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      Trump ally is first to plead guilty in Georgia elections case

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      Former Republican bail bondsman Scott Hall, one of the 19 people charged alongside Donald Trump for conspiring to overturn the 2020 election results in the state of Georgia, entered into a plea agreement on Friday, becoming the first defendant to plead guilty in the sprawling criminal case.The surprise move from Hall came after he gave a recorded statement, it was revealed in court, to prosecutors who are almost certain to use that testimony against the former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell when she goes to trial in October accused of several of the same crimes.A live video of the court proceeding showed Hall pleading guilty to five counts of conspiracy to commit intentional interference with the performance of election duties, a misdemeanor charge.Hall was sentenced to five years’ probation, a $5,000 fine, 200 hours of community service, and to write an apology letter to the state.The description of the plea agreement suggested prosecutors were interested in having Hall flip against Trump and the other co-defendants in the wider Rico case, but especially against people like Powell who had similar legal exposure to him and also had direct links to Trump.In addition to contacts with Powell, Hall also had a 63 minute phone call with former Trump justice department official Jeffrey Clark on 2 January 2021 where they discussed the 2020 election results in Georgia, according to the indictment. Clark, another co-defendant, lost his bid to transfer his case to federal court on Monday.Hall was indicted by an Atlanta-area grand jury last month on charges, brought by the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, that he had played a role in trying to reverse Trump’s defeat in the 2020 presidential election in a brazen plot to access voting machines in Coffee county, Georgia.The scheme involved several Trump allies hiring a team of forensics experts that gained unauthorized access to the voting machines and copied virtually every part of the elections systems, before uploading them to a password-protected website that could be accessed by 2020 election deniers.A day after the Capitol attack in Washington, surveillance footage showed data experts from SullivanStrickler, a firm that specializes in “imaging”, or making exact copies, of electronic devices, arrive at the Coffee county election office and meeting with Hall as well as others.What happened inside the elections office is only partially captured on surveillance video, but records show the SullivanStrickler team imaged almost every component of the election systems, including ballot scanners, the server used to count votes, thumb drives and flash memory cards.Hall was charged with multiple counts including engaging in the Rico plot, conspiring to commit election fraud, conspiring to commit computer theft, conspiring to commit computer trespass, conspiracy to commit computer invasion of privacy and conspiracy to defraud the state of Georgia.Powell, the former Trump lawyer who was charged with many of the same criminal violations, has argued that she did nothing wrong because it was only her non-profit company that paid the forensics experts and that there had been authorization from officials to access the voting machines.The exact nature of the recorded statement that Hall gave prosecutors remains unclear because it took place before he revealed he had taken the plea agreement and was not available on the case docket.But Melissa Redmon, a former deputy Fulton county district attorney and assistant professor at the University of Georgia School of Law, said Hall probably got the agreement because his testimony would undercut Powell’s defense arguments that the voting machine breaches were above board.The jury selection for Powell’s case, where she is being tried alongside another ex-Trump lawyer called Kenneth Chesebro, is scheduled to start on 23 October. Powell and Chesebro are going separately from the other co-defendants after they requested a speedy trial under Georgia state law. More

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      in US Politics

      Unless Joe Biden stands aside, the world must prepare for President Trump 2.0 | Timothy Garton Ash

