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      Fani Willis confirms relationship with prosecutor on 2020 Trump election case

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      The Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, and Nathan Wade, a special prosecutor working on the case against Donald Trump and 14 other defendants, confirmed for the first time on Friday they had a romantic relationship. But they denied any wrongdoing and Willis said she should not be disqualified from the case.“In 2022, District Attorney Willis and I developed a personal relationship in addition to our professional association and friendship,” Wade wrote in an affidavit attached to a 176-page motion Willis filed in court on Friday. Notably, Wade said the relationship developed after he was hired to work on the Trump case in 2021.Willis wrote in the filing she had no personal or financial conflict of interest that “constitutes a legal basis for disqualification”. She urged Judge Scott McAfee, who is overseeing the case, to dismiss a request to disqualify her without a hearing, currently set for 15 February.“While the allegations raised in the various motions are salacious and garnered the media attention they were designed to obtain, none provide this court with any basis upon which to order the relief they seek,” she wrote.Michael Roman, a seasoned Republican operative and one of the defendants in the wide-ranging racketeering case against Trump and associates for trying to overturn the election, is seeking Willis’s disqualification. He alleges that Wade used money he earned from his work in Willis’s office on the case to pay for vacations for the two of them. Trump and Robert Cheeley, another defendant, have also joined Roman’s request to dismiss the case.Legal experts are largely dubious of Roman’s request to disqualify Willis.“The filing effectively ended any question I had about what Judge McAfee should and will do. The motion to dismiss and disqualify will be roundly and easily rejected. My only question now is whether other defendants will slowly back away from the Roman motion given how effectively the DA dispatched with the allegations of serious wrongdoing,” said Anthony Michael Kreis, a law professor at Georgia State University.But the confirmation of a relationship with Wade could still do serious harm to Willis in terms of the politics of the case, undermining the credibility of her judgment in the public’s view. The fact that Willis did not disclose the relationship publicly before Roman’s filing, and did not respond to the allegation for weeks, could also leave the impression she was trying to conceal it from public view. Trump, who has already taunted Willis over the relationship, is also likely to dig in.Meanwhile, even though he may not have done anything wrong legally, some experts have called for Wade to step aside in order to protect the public perception of the case.There is no evidence that the relationship resulted in any financial gain for Willis, the district attorney wrote in her filing. She noted they had no joint bank accounts or shared expenses and were not financially dependent on each other. While Wade has purchased travel for Willis with his personal funds, she also noted that she had done the same for him.“Financial responsibility for personal travel taken is divided roughly evenly between the two, with neither being primarily responsible for expenses of the other, and all expenses paid for with individual personal funds,” Willis wrote in the filing.A personal relationship between two lawyers also is not enough to disqualify a prosecutor, Willis wrote. She noted that some of the lawyers for various defendants in the case were either married or in a personal relationship. She noted Roman had offered no evidence their relationship affected prosecuting the case in any way.“The existence of a relationship between members of a prosecution team, in and of itself, is simply not a status that entitles a criminal defendant any remedy,” she wrote.Willis also rebuffed an additional argument by Trump’s attorneys that she should be disqualified because of comments she made at a Black church saying attacks on her were racist. Trump had used those comments to suggest the prosecution against him was racially motivated.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“The motion makes no serious legal argument, establishes no violation of any ethical rule, and makes no real effort to link the public statements to the legal standard for disqualification,” she wrote. “Instead, much like the motion advanced by … Defendant Roman, Defendant Trump’s motion appears designed to generate media attention rather than accomplish some form of legitimate legal practice. It should be dismissed out of hand.”Steve Sadow, Trump’s lead attorney in Fulton county, dismissed Willis’s filing.“While the DA admits to an intimate relationship with her employee Special Asst DA Wade, she fails to provide full transparency and necessary financial details. Indeed, she says absolutely nothing about the so-called ‘coincidence’ of Wade filing for divorce the day after the DA hired him!” he said in a statement.“Most significantly, and disingenuously, the DA attempts to explain and downplay her ‘church speech’, by preposterously claiming that her racially charged extra-judicial comments were somehow not about the case or the defendants, and that her intentional injection of racial animus in violation of her ethical responsibilities as a prosecutor should simply be ignored,” he added.“Apparently, the DA believes she can make public out-of-court statements about race, this case, and the defendants whenever she wants, and the court is powerless to punish her by disqualification.”Shortly after the filing, Trump distorted what Willis had said into falsehoods and used it to attack her. In a post on Truth Social, his social media platform, he said: “By going after the most high level person, and the Republican Nominee, she was able to get her ‘lover’ much more money, almost a Million Dollars, than she would be able to get for the prosecution of any other person or individual. THAT MEANS THAT THIS SCAM IS TOTALLY DISCREDITED & OVER!”Willis’s filing on Friday details how Wade stepped away from lucrative other legal work to handle the case and took on a reduced governmental rate to work on the case. More

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      Fani Willis: what does relationship with Trump prosecutor mean for Georgia case?

