Elections

The ex-president vowed to appeal a judge’s decision to schedule the start on his trial the day before Super Tuesday. He can’t disrupt the trial that way, legal experts say — but there is a longer-shot possibility.Former President Donald J. Trump immediately vowed to challenge the March 4 start date for his criminal trial over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, raising questions of whether or how he could try to push back the timing of the case.“I will APPEAL!” Mr. Trump wrote on social media shortly after Judge Tanya S. Chutkan issued her order on Monday.But despite complaining about the date, a lawyer for Mr. Trump, John Lauro, said in court that the defense team would abide by her decision “as we must.” Mr. Lauro had proposed the trial begin in April 2026, citing the volume of evidence defense lawyers needed to study, while prosecutors had suggested starting in January.Here is a closer look.Why is March 4 awkward?The date comes in the middle of an already crammed calendar for Mr. Trump, who faces an array of criminal cases and civil lawsuits as he seeks the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.In particular, as Mr. Trump noted, the day after the trial would begin is Super Tuesday, when voters in over a dozen states will cast their primary votes. That voting will take place amid the likelihood of negative headlines pegged to the start of the trial, and his ability to travel and hold rallies campaigning for primaries in subsequent weeks is likely to be limited.Defendants are generally required to be present at their trials. After preliminary matters like jury selection, prosecutors have estimated they will need about four to six weeks to present their case, after which defense lawyers will also have an opportunity to call additional witnesses.Are trial calendars even subject to appeal?Typically, no, but there are complexities.First, Mr. Lauro could file a motion asking Judge Chutkan to reconsider the timing and fleshing out his argument that March 4 does not give the defense enough time to adequately prepare.But if she declines to change it, decisions by a Federal District Court judge over a prospective trial calendar are not usually considered subject to an immediate appeal. Instead, if a claimed problem can be remedied by later overturning any guilty verdict, an appeal raising that issue must wait until after the trial.Indeed, if the former president is convicted, Mr. Lauro appears to be laying the groundwork for Mr. Trump to argue in an appeal after the trial that the start date violated his constitutional right to have meaningful legal representation. Mr. Lauro told the judge on Monday that the defense team would not be able to provide adequate representation to Mr. Trump if it had to be prepared by March 4. Such a trial date would deny his client the opportunity to have effective assistance of counsel, he added.But Mr. Trump has another way to ask a higher court to review the calendar before the trial starts. It is called a petition for a writ of mandamus, and while it is not technically considered to be an appeal, legal experts say, it looks very similar.What is a writ of mandamus?It is a judicial order to a lower-court judge mandating some action. It functions as a safety release valve, allowing what are essentially early appeals. It is reserved for extraordinary situations where a judge has made a mistake that will cause a defendant irreparable harm, so the normal process of waiting until after any guilty verdict to raise the issue on appeal could not provide a remedy.Thus, while Mr. Trump would normally have to wait until after the trial to ask a higher court to review Judge Chutkan’s calendar decision, his defense team could, in theory, try to short-circuit that process by filing a mandamus petition to the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit — or even directly to the Supreme Court.Is it easy to win such an order?No. In general, a mandamus petition is very likely to be denied, legal experts say. Higher courts, reluctant to disrupt the ordinary judicial process, have set a steep bar before they agree to intervene this way.In a 1999 ruling, for example, the D.C. Circuit said it would not even consider a mandamus petition based on an argument that the trial judge had made a clearly wrong decision since the problem could be addressed later through an ordinary appeal.“As we have seen, any error — even a clear one — could be corrected on appeal without irreparable harm,” the judges wrote.In a 2004 ruling, the Supreme Court said the right to relief must be “clear and indisputable” and there must be no other adequate means to obtain it. And even then, it said, a higher court still has discretion to decline issuing such an order if it nevertheless believes that intervening would not be “appropriate under the circumstances.”Does Trump have grounds for a mandamus petition?By itself, the objection raised by Mr. Lauro — that March 4 will not give Mr. Trump’s lawyers adequate time to prepare — would almost certainly fall short as a reason for a higher court to intervene early, according to Paul F. Rothstein, a Georgetown University law professor and specialist in criminal procedure.But Professor Rothstein said it was harder to predict what would happen if Mr. Trump’s team also raised an objection the former president has made in his public comments: that the trial date interferes with the election. There is a stronger argument for a claim of irreparable harm since various primaries will be over by the time of a verdict.Still, there is scant precedent to guide a higher court’s decision about whether a trial date’s effect on an election is sufficient to consider intervening early. And even if so, he said, it is also uncertain where the higher court might land on whether the public interest is better served by delaying a trial or by letting it go forward so voters can know about a major candidate’s criminality as soon as possible.“Like so many things with these unprecedented questions that the Trump cases present, the law does not have a definite answer,” Prof. Rothstein said. More