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      During the two months I spent in the US this summer, I kept asking every journalist, academic and analyst I met one simple question: “Who will be the next president of the United States?” The response was usually the same. First there was a distinct hesitation, then they said “Well, probably Joe Biden, but …”What followed the “but” was a long list of concerns, partly about deeper trends but mainly about how old and frail the 80-year-old president looks. Often, the conversation ended with my interlocutor saying it would be better if Biden stood aside, to let a younger candidate turn the age card against the 77-year-old Donald Trump.Biden has been a good president of the United States. Although the retreat from Afghanistan was chaotic, he dealt with the Covid pandemic well and is handling the war in Ukraine fairly well. He is presiding over a remarkably vibrant economy, with New Deal-style public spending accelerating a green transition and creating jobs. But if he stumbles – physically, mentally or politically – during the gruelling marathon that is a US presidential campaign, and lets Trump back in, that’s the only thing Biden will be remembered for.In a recent NBC poll, Trump and Biden were neck-and-neck, scoring 46% each. Any one of a number of factors unrelated to the characters and performances of the two candidates might swing such a close election. In the country’s hyperpolarised media environment, many Republican voters simply don’t see that the economy is doing well. AI will add to the already high possibility of misinformation, with Vladimir Putin certainly eager to tip the scales in favour of Trump. Third candidate initiatives, such as the well-intentioned centrist initiative No Labels and the intellectual activist Cornel West’s progressive-environmentalist campaign, are likely to take more votes from the Democrats than from the Republicans.Most worryingly for the Democrats, there’s a trend of Black, Hispanic and other non-white voters shifting from Democrat to Republican, and especially from Biden to Trump. There are sociological and historical explanations for this, as well as the strange appeal of Trump himself, but there’s little doubt that Biden’s age and frailty play a role.In a recent poll, three out of every four Americans said Biden was too old for a second term – at the end of which he would be 86. Only half those asked expressed the same concern about Trump. I spoke to four individuals who had seen Biden at close quarters in recent months. They said he was mentally fine, but physically showing his age. One commented on the way his voice sometimes faded to almost inaudible at the end of a sentence.All this will be ruthlessly exposed in the 24/7 media coverage of a presidential election campaign. A single fall from an election rally stage by the Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole played a part in his defeat in 1996. And Dole was a mere spring chicken of 73, in a more sedate media environment.Biden comes with one other liability. Because of his age, unusual attention will be focused on his running mate, who may have to step into the hot seat. But the vice-president, Kamala Harris, is not a great electoral asset, and hardly convinces as a possible “leader of the free world”. Despite the initial excitement, she has seemed marginal to the presidency, has an approval rating lower even than Biden’s and has made almost no impact on the world stage.Of course, Trump has huge liabilities too – above all, the multiple lawsuits that are taking much of his time and campaign funding. If Jack Smith, the prosecutor in the central case concerning possible fraud in the 2020 presidential election, is as effective as some think he is, Trump might even be in prison when Americans vote next November. Yet, astonishingly to an outsider, there’s little evidence that these prosecutions have so far seriously damaged his election prospects.Obviously, there are also risks associated with Biden stepping aside at this late stage. Some observers expressed a concern that the fragile rainbow coalition of the Democratic party could tear itself apart if set to find a new candidate. A former congressman disagreed, pointing to the disciplining effect of the threat of Trump. Certainly, there are credible contenders of a younger generation, such as the Pennsylvania governor, Josh Shapiro (who would then be the first Jewish president), the Michigan governor, Gretchen Whitmer (who would then be the first female president), or California’s governor, Gavin Newsom.Not only would they turn the age card against Trump; they would also rejuvenate the image of the US in the world. At the moment, outsiders contemplate with astonishment what looks to us like a Brezhnevite gerontocracy in Washington. Biden, 80 going on 81. Trump, 77. The Republican Senate leader, Mitch McConnell, 81, freezing for half a minute like an old desktop with a bad internet connection. The former house speaker Nancy Pelosi, running again at the age of 83. The Californian Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein refusing to retire at 90. Really? Give us a break.One thing, however, is clear: the only person who can make this decision is Biden, with his wife, Jill. If it’s to happen, it would be best it happens fast, so younger candidates can declare themselves, raise sufficient funds and organise national campaigns, and then one of them can be selected and choose a credible running mate. “It must be before Thanksgiving,” one longtime observer of US politics exclaimed. That’s less than two months away.At this point, some American readers might be huffing, “Who’s this Brit telling us what we ought to do?” All I would say in reply is: sorry, but it’s not only your future that this contest will decide.There’s a bunch of interesting elections coming up on our side of the Atlantic: a crucial Polish election next month, which may determine the future of a fragile democracy; European parliament elections next June, which may see a sharp turn to the populist right; a British general election, which may see the post-Brexit UK returning to something vaguely resembling sanity; perhaps even a Ukrainian presidential election. None of these European elections will be as consequential for Europe as this American one.A second Trump presidency would be a disaster for the US. It would also be a catastrophe for Ukraine, an emergency for Europe and a crisis of the west. If Biden steps aside now, democrats everywhere will honour him, while the US Democrats can choose a younger candidate to see off Trump – and perhaps even inspire the world again with a sense of American dynamism.
      Timothy Garton Ash is a Guardian columnist

      Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

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      in US Politics

      Trump gets done for fraud as GOP candidates vie for attention – podcast

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      Wednesday was debate night for almost all the Republican candidates for the White House, but once again, the man who chose not to turn up was stealing the headlines for yet another legal issue that went against him.
      Ron DeSantis, Mike Pence, Nikki Haley and the others had ample opportunity to bring up the fact that a judge in New York ruled that Donald Trump had committed fraud for years while building a real estate empire. But they didn’t focus on that or any of the other court cases set to interrupt his campaign next year. So what did they all have to say? Did they manage to steal any of the limelight?
      This week, Jonathan Freedland speaks to Bill Kristol, the former chief of staff to the vice-president Dan Quayle and top conservative commentator, to get his take on the Republican field

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know More

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      in US Politics

      Biden warns voters a second Trump presidency will threaten democracy

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      Joe Biden dramatically raised the ante in the forthcoming US presidential election campaign on Thursday with a stark and impassioned warning that American democracy is imperiled by a vengeful Donald Trump, his likely opponent next year.Faced by stagnant approval ratings and worries about his advanced age, the US president attempted to stir his dormant supporters and animate the undecided by spelling out the dangers he insisted a second Trump presidency would pose to the US’s status as the world’s leading beacon of democratic government.Declaring US history at “an inflexion point”, Biden, 80, said the country’s character and future was threatened by the authoritarian values of Trump’s self-styled Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement.“There is something dangerous happening in America,” he told an audience in Phoenix, Arizona. “There is an extremist movement that does not share the basic beliefs of our democracy: the MAGA movement … History has brought us to a new time of testing.“All of us are being asked right now: What will we do to maintain our democracy?”His voice at times falling to little more than a whisper to stress his message, Biden invoked the late John McCain, a former Republican senator with whom he had a close relationship, to emphasize what he said were the selfless virtues of democracy.He was forced to pause early in his speech when a heckler interrupted to demand why he had not declared a climate emergency, according to reporters in the auditorium.“If you shush up, I will meet with you immediately after this, OK?” the president responded. He then added pointedly: “Democracy never is easy – as you just demonstrated.”Referring to Trump by name just once in his half-hour speech, Biden nevertheless set out to contrast democratic norms and traditions with conduct that appeared to characterize his predecessor.Democracy, he said, “means rule of the people, not rule of the monarchy, not rule of money, not rule of the mighty.“Regardless of party, that means free and fair elections, respecting the outcome, win or lose. It means you cannot love your country only when you win.“Democracy means rejecting and repudiating political violence. Regardless of party, such violence is never, never, never acceptable in America. It’s undemocratic and it must never be normalized to gain political power.”The last comments were an apparent reference to the attack on Capitol Hill on January 6 when a Trump-inspired mob tried to stop the ratification of Biden’s presidential election victory by the US congress.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDespite Trump’s failure to overturn the 2020 election result, Biden warned that the danger had not passed. “Today, democracy is still at risk. This is not hyperbole. It’s a simple truth,” he said.The threat of violence continued unabated, he said, most recently aimed at general Mark Milley, the chair of the US armed forces joint chiefs of staff, whom Trump recently said in a social media post was guilty of “treason”.“Frankly, these MAGA extremists have no idea what the hell they’re talking about,” Biden said.The pro-democracy speech was delivered at an event honoring the memory of McCain, one of Biden’s political adversaries and twice a GOP presidential candidate, who frequently criticized Trump before his death in 2018.Biden depicted his relationship with McCain as a fitting paean to American democracy because the two men frequently engaged in across-the-aisle bipartisan cooperation when they were US senators despite being from different parties, a feature the president said the character of today’s Republican party has all but precluded.“There is no doubt that today’s Republican party is driven and intimidated by MAGA extremists,” he said. “Their extreme agenda, if carried out, would fundamentally alter the institutions of American democracy as we know it.”Biden has reportedly been regularly portraying Trump as a threat to democracy to donors at events to raise funds for next year’s election. Thursday’s speech was the first time he had done so publicly since before last year’s congressional mid-term elections and indicated that he intended to make the theme a central presidential campaign issue. More

