Eliana Willis

More stories

  • 125 Shares99 Views

    in Elections

    Final Trump co-defendants surrender to authorities in Georgia – live

    From 4m agoTwo of the last co-defendants who were indicted in Georgia along with Donald Trump for attempting to overturn Joe Biden’s election win in the state three years ago surrendered to authorities today.According to Fulton county jail records, Chicago-based publicist Trevian Kutti turned herself in after being charged with threatening election worker Ruby Freeman. Also surrendering today was Stephen Lee, a longtime police chaplain in Georgia who traveled to Freeman’s home and identified himself as a pastor trying to help.Here’s a rundown of all the 19 defendants named in Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis’s sprawling indictment, which is centered on the Trump campaign’s attempt to prevent Biden from winning Georgia’s electoral votes weeks after the ballots had been counted:A social media post viewed nearly six million times of what appears to be Donald Trump fans wildly celebrating in a bar as the mugshot of the former president is broadcast on a large screen, appears to be a well-crafted hoax.The Lincoln Project, a political action committee founded by disenchanted Republicans, shared the video on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, but Newsweek claims: “the footage is actually of England soccer fans…and has been widely edited as a meme.”The Lincoln Project post doesn’t say where the video was sourced, just the words ‘TRUMP MUGSHOT JUST DROPPED’. Since posting the video 12 hours ago, the Lincoln Project has defiantly reposted the footage twice more.Ahead of the surrender, Donald Trump shook up his legal team and retained the top Georgia attorney Steven Sadow, who filed a notice of appearance with the Fulton county superior court as lead counsel, replacing Drew Findling. Trump’s other lawyer in the case, Jennifer Little, is staying on.The reason for the abrupt recalibration was unclear, and Trump’s aides suggested it was unrelated to performance. Still, Trump has a record of firing lawyers who represented him during criminal investigations but were unable to stave off charges.Findling was also unable to exempt Trump from having his mugshot taken, according to people familiar with the matter – something that personally irritated Trump, even though the Fulton county sheriff’s office had always indicated they were uninterested in making such an accommodation. His mugshot was not taken in his other criminal cases.In a clear sign of her belief that her team is ready to go to trial immediately, Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis on Thursday asked for the trial of all 19 defendants to start on 23 October after one of the co-defendants.Trump’s legal team filed a motion opposing such a quick trial date within hours, underscoring the former president’s overarching strategy to delay proceedings as much as possible – potentially until after the 2024 presidential election.Willis’ request to schedule the trial of Trump and his 18 co-defendants to begin in October came after one of the co-defendants, Trump’s former lawyer Kenneth Chesebro, apparently gambled and requested a speedy trial.In a court filing, Trump attorney Steve Sadow notified a judge that Trump will soon file a motion to sever his case from Chesebro – indicating the diverging interests of the people ensnared in the indictment.Sadow also said Trump will seek to sever his case from “any other co-defendant who makes a similar request” for a quick trial. He wrote:
    President Trump further respectfully puts the Court on notice that he requests the Court set a scheduling conference at its earliest convenience so he can be heard on the State’s motions for entry of pretrial scheduling order and to specially set trial
    Among the defendants who surrendered to Georgia authorities early this morning was Jeffrey Clark, the former justice department official charged with violating the state’s Rico act and criminal attempt to commit false statements and writings.Clark, who worked as assistant attorney general for the DOJ’s civil division from September 2020 to January 2021, was booked at the Fulton county jail on Friday morning and released on a $100,000 bond.In the indictment, prosecutors said Clark pushed to send out an official justice department letter claiming that investigators had “identified significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election in multiple States.” Donald Trump supported Clark and planned to name him acting attorney general until he was threatened with mass resignations if he did so, according to the indictment.On Tuesday, Clark had asked a judge to prohibit Fulton county Fani Willis from arresting him by a Friday deadline, arguing that his case should be handled by federal courts because of his work as a federal officer.US district judge Steve Jones denied Clark’s request, as well as a similar request by former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.Marjorie Taylor Greene, the rightwing extremist Republican congresswoman, posted a mocked-up mugshot on X, formerly known as Twitter, in a show of solidarity with Donald Trump after his surrender to Fulton county officials.Alongside the hashtag MAGAMugshot, Greene wrote:
    I stand with President Trump against the commie DA Fani Willis who is nothing more than a political hitman tasked with taking out Biden’s top political opponent.
    Vivek Ramaswamy has described himself as an “outsider”, accusing rivals for the Republican presidential nomination of being “bought and paid for” by donors and special interests.But the 38-year-old Ohio-based venture capitalist, whose sharp-elbowed and angry display stood out in the first Republican debate this week, has his own close ties to influential figures from both sides of the political aisle.Prominent among such connections are Peter Thiel, the co-founder of tech giants PayPal and Palantir and a rightwing megadonor, and Leonard Leo, the activist who has marshaled unprecedented sums in his push to stock federal courts with conservative judges.Ramaswamy is a Yale Law School friend of JD Vance, the author of the bestselling memoir Hillbilly Elegy who enjoyed success in finance before entering politics. At Yale, Vance and Ramaswamy attended what the New Yorker called an “intimate lunch seminar for select students” that was hosted by Thiel. Last year, backed by Thiel and espousing hard-right Trumpist views, Vance won a US Senate seat in Ohio.Thiel has since said he has stepped back from political