US Politics

Trump Organization guilty of tax fraud, New York jury findsTwelve-person jury returns guilty verdict against former president’s company after being sent out on Monday to deliberate A jury in New York has convicted the Trump Organization of criminal tax fraud in a major blow for the former president.Although Donald Trump was not personally on trial, prosecutors insisted he was fully aware of the 15-year scheme in which they said executives were enriched by off-the-books perks to make up for lower salaries, reducing the company’s tax liabilities.The 12-person jury in New York’s state court was sent out to deliberate on Monday morning after a six-week trial in which Trump Organization lawyers pinned blame for the fraud solely on the greed of longtime chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg.The former close ally of Trump accepted a plea deal earlier this year admitting fraud in exchange for a five-month prison sentence. Prosecutors laid out a case heavily reliant on Weisselberg’s testimony.The verdict represents a serious blow to Trump and his family who rose to fame as property moguls in New York but whose business practices have long shadowed in secrecy with rumors of ill-doing.It is also the latest in a raft of legal troubles that surround Trump, including several investigations related to his attempts to overturn the 2020 election victory of Joe Biden and his apparent removal of sensitive White House documents to his Florida resort of Mar-a-Lago.The monthlong trial featured testimony from seven witnesses, including Weisselberg and senior vice-president and controller Jeffrey McConney. An outside accountant who spent years preparing tax returns for Trump and the company also testified.Earlier jurors had zeroed in on the last count listed on the verdict sheet: falsifying business records.Jurors sent notes twice Tuesday asking for clarity on the falsifying business records charge and a reading of related testimony.Weisselberg testified that he ordered accounts payable supervisor Deborah Tarasoff to delete “per Allen Weisselberg” notations from entries in Trump’s personal general ledger reflecting that Trump personally paid private school tuition for Weisselberg’s grandchildren.First, jurors asked the judge to reread the charge and the elements they are required to find for a guilty verdict. Later, they asked to again hear Tarasoff’s testimony. Tarasoff, a Trump Organization veteran, testified that Weisselberg called her into his office and told her, “Go in and take my name off it” in September 2016.After resuming deliberations Tuesday, jurors sent a note asking the judge to reread three counts of falsifying business records pertaining to the creation of false W2 tax forms for Weisselberg for 2015, 2016 and 2017.The legal woes have to a large extent over-shadowed Trump’s recent announcement of a 2024 run to return to the White House.Though Trump’s campaign was launched with great fanfare from Mar-a-Lago, it has not set the political world alight after high profile Trump-backed candidates were largely defeated in November’s midterm elections.Numerous rivals to Trump are now starting to emerge in the Republican party, especially Florida governor Ron DeSantis.TopicsDonald TrumpUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

January 6 officers and relatives snub top Republicans at gold medal ceremonyMitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy denounced as ‘two-faced’ by Brian Sicknick’s mother at Congressional Gold Medal event00:44Senior Republicans Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy were snubbed by law enforcement leaders and a fallen officer’s family at Tuesday’s Congressional Gold Medal award ceremony for Capitol police who defended against the 6 January attacks.The pair were denounced as “two-faced” by the mother of Officer Brian Sicknick, who died after a mob of Donald Trump supporters ransacked the Capitol building and forced politicians to flee for their lives.McConnell, the Senate minority leader, was caught on video with his hand outstretched, waiting in line for handshakes that never came as senior officers and Sicknick’s parents warmly greeted the Democratic House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer.The relatives and officers in uniform then walked straight past the Republican duo, barely looking at them.“They’re just two-faced. I’m just tired of them standing there and saying how wonderful the Capitol police is, and they turn around and … go down to Mar-a-Lago and kiss [Trump’s] ring,” Sicknick’s mother, Gladys Sicknick, said, according to a tweet by CNN congressional reporter Daniella Diaz.