US Politics

House Republicans barreled ahead with their effort to impeach the homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, for his handling of the US’s southern border, as their party attempts to make immigration a defining issue of this year’s presidential election.The House homeland security committee launched the impeachment proceedings on Wednesday, with Republicans charging that Mayorkas has been derelict in his duty to secure the US-Mexico border amid a sharp rise in migration while Democrats and administration officials assailed the inquiry as a “sham” and a “political stunt”.“This is not a legitimate impeachment,” said Congressman Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the top Democrat on the panel. Echoing constitutional experts and conservative legal scholars, Thompson added: “You cannot impeach a cabinet secretary because you don’t like a president’s policy.”At Wednesday’s hearing, titled Havoc in the Heartland: How Secretary Mayorkas’ Failed Leadership Has Impacted the States, the panel’s chairman, Representative Mark Green, Republican of Tennessee, declared that he had a “duty” to pursue impeachment against Mayorkas, arguing in a combative closing statement that it was the appropriate punishment for the secretary’s “piss-poor performance” controlling the flow of migration and drugs into the US.He charged that Mayorkas, a former federal prosecutor, had “brazenly refused to enforce the laws passed by Congress” and has “enacted policies that knowingly make our country less safe”. As a result, Green said, Republicans were left with “no reasonable alternative than to pursue the possibility of impeachment”.The investigation into Mayorkas’s handling of the nation’s borders is being led by the House homeland security committee, as opposed to the House judiciary committee, which typically oversees impeachment proceedings but is presently consumed by Republicans’ impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden.If Republicans are successful, Mayorkas would be the first cabinet secretary impeached in nearly 150 years.Yet across the Capitol, Mayorkas has emerged as a central figure in the bipartisan Senate negotiations over how to respond to the rise in migration at the US border with Mexico. It creates an odd juxtaposition in which House Republicans are trying to impeach an official with whom Senate Republicans are working to try to strike a border security deal.Record numbers of people are arriving at the southern US border each day, though crossings have recently fallen. The influx, as many as 10,000 arrivals on peak days, has strained border patrol resources as well as the public services in many cities and towns across the country.The situation at the US-Mexico border is an acute political vulnerability for the president, who has been unable to stem the flow of people from across the western hemisphere traveling north to escape violence, political upheaval, poverty and natural disasters.Unease among some House Republicans over their effort to impeach Biden despite a failure to uncover any evidence of misconduct has appeared to only strengthen the party’s appetite for bringing articles of impeachment against Mayorkas.In November, shortly after Republicans elected Mike Johnson as their new speaker after the ouster of Kevin McCarthy, far-right congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia attempted to force a snap impeachment of Mayorkas. Eight House Republicans joined with Democrats to block the effort, instead sending her resolution to the House homeland security committee.Now, as the problems at the border deepen and polling shows Republicans with a clear advantage on the issue of immigration and border security, some of those Republicans appear newly willing to support the impeachment effort.Green has indicated that he hopes to move quickly with the impeachment proceedings. But with their razor-thin majority, House Republicans would need near-total unanimity to levy articles of impeachment against Mayorkas.If the House impeaches Mayorkas, it is extremely unlikely two-thirds of the Senate, narrowly controlled by Democrats, would vote to convict him.Austin Knudsen, one of three Republican state attorneys general who testified before the panel on Wednesday, said Montana was on the frontline of the fentanyl crisis, accusing the Biden administration’s border policies of having “poured gasoline on this fire”.Knudsen, along with Gentner Drummond of Oklahoma and Andrew Bailey of Missouri heralded the hardline enforcement actions taken by Donald Trump and blamed the current challenges on Biden’s decisions to stop future construction of his predecessor’s border wall and end of Covid-19 era policy to swiftly expel migrants. (Several miles of the border wall have been built since Biden took office.) Trump, the Republican frontrunner for the party’s 2024 presidential nomination, has vowed even more draconian measures if he is elected to a second term.In her line of questioning on Wednesday, Greene, who sits on the homeland security panel, asked each Republican witness if he believed Mayorkas should be impeached. They agreed unequivocally that he should be.Representative Dan Goldman, a Democrat of New York who was the lead counsel in Trump’s first impeachment, scoffed at their determination, arguing that the attorneys general were not experts on the matter of impeachment and all had joined a lawsuit suing the Biden administration over its border policies.