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      Proud Boys Member Who Threatened Police With Ax Handle on Jan. 6 Is Sentenced

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      William Chrestman of Olathe, Kan., a Proud Boys member, was sentenced to 55 months for breaching the U.S. Capitol and threatening officers, prosecutors said.A member of the Proud Boys extremist group who threatened police officers with an ax handle and breached the U.S. Capitol during the attack on Jan. 6, 2021, was sentenced on Friday to nearly five years in prison, federal prosecutors said.Judge Timothy J. Kelly of U.S. District Court in Washington sentenced the man, William Chrestman, 51, of Olathe, Kan., to 55 months in prison. Mr. Chrestman pleaded guilty in October to felony charges of obstruction of an official proceeding and threatening a federal officer.The judge also ordered Mr. Chrestman to pay $2,000 in restitution, and his prison sentence will be followed by three years of supervised release, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia said in a statement on Friday.Mr. Chrestman was sentenced to less time in prison than the 63 months that prosecutors had recommended in a sentencing memo. They argued that Mr. Chrestman had “played a significant role during the riot due to his presence and conduct at pivotal moments during the day.”Lawyers for Mr. Chrestman did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Friday. Prosecutors declined to comment.Mr. Chrestman has been in jail since he was arrested in February 2021, and he will get credit for time served, according to the U.S. attorney’s office.The Jan. 6 Riot Inquiry So Far: Three Years, Hundreds of Prison SentencesMore than 1,200 people have now been arrested in connection with the attack on the Capitol, and more than 450 sentenced to periods of incarceration. The investigation is far from over.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      E Jean. Carroll’s Lawyers Ask That Trump Not Make Defamation Trial a ‘Circus’

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      The writer next week will seek a second round of damages from the former president for his denials that he sexually assaulted her.A lawyer for the writer E. Jean Carroll, whose latest defamation lawsuit against Donald J. Trump is scheduled for trial next week in Manhattan, asked a judge Friday to ensure that if the former president testifies, that he does not stray beyond the narrow issue in the case, with the goal of “turning this trial into a circus.”“If Mr. Trump appears at this trial, whether as a witness or otherwise,” the lawyer, Roberta A. Kaplan, wrote in a letter, “his recent statements and behavior strongly suggest that he will seek to sow chaos.”In the letter, which comes just four days before jury selection is to begin in Federal District Court, Ms. Kaplan cited Mr. Trump’s continued derogatory public comments about Ms. Carroll and his behavior in another case involving him this week.On Thursday, Mr. Trump attended the final day of trial in the New York attorney general’s civil fraud case against him, where — after the judge allowed him to argue on his own behalf — he attacked the attorney general, Letitia James, called himself the victim of fraud and assailed the judge to his face. Afterward, Mr. Trump told reporters that he also planned to attend Ms. Carroll’s trial.“I’m going to explain I don’t know who the hell she is,” he said. “I have no idea.”But the judge, Lewis A. Kaplan, has already ruled that a jury’s verdict last May in an earlier civil trial, which found that Mr. Trump was liable for sexually assaulting Ms. Carroll in a department store dressing room in the 1990s and had later defamed her, will carry over to the trial next week. The judge thus has limited the trial to one issue — what damages, if any, Mr. Trump must pay Ms. Carroll for defaming her on a separate occasion in 2019 when he called her allegation “totally false.”The request by Ms. Carroll’s lawyer to constrain Mr. Trump, 77, comes as he has lashed out at her while moving among courthouses and political stops in his quest for the Republican presidential nomination. On a single day recently, he issued more than 40 derisive posts about her on his Truth Social website, and last weekend, while campaigning in Iowa, he accused her of fabricating her claim and called the judge in the case a “radical Democrat in New York.”Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Alina Habba, declined to comment on Ms. Kaplan’s letter, citing trial publicity rules. The judge said Friday that Mr. Trump had until Sunday to file a response, and Ms. Habba said she would be doing so.In her letter, Ms. Kaplan (who is not related to the judge) asked that he admonish Mr. Trump about the limited damages issue before the jury. She also asked that he require Mr. Trump to state on the record and under oath, out of the jury’s presence, that he understands that certain facts have been established.“The court’s recent rulings leave no doubt about what is permissible and what is off-limits,” Ms. Kaplan wrote. “Mr. Trump cannot testify that he did not sexually assault Ms. Carroll. He cannot claim that he did not rape her, or did not know her, or had never seen her before. He cannot question or attack her motives for revealing that he had assaulted her. He cannot say that he was defending himself from a false accusation.”The letter asked that Mr. Trump acknowledge he understands and accepts “all of the limits that the court has imposed on his testimony” and will act in accordance.Mr. Trump has been attacking Ms. Carroll, 80, since 2019, when she first accused him of raping her in a book excerpt that appeared in New York magazine. She has sued him twice, and in the first case to go to trial last May, the jury awarded Ms. Carroll damages of just over $2 million for sexually abusing her and nearly $3 million for defaming her, in 2022, when he called her claim “a complete con job” and a hoax.Because the judge found that Mr. Trump’s statements in 2019 were “substantially the same” as those that prompted the defamation award last May, there was no need to revisit the underlying facts of the assault.Ms. Kaplan in her letter included a transcript of Mr. Trump’s remarks on Thursday to the judge who is deciding the civil fraud trial, in which the former president called the state’s case “a political witch hunt” and declared he was innocent.“It takes little imagination to think that Mr. Trump is gearing up for a similar performance here — only this time, in front of a jury,” Ms. Kaplan wrote.Susan C. Beachy More

