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    New York judge partially lifts Trump’s gag order in hush-money case

    The New York judge who presided over Donald Trump’s hush-money trial has partially lifted a gag order that has been hanging over the former president since he was convicted of the accounting fraud charges last month.Under the revised order by Judge Juan Merchan, Trump is now free to criticize trial witnesses, which includes Stormy Daniels and his former lawyer Michael Cohen, but must maintain restrictions on his comments about individual prosecutors and others involved in the case.Trump’s lawyers argued in court motions that the broad gag order stifled his campaign speech, and could limit his ability to respond to Joe Biden when the two meet in the first presidential debate of 2024 on Thursday.They also argued Trump’s political opponents were using the restrictions as a “political sword” and that Trump was unable to respond to public attacks from Cohen and Daniels.The office of Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, said limits imposed on Trump’s speech about witnesses were no longer needed, but they had urged Merchan to keep restrictions on Trump’s comments about jurors, court staff and individual prosecutors “at least through the sentencing hearing and the resolution of any post-trial motions”.The gag order, in its totality, will be terminated after “the imposition of sentence”.Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesperson, said in a statement on Tuesday that the order “leaves in place portions of the unconstitutional Gag Order, preventing President Trump from speaking freely about Merchan’s disqualifying conflicts and the overwhelming evidence exposing this whole Crooked Joe Biden–directed Witch Hunt,” according to NBC News.Cheung added it was “another unlawful decision by a highly conflicted judge, which is blatantly un-American as it gags President Trump” and vowed to appeal it.Merchan issued Trump’s gag order on 26 March, a few weeks before the start of the trial and later expanded it to prevent comments about his own family, including his daughter, who Trump had identified as a “part of the Democrat machine”.After his conviction, Trump continued to test the judge’s ruling, saying he was under a “nasty gag order” and indirectly calling Cohen, his former fixer, “a sleaze-bag”.Trump plans to appeal is conviction and denies having an alleged 2006 sexual encounter with Daniels. Sentencing is scheduled for 11 July, days before the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee on 15 July to formalize his nomination as the party’s presidential candidate.Last week, an appeals court in New York declined to hear Trump’s appeal against the gag order in the case, asserting that “no substantial constitutional question is directly involved”.Trump’s lawyers had argued that the gag order restricted Trump’s “core political speech on matters of central importance at the height of his presidential campaign … and thus it violates the fundamental right of every American voter to hear from … [a] candidate for president on matters of enormous public importance”.New York prosecutors opposed the appeal, urging the court to dismiss it, and cited Trump’s “well-documented history of leveling threatening, inflammatory and denigrating remarks against trial participants”.Merchan imposed the gag order before the trial began in April, finding that Trump’s history of threatening statements posed a threat to the proceedings. Trump was later fined $10,000 for 10 violations of the order and threatened with incarceration if he continued. More

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    Mar-a-Lago search warrant was properly granted, says Trump documents judge

