Eliana Willis

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    Supreme court immunity ruling to cause new delay in Trump 2020 election case

    Donald Trump’s criminal prosecution over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election is expected to be delayed by another month after special counsel prosecutors said they had not finished assessing how the US supreme court’s immunity decision would narrow their case.On Thursday, the prosecutors on special counsel Jack Smith’s team told Tanya Chutkan, the US district judge presiding over the case, that they needed her to delay until 30 August a deadline to submit a possible schedule for how to proceed with a complicated fact-finding mission ordered by the court.“The Government continues to assess the new precedent set forth last month in the Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v United States, including through consultation with other Department of Justice components,” prosecutors wrote in a two-page court filing.“The Government has not finalized its position on the most appropriate schedule for the parties to brief issues related to the decision. The Government therefore respectfully requests additional time to provide the Court with an informed proposal.”The supreme court ruled last month that former presidents are entitled to some degree of immunity from criminal prosecution, marking a victory for Trump.Precisely what prosecutors are now stuck on remains unclear, although the ruling struck some of the charges against Trump and is expected to see Chutkan needing to pare back the indictment further.Trump is accused of overseeing a sprawling effort to subvert the results of the 2020 presidential election, including two counts of conspiring to obstruct the certification of the election results, conspiring to defraud the government, and conspiring to disenfranchise voters.The alleged illegal conduct includes Trump pressing justice department officials to open sham investigations, Trump obstructing Congress from certifying the election, including by trying to co-opt his vice-president, Trump helping prompt the Capitol attack, and Trump’s plot to recruit fake electors.View image in fullscreenThe supreme court decided that criminal accountability for presidents has three categories: core presidential functions that carry absolute immunity, official acts of the presidency that carry presumptive immunity, and unofficial acts that carry no immunity.The ruling meant that the charges related to core executive functions will be thrown out, and for Chutkan to determine through a fact-finding exercise if any other charges that might come under official acts must be expunged.Whether Chutkan will do the fact-finding on legal arguments or legal briefs, or will consider evidence perhaps given by witnesses, was supposed to become clearer after Trump and the special counsel jointly submitted the now-delayed scheduling brief.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump’s lawyers are expected to ask for few or no witnesses, the Guardian has previously reported. And in a statement on Truth Social, Trump called anew for the case to be tossed: “It is clear that the supreme court’s historic decision on immunity demands and requires a complete and total dismissal.”The deadline for the scheduling brief was the first activity in the case since December, when it was frozen after Trump asked the US court of appeals for the DC circuit and then the supreme court to consider his argument that he had absolute immunity from criminal prosecution.The supreme court issued its immunity ruling on 1 July, but the case only returned to Chutkan’s jurisdiction last week because of the court’s 25-day waiting period for any rehearing requests, and an additional week for the judgment to be formally sent down to the trial judge.Trump has already been enormously successful in delaying his criminal cases, a strategy he adopted in the hope that winning the 2024 election would enable him to appoint a loyalist as attorney general who he could direct to drop the charges.It is all but impossible now for the special counsel to bring the case to trial before election day, given Trump can make interim appeals for any decisions that Chutkan makes about the impact of the immunity decision. More

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    First conviction in Arizona fake electors case as Republican activist pleads guilty

    A Republican activist who signed a document falsely claiming Donald Trump had won Arizona in 2020 became the first person to be convicted in the state’s fake elector case.Loraine Pellegrino, a past president of the group Ahwatukee Republican Women, has pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of filing a false document, the Arizona attorney general’s office spokesperson, Richie Taylor, said on Tuesday, declining to comment further. Records documenting her guilty plea have not yet been posted by the court. Still, court records show Pellegrino was sentenced to unsupervised probation. Before the plea, she faced nine felony charges.Seventeen other people had been charged in the case, including 10 other Republicans, who had signed a certificate saying they were “duly elected and qualified” electors and claimed Trump had carried Arizona in the 2020 election. Joe Biden won Arizona by 10,457 votes. Joshua Kolsrud, an attorney representing Pellegrino, said in a statement that his client has accepted responsibility for her actions. “Loraine Pellegrino’s decision to accept a plea to a lesser charge reflects her desire to move forward and put this matter behind her,” Kolsrud said.On Monday, Jenna Ellis, former Trump’s campaign attorney who worked closely with his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, entered a cooperation agreement with prosecutors who have asked for her charges to be dismissed. The remaining defendants, including Giuliani and Mark Meadows, Trump presidential chief of staff, have pleaded not guilty to conspiracy, fraud and forgery charges.Pellegrino and 10 other people who had been nominated to be Arizona’s Republican electors had met in Phoenix on 14 December 2020 to sign the false document. A one-minute video of the signing ceremony was posted on social media by the Arizona Republican party at the time. The document was later sent to Congress and the National Archives, where it was ignored.Prosecutors in Michigan, Nevada, Georgia and Wisconsin have also filed criminal charges related to the fake electors scheme.Arizona authorities unveiled the felony charges in late April. Overall, charges were brought against 11 Republicans who submitted the document falsely declaring Trump had won Arizona, five lawyers connected to the former president and two former Trump aides.Trump himself was not charged in the Arizona case but was referred to as an unindicted co-conspirator in the indictment. More

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    Ex-Trump attorney agrees to cooperate in Arizona fake electors case

