Donald Trump trials

Subterms

    More stories

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Mar-a-Lago search warrant was properly granted, says Trump documents judge

      by

      The federal judge overseeing Donald Trump’s criminal case for retaining classified documents suggested she would deny his attempt to exclude the documents the FBI seized at the Mar-a-Lago club, saying at a hearing Tuesday that the warrant for the search was properly granted.The former president’s lawyers had contended the warrant was unconstitutionally vague and the FBI affidavit, used to convince the magistrate judge to find there was probable cause for a crime at the club, contained contextual omissions.But the US district judge Aileen Cannon suggested she considered the warrant was sufficiently specific about what items FBI agents could seize at Mar-a-Lago, and told Trump’s lawyers the omissions would have made no difference on whether there was probable cause.The attempt by Trump to suppress the Mar-a-Lago evidence came through a request for a Franks hearing, where a judge applies a four-part test to decide whether false or misleading statements in the affidavit meant the evidence obtained through that search needed to be suppressed.Even before Cannon, who has shown a proclivity for ruling in his favor on motions about evidence, Trump’s request was ambitious because the legal threshold to get a Franks hearing is onerous. Trump needed to make a “substantial preliminary showing” that the affidavit had parts that were recklessly false.The evidence Trump’s lawyers presented was limited to complaints that the FBI agent omitted the fact that some top FBI officials preferred a consensual search of Mar-a-Lago, the FBI tying the need for a warrant to the National Archives, and Trump did not need a security clearance as president.Cannon suggested she found those omissions unavailing. “Why would it have changed the magistrate judge’s determination of probable cause” if the omissions had actually been included, Cannon asked Emil Bove, who argued on behalf of Trump.Trump’s lawyers also complained that the warrant itself was too broad, arguing for instance that the warrant allowed FBI agents to seize any documents that fell under the Espionage Act and the Presidential Records Act, without defining the technical terms in the statutes.That meant the agents were making unilateral on-the-fly decisions about whether they could seize a particular document, Trump’s lawyers said, suggesting that the warrant should have outlined what “national defense information” meant under the Espionage Act.But Cannon appeared similarly unconvinced by that argument. “It just seems like you’re making policy arguments. It seems far afield from whether the affidavit reached the probable cause standard. I’m unclear what you think should have been included” in the warrant, Cannon told Bove.The hearing came after a morning session where Trump’s lawyers asked the judge, behind closed doors, to revoke prosecutors’ access to transcripts of voice memos made by Trump’s ex-lawyer Evan Corcoran, which constitute key evidence in the obstruction of justice part of the documents case.The Guardian first reported last week that Trump’s lawyers would ask the judge to exclude the memos, arguing they should not have been given to prosecutors on the crime-fraud exception, which allows prosecutors to see privileged communications if legal advice is used in furtherance of a crime.The sweeping request could have far-reaching consequences since the memos – with, for example, Trump asking whether they could ignore the subpoena, or a later suggestion to “pluck” out some classified documents instead of returning them to the FBI – are the strongest evidence of Trump’s obstructive intent.Even if the judge excludes only some of the passages, it could dramatically undercut the strength of the obstruction case.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn the worst case for prosecutors, their evidence of Trump’s obstructive intent could be reduced to CCTV footage of boxes being moved at Mar-a-Lago by his co-defendants Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, logs of Trump’s calls with Nauta, and testimony about Nauta’s movements.The obstruction charges center on Trump’s incomplete compliance with an 11 May 2022 grand jury subpoena that demanded the return of any classified documents in his possession, months before the FBI seized 101 classified documents when it searched Mar-a-Lago.The Corcoran memos – the contents of which were first reported by the Guardian last year – have played a major role in bolstering the charge that Trump conspired with Nauta and De Oliveira to play a “shell game” in hiding boxes of classified documents so Corcoran could not ensure their return.The indictment quoted the memos as saying Trump responded: “Well, what if we, what happens if we just don’t respond at all or don’t play ball with them?” and “Wouldn’t it be better if we just told them we don’t have anything here?” and “Well, look, isn’t it better if there are no documents?”After Corcoran found 38 classified documents in the storage room, his memos recount Trump asking him, “Did you find anything? …… Is it bad? Good?”, and made a sort of plucking motion, suggesting “if there’s anything really bad in there, like, pluck it out”.Trump’s lawyers were expected to argue that the chief judge in Washington was overly broad in turning over more than 60 pages of memos, and that the instances of Trump asking whether he needed to comply with the subpoena are questions that every defendant asks to understand the full scope of their obligations.Trump’s lawyers were also expected to argue that none of the commentary – about Trump asking whether they needed to comply with the subpoena, or the plucking motion – satisfied the crime-fraud exception because it did not amount to Trump using Corcoran’s legal advice for a crime. More

