Eliana Willis

More stories

  • 175 Shares159 Views

    in Elections

    ‘We’re not asking to be millionaires’: workers strike at US car giants – video

    Car workers have launched a series of strikes after their union failed to reach agreement on a new contract with the three largest US vehicle manufacturers, kicking off the country’s most ambitious industrial action in decades.
    The deadline for talks between the United Auto Workers union (UAW) and the car manufacturers Ford, General Motors and Stellantis expired at midnight on Thursday, with the sides still far from agreement on UAW’s contract priorities More

  • 138 Shares169 Views

    in Elections

    Active-duty US marine sentenced for participation in January 6 Capitol attack

    One of three active-duty US marines who stormed the nation’s Capitol together was sentenced on Monday to probation and 279 hours of community service – one hour for every marine who was killed or wounded fighting in the American civil war.The US district judge Ana Reyes said she could not fathom why Dodge Hellonen violated his oath to protect the constitution “against all enemies, foreign and domestic” – and risked his career – by joining the 6 January 2021 riot that disrupted Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election.“I really urge you to think about why it happened so you can address it and ensure it never happens again,” Reyes said.Dodge Hellonen, now 24, was the first of the three marines to be punished for participating in the Capitol attack. Reyes also is scheduled to sentence his co-defendants Micah Coomer on Tuesday and Joshua Abate on Wednesday.The three marines – friends from the same unit – drove together from a military post in Virginia to Washington DC on 6 January, when then president Donald Trump spoke at his “Save America” rally near the White House. They joined the crowd that stormed the Capitol after Trump urged his supporters to “fight like hell”.Before imposing Hellonen’s sentence, Reyes described how marines fought and died in some of the fiercest battles in American history. She recited the number of casualties from some of the bloodiest wars.Prosecutors recommended short terms of incarceration – 30 days for Coomer and 21 days for Hellonen and Abate – along with 60 hours of community service.A prosecutor wrote in a court filing that their military service, while laudable, makes their conduct “all the more troubling”.Reyes said she agreed with prosecutors that Hellonen’s status as an active-duty marine did not weigh in favor of a more lenient sentence. But she ultimately decided to spare him from a prison term, sentencing him to four years of probation.Reyes said it “carried a great deal of weight” to learn that Hellonen maintained a positive attitude and stellar work ethic when he was effectively demoted after the January 6 attack. He went from working as a signals analyst to a job that few marines want, inventorying military gear.“The only person who can give you a second chance is yourself,” she told him.“I take full responsibility for my actions and I’ll carry this with me for the rest of my life,” Hellonen told the judge.Hellonen, Coomer and Abate pleaded guilty earlier this year to parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building, a misdemeanor punishable by a maximum of six months behind bars. Hundreds of Capitol rioters have pleaded guilty to the same charge, which is akin to trespassing.More than 600 people have been sentenced for Capitol riot-related federal crimes. Over 100 of them have served in the US military, according to an Associated Press review of court records. Only a few were active-duty military or law enforcement personnel on January 6.As of Friday, all three marines were still on active-duty status, according to the Marine Corps. But all three could be separated from the Marine Corps “on less than honorable conditions”, prosecutors said. More

