US Politics

House January 6 panel asks lawyer for Alex Jones’s accidentally leaked textsTwo years of messages were inadvertently sent by Infowars host’s attorney to lawyer for Sandy Hook victim’s family The House January 6 committee has asked the attorney for a family suing Alex Jones for defamation to turn over up to two years’ worth of text messages from the far-right conspiracy theorist’s phone that he inadvertently received from the defense ahead of the trial.The request from the select committee – and another from federal law enforcement – was confirmed in an Austin, Texas, courtroom on Thursday by Mark Bankston, the lawyer for the parents of a child killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting, which Jones has falsely claimed was a hoax.Damaging Alex Jones texts mistakenly sent to Sandy Hook family’s lawyersRead moreNotably, Bankston said he had identified texts between Jones and Roger Stone, a far-right political operative and adviser to former president Donald Trump thought to be connected to the Capitol attack. He also said he intended to comply with the requests unless a court order instructed him not to.The inadvertent transfer of the texts to Bankston, as well as his readiness to turn them over, could mark an extraordinary stroke of luck for the January 6 panel after Jones invoked his constitutional right against self-incrimination in a deposition earlier in the committee’s investigation.Bankston has said in court that Jones’s texts cover a roughly two-year period dating back to 2019, which if true would include his communications from the weeks after the 2020 election that Trump lost to Joe Biden and leading up to the Capitol attack the defeated president’s supporters carried out in early 2021.But the Infowars host disputed that the texts to which Bankston has referred would contain anything of interest to the January 6 committee, saying on his show on Thursday that they actually covered a six-month period from 2019 to early 2020.The texts are potentially significant because Jones has claimed that on 3 January 2020 he was asked by the Trump White House and the Secret Service to lead a march from the Ellipse to the Capitol three days later. Just such an action by Trump supporters on 6 January disrupted the congressional certification of Biden’s presidential victory. The texts could shed light on the extent – if any – of that coordination.Jones’s claim that he was asked asked to lead that march is striking because the panel has heard that Trump later told an adviser he was unaware about such plans, according to a source familiar with the matter.Details about that supposed request from the Trump White House have been scarce. The committee has struggled to verify the Infowars host’s claims through records from the Secret Service after agents’ texts from January 6 were unlawfully erased.A committee spokesperson declined to comment on Jones’s texts.The confirmation from Bankston on Thursday that he was prepared to turn over the text messages was the latest twist in a bizarre saga that could have far-reaching consequences for Jones, particularly as the justice department steps up its criminal investigation into January 6.Bankston revealed he was in possession of the texts a day earlier, when he told Jones – while he was on the witness stand – that his legal team had “messed up” and provided “an entire digital copy of your entire cellphone with every text message” from the past two years.Those messages included texts that contradicted claims made under oath that Jones had nothing on his phone pertaining to the Sandy Hook shooting.Bankston said he immediately alerted Jones’s attorneys to the apparent error but they never took steps to keep the communications out of court by labeling them as privileged.Jones’s attorney, Andino Reynal, requested a mistrial on Thursday, over the purportedly accidental leak. The attorney argued that he feared the text message leak was introduced in court simply to create more press coverage, the Associated Press earlier reported.The emergency motion from Reynal sought the return and destruction of the documents, saying the defence had told Bankston to disregard the link to the files with the text messages, which also included messages from Robert Barnes, Jones’s other lawyer with ties to Stone.But the trial judge, Maya Guerra Gamble of Travis county, denied the motion.Reynal also asked Guerra Gamble to block the release of materials on Jones’s phone to anyone, including the January 6 committee. Guerra Gamble said she would let Reynal indicate what he wants to keep confidential, and then she would review that request, adding that she wasn’t sure she could block a subpoena, according to the Austin American-Statesman newspaper.Jurors in the defamation case brought against Jones by Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis – the father and mother of Jesse Lewis, a six-year-old murdered in the Sandy Hook shooting – began deliberations late on Wednesday afternoon.They resumed on Thursday, the ninth day of a trial which saw Jones apologize and admit that the 2012 shooting at the elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, was “100% real”.Jones previously spent years claiming that the 20 children and six adults murdered at Sandy Hook were not killed and instead – along with their grieving loved ones – were “crisis actors” carrying out an elaborate ruse to force gun control reform.Heslin and Lewis sued Jones for defamation and inflicting emotional stress, saying they suffered mental distress, death threats and harassment. They have demanded at least $150m, saying an apology would not be enough.Jones lost on the merits of the case by default, because he failed to provide any documents in response to the lawsuit. The jury is deciding how much he owes Lewis and Heslin in compensation. In a later phase, it will determine whether he should pay punitive damages.TopicsUS newsUS politicsUS Capitol attackNewtown shootingnewsReuse this content More