    • 138 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump mocked for claiming he was ‘tortured’ in Georgia mugshot arrest

      by

      Donald Trump has been met with a chorus of online mockery after claiming that he was “tortured” while being processed at the Fulton county jail in Georgia last August, an occasion that generated the mugshot that he has since turned into a money-making device as he campaigns for a second presidency.The outlandish and unsubstantiated claim came in a fundraising email and drew at least one unflattering comparison with one of the former president’s political nemeses: John McCain, the former Republican senator for Arizona whose real experience of torture and incarceration during the Vietnam war was a target for Trump’s mockery.“I want you to remember what they did to me. They tortured me in the Fulton County Jail, and TOOK MY MUGSHOT,” Trump wrote in an email promoting coffee cups with his mugshot emblazoned on them.“So guess what? I put it on a mug for the WHOLE WORLD TO SEE!”Trump’s jail experience resulted from his criminal indictment, on which he now faces 13 charges, over allegations that he tried to overturn the 2020 presidential election result in Georgia, one of the key states he lost in his defeat to Joe Biden.That case is separate from the criminal prosecution in New York, which recently led to Trump’s conviction on 34 felonies stemming from hush money paid to Stormy Daniels, the adult film actor who alleged an adulterous affair with him.After arriving in a presidential-style motorcade in Georgia, he was booked, fingerprinted and photographed for a mugshot in a process that took about 20 minutes. No allegations of torture or mistreatment surfaced at the time – but Trump’s supporters have perceived the resulting photo to be a mark of pride that has been stamped on campaign merchandise.Alleging torture prompted a social media comparison with McCain, who Trump repeatedly ridiculed for being unable to raise his arms after having them broken under torture.“Trump is claiming he was ‘tortured’ while getting his mug shot taken at the Fulton County jail,” one post on X read. “John McCain knew all about REAL TORTURE, unlike Trump who has NO IDEA what ‘TORTURE’ is or he would have REQUIRED Hospitalization.”Trump, who earned a medical draft deferment from the Vietnam war because of heel spurs, openly disdained McCain’s war record and prisoner of war status when he successfully campaigned for the White House in the 2016 election, saying: “He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”Others ridiculed his torture claim in more general terms. “What does Trump mean by this,” another X user posted. “Like they inconvenienced/annoyed him or that they did something painful/harmful like pulling his fingernails out? I highly doubt the Secret Service allowed Atlanta PD to truly torture Trump.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAnother X user posted: “Trump thinks torture includes photographs and fingerprinting. Was he strip-searched? How many criminals are laughing at him?”Another user wrote: “Cry baby Trump now claims that he was tortured when they took his mug shot. Truth is he tortured us with that mug.”It is not the first time Trump has invoked political prisoner imagery while facing multiple felony charges. He has compared himself to Alexei Navalny, the late jailed Russian opposition leader and critic of Vladimir Putin, who died mysteriously in a Siberian penal colony in February.Trump has also used the term “hostages” to describe his supporters who were jailed for their part in the 6 January 2021 attack on the US Capitol in an effort to overturn Biden’s victory in the presidential election weeks earlier. More

    • 163 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      Republicans have a ghoulish tactic for distracting from Trump’s criminality | Sidney Blumenthal

