Eliana Willis

Mark Meadows faces electoral fraud question over voter registration addressDonald Trump’s last chief of staff reported to have registered using North Carolina mobile home at which he seems never to have lived Mark Meadows played a key role in supporting and advancing Donald Trump’s lie about widespread electoral fraud in his defeat by Joe Biden, but the former White House chief of staff may have committed such fraud himself.According to the New Yorker, Meadows registered to vote at a property in North Carolina at which he appears never to have lived.Mark Meadows was at the center of the storm on 6 January. But only Trump could call it offRead moreMeadows resigned from the US House and became Trump’s fourth and last chief of staff in March 2020. He registered to vote in September, the New Yorker said.Asked for the address “where you physically live”, the magazine said, Meadows “wrote down the address of a 14ft-by-62ft mobile home in Scaly Mountain”, North Carolina, and “listed his move-in date for this address as the following day, 20 September”.“Meadows does not own this property and never has,” the New Yorker said. “It is not clear that he has ever spent a single night there.”Meadows did not comment to the magazine. The New Yorker spoke to the home’s former and current owners and neighbors and said that while members of Meadows’ family may have spent time in the property, it was not clear he ever slept there.The current owner said: “I’ve made a lot of improvements. But when I got it, it was not the kind of place you’d think the chief of staff of the president would be staying.”Told of Meadows using the address to register to vote, the owner said: “That’s weird that he would do that. Really weird.”Were Meadows to be found to have committed voter fraud, it would not be the first time he had embarrassed the president he served.In December, the Guardian was first to report that in his memoir, Meadows describes how Trump tested positive for Covid-19 but covered up the result (and a second negative) and went ahead with his first debate against Joe Biden.The memoir repeats Trump’s claims about voter fraud, lies which stoked the deadly attack on Congress on 6 January 2021.Meadows initially cooperated with the House committee investigating the attack, then withdrew. The committee recommended a charge of criminal contempt of Congress. None has been forthcoming from the Department of Justice.As the New Yorker pointed out, it is a federal crime to provide false information to register to vote in a federal election.Melanie D Thibault, director of the board of elections in Macon county, North Carolina, told the New Yorker she was “kind of dumbfounded” by Meadows’ registration.She also said he had voted absentee, by mail, in the 2020 election.Meadows’ old boss has repeatedly attacked voting by mail – despite doing it himself.TopicsMark MeadowsUS elections 2020newsReuse this content More

Trump violated federal laws in bid to overturn election, Capitol attack panel claimsIn a major filing, the House committee says the former president was obstructing Congress and defrauding the United States The House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack said in a major filing on Wednesday that it believed that Donald Trump violated multiple federal laws to overturn the 2020 election, including obstructing Congress and defrauding the United States.The revelations came as part of a filing that intended to force John Eastman, Trump’s former lawyer, to turn over thousands of emails and records since his participation in potential crimes destroyed his arguments for attorney-client privilege protections.Six of Donald Trump’s lawyers subpoenaed by Capitol attack panelRead moreHouse counsel Douglas Letter said in the 61-page filing that the select committee had a basis for concluding Trump violated the law by obstructing or attempting to obstruct an official proceeding and defrauded the United States by interfering with lawful government functions.Eastman has so far turned over about 8,000 pages of emails and documents from 4-7 January to the panel, but has withheld an additional 11,000 documents on the basis that they are protected by attorney-client privilege or constitute confidential attorney work product.The select committee has previously disputed his privilege claims by arguing that he has not demonstrated he had been formally retained as a lawyer for Trump, the White House or the Trump campaign. An ‘engagement letter’ that Eastman produced last week was unsigned.Eastman was a central figure to Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, and helped lead a “war room” at the Willard hotel in Washington that orchestrated a scheme to have then-vice-president Mike Pence return Trump to office.TopicsUS Capitol attackDonald TrumpUS politicsHouse of RepresentativesnewsReuse this content More