“It just hurts.”Sicknick’s brother, Ken, was also forthright. “They have no idea what integrity is. They can’t stand up for what’s right and wrong,” he said.McCarthy, who hopes to become speaker when Republicans take over the House majority next month, was widely condemned for what analysts said was a pilgrimage to Trump’s Florida resort in the days after the insurrection.After initially saying he held the outgoing president responsible for the violence of his supporters, McCarthy worked hard to regain Trump’s trust, and has promised he will investigate the January 6 bipartisan House panel who are looking into the events of that day.McConnell, similarly, has been criticized for not standing up to Trump.The book Unchecked, published in September by Rachael Bade of Politico and Karoun Demirjian of the Washington Post, claimed McConnell called Trump “crazy” and vowed never to speak to him again after 6 January.But like McCarthy before him, McConnell has backed away from his original stance, and in April said he would support Trump again if he ran for the presidency. Trump announced his 2024 candidacy last month.Michael Fanone, a DC Metropolitan Police officer beaten and injured in the attack, has previously branded McCarthy “a weasel” for actions and words after the riot. Fanone attended Tuesday’s ceremony, but says he was heckled by some former colleagues.“They called me a piece of shit and mockingly called me a great fucking hero while clapping,” Fanone said, according to an NBC justice reporter, Ryan Reilly.Before the snub, McCarthy said that “days like today force us to realize how much we owe the thin blue line”.Fanone, who has since retired, was not impressed. “I’m surprised Kevin McCarthy showed up. I thought that he would be busy trying to figure out how to suspend the constitution on behalf of former president Trump,” he told CNN.TopicsUS Capitol attackUS politicsRepublicansDemocratsHouse of RepresentativesUS SenatenewsReuse this content More

US vice-president Kamala Harris will swear in Los Angeles mayor Karen BassThe ceremony will be a nod to the barriers broken by the two most powerful women in California politics and beyond US vice-president Kamala Harris will swear in Karen Bass as Los Angeles mayor, marking the historic election of the first Black woman to lead the second largest city in the country.The swearing-in ceremony on Sunday will bring together two elected leaders who have repeatedly broken barriers in California politics and beyond. In 2020, Harris became the first woman, first Black person and first Asian person to be US vice- president. In 2008, as a California state assemblymember, Bass became the first Black woman to serve as the speaker of any US state legislature; she was elected to represent Los Angeles in the US congress in 2010 and later became chair of the Congressional Black Caucus.The mayor-elect asked Harris to administer the oath of office as a way to recognize their positions as two of California’s most powerful Black women, the LA Times reported, citing an aide to the vice-president. Harris was honored to participate, the aide told the paper. The vice-president tweeted that it was “an historic moment for the people of Los Angeles”.This is an historic moment for the people of Los Angeles. I look forward to swearing in Mayor-elect Karen Bass this weekend. https://t.co/uzV29F9PZv— Vice President Kamala Harris (@VP) December 5, 2022
The inauguration will take place on the steps of LA’s city hall and will include musical and other performances, according to a Bass spokesperson.Bass, the first woman to lead LA and second Black mayor in the city’s history, defeated her opponent, billionaire real estate developer Rick Caruso, in the closely watched race in November. Caruso had spent more than $100m (£87m) of his own funds on his campaign, which spent roughly 10 times as much as Bass’s campaign.It took a week for the race to be called, with Bass ultimately earning 55% of the vote and Caruso earning 45%.Bass is stepping up at a pivotal moment in LA politics after a leaked audio recording captured three councilmembers making racist and bigoted remarks about colleagues and marginalized communities in the region, prompting an ongoing scandal. Several progressive candidates defeated more moderate opponents in key LA races this year.The congresswoman is also taking over city hall at a time when LA county has recorded 69,000 unhoused people, including more than 48,000 living outside. On the campaign trail, Bass pledged to move 17,000 people indoors in her first year.TopicsCaliforniaKamala HarrisLos AngelesUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

Representatives for those receiving an award for officers who defended the Capitol during the January 6 attack shook hands with the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, but walked past Republicans Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy, video from the congressional gold medal ceremony shows 