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      The case brought against Donald Trump in Georgia is a powerful, sprawling indictment that charges the former US president and his top allies with violating the state’s racketeering statute over their efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.In January, the case was roiled by an explosive complaint filed by Trump’s co-defendant Michael Roman, who alleged that a secret personal relationship between the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, and her deputy Nathan Wade, amounted to a conflict of interest that warranted their disqualification.The latest twist in the weeks-long saga came on Friday, when Willis acknowledged in a court filing that she had a relationship with Wade, but that it began after he had been retained to work on the Trump case.Here’s what you need to know.What has just happened?Willis and Wade, a special prosecutor working on the case against Trump and 14 other defendants, confirmed for the first time on Friday they had a romantic relationship. Previously, evidence had emerged in Wade’s divorce proceedings that he had used some of the more than $650,000 he earned from his work for her to pay for vacations for the two of them. Bank records showed Wade had paid for tickets for the pair to go to California in 2023 and Miami in 2022.What do the Trump team argue?Trump’s allies and lawyers allege that the relationship between the district attorney and one of her top prosecutors on the team is an improper one that affects the investigation. That is important as the Georgia case was seen as a powerful blow to the former US president, with a strong chance of finding him guilty for his actions in 2020. Because the case is in Georgia state court, it is also immune from Trump’s interference should he win the 2024 election.What could that mean for the case?There is little doubt that Trump’s lawyers will now seek to exploit this situation and use it to undermine the credibility of the case and delay the proceedings. But experts have generally been skeptical the relationship will result in disqualification or getting the case removed.Even if nothing were to happen legally because of the scandal, it offers huge political ammunition to Trump to argue that the case is flawed and motivated by politics and personal ambition. In an election year, that could be crucial.What does Willis say?Willis wrote in the Friday filing that she had no personal or financial conflict of interest that “constitutes a legal basis for disqualification” and urged McAfee to dismiss the request to disqualify her without a hearing.She noted that Roman had failed to offer any evidence that the relationship affected any decisions of the case. The mere existence of a relationship, she wrote, was not grounds for disqualification. She noted that some of the defense lawyers in the case were married or had personal relationships.She also noted that neither she nor Wade benefited financially from the prosecution. The two do not have a joint bank account or other shared expenses. And when they travel together for personal reasons, they split the costs and bear their own expenses, her office wrote.“While the allegations raised in the various motions are salacious and garnered the media attention they were designed to obtain, none provide this Court with any basis upon which to order the relief they seek,” she wrote.What happens next?A hearing has been set for 15 February by the Fulton county superior court judge Scott McAfee, who is overseeing the case. McAfee is expected to decide based on the evidence presented then whether Willis should be disqualified, either because he finds there is an actual conflict of interest, or because he finds an appearance of impropriety, a lower standard that has been previously used in some cases.If McAfee decides to reject Roman’s motion to disqualify Willis, Roman could challenge his ruling at the Georgia state court of appeals, a move that would almost certainly delay the case by weeks or months, setting back the start of a potential trial. A trial date has not been set for Trump and his co-defendants.If McAfee decides to grant Roman’s motion and relieves Willis and her office from prosecuting the case, it would be handed to the Prosecuting Attorneys Council of Georgia, which would then appoint a replacement prosecutor. More

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      in Elections

      Trump ally Jim Jordan subpoenas Fani Willis for potential grant money misuse

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      The US House judiciary committee has subpoenaed Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney, for records related to the use of federal grant money in prosecutions and the potential misuse of those funds.The subpoena escalates the conflict between Jim Jordan, the Ohio Republican congressman, judiciary committee chair and ardent defender of Donald Trump, and Willis, whose office charged the former president and 18 others with 41 counts over interfering with a Georgia election and illegally attempting to undo Biden’s victory in Georgia.Willis responded to the subpoena on Friday. She said: “These false allegations are included in baseless litigation filed by a holdover employee from the prior administration who was terminated for cause. The courts that have ruled found no merit in these claims. We expect the same result in any pending litigation.”She went on to tout the office grant programs and said they are in compliance with Department of Justice requirements.The back and forth between Jordan and Willis began last year with correspondence Jordan sent on 24 August, the day Trump stood for a mugshot at the Fulton county jail. Jordan’s letter suggested Willis had subjected Trump to “politically motivated state investigations and prosecutions due to the policies they advanced as president”, and that any coordination her office had with federal prosecutors may have been an improperly partisan use of federal money.Willis’s scorching response in subsequent replies said the inquiry offends principles of state sovereignty and the separation of powers; that it interferes with a criminal investigation; that Trump is not immune to prosecution simply because he is a candidate for public office; and that Jordan himself was “ignorant of the US constitution”.The Republican-led committee opened a formal investigation into the Willis’s office in December.Willis has been under fire over the past month after allegations of an improper relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade, whom she hired to work on the Trump case in Fulton county.Jordan sent a letter to Nathan Wade on 12 January, asking for his cooperation in his committee’s inquiry into “politically motivated investigations and prosecutions and the potential misuse of federal funds”. The letter notes Wade’s billings for meetings with the federal January 6 committee, which the letter characterizes as partisan. “There are open questions about whether federal funds were used by [Fulton county] to finance your prosecution,” the letter states.Willis responded on Wade’s behalf 12 days later.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Your letter is simply a restatement of demands that you have made in past correspondence for access to evidence in a pending Georgia criminal prosecution,” she said in the reply.“As I said previously, your requests implicate significant, well-recognized confidentiality interests related to an ongoing criminal matter. Your requests violate principles of separation of powers and federalism, as well as respect for the legal protections provided to attorney work product in ongoing litigation.” More

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      Biden gains union worker support but faces ceasefire protests in Michigan