Meagan Wolfe, the Wisconsin Elections Commission administrator since 2018, has been demonized by former President Donald J. Trump’s allies in the battleground state.Republicans in Wisconsin pushing to oust the state’s nonpartisan head of elections clashed on Tuesday with voting rights advocates and some local clerks during a rancorous public hearing in Madison, sowing further distrust about voting integrity.With their new supermajority in the State Senate, Republicans fought over the reappointment of Meagan Wolfe as the Wisconsin Elections Commission administrator.The agency’s head since 2018, Ms. Wolfe has become a steady target of right-wing attacks, fueled by former President Donald J. Trump’s grievances about his defeat in the battleground state in 2020. Many of them hinge on his falsehoods about election fraud and the use of electronic voting machines and ballot drop boxes.Ms. Wolfe did not attend the hearing, where a stream of critics told a Senate election oversight committee that she should be ousted. Among them was Michael J. Gableman, a conservative former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice whom Republicans tasked with leading a 14-month investigation into the 2020 election results in the state. The review, which cost taxpayers $1.1 million, found no evidence of significant fraud.“A majority of people in Wisconsin have doubts about the honesty of elections in this state,” he said at the hearing. “That’s disgraceful.”On Tuesday, Ms. Wolfe declined to comment through a spokesman for the elections commission, who shared a copy of a letter that she sent to legislators in June that had sought to dispel election misinformation.“I believe it is fair to say that no election in Wisconsin history has been as scrutinized, reviewed, investigated and reinvestigated as much as the November 2020 general election,” her letter said. “The outcome of all those 2020 probes produced essentially the same results: the identification of a relatively small number of suggestions for procedural improvements, with no findings of wrongdoing or significant fraud.”Meagan Wolfe, the administrator, did not attend the hearing, where a stream of critics told a Senate election oversight committee that she should be removed.Ruthie Hauge/Wisconsin State Journal, via Associated PressAt the hearing, Ms. Wolfe’s supporters described her as a model of competency who guided a network of state, county and local election officials through the pandemic and has done so in an impartial manner. They warned that her removal would result in chaos.“Considering what happened after the 2020 elections and since, we are in a world of crazy for next year,” said Lisa Tollefson, the clerk of Rock County, in the southern part of the state. “With the actions and accusations that have been made toward election officials, we are certainly seeing the highest turnover in county clerks and municipal clerks in our history.”Dan Knodl, a Republican who is the chairman of the Senate committee, challenged her “world of crazy” remark.“Are you predicting something, or you have information that something is on the horizon?” he said.Ms. Tollefson answered that the political climate was only likely to intensify in Wisconsin and pointed to the hard-fought election in April that flipped Wisconsin’s Supreme Court from conservative to liberal.Several times during Tuesday’s hearing, Democrats argued that the Legislature did not have the authority to vote on Ms. Wolfe’s reappointment, noting that state law requires her renomination to come from the commission.A June vote by the commission on whether to appoint her to another four-year term ended in an impasse, with three Democrats abstaining over concerns that Republicans would use their supermajority in the Senate to remove her. By doing nothing — declining to renominate or take any other action — the commission can effectively keep Ms. Wolfe in her current role under state law.Republicans have challenged the statute, and the issue is expected to end up being decided by the courts.Ann S. Jacobs, a Democratic commissioner, referred to the move by G.O.P. lawmakers to oust Ms. Wolfe as a “circus.”Mr. Knodl bristled at her language and said he was not about to abdicate oversight.“Whether it’s circuslike or not, that’s what we’ll do,” he said. “Thank you for attending the circus.”Jay Heck, executive director of Common Cause in Wisconsin, a government watchdog group, said Ms. Wolfe’s removal would be a major blow to the state, which is likely to once again be a crucial battleground for the presidential race.“The vast majority of Wisconsin’s voters and citizens can and will lose confidence and trust in our elections,” he said. More

I wish it were as simple as that one Republican debate.I wish the Nikki Haley onstage in Milwaukee last week — who called out Donald Trump for his profligate government spending, who implored her fellow Republicans to approach the issue of abortion more sensibly and less sadistically, who made a meal of Vivek Ramaswamy — were guaranteed to be the Nikki Haley on the campaign trail next week, next month or next year.But I have this thing called a memory, and as one of my favorite classic rock bands pledged, I won’t get fooled again. Past Haley, present Haley, future Haley: They’re all constructs, all creations, malleable, negotiable, tethered not to dependable principle but to reliable opportunism. That’s the truth of her. That’s the hell of her.I say “hell” because what she displayed on that debate stage was the precise mix of authority and humanity that fueled her political rise, made her a political star and stirred speculation that she might be the country’s first woman president. I understand why so many observers got so excited. Haley was exciting.She has undeniable smarts and formidable talent, as Vivek Ramaswamy learned. She treated his so-called foreign policy as so many nonsense words scrawled with crayon in a toddler’s coloring book. Then she tore the pages of that book to shreds, doing to it in mere seconds what she has done to her own reputation over the past seven years.I could trace all her zigs and zags since early 2016: her initially ardent opposition to Trump’s candidacy, her speedy capitulation, her stint in his administration as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, and so on. But they were covered in an excellent essay in The Times by Stuart Stevens early this year, and a span of mere months, from December 2020 to April 2021, tells the saga of her signature spinelessness just as well.That December, she sat down with the journalist Tim Alberta, then with Politico, for one of several interviews for an epic profile of her that he was writing. For a month Trump had been denying the results of the presidential election, spreading his conspiracy theories, undermining the peaceful transfer of power and doing profound damage to the country. And while Haley let Alberta know that she had the president’s ear and had called him in the middle of it all, she made equally clear that she hadn’t felt a smidgen of responsibility to talk some sense and decency into him.