    The federal judge overseeing Donald Trump’s criminal case for retaining classified documents suggested she would deny his attempt to exclude the documents the FBI seized at the Mar-a-Lago club, saying at a hearing Tuesday that the warrant for the search was properly granted.The former president’s lawyers had contended the warrant was unconstitutionally vague and the FBI affidavit, used to convince the magistrate judge to find there was probable cause for a crime at the club, contained contextual omissions.But the US district judge Aileen Cannon suggested she considered the warrant was sufficiently specific about what items FBI agents could seize at Mar-a-Lago, and told Trump’s lawyers the omissions would have made no difference on whether there was probable cause.The attempt by Trump to suppress the Mar-a-Lago evidence came through a request for a Franks hearing, where a judge applies a four-part test to decide whether false or misleading statements in the affidavit meant the evidence obtained through that search needed to be suppressed.Even before Cannon, who has shown a proclivity for ruling in his favor on motions about evidence, Trump’s request was ambitious because the legal threshold to get a Franks hearing is onerous. Trump needed to make a “substantial preliminary showing” that the affidavit had parts that were recklessly false.The evidence Trump’s lawyers presented was limited to complaints that the FBI agent omitted the fact that some top FBI officials preferred a consensual search of Mar-a-Lago, the FBI tying the need for a warrant to the National Archives, and Trump did not need a security clearance as president.Cannon suggested she found those omissions unavailing. “Why would it have changed the magistrate judge’s determination of probable cause” if the omissions had actually been included, Cannon asked Emil Bove, who argued on behalf of Trump.Trump’s lawyers also complained that the warrant itself was too broad, arguing for instance that the warrant allowed FBI agents to seize any documents that fell under the Espionage Act and the Presidential Records Act, without defining the technical terms in the statutes.That meant the agents were making unilateral on-the-fly decisions about whether they could seize a particular document, Trump’s lawyers said, suggesting that the warrant should have outlined what “national defense information” meant under the Espionage Act.But Cannon appeared similarly unconvinced by that argument. “It just seems like you’re making policy arguments. It seems far afield from whether the affidavit reached the probable cause standard. I’m unclear what you think should have been included” in the warrant, Cannon told Bove.The hearing came after a morning session where Trump’s lawyers asked the judge, behind closed doors, to revoke prosecutors’ access to transcripts of voice memos made by Trump’s ex-lawyer Evan Corcoran, which constitute key evidence in the obstruction of justice part of the documents case.The Guardian first reported last week that Trump’s lawyers would ask the judge to exclude the memos, arguing they should not have been given to prosecutors on the crime-fraud exception, which allows prosecutors to see privileged communications if legal advice is used in furtherance of a crime.The sweeping request could have far-reaching consequences since the memos – with, for example, Trump asking whether they could ignore the subpoena, or a later suggestion to “pluck” out some classified documents instead of returning them to the FBI – are the strongest evidence of Trump’s obstructive intent.Even if the judge excludes only some of the passages, it could dramatically undercut the strength of the obstruction case.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn the worst case for prosecutors, their evidence of Trump’s obstructive intent could be reduced to CCTV footage of boxes being moved at Mar-a-Lago by his co-defendants Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, logs of Trump’s calls with Nauta, and testimony about Nauta’s movements.The obstruction charges center on Trump’s incomplete compliance with an 11 May 2022 grand jury subpoena that demanded the return of any classified documents in his possession, months before the FBI seized 101 classified documents when it searched Mar-a-Lago.The Corcoran memos – the contents of which were first reported by the Guardian last year – have played a major role in bolstering the charge that Trump conspired with Nauta and De Oliveira to play a “shell game” in hiding boxes of classified documents so Corcoran could not ensure their return.The indictment quoted the memos as saying Trump responded: “Well, what if we, what happens if we just don’t respond at all or don’t play ball with them?” and “Wouldn’t it be better if we just told them we don’t have anything here?” and “Well, look, isn’t it better if there are no documents?”After Corcoran found 38 classified documents in the storage room, his memos recount Trump asking him, “Did you find anything? …… Is it bad? Good?”, and made a sort of plucking motion, suggesting “if there’s anything really bad in there, like, pluck it out”.Trump’s lawyers were expected to argue that the chief judge in Washington was overly broad in turning over more than 60 pages of memos, and that the instances of Trump asking whether he needed to comply with the subpoena are questions that every defendant asks to understand the full scope of their obligations.Trump’s lawyers were also expected to argue that none of the commentary – about Trump asking whether they needed to comply with the subpoena, or the plucking motion – satisfied the crime-fraud exception because it did not amount to Trump using Corcoran’s legal advice for a crime. More

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    Judge partially lifts Trump gag order in hush-money case – as it happened

