Evelyn Reynolds

It is the nature of conspiracy theories to turn tragedy into grist, to transform grief and human suffering into an abstract game. The latest horrifying example came out of news late July that Barack Obama’s chef Tafari Campbell had drowned in the waters off Martha’s Vineyard. What was a terrible accident and a tragic loss for Campbell’s family and friends was almost immediately seized upon by the paranoid corners of the internet as proof that somehow Barack and Michelle Obama had been involved in an assassination.It was not the first time that conspiracists have seized on a senseless death as proof of a deeper plot: the 1993 suicide of Vince Foster, lawyer in the Clinton White House, and the murder of the DNC staffer Seth Rich during the 2016 presidential campaign were both used as proof of a “Clinton body count” by the right wing, a playbook that was immediately resurrected as news of Campbell’s death broke. The difference was that those earlier conspiracy theories were focused almost entirely on the Clintons, while the current iteration is far more diffuse and its targets far more wide-reaching.Campbell’s death, these conspiracists claim, is not just proof of the Obamas’ criminality but of a massive network of treasonous child sex traffickers – an elaborate and convoluted narrative all too well known to us now as QAnon. QAnon appeared in 2017 and quickly spread through the far right, before beginning to wane in the wake of Joe Biden’s inauguration.But it hasn’t disappeared entirely, and understanding the conspiracy theory’s rise and fall – and the awful legacy it has left us – reveals a great deal about the modern landscape of partisan paranoia. It also offers some clues on how best to fight back.QAnon seized the public’s imagination in 2017, exploding from an anonymous forum on one of the internet’s most notorious websites and becoming a popular conspiracy theory. The figure of “Q” first appeared on the message board 4chan – a website where anonymous users posted hardcore pornography and racial slurs – claiming to be a high-level intelligence officer. (Later Q would move to the equally vile site 8kun.)In October of 2017, the first Q “drop” (as Q’s missives became known) claimed that Hillary Clinton’s extradition was “already in motion”. A few hours later, a second post claimed Clinton had been “detained but not arrested”, while asking a series of cryptic questions (“Why does Potus surround himself with generals?”, “What is military intelligence?” and so forth). Users were hooked by the story that Q began to unfold over the next few months.The narrative of QAnon that developed from these early messages claimed that there was a conspiracy by the so-called deep state to undermine the presidency of Donald Trump – but Q also let his readers know that this conspiracy was countered by well-placed patriotic individuals, like Q, who supported Trump.Trump was, Q said, always fully in charge, and always seemingly just a few moves away from winning a vague 11-dimensional chess game against the deep state and the Democrats. The narrative also incorporated another conspiracy theory, known as Pizzagate, which claimed that these same high-ranking Democrats (along with various Hollywood celebrities) were engaged in a secret child trafficking ring involving sexual abuse and ritual murder, claiming they used children to harvest a chemical compound and elixir of youth, adrenochrome.This, in itself, was nothing new: Americans have circulated fantastic stories of ritual human sacrifice for centuries. A rumor in 1834 that a convent outside of Boston was home to an illicit cabal of Catholics kidnapping and enslaving women led to a riot in which the convent was burned to the ground, displacing the women who lived there. More recently, the 1980s saw the rise of the satanic ritual abuse panic, in which daycares and suburban homes were thought by many to be the sites of secret groups of satanists subjecting children to impossible and terrifying ordeals. Though no evidence of such groups ever emerged, these accusations appeared regularly on daytime talkshows and led to numerous convictions of parents and childcare workers, some of whom spent years in prison.The other element that QAnon borrowed heavily from in those early days was the rhetoric that, in Q’s words, “the storm was coming”: that it was only a matter of days or weeks before a sudden, revelatory shift occurred, where the guilty would be punished and the righteous made whole. It was a secularized version of a time-honored tradition: an End Times rhetoric that has captivated America for centuries, from the Great Disappointment (when thousands of followers of William Miller prepared themselves for the Second Coming of Christ on 22 October 1844) to the popularity of Tim LaHaye and Jerry B Jenkins’ Left Behind series of apocalyptic fiction in the 1990s and early 2000s.QAnon gamified these strands. The cryptic missives invited decoding and translation, and were purposefully vague enough that they could be interpreted in any number of ways. Like astrology or tarot cards, Q drops seemed freighted with meaning while lacking any specificity. One could log on, read the latest tea leaves and connect the latest dots, all the while binding oneself further to the web of paranoia. The phenomenon spread widely, roping in not just paranoid conspiracy theorists but puzzle solvers and people looking for community. And because there was so much cryptic messaging embedded in the discourse, it hardly mattered that those few things that might have been verifiable (such as Hillary Clinton being “detained” in October of 2017) were demonstrably false.It turned out to be a remarkably successful formula; in the days before the 2020 election, a Yahoo News/YouGov poll found that fully half of Trump’s supporters believed that top Democrats were “involved in an elite child sex trafficking ring” and that Trump was working to “dismantle” that same Democrat-led conspiracy. And despite the ludicrous and defamatory nature of the conspiracy theory, Trump seemed to embrace it; during a town hall event in October of 2020, NBC’s Savannah Guthrie repeatedly offered him a chance to denounce the movement and Trump refused.And then, in December of 2020, the Q drops abruptly ceased, and the movement seemed to falter. It helped that by then many tech companies – perhaps belatedly – had begun to filter out QAnon content: Twitter and TikTok in July of 2020 and Facebook and Instagram that October, along with YouTube around the same time. These filters drove conspiracists to fringe platforms like Gab and Rumble, reducing the movement’s reach with the general public.But the decline of QAnon after the election was more existential. The central narrative, that Donald Trump and select insiders were working behind the scenes to defeat the deep state and its child sex-trafficking ring, could not be sustained once Trump was removed from office. As Mike Rothschild, author of The Storm Is Upon Us, told me: “The QAnon as we knew it from October 2017 up until Biden’s inauguration is over, because it had to be over: the storyline of President Trump unleashing the purge