      by

      Donald Trump is already showcasing the big surprise he will spring on Joe Biden at their debate. It’s not a surprise; it’s his most morbid, ghastly and predictable trick.On Friday, his campaign arranged and publicized a telephone call to the mother of a young woman who had been murdered by an undocumented immigrant to express his heartfelt sympathy. That day, the former president posted three similar stories of gruesome murders on his Truth Social account. “We have a new Biden Migrant Killing – It’s only going to get worse, and it’s all Crooked Joe Biden’s fault. He’s a disgrace to the Office of President, he’s a disgrace to America. I look forward to seeing him at the Fake Debate on Thursday. Let him explain why he has allowed MILLIONS of people to come into our Country illegally!”In the debate, Trump will cast the president as responsible for those who stalk, rape and kill innocent young women. He will accuse Biden and his policies on the border of being the source of vicious crimes. Biden will be the villain. He will be shown to have no empathy. He will be exposed as secretly conspiring to unleash a reign of terror. He will be unveiled as the criminal. The chivalrous Trump will ride as the white knight to rescue vulnerable women from swarthy rapists and killers. The original scenario of this plot was The Birth of a Nation.Trump’s planned attack in the debate is pulled from his repertoire of ploys like a hack comedian on the Strip drawing from a roomful of old joke files. For years he has exploited these tragedies as set-ups and the anguished parents as props. According to Fox News, “he has lent hope and compassion to those who have lost family members or other loved ones in recent years due to heinous acts committed by individuals who had come to the US illegally”. Alongside its portrayal of Trump as the sincere consoler of the grieving, truly a minister of souls, Fox News helpfully highlighted a story headlined: Illegals Charged with Murder, Rape and Kidnapping in a Week of Shocking Crimes Across the US. (Hyped after that, the next story: Transgender Utah Woman Shot Parents Dead.)Trump has been deploying this gambit since his first campaign in 2016, which featured a cavalcade of members of stricken “angel families”. Most recently, in February, before Biden’s State of the Union Address, he called the parents of a young woman allegedly murdered by an undocumented immigrant and afterward described how the “beautiful young woman” was “barbarically attacked”.When one of the people he had accused was later acquitted, Trump stated that the verdict was the reason there was “no wonder” why Americans are “so angry with illegal immigration”. Trump ghoulishly trolls for this specific and unusual type of murder, and when the details don’t match his grisly story, it doesn’t matter because there’s still a dead woman he can pretend to mourn.Trump’s call last week to another devastated family was a revival of his failed effort to disrupt Biden’s State of the Union. His Maga zealot, House member Marjorie Taylor Greene, elbowed her way to the aisle of the House chamber as Biden entered. Wearing a red “Make America Great Again” cap and a T-shirt reading “Say Her Name”, a slogan appropriated from the Black Lives Matter movement to protest against the police killings of Black women, she thrust a button with a victim’s name into Biden’s hand.In his speech, Biden lamented that the Republicans in the Senate had killed a border security bill, chiefly crafted by the very conservative senator James Lankford, Republican from Oklahoma, and initially backed by the Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell. Biden had exerted considerable political capital to get the Democrats to agree to the bill, which many, if not most, found distastefully draconian. But it was not the Democrats who killed the conservative bill. Trump opposed it. Instead, he wanted the festering problem for his campaign. Under Trump’s pressure, the Republicans caved and even Lankford voted against his own bill.When Biden mentioned the demise of the bipartisan border bill at the hands of cowed Republicans, some Maga members began to jeer him. “Oh, you don’t like that bill, huh?” Biden replied. “That conservatives got together and said it was a good bill? I’ll be darned. That’s amazing.” Lankford was caught on camera muttering: “That’s true.”“Say her name!” shouted Greene. Biden held up the button she had given him, naming Laken Riley, a Georgia nursing student allegedly murdered by an undocumented immigrant. “Laken Riley,” said Biden, “an innocent woman who was killed by an illegal,” and added: “To her parents I say my heart goes out to you, having lost children myself.”Biden’s forthrightness deflated the intent of Greene’s stunt. In the face of the calculated effort to rattle him and make him lose his composure, he sidetracked his hecklers.After Biden spoke, the Alabama senator Katie Britt delivered the Republican response. As part of the overarching plan to pin murders by undocumented immigrants on Biden, she raised the murder of Laken Riley but created a weird dissonance speaking in her strange sing-song “fundie baby” voice. “This could have been my daughter. This could have been yours … From fentanyl poisonings to horrific murders, there are empty chairs tonight at kitchen tables just like this one because of Biden’s senseless border policies.”The orchestrated razzing at the State of the Union was the warm-up for the same tactic that Trump will undoubtedly use in the debate. Trump will make another attempt. Now that he is a convicted felon, he is more desperate than ever to shift the taint of criminality on to Biden.The Republicans following his playbook are seeking every opportunity to label Biden the true “criminal” and suppress mention of Trump’s conviction. “What he’s doing to the country is criminal,” the South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham parroted on Fox News on 19 June. “His border policies are allowing people to be raped and murdered on the street.”That Trump was adjudicated a rapist in his E Jean Carroll defamation case and has been credibly accused of sexually assaulting more than a dozen women only makes the stories about the murders of innocent women by undocumented immigrants that much more politically necessary.To protect Trump’s reputation, House Republicans have banned any reference to Trump as a convicted felon from congressional speeches as a supposed violation of the rules, a suppression of members’ speech not seen since the Gag Rule of the 1840s forbidding antislavery statements. Then the Republicans pivot to the stories of murders by undocumented immigrants. The Republican National Committee – under its co-chair, Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump – has created a website called “Biden Bloodbath”. In bold red letters, it screams: “Migrant Crime: There Is Blood on Biden’s Hands”.If the facts matter, a definitive