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      Fani Willis subpoenaed in divorce case involving Trump prosecutor

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      Fani Willis, Georgia’s Fulton county district attorney who brought election interference charges against Donald Trump and 18 co-defendants, has been subpoenaed in a divorce case involving a special prosecutor she hired in the Trump case.A process server delivered the subpoena to Willis’s office on Monday, according to a court filing reviewed by the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the subpoena. The subpoena requests Willis to testify in the divorce case involving her top prosecutor Nathan Wade and his wife Joycelyn Wade.The Wades filed for divorce in Cobb county, just outside Atlanta, in November 2021, according to a county court docket. The filings in the case have been sealed since February 2022.Earlier this week, Mike Roman, a former Trump campaign official and co-defendant in the election interference case who is facing seven criminal charges, filed a motion accusing Willis and Nathan Wade of an “improper, clandestine personal relationship during the pendency of this case”. The filing offered no proof of the relationship or of any wrongdoing.The motion claimed that the alleged relationship between Willis and Nathan Wade resulted in “the special prosecutor, and, in turn, the district attorney, profiting significantly from this prosecution at the expense of the taxpayers”.“Willis has benefited substantially and directly, and continues to benefit, from this litigation because Wade is being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to prosecute this case on her behalf,” the motion states.“He will continue to be incentivized to prosecute this case based on his personal and financial motives, so he has acquired a unique and personal interest or stake in Mr Roman’s continued prosecution. That is, he is motivated to prosecute Mr Roman for as long as possible because he will continue to make exorbitant sums of money,” the motion added.According to county records reviewed by the Hill, Nathan Wade was paid nearly $654,000 in legal fees in 2022 and 2023 as he worked on the election interference case.The motion further claimed – without evidence – that Willis and Nathan Wade traveled together to vacation destinations including Florida, Napa Valley and the Caribbean.The Guardian has contacted Willis and Nathan Wade for comment. Neither have yet spoken publicly on the subpoena. More

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      ‘Totally baseless’: Trump denounced for Nikki Haley ‘birther’ lie

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      A leading professor of US constitutional law condemned Donald Trump for “playing the race card” by propagating the “totally baseless” claim that Nikki Haley, his surging rival for the Republican presidential nomination, is not qualified because her parents were not US citizens when she was born.“The birther claims against Nikki Haley are totally baseless as a legal and constitutional matter,” Laurence Tribe, professor emeritus at Harvard Law School, told NBC.“I can’t imagine what Trump hopes to gain by those claims unless it’s to play the race card against the former governor and UN ambassador as a woman of colour – and to draw on the wellsprings of anti-immigrant prejudice by reminding everyone that Haley’s parents weren’t citizens when she was born in the USA.”The term “birther” was coined to describe racist conspiracy theories about Barack Obama, the first Black US president, which Trump seized on as he established a presence on the political far right.In 2016, as he ran for president himself, Trump also attempted to raise doubts about Ted Cruz, the Texas senator who was then his chief rival.Obama’s father was Kenyan and his mother American. He was born in Hawaii. Cruz’s father was Cuban and his mother American. He was born in Canada and moved to Texas when young.The 14th amendment to the US constitution – the same text under which Colorado and Maine now seek to remove Trump from the ballot for inciting an insurrection – says “all persons born or naturalised in the United States” are citizens. It was introduced after the civil war, conferring citizenship on people once enslaved. The constitution requires that a presidential candidate must be a resident for 14 years, at least 35 years old, and a “natural-born citizen”.As described in Haley’s autobiography, her parents “were born in the Punjab region of India”. Haley was born in Bamberg, South Carolina, in 1972, a US citizen at birth. Her father became a US citizen in 1978, her mother in 2003. Haley was governor of her home state from 2011 to 2017, then ambassador to the United Nations when Trump was president.In the race for the Republican nomination, Haley has surged in polling. She has done particularly well in New Hampshire, cutting Trump’s lead to single digits. Trump still dominates in Iowa, the first state to vote next week.On Tuesday, Trump re-posted to his Truth Social platform a post from the Gateway Pundit, a far-right site, which cited Paul Ingrassia, a New York Young Republican and “constitutional scholar”, as saying Haley was disqualified.In his own post, Ingrassia cited “great investigative work by Laura Loomer, who uncovered that neither one of Haley’s parents were US citizens when she was born in 1972”. Loomer, a far-right, Islamophobic, white-supremacist Florida activist who has run unsuccessfully for Congress, is an ardent Trump supporter.Experts agree Haley is qualified to be president, simply because she was born on US soil. Campaigning on a virulently anti-immigrant platform, Trump has promised to end birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented migrants.His post about Haley was condemned across the US media – and the political spectrum.Charles Gasparino, a Fox Business correspondent, said: “The problem with Donald is that he goes disgustingly low and not just against real enemies.”John Avlon, a CNN political analyst, said: “Trump’s lies are cut and paste: now he’s going birther on Nikki Haley – after trying the same attack on Obama, Harris and Cruz.”Kamala Harris, the first woman and woman of colour to be vice-president, was born in Oakland, California, in 1964, to parents from India and Jamaica. Trump sought to cast doubt on her eligibility for office during the 2020 election. More