of the deep state over Twitter doesn’t really work when he’s not the president any more, and he’s not on Twitter any more.”But by that point the damage was done. The January 6 riot at the Capitol, an attempt to overturn the peaceful transfer of power and reinstate Donald Trump as president, was not only populated by QAnon believers – its central purpose was motivated by QAnon. If Q and his well-placed insiders could not defeat the deep state and keep Trump in power, then his followers would have to do the job themselves. (An analysis by 60 Minutes found that one in 10 of the rioters had connections to QAnon.)Even as many conspiracists shifted the narrative to stolen elections and the Covid-19 pandemic, the belief persisted. A February 2022 poll found that even though it had been over a year since Q had communicated, the number of believers in the conspiracy was holding steady at 16% of Americans – which is over 40 million people. The poll found that the best predictor of QAnon beliefs came from which news source an individual trusted most – those who trusted far-right sources, including One America News and Newsmax (and, to a lesser extent, Fox News) were far more likely to believe in QAnon than others. Two sitting members of the House of Representatives – Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert – posted QAnon content to their social media accounts before being elected.Though Q (or someone posing as Q) finally made a reappearance in July of 2022, by then much of the landscape of American conspiracy theories had changed drastically. As Rothschild explains, even as the original storyline “came to a natural end”, there was immediately “the emergence of the stolen election movement, and they found their next thing. It really went really seamlessly from one thing to another.” The movement no longer needed “the codes and the drops and the props and the cryptic stuff”. And without the mystic clues and portents, many of the ideas that first gained strength through Q drops have gone mainstream. They have percolated into the public discourse, embraced by many in the Republican party, and no longer need to involve any actual reference to Q or 4chan.The surprise success of the film Sound of Freedom is just one more example. Ostensibly just a thriller about a special agent rescuing children from a trafficking ring, the movie’s box office takings – so far over $173m in the US and Canada – have not been dampened by widespread assertions that it is a QAnon parable. Though the movie makes no mention of QAnon and does not require the viewer to believe in any conspiracy theories in order to make sense of the narrative, its star, Jim Caviezel – who attended a private screening hosted by Donald Trump in July – has openly promoted it in QAnon context. On Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, Caviezel talked about the “whole adrenochrome empire”, referring to the anodyne chemical compound which he claimed to be “an elite drug that they’ve used for many years: it’s 10 times more potent than heroin, and it has some mystical qualities as far as making you look younger.”This week, the film’s writer-director, Alejandro Monteverde, described links with QAnon as “ridiculous” and “heartbreaking” and pointed out that he started writing the film in 2015, two years before QAnon surfaced. Though he distanced himself from Caviezel’s views (“There’s people that are too close to the film that are in politics,” he said), the film’s success has legitimized QAnon theories, regardless of its creator’s intentions. In the eyes of QAnon followers, what was once a conspiracy theory discussed only on fringe websites can now be seen at your local multiplex. “Most people don’t want to be digging through 4chan looking for clues about what this Q drop really means,” Rothschild says. “They want to see results. And with something like Sound of Freedom, you’ve got the results. Not in terms of saved kids but in terms of awareness and box office success.”The things that drove QAnon originally have now seeped into general thought; freed from the ridiculous premise, they’ve been accepted as mainstream rightwing talking points. Last week, the Florida governor and presidential candidate Ron DeSantis told supporters at a barbecue in New Hampshire: “We’re going to have all of these deep state people, you know, we are going to start slitting throats on day one.”While such violent rhetoric is primarily directed at Democrats, Rothschild also points out that QAnon, like many other conspiracy theories, traffics heavily in antisemitism: tropes about “puppet masters” controlling everything proliferate, along with constant references to George Soros and the Rothschild family.It’s been one of the many insidious ways antisemitism has spread: a constant barrage of vague accusations while playing up people’s sense of paranoia and unease. And it’s had disastrous consequences: Robert Bowers, the white nationalist convicted of carrying out a mass shooting against the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, complained in online messages that QAnon hadn’t gone far enough to root out Jews in America.And QAnon itself hasn’t gone away entirely. In the wake of Tafari Campbell’s death, conspiracists on Gab.com leapt at the chance to prove that this somehow proved Q drops from years ago. Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, now X, and his reinstating of previously banned accounts devoted to QAnon, has helped fuel a resurgence as well.The important thing, it seems, is to keep alive the potency of the original narrative, and keep it connected to the day’s events. Conspiracists now use old Q posts like Nostradamus’s prophecies, reinterpreting gibberish in light of new events to retroactively claim there’s been a plan all along. The YouTube videos and podcasters who accrue social capital around QAnon these days do so by interpreting the evidence of the day as proof that the plan is working.Such belief allows them to maintain a sense that for all the appearance of chaos and randomness in today’s world, there is order behind it. One recent QAnon video wound up an hour-long recap of the day’s events with the rallying cry: “Nothing’s gonna stop what is coming. And what is coming? The storm is coming,” before referencing a previous Q post: “2019 – the year of the boomerang.” This, the host argued, was “starting to make sense now … why would you give the deep state the exact moment this was going to happen?”When the philosopher Karl Popper coined the term “conspiracy theory” in the 1940s, he explained it as a quasi-theological outlook on life: “The conspiracy theory of society,” Popper wrote, “comes from abandoning God and then asking: what is in his place?” While a shadowy cabal controlling your every action from behind the scenes may seem terrifying, it offers a narrative and an explanation for the way the world works. And this is what QAnon was and continues to be to its believers: proof that there’s a plan (even if not entirely divine), which in turn gives them hope, and meaning.That’s a far more powerful drug than adrenochrome, and weaning adherents off of it will take real work.
