Evelyn Reynolds

After nearly three years, two statewide recounts and a violent attack on the US Capitol, Donald Trump is finally facing criminal charges over his relentless campaign to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 victory in the battleground state of Georgia.On Monday, the former president and his allies were indicted on a total of 41 counts in Fulton county, Georgia, where the district attorney, Fani Willis, has been investigating the former president and his associates since 2021. The 13 charges against Trump himself include racketeering, forgery and perjury. News of the Georgia indictment came less than two weeks after Trump pleaded not guilty to a separate set of federal charges stemming from special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the January 6 attack and 2020 election subversion efforts.For the voting rights leaders who worked tirelessly to deliver Democratic wins in Georgia, Trump’s indictment in Fulton county marked a clear rebuke of his extensive efforts to disenfranchise the state’s voters, reaffirming the sanctity and the power of the ballot.“This indictment is a win for voting rights and democracy because it strengthens our ability to defend it from its most imminent threat: Donald Trump,” said Xakota Espinoza, a spokesperson for the Georgia-based voting rights group Fair Fight. “It is critical that we send a message that our democracy is sacrosanct, whether it is at the ballot box or courthouse.”The Fulton county indictment represents a crucial turning point in a drama that has been unfolding since Biden was declared the winner of Georgia in November 2020. Two statewide recounts in Georgia confirmed Biden defeated Trump by roughly 12,000 votes, making him the first Democratic presidential nominee to win the state since 1992. The victory was heralded as a landmark achievement for Democrats, particularly the Black voters who make up much of the party’s base in Georgia.Kendra Davenport Cotton, chief executive officer at the New Georgia Project Action Fund, emphasized that the validity of Biden’s win in Georgia had been determined beyond question long before Trump’s indictment. But the charges against Trump reassert the electoral power of the multiracial coalition that carried Biden to victory.“We believe facts. Biden won the 2020 race because Georgia voters showed up and showed out in record breaking numbers,” Cotton said. “The folks that I work with here at NGP Action Fund have always known the power of Georgia voters and have always known what Georgia voters are capable of – especially Black, brown and young voters.”But after Biden won the presidential race, Trump and his associates immediately went to work challenging the legitimacy of the election results, as Smith outlined in his own indictment filed earlier this month. After dozens of his election lawsuits failed, Trump then attempted to pressure state leaders to overturn Biden’s wins in key battleground states.In Georgia specifically, Trump placed an infamous phone call to the secretary of state, Republican Brad Raffensperger, to demand that he “find” enough votes to reverse Biden’s victory. Days later, a group of Trump’s supporters stormed the US Capitol in an attempt to disrupt the congressional certification of Biden’s win. Shortly after that violent day, Willis began the investigative work that culminated in a grand jury approving an indictment against Trump on Monday.“[The indictment] is holding a former president accountable for attempting to overturn the results of a free, fair and legitimate election just because he lost right,” Cotton said. “Georgia voters specifically deserve to have some retribution for what he did during that time and what he continues to do.”Trump continues to falsely claim the 2020 race was stolen, which has spurred more election denialism among the former president’s most fervent supporters. Voting rights leaders hope that Trump’s indictment in Georgia, as well as the federal case against him, will deter others from engaging in similar anti-democratic efforts in the future.“The former president’s election denial conspiracies birthed a new anti-democratic movement that produced anti-voter legislation, threats to election workers, and undermined faith in democracy with lies and false allegations,” Espinoza said. “This indictment should serve as a warning to future anti-voter politicians that the will and voices of Georgia voters cannot be silenced, and there is no place for election-denying conspiracy theorists in our democracy.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAlthough Trump’s indictment may help prevent other election subversion efforts in the future, much of the damage cannot be reversed. As the country waited for news from Fulton county, Cotton found herself thinking about Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss, who served as election workers in 2020 and became a central focus of right-wing conspiracy theories.Trump’s allies claimed video footage showed Freeman and Moss tabulating fraudulent ballots after counting had officially concluded on election night, a claim that swiftly debunked by Georgia election officials. A report released by the Georgia state election board in June concluded: “All allegations made against Freeman and Moss were unsubstantiated and found to have no merit.”Despite the falsity of the allegations, some of Trump’s supporters continued to harass the two women for months. Testifying last year before the House select committee investigating January 6, Moss said she and her family had received numerous death threats, making her afraid to leave her home or introduce herself to strangers.Freeman told the committee: “There is nowhere I feel safe. Nowhere. Do you know how it feels to have the president of the United States target you?”The trauma experienced by Freeman and Moss cannot be erased, Cotton said, but she wondered if Trump’s indictment might provide them with some solace.