Keyword list for Trump lawyer hints at focus of US Capitol attack investigationHouse committee tells John Eastman to prioritize terms linked with possible conspiracy in complying with documents subpoena The House select committee investigating the January 6 attack on the US Capitol is asking the former Trump lawyer John Eastman to prioritize turning over records with certain keywords as he complies with his subpoena – a list of terms that reveal the panel’s focus as it investigates a potential conspiracy.The keywords include a Gmail address used by Donald Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows and the names of various individuals involved in the effort to overturn the 2020 election, from top Trump aides to Republican members of Congress to the former justice department official Jeffrey Clark.Six of Donald Trump’s lawyers subpoenaed by Capitol attack panelRead moreThe search terms list – which the select committee transmitted to Eastman – provides a glimpse of what House investigators suspect might be contained among the thousands of emails and documents that Eastman is being forced to review to comply with his subpoena.But the keywords also reveal the current investigative focus of the panel and the role Eastman played as one of the leading members of the Trump “war room” at the Willard hotel in Washington that coordinated Trump’s plan to return himself to office on 6 January 2021.The list is intended to act as a dragnet to catch his records from 4 to 7 January about efforts to overturn the 2020 election results between Eastman and individuals in different “centres of gravity”, according to a source with direct knowledge of the investigation.One focus for the select committee is Eastman’s records concerning Donald Trump, former vice-president Mike Pence and top Trump officials, where keywords include items as simple as “Trump”, or “EOP”, the government acronym for the executive office of the president.The select committee is examining Eastman’s records about Republican members of Congress including Andy Biggs, Mo Brooks, Ted Cruz, Louie Gohmert, Paul Gosar, Josh Hawley, Cindy Hyde-Smith, Jim Jordan, Cynthia Lummis, Roger Marshall, Doug Mastriano, Scott Perry and Tommy Tuberville.Another priority for the panel is messages between Eastman and those he communicated with across the federal government. The list includes the domains “usdoj.gov” and “justice.gov” for the justice department, “senate.gov” for the Senate, and “house.gov” for the House.The select committee’s addition of “[email protected]” – a sometime email address used by Meadows, who was a House Republican representing North Carolina before he became Trump’s final chief of staff – indicates it also wants messages not in official email records.The keywords also account for typos. In seeking Eastman’s messages with former Trump White House counsel Pat Cipollone, for instance, the panel included misspellings of his name they have found in other documents, from “Cippolone” to “Cippollone”.The list of terms is speculative insofar as it amounts only to what the select committee hopes are among Eastman’s most sensitive records and messages. But the keywords are there because the panel has reason to believe such communications exist, the source said.Taken together, the source said, the keywords reflect the panel’s suspicion that Eastman was at the heart of what could amount to an unlawful conspiracy between the Trump White House, GOP members of Congress and Trump loyalists at DoJ to obstruct Congress on 6 January.A spokesperson for the panel declined to comment. Eastman did not respond to a request for comment ahead of a hearing next week where he will attempt to withhold from the select committee documents he believes are protected by executive and attorney-client privilege.The list of keywords for Eastman also reflects the new urgency that has gripped the panel in recent weeks as it races to complete the evidence-gathering phase of the investigation.The panel is cognizant of how its investigators have managed to upend Washington with aggressive subpoena tactics more commonly seen in criminal prosecutions than congressional inquiries.For witnesses that might prove problematic, the chairman of the panel, Bennie Thompson, has moved to issue automatic subpoenas compelling documents and testimony, often before committee counsel has taken the customary step of first requesting voluntary cooperation.At the same time, the select committee has taken a broad view of its mandate: to investigate whether there was any coordination between the “political elements” of Trump’s plan to obstruct the certification of Biden’s election win in addition to the Capitol attack itself.That has increased the panel’s workload and pushed back the timeline, Thompson told the Guardian on Monday, though he said he still hoped for public hearings in April. “We keep adding to the list of people we need to talk to. That’s grown the body of work,” he said.TopicsUS Capitol attackHouse of RepresentativesDonald TrumpUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

