Eliana Willis

More stories

  • 175 Shares199 Views

    in Elections

    ‘May the best woman win’: Haley reacts as DeSantis ends presidential campaign – video

    Ron DeSantis has ended his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination and endorsed Donald Trump. The Florida governor’s withdrawal leaves Nikki Haley as the last remaining challenger to Trump for the party’s nomination. ‘He’s been a good governor and I wish him well,’ Haley said of DeSantis at a campaign event on Sunday. ‘Having said that, it’s now one fella and one lady left.’ Trump set aside months of criticism of DeSantis and welcomed his onetime rival as his newest supporter More

  • 125 Shares169 Views

    in Elections

    Judge hints that Trump’s election interference trial might be delayed

    The federal judge overseeing the criminal case against Donald Trump over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results indicated on Thursday that the scheduled trial date would not hold as a result of the case being frozen while the former US president appeals to have the charges dismissed.The US district judge Tanya Chutkan last summer scheduled the trial in Washington DC to start on 4 March – allowing Trump and his team seven months to prepare his defense – and has taken pains to ensure that date would not be delayed.But when Trump appealed her decision in December to reject his motion to toss the charges on grounds he could not be prosecuted for actions he took as president related to his duties, the case became automatically frozen while the US court of appeals for the DC circuit considered the matter.In her six-page order prohibiting the special counsel Jack Smith from filing motions pending the appeal, Chutkan affirmed that Trump would get the full seven-month period and that any time that elapsed between December and the end of the appeals process would not count against him.“Contrary to Defendant’s assertion, the court has not and will not set deadlines in this case based on the assumption that he has undertaken preparation when not required to do so,” the judge wrote.The line marked the first time that Chutkan has acknowledged that the March trial date may no longer be viable. While the DC circuit is expected to issue a decision on the immunity appeal expeditiously after oral arguments last week, it could be weeks until a decision is handed down.Trump can also continue his appeal efforts – and continue to have the case stayed – by asking the full appeals court to rehear the case “en banc” should the three-judge panel at oral arguments uphold Chutkan’s ruling. En banc means a hearing before an entire bench of judges. Trump could also ultimately appeal to the US supreme court.The situation reflects the success Trump has had to date with executing his strategy of seeking to delay the case, ideally beyond the 2024 election in the hope that he wins re-election to potentially pardon himself or direct his attorney general to drop the charges.Chutkan’s order was a win for Trump insofar as she affirmed that prosecutors should not be filing motions related to the substance of the case in order to comply with the stay order that has frozen the case, even if she declined to hold them in contempt as Trump had wanted.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump had complained that the filings from prosecutors, submitted to the trial court while they litigated the immunity issue, diverted their attention and created an unfair burden because his lawyers needed to review them to make sure it included things “involved in the appeal”.“While that is not a major burden, it is a cognizable one,” Chutkan wrote of Trump’s complaint. She added that Trump could make further objections to prosecutors’ findings, and he could do so when the appeals process is resolved and “the court sets a new schedule”. More