Under the Eye of Power: How Fear of Secret Societies Shapes American Democracy by Colin Dickey is out now More

In Rich Men North of Richmond, Oliver Anthony, a bushy-bearded former North Carolina factory worker, sings passionately about working hard for “bullshit pay”.Armed with just a guitar and his powerful voice, he identifies the source of the problem: “rich men north of Richmond” – federal politicians – who “want to have total control”. The song laments homelessness – “folks in the street ain’t got nothin’ to eat” – and a national suicide crisis: “Young men are putting themselves six feet in the ground / ’Cause all this damn country does is keep on kicking them down.”So far, so resonant: the song has collected more than 12m views on YouTube alone, and on Tuesday afternoon, it sat at No 3 on Spotify’s Top 50 – USA list.But things start to feel a little less empathetic when Anthony starts complaining about “the obese milking welfare”, reasoning that “if you’re 5-foot-3 and you’re 300 pounds / Taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds”. We can all agree that politicians have caused many of America’s problems; it’s harder to argue that our country is being destroyed by short, overweight chocolate enthusiasts. He also rails against taxation, which he says means “your dollar ain’t shit”.The supposed welfare abuse sounds like a rightwing talking point, and Anthony doesn’t appear to have considered that the nefarious fudge rounds might be feeding the very people he mentioned with nothing to eat. But Anthony claims to “sit pretty dead center” when it comes to politics, according to a video filmed in his car the day before the video was released. “I remember as a kid the conservatives wanting war, and me not understanding that. And I remember a lot of the controversies when the left took office, and it seems like, you know, both sides serve the same master.”Still, a reference to politicians “looking out for minors on an island somewhere” – apparently a reference to Jeffrey Epstein’s ties to elite figures – has also prompted speculation that Anthony could be nodding to QAnon, the far-right conspiracy theory positing that Democrats and Hollywood stars are drinking the blood of children. In the car video, Anthony claims child trafficking has become “normalized”, though what he’s referring to isn’t clear.It’s no surprise, then, that the song has been an enormous hit among the loudest rightwingers: Kari Lake, former candidate for Arizona governor, calls it “the anthem of this moment in American history”. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene calls it “the anthem of the forgotten Americans who truly support this nation and unfortunately the world”. The far-right activist Jack Posobiec can’t “even remember the last time a new song hit me like this”.The rightwing commentator Matt Walsh, meanwhile, claims the “song is raw and authentic … Everything around us is fake. A guy in the woods pouring his heart over his guitar is real.” Wait till Walsh hears about Bon Iver in 2007, or Ed Sheeran busking in a train station, or pretty much anyone at a New York open mic on a Wednesday night.Still, these politicians and provocateurs have helped Anthony rise from obscure singer-songwriter to darling of the right in record time – sparking questions over how authentically viral his rise has been.On Twitter, Jason Howerton, who advertises himself on LinkedIn as having “helped grow media companies and political influencers grow their social media footprint exponentially”, has been a major proponent of Anthony’s work, sharing the musician’s life story in a thread, offering to finance an album – which the rightwing country singer John Rich apparently agreed to produce – and announcing the musician had just joined Twitter. It does feel remarkable that Anthony decided to share his life story on YouTube a day before releasing a video that went viral.But Howerton denies any claims of astroturfing – in which powerful figures orchestrate supposed grassroots campaigns – and, as Chris Willman writes in Variety, there’s no clear evidence of it. And whether or not it was promoted by outside forces, the song has clearly struck a genuine chord with listeners. There are many unknown performers who can work wonders with just a guitar, and who are equally deserving of a platform, but there is no denying Anthony’s voice packs a punch.Compared with the likes of Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis and the rightwingers sharing his song, he also seems to have a modicum of empathy. Granted, the standards are incredibly low. But it’s difficult to imagine any of those figures offering listeners a sign-off like Anthony’s: “I hope wherever you are in the world listening to this, and whatever it is that you’re trying to do with your life, I hope that you succeed.”It would be nice if he’d apply that apparently heartfelt philosophy to his own lyrics. Winston Marshall, formerly of Mumford and Sons, compared Anthony to Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie – but if either of them ever recorded a song mocking the poorest of the poor, it’s been lost to history. If Anthony wants to keep moving upward, he should aim his punches in the same direction. More

From 6m agoMark Meadows, one of 19 people including Donald Trump who were criminally charged over efforts to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia, has filed to move the case into federal court.Meadows served as White House chief of staff under Trump. His lawyers have filed the petition to go from state to the US district court for the northern district of Georgia, arguing for the switch based on the idea that the charges stem from Meadows conduct in his capacity as an officer of the federal government.Trump is expected to make a similar move, which would allow him to seek a potentially friendlier jury pool and the chance of landing a judge that he appointed.“Nothing Mr. Meadows is alleged in the indictment to have done is criminal per se: arranging Oval Office meetings, contacting state officials on the President’s behalf, visiting a state government building, and setting up a phone call for the President,” Terwilliger wrote in the filing.The filing also indicates that Meadows plans to file a motion to dismiss the state’s case.John Eastman, who is considered one of the main architects of Trump’s strategy to overturn the 2020 election, and is one of the defendants in the Georgia case, plans to fight the indictment, according to his lawyer.“This is a legal cluster-bomb that leaves unexploded ordinances for lawyers to navigate in perpetuity,” said Eastman’s attorney Harvey Silverglate, in a statement. “It goes hand-in-glove with the recent effort to criminalize lawful political speech and legal advice.”Eastman, an attorney himself, is also identified as a co-conspirator in the federal inquiry on the January 6 insurrection. He is facing disciplinary charges in the State Bar Court of California due his development of a dubious legal strategy to overturn the 2020 presidential election by having former vice president Mike Pence interfere in the election certification.The charges against Trump were brought via Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (Rico) Act, which essentially allows prosecutors to link together different crimes committed by different people and bring criminal charges against a larger criminal enterprise. The law requires prosecutors to show the existence of a criminal enterprise that has committed at least two underlying crimes.Prosecutors have long used the federal Rico Act to go after the mafia. But Georgia’s version is even more expansive than the federal statute. It allows prosecutors in the state to bring racketeering charges if a defendant attempts or solicits a crime, even if they don’t bring charges for those crimes themselves.In the indictment by the state of Georgia, the state wrote: “Trump and the other defendants charged in this indictment refused to accept that Trump lost, and they knowingly and willfully joined a conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the election in favor of Trump. That conspiracy contained a common plan and purpose to commit two or more acts of racketeering activity.”Read more:Advocacy groups are outraged after the Arkansas department of education warned state high schools not to offer an advanced placement course on African American history.The admonition from Arkansas education officials is the latest example of conservative lawmakers limiting education on racial history, sexual orientation and other topics they label as “indoctrination”.The Arkansas Education Association (AEA), a professional organization of educators in the state, said the latest decision is of “grave concern” to its members and other citizens worried about “the abandonment of teaching African American history and culture”.“Having this course pulled out from under our students at this late juncture is just another marginalizing move that has already played out in other states,” said a statement from AEA president April Reisma, which was shared with the Guardian.In a statement to the Guardian, NAACP president and chief executive officer Derrick Johnson called the decision “abhorrent” and an “attempt to strip high school students of an opportunity to get a jumpstart on their college degree”.“Let’s be clear – the continued, state-level attacks on Black history are undemocratic and regressive,” Johnson said.
The sad reality is that these politicians are determined to neglect our nation’s youth in service of their own political agendas.