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      Joe Biden won a strong pledge of support on Thursday from union autoworkers crucial to his re-election bid in Michigan, while yet more protests over his backing of Israel’s actions in Gaza put pressure on the trip.The president’s travel to the battleground state was intended as a celebration after the United Auto Workers (UAW) union recently endorsed his re-election bid. But his visit was also met with protests amid the state’s sizable Arab American community, demanding Biden seek a ceasefire in the Israel-Gaza war, and refusing to meet his campaign.Biden visited a UAW union hall in Warren, Michigan, where UAW members plan to work a phone bank on his behalf ahead of the state’s 27 February nominating contest.He was greeted by UAW president Shawn Fain, who last week gave a full-throated endorsement of the Democratic incumbent and a sharp rebuke of Republican frontrunner Donald Trump.As the crowd chanted, “Joe, Joe”, Fain promised Biden: “We’re going to fight like hell” for him to win the November presidential election.“Wall Street didn’t build the middle class. Labor built the middle class, and the middle class built the country,” Biden said. “When labor does well, everybody does well.”He later joked: “Besides, you built my ’67 Corvette.”The campaign kept specific details of Biden’s visit private in the face of expected opposition until just before his arrival.Ahead of his motorcade, about 100 protesters marched down a street toward the UAW location, chanting “Genocide Joe has got to go” and waving Palestinian flags.Before heading to Michigan, Biden attended the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington. He said he was working to resolve the Gaza conflict, including a two-state solution for Palestinians and bringing home the hostages still held following Hamas’s 7 October attack on southern Israel.“We are actively working for peace,” he said at the breakfast.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump on Wednesday met with the Teamsters, one of the US’s biggest unions representing truck drivers, airline pilots and others, as he competes for their backing.Ahead of Biden’s visit to the Detroit area, protesters amassed in cars and vans with blue and white “Abandon Biden” signs and Palestinian flags, planning to rush to wherever he appeared.Arab Americans account for 5% of the vote in Michigan and Biden’s margin of victory over Trump was less than 3 percentage points in 2020.Reuters contributed reporting More

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      State department identifies Israeli citizens targeted by US sanctions as Netanyahu rejects them as ‘unnecessary’ – as it happened