donations. But he has backed Ramaswamy’s business career, supporting what the New Yorker called “a venture helping senior citizens access Medicare” and, last year, backing Strive Asset Management, a fund launched by Ramaswamy to attack environmental, social and governance (ESG) policies among corporate investors. Vance was also a backer.Ramaswamy’s primary vehicle to success has been Roivant, an investment company focused on the pharmaceuticals industry founded in 2014.The Roivant advisory board includes figures from both the Republican and Democratic establishments: Kathleen Sebelius, US health secretary under Barack Obama; Tom Daschle of South Dakota, formerly Democratic leader in the US Senate; and Olympia Snowe, formerly a Republican senator from Maine.Read the full story here.Vivek Ramaswamy, the 38-year-old biotech entrepreneur and GOP presidential hopeful, took in $450,000 in the hours after his appearance at the first Republican primary debate on Wednesday.Ramaswamy, a political newcomer whose bid for the GOP nomination has been hit by recent scandals over remarks that suggested sympathy for conspiracy theories around the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the January 6 assault on the Capitol, took in an average donation of $38, campaign spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told AP on Thursday.Ramaswamy has largely been self-funding his campaign. On Wednesday night, he repeatedly said all the other presidential candidates onstage in Milwaukee were “bought and paid for” by donors.The Guardian’s columnist Margaret Sullivan writes how Ramaswamy is America’s demagogue-in-waiting.Mere minutes after Donald Trump’s mugshot was released, the Trump campaign had already turned the image into a merchandizing opportunity.The former president’s re-election campaign announced in an email that it would give away a “free” T-shirt with Trump’s mugshot printed on it for $47.The caption on the shirt reads “NEVER SURRENDER” – which is literally what Trump was doing when the mugshot was taken on Thursday.Even as he remains the clear frontrunner for the Republican nomination, Donald Trump’s indictments are likely to take a toll on his prospects of winning the presidential election, according to a new poll.The Politico magazine/Ipsos poll suggests Americans are taking the cases against Trump seriously and that a majority are skeptical of his attempts to portray himself as a victim of a legally baseless witch-hunt.About 51% of respondents – 14% of Republicans and 88% of Democrats – said Trump is likely guilty in the federal case in which he is charged with conspiracy to defraud the US and conspiracy against rights. Another 52% said he is likely guilty in the federal case regarding his alleged mishandling of classified documents.Nearly 60% of respondents said they wanted the federal trial in Trump’s 2020 election subversion case to take place before the 2024 Republican primaries begin next year. Federal prosecutors have proposed the trial begin 2 Jan 2024, while Trump’s lawyers have pushed for a April 2026 trial start date.Nearly one-third of respondents said that a conviction in the federal trial in Trump’s 2020 election subversion case would make them less likely to support Trump, including 34% of independents.And half of the country said Trump should go to prison if he is convicted in the justice department’s 2020 election case, according to the poll.CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski points out that Donald Trump is polling better than he did at any point in 2020.The former president faces 91 felony counts and has been charged with attempting to subvert democracy, risking national security secrets and falsifying business records in connection with a hush money payment to an adult film star.Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and Republican vice-presidential nominee, said a second US civil war is “going to happen” if state and federal authorities continue to prosecute Donald Trump.“Those who are conducting this travesty and creating this two-tier system of justice, I want to ask them what the heck, do you do want us to be in civil war? Because that’s what’s going to happen,” Palin told Newsmax on Thursday night.
    We’re not going to keep putting up with this.
    Palin was speaking to the rightwing network as Trump surrendered at a jail in Fulton county, Georgia, and a historic mugshot was released.Academics have long warned of the potential for Trump to stoke violence worse than the attack on Congress on 6 January 2021, when supporters he told to “fight like hell” to stop certification of Biden’s victory stormed the Capitol building. Nine deaths have been linked to the riot.Barbara F Walter, author of How Civil Wars Start: And How To Stop Them and a CIA advisor, has written:
    No one wants to believe that their beloved democracy is in decline, or headed toward war.
    But “if you were an analyst in a foreign country looking at events in America – the same way you’d look at events in Ukraine or Ivory Coast or Venezuela – you would go down a checklist, assessing each of the conditions that make civil war likely.
    And what you would find is that the United States, a democracy founded more than two centuries ago, has entered very dangerous territory.
    Donald Trump described his experience of being booked at the Fulton county jail on Thursday as “terrible” and “very sad” after he surrendered to authorities on felony charges related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.Speaking to Newsmax after flying out of Georgia, Trump said he was treated “nicely” during his booking process but said his arrest was a “very sad day for the country”. He said:
    I took a mugshot. I’d never heard the words mug shot. They didn’t teach me that at the Wharton School of Finance.
    He added:
    I went through an experience that I never thought I’d have to go through, but then I’ve gone through the same experience three other times. In my whole life, I didn’t know anything about indictments. And now I’ve been indicted, like, four times
    In a separate interview with Fox News, Trump said:
    It is not a comfortable feeling – especially when you’ve done nothing wrong.
    Trump faces 13 charges in Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis’ sprawling racketeering case, including violating the state’s racketeering act, soliciting a public officer to violate their oath, conspiring to impersonate a public officer, conspiring to commit forgery in the first degree and conspiring to file false documents. More

