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      Billionaires are lining up to eagerly fund Trump’s anti-democratic agenda | Robert Reich

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      As an ever-greater portion of the nation’s total wealth goes to the top, it’s hardly surprising that ever more of that wealth is corrupting US politics.In the 2020 presidential election cycle, more than $14bn went to federal candidates, party committees, and Super Pacs – double the $7bn doled out in the 2016 cycle. Total giving in 2024 is bound to be much higher.That money is not supporting US democracy. If anything, that money is contributing to rising Trumpism and neofascism.There is a certain logic to this.As more and more wealth concentrates at the top, the moneyed interests rationally fear that democratic majorities will take it away through higher taxes, stricter regulations (on everything from trade to climate change), enforcement of anti-monopoly laws, pro-union initiatives and price controls.So they’re sinking ever more of their wealth into anti-democracy candidates.Donald Trump is going full fascist these days and gaining the backing of prominent billionaires.Earlier this month, on Veterans Day, Trump pledged to “root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical-left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country”, whom he accused of doing anything “to destroy America and to destroy the American dream”. (Notably, he read these words from a teleprompter, meaning that they were intentional rather than part of another impromptu Trump rant.)Days before, Trump claimed that undocumented immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country”. The New York Times reported that he was planning to round up millions of undocumented immigrants and detain them in sprawling camps while they wait to be expelled.Trump has publicly vowed to appoint a special prosecutor to “go after” Joe Biden and his family, and has told advisers and friends that he wants the justice department to investigate officials who have criticized his time in office.This is, quite simply, full-throated neofascism.Who’s bankrolling all this? While Trump’s base is making small contributions, the big money is coming from some of the richest people in the US.During the first half of the year, multiple billionaires donated to the Trump-aligned Make America Great Again, Inc Super Pac.Phil Ruffin (net worth of $3.4bn), the 88-year-old casino and hotel mogul, has given multiple $1m donations.Charles Kushner (family net worth of $1.8bn), the real estate mogul and father of Jared, who received a late-term pardon from Trump in December 2020, contributed $1m in June.Robert “Woody” Johnson (net worth of $3.7bn), Trump’s former ambassador to the United Kingdom and co-owner of the New York Jets, donated $1m to the Maga Pac in April.And so on.But Trump is not the only extremist pulling in big dollars.Nikki Haley – who appears moderate only relative to Trump’s blatant neofascism – claimed in her campaign launch that Biden was promoting a “socialist” agenda.During her two years as UN ambassador under Trump, Haley was a strong proponent of his so-called “zero tolerance” policy under which thousands of migrant children were separated from their parents and guardians.She supported Trump’s decision to pull out of the UN human rights council and to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal.Though she briefly criticized Trump for inciting the mob that attacked the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, Haley soon defended Trump and called on Democratic lawmakers to “give the man a break” when they impeached him for a second time.Haley recently told Kristen Welker of NBC’s Meet the Press that while Trump’s floating the idea of executing retired Gen Mark Milley might be “irresponsible”, it is not enough to disqualify Trump from running for the White House again.Haley’s billionaire supporters include Stanley Druckenmiller and Eric LeVine. The Republican mega-donor Ken Griffin has said he is “actively contemplating” supporting Haley.Notably, Haley has also gained the support of JPMorgan Chase’s chief executive, Jamie Dimon, who’s about as close as anyone in the US comes to being a spokesperson for the business establishment. Dimon admires Haley’s recognition of the role that “business and government can play in driving growth by working together”.The moneyed interests have been placing big bets on other Trumpist Republicans.Peter Thiel, the multibillionaire tech financier who once wrote that “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible,” contributed more than $35m to 16 federal-level Republican candidates in the 2022 campaign cycle, making him the 10th largest individual donor to either party.Twelve of Thiel’s candidates won, including Ohio’s now-senator JD Vance, who alleged that the 2020 election was stolen and that Biden’s immigration policy has meant “more Democrat voters pouring into this country”.The Republican House majority leader, Steve Scalise, is creating a new fundraising committee which will be soliciting contributions of up to $586,200 a pop.Elon Musk is not a major financial contributor to Trump nor other anti-democracy candidates, but his power over one of the most influential megaphones in the US gives him inordinate clout – which he is using to further the neofascist cause.Witness Musk’s solicitude of Trump, his seeming endorsement of antisemitic posts, his embrace of Tucker Carlson and “great replacement” theory, and his avowed skepticism towards democracy.Democracy is compatible with capitalism only if democracy is in the driver’s seat, so it can rein in capitalism’s excesses.But if capitalism and its moneyed interests are in charge, those excesses inevitably grow to the point where they are able to extinguish democracy and ride roughshod over the common good.That’s why Trump’s neofascism – and the complicity of today’s Republican party with it – are attracting the backing of some of the richest people in the US.What’s the alternative? A loud pro-democracy movement that fights against concentrated wealth at the top, humongous CEO pay packages, a politically powerful financial sector, and tax cuts for the wealthy and large corporations.And fights for higher taxes on the top (including a wealth tax) to finance Medicare for all, affordable housing, and accessible childcare and eldercare.The willingness to make this a fight – to name the moneyed interests backing neofascism, explain why they’re doing this, and mobilize and energize the US against their agenda and in favor of democracy – is critical to winning the 2024 election and preserving and rebuilding US democracy.Biden and the Democrats must take this on, loudly and clearly.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His newest book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com
      This article was amended on 21 November 2023 to clarify Ken Griffin’s position More

