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      I’m happy to debate Trump, says Biden in surprise Howard Stern interview

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      Joe Biden sprang a surprise on the Washington press corps on Friday when he gave an interview to the radio host and shock jock Howard Stern.The president also made news. Asked if he would debate Donald Trump before the election in November, Biden said: “I am, somewhere, I don’t know when, but I am happy to debate him.”The Biden campaign confirmed to reporters that Biden was willing to face Trump in person. Chris LaCivita, a senior adviser to Trump and the Republican National Committee, posted: “OK let’s set it up!”Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, has goaded Biden about debating – despite skipping all debates in his own primary this year; withdrawing from his second debate with Biden in 2020; and in 2022 prompting the Republican National Committee to withdraw from the body that organises presidential debates.Trump’s last White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, also revealed that when Trump and Biden did meet on the debate stage, in September 2020, Trump had tested positive for Covid-19 but declined to tell the public. Trump and members of his family then flouted Covid protocols around the debate with Biden.The interview between Biden and Stern was announced minutes before the conversation began on air. Reporting the unscheduled stop in New York, the White House pool report said: “At 10.05am, the motorcade made an unscheduled stop at Sirius XM studio in midtown Manhattan.”Jennifer Witz, chief executive of Sirius XM, said: “We are thrilled that President Biden chose Howard Stern. It’s just another reminder that Howard is in a league of his own, regularly lauded as the world’s best interviewer.”That would be up for debate but Stern does have a habit of making news – often, in the case of Biden’s White House predecessor, retrospectively.Trump’s interviews with Stern before entering politics have regularly resurfaced, particularly over Trump’s usually controversial, often lewd and sometimes disturbing remarks.Wirtz said Sirius XM was “proud to offer distinct and varied insights and commentary spanning the political spectrum”.Biden was in New York after attending a campaign fundraiser hosted by the actor Michael Douglas on Thursday.Stern had never interviewed a sitting president before. In 2019, he interviewed Hillary Clinton, the losing Democratic candidate in the 2016 election.A day after the rightwing-dominated supreme court showed signs of delaying Trump’s federal election subversion trial by indulging his claims about presidential immunity, Stern asked Biden why he had to be careful talking about a court the host called “a joke”.“It’s a really extremely conservative court, maybe the most conservative in modern history,” Biden said.He also excused himself for a “Freudian slip” after saying “Trump” while meaning to refer to Richard Nixon.Much of the interview focused on Biden’s long life in politics, as a senator from Delaware from 1973 to 2009, as vice-president to Barack Obama between 2009 and 2017, and as president since 2021.Discussing the deaths in a car crash in 1972 of his first wife, Neilia Hunter Biden, and young daughter, Naomi, the president told Stern he then contemplated suicide.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I used to sit there and just think I’m going to take out a bottle of scotch,” Biden said. “I’m going to just drink it and get drunk.“I just thought about it, you don’t need to be crazy to commit suicide. I thought, ‘Let me just go to the Delaware Memorial [Bridge] and jump.’”He also encouraged listeners experiencing mental health issues to seek therapy.About how he met Jill Biden, his second wife, Biden said: “I got a call from my brother. ‘So I have a girl here at Delaware’ – Jill is nine years younger than I am. He said, ‘You’ll love her. She doesn’t like politics.’”Before that, while he was single, Biden said, he “got put in that 10 most eligible bachelors list … and a lot of lovely women, but women, would send very salacious pictures and I just give them to the Secret Service.”The “proudest thing” he had ever done in politics, Biden said, was securing the passage of the Violence Against Women Act, which he introduced in 1990 and which became law four years later. The law was reauthorised and strengthened in 2013, when Biden was vice-president.The 81-year-old president has attracted controversy through his relative reluctance to sit for interviews with the mainstream press.On Thursday, a day before Biden chose to speak to Stern, Politico published an extensive report about what it called a “petty feud” between the Biden White House and the New York Times.“Although the president’s communications teams bristle at coverage from dozens of outlets,” Politico said, “the frustration, and obsession, with the Times is unique, reflecting the resentment of a president with a working-class sense of himself and his team toward a news organisation catering to an elite audience – and a deep desire for its affirmation of their work.“On the other side, the newspaper carries its own singular obsession with the president, aggrieved over his refusal to give the paper a sit-down interview that publisher AG Sulzberger and other top editors believe to be its birthright.”Reporting Biden’s interview with Stern, the Times noted that the president “once again told a story about being arrested at a Delaware desegregation protest as a teenager”, but observed: “There has never been any evidence that he ever was arrested at a civil rights protest.” More

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      ‘A lot would have to go wrong for Biden to lose’: can Allan Lichtman predict the 2024 election?