    The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s hush-money criminal case has modified a gag order, freeing the former president to comment publicly about witnesses and jurors in the trial until his sentencing date next month, Reuters reports.Judge Juan Merchan’s ruling allows Trump to go on the attack against his former fixer and lawyer, Michael Cohen, the adult star Stormy Daniels, and other witnesses.But Merchan ruled that Trump is still bound by the order’s restrictions on speaking about lawyers and staff for the Manhattan district attorney’s office and the court, if those statements could interfere with the case.Voters in three states are casting ballots in primaries that could prove crucial to determining the party control, and the ideological bent, of the next Congress. In New York, progressive Democrat Jamaal Bowman is fighting for his seat against challenger George Latimer, amid a race where Bowman’s criticism of Israel has become a major issue. Over in Colorado, far-right congresswoman Lauren Boebert is looking to overcome personal scandals and secure her place in the House by winning the GOP primary in a district that is even more friendly to Republicans than the one she presently represents. And in Utah, Republicans are deciding whether their next senator will be a moderate like the retiring senator Mitt Romney, or someone who vows to do what Donald Trump wants.Here’s what else happened today:
    Judge Juan Merchan modified the gag order imposed on Trump in his New York hush-money case and allowed him to attack jurors and witnesses.
    Joe Biden’s approval ticked up slightly in June, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found, but Trump maintained the edge when it came to handling of the economy.
    Aileen Cannon, the Florida judge handling Trump’s classified documents case, is on her third day of hearing arguments on motions that could decide the trajectory of the closely watched case.
    Last week’s primary in Virginia between Republican congressman Bob Good and challenger John McGuire remains too close to call, but Trump knows who he wants to win.
    Who will Trump pick as his running mate? We take a look at what clues have emerged.
    Federal prosecutors have released new photos of the classified documents they discovered two years ago at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, in a filing that rejects an attempt by the former president’s lawyers to get the case against him thrown out.The photos reveal that top secret documents were mixed in with keepsakes like copies of the New York Times, Maga hats and cases of Diet Coke:Here’s more, from the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell, on the latest revelations from prosecutors working for special counsel Jack Smith in the long-running case:Hillary Clinton has, interestingly enough, debated both Donald Trump and Joe Biden, though it is of course her general election loss to the former for which she is best remembered. Ahead of the Trump-Biden debate scheduled for Thursday, she offered some thoughts on what debating the ex-president is like, the Guardian’s Edward Helmore reports:Hillary Clinton has said it would be a “waste of time” for Joe Biden to attempt to refute Donald Trump’s contentions in Thursday’s presidential debate because “it’s nearly impossible to identify what his arguments even are”.The former secretary of state wrote in a New York Times opinion piece that Trump “starts with nonsense and then digresses into blather”.“This has gotten only worse in the years since we debated,” she said.Clinton debated Trump while unsuccessfully running for the White House against him in 2016 – and she had also debated Biden during a presidential primary eight years earlier.Trump was later accused of speaking over Clinton and looming over her in a way that she later described as “really weird”.Clinton predicted in her op-ed that Trump’s strategies would “fall flat” if Biden “is as direct and forceful as he was” during his State of the Union address in March.Referring to Trump, she added: “Expectations for him are so low that if he doesn’t literally light himself on fire on Thursday evening, some will say he was downright presidential.”Reuters and Ipsos just dropped a new poll ahead of Donald Trump and Joe Biden’s Thursday’s debate face-off, which shows the former president has the edge among voters when it comes to concerns about the economy, while the current White House occupant is more trusted to preserve America’s democracy.It also found a slight bump in Biden’s approval rating, from a not-great 36% in May to a still-not-great 37% this month.The survey does not tell us much we do not know, since previous polls have shown Trump with the edge on economic matters, though it does underscore the validity of the Biden campaign’s strategy of characterizing Trump as a threat to democracy.The survey found Trump was viewed as the better choice for the economy, the top concern of voters, by 43% of respondents, against Biden’s 37%. He was also the preferred pick of respondents when it came to handling foreign policy and terrorism, with 40% support against Biden’s 35%.The second-biggest concern for respondents was the state of the country’s democracy, and when it came to that, Biden was the pick of 39% of those polled, while Trump picked up 33% support.Speaking of attacks, a CNN presenter’s interview with Donald Trump’s spokesperson went awry yesterday, when she began criticizing the moderators of the ex-president’s upcoming debate against Joe Biden, the Guardian’s Robert Tait reports:CNN abruptly terminated a live interview with Donald Trump’s spokesperson on Monday after she criticised the two journalists whom the network chose to moderate the much anticipated upcoming debate between the former president and Joe Biden.Karoline Leavitt, the Trump campaign national press secretary, became embroiled in a heated exchange with Kasie Hunt, the presenter of CNN This Morning, after saying Trump would be entering a “hostile environment on this very network” when he debates the incumbent president in Atlanta on Thursday.Asked what strategy Trump would pursue on the debate stage, she said he would be contending “with debate moderators who have made their opinions about him very well known … and their biased coverage of him”.Leavitt’s comments were aimed, without initially naming them, at the moderators Dana Bash and Jake Tapper. They triggered an immediate reaction from Hunt, who defended her colleagues.“So I’ll just say, my colleagues, Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, have acquitted themselves as professionals as they have covered campaigns and interviewed candidates from all sides of the aisle,” Hunt said. Citing analysts of previous debates, she added: “If you’re attacking the moderators, you’re usually losing.”Donald Trump’s former attorney and fixer Michael Cohen, who appeared as a witness for the prosecution in the criminal trial that resulted in the former president’s conviction in New York City on charges related to hush-money payments, told CNN he won’t be intimidated by Trump’s attacks.His comment came after Judge Juan Merchan modified the gag order on Trump, and allowed him to make statements about witnesses in the case – such as Cohen.Here’s what he told CNN:And now we wait to see if Donald Trump unleashes a new volley of insults against those involved in his criminal conviction last month in New York City.The place to watch is his Truth Social account, which the former president has used in place of his account on X (formerly Twitter) to comment on a variety of subjects, his criminal trials included. He has left his account on X dormant since owner Elon Musk allowed him back on to the site two years ago, with the sole exception of tweeting out the mug shot taken in Georgia, when charges were brought against him in the election subversion case.Before its modification, Judge Juan Merchan fined Trump for repeatedly violating the gag order imposed against him in his hush money case. Here’s more on that:The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s hush-money criminal case has modified a gag order, freeing the former president to comment publicly about witnesses and jurors in the trial until his sentencing date next month, Reuters reports.Judge Juan Merchan’s ruling allows Trump to go on the attack against his former fixer and lawyer, Michael Cohen, the adult star Stormy Daniels, and other witnesses.But Merchan ruled that Trump is still bound by the order’s restrictions on speaking about lawyers and staff for the Manhattan district attorney’s office and the court, if those statements could interfere with the case.More than a dozen Nobel prize-winning economists have warned that inflation will soar once again if Donald Trump takes back the White House in November.In a letter obtained by Axios, 16 Nobel laureates wrote that the presumptive Republican nominee’s plans would reignite inflation and cause lasting harm to the global economy.
    While each of us has different views on the particulars of various economic policies, we all agree that Joe Biden’s economic agenda is vastly superior to Donald Trump.
    They go on to write that a second Trump term would have “a negative impact on the US’s economic standing in the world, and a destabilizing effect on the US’s domestic economy.”
    Many Americans are concerned about inflation, which has come down remarkably fast. There is rightly a worry that Donald Trump will reignite this inflation, with his fiscally irresponsible budgets.
    Hunter Biden’s license to practice law in Washington DC has been suspended after he was convicted earlier this month of three federal gun charges.The filing on Tuesday by the DC court of appeals states that Hunter Biden, the president’s eldest living son, is “suspended immediately” from practicing law in the city.The appeals court also directs the DC board on professional responsibility to to hold additional proceedings to “determine the nature of the offense and whether it involves moral turpitude.”Hunter Biden was found guilty earlier this month on three felony counts related to a handgun purchase while he was a user of crack cocaine.US senator Rand Paul celebrated Julian Assange’s freedom, but criticized the US plea deal as harmful.In a post to X, Paul said that he was “relieved” Assange was being reunited with his family, but argued that Assange’s plea deal was dangerous for first amendment rights and criminalizing to journalism.
    I’m relieved Assange is finally free and reuniting with his family after years of wrongful persecution. Yet, this plea deal sets a dangerous precedent, criminalizing journalism and damaging our First Amendment rights. The “Land of the Free” can and must do better.
    Follow the Guardian’s coverage of Julian Assange’s plea deal here.Voters in three states are casting ballots in primaries that could prove crucial to determining the party control, and the ideological bent, of the next Congress. In New York, progressive Democrat Jamaal Bowman is fighting for his seat against challenger George Latimer, in a race where Bowman’s criticism of Israel has become a major issue. Over in Colorado, far-right congresswoman Lauren Boebert is looking to overcome personal scandals and secure her place in the House by winning the GOP primary in a district that is even more friendly to Republicans than the one she presently represents. And in Utah, Republicans are deciding whether their next senator will be a moderate like the retiring senator Mitt Romney, or someone who vows to do what Donald Trump wants.Here’s what else has been happening today:
    Aileen Cannon, the Florida judge handling Trump’s classified documents case, is on her third day of hearing arguments on motions that could decide the trajectory of the closely watched case.
    Last week’s primary in Virginia between Republican congressman Bob Good and challenger John McGuire remains too close to call, but Trump knows who he wants to win.
    Who will Trump pick as his running mate? We take a look at what clues have emerged.
    Voting is ongoing in New York, where progressive congressman Jamaal Bowman is facing a tough challenge in the Democratic primary from George Latimer, the executive of Westchester county.On X, Bowman posted a video encouraging volunteers to come to his district and knock on doors to rally voter support, or to work phone banks:Latimer has meanwhile been calling attention to his endorsements. Here’s Ken Jenkins, the deputy executive of Westchester county, in New York City’s suburbs: More

