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      Trump trial nears end as prosecutors confident he ‘didn’t have the goods’

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      “You can’t con people – at least not for long,” Donald Trump observed in his 1987 bestseller The Art of the Deal. “You can create excitement, you can do wonderful promotion and get all kinds of press, and you can throw in a little hyperbole. But if you don’t deliver the goods, people will eventually catch on.”The former president spent decades trying to create excitement with wonderful levels of promotion, getting all kinds of press, and throwing in more than a little hyperbole. But did he have the goods?This is the central question Justice Arthur Engoron, of the state supreme court in Manhattan, has been considering over the last five weeks. On Monday, the fraud trial enters its final, fateful leg. Trump himself will take the stand. The stakes are high. Although Trump will not go to jail, regardless of the outcome, because this is a civil case, he is fighting for the future of his corporate empire.The case against Trump, although inextricably linked to his political rise, is focused on his business dealings. Hundreds of millions of dollars are at stake as the ex-real estate tycoon prepares to take the stand.Letitia James, the New York attorney general, has accused Trump and key members of his inner circle at the Trump Organization of fraudulently inflating his wealth to secure better loans from banks. She asked for $250m and the cancellation of Trump’s business licenses in New York, a move that would end the Trumps’ ability to run businesses in the state.This is not a jury trial, and Engoron has already made up his mind on the foundation of the case, finding Trump and his adult sons guilty of financial fraud before the trial started. Should an appellate court uphold this ruling, Trump will essentially lose the ability to operate his business in New York – and control of properties including Trump Tower in midtown Manhattan, from whose golden staircase Trump launched his successful presidential campaign.“The judge has already found fraud,” said Jed Handelsman Shugerman, professor of law at Boston University. “The question is the extent of the liability and the remedy. It seems like it’s going in a direction that will be a very serious liability and very serious remedy.”The court’s attention turned this week to his eldest sons. This is a family business, after all, officially run by Donald Jr and Eric since their father assumed the presidency.Both brothers sought to distance themselves from the alleged fraud, insisting it was up to others to ensure financial records were correct. “For purposes of accounting, I relied upon the accountants,” Don Jr, executive vice-president of the Trump Organization, said. “I never had anything to do with the statements of financial condition,” Eric, also executive vice-president at the company, added hours later.Their sister, Ivanka, is also scheduled to be questioned on Wednesday. Unlike Don Jr and Eric, she is not a named defendant in the case. While her lawyers argued she should not have to testify, this request was denied by an appeals court.While the family appearances are grabbing all the headlines, Engoron might ultimately be more interested in testimony that could help gauge the liability of the alleged fraud. On Wednesday Michiel McCarty, chair and CEO of the investment bank MM Dillon & Co, said the inflation of Trump’s wealth allowed the Trump Organization to secure better rates for loans. He calculated that banks lost more than $168m in interest payments as a result.The media spotlight on this trial has been brightest when high-profile witnesses – from Michael Cohen, Trump’s former fixer turned foe, to the former president himself next week – take the stand. But at the heart of the action sit stacks of emails, contracts and financial statements. “There’s enough evidence in this case to fill this courtroom,” Engoron remarked last month, as he rejected another bid by Trump’s lawyers to obtain an early verdict.Gregory Germain, professor of law at Syracuse University, said prosecutors must demonstrate that Trump was “unjustly enriched” by falsified financial statements. “In order to do that, the attorney general needs to show that somebody took these statements at face value, believed they were true, and made loans at lower interest rates that they would have, or priced an insurance policy at a lower price – something to show they were harmed by this, and he was enriched.”This element was “completely missing in the earlier stages of the case”, Germain added.Trump is set to be grilled over allegations that documents fraudulently magnified the value of his assets. Earlier in the trial, for example, prosecutors noted that his Trump Tower apartment was once listed as 30,000 sq ft and worth $327m, despite other paperwork – including one document signed by the former president in 1994 – reporting that the apartment was actually under 11,000 sq ft.Commentators expect Trump, like his sons, to try and distance himself from the accounting. But he is likely to be asked by prosecutors about allegations that he directly, if not explicitly, instructed executives to inflate his net worth.Cohen, his former personal attorney, testified that Trump would scrutinize the value of his assets and declare, “I’m actually not worth $4.5bn, I’m really worth more like 6,” before sending senior executives away. They would return to him “after we achieved the desired goal,” according to Cohen.A current Trump Organization employee, Patrick Birney, testified that the chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg informed him between 2017 and 2019 that Trump – by this point in the White House – wanted his net worth to go up.Since Engoron’s pre-trial ruling, Trump has argued he is worth “much more” than what is shown in his financial statements, which don’t include what he describes as his “most valuable” asset: his brand. The Trump Organization has been “slandered and maligned”, he has complained, denying his fortune was exaggerated.The former real estate mogul will attempt in the coming days to make the case that his empire was accurately valued. Even after Engoron ruled otherwise, Trump insists no one lost out as a result.Prosecutors are confident they are on the cusp of bringing Trump to justice. They believe – to paraphrase the defendant’s observation some four decades ago – that he didn’t have the goods, and they’re catching on. On Monday we may see who really has the goods. More