“These are not individuals who wanted to do anything but serve their community, to be good public servants,” Cotton said. “I hope that, from him being held accountable, that they find a sense of peace and justice.” More

Alabama Republicans on Monday 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.Lawyers for voters called Alabama’s plan, which maintains one majority-Black district, discriminatory. Abha Khanna, an attorney representing one group of plaintiffs in the case, said Alabama chose “defiance over compliance”.“Alabama has chosen instead to thumb its nose at this court and to thumb its nose at the nation’s highest court and to thumb its nose at its own Black citizens,” Khanna said.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.A lawyer for the state accused plaintiffs of seeking a “racial gerrymander” over traditional guidelines for drawing districts, such as keeping districts compact and keeping communities of interest together.“It’s unlawful to enforce proportionality over traditional redistricting principles,” Edmund LaCour, Alabama’s solicitor general, told the three-judge panel.Alabama claims the new plan complies with the Voting Rights Act. State leaders are hoping the panel will accept their proposal or that the state will prevail in a second round of appeals to the supreme court.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe judges did not indicate how quickly they will rule.The high-stakes hearing drew a large number of spectators to the federal courthouse in Birmingham where an overflow room was opened to accommodate the large crowd. Plaintiffs in the supreme court case attended with many wearing T-shirts printed with their proposed map which would have two majority-Black districts.“Alabama’s latest congressional map is a continuation of the state’s sordid history of defying court orders intended to protect the rights of Black voters,” former US attorney general Eric Holder, chairman of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, said in a statement. More

A 13-year-old girl in Mississippi gave birth to a boy after she was raped as well as impregnated by a stranger – and then was unable to get an abortion, according to a Time magazine report published on Monday.The mother of the girl, who uses the pseudonym Ashley in the report, was looking to get an abortion for her daughter but was told the closest abortion provider was in Chicago – a drive of more than nine hours from their home in Clarksdale, Mississippi.Ashley’s mother, referred to as Regina in the report, told Time that the cost of getting an abortion in Chicago was too expensive when considering the price of travel, taking time off work and getting the abortion for her daughter.“I don’t have the funds for all this,” Regina told Time.The report is the latest in a series of horrific personal accounts that have surfaced after the US supreme court overturned the nationwide abortion access rights which had been established by the Roe v Wade precedent. Since the decision, titled Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, 14 state laws banning abortion have gone into effect, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights.The women’s health clinic that was at the center of the case was the last abortion provider in Mississippi until it closed last summer after the Dobbs decision.Last summer, just a week after the ruling, a local newspaper in Ohio reported that a 10-year-old who was raped had to travel to Indiana for an abortion because of restrictions in her state. A man was found guilty last month of raping and impregnating the girl in that case, and he received a sentence of life imprisonment.Other stories detail how women nearly died because doctors had to wait until their life was at risk to perform an abortion – or that many women now have to travel long distances to get any kind of reproductive healthcare. An estimated 25 million women ages 15 to 33 live in states that have abortion restrictions.With respect to Monday’s Time report, Ashley discovered she was pregnant after her mother took her to the hospital for uncontrollable vomiting. Regina noticed that Ashley was behaving differently, staying in her room when she used to enjoy going outside to record TikTok dances. Upon receiving bloodwork showing Ashley was pregnant, the hospital contacted the police.“What have you been doing?” a nurse asked Ashley at that time, according to the report. The hospital ultimately directed Ashley to the Clarksdale Women’s Clinic, which provides OB-GYN services. The clinic did not respond to requests from the Guardian for comment.