Democrat apologises for saying Biden won’t run in 2024 – then says it againCarolyn Maloney says sorry for broaching the issue in a debate but that she will support Biden if he does seek a second term A senior New York Democrat predicted on Thursday that Joe Biden will not run for re-election in 2024, even as she apologised for saying that previously and also said she would support him if he did stand again.On the chopping block? Ron Johnson denies threatening social securityRead moreSpeaking to CNN, the congresswoman Carolyn Maloney said sorry for broaching the issue in a debate – but then said again she thought Biden would not run.“Mr President, I apologise,” Maloney said, of her remark on Tuesday, when she said she did not “believe” Biden would seek a second term.She added: “I want you to run.”But then Maloney said: “I happen to think you won’t be running. But when you run, or if you run, I will be there 100%. You have deserved it. You are a great president, and thank you for everything you’ve done for my state, and all the states, and all the cities in America. Thank you, Mr President.”Maloney, 76, and Biden, 79, are senior figures in a Democratic party some members say should be led by younger figures. Maloney’s primary opponent in New York, the House judiciary chair, Jerry Nadler, is 75.Debating Maloney on Tuesday, Nadler said it was “too early to say” if Biden should run for re-election, and said “it doesn’t serve the purpose of the Democratic party” to debate the issue before the midterm elections in November.Among mooted successors to Biden, the vice-president, Kamala Harris, is 57; Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, is 54; and Pete Buttigieg, the transportation secretary, is 40.Biden was 78 when he was inaugurated in January 2021, the oldest president ever to take office. He will turn 82 shortly after the 2024 election. If he were to win that contest, he would be 86 by the end of his time in office.Republicans claim Biden is too old to perform his duties properly. Democrats reject such claims.Biden has repeatedly said he intends to run again. But polls consistently show majorities of Democrats and all voters saying he should not do so.As one voter who spoke to The Focus Group with Sarah Longwell, a Bulwark podcast, put it recently: “It’s not the 82 that’s the problem. It’s the 86.”As a 76-year-old let me say: Joe Biden is too old to run again | Robert ReichRead moreIn a recent Guardian column, Robert Reich, 76 and a former labor secretary in a Democratic administration, echoed such concerns.“It’s not death that’s the worrying thing about a second Biden term,” Reich wrote. “It’s the dwindling capacities that go with ageing.“… I think my generation – including Bill and Hillary Clinton, George W Bush, Donald Trump, Newt Gingrich, Clarence Thomas, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and Biden – have fucked it up royally. The world will probably be better without us.“Joe, please don’t run.”TopicsDemocratsJoe BidenUS elections 2024US politicsNew YorknewsReuse this content More

On the chopping block? Ron Johnson denies threatening social securitySpokesman for Wisconsin senator targeted by Democrats in midterms says he is not trying to end spending on key programs A swing-state Republican senator denied threatening social security and Medicare, after Democrats accused him of putting them “on the chopping block”.‘I can’t live on $709 a month’: Americans on social security push for its expansionRead moreRon Johnson, who entered Congress on the Tea Party wave of 2010, is up for re-election in Wisconsin. As they attempt to keep hold of the Senate, Democrats think they have a chance of winning the seat.In an interview with The Regular Joe Show podcast, Johnson said social security and Medicare, crucial support programs for millions of older and disabled Americans and their dependents, should no longer be considered mandatory spending.“If you qualify for the entitlement, you just get it no matter what the cost,” Johnson said. “And our problem in this country is that more than 70% of our federal budget, of our federal spending, is all mandatory spending. It’s on automatic pilot … you just don’t do proper oversight. You don’t get in there and fix the programs going bankrupt.”He added: “What we ought to be doing is we ought to turn everything into discretionary spending so it’s all evaluated so that we can fix problems or fix programs that are broken, that are going to be going bankrupt. As long as things are on automatic pilot, we just continue to pile up debt.”Democrats pounced. Chuck Schumer of New York, the Senate majority leader, referred to Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan when he said: “They’re saying the quiet part out loud. Maga Republicans want to put social security and Medicare on the chopping block.”A Johnson spokesperson said Schumer was “lying”.The spokesperson said Johnson’s “point was that without fiscal discipline and oversight typically found with discretionary spending, Congress has allowed the guaranteed benefits for programs like social security and Medicare to be threatened.“This must be addressed by Congress taking its responsibilities seriously to ensure that seniors don’t need to question whether the programs they depend on remain solvent.”Social security payments average just over $1,600 a month.Last year, Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, told the Guardian: “The nation is really facing a retirement income crisis, where too many people aren’t going to be able to retire and maintain savings to live on. It’s a very strong system, but its benefits are extremely low by virtually any way you measure them.”Democrats see Republican threats to so-called “entitlements” – programs paid for by taxes and relied upon by vulnerable people – as a potent electoral issue. Polls show strong bipartisan support.From Joe Biden to leaders in Congress, Democrats have seized on a plan published by Rick Scott of Florida, the chair of the Republican Senate campaign committee.Scott proposed that all Americans should pay some income tax and that all federal laws should expire after five years if Congress does not renew them.The senator insisted he was “not going to raise anybody’s taxes” – despite saying more people should pay tax. He also said Congress “needs to start being honest with the American public and tell them exactly what we’re going to do to make sure they continue to get their Medicare and their social security”.But his own leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said: “We will not have, as part of our agenda, a bill that raises taxes on half the American people and sunsets social security and Medicare within five years.”Wisconsin will hold its primaries on Tuesday. Johnson is being challenged by the current lieutenant governor, Mandela Barnes.Jessica Taylor of the Cook Political Report told Wisconsin Public Radio Johnson was national Democrats’ “No 1 incumbent … that they are targeting”.TopicsRepublicansWisconsinUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