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      Pakistani Justices Reject Ban for Politicians With Past Convictions

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      The decision by the Supreme Court paves the way for a former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, to run in parliamentary elections in February.Pakistan’s Supreme Court on Monday overturned a law that barred politicians with past convictions from seeking political office, in a move that paves the way for former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to run in parliamentary elections in February.A seven-justice panel of the country’s top court, headed by Chief Justice Qazi Faez Isa, ruled 6-1 that a person could not be banned for life from running for office. The court said instead that politicians could be barred for a term of only five years.Critics had said that the law was draconian and used for political persecution.Mr. Sharif, a three-time former prime minister, was disqualified from running for office for life in 2017. He never finished any of his terms in office, running afoul of the country’s powerful military or, in the latest case, being toppled by corruption allegations.Mr. Sharif left Pakistan for London in 2019 but returned in October to revive his political career and to take part in the Feb. 8 general elections. Marriyum Aurangzeb, the central information secretary for the Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz, Mr. Sharif’s political party, hailed the decision as a “vindication” for Mr. Sharif.Ms. Aurangzeb said that Mr. Sharif had been a victim of political persecution. “Only the people of Pakistan have the power through their vote to qualify or disqualify their representatives,” she said.As the country heads for elections early next month, the atmosphere in the country is tense. Pakistan has been reeling from a political and economic crisis since April 2022, when former Prime Minister Imran Khan, who remains widely popular, was removed from power by a vote of no confidence of Parliament after having lost the support of the powerful military establishment.Mr. Khan is in jail on several charges, including treason, and candidates from his party are complaining of being denied a level playing field and the right to freely campaign. His party members have accused the state authorities of intimidation, harassment and unwarranted arrests.Supporters of former Prime Minister Imran Khan shouting slogans demanding his release during a protest in Karachi in August.Shahzaib Akber/EPA, via ShutterstockThe major political parties have not actively hit the campaign trail, and no big political rallies have been held so far, partly because of uncertainty about the polls and partly because of security fears. Militant attacks have also picked up in the country in recent months.On Jan. 3, Mohsin Dawar, a prominent politician belonging to the National Democratic Movement political party, escaped an assassination attempt after his convoy came under attack in the North Waziristan region in the country’s northwest. Mr. Dawar’s bulletproof vehicle was hit on its front and side mirrors, though he remained safe. There was no claim of responsibility for the attack.Last week, the country’s senate passed a resolution calling for a delay in the election, citing security concerns. The resolution was passed by a group of independent senators.But government officials stressed that there would be no delay or postponement.“The elections will be held on Feb. 8, as scheduled,” said Murtaza Solangi, the interim information minister. More

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      Trump Ballot Challenges Advance, Varying Widely in Strategy and Sophistication