Widely criticized Wisconsin report repeats falsehoods in argument to ‘decertify’ 2020 electionDocument offers clear example of how Republicans are embracing efforts to overturn results of validly executed elections Get the latest updates on voting rights in the Guardian’s Fight to vote newsletter.A long anticipated and widely criticized review of Wisconsin’s 2020 election has embraced fringe conspiracy theories and argued there were grounds for the legislature to “decertify” the results of the 2020 election, something legal experts have said is impossible.A report released on Tuesday was the result of months of work by Michael Gableman, a former state supreme court justice hired by the state assembly to review the election. Gableman’s efforts, backed by $676,000 in public funds, have been widely criticized as partisan, sloppy and unnecessary.Recounts in two of Wisconsin’s largest counties affirmed Joe Biden’s victory there in 2020 and an inquiry by the non-partisan legislative audit bureau also found no evidence of widespread fraud.Nonetheless, Gableman’s 136-page report offered a litany of accusations that culminated in an argument that the legislature should consider rescinding the election results.“I believe the legislature ought to take a very hard look at the option of decertification,” Gableman said in a presentation on Tuesday morning to the state assembly. Just before Gableman began speaking, Trump encouraged supporters to tune in to Gableman’s presentation.“It is clear that the Wisconsin legislature (acting without the concurrence of the governor), could decertify the certified electors in the 2020 presidential ​​election,” he wrote in his report. “This action would not, on its own, have any other legal consequence under state or federal law. It would not, for example, change who the current president is.”The document offers one of the clearest examples to date of how Republicans across the US are embracing efforts to overturn the results of validly executed elections – a new phenomenon experts call election subversion.In addition to legislation, Republicans who have embraced the idea of a stolen election are trying to take control of key election posts that would allow them to block validly cast votes from being certified in future elections.Gableman’s report, which cycled through numerous falsehoods that have already been debunked, appears to be a clear effort to offer the legislature justification for overturning the results of the 2020 race.Wisconsin Republicans have split on the idea of decertifying the election, which is a fringe legal theory. Jim Steineke, the majority leader in the GOP-controlled state assembly, tweeted on Tuesday that decertification was a “fool’s errand” and he would do everything he could during his time in office to block such an effort from moving forward.I have ten months remaining in my last term. In my remaining time, I can guarantee that I will not be part of any effort, and will do everything possible to stop any effort, to put politicians in charge of deciding who wins or loses elections. 1/— Jim Steineke 🇺🇦 (@jimsteineke) March 1, 2022
Gableman zeroed in on a number of election-related issues in Wisconsin that have already been scrutinized. He focused on grants given to election officials in the state from the Center for Tech and Civic Life to facilitate voting. The grants were funded by money from a donation from the Meta CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, and his wife Priscilla Chan. Three courts and the state elections commission have rejected arguments that the grants, which were received in 39 of the state’s 72 counties, were unlawful.Gableman also attacked the state elections commission’s decision to suspend a special voting procedure in nursing homes amid the pandemic in 2020. State law requires local clerks to send special voting deputies to nursing homes to assist people with filling out their ballots.With the Covid-19 pandemic raging in 2020, the state elections commission voted on a bipartisan basis to suspend that requirement and send absentee ballots instead. A local sheriff in Racine county released an investigation last year in which family members claimed their relatives had cast votes but did not have the mental capacity to do so.During Tuesday’s hearing, Gableman played several videos of nursing home residents who were recorded as having cast ballots in 2020. Several of the people were incapacitated or appeared confused about voting. In Wisconsin, a mentally incapacitated person only loses the right to vote if a judge explicitly orders that. Gableman’s review did not make clear whether those voters were legally barred from voting by a judge.Ann Jacobs, a Democrat who chairs the state elections commission, criticized the report and factchecked it in real time.It appears that there is some confusion between a determination of a primary care MD that a person is not competent so that a POA kicks in (very common) as opposed to a full-on guardianship that removes the right to vote (rather uncommon).— Ann Jacobs (@AnnJacobsMKE) March 1, 2022
Judges frequently allow people to retain their right to vote during a guardianship.— Ann Jacobs (@AnnJacobsMKE) March 1, 2022
Wisconsin’s governor, Tony Evers, a Democrat, also criticized the review.“This circus has long surpassed being a mere embarrassment for our state. From the beginning, it has never been a serious or functioning effort, it has lacked public accountability and transparency, and it has been a colossal waste of taxpayer dollars,” he said in a statement.“Enough is enough. Republicans in the legislature have always had the ability to end this effort, and I call on them to do so today.”Gableman said he would continue his work, though it is unclear if the assembly will back him. While Gableman’s initial contract expired in December, he said he believed its authority extended into 2022 and that he was negotiating new terms with the legislature.TopicsUS newsThe fight to voteWisconsinUS politicsUS elections 2020newsReuse this content More