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      How much legal trouble is Donald Trump in? – podcast

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      Donald Trump heads into the 2024 US election in a typically unusual position. Some pollsters have him as the likely winner next November when he is expected to be the Republican nominee taking on President Joe Biden. But Trump also faces legal challenges that are unprecedented for a candidate running for the highest office in the US. As the Guardian’s Washington reporter, Hugo Lowell, tells Nosheen Iqbal, Trump faces 91 charges sprawling across numerous civil and criminal trials in various jurisdictions, many of which will require Trump’s presence and attention across next year. Many of the charges are extremely serious, be they related to his behaviour on the day of the Capitol riots, attempts to interfere with the 2020 election result, retaining classified documents, obstructing justice, as well as civil claims including defamation. However, none of these appear to have dampened the enthusiasm of his supporters for a return to the White House. In fact, it appears Trump is hoping to use his legal troubles to his advantage: utilising court appearances to turn the tables on an establishment he believes is out to get him. More

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      Appeals court weighs narrowing Trump gag order in election subversion case

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      A federal appeals court appeared inclined at a hearing on Monday to keep some form of a gag order against Donald Trump preventing him from assailing potential trial witnesses and others in the criminal case related to his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.The court expressed concern, however, that the order was too broad and left open the possibility of restricting its scope – including allowing the former US president to criticize the prosecutors in the office of the special counsel Jack Smith who brought the charges.The trial judge Tanya Chutkan, who is overseeing the case in federal district court in Washington, entered the order in October that prohibited Trump from making inflammatory statements and social media posts attacking prosecutors, potential witnesses and court staff in the case.It allowed Trump only to criticize the case in general terms – such as broadly attacking Joe Biden, the Biden administration or the justice department as bringing politically motivated charges against him – and to criticize the judge herself.Trump appealed to the US court of appeals for the DC circuit, arguing the order unconstitutionally infringed on his first amendment rights and protected core political speech as he campaigns to be re-elected to the presidency next year. The order was paused while he appealed.On Monday, at the hearing, which lasted more than two hours, the three-judge panel repeatedly suggested they found untenable Trump’s position that there could be no “prophylactic” provision to ensure Trump was restricted from prejudicing the case until after it had already taken place.Trump’s lawyer John Sauer argued that prosecutors had not met their evidentiary obligations – that Trump’s statements directly led to threats to witnesses, for instance – to get a gag order. The legal standard, Sauer said, should be proof of an “imminent threat”.But the panel interjected that there was a clear pattern with Trump stretching back to the post-2020 election period that when he named and assailed individuals, they invariably received death threats or other harassment from his supporters.The pattern has included the trial judge Chutkan, who received a death threat the very next day after Trump’s indictment when he posted “If you go after me, I’m coming after you” on his Truth Social platform, even if Trump had not directly directed his ire at her.“Why does the district court have to wait and see, and wait for the threats to come, rather than taking reasonable action in advance?” the circuit judge Brad Garcia pressed Sauer.The Trump lawyer responded that posts from three years ago did not meet the standard required for a gag order, as he argued the supreme court has held that a “heckler’s veto” – gagging a defendant merely because of fears about how a third party might act – was not permissible rationale.What has complicated Trump’s case is the scant legal precedent to guide the courts in how to balance the constitutional needs of the criminal justice process and Trump’s right to political speech, even as he uses his 2024 campaign to shield himself from legal exposure.The circuit judges on multiple occasions wrestled with the question of when Trump might be engaged in political speech to defend himself during the campaign, and when he might be engaged in political speech “aimed at derailing or corrupting the criminal justice process”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionStill, the panel was also unconvinced that Trump should not be able to complain about the special counsel’s office, and sharply questioned the government’s lawyer Cecil Vandevender why Trump’s attacks against prosecutors would cause prejudice to the case.If Trump made an actual threat, the circuit judge Patricia Millett said, that would be a crime and a violation of Trump’s pre-trial conditions of release. But she suggested the special counsel surely had thick enough skin to withstand jibes from the former president.The panel appeared to conclude in general that some of the language in the gag order, such as Trump being prevented from making statements that “targeted” prosecutors, or the lack of distinctions between threats to prosecutors and threats to witnesses, needed to be refined.Millett questioned the government’s position that Trump calling a potential trial witness a “slimy liar” was not permissible, but calling the same witness an “untruth speaker” would be. Vandevender struggled to articulate a line of demarcation.It was unclear how soon the panel would issue a ruling, and whether they would make adjustments to the gag order or rescind it. The three-judge panel were all Democratic appointees: Garcia was appointed by Biden, while Millett and Cornelia Pillard were appointed by Barack Obama.Regardless of the outcome, either Trump or the government could appeal to the supreme court. But even if the order is ultimately upheld and returned to Chutkan, also an Obama appointee, she faces the tricky task of what to do with potential future violations.A gag order violation is typically treated as criminal contempt of court, which requires punishment for defying the order. Chutkan could not rule on a sanction herself, however: it would require prosecutors to take it up as a new charge and seek a separate trial. More

