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      Special counsel can file oversized motion on Trump election interference case

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      Special counsel Jack Smith can file an oversized, 180-page motion on presidential immunity in Donald Trump’s Washington DC federal court election interference case, a judge ruled Tuesday.Judge Tanya S Chutkan’s decision stems from prosecutors’ 21 September request to exceed the typical 45-page limit for opening motions and oppositions. Smith’s motion must be filed by Thursday and will include both legal arguments and evidence and could provide additional insight into Trump’s efforts to throw out election results, though it is unclear when the public might be able to see that material given that it’ll initially be filed under seal.Trump faces four felony counts over his effort to subvert the 2020 election, though a July US supreme court ruling on presidential immunity threw the case into near disarray.The supreme court held that Trump and other presidents enjoyed immunity for official acts, but not unofficial ones, undermining charges related to his alleged pressure campaign on Justice Department officials.The supreme court remanded the case back to Chutkan, who must decide which claims in Smith’s case are official acts, and which are not official. Smith filed a new indictment against Trump in August, which does not dramatically change this criminal case, but revamps some parts to stress that Trump was not acting in an official capacity in his attempt to overturn election results.Prosecutors proposed in a 5 September hearing that they should file a brief on the immunity issue with “a comprehensive discussion and description of both pled and unpled facts … so that all parties and the Court know the issues that the Court needs to consider in order to make its fact-bound determinations that the Supreme Court has required.”In green-lighting prosecutors’ request to file an unusually sizeable motion, Chutkan noted the supreme ourt’s direction that she need to engage in a “close” and “fact specific” examination of this indictment and related accusations.“The length and breadth of the Government’s proposed brief reflects the uniquely ‘challenging’ and factbound nature of those determinations,” the judge said in her ruling. “The briefs’ atypical sequence and size thus both serve the efficient resolution of immunity issues in this case ‘at the earliest possible stage.’”Trump’s legal team had fought prosecutors’ request to file a lengthier brief, complaining that it would “quadruple the standard page limits” in the district. They also unsuccessfully opposed Smith’s filing of this brief now, and argued that immunity arguments shouldn’t take place until Trump files a motion to dismiss the case.Prosecutors said in court filings that they are poised to file their briefing under seal, given the “substantial amount of sensitive material” and later, file a public version that has redactions. More

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      Chief justice Roberts pushed for quick immunity ruling in Trump’s favor – report

