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Prosecutors seek strongest sentences yet for US Capitol insurrectionists
US Capitol attackProsecutors seek strongest sentences yet for US Capitol insurrectionistsA judge will decide on Wednesday if Scott Fairlamb should serve 44 months, as prosecutors seek a 51-month term for Jacob Chansley Guardian staff and agenciesWed 10 Nov 2021 09.38 ESTLast modified on Wed 10 Nov 2021 10.00 ESTUS prosecutors are seeking the stiffest punishments yet for participants in the deadly 6 January insurrection at the US Capitol by extremist supporters of Donald Trump, urging judges to make an example out of a man filmed punching a police officer and another who stormed the Senate chamber wearing a horned headdress.At a court hearing on Wednesday, government lawyers will ask a judge to hand down a 44-month prison sentence for Scott Fairlamb, a former mixed martial arts fighter from New Jersey, who pleaded guilty in August to assaulting a police officer.White supremacists declare war on democracy and walk away unscathed | Carol AndersonRead moreHe was screaming at officers, in footage caught by their body-worn cameras, before shoving one and then punching him in the face.He is to be sentenced by federal judge Royce Lamberth in Washington DC on Wednesday morning.Separately, prosecutors in a late-night court filing recommended a four-year, three-month sentence for Jacob Chansley, the intruder at the Capitol attack who was seen around the world invading Congress, shirtless, wearing a horned headdress and furs, and heavily tattooed.Chansley, of Phoenix, Arizona, was known to some at the time as the so-called “QAnon Shaman”.He pleaded guilty in September to obstructing an official proceeding when he took part in the assault.Lamberth, who is also handling Chansley’s case, will sentence him on 17 November.In a court filing, Fairlamb’s defense lawyer asked the judge to “take into consideration the approximate 11 months the defendant has already served in custody” and not add additional time.Attorney Harley Breite said his client had accepted responsibility for his actions.Chansley’s attorney, Albert Watkins, said in a Tuesday court filing that Chansley should be released “as soon as possible”, noting that Chansley will have spent more than 10 months in pre-trial detention.“I can say with confidence that Mr Chansley is in dire need of mental health treatment,” Watkins stated.About 700 people have been arrested over the attack on the Capitol where Congress was meeting to certify Joe Biden’s November 2020 victory over Trump in the presidential election.So far, about 120 people have pleaded guilty and two dozen have been sentenced. Most of the guilty pleas have involved non-violent misdemeanor offenses carrying short jail sentences or probationary sentences.TopicsUS Capitol attacknewsReuse this content More
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Prince Harry says he warned Twitter boss a day before Capitol riot
Prince HarryPrince Harry says he warned Twitter boss a day before Capitol riot‘I warned him his platform was allowing a coup to be staged. I haven’t heard from him since,’ Harry says01:18Sarah Marsh@sloumarshWed 10 Nov 2021 06.24 ESTLast modified on Wed 10 Nov 2021 08.55 ESTPrince Harry has said he warned Twitter’s boss Jack Dorsey about his platform allowing political unrest a day before the Capitol riot that led to five deaths.The Duke of Sussex made the comments at the RE:WIRED tech forum in the US. He said: “I warned him his platform was allowing a coup to be staged. That email was sent the day before. And then it happened and I haven’t heard from him since.”On the day of the 6 January riots, Donald Trump tweeted allegations of vote fraud before a rally in Washington DC. Members of the Proud Boy movement, a rightwing militia, stormed the Capitol to disrupt the official certification of Joe Biden’s victory in the White House race, as part of an attempt to overturn the election result.Harry was speaking via video chat at a session discussing whether social media was contributing to misinformation and online hatred. Dorsey, who is Twitter’s chief executive, has so far not commented.A study released in October by the social media analytics service Bot Sentinel identified 83 accounts on Twitter that it said were responsible for 70% of hateful content and misinformation aimed at Harry and his wife, Meghan.Harry said that “perhaps the most disturbing part of this [study] was the number of British journalists who were interacting with them and amplifying the lies. But they regurgitate these lies as truth.”He said social media companies were not doing enough to stop the spread of misinformation, and the internet was “being defined by hate, division and lies”.He also argued that the word “Megxit”, used by the British press to describe the couple’s decision to quit their royal duties, was misogynistic.Harry said the word was an example of online and media hatred. “Maybe people know this and maybe they don’t, but the term ‘Megxit’ was or is a misogynistic term, and it was created by a troll, amplified by royal correspondents, and it grew and grew and grew into mainstream media. But it began with a troll,” he said. He did not elaborate.Harry and Meghan moved to California last year to lead a more independent life. He has said that part of the reason for their departure was the racist treatment of Meghan, whose mother is black and whose father is white, by the British tabloid media.TopicsPrince HarryTwitterJack DorseyUS Capitol attacknewsReuse this content More
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Prince Harry warned Twitter about 'coup' before Capitol riot – video
Prince Harry says he warned Twitter’s boss, Jack Dorsey, that the platform was ‘allowing a coup to be staged’, a day before the Capitol riot on 6 January. Speaking on a panel called the Internet Lie Machine, organised by Wired magazine, Harry says he had been in contact with Dorsey via email, but never received a reply after the storming of the Capitol.
