Eliana Willis

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    How the day of Trump's indictment unfolded – video report

    In what was seen by many as a sombre day for the US and its judicial system, Donald Trump became the first US president to be indicted on criminal charges on Tuesday. He was briefly arrested as he surrendered and attended his arraignment in a Manhattan court, where he pleaded not guilty to 34 felony charges of falsifying business records.
    The Guardian summarises a historic day of media frenzy as news crews followed Trump’s every step – from Trump Tower back to his Mar-a-Lago residence More

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    Lachlan Murdoch ‘culpable’ for January 6 insurrection because of Fox News ‘lies’, Australian defamation case hears

    Media mogul Lachlan Murdoch was culpable for the violent insurrection of the US Capitol after the 2020 presidential election because of lies told through Fox News, a judge has heard.In the federal court on Tuesday, barrister Michael Hodge KC said that while many media sources fuelled a conspiracy theory that Joe Biden stole the election from Donald Trump, Murdoch could still be held responsible.“He controls Fox Corporation. He permitted for the commercial and financial benefit of Fox Corporation this lie to be broadcast in the United States,” Hodge told Justice Michael Wigney.“We say that gives rise to culpability where you are allowing and promoting this lie and that lie is the motivation for the insurrection.”Hodge is representing Private Media, which publishes Crikey, as well as political editor Bernard Keane, editor-in-chief Peter Fray, chairman Eric Beecher and chief executive Will Hayward.They are seeking additional time to file their defences to Murdoch’s defamation suit over an opinion piece published in June last year and reposted in August referring to him as an “unindicted co-conspirator” with Trump over the false election claims.The publisher is seeking to add a contextual truth defence on top of its already pleaded defences of public interest and qualified privilege.
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    The proposed defence, yet to be approved by the federal court, includes personal communications between the Murdoch family revealed via separate US defamation proceedings brought against Fox by voting equipment company Dominion which claims it was falsely accused of conducting mass voter fraud.In one SMS, Rupert Murdoch tells his son Lachlan and Fox board member Paul Ryan about Trump’s “conspiracy nonsense” and refers to Fox talk show host Sean Hannity.“Wake up call for Hannity who has been privately disgusted by Trump for weeks but has been scared to lose viewers,” Rupert Murdoch wrote.Lachlan Murdoch, in the defamation case against Crikey, claims the articles conveyed a meaning that he illegally conspired with Trump to “incite a mob with murderous intent to march on the Capitol” in Washington DC on 6 January 2021.Murdoch’s barrister Sue Chrysanthou SC called the proposed contextual truth defence vague, saying it did not say how her client was culpable for the state of mind of about 2,000 people who stormed the Capitol building on 6 January.Other Murdoch-owned publications, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Post and even Fox itself had reported that Biden won the election and had disagreed with Trump’s claims.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“This defence is not rational, it is not arguable, it’s a waste of everyone’s time and it serves no legitimate end in the litigation,” the barrister said.She accused Crikey of including masses of material from the Dominion case in the Australian defamation lawsuit purely as part of its “Lachlan Murdoch campaign”.The media executive has previously alleged that Crikey has run this campaign against him to boost subscribers and gain financially.“They are happy to martyr themselves in this litigation to seek more money on the GoFundMe me campaign … to turn the case into something that resembles an inquiry and they don’t care if they win or lose,” Chrysanthou said.She urged the judge to reject the defence, saying it would mean a three-week trial scheduled to begin 9 October would have to be vacated.Wigney was due to deliver his judgment on Tuesday afternoon. More

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    Rupert Murdoch took direct role in Fox News 2020 election call, filings reveal