“Here was Haley, someone with a reputation for speaking candidly to Trump, someone who had the courage as governor to remove the Confederate flag from her state capitol, admitting that she hadn’t bothered to challenge him — even in private — on a deception that threatened the stability of American life,” Alberta marveled. “Why not?”Haley answered Alberta: “I understand the president. I understand that genuinely, to his core, he believes he was wronged.” For Haley, that absolved her of any patriotic duty and Trump of any blame for the havoc that he was wreaking. The guilty parties, she told Alberta, were the lawyers abetting his delusions. Astonishingly, she seemed not to grasp that she was abetting right alongside them.Her rationalizations “were so strained that they called into question her own judgment,” Alberta wrote. “This was a test for Haley, an early opportunity to define herself on a question of great national urgency. And she was failing.”But wait. Along came the insurrection of Jan. 6, and Haley suddenly snapped to. She talked to Alberta on Jan. 12. She told him she was “disgusted” by Trump’s treatment of Mike Pence. “When I tell you I’m angry, it’s an understatement,” she said.Trump, she seethed, “went down a path he shouldn’t have, and we shouldn’t have followed him, and we shouldn’t have listened to him. And we can’t let that ever happen again.” A belated epiphany. An inspiring vow. Cue the orchestra.Stop the music. By April, her ire was embers and her vow a puff of smoke. At a public appearance in Orangeburg, S.C., she told The Associated Press that if Trump decided to run for president again, she would support him and would not seek the Republican Party’s nomination herself. (Ha!)He was still publicly excoriating Pence, but she was singing a new song about that. “I think former President Trump’s always been opinionated,” she said, as if that were just a cute little character quirk.What had changed since January? The Senate had acquitted Trump of the charges that led to his second impeachment. Many other Republican leaders had moved on from any denunciations of his actions on Jan. 6. And his hold on the party’s base had proved enduring.So Haley’s “shouldn’t have followed him” yielded to her falling in line — for the time being.When I tell you that’s pathetic, it’s an understatement. More

The mayor of Miami, who had announced his run in June, had not qualified for the first Republican debate last week.Mayor Francis X. Suarez of Miami dropped out of the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination on Tuesday, after failing to gain traction in a crowded field and falling short of the requirements to participate in the first Republican debate.“Throughout this process, I have met so many freedom-loving Americans who care deeply about our nation, her people and its future,” Mr. Suarez posted on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “It was a privilege to come so close to appearing onstage with the other candidates at last week’s first debate.”Mr. Suarez, 45, wrote in the posting on Tuesday that he was suspending his campaign for president. He had announced his run in June, joining an already-crowded cast of Republicans vying for the nomination, including a former vice president, a U.S. senator, several governors — and a former president whose dominance in polls has been steady throughout the race.No one has ever ascended to the presidency directly from a mayoral office. As the sole Latino candidate — he is Cuban American — Mr. Suarez played up his ability to appeal to a diverse group of voters. He promoted a boilerplate G.O.P. platform in which he called to curb violent crime, suggested giving U.S. companies incentives to leave China and expressed support for a 15-week national abortion ban with exceptions.The first in the 2024 race to drop out, Mr. Suarez told reporters at the Iowa State Fair on Aug. 11 that any candidate who failed to make the debate stage should bow out.To participate in the debate, candidates needed a minimum of 40,000 unique donors, which Mr. Suarez said he had attained, and at least 1 percent in three qualifying polls. Mr. Suarez posted a video online celebrating his supposed qualification on Aug. 18. But three days later, the Republican National Committee announced a debate stage lineup that left him out.After acknowledging his failure to make the debate stage on X, Mr. Suarez went dormant on social media and did not hold campaign events in the days following the debate.During his campaign, Mr. Suarez often took shots at the governor of his home state, Ron DeSantis, including criticizing legislation that banned discussions of gender identity and sexual orientation in schools and poking fun at Mr. DeSantis’s dispute with Disney. But he rarely attacked the party’s front-runner, former President Donald J. Trump, and suggested that he would be open to pardoning him if convicted in any of his four indictments.A technology enthusiast, Mr. Suarez also experimented with novel means of attracting voters and created an “A.I. Suarez” in his likeness that, when prompted, explained his policy stances on a host of issues as its mouth moved in a somewhat-humanlike fashion. But his campaign never really took off, and his most favorable polls showed him hovering around 1 percent support, at best.The mayor faces allegations of peddling influence on behalf of a real estate development company. The Miami Herald reported that Mr. Suarez was paid at least $170,000 by Location Ventures “to help cut through red tape and secure critical permits.” The Herald later reported that the F.B.I. was investigating if those payments constituted bribes.In his statement on X on Tuesday, he stressed a need for Republicans to do “more to include and attract” Hispanic voters, among other demographics, whom he said “the left has taken for granted for far too long.”“Younger voters, independents, urban voters and suburban women — all of whom I’ve carried in previous elections — among others, should find a comfortable home in the G.O.P. and its policies,” he said. More