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      He has been called the Nostradamus of US presidential elections. Allan Lichtman has correctly predicted the result of nine of the past 10 (and even the one that got away, in 2000, he insists was stolen from Al Gore). But now he is gearing up for perhaps his greatest challenge: Joe Biden v Donald Trump II.Lichtman is a man of parts. The history professor has been teaching at American University in Washington for half a century. He is a former North American 3,000m steeplechase champion and, at 77 – the same age as Trump – aiming to compete in the next Senior Olympics. In 1981 he appeared on the TV quizshow Tic-Tac-Dough and won $110,000 in cash and prizes.That same year he developed his now famous 13 keys to the White House, a method for predicting presidential election results that every four years tantalises the media, intrigues political operatives and provokes sniping from pollsters. Long before talk of the Steele dossier or Mueller investigation, it all began with a Russian reaching out across the cold war divide.“I’d love to tell you I developed my system by ruining my eyes in the archives, by deep contemplation, but if I were to say that, to quote the late great Richard Nixon, that would be wrong,” Lichtman recalls from a book-crowded office on the AU campus. “Like so many discoveries, it was kind of serendipitous.”View image in fullscreenLichtman was a visiting scholar at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena when he met the world’s leading authority in earthquake prediction, Vladimir Keilis-Borok, who had been part of a Soviet delegation that negotiated the limited nuclear test ban treaty with President John F Kennedy in Washington in 1963.Keilis-Borok had fallen in love with American politics and began a collaboration with Lichtman to reconceptualise elections in earthquake terms. That is, as a question of stability (the party holding the White House keeps it) versus earthquake (the party holding the White House gets thrown out).They looked at every presidential election since Abraham Lincoln’s victory in 1860, combining Keilis-Borok’s method recognising patterns associated with stability and earthquakes with Lichtman’s theory that elections are basically votes up or down on the strength and performance of the party that holds the White House.They came up with 13 true/false questions and a decision rule: if six or more keys went against the White House party, it would lose. If fewer than six went against it, it would win. These are the 13 keys, as summarised by AU’s website:1. Party mandate: After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the US House of Representatives than after the previous midterm elections.2. Contest: There is no serious contest for the incumbent party nomination.3. Incumbency: The incumbent party candidate is the sitting president.4. Third party: There is no significant third party or independent campaign.5. Short-term economy: The economy is not in recession during the election campaign.6. Long-term economy: Real per capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms.7. Policy change: The incumbent administration effects major changes in national policy.8. Social unrest: There is no sustained social unrest during the term.9. Scandal: The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal.10. Foreign/military failure: The incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs.11. Foreign/military success: The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military affairs.12. Incumbent charisma: The incumbent party candidate is charismatic or a national hero.13. Challenger charisma: The challenging party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero.Lichtman and Keilis-Borok published a paper in an academic journal, which was spotted by an Associated Press science reporter, leading to a Washington Post article headlined: “Odd couple discovers keys to the White House.” Then, in the Washingtonian magazine in April 1982, Lichtman used the keys to accurately predict that, despite economic recession, low approval ratings and relative old age, Ronald Reagan would win re-election two years later.That led to an invitation to the White House from the presidential aide Lee Atwater, where Lichtman met numerous officials including then vice-president George HW Bush. Atwater asked him what would happen if Reagan did not run for re-election. Lichtman reckoned that a few important keys would be lost, including incumbent charisma.“Without the Gipper, forget it,” Lichtman says. “George Bush is about as charismatic as a New Jersey shopping centre on a Sunday morning. Atwater looks me in the eye, breathes a huge sigh of relief, and says, thank you, Professor Lichtman. And the rest is history.”For the next election, Bush was trailing his Democratic challenger Michael Dukakis by 18 percentage points in the opinion polls in May 1988, yet Lichtman correctly predicted a Bush victory because he was running on the Reagan inheritance of peace, prosperity, domestic tranquillity and breakthroughs with the Soviet Union.View image in fullscreenThat year Lichtman published a book, The Thirteen Keys to the Presidency. But he was still derided by the punditry establishment. “When I first developed my system and made my predictions, the professional forecasters blasted me because I had committed the ultimate sin of prediction, the sin of subjectivity.“Some of my keys were not just cut and dried and I kept telling them, it’s not subjectivity, it’s judgment. We’re dealing with human systems and historians make judgments all the time, and they’re not random judgments. I define each key very carefully in my book and I have a record.”He adds: “It took 15 to 20 years and the professional forecasting community totally turned around. They realised their big mathematical models didn’t work and the best models combined judgment with more cut-and-dried indicators. And suddenly the keys were the hottest thing in forecasting.”Lichtman was a man in demand. He spoke at forecasting conferences, wrote for academic journals and even gave a talk to the CIA about how to apply the 13 keys to foreign elections. And his crystal ball kept working.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHe predicted that George HW Bush would be a one-term president, even though he was riding high in polls after the Gulf war, causing many leading Democrats to pass on mounting a challenge. Then a call from Little Rock, Arkansas. It was Kay Goss, special assistant to Governor Bill Clinton.“Are you really saying that George Bush can be beaten in 1992?” she asked. Lichtman confirmed that he was saying that. Clinton went on to win the Democratic primary election and beat Bush for the White House. “The Clintons have been big fans of the keys ever since,” Lichtman notes.The one apparent blot on Lichtman’s copybook is the 2000 election, where he predicted victory for the Democratic vice-president Al Gore over George W Bush, the Republican governor of Texas. Gore did win the national popular vote but lost the electoral college by a gossamer-thin margin. Lichtman, however, believes he was right.View image in fullscreen“It was a stolen election. Based on the actual votes, Al Gore should have won going away, except for the discarding of ballots cast by Black voters who were 95% for Gore. I proved this in my report to the United States Commission on Civil Rights. One out of every nine to 10 ballots cast by a Black voter was thrown out, as opposed to one out of 50 cast by a white voter.“Most of those were not so-called hanging chads. They were over-votes because Black people were told punch in Gore and then write in Gore, just to be sure, and those ballots were all discarded. Political scientists have since looked at the election and proved I was right. Al Gore, based on the intent of the voters, should have won by tens of thousands of votes.”He adds: “I contend I was right about 2000 or at a minimum there was no right prediction. You could argue either way. I contend – and a lot of people agree with me – that I’m 10 out of 10. But even if you say I’m nine out of 10, that’s not bad.”Perhaps Lichtman’s most striking prophecy, defying polls, commentators and groupthink, was that Trump – a former reality TV star with no prior political or military experience – would pull off a wildly improbable win over the former secretary of state and first lady Hillary Clinton in 2016. How did he know?View image in fullscreen“The critical sixth key was the contest key: Bernie Sanders’s contest against Clinton. It was an open seat so you lost the incumbency key. The Democrats had done poorly in 2014 so you lost that key. There was no big domestic accomplishment following the Affordable Care Act in the previous term, and no big foreign policy splashy success following the killing of Bin Laden in the first term, so there were just enough keys. It was not an easy call.”After the election, Lichtman received a copy of the Washington Post interview in which he made the prediction. On it was written in a Sharpie pen: “Congrats, professor. Good call. Donald J Trump.” But in the same call, Lichtman had also prophesied – again accurately – that Trump would one day be impeached.He was right about 2020, too, as Trump struggled to handle the coronavirus pandemic. “The pandemic is what did him in. He congratulated me for predicting him but he didn’t understand the keys. The message of the keys is it’s governance not campaigning that counts and instead of dealing substantively with the pandemic, as we know, he thought he could talk his way out of it and that sank him.”In 2020 Lichtman gave a presentation to the American Political Science Association about the keys as one of three classic models of prediction. In recent months he has delivered keynote addresses at Asian and Brazilian financial conferences, the Oxford Union and JP Morgan. As another election looms, he is not impressed by polls that show Trump leading Biden, prompting a fatalistic mood to take hold in Washington DC and foreign capitals.“They’re mesmerised by the wrong things, which is the polls. First of all, polls six, seven months before an election have zero predictive value. They would have predicted President Michael Dukakis. They would have predicted President Jimmy Carter would have defeated Ronald Reagan, who won in a landslide; Carter was way ahead in some of the early polls.“Not only are polls a snapshot but they are not predictors. They don’t predict anything and there’s no such thing as, ‘if the election were held today’. That’s a meaningless statement.”He is likely to make his pronouncement on the 2024 presidential election in early August. He notes that Biden already has the incumbency key in his favour and, having crushed token challengers in the Democratic primary, has the contest key too. “That’s two keys off the top. That means six more keys would have to fall to predict his defeat. A lot would have to go wrong for Biden to lose.”View image in fullscreenLichtman gives no weight to running mate picks and has never changed his forecast in the wake of a so-called “October surprise” But no predictive model is entirely immune to a black swan event.Speaking in the week that saw a jury seated for Trump’s criminal trial in New York involving a hush-money payment to a pornographic film performer, Lichtman acknowledges: “Keys are based on history. They’re very robust because they go all the way back retrospectively to 1860 and prospectively to 1984, so they cover enormous changes in our economy, our society, our demography, our politics.“But it’s always possible there could be a cataclysmic enough event outside the scope of the keys that could affect the election and here we do have, for the first time, not just a former president but a major party candidate sitting in a trial and who knows if he’s convicted – and there’s a good chance he will be – how that might scramble things.”Millions of people will be on edge on the night of 5 November. After 40 years of doing this, Lichtman will have one more reason to be anxious. “It’s nerve-racking because there are a lot of people who’d love to see me fail.” And if he does? “I’m human,” he admits. “It doesn’t mean my system’s wrong. Nothing is perfect in the human world.”Biden v Trump: What’s in store for the US and the world?On Thursday 2 May, 3-4.15pm ET, join Tania Branigan, David Smith, Mehdi Hasan and Tara Setmayer for the inside track on the people, the ideas and the events that might shape the US election campaign. Book tickets here or at theguardian.live More