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      Renegade review: Adam Kinzinger on why he left Republican ranks

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      Adam Kinzinger represented a reliably Republican district in the US House for six terms. He voted to impeach Donald Trump over the insurrection and with Liz Cheney was one of two Republicans on the January 6 committee. Like the former Wyoming congresswoman, he earned the ire of Trump and the GOP base.A lieutenant colonel and air force pilot, Kinzinger read the terrain and declined to run again. In his memoir, he looks back at his life, family and time in the US military. He also examines the transformation of the Republican party into a Trumpian vessel. With the assistance of Michael D’Antonio, biographer of Mike Pence, he delivers a steady and well-crafted read.Kinzinger finds the Republicans sliding toward authoritarianism, alienating him from a world he once knew. On 8 January 2021, two days after the Trump-inspired coup attempt, he received a letter signed by 11 members of his family, excoriating him for calling for the president to be removed.“Oh my, what a disappointment you are to us and to God!’ the letter began. “We were once proud of your accomplishments! Instead, you go against your Christian principles and join ‘the Devil’s army’ (Democrats and the fake news media).”The word “disappointment was underlined three times”, Kinzinger counts. “God once.”Elected in 2010 with the backing of the Tea Party, once in office, Kinzinger distanced himself from the Republican fringe. The movement felt frenzied. Hyper-caffeinated. He cast his lot with Eric Cantor, House majority leader and congressman from Virginia. “Overtly ambitious”, in Kinzinger’s view, Cantor also presented himself as “serious, sober and cerebral”. Eventually, Cantor found himself out of step with the enraged core of the party. In 2014, he was defeated in a primary.Cantor was too swampy for modern Republican tastes. Out of office, he is a senior executive at an investment bank.Simply opposing Barack Obama and the Affordable Care Act wasn’t enough. With America’s first Black president in the White House, performative politics and conspiracy theories took over.Kevin McCarthy, deposed as speaker last month, earns Kinzinger’s scorn – and rightly.“I was not surprised he was ousted,” Kinzinger told NPR. “And frankly, I think it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.”On the page, Kinzinger paints McCarthy as weak, limitlessly self-abasing and a bully. He put himself at the mercy of Matt Gaetz, the Florida extremist, prostrated himself before Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia extremist, and endured 15 rounds of balloting on the House floor to be allowed the speaker’s gavel – an illusion of a win.McCarthy behaved like “an attention-seeking high school senior who readily picked on anyone who didn’t fall in line”, Kinzinger writes. The California congressman even tried, if feebly, to physically intimidate his fellow Republican.“Once, I was standing in the aisle that runs from the floor to the back of the [House] chamber,” Kinzinger remembers. “As [McCarthy] passed, with his security man and some of his boys, he veered towards me, hit me with his shoulder and then kept going.”Apparently, McCarthy forgot Kinzinger did stints in war zones.Kinzinger also takes McCarthy to task for his shabby treatment of Cheney, at the time the No 3 House Republican. On 1 January 2021, on a caucus call, she warned that 6 January would be a “dark day” if they “indulged in the fantasy” that they could overturn Joe Biden’s victory over Donald Trump.McCarthy was having none of it. “I just want to be clear: Liz doesn’t speak for the conference,” he said. “She speaks for herself.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThat, Kinzinger writes, was “unnecessary and disrespectful, and it infuriated me”.These days, McCarthy faces the prospect of a Trump-fueled primary challenge. But he is not alone in evoking Kinzinger’s anger. Kinzinger also has tart words for Mitch McConnell and his performance post-January 6. The Senate minority leader was more intent on retaining power than dealing with the havoc wrought by Trump and his minions, despite repeatedly sniping at him.When crunch time came, McConnell followed the pack. Kinzinger bemoans McConnell’s vote to acquit in the impeachment trial, ostensibly because Trump had left office, and then his decision to castigate Trump on the Senate floor when it no longer mattered.“It took a lot of cheek, nerve, chutzpah, gall and, dare I say it, balls for McConnell to talk this way,” Kinzinger bristles, “since he personally blocked the consideration of the case until Trump departed.”Kinzinger devotes considerable space to his own faith. An evangelical Protestant, he is highly critical of Christian nationalism as theology and as a driving force in the Republican party. He draws a direct line between religion and January 6. Proximity between the cross, a makeshift gallows and calls for Mike Pence to be hanged was not happenstance.“Had there not been some of these errant prophecies, this idea that God has ordained it to be Trump, I’m not sure January 6 would have happened like it did,” Kinzinger said last year. “You have people today that, literally, I think in their heart – they may not say it – but they equate Donald Trump with the person of Jesus Christ.”In his book, Kinzinger echoes Russell Moore, former head of public policy of the Southern Baptist Convention: “Moore’s view of Christianity was consistent with traditional theology, which does not have a place for religious nationalism. Nothing in the Bible said the world would be won over by American Christianity.”Looking at 2024, Kinzinger casts the election as “a simple question of democracy or no democracy … if it was Joe Biden and Donald Trump, I don’t think there’s any question I would vote for Joe Biden”.
