US Politics

Sotomayor accuses supreme court conservatives of dismantling church-state separationLiberal justice delivers warning after ruling that state of Maine cannot exclude religious schools from tuition programme The liberal justice Sonia Sotomayor has warned that the US supreme court is dismantling the wall between church and state, after the conservative majority ruled that the state of Maine cannot exclude religious schools from a tuition programme.‘I got in the car and he blindfolded me. I was willing to risk death’: five women on abortions before RoeRead moreIn a dissent to the ruling in Carson v Makin, released on Tuesday, Sotomayor wrote: “This court continues to dismantle the wall of separation between church and state that the framers fought to build.“… In just a few years, the court has upended constitutional doctrine, shifting from a rule that permits states to decline to fund religious organisations to one that requires states in many circumstances to subsidise religious indoctrination with taxpayer dollars.”Progressives fear other rulings due this month, among them a case set to bring down Roe v Wade, the 1973 ruling which established the right to abortion, and a ruling on a New York law set to loosen gun regulations even after several horrific mass shootings.Supreme court justices often claim not to rule according to political beliefs but few serious observers give such claims any credence.In the Maine case, John Roberts, the chief justice, wrote for the conservative majority. In Roberts’ view, the tuition programme violated the free exercise clause of the first amendment to the US constitution, because it said private schools were “eligible to receive the payments, so long as they [we]re ‘nonsectarian’”.Roberts wrote: “Regardless of how the benefit and restriction are described, the programme operates to identify and exclude otherwise eligible schools on the basis of their religious exercise.”A conservative, Roberts was appointed by George W Bush. Since Republicans rammed three new justices on to the court under Donald Trump, the chief justice has become in some cases a voice for moderation. Not this time.Sotomayor wrote: “While purporting to protect against discrimination of one kind, the court requires Maine to fund what many of its citizens believe to be discrimination of other kinds.”The main dissent was written by Stephen Breyer, at 83 the oldest of three liberals on the nine-judge panel. Breyer will soon retire, to be replaced by Ketanji Brown Jackson, Joe Biden’s first pick and the first Black woman confirmed to the court.Like her fellow liberal Elena Kagan, Sotomayor was nominated by Barack Obama.Concluding her dissent, Sotomayor wrote: “What a difference five years makes. In 2017, I feared that the court was ‘lead[ing] us … to a place where separation of church and state is a constitutional slogan, not a constitutional commitment’.“Today, the court leads us to a place where separation of church and state becomes a constitutional violation. If a state cannot offer subsidies to its citizens without being required to fund religious exercise, any state that values its historic antiestablishment interests more than this court does will have to curtail the support it offers to its citizens.“With growing concern for where this court will lead us next, I respectfully dissent.”Sonia Sotomayor says supreme court’s ‘mistakes’ can be corrected over timeRead moreHer words caused a stir. Antony Michael Kreis, a law professor and political scientist at Georgia State University, wrote: “Sotomayor is not having it today.”Nonetheless, Roberts’ ruling was further evidence of a court in conservatives’ grip.Last week, addressing progressive lawyers in Washington, Sotomayor said: “There are days I get discouraged. There are moments where I am deeply, deeply disappointed. And yes, there have been moments when I’ve stopped and said, ‘Is this worth it any more?’“And every time when I do that, I lick my wounds for a while, sometimes I cry, and then I say, ‘OK, let’s fight.’”TopicsUS supreme courtLaw (US)MaineUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

‘I think I would win’: Donald Trump takes aim at Ron DeSantis As the Florida governor rises in the polls, Trump begins to disparage his former ally The bromance between Donald Trump and the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, appears to be waning as the prospect of the two extreme-right Republicans facing off for the party’s presidential nomination grows, with Trump declaring “I think I would win.”As DeSantis’s popularity among the Republican base grows nationwide – thanks in part to his regular combative appearances on Fox News and anti-liberal rhetoric – his dramatic ascent in the polls and his refusal to rule out running for president has clearly riled Trump.True to form, Trump has begun his offensive by taking credit for his likely rival’s success.“If I didn’t endorse him [DeSantis], he wouldn’t have won,” Trump told the New Yorker, which published an in-depth story profiling DeSantis’s rise. The former president said that he and DeSantis had a “very good relationship”, adding “I’m proud of Ron.”Trump endorsed DeSantis in 2017 over then-Republican frontrunner Adam Putnam after being impressed by the former athlete’s combative stance.Trump, who could soon be forced to give testimony under oath in a New York state civil investigation into his business practices, said he was “very close to making a decision” about launching a third consecutive presidential run, which he has been hinting at ever since losing the 2020 election – a truth he still refuses to publicly accept.“I don’t know if Ron is running, and I don’t ask him,” Trump said. “It’s his prerogative. I think I would win.”In a handful of polls DeSantis, who faces an election for the governor’s mansion later this year, comes out ahead of Trump in the race for the Republican presidential nomination. Without Trump, he commands a big lead. (Lagging way behind in third place is the Texas senator Ted Cruz.)The governor’s rising star and declining interest in hanging out with Trump at Mar-a-Lago in Florida, are fuelling resentment among the former president’s inner circle. One Republican political consultant told the New Yorker, “Trump World is working overtime to find ways to burn DeSantis down. They really hate him​.”Perhaps worried that neither his fanbase nor DeSantis subscribe to the New Yorker, Trump said much the same when asked for his thoughts on the 43-year-old governor running for the White House during a phone interview with the rightwing TV station Newsmax on Monday.