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      Appeals court strikes significant blow against Voting Rights Act – as it happened

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      A federal appeals court has issued a decision striking down a core element of the Voting Rights Act, further undermining protections for voters of color in the US, saying only the federal government – not private citizens or civil rights groups – is allowed to sue under a crucial section of the landmark civil rights law.The 8th circuit today upheld a lower court’s ruling that says private individuals can’t bring lawsuits under the law, meaning only the federal government can sue under the Voting Rights Act’s section 2 protections for people of color. That also means that civil rights groups wouldn’t be allowed to sue either.There appears to be a strong prospect that even the right-leaning US supreme court will not uphold this when, as is likely, it is appealed to the highest level. But as currently ruled the decision would be a massive blow to voting rights and racial equality.The civil rights law was implemented to increase minority representation in US national leadership.And:That’s a wrap for today’s politics live blog.Here’s what happened today:
      A federal appeals court has issued a decision striking down a core element of the Voting Rights Act, further undermining protections for voters of color in the US. The court ruled that only the federal government – not private citizens or civil rights groups – is allowed to sue under a crucial section of the landmark civil rights law.
      Lawyers representing Donald Trump and federal prosecutors clashed on Monday in federal court about the scope of a gag order placed on the former president. A gag order last month prevents him from attacking witnesses, prosecutors, or others associated with the election interference case.
      Judges at the hearing on Trump’s gag order appeared skeptical about complaints regarding the gag order’s prophylactic nature, but were sympathetic to claims made by Trump’s defense team.
      At one point during the hearing, a judge raised the hypothetical point that it wouldn’t be fair if Trump “has to speak Miss Manners while everyone else is throwing targets at him”, Forbes reported.
      Judges on the three-person panel also criticized another hypothetical situation where Trump would not be allowed to call a potential witness a “liar” if they said things that were untrue.
      Thank you for reading; stay tuned for the Guardian’s politics live blog tomorrow.US representative Tony Cárdenas of California will not seek re-election in 2024 after almost three decades of service, the Los Angeles Times first reported.A staffer confirmed to the Times that Cárdenas would not be running for office, the first time in 28 years that he has not appeared on a ballot, the Hill reported.“I’m just at the age where I have enough energy and experience to maybe do something [different] and have another chapter of a career where I don’t have to go to Washington DC, 32 weeks out of the year,” Cárdenas told the Times.Cárdenas has focused much of his political career in the House on lowering drug prices, developing immigration policy, and combatting climate change, his office told the Times.Cárdenas’ seat will likely remain in the Democrat’s control, but it may be a crowded race.Here’s more information on the hearing around the scope of Trump’s gag order, from the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell:
      On Monday, at the hearing, which lasted more than two hours, the three-judge panel repeatedly suggested they found untenable Trump’s position that there could be no ‘prophylactic’ provision to ensure Trump was restricted from prejudicing the case until after it had already taken place.
      Trump’s lawyer John Sauer argued that prosecutors had not met their evidentiary obligations – that Trump’s statements directly led to threats to witnesses, for instance – to get a gag order. The legal standard, Sauer said, should be proof of an ‘imminent threat’.
      But the panel interjected that there was a clear pattern with Trump stretching back to the post-2020 election period that when he named and assailed individuals, they invariably received death threats or other harassment from his supporters.
      The pattern has included the trial judge Chutkan, who received a death threat the very next day after Trump’s indictment when he posted ‘If you go after me, I’m coming after you’ on his Truth Social platform, even if Trump had not directly directed his ire at her.
      ‘Why does the district court have to wait and see, and wait for the threats to come, rather than taking reasonable action in advance?’ the circuit judge Brad Garcia pressed Sauer.
      The Trump lawyer responded that posts from three years ago did not meet the standard required for a gag order, as he argued the supreme court has held that a ‘heckler’s veto’ – gagging a defendant merely because of fears about how a third party might act – was not permissible rationale.
      Read more here:Here’s more info on polling that shows a majority of Democrats believe Israel’s actions are “too much”:
      According to polling from Reuters/Ispos, the majority of Americans believe that Israel should call a ceasefire. About 68% of respondents said they agreed that ‘Israel should call a ceasefire and try to negotiate’.
      A majority of Democratic voters also believe that Israel’s overwhelming response to the 7 October Hamas attack, in which the Islamist extremists killed more than 1,200 people in southern Israel and took hostages back to Gaza, is ‘too much’, according to a new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll.