    Jenna Ellis, Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign attorney charged in Arizona as part of the fake electors scheme, has agreed to cooperate with prosecutors in exchange for getting her charges dismissed.Arizona’s attorney general, Kris Mayes, announced the deal on Monday, sharing a legal agreement that shows Ellis agreed to sit for interviews and turn over documents related to the scheme. The agreement also calls on Ellis to “testify completely and truthfully at any time and any place requested by the Arizona attorney general’s office”.In exchange, Ellis will avoid potential jail time for her role in the scheme.“This agreement represents a significant step forward in our case,” Mayes said in a statement. “I am grateful to Ms Ellis for her cooperation with our investigation and prosecution. Her insights are invaluable and will greatly aid the state in proving its case in court.”In Arizona, 18 people were charged – the 11 people who falsely attested that Trump had won the state’s electors, and seven others from Trump’s circle who helped coordinate the scheme.Ellis previously pleaded guilty in Georgia to one count of aiding and abetting false statements and writings in that state’s election subversion case. Her plea deal in Georgia resulted in five years’ probation, a fine and community service in exchange for cooperating with prosecutors. Her plea came quickly after two others pleaded guilty in the case, and she subsequently had her law license suspended.Documents filed in the Arizona case cite the Georgia plea agreement, saying that it was “in the interest of justice” for the judge to accept the Arizona deal because it comes from “the same conspiracy charged in this case”.Ellis, and the others indicted in the Arizona case, faced nine felony charges related to fraud, forgery and conspiracy. All pleaded not guilty.Arizona is one of seven states where Trump and his allies sought to install “alternate” electors who claimed Trump won in their states. In five of the states, prosecutors have worked to bring charges against at least some of those involved. More

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    Judge rejects Trump effort to dismiss 2020 federal election subversion case

    The federal judge presiding over Donald Trump’s election subversion case in Washington DC rejected on Saturday a defense effort to dismiss the indictment on claims that the former president was prosecuted for vindictive and political purposes.Judge Tanya Chutkan’s ruling is the first substantive order since the case was returned to her Friday following a landmark US supreme court opinion in July that conferred broad immunity for former presidents and narrowed special counsel Jack Smith’s case against Trump.In their motion to dismiss the indictment, defense lawyers argued that Trump was mistreated because he was prosecuted even though others who have challenged election results have avoided criminal charges. Trump, the Republican nominee in the 2024 presidential race, also suggested that President Joe Biden and the US justice department launched a prosecution to prevent him from winning re-election.But Chutkan rejected both arguments, saying Trump was not charged simply for challenging election results – but instead for “knowingly making false statements in furtherance of criminal conspiracies and for obstruction of election certification proceedings”. She also said that his lawyers had misread news media articles that they had cited in arguing that the prosecution was political in nature.“After reviewing [the] defendant’s evidence and arguments, the court cannot conclude that he has carried his burden to establish either actual vindictiveness or the presumption of it, and so finds no basis for dismissing this case on those grounds,” Chutkan wrote in her order.Also Saturday, she scheduled a 16 August status conference to discuss next steps in the case.The four-count indictment, brought in August 2023, accuses Trump of conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 election he lost to Biden through a variety of schemes, including by badgering his vice-president, Mike Pence, to block the formal certification of electoral votes.Trump’s lawyers argued that he was immune from prosecution as a former president, and the case has been on hold since December as his appeal worked its way through the courts.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe supreme court, in a 6-3 opinion, held that presidents enjoy absolute immunity for core constitutional duties and are presumptively immune from prosecution for all other official acts. The justices sent the case back to Chutkan to determine which acts alleged in the indictment can remain part of the prosecution and which must be discarded. More

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    Republican Arizona official who said 2020 election was not stolen loses primary

    The top election official in Arizona’s Maricopa county, who became nationally known for defending the 2020 election results from false claims by Donald Trump and others of fraud, has lost his seat in the Republican primary to a challenger who questioned those 2020 results.In his campaign, Stephen Richer reaffirmed in a primary debate with his Republican opponents that neither the 2020 nor 2022 elections were stolen. His opponents continued questioned the results, with one partly blaming Mark Zuckerberg, claiming the Facebook founder “dropped in illegal drop boxes” to sway the elections.State representative Justin Heap, another challenger, claimed election rules were not followed, though he avoided taking a direct stance on whether he thought the elections were stolen.On Wednesday it was announced that Heap had won the election with more than 40% of the vote, after 81% of ballots had been counted. Richer trailed by 6.5%.Heap is a first-term state representative who sought the votes of Maga supporters, despite deleting 2023 posts on social media claiming he is not one himself. He has, however, claimed he proudly voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020 and would do so again. His candidacy was supported by the far-right Freedom caucus.He has also aligned himself with the Senate candidate Kari Lake, a favorite of Trump who has also repeatedly claimed election fraud despite no evidence, and falsely accused Richer of having a role in it. Richer has sued Lake for defamation.Richer took office in 2021 after defeating a Democrat incumbent.“Nobody stole Maricopa county’s election. Elections in Maricopa county aren’t rigged,” Richer wrote in a 2021 open letter to Arizona Republicans. “The truth is that the case isn’t there. I spent November and December willing to wait for a meritorious lawsuit, a scientific claim or convincing data. But it never came because it didn’t exist.”He received death threats for denying the 2020 election was stolen from Trump and that the 2022 election was stolen from Lake. One county party official stated that he would “lynch” Richer, and a Missouri man faced federal charges for threatening to kill him in 2022.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAs recorder of Maricopa county, the most populous county in Arizona, Richer ran voter registration and early voting efforts.Heap will now run against Democrat Tim Stringham, an attorney, in the 5 November general election. More