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House January 6 panel to issue criminal referrals to DoJ as tensions heightenTargets and details of referrals in investigation of Capitol attack were not immediately clear but could follow two tracks The House January 6 select committee will make criminal referrals to the US justice department in connection with its investigation into the Capitol attack, the chairman of the panel said Tuesday, heightening tensions ahead of the release of its final report expected to come later this month.The targets and details about the referrals were not immediately clear, and the panel’s chairman Bennie Thompson affirmed to reporters only that the panel would issue citations.January 6 report expected to focus on Trump’s role and potential culpabilityRead moreBut the decision to move forward with referrals comes days after a special four-member subcommittee established to consider the issue recommended that the full committee seek prosecution from the justice department for a number of individuals connected to January 6, two sources said.The referrals could follow two tracks: citations for things that Congress can request prosecution by statute, such as perjury or witness tampering, or wider-ranging recommendations such as making the case that Donald Trump obstructed an official proceeding on 6 January.At issue is the value of making referrals when the justice department could now be in a better position to asses potential crimes.The department in recent months has intensified its own parallel, criminal investigations into the Capitol attack and Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, subpoenaing dozens of Trump advisors and January 6 rally organizers to testify before at least two federal grand juries in Washington.The select committee might have once argued that it made sense to issue referrals for instance for lying to Congress because it alone could determine whether witnesses had made false statements to investigators.But with the panel committed to releasing all of its evidence and transcripts alongside the final report, the department might now be best placed to identify false or contradictory statements to Congress, given how federal prosecutors have now interviewed many of the same witnesses.The justice department has also previously issued charges even when Congress did not make overt referrals; Trump confidante Roger Stone was indicted and convicted in 2019 for lying to Congress, witness tampering and obstructing a House investigation when he appeared before the House intelligence committee.The four-member subcommittee led by Congressman Jamie Raskin and the other members with legal backgrounds – the vice-chair Liz Cheney, Adam Schiff and Zoe Lofgren – made its recommendations about referrals and subpoena noncompliance by Republican members of Congress privately on Friday.The move is likely to lead to intense speculation as the committee puts the finishing touches on its report into the insurrection at the Capitol and those who took part in it and the build up to the attack.The committee held a series of often dramatic public hearings over the summer where it presented some of its evidence and testimony from the many witnesses it called. The picture the committee painted was one of a plot to foil the certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 election win that was orchestrated by Donald Trump and some of his key allies in his White House. “The committee has determined that referrals to outside entities should be considered as a final part of its work. The committee will make decisions about specifics in the days ahead,” a spokesman for the panel said in a statement.The work of the committee has been the target of often baseless attacks by Trump and many others in the Republican party, who have sought to portray it as a partisan effort, despite the prominence of two rebel Republicans on the panel. But the narrow victory in the House by Republicans in last month’s midterm elections means it will now certainly be wound up as the party takes control of the lower chamber of Congress.TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsUS politicsDonald TrumpUS Capitol attacknewsReuse this content More

Trump Pac reportedly paid legal bills of Mar-a-Lago witnessesPolitical action committee paid bills of former Trump adviser Kash Patel and valet Walt Naud, who told FBI agents he moved boxes at Trump’s direction A report published by the Washington Post claims that money from Donald Trump’s political action committee paid the legal bills of some witnesses involved in the US justice department’s criminal inquiry into the former president’s improper handling of classified documents.They include the former Trump adviser Kash Patel, who was granted immunity last month for his grand jury testimony, the newspaper says, citing anonymous sources said to be familiar with the matter.Another is the valet Walt Nauda, who told FBI agents that he had moved boxes at Trump’s direction around his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida while the government was trying to retrieve documents and records that should have been preserved in Washington DC, according to the Post.The payment of witnesses’ legal fees by a political group whose purse strings Trump controls, while not illegal, raises ethical concerns and poses a conflict, the Post says.It quotes former federal prosecutor Jim Walden, who questioned if the payments to witnesses’ lawyers by the Trump fund influenced their testimony or level of cooperation.“It looks like the Trump political action committee is either paying for the silence of these witnesses, for them to take the fifth [amendment] or for favorable testimony,” he said, referring to the constitutional protection against self-incrimination.