“We have Republicans suing Secretary Mayorkas to stop him from implementing his policy to address the issues at the border. And now we’re going to impeach him because you say he’s not addressing the issues at the border,” Goldman said. “Which do you want?”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionFrank Bowman, a professor at the University of Missouri school of law and author of the book High Crimes and Misdemeanors: A History of Impeachment for the Age of Trump who counts Bailey, the Missouri attorney general, as a former student, was the lone voice of dissent on the panel. He argued that Mayorkas’s conduct did not rise to level of “high crimes and misdemeanors”, far from it.“If the members of the committee disapprove of the Biden administration’s immigration and border policies, the constitution gives this Congress a wealth of legislative powers to change them,” he said. “Impeachment is not one of them.”During the hearing, Democrats readily acknowledged the challenges at the border, but said impeaching Mayorkas was not the solution. They implored Republicans to work with them to overhaul the nation’s outdated immigration system, expand work permits and increase funding for border agents.Representative Delia Ramirez, a Democrat of Illinois, said it was Republicans, not Democrats, who were failing to take the “humanitarian crisis within our borders seriously”.“Impeachment will not make our borders any safer for our communities or for asylum-seekers and it will not address the conditions across Latin America that motivate families to migrate across the jungles and deserts to our southern border,” she said.Several conservative lawmakers are unhappy with the direction of the bipartisan Senate talks, demanding Congress go further to restrict asylum laws. Some are threatening to block a funding bill and risk a government shutdown if Congress fails to take up Republicans’ hardline border security demands.Representative Anthony D’Esposito, a Republican of New York who represents a district carried by Biden in 2020, was emphatic that the proceedings were about accountability and not political theater. He cited comments by the Democratic leaders in his state who have pleaded for more federal help to deal with the migrant crisis in New York.“This isn’t a narrative,” he said. “It’s not one created by Republicans.”In a memo released ahead of the hearing, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) slammed the proceedings as a “baseless political attack” and a distraction from the efforts underway to find “real solutions” to fix the nation’s beleaguered immigration system.The agency highlighted comments made by Republican lawmakers and conservative legal scholars who disagreed that Mayorkas had committed impeachable offenses.And contrary to Republican claims of an “open” border, the DHS memo said that agents had removed or expelled more than 1 million individuals encountered at the border in both fiscal years 2022 and 2023, with more removals in 2022 than any previous year. It estimated that the annual rate of apprehensions under the Biden administration was 78%, “identical” to the rate under the Trump administration.They also noted increased efforts in stopping the flow of fentanyl, noting that the agency has “stopped more fentanyl and arrested more individuals for fentanyl-related crimes in the last two years than in the previous five years combined”.“This unprecedented process, led by extremists, is harmful to the Department and its workforce and undercuts vital work across countless national security priorities,” the memo said. “Unlike like those pursuing photo ops and politics, Secretary Mayorkas is working relentlessly to fix the problem by working with Republican and Democratic Senators to find common ground and real solutions.” More

The US secretary of state, has warned the Houthis that there would be ‘consequences’ for the Yemeni rebel group’s apparent attack on western warships in the Red Sea. Speaking to reporters in Bahrain during his tour of the Middle East, Antony Blinken said: ‘All I can tell you is that as we’ve made clear, and many other countries make clear, there will be consequences for the Houthis’ actions.’

