Kansans delivered a win for abortion rights in the US on Tuesday night when they voted to continue to protect abortion in the state constitution. A deeply conservative and usually reliably Republican state, Kansas was the first in the US to put abortion rights to a vote since the US supreme court ruled to overturn Roe v Wade in late June
Kansas votes to protect abortion rights in state constitution More
House panels: DHS officials interfered in effort to get lost Secret Service textsAfter the inspector general’s office requested the Secret Service’s January 6 communications, the effort was shut down Top officials at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) inspector general’s office interfered with efforts to recover erased Secret Service texts from the time of the US Capitol attack and attempted to cover up their actions, two House committees said in a letter on Monday.Taken together, the new revelations appear to show that the chief watchdog for the Secret Service and the DHS took deliberate steps to stop the retrieval of texts it knew were missing, and then sought to hide the fact that it had decided not to pursue that evidence.The inspector general’s office had initially sought to retrieve the lost texts from across the DHS – spanning both the Secret Service as well as the former DHS secretary Chad Wolf and his deputy, Ken Cuccinelli – as part of its internal review into January 6.But six weeks after the inspector general’s office first requested Secret Service communications from the time of the Capitol attack, that effort was shut down by Thomas Kait, the deputy inspector general for inspections and evaluations, the House committees said.“Use this email as a reference to our conversation where I said we no longer request phone records and text messages from the USSS relating to the events on January 6th,” Kait wrote in a July 2021 email to a senior DHS liaison official, Jim Crumpacker, that was obtained by Congress.The House committees also disclosed they had learned that Kait and other senior officials manipulated a memo, authored on 4 February 2022, that originally criticized the DHS for refusing to cooperate with its investigation and emphasized the need to review certain texts.By the time that Kait and other senior officials had finished with the memo, the House committee said, mentions about the erased texts from the Secret Service or the DHS secretary had been removed and instead praised the agency for its response to the internal review.The memo went from being a stinging rebuke that said “most DHS components have not provided the requested information” to saying “we received a timely and consolidated response from each component”, the House committees said.Appearing to acknowledge the removal of the damaging findings in the memo, Kait asked colleagues around that time: “Am I setting us up for anything by adding what I did? I spoke with Kristen late last week and she was ok with acknowledging the DAL’s efforts.”The disclosures alarmed the House oversight committee chair, Carolyn Maloney, and House homeland security committee chair, Bennie Thompson – who also chairs the House January 6 committee – enough to demand that top DHS officials appear for transcribed interviews.In the four-page letter, the two House committees again called for the recusal of the DHS inspector general, Joseph Cuffari, and demanded communications inside the inspector general’s office about not collecting or recovering texts from the agency relating to the Capitol attack.The deepening investigation has also revealed that Cuffari’s office was notified in February 2022 that texts from Wolf and Cuccinelli could not be accessed and that Cuccinelli had been using a personal phone – yet never told Congress.Kait has a history of removing damaging findings from reports. In a DHS report on domestic violence and sexual misconduct, Kait directed staff to remove a section that found officers accused of sexual offenses were charged with generic offenses, the New York Times reported.The controversy over the missing texts erupted several weeks ago after Cuffari first informed Congress in mid-July that his department could not turn over Secret Service texts from the time of the Capitol attack because they had been erased as part of a device replacement program.That prompted Thompson, through the House January 6 select committee, to issue a subpoena to the Secret Service for texts from the day before and the day of the Capitol attack as it examined how the agency intended to move Donald Trump and Mike Pence on January 6.But the Secret Service provided only one text exchange to the select committee, the Guardian has previously reported, telling investigators that every other message had been wiped after personnel failed to back up data from the devices when they were swapped out.TopicsSecret ServiceUS Capitol attackJanuary 6 hearingsUS politicsnewsReuse this content More