  • 150 Shares169 Views

    in Elections

    Trump asks judge to recuse herself in federal 2020 election subversion case

    Donald Trump’s legal team on Monday asked the federal judge overseeing the 2020 election interference prosecution against him to remove herself from the case, arguing that her previous public comments about the former president’s culpability in the January 6 Capitol attack was disqualifying.The recusal motion, filed to and against the US district judge Tanya Chutkan, faces major legal hurdles: to succeed, Trump must show a “reasonable person” would conclude from just her remarks – but not any of her actual rulings – that she was unable to preside impartially.Trump has long complained that the judge assigned to the case was biased against him because of her previous comments about Trump in other January 6 riot defendant cases and his legal team weighed filing the motion for weeks, according to two people familiar with deliberations.The nine-page motion identified two episodes where Chutkan remarked on her opinion about Trump’s responsibility in instigating the Capitol attack, which Trump’s lawyers argued gave rise to the appearance of potential bias or prejudice against the former president.The first instance came in October 2022 when she said, referring to January 6: “And the people who mobbed that Capitol were there in fealty, in loyalty, to one man… It’s a blind loyalty to one person who, by the way, remains free to this day.”Trump’s lawyers argued that those remarks, which came during sentencing of a rioter who stormed the Capitol, suggested Chutkan believed Trump should have been prosecuted and jailed in a pre-judgement of guilt that alone was disqualifying.The second instance was when the judge told another January 6 rioter in December 2021: “The people who exhorted you and encouraged you and rallied you to go and take action and to fight have not been charged,” adding, “I have my opinions,” but that was out of her control.Trump’s lawyers argued that those remarks suggested Chutkan agreed with that rioter’s defense attorney, who had said Trump had falsely convinced his supporters that the 2020 election was fraudulent and that they needed to take steps to stop the peaceful transition of power.It was uncertain whether the judge’s two public statements would satisfy the high bar for removal. Notably, the motion did not complain about any of Chutkan’s pre-trial rulings to date, perhaps because in a handful of instances, she has ruled against prosecutors.The judge, an Obama appointee, came into the case with a reputation of being particularly tough in January 6-related prosecutions after she handed down sentences in some prosecutions that were longer than had been requested by the justice department.Still, Chutkan is far from the only federal judge in DC – or elsewhere in the country, for that matter – who has suggested Trump might have culpability for the Capitol attack during sentencing hearings.In June, US district judge Amy Berman Jackson told the January 6 rioter Daniel Rodriguez, who she sentenced to 12 years in jail for using a Taser on DC Metropolitan police officer Michael Fanone, that he had been radicalized by “irresponsible and knowingly false claims that the election was stolen”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionFiling a recusal motion is not necessarily uncommon and federal judges tend not to take offense, former prosecutors and defense attorneys have said, even if Trump files them almost as a matter of routine. Recently, Trump sought to recuse the state court judge in his Manhattan criminal case, which was denied.Should the judge decline to remove herself, legal experts said Trump could seek to have the decision reviewed and petition the US court of appeals for the DC circuit for a writ of mandamus, a judicial order to a lower-court judge compelling an action such as recusal.The appeal could be accompanied with a motion to stay Chutkan’s rulings pending appeal, which could delay the pre-trial process and push back the current trial date set for March 2024 while that litigation continues.That kind of postponement would be beneficial to Trump, who has made clear that his overarching legal strategy for each of his criminal cases is to seek delay – preferably until after the 2024 presidential election as part of an effort to insulate himself from the charges.The consequences of an extended delay could be far-reaching. If the case is not adjudicated until after the 2024 election and Trump is re-elected, he could try to pardon himself or direct the attorney general to have the justice department drop the case in its entirety. More

  • 175 Shares189 Views

    in Elections

    Georgia special grand jury recommended charges against Lindsey Graham and former senators – live