Blinken also called on Iran to cease its support for Houthis, as the group continued its blockade of Israel-linked and Israel-bound ships passing through the Red Sea More

Fani Willis, Georgia’s Fulton county district attorney who brought election interference charges against Donald Trump and 18 co-defendants, has been subpoenaed in a divorce case involving a special prosecutor she hired in the Trump case.A process server delivered the subpoena to Willis’s office on Monday, according to a court filing reviewed by the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the subpoena. The subpoena requests Willis to testify in the divorce case involving her top prosecutor Nathan Wade and his wife Joycelyn Wade.The Wades filed for divorce in Cobb county, just outside Atlanta, in November 2021, according to a county court docket. The filings in the case have been sealed since February 2022.Earlier this week, Mike Roman, a former Trump campaign official and co-defendant in the election interference case who is facing seven criminal charges, filed a motion accusing Willis and Nathan Wade of an “improper, clandestine personal relationship during the pendency of this case”. The filing offered no proof of the relationship or of any wrongdoing.The motion claimed that the alleged relationship between Willis and Nathan Wade resulted in “the special prosecutor, and, in turn, the district attorney, profiting significantly from this prosecution at the expense of the taxpayers”.“Willis has benefited substantially and directly, and continues to benefit, from this litigation because Wade is being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to prosecute this case on her behalf,” the motion states.“He will continue to be incentivized to prosecute this case based on his personal and financial motives, so he has acquired a unique and personal interest or stake in Mr Roman’s continued prosecution. That is, he is motivated to prosecute Mr Roman for as long as possible because he will continue to make exorbitant sums of money,” the motion added.According to county records reviewed by the Hill, Nathan Wade was paid nearly $654,000 in legal fees in 2022 and 2023 as he worked on the election interference case.The motion further claimed – without evidence – that Willis and Nathan Wade traveled together to vacation destinations including Florida, Napa Valley and the Caribbean.The Guardian has contacted Willis and Nathan Wade for comment. Neither have yet spoken publicly on the subpoena. More

A leading professor of US constitutional law condemned Donald Trump for “playing the race card” by propagating the “totally baseless” claim that Nikki Haley, his surging rival for the Republican presidential nomination, is not qualified because her parents were not US citizens when she was born.“The birther claims against Nikki Haley are totally baseless as a legal and constitutional matter,” Laurence Tribe, professor emeritus at Harvard Law School, told NBC.“I can’t imagine what Trump hopes to gain by those claims unless it’s to play the race card against the former governor and UN ambassador as a woman of colour – and to draw on the wellsprings of anti-immigrant prejudice by reminding everyone that Haley’s parents weren’t citizens when she was born in the USA.”The term “birther” was coined to describe racist conspiracy theories about Barack Obama, the first Black US president, which Trump seized on as he established a presence on the political far right.In 2016, as he ran for president himself, Trump also attempted to raise doubts about Ted Cruz, the Texas senator who was then his chief rival.Obama’s father was Kenyan and his mother American. He was born in Hawaii. Cruz’s father was Cuban and his mother American. He was born in Canada and moved to Texas when young.The 14th amendment to the US constitution – the same text under which Colorado and Maine now seek to remove Trump from the ballot for inciting an insurrection – says “all persons born or naturalised in the United States” are citizens. It was introduced after the civil war, conferring citizenship on people once enslaved. The constitution requires that a presidential candidate must be a resident for 14 years, at least 35 years old, and a “natural-born citizen”.As described in Haley’s autobiography, her parents “were born in the Punjab region of India”. Haley was born in Bamberg, South Carolina, in 1972, a US citizen at birth. Her father became a US citizen in 1978, her mother in 2003. Haley was governor of her home state from 2011 to 2017, then ambassador to the United Nations when Trump was president.In the race for the Republican nomination, Haley has surged in polling. She has done particularly well in New Hampshire, cutting Trump’s lead to single digits. Trump still dominates in Iowa, the first state to vote next week.On Tuesday, Trump re-posted to his Truth Social platform a post from the Gateway Pundit, a far-right site, which cited Paul Ingrassia, a