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      How much did #MeToo change for women? Let’s ask Harvey Weinstein today – or Donald Trump | Marina Hyde

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      According to his representatives, former Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein is still digesting the overturning of his rape conviction by a New York court, but they did come out to say he was “cautiously excited”. Cautiously excited? I’m not sure these are the words I’d alight on to paint a word-picture of a rapist. You might as well say “tentatively aroused”. Then again, as we’re about to discuss, quite a lot of guys don’t particularly have to worry about what they say or do, or how they say or do it. It’s only natural that Harvey should very much want to be one of them again.Speaking of word-pictures, though, how’s this for a vignette of our times? When they heard the news that Weinstein’s conviction had been overturned on Thursday, a whole host of reporters happened to be looking at the exact spot in the exact New York courtroom that he’d sat in when that original judgment had been handed down. This was because they were waiting for Donald Trump to sit in it for Thursday’s proceedings in his hush money trial. Mr Trump, you might recall, is in such a lot of trouble that he is the presumptive Republican nominee and current bookies’ favourite to win the US presidency again, though admittedly he lags behind Weinstein on the sexual assault and misconduct front, given that only 26 women have accused him of it. Ultimately, though, I guess the question is: if #MeToo “went too far”, what would “going just far enough” have looked like?In seeking to answer that question, I’m somehow picturing the Best Picture climax of this year’s Oscars, with lifetime dictator Donald J Trump opening the envelope and calling it for Oppenheimer, before cackling: “I’m kidding with you, Nolan – the award goes to The Passion of the Harvey. Come on up here, all the guys from the Weinstein Company. And, Louis, you did a beautiful job with the role. You can add this one to your latest Grammy.”Or hang on – maybe #MeToo going just far enough would just look like a supreme court justice who is credibly accused of sexual assault deliberating with his colleagues/fellow placemen on whether the president can commit crimes absolutely without consequences, and then them deciding that it’s honestly too hard to decide on for now, thus delaying the guy’s trial for trying to overturn the results of a democratic election. Because that one really happened, also on Thursday.View image in fullscreenNot to flit too giddily between courtrooms, but we should note that despite Thursday’s news, Weinstein’s rape conviction in a Californian court still stands. As for what went wrong with his New York trial, it includes the legal error of the trial judge’s decision to allow testimony from four women who were not directly part of the case in hand. Long story short: unfortunately, simply too many women told the court that Weinstein had sexually assaulted them, which has now rendered his sexual assault trial null and void. The whole thing will have to be run anew, forcing an approved selection of those women to have to testify all over again. And yes – we might all have a number of strong views about those who benefit from the vagaries of the US legal system, but quite often you can’t print those views over this side of the Atlantic because of the vagaries of the UK legal system. Maybe we all get the legal systems we deserve. Except lawyers. You can’t help feeling those guys are the one set of people reaping unjust deserts from the legal system.Anyhow, back to even more of Thursday’s court news coming out of New York, where another judge was also ruling against Trump’s appeal of the $83m defamation verdict in the case brought against him by the writer E Jean Carroll, who alleged he raped her in a department store changing room. Given Trump was in the aforementioned courtroom across town, it’s quite something to be able to say that the day nevertheless still turned out to be a net good one for him, what with the supreme court’s decision not to yet make a decision on whether he can stand trial on charges of conspiring to overthrow the election. Certainly it was news about which he could be cautiously excited.But perhaps not about which he could be completely surprised, given his supreme efforts to bend the court to his will. Only the day before, the court had been hearing the state of Idaho argue for a ban on abortion even in cases where it is required for health-saving care. Trump’s campaign trail rallies see him frequently and repeatedly boast of being the puppet master of the judgment that overthrew Roe v Wade, the 1973 supreme court judgment that protected federal abortion rights. And he’s arguably right about that, what with having appointed three justices to the court and upset a balance the rest of the world is supposed to regard as fabled. Obviously, Trump’s pride in the achievement means so much more coming from a man who I’d love to joke has probably paid for more abortions than there are compromised supreme court justices, even if legal discussions over retaining that statement in this column are likely to run to more time than it took to write the column.On balance, you couldn’t accuse Thursday of being a great day for Lady Justice – or indeed for lady justice. As it turns out, all the so-called reckonings of the past few years can be unreckoned with far more easily than they were won. The only thing that’s gone “too far” is the pretence that anything went far enough.
      Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist
      Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

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      US supreme court presses Trump lawyer over immunity from prosecution claim – audio

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      US supreme court justices on Thursday questioned a lawyer for Donald Trump about the former president’s claim of immunity from prosecution over his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. They posed questions about what happens if a president sells nuclear secrets, takes a bribe or orders a coup or assassination. Trump took his case to the highest court after lower courts rejected his request to be shielded from four election-related criminal charges on the grounds that he was serving as president when he allegedly took the actions that led to the indictment More

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      Trump the elephant in the room as supreme court hearing strays into the surreal