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      in US Politics

      Senate debates measure to prevent shutdown that McCarthy said he would not consider – as it happened

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      From 4h agoThe House oversight committee’s impeachment hearing is now taking a short break, so let’s tune into the Senate, which just voted to begin debate on a measure that would fund the federal government till 17 November, and prevent the shutdown that will otherwise begin on Sunday:However, House speaker Kevin McCarthy said yesterday he would not consider the legislation, assuming the Senate approves it, instead opting to move ahead with passing longer-term funding measures. The problem with McCarthy’s strategy is it does not appear to be sufficient to stop the government from shutting down, and the bills will likely take time to be approved by both chambers of Congress.The House oversight committee held its first hearing in the impeachment inquiry of Joe Biden, the latest step in a months-long effort investigating the president and his son Hunter Biden’s business dealings that has yet to produce substantial evidence of wrongdoing.Here’s some analysis from our colleague Sam Levine:
      Despite investigating Biden for months, Republicans on Thursday largely focused on the financial dealings by Hunter Biden, using innuendos and the suggestion of potential criminal activity to recommend that further investigation was necessary. The strategy appeared to be to lay the groundwork to justify a longer fishing expedition.
      Meanwhile, a shutdown loomed even closer, with Democrats and Republicans nowhere closer to an agreement on how to keep the government funded. As the Senate moved forward with a stopgap measure to avert a shutdown, far-right members of the House kept on with their plan to pass a series of appropriation bills that wouldn’t actually stop a shutdown. House leaders are hoping that moving forward with these appropriations bills will cajole the hard-right and convince them to back a House-crafted continuing resolution to temporarily fund the government.Finally, the various legal cases against Donald Trump moved forward.
      A New York appeals court has denied Trump’s bid to delay a fraud trial set for Monday. This will allow the case to proceed two days after a judge ruled that Trump and his company routinely and repeatedly deceived banks, insurers and others by massively overvaluing assets and exaggerating his net worth on paperwork. The civil lawsuit is brought by Letitia James, New York’s attorney general.
      The federal judge presiding in Donald Trump’s criminal case over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results rejected his request that she recuse herself on Wednesday.US district judge Tanya Chutkan ruled that the former president failed to show her previous comments about his role in the January 6 Capitol attack meant she could not be impartial.
      – Guardian staffHere’s another sign that the Senate’s efforts to pass a short term measure averting shutdown may not get far …Twenty-seven House Republicans, including the chair of the Freedom Caucus are asking speaker Kevin McCarthy to confirm that he plans to pass 12 individual appropriations bills that hard-right members are pushing before even considering the short term measure.A New York appeals court has denied Donald Trump’s bid to delay a fraud trial set for Monday.This will allow the case to proceed two days after a judge ruled that Trump and his company routinely and repeatedly deceived banks, insurers and others by massively overvaluing assets and exaggerating his net worth on paperwork. The civil lawsuit is brought by Letitia James, New York’s attorney general.James is seeking at least $250m in penalties and a ban on Trump doing business in New York.Speaking to his Democratic Senate colleagues in a private meeting, New Jersey’s Bob Menendez again refused to resign despite his indictment on corruption-related charges last week, CNN reports:Prosecutors have alleged Menendez accepted bribes in the form of cash and gold bars from people connected to the Egyptian government, and more than a dozen Democratic senators have called for him to step down, including New Jersey’s Cory Booker.The decision by Menendez, who pleaded not guilty to the charges on Wednesday, is unlikely to affect the balance of power in the Senate. New Jersey leans Democratic, and while the Democrats control the chamber by a mere two seats, it is unlikely that Menendez would be replaced by a Republican.Republicans keep coming to Jonathan Turley, hoping the George Washington University law professor will offer his opinion on if Joe Biden should be impeached.But while he has said he believes Hunter Biden tried to sell access to his father, he has refused to offer his thoughts on if the president acted improperly.The latest Republican to try was Jim Jordan, who asked, “I want you to elaborate on something you said earlier … you said ‘confirmed corrupt influence peddling operation’. Can you elaborate on what you what you think that entails?”“It’s now in my view, at least largely unassailable, even people that have long been critical of some of the investigations have acknowledged recently, particularly after the Archer interview, that this was an influence peddling effort,” Turley said, referring to an interview with Biden’s former business partner Devon Archer.But Turley declined to go further than that:
      Whether it was an illusion or not is part of the task for the inquiry. But it seems to be abundantly clear from these emails and statements, and now sworn testimony, that Hunter Biden, his associates, were selling access to Joe Biden, and the question is whether any of that effort resulted in decisions and changes being made by Joe Biden and also the degree to which he knew of it, directed it, encouraged it. That’s all the subject of an inquiry that has to be determined. It can be disproven or proven, but that’s what lays ahead of you.
      “As a former director of emergency management, I know a disaster when I see one,” Democratic congressman Jared Moskowitz said, as he kicked off remarks in which he condemned the impeachment hearing.It’s what you would expect from a Joe Biden ally, but the more worrying aspect for Republicans is that many in their party feel the same way, as Punchbowl News reports:Marjorie Taylor Greene, one of the most extreme rightwing House lawmakers, took the hearing deep into conspiracy land by claiming Hunter Biden was engaged in sex trafficking.She then displayed a placard that appeared to show naked bodies, drawing a protest from Democrats.“Our colleague from Georgia has introduced before pornographic exhibits and displayed things that are really not suitable for children who might be watching,” Democratic ranking member Jamie Raskin said. “I would like the member to be instructed to not introduce any pornography today.”“A bathing suit is not pornography,” Greene shot back.“You are submitting a naked woman’s body,” Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said.Greene again insisted she was showing a picture of someone wearing a bathing suit, then asked Ocasi-Cortez, “Glasses, do you wear them or not?”“I have contacts,” the Democrat replied. “Congratulations,” was Greene’s response.Democrat Jasmine Crockett took issue with Republicans’ propensity for using the word “if”.Arguing that the GOP and their three witnesses had spent the hearing dabbling in hypotheticals, she asked Democratic witness Michael J. Gerhardt how many times they’d said “if”.Gerhardt replied that he’d been keeping a tally, and the GOP has used the word 35 times.“Thank you so much for that because, honestly, if they would continue to say if or Hunter and we were playing a drinking game, I would be drunk by now,” Crockett said.After a lengthy speech in which he referred to the impeachment inquiry against Joe Biden as a “disgrace,” Democrat Greg Casar declared, “It is my firm belief that Hunter and Trump should both face trial and, if guilty, be held accountable for the crimes they’ve been accused of.”Then he asked committee members to raise their hands if they agree. “Please raise your hand if you believe both Hunter and Trump should be held accountable for any of the indictments against them, if convicted by a jury of their peers,” Casar said.Democrats held their hands high, but few, if any, Republicans did the same.“I think it is worse than embarrassing that Republicans won’t raise their hands. They refuse to say that equal justice under the law should apply to everyone,” Casar said.“This double standard insults the institutions of Congress that people fought and died to build. This impeachment hearing clearly is not about justice. We cannot say equal justice under the law for everyone, except for the guy who holds the leash.”Throughout the House oversight committee’s impeachment hearing, which just resumed, the White House has repeatedly sent reporters this statement.So far, the Guardian has received the statement nine times, and each message has been essentially the same, with one exception: the time to the government’s funding expiring keeps counting down.In the most recent message, we are 57 hours and 55 minutes away.The House oversight committee’s impeachment hearing is now taking a short break, so let’s tune into the Senate, which just voted to begin debate on a measure that would fund the federal government till 17 November, and prevent the shutdown that will otherwise begin on Sunday:However, House speaker Kevin McCarthy said yesterday he would not consider the legislation, assuming the Senate approves it, instead opting to move ahead with passing longer-term funding measures. The problem with McCarthy’s strategy is it does not appear to be sufficient to stop the government from shutting down, and the bills will likely take time to be approved by both chambers of Congress.Reports are emerging that Republicans are not happy with how the first hearing of Joe Biden’s impeachment inquiry has gone today. The party’s operatives are dissatisfied with their three witnesses, who refused to definitively say the president broke the law, as well as oversight committee chair James Comer’s management of the session.Here’s more, from CNN and the Messenger: More