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      The US state department has released the names of four Israeli nationals subjected to sanctions under Biden’s new executive order.
      David Chai Chasdai
      Einan Tanjil
      Shalom Zicherman
      Yinon Levi
      According to the state department, Chasdai “initiated and led a riot, which involved setting vehicles and buildings on fire, assaulting Palestinian civilians, and causing damage to property in Huwara, which resulted in the death of a Palestinian civilian”.It accuses Tanjil of involvement in the assault of “Palestinian farmers and Israeli activists by attacking them with stones and clubs, resulting in injuries that required medical treatment”.Zicherman was seen on video assaulting “Israeli activists and their vehicles in the West Bank, blocking them on the street, and attempted to break the windows of passing vehicles with activists inside,” it said. He “cornered at least two of the activists and injured both”.Levi “led a group of settlers who engaged in actions creating an atmosphere of fear in the West Bank. He regularly led groups of settlers from the Meitarim Farm outpost that assaulted Palestinian and Bedouin civilians, threatened them with additional violence if they did not leave their homes, burned their fields, and destroyed their property. Levi and other settlers at Meitarim Farm have repeatedly attacked multiple communities within the West Bank.”Good afternoon. It’s been another lively day in Washington. Thanks for reading.Here’s what we covered today:
      Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, announced that the long-awaited text of a border deal to unlock aid to Ukraine and Israel could be released as early as tomorrow and said to expect a vote next week. Despite months of painstaking, bipartisan negotiations between senators and the White House, the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, has already declared it “dead on arrival” amid opposition from Donald Trump, the Republican frontrunner who hopes to use immigration as a cudgel against Joe Biden.
      Meanwhile, Biden announced that the US will place sanctions on Israeli settlers in the West Bank, via presidential executive order, citing “intolerable levels” of violence. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected the action as “unnecessary.” The state department on Thursday released the names of four Israeli citizens targeted in a first round of sanctions under the new authority. For latest updates on the Middle East, you can follow our live coverage here.
      Defense secretary Lloyd Austin, was contrite in a Pentagon press briefing this morning, his first since being rushed to the hospital with complications from prostate cancer surgery that he kept secret from the president and the public for several days. “I want to be crystal clear: we did not handle this right and I did not handle this right,” Austin told reporters.
      Biden praised the Ukrainians people’s “incredible resolve and resilience against Putin’s aggression” and demanded afresh of Congress: “We must continue to help them.” The White House’s request to send nearly $110bn in additional security assistance and aid to Ukraine is on hold on Capitol Hill amid House Republican resistance.
      The US House of Representatives last night passed a nearly $79bn tax package that would expand the child tax credit for millions and revive a trio of tax breaks for businesses.
      Criticizing the policies included in the bipartisan border deal as “Republican light,” Democratic congressman Greg Casar lamented Joe Biden‘s recent statement indicating that he would move to “shut down the border” if the deal becomes law.“I’m a supporter of the president, but I think that he made a big mistake with that statement. The president’s statement reflects not just bad policy but bad politics,” Casar said.“‘Shutting down the border’ means that we’re further empowering cartels and criminal organizations to move people across the border. We need to be creating legal pathways for migration.”Republican lawmakers have demanded that Biden sign off on severe border measures in exchange for approving additional aid for Ukraine, and Casar advised the president against accepting those terms.“I do not think we should be playing into that kind of a hostage-taking situation. It’s bad policy,” Casar said. “And I don’t think that it will be good politics for the president either because these Republican policies are not going to create a more orderly situation at the border.”Conservative opposition to the border bill has received much of the attention. But progressives are also alarmed by the emerging proposal, as the Guardian’s Joan Greve reports.Congressman Greg Casar, a progressive Democrat of Texas, expressed grave concerns today about the border deal recently brokered by the Biden administration and a bipartisan group of senators.“It really worries me to hear these negotiations with the US Senate, where it feels that Republican, anti-immigrant policies could make their way into law even under a Democratic president,” Casar said on a press call.“I just don’t think that that is the way to go. We have to respond to this anti-immigrant propaganda with a proactive vision that recognizes that immigration is a good thing.”The Senate negotiators have not yet released bill text of the border deal, and it remains highly unclear whether the proposal can pass through Congress. Mike Johnson, the Republican House speaker, has already attacked the proposal as insufficient and has indicated that the legislation would be “dead on arrival” in the lower chamber.The group of senators working on the border deal have defended it against what they claim are rumors and misinformation about the bill’s contents. Conservatives are under pressure from Donald Trump to reject the deal, despite arguing that border enforcement is their top priority.Senator Kyrsten Sinema, an Independent of Arizona who has helped lead the talks, outlined some of the provisions for reporters on Capitol Hill yesterday.According to Axios, she said the plan would include strict new measures to tighten and speed up asylum claims as well as changes the way enforcement agents use detention, deportation and parole.Switching back for a moment to matters of domestic policy – albeit it an issue with major global implications for US immigration policy, aid to Ukraine and support for Israel and Taiwan: Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, just announced that the text of a long-awaited border security bill could be released as early as tomorrow (Friday), with a vote expected next week.For months, Senate negotiators have worked behind the scenes to broker a border deal that would unlock military aid to Ukraine and Israel. But it faces long odds in the Republican-controlled House, where the speaker, Mike Johnson, has already rejected the measure outright, despite not knowing what exactly is in the bill.My colleague Peter Beaumont notes in his full report on the