He also says the word ‘Megxit’, used to describe his decision to quit royal duties with his wife, Meghan, was a misogynistic term that had been created by a trollPrince Harry says ‘Megxit’ is a misogynistic term aimed at his wife Meghan More
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Trump ‘throws sand’ in gears of Capitol attack inquiry amid legal setbacks
Donald TrumpTrump ‘throws sand’ in gears of Capitol attack inquiry amid legal setbacks Ex-president wages a court battle to thwart House committee from obtaining White House records for inquiry into the Capitol assaultPeter Stone in WashingtonTue 9 Nov 2021 06.00 ESTLast modified on Tue 9 Nov 2021 06.03 ESTDonald Trump has suffered a series of legal setbacks and more loom, as he wages a court battle to thwart a House committee from obtaining White House records for its inquiry into the 6 January Capitol assault and a new grand jury begins hearing evidence about possible crimes by his real estate firm.Former justice officials and legal scholars say Trump’s long-standing penchant for using lawsuits to fend off investigations and opponents is looking weaker now that he’s out of the White House and facing legal threats on multiple fronts.The list of significant legal setbacks is lengthy for the former president and real estate mogul who has long had a reputation for threatening to sue his foes.Early this year, for example, Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance Jr won a lengthy legal fight to obtain Trump’s tax returns, and in July charged two Trump companies and the Trump Organization’s chief financial officer with a 15 year tax fraud scheme, which the companies and the CFO have denied in pleas.On 4 November, a second grand jury was convened by Vance to hear more evidence about the financial practices of the Trump Organization and possibly bring more charges, according to the Washington Post.Trump suffered another legal setback when a New York court ordered him to give a deposition in October that lasted more than four hours in an old lawsuit by men alleging they were attacked in 2015 by Trump security guards at a demonstration outside Trump Tower in Manhattan.Meanwhile, in his latest high stakes court fight, Trump’s attorneys have launched a legal blitz invoking executive privilege to block the House select committee from obtaining hundreds of pages of documents from the National Archives the committee seeks as it investigates the 6 January Capitol riot and what role Trump played in it.A federal judge at a hearing on Trump’s legal challenges on 4 November voiced strong scepticism about his lawyers’ executive privilege claims to keep the committee from getting most of the records it wants, noting that President Joe Biden approved turning them over.Trump’s many reverses in court and his efforts to blunt the bipartisan House committee’s inquiry, underscore the growing legal threats Trump is facing that pose new financial and political risks, say former justice department lawyers and legal scholars.Historically, Trump has relied on lawsuits as a delaying tactic to benefit his business interests, or to claim executive privilege or immunity to stymie congressional, state and other investigations when he was president, according to legal analysts.Likewise, after his loss to Joe Biden last year, Trump’s campaign and allies filed more than 60 lawsuits claiming widespread fraud that were rejected by various courts.To back his fights Trump boasts a legal arsenal with a shifting cast of lawyers, in part because Trump has been rebuffed by several high-profile attorneys this year, according to a CNN report and legal sources.“Trump is going pretty deep down the bench to find lawyers,” said one former DOJ prosecutor and GOP white collar attorney. “I think a lot of established lawyers would have trouble getting approval from their firms because of political blowback and risk of non-payment.”DoJ lawyers and experts say that Trump’s legal fortunes now look grimmer, and that his current battle royale to block the House inquiry into the Capitol riot by his allies seems quite weak, though it may delay the inquiry for months.“Trump’s current assertions of a privilege against the disclosures are almost identical to the baseless claims of an absolute immunity that he advanced repeatedly – and the supreme court rejected – when he was president,” said Donald Ayer, a former deputy attorney general in the George HW Bush administration, in a Guardian interview.Ayer added that “Trump is just blowing smoke and trying to throw sand in the gears of the select committee investigation. Congress, the administration, and the courts need to quickly and emphatically say no and press ahead with the investigation.”Other DoJ veterans agree that Trump’s legal case looks flimsy, but say it could stall the House inquiry.“The executive privilege claim against the National Archives is extremely weak,” said former federal prosecutor Paul Rosenzweig. “The question is whether he can game the system to run out the clock and make the requests moot.”That may well be the point. Trump’s regular use of litigation to delay federal and state inquiries echo his modus operandi when he was president and in the business world, say experts.