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    Hunter Biden law licence suspended after conviction in gun case

    Hunter Biden’s right to practice law in Washington DC has been suspended following his recent conviction on federal gun charges, with the possibility that he could be permanently disbarred.The District of Columbia court of appeals issued an order on Tuesday suspending Biden’s licence, citing the guilty verdict on three felony charges following this month’s trial in Wilmington, Delaware, which it said were defined as “serious crimes” under the district’s bar rule.The court order also hinted at more severe repercussions by instituting formal proceedings to determine the nature of the offences and whether they amount to “moral turpitude”. DC law requires that lawyers be disbarred if they are found guilty of such crimes.Biden, the son of Joe Biden, the US president, was found guilty by a jury of lying on a gun application form when buying a Colt Cobra 38 Special revolver in 2018 by not disclosing his drug addiction, and then illegally owning the gun for 11 days, before his then girlfriend, the widow of his late brother Beau, threw it in a garbage bin.The trial, which featured testimony from several family members, was dominated by descriptions of Hunter Biden’s addiction to crack cocaine, and was attended by the president’s wife, Jill Biden. Joe Biden did not attend.Hunter Biden, who described his struggles with addiction in a personal memoir and says he is now clean, has not yet been sentenced. The charges carry a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison and fines of $750,000, although such punishments are rare for first time offenders.Biden denied the charges against him and his lawyer, Abbe Lowell has requested a new trial, citing procedural matters.He face another trial in Los Angeles in September on charges of tax evasion. Republicans have sought to tie his legal travails to his father, setting in train a stalled impeachment process in the House of Representatives based on unproven allegations that the president profited from his son’s business deals. More