study in 2020 conducted by a team of academic researchers from the University of Wisconsin for the libertarian Cato Institute showed: “Contrary to public perception, we observe considerably lower felony arrest rates among undocumented immigrants compared to legal immigrants and native-born US citizens and find no evidence that undocumented criminality has increased in recent years.”The researchers concluded from data collected in Texas: “The illegal immigrant criminal conviction rate was 45% below that of native‐​born Americans in Texas. The general pattern [is] of native‐​born Americans having the highest criminal conviction rates followed by illegal immigrants and then with legal immigrants having the lowest holds for all of other specific types of crimes such as violent crimes, property crimes, homicide, and sex crimes.”A new study published in 2024 by Stanford University experts for the National Bureau of Economic Research stated: “We find that, as a group, immigrant men have had a lower incarceration rate than US-born men for the last 150 years of American history. The differences in incarceration have become more pronounced starting in 1960, with recent waves of immigrants being 50–60% less likely to be incarcerated than US-born men (30% when compared to US-born white men). This relative decline in incarceration has occurred among immigrants from all major countries of origin, and it cannot be explained by changes in immigrants’ observable characteristics or in immigration policies.”The reality, moreover, is that crime, which shot up during and immediately after Trump’s incompetent and malignant handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, is now plummeting under Biden, mainly as a result of steadily improving economic conditions. Based on FBI statistics gathered from more than 11,000 police agencies across the country, Biden has noted: “In the first quarter of this year, murders decreased by 26%, robberies by almost 18%, and violent crime overall by 15%.”Since the Republicans under the influence of Trump voted down their own border bill, Biden has issued a series of executive actions. They include suspending entry into the US of those unlawfully crossing into the US, granting citizenship to those legally married to an American and resident in the country for 10 years, and giving quick access to work visas to qualified Daca recipients (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or Dreamers) who have graduated college and have jobs.Biden’s actions have been taken on his own because he has no Republican partners. His Republican critics, who made his unilateral actions necessary, pretend he has not done anything at all.Despite what Biden has tried and effected, Trump’s enduring contempt for facts extends not least to the question of murders by undocumented immigrants. His ability to continue manipulating the calamities of “angel families” for his own ambition has depended upon his wrecking a Republican-written border security bill, his defiance of the facts that undocumented immigrants are the least likely group to commit crimes, and his enlistment and intimidation of Republicans to do his bidding and echo his demagogy.Trump, however, can’t help himself from undermining the frenetic Republican attempts to protect him and the party from his criminality. He just keeps raising it. At every rally, he promises that he will pardon the violent criminals imprisoned as a result of their participation in the January 6 insurrection. He calls them “hostages” and “warriors”.The news is awash in stories of Trump’s filings and motions to delay his trials for his alleged coup attempt and alleged stealing of national security documents. Present and former associates constantly surface to the top of the crime news.Fifty-two people involved in Trump’s fake electors scheme have been indicted in four states. He is under indictment himself in Georgia and an unindicted co-conspirator in Michigan. His personal attorney Rudy Giuliani has been indicted in three states. Another of his attorneys, Boris Epshteyn – who pleaded guilty in 2021 to disorderly conduct after being accused of groping women in a nightclub (the sexual assault charges were dropped) – has been indicted in Arizona. A third Trump attorney, Jenna Ellis, has been indicted and says she regrets ever representing Trump. Another attorney, Kenneth Chesebro, also indicted, has flipped and turned state’s evidence. Trump’s former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, has been indicted in three states.His former campaign manager and senior White House adviser, Steve Bannon, has been sentenced to prison for contempt of Congress for failing to honor a subpoena from the January 6 committee. Bannon also faces an October trial in New York state for an alleged scheme to fleece Trump supporters in a “Build the Wall” fraud, another money-making opportunity after Mexico declined to pay for Trump’s empty promise to Americans that our friendly neighbor to the south would pony up after Trump called immigrants “Mexican rapists”. Trump had pardoned Bannon from federal prosecution for that same charge.For Trump, the emotional manipulation of the compelling anecdotal fallacy is all that matters. New “angel families” are ordered up and brought to his attention to be used and discarded one after another. He will always find the next terrible tragedy involving some immigrant somewhere to illustrate his false narrative to sustain the problem whose solution he has thwarted in order to be able to inflame it in his interest. Then, wet with crocodile tears, he can stage lachrymose scenes of people’s genuine affliction by which to demonize Biden.Demonstrating his piety and virtue, while showing no remorse for his felonies as he awaits sentencing, Trump endorsed the state of Louisiana’s edict to post a copy of the Ten Commandments in every schoolroom. “I LOVE THE TEN COMMANDMENTS IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS, PRIVATE SCHOOLS, AND MANY OTHER PLACES, FOR THAT MATTER.” Trump did not specify those “many other places”. He made no announcement about posting the Ten Commandments at Mar-a-Lago or any other Trump golf club.“READ IT – HOW CAN WE, AS A NATION, GO WRONG??? THIS MAY BE, IN FACT, THE FIRST MAJOR STEP IN THE REVIVAL OF RELIGION, WHICH IS DESPERATELY NEEDED, IN OUR COUNTRY. BRING BACK TTC!!! MAGA2024” Give me that old time Maga TTC.Trump endlessly cavorts before a credulous audience that either swallows his routine as they did the fakery of Trump as master of the universe in The Apprentice or else don’t care any more than Trump does so long as his pantomime advances him. As Trump said in his Access Hollywood tape, laying out the only commandment he has ever upheld: “When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.”
      Sidney Blumenthal, former senior adviser to Bill and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth. He is a Guardian US columnist More