“I have a good relationship with Ron, I don’t know that he wants to run. I haven’t seen that. You’re telling me something that I’ve not seen, so we’ll see what happens,” he said. “But no, I was very responsible for getting him elected.”In another move that’s unlikely to please Trump, some wealthy donors who supported Trump’s failed 2020 election race have started contributing to a political committee tied to DeSantis, Politico reported on Sunday. For many this was their first time donating to a candidate in a Florida state-level election.TopicsDonald TrumpRon DeSantisUS elections 2024US politicsnewsReuse this content More

Texas Republican party adopts far-right position that homosexuality is ‘abnormal’Delegates at biennial convention also approve platform declaring that Joe Biden was not legitimately elected The Republican party in Texas has officially adopted a series of extreme-right positions that includes claims Joe Biden was not legitimately elected and homosexuality is “abnormal”.In a platform adopted at its biennial convention in Houston, delegates voted to oppose “all efforts to validate transgender identity”, including the use of taxpayer funds for any “medical gender dysphoria treatments or sex change operations”.The anti-trans and anti-gay declarations are part of the state party’s new guiding principles, in a section titled homosexuality and gender issues, which contradict claims by some Republicans that the GOP wants to be more inclusive.I often hear Republicans say they want to make a “bigger tent” and to be more inclusive.It’s clear that many Texas Republicans don’t want LGBT+ people in it. Here’s some of the flyers being passed around at the TX GOP Convention: #txleg #txpol pic.twitter.com/3S7vDX9WfM— Sergio Martínez-Beltrán (@SergioMarBel) June 17, 2022
Adopted planks include opposition to giving a special legal status to gay men or women, while supporting those who oppose homosexuality based on faith, religion or a belief in “traditional values”. Military personnel, prison inmates and young people struggling with body dysmorphia and gender identity issues are singled out as groups who should not receive care and treatment.The state party’s stance is a rebuke to Biden’s recent executive order designed to protect the LGBTQ+ community from a wave of state laws in Republican states such as Texas that prevent access to health care resources and ban the discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in schools.In another section dedicated to education, the platform calls for students in Texas to “learn about the humanity of the preborn child”, by witnessing a live ultrasound and the use of fetal baby models. The supreme court decision on abortion access is expected in the coming days, but Texas has already criminalized abortion in most cases.The resolution embracing falsehoods about the 2020 election stated that “substantial election fraud in key metropolitan areas significantly affected the results in five key states in favor of … Biden.” The state party rejects “the certified results of the 2020 presidential election, and we hold that acting President Joseph Robinette Biden Jr was not legitimately elected by the people of the United States.”The resolution encouraged Republicans to “show up to vote” in the November midterms, and to “bring your friends and family, volunteer for your local Republicans and overwhelm any possible fraud”.The state party also supports further restriction on mail-in voting and for the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the landmark legislation which outlawed racial discrimination in elections, to be “repealed and not reauthorized”.Overall, the new platform provides more evidence of Texas Republicans moving further to the extreme right. Republicans, who control the legislature, governor’s mansion and every statewide office, have used their dominance to push through a swath of regressive laws in recent months including anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ+, anti-migrant and anti-voting rights legislation.Steve Toth, the state representative for part of Montgomery county, a Houston suburb, denied the party was moving to the right. “Defense of marriage? Abortion? Second amendment? Where have we moved to the right?… The Republicans have always been strong defenders of constitutional family values.”TopicsTexasRepublicansUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

Republicans exude confidence at Nashville event as midterms loom Party officials, prominent supporters, lawmakers and Trump took the stage at the ‘Road to Majority’ conference, but were vague on how they would ‘rescue America’“It’s the time to take this country back,” proclaimed Senator Rick Scott. “I’m here to tell you the American people are going to give a complete butt kicking to the Democrats this November!”The audience of religious conservatives clapped and whooped. No one felt that the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee was making an empty boast. Going into the midterm elections, the party has opinion polls, economic worries and history on its side.The ‘big rip-off’: how Trump exploited his fans with ‘election defense’ fund Read moreRepublicans exuded confidence this week at the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s “Road to Majority” conference in Nashville, Tennessee, eager to regain power after a punishing few years that saw them shut out of the House of Representatives, Senate and White House.Party officials, prominent supporters, senators, representatives and former president Donald Trump took the stage – set in a faux classical temple – in triumphal mood, denouncing Joe Biden for presiding over inflation and rising gas prices, though they were more vague on how they would fix it.Addressing the faithful on Friday, Scott declared: “Now, the Biden