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      It took two hours and 24 minutes for the elephant in the room to be mentioned at Thursday’s US supreme court hearing. “The special counsel has expressed some concern for speed, and wanting to move forward,” said Justice Amy Coney Barrett.That was shorthand for the gargantuan stakes at play in Trump v United States. The court was being asked to consider one of the most consequential prosecutions in US history – the four federal charges brought against former president Donald Trump accusing him of attempting to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election – and whether the case can conceivably go to trial.The supreme court has already moved at such a snail’s pace that the chances of the case coming to trial before November’s presidential election – in which the accused is once again standing for the most powerful job on Earth – are growing slim. The charges were filed by special counsel Jack Smith on 1 August, almost nine months ago.With the clock ticking down, the most conservative of the nine supreme court justices appeared determined to talk about anything but the case at hand. “I’m not concerned about this case, so much as future ones,” said Neil Gorsuch, one of the three justices appointed to the supreme court by Trump.“I’m not focused on the here and now in this case,” parroted another Trump appointee, Brett Kavanaugh. “I’m very concerned about the future.”Samuel Alito repeated the mantra. “I’m going to talk about this in the abstract because what we decide is going to apply to all future presidents,” he said.What the justices appeared to be overlooking in the rush towards abstraction was that the actual substance of the case – the here and now – is of monumental significance. Trump is charged with having orchestrated a conspiracy to subvert the bedrock of democracy – the outcome of a freely held election – as the first president in US history to resist the peaceful handover of power.As Michael Dreeben, who spoke for the government, put it, Trump’s novel legal theory that he enjoys absolute immunity from criminal liability would immunize any president who commits bribery, treason, sedition and murder. Or in Trump’s case, “conspiring to use fraud to overturn the results of an election and perpetuate himself in power”.At times the epic debate, which lasted two hours and 40 minutes, strayed into the surreal. Trump’s lawyer, John Sauer, argued that a president who ordered the assassination of a political rival or who instigated a military coup could only be prosecuted if he had been impeached and convicted first by Congress.The first question from the bench came from Clarence Thomas, the justice who stubbornly refused to recuse himself despite the inconvenient truth that his wife, Ginni, was profoundly mired in Trump’s conspiracy leading up to the insurrection at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021.The award for the most jaw-dropping display of jurisprudential sleight of hand goes to Alito. He invoked the goal of preserving a “stable democratic society” in support of Trump’s claim that he should be immune from prosecution for having attempted to destroy a stable democratic society.“If an incumbent who loses a very close hotly contested election knows that it is a real possibility after leaving office that he may be criminally prosecuted by a bitter political opponent, will that not lead us into a cycle that destabilizes the functioning of our country?” Alito asked.“I think it’s exactly the opposite, Justice Alito,” Dreeben replied, with admirable restraint.It was all clearly too much for Ketanji Brown Jackson. Of the three liberal justices she put up the most impassioned counter-argument for the prosecution to go ahead.“If there’s no threat of criminal prosecution, what prevents the president from just doing whatever he wants,” she said. The justice left it implicit that this particular former president is potentially less than seven months away from returning to the Oval Office.How the court will rule is less than clear. It is a fair bet that four of the conservatives – Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Thomas – will vote for an outcome that in some form spares Trump from facing a jury in DC before he faces the American electorate on 5 November.Barrett was harder to read. She appeared to be open to allowing the prosecution to proceed, albeit through a tighter lens to distinguish between Trump’s actions that were motivated by personal gain from those conducted in his official capacity.The final word may well fall – once again – to John Roberts, the chief justice. The thrust of his questioning (he alluded to one-legged stools and got stuck on the word “tautology”) suggested that he might be tempted to remand the case back to a lower court for further time-consuming deliberation.Which would play exactly into Trump’s hands. From day one, Trump’s strategy has been delay, delay, delay – with the endgame of kicking the prosecutorial can so far down the road that he can win re-election and appoint a manipulable attorney general who will scrap all charges, or even pardon himself.Which is why the elephant in the courtroom cut such a striking presence. Though with the exception of Barrett’s lone comment, it went entirely un-noted. More

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      Justice Barrett signals at least part of Trump’s trial could continue even if court approves immunity defense – live