“It was surreal for her,” Dr Erica Balthrop, Ashley’s physician, told Time. “She just had no clue.”Before Dobbs, Balthrop could have directed Regina to a Memphis abortion clinic that was a 90-minute drive north, or to Jackson Women’s Health, which is a 2.5-hour drive south. But Mississippi – along with all the states surrounding it – has banned abortion.Mississippi, along with many other states that also ban abortions, technically make exceptions for when the pregnancy is from rape or is life-threatening. But abortions granted under these exceptions are extremely rare and poorly tracked.In January, the New York Times reported that Mississippi made two exceptions since the state’s abortion ban went into effect. The state requires that a rape be reported to law enforcement in order to qualify for a legal abortion.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTwo out of three sexual assault cases in the US are not reported to the police, according to Rainn, or the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, an anti-sexual assault nonprofit. Even if an exception is made, a person must travel out of their state to get an abortion procedure if their state bans it.The laws exacerbate longstanding health inequalities in Mississippi, where Black women are four times more likely to die from pregnancy-related complications compared with white women, according to the state’s health department. According to the Guttmacher Institute, 60% of women who seek abortions are people of color and about half live below the federal poverty line.Regina said she filed a complaint with the Clarksdale police department after she learned Ashley was pregnant. She told Time that her daughter ultimately opened up about what happened: a man came into their front yard while she was making TikToks outside while her uncle and sibling were inside and assaulted her. Ashley said she did not know who the man was and that no one witnessed the attack.The police department confirmed to Time that a report had been filed. But the agency declined to comment publicly on the case since it involved a minor.After 39 weeks of pregnancy, Ashley gave birth to a boy, whom they nicknamed Peanut. Ashley told Time the birth was “painful”.“This situation hurts the most because it was an innocent child doing what children do, playing outside, and it was my child,” Regina told Time. “It still hurts, and is going to always hurt.”
Information and support for anyone affected by rape or sexual abuse issues is available from the following organisations. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support on 0808 500 2222. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html More

Lawyers for Hunter Biden, the son of President Joe Biden who has been under a years-long federal investigation over failing to pay taxes and, separately, illegally possessing a gun, said that part of the plea deal which unexpectedly fell apart in July remains “valid and binding”, in a Sunday court filing.Federal prosecutors, led by US attorney David Weiss, had on Friday asked the court to cancel its request that the two sides reach a renewed agreement on the deal “since there is no longer a plea agreement or diversion agreement for the Court to consider”.But Hunter Biden’s lawyers said the guilty pleas were “separate and independent” from the diversion agreement that is set to drop his felony gun charges after two years. They said the diversion agreement was executed at the July hearing even as the overall deal collapsed and Hunter Biden intends to abide by its terms.The court has “acknowledged in its filings agreeing to the public disclosure of the Plea and Diversion Agreements – that the parties have a valid and binding bilateral Diversion Agreement”, Hunter Biden’s lawyers wrote in their Sunday filing, responding to prosecutors’ Friday motion.Weiss, a Trump appointee who has been investigating Hunter Biden in a Delaware district court since 2018, has asked the court to dismiss the case so that federal prosecutors can bring additional tax charges against him outside of the state, including in California and DC, and bring the case to trial.“After the hearing, the parties continued negotiating but reached an impasse. A trial is therefore in order,” Weiss wrote in a different Friday court filing. “And that trial cannot take place in this District because, as explained, venue does not lie here.”Attorney General Merrick Garland on Friday appointed Weiss special counsel to oversee the ongoing investigation into Hunter Biden. Weiss had earlier in the week asked Garland for the post, which gives him independence from the Department of Justice, a budget to pursue the investigation and the ability to bring charges in any federal jurisdiction.“Upon considering his request, as well as the extraordinary circumstances relating to this matter, I have concluded it is in the public interest to appoint him as special counsel,” Garland said in a surprise press conference.The plea deal fell apart after the Delaware judge assigned to the case, Maryellen Noreika, who was appointed by Trump, said she could not accept its terms. The two sides also clashed over whether Hunter Biden could face additional charges over his overseas business dealings, with his lawyers saying that he couldn’t and federal prosecutors saying he could.In their Sunday court filing, Hunter Biden’s lawyers wrote that his understanding of immunity was “based on the express written terms of the Diversion Agreement” and sought to levy the blame for the collapsed plea deal on the federal prosecution, saying it was their decision to “renege” on the agreement.