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      John Roberts Jr used his position as the US supreme court’s chief justice to urge his colleagues to rule quickly – and in favor – of Donald Trump ahead of the decision that granted him and other presidents immunity for official acts, according to a New York Times investigation published on Sunday.The new report provides details about what was happening behind the scenes in the country’s highest court during the three recent supreme court decisions centering on – and generally favoring – the Republican former president.Based on leaked memos, documentation of the proceedings, and interviews with court insiders, the Times report suggests that Roberts – who was appointed to the supreme court during Republican George W Bush’s presidency – took an unusually active role in the three cases in question. And he wrote the majority opinions on all three.In addition to the presidential immunity ruling, the decisions collectively barred states from removing any official – including Trump – from a federal ballot as well as declaring the government had overstepped with respect to obstruction of justice charges filed against participants of the 6 January 2021 attack that the former president’s supporters aimed at Congress.The Times reported that last February, Roberts sent a memo to his fellow supreme court justices regarding the criminal charges against Trump for attempting to overturn the result of the 2020 election that he lost to Joe Biden.In the leaked memo, the Times reported that he criticized a lower court decision that allowed the case to move forward – and he argued to the other justices that Trump was protected by presidential immunity. He reportedly said that the supreme court ought to hear the case and grant Trump greater protection from prosecution.“I think it likely that we will view the separation of powers analysis differently,” the Times said that Roberts wrote to the other supreme court justices in the private memo.According to the Times, some of the conservative justices wanted to delay the decision on the presidential immunity case until after Trump finished running for a second term in the White House in November. But Roberts advocated for an early hearing and decision – and ultimately wrote the majority opinion himself.Before the opinion and ruling went public, the Times reported that Justice Brett Kavanaugh had praised Roberts on the ruling, calling it “extraordinary”. Their fellow conservative justice Neil Gorsuch – who, like Kavanaugh, was appointed to the supreme court during Trump’s presidency – called it “remarkable”.The decision came out on 1 July and stated that former presidents are entitled to some degree of immunity from criminal prosecution. Both conservatives and liberals saw it as a huge win for Trump, who – among a spate of legal problems – is awaiting sentencing for a criminal conviction in May of falsifying business records to conceal hush-money payments to an adult film actor who alleged an extramarital sexual encounter with him.The supreme court then returned the case to district judge Tanya Chutkan, who is overseeing the federal case against Trump for allegedly participating in an illicit effort to reverse his defeat in the 2020 election. That left her tasked with having to figure out how to apply the US supreme court’s decision.The Times also reported that in the case about whether individual states could kick Trump off the ballot based on language in the US constitution which bars insurrections from holding office, Roberts told his colleagues that he wanted the decision to be unanimous and unsigned.All nine justices initially agreed that Trump should remain on state ballots. But then, the Times reports, four conservative justices suggested additions to the ruling, including proposing that Congress would have to approve enforcement of the insurrectionist ban in the constitution.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionFour justices – liberals Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Ketanji Brown Jackson and conservative Trump appointee Amy Coney Barrett – reportedly disagreed. They said they thought that went too far and wrote concurrences in disagreement, according to the Times.Ultimately, Roberts sided with the four remaining justices – fellow conservatives Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito Jr – in an opinion that he wrote and was issued unsigned.In the third case scrutinized by the Times, which involved the Capitol attack participants’ obstruction of justice charges, Roberts had originally assigned the writing of the majority opinion to Alito.But then in May, Roberts – in an unusual move – informed the court that he would write the opinion himself. The chief justice did that days after a scandal enveloped Alito in the wake of reports that his wife had flown an upside-down flag outside the couple’s home following the Capitol attack. Flying flags upside down, a universal sign of distress, has been associated with a movement that boosted Trump’s lies about the 2020 election being unduly stolen from him.The Times wrote that it was unclear whether there was a link between the flag scandal and Roberts’ decision to write the Capitol attack-related opinion, in which a 6-3 conservative majority found the federal government could not apply its obstruction of justice statute so broadly. The justices did not respond to the outlet’s request for comment. More

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      Judge dismisses two criminal counts against Trump in Georgia election case

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      Donald Trump had two counts tossed from his criminal case in Georgia over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, after the presiding judge decided on Thursday they fell under the supremacy clause in the US constitution that bars state prosecutors from charging federal crimes.“The Supremacy Clause declares that state law must yield to federal law when the two conflict,” the Fulton county superior court judge Scott McAfee wrote in his order.The judge decided that two charges against Trump and an additional count against several Trump allies, who were charged as co-defendants, should be struck. But he decided the remainder of the indictment – including the Rico racketeering charge – could remain.Trump now faces eight charges, down from 13 charges. Trump pleaded not guilty to the sprawling 2020 election interference case in Fulton county last year along with 18 other co-defendants. Four have since taken plea deals and agreed to testify against the other defendants.The charges that were dismissed against Trump – the filing of false documents and conspiring to file false documents – related to the Trump campaign’s gambit to submit fake elector certificates declaring Trump as the winner even though he had lost.The fake elector certificates were then sent to the National Archives ahead of the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s election win on 6 January 2021, which the Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis charged as criminal forgery counts.“President Trump and his legal team in Georgia have prevailed once again. The trial court has decided that counts 15 and 27 in the indictment must be quashed/dismissed,” Trump’s lead lawyer, Steve Sadow, said in a statement.The 22-page order issued by McAfee comes as the fate of the case hangs in the balance ahead of the Georgia appeals court deciding whether Willis can continue with the case, following her alleged relationship with her deputy, Nathan Wade.McAfee declined to remove Willis from the case as long as Wade resigned to resolve the conflict of interest allegation, a decision that Trump’s lawyers have appealed.Trump’s attorneys continue to argue that Willis has a conflict of interest, but also argued that she should have been disqualified for comments she made about the case at a speech at Big Bethel AME church in downtown Atlanta. In the wake of revelations about her relationship with Wade, Willis attributed the legal attack to racist motivations.Separately on Thursday, McAfee rejected a motion from the former Trump lawyer John Eastman and Trump fake elector Shawn Still to toss the entire indictment on grounds that it relied on an overly broad interpretation of the Georgia state racketeering statute. More