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      in US Politics

      Court rejects Trump effort to delay New York civil trial days after fraud ruling

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      An appeals court on Thursday rejected Donald Trump’s attempt to delay a civil trial in a lawsuit brought by New York’s attorney general, allowing the case to proceed days after a judge ruled the former president committed years of fraud and stripped him of some companies as punishment.The decision, by the state’s intermediate appellate court, clears the way for Judge Arthur Engoron to preside over a non-jury trial starting 2 October in Manhattan in the civil lawsuit brought by the New York attorney general, Letitia James.Trump is listed among dozens of possible witnesses, setting up a potential courtroom showdown with the judge. The fraud ruling on Tuesday threatens to upend his real estate empire and force him to give up prized New York properties such as Trump Tower, a Wall Street office building, golf courses and a suburban estate.Trump has denied wrongdoing, arguing that some of his assets are worth far more than what is listed on annual financial statements that Engoron said he used to secure loans and make deals. Trump has argued that the statements have disclaimers that absolve him of liability. His lawyers have said they would appeal.Messages seeking comment were left on Thursday with Trump’s lawyers and James’s office.In New York “these cases take many years to get to trial”, Trump wrote on Wednesday in a post on his Truth Social platform that appeared to conflate several of his legal foes. “My Political Witch Hunt case is actually scheduled to start on Monday. Nobody can believe it? This is a ‘Railroading’ job, pushed hard by the Radical Left DOJ for purposing Election Interference. A very SAD time for New York State, and America!”Trump’s lawyers had sought the trial delay before Engoron’s ruling, alleging the judge abused his authority and hindered their preparations by failing to comply with a June appeals court order that he narrow the scope of the trial based on the statute of limitations.They filed a lawsuit against Engoron on 14 September under a provision of state law known as Article 78, which allows people to challenge some judicial authority, and asked that the trial be postponed until that matter was resolved.An appeals court judge, David Friedman, granted an interim stay of the trial while the full appeals court considered the lawsuit on an expedited basis. Thursday’s ruling lifted the stay, allowing the trial to proceed as scheduled.Engoron ruled on Tuesday that Trump and his company, the Trump Organization, defrauded banks, insurers and others with annual financial statements that massively overvalued his assets and exaggerated his wealth. Engoron ordered some of Trump’s companies removed from his control and dissolved. James alleges Trump boosted his net worth by as much as $3.6bn.After the ruling, Trump’s lawyers again urged the appeals court to delay the trial.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThey argued in court papers that Engoron showed in his 35-page decision that he was intent on defying the appeals court by ignoring the statute of limitations issue. Engoron refused to dismiss any claims and based his fraud ruling partly on stale allegations that should have been thrown out, the Trump lawyer Clifford Robert said.Engoron’s fraud ruling, in a phase of the case known as summary judgment, resolved the key claim in James’s lawsuit, but six others remain. They include allegations of conspiracy, falsifying business records and insurance fraud. The judge will also decide on James’s request for $250m in penalties.James’s office argued Trump’s lawsuit against Engoron was a “brazen and meritless attempt” to usurp his authority and that any delay “would likely wreak havoc on the trial schedule” and could cause conflicts with Trump’s four pending criminal cases.The civil trial is the culmination of a years-long investigation by James’s office that saw Trump questioned under oath and millions of pages of documents change hands. Engoron has said it could take three months. More