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe ongoing investigation into the president’s son, led by Weiss, does create new challenges for Joe Biden’s re-election campaign in 2024. Republicans in the House of Representatives are also investigating the Biden family’s “domestic and overseas dealings” and whether they interfere with the president’s ability to lead impartially, as well as national security.Yet many decried Weiss’s appointment, saying he “can’t be trusted” after negotiating a “sweetheart plea deal” that a judge rejected.“This move by Attorney General Garland is part of the justice department’s efforts to attempt a Biden family coverup,” said the GOP-led House oversight committee chair James Comer, of Kentucky, in a statement following Garland’s announcement. More

The indictment of Donald Trump over his attempted election subversion in Georgia loomed closer on Monday amid an apparent false alarm about charges being filed and a series of angry statements from the former president punctuating a day of prosecution presentations in court.At about midday, 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.A spokesperson for the district attorney said reports “that those charges were filed [are] inaccurate. Beyond that we cannot comment.”Trump, 77, already faces 78 criminal charges in three other indictments: over hush-money payments to the adult film star Stormy Daniels, his retention of classified documents and his election subversion at the federal level.Despite such unprecedented legal jeopardy, Trump dominates Republican primary polling as the first televised debate nears at the end of this month.Lawyers for Trump have mounted a free speech defense to charges over election subversion. On Monday, Trump was characteristically free with his speech.Using his Truth Social media platform, he lashed out at his perceived persecutors, in one instance appearing to attempt to intimidate a witness against him.“I am reading reports that failed former Lt Governor of Georgia, Jeff Duncan, will be testifying before the Fulton county grand jury,” Trump wrote, misspelling the first name of Geoff Duncan, a Republican witness who said he was due to appear before the grand jury on Tuesday.“He shouldn’t. I barely know him but he was, right from the beginning of this witch hunt, a nasty disaster for those looking into the election fraud that took place in Georgia.”Experts agree that in Trump’s conclusive 2020 defeat by Joe Biden there was no widespread electoral fraud in Georgia or any other state. The federal indictment secured by the special counsel Jack Smith this month contained extensive evidence that Trump was repeatedly told as much but advanced his lie regardless.In Atlanta on Monday, prosecutors began presenting to a grand jury.A former Democratic state senator, Jen Jordan, told reporters as she left the Fulton county courthouse she was questioned for about 40 minutes. News outlets reported that a former Democratic state representative, Bee Nguyen, and Gabriel Sterling, a top official in the office of the Georgia secretary of state, were seen arriving too.For two and a half years, the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, has been investigating Trump’s attempt to overturn his narrow loss in Georgia. Barriers and street closures around the courthouse in downtown Atlanta, and statements made by Willis, indicated that indictments could come this week.Nguyen and Jordan attended state legislative hearings in December 2020, during which the former New York mayor turned Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani and other aides made false claims of widespread fraud in Georgia.The Trump lawyer John Eastman appeared during at least one of those hearings, saying the election had not been held in compliance with Georgia law and lawmakers should appoint a new slate of electors.Sterling and the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, pushed back against allegations of widespread problems. Both are Republicans.On 2 January 2021, Trump called Raffensperger to say officials should help “find” the votes he needed to beat Biden. The release of a recording of that call prompted Willis to open her investigation.In his social media posts on Monday, Trump said: “Would somebody please tell the Fulton county grand jury that I did not tamper with the election. The people that tampered with it were the ones who rigged it.” He also abused the DA as “Phony Fani Willis” and said she “wants desperately” to indict him.Citing unnamed sources briefed on the matter, the Guardian has reported that Willis is set to announce charges this week against more than a dozen defendants, including crimes related to election law and a racketeering charge, the latter under a statute commonly used to fight organised crime.Associated Press and Reuters contributed reporting More