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      Trump warns of ‘bedlam’ if criminal cases bar him from White House

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      There will be “bedlam” in the US if criminal cases deny Donald Trump a White House return, said the former president who incited the deadly January 6 attack on Congress but who is the clear frontrunner for the Republican nomination this year.“I think they feel this is the way they’re going to try and win, and that’s not the way it goes,” Trump told reporters, referring to Joe Biden and Democrats, after a court hearing in Washington DC on Tuesday.“It’ll be bedlam in the country. It’s a very bad thing. It’s a very bad precedent. As we said, it’s the opening of a Pandora’s box.”Trump claims he is a victim of political persecution.Prosecutors say he committed 91 criminal offenses, regarding federal election subversion (four charges); state election subversion (13, in Georgia); retention of classified information (40, federal) and hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels, an adult film star who claimed an affair (34, in New York).Trump also faces civil trials over his business affairs and a defamation case arising from a rape allegation a judge called “substantially true”.Arising from his incitement of the attack on Congress on 6 January 2021 – an attempt to overturn his defeat by Biden now linked to nine deaths and more than 1,200 arrests – Trump also faces attempts to remove him from the ballot under the 14th amendment to the US constitution, introduced after the civil war to stop insurrectionists running for office.Trump has appealed removal in Maine in that state. An appeal against his removal in Colorado will be argued at the US supreme court.On Tuesday, Trump chose to attend an appeals hearing in his federal election subversion case, listening as his lawyers argued he enjoys immunity for anything done while president.One judge asked if a president would be immune to prosecution if he ordered Seal Team 6, an elite special forces unit, “to assassinate a political rival”.For Trump, D John Sauer, a former Missouri solicitor general, said a president “would have to be impeached and convicted” before being prosecuted for any such action.Trump was impeached (for a second time) for inciting the Capitol attack. Republicans in the Senate ensured he was acquitted.Representing Jack Smith, the special counsel, James Pearce said Trump’s lawyers were proposing “an extraordinarily frightening future”.Speaking to reporters, Trump referred to speeches by Biden around the January 6 anniversary, saying of the charges against him: “When they talk about threat to democracy, that’s your real threat to democracy.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionClaiming he did “nothing wrong, absolutely nothing”, he nonetheless repeated his claim: “If it’s during the time [in office], you have absolute immunity.”A reporter asked: “You just used the word ‘bedlam’. Will you tell your supporters now, ‘No matter what, no violence’?”Trump walked away.Polling shows a criminal conviction may reduce Republican support for Trump. The trial in the federal election subversion case is due to begin on 4 March, in the middle of the GOP primary. As in other cases, Trump’s appeal is widely seen as an attempt to delay proceedings.His prediction of “bedlam” stoked widespread alarm.Maya Wiley, chief executive of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, alluded to Republican endorsements of Trump when she said his “warnings” were “heard by too many as calls to action. Every Republican should come forward and repeat these simple and unequivocal words: ‘Political violence is never acceptable … it has no place in the democracy. None.’ This isn’t a game.”Tim O’Brien of Bloomberg News, a longtime Trump-watcher, recapped remarks in court and added just one word: “Fascism”. More