sanctions that they follow a US visa ban for any Israeli settlers implicated in attacks on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank announced last month.The new order will give the treasury department the authority to impose financial sanctions on settlers engaged in violence, but is not meant to target US citizens. A substantial number of the settlers in the West Bank hold US citizenship and they would be prohibited under US law from transacting with the sanctioned individuals.The Guardian’s Chris McGreal has a deeper dive into how American citizens have been leading the rise in settler-related violence in the West Bank, which you can read here:Biden has landed in the Detroit area, ahead of an event with auto workers. But expect senior administration officials to return to the state this month to meet with community leaders amid deep anger at the president’s handling of the war in Gaza, Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters.Past outreach attempts by the administration have … not gone well. Participants have been open about their frustration with Biden and what they view as his failure to rein in Israel’s devastating military campaign in Gaza.Arab American voters are a relatively small but growing constituency that has historically favored Democrats. In battleground states such as Michigan and Georgia, home to large Arab and Muslim American communities, even the tiniest erosion of support could hurt Biden’s prospects for re-election. Representative Rashida Tlaib, the lone Palestinian American in Congress, who represents a Detroit-area district, has said so explicitly. In a video calling on the Biden administration to back a ceasefire, she appears before text that reads: “We will remember in 2024.”In a statement, the office of Benjamin Netanyahu said the vast majority of West Bank settlers as “law-abiding citizens” and described Biden’s executive order sanctioning settler extremists as “exceptional”.“Israel acts against all Israelis who break the law, everywhere; therefore, exceptional measures are unnecessary,” the statement continued.The US state department has released the names of four Israeli nationals subjected to sanctions under Biden’s new executive order.
      David Chai Chasdai
      Einan Tanjil
      Shalom Zicherman
      Yinon Levi
      According to the state department, Chasdai “initiated and led a riot, which involved setting vehicles and buildings on fire, assaulting Palestinian civilians, and causing damage to property in Huwara, which resulted in the death of a Palestinian civilian”.It accuses Tanjil of involvement in the assault of “Palestinian farmers and Israeli activists by attacking them with stones and clubs, resulting in injuries that required medical treatment”.Zicherman was seen on video assaulting “Israeli activists and their vehicles in the West Bank, blocking them on the street, and attempted to break the windows of passing vehicles with activists inside,” it said. He “cornered at least two of the activists and injured both”.Levi “led a group of settlers who engaged in actions creating an atmosphere of fear in the West Bank. He regularly led groups of settlers from the Meitarim Farm outpost that assaulted Palestinian and Bedouin civilians, threatened them with additional violence if they did not leave their homes, burned their fields, and destroyed their property. Levi and other settlers at Meitarim Farm have repeatedly attacked multiple communities within the West Bank.”White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre just wrapped up the media briefing on Air Force One, as the flight was about to descend towards the Detroit area, where Joe Biden is heading to a campaign event to meet auto workers.Jean-Pierre was asked whether the executive order setting up sanctions against certain Israeli settlers in the West Bank was announced today to, essentially, appease Muslim Americans incensed by America’s tenacious support and funding for Israel even as its military decimates Gaza in response to the attack by Hamas on southern Israel on October 7.The Detroit area has a huge Arab American population and protests are expected during Biden’s visit today.Jean-Pierre denied that the timing was intentional, adding that “these types of sanctions take a long time” to plan and impose.The US government informed the Israeli government before it publicly announced earlier today that Joe Biden was issuing an executive order in relation to the occupied West Bank, the White House just confirmed.The US will place sanctions on Israeli settlers in the West Bank, with the US president citing “intolerable levels” of violence against Palestinians there.John Kirby, the national security spokesman, based in the White House, was asked in the press briefing now underway whether Biden had informed Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu before he issued the executive order.“We informed the Israeli government before it was announced,” Kirby said.Asked again if that communication had been at the level of president to prime minister, Kirby repeated his answer.The Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, has called on the Biden administration to “immediately sanction” what Cair termed far-right Israeli officials who enable violence by illegal Israeli settlers against Palestinian civilians in the West Bank.Biden issued an executive order today imposing sanctions on Israeli settlers who have been attacking Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.
      The Biden administration should use this executive order to immediately sanction Israeli government officials who are enabling settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, including National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. Just as importantly, President Biden must end American support for the Israeli government’s genocidal war on the people of Gaza. It makes no sense for the Biden administration to oppose killing Palestinian civilians in the West Bank while enabling the killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza,” Cair national deputy director Edward Ahmed Mitchell said.
      Hello, it’s been a lively few hours in Washington, on Capitol Hill and at the White House. We await a briefing from press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and national security spokesman John Kirby, so stand by for that. Looks like that will go ahead at 1.30pm ET as the two spox and reporters accompany Joe Biden to Michigan, aboard Air Force One.Here’s how the day is going:
      Joe Biden announced that the US will place sanctions on Israeli settlers in the West Bank, via presidential executive order, citing “intolerable levels” of violence.
      Americans’ views of the economy are improving, but their views of Biden are not. That’s according to a new AP-Norc poll that found a notable increase in the percentage of US adults who called the US economy “good”, but that’s not translating into support for the president.