      And 56% of Democrats have said that Israel’s military operations in Gaza have been too much, which is 21 points higher than a similar survey last month.
      People of color in the US as well as those under the age of 45 also believe that Israel’s response has been disproportionate, pointing to generational and racial splits around support for Israel.
      Meanwhile, 52% of Republicans viewed Israel’s response as ‘about right’, an increase from last month’s poll when more Republicans then viewed Israel’s reaction as ‘too little’.
      Overall, the majority of respondents say they are more sympathetic to Israelis than Palestinians.
      Read more information here and about US demonstrations in support of Palestine, from the Guardian.White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre addressed a question about poll numbers showing that a growing number of American people don’t support Joe Biden’s handling of the conflict in Gaza.“We’re not gonna govern by poll numbers. We’re gonna focus on delivering for the American people … on what the American people expect him to do,” Jean-Pierre said, emphasizing Biden’s gains for the economy.Jean-Pierre added that she would not be going “point by point” on each poll.The White House briefing is happening now, with spokesperson John Kirby discussing the situation in Gaza with reporters.Kirby has said that he does not have an update regarding a potential deal to get hostages from Hamas.Kirby did not elaborate if the potential deal would focus on women and children, but added, “we’re closer now than we’ve been before” when it comes to a deal to guarantee the hostages’ safety.More quotes are coming out of this morning’s hearing on the scope of Donald Trump’s gag order, demonstrating that the judges were not entirely unsympathetic to the arguments of the former president’s defense team.At one point, a judge raised the hypothetical point that it wouldn’t be fair if Trump “has to speak Miss Manners while everyone else is throwing targets at him”, Forbes reported.Judges also criticized another hypothetical situation where Trump would not be allowed to call a potential witness a “liar” if they said things that were untrue.When the supreme court gutted the requirement for states with a history of racial bias to pre-clear changes to their voting laws with the federal government – in its 2013 landmark ruling in Shelby county v Holder that drastically weakened the Voting Rights Act – it expected that the capacity for individuals to sue was the safety net needed.That’s one element drawing expert ire today. Here’s Steve Vladeck:Wendy Weiser of the Brennan Center is clearly furious at the appeals court’s ruling today:Some background from the Guardian:The decision from the 8th circuit court of appeal, which is based in St Louis, Missouri, and was ruling on a lower court redistricting case out of Arkansas, is drawing furious reaction from defenders of a fundamental element of the Voting Rights Act.Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is chiefly designed to prohibit voting practices or procedures that discriminate on the basis of a person’s race and is one of the law’s last remaining powerful provision after years of attacks from the right.(The US supreme court, in a 5-4 opinion authored by chief justice John Roberts in 2013, gutted a key provision of the law that required states with a history of voting discrimination to get voting changes pre-cleared by the federal government before they went into effect.)Most challenges under section 2 are brought by private individuals or civil rights or voting rights advocacy and campaign groups, not the US government.A federal appeals court has issued a decision striking down a core element of the Voting Rights Act, further undermining protections for voters of color in the US, saying only the federal government – not private citizens or civil rights groups – is allowed to sue under a crucial section of the landmark civil rights law.The 8th circuit today upheld a lower court’s ruling that says private individuals can’t bring lawsuits under the law, meaning only the federal government can sue under the Voting Rights Act’s section 2 protections for people of color. That also means that civil rights groups wouldn’t be allowed to sue either.There appears to be a strong prospect that even the right-leaning US supreme court will not uphold this when, as is likely, it is appealed to the highest level. But as currently ruled the decision would be a massive blow to voting rights and racial equality.The civil rights law was implemented to increase minority representation in US national leadership.And:Joe Biden joked about his birthday and age while conducting the annual pardon of Thanksgiving turkeys.Biden, who turned 81 today, joked that he was only turning 60 while pardoning the poultry, the Hill reported.“I just want you to know it’s difficult turning 60, difficult,” Biden said.Biden also added that it was the 76th anniversary of the pardoning tradition in the White House, joking that he was “too young” to make the tradition up.Judges at the hearing on Donald Trump’s gag order appeared skeptical about complaints regarding the gag order’s prophylactic nature, the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports.The hearing on the scope of the former president’s gag order in the election interference case is now over.After over two hours of arguments, judges are not expected to make a decision on the order today.The three-judge panel seemed unconvinced about legal complaints coming from Trump’s defense team, but also believed that the original gag order was “insufficiently narrow”. More