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      Donald J. Trump’s eligibility for the presidential ballot has been challenged in more than 30 states, but only a handful of those cases have gained traction so far.John Anthony Castro, a 40-year-old Texan, long-shot Republican presidential candidate and the most prolific challenger of Donald J. Trump’s eligibility to be president, has gone to court in at least 27 states trying to remove the former president from the ballot.On Wednesday, Mr. Castro found himself in a mostly empty courthouse in New Hampshire’s capital, where he was making a second attempt to advance his arguments; his initial case was dismissed last fall.None of Mr. Castro’s lawsuits have succeeded. But the New Hampshire case is part of a growing constellation of ballot challenges — some lodged by established groups with national reach, many others far more homemade — that have been playing out in more than 30 states. Challengers in Colorado and Maine have succeeded, at least temporarily, in getting Mr. Trump disqualified, while other lawsuits have stalled or been dismissed. In at least 22 states, cases have yet to be resolved.Tracking Efforts to Remove Trump From the 2024 BallotSee which states have challenges seeking to bar Donald J. Trump from the presidential primary ballot.All the litigation has made for an odd, diffuse process in which some of the weightiest issues of American democracy are being raised not primarily by elected officials or a political party, but by an unlikely assortment of obscure figures, everyday citizens and nonprofit groups. Even some of the players are wondering what they are doing there.“How did we get to this point, where you have random brewers in Wisconsin throwing Hail Marys to try to get Trump off the ballot?” said Kirk Bangstad, a brewing company owner and liberal activist who filed an unsuccessful challenge to Mr. Trump’s eligibility with the Wisconsin Elections Commission. Mr. Bangstad, who is now considering a lawsuit, readily admits that he wishes someone more prominent would have taken up the cause.Kirk Bangstad, a brewing company owner and liberal activist who filed an unsuccessful challenge of Mr. Trump’s eligibility with the Wisconsin Elections Commission.Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesThough the ballot challenges vary in format, venue and sophistication, they share a focus on whether Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat make him ineligible to hold the presidency again. The cases are based on a largely untested clause of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, which was enacted after the Civil War. The clause bars federal or state officials who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” from holding office.Some lawyers have argued since 2021 that the clause could preclude Mr. Trump from appearing on a presidential ballot, and lawsuits invoking that theory were filed in several states in 2023. But it was not until last month, when the Colorado Supreme Court found Mr. Trump ineligible for that state’s primary ballot because of the 14th Amendment, that the question vaulted to the center of American politics. When Maine’s Democratic secretary of state announced last week that she, too, was disqualifying Mr. Trump, it only intensified the spotlight on the issue.Steven Cheung, a spokesman for the Trump campaign, described the lawsuits in a statement last week as “bad-faith, politically motivated attempts to steal the 2024 election,” claiming that Democrats had “launched a multifront lawfare campaign to disenfranchise tens of millions of American voters and interfere in the election.” Mr. Cheung did not respond to a request for comment for this article.Mr. Trump filed a lawsuit in state court in Maine on Tuesday seeking to overturn the secretary of state’s decision, and on Wednesday he asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review the Colorado ruling.The issue could not be more urgent: Republican presidential primary elections and caucuses begin this month, and polls have shown Mr. Trump with a commanding lead over his opponents.In the meantime, other cases continue to wind their way through state and federal court systems.Those lawsuits can generally be divided into three categories: Mr. Castro’s lawsuits, almost all of which have been filed in federal court; state challenges filed by two nonprofit organizations; and one-off cases brought in state or federal courts by local residents. In a handful of places — most notably Maine, but also Illinois, Massachusetts, North Carolina and Wisconsin — voters have challenged Mr. Trump’s eligibility directly with a secretary of state or an election commission rather than in court. In California and New York, some elected officials have written letters pushing for elections officers in those states to disqualify or consider disqualifying the former president.Most establishment Democrats have not publicly embraced the cause. President Biden said after the Colorado Supreme Court ruling that it was “self-evident” that Mr. Trump had supported an insurrection, but that it was up to the judiciary to determine his eligibility for the ballot. Several Democratic secretaries of state, who in much of the country are their states’ chief election officers, have included Mr. Trump on candidate lists and deferred to the courts on the question of his eligibility. A growing constellation of challenges to Mr. Trump’s eligibility have been filed in courts across the country, including federal court in Concord, N.H.Neville Caulfield for The New York TimesThe two national groups are Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, known as CREW, which brought the Colorado case, and Free Speech for People, which filed lawsuits in Michigan, Minnesota and Oregon, as well as complaints with election officials in Illinois and Massachusetts. Those two groups have focused on state-level challenges. The Michigan and Minnesota Supreme Courts declined to take Mr. Trump off the primary ballot in those states. The Oregon lawsuit is still pending, as are the objections in Illinois and Massachusetts, which were both filed on Thursday.Ben Clements, the chairman of Free Speech for People, said he believed challenges originating in federal court “are not helpful” to the disqualification cause because of concerns about plaintiffs not having the legal standing to bring a case. But he said the array of lawsuits in state courts — such challenges were pending this week in California, Florida, Louisiana, North Carolina, Oregon, Wisconsin and Wyoming — were welcome.“Even if we wanted to, and even if CREW had taken an approach of filing multiple suits, we’re not going to hit all 50 states,” Mr. Clements said.Many people expect the U.S. Supreme Court to ultimately decide the question of Mr. Trump’s eligibility. And outside of a few states, the challenges so far have not gained traction.Some cases have been dismissed, including a federal lawsuit in Virginia and Mr. Bangstad’s complaint in Wisconsin, both last week. Others have been withdrawn, including several of Mr. Castro’s lawsuits and a state case in New Jersey filed by John Bellocchio, a former history teacher. In an interview, Mr. Bellocchio said he was working on a second lawsuit, and that he was motivated by concern that the former president and his supporters “envision a Christian theocracy.”“You cannot have a theocracy and a democracy at the same time,” Mr. Bellocchio said in an interview.By far, the most persistent litigant is Mr. Castro, who, according to his campaign website, first ran for a county office at the age of 19 and has since run unsuccessfully at least twice for other offices, including in a special congressional election in 2021.Mr. Castro received a law degree from the University of New Mexico and a master’s degree from Georgetown’s law school. He said he had never been licensed as a lawyer by any state, but was certified by the I.R.S. to work on federal tax cases. Over the years, he has been involved in a dizzying array of legal disputes.Mr. Castro said he had hoped that someone better known would mount a Republican presidential campaign to challenge Mr. Trump’s ballot qualifications, but when no one else stepped up, he decided to do it himself.“My biggest fear was having the knowledge how to stop Trump and having to tell my grandchildren that I did nothing,” he said.At Wednesday’s federal court hearing, Mr. Castro needed to persuade Judge Samantha Elliott that he was a real candidate for the Republican nomination for president and had the legal standing to sue.Among his evidence: He had filed reports with the Federal Election Commission (as of September, records show his campaign had raised $678), and two of his relatives had driven around New Hampshire one day in October, installing a dozen yard signs, before flying home to Texas.In the courtroom on Wednesday, Mr. Castro appeared at times to be unfamiliar with court procedures. But he seemed to come to life as he cross-examined Michael Dennehy, a veteran political strategist and expert witness for Mr. Trump, who testified that it would be “impossible” for Mr. Castro to win any delegates in the state based on his nearly “nonexistent” fund-raising and campaign.If Mr. Castro’s goal is to disqualify Mr. Trump, some observers have suggested that his strategy may backfire.Derek Muller, an election law expert and professor at Notre Dame’s law school, said Mr. Castro risked creating unfavorable precedent with his failed lawsuits. Mr. Trump has already been able to use a judge’s opinion in one state — in which the judge dismissed a Castro lawsuit — to bolster his arguments in another.Mr. Castro is “single-handedly building up precedent for Trump, inadvertently,” said Mr. Muller, who has filed briefs in two state court cases analyzing the relevant election law.Mr. Castro disagreed. If anything, he said, his suits have forced Mr. Trump’s lawyers to “show their cards,” helping other challengers to hone their arguments. He said he plans to refile lawsuits in three more states this month.Tracey Tully More