Ivanka Trump in talks to cooperate with January 6 panel, reports sayEx-president’s daughter may voluntarily appear for an interview, according to congressional committee Ivanka Trump is in talks with the January 6 House select committee about potentially cooperating with the panel, according to multiple US media reports.“Ivanka Trump is in discussions with the Committee to voluntarily appear for an interview,” a spokesperson for the daughter of former President Donald Trump said in a statement on Wednesday, CNN reported.According to the New York Times, which first reported the discussions, it remains unclear whether the preliminary negotiations would result in Trump actually providing substantial information to the committee.US Capitol attack panel discusses subpoena for Ivanka TrumpRead moreEarlier this month, the Guardian reported that the committee was considering issuing a subpoena to Trump to force her cooperation with the inquiry into the former president’s efforts to return himself to power on 6 January 2021.Any move to subpoena Trump and, for the first time, force a member of Donald Trump’s own family to testify against him, would mark a dramatic escalation in the January 6 inquiry that would amount to a treacherous legal and political moment for the former president.In January, the committee released a public letter addressed to Ivanka Trump in which committee members called upon her to provide “voluntary cooperation with our investigation”.“We write to request your voluntary cooperation with our investigation on a range of critical topics … We respect your privacy, and our questions will be limited to issues relating to January 6th, the activities that contributed to or influenced events on January 6th, and your role in the White House during that period,” the letter said.Sources familiar with the discussions told the New York Times that Trump had not yet agreed on a date for when she might speak with the committee and that the panel had not made any subpoena threats.Trump reportedly does not plan to follow in the steps of Steve Bannon, a staunch ally of her father who refused to cooperate with the panel and was later indicted for contempt of Congress. The sources added that Donald Trump had not requested his daughter refuse the committee’s requests.In the letter addressed to Ivanka Trump last month, the committee revealed new details about attempts to urge Donald Trump to condemn the violence on 6 January 2021.According to Keith Kellogg, a retired lieutenant general and the former vice-president Mike Pence’s national security adviser, Ivanka Trump and White House officials urged the president twice to condemn the violence.Donald Trump allegedly said no to aides, including his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and the White House press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany. Kellogg then asked Ivanka Trump to speak to the president, saying: “She went back in, because Ivanka can be pretty tenacious.”In an interview with the Washington Examiner last month, the former president criticized the committee’s investigation into his children, saying, “It’s a very unfair situation for my children … Very, very unfair.”TopicsUS Capitol attackIvanka TrumpDonald TrumpUS CongressnewsReuse this content More

Far-right Oath Keepers leader to stay in jail until Capitol attack trial, judge rulesStewart Rhodes ‘presents a clear and convincing danger’ after spending thousands on weapons before riot, judge says The founder of the far-right Oath Keepers, Stewart Rhodes, will remain in jail until his seditious-conspiracy trial for allegedly helping plot the assault on the US Capitol, a US judge said, calling him a “clear and convincing danger”.The US district judge Amit Mehta said during a Friday court hearing that Rhodes spent thousands of dollars on weapons and other equipment ahead of the 6 January 2021 attack on the Capitol by Donald Trump’s supporters and also made “substantial purchases” of weapons afterwards.“He presents a clear and convincing danger, in my view,” Mehta said.Rhodes’s lawyers had proposed he be released into the custody of relatives in California, where he would stay in a separate residence on their property without access to the internet.Mehta said he was not satisfied with that arrangement, stating that Rhodes “has been extremely sophisticated with his ability to communicate”.Criminal defendants are often released pending trial, since they are presumed innocent until convicted, but can be held if they are deemed dangerous or likely to flee the country.How the arrest of a far-right militia leader signals a new chapter in the January 6 inquiryRead moreRhodes, 56, is the most high-profile defendant of the more than 725 people charged with playing a role in the attack. His lawyer said there was no evidence that Rhodes conspired to block Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s election.He is one of 11 members or associates of the Oath Keepers facing a seditious conspiracy charge.Rhodes is accused of spearheading a conspiracy to block the certification of the presidential election by recruiting others and even stationing armed “quick reaction force” units outside of Washington to be ready to stop the peaceful transfer of power.A US magistrate judge in Texas last month ruled Rhodes should be detained, after hearing testimony from an FBI agent as well as Rhodes’ ex-wife, who expressed concerns for her safety. Rhodes appealed that decision to Mehta. TopicsUS Capitol attackThe far rightnewsReuse this content More