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      Illinois governor ‘deeply concerned’ by Trump rhetoric reminiscent of Nazi era

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      Donald Trump’s rhetoric on immigration, his plans for a second presidency if he wins next year’s election, and his description of political enemies as “vermin” reflect the language of 1930s Germany and the Nazis’ rise to power there, a senior Democrat warned on Sunday.JB Pritzker, the Illinois governor of Jewish descent who helped drive the construction of the state’s Holocaust Museum and Education Center in Chicago, added his voice to a wave of condemnation over the former president’s remarks.Joe Biden last week also likened Trump’s comments to the era when Nazi Germany orchestrated the murders of 6 million Jews during the Holocaust, saying “it isn’t even the first time” he had done so.Trump had deliberately chosen to use words “that are unfortunately reminiscent of the past”, Pritzker said during an appearance on MSNBC’s Inside with Jen Psaki.“The rhetoric that’s being used by Trump, by some of the Maga (Make America great again) extremists, is rhetoric that was used in the 1930s in Germany [and] I am very concerned about the direction of the country if we see policies like what Donald Trump is espousing come to light,” he said.“In Germany in the 1930s people that they didn’t want to have power, people that they wanted to separate and segregate, they began calling them immigrants, even people who had been in Germany for generations. This is a way to begin to segregate people and then eventually … dehumanize and kill people.“I don’t know where it’s going with Donald Trump. What I can tell you is that the things that he talks about are frightening to those of us who know the history of Europe in the 1930s and 40s. And I’m deeply concerned about his predilection for revenge and what that will mean for groups of people that didn’t support him in the 2024 election if he gets elected.”Highlighting Trump’s extremism has become a key part of messaging from the Joe Biden White House and Democratic party as the runaway leader in the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination moves further ahead of his challengers.“Employing words like ‘vermin’ to describe anyone who makes use of their basic right to criticize the government echoes dictators like [Adolf] Hitler and [Benito] Mussolini,” White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said during a press briefing last week.“Using terms like that about dissent would be unrecognizable to our founders, but horrifyingly recognisable to American veterans who put on their country’s uniform in the 1940s” and defeated the Axis Powers which included forces from Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy during the second world war.Pritzker expanded on the theme Sunday in his interview with Psaki, Biden’s former White House press secretary.“I repeat it wherever I go, that Donald Trump is dangerous for our democracy. He’s dangerous for specific minority groups in the US. And I think that for those of us who have a platform to call it out it is a requirement,” he said.“I’m deeply concerned about the rise of hate. I worry about it on our college campuses. We’ve seen protests, and I think it’s everybody’s right to express themselves. What I don’t want is protests and counter-protests encountering each other and that turning into violence.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe governor also had words of comfort for Democrats concerned at recent polls placing Trump ahead of Biden in several key swing states.“I don’t think yet people have really put these two next to each other and evaluated what the philosophies and agendas are,” he said.“People don’t really focus until, let’s face it, after the conventions. It’s just in those final couple of months, July all the way through November, that this needs to be brought home to people.“When that happens, that crystallization will occur in people’s minds and people will see that the democracy that they believe in, the country that they owe their allegiance to, that the best thing for America is to put aside the authoritarian Donald Trump.”Trump was in Texas near the border with Mexico on Sunday to promote an escalation of hard-line immigration police that he adopted while in office.Those policies alarmed civil rights activists and drew court challenges. More