President Joe Biden traveled to a manufacturing warehouse in Wisconsin on Tuesday where he delivered remarks on the Inflation Reduction Act, a major piece of economic legislation he signed into law a year ago.Wisconsin is among the key states where Biden needs to persuade voters that his policies are having a positive impact on their lives, but polls show that most people know little about the Act or what it does, AP reported.“It’s really kind of basic: we just decided to invest in America again,” Biden said. “That’s what it’s all about.”The president chose to ignore Donald Trump in his speech, but he made the economic case personal by directly challenging the state’s Republican senator Ron Johnson, who he said “believes outsourcing manufacturing jobs is a great thing”.
Administration officials say the trip is aimed at recognizing the effects of the law, which passed Congress on party-line votes. According to the White House, in Wisconsin, private firms have committed more than $3 billion in manufacturing and clean energy investments since Biden was sworn into office.
The Fulton county court clerk released a statement acknowledging that it had published on its website a document about Donald Trump being criminally charged.At about midday on Monday, a two-page docket report posted to the Fulton county court website indicated charges against Trump including racketeering, conspiracy and false statements. The appearance of the report set off a flurry of news media activity, but then the document vanished.The court clerk has now said it had been testing its system before the grand jury voted later in the day on whether to indict Trump.Alabama Republicans defended their decision not to create a second majority-Black district in a hearing before a panel of federal judges over the state’s redrawn congressional maps.State Republicans continue to resist court orders, including from the supreme court in June, to amend the congressional maps to give Black voters increased political power and representation.The three-judge panel, which blocked the use of the state’s old map last year, will decide whether to let Alabama’s new districts go forward or step in and draw new congressional districts for the state. The results of the extended court battle could also determine whether Democrats pick up another seat in Congress, where Republicans currently hold a slim majority.In a surprise June decision, the supreme court upheld the panel’s earlier finding that the state’s then map – which had one Black-majority district out of seven in a state where more than one in four residents is Black – likely violated the federal Voting Rights Act.In response to the ruling, Alabama Republicans boosted the percentage of Black voters in the majority-white second congressional district, now represented by Republican representative Barry Moore, from about 30% to 39.9%, failing to give Black voters a majority which would allow them to elect their candidate of choice.Read the full story here.Florida governor and Donald Trump’s leading rival for the GOP presidential nomination in most polls, Ron DeSantis, was critical of the Georgia indictment.Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, DeSantis said the indictment was “an example of this criminalization of politics. I don’t think that this is something that’s good for the country”.He also accused Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis of using an “inordinate amount of resources” on the Trump case while failing to tackle crime.Donald TrumpOf course, at the center of the criminal investigation is Donald Trump. On 2 January 2021, Trump phoned the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, pressuring him “to find 11,780 votes” – the number of ballots needed to overturn Biden’s victory in Fulton county. News reports of that hour-long phone call kicked off Willis’s investigation.He also directed Mike Pence, then the vice-president, to reject the electoral vote in Georgia and other states revealed to be involved in what is now known as the “fake electors” scheme.Trump is facing several other charges in different courts, including mishandling of classified documents, his role in the January 6 Capitol insurrection and hush money payments to an adult film actor.Rudy GiulianiGiuliani, a former Trump campaign attorney and New York mayor, repeatedly spewed false claims of election fraud in the months following Biden’s 2020 victory. That December, he met with Georgia lawmakers and spewed baseless claims of election fraud such as a conspiracy by voting machine manufacturers to flip votes from Trump to Biden. The Department of Justice and the House January 6 committee have also investigated Giuliani for his role in orchestrating the false electors scheme, where Trump allies in multiple states produced fake certificates saying he won the election. A watchdog group found Giuliani to be a “central figure”. A disciplinary panel has said Giuliani should be disbarred.Mark MeadowsServing as Donald Trump’s chief of staff during the 2020 election and its aftermath, Meadows was at the center of hundreds of messages about how to keep Trump in power, according to texts he turned over to the House January 6 select committee. Meadows was also on the infamous phone call Trump placed to Raffensperger demanding he “find 11,780 votes”. A judge ordered Meadows to testify in the Georgia election investigation – though Meadows had repeatedly tried to avoid doing so.Jenna EllisEllis, a Trump campaign attorney and former Colorado prosecutor, spread multiple statements claiming voter fraud during the 2020 election and sent at least two memos advising Mike Pence to reject Biden’s victory in Georgia and other states. She was ordered to appear before the special grand jury in 2022. Earlier this year, the Colorado supreme court censured Ellis for making false statements and she acknowledged making misrepresentations as part of the agreement.Kenneth ChesebroAlso known as “co-conspirator 5” in special counsel Jack Smith’s federal election fraud inquiry, Chesebro has been revealed to be one of the main architects of the fake electors scheme –– which he described as a “bold, controversial plan”. The New York Times obtained a copy of a memo from Chesebro to a Wisconsin attorney laying out a three-pronged plan to overturn election results in six states, including Georgia, and keep Trump in power. Willis subpoenaed Chesebro to appear before the special grand jury but the New York-based attorney moved to quash it.Sidney PowellAn attorney associated with Trump’s campaign after the 2020 election, Powell, who filed a lawsuit against Brian Kemp, the governor of Georgia, alleging voter fraud, is thought to be “co-conspirator 3” in the federal investigation by Jack Smith. Along with Rudy Giuliani, Powell appeared regularly on conservative news networks where she spewed baseless claims of election fraud, including foreign rigging of voting machines and was one of the most prominent names in the defamation case brought upon Fox News by Dominion Voting Systems, whose individual case against Powell is still pending.Jeffrey ClarkA former justice department attorney, Clark has been identified as “co- conspirator 4” in the federal January 6 investigation. Clark allegedly tried to coerce justice department officials to sign a letter to officials in several states. He drafted a letter to Georgia officials in late December 2020 falsely claiming the justice department had “identified significant concerns” that may have impacted election results in multiple states, including Georgia –– but it remained unsent. He also reportedly plotted with Trump to oust the acting attorney general, but failed.John EastmanThought to be one of the main architects of Trump’s strategy to overturn the 2020 election, Eastman – identified as “co-conspirator 2” in the federal January 6 inquiry – drafted a six-step plan that directed Mike Pence to reject Biden’s victory.These are the people involved in the high-profile election investigation that could have far-reaching implications for Donald Trump, who may well face jail time if convicted, and his chances of winning the Republican nomination in 2024.Fani WillisFulton county district attorney Fani Willis, a famously tough prosecutor against gangs and organized crime, is overseeing the election investigation, which she launched in 2021, just weeks after being sworn in. A career Atlanta-area criminal prosecutor, Willis has been known to aggressively use Rico, an anti-racketeering law that is stronger in Georgia than under federal statute.Trump and his lawyers have sought to disqualify Willis from carrying out the investigation, filing motions to do so in March and July. Trump branded Willis a “young, ambitious, Radical Left Democrat ‘Prosecutor’” in a Truth Social post last year. Willis, a Democrat, is the first Black woman to serve as Fulton county DA.Robert McBurneyThe Fulton county superior court judge Robert McBurney was selected to supervise the special grand jury that put together recommendations for Willis’s investigation into Trump’s behavior surrounding election results. McBurney released a partial version of the panel’s final report in February, keeping the majority of its findings under seal. Trump’s lawyers targeted McBurney, a former prosecutor, for approving Willis’s special grand jury request, asking that he disqualify her from the case.The grand juriesWillis requested a special grand jury, assembled last May to aid her investigation into Trump and his allies’ meddling with election results. After eight months and 75 witness interviews, the jurors compiled a report with recommendations for the case. The panel was dissolved in January. Afterward, the foreperson, Emily Kohrs, hinted they recommended more than a dozen indictments, drawing backlash for her media blitz.McBurney has empaneled two regular grand juries – and one is likely to consider charges against Trump and his allies.Treasury secretary Janet Yellen said she accidentally ate a “magic mushroom” while on a recent trip to China.Yellen visit to Beijing last month included a stop at a Yunnan restaurant chain, where she ate the local jian shou qing.“So I went with this large group of people and the person who had arranged our dinner did the ordering,” she told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Monday.