presidency has brought us one new thing. They’ve figured out how to merge radical leftwing policies with absolute gross incompetence.”The Florida senator highlighted a 12-point plan to “rescue America” that appears designed to “trigger” liberals and has proved controversial even in his own party. But it offers an insight into likely rightwing priorities for Republicans if they gain majorities in the House and Senate.Point one states: “Our kids will say the pledge of allegiance, salute the flag, learn that America is a great country, and choose the school that best fits them.” Point three: “The soft-on-crime days of coddling criminal behavior will end. We will re-fund and respect the police because, they, not the criminals, are the good guys.”Point four: “We will secure our border, finish building the wall, and name it after President Donald Trump.” Point seven: “We will protect the integrity of American Democracy and stop leftwing efforts to rig elections.” Point nine: “Men are men, women are women, and unborn babies are babies.”Scott had good reason to scent opportunity. History shows that the party that controls the White House tends to lose seats to energised opposition in midterm elections. This November Democrats face an added sense of malaise, with gas prices at $5 a gallon, a shortage of baby formula and some business leaders predicting recession.Republicans are ready to pounce. Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina told the conference: “Inflation is crushing American families and the White House tells us that inflation could be good for our economy. Excuse me? … Gas prices, inflation, economic instability. We have to be the party that saves our economy by looking back to 2016 to 2020 when we were in charge.”Scott predicted: “I believe that we’re going to win the House and bring it back to the right. I believe that we’re going to win the Senate and bring back it back to the majority. I have a dream that with the House on our side and the Senate on our side and the White House back on our side, we will show America what leadership looks like.”Ronna McDaniel, chairperson of the Republican National Committee, added: “I can’t think of an election where we will have economic issues play such a big role, which we know they will with the gas prices and inflation. And also our values and our cultural issues will be on the ballot.”The gathering, held at a sprawling resort near the Grand Ole Opry House in the home of country music, also heard from former ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley, Senator Lindsey Graham and Congressmen Dan Crenshaw and Jim Jordan. But former vice-president Mike Pence, a devout Christian, did not attend after falling out with Trump over the 2020 election and being booed at last year’s event.Attendees agreed that economic concerns are paramount. Tommy Crosslin, 54, a singer-songwriter, said: “Look at America right now. Inflation is high. Gas prices is high.“Workers are hard to come by because of certain situations that we’ve been put in. I don’t think most Americans wanted the Keystone pipeline shut down and I think there was a trickle effect from the beginning of President Biden’s take over. The American people will voice their opinions in the midterms.”Few believed that the televised congressional hearings into the Trump-inspired insurrection at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 will provide much counterweight. Joseph Padilla, 42, a retired Marine who works for a non-profit, said: “Every time we go to a grocery store, every time we go to get gas, we’re not reminded of January 6, we’re reminded of what administration is in this country right now. It’s going to be a red wave.”The conference also underlined the important role that religious conservatives still play in Republican politics. Attacking abortion rights was a popular applause line, although an imminent supreme court decision on Roe v Wade received few mentions than might have been expected.Ralph Reed, founder of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, told the Politico website: “In the Republican presidential nominating process, evangelical Christians today, in the Republican party, occupy a position of criticality and centrality that is analogous to the role that African Americans play in the Democratic party.”Several speakers made a point of quoting from scripture. Trump, who forged an unlikely alliance with evangelicals to win the presidency, told the audience: “This is going to be the biggest turnout in midterm history, we think without question, and it’s going to have conservative Christians all over the place.”The former president elicited one of the biggest cheers of the day when he said: “Above all else, we know this. In America we don’t worship government, we worship God.” Hearing the reaction, he joked: “I think this room loves God a lot.”The Senate is a close call in November but opinion polls suggest the question is not whether Republicans win a majority in the House but by how much. A 35-seat gain would give the party its biggest majority in more than 90 years. An 18-seat gain would eclipse the one it secured in 1995 when Newt Gingrich first became speaker.Such an outcome would enable Republicans to block Biden’s legislative agenda and aim to turn him into a lame duck president. They have also vowed to launch investigations into everyone from Biden’s son Hunter to infectious diseases expert Dr Anthony Fauci. And ominously the new intake is likely to include numerous election deniers who back Trump’s “big lie”.Such a prospect gave Trump loyalists at the Nashville event a renewed sense of swagger. Hogan Gidley, a former White House official, said: “The whiplash effect of all the prosperity that people were feeling just two years ago versus the the effect of the bad policies is what’s going to drive people out to the polls in the midterms.“It’s the juxtaposition of the success now with all the failures, and the braggadocio of the Biden administration saying, ‘Look, we’re doing everything opposite, we’re doing everything that Donald Trump didn’t do, we’re changing everything.’ Well, the effects of those policies matter to the American people and they’re hurting families in this country.”Gidley, now director of the Center for Election Integrity at the America First Policy Institute thinktank, added: “They can try to shift blame all they want to. These aren’t things that are happening to Joe Biden; they’re happening because of Joe Biden. That’s why I think a lot of people show up to events like this. They’ve never been more excited. They’ve never been more engaged. They’ve never been more willing to put skin in the game.”Critics say there is some irony in the Republican party capitalising on economic woes to brand itself the party of competence, noting that George W Bush presided over the Great Recession and Trump left office with the worst labour market in modern American history.Allan Lichtman, a history professor at American University in Washington, observed: “The Republicans don’t have any answers to the economy or to inflation, It’s not as if oh, if we vote Republican, that’s going to solve it all. That’s ridiculous. But if you lose your democracy, you’re not getting it back. That’s infinitely more important than come and go inflation.”TopicsRepublicansUS politicsDonald TrumpTennesseeNashvillefeaturesReuse this content More

Liz Cheney’s condemnation of Trump’s lies wins over DemocratsThe Republican vice-chair of the January 6 committee has played hardball on Trump and his allies in hearings – and the left has shown admiration for her Liz Cheney voted for Donald Trump’s agenda 93% of the time during his presidency. The Wyoming congresswoman has an A rating from the National Rifle Association gun rights group, and she has called for the defunding of Planned Parenthood over the group’s abortion services. She also comes from a Republican political dynasty, as her father, Dick Cheney, served as vice-president under George W Bush.In short, Cheney is no Democrat.Pence the ‘hero’ who foiled Trump’s plot – could it lead to a 2024 run?Read moreBut as the Republican vice-chair of the January 6 select committee, Cheney has played a crucial role in presenting the case against Trump and his lies about the 2020 election, which culminated in the deadly attack on the Capitol, and that has won her a legion of strange bedfellow fans on the left.Even Democrats who disagree with Cheney on almost every other policy issue have expressed admiration for her clear-eyed condemnation of Trump’s antidemocratic crusade.“We can differ with Representative Cheney and other Republicans on policy,” said Christina Harvey, executive director of the progressive group Stand Up America. “But at the end of the day, we’re all Americans. We all care deeply about this country. And we believe that our democracy must be defended.”There is little doubt that Cheney has played hardball on Trump, his allies and enablers. During the committee’s first primetime hearing earlier this month, Cheney delivered a stark message to fellow Republican lawmakers: history will remember your misdeeds.“In our country, we don’t swear an oath to an individual, or a political party,” Cheney said. “I say this to my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible: there will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain.”Cheney’s performance during the hearings has provided solace to fellow conservatives who feel the Republican party has strayed far from its roots and morphed into a personality cult worshipping Trump.Michael Steele, the former Republican National Committee chairman who has become a vocal critic of Trump, said Cheney has offered a welcome contrast to “these little petty, pathetic whiners who don’t even have the manhood to stand up to a 76-year-old punk”.“She has performed in a way that surpasses anything I think anyone would have expected, given the pressure that she has been under,” Steele said. “She’s holding up a mirror to both Trump and the party and reflecting back on them what we all saw … It’s really an indictment coming from a fellow Republican.”But it is with Democrats that the new Cheney fan club is most marked. Harvey’s group recently conducted a survey among its members and asked them to name political figures who inspire them. Cheney’s name came up repeatedly in the responses, with one member from Wisconsin describing her as “the only light in an otherwise pitch-dark Republican cellar”.While acknowledging that she wished Cheney would also support Democrats’ voting rights bills and other election reforms, Harvey expressed admiration for her willingness to stand up to members of her own party.“Would I also like Liz Cheney to support the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and the Freedom to Vote Act? Yes, I absolutely would,” Harvey said. “But I give her a tremendous amount of credit right now for the courage that she is showing, in trying to protect the very fact that our system of government is a democracy.”Cheney has paid a heavy political price on the right for her work with the January 6 committee and her criticism of Trump. Cheney was stripped of her House leadership role last year, just a few months after she and nine of her Republican colleagues voted to impeach Trump for incitement of insurrection.Cheney now faces the serious threat of a primary challenge, as candidate Harriet Hageman has attacked the incumbent over her anti-Trump views. Trump has endorsed Hageman, and he traveled to Wyoming last month for a rally in support of her campaign.“There is no Rino [Republican In Name Only] in America who has thrown in her lot with the radical left more than Liz Cheney,” Trump said at the rally. He added: “As one of the leading proponents of the insurrection hoax, Liz Cheney has pushed a grotesquely false, fabricated, hysterical, partisan narrative.”Trump’s words appear to have struck a chord with her constituents. A Super Pac aligned with Hageman’s campaign released a poll this month showing Cheney trailing her primary opponent 28% to 56%.At this point, Cheney’s hopes of winning another term in Congress appear bleak, and they are unlikely to improve after her noteworthy performance in the January 6 committee hearings. But even if Cheney does not return to the House next year, she could continue to play a vital role as a Republican counterpoint to Trump.Steele said he considered Cheney’s primary race to be a “win-win” situation for her. Either she beats Hageman and returns to the House emboldened, or she loses and she boosts her political profile as a bold conservative willing to stand up to Trump regardless of the consequences, Steele argued.“If she loses, the sky’s the limit. Now you have completely ostracized this woman to the point that she owes you absolutely zero,” Steele said. “I hope she considers looking at the presidency in 2024. The opportunities to continue the discussion about our country and the right direction for democracy become even greater.”TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsRepublicansUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