  • 100 Shares119 Views

    in Elections

    Republican candidates grapple with post-Roe positioning on abortion

    Eight Republican presidential hopefuls clashed over the future of abortion access on Wednesday night in the first debate of the 2024 election cycle.Without the specter of Roe v Wade looming overhead, the candidates faced a new litmus test on abortion: whether or not they support a nationwide ban on the procedure after 15 weeks of pregnancy.The former vice-president Mike Pence, former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson and South Carolina Senator Tim Scott all pledged to support a federal 15-week ban.The question from the moderator Martha MacCallum had noted that abortion had consistently been a losing issue for Republicans in state ballots since the Dobbs decision.Nevertheless just one candidate, the North Dakota governor, Doug Burgum, decisively rejected the idea that Congress ought to regulate abortion access.Burgum, who signed North Dakota’s six-week abortion ban in April, said the conservative mission to overturn Roe was predicated on the belief that states should be allowed to set their own rules on the procedure.“What is going to work in New York will never work in North Dakota and vice versa,” Burgum said.For decades, Roe v Wade offered Republican candidates a convenient boogeyman. The supreme court ruling was not just about abortion – swing state conservatives like Burgum could point to Roe as an example of federal overreach.But Wednesday’s debate signaled a schism in the GOP’s position on abortion.In a post-Roe landscape, one year after Senator Lindsey Graham first introduced a federal 15-week ban bill in Congress, Republicans were forced to choose between their purported support for states’ rights and their opposition to abortion access.Burgum was the lone voice that chose states’ rights.Pence and Scott, both evangelical Christians, said they support a 15-week ban because abortion is a “moral” question that necessitates federal intervention.Scott said states like “California, New York and Illinois” should not be allowed to offer broad access to the procedure.Pence said abortion was “not a states only issue, it’s a moral issue”.The former vice-president, who has centered abortion in his bid to court socially conservative voters, condemned his opponents for refusing to back a federal ban.“I’m not new to this cause,” Pence said on Wednesday night. “Can’t we have a minimum standard in every state in the nation?”In his opening remarks, Pence lauded the work of the Trump administration, which placed three conservative justices on the US supreme court and “gave the people a new beginning for the right to life”.Pence also criticized the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, who suggested that it would be difficult to gain the requisite congressional support to pass a federal abortion ban.Haley, the only woman on Wednesday’s debate stage, said Republicans should instead pursue pragmatic legislative goals that could garner bipartisan support in Congress.“Let’s find consensus, can’t we all agree that we should ban late-term abortions? Can’t we all agree that we should encourage adoptions?” she said.In his response, Pence directly addressed Haley: “Consensus is the opposite of leadership.”Susan B Anthony Pro-Life America, a powerful anti-abortion lobbying group, praised Pence, Hutchinson and Scott for offering “a clear, bold case for national protections for the unborn at least by 15 weeks”.“The position taken by candidates like Doug Burgum, that life is solely a matter for the states, is unacceptable for a nation founded on unalienable rights and for a presidential contender,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, the group’s president, in a statement on Wednesday night.Last month, Dannenfelser issued a similar condemnation of the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, for his reluctance to back a federal ban.DeSantis has supported bills restricting access to abortion – including a six-week ban in his own state of Florida, but has stopped short of saying he would support a federal ban.Dannenfelser said the Republican presidential candidate should “work to gather the votes necessary in Congress” to pass a national ban on abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy, adding that DeSantis’s failure to support the ban was “unacceptable”.“There are many pressing legislative issues for which Congress does not have the votes at the moment, but that is not a reason for a strong leader to back away from the fight,” she said in a statement last month.On Wednesday night, Fox News moderators twice asked DeSantis to clarify his position on federal abortion restrictions, but the Florida governor refused to provide a direct answer.“I’m going to stand on the side of life,” DeSantis said. “I understand Wisconsin is going to do it different than Texas, I understand Iowa and New Hampshire are going to be different, but I will support the cause of life as governor and as president.”Notably, Donald Trump – the presumed GOP frontrunner – skipped Wednesday night’s debate.Earlier this year, Trump criticized DeSantis’s position on abortion, calling Florida’s six-week ban “too harsh”.But the former president appears to share DeSantis’s hesitations about the federal 15-week ban, dodging questions about the proposed restrictions since launching his re-election campaign in March.The Guardian reported in April that Trump considers a federal abortion ban a losing proposition for Republicans, though his exact vision for the future of US abortion access remains unclear. More

  • 163 Shares169 Views

    in Elections

    First two defendants in Georgia election subversion case booked in Fulton county jail

    The first two defendants in the Georgia election subversion case against Donald Trump and 18 other defendants have been booked in the Fulton county jail, according to its online database.Scott Hall, an Atlanta-area bail bondsman, was booked at the Rice Street jail on Tuesday. John Eastman, a Trump attorney and one of the main architect’s of Trump’s plan to halt the certification of Biden’s victory, also voluntarily turned himself in later on Tuesday morning.They are expected to undergo fingerprinting, submit personal information and potentially take a mugshot.In a statement, Eastman said: “My legal team and I will vigorously contest every count of the indictment in which I am named, and also every count in which others are named, for which my knowledge of the relevant facts, law, and constitutional provisions may prove helpful. I am confident that, when the law is faithfully applied in this proceeding, all of my co-defendants and I will be fully vindicated.”In December 2020, Eastman helped orchestrate the plan for Georgia Republican electors to meet and sign a fraudulent certificate that said Trump won the election in what is now known as the fake electors scheme. He also drafted a six-point memo that directed former vice-president Mike Pence to refuse to certify electoral votes on 6 January 2021.Eastman, alongside the Trump attorney and disgraced former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, spoke at a rally near the US Capitol on the day of the insurrection where he spread baseless claims of election fraud. Kenneth Chesebro, another Trump attorney who worked closely with Eastman, Trump and Giuliani to halt the electoral certification and is a named defendant, was also at the Capitol that day.Hall was charged with seven felony counts, including six criminal conspiracy charges and with violating the Rico Act. His bond is set at $10,000, according to a “consent bond order” posted to the Fulton county court’s website on Monday.Eastman was charged with nine felony counts, including criminal conspiracy, solicitation, filing false documents and violating the Rico Act. Eastman’s bond is set at $100,000.After Trump’s 2020 loss, Hall illegally sought access to voting machines in Coffee county, Georgia, to search for evidence they were rigged. According to the indictment, he traveled to the Coffee county elections office to copy voter data from Dominion Voting Systems machines, which was a breach of privacy and unlawful.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHe was charged alongside the Coffee county officials Misty Hampton and Cathy Latham, as well as Trump-aligned attorney Sidney Powell, for “willfully and unlawfully tampering with electronic ballot markers and tabulating machines”, which was an act of conspiracy to commit election fraud.Hall also placed several phone calls to the individuals who were involved with intimidating Georgia poll workers to coerce false testimony about election security, according to the indictment.The district attorney, Fani Willis, who delivered the sweeping indictment last week, has given all 19 defendants until noon this Friday, 25 August, to voluntarily surrender. Trump, whose bond has been set at $200,000 and was charged with 13 felony counts, said he plans to turn himself in on Thursday. More