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      Dick Cheney confirms he will vote for Kamala Harris, saying no ‘greater threat’ to US than Donald Trump – live

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      Dick Cheney has confirmed that he will be voting for the Democratic ticket in the US presidential election. The statement from the Republican former vice-president came hours after his daughter Liz Cheney, the former Republican representative for Wyoming, told a crowd that her father would be supporting Harris.His pronouncement comes days after Liz told a North Carolina crowd that she would also be voting for Harris.The Georgia bureau of investigations (GBI) has announced that threats directed at other Georgia schools in the wake of Wednesday’s mass shooting have been deemed non-credible.In a press release on its website, the GBI says that an increase in threats and subsequent tips from concerned people are common after these types of shootings, and that those who make these threats will be “investigated and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law”.The White House has condemned Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host, over his interview with Darryl Cooper, a Holocaust revisionist and podcast host who, during an interview released on Monday, argued that the Holocaust was the result of Germany not knowing what to do with prisoners of war.The interview drew the ire of Jewish leaders, and in a statement to the New York Times, White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said:
      Giving a microphone to a Holocaust denier who spreads Nazi propaganda is a disgusting and sadistic insult to all Americans, to the memory of the over six million Jews who were genocidally murdered by Adolf Hitler, to the service of the millions of Americans who fought to defeat Nazism and to every subsequent victim of antisemitism.
      In a now-deleted tweet, Elon Musk described the interview between Carlson and Cooper as: “Very interesting. Worth watching.”A 15-year-old student has been shot and injured at Joppatowne high school in Maryland, about 24 miles north of Baltimore. The shooting appears to have stemmed from a fight on campus, and a 16-year old student has been arrested, ABC News reports.The injured student was airlifted to a local trauma unit and is in serious condition, authorities say. Deputies responded within two minutes and at least 100 other officers showed up to the scene.“It showed our response – as if it was one – is ready. I pray we never have to test that system,” Jeff Gahler, sheriff of Harford county, said during a press conference.The shooting on Friday comes days after two students and two adults were killed and nine others were injured during a mass shooting at Apalachee high school in Georgia.Here is video of the moment Liz Cheney revealed that her father, Dick Cheney, will be voting for Kamala Harris:
      Think about the moment that we’re in and you think about how serious this moment is … My dad believes … there’s never been an individual in our country who is as grave a threat to our democracy as Donald Trump is and that’s the moment that we’re facing and so I think recognizing that, Dick Cheney will be voting for Kamala Harris,” Cheney said.
      Dick Cheney will vote for Kamala Harris in November, the former vice-president’s daughter Liz Cheney said on Friday.In an interview on Friday at the Texas Tribune Festival, Liz Cheney said: “Dick Cheney will be voting for Kamala Harris,” NBC reports.Earlier this week, Liz Cheney addressed an audience at Duke University, where she said: “Because of the danger that Donald Trump poses, not only am I not voting for Donald Trump, but I will be voting for Kamala Harris.”During her interview on Friday, Liz Cheney also said that she will support the senatorial bid of Colin Allred, Texas’s Democratic representative.Speaking of Allred, who is challenging Ted Cruz, the Republican incumbent, Cheney called him a “tremendous, serious candidate”, adding: “We need people who are going to serve in good faith … We need people who are honorable public servants, and in this race, that is Colin Allred, so I’ll be working on his behalf.”Tim Walz has responded to JD Vance’s comment following Georgia’s deadly school shooting in which he said school shootings are “just a fact of life”.Walz, who has previously voiced support for an assault weapons ban, said in response to Vance’s comment:
      This is pathetic. We can’t quit on our kids – they deserve better.
      Republicans have repeatedly criticised and rejected calls for gun safety reforms including increased background checks and red flag policies, and have instead pointed to mental health issues as a chief reason for mass shootings across the country.Before Donald Trump’s trip to North Carolina today, the Fraternal Order of Police issued the following statement of endorsement of him:
      In every election cycle, the FOP pays close attention to which presidential campaign highlights the issues most vital to the men and women of the FOP, including the challenges faced by the rank-and-file law enforcement officers, the real issues in public safety, and the problems in our criminal justice system …
      The National FOP endorsed Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020. He led our nation through some very tough times. He provided our nation with strong, effective leadership during his first term, and now that he is seeking election to a second term, we intend to help him win it.
      In his decision, Judge Juan Merchan wrote that the “court is a fair, impartial and apolitical institution”.He went on to add that delaying Trump’s sentencing should “dispel any suggestion” that he tried “to give an advantage to, or to create a disadvantage for, any political party and for any candidate for any office”.Hello, US politics blog readers. It’s a very busy news day even though the election campaign trail itself is rather quiet.Kamala Harris is in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, behind closed doors preparing for her historic debate next Tuesday with her opponent for the White House in November, Donald Trump. But she has been given good news in the form of her latest fundraising and polling results.Trump, meanwhile, has been dealing with legal troubles in New York. First, he appeared in civil court at a hearing in which he is appealing a civil judgment against him that he sexually abused the writer E Jean Carroll, before holding a press conference uptown and then getting a vital judicial decision in his New York criminal case.Here’s where things stand:

      The judge in the New York criminal case in which Donald Trump was convicted earlier this year of election-related fraud over hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels and a cover-up has delayed sentencing of the former president until after the election.

      Donald Trump launched an angry tirade against E Jean Carroll, the Biden administration, Kamala Harris, news networks including ABC and CNN, and Iran and China in a long and aggressive press conference filled top to bottom with outlandish claims and personal attacks.

      More than 90 business leaders, including the heads of Yelp and Chobani, endorsed Kamala Harris’s presidential bid, in a new letter. It was also signed by current and former top executives including the former CEOs of PepsiCo, Ford Motor, Yahoo! and 21st Century Fox, and said: “Harris has a strong record of advancing actions to spur business investment in the United States and ensure American businesses can compete and win.”

      Trump’s lawyers argued at an appeal hearing in civil court in New York that the trial spurred by a lawsuit brought forth by the writer E Jean Carroll, where a jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse, consisted of improper evidence.

      Kamala Harris’s election campaign brought in $361m in contributions the last month, nearly tripling the $130m raised by Trump’s campaign during the same period. The campaign of Harris and Tim Walz, her running mate and the governor of Minnesota, called it the biggest grassroots fundraiser in presidential campaign history.

      Joe Biden is due to arrive in Ann Arbor, Michigan, soon, where he will speak about his administration’s economic agenda.

      JD Vance sparked a political row after calling school shootings an unwelcome “fact of life” and saying schools need stronger security, while Democrats, led by Biden and Harris, want stronger gun control, especially a ban on assault-style rifles, including the semi-automatic gun that was used in the school shooting in Georgia earlier this week.
      Donald Trump and his legal team had asked Justice Juan Merchan to push back the former president’s criminal sentencing date until after the presidential vote on 5 November.Merchan moments ago announced the sentencing would be pushed back from 18 September to 26 November (a Tuesday, two days before Thanksgiving).Here’s a fuller quote from Merchan’s response to both sides’ legal teams, picked out from the official decision by Reuters:
      This matter is one that stands alone in a unique place in this Nation’s history. Unfortunately, we are now at a place in time that is fraught with complexities rendering the requirements of a sentencing hearing, should one be necessary, difficult to execute,.
      Trump’s lawyers earlier this month had argued there would not be enough time before the original sentencing date for the defense to potentially appeal Merchan’s forthcoming ruling on Trump’s request to overturn the conviction due to the supreme court’s landmark decision on presidential immunity. Merchan had been scheduled to rule on that motion on 16 September.He wrote today that he now plans to rule on that motion on 12 November.The supreme court’s 6-3 ruling, which related to a separate criminal case Trump faces – the federal election meddling case – found that presidents cannot be criminally prosecuted for their official acts, and that evidence of presidents’ official actions cannot be used to help prove criminal cases involving unofficial actions. More