      Renegade is published in the US by Penguin Random House More

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      In a world on fire, Biden struggles to banish the curse of Trump

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      Is Joe jinxed? In less than three years as US president, Joe Biden has faced more than his fair share of international crises. America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan blew up in his hands like a cluster bomb. Then came Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and Europe’s biggest war since 1945. Now, suddenly, the Middle East is in flames.It could just be bad luck. Or it could be Biden, who prides himself on foreign policy expertise, is not as good at running the world as he thinks. But there is another explanation. It’s called Donald Trump. If Biden’s presidency is cursed, it’s by the toxic legacy of the “very stable genius” who preceded him.It’s worth noting how the poisonous effects of Trump’s geostrategic car crashes, clumsy policy missteps and egotistic blunders continue to be felt around the world – not least because he hopes to be president again. In 2020, with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu at his side, Trump unveiled his “ultimate deal” for peace in Israel-Palestine.His plan was a gift to rightwing Jewish nationalists, offering Israel full control over Jerusalem and large parts of the West Bank and Jordan Valley while shattering hopes of a viable Palestinian state. It was laughably, amateurishly lopsided. Except it was no joke. It excluded and humiliated Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority, convinced many that peaceful dialogue was futile and so empowered Hamas.Netanyahu had long advised Trump that the Palestinians could be safely ignored, normalisation with Arab states was a better, more lucrative bet and Iran was the bigger threat. Now he could barely contain his glee. “You have been the greatest friend that Israel has ever had in the White House,” he cooed. Naturally, Trump lapped it up.The catastrophic consequences of Trump’s dangerous fantasising are now plain to all – but it’s Biden, his re-election prospects at risk, who is getting heat from left and right. Partly it’s his own fault. He thought the Palestinian question could be frozen. Meanwhile, Trump, typically, has turned against Netanyahu while praising Hamas’s close ally, Iranian-backed Hezbollah, as “very smart”.The 2018 decision by Trump, egged on by Israel, to unilaterally renege on the west’s UN-backed nuclear counter-proliferation accord with Iran was the biggest American foreign policy blunder since the Iraq invasion. Ensuing, additional US economic sanctions fatally weakened the moderately reformist presidency of Hassan Rouhani.Iran took Trump’s confrontational cue – and shifted sharply to the anti-western, rejectionist right. A notorious hardliner, Ebrahim Raisi, president since 2021, has pursued close alliances with Russia and China. At home, a corrupt, anti-democratic clerical oligarchy, topped by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, brutally suppresses dissent, notably advocates of women’s rights.Mahsa Yazdani is the mullahs’ latest victim. Her “crime”, for which she was jailed for 13 years, was to denounce the killing by security forces of her son, Mohammad Javad Zahedi. Such persecution is commonplace. Yet if the Barack Obama-Biden policy of engagement, backed by Britain and the EU, had been maintained by Trump, things might be very different today, inside and outside Iran.Instead, Biden faces an angry foe threatening daily to escalate the Israel-Hamas war. Iran and its militias are the reason he is deploying huge military force to the region. Iran is why US bases in the Gulf, Syria and Iraq are under fire. And thanks to Trump (and Netanyahu), Iran may be closer than ever to acquiring nuclear weapons capability.Trump’s uncritical, submissive, often suspiciously furtive attitude to Vladimir Putin has undermined Biden’s Russia policy, doing untold, lasting harm. Untold because Democrats have given up trying to cast light on at least a dozen, publicly unrecorded Trump-Putin calls and meetings over four years in the White House.It’s not necessary to believe Moscow’s spooks possess embarrassing sex tapes, or that Trump solicited Russian meddling in US elections, to wonder whether he cut private deals with Putin. Did he, for example, suggest the US would stand aside if Russia invaded Ukraine, where there had been fighting over the Donbas and Crimea since 2014? Trump has a personal beef with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy. That alone is sufficient to shape his policy.Trump’s criticism of European allies and threats to quit Nato caused a damaging loss of mutual confidence that Biden still struggles to repair. For his part, manipulative Putin sticks up for the former president. He recently declared that federal lawsuits against Trump amounted to “persecution of a political rival for political reasons”. Evidently, he’d like to see his pal back in power.Did Trump’s behaviour in office, his impeachments and failed coup, encourage Putin (and China’s Xi Jinping) to view American democracy as sick, failing and demoralised. Probably. Trump’s 2020 Afghanistan “peace deal” – in truth, an abject capitulation to the Taliban – confirmed their low opinion. It led directly to the chaotic 2021 withdrawal and a shredding of US global credibility that was largely blamed on Biden.Little wonder Putin calculates that American staying power will again fade as Trump, campaigning when not in court, trashes Biden’s Ukraine policy and his House Republican followers block military aid to Kyiv. Unabashed by his Middle East fiasco, Trump vainly boasts he would conjure a Ukraine peace deal overnight – if re-elected (and not in jail).It’s an unusually challenging time in world affairs. And Biden has been unlucky domestically, too, given a post-pandemic cost of living crisis and a supreme court gone rogue. Yet his biggest political misfortune remains the noxious global legacy and continuing, uniquely destructive presence of Trump.He is more than just a rival waiting for an 80-year-old president to slip and take a tumble. Symbolically, Trump is nemesis. He is the darkness beyond the pale, he’s a monster lurking in the depths, he’s the enemy within. He’s Joe’s Jonah.