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    The Guardian view on the WikiLeaks plea deal: good for Julian Assange, not journalism | Editorial

    Julian Assange should never have been charged with espionage by the US. The release of the WikiLeaks founder from custody in the UK is good news, and it is especially welcome to his family and supporters. He is due to plead guilty to a single charge of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified US national defence documents at a hearing early on Wednesday, but is not expected to face further jail time. The court in Saipan, a remote Pacific island which is a US territory, is expected to approve the deal, crediting him for the five years he has already spent on remand in prison.His opportunity to live with his young family comes thanks to Australian diplomacy under the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, who had made clear his desire for a resolution, and the Biden administration’s keenness to get a controversial case off its plate, particularly in an election year. Seventeen of the charges have been dropped. The one that remains, however, is cause for serious alarm. It was the Trump administration that brought this case. But while the Biden administration has dropped 17 of the 18 charges, it insisted on a charge under the 1917 Espionage Act, rather than the one first brought against him of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion.This is no triumph for press freedom. Mr Assange’s plea has prevented the setting of a frightening judicial precedent for journalists, avoiding a decision that might bind future courts. Nonetheless, this is the first conviction for basic journalistic efforts under the 1917 act.Using espionage charges was always a bad and cynical move. The case relates to hundreds of thousands of leaked documents about the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, as well as diplomatic cables, which were made public by WikiLeaks working with the Guardian and other media organisations. They revealed appalling abuses by the US and other governments, which would not otherwise have been exposed – and for which no one has been held liable, despite the pursuit of Mr Assange.National security laws are necessary. But it is also necessary to acknowledge that governments keep secrets for bad reasons as well as good. Alarmingly, the Espionage Act allows no public interest defence, preventing defendants from discussing the material leaked, why they shared it, and why they believe the public should know about it. The Obama administration correctly identified the chilling effect that spying charges could have on investigative journalism, and chose not to bring them on that basis. The Biden administration – which proclaims itself a champion of press freedom globally – should not have pursued them. The UK government should never have agreed to Mr Assange’s extradition.The bad news is that the prosecutorial policy is now clear. Federal prosecutors can chalk this one up as a win. It is possible that future administrations could take this case as encouragement to pursue the press under the Espionage Act. It is likely that an emboldened second Trump administration would do so. The Republican candidate has repeatedly cast the media as his “real opponent” and the enemy of the people.The political solution to this lengthy saga is welcome, particularly given the reported impact on Mr Assange’s health after years holed up in London’s Ecuadorian embassy and then in Belmarsh prison. But the threat to press freedom has not ended. Its defence cannot rest either. More

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    Hillary Clinton: waste of Biden’s debate time to rebut Trump ‘nonsense’

    Hillary Clinton has said it would be a “waste of time” for Joe Biden to attempt to refute Donald Trump’s contentions in Thursday’s presidential debate because “it’s nearly impossible to identify what his arguments even are”.The former secretary of state wrote in a New York Times opinion piece that Trump “starts with nonsense and then digresses into blather”.“This has gotten only worse in the years since we debated,” she said.Clinton debated Trump while unsuccessfully running for the White House against him in 2016 – and she had also debated Biden during a presidential primary eight years earlier.Trump was later accused of speaking over Clinton and looming over her in a way that she later described as “really weird”.Clinton predicted in her op-ed that Trump’s strategies would “fall flat” if Biden “is as direct and forceful as he was” during his State of the Union address in March.Referring to Trump, she added: “Expectations for him are so low that if he doesn’t literally light himself on fire on Thursday evening, some will say he was downright presidential.”Clinton advised debate-watchers to focus on three things: how each candidate talks about people, whether they “focus on the fundamentals”, and on the choice between “chaos and competence”.Referring to Trump’s recent conviction in the New York criminal prosecution involving hush money paid to the adult film actor Stormy Daniels, Clinton said the choice between “a convicted criminal out for revenge and a president who delivers results” was “easy” regardless of the debate’s outcome.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionClinton’s comments come as both main political parties are attempting to talk down expectations of a decisive political clash. They also arrived on the same day that she announced a new memoir – Something Lost, Something Gained – set to be published seven weeks ahead of November’s vote.Clinton said she will offer a “warning to all American voters”, along with “her unvarnished views on politics, democracy, the threats we face, and the future within our reach”.Subjects the 76-year-old former US secretary of state is said to address include her reflections on marriage, friendships with other former first ladies, and, according to the publisher Simon & Schuster’s editor-in-chief, Priscilla Painton, moving “past her dream of being president”. More

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    Trump mocked for claiming he was ‘tortured’ in Georgia mugshot arrest