    Rupert Murdoch took a direct role in how Fox News finally called the 2020 US election for Joe Biden over Donald Trump, newly unredacted messages in Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6bn defamation case showed on Friday.“It would be great if we call it for Biden as soon as he gets over, say, 35,000 ahead in Pennsylvania,” Murdoch, the now 92-year-old Fox News owner, wrote to the network’s chief executive, Suzanne Scott, on 6 November 2020, three days after election day but a day before Pennsylvania put Biden over the top.“Whenever we do it, it will all be over. Regardless of Arizona.”Fox News’ election night call of Arizona for Biden took most observers by surprise and enraged Trump and his followers.Trump’s attempts to have the call rescinded are well documented. The author Michael Wolff, for one, reported that when told of the outgoing president’s fury over Arizona, Murdoch responded with a “signature grunt” and said: “Fuck him.”Fox News denies that. But Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, wrote in his memoir that Murdoch told him on election night that “the numbers are ironclad – it’s not even close”.In his emails to Scott revealed on Friday, however, Murdoch pointed to Trump’s commitment to his lie about large-scale electoral fraud and Fox News’ accommodation of it when he said that on “second thoughts” the network should “maybe” call the election when Biden was up by “50,000 in Pennsylvania” but also say the call was “subject to litigation”.Fox in the end called Pennsylvania for Biden 10 minutes after other networks, when he was a little under 35,000 votes ahead of Trump in the state.The anchor Martha MacCallum told viewers: “Keep in mind the Trump campaign is in the midst of waging legal challenges in several states. But the path is clear for the new president-elect.”In emails to Scott, Murdoch also said the Fox News contributor and Wall Street Journal editor Paul Gigot thought such a call “won’t change Trump”.“But he’s got to get some real evidence,” Murdoch wrote, adding: “Fact that Rudy is advising really bad!”Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor who became Trump’s personal lawyer, pushed the outlandish claims of voter fraud at the heart of Dominion’s case.Dominion must prove Fox News hosts and executives broadcast such claims while knowing they were untrue. Filings have shown how hosts including the primetime stars Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham bemoaned Trump’s lie as their network continued to broadcast it.In the filings released on Friday, a top producer for Jeanine Pirro’s show of 21 November 2020 told a senior executive: “She is refusing to drastically change the opening despite the fact-check.”The executive replied: “Understood.”In that opening, Pirro complained about Democrats’ handling of the investigation of Russian election interference in 2016 and said: “Never, ever, not once did we see a scintilla of evidence. Never.”She then described the Dominion conspiracy theory, involving Venezuelan influence and Cuban money, which she nonetheless called “serious allegations” based on “sworn statements of factual allegations”. Giuliani, she said, had “made clear that Democrat cities were targeted by crooked Democrats who stole votes”.The filings on Friday also contained more evidence that Fox executives worried their core audience, refusing to believe Trump lost and attracted by such claims of fraud, would desert the network.In an email on 11 November, Scott told producers there was “intense anger over our AZ call” among Fox News viewers.“A trust has been broken,” she wrote, “and it’s our jobs to help them through this to the other side with strong reporting, investigative pieces and certainly speaking to the audience with respect is critical.”On 13 November, Fox Corporation senior vice-president Raj Shah wrote in a memo to Lachlan Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch’s son: “Fox News is facing a brand crisis, with viewers upset and online activists in open revolt of Fox’s handling of election night coverage last week and certain programming decisions since.”He added: “This will not simply fade on its own for weeks or months and poses lasting damage to the Fox News brand unless effectively addressed soon.”Fox News contends that Dominion is using “cherrypicked quotes without context to generate headlines”, and that it broadcast newsworthy allegations reasonable viewers would have understood were not factual statements.Claiming “the foundational right to a free press is at stake”, Fox says it “will continue to fiercely advocate for the first amendment in protecting the role of news organisations to cover the news”. More

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    Gasp heard on Fox News as Donald Trump indictment announced – video

    The news that Donald Trump had become the first former US president to face criminal charges drew an audible gasp on Fox News, as broadcasters and viewers processed the extraordinary development. ‘We have just gotten word that former president Donald Trump has been indicted,’ the host begins, while a stunned gasp is audible from off-camera. ‘What?’ asks another incredulous voice, as the presenter explains to Fox News’s afternoon audience that Trump will be charged in relation to an alleged ‘hush-money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels’ More

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    Donald Trump supporters surround Mar-a-Lago home after indictment – video

    Supporters of Donald Trump gathered outside his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida to show their support for the former US president after he was indicted by a Manhattan grand jury. The case is centred on a hush money payment made to the adult film star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 election. No former US president has ever been criminally indicted. The news is set to shake the race for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, in which Trump leads most polls More

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    Lauren Boebert fixates on public urination in bizarre hearing – video

    The Republican representative Lauren Boebert raised a peculiar question in a recent US House hearing. She asked whether a revised Washington DC criminal code, which was previously overturned by Congress, had become law. While her question was met with a reminder of the previous decision of Congress, Boebert continued to express interest in whether or not the revised code would have decriminalised public urination. A dumbfounded Washington DC council member, Charles Allen, repeatedly reminded Boebert that it was still a criminal offence More

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    FBI informant testifies for Proud Boys defense that January 6 ‘not organized’