US Capitol attack panel discusses subpoena for Ivanka TrumpHouse select committee is considering best way to get evidence from ex-president’s daughter about his efforts to cling to power The House select committee investigating the Capitol attack is considering issuing a subpoena to Ivanka Trump to force her cooperation with the inquiry into Donald Trump’s efforts to return himself to power on 6 January, according to a source familiar with the matter.Any move to subpoena Ivanka Trump and, for the first time, force a member of Trump’s own family to testify against him, would mark a dramatic escalation in the 6 January inquiry that could amount to a treacherous legal and political moment for the former president. Biden orders release of Trump White House visitor logs to January 6 panelRead moreThe panel is not expected to take the crucial step for the time being, the source said, and the prospect of a subpoena to the former president’s daughter emerged in discussions about what options remained available after she appeared to refuse a request for voluntary cooperation.But the fact that members on the select committee have started to discuss a subpoena suggests they believe it may ultimately take such a measure – and the threat of prosecution should she defy it – to ensure her appearance at a deposition on Capitol Hill.The select committee did not address a possible subpoena for Ivanka Trump at a closed-door meeting last Friday, and the panel wants to give her a reasonable window of opportunity to engage with the investigation before moving to force her cooperation, the source said.The panel would also have to formally vote to move ahead with such a measure, the source said, and Thompson would probably inform the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, of the decision before formally authorizing a subpoena to the former president’s daughter.But members on the select committee are not confident that Ivanka Trump would appear on her own volition, the source said, and the discussion about a subpoena reflected how important they consider her insight into whether Trump oversaw a criminal conspiracy on 6 January.The chairman of the select committee, Bennie Thompson, said in an 11-page letter requesting her voluntary cooperation last month that the panel wanted to ask about Trump’s plan to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory to return himself to office.Ivanka Trump was close to the former president in the days leading up to the Capitol attack, Thompson said, and appeared to have learned the plan to have the then vice-president, Mike Pence, refuse to certify Biden’s election win in certain states was possibly unlawful.“The committee has information suggesting that President Trump’s White House counsel may have concluded that the actions President Trump directed Vice-President Pence to take would … otherwise be illegal. Did you discuss these issues?” the letter said.The letter added House investigators had additional questions about whether Ivanka Trump could say whether the former president had been told that such an action might be unlawful, and yet nonetheless persisted in pressuring Pence to reinstall him for a second term.Thompson also said in the letter that the panel wanted to learn more about Trump’s indifference to the insurrection, and discussions inside the White House about his tweet castigating Pence for not adopting his plan as a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol in his name.The letter said a persistent question for Ivanka Trump – who White House aides thought had the best chance of persuading the former president to condemn the rioters – was what she did about the situation and why her father did not call off the rioters in a White House address.The select committee said in the letter that they also wanted to ask her about what she knew with regard to the long delay in deploying the national guard to the Capitol, which allowed the insurrection to overwhelm law enforcement into the afternoon of 6 January.Thompson said that House investigators were curious why there appeared to have been no evidence that Trump issued any order to request the national guard, or called the justice department to request the deployment of personnel to the Capitol.A spokesperson for the select committee declined to comment on whether the panel was considering a subpoena for Ivanka Trump or the content of the Friday meeting. Neither a spokesperson for the former president nor Ivanka Trump responded to requests for comment.But Ivanka Trump has appeared to suggest she is not prepared to appear voluntarily, and said in a statement at the time of the letter requesting voluntary cooperation that “as the committee already knows, Ivanka did not speak at the January 6 rally”.TopicsUS Capitol attackIvanka TrumpDonald TrumpHouse of RepresentativesnewsReuse this content More