From 2h agoDonald Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows spent yesterday arguing that he should be tried in federal, rather than state, court, after being accused of attempting to stop Joe Biden’s election win in Georgia three years ago. In a surprise move, Meadows, who was Trump’s top White House deputy during the time of his re-election defeat, took the stand to argue that his phone calls and meetings with state officials were all part of his government job, and not political activities, as Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis has alleged.Legal experts say a federal court trial could give Meadows’ defense team more options to argue his innocence, and would also expand the jury pool beyond the Democratic-heavy Atlanta area to the counties around it, which lean more Republican.The judge handling the case, Steve Jones, did not rule yesterday, but said he would do so quickly. If he does not before 6 September, Jones said Meadows will have to appear in state court to be arraigned on the charges, as will all the other defendants who have not entered their pleas yet. Should he find in Meadows’s favor, it could benefit other defendants who have made similar requests, including Jeffrey Clark, a former justice department official that Trump tried to appoint acting attorney general. Trump, himself, is also expected to request to move his trial to Georgia federal court.For more on yesterday’s hearing, here’s the full report from the Guardian’s Mary Yang:
The sprawling 41-count indictment of Donald Trump and 18 other defendants in Fulton county had its first test on Monday as Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff, took the stand before a federal judge over his request to move his Georgia election interference case from state to federal court.
Meadows testified for nearly three hours before the court broke for lunch, defending his actions as Trump’s chief of staff while avoiding questions regarding whether he believed Trump won in 2020.
Meadows faces two felony charges, including racketeering and solicitation of a violation of oath by a public officer. But Meadows argued that he acted in his capacity as a federal officer and thus is entitled to immunity – and that his case should be heard before a federal judge.
Meadows swiftly filed a motion to move his case to the federal US district court of northern Georgia after Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney, handed down her indictment.
In a response, Willis argued that Meadows’ actions violated the Hatch Act, a federal law that prohibits government officials from using their position to influence the results of an election and were therefore outside his capacity as chief of staff.
“There was a political component to everything that we did,” testified Meadows, referring to his actions during the final weeks of the Trump administration.
And here’s video of Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s comments on the approaching Hurricane Idalia:Hurricane Idalia’s ill winds could be blowing some good for Florida’s governor Ron DeSantis as he takes a break from the presidential campaign trail to oversee storm preparations in his state.The Republican, who is sinking in the race for his party’s nomination, has become an almost permanent fixture on national TV during his emergency briefings, drawing far more exposure than had he remained on the stump in Iowa and South Carolina.He was asked about it at his morning press conference in Tallahassee, and replied with a word soup that essentially said it’s no big deal:
With Hurricane Ian [which struck Florida last September] we were in the midst of a governor’s campaign. I had all kinds of stuff scheduled, not just in Florida, around the country. You know, we were doing different things. And do what you need to do.
It’s going to be no different than what we did during Ian. I’m hoping that this storm is not as catastrophic… we do what we need to do, because it’s just something that’s important, but it’s no different than what we’ve done in the past.
In his place on the campaign trail, DeSantis has left his wife and chief surrogate Casey DeSantis to speak for him. At South Carolina congressman Jeff Duncan’s Faith and Freedom event in Anderson on Monday night, attendees were treated to a stirring speech about her children’s romp through the governor’s mansion:The ill will towards Donald Trump in Georgia extends even into the Republican party, with the state’s lieutenant governor blaming him for a host of issues and saying voters would be foolish to nominate him again, the Guardian’s Martin Pengelly reports:Donald Trump has “the moral compass of an axe murderer”, a Republican opponent in Georgia said, discussing the former president’s legal predicament in the southern US state and elsewhere but also his continuing dominance of the presidential primary.“As Republicans, that dashboard is going off with lights and bells and whistles, telling us all the warning things we need to know,” Geoff Duncan told CNN on Monday.“Ninety-one indictments,” Duncan said. “Fake Republican, a trillion dollars’ worth of debt [from his time in the White House], everything we need to see to not choose him as our nominee, including the fact that he’s got the moral compass of a … more like an axe murderer than a president.“We need to do something right here, right now. This is either our pivot point or our last gasp as Republicans.”Duncan was the lieutenant governor of Georgia when Trump tried to overturn his defeat there by Joe Biden in 2020, an effort now the subject of 13 racketeering and conspiracy charges.Last week, Atlantans were greeted with the spectacle of Donald Trump’s motorcade heading to the Fulton county jail, where the ex-president was formally arrested and then released after being indicted in the Georgia election subversion case.Most Americans will remember the day for the mugshot it produced, the first ever taken of a former US president, but the Washington Post reports that for residents of the Atlanta neighborhood his lengthy and heavily guarded convoy passed through, it was a unique and emotionally conflicted experience.“I see them bringing people to Rice Street every day,” 39-year-old Lovell Riddle told the Post, referring to the local jail. “But this was like a big show, this was a circus. He had this big police escort and all of that. If it were me or any other Black man accused of what he is accused of, we would have already been under the jail and they would have thrown the keys away.”Here’s more from their report:
The areas that Trump traveled through Thursday are deeply intertwined with America’s record of racial strife and discrimination. Even the street signs reflect the connection: Lowery Boulevard, named for the Atlanta-based Black minister and civil rights advocate who founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference alongside Martin Luther King Jr, was until 2001 named for a Confederate general.