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      In an exchange with attorney John Sauer, conservative justice Amy Coney Barrett signaled she thought Donald Trump could still face trial on some election interference charges brought by special counsel Jack Smith, even if the supreme court agrees with his claims of immunity.“So, you concede that private acts don’t get immunity?” Barrett asked.“We do,” Sauer replied. Barrett then referred to Smith’s brief in the immunity case:
      He urges us even if we … assume that there was some sort of immunity for official acts, that there were sufficient private acts in the indictment … for the case to go back and the trial to begin immediately. And I want to know if you agree or disagree about the characterization of these acts.
      She then posed a series of scenarios to Sauer, and asked him whether the acts were official or private. Sauer said most would be considered private, not official, acts.“So those acts, you would not dispute those were private, and you wouldn’t raise a claim that they were official as characterized?” Barrett asked. It’s a telling statement from the Trump-appointed justice, because the court could find that Trump is immune for official acts – but must face trial for acts done in his capacity as a private citizen.Before the special counsel’s office began presenting its case, Neil Gorsuch, a conservative justice, pondered whether rejecting Donald Trump’s claim of immunity would cause presidents to preemptively pardon themselves, in fear that a successor could decide to prosecute them.“What would happen if presidents were under fear, fear that their successors would criminally prosecute them for their acts in office,” asked Gorsuch, who Trump appointed, in an exchange with his attorney John Sauer.“It seems to me like one of the incentives that might be created as for presidents to try to pardon themselves,” Gorsuch continued, adding, “We’ve never answered whether a president can do that. Happily, it’s never been presented to us.”“And if the doctrine of immunity remains in place that’s likely to remain the case,” Sauer replied.Trump’s lawyer went on to argue that a finding against his immunity claim would weaken all future presidents:
      The real concern here is, is there going to be bold and fearless action? Is the president going to have to make a controversial decision where his political opponents are going to come after him the minute he leaves office? Is that going to unduly deter, or is that going to dampen the ardor of that president to do what our constitutional structure demands of him or her, which is bold and fearless action in the face of controversy?
      “And perhaps, if he feels he has to, he’ll pardon himself every four years from now on,” Gorsuch pondered.“But that, as the court pointed out, wouldn’t provide the security because the legality of that is something that’s never been addressed,” Sauer replied.Arguing before the court now is Michael Dreeben, an attorney representing special counsel Jack Smith, who indicted Donald Trump on federal charges relating to conspiring to overturn the 2020 election.He told the court that agreeing with Trump’s immunity claim means president could not be found liable for all sorts of criminal acts:
      His novel theory would immunize former presidents for criminal liability for bribery, treason, sedition, murder, and here for conspiring to use fraud to overturn the results of an election and perpetuate himself in power.
      Such presidential immunity has no foundation in the constitution. The framers knew too well the dangers of a king who could do no wrong. They therefore devised a system to check abuses of power, especially the use of official power for private gain. Here the executive branch is enforcing congressional statutes and seeking accountability for petitioners’ alleged misuse of official power to subvert democracy.
      Conservative justice Amy Coney Barrett continues to sound somewhat flummoxed by John Sauer arguments in favor of Donald Trump’s immunity.“So how can you say that he would be subject to prosecution after impeachment, while at the same time saying that he’s exempt from these criminal statutes?” Barrett asked.Apparently unsatisfied with his answer, Barrett posed another hypothetical to Sauer: In the “example of a president who orders a coup, let’s imagine that he is impeached and convicted for ordering that coup and let’s just accept for the sake of argument, your position that that was official conduct. You’re saying that he couldn’t be prosecuted for that even after conviction and an impeachment proceeding?”Sauer responded by arguing the law must specify that a president who has been impeached and convicted by Congress can still face criminal prosecution for a coup:
      If there was not a statute that expressly referenced the president and made it criminal for the president. There would have to be a statute that made a clear statement that Congress purported to regulate the president’s conduct.
      In an exchange with attorney John Sauer, conservative justice Amy Coney Barrett signaled she thought Donald Trump could still face trial on some election interference charges brought by special counsel Jack Smith, even if the supreme court agrees with his claims of immunity.“So, you concede that private acts don’t get immunity?” Barrett asked.“We do,” Sauer replied. Barrett then referred to Smith’s brief in the immunity case:
      He urges us even if we … assume that there was some sort of immunity for official acts, that there were sufficient private acts in the indictment … for the case to go back and the trial to begin immediately. And I want to know if you agree or disagree about the characterization of these acts.
      She then posed a series of scenarios to Sauer, and asked him whether the acts were official or private. Sauer said most would be considered private, not official, acts.“So those acts, you would not dispute those were private, and you wouldn’t raise a claim that they were official as characterized?” Barrett asked. It’s a telling statement from the Trump-appointed justice, because the court could find that Trump is immune for official acts – but must face trial for acts done in his capacity as a private citizen.Another liberal justice, Elena Kagan, debated the specifics with Donald Trump’s attorney John Sauer of his alleged misconduct, and whether he would be immune from prosecution.Kagan asked for Sauer’s views on Trump’s attempt to get Republican lawmakers in Arizona to help him disrupt Joe Biden’s election victory there: “The defendant asked the Arizona House Speaker to call the legislature into session to hold a hearing based on their claims of election fraud.”