    From 1h agoThe special grand jury investigating the attempt to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results recommended bringing charges against the state’s former senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler as well as the current South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham.None of the three were named in the indictment Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis unveiled last month, which targeted Donald Trump and 18 others with racketeering charges related to their attempt to stop Joe Biden from collecting Georgia’s electoral votes despite his victory there.According to the report, the jurors recommended the three senators be charged over “the national effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election”.All told, the special grand jurors in Georgia recommended charges against 39 people for trying to overturn the state’s elections, but Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis’s indictment only targeted 19 people, Donald Trump among them.Among those who were named in the report, but not charged:David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler were Georgia’s Republican senators, until both were ousted from office by the Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock in elections held the day before the January 6 insurrection.The special grand jury in Fulton county recommended that Perdue be charged “over the persistent, repeated communications directed to multiple Georgia officials and employees between November of 2020 and January of 2021” – the period when Donald Trump was trying to overturn his election loss. The vote was 16 jurors in favor, one against, and one abstention.The jurors also recommended charges against both Loeffler and Perdue for “the national effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election”. However there was more dissent on this count. For Perdue, the vote was 17 in favor and four against, while for Loeffler, the vote was 14 in favor, 6 against, and one abstention.Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis ultimately did not indict either of the former lawmakers.Lindsey Graham’s name appeared early as Donald Trump’s attempts to stay in the White House began shortly after his re-election defeat in November 2020.Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger told the press that the South Carolina senator had called him to ask if it was possible to throw away mail-in ballots in counties crucial to Joe Biden’s win in Georgia. From the Guardian’s Lauren Gambino’s report at the time:
    Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, has said that Senator Lindsey Graham asked whether it was possible to invalidate legally cast ballots after Donald Trump was narrowly defeated in the state.
    In an interview with the Washington Post, Raffensperger said that his fellow Republican, the chairman of the Senate judiciary committee, questioned him about the state’s signature-matching law and asked whether political bias might have played a role in counties where poll workers accepted higher rates of mismatched signatures. According to Raffensperger, Graham then asked whether he had the authority to toss out all mail-in ballots in these counties.
    Raffensperger was reportedly “stunned” by the question, in which Graham appeared to suggest that he find a way to throw out legally cast absentee ballots.
    “It sure looked like he was wanting to go down that road,” he said.
    Graham confirmed the conversation to reporters on Capitol Hill but said it was “ridiculous” to suggest that he pressured Raffensperger to throw out legally cast absentee ballots. According to Graham, he only wanted to learn more about the process for verifying signatures, because what happens in Georgia “affects the whole nation”.
    “I thought it was a good conversation,” Graham said on Monday after the interview was published. “I’m surprised to hear he characterized it that way.”
    Trump has refused to accept results showing Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 presidential election, falsely blaming rampant fraud and irregularities that election officials in both parties have dismissed as meritless.
    The special grand jury investigating the attempt to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results recommended bringing charges against the state’s former senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler as well as the current South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham.None of the three were named in the indictment Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis unveiled last month, which targeted Donald Trump and 18 others with racketeering charges related to their attempt to stop Joe Biden from collecting Georgia’s electoral votes despite his victory there.According to the report, the jurors recommended the three senators be charged over “the national effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election”.The full report of the special grand jury whose investigation led to the indictment of Donald Trump and 18 others for trying to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election result has been released.We’re digging into it and will let you know what it says.The special grand jury report that was used in the indictment of Donald Trump and 18 others in Georgia for trying to overturn the state’s 2020 election results is expected to be released any minute now.While parts of it have already been unsealed, we will finally be getting a look at the full report by the jurors empaneled by Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis. There are two main pieces of news expected from the report:
    Whether the grand jurors recommended charges be brought against people who Willis ultimately opted not to pursue.
    The vote counts for each person the jurors said should be indicted, and whether there were any significant splits within the panel.