“These circumstances should look very suspicious to the justice department, and there’s a judicial mechanism for them to get court oversight if there’s a conflict.”Federal investigators are already looking into Trump Save America Pac, and in September subpoenaed two of the former president’s advisers, senior aide Stephen Miller and ex-director of White House political affairs Brian Jack, over fundraising for efforts to reverse his 2020 election defeat.The Guardian has reported previously how Trump retained documents bearing classification markings, along with communications from after his presidency, at his Florida resort following his departure from the White House in January 2021.FBI agents raided Trump’s private members’ club in August and uncovered thousands of documents, including hundreds marked classified, that his legal team insisted had already been returned to government archives. Nauda, the valet, told FBI investigators that Trump directed him to move boxes of documents around the property.The justice department’s criminal investigation is looking into whether Trump mishandled national security information, including whether he destroyed documents.Patel, who has already appeared before a grand jury in the case, is a key witness for his knowledge of the final days of the Trump administration and whether the ousted president, as he has insisted, moved to declassify documents he took with him to Florida.A judge granted immunity to Patel, who served in several lower-level positions in the Trump government, last month, ruling that the offer was the only way to guarantee his testimony. The Post report appears to cast doubt on the authenticity of that evidence.The report says Patel and Nauta are represented by the Washington DC attorneys Brand Woodward Law, which according to its website has experience in “white-collar defense” and “government and congressional investigations”.Public records show Trump’s Pac paid more than $120,000 to the firm. Stan Brand, the firm’s leading lawyer, told the Post there was “nothing improper” about the payments.“There’s no bar against third parties paying for legal fees as long as it’s disclosed to the client. The ethical obligation of the lawyer is to the client,” Brand said.“This is a tempest in a teapot and another cheap shot at these people because of who they work for.”The justice department investigation has ramped up in recent weeks, with the attorney general, Merrick Garland, appointing an independent special counsel last month to oversee its pace and direction. The veteran prosecutor and former justice department official Jack Smith will also supervise a parallel inquiry into Trump’s efforts to subvert the 2020 election.The former president suffered a significant blow last week in his attempt to delay the documents inquiry when a federal appeals court removed a special master previously appointed to review the seized papers.It paved the way for the justice department to regain access to the entirety of the materials for use in the criminal investigation.TopicsDonald TrumpUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

The Georgia Senate runoff is a referendum on Trump’s zombie grasp on AmericaRobert ReichThe biggest loser in a Raphael Warnock victory won’t be his Republican rival, Herschel Walker. It will be Donald Trump If Raphael Warnock wins today’s Senate runoff in Georgia, Senate Democrats will gain a 51-49 majority – providing them with some insurance if Arizona voters boot out Kyrsten Sinema in 2024, while at the same time reducing the power of the West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin to control the Democrat’s agenda.In other words: a win-win.But it could prove an even bigger Democratic win. That’s because the biggest loser in a Warnock victory won’t be his Republican rival, Herschel Walker.It will be Donald Trump.Walker’s entire candidacy was a Trump creation – not unlike Trump University, Trump Airline, Trump Vodka and Trump Steaks.And like those businesses, the Walker candidacy appears to have sunk under a miasma of ineptitude, lies and embarrassing allegations – in this case, of domestic abuse, semi-secret children and payments for abortions for multiple women.Trump encouraged Walker to run. Before Walker announced his campaign, Trump loudly hinted that the former NFL star was considering entering the race. Earlier this year, Trump went to Georgia to stump for him.But after the 2022 midterms, when so many Trump-endorsed candidates flamed out, Walker’s campaign asked Trump to please stay away. No more endorsements, rallies, stumps or joint appearances.Grudgingly, Trump complied. But his corpulent shadow has continued to dog Walker’s slipshod campaign.In many respects, Georgia is becoming Trump’s Waterloo.Earlier this year, Georgia’s Republicans rejected Trump’s chosen primary challengers to Governor Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.In a typical display of distemper, Trump targeted both for defeat after they refused to help him subvert the presidential election results in 2020.Recall that Trump had urged Kemp to support efforts aimed at decertifying