Investigation debunks bogus ‘audit’ claiming 300 dead people voted in Arizona in 2020New findings disprove audit by Cyber Ninjas, investigating all ‘dead’ individuals: ‘Many were very surprised to learn they were allegedly deceased’ After spending months reviewing the 2020 election in Arizona last year, Cyber Ninjas, the firm overseeing the so-called audit said it believed nearly 300 dead people may have voted. It was one of a series of allegations the company made as part of an effort to sow doubt about the election results in Arizona.It turned out not to be true. After investigating the allegations thoroughly, analysts found just one person who was actually dead at the time of the election.“After spending hundreds of hours reviewing these allegations, our investigators were able to determine that only one of the 282 individuals on the list was deceased at the time of the election. All other persons listed as deceased were found to be current voters,” Arizona’s attorney general, Mark Brnovich, a Republican, wrote in a Monday letter to state senate president Karen Fann, who authorized the review.Brnovich added: “Our agents investigated all individuals that Cyber Ninjas reported as dead, and many were very surprised to learn they were allegedly deceased.”Experts have long said the review and Cyber Ninjas conclusion were misleading and untrue. Election officials in Maricopa county, the location of the review, released an extensive report earlier this year debunking the claims.The letter came a day before Arizona’s primary, where baseless allegations about the 2020 election continue to swirl. Republicans who continue to deny the 2020 election results are on the verge of clinching the party’s nomination for governor and secretary of state.Brnovich is seeking the GOP nomination for secretary of state, but trails Blake Masters, a Trump-endorsed candidate who has embraced lies about the 2020 race. Trump has railed against Brnovich for not doing enough to overturn the election.Officials also investigated reports of dead voters from “other sources,” alleging 409 dead voters and another report flagging nearly 6,000 registrations as potentially deceased.“These claims were thoroughly investigated and resulted in only a handful of potential cases. Some were so absurd the names and birthdates didn’t even match the deceased, and others included dates of death after the election,” he wrote. “While our office has successfully prosecuted other instances of dead voters, these cases were ultimately determined to be isolated instances.”“We supported the Arizona Senate’s ability to conduct an audit of Maricopa county’s elections and understand the importance of reviewing the results. However, allegations of widespread deceased voters from the Senate Audit and other complaints received by the [Election Integrity Unit] are insufficient and not corroborated,” the letter ends.TopicsArizonaUS elections 2020US politicsRepublicansnewsReuse this content More
US Capitol attack: militia member gets longest prison sentence yetMan with ties to Three Percenters, who said he planned to violently drag Pelosi from building, sentenced to seven years An associate of the far-right Three Percenters militia group has been sentenced to more than seven years in prison for his role in storming the US Capitol on 6 January 2021.It is the longest sentence imposed so far among hundreds of cases related to the insurrection by extremist supporters of Donald Trump who sought to stop the official congressional certification of Joe Biden’s election victory over his Republican rival.Prosecutors said Guy Reffitt had told fellow members of the Texas Three Percenters militia group that he planned to drag the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi out of the Capitol building by her ankles “with her head hitting every step on the way down”, according to a court filing.Reffitt was sentenced in Washington DC on Monday after being convicted by a jury in March of obstructing Congress’ joint session, of interfering with police officers outside the Capitol and of threatening his two teenage children if they reported him to law enforcement.Justice department prosecutors recommended a 15-year prison sentence for Reffitt, with the duration