On Trump’s way down Lowery to the jail, he passed Morehouse College, the historically Black institution that is King’s alma mater; the Bankhead neighborhood, where rappers T.I. and Lil Nas X grew up and found inspiration; and the English Avenue community, where the local elementary school was dynamited during the contentious integration of the city’s public schools.
Before the motorcade came through, residents and office workers rushed to get spots on sidewalks, stoops and balconies. Trump, who has proclaimed his innocence, later recounted on Newsmax that he had been greeted by “tremendous crowds in Atlanta that were so friendly.” Some cellphone videos that ricocheted around social media showed a different reaction, with people shouting obscenities or making crude gestures as the convoy sped by.
Those who were there suggest the response was more complicated, with Trump’s unexpected arrival — and rapid departure — prompting feelings of catharsis and anger, awe and disgust, indignance and pride.
Coryn Lima, a 20-year-old student at Georgia State University, was walking home from his aunt’s house when he noticed the commotion. Officials hadn’t announced the motorcade’s route in advance, but police cordoning off a two-mile stretch of Lowery Boulevard was a sure sign.
As news spread that Trump was coming through on his way to the jail, where he would be fingerprinted and required to take a mug shot, the neighborhood took on a carnival air. Lima said his neighbors ran out of their homes with their kids to grab a spot, like they might for a parade. There were also people he didn’t recognize: Some had signs supporting Trump, others came with profanity-laced posters denouncing him.
The moment came and went with a flash, Lima said, with Trump’s motorcade, which consisted of more than a dozen cars, moving down the street “extremely fast.” But Lima said it had still been “cathartic.”
“From what I’ve been told by people around my age, Trump is like a supervillain,” Lima said. “And he’s finally getting caught for all of his supervillain crimes.”
Speaking of courts, conservative supreme court justice Amy Coney Barrett spoke at a conference yesterday, where she declined to weigh in on efforts pushed by Democrats to force the judges to adopt a code of ethics. That’s unlike fellow conservative Samuel Alito, who spoke out forcefully against the campaign. Here’s the Associated Press with the full report:The US supreme court justice Amy Coney Barrett told attendees at a judicial conference in Wisconsin that she welcomed public scrutiny of the court. But she stopped short of commenting on whether she thinks the court should change how it operates in the face of recent criticism.Barrett did not offer any opinion – or speak directly about – recent calls for the justices to institute an official code of conduct.She took questions from Diane Sykes, chief judge of the seventh US circuit court, at a conference attended by judges, attorneys and court personnel. The event came at a time when public trust in the court is at a 50-year low following a series of polarizing rulings, including the overturning of Roe v Wade and federal abortion protections last year.Barrett did not mention the ethics issues that have dogged some justices – including conservatives Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito and the liberal Sonia Sotomayor.“Public scrutiny is welcome,” Barrett said. “Increasing and enhancing civics education is welcome.”Here are some thoughts from former US attorney Barb McQuade on why Mark Meadows wants to be tried in federal court, and whether his motion will succeed:Donald Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows spent yesterday arguing that he should be tried in federal, rather than state, court, after being accused of attempting to stop Joe Biden’s election win in Georgia three years ago. In a surprise move, Meadows, who was Trump’s top White House deputy during the time of his re-election defeat, took the stand to argue that his phone calls and meetings with state officials were all part of his government job, and not political activities, as Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis has alleged.Legal experts say a federal court trial could give Meadows’ defense team more options to argue his innocence, and would also expand the jury pool beyond the Democratic-heavy Atlanta area to the counties around it, which lean more Republican.The judge handling the case, Steve Jones, did not rule yesterday, but said he would do so quickly. If he does not before 6 September, Jones said Meadows will have to appear in state court to be arraigned on the charges, as will all the other defendants who have not entered their pleas yet. Should he find in Meadows’s favor, it could benefit other defendants who have made similar requests, including Jeffrey Clark, a former justice department official that Trump tried to appoint acting attorney general. Trump, himself, is also expected to request to move his trial to Georgia federal court.For more on yesterday’s hearing, here’s the full report from the Guardian’s Mary Yang:
The sprawling 41-count indictment of Donald Trump and 18 other defendants in Fulton county had its first test on Monday as Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff, took the stand before a federal judge over his request to move his Georgia election interference case from state to federal court.