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      ‘Better be scared’: threats of political violence foretell tense election year

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      The judge overseeing the election interference case against Donald Trump in Washington DC had her home visited by police after a fake emergency call, and attempts were made to do the same to the prosecutor Jack Smith.The Maine secretary of state was “swatted”, too, after she ruled that the former president could not appear on the ballot there because of the 14th amendment. The Colorado judges who ruled similarly have faced threats, leading to increased security.There was also a round of bomb threats to state capitols, sent to secretaries of state and legislative offices, that were believed to be a hoax but led to evacuations around the country this month. Those hoaxes came after letters containing fentanyl were sent to elections office in a handful of states in November.A recent wave of threats against elections officials and judges foretells a tense presidential election year that’s likely to see ongoing threats of political violence that could turn physical, as the future of US democracy hangs in the balance.“It does seem sort of like it’s a message starting off the year, saying, ‘OK we are in 2024, and this is not going to be easy. Elections are not going to go smoothly, and you better be scared,’” said Lilliana Mason, a political science professor at Johns Hopkins University who studies political violence.The wave comes after several years of sustained threats to and harassment of elections officials, who have seen high turnover in their field as a result. It’s now part of the job to face an onslaught of harassing messages when running an election in the US.While these recent threats haven’t carried physical violence, they aren’t innocent. They disrupt and intimidate the people involved – and they cause chaos, making it difficult for elections officials to do their jobs. Women and people of color are more often the targets of these threats, Mason said, which could drive people out of the jobs, potentially changing the profile of who runs elections.A threat against a building, such as the bomb threats, takes hours to investigate and evacuate to ensure people are safe. Threats like doxing, or posting personal information online, or swatting someone’s home take even longer to unwind, requiring more security, staying in another location and scrubbing online information. It’s not always clear, either, whether a threat is simply designed to sow chaos or will lead to violence.“Today, it could be warnings. Tomorrow, there could be an actual bomb that goes off or there could be an assassination attempt with a rifle,” said Robert Pape, a University of Chicago professor who directs the Chicago Project on Security and Threats.Beyond the effects on those targeted, violence and intimidation are destabilizing and distract people from thinking more soberly about the country and its future, Mason said.“They focus our energy on who is mad at who and dividing us against each other, rather than focusing on the wellbeing of the nation as a whole,” she said.Shenna Bellows, the Democratic secretary of state in Maine, had her home swatted – with state troopers searching her house summoned by a call about a fake break-in – after her decision on the 14th amendment question that would result in Trump being left off the ballot in the state. Her personal cellphone number and home address were posted online. She knew that her decision would bring strong reactions, but not to this extent.“The ensuing threatening communications, the doxing, the swatting of my home are unacceptable,” she said. “We should be able to agree to disagree on issues that are extraordinarily important and even controversial with respect and civility. We should be able to disagree without threats of violence.”Pape, who has conducted surveys showing increasing support for political violence in the US, said the recent wave of threats shows exactly what he was concerned about.They show that the country is a “tinderbox”, where people increasingly support violence to achieve their political goals as they lose faith in democracy, he said. Pape also pointed out the threats have come in waves since the January 6 insurrection and could increase this year, especially if Trump’s supporters believe he will not win at the ballot box. The increased support for violence gives the people doing threats a “mantle of legitimacy”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“These volatile individuals are often encouraged to take the next step toward actual violence by a perception they’re doing it in a community’s interest,” he said.Trump and his allies have not sought to tamp down their rhetoric or condemn the threats made by supporters, but such a condemnation could make a difference, Mason and Pape both said.Strong bipartisan statements against political violence and threats have a tangible effect, Pape said. Given the reaction politicians often get when standing against their party, particularly Trump, some Republicans have privately said they fear for their safety and their families and have shied away from speaking out against him.“One thing that we found to be pretty effective at reducing regular people’s approval of political violence is just to have their leaders tell them that it’s not OK. It’s pretty simple. And the problem is that Trump is not doing that,” Mason said. “The tragedy is that we have very easy ways to reduce violent tendencies in the electorate, but those ways tend to be based on leadership playing a responsible role.”The incredibly high stakes of the 2024 election, where both sides see an existential battle for the country’s future, are not typical of a normal election.“It’s not supposed to feel that way. If it’s existential, then the bedrock of democracy – which is loser’s consent – is harder to agree to,” Mason said.Bellows, the Maine secretary of state, said she also received messages of support alongside the threats and harassment. One former GOP legislator reached out and asked if she needed a place to stay or firearms, she said. Even people who disagreed with her decision supported her ability to make it and she said it’s the responsibility of public officials to tone down the rhetoric.“Our democracy depends on open and free expression and debate. We need to stand up against hate and threats of violence.” More