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      Prosecutors accuse Trump of new effort to delay classified documents trial

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      Special counsel prosecutors accused Donald Trump of trying to delay the classified documents case to within three months of the 2024 election in a court filing late on Wednesday, suggesting his lawyers had attempted to weaponize the complex government secrecy rules to upend the trial schedule.The alleged delay effort from Trump – whose overarching legal strategy is to push back his criminal cases, potentially until after the election because he could have them dropped were he to win – centers on a proposal from his legal team to extend pre-trial deadlines.The Department of Justice prosecutors said in their filing that they were prepared to accept a short extension in the case after the presiding US district judge, Aileen Cannon, allowed Trump to ask for more time to prepare his next legal briefs following earlier delays in the pre-trial process.But they sharply objected to a proposal from Trump to delay not just one deadline but the entire pre-trial schedule, saying it amounted to a veiled attempt to re-litigate the trial date set for May 2023.“The Court invited the defendants to file a ‘motion to extend deadlines’,” the 15-page filing said. “Instead, defendant Donald J. Trump, joined by his co-defendants, filed a motion that threatens to upend the entire schedule established by the Court.”At issue is the complex nature of the US government’s own rules for using classified documents at trial, known as Cipa, short for the Classified Information Procedures Act that governs how the materials can be introduced in national security cases.Trump was charged with retaining national defense information – including US nuclear secrets and plans for US military retaliation in the event of an attack – and obstructing the government’s efforts to retrieve them, which is why the case is being governed by Cipa rules.The complaint from prosecutors in the office of Jack Smith, the special counsel, is that Trump’s lawyers are attempting to weaponize Cipa section 4, where the judge has to decide whether to allow the government to redact the classified documents that need to be turned over in discovery.Trump’s lawyers know the judge has to rule on the proposed redactions or substitutions before those classified documents can be turned over to them, prosecutors contended, and appeared to be trying to delay that entire process in order to push back the trial date further.The complaint sets up another significant early test for Cannon, a Trump appointee who came under widespread criticism last year during the criminal investigation after she issued a series of favorable decisions to the former president before her rulings were struck down on appeal.A spokesperson for the special counsel declined to comment. A Trump spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.At its core, prosecutors objected to Trump lawyers’ claim they could not start Cipa section 4 before they had reviewed all of the discovery, and their attempt to create a new Cipa section 4 process that involved sequential court filings from both sides instead of doing it simultaneously.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“The defendants provide no examples of where a Court has handled Section 4 briefing on a responsive briefing schedule as defendants propose – and the Government is aware of none,” the filing said of the proposal.Prosecutors argued that Trump only had a number of potential defenses to the charge that he retained national defense information, and his lawyers did not need to go through all of the discovery to come up with their broad defense arguments for the purpose of filing a section 4 brief.The defenses would come down to a handful of options, prosecutors argued: Trump was authorized to posses those documents, the documents did not contain national security information, the documents were not “closely held”, or that Trump did not wilfully retain them.“The nature of the material the Government will propose substituting and the limited redactions it will propose are unlikely to require finely detailed defense theories in order for the Court to determine the helpfulness of the material or the adequacy of a substitution,” the filing said.Prosecutors added that even if Trump did need to review more discovery than usual, most of the unclassified discovery had already been produced, including more than 200 witness interview transcripts as well as all of the surveillance footage at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club.The production of the classified discovery was also almost complete, the prosecutors said, and the only materials not turned over were five classified documents that were so highly sensitive that they could not be stored with the rest of the materials in a secure facility in Florida. More