Yellen says US recession not ‘inevitable’ but expects ‘economy to slow’ Treasury secretary says ‘inflation unacceptably high’ and it is Biden’s ‘top priority to bring it down’ Joe Biden’s treasury secretary Janet Yellen says she expects “the economy to slow” but continued insisting that a full-blown recession is not “at all inevitable”.Yellen’s remarks on Sunday came days after the US central bank moved to sharply raise interest rates in an effort to contain soaring inflation.She told ABC’s This Week host George Stephanopoulous that her financial outlook results from how the economy has “been growing at a very rapid rate, as the economy, as the labor market, has recovered and we have reached full employment”.“It’s natural now that we expect a transition to steady and stable growth, but I don’t think a recession is at all inevitable,” Yellen added.Pressed on the issue of inflation, which polls indicate is a top priority for US voters as the midterm elections in November approach, Yellen said inflation causes are global, not local, and those factors are unlikely to diminish immediately.Yellen said some trade tariffs on China inherited from the administration of former President Donald Trump made “no strategic sense”. She added that Biden was reviewing them as a way to bring down inflation.“Clearly, inflation is unacceptably high,” Yellen said. “It’s President Biden’s top priority to bring it down.”The US central bank’s chairperson, Jerome Powell, has also said “it’s his goal to bring it down while maintaining a strong labor economy,” according to Yellen.The comments from Biden’s top economist came reflect the administration’s ongoing push to change the national narrative around the economy.Yellen’s comments were more in line with that push than they have been recently.Last month, she broke with the administration’s preferred talking points when she admitted to the American public that she “was wrong” about the path inflation would take.Recent economic confidence polling has shown sharp drops, with Gallup recording the lowest reading during the coronavirus pandemic, and it’s likely the lowest confidence has been since the tail end of the Great Recession in early 2009.Dissatisfaction with Biden’s handling of the economy could ricochet through the midterms elections. Central to those concerns are gasoline prices, which have surged during Biden’s term.On Sunday, Yellen voiced measured support for temporarily pausing gasoline taxes, describing it as an idea “certainly worth considering”.Separately, energy secretary Jennifer Granholm warned drivers against expecting quick relief in prices amid tight oil supplies worldwide.The US energy information administration has projected that prices at the pump will average about $4.27 per gallon in the third quarter – down from the current $4.98 – but that its forecast could be “completely upended” by world events.“We know this is going to be a tough summer because driving season just started,” Granholm said. “And we know that there will be continued upward pull on demand.”Looking ahead to Biden’s scheduled – and highly controversial – visit to Saudi Arabia next month, Granholm said the president “has asked for all suppliers around the globe to increase production”.The planned trip has become a lightning rod for criticism as it appears to be a reversal of the president’s stated intent to make the kingdom a “pariah” over its human-rights record, including the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, which the CIA concluded was ordered by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.Granholm said Biden is “very concerned” about human rights in Saudi Arabia and surely will raise the issue, “but he’s also very concerned about what people are experiencing at the pump and Saudi Arabia is head of OPEC”.“We need to have increased production so that everyday citizens in America will not be feeling this pain that they’re feeling right now,” Granholm added.Yellen was not alone Sunday in presenting a more upbeat economic message than the recessionist narrative most US economists are presenting. A survey of economists published Sunday by The Wall Street Journal raised the probability of recession to 44% in the next 12 months – a level of probability that the newspaper wrote is “usually seen only on the brink of or during actual recession.”The director of the National Economic Council, Brian Deese, told Margaret Brennan on CBS’ Face the Nation that the US “is in an uncertain moment and we face real challenges, global challenges.”“We need to navigate through this transition in a way that gets us to stable growth without giving up all of the incredible economic gains that we’ve made,” he said.Pressed on how the administration plans to lower inflation, running at a 40-year high of 8.6% and projected by the congressional budget office to remain high into 2024, Deese said a package of legislative measures was being prepared in congress to lower prescription drug costs, utility costs and enacting tax reforms.“If we can do a package like that we can move forward in the near future,” Deese said. “It will not only help in lowering prices, but it will send a signal to the markets and the global economy that the United States is really deadly serious about taking on this inflation.”In a rare one-on-one interview last week, Biden set out his administration’s public line.“First of all, it’s not inevitable,” he said to the Associated Press. “Secondly, we’re in a stronger position than any nation in the world to overcome this inflation.”As clouds gathered over the US economic position during the past 18 months, administration economic officials and central bankers have reformed their inflation message from “transitory” to an economy, as Deese said, that is “in a transition.”TopicsUS politicsUS economyReuse this content More