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      Nikki Haley’s unexpected rise from ‘scrappy’ underdog to Trump’s closest rival

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      On Monday, Nikki Haley returned to the building where her political career began to formally submit the paperwork to appear on the Republican presidential primary ballot in her home state of South Carolina. Haley held up her filing for the cameras. In loopy writing she had scrawled: “Let’s do this!”The exclamation punctuated Haley’s emergence as a viable alternative to Donald Trump. It comes nearly 20 years after Haley’s election to the South Carolina statehouse, having bested a 30-year Republican incumbent in a come-from-behind victory that stunned her party and began her unlikely ascent to the governor’s mansion and then to become Donald Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations.“I’ve always been the underdog,” Haley said in remarks at the statehouse on Monday. “I enjoy that. It’s what makes me scrappy.”In a Republican primary still thoroughly dominated by Trump, Haley is enjoying, for now, the next best thing: an unexpected rise to second place.For Republicans desperate to move on from Trump, the 51-year-old’s “adult-in-the-room” candidacy presents a compelling choice: a conservative leader with executive experience and a foreign policy hawk who pushed “America First” on a global stage. Her record, combined with her personal story as the daughter of Indian immigrants, would be hard to beat in a general election, her proponents argue, and would help broaden Republicans’ appeal among women, suburbanites and independents – groups that recoiled from the party during the Trump years.A pair of strong debate performances, a consolidating field and a sharp new focus on foreign policy following Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel have helped elevate Haley’s profile – and prospects – as she woos Republican voters and donors.In the early voting states of New Hampshire and South Carolina, polls show Haley surging past Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor whose campaign has stalled ever since he entered the race as de facto runner-up to Trump. She is also gaining ground in Iowa, which launches the Republican nominating process.In a survey released on Monday by the Des Moines Register, Haley climbed 10 points to 16%, putting her even with DeSantis as he struggles to break through against Trump.But underscoring just how difficult it will be for any candidate not named Trump to win the nomination, the poll found that the twice-impeached former president now facing four criminal indictments maintained a 27-point lead in Iowa, less than three months before the state’s caucuses.“It is slow and steady wins the race,” Haley said, previewing her strategy at the capitol building on Monday. She predicted the once-sprawling Republican field would winnow considerably after Iowa and New Hampshire before the race turns to her “sweet state of South Carolina” where she vowed: “We’ll finish it.”“I’ve got one more felIa I’ve gotta catch up to,” Haley told the crowd, “and I am determined to do it.”Last month, Trump’s former vice-president Mike Pence, ended his bid for the White House. Before that the former Republican congressman Will Hurd, suspended his campaign and endorsed Haley. In an op-ed, he argued that she has “the character and credentials to lead, the willingness to take on Mr. Trump, and the conservative record needed to beat Joe Biden”.That is the essence of Haley’s pitch to voters: that she is the most electable. To argue her case, she points to polling that shows her beating Biden in a hypothetical general election matchup.On the campaign trail, she likes to remind Republican voters that the party has lost the popular vote in the last seven out of eight presidential elections. “That’s nothing to be proud of,” she told the Daily Show guest host Charlamagne Tha God on Wednesday.Electability is the strongest argument Trump’s Republican rivals can make to voters, said Gunner Ramer, political director of the anti-Trump Republican Accountability Pac. But it’s almost certainly not enough to pry the nomination from him.There was a window after Republicans’ poor showing in the 2022 midterms when Trump appeared vulnerable to a primary challenge, he said. But his grip on the party has not only recovered since then, each indictment against him has seemed to harden the loyalty he inspires from his followers.“Her campaign is something out of 2015,” Ramer said. “It’s a reminder of what a competent Republican presidential campaign could look like if it were 2015. But we are in an era of a Donald Trump-led and inspired Republican party.”Strategists say Haley’s path to the nomination would probably require a strong performance in New Hampshire and an even better one – if not an upset – in South Carolina to send her into Super Tuesday as the clear Trump alternative.Despite growing calls for the Republican field to consolidate behind Haley, polls still show her trailing far behind Trump in both states. But longtime supporters say not to underestimate her, especially not in her home state, where she’s never lost an election.“In South Carolina, the same people who voted for Donald Trump for president twice have voted for Nikki Haley for governor twice,” said Katon Dawson, a former chair of the South Carolina Republican party who supports Haley. “It’s early yet.”While Trump has been holding his signature rallies between courtroom appearances and avoiding the debate stage, Haley has kept a frenetic campaign schedule, embracing the retail politics that she became known for in South Carolina. This week, she spoke to an overflow crowd at a diner in New Hampshire, where she was joined by the state’s Republican governor, Chris Sununu, a prominent Trump critic whose endorsement is highly coveted.“Are you ready to endorse me?” she teased.“Getting closer every day,” he replied.The clearest sign of Haley’s momentum may be the attention she’s drawing from her former boss.“Donald Trump isn’t stupid. He knows a threat when he sees one,” said Preya Samsundar, a spokesperson for a pro-Haley Super Pac. “And the fact that he’s zeroing in on Nikki instead of DeSantis is very telling.