The Kansas victory shows that Democrats can fight for abortion rights and winMoira DoneganEven in conservative Kansas, abortion rights are popular. The Democrats need to stop shying away from abortion and make it a campaign issue It wasn’t even close; it was a blowout. With an unexpectedly large turnout and a huge margin, Kansas voters on Tuesday rejected a measure that would have removed the right to an abortion from their state’s constitution. Nearly 60% of voters in the deeply conservative state rejected the anti-abortion measure. Only about 40% supported it.Tuesday’s primaries offered a glint of hope for Democrats this fall | Lloyd GreenRead moreThe so-called Value Them Both Act would have dramatically devalued women in Kansas. The bill was designed to amend the state’s constitution in response to a 2019 ruling by the state supreme court, which found that abortion was protected in the state charter’s guarantee of “equal and inalienable rights” to all citizens. In contrast to the US supreme court, the Kansas court rejected the idea that civil rights were frozen in time at the time of the document’s ratification; instead, they extended those equal rights to women. “We are now asked: is this declaration of rights more than an idealized aspiration?” the court wrote. “And, if so, do the substantive rights include a woman’s right to make decisions about her body, including the decision whether to continue her pregnancy? We answer these questions, ‘Yes.’” Overwhelmingly, by a margin of roughly 20 points, Kansan voters agreed with them.It was the first electoral test of support for abortion rights since the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade in June, and the results were unambiguous. Even in conservative Kansas, abortion rights are popular with most Americans. Even in conservative Kansas, abortion bans are offensive to them.On paper, this shouldn’t have been surprising. Americans have a wide range of opinions on abortion, but broadly, the notion that women and others should have a legal right to end their pregnancy is very popular, capturing somewhere between 60% and 70% support. Accordingly, ballot initiatives asking voters to restrict abortion tend to fail, according to New York Magazine correspondent Irin Carmon. A measure that would have granted personhood rights to fetuses and embryos failed in very conservative Mississippi in 2011. A municipal ballot measure that aimed to ban abortions after 20 weeks in the city of Albuquerque, New Mexico, failed by a large margin in an unusually high-turnout election in 2013. When South Dakota passed an abortion ban in 2006, pro-choice advocates managed to collect enough signatures to put the measure to a popular vote. The electorate threw that out, too.The US supreme court’s ruling overturning Roe v Wade is particularly unpopular with the public, and has incited renewed passion for the pro-choice cause. According to polling from CNN, 63% of Americans – almost two-thirds – say they disapprove of the court’s ruling. A little more than half of them, 51%, say they disapprove “strongly”. This public outrage is clearly translating into votes. After the court reversed Roe on 24 June, many states saw a surge in new voter registrations. In Kansas, 70% of those new voters were women.There were some indications that the anti-abortion side was nervous, even before their resounding defeat on election day. They played dirty. The vote was scheduled for a blindingly hot primary day in August, when turnouts are usually low and Republicans fare better. In the days before the election, a Republican-aligned firm in Nevada sent out texts to Kansas voters. “Women in Kansas are losing their choice on reproductive rights,” the texts read. “Voting YES on the Amendment will give women a choice. Vote YES to protect women’s health.” A yes vote on the constitutional amendment would have been a vote against abortion rights. Clearly, the anti-choice Republicans didn’t think they could win on the merits. Turns out, they couldn’t.But you would never know how resoundingly popular abortion rights are from the behavior of the Democrats, who for the past three decades, and since the election of Donald Trump specifically, have been allergic to full-throated defenses of reproductive rights and other so-called “culture war” issues.The party’s centrist leadership has made the calculation that only economic issues – defined, in practice, as issues that affect white men – can garner voters’ enthusiasm. The Biden administration was flat-footed and inept in its response to Dobbs, agreeing to take only the flimsiest and most risk-averse steps to restore abortion access and alienating huge swaths of its base as it attempted to keep the focus on its efforts to curb inflation. Biden hardly ever even says “abortion”. You get the sense he would much rather not be talking about it at all.But the results in Kansas suggest that he should be. The ballot initiative on abortion produced a massive turnout. Abortion rights got considerably more electoral support than Joe Biden did in most Kansas counties. It’s a so-called “culture war” issue that brought voters out in droves to vote for a Democratic agenda item. The Kansas vote shows that the overturning of Roe has created a moral emergency that voters will respond to. Ignoring these “culture war” issues does not make the Democrats look sensible and moderate. It makes them look like cowards, running away from a fight.What Republicans want to do to America, especially with regard to abortion rights, is unpopular. More importantly, it is anti-democratic and immoral. This is a fight that the voters want to take on. It’s time for the Democratic party to join them.
Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist
TopicsUS politicsOpinionDemocratsAbortionRoe v WadecommentReuse this content More

Time is running out. The Department of Justice must indict and convict TrumpLaurence H Tribe and Dennis AftergutIf Trump or any of the likely Republican nominees win in 2024, they will immediately move to protect those who attempted to overturn the 2020 election On Tuesday CNN reported that key January 6 texts have been erased by officials of Donald Trump’s defense department in addition to homeland security and the Secret Service. Not even a clueless Hamlet could avoid smelling “something rotten in the state of Denmark”.With the growing list of deletions, there is a whole new criminal conspiracy to investigate: one to destroy evidence of the grave federal crimes already under investigation. Nothing so focuses the prosecutorial mind or underscores the need to accelerate a criminal investigation as evidence that the investigation’s target may have plotted to erase the proof of his wrongdoing that is needed to hold him accountable.Trump’s attempted coup continues – even after January 6 hearings are over for now | Robert ReichRead moreThe attorney general, Merrick Garland, knows that the fish always rots from the head. On 26 July, the Washington Post broke news that the justice department’s investigation is focused on Donald Trump himself. Time is of the essence in bringing his case to indictment.Indeed, a moving target who gives every indication that he plans to strike again must trigger a different cost-benefit calculus in the inevitable debates both within and outside the justice department about when enough proof has been gathered to indict responsibly – and when it would be a dereliction of duty to delay further.The former president’s insistence that he has nothing to be remorseful about (other than not marching to the Capitol) makes that debate seem academic. And the steps being taken at his behest even now in battleground states to replace 2020’s failure with 2024’s success redouble the urgency. Shakespeare’s Brutus had it right when he said, in Julius Caesar: “We must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures.”In these circumstances, prudence counsels running the clock backwards to set clear benchmarks for moving forward. Any calculation of how to proceed must start with two pessimistic premises. First, that Trump will run in 2024 and could win. Second, that if any of the likely Republican nominees wins, the next administration will be one that is eager to scrap any prosecution of the last.Hence, the goal must be to secure a conviction before November 2024, and in any event, no later than 20 January 2025, when the next presidential term begins. It is already too late for all appeals from any such conviction to be exhausted by that date, but the key to holding the chief conspirator accountable is a jury verdict of guilt.Consider this: the trial of insurrectionist Guy Reffitt occurred 13 months after his original indictment. That trial, and its delaying pre-trial motions, were incalculably less complex than Trump’s would be. One can easily anticipate motions that, if denied, might go far up the appellate chain.It is not hard to imagine a majority of supreme court justices in no great hurry to resolve motions upon which the start of trial could depend. One can easily conceive a 20-month or longer period with the former president indicted but not yet tried. If Trump is not formally charged until January 2023, that would imply a multi-month trial starting in September or October. Should he run for president and win in November, we would have a president-elect in the middle of a criminal trial.Part of why a lengthy post-indictment/pre-verdict period is foreseeable is that federal district courts are bound to protect an accused’s rights to full airing of pre-trial claims and the time needed to file and argue them. Trump will have many pre-trial claims, setting out his serial and inexhaustible list of grievances, the imagined violation of his rights, his purported immunity from prosecution as a former president and the overriding unfairness of it all.Some district court judges more than others will balance protections for the accused with accountability’s pragmatic need for speed. Importantly, even the four Trump-appointed district court judges in DC have often shown little sympathy for those charged with perpetrating the events of January 6 or resisting their investigation. On 1 August, Judge Dabney Friedrich sentenced Reffitt to more than seven years in prison, the longest sentence to date.Judge Tim Kelly refused to dismiss indictments against Proud Boy leaders who were part of the January 6 siege. Judge Carl Nichols brooked no nonsense in Steve Bannon’s July trial, deliberately preventing it from becoming the “political circus” Bannon sought to make it.On the other hand, among eight judges who have considered defendants’ motions to dismiss federal charges of obstructing an official government proceeding – Congress’s January 6 election certification session – Nichols was the lone outlier who dismissed the count. That is one of the main charges that observers believe federal prosecutors could bring against Trump.The point is that if Trump were to be indicted, the Department of Justice cannot count on a favorable judge putting it on a jet stream to an actual trial. So what does that mean for precisely when Trump must be formally indicted?Thankfully, it doesn’t imply the impossible. The Department of Justice could pull an experienced prosecutor or two from every US attorney’s office and put them together on the case.With all stops pulled, prosecutors still have time to do what is needed before year end. The tasks include talking to witnesses that the January 6 House committee interviewed and deposed, which is well under way. Cassidy Hutchinson, principal aide to Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows, and Vice-President Mike Pence’s top aides, Marc Short and Greg Jacobs, are now working with the Department of Justice or appearing before its grand jury.Cooperation is already reported to have begun among the lawyer-enablers of Trump’s coup plotting. With the investigation’s accelerating aim at Trump, every potential target’s defense counsel has surely discussed with the target the advantages of an early offer to plead guilty and cooperate. Early birds get better worms.On 2 August, the federal grand jury investigating the lead-up to the January 6 insurrection subpoenaed the former White House counsel Pat Cipollone. Department of Justice prosecutors are reported to be preparing to go to court to secure his testimony about his conversations with Trump if Cipollone again declines to disclose them on grounds of executive privilege.The task ahead is massive, but if attacked with supreme urgency, it can get done. The building blocks for a trial of Donald Trump must be put into place with alacrity. In no case more than this one, the perfect cannot be the enemy of the good. The clock is ticking.