    Yesterday, Ron DeSantis had a testy exchange with an audience member who accused the Republican governor of backing policies in Florida that enabled violence against Black people – such as last month’s shooting by a racist gunman in Jacksonville:Clearly smarting over the exchange, DeSantis later went on Fox News to call the questioner a “nutjob”:While Joe Biden is in India for a meeting of G20 leaders, Republicans angling to replace him next year are continuing their campaigns, including Ron DeSantis – who may have done himself more harm than good by skipping a meeting with the president after a hurricane struck Florida. Here’s the story, from the Guardian’s Richard Luscombe:One reality of Florida politics is that a bad hurricane for the state traditionally blows good fortune for its governor. It was true for Rick Scott, elected a senator in November 2018, one month after guiding Florida through Category 5 Hurricane Michael; and again for Ron DeSantis, whose landslide re-election last year followed his much-praised handling of the aftermath of Hurricane Ian.This year, however, DeSantis is struggling to shake the dark clouds of Hurricane Idalia, as his return to the national stage to try to rescue his flailing presidential campaign after an 11-day break has been further scarred by his “petty and small” snub of Joe Biden’s visit to Florida last weekend to survey the storm’s damage.Opponents seized on it as a partisan politicization of a climate disaster, contrasting the Republican Florida governor’s approach to a year ago after Ian, when DeSantis and Biden put their differences aside to praise each other and tour the worst-affected areas with their respective first ladies.“Your job as governor is to be the tour guide for the president, to make sure the president sees your people, sees the damage, sees the suffering, what’s going on and what needs to be done to rebuild it,” Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor, and a rival for the Republican presidential nomination, told Fox News Radio’s Brian Kilmeade.“You’re doing your job. And unfortunately, he put politics ahead of his job,” added Christie, who was applauded by Democrats and savaged by Republicans for working closely with Barack Obama after superstorm Sandy mauled his state in 2012.The Twitter/X account of Joe Biden, who is currently flying on Air Force One to New Delhi for a summit of G20 nations, just released video showing him touring the renovated situation room.That’s the space in the White House where the president goes to handle emergencies or highly sensitive operations:Perhaps the most famous appearance of a president in the situation room is Barack Obama’s from 1 May 2011, as he watched US soldiers kill Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. His photographer Pete Souza captured the scene:Yesterday, Donald Trump indicated he may ask that his trial in the Georgia election subversion case be moved to federal court, which the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reported could have a number of advantages for the former president:Donald Trump’s lead defense lawyer notified a judge in Fulton county on Thursday that he could soon seek to remove to federal court the racketeering prosecution charging him with attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in the state of Georgia.The unusual filing, submitted to the Fulton county superior court judge Scott McAfee, said only that the former president “may seek removal of his prosecution”, stopping short of submitting a formal motion to transfer the trial venue.Trump has been weighing for weeks whether to seek removal to federal court and, according to two people familiar with deliberations, is expected to make a decision based on whether his former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows is successful in his own effort.The idea with waiting on a decision in the Meadows case, the people said, is to use him as a test. If Meadows is successful in transferring to federal court, the Trump legal team is intending to repurpose the same arguments and follow a similar strategy.To have the case moved to the US district court for the northern district of Georgia, Trump would have to show that the criminal conduct alleged in the indictment involved his official duties as president – he was acting “under color of office” – and cannot be prosecuted at the state level.The rationale to seek removal to federal court is seen as twofold: the jury pool would expand beyond just the Atlanta area – which skews heavily Democratic – and a federal judge might be less deferential to local prosecutors compared with judges in the Fulton county superior court.The Georgia special grand jury report that is expected to be released at 10am ET today could reveal whether the investigative panel thought anyone else besides Donald Trump and his 18 co-defendants should face charges for meddling in the state’s election result three years ago.Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis convened the panel and used its subpoena power to compel witness testimony, and portions of its final report have already been released. The special grand jury did not indict Trump – that was done by one of the regular grand juries she convened in August.Good morning, US politics live blog readers. It’s going to be another big Friday in one of the criminal cases against Donald Trump, while US president Joe Biden is in India for G20 and a crucial bilateral with the prime minister, Narendra Modi.Here’s some of what’s ahead:
    The report of the special grand jury in Georgia that investigated Trump in the election subversion case – where the now-former president attempted to overturn the 2020 election in the swing state – is expected to be unsealed today.
    Biden is due to touch down in New Delhi, India, in under two hours, a day before the start of the G20 summit there. He and Modi will hold a bilateral meeting shortly after the US president arrives. The specter of Russia’s war in Ukraine looms over the event.
    Speaking of criminal cases against former US presidents, on this day 49 years ago Republican president Gerald Ford granted a “full, free, and absolute pardon” to former president Richard Nixon covering his entire term in office, the AP notes.
    Trump will attend a rally tonight in South Dakota and the state’s rightwing governor Kristi Noem is expected to endorse his run for the 2024 Republican nomination for the White House. Noem is considered a vice-presidential hopeful. More