There was a delicious mushroom dish. I was not aware that these mushrooms had hallucinogenic properties. I learned that later.
She said she had “read that if the mushrooms are cooked properly, which I’m sure they were at this very good restaurant, that they have no impact.” She added:
But all of us enjoyed the mushrooms, the restaurant, and none of us felt any ill effects from having eaten them.
Joe Biden said he will travel to Hawaii to visit the devastation left behind by the country’s deadliest wildfires in over a century, killing at least 99 people and reducing neighborhoods to ash.“My wife, Jill, and I are going to travel to Hawaii as soon as we can,” Biden said in his first public comments on the disaster since late last week.
I don’t want to get in the way – I’ve been to too many disaster areas, but I want to go and make sure we got everything they need. I want to be sure we don’t disrupt the ongoing recovery efforts.
Deputy press secretary Olivia Dalton said earlier today that the White House was having “active conversations” about when the Bidens could visit.Biden’s remarks at a wind and electric power manufacturing plant in Milwaukee were his first comments on the Maui wildfires since last week, when he declared a federal emergency. The period of silence drew criticism from Republicans, including Donald Trump.Joe Biden’s landmark climate legislation has been “disappointing” and failed to deliver protections to car industry workers confronted by the transition to electric vehicles, according to the head of the US’s leading autoworkers union, which has pointedly withheld is endorsement of the president for next year’s election.The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), signed by Biden a year ago this week, has bestowed huge incentives to car companies to manufacture electric vehicles without any accompanying guarantees over worker pay and conditions, Shawn Fain, president of the United Auto Workers (UAW), told the Guardian.“So far it’s been disappointing. If the IRA continues to bring sweatshops and a continued race to the bottom it will be a tragedy,” Fain said.
This is our generation’s defining moment with electric vehicles. The government should invest in US manufacturing but money can’t go to companies with no strings attached. Labor needs a seat at the table. There should be labor standards built in, this is the future of the car industry at stake.
The UAW, which is based in the car-making heartland of Detroit and has around 400,000 members, has so far refused to endorse Biden for next year’s presidential election, a major political headache for a president who has called himself a “union guy” and counts upon organized labor as a key part of his base, particularly in crucial midwest states such as Michigan.The ire of unions has been a thorny problem in the Biden administration’s attempts to speed the proliferation of electric vehicles and cut planet-heating emissions from transportation, the largest source of US carbon pollution.Joe Biden is talking in Milwaukee at an Ingeteam factory, a company built on the drive for clean energy that manufactures onshore wind turbine generators.The US president is in the vital swing state of Wisconsin to talk about his “Bidenomics” policies to boost the embattled US middle class and US industries such as manufacturing, construction and semiconductor technology, especially those with strong union membership.He’s in Wisconsin on the eve of the anniversary of his signing into law a major bipartisan legislative plank, the healthcare, climate and tax package called the Inflation Reduction Act.The scene of Biden talking to crowds of union members cheering his touting of a “made in America” policy and green energy that he said has the potential to cheaper to power the US than fossil fuels provides a sharp contrast to his chief Republican rival for the White House, Donald Trump after the 2024 candidate hoping to return to the presidency was handed his fourth criminal indictment last night, in Georgia.Next week, the first Republican primary season debate will be held in Milwaukee.US president Joe Biden just stepped up to the podium to speak in Milwaukee. Union leaders and members are there and so are some of Wisconsin’s senior Democrats, the state governor Tony Evers, US Senator Tammy Baldwin and congresswoman Gwen Moore.After hailing his fellow Democrats, Biden is now lamenting the disastrous wildfires that have decimated parts of Maui in Hawaii.Biden said he wants to go there as soon as it’s feasible – “as soon as I can” – but isn’t rushing there immediately so as not to “get in the way”, as a presidential visit is always a huge project for any locality.Hello again, US politics live blog readers, it’s been a lively day so far as the ripples continue to spread from the late-night indictment unveiled in Georgia against Donald Trump and 18 codefendants, accusing them of an organized racket to overturn Trump’s defeat by Biden in one of the decisive state results of the 2020 presidential election.There will be a lot more news in the coming hours and we’ll continue to bring it to you as it happens. US president Joe Biden is about to speak in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.Here’s where things stand:
Brian Kemp, the Republican governor of Georgia, responded to Donald Trump’s announcement that he would present an “irrefutable report” on election fraud in Georgia on Monday by saying: “The 2020 election in Georgia was not stolen.”
Hunter Biden’s lead criminal defense attorney, Christopher Clark, asked a federal judge for permission to withdraw from the criminal case involving his client on the grounds he might be called to testify as a witness in future proceedings.
Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, made a brief statement saying: “The most basic principles of a strong democracy are accountability and respect for the Constitution and rule of law. You either have it, or you don’t.”
Carlos de Oliveira, the property manager of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, pleaded not guilty to multiple obstruction-related offenses in the case related to the former president’s alleged mishandling of classified documents.
Republican politicians, including candidates for the presidency in 2024, are seeking to defend Donald Trump over the indictment in Georgia.
Hillary Clinton said she did not “feel any satisfaction” about Donald Trump’s extreme legal predicament and instead felt “great profound sadness”.
Donald Trump said he would present an “irrefutable report” on election fraud in Georgia on Monday at his private golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey.
Yes. The US constitution does not prohibit anyone charged with a crime, nor anyone convicted of one, from holding office.The 14th amendment, however, does bar anyone who has taken an oath to protect the United States and engaged in “insurrection or rebellion” from holding office.Relying on that provision, a slew of separate civil lawsuits in state courts are expected in the near future to try to bar Trump from holding office. More

There’s no other way to say it: the 98-page indictment handed down by a Fulton county grand jury on Monday represents the most aggressive effort to hold Donald Trump and allies accountable for their efforts to overturn the 2020 election.The document is staggering in its breadth and the ambition of its charges. The 41 counts of crimes in it, including 13 against Trump, detail the lies the former president and his co-defendants told the public about fraud to try and keep him in power. It doesn’t back away from charging Trump’s attorneys and inner circle with crimes for coordinating a plan to create slates of fake electors and to stop Congress from counting votes. Some of the state’s 16 fake electors themselves also face charges. And it also casts a wide net, not letting those who breached voting equipment and intimidated poll workers off the hook.Instead, the indictment tells perhaps the most comprehensive story to date of one of the most brazen efforts to date to subvert American democracy.Legally, the Georgia case may represent the biggest legal peril for Trump to date. If he wins the presidential election next year, Trump cannot pardon himself, something he could theoretically do if he is convicted on similar charges pending in federal court. In Georgia, a defendant must serve five years in prison before a pardon is even considered by the state board of pardon and paroles. Unlike many other states, the governor of Georgia does not have the ability to unilaterally pardon people.The focus of the indictment – Trump’s efforts to stay in power – is the same as the federal charges Jack Smith, the justice department special counsel, filed earlier this month. But the two cases are significantly different. Smith’s case focuses squarely on Trump and his specific efforts to overturn the election, leaving other co-conspirators unnamed and uncharged (for now). The Fulton county case, brought by Fani Willis, the district attorney, uses precise detail to place Trump at the center of a large criminal enterprise that includes nearly 50 people (19 of them are named, 30 are not).Of course, there is more of a risk to bringing a sprawling criminal indictment. The case is likely to be tied up in extensive procedural battles before even moving forward to a trial. Willis said Monday she intends to try all 19 defendants together, setting up a potential blockbuster, but complicated trial. Willis has not shied away from such challenges in the past, relying on the same Georgia racketeering statute at the heart of the Trump case to successfully get convictions against Atlanta teachers and is currently using them in a Rico case against the rapper Young Thug and the YSL gang.“Jack Smith seems to be on a mission to get this done and to focus on Donald Trump,” said Anthony Michael Kreis, a law professor at Georgia State University. The Georgia case, he said, was “very different”.“All of these actors are being held to account,” he said. “What might lack in efficiency and expediency in Georgia is made up for in the fact that I think Fani Willis is really trying to tell a narrative here about what these individuals did in her view to undermine and destroy American democracy.”That story, according to the indictment, began the morning after election day in 2020. Speaking at the White House, Trump lied about the election results. As votes were still being counted, Trump claimed there was “a fraud” on the American public and said “frankly, we did win this election”, he said. The speech is “Act 1” in the indictment – the start of the conspiracy to keep Trump in power.The indictment goes on to do something extraordinary – it translates lies that Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell told about the election into criminal acts. When Giuliani and Powell falsely claimed fraud at a press conference at the Republican National Committee headquarters, they were furthering a criminal conspiracy. When Giuliani appeared at a Georgia legislative hearing and lied about fraudulent ballots being cast, he made false statements, a crime in Georgia, the indictment says.In one of its most significant sections, the indictment also brings criminal charges against two people who sought to intimidate and harass Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, two Fulton county election workers who were at the center of false claims of fraud amplified by Giuliani. Both women faced vicious harassment after the 2020 election that upended their lives. The indictment details how Trevian Kutti, a former publicist for Kanye West and R Kelly, worked with two other men, Harrison Floyd and Stephen Lee, to try and pressure Freeman into confessing to voter fraud. Kutti showed up at Freeman’s doorstep, eventually met with her, and told her to confess to voter fraud or else people would come for her within 48 hours and she would go to jail.Willis’s decision to translate the episode into criminal charges is significant. It underscores the breadth with which Willis is framing the conspiracy – no episode is too tangential, or harebrained, to escape her scrutiny. It also amounts to the first time that anyone has faced criminal charges related to the harassment of Freeman and Moss, two Black women who have come to symbolize the human toll of Trump’s lies about the election.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWillis also doesn’t shy away from charging the cadre of lawyers who sought to provide legal cover for Trump with fringe ideas. Ken Chesebro, a little-known lawyer who authored a key memorandum laying out a strategy for fake electors, was charged with multiple crimes, including conspiracy to commit forgery, conspiracy to impersonate a public officer, and conspiracy to commit false statements and writings. Jeffrey Clark, a justice department official who tried to pressure superiors to send a letter claiming fraud in Georgia, was charged with multiple crimes. As does John Eastman, the lawyer who tried to provide a legal pretext for Congress to overturn the election.For the first time, a high-level White House aide, Mark Meadows, also faces criminal charges. The indictment cites multiple meetings Meadows had with state lawmakers across the country to get them to try and overturn the election results. It also cites a December meeting Meadows and Trump held with John McEntee, another White House aide, in which he and Trump requested McEntee prepare a memo outlining how to delay the counting and certification of electoral college votes. The document outlines Meadows presence on the telephone call in which Trump infamously pressured Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes” to overturn the election. In doing so, Trump and Meadows committed a felony by soliciting Raffensperger to violate his oath as a public officer.Lastly, Willis makes it clear the story of Trump’s subversion includes efforts by his allies to breach voting equipment. Similar to charges filed in Michigan earlier this month, this marks a significant attempt to hold Trump accountable for efforts to sow doubt about the actual machinery of elections. As Trump claimed fraud, an election official in Coffee county helped his allies gain unauthorized access to voting equipment. The information extracted was passed on to other election deniers who were trying to prove the outlandish idea that the equipment was rigged.While Willis’s indictment is complex and contains 161 overt acts, she boils down the heart of it before even listing the charges.“Defendant Donald John Trump lost the United States presidential election held on 3 November 2020. One of the states he lost was Georgia. Trump and the other defendants charged in this indictment refused to accept that Trump lost, and they knowingly and willfully joined conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the election in favor of Trump,” she says.While she goes on to list all of the complex crimes Trump and allies committed, many of the paragraphs in the indictment end the same way, reminding the public that each action was “an overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy”. More