      Defense secretary Lloyd Austin, was contrite in a Pentagon press briefing this morning, his first since being rushed to the hospital with complications from prostate cancer surgery that he kept secret from the president and the public for several days. “I want to be crystal clear: we did not handle this right and I did not handle this right,” Austin told reporters.
      Joe Biden praised the Ukrainians people’s “incredible resolve and resilience against Putin’s aggression” and demanded afresh of Congress: “We must continue to help them.” The White House’s request to send nearly $110bn in additional security assistance and aid to Ukraine is on hold on Capitol Hill amid House Republican resistance.
      The US House of Representatives last night passed a nearly $79bn tax package that would expand the child tax credit for millions and revive a trio of tax breaks for businesses. Yes, that House – the Republican-controlled one that booted its Speaker and has repeatedly brought the US government to the brink of a shutdown!
      The Israeli newspaper Haaretz suggested the move to sanction Israeli settlers was without precedent, calling it “arguably the most punitive measure ever taken from the US government against Israeli citizens”.Four Israelis are expected to be sanctioned under the new authority, according to several news reports, with more expected to be punished in the future. Doing so blocks these individuals from engaging with the American financial system and from accessing their assets and property in the US as well as bars them from traveling to the US.In a statement following the announcement of sanctions against Israeli settlers, Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, said the “record” spike in violence by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank “poses a grave threat to peace, security, and stability in the West Bank, Israel, and the Middle East region, and threatens the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States”.He said the executive order allows the US to impose financial sanctions against those it deems to have directed or particpated in acts of violence against civilians as well as those who have sought to displace them from their homes, destroyed property or engaged in “terrorist activity” in the West Bank.“Today’s actions seek to promote peace and security for Israelis and Palestinians alike,” Sullivan said.In December, the state department imposed a travel ban on some settlers.In an executive order released moments ago, Biden announced that the US will place sanctions on Israeli settlers in the West Bank, citing “intolerable levels” of violence.Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed by security forces and settlers across the occupied West Bank since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, according to the United Nations. The violence is separate from Israel’s military assault on Gaza, where the death toll is approaching 27,000 Palestinians.In the notice to Congress, Biden said actions by Israeli settler extremists “constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States” and declared a national emergency to address it.
      I, Joseph R Biden Jr, President of the United States of America, find that the situation in the West Bank – in particular high levels of extremist settler violence, forced displacement of people and villages, and property destruction – has reached intolerable levels and constitutes a serious threat to the peace, security, and stability of the West Bank and Gaza, Israel, and the broader Middle East region,” reads the order.
      “These actions undermine the foreign policy objectives of the United States, including the viability of a two-state solution and ensuring Israelis and Palestinians can attain equal measures of security, prosperity, and freedom. They also undermine the security of Israel and have the potential to lead to broader regional destabilization across the Middle East, threatening United States personnel and interests.”
      Americans’ views of the economy are improving, but their views of Biden are not. That’s according to a new AP-Norc poll that found a notable increase in the percentage of US adults who called the US economy “good”.Last year, just 24% of Americans rated the national economy as good, compared with 35% who do so now. It’s also an improvement from late last year when just 30% said so. The rosier outlook tracks with positive economic indicators: inflation has begun to recede and growth is strong.While nearly two-thirds of Americans still call the economy poor, it’s an improvement from a year ago, when 76% described it that way, the survey found.Still, that is not translating into support for the president, whose approval ratings are languishing at 38%, where it has stood mostly unchanged for the past two years. Just 35% of Americans approve of Biden’s handling of the economy. The evidence of a stronger economy has yet to spill over into greater support for Biden: the new poll puts his approval rating at 38%, which is roughly where that number has stood for most of the past two years. Biden’s approval rating on handling the economy is similar, at 35%.Voters’ perceptions of the economy often shape elections, which is why Biden and his team are working to emphasize any sign of economic strength. But if Americans aren’t feeling it personally, the message is unlikely to resonant.New reporting from the Associated Press reveals that Biden is expected to issue an executive order targeting Israeli settlers in the West Bank, where violence against Palestinians has surged in the occupied territory.The report, based on four officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the White House was expected to announce the order later today. It comes as Biden departs for Michigan, a battleground state and home to a sizable Arab American population that is furious with the president over his handling of Israel’s war in Gaza.Biden has faced growing criticism from Democrats amid rising Palestinian death toll and the destruction in Gaza. The move reflects the administration’s growing frustration with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, as the US ramps up pressure on its ally to show more restraint in its military operations in Gaza.
      The AP reports: Israel Defense Forces stepped up raids across the West Bank after the war began. Hamas militants are present in the West Bank, but largely operate underground because of Israel’s tight grip on the territory. Palestinians complain that the Israeli crackdown in the West Bank have further blurred the line between security forces and radical, violent settlers.
      The executive order is expected to set the ground for imposing sanctions on individuals who have engaged in violence against Palestinians in the West Bank. White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan met on Wednesday at the White House with Ron Dermer, the Israeli minister of strategic affair. It was not clear whether the executive order was discussed.
      Read the full report here. More