    Donald Trump has been met with a chorus of online mockery after claiming that he was “tortured” while being processed at the Fulton county jail in Georgia last August, an occasion that generated the mugshot that he has since turned into a money-making device as he campaigns for a second presidency.The outlandish and unsubstantiated claim came in a fundraising email and drew at least one unflattering comparison with one of the former president’s political nemeses: John McCain, the former Republican senator for Arizona whose real experience of torture and incarceration during the Vietnam war was a target for Trump’s mockery.“I want you to remember what they did to me. They tortured me in the Fulton County Jail, and TOOK MY MUGSHOT,” Trump wrote in an email promoting coffee cups with his mugshot emblazoned on them.“So guess what? I put it on a mug for the WHOLE WORLD TO SEE!”Trump’s jail experience resulted from his criminal indictment, on which he now faces 13 charges, over allegations that he tried to overturn the 2020 presidential election result in Georgia, one of the key states he lost in his defeat to Joe Biden.That case is separate from the criminal prosecution in New York, which recently led to Trump’s conviction on 34 felonies stemming from hush money paid to Stormy Daniels, the adult film actor who alleged an adulterous affair with him.After arriving in a presidential-style motorcade in Georgia, he was booked, fingerprinted and photographed for a mugshot in a process that took about 20 minutes. No allegations of torture or mistreatment surfaced at the time – but Trump’s supporters have perceived the resulting photo to be a mark of pride that has been stamped on campaign merchandise.Alleging torture prompted a social media comparison with McCain, who Trump repeatedly ridiculed for being unable to raise his arms after having them broken under torture.“Trump is claiming he was ‘tortured’ while getting his mug shot taken at the Fulton County jail,” one post on X read. “John McCain knew all about REAL TORTURE, unlike Trump who has NO IDEA what ‘TORTURE’ is or he would have REQUIRED Hospitalization.”Trump, who earned a medical draft deferment from the Vietnam war because of heel spurs, openly disdained McCain’s war record and prisoner of war status when he successfully campaigned for the White House in the 2016 election, saying: “He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”Others ridiculed his torture claim in more general terms. “What does Trump mean by this,” another X user posted. “Like they inconvenienced/annoyed him or that they did something painful/harmful like pulling his fingernails out? I highly doubt the Secret Service allowed Atlanta PD to truly torture Trump.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAnother X user posted: “Trump thinks torture includes photographs and fingerprinting. Was he strip-searched? How many criminals are laughing at him?”Another user wrote: “Cry baby Trump now claims that he was tortured when they took his mug shot. Truth is he tortured us with that mug.”It is not the first time Trump has invoked political prisoner imagery while facing multiple felony charges. He has compared himself to Alexei Navalny, the late jailed Russian opposition leader and critic of Vladimir Putin, who died mysteriously in a Siberian penal colony in February.Trump has also used the term “hostages” to describe his supporters who were jailed for their part in the 6 January 2021 attack on the US Capitol in an effort to overturn Biden’s victory in the presidential election weeks earlier. More

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    Republicans have a ghoulish tactic for distracting from Trump’s criminality | Sidney Blumenthal