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      Trump pleads not guilty to revised 2020 election interference charges

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      Donald Trump pleaded not guilty on Thursday, via his legal team, to the revised charges in his federal criminal election interference investigation, in the first hearing in the Washington DC case since the US supreme court gave its immunity ruling.The former US president and current Republican nominee for the White House in this November’s election was not present in federal court in the capital.The US district judge, Tanya Chutkan, said she would not set a schedule in the case at this status conference for the prosecution and defense teams, but hopes to do so later on Thursday.The case relates to Trump’s conduct surrounding events after he lost his re-election bid in November 2020 to his Democratic rival Joe Biden, culminating in the insurrection at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, by thousands of extreme Trump supporters intent on overturning the election result.Chutkan is hearing arguments about the potential next steps in the election subversion prosecution of Trump for the first time since the supreme court narrowed the case by ruling that former presidents are entitled to broad immunity from criminal charges.As the hearing opened, the judge noted that it has been almost a year since she had seen the lawyers in her courtroom. The case has been frozen since last December as Trump pursued his appeal.The defense lawyer John Lauro joked to the judge: “Life was almost meaningless without seeing you.”Chutkan replied: “Enjoy it while it lasts.”A not guilty plea was entered on Trump’s behalf for a revised indictment that the special counsel Jack Smith’s team filed last week to strip out certain allegations and comply with the supreme court’s ruling in July. Prosecutors have said they can be ready at any time to file a legal brief laying out its position on how to apply the justices’ immunity opinion to the case.Defense lawyers are challenging the legitimacy of the case and said they intend to file multiple motions to dismiss the case, including one that piggybacks off a Florida judge’s ruling that Smith’s appointment was unconstitutional.Neither side envisions a trial happening before the November election. The case is one of two federal prosecutions against Trump, in a host of legal cases. The other, charging him with illegally hoarding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, was dismissed in July by the US district judge Aileen Cannon, who said Smith’s appointment as special counsel was unlawful.Smith’s team has appealed that ruling. Trump’s lawyers say they intend to ask Chutkan to dismiss the election case on the same grounds.Reuters and the Associated Press contributed reporting. More

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      Federal judge rejects Trump’s request to intervene in hush-money criminal case

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      A federal judge on Tuesday rejected Donald Trump’s request to intervene in his New York hush-money criminal case, thwarting the former president’s latest bid to overturn his felony conviction and delay his sentencing.US district judge Alvin Hellerstein ruled that Trump had not satisfied the burden of proof required for a federal court to take control of the case from the state court where it was tried.Hellerstein’s ruling came hours after Manhattan prosecutors raised objections to Trump’s effort to delay post-trial decisions in the case while he sought to have the federal court step in.The Manhattan district attorney’s office argued in a letter to the judge presiding over the case in state court that he had no legal obligation to hold off on post-trial decisions and wait for Hellerstein to rule.Prosecutors urged the trial judge, Juan M Merchan, not to delay his rulings on two key defense requests: Trump’s call to delay sentencing until after the November election, and his bid to overturn the verdict and dismiss the case in the wake of the US supreme court’s presidential immunity ruling.Merchan has said he will rule 16 September on Trump’s motion to overturn the verdict. His decision on delaying sentencing has been expected in the coming days.Trump was convicted in May of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to conceal a $130,000 hush-money payment to adult film actor Stormy Daniels, whose affair allegations threatened to disrupt his 2016 presidential run. Trump has denied her claim and said he did nothing wrong.Falsifying business records is punishable by up to four years behind bars. Other potential sentences include probation or a fine.In a letter Tuesday, assistant district attorney Matthew Colangelo reiterated that prosecutors have not staked a position on whether to delay sentencing, deferring to Merchan on an “appropriate post-trial schedule”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump’s lawyers have argued that sentencing Trump as scheduled, just two days after Merchan’s expected immunity decision, would not give him enough time to weigh next steps – including a possible appeal – if Merchan rules to uphold the verdict.They also argued that sentencing Trump on 18 September, about seven weeks before election day, would be election interference, raising the specter that Trump could be sent to jail as early voting is getting under way.Colangelo said Tuesday that prosecutors were open to a schedule that allows “adequate time” to adjudicate Trump’s motion to set aside the verdict while also sentencing him “without unreasonable delay”.In a letter to Merchan last week, Trump’s lawyers said delaying the proceedings is the “only appropriate course” as they seek to have the federal court rectify a verdict they say was tainted by violations of the Republican presidential nominee’s constitutional rights and the supreme court’s ruling that gives ex-presidents broad protections from prosecution.If the case is moved to federal court, Trump’s lawyers said they will then seek to have the verdict overturned and the case dismissed on immunity grounds.The supreme court’s 1 July ruling reins in prosecutions of ex-presidents for official acts and restricts prosecutors in pointing to official acts as evidence that a president’s unofficial actions were illegal.Trump’s lawyers have argued that prosecutors rushed to trial instead of waiting for the supreme court’s presidential immunity decision, and that prosecutors erred by showing jurors evidence that should not have been allowed under the ruling, such as former White House staffers describing how Trump reacted to news coverage of the hush-money deal and tweets he sent while president in 2018.Trump’s lawyers had previously invoked presidential immunity in a failed bid last year to get the hush-money case moved from state court to federal court. More