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      Crosstalk and weak zingers hand win to absent Trump at Republican debate

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      It’s hard to pick the low point of a debate that dissolved frequently into incoherent crosstalk and included former vice-president Mike Pence, a Christian conservative who has famously said he would never dine alone with a woman other than his wife, attempting to make a joke about his sex life. (“My wife isn’t a member of the teachers union, but I gotta admit I’ve been sleeping with a teacher for 38 years,” he said.)In a debate conducted not far from Ronald Reagan’s grave, seven GOP presidential candidates shouted and sniped at each other for two hours without producing a single standout moment.Whether echoing Donald Trump’s rhetoric, or attempting to criticize him – Chris Christie dubbed him “Donald Duck” for choosing not to participate – none of the presidential hopefuls succeeded in upending the expectations of the race. Once again, Trump won the GOP debate without even having to show up.On substantive issues, the Republican candidates endorsed virulent transphobia, with entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy arguing that “transgenderism” is “a mental health disorder”. He said he wanted to end birthright citizenship, so that children born in the US to undocumented parents would not be given citizenship.Florida governor Ron DeSantis suggested he would address the fentanyl overdose crisis by using the US military against drug dealers in Mexico, and treat them like “foreign terrorist organizations”. He also did not believe Republican losses in the 2022 midterm elections should be blamed on the party’s embrace of extreme anti-abortion policies.Pence said his plan for preventing future mass shootings was not new gun control laws, but instituting “a federal expedited death penalty for anyone involved in a mass shooting”. (Research shows that many mass shooters are suicidal.)But some of the brutal Trumpian rhetoric seemed to have lost its punch. “Yes, we’ll build the wall,” DeSantis said, sounding almost bored.On Fox News after the debate, former Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway argued that “nobody made the case” that they had something different from Trump to offer voters. “They want to build a wall, they want to secure the border, they sound a lot like him,” she said.Trump’s rivals also tried, and largely failed, to produce memorable attack lines against each other.South Carolina senator Tim Scott tried to criticize former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley for a set of $50,000 curtains at her residence as UN ambassador. “Do your homework, Tim, because Obama bought those curtains,” Haley responded.Haley, in turn, savaged 38-year-old entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy for doing business in China and for joining the social media app TikTok, which Ramaswamy defended as a logical thing to do to help the party attract younger voters, even as he said that people under 16 should not be “using addictive social media”.“TikTok is one of the most dangerous social media apps that we could have,” Haley said. “Honestly, every time I hear you, I feel a little bit dumber for what you say.”“We can’t trust you,” she said. “We can’t trust you.”The reviews were mixed. New York Times political correspondent Maggie Haberman wrote early in the debate, “This is unwatchable.” But Fox News’ Laura Ingraham argued after the debate that Haley and Ramaswamy were the most promising candidates in two flavors – Ramaswamy as the populist, Haley as the more traditional conservative supported by GOP donors.Ramaswamy seemed at one point to flaunt his youth and inexperience, acknowledging that as the “new guy”, he expected that voters would see him as “a young man who’s in a bit of a hurry, maybe a little ambitious, bit of a know-it-all”.“I’m here to tell you, no, I don’t know it all. I will listen. I will have the best people, the best and brightest in this country, whatever age they are, advising me,” he promised.Scott earned applause from the audience and praise from Sean Hannity for saying that, while he had experienced discrimination as a Black man, “America is not a racist country.”At the end of the debate, moderator Dana Perino of Fox News asked the candidates: “Which one of you onstage tonight should be voted off the island?” Almost everyone refused to reply. When Christie did, he attacked the one person who wasn’t on that particular island.Donald Trump. More