  • 150 Shares99 Views

    in Elections

    Trump lawyers ask judge to push January 6 trial to April 2026

    Lawyers for Donald Trump asked the judge in Washington DC overseeing his federal election interference trial to push back the start date to April 2026, almost 18 months after the next presidential election and more than two years from the trial date proposed by the US government.The former president’s legal team filed the request to the US district court judge Tanya Chutkan, after Trump was indicted earlier this month on charges that he conspired to defraud the United States, conspired to obstruct an official proceeding, obstructed an official proceeding and engaged in a conspiracy against rights.Federal prosecutors in the office of the special counsel Jack Smith had proposed to schedule the trial for the start of January 2024, saying there was a significant public interest in expediting the prosecution.“A January 2 trial date would vindicate the public’s strong interest in a speedy trial,” prosecutors wrote, adding: “It is difficult to imagine a public interest stronger than the one in this case in which the defendant – the former president of the United States – is charged with three criminal conspiracies.”In their court filing on Thursday, Trump’s attorneys argued a years-long delay was necessary due to the “massive” amount of information they will have to review and because of scheduling conflicts with the other criminal cases Trump is facing.“If we were to print and stack 11.5 million pages of documents, with no gap between pages, at 200 pages per inch, the result would be a tower of paper stretching nearly 5,000 feet into the sky. That is taller than the Washington Monument stacked on top of itself eight times, with nearly a million pages to spare,” Trump’s team wrote.In their 16-page filing, the lawyers also argued that putting Trump, who is a candidate for the 2024 Republican nomination in a bid to reclaim the White House, on trial this coming January would mark a “rush to trial”.They argue that would violate his constitutional rights and be “flatly impossible”, adding: “The government’s objective is clear: to deny President Trump and his counsel a fair ability to prepare for trial.”Chutkan has said she wants to set a trial date at her next scheduled hearing on 28 August.Twice impeached and now indicted in four cases, Trump faces criminal charges in New York, Florida, Washington DC and Georgia over a hush-money scheme during the 2016 election, his alleged mishandling of classified documents and his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.He also faces a civil trial beginning this October in the investigation into his business interests led by the New York attorney general, Letitia James.And on Friday, the New York judge Lewis Kaplan declared that Trump had filed a “frivolous” appeal against his decision not to dismiss the first of writer E Jean Carroll’s two defamation lawsuits against him. She is seeking $10m and a jury in May found him liable for sexual abuse and defamation of Carroll in 1996, awarding her $5m in damages. More

  • 250 Shares149 Views

    in Elections

    US hails ‘new era’ of Asia Pacific relations as Biden hosts historic summit with Japan and South Korea – live