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      in Elections

      Groups increasingly use defamation law to ward off US election subversion

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      Groups seeking to protect US democracy from a renewed threat of subversion in the presidential race next year wield a new weapon against Donald Trump and his accomplices: the little-used law of defamation.Trump’s former lawyer Rudy Giuliani, the My Pillow CEO, Mike Lindell, and conspiracy theorist Dinesh D’Souza are among the individuals named in a spate of high-profile defamation cases targeting those who tried to overturn the 2020 election. Prominent rightwing media outlets such as Fox News and Gateway Pundit are also on the hook.Already the legal pain is mounting. Giuliani has been found liable for defaming two election workers in Georgia whom he falsely accused of criminally miscounting votes in 2020 in favour of Joe Biden.The case will go to trial in December with Giuliani facing possibly swingeing punitive damages.Lindell has notched up millions in legal fees in the $2bn defamation suits that have been brought against him by the voting machine firms Dominion and Smartmatic for falsely saying they rigged the count. His ongoing libel woes follow the April settlement in which Fox agreed to pay Dominion a shattering $788m for broadcasting similar lies.“This is lawfare,” Lindell protested in an interview with the Guardian. “Lawfare hasn’t been used in our country since the late 1700s, and that’s what they are doing.”The lawsuits are designed in part as a strategy of deterrence. Those pressing the libel suits hope that anyone contemplating a renewed assault on next year’s presidential election, in which Trump is once again likely to be the Republican candidate, will look at the potentially devastating costs and think twice.“We aim to demonstrate that there is no immunity for spreading intentional and reckless lies,” said Rachel Goodman, a lawyer with the non-partisan advocacy group Protect Democracy. “Ensuring accountability for intentional defamation is a crucial part of deterring election subversion from happening again in 2024.”Protect Democracy currently has five defamation suits on the go against individuals and outlets who propagated election denial. The defendants include Giuliani, the Gateway Pundit and the beleaguered undercover video outfit Project Veritas.D’Souza is being sued over his widely derided and debunked movie 2000 Mules. In it he depicted a Black voter in Georgia, Mark Andrews, as a “mule” who illegally deposited ballots in a drop box when in fact he legally delivered the votes of his own family.The fifth case concerns Kari Lake, the Arizona Republican who refused to accept her defeat in that state’s gubernatorial contest last year. The plaintiff is the top election official in Maricopa county, Stephen Richer, whom she falsely accused of injecting 300,000 phoney ballots into the count to swing the race against her.Defamation law has traditionally been sparingly used in the US, given the very high bar that plaintiffs have to meet. Under the 1964 supreme court ruling New York Times Co v Sullivan, they have to be able to show “actual malice” on behalf of the accused.“When lawsuits are brought against public figures they can only prevail if they can show that the speaker knew that the statements were false, or very likely false, and made recklessly without further investigation or caring for the truth,” said Eugene Volokh, a law professor at UCLA.The first Protect Democracy suit to reach trial will be that against Giuliani. A jury will convene in a federal court in Washington DC on 11 December to decide the scale of damages he will have to pay.Giuliani waged a “sustained smear campaign” against two Georgia poll workers in the 2020 count of absentee ballots, Protect Democracy alleged. The mother and daughter duo, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, became the targets of a conspiracy theory in which they were said to have packed bogus ballots into “suitcases” which they then surreptitiously counted five times, transferring victory to Biden.Giuliani called their actions “the crime of the century”, and labeled them “crooks”.Georgia election officials and police investigators categorically disproved the falsehoods within 24 hours of Giuliani airing them. The suitcases turned out to be ballot storage boxes and the counting process was entirely normal, yet he continued to repeat the lies for months.Freeman and Moss faced a prolonged harassment campaign, including death threats from Trump supporters. At its peak, Freeman was compelled to flee her own home and to shutter her online business.In July, in an attempt to avoid disclosing evidence to the plaintiffs, Giuliani admitted that he had made defamatory statements and caused the pair emotional distress. The following month a federal judge ruled he was liable for defamation – leaving the jury to decide only the scale of damages.Goodman said the case summed up why Protect Democracy was bringing defamation suits against election denialists. “Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss were Americans doing their civic duty, and they were put in the crosshairs of this election subversion machine – we should not stand for that.”Most defendants have tried to shield themselves behind the first amendment right to free speech. In Arizona, Kari Lake has attacked the lawsuit against her as an attempt to “punish or silence” her “core free speech about the integrity of the 2022 election”.In his Guardian interview, Lindell said: “I have a first amendment right. These defamation cases are damaging free speech – people are afraid to speak out, to come forward with anything.”Protect Democracy countered that the first amendment does not provide blanket protection for mendacity. “It does not protect those who knowingly spread lies that destroy reputations and lives,” Goodman said.Nina Jankowicz, an expert on disinformation, also rejects the idea that the first amendment shields reckless falsehoods. She is suing Fox News for what she claims were the “vitriolic lies” the channel spread about her in 2022 in her role as head of a newly created federal unit combatting misinformation.Jankowicz resigned from the Disinformation Governance Board, which was also disbanded, barely three weeks into the job. Her defamation complaint quotes the former Fox News star Tucker Carlson calling her a “moron” on air and labelling her unit “the new Soviet America”.Jankowicz said she took the decision to sue because she could see no other route to correct the public record. If there was a free speech component, she said, it was that her rights had been violated, not those of Fox News.“Their intention was to silence me, just as the defamation of election workers in Georgia was designed to silence them. That’s pretty un-American.”Fox has moved to have Jankowicz’s case dismissed, arguing that she has failed to meet the actual malice standard. A ruling is expected soon.The billion-dollar question is: can it work? Can the strategy of deploying defamation as a deterrent force denialists to think twice before they embark on renewed election subversion in 2024?Jankowicz, despite pressing ahead with her own libel suit, remains skeptical. “I haven’t seen any change in how these rumors and outright lies are being spread yet, and I do worry for 2024,” she said.She added that change would only come “when we see more big settlements, or juries siding with plaintiffs”.Parties accused of peddling anti-democratic lies certainly remain vociferous. The Gateway Pundit, the far-right website which Protect Democracy is suing for having published the same falsehoods as Giuliani about the Georgia poll workers, has used the lawsuit as a fundraising tool.Lindell said that he would never be silenced, and continued to insist that his statements about Dominion’s rigging of the 2020 election were “truths”. “I will continue to tell the truth, nothing’s going to stop me from speaking out. I’m not scared,” he said.There are though tentative signs of a shift in behavior. The far-right channel One America News backtracked on its lies about the Georgia poll workers last year after having settled its defamation suit with Freeman and Moss. Since then the outlet has been dropped by several major cable providers.In the wake of the huge defamation settlement between Fox and Dominion, Dinesh D’Souza and Trump himself complained that Fox News refused to give air time to 2000 Mules.Goodman is optimistic that defamation suits can help shore up the US’s shaken democratic norms. “This is about accountability as a way of ensuring that our democracy can get back on track,” she said. More