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      The revised indictment against Donald Trump is the last thing he needs right now | Lloyd Green

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      On Tuesday, Jack Smith, the special counsel, delivered a revised 36-page indictment, again charging Donald Trump with conspiring to subvert the final outcome of the 2020 election. How the courts treat the latest indictment remains to be seen. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito may again race to Trump’s rescue. But two weeks before the scheduled 10 September presidential debate, the American electorate and Donald Trump are again reminded that the Republican nominee stands in legal jeopardy. Then again, winning on 5 November may be the simplest way for him to avoid jail time.Already trailing in the polls, this is not good news for Trump, a candidate who has twice lost the popular vote. Without Joe Biden as a foil, his decline and age visibly grow. At 59, Kamala Harris is almost 20 years younger. All too often, Trump, 78, slurs his words and rambles. His dance moves remind folks of their elderly uncle.Trump already labors under a state court felony conviction in New York and a nine-figure pile of civil judgments. His personal liquidity and the future of his family business are in doubt. He must again deflect renewed allegations that he sought to thwart the will of the people and obstruct the outcome of a valid election. That costs more time and money.“Despite having lost, the Defendant – who was also the incumbent President – was determined to remain in power,” the indictment reads.“For more than two months following election day on November 3, 2020, the Defendant spread lies that there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the election and that he had actually won. These claims were false, and the Defendant knew that they were false.”For a guy who yammers about law and order, it’s a lousy look – as is his campaign’s physical altercation at Arlington national cemetery over its use as a prop in which Trump flashes a thumbs-up.Since Harris emerged as the Democrats’ standard-bearer, Trump is on the short end of a nine-point shift in the polls. This latest legal development will likely hinder his attempt to make up lost ground. If history matters, indictments have a way of doing just that.A veteran of George HW Bush’s losing re-election campaign, I remember Caspar Weinberger, Ronald Reagan’s defense secretary, being re-indicted just days before the 3 November 1992 election. In the run-up to that fateful Friday, the campaign had battled back into a statistical tie with Bill Clinton. The one-count re-indictment, however, derailed the campaign’s final gasp for momentum.Before the latest indictment, Harris already held an 11-point lead over Trump on the question of who is the more honest and trustworthy candidate. Expect Tuesday’s indictment to expand the gap, a development that he can ill afford.The map tells the story. According to Nate Silver, the polling guru, Harris has recaptured a lead in the electoral battlegrounds of Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The website he founded, ABC’s 538, gives her nearly a three-in-five shot of winning. PredictIt, an online betting site, puts her chance at 55%.Nationally, House Democrats have improved their chances of retaking the chamber. Over in Texas, the senator Ted Cruz holds a mere two-point advantage over the representative Colin Allred, his Democratic opponent. The loathed incumbent senator is in trouble.This is not the future Trump and the Republicans envisioned after he walloped Biden in the debate. Even worse, this is not the endgame the Trump campaign anticipated. Rather, Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles expected Sleepy Joe to hang on until the bitter end. Of all his unforced errors, Trump agreeing to an early debate may have been his most consequential. Lack of imagination can be fatal in politics and war.Adding insult to injury, the Harris campaign announced on Tuesday that Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, will sit for a joint interview to be aired this Thursday night on CNN. For days, the punditocracy repeatedly announced that without a media sit-down she would be unable to maintain her momentum.That box is about to be checked. Team Trump is on verge of losing another talking point.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBeyond that, the Harris-Walz interview falls on the eve of the upcoming Labor Day weekend, when most of the US is on the road, as opposed to being glued to their televisions. If the interview goes poorly for Harris, it is less likely to develop into a real-time disaster.The Trump re-indictment also serves to highlight Harris’s career as a local prosecutor and state attorney general. In this vein, a speech she delivered in late June in Atlanta sets the table for the final weeks of the campaign.“In those roles, I took on perpetrators of all kinds: predators who abused women; fraudsters who ripped off consumers; cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain,” she advised the crowd.“So, hear me when I say I know Donald Trump’s type. I know the type. And I have been dealing with people like him my entire career.”Meanwhile, her campaign coffers brim. Voter registration among Black women explodes. And Trump is left to hawk another round of digital trading cards.He is not enjoying a “brat summer”.