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      Should Trump Be Removed From the Ballot?

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      More from our inbox:Reflections After Claudine Gay’s Resignation at HarvardLegal challenges similar to the one former President Donald J. Trump faces in Colorado are pending in at least 16 additional states. Doug Mills/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Seeing Threat to Democracy, With Trump on Ballot or Not” (front page, Dec. 31):The argument by Republicans like J.D. Vance and Chris Christie and Democrats like Gavin Newsom that removing Donald Trump from the ballot would be anti-democratic and would deprive voters of the right to choose their president is flawed in two respects.First, the 14th Amendment — like the rest of the Constitution — was adopted through a democratic process. It is no more anti-democratic to deny Mr. Trump a place on the ballot because he engaged in insurrection than it is to disqualify a 34-year-old from running for president because of the age requirement.Second, if the Supreme Court chooses not to enforce the 14th Amendment on the premise that voters should be able to make an unfettered decision, it must give voters an opportunity to assess all of the facts for themselves. If the court were to reverse the Colorado decision to keep Mr. Trump off the ballot, a necessary corollary must be an expedited criminal trial on the Jan. 6-related indictment so that voters can be fully informed before deciding whether to vote for Mr. Trump.The polls suggest that the results of this trial could change the votes of a significant number of Mr. Trump’s supporters and could determine the outcome of the election.Randy SpeckWashingtonTo the Editor:“Seeing Threat to Democracy, With Trump on Ballot or Not” leaves out a crucial problem: the glacial pace of the criminal justice system. Whether former President Donald Trump is guilty of insurrection should have already been decided in court. But our justice system is too slow, and too vulnerable to Mr. Trump’s favorite legal strategy, to delay, delay, delay.Since March 2023, Mr. Trump has been charged with 91 felonies in four cases: falsifying business records, mishandling classified documents, and attempting to overturn the 2020 election through an insurrection and by trying to strong-arm Georgia officials. But we haven’t seen Mr. Trump cleared or convicted of these charges, charges filed only years after the fact.With courtroom justice delayed, and mountains of compelling evidence publicly available, it’s no surprise that challenges have been filed in 32 states to consider whether Mr. Trump is guilty of insurrection and thus ineligible to run for president.Deciding Mr. Trump’s guilt or innocence before the next election is still possible. But it will require judicial officials to act faster than may be comfortable or usual. American democracy is at stake, making it imperative that justice not be denied through delay.Tom LevyOakland, Calif.To the Editor:Re “How Justices May Weigh Trump Case,” by Adam Liptak (news analysis, front page, Dec. 30):In 2000, I wrote a statement eventually signed by 673 law professors (and run as a full-page ad in The Times) denouncing the Bush v. Gore justices for acting as “political partisans, not judges of a court of law.” Will they do so again?The Republican-appointed justices can escape partisanship by rejecting the feeble arguments against removing Donald Trump from the ballot.First, the 14th Amendment plainly applies to the presidency. Who can take seriously the notion that the amendment’s authors wanted to prevent insurrectionists from running for dogcatcher but not the most powerful office in the land?Second, Jan. 6 was obviously an insurrection — a violent attempt to overturn an election and prevent a lawfully elected president from taking office.Finally, those who argue “let the voters decide” ignore that it was precisely the point of the constitutional provision to prevent voters from deciding to put insurrectionists back into power.Anti-democratic? In a way. Those who wrote Section 3 of the 14th Amendment recognized that American democracy remained at risk from those who had once tried to overthrow our government. When it came to insurrection, their view was: “One strike, you’re out.”We face the very same risks today. An insurrectionist wants another shot at dictatorship. The Constitution says no way.Mitchell ZimmermanPalo Alto, Calif.To the Editor:Re “In Trump Case, Voters’ Will vs. Rule of Law,” by Charlie Savage (news analysis, Dec. 23):Mr. Savage considers the argument that removing Donald Trump’s name from the ballot based on the 14th Amendment would deprive voters of the right to pick their leaders, and he sees a clash between voters’ rights and the principle that no one is above the law.But there is no such conflict here. We must of course respect voters’ rights, if our democracy is to endure. Which is all the more reason to enforce the 14th Amendment and keep Mr. Trump off the ballot.He was already rejected by the voters in 2020, and he refused to accept their decision. He refused to honor his constitutional duty to enable the peaceful transfer of power. He attempted to deprive millions of voters of their right to have their votes counted. One purpose of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment is to prevent such people from repeating such a travesty.Let us also dispense with the argument that we should keep Mr. Trump on the ballot to avoid social unrest. The coming election — assuming a rematch between President Biden and Mr. Trump — will be fraught with problems, no matter the outcome.If Mr. Trump wins, he will keep his promises to destroy many of our democratic institutions; if he loses, he will not accept his defeat, and we will see a replay of 2020, and possibly of Jan. 6, 2021.The consequences of enforcing the law might be dire, but the consequences of not enforcing it might be worse.Larry HohmSeattleReflections After Claudine Gay’s Resignation at Harvard Adam Glanzman for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “What Happened at Harvard Is Bigger Than Me,” by Claudine Gay, the former president of Harvard (Opinion guest essay, Jan. 4):I applaud Dr. Gay’s guest essay. She emphasizes how her position as a Black woman in a position of power partly explains the venom with which she has been attacked. The press, including The New York Times, should be drawing greater attention to the rampant misogyny unleashed in these attacks on leading women in academia.Susan Laird ModyPlattsburgh, N.Y.The writer is emerita associate professor of education and gender and women’s studies at SUNY Plattsburgh.To the Editor:Claudine Gay wraps herself in Harvard’s toga of integrity. It simply won’t work, not for herself nor for Harvard. Plagiarism allegations are serious, especially for an academic researcher — or for a president of a leading academic institution. The best she can do now is to leave gracefully, without excuses or explanations.Mark CastelinoNewarkThe writer is an associate professor of finance at Rutgers Business School.To the Editor:As a Harvard alumnus, I for one am sorry to see Claudine Gay go. Not because she was a perfect president. But because she demonstrated several qualities often lacking in public figures today: kindness, humility and a commitment to growth.I also don’t understand people who say she wasn’t “qualified” because she didn’t have a voluminous research record. The presidency of Harvard is not a Nobel Prize. It’s an administrative role, and Dr. Gay was an accomplished university administrator. We should consider the agendas of those who suggest otherwise.Bernie ZipprichNew York More