    An FBI informant who marched to the US Capitol with fellow Proud Boys on January 6 testified on Wednesday that he did not know of any plans for the far-right extremist group to invade the building and didn’t think they inspired violence that day.The informant, who identified himself in court only as “Aaron”, was a defense witness at the trial of the former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio and four lieutenants charged with seditious conspiracy for what prosecutors say was a plot to keep Donald Trump in the White House after the 2020 election.The informant was communicating with his FBI handler as a mob breached police barricades at the Capitol on 6 January 2021.The Proud Boys “did not do it, nor inspire”, the informant texted his handler. “The crowd did as herd mentality. Not organized.”The handler’s response was redacted from a screenshot a defense attorney showed to jurors.“Barriers down at capital [sic] building. Crowd surged forward, almost to the building now,” the informant texted.The informant said he contacted the agent because he saw it as an “emergency situation”. He testified that the FBI didn’t ask him to go to Washington or march with the Proud Boys that day.“If there was any violence and all that, they would have wanted to know,” he said of the FBI.“Aaron” is one of several Proud Boys associates who were FBI informants before or after the January 6 attack. He is the first to testify at one of the most important trials to come out of the justice department investigation of the Capitol riot.Prosecutors have employed an unusual theory that Proud Boys leaders mobilized a handpicked group of foot soldiers – or “tools” – to supply the force necessary to carry out their plot by overwhelming police and breaching barricades. The informant who testified on Wednesday was not one of those “tools”.Defense attorneys have argued there is no evidence the Proud Boys plotted to attack the Capitol and stop Congress certifying Joe Biden’s electoral victory.The informant testified that marching from the Washington Monument to the Capitol appeared to be a photo opportunity for the Proud Boys.“I didn’t know the specific purpose other than just being on the streets and being seen,” he said.Earlier in the trial, jurors heard from two former Proud Boys members who agreed to cooperate with the government after they were charged with riot-related crimes. Those witnesses, Matthew Greene and Jeremy Bertino, testified they did not know of any specific plan to storm the Capitol. Greene said group leaders celebrated the attack but did not explicitly encourage members to use force.Tarrio, a Miami resident who was national chairman of the group, and the other Proud Boys could face up to 20 years in prison if convicted of seditious conspiracy.Also on trial are Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs, Zachary Rehl and Dominic Pezzola.Nordean, of Auburn, Washington, was a Proud Boys chapter leader. Biggs, of Ormond Beach, Florida, was a self-described organizer. Rehl was president of the chapter in Philadelphia. Pezzola was a member from Rochester, New York.The informant, who joined the Proud Boys in 2019, said he was not a group leader and did not know any of the leaders on trial.The trial started in January. Prosecutors rested their case on 20 March. Jurors are expected to hear several more days of testimony from defense witnesses before they hear closing arguments.Nordean’s attorney, Nicholas Smith, called the informant as a witness. The witness said the FBI interviewed him within 10 days of returning home from Washington.“It wasn’t very specific,” he said. “Just a lot of random questions.”The informant entered the Capitol on January 6 and was inside for about 20 minutes. He said he felt justified in entering the Capitol because he thought he could prevent rioters from destroying items of “historic significance”.“I didn’t want to be in there any longer than I had to,” the informant testified.The defense attorney Carmen Hernandez asked: “When you entered the Capitol, did you think that was something minor?”“I wasn’t thinking like that at the time,” the informant said.The informant said he believed he would not get into trouble with the FBI for something “minor” like breaking a window, as long as it could be seen as an “act of self-preservation” in a confrontation with antifascist activists. More

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    Witness expected to testify for defense at Proud Boys trial was government informant

    Federal prosecutors disclosed on Wednesday that a witness expected to testify for the defense at the seditious conspiracy trial of the former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio and four associates was a government informant for nearly two years after the January 6 US Capitol attack.Carmen Hernandez, a lawyer for Zachary Rehl, a former chapter leader in the far-right group, asked a judge to schedule an immediate emergency hearing and suspend the trial “until these issues have been considered and resolved”. Lawyers for the other four defendants joined in Hernandez’s request.Hernandez said in court papers the defense was told by prosecutors on Wednesday afternoon the witness they were planning to call on Thursday had been a government informant.The judge ordered prosecutors to file a response to the defense filing by Thursday afternoon and scheduled a hearing for the same day, putting testimony in the case on hold until Friday. The US attorney’s office did not immediately comment.In her court filing, Hernandez said the unnamed informant participated in “prayer meetings” with relatives of at least one of the Proud Boys on trial and had discussions with family members about replacing one of the defense lawyers. The informant has been in contact with at least one defense lawyer and at least one defendant, Hernandez wrote.It is the latest twist in a trial that has been bogged down by bickering between lawyers and the judge. Defense lawyers have repeatedly asked the judge to declare a mistrial.The trial in Washington federal court is one of the most serious cases to emerge from the January 6 attack. Tarrio, Rehl and three other Proud Boys – Joseph Biggs, Ethan Nordean and Dominic Pezzola – are charged with conspiring to block the transfer of power from Donald Trump to Joe Biden.Tarrio, a Miami resident, was national chairman for the far-right group, whose members describe it as a politically incorrect men’s club for “western chauvinists”. He and the other Proud Boys could face up to 20 years in prison if convicted of seditious conspiracy.Defense attorneys have argued there is no evidence the Proud Boys plotted to attack the Capitol and stop Congress certifying Biden’s victory.Hernandez did not name the informant in her filing but said he or she was a “confidential human source” for the government since April 2021 through at least January 2023. Prosecutors knew in December the person was a potential witness, she said.It is not the first time government use of informants has become an issue in the case. Defense attorneys have pushed for more information about informants.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAn FBI agent, Nicole Miller, testified last week that she was aware of two informants in the Proud Boys, including one who marched on the Capitol.Hernandez said there were “reasons to doubt the veracity of the government’s explanation and justification for withholding information about the (confidential human sources) who have been involved in the case”.Law enforcement routinely uses informants in criminal investigations but methods and identities can be closely guarded secrets. Federal authorities have not publicly released much information about their use of informants in investigating the Proud Boys’ role on January 6. More