Laurence H Tribe is the Carl M Loeb University professor and professor of constitutional law emeritus at Harvard Law School
Dennis Aftergut is a former federal prosecutor, currently of counsel to Lawyers Defending American Democracy
TopicsUS politicsOpinionDonald TrumpUS Capitol attackJanuary 6 hearingsRepublicansMerrick GarlandcommentReuse this content More

Election denialism remains powerful in Republican politicsRepublican nominees in Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania are on the verge of claiming offices where they would have enormous power over elections Get the latest updates on voting rights in the Guardian’s Fight to vote newsletterHello, and Happy Thursday,I’m writing this as we’re still digesting the results of Tuesday’s primary elections in several states, the latest test of whether Republican candidates who have embraced lies about the 2020 election can get the backing of GOP voters. So far, the results only add to the considerable evidence showing election denialism remains remarkably powerful in Republican politics.One of the most consequential results on Tuesday was in Arizona, where Mark Finchem, a state lawmaker, easily won the Republican nomination to run for secretary of state, a position from which he would oversee elections. Few people in Arizona have fought as aggressively to overturn the 2020 election as Finchem has – he first tried to block Congress from recognizing Joe Biden’s legitimate victory in the state, and has since sought to spread misinformation and decertify the election, which is not possible.Finchem now joins Kristina Karamo in Michigan, Jim Marchant in Nevada, and Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania as Republican nominees on the verge of claiming offices where they would have enormous power over elections (Karamo and Marchant are running for secretary of state, Mastriano is running for governor, where he would get to appoint the secretary of state). So far, three of the four secretary of state candidates Trump has endorsed have won (the one exception came in Georgia’s primary).“Having even one election denier in a statewide office would be a five-alarm fire for our elections,” Joanna Lydgate, CEO of States United Action, which is tracking election deniers running for office, said in a statement. “Recent primaries – particularly in Arizona and Michigan – should worry all of us as Americans. But voters have the power here. They can slow this trend in the primaries to come, and they can stop it in its tracks in the general election.”Before Tuesday’s vote, Finchem, who was endorsed by Trump, encouraged supporters to congregate at voting sites to watch for wrongdoing. “Stand 75ft away from the entrance of the polls,” Finchem told a crowd recently, according to the Arizona Mirror. “The mere fact that you are there watching scares the hell out of them.”“If Mark Finchem is victorious this November, it could jeopardize the integrity of the 2024 presidential election and possibly could subvert the will of the people for years to come,” Ellen Kurtz, the founder and president of iVote, a liberal group focused on voting rights and elections, said in a statement. “No one who attempts to stop the peaceful transfer of power by attending a violent, deadly attack on our Capitol deserves to be on any ballot.”There’s deep concern that these officials, if elected, could use the power of their office to attempt to overturn the results of a valid election.Last week, I asked Chuck Coughlin, a Republican consultant in Arizona, what he thought Finchem would do if he was in charge of a future election and the result was in doubt. “He would not fall in line. He would follow the Donald Trump script of doing everything possible to be a disrupter if the election outcome is anything but what he wanted. I don’t see any go-along-to-get-along in Mark Finchem,” he told me.Kari Lake, a Republican who made election denialism a pillar of her campaign, also is leading in the Arizona governor’s race. Votes are still being counted, but if she wins, it would place election denialism front and center in a state where top Republicans have aggressively embraced it.There was one other big victory for Trump on Tuesday. Rusty Bowers, the term-limited GOP speaker of the Arizona House, lost his primary to a Trump-backed challenger in a state senate race. Bowers played a central role in rebuffing Trump’s efforts to overturn the election in his state and was censured by the state GOP after he testified in front of the panel investigating the January 6 attack.Acknowledging the headwinds he faced for going against the former president, Bowers told NBC before the primary it would be a “miracle” if he won.Also worth watching …
Arizona’s attorney general debunked a claim from Cyber Ninjas that nearly 300 dead people could have voted in the 2020 election in Arizona
Some voters were stealing pens from voting sites in Arizona, egged on by a conspiracy theory
A retired supreme court justice hired by Wisconsin Republicans to review the 2020 race publicly said in March lawmakers should consider decertifying the race. Privately, he said doing so was “a practical impossibility”.