warranted “for terrorism”.The longest sentence before Reffitt’s 7.25-year term was handed down was five years and three months, for two men who admitted assaulting police officers at the Capitol.Reffitt’s defense had asked for no more than two years in prison.Videos captured the confrontation between outnumbered US Capitol police officers and a mob of people, including Reffitt, who approached them on the west side of the building that afternoon, shortly after Trump had held a rally calling on the crowd to go to the Capitol and urging supporters to “fight like hell” to keep him in power.Garland promises ‘justice without fear or favor’ as DoJ digs into Trump’s January 6 roleRead moreReffitt was armed with a Smith & Wesson pistol in a holster on his waist, carried zip-tie handcuffs and was wearing body armor and a helmet equipped with a video camera when he advanced on officers, according to prosecutors.He retreated after an officer pepper-sprayed him in the face, but he waved on other rioters who ultimately breached the building, prosecutors said.Reffitt’s 19-year-old son, Jackson, testified that his father had told him and his sister, then 16, that they would be traitors if they reported him to authorities and warned them that “traitors get shot”.The Three Percenters movement refers to the myth that only 3% of Americans fought in the revolutionary war against the British.Reffitt lived with his wife and children in Wylie, Texas, a Dallas suburb. He drove to Washington with Rocky Hardie, a fellow member of the militia group.Hardie testified that both of them attended Trump’s rally.More than 840 people have been charged with federal crimes related to the riot. More than 340 of them have pleaded guilty and more than 220 have been sentenced, with nearly half of them receiving terms of imprisonment. Approximately 150 others have trial dates stretching into 2023.Reffitt is one of seven Capitol riot defendants to get a jury trial so far. Jurors have convicted all seven on all counts.The Department of Justice has not ruled out Trump and members of his cohort from its widening criminal investigation into events surrounding January 6 as well as the insurrection itself.The attorney general, Merrick Garland, last week pledged “to bring to justice everybody who is criminally responsible for interfering with the peaceful transfer of power” and to pursue wrongdoing “without fear or favor”.Separately, a bipartisan House select committee is investigating events leading up to, on and immediately after January 6 and has held a series of public hearings that are expected to resume in the fall, that also examine Trump’s role.TopicsUS Capitol attackThe far rightnewsReuse this content More
China has stepped up its warning against Nancy Pelosi’s potential visit to Taiwan, saying its military will ‘not sit idly by’ if it goes ahead this week. The explicit message came amid reports that the US House speaker, who began her tour of Asia at the weekend, may be arriving in Taipei on Tuesday and as China’s People’s Liberation Army was celebrating the 95th anniversary of its founding. China’s spokesperson, Zhao Lijian, said that because of Pelosi’s status, a visit to Taiwan, which China claims as its own province, would ‘lead to egregious political impact’
China’s military ‘will not sit idly by’ if Nancy Pelosi visits Taiwan More
Prosecutors at the justice department are gearing up for a courtroom battle to force the testimony of Donald Trump’s former White House officials, as they pursue their criminal inquiry into his insurrection, a report published Friday by CNN says.The former president is expected to try to invoke executive privilege to prevent his closest associates telling what they know about his conduct and actions following his 2020 election defeat, and efforts to prevent Joe Biden taking office, according to the network.But the department, which has taken a much more aggressive stance in recent weeks, is readying for that fight, CNN says, “the clearest sign yet” that the inquiry has become more narrowly focused on Trump’s conversations and interactions.This week attorney general Merrick Garland promised “justice without fear or favor” for anyone caught up in insurrection efforts and would not rule out charging Trump criminally if that’s where the evidence led.He told NBC’s Lester Holt:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}We intend to hold everyone, anyone who was criminally responsible for events surrounding January 6, or any attempt to interfere with the lawful transfer of power from one administration to another, accountable.