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      Trump’s electoral and judicial calendars collide – but it does him little harm

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      Four candidates were on the campaign trail, meeting and greeting voters in frigid Iowa. A fifth was sitting in a courtroom in rainy Washington, trying to fend off a criminal case that might land him in jail.But in the upside-down, topsy-turvy world of American politics, it is Donald Trump – not Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Asa Hutchinson or Vivek Ramaswamy – who is expected to win the first Republican presidential nominating contest in a landslide next week.This is not despite but because of a host of legal woes that would have long buried a normal candidate in a normal time have become a feature, not a bug, of his 2024 presidential run. “Unprecedented” is the most overused word of the Trump era but this week really is, well, unprecedented as the collision of his electoral and judicial calendars gets real.On Tuesday he was in court as his lawyers tried to convince the three judges that a federal criminal case charging him with election subversion should be dismissed before it goes to trial. On Wednesday, Trump will sit for a Fox News town hall in Des Moines, Iowa, counterprogramming a CNN debate in the same city between DeSantis and Haley. On Thursday, expect to see Trump in New York for the closing arguments in a civil fraud trial. And on Saturday, he returns to Iowa for campaign rallies.The former president is picking and choosing when and where he shows up. In every case, the decision is calculated to maximise his chances of winning back the White House – and staying out of prison.He was not obliged to attend Tuesday’s proceedings at the US court of appeals for the District of Columbia circuit. In driving rain, few protesters bothered to show up outside the courtroom and there were no TV cameras allowed inside. Trump sat there with no opportunity to speak as lawyers jousted over claims that he is immune from criminal charges for trying to overturn the 2020 election.Trump’s lawyer, D John Sauer, told a three-judge panel that prosecuting former presidents “would open a Pandora’s box from which that nation may never recover”. He argued that presidents must first be impeached and removed from office by Congress before they can be prosecuted. Judge Florence Pan reacted sceptically, asking Sauer: “You’re saying a president could sell pardons, could sell military secrets, could tell Seal Team Six to assassinate a political rival?”Trump will probably lose this argument. But the real point of his rare return to Washington came after the hearing, when he spoke to reporters at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel, formerly the Trump International hotel, calling it “a very momentous day” and insisting that he “did nothing wrong”.If the case is allowed to proceed, Trump claimed, that would potentially leave Biden open to prosecution once he left office. “When they talk about a threat to democracy, that’s your real threat to democracy,” he said. The remarks were transmitted live to the base on the conservative Fox News channel, guaranteeing more exposure than a typical rally.Meanwhile Trump’s fundraising campaign had kicked into gear. Before the hearing, he released a video in which he said he might prosecute Biden if he defeats him in the presidential election. “If I don’t get immunity then crooked Joe Biden doesn’t get immunity. Joe would be ripe for indictment,” he said.The campaign dates and court dates are now like two liquids mixed and impossible to separate. The trial in the federal election interference case is due to start on 4 March, one day before Super Tuesday, when 15 states will hold primaries or caucuses.The convergence has helped Trump break another American tradition. For half a century, Iowa has been a test of retail politics as diners, farms, hotel ballrooms, school gyms and a state fair play an outsized role in deciding who will become the most powerful person on the planet. The candidate with a winning smile and tireless handshake had a decent chance of working their way to the White House.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut data collected by the Des Moines Register newspaper shows that, between 1 January 2023 and 4 January 2024, Trump held only 24 events in 19 counties, far fewer than DeSantis (99 events in 57 counties), Haley (51 events in 30 counties) and Ramaswamy (239 events in 94 counties).Yet a recent poll put Trump 34 percentage points clear of DeSantis in Iowa. His campaign surrogates such as Ben Carson, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Kristi Noem often draw bigger crowds in the state than actual candidates.There are several reasons for Trump’s dominance but court appearances like Tuesday’s have not done him any harm. Any time his fortunes seemed in danger of flagging, for example after Republicans’ midterms flop, the justice department inadvertently gave him political rocket fuel. He played victim and martyr of a politicised system and Republicans – even his opponents – rallied around him.That will not necessarily work against Biden in November. A CBS News poll found that 64% of Americans do not think Trump should be immune from prosecution for actions he took as president, whereas just 34% believe he should be. Other surveys suggest that a criminal conviction – he is facing 91 criminal charges in Atlanta, Miami, New York and Washington – could deal him a big blow among moderates and independents.Two Republican candidates have been vocal in making that case. Chris Christie, a former New Jersey governor and federal prosecutor, and Asa Hutchinson, an ex-governor of Arkansas, have warned that Trump will be convicted and is unfit for office.Last month a Reuters/ Ipsos poll put Trump’s support among Republicans at 61%. Christie? He was at 2%. And Hutchinson? He was at 1%. More