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      in US Politics

      Deny, attack, reverse – Trump has perfected the art of inverted victimhood | Sidney Blumenthal

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      Time after time, with predictable regularity, never missing a beat, Donald Trump proclaims his innocence. He always denies that he has done anything wrong. The charge does not matter. He is blameless. But this is only the beginning of the pattern. Then, he attacks his accusers, or anyone involved in bringing him to account, usually of committing the identical offense of which he stands accused.But it is not enough for him to lash out. Then, he declares himself to be the victim. Whatever it is, he is falsely accused. But his self-dramatization as the wounded sufferer is only half his story: he insists that whoever has accused him is in fact the offender. He emerges triumphant, the martyr, the truth-teller, courageously unmasking the real villain. J’accuse!Trump’s pattern is textbook manipulation – literally. It has a precise name given to it after decades of academic research. Jennifer Freyd, now professor emerita of psychology at the University of Oregon, developed the theory over her career studying sexual assault, trauma and institutional betrayal. She named the process by which the perpetrator seeks to avoid accountability Darvo – a strategy with the elements of denial, attack, and reversal of victim and offender.“I named the idea in the 1990s,” Freyd told me. “People can deny an accusation without resorting to Darvo. Why not just say, ‘I’m disturbed by what you’re saying, it doesn’t comport with what I remember, these are important issues, I want to understand.’ You can stick to a firm denial without being a victim. But the viciousness of the attack is intended to be silencing.”Freyd observes: “The people who use Darvo are different from the people who don’t … It’s a red flag.”Trump’s behavior in the E Jean Carroll case has been a classic exhibit. The defamation case was brought after Trump said she was “totally lying”, explaining that “she’s not my type”, about her description of his sexual assault of her in a book and a New York magazine article. He issued a formal statement from the White House on 19 July 2019: “If anyone has information that the Democratic Party is working with Ms Carroll or New York magazine, please notify us as soon as possible. The world should know what’s really going on. It is a disgrace, and people should pay dearly for such false accusations.”All the elements of Darvo, his familiar pattern, were present in his deflection. He denied the incident occurred: “I’ve never met this person in my life.” He attacked her: “Shame on those who make up false stories of assault to try to get publicity for themselves or sell a book or carry out a political agenda.” And he turned the tables to make himself the victim and her the aggressor deserving of punishment: “People should pay dearly for such false accusations.”In the first defamation trial in 2023, Judge Lewis Kaplan declared that based on the jury’s deliberations Trump had defamed her and committed rape. “… Mr Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape’,” he stated. “Indeed, as the evidence at trial recounted below makes clear, the jury found that Mr Trump in fact did exactly that.”The jury awarded Carroll $5m. Trump appeared on CNN the day after the judgment to call the decision “fake news” and her a “whack job”. She amended her defamation lawsuit.During the second trial, Trump inevitably repeated this pattern. First, he denied the accusation. “She said that I did something to her that never took place,” he testified in a deposition. “There was no anything.” Then, he attacked her: “I know nothing about this nutjob.” Then, he made himself her victim: “She’s accusing me of rape, a woman that I have no idea who she is.” Then, he called her “sick, mentally sick” and labeled her attorney Roberta Kaplan “a political operative”. They had connived for ulterior motives to hurt him.Then, he lied about an interview she had given, to claim that – even if he never knew her and the event never took place – she said she enjoyed being sexually assaulted by him. “She actually indicated that she loved it. Okay? She loved it until commercial break,” Trump said. “In fact, I think she said it was sexy, didn’t she? She said it was very sexy to be raped. Didn’t she say that?”In the second defamation trial, the jury delivered a judgment of $83.3m in damages against Trump.There’s a method to Trump’s madness. The madness is the method – and the method is the madness. It’s more than his malignant narcissism. It’s more than his relentless lying. Conscious or unconscious, it is his invariable reflexive response to the danger of being held responsible for his misdeeds and crimes. Its roots lie in the model of his brutish father. Upon that foundation he added the vicious counsel of Roy Cohn to attack anyone suing him in order to raise the personal cost for his victims, drain them of resources and delay the courts.But Trump’s instinctive reliance on Darvo goes beyond the mean-spirited tactics he learned from Cohn. Those lessons settled long ago into his pathology, becoming something more pervasive, systematic and fundamental, defining Trump’s behavior in every area of his life. The pattern is written all over Trump’s rap sheet of adjudicated and alleged sexual violence. Dozens of women have come forward by name to accuse him of assault and rape. His malicious insults of women are legion.He responds to all of his accusers using the Darvo playbook. “Every woman lied when they came forward to hurt my campaign,” he said in 2016. “Total fabrication. The events never happened. Never. All of these liars will be sued after the election is over.” Again, he was the victim, they were the aggressors. He threatened them in order to silence them.Though Trump ranks among the greatest living specimens of misogyny, his Darvo blame-casting extends to foes of any gender in every one of his conflicts. Trump’s syndrome has become the core of his politics. Just as he is the Maga icon, even exalted as a god, his derangement is the golden calf for his followers. They worship by imitation. His gaslighting about his sexual violence has morphed into the essence of his pseudo-ideology of a debauched party.The Trump Republicans, apologizing for him, twist their arguments into the Darvo template. In the Republican-dominated House of Representatives, the weaponization committee has institutionalized a warped Darvo construct in its projections on the cave wall of conspiracies and enemies. One day, the FBI is the culprit victimizing Trump; the next, Taylor Swift.In case after case, Trump applies the blueprint. His closing statement at his New York fraud trial on 12 January was definitive in his application of the complete features of Darvo. He raced back and forth from denial, to attack, to reversal of victim and offender. “This is a political witch-hunt that was set aside by – should be set aside. We should receive damages for what we’ve gone through, for what they’ve taken this company through.” He was the victim.The one bringing the case, Letitia James, the New York attorney general, was the assailant. “We have a situation where I’m an innocent man,” Trump said. “I’ve been persecuted by somebody running for office … they want to make sure that I don’t win again, that this is partially election interference. But, in particular, the person in the room right now hates Trump and uses Trump to get elected.”Trump, on trial for financial fraud, flipped the narrative. “This is no fraud. This is a fraud on me.” Then, he baited Judge Arthur Engoron. “I know this is boring you.”“One minute, Mr Trump,” said the judge.“You can’t listen for more than one minute,” Trump shot back. “This has been a persecution of somebody that’s done a good job in New York.”“Please control your client,” the judge told Trump’s lawyer.“Your Honor, look, I did nothing wrong,” said Trump. “They should pay me for what we had to go through.”Trump’s harangue in the Manhattan courtroom was just the latest variation on his themes. After the FBI seized boxes of classified documents, including national security secrets, that Trump took to Mar-a-Lago, for which he has been charged with 41 felonies, Trump let loose on 8 August 2022 with a vehement Darvo defense. His “beautiful home” was “under siege” from “FBI agents”, in “an attack from Radical Left Democrats”.Never describing the reason for the seizure of documents, he literally spelled out his technique of sleight-of-hand reversal. “What is the difference between this and Watergate, where operatives broke into the Democrat National Committee? Here, in reverse, Democrats broke into the home of the 45th President of the United States.”This outrage, according to Trump, was the culmination of his mistreatment – at least until the next one. “The political persecution of President Donald J Trump has been going on for years,” he said, speaking of himself in the third person, “with the now fully debunked Russia, Russia, Russia Scam, Impeachment Hoax No 1, Impeachment Hoax No 2, and so much more, it just never ends. It is political targeting at the highest level!” Then, he attacked Hillary Clinton. “Absolutely nothing has happened to hold her accountable.”Trump’s language in his Darvo screed about the documents he had secreted at Mar-a-Lago was a replica of his most historic speech. In his rant on 6 January 2021 to the assembled mob ready to march on the Capitol, he presented himself as the victim in almost exactly the same words.“All of us here today do not want to see our election victory stolen by emboldened radical-left Democrats, which is what they’re doing. And stolen by the fake news media … You don’t concede when there’s theft involved … We will stop the steal.”He turned Mike Pence, his vice-president, into an enemy, mentioning his name seven times. The gallows were already being constructed in front of the Capitol, yet Trump and his mob were the ones being intimidated and silenced. “We will not let them silence your voices.” The media was “the enemy of the people”.In the midst of his recital of the “pure theft” of the election, he managed to find a way to insert a graceless note of misogyny, exactly as he would after the Mar-a-Lago seizure, a non sequitur explicable by the perverse logic of Darvo. “And the only unhappy person in the United States, single most unhappy, is Hillary Clinton.” Then, he told the mob to go “fight” at the Capitol.“Darvo works,” Freyd told me. “There are two ways it works. One is on the victim, who is attacked. Darvo leads to self-blame, which leads to self-silencing. It’s effective in that it increases power over the victim. The other way is that it damages the credibility of the victim. When we introduce Darvo into the experiment, for the participant who doesn’t know about it, blame is reduced on the perpetrator. Darvo hurts the victim more. It tarnishes more the person who is the target of Darvo.”But Freyd also says that her research shows that when people are made aware of the nature of Darvo beforehand, it has a diminished effect. “The one hope is that when they know about it, they are less susceptible to it as a defense.” She concludes: “It would make a difference to identify the strategy and call it out. Normalizing Darvo is colluding and harmful.”Trump’s campaign themes largely consist of his defenses, which are adaptations of Darvo. He denies all the accusations. A majority of Republicans believe he is falsely charged. He attacks a host of enemies from E Jean Carroll to Jack Smith, from the judges to their clerks. He is the victim. They are the offenders. Darvo is his shield of innocence.“Are you thinking of trying to use campaign funds to pay some of the penalties?” a reporter asked Trump after it was disclosed that he had spent $50m in donor money on lawyers’ fees in 2023.“What penalties?” Trump answered.“In the New York fraud case and the defamation case.”“I didn’t do anything wrong,” Trump said. “I mean, that’s been proven as far as I’m concerned.”
      Sidney Blumenthal is a Guardian US columnist. He is a former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton 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 More