“Absolutely an official act for the president to communicate with state officials on a matter of enormous federal interest and concern, attempting to defend the integrity of a federal election to communicate with state officials,” Sauer replied.In an exchange with liberal justice Sonia Sotomayor, Donald Trump’s attorney John Sauer defended the legality of sending slates of fake electors – as Trump is alleged to have done to stop Joe Biden from winning the White House.The allegation is at the heart of the charges against Trump, both in special counsel Jack Smith’s federal case, and in the case brought in Georgia by Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis.“What is plausible about the president insisting and creating a fraudulent slate of electoral candidates, assuming you accept the facts of the complaint on their face? Is that plausible that that would be within his right to do?” Sotomayor asked.“Absolutely, your honor,” Sauer replied. “We have the historical precedent we cite in the lower courts of president Grant sending federal troops to Louisiana and Mississippi in 1876 to make sure that the Republican electors got certified.”Liberal justice Sonia Sotomayor sounded sharply skeptical of John Sauer’s arguments as she harkened back to the country’s early days in exploring the situations where a president could be prosecuted.Referring to amicus, or “friend of the court”, briefs filed in the case by outside groups, Sotomayor said:
      There are amica here who tell us that the founders actually talked about whether to grant immunity to the president. And in fact, they had state constitutions that granted some criminal immunity to governors. And yet, they didn’t take it up. Instead, they fought to pass an impeachment clause that basically says you can’t remove the president from office, except by a trial in the Senate, but you can impeach him after so … you can impose criminal liability.
      We would be creating a situation in which … a president is entitled not to make a mistake, but more than that, a president is entitled for total personal gain, to use the trappings of his office. That’s what you’re trying to get us to hold? Without facing criminal liability?
      Up first before the court is attorney John Sauer, who is representing Donald Trump.He’s currently in a back-and-forth with chief justice John Roberts, a conservative who has occasionally acted as a swing vote on the rightward-leaning court, as to whether a president accepting a bribe would be legal.The nine supreme court justices are seated and have begun hearing arguments over whether or not Donald Trump is immune from prosecution for allegedly trying to overturn the 2020 election because he was acting in his official capacity as president.Follow along here for live updates.Should the supreme court throw out Donald Trump’s immunity claim, when might his trial on federal election subversion charges begin?Or, if it is delayed further, which is the next criminal case to go before jurors? And what of the many civil suits against him?For a rundown of the former-perhaps-next president’s multitudinous legal troubles, check out our regularly updated case tracker:Protesters often turn up by the dozens outside the supreme court in Washington DC when it hears high-profiles cases, and Donald Trump’s occasional appearances in the Capitol also typically attract demonstrations.But for whatever reason, the exterior of the high court appears relatively quiet this morning, at least based on the photos on the wire, with few protesters present:The supreme court has not yet even heard arguments in Donald Trump’s claim that he is immune from charges related to attempting to overturn the 2020 election because his alleged actions were taken while serving as president. But legal scholar Michael Waldman, president of the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, said the conservative-dominated body has already done the ex-president’s bidding by agreeing to hear the case – and therefore delaying the start of a trial that could prove pivotal to his chances of returning to the White House.“The justices have already done great damage,” Waldman wrote recently. “They engineered one of history’s most egregious political interventions – not with an ugly ruling, at least not yet, but by getting ‘the slows’. At the very least they should issue this ruling in three weeks. That would give trial judge Tanya Chutkan enough time to start the trial [before the election], if barely.”Here’s more on why Waldman thinks the high court erred, and what we can expect in today’s arguments, from the Guardian’s Martin Pengelly:Good morning, US politics blog readers.It’s another big day at the supreme court – perhaps the biggest of its term so far. Beginning at 10am ET, the nine justices will hear arguments over whether Donald Trump is immune from prosecution for acts done while he was in office. The former president has made the claim as part of a bid to blunt special counsel Jack Smith’s case against him for allegedly trying to overturn the 2020 election, and while there’s no telling how the court will rule, it has already had one concrete effect: delaying his trial in Washington DC, potentially until after the November election, and therefore preventing a potential guilty verdict that could have damaged his campaign.The supreme court is composed of a six-justice conservative supermajority – three of whom Trump appointed – and a three-justice liberal minority, and the fact that they took this case up at all has raised eyebrows among some legal scholars. A ruling in his favor could lead to at least some of the charges Smith has brought to be dropped. If the court rejects arguments from Trump’s attorneys, his trial may be cleared to proceed – but there is still no telling when it will actually kick off.The former president will not be in Washington DC for today’s oral arguments. He’s in New York City, where his trial is underway on charges of falsifying business documents related to hush money payments made before his 2016 election victory, the first of his four criminal cases to go before jurors. We have a separate live blog covering all that.Here’s what else is going on today:
      Joe Biden is heading to Syracuse, New York to tell the tale of how the 2022 Chips act and other policies are helping turn around the local economy, then heading to New York’s ritzy suburbs for a campaign event.
      Arizona has indicted 18 former top Trump officials, including Mark Meadows, his ex-chief of staff, and attorney Rudy Giuliani for their attempts to overturn Biden’s victory in the state four years ago, the AP reports.
      And in Michigan, a state investigator said he considered Trump and Meadows as unindicted co-conspirators in a plot to interfere with Biden’s victory there in 2020, according to the AP. More