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAt a recent campaign rally in Iowa, Trump, who used to focus his ire almost exclusively on DeSantis, assailed Haley as a “highly overrated person”. Repeatedly referring to her by the derogatory nickname “Birdbrain”, Trump complained to the crowd that Haley had broken her promise to him that she would not run against him for the Republican nomination if he ran in 2024.Haley’s turn in the spotlight will inevitably invite more scrutiny. Ahead of next week’s Republican debate in Florida, Haley and DeSantis have ramped up their attacks on each other, tussling over who has a more hardline track record on immigration and foreign policy among other policy issues.In a spiky back-and-forth, DeSantis accused Haley of wanting to resettle refugees from Gaza in the United States, to which Haley is firmly opposed. She has assailed DeSantis for distorting her words.DeSantis’s team has waved off any suggestion that he and Haley’s campaigns are on opposite trajectories, arguing that the Florida governor remains Trump’s strongest challenger.“This is a two-man race, and Team Trump knows it,” Bryan Griffin, a press secretary for the DeSantis campaign, said in a statement. “That’s why they’re spending $1m to attack DeSantis in Iowa after proclaiming the primary was ‘over’.”Democrats are also weighing in against her. In recent weeks, they have sought to elevate Haley’s conservative record, particularly on abortion, which has been a damaging issue for Republicans since the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade last year.Jaime Harrison, chair of the Democratic National Committee who is also from South Carolina, accused Haley of “trying to rewrite history” by softening her approach on abortion. As governor, he noted, Haley signed into law a 20-week abortion ban that did not include exceptions for rape or incest.“Nikki may be singing a different song now, but don’t be fooled,” Harrison wrote on X, formerly Twitter, “when it comes to the issues, she is just as extreme as the rest of the MAGA field.”Perhaps Haley’s biggest asset at the moment is the sudden salience of foreign policy, amid the deepening conflict in Gaza.In recent weeks, Haley has emphasized her staunch support of Israel. As Trump’s UN ambassador, she championed his administration’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, and then relocate the US embassy from Tel Aviv. She also pulled the US out of the UN human rights council after accusing it of displaying “unending hostility towards Israel”.Haley used a recent appearance at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual meeting in Las Vegas to issue some of her most scathing attacks on Trump to date, questioning his capacity to lead the country at such a precarious moment. With wars raging in the Middle East and Europe, and China posing new challenges, Haley said the stakes were too high for another “four years of chaos, vendettas and drama”.“America needs a captain who will steady the ship,” she said, “not capsize it.”As she plows ahead, Haley is also testing her party’s willingness to elect a woman of color to the nation’s highest office.In her campaign launch, she nodded to the possibility that her candidacy could make history. “I will simply say this: may the best woman win.” (In the same speech she also denounced “identity politics” and “glass ceilings”.)No woman has ever won a Republican presidential primary contest, let alone the party’s nomination. And to do so, she must wrest control of the party from the frontrunner, a former president with a long record of attacking women and people of color in demeaning and vulgar terms.“Top predictors of votes for Donald Trump are hostile sexism and racial resentment,” said Kelly Dittmar, director of research and a scholar at the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.“So how do you as a south Asian woman run against the person who has won on sentiments that also work against you as an individual?”Dawson, the former South Carolina party chair, said if any Republican can defy the odds and beat Trump, it will be Haley. He says he’s counting on the voters in South Carolina to their first female governor make history again by putting her on the path to becoming America’s first female president.“Indira Gandhi of India. Margaret Thatcher of Great Britain. Angela Merkel of Germany,” he said. “Next it’s Nikki Haley.” More

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      Who is Democratic congressman Dean Phillips – and why is he taking on Biden?

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      For people who know the Democratic Minnesota congressman Dean Phillips, his run for presidency is perplexing. For some of them, it’s also disappointing, maybe even enraging. But they also think he’s genuine in his quest to go up against Joe Biden in the Democratic primary, despite how it might affect his own political career and how it could damage Biden in one of the most consequential elections in recent US history.Phillips announced his run for the presidency in New Hampshire last week, saying it was time for the next generation to lead in a pointed reference to concerns about Biden’s age. He says he is a fan of Biden’s and a supporter of his policies, but he is 54, while Biden is 80. Phillips, the heir to a distilling empire who also co-owned a gelato company, is injecting his own wealth into his presidential campaign – solving any problem of raising funds.In Minnesota, where Phillips represents a purple district filled with wealthier suburbs of Minneapolis, Phillips first ran for Congress in the state’s third congressional district and flipped a longtime Republican seat blue. In his next two elections, he won more and more voters to his side, preaching pragmatic politics and driving a “government repair truck”.Ann Gavin helped him. She knocked on doors, delivered campaign signs. The 70-year-old Democratic voter from Plymouth, Minnesota, admires the congressman and the work he’s done for the district. She thinks he would be a great president someday, too, with his business savvy and political skills.