    • 163 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Judge in classified files case to consider reining in Trump attacks on FBI

      by

      The federal judge overseeing Donald Trump’s prosecution for retaining classified documents is expected on Monday to consider modifying his conditions of release to include a prohibition on making statements that could endanger the safety of FBI agents involved in the case.The request to the US district judge, Aileen Cannon – the first time prosecutors have sought to limit Trump’ public remarks in this case – raises the stakes for Trump. Unlike in his other cases, where prosecutors sought gag orders, a violation of release conditions carries a risk of jail.The latest dispute over Trump’s inflammatory statements stems from his blatantly false characterization of the FBI’s use-of-deadly force policy when they executed a search warrant at the Mar-a-Lago club in August 2022 and retrieved more than 100 classified documents.The order, which limits FBI agents to use deadly force only if they face extreme danger and became public after the FBI’s operational plan for the search was unsealed, used standard language that is routinely used in hundreds of warrants executed across the country.But Trump and some allies twisted the limiting language to claim the FBI was authorized by the Biden administration to shoot him when they searched Mar-a-Lago, even though Trump was not there during the search and the language is standard US justice department policy.“Crooked Joe Biden’s DOJ, in their Illegal and UnConstitutional Raid of Mar-a-Lago, AUTHORIZED THE FBI TO USE DEADLY (LETHAL) FORCE. NOW WE KNOW, FOR SURE, THAT JOE BIDEN IS A SERIOUS THREAT TO DEMOCRACY. HE IS MENTALLY UNFIT TO HOLD OFFICE — 25TH AMENDMENT!” Trump wrote in a social media post last month.Prosecutors in the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, last month asked Cannon to revise Trump’s conditions of release to bar him from making any public comments “that pose a significant, imminent and foreseeable danger to law enforcement agents participating in the investigation”.By falsely suggesting that FBI agents were prepared to kill him, prosecutors argued, Trump exposed them to the risk of threats, violence and harassment. “These deceptive and inflammatory assertions irresponsibly put a target on the backs of the FBI agents involved in this case,” the motion said.To back up their point, prosecutors reminded Cannon that a man tried to shoot his way into an FBI office in Ohio just days after the Mar-a-Lago search, saying “patriots” should head to Florida to defend Trump and kill FBI agents.But prosecutors did not include an example of Trump’s remarks directly leading to a threat, a point on which Cannon previously criticised prosecutors when they sought in a separate motion to force Trump to redact the identities of people involved in the investigation to ensure their safety.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe question was adopted by Trump’s lawyers in their 20-page response to prosecutors’ motion, arguing they had failed to point to a single example of an agent working on the documents case who has faced threats because of Trump’s inflammatory statements.“President Trump and the defense are similarly unaware of any hostility, harassment or risk of harm directed at any agent involved in this case based on President Trump’s statements,” the Trump lawyers wrote. More