Georgia’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp, insisted on Tuesday that the 2020 presidential election in his state “was not stolen” in an apparent defense of the latest criminal indictment of Donald Trump.Kemp, who has clashed frequently with the former president over his false claim the election was rigged, responded on Twitter to an earlier post on Truth Social from Trump announcing a press conference next week at which he promised to present “irrefutable” evidence of fraud.“The 2020 election in Georgia was not stolen. For nearly three years now, anyone with evidence of fraud has failed to come forward – under oath – and prove anything in a court of law,” Kemp wrote in his tweet.“Our elections in Georgia are secure, accessible, and fair and will continue to be as long as I am governor. The future of our country is at stake in 2024 and that must be our focus.”Kemp’s message was immediately endorsed by Chris Christie, the Republican former governor of New Jersey who is challenging Trump for the party’s 2024 presidential nomination.“This is a strong leader telling the truth. Others should try it,” Christie wrote on Twitter, taking his own dig at Trump’s honesty.Trump has previously railed against Kemp and Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, the recipient of his infamous phone call demanding officials “find” enough votes to nullify Joe Biden’s win.That January 2021 conversation is believed to have been a central component of the investigation by the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, that led to Trump’s Monday night indictment on charges including forgery and racketeering.Kemp’s tweet referred to numerous failed efforts by Trump’s legal team in Georgia to overturn the result following Biden’s victory there by fewer than 12,000 votes. A judge dismissed one lawsuit alleging that 147,000 illegitimate ballots were wrongly counted, and the state’s supreme court refused to hear an appeal.That lawsuit was supported by David Perdue, a Trump ally and former senator who challenged Kemp for their party’s gubernatorial nomination in 2022. Perdue’s defeat was widely regarded as a significant blow to Trump’s ongoing campaign to reverse his own loss.It is the second time in five days that Kemp has tweeted a message directed at Trump, having accused him last week of putting himself “ahead of the future of our country” by declining to pledge support to the eventual 2024 Republican presidential nominee.Trump has been equally critical of Kemp, the two having feuded since Trump blamed his 2020 humiliation in Georgia on the governor.Kemp is among a number of senior Republicans, including Christie and Asa Hutchinson, the former governor of Arkansas, who have urged the party to move on from Trump, the leading candidate for its 2024 presidential nomination.Analysts say Kemp’s style of conservative leadership offers a blueprint for the future if Trump’s grip on the party should loosen. More

Advocacy groups are outraged after the Arkansas department of education warned state high schools not to offer an advanced placement course on African American history.The admonition from Arkansas education officials is the latest example of conservative lawmakers limiting education on racial history, sexual orientation and other topics they label as “indoctrination”.The Arkansas Education Association (AEA), a professional organization of educators in the state, said the latest decision is of “grave concern” to its members and other citizens worried about “the abandonment of teaching African American history and culture”.“Having this course pulled out from under our students at this late juncture is just another marginalizing move that has already played out in other states,” said a statement from AEA president April Reisma, which was shared with the Guardian.In a statement to the Guardian, NAACP president and chief executive officer Derrick Johnson called the decision “abhorrent” and an “attempt to strip high school students of an opportunity to get a jumpstart on their college degree”.“Let’s be clear – the continued, state-level attacks on Black history are undemocratic and regressive,” Johnson said. “The sad reality is that these politicians are determined to neglect our nation’s youth in service of their own political agendas.”On Monday, the first day of the 2023-2024 school year for many Arkansas public schools, the state education department announced that it would not be granting credit for the AP African American history class, the Arkansas Times reported.The official announcement came after department officials called educators on Friday, alerting them that the AP course would not be recognized for college credit in the same manner that similar courses on other topics are.The department said that the course may violate state’s Literacy, Empowerment, Accountability, Networking and Safety (Learns) Act, a new law passed this spring under Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee, a Republican and former White House press secretary during Donald Trump’s presidency.The Learns Act limits curriculum on a range of topics including gender, sexual orientation and subjects that would “indoctrinate students with ideologies, such as Critical Race Theory”.“Arkansas law contains provisions regarding prohibited topics. Without clarity, we cannot approve a pilot that may unintentionally put a teacher at risk of violating [state] law,” the department said in a statement about the pulled course to the Arkansas Times.Officials also announced that the state would not be covering the cost of the end-of-year exam on the course that allows high school students to earn college credit.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe cost of the credit qualifying exam is usually covered for other AP courses.Two high schools already offered a pilot version of the course last year, Axios reported. Six schools were scheduled to offer the course this year, including Little Rock’s Central high school, the epicenter of forced desegregation in 1957, NBC News reported.The latest challenge to the AP course comes after Florida’s department of education rejected the class in January.Florida’s department of education under Governor Ron DeSantis officially banned the course from that state’s high schools in January.In a letter to the College Board, the nonprofit organization that oversees AP courses and other university readiness exams, the Florida education department wrote that the course violated state law and “lacked educational value”. More