Searing testimony increases odds of charges against Trump, experts say Former prosecutors say January 6 hearings have delivered ‘compelling evidence that Trump committed crimes’The searing testimony and growing evidence about Donald Trump’s central role in a multi-pronged conspiracy to overturn Joe Biden’s election in 2020 presented at the House January 6 committee’s first three hearings, has increased the odds that Trump will face criminal charges, say former DoJ prosecutors and officials.The panel’s initial hearings provided a kind of legal roadmap about Trump’s multi-faceted drives – in tandem with some top lawyers and loyalists – to thwart Biden from taking office, that should benefit justice department prosecutors in their sprawling investigations into the January 6 assault on the Capitol by a mob of Trump supporters.Ex-justice department lawyers say new revelations at the hearings increase the likelihood that Trump will be charged with crimes involving conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding or defrauding the United States, as he took desperate and seemingly illegal steps to undermine Biden’s election.The January 6 hearings aren’t acknowledging the elephant in the room | Thomas ZimmerRead moreTrump could also potentially face fraud charges over his role in an apparently extraordinary fundraising scam – described by House panel members as the “big rip-off” – that netted some $250m for an “election defense fund” that did not exist but funneled huge sums to Trump’s Save America political action committee and Trump properties.The panel hopes to hold six hearings on different parts of what its vice-chair, Liz Cheney, called Trump’s “sophisticated seven-part plan” to overturn the election.Trump was told repeatedly, for instance, by top aides and cabinet officials – including ex-attorney general Bill Barr – that the election was not stolen, and that his fraud claims were “completely bullshit” and “crazy stuff” as Barr put it in a video of his scathing deposition. But Trump persisted in pushing baseless fraud claims with the backing of key allies including his ex-personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and lawyer John Eastman.“The January 6 committee’s investigation has developed substantial, compelling evidence that Trump committed crimes, including but not limited to conspiracy to defraud the United States and obstruct official proceedings,” Michael Bromwich, a former inspector general at the DoJ told the Guardian.Donald Ayer, a former deputy attorney general in the George HW Bush administration, told the Guardian that “the committee hearings have bolstered the need to seriously consider filing criminal charges against Trump”.The crux of any prosecution of Trump would hinge heavily on convincing a jury that Trump knew he lost the election and acted with criminal intent to overturn the valid election results. The hearings have focused heavily on testimony that Trump fully knew he had lost and went full steam ahead to concoct schemes to stay in power.New revelations damaging to Trump emerged on Thursday when Greg Jacob, the ex-counsel to former vice-president Mike Pence, recounted in detail how Eastman and Trump waged a high-pressure drive, publicly and privately, even as the Capitol was under attack, to prod Pence to unlawfully block Biden’s certification by Congress on January 6.The Eastman pressure included a scheme to substitute pro-Trump fake electors from states that Biden won for electors rightfully pledged to Biden – a scheme the DoJ has been investigating for months and that now involves a grand jury focused on Eastman, Giuliani and several other lawyers and operatives.Eastman at one point acknowledged to Jacob that he knew his push to get Pence on January 6 to reject Biden’s winning electoral college count would violate the Electoral Count Act, and that Trump, too, was told it would be illegal for Pence to block Biden’s certification.Paul Pelletier, a former acting chief of the DoJ’s fraud section, said: “It is a target-rich environment, with many accessories both before and after the fact to be investigated.”But experts caution any decision to charge Trump will be up to the current attorney general, Merrick Garland, who has been careful not to discuss details of his department’s January 6 investigations, which so far have led to charges against more than 800 individuals, including some Proud Boys and Oath Keepers charged with seditious conspiracy.After the first two hearings, Garland told reporters, “I’m watching and I will be watching all the hearings,” adding that DoJ prosecutors are doing likewise.Garland remarked in reference to possibly investigating Trump: “We’re just going to follow the facts wherever they lead … to hold all perpetrators who are criminally responsible for January 6 accountable, regardless of their level, their position, and regardless of whether they were present at the events on January 6.”But Garland has not yet tipped his hand if Trump himself is under investigation. Despite that reticence, justice department veterans say the wealth of testimony from one-time Trump insiders and new revelations at the House hearings should spur the department to investigate and charge Trump.Barbara McQuade, a former US attorney for eastern Michigan, said the panel’s early evidence was strong, including “video testimony of Trump insiders who told Trump that he was going to lose badly, and that with regard to claims of election fraud, there was ‘no there there’,” as Trump’s ex-chief of staff Mark Meadows acknowledged in one exchange made public at the hearings.McQuade added that Barr’s testimony was “devastating for Trump. He and other Trump insiders who testified about their conversations with Trump established that Trump knew he had lost the election and continued to make public claims of fraud anyway. That knowledge can help establish the fraudulent intent necessary to prove criminal offenses against Trump.”In a novel legal twist that could emerge if Trump is charged, Bromwich said: “Bizarrely, Trump’s best defense to the mountain of evidence that proves these crimes seems to be that he was incapable of forming the criminal intent necessary to convict. That he was detached from reality, in Barr’s words. But there is strong evidence that he is not crazy – but instead is crazy like a fox.