      Lloyd Green is an attorney in New York and served in the US Department of Justice from 1990 to 1992 More

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      Special counsel files new indictment against Trump over 2020 election

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      The justice department filed a new indictment against Donald Trump on Tuesday over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. The maneuver does not substantially change the criminal case against him but protects it in the wake of a July supreme court decision ruling saying that Trump and other presidents have immunity for official acts, but not unofficial ones.“Today, a federal grand jury in the District of Columbia returned a superseding indictment, charging the defendant with the same criminal offenses that were charged in the original indictment,” lawyers for Jack Smith, the special counsel handling the case, said in a filing that accompanied what is known as a superseding indictment.“The superseding indictment, which was presented to a new grand jury that had not previously heard evidence in this case, reflects the Government’s efforts to respect and implement the Supreme Court’s holdings and remand instructions in Trump v United States.”The document retains the same four criminal charges against Trump that were originally filed last summer. But portions of the new indictment are rewritten to emphasize that Trump was not acting in his official capacity during his efforts to try to overturn the election.The new document, for example, removes mention of Jeffrey Clark, a former justice department official who aided Trump’s attempt to try to overturn the election. Clark was the only government official who was listed as an unnamed co-conspirator in the original indictment.“Trump is therefore absolutely immune from prosecution for the alleged conduct involving his discussions with Justice Department officials,” the supreme court wrote in its ruling in July.The supreme court also suggested that a president could be criminally immune in connection to acts between him and the vice-president. The superseding indictment reframes Trump’s interactions with Mike Pence, emphasizing that he was Trump’s running mate.At other points in the document, prosecutors emphasize that Trump was acting outside the scope of his official duties.“The defendant had no official responsibilities related to any state’s certification of the election results,” the document says.Prosecutors also highlighted that Trump used his Twitter/X account both for official and personal acts. They noted that the rally he attended on the Ellipse, near the White House, on 6 January 2021 was a “campaign speech”.Even if the case is still unlikely to go to trial before the 2024 election in November, and even if the Trump lawyers file motions seeking to excise more parts of the indictment, the decision to pursue a superseding indictment may have been to avoid more delay.Trump has been enormously successful in delaying his criminal cases, which came as part of a broader strategy to push his legal troubles past November, in the hopes that he wins and can appoint a loyalist as the attorney general who would then drop the cases entirely.In July, the supreme court’s conservative majority ruled that former presidents are immune from criminal prosecution for official actions that extended to the “outer perimeter” of their office, most notably any interactions with the justice department and executive branch officials.The framework of criminal accountability for presidents, as laid out by the ruling, has three categories: core presidential functions that carry absolute immunity, official acts of the presidency that carry presumptive immunity, and unofficial acts that carry no immunity.The court also ruled that the special counsel, Jack Smith, could not introduce as evidence at trial any acts deemed to be official, even as contextual information for jurors to show Trump’s intent. More