    From 40m agoJoe Biden will welcome his South Korean counterpart, Yoon Suk Yeol, and Japanese prime minister, Fumio Kishida, to Camp David for the first-ever trilateral summit with the three countries amid a recent thaw in ties between Japan and Korea.The US has promised to usher in a “new era” in relations with its most important allies in Asia, as the region struggles to address the threat posed by an increasingly assertive China and a nuclear-armed North Korea.Washington’s ties with Tokyo and Seoul are “stronger than they have been at any point in modern memory”, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said at a Friday briefing, as he confirmed the US will announce “significant steps to enhance trilateral security cooperation” including new collaborations on missile defence and technology when the three leaders meet for their first standalone summit.The leaders are also expected to detail plans to invest in technology for a three-way crisis hotline and offer an update on the progress the countries have made in sharing early-warning data on missile launches.Kishida, before departing Tokyo for Washington on Thursday, called the summit a “historic occasion to bolster trilateral strategic cooperation based on our stronger-than-ever bilateral relations with the United States and South Korea”.US officials are confident that its two main allies in the region, Japan and South Korea, share Washington’s view on most global issues, although a joint statement is expected to stop short of directly referring to China to reflect South Korean reservations about openly criticising Beijing.“Japan and South Korea are core allies – not just in the region, but around the world,” the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said this week, adding that Biden’s summit would “mark what we believe is a new era in trilateral cooperation”.Blinken said he expected a continued focus on North Korea “given the endless provocation it’s taken” but added that the meeting would address a “much more expansive agenda”.China has denounced the summit, saying it “opposes relevant countries forming various cliques and their practices of exacerbating confrontation and jeopardising other countries’ strategic security.”Foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said this week:
    We hope the countries concerned will go with the trend of the times and do something conducive to regional peace, stability and prosperity.
    A standalone summit bringing together the leaders of Japan and South Korea would have been almost unthinkable just over a year ago, when the north-east Asian neighbours were embroiled in disputes over their bitter wartime legacy.Bilateral ties were at a low point before the South Korean president, Yoon Suk Yeol, took office in May 2022, due to compensation claims by Koreans over Japan’s use of forced labour during its 1910-1945 colonial rule of the Korean peninsula, and the longstanding controversy over Korean women who were coerced into working in Japanese military brothels.Yoon, a conservative, and the Japanese prime minister, Fumio Kishida, appear to have resolved the forced labour dispute and established a warm relationship that has included a joint visit to a memorial to Korean victims of the Hiroshima atomic bombing when the city hosted the G7 summit in May.This week, Yoon described Japan as a “partner” with shared values and interests, as his county marked the 78th anniversary of its liberation from 35 years of Japanese colonial rule.The thaw in ties has been greeted with relief in Washington as it attempts to present a united regional front against Chinese military activity near Taiwan and North Korea’s development of more powerful weapons of mass destruction in defiance of UN-led sanctions.“Suffice it to say, this is a big deal,” National security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters on Friday shortly before the formal start of the daylong summit.
    It is a historic event, and it sets the conditions for a more peaceful and prosperous Indo-Pacific, and a stronger and more secure United States of America.
    Friday’s summit will be the first time Joe Biden has used Camp David to host international leaders.Joe Biden will welcome his South Korean counterpart, Yoon Suk Yeol, and Japanese prime minister, Fumio Kishida, to Camp David for the first-ever trilateral summit with the three countries amid a recent thaw in ties between Japan and Korea.The US has promised to usher in a “new era” in relations with its most important allies in Asia, as the region struggles to address the threat posed by an increasingly assertive China and a nuclear-armed North Korea.Washington’s ties with Tokyo and Seoul are “stronger than they have been at any point in modern memory”, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said at a Friday briefing, as he confirmed the US will announce “significant steps to enhance trilateral security cooperation” including new collaborations on missile defence and technology when the three leaders meet for their first standalone summit.The leaders are also expected to detail plans to invest in technology for a three-way crisis hotline and offer an update on the progress the countries have made in sharing early-warning data on missile launches.Kishida, before departing Tokyo for Washington on Thursday, called the summit a “historic occasion to bolster trilateral strategic cooperation based on our stronger-than-ever bilateral relations with the United States and South Korea”.The US justice department is seeking 33 years in prison for Enrique Tarrio, the former Proud Boys leader convicted of seditious conspiracy in one of the most serious cases to emerge from the attack on the US Capitol to block the transfer of presidential power in the hopes of keeping Donald Trump in the White House after he lost the 2020 election, according to court documents.The sentence, if imposed, would be by far the longest punishment that has been handed down in the massive prosecution of the riot on 6 January 2021. The Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, who was convicted of seditious conspiracy in a separate case, has received the longest sentence to date – 18 years.Tarrio, who was not at the Capitol riot itself, was a top target of what has become the largest justice department investigation in American history. He led the neo-fascist group – known for street fights with leftwing activists – when Trump infamously told the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by” during his first election debate with Democrat Joe Biden.During the months-long trial, prosecutors argued that the Proud Boys viewed themselves as foot soldiers fighting for Trump as the Republican spread lies that Democrats stole the election from him, and were prepared to go to war to keep their preferred leader in power.“They unleashed a force on the Capitol that was calculated to exert their political will on elected officials by force and to undo the results of a democratic election,” prosecutors wrote in their filing on Thursday.
    The foot soldiers of the right aimed to keep their leader in power. They failed. They are not heroes; they are criminals.
    A judge declared Donald Trump had filed a “frivolous” appeal from his decision not to dismiss the first of writer E Jean Carroll’s two defamation lawsuits against him.US district judge Lewis Kaplan criticized the former president’s “delay” tactics, writing in a 17-page ruling:
    This case was largely stalled for years due in large part to Mr Trump’s repeated efforts to delay, which are chronicled in the Court’s prior decisions.
    Donald Trump said he had canceled a press conference scheduled for next week in which he claimed he would release a report containing new “evidence” of fraud in the state of Georgia during the 2020 presidential election.The former president, who was charged in Georgia last week with conspiring to overturn the state’s 2020 election results, said on Thursday that his lawyers would prefer putting his allegations in court filings instead.Trump, posting on his social media platform, Truth Social, wrote:
    Rather than releasing the Report on the Rigged & Stolen Georgia 2020 Presidential Election on Monday, my lawyers would prefer putting this, I believe, Irrefutable & Overwhelming evidence of Election Fraud & Irregularities in formal Legal Filings.
    Trump had claimed on Tuesday that he would publish a 100-page report at the event, which was due to be held on Monday in Bedminister, New Jersey, that would exonerate him.No compelling evidence of wide-scale fraud has emerged in the two-and-a-half years since the election in Georgia or elsewhere, despite Trump’s baseless claims.Twice impeached and now indicted in four cases: Donald Trump faces serious criminal charges in New York, Florida, Washington and Georgia over a hush-money scheme during the 2016 election, his alleged mishandling of classified documents and his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.As Trump prepares for those cases to go to trial, the former president is also confronting a verdict that found him liable for sexual abuse and defamation of the writer E Jean Carroll. A New York jury awarded Carroll, who accused Trump of assaulting her in 1996, $5m in damages.Here is where each case against Trump stands:Lawyers for Donald Trump asked the judge overseeing his federal election interference trial to push back the start date to April 2026, nearly 18 months after the next presidential election.The lawyers filed the request to US district court judge Tanya Chutkan, after Trump was indicted earlier this month on charges that he conspired to defraud the United States, conspired to obstruct an official proceeding, obstructed an official proceeding and engaged in a conspiracy against rights.Federal prosecutors in the office of special counsel Jack Smith had proposed to schedule the trial for the start of January 2024, saying there was a significant public interest in expediting the prosecution.“A January 2 trial date would vindicate the public’s strong interest in a speedy trial,” prosecutors wrote.
    It is difficult to imagine a public interest stronger than the one in this case in which the defendant – the former president of the United States – is charged with three criminal conspiracies.
    In their court filing on Thursday, Trump’s attorneys argued a years-long delay was necessary due to the “massive” amount of information they will have to review and because of scheduling conflicts with the other criminal cases Trump is facing.
    If we were to print and stack 11.5 million pages of documents, with no gap between pages, at 200 pages per inch, the result would be a tower of paper stretching nearly 5,000 feet into the sky. That is taller than the Washington Monument, stacked on top of itself eight times, with nearly a million pages to spare.
    Good morning, US politics blog readers. Lawyers for former president Donald Trump asked the judge presiding over his federal 2020 election interference case to schedule his trial for April 2026 – more than two and a half years from now.In a 16-page filing on Thursday, the lawyers argued that putting Trump on trial this coming January – as federal prosecutors have requested – would mark a “rush to trial” that would violate his constitutional rights and be “flatly impossible” given the extraordinary volume of discovery evidence they will have to sort through. Trump’s lawyers wrote:
    The government’s objective is clear: to deny President Trump and his counsel a fair ability to prepare for trial.
    Special counsel Jack Smith is expected to oppose the April 2026 start date, which would put the trial long after the 2024 presidential election, in which Trump is the current frontrunner for the Republican nomination. US district court judge Tanya Chutkan has said she wants to set a trial date at her next scheduled hearing on 28 August.Meanwhile, Joe Biden will welcome his South Korean counterpart, Yoon Suk Yeol, and Japanese prime minister, Fumio Kishida, to Camp David today for the first-ever trilateral summit with the three countries, as the US hopes to cement ties with its two most important allies in Asia amid an increasingly assertive China and a nuclear-armed North Korea.Washington’s ties with Tokyo and Seoul are “stronger than they have been at any point in modern memory”, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said at a Friday briefing, as he confirmed the US will announce “significant steps to enhance trilateral security cooperation” including new collaborations on missile defence and technology when the three leaders meet for their first standalone summit.Here’s what else we’re watching today:
    11am: Joe Biden will welcome the South Korean president, Yoon Suk Yeol, and Japan’s prime minister, Fumio Kishida, to Camp David for a trilateral summit.
    3pm: Biden, Yoon and Kishida will hold a joint press conference.
    6pm: Biden will leave Camp David for Andrews, where he will fly to Reno
    The House and Senate are out. More