In an online video, Donald Trump praised the white nationalist conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer as “terrific” and “very special” and said: “You are a very opinionated lady, I have to tell you. And in my opinion, I like that.”Loomer, 30, is a Florida activist and failed political candidate who once described herself as a “proud Islamophobe”, earning bans from major social media platforms.Among proliferating controversies, Loomer has called Muslims “savages” and Islam a “cancer”. She has spread conspiracy theories about mass shootings, including the Parkland school shooting in Florida.Trump endorsed Loomer in 2020, when she won a Republican US House primary in Florida. Heavily beaten in the general election, she switched districts in 2022, narrowly losing another primary.Loomer has been closely linked to Nick Fuentes, the white nationalist who, with the rapper Ye, controversially dined with Trump last year.In April, the New York Times reported that the former president wanted to give Loomer a campaign role. It did not come to pass but she remains a vocal supporter. In the video posted online on Sunday, she said she was making her first visit to Bedminster, Trump’s golf club in New Jersey.Sitting with the man she called “the greatest president ever”, she said Trump was “killing it right now” in the Republican presidential primary, adding: “You’re crushing it. You’re up over 50 points.”Trump, 77, said: “It’s great to have you and you are very special and you work hard … I appreciate your support and everybody appreciates your support.”Loomer said: “Thank you so much for inviting me to sit with you today. It’s a pleasure. You’re the best. I love you.”The ex-president is indeed dominating the Republican primary, despite facing 78 criminal charges contained in three separate indictments – for hush-money payments, retention of classified information and election subversion – and the prospect of more, over election subversion, in Georgia this week.On Monday, the fivethirtyeight.com polling average put Trump at 53.7% and his nearest challenger, Ron DeSantis, at 14.3% – a lead of 39.4 points.Aides to the Florida governor are reportedly bullish about his chances in Iowa, the first state to vote next year. But Trump leads there by robust margins too.Despite Trump’s unprecedented legal jeopardy, some party insiders fear that if he is not picked to face the Democratic incumbent Joe Biden, Republican turnout will drop.“There’s concern that if Trump’s not the nominee, his coalition will take their ball and go home,” Matt Dole, an Ohio strategist, told the Hill.Another strategist, Brian Darling, said: “If somehow he’s not the nominee, it will hurt turnout. He’s got a unique coalition. He brings a lot of non-traditional voters to the Republican party.”Trump’s “non-traditional voters” include those on the extreme right. But in April, when Trump reportedly sought to give Loomer a campaign role, another ardent supporter, the far-right Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, was angry.“Laura Loomer is mentally unstable and a documented liar,” wrote Greene, who has also spread conspiracy theories, including claiming the Parkland shooting was a “false flag” operation.“Never hire or do business with a liar. Liars are toxic and poisonous to everything they touch.”According to the Washington Post, Trump made 30,573 false or misleading claims in his four years in office. More

If Donald Trump stood in the middle of Fifth Avenue after robbing the Chase Bank branch by passing a note to the teller saying, “Your money or your life,” he’d likely plead the first amendment as his defense: “I was just exercising my rights to free speech!”Of course, he’d be wrong. Words that criminal defendants have written or spoken are used against them all the time. Perhaps you’ve heard of a confession.Still, no one should discount the potential resonance in the court of public opinion of Trump’s messaging that he is the victim of a government attack on his first amendment rights. For the best of reasons, Americans prize the constitutional guarantee of free speech.Hence, it’s worth a bit of a dive into why Trump has no serious first amendment defense in a court of law to the charges set forth in the masterful, 1 August DC grand jury indictment in which he’s charged with conspiring to overturn the 2020 election.The law puts it this way: “Speech integral to criminal conduct” is not protected speech. UCLA Law professor and first amendment scholar Eugene Volokh has written that “[i]t’s now a standard item on lists of First Amendment exceptions.”In the imagined robbery at Chase, the threatening note is integral to the crime of walking into a bank and taking the loot.In parallel, in the DC grand jury’s indictment, Trump’s claims that the election was stolen were integral to the conspiracy, the agreement with others and the acts of working in concert with them to unlawfully obstruct the January 6 congressional certification of President Joe Biden’s election.Surprise, surprise! Trump used words to do that.The first amendment does not immunize him from conviction because he did so. As even former Trump attorney general Bill Barr explained, “All conspiracies involve speech, and all fraud involves speech. So, free speech doesn’t give you the right to engage in a fraudulent conspiracy.”That’s more than common sense. In 1949, the supreme court expressly rejected a claim that “constitutional freedom for speech and press extends its immunity to speech or writing used as an integral part of conduct in violation of a valid criminal statute”. The statute at issue criminalized conspiracies in restraint of trade.Applied to Trump’s case, the court’s holding means you can’t