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      in Elections

      Arizona grand jury indicts Trump allies including Giuliani over 2020 fake elector scheme

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      An Arizona grand jury has charged 18 people involved in the scheme to create a slate of false electors for Donald Trump, including 11 people who served as those fake electors and seven Trump allies who aided the scheme.Kris Mayes, Arizona’s Democratic attorney general, announced the charges on Wednesday, and said the 11 fake electors had been charged with felonies for fraud, forgery and conspiracy.Beyond the fake electors themselves, high-profile Trump affiliates have been charged with aiding in the scheme: Mark Meadows, John Eastman, Boris Epshteyn, Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis, Christina Bobb and Mike Roman.Those charged over their roles as false electors include two sitting lawmakers, state senators Jake Hoffman and Anthony Kern. The former Arizona Republican party chair Kelli Ward and her husband, Michael Ward, have been charged, as has Tyler Bowyer, a Republican national committeeman and Turning Point USA executive, and Jim Lamon, who ran for US Senate in 2022. The others charged in the fake electors scheme are Nancy Cottle, Robert Montgomery, Samuel Moorhead, Lorraine Pellegrino and Gregory Safsten.The indictment says: “In Arizona, and the United States, the people elected Joseph Biden as president on November 3 2020. Unwilling to accept this fact, defendants and unindicted co-conspirators schemed to prevent the lawful transfer of the presidency to keep unindicted co-conspirator 1 in office against the will of Arizona’s voters. This scheme would have deprived Arizona voters of their right to vote and have their votes counted.”Biden won Arizona by more than 10,000 votes, a close margin in the typically red state that immediately prompted allegations of voter fraud that persist to this day. The state has remained a hotbed of election denialism, despite losses for Republicans who embraced election-fraud lies at the state level.Trump has not been charged in the Arizona case.The indictment refers to Trump himself as “unindicted co-conspirator 1” throughout, noting how the former president schemed to keep himself in office, and how those around him, even those who believed he lost, aided this effort.Some involved have claimed they signed on as an alternate slate of electors in case court decisions came down in Trump’s favor, so they would have a backup group that could be certified by Congress should Trump prevail.But, the indictment says, the defendants intended for these false votes to pressure former vice-president Mike Pence into rejecting the slate of accurate electors for Joe Biden during the electoral college vote-counting on 6 January 2021. Pence did not declare Trump the winner, use these fake electoral votes, or otherwise delay the official count.Arizona’s charges are the latest turn in the fake electors saga. Seven states saw similar schemes, but two states – New Mexico and Pennsylvania – hedged their language in their documents enough to prevent prosecution.Democratic attorneys general in Michigan and Nevada have indicted Republican fake electors in their respective states. In Georgia, three of 16 fake electors were indicted as part of a wide-ranging racketeering indictment against Trump and allies. The remaining were given immunity for helping in the district attorney’s investigation.In Wisconsin, the fake electors acknowledged Biden’s win as a way to settle a civil lawsuit over the issue.Mayes’ investigation fell behind other states because she narrowly won office in 2022, and her predecessor, Republican Mark Brnovich, had not pursued the line of inquiry. She had confirmed the investigation in early 2023.The investigation – along with a host of other disagreements – have put Mayes at odds with Arizona’s Republican-led legislature, which started a committee to investigate Mayes and her office over concerns she was working beyond her authority as attorney general.In a video on Wednesday, Mayes said the investigation was “thorough and professional” and would provide justice for the plot to overturn the state’s electoral votes.“I understand for some of you today didn’t come fast enough, and I know I’ll be criticized by others for conducting this investigation at all,” she said. “I will not allow American democracy to be undermined – it’s too important.”Hugo Lowell and Sam Levine contributed reporting More