    • 125 Shares139 Views

      in US Politics

      Missouri attorney general to sue New York over Trump prosecutions

      by

      The Missouri attorney general, Andrew Bailey, has confirmed that he is suing the state of New York for election interference and wrongful prosecution for bringing the Stormy Daniels hush-money case to a trial that saw Donald Trump convicted of 34 felonies.Bailey, a Republican politician appointed by Missouri’s governor, Mike Parson, last year, said in a post on X (formerly Twitter) that he would be filing a lawsuit “against the State of New York for their direct attack on our democratic process through unconstitutional lawfare against President Trump”.“We have to fight back against a rogue prosecutor who is trying to take a presidential candidate off the campaign trail. It sabotages Missourians’ right to a free and fair election,” he added in a subsequent message.The lawsuit is anticipated to be a series of similar actions against the New York attorney general, Letitia James, and the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, over a pair of lawsuits brought against Trump or the Trump Organization and its officers. Both resulted in findings against the defendants. Trump is appealing both cases.Bailey claims the hush-money case was brought to smear the presumptive presidential nominee going into November’s election and that New York’s statute of limitations on falsification of business records, a misdemeanor, expired in 2019.Moreover, he argues, Bragg never specified “intent to commit another crime” – namely election interference – that would have brought the charges back within time-limitation statutes.“Radical progressives in New York are trying to rig the 2024 election. We have to stand up and fight back,” Bailey told Fox News Digital on Thursday.But Bailey also told the outlet that he recognized that any attempt by one state to sue another would probably go straight to the US supreme court. He said the investigations and subsequent prosecutions of Trump “appear to have been conducted in coordination with the United States Department of Justice”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionNext month, Matthew Colangelo, a former federal prosecutor who transferred to New York where he worked on Trump’s state and city prosecutions, will be called to give evidence before Congress.The aftershocks of Trump’s 34-count criminal conviction continue to travel. On Friday, it was reported that the presumptive Republican presidential candidate had overtaken his Democratic rival, Joe Biden, in fundraising since the May verdict. More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Biden ad blitz targets Trump’s criminal conviction in pitch to swing voters

      by

      Joe Biden is seeking to exploit Donald Trump’s recent felony conviction in a television advertising blitz, amid polling evidence that the presumptive Republican nominee’s criminal status is hurting him with independent voters.A new 30-second advert released on Monday homes in on Trump’s 31 May conviction in a Manhattan court on 34 counts of falsifying documents to conceal the payment of hush money to Stormy Daniels, an adult actor, who testified that the pair had sex.The ad – featuring black-and-white courtroom images of Trump – also highlights his losses in two civil court cases, one from the writer E Jean Carroll, who said the former president raped and defamed her, and a $355m fraud ruling against his businesses.“We see Donald Trump for who he is,” the ad’s narrator says. “He’s been convicted of 34 felonies, found liable for sexual assault and he committed financial fraud.“Meanwhile, Joe Biden’s been working,” the narrative continues in a calculated comparison between Trump and his successor in the Oval Office. “This election is between a convicted criminal who is only out for himself and a president who is fighting for you and your family.”The ad will run in key battleground states and is the Biden campaign’s most aggressive commentary yet on Trump’s criminal status after a muted initial response.It is part of a $50m advertising onslaught as the Biden election machine seeks to make Trump’s character a central issue in the run-up to the first scheduled televised debate between the pair on CNN on 27 June.In the immediate aftermath of the verdict – which Trump has appealed – the president appeared to play it down, saying: “There’s only one way to keep Donald Trump out of the Oval Office: At the ballot box.”The apparent change of course follows polling indicators that the conviction may sway potential swing voters, widely deemed crucial in a close race. A fresh poll for Politico shows 21% of independent voters saying it makes them less likely to vote for him in November – a potentially decisive factor in a contest in which opinion surveys have shown the two candidates running neck-and-neck, with Trump leading narrowly in many instances.The poll also recorded 43% of voters as believing that the verdict was intended to help Biden.One of Trump’s leading surrogates, the Florida congressman Byron Donalds, who has been tipped as a potential vice-presidential contender, called on the US supreme court – which has a six-to-three conservative majority, largely because of Trump’s nomination of conservative justices while he was president – to reverse the conviction, despite it having no jurisdiction over state cases.“In New York, the only ability for this to be overturned … is going to be happening two or three years from now,” he told NBC’s Meet The Press.“That’s why what happened in lower Manhattan was to interfere with an election, which is why Speaker [Mike] Johnson, myself included, and many Americans believe the supreme court should step in to this matter.”At a fundraising event in Los Angeles, attended by former president Barack Obama, and actors George Clooney and Julia Roberts, Biden told the comedian Jimmy Kimmel that a Trump victory would result in at least two more conservative justices being appointed to the supreme court, which he said would be “very negative in terms of the rights of individuals”. More