his loss, and had threatened and pleaded with Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have”.These efforts are now the subject of a criminal lawsuit against Trump in Georgia.If Georgia is a bellwether for American politics, it has been pointing in a direction opposite Trump.In 2020, after enduring four years of Trump’s presidency, Georgians voted for a Democrat for president for the first time in 28 years, and also elected both Warnock and Democrat Jon Ossoff to the Senate.Trump’s endorsement has become such a kiss of death in Georgia that Warnock’s campaign ran ads consisting entirely of Trump praising Walker, along with the words “Stop Donald Trump” and “Stop Herschel Walker”.Georgia isn’t quite a microcosm of America. It’s more likely a microcosm of the future of America.Since 2000, the state’s population has surged, particularly among young people and people of color. The foreign-born population now exceeds 10% of the state’s total.Atlanta has become a hub of youthful innovation and knowledge work, including upwardly mobile Black professionals.Warnock and Walker are two Black men in a runoff contest created decades ago to thwart Black candidates. Georgia has never had two Black nominees compete for the Senate.Affirming Georgia’s status as a political keystone, the Democratic National Committee’s rules committee last Friday took a step toward making Georgia an early primary state.Across America, red states are gaining purple hues. Their more urban and educated precincts have become wealthier – and Democratic – while their white rural hinterlands remain economically stagnant, and Trump Republican.The same trend is apparent even in heavily Democratic states like California and New York, where economic and demographic changes are producing wealthier, more educated and diverse urban regions surrounded by outlying regions populated by an ever more precarious white working class – Trump’s base.The Trump base is no longer large enough to swing elections in Georgia or other key states. But it is big enough to destabilize America because of its continued receptiveness to Trump’s conspiracy theories and “big lie”.Trump’s growing desperation makes this an incendiary combination.His 2020 loss, the rejection of his candidates in the 2022 midterms, and the mounting lawsuits against him have made him even more intent on being the center of the nation’s attention, fueling his base’s paranoia, and winning, somehow.Three weeks ago, he delivered a lie-infested announcement that he was running again for the presidency.Two weeks ago, he openly dined with two infamous antisemites.On Saturday, he called for the constitution to be set aside because the 2020 election was stolen from him.Each bonkers escalation ratchets up pressure on Republican lawmakers to disavow him. Each turns off more moderate Republicans and independent voters. Each makes it less likely that Trump-endorsed candidates like Herschel Walker will be voted into office.But as these consequences play out, Trump’s desperation only increases.Where will this end?
Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com
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The US supreme court is poised to strike another blow against gay rightsMoira DoneganThe court is hearing a case that could allow the kind of naked discrimination that the gay rights and civil rights movements fought so hard to end It’s not clear what, exactly, Lorie Smith’s problem is. The Colorado woman aspires to be a web designer; apparently, she’s also upset that gay people can get married. Smith is an evangelical Christian who says that her faith makes her object to same-sex marriage.This wouldn’t be anyone’s problem, except that Smith lives in a state with a robust civil rights law, one that forbids business owners who make their services available to the public from discriminating. But Smith really wants to discriminate: she hopes to be able to turn away gay clients from her as-yet-hypothetical wedding website business; she wants to put a banner at the top of her business homepage proclaiming her unwillingness to design websites for gay weddings. The law would forbid this if she ever went into business, so she’s suing.As of now, none of this has actually come up. At the time Smith filed her lawsuit, demanding an exemption to her state’s law, she didn’t even have a business with which to discriminate. The law has never been enforced against her; she’s never had the opportunity to discriminate that she so craves. It’s not clear, in other words, that she really has standing to sue – she’s never been forced to provide services to gay people, so, in legal parlance, there’s no “injury” to speak of. But Smith is an angry conservative, and she’s found some very well-funded lawyers from the Alliance Defending Freedom, a huge rightwing legal organization that has embarked on a nationwide campaign of lawsuits to erode civil rights protections for gay people.The result is 303 Creative v Elenis, a case in which Smith argues that her religious convictions mean that she shouldn’t have to comply with a generally applicable civil rights law, and should be