    Donald Trump is already showcasing the big surprise he will spring on Joe Biden at their debate. It’s not a surprise; it’s his most morbid, ghastly and predictable trick.On Friday, his campaign arranged and publicized a telephone call to the mother of a young woman who had been murdered by an undocumented immigrant to express his heartfelt sympathy. That day, the former president posted three similar stories of gruesome murders on his Truth Social account. “We have a new Biden Migrant Killing – It’s only going to get worse, and it’s all Crooked Joe Biden’s fault. He’s a disgrace to the Office of President, he’s a disgrace to America. I look forward to seeing him at the Fake Debate on Thursday. Let him explain why he has allowed MILLIONS of people to come into our Country illegally!”In the debate, Trump will cast the president as responsible for those who stalk, rape and kill innocent young women. He will accuse Biden and his policies on the border of being the source of vicious crimes. Biden will be the villain. He will be shown to have no empathy. He will be exposed as secretly conspiring to unleash a reign of terror. He will be unveiled as the criminal. The chivalrous Trump will ride as the white knight to rescue vulnerable women from swarthy rapists and killers. The original scenario of this plot was The Birth of a Nation.Trump’s planned attack in the debate is pulled from his repertoire of ploys like a hack comedian on the Strip drawing from a roomful of old joke files. For years he has exploited these tragedies as set-ups and the anguished parents as props. According to Fox News, “he has lent hope and compassion to those who have lost family members or other loved ones in recent years due to heinous acts committed by individuals who had come to the US illegally”. Alongside its portrayal of Trump as the sincere consoler of the grieving, truly a minister of souls, Fox News helpfully highlighted a story headlined: Illegals Charged with Murder, Rape and Kidnapping in a Week of Shocking Crimes Across the US. (Hyped after that, the next story: Transgender Utah Woman Shot Parents Dead.)Trump has been deploying this gambit since his first campaign in 2016, which featured a cavalcade of members of stricken “angel families”. Most recently, in February, before Biden’s State of the Union Address, he called the parents of a young woman allegedly murdered by an undocumented immigrant and afterward described how the “beautiful young woman” was “barbarically attacked”.When one of the people he had accused was later acquitted, Trump stated that the verdict was the reason there was “no wonder” why Americans are “so angry with illegal immigration”. Trump ghoulishly trolls for this specific and unusual type of murder, and when the details don’t match his grisly story, it doesn’t matter because there’s still a dead woman he can pretend to mourn.Trump’s call last week to another devastated family was a revival of his failed effort to disrupt Biden’s State of the Union. His Maga zealot, House member Marjorie Taylor Greene, elbowed her way to the aisle of the House chamber as Biden entered. Wearing a red “Make America Great Again” cap and a T-shirt reading “Say Her Name”, a slogan appropriated from the Black Lives Matter movement to protest against the police killings of Black women, she thrust a button with a victim’s name into Biden’s hand.In his speech, Biden lamented that the Republicans in the Senate had killed a border security bill, chiefly crafted by the very conservative senator James Lankford, Republican from Oklahoma, and initially backed by the Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell. Biden had exerted considerable political capital to get the Democrats to agree to the bill, which many, if not most, found distastefully draconian. But it was not the Democrats who killed the conservative bill. Trump opposed it. Instead, he wanted the festering problem for his campaign. Under Trump’s pressure, the Republicans caved and even Lankford voted against his own bill.When Biden mentioned the demise of the bipartisan border bill at the hands of cowed Republicans, some Maga members began to jeer him. “Oh, you don’t like that bill, huh?” Biden replied. “That conservatives got together and said it was a good bill? I’ll be darned. That’s amazing.” Lankford was caught on camera muttering: “That’s true.”“Say her name!” shouted Greene. Biden held up the button she had given him, naming Laken Riley, a Georgia nursing student allegedly murdered by an undocumented immigrant. “Laken Riley,” said Biden, “an innocent woman who was killed by an illegal,” and added: “To her parents I say my heart goes out to you, having lost children myself.”Biden’s forthrightness deflated the intent of Greene’s stunt. In the face of the calculated effort to rattle him and make him lose his composure, he sidetracked his hecklers.After Biden spoke, the Alabama senator Katie Britt delivered the Republican response. As part of the overarching plan to pin murders by undocumented immigrants on Biden, she raised the murder of Laken Riley but created a weird dissonance speaking in her strange sing-song “fundie baby” voice. “This could have been my daughter. This could have been yours … From fentanyl poisonings to horrific murders, there are empty chairs tonight at kitchen tables just like this one because of Biden’s senseless border policies.”The orchestrated razzing at the State of the Union was the warm-up for the same tactic that Trump will undoubtedly use in the debate. Trump will make another attempt. Now that he is a convicted felon, he is more desperate than ever to shift the taint of criminality on to Biden.The Republicans following his playbook are seeking every opportunity to label Biden the true “criminal” and suppress mention of Trump’s conviction. “What he’s doing to the country is criminal,” the South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham parroted on Fox News on 19 June. “His border policies are allowing people to be raped and murdered on the street.”That Trump was adjudicated a rapist in his E Jean Carroll defamation case and has been credibly accused of sexually assaulting more than a dozen women only makes the stories about the murders of innocent women by undocumented immigrants that much more politically necessary.To protect Trump’s reputation, House Republicans have banned any reference to Trump as a convicted felon from congressional speeches as a supposed violation of the rules, a suppression of members’ speech not seen since the Gag Rule of the 1840s forbidding antislavery statements. Then the Republicans pivot to the stories of murders by undocumented immigrants. The Republican National Committee – under its co-chair, Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump – has created a website called “Biden Bloodbath”. In bold red letters, it screams: “Migrant Crime: There Is Blood on Biden’s Hands”.If the facts matter, a definitive