    • 138 Shares179 Views

      in US Politics

      Drill, baby, drill … if you haven’t passed out from heatstroke

      by

      Hello!More than a dozen Donald Trump supporters collapsed at his rallies amid record high temperatures in the south-west in recent days – presumably missing Trump’s promise at the gatherings to gut Biden’s environmental policies and “drill, baby, drill”. So what would a Trump administration mean for those who hope the world can limit global heating and the climate crisis? We’ll take a look after the headlines.Here’s what you need to know …1. Hunter Biden convicted of gun chargesHunter Biden, the president’s son who has become a bete noire for Republicans, was found guilty of three charges relating to buying a gun while being a user of crack cocaine. Rightwing politicians and media have accused Hunter and his father of various corrupt acts, but a Republican-led House committee spent a year investigating the pair and failed to come up with any corruption charges. The judge will now decide on Hunter Biden’s punishment: the crimes are punishable by up to 25 years in prison, although a lesser sentence is expected.2. Trump awaits his fateTrump was interviewed by probation officers on Monday, ahead of his sentencing in July. The probation interview typically serves to prepare a report on a convicted individual, which will then be considered by the judge when issuing sentence – which in this case could, in theory, include a prison sentence. Trump was convicted of 34 felony crimes related to him falsifying business records to cover up hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels, the adult film actor who claims they had an affair. He is due to be sentenced on 11 July.3. A warning for Republicans?Ohio’s sixth district went to Trump by 29 points in 2020 – but in a special election on Tuesday night, Republican candidate Michael Rulli triumphed by just nine points, which could suggest a lack of enthusiasm among voters. Elsewhere, Trump-endorsed candidates won primary elections in Nevada and South Carolina, including Nancy Mace, a congresswoman involved in the effort to remove Kevin McCarthy as House speaker: Mace had faced a vengeance-led challenge from a McCarthy-backed candidate, but won comfortably.Trump supporters drop in extreme heat waiting for their climate-denying kingpinView image in fullscreenLast week Trump and his campaign managed to send 17 supporters to the hospital after people wilted in 100F heat at his rallies in Arizona and Nevada. At the Phoenix event, Trumpers were forced to line up outside a megachurch venue for hours in the hot sun, and the stricken received only a brief mention from their leader, with Trump suggesting that people will not “be so thrilled” about waiting outside.The south-west is being blasted by record-breaking heat, with temperatures of 45C (113F) in the last week. Half of Arizona and Nevada were under heat warnings over the weekend, and given that extreme heat is accepted to be a consequence of the climate emergency, we might have expected a presidential candidate to talk up environmental efforts to limit global heating.Nah.“[Biden has] got windmills all over the place, every time you see a windmill going up you need tremendous subsidy, now it kills your birds, it ruins your landscape, ruins your value, if you have a house and you can see a windmill your house is worth half,” Trump told the crowd in Phoenix.He added: “We’re going to drill, baby, drill.”My colleagues Oliver Milman and Dharna Noor, who cover the environment, have previously reported on the Trump team’s plans to increase fossil fuel production in “a frenzy” of oil and gas drilling, while sidelining government climate scientists. In Phoenix, Trump repeated his pledge to scrap key parts of Biden’s climate plans, including rebates for people who buy electric vehicles. And just last week it emerged that Trump had promised lucrative tax favors to fossil fuel executives if they gave his campaign $1bn.Biden, for his campaign, has touted the Inflation Reduction Act, which invested a record $278bn in moving towards renewable energy sources, and in March claimed: “I’m taking the most significant action on climate ever in the history of the world.”But Oliver and Nina Lakhani also reported that Biden is weakening some of his previous climate plans – delaying a regulation to reduce emissions from gas power plans, and relaxing rules about how much carbon cars can emit.Both sides, then, could be doing more. But it’s worth taking into account one analysis that found a second Trump presidency could lead to an additional 4bn tons of US emissions by 2030.By the way: Trump has never been a fan of windfarms, and in May he said would scrap offshore wind projects on “day one” of his presidency. Part of Trump’s reasoning seems to be his incorrect belief that wind turbines cause cancer, while he has previously claimed – also wrongly – that wind turbines lead to whale deaths by making them “batty”.Of course, this wasn’t the first time Trump has expressed an interest in aquatic life, because …Shark!View image in fullscreen… the presidential hopeful has a fascination with, and loathing of, sharks. Trump has previously tweeted that he ranks sharks alongside the “losers and haters of the world”, while Stormy Daniels, the porn star whose silence Trump bought (and was convicted of fudging business accounts to pay for), has said Trump is “obsessed with sharks”. Daniels said he went as far to say: “I hope all the sharks die.”Clearly sharks were still on Trump’s mind this week. In Vegas, he went on a typically meandering monologue, musing whether it would be better to stay on board a sinking electric boat or to jump into shark-infested waters.“You know what I’d do if there was a shark, or you get electrocuted?” Trump asked the crowd. “I’d take electrocution every single time.” Please, please watch the full video.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWho had the worst week: Jesus ChristView image in fullscreenRiding high after his Easter resurrection, things took a turn for the worse for the Son of God this week when he was compared – and not for the first time – to Donald Trump.“The Democrats and the fake news media want to constantly talk about ‘President Trump is a convicted felon’,” Marjorie Taylor Greene told a crowd. “Well, you want to know something? The man that I worship is also a convicted felon. And he was murdered on a Roman cross.”Trump has previously encouraged the comparison to Jesus.Out and about: El PasoView image in fullscreen“A gut punch.” “Political theater.” “Nonsensical.”That was the reaction from advocates in El Paso the day after Joe Biden announced a clampdown on asylum. Many worried about how the order would affect migrants fleeing violence, poverty and persecution in their home countries.I spoke with them as part of an incredibly well-timed immigration reporting workshop in El Paso, a historically liberal city in west Texas, where Spanish and English are spoken interchangeably and the border is a line many cross daily for work, school or to grab a bite.Many were skeptical. Juan Acereto Cervera, an adviser to the mayor of Juárez, the Mexican city across the border from El Paso, said the policy would do little to stop people from seeking a better life elsewhere.“Nothing’s going to stop the migration, nothing,” he said.That is the conundrum Biden faces as he tries to address an issue that poses both a serious policy challenge and a serious political threat to his re-election campaign.– Lauren Gambino, political correspondent, El Paso, TexasBiggest lie: Charlie KirkView image in fullscreenJoe Biden’s acceptance of the legal process in his son Hunter’s criminal case, and a promise that he wouldn’t pardon him, stands in contrast to how Trump reacted after his conviction of 34 felonies – which the former president has frequently and falsely claimed was orchestrated by the Biden administration.It also provides an example against the Republican-pushed claim that the elder Biden can, and does, rig the courts against Trump. Wouldn’t he have saved his own son?Of course not, say Trump allies, who have started to push a new conspiracy about the Hunter Biden conviction.“This is a fake trial trying to make the justice system appear ‘balanced’,” said Charlie Kirk, the leader of conservative youth group Turning Point USA. “Don’t fall for it.” More