New York Young Republican and “constitutional scholar”, as saying Haley was disqualified.In his own post, Ingrassia cited “great investigative work by Laura Loomer, who uncovered that neither one of Haley’s parents were US citizens when she was born in 1972”. Loomer, a far-right, Islamophobic, white-supremacist Florida activist who has run unsuccessfully for Congress, is an ardent Trump supporter.Experts agree Haley is qualified to be president, simply because she was born on US soil. Campaigning on a virulently anti-immigrant platform, Trump has promised to end birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented migrants.His post about Haley was condemned across the US media – and the political spectrum.Charles Gasparino, a Fox Business correspondent, said: “The problem with Donald is that he goes disgustingly low and not just against real enemies.”John Avlon, a CNN political analyst, said: “Trump’s lies are cut and paste: now he’s going birther on Nikki Haley – after trying the same attack on Obama, Harris and Cruz.”Kamala Harris, the first woman and woman of colour to be vice-president, was born in Oakland, California, in 1964, to parents from India and Jamaica. Trump sought to cast doubt on her eligibility for office during the 2020 election. More

The judge overseeing the election interference case against Donald Trump in Washington DC had her home visited by police after a fake emergency call, and attempts were made to do the same to the prosecutor Jack Smith.The Maine secretary of state was “swatted”, too, after she ruled that the former president could not appear on the ballot there because of the 14th amendment. The Colorado judges who ruled similarly have faced threats, leading to increased security.There was also a round of bomb threats to state capitols, sent to secretaries of state and legislative offices, that were believed to be a hoax but led to evacuations around the country this month. Those hoaxes came after letters containing fentanyl were sent to elections office in a handful of states in November.A recent wave of threats against elections officials and judges foretells a tense presidential election year that’s likely to see ongoing threats of political violence that could turn physical, as the future of US democracy hangs in the balance.“It does seem sort of like it’s a message starting off the year, saying, ‘OK we are in 2024, and this is not going to be easy. Elections are not going to go smoothly, and you better be scared,’” said Lilliana Mason, a political science professor at Johns Hopkins University who studies political violence.The wave comes after several years of sustained threats to and harassment of elections officials, who have seen high turnover in their field as a result. It’s now part of the job to face an onslaught of harassing messages when running an election in the US.While these recent threats haven’t carried physical violence, they aren’t innocent. They disrupt and intimidate the people involved – and they cause chaos, making it difficult for elections officials to do their jobs. Women and people of color are more often the targets of these threats, Mason said, which could drive people out of the jobs, potentially changing the profile of who runs elections.A threat against a building, such as the bomb threats, takes hours to investigate and evacuate to ensure people are safe. Threats like doxing, or posting personal information online, or swatting someone’s home take even longer to unwind, requiring more security, staying in another location and scrubbing online information. It’s not always clear, either, whether a threat is simply designed to sow chaos or will lead to violence.“Today, it could be warnings. Tomorrow, there could be an actual bomb that goes off or there could be an assassination attempt with a rifle,” said Robert Pape, a University of Chicago professor who directs the Chicago Project on Security and Threats.Beyond the effects on those targeted, violence and intimidation are destabilizing and distract people from thinking more soberly about the country and its future, Mason said.“They focus our energy on who is mad at who and dividing us against each other, rather than focusing on the wellbeing of the nation as a whole,” she said.Shenna Bellows, the Democratic secretary of state in Maine, had her home swatted – with state troopers searching her house summoned by a call about a fake break-in – after her decision on the 14th amendment question that would result in Trump being left off the ballot in the state. Her personal cellphone number and home address were posted online. She knew that her decision would bring strong reactions, but not to this extent.