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      In Tense Election Year, Public Officials Face Climate of Intimidation

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      Colorado and Maine, which blocked former President Donald J. Trump from the ballot, have grappled with the harassment of officials.The caller had tipped off the authorities in Maine on Friday night: He told them that he had broken into the home of Shenna Bellows, the state’s top election official, a Democrat who one night earlier had disqualified former President Donald J. Trump from the primary ballot because of his actions during the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.No one was home when officers arrived, according to Maine State Police, who labeled the false report as a “swatting” attempt, one intended to draw a heavily armed law enforcement response.In the days since, more bogus calls and threats have rolled in across the country. On Wednesday, state capitol buildings in Connecticut, Georgia, Hawaii, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi and Montana were evacuated or placed on lockdown after the authorities said they had received bomb threats that they described as false and nonspecific. The F.B.I. said it had no information to suggest any threats were credible.The incidents intensified a climate of intimidation and the harassment of public officials, including those responsible for overseeing ballot access and voting. Since 2020, election officials have confronted rising threats and difficult working conditions, aggravated by rampant conspiracy theories about fraud. The episodes suggested 2024 would be another heated election year.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Read Trump’s Appeal to the Supreme Court Over Colorado’s Ballot Ruling

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      21

      ator John McCain, and Senator Ted Cruz held that the issue was for Congress and not the federal courts.

      32

      It would be beyond absurd-particularly in light of the Fourteenth Amendment’s enlargement of federal authority that this issue would be nonjusticiable by

      32. See, e.g., Castro v. N.H. Sec’y of State, Case No. 23-cv-416-JL, 2023 WL 7110390, at *9 (D.N.H. Oct. 27, 2023) (footnote omitted) aff’d on other grounds – F.4th —-, 2023 WL 8078010 (1st Cir. Nov. 21, 2023) (“[T]he vast weight of authority has held that the Constitution commits to Congress and the electors the responsibility of determining matters of presidential candidates’ qualifications.”); Robinson v. Bowen, 567 F. Supp. 2d 1144, 1147 (N.D. Cal. 2008) (“Arguments concerning qualifications or lack thereof can be laid before the voting public before the election and, once the election is over, can be raised as objections as the electoral votes are counted in Congress. The members of the Senate and the House of Representatives are well qualified to adjudicate any objections to ballots for allegedly unqualified candidates.”); Grinols v. Electoral College, No. 2:12-cv-02997-MCE-DAD, 2013 WL 2294885, at *5-7 (E.D. Cal. May 23, 2013) (“[T]he Constitution assigns to Congress, and not to federal courts, the responsibility of determining whether a person is qualified to serve as President of the United States.”); Grinols v. Electoral Coll., No. 12-CV-02997-MCE-DAD, 2013 WL 211135, at *4 (E.D. Cal. Jan. 16, 2013) (“These various articles and amendments of the Constitution make it clear that the Constitution assigns to Congress, and not the Courts, the responsibility of determining whether a person is qualified to serve as President.”); Taitz v. Democrat Party of Mississippi, No. 3:12-CV-280-HTW-LRA, 2015 WL 11017373, at *12–16 (S.D. Miss. Mar. 31, 2015) (“[T]hese matters are entrusted to the care of the United States Congress, not this court.”); Kerchner v. Obama, 669 F. Supp. 2d 477, 483 n.5 (D.N.J. 2009) (“The Constitution commits the selection of the President to the Electoral College in Article II, Section 1, as amended by the Twelfth Amendment and the Twentieth Amendment, Section 3,” and “[n]one of these provisions evince an intention for judicial reviewability of these political choices.”). More