granted license to discriminate by her state. The US supreme court heard oral arguments on Monday, and the 6-3 conservative majority is certain to hand Smith a victory allowing her to deny service to clients based on sexual orientation.A decision from the court is expected next summer. The question, as happens so often with this rabidly conservative court, is not who is going to win. That question was probably answered the moment the court agreed to hear the case, to the point that briefings and oral arguments in hot-button culture and identity cases like 303 Creative have been rendered largely moot.The question, instead, is how far the court will go: how much the justices will unravel the anti-discrimination laws that govern public accommodations – that is, the laws that say that businesses which serve the public cannot deny service to people based on their identity – and how much discrimination, humiliation and bigotry in public life they will unleash upon gay Americans. The question is whether the speech that Smith can deploy in any other form of her life – any belief that she already has every right to broadcast online, or in her church, or in writing, or by holding a sign up in the street – is also an opinion she is entitled to enforce through the conduct of her business.If the 303 Creative case sounds familiar, that’s because it’s more or less a rerun. In 2018, the supreme court heard Masterpiece Cakeshop v Colorado Civil Rights Commission, another case by a business owner challenging the same state law, this time a baker who didn’t want to make a gay couple’s wedding cake. In that case, the court punted, ruling that lower tribunals had mishandled the case, but not making a decision on the merits about whether an individual businessperson’s opinions trumped civil rights law. But the court looked very different in 2018: that punting opinion was written by Anthony Kennedy, who retired soon thereafter and was replaced by his protege, the beer enthusiast Brett Kavanaugh. Since then the court has lurched even further to the right, and has shown a willingness to indulge even the most far-fetched claims of Christian religious litigants.But it’s worth considering what the court did not do when it agreed to hear 303 Creative: it did not grant certiorari on Smith’s claim that her religious freedom was violated by the anti-discrimination law. This is unusual, for this court: since the Trump justices joined the court, turning it from what was already a quite conservative institution into a maximalist, revanchist one with a culture-war axe to grind, the court has expanded free-exercise-of-religion rights quite rapidly – at least, so long as those free-exercise rights are being exercised by conservative Christians.The court has even specifically used the constitution’s free-exercise clause to imply an entitlement to discriminate against homosexuals: in last summer’s Fulton v Philadelphia, the justices ruled that municipal agencies handling the welfare of children in need were obliged to work with a religiously affiliated adoption agency, even though that agency discriminated against gay couples in violation of city civil rights law.But in 303 Creative the court is only considering Smith’s wish to discriminate as a free speech issue. This opens a new avenue for challenges to civil rights law, and will provide an opportunity for rightwing lawyers to begin unraveling the laws regarding non-discrimination in public accommodations in the wake of the civil rights movement, like pulling on a loose thread to unravel a sweater.Though Smith wants to discriminate only against gay couples, and other exemptions to civil rights law are likely to focus on allowing open bigotry against LGBTQ+ people to be expressed in commercial life, there is no limiting principle that means that only gay people will be targeted. After all, if a website designer is allowed to decline to make a gay wedding website, what stops her from making the same claim to refuse an interracial wedding, or an interfaith one? Is she allowed to decline to make sites for birth announcements of children born to gay couples, or via IVF?I keep thinking of the sign that Smith wants to put at the top of her future business’s webpage, the one that says she won’t make websites for gay weddings. It’s essentially an advertisement of her belief in gay people’s inferiority, an effort to exclude them not just from her own goodwill, but from commercial life. How different is such a sign, really, from those that advertised whites-only lunch counters, or the signs that the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg recalled seeing in the windows of shops when she went on family road trips as a child: “No dogs and no Jews”.It has become vogue, in rightwing legal arguments against civil rights law, to speak of the “indignity” imposed on anti-gay business owners who are forced to comply with anti-discrimination law. It’s a shame that the court doesn’t seem poised to consider the indignity of facing discrimination itself.
Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist
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