“Likelihood of success on Trump’s legal claims is not always or often the primary goal,” said Stephen Gillers, a law professor at New York University. “The primary goal, at least for the farfetched claims, is delay. If there’s also a partial victory, so much the better.”More legal battles are pending for Trump, including claims by two women, ex- Apprentice candidate Summer Zervos and writer E Jean Carroll, who, respectively, have alleged they were sexually harassed or raped by Trump, charges he has denied.Zervos has sued Trump for defamation and Trump, who has threatened to counter sue, faces a court order to sit for a deposition by Christmas. Similarly, a New York judge in September denied a Trump lawyer’s request to pause a defamation lawsuit by Carroll against Trump.But Trump’s legal armada now seems focused on blocking White House records from the House committee investigating the deadly 6 January attack on Congress, which followed a Trump rally where he told a large crowd of loyalists to “fight like hell”, as Congress was poised to certify Biden’s win.Trump’s legal tactics fit his old playbook. “He is behaving now as he long behaved as a real estate investor and builder in the high stakes and often vicious world of New York commercial real estate,” Gillers said. “When the same tactics are employed in national politics, the victims are democracy and the nation.”TopicsDonald TrumpUS politicsUS Capitol attacknewsReuse this content More
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Lawyer John Eastman and Michael Flynn among six subpoenaed by Capitol attack panel
US Capitol attackLawyer John Eastman and Michael Flynn among six subpoenaed by Capitol attack panelPanel seeks documents and testimony from legal scholar said to have outlined scenarios for overturning election Hugo Lowell in WashingtonMon 8 Nov 2021 18.31 ESTFirst published on Mon 8 Nov 2021 17.58 ESTThe House select committee investigating the Capitol attack has issued subpoenas to six of Donald Trump’s associates involved in the effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election from a “command center” at the Willard Hotel in Washington DC.The subpoenas demanding documents and testimony open a new line of inquiry into the coordinated strategy by the White House and the Trump campaign to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election win, and whether it was connected to the 6 January insurrection.House investigators on Monday targeted six Trump officials connected to the Willard: the legal scholar John Eastman, Trump’s campaign manager Bill Stepien, Trump’s adviser Jason Miller, the former national security adviser Michael Flynn, Trump’s campaign aide Angela McCallum, and the former New York police department commissioner Bernard Kerik.The select committee chairman, Bennie Thompson, said in a statement that the panel was pursuing the Trump officials in order to uncover “every detail about their efforts to overturn the election, including who they were talking to in the White House and in Congress”.House 6 January panel to issue new round of subpoenas for Trump alliesRead moreThe six Trump officials compelled to cooperate with the select committee may have some of the most intimate knowledge of how the different elements of the former president’s effort to stop the certification – fit together.The subpoenas for Eastman and other Trump associates – first reported by the Guardian – show the select committee’s resolve to uncover the “centers of gravity” from which Trump and his advisers schemed to overturn the election, according to a source familiar with the matter.House investigators are taking a special interest in Eastman after it emerged that he outlined scenarios for overturning the election in a memo for a 4 January White House meeting that included Trump, the former vice-president Mike Pence and Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows.At the meeting, according to a source close to Trump, Eastman ran through the memo that detailed how Pence might refuse to certify electoral slates for Biden on 6 January and thereby unilaterally hand Trump a second term.The former president seized on Eastman’s memo, reviewed by the Guardian, and relentlessly pressured Pence in the days that followed to use it to in effect commandeer the ceremonial electoral certification process, the source said.Trump was not successful in co-opting Pence and Congress certified Biden as president. But House investigators are examining whether the memo was part of a broader conspiracy connected to the Capitol attack – and whether Trump had advance knowledge of the insurrection.The pro-Trump legal scholar also pressured nearly 300 state legislators to challenge the legitimacy of Biden’s win, reportedly participated at a “war room” meeting at the Willard on 5 January and spoke at a rally before the Capitol attack, the select committee said.House investigators also subpoenaed Stepien, the manager of the Trump 2020 campaign, after he urged state and Republican party officials to delay or deny the certification of electoral votes ahead of the joint session of Congress on 6 January.The