TopicsUS midterm elections 2022Fight to voteUS politicsUS voting rightsRepublicansfeaturesReuse this content More

MyPillow chief spends tens of millions in fresh crusade to push Trump’s big lie Mike Lindell says he has poured up to $40m into wave of lawsuits and a new movie as US experts warn of threat to democracyMyPillow chief executive Mike Lindell, a fervent Donald Trump ally, says he has poured $35-40m into a wide crusade – a wave of lawsuits to get rid of voting machines that he faults for Trump’s defeat, a new movie about voting fraud, and a hefty legal stable – to promote charges that the 2020 election was riddled with fraud, despite a flood of contrary evidence.In his frenetic quest to dispense with electronic voting equipment that he has often charged are defective, Lindell is hosting a two-day “Moment of Truth” summit on 20 and 21 August in Missouri, that he expects will draw 200 federal and state officials and staff, as well as hundreds of representatives from groups nationwide who have investigated election fraud this year and in 2020.Trump lawyers feel heat as legal net tightens on plot to overturn electionRead moreOn a related front to boost his cause, a small segment of the summit will feature 10 conservative sheriffs who have become increasingly active in fighting purported election fraud, who Lindell told the Guardian he invited so they would have “a platform to get their voices heard”.One leading voice is slated to be former Arizona sheriff Richard Mack, who runs the rightwing Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA). The organization hosted a July meeting in Las Vegas that Lindell attended and publicized via a TV operation he owns, and has taken the unorthodox step of making monitoring election fraud its top priority, which Mack has dubbed a “holy cause”.The upcoming Lindell summit underscores the growing roles of him and his allies in a sprawling network waging a multi-front war to push Trump’s “big lie” about the 2020 elections, and mobilize activists to ramp up their scrutiny of the fall elections as poll workers and poll watchers. These moves could curb voting rights and intimidate voters, say election watchdogs.The “big lie” network has been bolstered by other multimillionaires including Patrick Byrne, the former chief executive of Overstock, and at least $1m from a Donald Trump political action committee.Byrne co-founded the America Project with retired army Lt Gen Michael Flynn just a few months after they attended a meeting with Trump in December 2020, where wild schemes to overturn Joe Biden’s win were discussed. He has boasted of pouring $3m into a self -styled “election integrity” drive to hunt for potential fraud by training activists in poll watching and canvassing.Non-partisan election spending analysts warn of threats to democracy in the new voting blitzes that mega-donors who promote Trump’s “big lie” are underwriting.“Mega-donor spending, long associated with Super Pacs and non-profits, is now also aimed at shaping even how our elections are administered,” said Sheila Krumholz, who leads OpenSecrets, which tracks campaign money. “Election administration is critical infrastructure in a democracy and should not be determined by partisan power-brokers.”However, the burgeoning “big lie” ecosystem seems to have other priorities: it includes nonprofits such as the Texas-based True the Vote, which co-sponsored the CSPOA Las Vegas summit in July, and has teamed up with another sheriffs’ group, Protect America Now, run by Arizona sheriff Mark Lamb, to form an alliance to police this year’s voting for fraud.Another influential activist with strong fundraising ties on the right is Cleta Mitchell, a former Trump campaign lawyer who has spearheaded numerous “election integrity” summits in key swing states and is a leading figure at the Conservative Partnership Institute, to which Trump’s leadership Pac last year gave $1m.Mitchell participated in Trump’s infamous call on 2 January 2021 with the Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger, where Trump urged him to “find” 11,870 votes to block Biden’s win there. Mitchell was subpoenaed last month by a special grand jury in Georgia investigating whether Trump’s call and other related efforts broke state laws.The “big lie” advocates have spent tens of millions of dollars pushing baseless claims of widespread election fraud in 2020 as they have built an infrastructure of loyalists in swing states to be poll watchers and poll workers, and helped enact new laws in 18 states since 2021 that include new limits on absentee voting and other measures to make voting more difficult.Despite powerful evidence presented to the House panel investigating the January 6 Capitol attack, including former attorney general Bill Barr’s comments that he told Trump there was no evidence of significant fraud in 2020, and numerous studies showing that voting fraud is historically small, the pro-Trump network seems to be growing.“It is troubling to see conspiracy theorists investing money in a network designed to spread their lies about the 2020 election,” said Sean Morales-Doyle, the acting director of the voting rights and elections program at the Brennan Center for Justice. “They are using those conspiracies in an attempt to cause real harm to voters, and to our democracy. In the search for non-existent fraud, they are turning American citizens against their neighbors, who seek only to exercise their fundamental right to vote.”Morales-Doyle added: “Now, it seems that election deniers have begun recruiting law enforcement to their cause. At a time when both voters and election workers have cause to fear intimidation and harassment, it is shameful that law enforcement officers would compound that fear rather than offering them protection.”Some police chiefs too are very troubled by law enforcement officials getting involved in elections.