That’s what we do. We don’t pay any attention to other issues with respect to that.CNN’s story suggests that prosecutors are acutely aware that Trumpworld insiders who are initially reluctant to testify will be more inclined to do so with a judge’s order compelling it.The network also says Trump’s attempt to maintain secrecy came up over recent federal grand jury testimony of two of former vice-president Mike Pence’s aides, Marc Short and Greg Jacob.Questioning reportedly skirted around issues likely to be covered by executive privilege, with prosecutors having an expectation they could return to those subjects at a later date, CNN’s sources said.The development is set to add more legal pressure on Trump following the announcement of an evidence-sharing “partnership” between the justice department and the parallel House January 6 inquiry, in which transcripts of testimony from at least 20 witnesses are passing to Garland’s investigation.An impassioned plea from a 12-year-old girl has gone viral after she spoke to West Virginia Republican lawmakers during a public hearing for an abortion bill that would prohibit the procedure in nearly all cases.On Wednesday, Addison Gardner of Buffalo middle school in Kenova, West Virginia, was among several people who spoke out against a bill that would not only ban abortions in most cases but also allow for physicians who perform abortions to be prosecuted.Addressing the West Virginia house of delegates, Gardner, among about 90 other speakers, was given 45 seconds to plead her case.“My education is very important to me and I plan on doing great things in life. If a man decides that I’m an object and does unspeakable and tragic things to me, am I, a child, supposed to carry and birth another child?” Gardner said.Read more here:‘What about my life?’ West Virginia girl, 12, speaks out against anti-abortion bill Read moreText messages of two of Donald Trump’s chief homeland security officials, Chad Wolf and Ken Cuccinelli, are missing for “a key period” surrounding the former president’s January 6 insurrection, the Washington Post reported Friday.It follows news that secret service texts from about the same time had been mysteriously erased, hampering the House panel’s inquiry into the deadly Capitol riot and Trump’s illegitimate efforts to remain in office.The previously unreported discovery of missing records for the most senior homeland security officials increases the volume of potential evidence that has vanished regarding the time around the Capitol attack, the Post says.🚨🔎🚨BREAKING POGO INVESTIGATION: yet another story of missing text messages at #DHS. This time, text messages to and from three top Trump-era officials at the dept. from early January 2021 are missing. Read the investigation now: https://t.co/AkWxoUu65Z— Project On Government Oversight (@POGOwatchdog) July 29, 2022
The homeland security department told the agency’s inspector general in February that texts of Wolf and Cuccinelli were lost in a “reset” of their government phones when they left their jobs in January 2021 in preparation for the new Biden administration, the newspaper adds.The Post says its source is an internal record obtained by the Project on Government Oversight, whose own report on the disappearance of the messages can be found here.Messages of a third senior department official, the undersecretary of management Randolph “Tex” Alles, a former Secret Service director, are also no longer available because of the reset, according to the Post.In his forthcoming memoir, the former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort describes his travels through the US prison system after being convicted on tax charges – including a stay in a Manhattan facility alongside the financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and the Mexican drug baron Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.Manafort also writes that during one transfer between facilities, at a private airfield “somewhere in Ohio”, the sight of “prisoners … being herded in long lines and then separated into other buses and on to … transport planes … reminded me of movies about the Holocaust”.Political Prisoner: Persecuted, Prosecuted, but Not Silenced, will be published in the US next month. The Guardian obtained a copy.Manafort’s book is not all quite so startling. But he does make the surprise admission that in 2020, he indirectly advised Trump’s campaign while in home confinement as part of a seven-year sentence – advice he kept secret as he hoped for a presidential pardon.“I didn’t want anything to get in the way of the president’s re-election or, importantly, a potential pardon,” Manafort writes.He got the pardon.Here’s more:Paul Manafort admits indirectly advising Trump in 2020 but keeping it secret in wait for pardon Read moreProsecutors at the justice department are gearing up for a courtroom battle to force the testimony of Donald Trump’s former White House officials, as they pursue their criminal inquiry into his insurrection, a report published Friday by CNN says.The former president is expected to try to invoke executive privilege to prevent his closest associates telling what they know about his conduct and actions following his 2020 election defeat, and efforts to prevent Joe Biden taking office, according to the network.But the department, which has taken a much more aggressive stance in recent weeks, is readying for that fight, CNN says, “the clearest sign yet” that the inquiry has become more narrowly focused on Trump’s conversations and interactions.This week attorney general Merrick Garland promised “justice without fear or favor” for anyone caught up in insurrection efforts and would not rule out charging Trump criminally if that’s where the evidence led.He told NBC’s Lester Holt:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}We intend to hold everyone, anyone who was criminally responsible for events surrounding January 6, or any attempt to interfere with the lawful transfer of power from one administration to another, accountable.