select committee said it had subpoenaed Miller since he was in close and repeated contact with top Trump associates at the Willard and he too participated in the “war room” meeting that took place the day before the Capitol attack.At that meeting, the select committee said, Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon and Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani discussed how to subvert the election by having Pence follow Eastman’s memo and not certify the election for Biden.The select committee issued further subpoenas to Bernard Kerik, an aide to Giuliani based at the Willard, as well as Angela McCallum, who also pressured state legislators to challenge Biden’s win.House investigators sent a sixth subpoena to Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser fired in 2017 for lying to the FBI, after he attended an 18 December Oval Office meeting about whether Trump could invoke emergency powers based on lies about election fraud.The select committee was expected to send further subpoenas to Trump officials connected to activities at the Willard, the source said, noting that Thompson had told reporters last week that he had signed about 20 subpoenas that were ready to be issued.In the letters accompanying the six subpoenas, Thompson said Eastman was compelled to produce documents by 22 November and appear for a deposition on 8 December. The other Trump officials have until 23 November to produce documents and have deposition dates later in December.But it was not immediately clear whether the subpoenaed aides would comply with the orders. Other Trump administration aides subpoenaed by the select committee have slow-walked their cooperation, while Bannon ignored his subpoena in its entirety.TopicsUS Capitol attackDonald TrumpUS politicsUS CongressHouse of RepresentativesMichael FlynnnewsReuse this content More
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Trump DoJ official Jeffrey Clark to testify before Capitol attack committee
US Capitol attackTrump DoJ official Jeffrey Clark to testify before Capitol attack committeeEx-acting head of DoJ civil division was proponent of Trump’s false claim that Joe Biden’s election victory was result of fraud Guardian staff and agenciesThu 4 Nov 2021 18.32 EDTA former senior Department of Justice official will testify on Friday before the congressional committee investigating the Capitol insurrection by extremist supporters of Donald Trump, a congressional aide familiar with the inquiry has said.Last week, the House of Representatives select committee delayed testimony by Jeffrey Clark because he had retained a new lawyer.Clark did not immediately respond to requests from Reuters for comment. The congressional aide spoke on condition of anonymity.Giuliani investigators home in on 2019 plan to advance Ukraine interests in USRead moreClark, the former acting head of the DoJ’s civil division, was a proponent Trump’s false claims that Joe Biden’s victory in the November election was the result of fraud.On 13 October, the committee announced it had issued a subpoena to Clark asking him to produce records and testify at a deposition by 29 October.In announcing it had subpoenaed Clark, the panel said it needed to understand all the details about efforts inside the previous administration to amplify misinformation about election results.In January, the DoJ’s inspector general announced his office was launching an investigation into whether Clark plotted to oust then acting attorney general Jeff Rosen so he could take over the department and help pursue Trump’s baseless claims by opening an investigation into voter fraud in Georgia.A US Senate judiciary committee report found Clark also drafted a letter he wanted Rosen to approve which urged Georgia to convene a special legislative session to investigate voter fraud claims.Clark’s plan ultimately failed after senior department leaders threatened to resign in protest, the Senate investigation found.Meanwhile, former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and other top aides subpoenaed by the committee have defied orders to produce relevant documents and give testimony.Four Trump aides targeted by the select committee – Meadows, deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino, strategist Steve Bannon and defense department aide Kash Patel resisted the orders – under the influence of Trump, sources told the Guardian last month.The House later voted to hold Bannon in criminal contempt of Congress and federal prosecutors are weighing the case.TopicsUS Capitol attackUS politicsDonald TrumpnewsReuse this content More
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Biden says 'people are upset' after Democrat loss in Virginia – video
Joe Biden said “people are upset and uncertain about a lot of things” after Democrats suffered the loss of a gubernatorial seat in Virginia. Republican Glenn Youngkin defeated Democrat Terry McAuliffe one year after the party took control of the White House and Congress. Biden won Virginia by 10 points in 2020 before the victory of political newcomer Youngkin.
Body blow for Biden as voters in Virginia and New Jersey desert Democrats More