  • 138 Shares199 Views

    in Elections

    Trump lawyers urge supreme court to reinstate him on Colorado ballot

    Donald Trump’s lawyers urged the US supreme court on Thursday to reverse a judicial decision disqualifying the former president from Colorado’s Republican primary ballot as the justices prepare to tackle the politically explosive case.Trump’s lawyers in court papers presented the former US president’s main arguments against a Colorado supreme court ruling on 19 December barring him from the primary ballot over his actions around the January 6 Capitol attack, citing the 14th amendment of the US constitution.The justices have scheduled oral arguments in the case for 8 February.Trump’s lawyers urged the court to “put a swift and decisive end to these ballot-disqualification efforts”, noting that similar efforts were under way in more than 30 states.The lawyers said the 14th amendment provision does not apply to presidents, that the question of presidential eligibility is reserved to Congress, and that Trump did not participate in an insurrection.The brief adheres to an accelerated schedule set by the justices on 5 January when they agreed to take up the case. Colorado’s Republican primary is set for 5 March.Trump is the frontrunner for his party’s nomination to challenge Joe Biden in the November 5 election.The plaintiffs – six conservative Republican or independent voters in Colorado – challenged Trump’s eligibility to run for office in light of his actions before the attack.They now have until 31 January to respond to Trump’s filing.The Colorado ruling marked the first time that section 3 of the 14th amendment – the so-called disqualification clause – had been used to find a presidential candidate ineligible.Section 3 bars from holding office any “officer of the United States” who took an oath “to support the constitution of the United States” and then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof”.The Colorado lawsuit is part of a wider effort to disqualify Trump from state ballots under the 14th amendment, so the ruling by the justices may shape the outcome of that drive.For instance, Trump also has appealed to a Maine court a decision by that state’s top election official barring him from the primary ballot under the 14th amendment. That case is on hold until the supreme court issues its ruling in the Colorado case.The 14th amendment was ratified in the aftermath of the American civil war of 1861-65 in which southern states that allowed the practice of slavery rebelled in a bid for secession.The Capitol rampage was a bid to prevent Congress from certifying 2020 Biden’s election victory over Trump, who gave an incendiary speech to his supporters beforehand, repeating his false claims of widespread voting fraud.Trump also faces criminal charges in two cases related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election outcome.The Colorado plaintiffs have emphasized the lower court‘s findings that Trump’s intentional “mobilizing, inciting, and encouraging” of an armed mob to attack the Capitol meets the legal definition in section 3. “This attack was an ‘insurrection’ against the constitution by any standard,” they said in legal papers. More

  • 138 Shares169 Views

    in Elections

    Judge in Trump case sets hearing over Fani Willis conflict-of-interest claims

    The Georgia judge overseeing the racketeering case charging Donald Trump and allies with attempting to overturn the 2020 election results in the state has scheduled a hearing for February to weigh whether the Fulton county district attorney should be disqualified from prosecuting the charges.In a one-page order, the Fulton county superior judge Scott McAfee set an evidentiary hearing for 15 February to address allegations raised by Trump’s co-defendant Michael Roman that the district attorney Fani Willis had an improper romantic relationship with one of her prosecutors.The judge also ordered the district attorney to file a response to the allegations by 2 February. Earlier this week, Willis’s office had privately told at least two lawyers involved in the case that they intended to submit their written response by that date, people familiar with the matter said.The case is unlikely to be dismissed outright even if the allegations are proven true. But that could result in the disqualification of Willis, which, under Georgia caselaw, would necessitate the disqualification of the entire Fulton county district attorney’s office, as well.At issue is an explosive complaint from Roman – director of Trump’s 2020 election-day operations – that Willis should be relieved of bringing the case because of conflicts of interests arising from her ongoing relationship with a lawyer named Nathan Wade, whom she hired as a special prosecutor.The filing claimed Willis personally profited from the contract. Wade was paid at least $653,000 and potentially as much as $1m for legal fees as one of the lead prosecutors on the Trump case, and the filing alleged Wade then paid for trips he took with Willis to Napa Valley and the Caribbean.The filing included no proof of the allegations. Roman’s lawyer Ashleigh Merchant, a respected local attorney who publicly endorsed Wade when he ran to be a Cobb county superior judge 2016, has said the claims were based on sources and records from Wade’s divorce proceeding that remains under seal.Wade started divorce proceedings the day after he was hired as a special prosecutor on the Trump case. According to court records, the divorce case has been contentious, and Joycelyn Mayfield Wade wrote that her husband had failed to disclose his finances, including from his Fulton county work.For his part, Wade has repeatedly insisted in court filings that he had complied with the discovery obligations and accused his wife of being “stubbornly litigious and dragging the matter out for no stated reasons”.Three days after Trump was indicted in Atlanta last August, the presiding Cobb county superior court judge Henry Thompson held Wade in contempt for failing to disclose financial statements, including bank and credit card statements.Weeks later, Joycelyn Mayfield Wade said in a filing in September that she would be forced to subpoena records to obtain her husband’s earnings from legal work done for the Fulton county district attorney’s office and Fulton county in November and December respectively.Willis herself was subpoenaed for testimony on 8 January, just hours before Roman filed his motion seeking dismissal of the charges and disqualification. The subpoena ordered her to appear for a 23 January video-taped deposition.Willis has not directly addressed the allegations, and a spokesperson has said it would all be addressed in court filings.Roman’s allegations threaten to upend one of the most consequential criminal cases against Trump, who pleaded not guilty to charges that he and his co-defendants violated the Georgia Rico statute through his efforts to reverse his 2020 election defeat.Whether Willis, and therefore the district attorney’s office, can be disqualified from prosecuting the Trump case turns less on Wade’s credentials and more on the extent of a potential conflict of interest, legal experts said.The standard for disqualification does not turn on whether Willis made prosecutorial decisions to benefit Wade, the experts said, but whether she made decisions to extend a criminal investigation actually benefited Wade, who was also paying for travel and vacations.In 2022, the chief Fulton county superior court judge Robert McBurney disqualified the Fulton county district attorney’s office from prosecuting the Republican lieutenant governor Burt Jones after Willis endorsed his political opponent, Charlie Bailey.The order from McBurney found that there was an “actual” conflict of interest because even though Jones might not have had definitive proof that “an investigative decision was made to benefit Bailey … any public criminal investigation into Jones plainly benefits Bailey’s campaign”.Should McAfee ultimately decide to disqualify Fulton county, the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia would be tasked with deciding where the case would be transferred to. It could pursue the case itself, or give it to another district attorney’s office, which could choose to drop the charges. More