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      Capitol rioter falsely accused of being double agent sentenced to probation

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      A man targeted by rightwing conspiracy theories about the US Capitol riot was sentenced on Tuesday to a year of probation for joining the January 6 attack by a mob of fellow Donald Trump supporters.Ray Epps, a former Arizona resident who was driven into hiding by death threats, pleaded guilty in September to a misdemeanor charge. He received no jail time, and there were no restrictions placed on his travel during his probation, but he will have to serve 100 hours of community service.He appeared remotely by video conference and was not in the Washington courtroom when chief judge James Boasberg sentenced him. Prosecutors had recommended a six-month term of imprisonment for Epps.Epps’s sentencing took place in the same building where Trump was attending an appeals court hearing as the Republican former president’s lawyers argued he is immune from prosecution on charges he plotted to overturn the results of the 2020 election he lost.The Fox News Channel and other rightwing media outlets amplified conspiracy theories that Epps, 62, was an undercover government agent who helped incite the Capitol attack to entrap Trump supporters.Epps filed a defamation lawsuit against Fox News last year, saying the network was to blame for spreading baseless claims about him.Epps told the judge that he now knows that he never should have believed the lies about a stolen election that Trump and his allies told and that Fox News broadcast.“I have learned that truth is not always found in the places that I used to trust,” said Epps, who asked for mercy before learning his sentence.The judge noted that many conspiracy theorists still refuse to believe that the Capitol riot was an insurrection carried out by Trump supporters. The judge said he hopes that the threats against Epps and his wife subside so they can move on with their lives.“You were hounded out of your home,” the judge said. “You were hounded out of your town.”Federal prosecutors have backed up Epps’s vehement denials that he was a government plant or FBI operative. They say Epps has never been a government employee or agent beyond serving in the US marines from 1979 to 1983.The ordeal has forced Epps and his wife to sell their property and businesses and flee their home in Queen Creek, Arizona, according to his lawyer.“He enjoys no golf, tennis, travel, or other trappings of retirement. They live in a trailer in the woods, away from their family, friends, and community,” attorney Edward Ungvarsky wrote in a court filing.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe internet-fueled accusations that upended Epps’s life have persisted even after the justice department charged him with participating in the January 6 siege.“Fear of demented extremists has no apparent end in sight so long as those who spread hate and lies about Mr Epps don’t speak loudly and publicly to correct the messaging they delivered,” Epps’s lawyer wrote.Epps pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct on restricted grounds, a charge punishable by a maximum of one year behind bars. Prosecutors say Epps encouraged the mob to storm the Capitol, helped other rioters push a large metal-framed sign into a group of officers and participated in “a rugby scrum-like group effort” to push past a line of police officers.A prosecutor, Michael Gordon, said Epps does not deserve to be inundated with death threats but should serve jail time for his conduct on 6 January 2021.“He didn’t start the riot,” Gordon told the judge. “He made it worse.”Epps’s lawyer sought six months of probation without any jail time. Ungvarsky said his client went to Washington on 6 January 2021 to peacefully protest against the certification of the electoral college vote for Joe Biden over Trump. More