“How else to explain his attempts to pressure the Georgia secretary of state to ‘find the votes’ necessary to change the result? Or his telling DoJ officials to simply declare the election ‘corrupt’ and leave ‘the rest to me’ and Republican House allies?”Bromwich added: “All of this shows not someone incapable of forming criminal intent, but someone who understood what the facts were and was determined not to accept them. Because he couldn’t stand to lose. That was far more important to him than honoring our institutions or the constitution.”Former federal prosecutor Michael Zeldin said Trump could face charges over what Cheney called the “big rip-off”, which centers on the allegation that “Trump raised money from small-dollar donors after the election under false pretenses”.Zeldin said: “Specifically, he asked for money to fight election fraud when, in fact, the money was used for other purposes. This type of conduct could violate the wire fraud statute.”Ayer cited the importance of a justice department regulation identifying factors to consider in deciding whether to charge, and noted three of particular relevance to Trump – the nature and severity of the offence, the important deterrent effect of prosecutions, and the culpability of the individual being charged.But it might not be all plain sailing.Simmering tensions between the panel and the justice department have escalated over DoJ requests – rebuffed so far – to obtain 1,000 witness transcripts of committee interviews, which prosecutors say are needed for upcoming trials of Proud Boys and other cases. However, the New York Times has reported some witness transcripts could be shared next month.Nonetheless, as Garland weighs whether to move forward with investigating and charging Trump, experts caution a prosecution of Trump would require enormous resources, given the unprecedented nature of such a high-stakes case, and the risks that a jury could end up acquitting Trump – which might only enhance his appeal to the Republican base. Yet at the same time ,the stakes for the country of not aggressively investigating Trump are also extremely high.“No one should underestimate the gravity of deciding to criminally charge an ex-president,” said former federal prosecutor Dennis Aftergut.For Aftergut, though, charging Trump seems imperative.“Ultimately, the avalanche of documents and sworn testimony proving a multi-faceted criminal conspiracy to overturn the will of the people means one thing: if no one is above the law, even an ex-president who led that conspiracy must be indicted.”TopicsDonald TrumpJanuary 6 hearingsUS politicsUS Capitol attacknewsReuse this content More

January 6 hearings make for gripping TV, but are voters paying attention? The committee’s tightly scripted production has impressed political junkies but Democrats worry many Americans are focused elsewhere Did you see episode three? The president calls his deputy a “pussy” and “wimp” for refusing to support his coup. An angry mob then goes after said deputy wanting to hang him. A legal scholar who cooked up the plan asks the president for a pardon.Thursday’s congressional hearing into the January 6 2021 attack on the US Capitol veered into you-couldn’t-make-it-up territory. But while political aficionados were agog, it remained less certain how many citizens were paying attention at lunchtime on a midweek workday.As the panel’s sessions near the halfway mark, their explosive narrative about Republican president Donald Trump’s failed power grab is struggling to break through to an American public consumed by economic anxiety. Democrats could find that gas at $5 a gallon, not the threat to democracy, looms largest in November’s midterm elections.“People are much more concerned about living day to day,” said Joni Bryan, 59, a non-profit founder and store manager who did not watch the third hearing and was attending a gathering of religious conservatives in Nashville on Friday. “Just this year my gas, my food and my rent has increased a thousand dollars a month so I’m having to take another job to try to pay just for what I had last year. It’s really hard out here and right now it seems like the administration couldn’t care less.”There are seven Democrats and two Republicans on the House of Representatives’ January 6 committee. After a year of painstaking work and more than a thousand interviews, it wanted to make a splash in the public arena. The committee enlisted James Goldston, the former president of ABC News, to help its presentation.The committee chairman, Bennie Thompson, and vice-chair, Liz Cheney, have sought to make a methodical case that Trump’s lies about the 2020 election led directly to his supporters’ insurrection. The sessions have drawn comparison with true crime TV series or podcasts, with each “episode” having its own theme and ending with a tantalising preview of the next (though there is no mystery about whodunnit).The panel has shown clips from the violent assault on the US Capitol and also from closed-door interviews with Trump aides and associates who were trying to dissuade him from spreading falsehoods about an election he lost. The former attorney general, Bill Barr, describedhis claims of fraud as “bullshit” and remarked that Trump was becoming “detached from reality”.On Thursday, Ivanka Trump’s chief of staff, Julie Radford, was seen telling the panel in a deposition that Trump called Vice-President Mike Pence the “P-word”, meaning “pussy”, for refusing to overturn the election. Other witnesses have appeared in person. Capitol police officer Caroline Edwards described a bloody “war scene” and hours of hand-to-hand combat.Not all the details are new but Democrats hope that, by weaving them together, the cumulative effect will provide a wake-up call to