Even close followers of the news could be forgiven for losing track of the criminal proceedings against Donald Trump. His indictment in Georgia is his second in a fortnight, and his fourth in total. The 13 new counts added to the scorecard bring the total – so far – to 91. What was once the precedent-shattering prospect of a former president facing trial on serious charges now seems oddly commonplace. That’s without mentioning the two impeachments he survived in office, or the multiple civil cases against him.Like the federal charges brought by the special counsel Jack Smith earlier this month, these are vastly graver matters than those relating to the payment of hush money to a pornography star, or even to the retention of classified national security documents. The federal case also addresses his attempts to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia. But Mr Trump would have less ability to interfere with a state-level case if re-elected, and would not be able to pardon himself. The use of Georgia’s racketeering legislation, broader than the federal equivalent, is also striking, and not only because it is usually associated with the pursuit of mobsters. It does not require prosecutors to prove that defendants directly broke the law, but that they knowingly coordinated with others who did so. The charging of 18 alleged co-conspirators may increase the likelihood of former associates flipping and assisting the prosecution.Nonetheless, the pattern is well established. Prosecutors present detailed evidence against Mr Trump, enlarging on what was already in the public domain. He dismisses the charges as a “witch-hunt”. Republicans who briefly shunned him after the storming of the Capitol now rally to his cause once more. The danger of overestimating the difference that these cases could make on next year’s election is similarly well rehearsed. Most voters made up their minds on Mr Trump long ago. He claims each charge as further evidence of the grand conspiracy he falsely claims denied him victory in 2020 and, therefore, as mandating more support, including financial. The former president himself told voters recently that “we need one more indictment to close out the election”. Previous charges appeared to boost his lead over his Republican rival Ron DeSantis, who is trailing far behind him.His favourability ratings fell among Republicans following his June indictment over illegally holding classified documents, and last year’s midterms were a reminder of the differences between primary and general election voters. In purely practical terms, the need to fight – and even testify in – criminal cases will be a time-consuming distraction while trying to campaign for the presidency.Still, the next election is more likely to be swayed by Joe Biden’s ability to convince voters that the economy is thriving – something they are unwilling to believe as yet – and by campaigning on issues such as abortion. This month, citizens in Ohio overwhelmingly rejected the constitutional amendment that Republicans were trying to rush through to fend off abortion rights protections, demonstrating the continued commitment of voters to safeguarding access – and their growing awareness of Republican efforts to tilt elections. Many grow more determined as they see more such efforts.In contrast, the impact of each set of criminal charges, even if they are more serious than the last, is inevitably reduced somewhat as they accumulate. Democracy is not only about contests of popularity: it cannot survive without procedures of accountability.
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Republicans rallied to Donald Trump’s defense after the former president was indicted on 13 criminal charges in Georgia over his attempt to overturn his defeat there by Joe Biden in the 2020 election.Kevin McCarthy, the speaker of the US House, said: “Justice should be blind, but Biden has weaponized government against his leading political opponent to interfere in the 2024 election.”Trump faces 91 criminal charges in all, also regarding hush-money payments to an adult film star, retention of classified information and federal election subversion.Regardless, he dominates Republican primary polling, leading his closest challengers nationally and in early voting states by about 40 points.Referring to Fani Willis of Fulton county, McCarthy continued: “Now a radical [district attorney] in Georgia is following Biden’s lead by attacking President Trump and using it to fundraise her political career. Americans see through this desperate sham.”Trump has long used his legal predicament as a fundraising engine, both for his campaign and as a way to pay his increasingly mountainous legal bills.On Monday night, after charges were filed in Georgia, an email soliciting donations bemoaned a “FOURTH ACT of Election Interference on behalf of the Democrats in an attempt to keep the White House under Crooked Joe’s control and JAIL his single greatest opponent of the 2024 election”.Republicans in Congress remained firmly on Trump’s side.New York congresswoman Elise Stefanik, a member of House leadership, insisted Trump “had every legal right to challenge the results of the election” he conclusively lost.She added: “This blatant election interference by the far left will not work, President Trump will defeat these bogus charges and win back the White House in 2024.”In the Senate, Ted Cruz of Texas, in 2016 Trump’s closest rival for the Republican presidential nomination, said he was “pissed”. Cruz also called the Georgia indictment “disgraceful” and repeated McCarthy’s “weaponization” complaint – a party talking point.Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a Trump ally who briefly deserted him over the January 6 attack on Congress but swiftly came back onside, told Fox News: “The American people can decide whether they want [Trump] to be president or not.“This should be decided at the ballot box and not in a bunch of liberal jurisdictions trying to put the man in jail. They’re weaponizing the law in this country. They’re trying to take Donald Trump down.”Among Republicans aiming to take Trump down – the other candidates in the presidential primary field – many were slower to respond.On Tuesday, Ron DeSantis, the second-placed candidate in most polls, told reporters the Georgia indictment was “an example of this criminalization of politics. I don’t think that this is something that’s good for the country.”DeSantis also accused Willis of using an “inordinate amount of resources” on the Trump case while failing to tackle crime.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionChris Christie, the former New Jersey governor now challenging DeSantis for second place in New Hampshire, also questioned Willis’s motives.The indictment was “unnecessary”, Christie, himself a former prosecutor, told Fox News, adding that indicting Trump was “probably an ego decision”.Christie said he last spoke to Trump in December 2020, amid Trump’s schemes to overturn the election. Christie said he told the man he endorsed four years before: “There’s nothing left. You need to concede the election.”Trump, he said, responded: “I will never, ever, ever admit it.”On social media, the biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who has polled surprisingly strongly, said: “I’d volunteer to write the amicus brief to the court myself: prosecutors should not be deciding US presidential elections, and if they’re so overzealous that they commit constitutional violations, then the cases should be thrown out and they should be held accountable.”Ramaswamy also echoed the Trump campaign in seizing on a mistake in which a version of the indictment was posted on a court website on Monday afternoon and then swiftly deleted, all while grand jury testimony continued.“Since the four prosecutions against Trump are using novel and untested legal theories,” Ramaswamy said, “it’s fair game for him to do the same in defence: immediately file a motion to dismiss for a constitutional due process violation for publicly issuing an indictment before the grand jury had actually signed one.“He should make a strong argument on these grounds and it would send a powerful message to the ever-expansive prosecutorial police state.”The former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson, who like Christie has set himself against Trump, said: “Over a year ago, I said that Donald Trump’s actions disqualified him from ever serving as president again. Those words are more true today than ever before.”Another anti-Trump candidate, the former congressman Will Hurd, like Hutchinson a vanishingly small presence in polling, called the Georgia indictment “another example of how the former president’s baggage will hand Joe Biden re-election if Trump is the nominee”.Bemoaning “further evidence that Trump knew he lost the 2020 election and was ready to do anything it took to cling to power”, Hurd said the former president would “use this latest indictment as another opportunity to manipulate Americans into paying his legal bills”. More