  • 150 Shares169 Views

    in Elections

    US justice department seeks 33 years in prison for ex-Proud Boys leader

    The US justice department is seeking 33 years in prison for Enrique Tarrio, the former Proud Boys leader convicted of seditious conspiracy in one of the most serious cases to emerge from the attack on the US Capitol, according to court documents.The sentence, if imposed, would be by far the longest punishment that has been handed down in the massive prosecution of the riot on 6 January 2021. The Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, who was convicted of seditious conspiracy in a separate case, has received the longest sentence to date – 18 years.Tarrio, who once served as national chairman of the far-right extremist group, and three lieutenants were convicted by a Washington DC jury in May of conspiring to block the transfer of presidential power in the hopes of keeping Donald Trump in the White House after the Republican president lost the 2020 election.Tarrio, who was not at the Capitol riot itself, was a top target of what has become the largest justice department investigation in American history. He led the neo-fascist group – known for street fights with leftwing activists – when Trump infamously told the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by” during his first election debate with Democrat Joe Biden.During the months-long trial, prosecutors argued that the Proud Boys viewed themselves as foot soldiers fighting for Trump as the Republican spread lies that Democrats stole the election from him, and were prepared to go to war to keep their preferred leader in power.“They unleashed a force on the Capitol that was calculated to exert their political will on elected officials by force and to undo the results of a democratic election,” prosecutors wrote in their filing on Thursday. “The foot soldiers of the right aimed to keep their leader in power. They failed. They are not heroes; they are criminals.”Prosecutors are also asking for a 33-year-sentence for one of Tarrio’s co-defendants, Joseph Biggs of Ormond Beach, Florida, a self-described Proud Boys organizer.They are asking the judge to impose a 30-year prison term for Zachary Rehl, who was president of the Proud Boys chapter in Philadelphia; 27 years in prison for Ethan Nordean of Auburn, Washington, who was a Proud Boys chapter president; and 20 years for Dominic Pezzola, a Proud Boys member from Rochester, New York.Defense attorneys argued there was no conspiracy and no plan to attack the Capitol. More