That’s what we do. We don’t pay any attention to other issues with respect to that.CNN’s story suggests that prosecutors are acutely aware that Trumpworld insiders who are initially reluctant to testify will be more inclined to do so with a judge’s order compelling it.The network also says Trump’s attempt to maintain secrecy came up over recent federal grand jury testimony of two of former vice-president Mike Pence’s aides, Marc Short and Greg Jacob.Questioning reportedly skirted around issues likely to be covered by executive privilege, with prosecutors having an expectation they could return to those subjects at a later date, CNN’s sources said.The development is set to add more legal pressure on Trump following the announcement of an evidence-sharing “partnership” between the justice department and the parallel House January 6 inquiry, in which transcripts of testimony from at least 20 witnesses are passing to Garland’s investigation.Good morning blog readers, we’ve made it to the end of an extraordinary week in US politics, but we’re not through quite yet. There’s news today of more legal peril for Donald Trump over his efforts to illegitimately reverse his 2020 election defeat.Justice department prosecutors, according to CNN, are preparing a court fight to force Trump insiders to testify over the former president’s conversations and actions around January 6. They expect Trump to try to invoke executive privilege to prevent his former White House officials telling what they know.We’ll have more on that coming up, and will also be looking at the following:
Washington is still abuzz with Senator Joe Manchin’s stunning reversal, leading to the surprise announcement of the Inflation Reduction Act and the chance for Joe Biden to achieve some of his signature climate policy goals.
Text messages around the time of the January 6 Capitol riot “vanished” from the the phones of Trump’s senior homeland security officials Chad Wolf and Ken Cuccinelli, the Washington Post reports.
The Biden administration reportedly has a new plan for Covid-19 boosters, scrapping advice for a summer shot and concentrating instead on pushing next-generation vaccines in the fall.
It could be a busy day in the House with possible votes on gun controls and police funding, before members head off for a six-week break. But the speaker, Nancy Pelosi, could call them back next week for a vote on the Inflation Reduction Act.
The White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, has her daily briefing scheduled for 1.30pm. Joe Biden has no public events listed. More
Murdoch told Kushner on election night that Arizona result was ‘not even close’Donald Trump’s son-in-law and adviser’s new book recounts turmoil caused by Fox News decision to call state for Biden in 2020 When Fox News called Arizona for Joe Biden on election night 2020, infuriating Donald Trump and fueling Republican election subversion attempts which continue to this day, Rupert Murdoch told Jared Kushner “the numbers are ironclad – it’s not even close”.Is Murdoch tiring of Trump? Mogul’s print titles dump the ex-presidentRead moreDetails of the Fox News owner’s conversation with Trump’s son-in-law and chief adviser about the call which most observers say confirmed Trump’s defeat are contained in Kushner’s memoir, Breaking History, which is due out next month.They also come as Murdoch-owned papers and even Fox News itself seem to turn against Trump in light of the January 6 hearings on the US Capitol attack and his attempt to overturn his election defeat.A first extract from the book, in which Kushner described being secretly treated for thyroid cancer, was reported by Maggie Haberman of the New York Times.On Wednesday another Times reporter, Kenneth Vogel, tweeted pictures of pages from Kushner’s book, each emblazoned with the word “confidential”.Kushner’s description of the shock of the Fox News Arizona call mirrors those in numerous reports and books on Trump’s 2020 defeat, his refusal to accept it and the attack on US democracy which followed.“The shocking projection brought our momentum to a screeching halt,” Kushner writes. “It instantly changed the mood among our campaign’s leaders, who were scrambling to understand the network’s methodology.”Kushner describes the Trump campaign’s focus on Arizona and writes that losing there “would drastically narrow our path to victory”.In Landslide, a book released last year, the author Michael Wolff reported that Murdoch gave his son Lachlan Murdoch approval for Fox News to call Arizona for Biden with “a signature grunt” and a barb for Trump: “Fuck him.”Fox News denied Wolff’s story.Kushner writes: “I dialed Rupert Murdoch and asked why Fox News had made the Arizona call before hundreds of thousands of votes were tallied. Rupert said he would look into the issue, and minutes later he called back.