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      Conservative Group Wins Legal Victory Over 2020 Voting Challenges in Georgia

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      The group, True the Vote, had been accused by the liberal organization Fair Fight of violating the Voting Rights Act by intimidating voters. A judge rejected the claims.A federal judge ruled on Tuesday that a conservative group’s efforts to challenge the eligibility of hundreds of thousands of voters in the Senate runoff elections in Georgia in early 2021 did not violate the Voting Rights Act under a clause outlawing voter suppression.In a 145-page opinion, the judge, Steve C. Jones of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, wrote that the court “maintains its prior concerns” regarding how the group, True the Vote, sought to challenge voters’ eligibility. But he said that Fair Fight, the liberal voting rights group that brought the lawsuit against True the Vote, had failed to show that the efforts were illegal.The decision was relatively narrow, applying only to Judge Jones’s district in northern Georgia, and will do little to change the status quo: Right-wing election groups have already tried to help bring thousands of challenges to voter registrations in states across the country.But the opinion is likely to encourage conservative activists hunting for voter fraud during the 2024 presidential election. Election officials and voting rights groups have expressed worries about these efforts, warning that an expanded campaign to challenge voters en masse could intimidate people away from the ballot box. True the Vote and similar groups, taking a cue from former President Donald J. Trump, have often spread false theories about election fraud.“Any of these decisions that allows these kinds of mass challenges to go forward embolden that movement,” said Sophia Lin Lakin, the director of the Voting Rights Project at the A.C.L.U.In his opinion, Judge Jones wrote that evidence from Fair Fight and individual voters in the trial did not amount to intimidation under an important section of the Voting Rights Act known as Section 11(b), which outlaws any attempt to “intimidate, threaten, or coerce, or attempt to intimidate” any voter or act of voting.“While the court believes that actions increasing the difficulty to vote if paired with other conduct might give rise to a Section 11(b) violation in some circumstances, increased difficulty alone does not constitute voter intimidation,” Judge Jones wrote.Voting rights experts said the ruling could raise the bar of what constitutes voter intimidation under the Voting Rights Act, and said it was yet another court decision that chipped away at the protections in the landmark law.“He took a very narrow view of what constitutes intimidation,” Ms. Lakin said. “But raising the bar of what you need to show altogether will make demonstrating voter intimidation claims more difficult, at least in the Northern District of Georgia.”In a footnote in the decision, Judge Jones, who was appointed to his post by President Barack Obama, was careful not to give a blessing to tactics like True the Vote’s.“In making this conclusion, the court, in no way, is condoning TTV’s actions in facilitating a mass number of seemingly frivolous challenges,” he wrote. He added: “TTV’s list utterly lacked reliability. Indeed, it verges on recklessness.”Fair Fight sued True the Vote three years ago, after the conservative group organized challenges in December 2020 questioning the eligibility of more than 250,000 registered Georgia voters. To spur right-wing activists to help challenge voters, True the Vote created a $1 million reward fund and offered bounties for evidence of “election malfeasance.”Fair Fight argued in its lawsuit that finding actual fraud or ineligible voters was only a secondary concern for True the Vote, and that the real intention was to frighten Democratic-leaning voters from turning out in what were expected to be razor-thin runoff elections that would determine control of the United States Senate.Catherine Engelbrecht, the president of True the Vote, celebrated the ruling as “an answer to the prayers of faithful patriots across America.”“Today’s ruling sends a clear message to those who would attempt to control the course of our nation through lawfare and intimidation,” Ms. Engelbrecht wrote in a statement. “American citizens will not be silenced.”Fair Fight, in a lengthy statement, said that federal courts were not adequately protecting Americans from ramped-up attacks on voting rights.“While there is much to make of the court’s 145-page opinion, Fair Fight is disappointed that Georgians and voters nationwide must continue to wait for our federal courts to impose accountability in the face of widespread and mounting voter intimidation efforts,” Cianti Stewart-Reid, the executive director of Fair Fight, said in the statement.It was unclear whether the group planned to appeal the decision. More