  • 138 Shares119 Views

    in Elections

    Names and addresses of Georgia grand jurors posted on rightwing websites

    Law enforcement officials in Georgia say they are investigating threats targeting members of the grand jury that indicted former President Donald Trump and 18 of his allies, after private information about jurors was published online.On Thursday, the Fulton county sheriff’s office announced that it was “aware that personal information of members of the Fulton county grand jury is being shared on various platforms”.On Monday the Fulton county grand jury returned a 41-count indictment charging Trump and others with illegally conspiring to overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia.According to the Independent, several users on Trump’s rightwing social media platform Truth Social posted the names of the jurors, with one user writing, “Someone needs to look into all of these grand jurors. I can guarantee that everyone of them has a BIG FAT D by their name!”Another user wrote: “I’m looking forward to the fun some will have with the list of leaked grand jurors …,” the outlet reported.Meanwhile, CNN reported that in addition to names, photos, social media profiles and even home addresses appearing to belong to the jurors have been shared online on various platforms including pro-Trump forums and websites that have been linked to extremist attacks.In Thursday’s announcement, the sheriff’s office said that its investigators were working closely with local, state and federal law enforcement agencies to track down the origins of the threats in Fulton county and other jurisdictions.“We take this matter very seriously and are coordinating with our law enforcement partners to respond quickly to any credible threat and to ensure the safety of those individuals who carried out their civic duty. If anyone becomes aware of a threat, please call 911 immediately or contact your local police department,” the sheriff’s office added.Though the grand jury proceedings were secret, the unredacted names of the grand jury members were included in the indictment. That is standard practice in Georgia, in part because it gives criminal defendants a chance to challenge the composition of the grand jury. The indictment itself is a public record.The American Bar Association condemned any threats as well as the sharing of other personal information about the grand jurors online.“The civic-minded members of the Georgia grand jury performed their duty to support our democracy,” the association’s statement said. “It is unconscionable that their lives should be upended and safety threatened for being good citizens.”Since the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, delivered the 41-count indictment, Willis, who is African American, has faced a wave of racist abuse online including from Trump, who, using a thinly veiled play on the N-word, wrote on Truth Social: “They never went after those that Rigged the Election … They only went after those that fought to find the RIGGERS!”As Trump prepares for his fourth arraignment, authorities remain concerned over the spike in political violence across the country. This week, a Texas woman was arrested and charged with threatening to kill Tanya Chutkan, the federal judge overseeing the criminal case against Trump in Washington DC.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe woman, identified as Abigail Jo Shry of Texas, also threatened to kill Sheila Jackson Lee, a Texas Democratic representative, according to court documents reviewed by the Associated Press.Meanwhile, Trump himself has also made threats to authorities and his rivals amid his mounting legal woes, writing on social media: “If you go after me, I’m coming after you.” More