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      in US Politics

      Network of Lies review: Brian Stelter on Fox News, Trump and Dominion

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      This week, Rupert Murdoch formally stepped down as the chairman of News Corp. At the annual shareholder’s meeting, the 92-year-old media mogul inveighed against the “suppression of debate by an intolerant elite who regard differing opinions as anathema”. He also passed the baton to Lachlan Murdoch, his 52-year-old son, “a believer in the social purpose of journalism”.Murdoch also told those assembled that “humanity has a high destiny”. Unmentioned: how Fox News’s coverage of the 2020 election led to its shelling out of hundreds of millions to settle a defamation lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems, or how other suits continue.Five days after the election, insisting Donald Trump could not have lost to Joe Biden – as he clearly did – Maria Bartiromo defied management to become “the first Fox host to utter the name ‘Dominion’”, writes Brian Stelter, a veteran Fox-watcher and former CNN host. “All gassed up on rage and righteousness, [Bartiromo] heaped shame onto the network and spurred a $787.5m settlement payment.”Bartiromo popularized the Trump aide Sidney Powell and her special brand of insanity. Their enthusiasm became fatally contagious. January 6 and the insurrection followed. Two and a half years later, Bartiromo is still on the air. Powell is a professional defendant. Last month, she pleaded guilty in Fulton county, Georgia, to six counts of misdemeanor election interference and agreed to six years of probation. She still faces potential civil liability and legal sanction.“What Bartiromo began on a Sunday morning in November … destroyed America’s sense of a shared reality about the 2020 election,” Stelter laments. “The consequences will be felt for years to come.”In the political sphere, Trump shrugs off 91 criminal charges and assorted civil threats to dominate the Republican primary, focusing on retribution and weaponizing the justice department and FBI should he return to power.With less than a year before the 2024 election, Stelter once again focuses on the Murdochs’ flagship operation. Like his previous book from 2020, Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth, Network of Lies offers a readable and engrossing deep dive into the rightwing juggernaut paid for by the Murdochs and built by the late, disgraced Roger Ailes.Now a podcast host and consulting producer to The Morning Show, an Apple TV drama, Stelter also has journalistic chops earned at the New York Times. He wades through court filings and paperwork from the Dominion litigation, talks to sources close to Fox and the Murdochs, and offers insight into the firing of Tucker Carlson, the dominant, far-right prime-time host who was suddenly ditched in April. Stelter’s book is subtitled The Epic Saga of Fox News, Donald Trump, and the Battle for American Democracy. He overstates, but not by much.Unlike Bartiromo, Carlson didn’t drink the Kool-Aid. He was sly and calculated, not crazy.“Carlson privately thought Powell’s ‘software shit’ was ‘absurd’,” Stelter writes about the idea that voting machines were outlandishly rigged. “He worriedly speculated that ‘half our viewers have seen the Maria clip’, and he wanted to push back on it.” But Carlson didn’t push back hard enough. He went with the flow.He now peddles his wares on what used to be Twitter, broadcasts from a basement, and hangs out with Trump at UFC. For a guy once known for wearing bow ties, it’s a transformation. Then again, Carlson also prided himself on his knowledge of how white guys ought to fight, an admission in a text message, revealed by the Dominion suit, that earned the ire of the Fox board and the Murdochs.In Stelter’s telling, Fox “A-listers” received a heads-up on what discovery in the Dominion case would reveal.“‘They’re going to call us hypocrites,’ an exec warned.” Plaintiffs would juxtapose Fox’s public message against its internal doubts about voter fraud claims. “It was likened to ‘a seven-layer cake of shit’,” Stelter writes.The miscalculation by Fox’s legal team is now legend. It led Murdoch to believe Dominion would cost him $50m. But even Murdoch came close to concluding it was “unarguable that high-profile Fox voices” fed the “big lie”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionStelter captures the Murdochs’ struggle to make money, keep their audience happy and avoid liability. It is a near-impossible task. The beast must be fed. There is always someone or something out there waiting to cater to Trump’s base if Fox won’t. After the 2020 election, Trump forced Fox to compete with One America News and Newsmax for his attention and his followers’ devotion.The Murdochs’ pivot toward Ron DeSantis as their Republican candidate of choice won’t be forgotten soon, at least not by voters during the GOP primary. Despite being assiduously courted by Fox to appear at the first debate, which it sponsored, Trump smirkingly and wisely declined to show. Fox still covers Trump’s events – until he plugs Carlson, the defenestrated star.Judging by the polls, none of this has hurt Trump’s hopes. He laps the pack while DeSantis stagnates, Nikki Haley threatening to take second place. At the same time, some polling shows Trump ahead of Joe Biden or competitive in battleground states and leading in the electoral college. For now, Fox needs him more than he needs Fox.In that spirit of “social purpose” reporting lauded by his dad, Lachlan Murdoch will be left to navigate a defamation action brought by Smartmatic, another voting machine company, and, among other cases, a suit filed by Ray Epps, an ex-marine who pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges for his role in the January 6 insurrection but became the focus of conspiracy theorists. Sating the appetites of the 45th president and his rightwing base never comes cheap.In the Smartmatic litigation, Fox tried to subpoena George Soros, the bete noire of the right. It lost, but conspiracy theories die hard. US democracy remains fragile, the national divide seemingly unbridgeable. Expect little to change at Fox. The show must go on.
      Network of Lies is published in the US by Simon & Schuster More