“There’s no place for politics in policing,” Paul Penzone, the police chief of Arizona’s Maricopa county, told the Guardian. “We are seeing a radical movement, including some local law enforcement, of people who are committed to destroying trust in our system for their own selfish gain.“We must fight against it, or our nation will no longer be the democratic standard.”Critics notwithstanding, “big lie” advocacy looks to be broadening.For instance, Lindell’s efforts to wage war on alleged voting fraud have expanded in recent months as he has financed lawsuits to ditch voting machines in numerous states including Arizona, which Biden won. He also plowed about $1m into a new film on voting fraud by former Fox News reporter Lara Logan, which is slated to debut at his summit.Lindell predicts the film will have a “huge” impact. Logan, who was ousted from Fox after making an incendiary comparison between Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to the president, and the infamous Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, told Lindell she could “[not] find any place where there wasn’t fraud.”The summit, which will be broadcast on Lindell TV and streamed on Lindell’s FrankSpeech.com, is also scheduled to include several of the lawyers Lindell has tapped for his litigation, plus a team of cyber specialists who have done research on election fraud, Lindell said.The upcoming summit seems to underscore other ties that Lindell has been forging with Mack, the former sheriff, and his association. Mack’s Las Vegas meeting was live-streamed on Lindell’s eponymous Lindell TV, and Lindell interviewed Mack, a former board member of the far-right Oath Keepers, on his own show, The Lindell Report, on 13 July. Lindell and Mack also held a joint press event in Las Vegas where they touted how sheriffs could play key roles in fighting alleged voting fraud.Mack’s Las Vegas event also garnered more exposure due to True the Vote’s co-sponsoring, a move that reflects the Texas group’s aggressive drive to mobilize sheriffs to monitor elections.True the Vote’s recent launch of ProtectAmerica.Vote, in tandem with Arizona sheriff Mark Lamb, highlights a burgeoning alliance between the group and some sheriffs.The website for ProtectAmerica.Vote offers a sweeping mission statement that includes efforts to “empower sheriffs” and “connect citizens and sheriffs” as part of a wide-ranging drive to ferret out potential voting fraud.Other drives to promote Trump’s big lie have witnessed more fundraising and alliances to help beef up voting scrutiny for the fall elections.Mitchell’s summits, for instance, have benefited from strong links to well-heeled conservative groups who have been co-sponsors, including Tea Party Patriots Action and FreedomWorks. As senior legal fellow at CPI, Mitchell has led the summits in swing states such as Georgia, Arizona, Pennsylvania and North Carolina, and boasted of creating a “movement” to fight alleged voting fraud by recruiting poll watchers and poll workers.To that end, Mitchell and CPI have helped set up local and state taskforces, and supplied a 19-page “Citizens’ Guide to Building an Election Integrity Infrastructure”. The CPI manual suggests traditional poll monitoring methods, plus, ominously, urging its activists to be “ever-present” inside election offices and to follow “every step” of vote-by-mail operations.Further, CPI has witnessed a big jump in its overall revenues, which benefit a variety of the group’s conservative programs, including its election integrity initiative, since last year, when it recruited Mitchell and Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows as senior partner. Founded by former South Carolina senator Jim DeMint in 2017, CPI raked in $19.7m in 2021, up from $7.3m in 2020, according to its latest annual report.Besides hauling in $1m from Trump’s leadership Pac, the group seems to have gotten a boost from a letter Trump wrote, praising its role “helping to build out the vital infrastructure we need to lead the America First movement to new heights”.Meanwhile, when Byrne unveiled the America Project’s “election integrity” drive, dubbed Operation Eagles Wings, that he ponied up $3m to launch this year, he named Flynn and longtime Trump confidant Roger Stone as special advisers. The move set off alarm bells with voting watchdogs such as Morales-Doyle, who deemed it a “sham”, in part because of the duo’s ties to several Oath Keepers and Proud Boys charged in the Capitol attack.Byrne, like Stone and Flynn, is known for conspiratorial and debunked efforts to prove the 2020 election was rigged. With Operation Eagles Wings he has boasted of plans to educate “election reform activists” to handle election canvassing, grassroots work and fundraising “to expose shenanigans at the ballot box.”Byrne has described the operation’s mission as ensuring “there are no repeats of the errors that happened in the 2020 election”, and stressed the “need to protect the voting process from election meddlers who care only about serving crooked special-interest groups that neither respect nor value the rule of law”.Looking ahead, Morales -Doyle stressed that the Trump-allied election denialist movement poses multiple threats to democracy.“The ramifications of the lie that the 2020 election was rigged reach far beyond the events of January 6. This lie has fueled a variety of new threats to our democracy, including changes to state law, harassment of election workers, and the recruitment of poll watchers, poll workers, and vigilante canvassers.”Still, he added: “We must keep in mind that our democracy is resilient, and that there are federal and state laws in place to protect voters and others from those that seek to undermine it.”TopicsUS newsDonald TrumpRepublicansUS politicsUS elections 2020newsReuse this content More