  • 150 Shares169 Views

    in Elections

    Florida man who assaulted police in January 6 riots given five-year sentence

    A Florida man described by prosecutors as one of the most violent rioters who attacked the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 was sentenced on Wednesday to five years in prison, court records show.Kenneth Bonawitz, a member of the far-right Proud Boys extremist group’s Miami chapter, assaulted at least six police officers as he stormed the Capitol with a mob of Donald Trump supporters. He grabbed one of the officers in a chokehold and injured another so severely that the officer had to retire, according to federal prosecutors.Bonawitz, 58, of Pompano Beach, Florida, carried an eight-inch knife in a sheath on his hip. Police seized the knife from him in between his barrage of attacks on officers.“His violent, and repeated, assaults on multiple officers are among the worst attacks that occurred that day,” assistant US attorney Sean McCauley wrote in a court filing.US district judge Jia Cobb sentenced Bonawitz to a five-year term of imprisonment followed by three years of supervised release, court records show.The US justice department recommended a prison sentence of five years and 11 months for Bonawitz, who was arrested last January. He pleaded guilty in August to three felonies – one count of civil disorder and two counts of assaulting police.Bonawitz took an overnight bus to Washington DC on the day of the Capitol attack, chartered for Trump supporters to attend his Stop the Steal rally near the White House.Bonawitz was among the first rioters to enter the upper west plaza once the crowd overran a police line on the north side. He jumped off a stage built for Joe Biden’s presidential inauguration and tackled two Capitol police officers. One of them, Sgt Federico Ruiz, suffered serious injuries to his neck, shoulder, knees and back.“I thought there was a strong chance I could die right there,” Ruiz wrote in a letter addressed to the judge.Ruiz, who retired last month, said the injuries inflicted by Bonawitz prematurely ended his law-enforcement career.“Bonawitz has given me a life sentence of physical pain and discomfort, bodily injury and emotional insecurity as a direct result of his assault on me,” he wrote.After police confiscated his knife and released him, Bonawitz assaulted four more officers in the span of seven seconds. He placed one of the officers in a headlock and lifted her off the ground, choking her.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Bonawitz’s attacks did not stop until (police) officers pushed him back into the crowd for a second time and deployed chemical agent to his face,” the prosecutor wrote.More than 100 police officers were injured during the siege. More than 1,200 defendants have been charged with Capitol riot-related federal crimes. About 900 have pleaded guilty or been convicted after trials – more than 750 have been sentenced, with nearly 500 receiving a term of imprisonment, according to data compiled by the Associated Press.Dozens of Proud Boys leaders, members and associates have been arrested on January 6 charges. A jury convicted former Proud Boys national chairman Enrique Tarrio and three lieutenants of seditious conspiracy charges for a failed plot to forcibly stop the peaceful transfer of presidential power from Trump to Biden after the 2020 election.Bonawitz isn’t accused of coordinating his actions on January 6 with other Proud Boys. But he “fully embraced and embodied their anti-government, extremist ideology when he assaulted six law enforcement officers who stood between a mob and the democratic process”, the prosecutor wrote.Bonawitz’s lawyers didn’t publicly file a sentencing memo before Wednesday’s hearing. More