    • 175 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      Rudy Giuliani says he’s ‘very, very proud’ of actions after taking Arizona mug shot

      by

      After emerging on Monday from having his mug shot taken in connection with the fake 2020 electors case pending against him in Arizona, Rudy Giuliani boasted about having no regrets over his actions that led to the criminal charges against him.“I’m very, very proud of it,” the former Donald Trump attorney and ex-mayor of New York City said as he left the state courthouse where he was processed on Monday.When a reporter with KPNX asked him if he had any regrets about his role in trying to overturn the former president’s defeat to Joe Biden in the 2020 election, Giuliani added: “Oh, my goodness, no.”The comments from Giuliani came after an Arizona grand jury in May indicted him alongside 16 other Trump allies with attempting to change the outcome of Biden’s electoral victory in the state in 2020.The grand jury charged Giuliani with pressuring Arizona legislators and the Maricopa county board of supervisors to change the result of the state’s presidential election – and with encouraging Republican electors in Arizona and six other contested states to vote for Trump.It is one of Giuliani’s two unresolved criminal cases stemming from Trump’s loss to Biden. A grand jury in Georgia had previously charged him with spearheading efforts to compel state lawmakers to ignore the will of voters who rejected the former president in favor of Biden and illegally appoint pro-Trump electors to the electoral college.Giuliani has pleaded not guilty in both cases.On Monday, Giuliani was required to appear in person to be formally booked on the conspiracy, fraud and forgery charges outlined in the Arizona indictment after a virtual arraignment on 21 May. He also posted a $10,000 bond and had his mug shot as well as his fingerprints taken.The criminal charges against Giuliani in Arizona and Georgia account for only some of the 80-year-old’s legal problems. He filed for bankruptcy protection in December 2023 after being ordered to pay $148m in a defamation case brought against him by Atlanta election workers Ruby Freeman and Shay Moss.Giuliani had falsely accused Freeman and Moss of having a hand in robbing Trump of the 2020 election to Biden’s benefit.His spreading of the lie that Trump only lost in 2020 because of electoral fraudsters also prompted the New York City radio station WABC to suspend Giuliani’s show from its lineup. But such a consequence did not seem to deter Giuliani from alluding to the 2020 election in his remarks to KPNX on Monday.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“There was a substantial amount of vote fraud that went on here that was covered up,” Giuliani said to the station, even though election integrity experts consider the 2020 race that Trump lost to be one of the most secure ever. “Probably one of the biggest conspiracies in American history.”Giuliani, who was previously the US attorney for the federal court district encompassing New York City, later went on his online streaming show and expressed disbelief over Monday’s events.“It’s hard for me to believe – after all my years in law enforcement and serving the government and all the cases I prosecuted successfully – that I actually had to report as a defendant in a criminal case,” he said on America’s Mayor Live. More