Meadows testified for nearly three hours before the court broke for lunch, defending his actions as Trump’s chief of staff while avoiding questions regarding whether he believed Trump won in 2020.
Meadows faces two felony charges, including racketeering and solicitation of a violation of oath by a public officer. But Meadows argued that he acted in his capacity as a federal officer and thus is entitled to immunity – and that his case should be heard before a federal judge.
Meadows swiftly filed a motion to move his case to the federal US district court of northern Georgia after Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney, handed down her indictment.
In a response, Willis argued that Meadows’ actions violated the Hatch Act, a federal law that prohibits government officials from using their position to influence the results of an election and were therefore outside his capacity as chief of staff.
“There was a political component to everything that we did,” testified Meadows, referring to his actions during the final weeks of the Trump administration.
Good morning, US politics blog readers. Last week brought shock and spectacle to the political scene in the form of Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis’s indictment of Donald Trump and 18 others on charges related to trying to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election, resulting in the group traveling to Atlanta to be formally arrested and have their mugshots taken – yes, even Trump. Now the case enters the more mundane territory typical of all legal defenses. Yesterday, the first of Trump’s co-defendant’s, attorney Ray Smith, entered a not guilty plea in the case, waiving an arraignment that is scheduled to take place for Trump and the others on 6 September.Meanwhile, we are awaiting a ruling after Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows spent Monday in court, arguing that he should be tried in the Georgia case at the federal rather than the sate level. The judge’s decision could come at any time (though may not arrive for a few days), and if he rules in Meadows’s favor, it could open him up to new defenses and potentially a more conservative jury pool.Here’s what’s going on today:
The Biden administration just announced 10 drugs that it will seek to negotiate the prices paid under Medicare, in part of a major push to reduce health care costs for older Americans. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will hold an event to announce the effort at 2pm eastern time.
An excerpt of the first major book about Biden’s presidency has just been released, concerning how the president handled the chaotic and controversial withdrawal of Afghanistan.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre takes questions from reporters at 1pm ET. More

By assembling a sprawling, 19-defendant RICO indictment with 41 counts, District Attorney Fani Willis of Fulton County has brought the sort of charging instrument that has typically led to monthslong trials, complicated appeals and exhaustion for the participating attorneys. Now, as some co-defendants seek federal removal while others demand speedy trials in state court, we are starting to see the costs of complexity.In federal and state cases, Donald Trump’s legal game plan has always been the same: delay often and everywhere with the goal of winning the 2024 election and hoping the charges go away. Special Counsel Jack Smith’s election interference indictment — just four counts brought solely against Mr. Trump — makes that difficult. On Monday, the judge set the trial for March 4, 2024.By contrast, the Georgia indictment is a sprawling account of a conspiracy among the former president, his closest advisers and state and local Republican officials to change the outcome of the 2020 Georgia election through an escalating series of falsehoods. For many, it is a satisfying political document. But as a legal instrument, its ambitious scope will provide the co-defendants with many opportunities for delay, appeals, and constitutional challenges.And even though Fulton might very will win in the end, a simpler, more direct approach would likely lead to a better result, faster, here’s why.Much of the Georgia indictment is about how Mr. Trump and others tried to get public officials to do implausible things to hand him the election — things like asking state senators to appoint an alternate slate of electors, calling a special session of the General Assembly or asking the secretary of state to “find” the votes Mr. Trump needed to win.The state chose to charge this conduct in two ways. One of them is strong and simple: Team Trump lied to elected officials and tried to forge documents.The other — that they were aware of the officials’ oaths of office and were hoping specifically to get them to violate it — is unusual and hard to prove.Solicitation requires you to ask someone else to commit a felony intentionally. In this case, the oath of office the defendants were being asked to violate was a promise to follow the Constitution and do what’s best for their constituents. It is indeed a crime in Georgia for a public officer to “willfully and intentionally” violate the terms of his oath.Here’s the problem: It’s hard enough to prove that Mr. Trump’s request violates the Constitution, since the Constitution allows states to figure out how to select electors. But then the state must also prove that Mr. Trump knew this would violate the electors’ oath of office.It seems possible that Mr. Trump had no idea what these officials’ oath of office was, maybe even no idea that they swore an oath at all. Under Georgia’s “mistake of fact” affirmative defense, if Mr. Trump has some evidence that he was operating under a “misapprehension of fact” that would justify his actions, the state must disprove it beyond a reasonable doubt.There are a few reasons this could be a strong defense. First, Mr. Trump surrounded himself with individuals who told him what he was doing