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      Donald Trump’s ‘sex and bribes’ data protection case rejected by UK court

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      Donald Trump’s data protection claim for damages over allegations in the “Steele dossier” that he took part in “perverted” sex acts and gave bribes to Russian officials has been dismissed by a high court judge in London.Mrs Justice Steyn agreed with Orbis Business Intelligence, the company founded by the former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, who compiled the contentious material, that the case should not go to trial.The ruling issued on Thursday said the court did not “consider or determine the accuracy or inaccuracy of the memoranda” but found that Trump’s claim for damages had been made outside the six-year period of “limitations”.The court ruled that Trump “has no reasonable grounds for bringing a claim for compensation or damages, and no real prospect of successfully obtaining such a remedy”.It added that the “only other remedy claimed was for a compliance order erasing or restricting processing of the memoranda” but that this would be “pointless, and unnecessary, in circumstances where the dossier was freely available on the internet, and the defendant had in any event undertaken to delete the copies it held”.The former US president, who is the frontrunner in the race to be the Republican candidate in this year’s election, had indicated he was willing to give evidence at the high court in the case alleging breach of data protection rights by Orbis Business Intelligence over the 2016 “Steele dossier”.The report, investigating Russian efforts to influence the 2016 US presidential campaign, was compiled by Steele, who previously ran MI6’s Russia desk, and then published by BuzzFeed in 2017.The document included allegations that Trump had hired sex workers to urinate on each other in the presidential suite of a hotel in Moscow, and took part in sex parties in St Petersburg. He denies the claims.Trump’s lawyer, Hugh Tomlinson KC, had told the court his client knew he had the legal responsibility to prove the allegations were false and that he intended “to discharge his burden by giving evidence in this court”.Orbis was successful in arguing that the claim had been brought too late.Trump’s campaign spokesperson, Steven Cheung, said: “The high court in London has found that there was not even an attempt by Christopher Steele, or his group, to justify or try to prove, which they absolutely cannot, their false and defamatory allegations in the fake ‘dossier’.“The high court also found that there was processing, utilisation, of those false statements. President Trump will continue to fight for the truth and against falsehoods such as ones promulgated by Steele and his cohorts.” More

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      Trump political action committees spent over $50m last year on legal bills

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      Donald Trump’s political action committees spent more than $50m on legal fees over the course of 2023, as the former president’s legal troubles intensified in the face of 91 felony counts across four criminal cases.According to documents filed with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) on Wednesday night, Save America, Trump’s leadership Pac that has shouldered most of the financial burden of his legal battles, entered 2024 with just $5m in cash on hand after spending more than $25m on legal expenses over the last six months of 2023.Another Trump-affiliated group, Make America Great Again, spent another $4m on legal bills over the second half of the year. Earlier filings showed that Save America also spent more than $21m on legal fees during the first six months of last year, bringing Trump’s total 2023 legal bill to more than $50m.As Trump’s legal woes have escalated, his political action committees have been forced to redistribute their financial resources. Filings show that Maga Inc refunded $30m to Save America in the second half of 2023, after already transferring more than $12m to the group earlier in the year. Save America had distributed $60m to Maga Inc back in 2022 to bolster Trump’s campaign efforts, but the group has now reclaimed most of those funds in the face of the former president’s mounting legal fees. After those transactions, Maga Inc reported roughly $23m in cash on hand heading into 2024.The FEC filings show that Trump-affiliated groups distributed payments to lawyers such as John Lauro, Steven Sadow and Chris Kise, all of whom have assisted in the former president’s legal defense. The new reports underscore how much of Trump’s impressive fundraising haul has been diverted away from his presidential campaign and redirected toward his legal battles – a fact that has caught the attention of his opponent in the Republican presidential primary, Nikki Haley.Haley said on X (formerly Twitter) on Tuesday: “Another reason Donald Trump won’t debate me … His PAC spent 50 MILLION in campaign dollars on his legal fees. He can’t beat Joe Biden if he’s spending all his time and money on court cases and chaos.”Despite the former president’s mounting legal troubles, the Trump campaign still began 2024 with $33m in cash on hand, but that total fell short of Joe Biden’s re-election campaign. The Biden campaign began 2024 with roughly $46m in the bank, while the Biden victory fund, a joint fundraising committee, reported $37.5m in cash on hand. The Democratic National Committee also reported more than twice as much cash on hand compared with its Republican counterpart, which started 2024 with just $8m in the bank.The figures prompted celebration among Biden campaign officials, who boasted about the president’s superior fundraising on social media.TJ Ducklo, a Biden campaign spokesperson, said in a statement: “While Donald Trump lights money on fire paying the tab on his various expenses, Team Biden-Harris, powered by grassroots donors, is hard at work talking to the voters who will decide this election and building the campaign infrastructure to win in November.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBeyond his legal fees, Trump is dealing with other financial strain, after a New York jury recently awarded $83.3m to E Jean Carroll in her defamation lawsuit. Last year, another jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming Carroll, awarding her $5m.And Trump’s civil lawsuits will soon be the least of his concerns. Two of his criminal cases are scheduled to go to trial in March, although at least one of those trials is expected to be delayed. Trump’s legal troubles – and their associated fees – will probably only worsen in the months ahead. More