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      Mike Johnson to publicly release 44,000 hours of sensitive January 6 footage

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      House speaker Mike Johnson said Friday he plans to publicly release thousands of hours of footage from the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, making good on a promise he made to far-right members of his party when he was campaigning for his current job.“This decision will provide millions of Americans, criminal defendants, public interest organizations and the media an ability to see for themselves what happened that day, rather than having to rely upon the interpretation of a small group of government officials,” Johnson said in a statement.The newly elected speaker said the first tranche of security footage, around 90 hours, will be released on a public committee website Friday, with the rest of the 44,000 hours expected to be posted over the next several months. In the meantime, a public viewing room will be set up in the Capitol.For the last several months, the GOP-led House Administration Committee has made the video available by appointment only to members of the media, criminal defendants and a limited number of other people. The video shows some of the fighting up close and gives a bird’s-eye view of the Capitol complex – one that visitors rarely see – as hundreds of president Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the building, violently attacking police officers and breaking in through windows and doors.By expanding this access to the general public, Johnson is fulfilling one of the pledges he made last month to the most conservative members of his party, including the representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, who orchestrated the ouster of the former speaker, Kevin McCarthy. Both Gaetz and Trump – who is currently running for re-election as he faces federal charges for his role in the January 6 attack – applauded Johnson’s decision.In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump congratulated the speaker “for having the courage and fortitude” to release the footage.The move by Johnson will grant the general public a stunning level of access to sensitive and explicit January 6 security footage, which many critics have warned could endanger the safety of staff and Congressmembers in the Capitol complex if it gets into the wrong hands. The hours of footage detail not only the shocking assault rioters made on US Capitol police as they breached the building but also how the rioters accessed the building and the routes lawmakers used to flee to safety.A request for comment from Capitol police was declined.Johnson said Friday that the committee is processing the footage to blur the faces of individuals “to avoid any persons from being targeted for retaliation of any kind”. He added that an estimated 5% of the footage will not be publicly released as it “may involve sensitive security information related to the building architecture”.Gripping images and video from the Capitol attack by Trump supporters have been widely circulated by documentarians, news organizations and even the rioters themselves. But until this year, officials held back much of the surveillance video from hundreds of security cameras stationed in and around the Capitol.In February, McCarthy gave then Fox News host Tucker Carlson exclusive access to the footage, a move that Democrats swiftly condemned as a “grave” breach of security with potentially far-reaching consequences.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe conservative commentator aired a first installment to millions of viewers on his prime-time show in the spring, working to bend perceptions of the violent, grueling siege that played out for the world to see into a narrative favorable to Trump.It is all part of a larger effort by Republicans to redefine the narrative around the deadly insurrection after the findings of the House January 6 committee last year. The select committee of seven Democrats and two Republicans spent months painstakingly documenting, with testimony and video evidence, how Trump rallied his supporters to head to the Capitol and “fight like hell” as Congress was certifying his loss to Democrat Joe Biden.The committee’s final report released last December concluded that Trump criminally engaged in a “multi-part conspiracy” to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 presidential election and failed to act to stop his supporters from attacking the Capitol.The panel passed their investigation to the justice department, recommending that federal prosecutors investigate the former president on four crimes, including aiding an insurrection. In August, Trump was indicted on four felony counts for his role in the attack as the justice department accused him of assaulting the “bedrock function” of democracy. More