“I’ve got friends who are upset. I’m more confused than upset,” she said. “I just think the timing is wrong. And he probably knows that too. So I’m not sure if he’s going to accomplish much.”Steve Schmidt, the anti-Trump Republican strategist, serves as a campaign adviser to Phillips. Schmidt said all the polling he’s seen shows Biden losing to Trump in 2024. Biden’s vulnerability is a private concern for Democrats, yet none of them will publicly admit it, he claims. The idea that voters having a choice in the primary will ultimately threaten democracy by throwing the election to Trump “demonstrates how far off the rails we’ve gotten”, he said.Phillips was not made available for an interview himself.In his run for the White House, the little-known Phillips now has to introduce himself to key early voting states then possibly the whole country. Schmidt sees that as an asset: he doesn’t have decades of “political stink on him” to overcome, and he can build up a lot of name recognition quickly because “you can get famous very fast in American politics”, he says.Phillips plans to run in New Hampshire, Michigan and South Carolina, then reassess from there. If he drops out, he will concede with dignity and throw all his weight behind defeating Donald Trump, Schmidt said.In Minnesota, at least, voters in his district and active Democrats know him. To some of them, his decision to run felt more personal – and also potentially disastrous.Ken Martin, the chairman of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor party, recruited Phillips to run for Congress after trying for many years. Martin and others worked hard to get Phillips elected and flip the seat in the third district. He saw Phillips as a “rising star” in the party who was charting his path in Washington.Now he thinks that’s all gone.“He just pissed it all away on this vanity project that’s not really going to end up with him being the nominee of the party,” Martin said. “Here he is, 54 years old, and he basically blew his whole political career on something that was never going to be, just to make a point, and I’m not even sure what the point is.”Whenever Phillips would appear in the media over the past year talking about how someone else should run against Biden, Martin said he would reach out to express his disappointment and share how it wouldn’t be a good move politically or personally.He is not alone. Among some of Phillips’s previous donors and supporters, there is a sense of betrayal and abandonment. For Martin, it’s not clear who, if anyone, is encouraging Phillips to run, despite it also seeming like he’s earnestly made the decision.“One thing you can say about Dean Phillips: he is a very genuine and sincere guy. He’s thoughtful,” Martin said. “This is not just some sort of kneejerk deal. I don’t think he came to this conclusion lightly, and as much as I disagree with that conclusion, I think it would be hard-pressed for anyone who actually knows Dean to suggest that he’s not sincere or genuine in his belief on why he’s doing this.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe legislators who represent the areas Phillips’s district covers released a statement this week detailing their support for Biden, who visited Minnesota this week. Phillips won’t get organizational or financial support from the Democratic National Committee or state parties, making campaigning more difficult in an already-difficult run against a sitting president.Not having the support of the party infrastructure isn’t the same as not having support from Democratic voters, Schmidt said. “The most out-of-touch people in the country work at the DNC.”.There are two schools of thought among Democrats on how this could play out: Phillips could undermine Biden by hitting on his weak points during a primary, leaving the president all the more vulnerable in the general election. Or Phillips’s campaign could energize Biden and his supporters, buoying them up as they fend off a challenger.The Phillips v Biden matchup is likely to focus mostly on Biden’s age, given the two don’t differ much on policy. While primary candidates often launch long-shot campaigns as a way to move the leading candidate closer to their positions, in this instance, Phillips’s presence in the race can’t make Biden younger. And a focus during the primary on Biden’s age can play into Republicans’ hands, as it’s already something they use to attack the president.Schmidt said the question of whether Phillips’s run brings attention to Biden’s age is “premised on the absurdity that something Congressman Phillips is doing is bringing attention to something that is clearly evident”.“The congressman isn’t taking the paper off of the package, so to speak, on that question, and he’s not going to talk about the president’s age,” he said. “Why would anyone talk about the president’s age? The president’s age is what the president’s age is.”Back at home, Democrats aren’t just grappling with seeing a friend or someone they respected make a decision they don’t agree with. They’re also worried about what could happen in the third district.Phillips’s district isn’t deep blue – it’ll require more money and effort from Democrats to keep it in their hands without Phillips. Phillips hasn’t said whether he’ll continue to run for re-election in his district, though he will face a primary if he does. In Minnesota, the state party has an endorsement process that assesses all candidates instead of immediately throwing its weight behind incumbents.Phillips’s presidential campaign might not last until Minnesota’s primary, on 5 March. If he’s still in it, Gavin, who knocked doors for Phillips, probably wouldn’t vote for him. She’d consider it, if he got a lot of traction in prior states and was pulling ahead, but she doesn’t want Trump to return to office.“Would I vote for him?” Gavin said. “Boy, certainly not if I thought it was going to hurt Biden’s chances, so I guess maybe I wouldn’t. That says it all, right?” More

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      US courts hear efforts to remove Trump from 2024 ballot – will they work?