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      Federal appeals judges begin hearing on Trump immunity arguments – live

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      Judge Karen Henderson gets into what the appeals court’s options are going forward.Trump attorney John Sauer says he thinks the judges should remand the case back to the lower district court, with instructions to go through the indictment and consider whether each alleged act is an official act, or private conduct.Sauer’s position is that private conduct can be prosecuted, but officials acts cannot, and that all the acts in the indictment are official acts.Judge Karen Henderson moved on to what acts are official acts for a president, saying, “I think it’s paradoxical to say his constitutional duty to say that the laws be faithfully executed allows him to violate the law”.Sauer replied that a president’s actions can never be examinable by the courts.Judges Karen Henderson and Michelle Childs pressed John Sauer on comments Donald Trump uttered while in office, when he conceded that no former officeholder is immune from investigation and prosecution.Senators might have relied on that to acquit Trump in the impeachment that followed the January 6 insurrection, Henderson said.Sauer replied that he disagrees with the judges’ interpretation of that line, which has been memorialized in the congressional record. He says the term “officeholder” would pertain to lesser government officials, not the president, and, in any case, Trump was referring to being investigated generally.Judge Florence Pan started off her questioning of Trump lawyer John Sauer by offering a novel scenario.“Could a president who ordered Seal Team Six to assassinate a political rival and was not impeached, could he be subjected to criminal prosecution?” Pan asked.After some back and forth, Sauer said, “Qualified yes, if he’s impeached and convicted first.”Circuit judge Florence Pan is putting Trump lawyer John Sauer in a tough spot. After Sauer said that presidents can be prosecuted so long as there’s impeachment and conviction in the Senate, Pan asks if he is conceding that presidents actually do not have absolute immunity, and that if president can be prosecuted, don’t “all of your separation of powers and policy arguments fall away”?Live television cameras are not allowed in federal courtrooms.But live audio is, and you can listen to the back and forth between Donald Trump’s lawyers and the three judges at the top of the page. The former president is not expected to address the court.Donald Trump’s lawyers have begun making their arguments to a panel of three federal appeals judges that the former president cannot be prosecuted for trying to overturn the 2020 election because the events took place while he was president.The three federal judges hearing the case are now in the courtroom.They are Michelle Childs, who was appointed by Joe Biden, Karen Henderson, a George HW Bush appointee, and Florence Pan, another Biden appointee.Donald Trump’s lawyers have arrived in the courtroom where a federal appeals court will consider whether he is immune from charges related to trying to overturn the 2020 election.Representing Trump today is former Missouri solicitor general John Sauer. Also in attendance for the former president are lawyers John Lauro, Greg Singer, Emil Bove and Stanley Woodward.There is at least one anti-Trump demonstrator waiting in the foul weather to greet the former president, WUSA9 reports:Since it’s 42 degrees Fahrenheit and raining in Washington DC today, do not expect the lively crowds that gathered for Donald Trump’s August arraignment to convene once again for his potentially pivotal immunity hearing.The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell, who is covering the hearing from within the E Barrett Prettyman federal courthouse, saw no supporters, protesters or lookie-loos outside, and this morning’s wire photos of the building show a pretty unremarkable scene:Good morning, US politics blog readers. Donald Trump is taking a break from the campaign trail today to appear in a Washington DC federal appeals court, where his lawyers will attempt to convince a three-judge panel that his “presidential immunity” prevents him from facing trial for trying to overturn the 2020 election. The stakes will be the highest of any court hearing for Trump since he was first indicted on the charges by special counsel Jack Smith in August, and if the former president prevails, Smith’s prosecution will end. We do not expect to get a decision today, and whichever way the three judges – two appointed by Joe Biden, and one by George HW Bush, rule, chances are the issue will go to the supreme court.Trump is not required to attend the hearing, but is using the proceedings as an opportunity to juice his claims of political persecution ahead of Monday’s Iowa Republican caucuses, which he is expected to win. “I was looking for voter fraud, and finding it, which is my obligation to do, and otherwise … running our Country”, the former president wrote yesterday on his Truth Social network. The hearing kicks off at 9.30am eastern time.Here’s what else is happening today:
      Nikki Haley’s support has peaked in New Hampshire, or perhaps not. Ahead of the state’s 23 January Republican primary, a Boston Globe/Suffolk University/USA Today poll reports she has 26% support compared with Trump’s 46%. But a CNN poll conducted by the University of New Hampshire shows a much closer race, with Trump at 39%, and Haley at 32%.
      The House returns today after the holiday break, and we get a better sense of whether rightwing lawmakers are prepared to reject a framework announced over the weekend to prevent a government shutdown.
      Joe Biden has no public events, but White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre will brief reporters at 2pm. More