  • 175 Shares129 Views

    in Elections

    Trump’s latest indictment leads to fears of rise in calls for violence – live

    After news broke on Monday night of Donald Trump’s indictment in Fulton county, Georgia, attention quickly turned to the possible spectacle of a trial unfolding on television as a former president attempts to rebut charges of racketeering and conspiracy over his efforts to overturn the results of an election.But before the district attorney Fani Willis can have the opportunity to make her case against Trump with the cameras rolling, she must first clear a key procedural hurdle to keep the case in Fulton county.Trump’s legal team is expected to rely on a little known legal statute to argue the case should be moved to federal court, and that jurisdictional question could delay a trial for months. The stakes of that procedural fight will be high, as a conviction in Fulton county would leave Trump facing years of prison time with no clear pathway to a pardon.Read the full story here.Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor, dismissed the suggestion that she is running in the 2024 GOP presidential race in order to become the vice president.In an interview with Politico, Haley said:
    I think everybody that says, ‘She’s doing this to be vice president,’ needs to understand I don’t run for second.
    That’s something that I hear all the time, and I’ll tell you that, look, we have a country to save, and I don’t trust anybody else to do it.
    Donald Trump’s legal advisers have urged the former president not to hold a press conference next week in response to his latest indictment, according to an ABC report. Trump announced in a Truth Social post on Tuesday that he would present a “report” to refute the allegations in the indictment handed up by the Fulton country district attorney’s office from his home in Bedminster, New Jersey.But the press conference, originally scheduled for 11am Monday, is now very much in doubt, multiple sources told ABC.
    Sources tell ABC News that Trump’s legal advisers have told him that holding such a press conference with dubious claims of voter fraud will only complicate his legal problems and some of his attorneys have advised him to cancel it.
    The names, photographs and home addresses purportedly belonging to members of the Fulton county grand jury that indicted Donald Trump and 18 of his co-defendants this week are circulating on social media.The grand jurors’ purported addresses were posted on a fringe website that often features violent rhetoric, NBC reported on Wednesday.The indictment issued on Monday includes the names of all the grand jurors who served on the 26-member panel in Fulton county, but not their addresses or other personal information.Websites where the purported photographs, social media profiles and home addresses of the grand jurors included pro-Trump forums and sites that have previously been linked to violent extremist attacks, according to a CNN report. In some cases, users have posted social media profiles of different people who have the same name as some of the grand jurors, while some addresses appear to be wrong, the report said.The rightwing extremist Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has not made up her mind about running for Senate in Georgia – in part because she hopes to be Donald Trump’s vice-president.“I haven’t made up my mind whether I will do that or not,” Greene told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, about a rumoured challenge to the current governor, Brian Kemp, in a Georgia Senate primary in 2026.
    I have a lot of things to think about. Am I going to be a part of President Trump’s cabinet if he wins? Is it possible that I’ll be VP?
    Despite a string of controversies over voicing conspiracy theories, aggressive behaviour towards Democrats and progressives and recent squabbling with her fellow House extremist Lauren Boebert, and despite being “kicked out” of the hard-right Freedom Caucus, Greene remains influential in Republican ranks, close to the speaker, Kevin McCarthy.She told the AJC she would consider it an “honour” to be picked as Trump’s running mate to take on Joe Biden and Kamala Harris next year. She would consider such an offer “very, very heavily”, she said.Trump has encouraged Greene to harbour higher ambitions, saying in March he would “fight like hell” for her if she ran for Senate.Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump’s former lawyer, has personally appealed to the former president to pay his ballooning legal bills, according to a CNN report. The former New York mayor traveled to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in late April, along with his lawyer Robert Costello, where they had two meetings with Trump to discuss Giuliani’s seven-figure legal fees, the report said, citing a source.Giuliani and Costello made several pitches about how paying Giuliani’s bills was ultimately in Trump’s best interest, but the former president did not seem interested, the source said.The source said Trump verbally agreed to help with some of Giuliani’s bills but did not commit to any specific amount or timeline. He also agreed to attend two fundraisers for Giuliani, a separate source said.Giuliani is facing hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal bills and sanctions amid numerous lawsuits related to his work for Trump after the 2020 election.Calls to violence have proliferated across far-right sites since the charges against Donald Trump in the 2020 Georgia election subversion case were made public on Monday night.The former president’s allusion to the racial slur was immediately picked up by his supporters on far-right platforms including Gab and Patriots.win. Several Gab posts reproduced images of nooses and gallows and called for Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis and grand jurors who delivered the charges to be hanged. And posts on Patriots.win combined the wordplay with direct calls to violence.Earlier this month, Willis wrote to Fulton county commissioners and judges to warn them to stay vigilant in the face of rising tensions ahead of the release of the indictment. She told them that she and her staff had been receiving racist threats and voicemails since she began her investigation into Trump’s attempt to subvert the election two years ago.
    I guess I am sending this as a reminder that you should stay alert over the month of August and stay safe.
    As Willis’s investigation approached its climax, Trump intensified his personal attacks on her through social media. He has accused her of prosecutorial misconduct and even of being racist herself.Willis, who on Wednesday said she wants to take the case to trial in March 2024, has rebuffed Trump’s claims as “derogatory and false”.Trump has also unleashed a barrage of vitriol against Jack Smith, the special counsel who earlier this month brought four federal charges against Trump over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Trump has referred to the prosecutor, who is white, as “Deranged Jack Smith”.Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney in Georgia who is prosecuting Donald Trump and 18 other allies over efforts to overturn the 2020 election, is facing a flurry of racist online abuse after the former president attacked his opponents using the word “riggers”, a thinly veiled play on the N-word.Hours after Willis had released the indictments on Monday night, Trump went on his social media platform Truth Social calling for all charges to be dropped and predicting he would be exonerated. He did not mention Willis by name, but accused prosecutors of pursuing the wrong criminal targets.“They never went after those that Rigged the Election,” Trump wrote.
    They only went after those that fought to find the RIGGERS!
    Willis is African American. So too are the two New York-based prosecutors who have investigated Trump, the Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg who indicted him in April over alleged hush-money payments, and Letitia James, the state attorney general who is investigating Trump’s financial records.Trump’s allusion to the racial slur was immediately picked up by his supporters on far-right platforms including Gab and Patriots.win. The sites hosted hundreds of posts featuring “riggers” in their headlines in a disparaging context.The word has also been attached to numerous social media posts to Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss. The two Black poll workers from Atlanta were falsely accused by some of the 19 defendants in the Fulton county case of committing election fraud during the 2020 vote count, and the indictment accuses Trump allies of harassing them.US district judge Tanya Chutkan, who overseeing Donald Trump’s 2020 election subversion case, warned the former president last week to refrain from making statements that could intimidate witnesses or prejudice potential jurors.Just a day before Abigail Jo Shry allegedly left a voicemail message threatening to kill Chutkan, Trump had posted on his social media platform, Truth Social: writing “If you go after me, I’m coming after you!”Trump has specifically posted about Chutkan since she was randomly assigned to oversee his 2020 election case. On Monday, the former president said she “obviously wants me behind bars” and described her as “very biased and unfair”.Chutkan has reportedly been assigned extra security by the US marshals service in recent weeks, and CNN reported observing more security detailed to the judge around the Washington DC federal courthouse.A Texas woman was arrested on charges that she threatened to kill US district judge Tanya Chutkan, who is overseeing the prosecution of former president Donald Trump on allegations that he tried to overturn the 2020 election.Abigail Jo Shry, 43, of Alvin, Texas, called the federal courthouse in Washington DC on 5 August and left the threatening voicemail message, using a racist slur, according to court documents.In the call, Shry told the judge: “You are in our sights, we want to kill you,” according to the documents. Prosecutors allege Shry also said: “If Trump doesn’t get elected in 2024, we are coming to kill you.”Investigators traced the phone number and Shry later admitted to making the threatening call, according to a criminal complaint.Shry is charged with Transmission in Interstate or Foreign Commerce of any Communication Containing a Threat to Injure the Person of Another. She is being held in detention pending trial, according to court documents, and a bond hearing has been set for 13 September.Good morning, US politics blog readers. A Texas woman has been charged with threatening to kill the federal judge presiding over former president Donald Trump’s criminal case in Washington DC over his attempts to overturn the 2020 election.Abigail Jo Shry, 43, left a voicemail at US district judge Tanya Chutkan’s chambers on 5 August in which she used a racial slur and threatened her, saying “If Trump doesn’t get elected in 2024, we are coming to kill you, so tread lightly, bitch”, according to a court document. She also allegedly threatened to kill “all democrats in Washington DC and all people in the LGBTQ community”, according to the court filing.On the day before the threatening phone call, Trump had posted on his social media platform, Truth Social: “If you go after me, I’m coming after you!” The former president has intensified attacks against those individuals involved in the many indictment against him, including Chutkan and Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney who is prosecuting him over efforts to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia.Hours after Willis had released the indictments on Monday night, Trump accused prosecutors of pursuing the wrong criminal targets using the word “riggers”, a thinly veiled play on the N-word. Trump’s allusion to the racial slur was immediately picked up by his supporters on far-right platforms, and Willis – who is African American – has faced a flurry of racist online abuse.Calls to violence have proliferated across far-right sites since the charges were made public on Monday night. The purported names and addresses of members of the Georgia grand jury that indicted Trump and 18 of his allies were posted on a fringe website that often features violent rhetoric, NBC News reported.Here’s what else we’re watching today:
    10am Eastern time: President Joe Biden will get his daily intelligence briefing.
    11.25am: Biden will leave for Andrews, where he will fly to the Wilkes-Barre Scranton Airport.
    12.35pm: Biden will travel to Avoca, Pennsylvania, where he will pay respects to the state’s former first lady Ellen Casey in advance of a viewing.
    2.10pm: Biden will fly to Hagerstown, Maryland, for Camp David.
    The House and Senate are out. More