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      When Scott Gessler stepped up to the lectern in a Denver courtroom on Monday, he opened with a full-throated defense of American democracy.“When it comes to decide who should lead our nation, it’s the people of the United States of America who should make those decisions,” he said. “This court should not interfere with that fundamental value – that rule of democracy.”It wasn’t so much the argument that was significant as much as who Gessler was representing: Donald Trump. The same Donald Trump who fought doggedly to have courts, state legislators, his vice-president and members of Congress throw out valid electoral slates from several states and declare him the winner of the 2020 presidential election.Gessler is defending the former president in a novel case in Colorado seeking to block him from appearing on the state’s ballot – a case that centers around whether Trump is disqualified from running for president under section 3 of the 14th amendment. The Reconstruction-era provision disqualifies anyone from holding office if they have taken an oath to the United States and subsequently “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same” unless Congress votes to remove that disqualification by two-thirds vote.It is not the only one of its kind: the Minnesota supreme court heard a similar case this week and there is also a similar case already pending in Michigan, a key battleground state. States are tasked with ensuring that candidates for office meet the qualifications so the challenges to Trump’s candidacy are bubbling up through state court.The 14th amendment cases are part of a mosaic of legal efforts that seek to hold Trump and his allies accountable for overturning the 2020 election, but they are among the most important. While the cases are dry – steeped in legalese and historical understanding of constitutional text – they get at Trump in a way that none of the other suits can: blocking his return to political life.While the other cases could require Trump and his allies to face jail time, lose their law licenses, and pay damages for defamatory lies, none of them would block Trump from returning to the White House in 2024 (a criminal conviction does not disqualify someone from running or serving as president). If he wins the election, he could theoretically pardon himself in the federal cases against him or dismiss the prosecutions. And while no pardon would be available in the Georgia criminal case, it’s untested whether the constitution would allow a state to incarcerate a serving, elected president.Simply put, winning the election is widely seen as Trump’s best chance at escaping the criminal charges against him. Losing the 14th amendment cases would cut off that possibility.“Let me be clear. The purpose of our actions is to obtain rulings that Trump is disqualified from the ballot, not merely to have a political debate. Not at all to have a political debate. Not merely to air issues,” said Ron Fein, the legal director for Free Speech for People, a left-leaning group that filed the challenge in Minnesota.“The dangers of Trump ever being allowed back into public office are exactly those foreseen by the framers of section 3. Which is that they knew that if an oath-taking insurrectionist were allowed back into power they would do the same if not worse.”The 14th amendment measure was passed after the civil war and has never been used to block a presidential candidate from the ballot. It picked up steam this summer after a pair of conservative scholars authored a law review article saying that it applied to Trump.Trump’s lawyers have defended him by arguing that his conduct on January 6 did not amount to an insurrection, that Congress needs to pass a law to enforce the 14th amendment, and that its language does not apply to the president.But expert witnesses for the challengers in the Colorado case offered a wealth of historical and other evidence this week suggesting that what Trump did on January 6 was an insurrection as the framers of the 14th amendment would have understood it.Legal observers almost universally agree that the US supreme court, where Trump appointed three of the six members of the court’s conservative super-majority, will ultimately decide the issue and whether Trump is eligible to run for re-election. There is not a clear legal consensus and since the law is so untested, it’s not clear what the court will do.Outside of the courtroom, the biggest challenge may be getting a wide swath of Americans to accept the idea that someone they support may not be eligible to run for president. In a democracy, there is something viscerally distasteful about not being able to vote for the person we support, Ned Foley, a law professor at the Ohio State University, noted earlier this year.It’s a question the supreme court justices in Minnesota seemed to be wrestling with as well, acknowledging the case was coming up on a line between politics and the law.“Let’s say we agree with you that section 3 is self-executing, and that we do have the authority under the relevant statute to keep Mr Trump’s name off the ballot. Should we – is the question that concerns me the most,” Natalie Hudson, the chief justice of Minnesota’s supreme court said on Thursday during oral argument.But the challengers in the cases, which are supported by left-leaning groups, argue that disqualifying Trump based on the 14th amendment is no different than disqualifying someone because they are under the age of 35, a naturalized citizen, or because they have served two terms as president.“In many ways, section 3 sets forth a qualification for president that is far more important than the other constitutional criteria,” Fein said. “Most Americans are not too worried about whatever dangers might have once been posed by somebody who was not a natural born US citizen.“But someone who broke an oath to the constitution and then engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the constitution poses a real danger if they’re ever allowed back into power.”Rachel Leingang contributed reporting from Minneapolis More

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      Ring any bells? Trump boys show less than total recall at family fraud trial

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      In 1990, Ronald Reagan testified at the trial of John Poindexter, his former national security adviser caught up in the Iran-Contra affair. Two years out of office, questioned for eight hours, the former US president memorably said “I don’t recall” or “I can’t remember” no less than 88 times.This week, the two adult sons of one of Reagan’s Republican successors took the stand in New York, for testimony in a $250m civil fraud trial in which the judge has already determined the family’s guilt and now seeks to determine their penalty.On the campaign trail, Donald Trump often pays tribute to Reagan. In the courtroom, Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump tipped the hat to the master of repetitive deflection under legal examination.On Wednesday, Trump Jr answered several questions in the Reagan manner. Asked, for example, about the Donald J Trump Revocable Trust, and if his father was still one of its trustees, he simply said: “I don’t recall.”On Thursday, Trump Jr was asked about a $2m severance package given earlier this year to Allen Weisselberg, the longtime Trump Organization chief financial officer who went to jail for tax fraud. He could not recall much, he said.Eric Trump followed his older brother on to the stand. Asked if he remembered a 2013 phone call about a statement of financial condition – documents at the heart of the case against the Trumps, prosecutors alleging they routinely made inaccurate statements in search of financial advantage – his answer was longer than his brother’s. But it still contained the magic words.