was legal. Georgia does not normally have an “advice of counsel” defense, but in this context it seems relevant that people he apparently trusted were not telling him this would violate any oath of office.And to put it gently, Mr. Trump is plausibly ignorant on a variety of subjects, ranging from how hurricanes are formed to whether it’s a good idea to use or inject disinfectants as a possible Covid cure. Even if prosecutors can meet the burden of showing that what he requested was unconstitutional — not necessarily an easy thing to establish with a jury of non-lawyers — it may be difficult to prove that Donald Trump knew, or cared, what the Constitution had to say on the subject.Then there’s the Hawaii precedent. Mr. Trump’s advisers were relying on an incident from the 1960 presidential election, when Richard Nixon looked as though he had won the state of Hawaii by a few dozen votes. But the results were so uncertain that three Democrats submitted their Electoral College votes just in case, and when, after a recount, it looked like John F. Kennedy was the actual winner, the Senate (headed by Nixon) unanimously agreed to the alternate slate.Even though no court ever blessed this procedure, or even held that it wasn’t criminal, Mr. Trump’s team could argue with a straight face that they believed their request was legally possible.There’s also the possibility of a First Amendment defense. Typically, people are allowed to petition the government to do things, even unconstitutional things. That a court might, down the line, find those things to be unconstitutional seems like a dangerous basis to criminalize that petitioning.I’d understand bringing these charges to get at some obviously bad and immoral conduct by the president if there were nothing else available. But there are other, much stronger charges in the same indictment without the same constitutional concerns. Take the false statement counts: The very best case that Mr. Trump and his team could cite is United States v. Alvarez, where the Supreme Court held that there is a First Amendment right to lie about having received the Medal of Honor. But the Supreme Court also specifically said that this protection vanishes when lying for material gain, or to the government.Rudy Giuliani told state legislators that election workers were passing around flash drives like “vials of heroin” and that thousands of dead and felonious voters participated, but he can’t claim those statements have constitutional protection. All Mr. Giuliani can do is show the court what evidence supported those statements. There is none. And what’s more, Mr. Giuliani recently admitted in a civil filing that his claims against two Fulton County election workers had been false. Despite claiming that it was for “this litigation only,” that’s an admission.Similarly, the forgery charges simply need to establish a conspiracy to create fake elector votes that could potentially be counted on Jan. 6. It’s irrelevant whether the parties thought it was legal to do this, so long as they knew they were not, in fact, the duly appointed electors.So it is an odd legal choice to drag a jury through weak, disputed counts in a monthslong trial when you could just focus on the counts that are hard to challenge and easy to explain, saving weeks in the process. The RICO count will already require dozens of witnesses and some complicated instructions, so tossing in these oath of office charges seems like a recipe for confusion and delay.And it’s not just the charges that complicate things, but the sheer number of defendants. A judge granted one co-defendant, Ken Chesebro, a speedy trial, which will require Fulton County to bring this case to trial by Nov. 3 or acquit him as a matter of law. (Sidney Powell has also requested a speedy trial.)Ms. Willis reacted by requesting an October date for the entire case, but at least for the moment, a judge has declined her request. This puts the prosecutors in a bind. Mr. Chesebro’s trial would give Mr. Trump a useful preview of the entire case, from voir dire to closing arguments, which could weaken the effectiveness of Ms. Willis’s prosecution of Mr. Trump and the other defendants. It would allow Mr. Trump’s lawyers to dig into witness testimony and perhaps encourage Georgia Republicans to step in.Additionally, it might be very difficult for Fulton County to actually grant these parties the speedy trial they’ve requested. There is some Georgia authority to suggest that a trial does not “begin” under the statutory speedy trial act until a jury is empaneled and sworn. What happens if Fulton County needs a month, or two months, to actually select the jury that will be sworn?And for all the talk of potentially flipping co-defendants, many of the people in this case don’t have all that much criminal exposure. With no mandatory minimums for prison time and no criminal history, many of the participants could reasonably expect probation, and maybe even a first-offender sentence that would not count as a felony. A simpler case, with fewer co-defendants, would go more swiftly, with less legal uncertainty.As a general, George Washington was known for unworkable battle plans. Where an ordinary commander might send all his troops to one location at one time, Washington would split them into three columns, expecting them to arrive all at one spot with precision timing. It rarely worked out. Despite those mistakes, he’s now best known for winning.For all the potential problems with this indictment, I would still expect Ms. Willis to secure a conviction against Mr. Trump on one or more counts if this case goes to trial as it intends.But there are a dozen ways that things can go sideways, and it is very possible that history will remember the two years that Fulton County took to bring these charges as a wasted opportunity to make a simpler case.Andrew Fleischman is an attorney at Sessions & Fleischman in Atlanta.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected] The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