tell your campaign subordinates or lawyers to “organize slates of fake electors in seven states”, if those individuals agree to follow your orders and do it.The grand jury indictment fits supreme court law like a glove custom-made for a small hand. It recognizes that Trump has a right to make false claims. The problem, however, is with his actions.As the indictment recounts. Trump “pursued unlawful means of discounting legitimate votes and subverting the election results . . . and perpetrated three criminal conspiracies.”Specifically, the grand jury alleges that “the Defendant pushed officials in certain states to ignore the popular vote; disenfranchise millions of voters; dismiss legitimate electors; and ultimately, cause the ascertainment of and voting by illegitimate electors in favor of the Defendant.”These are actions performed through words. If proven, they are criminal.So is lying to a court. According to the indictment, “On December 31, the Defendant signed a verification affirming false election fraud allegations made on his behalf in a lawsuit filed in his name against the Georgia governor.”That’s not free speech. It’s perjury.As to Trump’s unrelenting false election claims, at the trial, there’s little barrier to Special Counsel Jack Smith introducing them into evidence. In 1993, the supreme court squarely held that “[t]he First Amendment . . . does not prohibit the evidentiary use of speech to establish the elements of a crime or to prove motive or intent.”Trump’s many speeches advancing his phony claims of election fraud show his corrupt intent to use lies as a method and means to enlist state legislators and others into the scheme. At his trial, they will be admissible.Before the trial, Trump has vowed to continue to “talk about” his case. He has a general right to do so, but no right to say whatever he wants in public about it.On Friday, at a Washington hearing on the government’s request for a protective order to prevent disclosure of the discovery material that prosecutors will soon hand over to Trump, federal district court Judge Tanya Chutkan addressed the issue.“Mr. Trump, like every American,” she stated, “has a first amendment right to free speech, but that right is not absolute. In a criminal case such as this one, the defendant’s free speech is subject to the rules.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“The fact that he is running a political campaign … must yield to the orderly administration of justice … If that means he can’t say exactly what he wants to say about witnesses in this case,” the judge declared, “then that’s how it’s going to be”.Her warnings echo the supreme court’s broad teaching in the 1966 case of Sheppard v Maxwell. There, the court made clear that rights derived from the first amendment “must not be allowed to divert the trial from the very purpose of a court system . . .” including “the requirement that the jury’s verdict be based on evidence received in open court, not from outside sources”.To ensure “the purpose of the court system”, Judge Chutkan did what is normal in cases of significant media interest and cases where there are risks to witnesses or of publicly disclosed grand jury material tainting the jury pool. She issued a protective order.By the order, Trump has been specifically told that he may not publicly discuss materials that the government designates as “sensitive”. They will include witness’s private identifying information, transcripts of their interviews and grand jury testimony.The supreme court has said that where good cause for a protective order exists, it “does not offend the first amendment.”It’s impossible to dispute that good cause exists where the record shows, as it does here, that just days before Judge Chutkan’s order, defendant Trump posted on social media the message, “If you go after me, I will come after you.”No doubt with that message in mind, Judge Chutkan instructed Trump and his lawyers to “take special care” that their public statements could not be reasonably viewed as intimidating witnesses or affecting the future judgment of jurors. “[E]ven ambiguous statements,” she warned, “… can threaten the process.”She has broad authority to impose consequences for a party’s disobedience. Under the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, “If a party fails to comply… ” the court may … enter any other order that is just under the circumstances.”In addition, the DC district court’s local rules authorize trial judges to fashion special orders to protect the right to a fair trial in “a widely publicized or sensational criminal case”.For now, Judge Chutkan foreshadowed use of the strongest hammer she has in Trump’s case to punish any future disobedience, a tool that has nothing to do with holding him in contempt and potentially jailing him.“The more a party makes inflammatory statements about this case…,” she said from the bench, “the greater the urgency will be that we proceed to trial to ensure a jury pool from which we can select an impartial jury.”That’s sensible. The shorter the time to trial, the less opportunity for the jury pool to be tainted by messages that attempt to get Trump’s story to them extrajudicially or that carry even a hint of intimidation.As we all know, a speedy trial taking place long before the election is the absolute last thing that Donald Trump wants.