“‘Sorry Jared, there is nothing I can do,’” he said. “‘The Fox News data authority says the numbers are ironclad – he says it won’t be close.’”Biden won Arizona by about 10,000 votes, a margin which increased after a partisan audit encouraged by Trump allies and commissioned by state Republicans.Key members of the Fox News decision desk left after the election. Chris Stirewalt, the politics editor, was fired. He has appeared before the January 6 committee.“We knew [Arizona] would be a consequential call because it was one of five states that really mattered,” Stirewalt testified.Stirewalt also said that by the time of the Arizona call, Trump’s chances of beating Biden were “very small” and “getting smaller”. After Arizona, he said, those chances dwindled to “none”.In his book, Kushner shades close to his father-in-law’s lie about electoral fraud in Biden’s victory, writing: “2020 was full of anomalies.”The election was called for Biden on 7 November, when Pennsylvania fell into his column. He won the electoral college by 306-232, the same margin Trump called a landslide when it landed in his favour against Hillary Clinton in 2016. Biden won the popular vote by more than 7m.In his passage on the speech Trump gave in the early hours of 4 November, the day after election day, claiming “Frankly, we did win this election”, Kushner says he was called by Karl Rove, the strategist who helped George W Bush win “the closest presidential election in US history”, against Al Gore in 2000.Trump claimed to have been the victim of fraud. Rove, Kushner writes, said: “The president’s rhetoric is all wrong. He’s going to win. Statistically, there’s no way the Democrats can catch up with you now.”Kushner says he responded: “Call the president and tell him that.”Trump later turned on Rove, who he said called him at 10.30pm on election night “to congratulate me on ‘a great win’”. Fox News called Arizona just before midnight.On Wednesday, Vogel also tweeted pages in which Kushner describes his work on presidential pardons.Kushner says he did not oppose a pardon for Steve Bannon, the former Trump strategist who was accused of fraud but who was a prominent White House leaker, because of the work Bannon did on Trump’s winning campaign in 2016.He also writes that when Trump pardoned Alice Johnson, a Black grandmother sentenced on a minor drugs-related charge of the sort Kushner targeted in his work on sentencing reform, Trump said: “Let’s hope Alice doesn’t go out and kill anyone!”TopicsBooksJared KushnerRupert MurdochFox NewsUS elections 2020Donald TrumpPolitics booksnewsReuse this content More
Justice department gets warrant to search Trump lawyer’s phoneJohn Eastman spoke at a rally before the Capitol attack and claimed Mike Pence could halt certification of Biden’s election win The US justice department said on Wednesday it had obtained a warrant to search the phone of Donald Trump’s election attorney, John Eastman, who spoke at a rally before the January 6 assault on the US Capitol.Federal agents seized Eastman’s phone in June based on a warrant authorizing them to take the device. They needed a second warrant to search the phone’s contents.In a filing with US district court in New Mexico, the assistant US attorney Thomas Windom said the US district court for the District of Columbia issued a search warrant on 12 July authorizing review of the phone’s contents and manual screen capture.He said federal agents in northern Virginia had the phone and screenshots of some of its contents.Eastman has been under intense scrutiny in the investigations into the attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters after the former president falsely claimed that he had won the 2020 election. Eastman spoke at the rally where Trump gave a fiery speech alleging election fraud and urging supporters to march on the Capitol.Eastman also wrote a memo outlining how, in his view, Mike Pence could thwart formal congressional certification of Trump’s re-election loss. The then vice-president declined to follow Eastman’s advice.Wednesday’s filing was made in New Mexico because Eastman had previously filed a suit there asking a judge to order the justice department to return the phone, destroy records and block investigators from accessing the phone.The judge denied that request but ordered the government to update the court by Wednesday on the location of the phone and status of a second search warrant.A representative for Eastman was not immediately available for comment.TopicsUS Capitol attackUS politicsBiden administrationDonald TrumpnewsReuse this content More