“The ensuing threatening communications, the doxing, the swatting of my home are unacceptable,” she said. “We should be able to agree to disagree on issues that are extraordinarily important and even controversial with respect and civility. We should be able to disagree without threats of violence.”Pape, who has conducted surveys showing increasing support for political violence in the US, said the recent wave of threats shows exactly what he was concerned about.They show that the country is a “tinderbox”, where people increasingly support violence to achieve their political goals as they lose faith in democracy, he said. Pape also pointed out the threats have come in waves since the January 6 insurrection and could increase this year, especially if Trump’s supporters believe he will not win at the ballot box. The increased support for violence gives the people doing threats a “mantle of legitimacy”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“These volatile individuals are often encouraged to take the next step toward actual violence by a perception they’re doing it in a community’s interest,” he said.Trump and his allies have not sought to tamp down their rhetoric or condemn the threats made by supporters, but such a condemnation could make a difference, Mason and Pape both said.Strong bipartisan statements against political violence and threats have a tangible effect, Pape said. Given the reaction politicians often get when standing against their party, particularly Trump, some Republicans have privately said they fear for their safety and their families and have shied away from speaking out against him.“One thing that we found to be pretty effective at reducing regular people’s approval of political violence is just to have their leaders tell them that it’s not OK. It’s pretty simple. And the problem is that Trump is not doing that,” Mason said. “The tragedy is that we have very easy ways to reduce violent tendencies in the electorate, but those ways tend to be based on leadership playing a responsible role.”The incredibly high stakes of the 2024 election, where both sides see an existential battle for the country’s future, are not typical of a normal election.“It’s not supposed to feel that way. If it’s existential, then the bedrock of democracy – which is loser’s consent – is harder to agree to,” Mason said.Bellows, the Maine secretary of state, said she also received messages of support alongside the threats and harassment. One former GOP legislator reached out and asked if she needed a place to stay or firearms, she said. Even people who disagreed with her decision supported her ability to make it and she said it’s the responsibility of public officials to tone down the rhetoric.“Our democracy depends on open and free expression and debate. We need to stand up against hate and threats of violence.” More

Four candidates were on the campaign trail, meeting and greeting voters in frigid Iowa. A fifth was sitting in a courtroom in rainy Washington, trying to fend off a criminal case that might land him in jail.But in the upside-down, topsy-turvy world of American politics, it is Donald Trump – not Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Asa Hutchinson or Vivek Ramaswamy – who is expected to win the first Republican presidential nominating contest in a landslide next week.This is not despite but because of a host of legal woes that would have long buried a normal candidate in a normal time have become a feature, not a bug, of his 2024 presidential run. “Unprecedented” is the most overused word of the Trump era but this week really is, well, unprecedented as the collision of his electoral and judicial calendars gets real.On Tuesday he was in court as his lawyers tried to convince the three judges that a federal criminal case charging him with election subversion should be dismissed before it goes to trial. On Wednesday, Trump will sit for a Fox News town hall in Des Moines, Iowa, counterprogramming a CNN debate in the same city between DeSantis and Haley. On Thursday, expect to see Trump in New York for the closing arguments in a civil fraud trial. And on Saturday, he returns to Iowa for campaign rallies.The former president is picking and choosing when and where he shows up. In every case, the decision is calculated to maximise his chances of winning back the White House – and staying out of prison.He was not obliged to attend Tuesday’s proceedings at the US court of appeals for the District of Columbia circuit. In driving rain, few protesters bothered to show up outside the courtroom and there were no TV cameras allowed inside. Trump sat there with no opportunity to speak as lawyers jousted over claims that he is immune from criminal charges for trying to overturn the 2020 election.Trump’s lawyer, D John Sauer, told a three-judge panel that prosecuting former presidents “would open a Pandora’s box from which that nation may never recover”. He argued that presidents must first be impeached and removed from office by Congress before they can be prosecuted. Judge Florence Pan reacted sceptically, asking Sauer: “You’re saying a president could sell pardons, could sell military secrets, could tell Seal Team Six to