Laurence H Tribe is the Carl M Loeb University Professor of Constitutional Law Emeritus at Harvard University. Follow him on @tribelaw
Dennis Aftergut is a former federal prosecutor, currently of counsel to Lawyers Defending American Democracy More

After five years, the US attorney pursuing Hunter Biden has only been able to file tax and unlawful gun possession charges – and that shouldn’t change just because the prosecutor has been named special counsel in the case, the lawyer for the president’s son has said.“If anything changes from his conclusion … the question [that] should be asked [is] what infected the process that was not the facts and the law?” Hunter Biden’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, said on CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday. Lowell also said: “There’s no new evidence to be found.“Only thing that will change is the scrutiny on some of the charges.”Lowell’s remarks came after the US attorney in Delaware who has been investigating Hunter Biden’s business dealings, David Weiss, received an appointment on Thursday to become special counsel over the case.The US attorney general, Merrick Garland, has said Weiss told him days earlier that “in his judgment, his investigation [had] reached a stage at which he should continue his work as a special counsel, and he asked to be appointed”. Garland added that he granted the request of Weiss – who was appointed to his post by Joe Biden’s presidential successor Donald Trump – having concluded that it was “in the public interest” to do so.Yet Garland’s justification did little to dampen a political firestorm in Washington DC. Weiss’s probe into Biden’s son is set to continue on a track that is parallel to special counsel investigations into Trump – the Republican frontrunner to challenge Biden in the 2024 race for the White House – which have produced a multitude of criminal charges against him.The Democratic incumbent, too, is under a special counsel investigation over his retention of government secrets after he finished his vice-presidency to Barack Obama in 2017.But in speaking to Face the Nation host, Margaret Brennan, on Sunday, Lowell sought to pour cold water on the notion that Weiss’s appointment represented a significant upping of the ante against his client.“He’s the same person he’s been for the last five years,” Lowell said of Weiss.Hunter Biden – who has been a lobbyist, lawyer, banker, consultant and artist – has been charged with two misdemeanors for failing to pay taxes on more than $1.5m in income in 2017 and 2018. The 53-year-old has since paid up, but he is also charged with illicitly owning a firearm while addicted to and using a controlled substance amid a broader struggle with addiction.One of Delaware’s federal judges in July was reviewing a proposed plea deal offered to Hunter Biden for him to avoid the gun charge, which is a felony. But during that review, he pleaded not guilty to the tax charges, causing the unexpected collapse of the plea deal.Lowell said on Sunday that his side and prosecutors remained at an “impasse” over negotiations to revive the plea deal, meaning Hunter Biden could go to trial. But a trial is “not inevitable”, he said. “We were trying to avoid one all along, and so were the prosecutors.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe lawyer for Hunter Biden also made it a point to say that Weiss has “already looked at” whether his client’s seat on the governing board of a Ukrainian energy company violated a federal law requiring agents of foreign states to register as such. That board seat has been a source of constant criticism from the American political right wing.“Our client has been investigated in … a long, thorough, painstaking investigation for every transaction that he was involved in,” Lowell said. “I can assure you that the only charges that made sense were two misdemeanors for failing to file, like millions of Americans do, and a … gun charge.”Special counsels such as Weiss are appointed in cases in which the attorney general believes the US justice department faces a conflict of interest. They report to the attorney general but are independent.In his own interview on Sunday on CNN, New York Democratic congressman Daniel Goldman said the reactions to the various special counsel investigations revealed a key difference between his party and the Republicans, many of whom assert that Trump is being unjustly persecuted because of his lead in the race for the GOP’s 2024 White House nomination.Those assertions persist despite detailed charges that he schemed to overturn his defeat in the 2020 election, took measures to conceal hush-money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels, and illicitly hoarded government secrets at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida after his presidency. Trump has pleaded not guilty and denies all wrongdoing.Goldman, for his part, said: “If Hunter Biden has committed crimes, he should be charged with them. I’m a Democrat saying that. You don’t hear [Republicans] saying that if Donald Trump committed crimes, he should be charged with them. And that’s a critical distinction that the public needs to understand.”Hunter Biden is the president’s only surviving son after the former Delaware attorney general Beau Biden died at the age of 46 in 2015. His father and Trump are both historically unpopular with voters, according to recent polls. More