Pro-Israel groups denounced after pouring funds into primary raceGroups accused of using Republican mega-donors to hijack Democratic primaries following the defeat of Jewish congressman Hawkish pro-Israel lobby groups have been accused of using Republican mega-donors to hijack Democratic primaries following the “alarming” defeat of a prominent Jewish congressman because he criticised Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) spent more than $4m to defeat Andy Levin in Tuesday’s Democratic primary for a congressional seat in north-western Detroit.Levin, who comes from a distinguished political dynasty including his father and an uncle who served long stints as Democrats in Congress, said he had been “the target of a largely Republican-funded campaign” because he dissented from Aipac’s support for hardline Israeli policies.Aipac poured funds into supporting Levin’s opponent, Haley Stevens, who won with about 60% of the vote. The lobby group heralded her victory as evidence that “being pro-Israel is both good policy and good politics”. But critics noted that much of Aipac’s spending was on negative campaigning against Levin that did not mention Israel.Levin was backed by the more liberal pro-Israel group, J Street. It contrasted Aipac’s endorsement of more than 100 Republican members of Congress who voted against certifying Joe Biden’s presidential election victory with the “onslaught of rightwing outside spending and baseless smears” to defeat a progressive candidate with a history of supporting unions and civil rights.Aipac, through its political action committee, the United Democracy Project, has raised millions of dollars from Republican billionaires such as the Trump campaign funders Paul Singer and Bernie Marcus to defeat candidates not considered pro-Israel enough.Other pro-Israel groups, such as the Democratic Majority for Israel and Pro-Israel America, have also spent heavily to oppose candidates regarded as anti-Israel in Democratic primaries from Texas to Ohio and California.“This aggressive intervention in Democratic primaries – by a group funded in part by Republican mega-donors – to promote an unpopular agenda is harmful to American foreign policy, to the Democratic party and ultimately to the State of Israel,” said J Street, which is more critical of Israeli policies that perpetuate domination of the Palestinians.In an interview with the Guardian during the campaign, Levin warned that Aipac’s involvement raised the specter of the entire primary process being hijacked by well-funded lobbies such as big oil and the gun industry.“I don’t think the Democratic party can really stand for it and maintain the integrity of our own elections,” he said.Following his defeat, Levin said he “will continue to speak out against the corrosive influence of dark money on our democracy”.J Street has called on Democratic candidates to decline Aipac’s support, saying that it is intended to warn politicians against criticism of Israel’s actions or risk a well-funded campaign against them.“With their overwhelming spending, Aipac hopes to send an intimidating message to others: cross our red lines, and you could be next. While political space for open and healthy debate over US foreign policy has opened up considerably in recent years, they appear determined to close it down,” it said.Aipac has poured more than $24m in to defeating Democratic primary candidates critical of Israel. Last month it celebrated defeating former congresswoman Donna Edwards who was favorite to win a Maryland seat until the UDP spent $7m to unleash an advertising blitz against her.But Aipac suffered an unusual setback on Tuesday in another Detroit seat where it spent heavily to defeat a member of the Michigan state legislature, Shri Thanedar, who has strongly criticised the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories.Thanedar, an Indian immigrant and wealthy entrepreneur, beat state senator Adam Hollier, who is Black and strongly pro-Israel, in a field fractured between several candidates in the majority African American district.Some of Aipac’s supporters have suggested that the focus on Aipac’s funding of campaigns against candidates critical of Israeli government policies is antisemitic because the group is doing no more than other lobby organisations.In response, Lara Friedman, president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, tweeted: “So AIPAC can do it… & AIPAC can brag about doing it… But talking about what AIPAC did (at least in a critical way) is antisemitic. See how that works?TopicsUS political financingUS politicsUS midterm elections 2022newsReuse this content More