The New York Times Audio app is home to journalism and storytelling, and provides news, depth and serendipity. If you haven’t already, download it here — available to Times news subscribers on iOS — and sign up for our weekly newsletter.The Headlines brings you the biggest stories of the day from the Times journalists who are covering them, all in about 10 minutes. Hosted by Annie Correal, the new morning show features three top stories from reporters across the newsroom and around the world, so you always have a sense of what’s happening, even if you only have a few minutes to spare.Former President Donald J. Trump faces federal and state investigations in New York, Georgia and Washington.Doug Mills/The New York TimesOn Today’s Episode:An Update on Tropical Storm IdaliaJudge Sets Trial Date in March for Trump’s Federal Election Case, with Glenn ThrushA.I. Comes to the U.S. Air Force, with Eric LiptonEli Cohen More

Un expresidente con ficha policial, repunte de covid, polémica en España y más para estar al día.Donald Trump se puso a disposición de las autoridades de Georgia la semana pasada. En la oficina del sheriff del condado de Fulton, el expresidente fue imputado por asociación delictiva y cargos relacionados con el intento de interferir con las elecciones de 2020.Estuvo unos 20 minutos en el procedimiento, donde se le tomaron las huellas dactilares y se le asignó un número de identificación —P01135809— en el sistema de justicia penal del condado. Poco después se difundió su foto de prontuario, la primera vez que se da a conocer una imagen así de un expresidente en EE. UU. Este año, Trump ya ha comparecido en cuatro ocasiones en casos penales. Hasta el momento se le imputan 91 cargos por delitos graves.El expresidente Donald Trump aparece en una foto policial de fichaje difundida por la oficina del sheriff del condado de Fulton el jueves.Oficina del sheriff del condado de FultonEn el retrato, Trump aparece con el ceño fruncido, un contraste con el gesto alegre y desafiante de algunos de los otros imputados en el mismo caso.Los reporteros Glenn Thrush y Maggie Haberman escribieron así sobre la expresión de algunos de los aliados del expresidente ante la cámara:El semblante que han puesto para la cámara del sistema de justicia penal, y para el lente de la historia, recuerda los otros papeles de reparto que desempeñan en lo que parece ser una extraordinaria producción del teatro político: uno que concuerda con la afirmación muy repetida por Trump de que la fiscalía es una farsa y una burla.En el actual panorama político, las imágenes son muy poderosas y Trump y sus aliados comprenden que pueden usar el simbolismo de estos retratos a su favor.Jenna Ellis y David Shafer en las fotos que les tomaron al ser fichados en Georgia.Oficina del sheriff del condado de Fulton vía Associated PressY es que, hasta ahora, las acusaciones formales contra Trump han tenido un impacto positivo en su campaña. Un análisis realizado por un equipo de periodistas del Times muestra que la formalización de los casos penales contra el expresidente ha tenido repercusiones favorables en los sondeos, la recaudación de fondos de su campaña y la cobertura que recibe. La nota incluye gráficos y comentarios de expertos sobre este efecto.Después de dos años, Trump volvió a X, la plataforma antes conocida como Twitter. “¡NUNCA RENDIRSE!”, decía la leyenda que puso junto a su foto de prontuario que ahora, “forma parte del boato del momento, del teatro de la ley”, escribió la crítica del Times Vanessa Friedman, “y Trump es un hombre que siempre ha entendido el poder y el lenguaje del teatro. De montar un espectáculo. De la forma en que una imagen puede utilizarse para la comunicación viral y la opinión pública”.P. D.: Hablando de expresidentes en problemas, Jair Bolsonaro enfrenta varios casos penales. Uno de ellos, sobre malversación de obsequios, involucra un costoso reloj que le regaló el gobierno saudí cuando era presidente y que luego fue revendido en Filadelfia por su asistente personal.Si alguien te reenvió este correo, puedes hacer clic aquí para recibirlo tres veces por semana.Qué pasa con la covidEn Estados Unidos y otros países se ha registrado un repunte en los casos de covid. Algunos expertos recomiendan retomar precauciones, en particular a las personas inmunocomprometidas. Esto incluye procurar mantenerse en áreas bien ventiladas y usar mascarillas de buena calidad en lugares muy concurridos.La nueva variante EG.5 de la COVID-19 se está propagando rápidamente, pero los expertos afirman que no es más peligrosa que las versiones anteriores. Los científicos están preocupados por otra nueva variante de covid, la BA.2.86, debido al número de mutaciones que porta. Se ha vinculado con siete casos en todo el mundo, pero los expertos sospechan que está más extendida.Y en cuanto a la vacuna de refuerzo, tal vez sea buena idea esperar a las nuevas actualizaciones, que ofrecerán protección contra variantes más recientes.¿Te ha dado covid varias veces? Esto es lo que los expertos saben —y no saben— sobre las reinfecciones y sus efectos en la salud.Asunto de debateEl lunes se registraron protestas contra el jefe máximo del fútbol español, Luis Rubiales. La pancarta muestra una etiqueta que se viralizó en España.Isabel Infantes/ReutersEn España y el mundo del deporte no se habla de otra cosa que del episodio en el que Luis Rubiales, presidente de la federación española de fútbol, besó a la delantera Jennifer Hermoso frente a las cámaras en la ceremonia de premiación de la Copa del Mundo Femenina en Sídney, Australia.El beso, que no fue consensuado, ha pasado a simbolizar una brecha fundamental entre una cultura arraigada de machismo y quienes exigen un trato igualitario y respetuoso para las deportistas en particular y las mujeres en general.Participa con tus opiniones en español; recuerda que todos los comentarios están sujetos a moderación para asegurar un debate cortés.— More