  • 163 Shares179 Views

    in Elections

    Georgia report reveals jury called for criminal charges against Lindsey Graham and others

    A special purpose grand jury in Georgia that investigated Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election for nearly two years recommended bringing criminal charges against several people who ultimately were not charged, including US senator Lindsey Graham, former senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, as well as the influential conservative figure Cleta Mitchell.Those recommendations were revealed Friday when the special purpose grand jury’s final report was unsealed. A regular grand jury indicted Trump and 18 others over their efforts to overturn the 2020 election last month. Those charged include Rudy Giuliani, Mark Meadows, Sidney Powell, and former Georgia Republican party chairman David Shafer.The special purpose grand jury recommended bringing charges against Graham, Perdue and Loefller “with respect to the national effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election with efforts focused on Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and the District of Columbia”.Graham, a key Trump ally in the senate, called Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger after the election and inquired about tossing aside legally cast mail-in ballots. Perdue reportedly pushed Georgia governor Brian Kemp to call a special session of the Georgia legislature in order to overturn the election results. Loeffler initially said she would vote against certification of Biden’s win in the US Senate before reversing course after the January 6 riot and voting in favor of certification.Mitchell, who remains an influential figure on the right today, was on the infamous January 2021 phone call in which Trump asked Raffensperger to find votes in his favor. The special purpose grand jury unanimously recommended indicting her under several Georgia statutes.The special purpose grand jury also recommended indicting Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, and Boris Epshteyn, who remains a top Trump aide.It also recommended charges against Burt Jones, who served as a fake elector and is now lieutenant governor of Georgia. A special prosecutor is handling an investigation of Jones after Willis was barred from investigating him after hosting a fundraiser for a political rival. More