assassinate a political rival?”Trump will probably lose this argument. But the real point of his rare return to Washington came after the hearing, when he spoke to reporters at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel, formerly the Trump International hotel, calling it “a very momentous day” and insisting that he “did nothing wrong”.If the case is allowed to proceed, Trump claimed, that would potentially leave Biden open to prosecution once he left office. “When they talk about a threat to democracy, that’s your real threat to democracy,” he said. The remarks were transmitted live to the base on the conservative Fox News channel, guaranteeing more exposure than a typical rally.Meanwhile Trump’s fundraising campaign had kicked into gear. Before the hearing, he released a video in which he said he might prosecute Biden if he defeats him in the presidential election. “If I don’t get immunity then crooked Joe Biden doesn’t get immunity. Joe would be ripe for indictment,” he said.The campaign dates and court dates are now like two liquids mixed and impossible to separate. The trial in the federal election interference case is due to start on 4 March, one day before Super Tuesday, when 15 states will hold primaries or caucuses.The convergence has helped Trump break another American tradition. For half a century, Iowa has been a test of retail politics as diners, farms, hotel ballrooms, school gyms and a state fair play an outsized role in deciding who will become the most powerful person on the planet. The candidate with a winning smile and tireless handshake had a decent chance of working their way to the White House.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut data collected by the Des Moines Register newspaper shows that, between 1 January 2023 and 4 January 2024, Trump held only 24 events in 19 counties, far fewer than DeSantis (99 events in 57 counties), Haley (51 events in 30 counties) and Ramaswamy (239 events in 94 counties).Yet a recent poll put Trump 34 percentage points clear of DeSantis in Iowa. His campaign surrogates such as Ben Carson, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Kristi Noem often draw bigger crowds in the state than actual candidates.There are several reasons for Trump’s dominance but court appearances like Tuesday’s have not done him any harm. Any time his fortunes seemed in danger of flagging, for example after Republicans’ midterms flop, the justice department inadvertently gave him political rocket fuel. He played victim and martyr of a politicised system and Republicans – even his opponents – rallied around him.That will not necessarily work against Biden in November. A CBS News poll found that 64% of Americans do not think Trump should be immune from prosecution for actions he took as president, whereas just 34% believe he should be. Other surveys suggest that a criminal conviction – he is facing 91 criminal charges in Atlanta, Miami, New York and Washington – could deal him a big blow among moderates and independents.Two Republican candidates have been vocal in making that case. Chris Christie, a former New Jersey governor and federal prosecutor, and Asa Hutchinson, an ex-governor of Arkansas, have warned that Trump will be convicted and is unfit for office.Last month a Reuters/ Ipsos poll put Trump’s support among Republicans at 61%. Christie? He was at 2%. And Hutchinson? He was at 1%. More

Contemplating a New Hampshire campaign event to which not one voter showed up, the Minnesota congressman and Democratic presidential hopeful Dean Phillips told reporters on Tuesday: “Sometimes, if you build it, they don’t come.”He was alluding to a famous line from Field of Dreams, a 1989 film in which an Iowa farmer played by Kevin Costner builds a baseball field, thereby attracting the ghosts of famous players.Phillips is widely held to have a ghost of a chance of succeeding in his quest to deny a sitting president, Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential nomination. Nonetheless, the 54-year-old centrist, who is self-funding his campaign, insists Biden is too old at 81 to mount a meaningful fight against Donald Trump, the likely Republican nominee.In Manchester, New Hampshire, on Tuesday, Phillips parked his “Government Repair Truck” – a tested campaign prop – outside a Hilton hotel, planning to talk to voters while handing out Dunkin’ Donuts coffee, a staple for New Englanders, notably including Ben Affleck.Unfortunately, reports of sparsely or non-attended campaign events are a staple of presidential primary campaigns.According to NBC News, no one showed up to chat with Phillips in part because the temperature was below freezing, thereby sending drivers to an underground parking garage from which they could enter the hotel.Phillips “ended up pouring coffee for the staffers who were there”, NBC said, adding that the candidate made his Field of Dreams quip to reporters.Biden is not on the ballot in New Hampshire, thanks to a dispute between the state and national Democrats who reconfigured their primary to start in South Carolina.The focus of the Republican race will switch to New Hampshire next week, after Monday’s Iowa caucuses. Trump leads in the north-eastern state, though the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley has eaten into his advantage.Elsewhere on Tuesday, Reuters published an interview in which Phillips once again rejected the contention that he risks damaging Biden and thereby boosting Trump.