“I don’t believe I ever saw or worked on the statement of financial condition,” Eric Trump said. “I don’t believe I had any knowledge of it. I think I was 26 years old. I don’t recall – I was not aware of it, I never worked on it, and I didn’t know about it until this case came into fruition.”He was asked about an email in which a now former Trump lawyer said she spoke to him about an appraisal for Seven Springs, a family estate in New York that has been at the heart of reporting about Trump’s tax affairs.The appraiser valued the estate at $50m. Eric Trump said he did not share that valuation with Jeff McConney, controller of the Trump Organization and a co-defendant, because “I would have never thought to because I didn’t work on this document”.Eventually, the Trumps valued Seven Springs at $291m.Regarding Briarcliff Manor, a New York golf course, an email was read out in which a Trump Organization lawyer said: “I spoke to Eric and he is aware that the more supportable value at this point is around $45m.” In Trump Organization financial statements from 2013 to 2018, the course was valued $58m higher.In court, Eric Trump said: “I really hadn’t been involved in the appraisal of the property … I don’t recall [the appraiser] at all. I don’t think I was the main person involved. I don’t focus on appraisals, that’s not the focus of my day.”Even when confronted with evidence of his involvement in such matters, Trump would only concede: “It appears that way.”Observers were not impressed. Andrew Weissmann, a former federal prosecutor who worked for the special counsel Robert Mueller on the investigation of Russian election interference and links between Trump and Moscow, said: “Don Jr and Eric Trump’s ‘defense’ … appears so far to be that they were derelict in their duties as executives and trustees.”The main show is yet to come. Donald Trump and his oldest daughter, Ivanka Trump, are due to testify next. But even if the Trump boys were just a warm-up, they put on a masterclass of reliably unreliable recall.Asked if he had been involved in preparing an allegedly manipulated statement about a golf course deal, Eric said: “Not that I recall.”Then, he produced the mot juste: “I don’t know what I knew at the time.” More

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      Bannon used Confederate code words to describe Trump speech, book says

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      The far-right Donald Trump ally and adviser Steve Bannon used Confederate code words linked to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln to describe a speech by the former US president before his historic first criminal indictment, a new book says.On 6 March this year, addressing the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland, Trump took aim at Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney then widely expected to bring charges over hush-money payments to the porn star Stormy Daniels, thereby making Trump the first former president ever criminally indicted.Trump told his audience: “I am your warrior; I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution. I am your retribution.”In a forthcoming book, Tired of Winning: Donald Trump and the End of the Grand Old Party, Jonathan Karl, chief Washington correspondent for ABC News, writes: “When I spoke with Bannon a few days later, he wouldn’t stop touting Trump’s performance, referring to it as his ‘Come Retribution’ speech.“What I didn’t realise was that ‘Come Retribution’, according to some civil war historians, served as the code words for the Confederate Secret Service’s plot to take hostage – and eventually assassinate – President Abraham Lincoln.”Lincoln was shot at Ford’s Theatre in Washington on 14 April 1865, by John Wilkes Booth, an actor. The president died the following day.Karl is the author of two bestsellers – Front Row at the Trump Show and Betrayal – about Trump’s rise to the presidency, time in the White House and defeat by Joe Biden.In his third Trump book, excerpted in the Atlantic on Thursday, Karl quotes from a 1988 book, Come Retribution: The Confederate Secret Service and Assassination of Lincoln.“The use of the key phrase ‘Come Retribution’ suggests that the Confederate government had made a bitter decision to repay some of the misery that had been inflicted on the south,” the authors write. “Bitterness may well have been directed toward persons held to be particularly responsible for that misery, and Abraham Lincoln certainly headed the list.”Bannon, Karl writes, “actually recommended that I read that book, erasing any doubt that he was intentionally using the Confederate code words to describe Trump’s speech.“Trump’s speech was not an overt call for the assassination of his political opponents, but it did advocate their destruction by other means. Success ‘is within our reach, but only if we have the courage to complete the job, gut the deep state, reclaim our democracy, and banish the tyrants and Marxists into political exile forever,’ Trump said. ‘This is the turning point.’”In Karl’s estimation, the “Come Retribution” speech “was a turning point for Trump’s campaign” for re-election.Trump began his 2024 campaign sluggishly but then surged to huge leads over his Republican party rivals in national and key-state polling, despite a charge sheet now totaling 91 criminal counts and two civil trials, one over his business practices and one concerning a defamation claim arising from a rape allegation a judge called “substantially true”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionKarl writes: “The [federal] trial date for the charge of interfering in the 2020 election has been set for 4 March [2024]; for the hush-money case, it’s 25 March; for the classified-documents case, it’s 20 May.“As election day approaches and [Trump] faces down these many days in court, he will be waging a campaign of vengeance and martyrdom. He will continue to talk about what is at stake in the election in apocalyptic terms – ‘the final battle’ – knowing how high the stakes are for him personally. He can win and retake the White House. Or he can lose and go to prison.”Bannon is quoted as saying: “Trump’s on offense and talking about real things. The ‘Come Retribution’ speech had 10 or 12 major policies.”But, Karl writes, “Bannon knew that the speech wasn’t about policies in a traditional sense. Trump spoke about whom he would target once he returned to power.“‘We will demolish the deep state. We will expel the warmongers,’ Trump said. ‘We will drive out the globalists; we will cast out the communists. We will throw off the political class that hates our country … We will beat the Democrats. We will rout the fake news media. We will expose and appropriately deal with the RINOs. We will evict Joe Biden from the White House.“‘And we will liberate America from these villains and scoundrels once and for all.’” More