  • 150 Shares129 Views

    in Elections

    Trump may seek to transfer Georgia 2020 election charges to federal court

    Donald Trump’s lead defense lawyer notified a judge in Fulton county on Thursday that he could soon seek to remove to federal court the racketeering prosecution charging him with attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in the state of Georgia.The unusual filing, submitted to the Fulton county superior court judge Scott McAfee, said only that the former president “may seek removal of his prosecution”, stopping short of submitting a formal motion to transfer the trial venue.Trump has been weighing for weeks whether to seek removal to federal court and, according to two people familiar with deliberations, is expected to make a decision based on whether his former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows is successful in his own effort.The idea with waiting on a decision in the Meadows case, the people said, is to use him as a test. If Meadows is successful in transferring to federal court, the Trump legal team is intending to repurpose the same arguments and follow a similar strategy.To have the case moved to the US district court for the northern district of Georgia, Trump would have to show that the criminal conduct alleged in the indictment involved his official duties as president – he was acting “under color of office” – and cannot be prosecuted at the state level.The rationale to seek removal to federal court is seen as twofold: the jury pool would expand beyond just the Atlanta area – which skews heavily Democratic – and a federal judge might be less deferential to local prosecutors compared with judges in the Fulton county superior court.There is no obligation for a defendant to inform a judge about a hypothetical motion and so, in that sense, Trump’s filing was aimed more at giving notice to the judge who is deliberating on whether all the defendants in the case should be tried at the same time.A spokesperson for Trump could not immediately be reached for comment.Last month, the Atlanta-area grand jury handed up a sprawling 41-count indictment against Trump and 18 others, alleging that the former president violated Georgia’s state Rico statute in pursuing a multi-pronged effort to throw out the results of a fair election.For the moment, two of the defendants, the former Trump election litigation lawyers Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell, are scheduled for trial on 23 October after they both sought a speedy trial. But it remains unclear whether everyone else will also go to trial on that date.The removal question has major and complicated implications: if Trump or Meadows manages to transfer to federal court, that could upend any trial in Fulton county superior court that had started or finished because of potential jurisdictional issues.Trump can wait until 30 days after his arraignment – or in this case, his arraignment waiver and not-guilty plea filed on 31 August – to decide whether to seek removal to federal court.The Trump legal team is almost certain to wait until the last moment to file, the people said, given Trump’s overarching legal strategy with all of his criminal cases is to delay, potentially even beyond the 2024 election for which he is the frontrunner for the Republican nomination. More

  • 125 Shares139 Views

    in Elections

    First hearing held in Georgia for 2020 election interference case

    A Fulton county judge said that he hoped to decide on trial schedules in the Georgia election interference case next week, a case for which a joint trial will take approximately four months, according to state prosecutors.On Wednesday, the judge Scott McAfee held the first hearing in the Georgia election interference case involving 19 co-defendants including ex-president Donald Trump, who have been charged with interfering in the 2020 presidential elections.During the hearing, a prosecutor from the Fulton county district attorney’s office said that a joint trial involving all 19 defendants will take approximately four months.The prosecutor Nathan Wade also said that the trial will involve approximately 150 witnesses and that the timeline does not account for jury selection.McAfee also denied the request of Kenneth Chesebro to sever his case from his co-defendant Sidney Powell and ordered the two defendants to stand trial on 23 October together.McAfee disagreed with requests from Chesebro and Powell – both attorneys who worked alongside the Trump campaign in 2020 – who wanted their cases to be handled separately from other defendants. Both Chesebro and Powell have also filed motions for a speedy trial.Chesebro’s attorney Scott Grubman argued that while Chesebro’s case surrounds the fake electors scheme, Powell’s case revolves primarily around Coffee county’s voting systems breach.“You’re going to have two cases in one. You’re going to have days, if not weeks, God forbid months, of testimony just related to the Coffee county allegations,” Grubman argued.Manubir “Manny” Arora, another attorney of Chesebro’s, echoed similar sentiments, saying that Powell’s charges have “nothing to do with Mr Chesebro”.Meanwhile, state prosecutor Wade argued that even if Chesebro and Powell’s cases were severed, the Fulton county district attorney’s office would “absolutely” still require the same amount of time and witnesses to try the case.Nevertheless, McAfee disagreed, saying: “Based on what’s been presented today, I am not finding the severance from Mr Chesbro or Ms Powell is necessary to achieve a fair determination of the guilt or innocence for either defendant in this case.”McAfee, who decided to adhere to Chesebro and Powell’s request for a speedy trial, has yet to issue a final ruling on whether the remaining 17 co-defendants will also be tried in October.“It sounds like the state is still sticking to the position that all these defendants should remain and they want to address some of these removal issues,” McAfee said on Wednesday. “I’m willing to hear that. I remain very skeptical, but we can – I’m willing to hear what you have to say on it,” he added.McAfee gave prosecutors until Tuesday to submit a brief on whether the 23 October trial will include only Chesebro and Powell or all of the defendants. More