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHe also declined to rule out a third-party run for president, notionally on a ticket with Liz Cheney, the former Wyoming congresswoman whose opposition to Trump cost her a seat in the House.“I wouldn’t say that’s even discussed right now,” Phillips said. “But I never say never.“I mean, this is about preservation of democracy. We are certainly different, politically. But we do have the same principle. And that is protecting the constitution, ensuring our systems of governance work and restoring some degree of sensibility and common sense to Washington. So I want to help her do that. And I think she wants to help me.” More

A man targeted by rightwing conspiracy theories about the US Capitol riot was sentenced on Tuesday to a year of probation for joining the January 6 attack by a mob of fellow Donald Trump supporters.Ray Epps, a former Arizona resident who was driven into hiding by death threats, pleaded guilty in September to a misdemeanor charge. He received no jail time, and there were no restrictions placed on his travel during his probation, but he will have to serve 100 hours of community service.He appeared remotely by video conference and was not in the Washington courtroom when chief judge James Boasberg sentenced him. Prosecutors had recommended a six-month term of imprisonment for Epps.Epps’s sentencing took place in the same building where Trump was attending an appeals court hearing as the Republican former president’s lawyers argued he is immune from prosecution on charges he plotted to overturn the results of the 2020 election he lost.The Fox News Channel and other rightwing media outlets amplified conspiracy theories that Epps, 62, was an undercover government agent who helped incite the Capitol attack to entrap Trump supporters.Epps filed a defamation lawsuit against Fox News last year, saying the network was to blame for spreading baseless claims about him.Epps told the judge that he now knows that he never should have believed the lies about a stolen election that Trump and his allies told and that Fox News broadcast.“I have learned that truth is not always found in the places that I used to trust,” said Epps, who asked for mercy before learning his sentence.The judge noted that many conspiracy theorists still refuse to believe that the Capitol riot was an insurrection carried out by Trump supporters. The judge said he hopes that the threats against Epps and his wife subside so they can move on with their lives.“You were hounded out of your home,” the judge said. “You were hounded out of your town.”Federal prosecutors have backed up Epps’s vehement denials that he was a government plant or FBI operative. They say Epps has never been a government employee or agent beyond serving in the US marines from 1979 to 1983.The ordeal has forced Epps and his wife to sell their property and businesses and flee their home in Queen Creek, Arizona, according to his lawyer.“He enjoys no golf, tennis, travel, or other trappings of retirement. They live in a trailer in the woods, away from their family, friends, and community,” attorney Edward Ungvarsky wrote in a court filing.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe internet-fueled accusations that upended Epps’s life have persisted even after the justice department charged him with participating in the January 6 siege.“Fear of demented extremists has no apparent end in sight so long as those who spread hate and lies about Mr Epps don’t speak loudly and publicly to correct the messaging they delivered,” Epps’s lawyer wrote.Epps pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct on restricted grounds, a charge punishable by a maximum of one year behind bars. Prosecutors say Epps encouraged the mob to storm the Capitol, helped other rioters push a large metal-framed sign into a group of officers and participated in “a rugby scrum-like group effort” to push past a line of police officers.A prosecutor, Michael Gordon, said Epps does not deserve to be inundated with death threats but should serve jail time for his conduct on 6 January 2021.“He didn’t start the riot,” Gordon told the judge. “He made it worse.”Epps’s lawyer sought six months of probation without any jail time. Ungvarsky said his client went to Washington on 6 January 2021 to peacefully protest against the certification of the electoral college vote for Joe Biden over Trump. More