  • 175 Shares189 Views

    in Elections

    Trump wins in Iowa as Republican contest kicks off 2024 presidential race – video

    Donald Trump won the US’s first election contest of 2024, easily fending off a field of Republicans who failed to gain traction against the former US president. The result for Trump was called quickly, while the battle for second place took much longer, with Ron DeSantis edging out Nikki Haley in an upset. Vivek Ramaswamy led the lesser-known pack of contenders, before he dropped out of the Republican nomination race and endorsed Trump More

  • 125 Shares189 Views

    in Elections

    Houthis vow retaliation for US and UK airstrikes – video

    A Houthi military spokesperson says overnight strikes by the US and UK, in response to the movement’s attacks on ships in the Red Sea, will not go without ‘punishment or retaliation’.

    Yahya Sarea said the strikes had killed five Houthi fighters and wounded six others, and that the group would continue to target ships headed for Israel in response to the country’s war on Gaza.

    The US and the UK said steps had been taken to minimise civilian casualties, partly by attacking at night, but it was unclear initially what damage had been done on the ground and the impact on the Houthi and civilian populations More

  • 150 Shares99 Views

    in Elections

    Trump warns of ‘bedlam’ if criminal cases bar him from White House

    There will be “bedlam” in the US if criminal cases deny Donald Trump a White House return, said the former president who incited the deadly January 6 attack on Congress but who is the clear frontrunner for the Republican nomination this year.“I think they feel this is the way they’re going to try and win, and that’s not the way it goes,” Trump told reporters, referring to Joe Biden and Democrats, after a court hearing in Washington DC on Tuesday.“It’ll be bedlam in the country. It’s a very bad thing. It’s a very bad precedent. As we said, it’s the opening of a Pandora’s box.”Trump claims he is a victim of political persecution.Prosecutors say he committed 91 criminal offenses, regarding federal election subversion (four charges); state election subversion (13, in Georgia); retention of classified information (40, federal) and hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels, an adult film star who claimed an affair (34, in New York).Trump also faces civil trials over his business affairs and a defamation case arising from a rape allegation a judge called “substantially true”.Arising from his incitement of the attack on Congress on 6 January 2021 – an attempt to overturn his defeat by Biden now linked to nine deaths and more than 1,200 arrests – Trump also faces attempts to remove him from the ballot under the 14th amendment to the US constitution, introduced after the civil war to stop insurrectionists running for office.Trump has appealed removal in Maine in that state. An appeal against his removal in Colorado will be argued at the US supreme court.On Tuesday, Trump chose to attend an appeals hearing in his federal election subversion case, listening as his lawyers argued he enjoys immunity for anything done while president.One judge asked if a president would be immune to prosecution if he ordered Seal Team 6, an elite special forces unit, “to assassinate a political rival”.For Trump, D John Sauer, a former Missouri solicitor general, said a president “would have to be impeached and convicted” before being prosecuted for any such action.Trump was impeached (for a second time) for inciting the Capitol attack. Republicans in the Senate ensured he was acquitted.Representing Jack Smith, the special counsel, James Pearce said Trump’s lawyers were proposing “an extraordinarily frightening future”.Speaking to reporters, Trump referred to speeches by Biden around the January 6 anniversary, saying of the charges against him: “When they talk about threat to democracy, that’s your real threat to democracy.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionClaiming he did “nothing wrong, absolutely nothing”, he nonetheless repeated his claim: “If it’s during the time [in office], you have absolute immunity.”A reporter asked: “You just used the word ‘bedlam’. Will you tell your supporters now, ‘No matter what, no violence’?”Trump walked away.Polling shows a criminal conviction may reduce Republican support for Trump. The trial in the federal election subversion case is due to begin on 4 March, in the middle of the GOP primary. As in other cases, Trump’s appeal is widely seen as an attempt to delay proceedings.His prediction of “bedlam” stoked widespread alarm.Maya Wiley, chief executive of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, alluded to Republican endorsements of Trump when she said his “warnings” were “heard by too many as calls to action. Every Republican should come forward and repeat these simple and unequivocal words: ‘Political violence is never acceptable … it has no place in the democracy. None.’ This isn’t a game.”Tim O’Brien of Bloomberg News, a longtime Trump-watcher, recapped remarks in court and added just one word: “Fascism”. More