study in 2020 conducted by a team of academic researchers from the University of Wisconsin for the libertarian Cato Institute showed: “Contrary to public perception, we observe considerably lower felony arrest rates among undocumented immigrants compared to legal immigrants and native-born US citizens and find no evidence that undocumented criminality has increased in recent years.”The researchers concluded from data collected in Texas: “The illegal immigrant criminal conviction rate was 45% below that of native‐​born Americans in Texas. The general pattern [is] of native‐​born Americans having the highest criminal conviction rates followed by illegal immigrants and then with legal immigrants having the lowest holds for all of other specific types of crimes such as violent crimes, property crimes, homicide, and sex crimes.”A new study published in 2024 by Stanford University experts for the National Bureau of Economic Research stated: “We find that, as a group, immigrant men have had a lower incarceration rate than US-born men for the last 150 years of American history. The differences in incarceration have become more pronounced starting in 1960, with recent waves of immigrants being 50–60% less likely to be incarcerated than US-born men (30% when compared to US-born white men). This relative decline in incarceration has occurred among immigrants from all major countries of origin, and it cannot be explained by changes in immigrants’ observable characteristics or in immigration policies.”The reality, moreover, is that crime, which shot up during and immediately after Trump’s incompetent and malignant handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, is now plummeting under Biden, mainly as a result of steadily improving economic conditions. Based on FBI statistics gathered from more than 11,000 police agencies across the country, Biden has noted: “In the first quarter of this year, murders decreased by 26%, robberies by almost 18%, and violent crime overall by 15%.”Since the Republicans under the influence of Trump voted down their own border bill, Biden has issued a series of executive actions. They include suspending entry into the US of those unlawfully crossing into the US, granting citizenship to those legally married to an American and resident in the country for 10 years, and giving quick access to work visas to qualified Daca recipients (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or Dreamers) who have graduated college and have jobs.Biden’s actions have been taken on his own because he has no Republican partners. His Republican critics, who made his unilateral actions necessary, pretend he has not done anything at all.Despite what Biden has tried and effected, Trump’s enduring contempt for facts extends not least to the question of murders by undocumented immigrants. His ability to continue manipulating the calamities of “angel families” for his own ambition has depended upon his wrecking a Republican-written border security bill, his defiance of the facts that undocumented immigrants are the least likely group to commit crimes, and his enlistment and intimidation of Republicans to do his bidding and echo his demagogy.Trump, however, can’t help himself from undermining the frenetic Republican attempts to protect him and the party from his criminality. He just keeps raising it. At every rally, he promises that he will pardon the violent criminals imprisoned as a result of their participation in the January 6 insurrection. He calls them “hostages” and “warriors”.The news is awash in stories of Trump’s filings and motions to delay his trials for his alleged coup attempt and alleged stealing of national security documents. Present and former associates constantly surface to the top of the crime news.Fifty-two people involved in Trump’s fake electors scheme have been indicted in four states. He is under indictment himself in Georgia and an unindicted co-conspirator in Michigan. His personal attorney Rudy Giuliani has been indicted in three states. Another of his attorneys, Boris Epshteyn – who pleaded guilty in 2021 to disorderly conduct after being accused of groping women in a nightclub (the sexual assault charges were dropped) – has been indicted in Arizona. A third Trump attorney, Jenna Ellis, has been indicted and says she regrets ever representing Trump. Another attorney, Kenneth Chesebro, also indicted, has flipped and turned state’s evidence. Trump’s former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, has been indicted in three states.His former campaign manager and senior White House adviser, Steve Bannon, has been sentenced to prison for contempt of Congress for failing to honor a subpoena from the January 6 committee. Bannon also faces an October trial in New York state for an alleged scheme to fleece Trump supporters in a “Build the Wall” fraud, another money-making opportunity after Mexico declined to pay for Trump’s empty promise to Americans that our friendly neighbor to the south would pony up after Trump called immigrants “Mexican rapists”. Trump had pardoned Bannon from federal prosecution for that same charge.For Trump, the emotional manipulation of the compelling anecdotal fallacy is all that matters. New “angel families” are ordered up and brought to his attention to be used and discarded one after another. He will always find the next terrible tragedy involving some immigrant somewhere to illustrate his false narrative to sustain the problem whose solution he has thwarted in order to be able to inflame it in his interest. Then, wet with crocodile tears, he can stage lachrymose scenes of people’s genuine affliction by which to demonize Biden.Demonstrating his piety and virtue, while showing no remorse for his felonies as he awaits sentencing, Trump endorsed the state of Louisiana’s edict to post a copy of the Ten Commandments in every schoolroom. “I LOVE THE TEN COMMANDMENTS IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS, PRIVATE SCHOOLS, AND MANY OTHER PLACES, FOR THAT MATTER.” Trump did not specify those “many other places”. He made no announcement about posting the Ten Commandments at Mar-a-Lago or any other Trump golf club.“READ IT – HOW CAN WE, AS A NATION, GO WRONG??? THIS MAY BE, IN FACT, THE FIRST MAJOR STEP IN THE REVIVAL OF RELIGION, WHICH IS DESPERATELY NEEDED, IN OUR COUNTRY. BRING BACK TTC!!! MAGA2024” Give me that old time Maga TTC.Trump endlessly cavorts before a credulous audience that either swallows his routine as they did the fakery of Trump as master of the universe in The Apprentice or else don’t care any more than Trump does so long as his pantomime advances him. As Trump said in his Access Hollywood tape, laying out the only commandment he has ever upheld: “When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.”
    Sidney Blumenthal, former senior adviser to Bill and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth. He is a Guardian US columnist More