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      in US Politics

      How the National Enquirer boosted Trump and smeared his opponents: ‘The only choice for president’

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      A New York court has heard evidence of how Donald Trump’s long and tumultuous journey to secure the Republican nomination – and later the presidency – was aided by a US tabloid known for printing gory pictures of murder scenes and questionable journalistic ethics.Testimony from David Pecker revealed how the former publisher of the National Enquirer had pledged to be Trump’s “eyes and ears” during his 2016 presidential campaign.Prosecutors say an alleged “catch-and-kill” scheme saw the National Enquirer catching a potentially damaging story by buying the rights to it and then killing it through agreements that prevent the paid person from telling the story to anyone else. Trump has maintained his innocence.In court on Tuesday, Pecker recounted how he promised Trump that he would help suppress harmful stories while smearing his political opponents at the same time.The process was solidified during an August 2015 meeting at Trump Tower involving Trump and Michael Cohen, his lawyer and personal fixer, in which Pecker said he would publish positive stories about Trump and negative stories about his opponents.Soon after, the fruits of that pledge became apparent in the pages of the National Enquirer.View image in fullscreenThroughout 2015 and 2016, a months-long fight to secure the Republican nomination saw more than 12 candidates, made up of political veterans and business titans, cast aside by the momentum of Trump’s campaign.However, in the days and weeks after Trump announced his candidacy, he was still seen as a long shot. Jeb Bush led across most polls in June 2015 and was attracting millions of dollars in donations.That month, the Enquirer printed unfounded claims about Bush, claiming he had a cocaine habit in the 1980s.In late August Trump penned an article for the National Enquirer outlining why he was “the ONLY choice for President” and by autumn, Bush was lagging far behind in the polls.By then, Trump’s closest challenger was another political outsider, Ben Carson, a soft-spoken retired paediatric neurosurgeon who also had no background in politics. In October, Carson was polling near neck and neck with Trump, and pulling in large amounts in fundraising.That month, the Enquirer published a front-page story: “Ben Carson butchered my brain!” The article claimed that Carson had left a sponge in a person’s brain during a procedure. Carson responded at the time by saying his opponents had found “five or six disgruntled people … and many of those cases never went anywhere”.View image in fullscreenBy March 2016, Carson was out and Trump’s closest rival became Ted Cruz, the Texas senator.The Enquirer began to print unsubstantiated stories about Cruz having multiple affairs, labelling the devout Christian a hypocrite on its front pages.In one example – redolent of how the publications would twist headlines until they had only a passing connection to the facts – an Enquirer headline read “Ted Cruz Shamed by Porn Star”, above a picture of a woman wearing a bikini.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe actual story was about Cruz’s campaign having to pull an advertisement after learning one of the actors had worked in adult films.In May, with Cruz trailing Trump in the primaries and battling to keep his candidacy alive, the Enquirer printed a “World Exclusive Investigation”.Next to a grainy photo of the JFK assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, the magazine printed the headline “Ted Cruz father linked to JFK assassination!”. Trump picked up on the story, mentioning the claim in campaign speeches.Cruz labelled the unfounded claims “kooky” and tore into Trump, calling him an “amoral pathological liar”, and a “braggadocious, arrogant buffoon”. Within hours though, Cruz was out of the race and Trump’s path to the Republican nomination was clear.View image in fullscreenAs the Republican party broadly swung behind Trump’s candidacy, the Enquirer turned its attention to his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton.Headlines ranged from the simple (“Corrupt!”), to the ridiculous (Hillary’s hitman tells all!”). The magazine attacked Clinton’s health, said she was “going to jail” and continually labelled her corrupt. It alleged, without any reliable evidence, that she used racist language and that she “blackmailed and intimated” prosecutors, claims that are entirely unsubstantiated.By election day, Clinton had appeared on the Enquirer’s front page at least 15 times in a five-month period.In its first edition published after Trump’s shock victory, the Enquirer plastered the incoming president on its front page and outlined a supposed checklist of his most important policy priorities.Above the headline “My first 100 days!”, the magazine apparently couldn’t resist a final insult to anyone who doubted the incoming president: “We told you so!” More