America about the continued threat to its democracy. Many election deniers are running as Republican candidates in the midterms and Trump appears poised for another presidential run in 2024.Donna Brazile, a former acting chairperson of the Democratic National Committee, said: “The hearings so far have been very compelling and informational. This is just as important as the Iran-contra hearings, the Watergate hearings, the 9/11 hearings. It’s to encourage the public to follow all of the facts and understand what happened because the American people should be once again reminded that the United States of America was under attack.”It was not necessary to “join the dots” right away, Brazile added. “We know, that as a result of the pandemic, the entire global economy is facing strains and stresses in terms of the demand for fuel and food but this notion that we can’t do two things at one time is just political spin. This is about the future of American democracy.”The first hearing, held at 8pm to receive maximum exposure on primetime television, was watched by an estimated 20 million people, according to the Nielsen ratings agency. This ranked below other political events such as Joe Biden’s State of the Union address, which pulled in 38 million viewers in March, but higher than the first televised hearing of the impeachment inquiry into Trump, which attracted about 14 million in 2019.The first January 6 hearing also beat the Oscars, Grammys, Emmys and Golden Globes, all of which drew fewer than 10 million viewers last year. The opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games attracted 15.1 million and 14 million viewers in 2020 and 2021 respectively.But Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, cautioned: “Twenty million watching, that’s great, but you’re still talking about a tiny fraction of the actual voting pool. If they’re not watching, they’re not going to be very influenced by it. Even if they are watching, it doesn’t mean that you can somehow put the emphasis on January 6 or the plot to steal the presidency rather than inflation and potential recession and all the other problems on the plate right now.”The riot happened nearly 18 months ago and, to many voters, democracy can seem like an abstract, intangible concept. Sabato added: “If they’re concerned at all, they say, ‘That’s esoteric, we’ll get to that eventually, let’s worry about that in 2024. Right now, I want something done about my gas prices. I can’t believe I’m paying $6 a gallon.’ They don’t even think about anything else.”Friday marked the 50th anniversary of the arrest of five men for breaking into and bugging the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington, triggering a scandal that led to the resignation of the president, Richard Nixon. It is estimated that the average household watched about 30 hours of the Senate Watergate hearings during the summer of 1973.The January 6 committee faces a tougher task to cut through and shape the national conversation in a fragmented landscape of cable news, social media and “alternative facts”. Republican leaders have denounced the hearings as a partisan, politically motivated witch-hunt designed to deflect attention from Biden’s economic troubles. The conservative Fox News network refused to show the first hearing in prime time, although it did broadcast the second and third.Frank Luntz, a pollster and political messaging expert, believes that the committee has made some missteps, for example by starting the all-important first hearing with speeches from Thompson and Cheney before playing a video of what happened. “If you want to influence people you show them the facts, you show them the evidence, and then you do the interpretation, not the other way around,” he said.Trump loyalists who backed his election lies were denied places on the committee. Their absence makes it easy for Trump voters to dismiss, Luntz added. “It’s not about being fair, it’s actually about how you change the minds of people. If I’m a Trump person, all that I’m seeing is the negativity and they’re trying to jam him. My reaction is, well, this is one side of the story, I haven’t heard the other side.”At the Faith & Freedom “Road to Majority” conference in Nashville on Friday, such views were commonplace. Tommy Crosslin, 54, a singer-songwriter, said: “It’s unfair. The story has two sides but I think we’re only hearing one side. Americans have open minds, but they know the truth and the whole truth is not imparted into the January 6 hearings. The American people are smart enough to discern what’s going on.”A national survey this week by Navigator Research found 28% of registered voters have heard “a lot” about the hearings, 35% have heard “some” and 37% have heard “a little/ nothing”. Two in three Republicans say the committee is too focused on the past and there should be a focus on issues facing the country today. A Washington Post headline observed: “Some feel hopeful, others angry. Many aren’t watching at all.”In such a context, few Democrats believe the hearings will make a significant impact in the midterm elections, where the party holding the White House traditionally fares badly. Biden, whose approval rating is in the doldrums, acknowledged in an Associated Press interview this week: “People are really, really down.”But the committee’s findings may have longer-term consequences by putting Turmp at risk of criminal prosecution.David Rudolf, a leading trial lawyer seen in the true crime TV series The Staircase, said: “The committee is aiming at one audience and that’s the Department of Justice. What they’ve put together is a very compelling opening statement, laying out, just like you would for a jury, what the case is going to be, a prediction of the evidence.“From my perspective, it is as persuasive and well put together as any opening statement I’ve ever seen. It’s exactly the kind of opening statement that I would make if I was prosecuting Trump and [lawyer John] Eastman and [adviser Peter] Navarro and various others and I think that’s what they’re aiming for.”TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsThe ObserverUS Capitol attackUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More