  • 200 Shares139 Views

    in Elections

    Latest E Jean Carroll lawsuit against Trump limited to damages in victory for writer – live

    From 1h agoThe judge presiding over E Jean Carroll’s second civil defamation case against Donald Trump said a forthcoming trial will only determine the damages she is to receive from the former president, in a major victory for the writer.Politico obtained a copy of the judgment:Earlier this year, Carroll prevailed in her first lawsuit against Trump when a jury found him liable for sexually abusing her, and ordered him to pay $5m in damages. According to Reuters, the second suit Carroll filed accused Trump of defaming her by denying in 2019 that he had raped her in the mid-1990s.Because of the jury’s finding earlier this year, New York-based federal judge Lewis Kaplan found that Trump made his 2019 statements with “actual malice”, and a jury will only need to decide how much in damages he should pay.Last month, the same judge dismissed a counterclaim filed by Trump against Carroll, an advice columnist.Opening arguments are starting today in the trial of a former White House aide to Donald Trump who is accused of contempt of Congress for defying subpoenas from the January 6 committee, the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports:Federal prosecutors are expected to present the case on Wednesday that former Trump White House official Peter Navarro should be convicted of contempt of Congress because he wilfully ignored a subpoena issued last year by the House January 6 committee during the investigation into the Capitol attack.The only standard that prosecutors will have to reach is that Navarro’s failure to comply with the subpoena was deliberate and intentional – and Navarro will not be able to argue in defense that he blew off the subpoena because he thought Donald Trump had asserted executive privilege.Navarro is about to face his contempt of Congress trial without what he had hoped would be his strongest defense, after the presiding US district court judge Amit Mehta ruled last week Navarro had failed to prove Trump had actually asserted executive privilege to block his cooperation.In an added twist, prosecutors also said the day before trial that they intend to argue that Navarro’s claim of executive privilege was actually self-incriminating because it reinforced his failure to comply with the subpoena was calculated and deliberate, according to court documents.That sets the stage for a trial in federal court in Washington which could end in a quick defeat for Navarro given his lack of defenses, though the consequential nature of the case could also mean it immediately becomes tied up for months on appeal.E Jean Carroll’s defamation suit is not the only instance where Donald Trump’s words are getting him into trouble. As the Guardian’s Sam Levine reports, attorneys for special counsel Jack Smith are complaining about the former president’s constant public comments as the federal case against him for trying to overturn his election loss moves forward:Donald Trump is making “daily extrajudicial statements that threaten to prejudice the jury pool” in the federal criminal case dealing with his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, attorneys for special counsel Jack Smith said in a court filing.Trump has not hesitated to criticize the US district judge Tanya Chutkan, who is overseeing the case. He has called her “highly partisan” and “VERY BIASED & UNFAIR,” pointing to her comments sentencing one of the January 6 rioters. Trump has also attacked Smith, calling him “deranged” and someone with “unchecked and insane aggression”.Chutkan has warned Trump’s attorneys about his comments. She has also imposed a protective order in the case, limiting what documents and other materials can be made with the public.“I caution you and your client to take special care in your public statements about this case,” she said to John Lauro, one of his lawyers, during a hearing in August. “I will take whatever measures are necessary to safeguard the integrity of these proceedings.”Here’s more from Reuters on E Jean Carroll’s latest lawsuit against Donald Trump, which seeks damages based on allegations that he raped her in the 1990s, then lied about it two decades later:A federal judge on Tuesday said E Jean Carroll, the New York writer who last month won a $5m jury verdict against Donald Trump for sexual abuse and defamation, can pursue a related $10m defamation case against the former US president.US district judge Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan ruled in favor of the former Elle magazine columnist, after Trump had argued that the defamation case must be dismissed because the jury had concluded he never raped her.Kaplan said he may explain his reasoning later.Through a spokeswoman, Trump’s lawyer Alina Habba maintained that Carroll should not be allowed to change her legal theory supporting the defamation case “at the 11th hour” to conform to the jury verdict.Habba was in Miami, where Trump pleaded not guilty in a separate case to federal criminal charges that he mishandled classified files.Carroll’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan, who is not related to Judge Kaplan, said: “We look forward to moving ahead expeditiously on E Jean Carroll’s remaining claims.”Both of Carroll’s civil lawsuits arose from Trump’s denials that he had raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room in Manhattan in the mid-1990s.On 9 May, a Manhattan jury ordered Trump to pay Carroll $2m for battery and $3m for defamation over Trump’s October 2022 denial.The judge presiding over E Jean Carroll’s second civil defamation case against Donald Trump said a forthcoming trial will only determine the damages she is to receive from the former president, in a major victory for the writer.Politico obtained a copy of the judgment:Earlier this year, Carroll prevailed in her first lawsuit against Trump when a jury found him liable for sexually abusing her, and ordered him to pay $5m in damages. According to Reuters, the second suit Carroll filed accused Trump of defaming her by denying in 2019 that he had raped her in the mid-1990s.Because of the jury’s finding earlier this year, New York-based federal judge Lewis Kaplan found that Trump made his 2019 statements with “actual malice”, and a jury will only need to decide how much in damages he should pay.Last month, the same judge dismissed a counterclaim filed by Trump against Carroll, an advice columnist.In an interview with the Associated Press, Kamala Harris broke the White House’s relative silence on the prosecutions of Donald Trump and others for trying to overturn the 2020 election, and said those responsible for the campaign should be held accountable.“Let the evidence, the facts, take it where it may,” the vice-president in an interview held during a trip to Indonesia, where she is attending a summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.“I spent the majority of my career as a prosecutor,” said Harris, a former attorney general of California. “I believe that people should be held accountable under the law. And when they break the law, there should be accountability.”Biden and other top White House officials have generally stayed mum as prosecutors have indicted Trump for the Mar-a-Lago documents and his campaign to overturn the 2020 election. Two of the cases Trump is facing were brought by Jack Smith, a special counsel appointed by the US attorney general, Merrick Garland, whom Biden nominated for the job.People typically hire lawyers to give them advice on how to handle legal matters. But as ABC News’s report this morning on Evan Corcoran’s recollections of his time representing Donald Trump shows, the former president was not immediately interested in his advice on handling a grand jury subpoena to return whatever classified documents he had at Mar-a-Lago:
    Corcoran and another Trump attorney, Jennifer Little, flew to Florida to meet with Trump. “The next step was to speak with the former president about complying with that subpoena,” Corcoran recalled in a voice memo the next day.
    But while sitting together in Trump’s office, in front of a Norman Rockwell-style painting depicting Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford, Bill Clinton and Trump playing poker, Trump, according to Corcoran’s notes, wanted to discuss something else first: how he was being unfairly targeted.
    As Corcoran later recalled in his recordings, Trump continuously wandered off to topics unrelated to the subpoena — Hillary Clinton, “the great things” he’s done for the country, and his big lead in the polls in the run-up to the 2024 Republican presidential primary race that Trump would officially join in November. But Corcoran and Little “kept returning to the boxes,” according to the transcripts.
    Corcoran wanted Trump to understand “we were there to discuss responding to the subpoena,” Corcoran said in the memos.
    …
    As Corcoran described it in his recordings, he explained to Trump during that meeting what the former president was facing. “We’ve got a grand jury subpoena and the alternative is if you don’t comply with the grand jury subpoena you could be held in contempt,” Corcoran recalled telling Trump.
    Trump responded with a line included in the indictment against him, asking, “what happens if we just don’t respond at all or don’t play ball with them?”
    The transcripts reviewed by ABC News reveal what Corcoran says he then told Trump. “Well, there’s a prospect that they could go to a judge and get a search warrant, and that they could arrive here,” Corcoran recalled warning the former president as they sat at Mar-a-Lago.
    According to CNN, investigators from special counsel Jack Smith’s office are asking witnesses about fundraising done by Donald Trump’s former lawyer Sidney Powell, and whether it was used to fund efforts to breach voting systems in four swing states:
    According to sources, witnesses interviewed by Smith’s prosecutors in recent weeks were asked about Powell’s role in the hunt for evidence of voter fraud after the 2020 election, including how her nonprofit group, Defending the Republic, provided money to fund those efforts.
    Powell promoted Defending the Republic as a non-profit focused on funding post-election legal challenges by Trump’s team as it disputed results in key states Biden had won. Those challenges and fundraising efforts underpinning them were all based on the premise that evidence of widespread voter fraud was already in hand.
    But according to documents reviewed by CNN and witness testimony obtained by the House select committee that investigated January, 6, 2021, the group was used to fund a desperate search to retroactively back-up baseless claims that Trump’s lawyers had already put forward in failed lawsuits challenging the results in several states.
    A series of invoices and communications obtained by election integrity groups including The Coalition for Good Governance and American Oversight show Defending the Republic contributed millions of dollars toward the push to access voting equipment in key states.
    In a court filing after her indictment in Georgia, Powell denied involvement in the Coffee County breach but acknowledged that “a non-profit she founded” paid the forensics firm hired to examine voting systems there.
    Powell did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.
    Smith’s investigators have also dived deep into the bewildering conspiracy theories that Trump allies pedaled following his election loss to try to convince his supporters that the polls were rigged:
    Smith’s team has specifically asked witnesses about certain conspiracy theories pushed by Powell including that Dominion Voting Systems had ties to former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and featured software he used to rig his own election. The software company, Smartmatic, has previously said the turnout in those Venezuelan elections, not the voting system, was manipulated.
    Both Dominion and Smartmatic have said that they are competitors with no corporate links, knocking down the claim pushed by Powell.
    One witness who met with Smith’s team earlier last month, former NYPD Commissioner Bernie Kerik, spoke at length about how Trump allies accessed voting systems in Antrim County, Michigan, shortly after Election Day. Kerik also discussed the origins of a theory that voting machines could switch votes from one candidate to another, according to his lawyer Tim Parlatore.
    Kerik also acknowledged the breach of voting systems in Coffee County during his interview with federal prosecutors, Parlatore told CNN, adding that while his client raised the topic, the conversation did not delve into specifics.
    Kerik and another witness who met with Smith’s team in recent weeks were both asked if Powell was ever able to back-up her various claims of fraud, including conspiracy theories that foreign countries had hacked voting equipment.
    Both were also asked about Defending the Republic and how it was used as a source of funding efforts to find evidence of voter fraud, sources told CNN.
    Good morning, US politics blog readers. New reports have emerged in recent days that offer more details of the legal peril that Donald Trump has found himself in. Weeks after he indicted Trump for trying to overturn the 2020 election, CNN reports that special counsel Jack Smith is continuing his investigation, focusing in particular on attorney Sidney Powell’s activities in Georgia. Powell was last month among the 19 people – Trump included – who were charged by Atlanta-area district attorney Fani Willis in a racketeering indictment over the campaign to block Joe Biden from winning the state’s electoral votes.Separately, ABC News reports this morning that another attorney for Trump, Evan Corcoran, specifically warned the president that if he did not comply with the government’s efforts to retrieve classified documents from Mar-a-Lago, the FBI could search the property. But then another attorney for the former president warned Corcoran that if he continued to press him, Trump is “going to go ballistic”. In June of this year, Smith indicted Trump and his aides on charges related to the documents hidden at the resort.Here’s what’s happening today:
    Officials from border security agencies will appear before a Senate Homeland Security subcommittee to testify about the touchy subject of asylum law at 2.30pm eastern time.
    Secretary of state Antony Blinken snuck away to Kyiv for a surprise visit. Follow our live blog for all the latest news from Ukraine.
    White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre briefs reporters at 1pm. More