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      Trump expected in court for immunity appeal in election interference case

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      A federal appeals court is considering whether Donald Trump can be criminally prosecuted on federal charges over his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election because it involved actions related to his office that he undertook while still president.The decision that the appeals court in Washington reaches after the Tuesday morning hearing – which the former president said on his Truth Social platform he will attend – and how long it takes to issue a ruling, could carry profound consequences for the scheduled March trial.Trump appealed his federal election interference case last month after the trial judge rejected his effort to have the charges thrown out on grounds that he was afforded absolute immunity from prosecution.The argument from Trump’s lawyers advanced a sweeping interpretation of executive authority that contended all of his actions to reverse his election defeat in 2020 fell under the “outer perimeter” of his duties as president and were therefore protected.Trump’s motion was swiftly rejected by the US district judge Tanya Chutkan, who wrote in an opinion accompanying the ruling that neither the US constitution nor legal precedent supported such an extraordinary extension of post-presidential power.“Whatever immunities a sitting president may enjoy, the United States has only one chief executive at a time, and that position does not confer a lifelong ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ pass,” Chutkan wrote. “Former presidents enjoy no special conditions on their federal criminal liability.”Trump’s lawyers had always expected to lose their initial attempt to toss the charges, which is scheduled for trial in federal district court in Washington on 5 March, and to use the appeals process as their final strategy to delay the case as long as possible.Trump has made it no secret that his strategy for all his impending cases is to delay, ideally beyond the 2024 election in November, in the hopes that winning re-election could enable him to potentially pardon himself or direct his attorney general to drop the charges.The clear attempt to stave off the looming trial prompted the special counsel, Jack Smith, to attempt a rarely seen move to ask the US supreme court to resolve the presidential immunity question before the DC circuit had issued its own judgment.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionProsecutors made it plain in their 81-page court filing that they wanted to leapfrog the lower appeals court because they were concerned that the process – scheduling hearings and waiting for rulings – would almost certainly delay the trial date.But the supreme court declined to hear the matter last month, remanding the case back to the DC circuit and having the three-judge panel of Florence Pan, Michelle Childs and Karen Henderson issue its own decision first. In the interim, the case against Trump remains frozen.The decision has almost certainly slowed down Trump’s federal election interference case. Even if the DC circuit were to rule against Trump quickly, he can ask the full appeals court to rehear the case, and then has 90 days to lodge his own appeal to the supreme court. More