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      Biden says landmark climate bill is winning against special interests – as it happened

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      From 2h agoPresident Joe Biden has started his speech marking the first anniversary of the Inflation Reduction Act, which he described as “one of the most significant laws … of taking on a special interest and winning”.Biden begins thanking Vice-President Kamala Harris and members of Congress who played a “pivotal” role in getting the bill passed. “Everyone was telling us there’s no possibility with the divided Congress the way it was,” he said.Here’s a recap of today’s developments:
      President Joe Biden used the first anniversary of his signature Inflation Reduction Act to pitch the landmark clean-energy law as an economic powerhouse to an American public that remains largely unaware of its contents. Speaking at a White House ceremony, Biden said the legislation has already created 170,000 clean energy jobs and will create some 1.5m jobs over the next decade, while significantly cutting the nation’s carbon emissions.
      Biden and first lady Jill Biden will travel to Maui on Monday to survey damage from the deadly wildfires that ravaged the resort town of Lahaina last week. The Bidens will meet with survivors of the fires, as well as first responders and other government officials, the White House said.
      Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney in Georgia who is prosecuting Donald Trump and 18 other allies over efforts to overturn the 2020 election, has proposed a trial commencement date of 4 March 2024 for Trump and his 18 co-defendants. That would have Trump in court mid-campaign for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
      Willis is facing a flurry of racist online abuse after the former president attacked his opponents using the word “riggers”, a thinly veiled play on the N-word. Calls to violence have proliferated across far-right sites since the charges against Trump in the Georgia case were made public on Monday night.
      Former vice-president Mike Pence said the Georgia election was not stolen in 2020 and that “no one is above the law” after Trump was indicted in the state’s election subversion case. Pence’s remarks were his first since the indictment was handed down on Monday, and mark a new full-court press in recent days surrounding his certification of the 2020 election results.
      Trump’s dubious defense that he was exercising his free-speech rights in response to a four-count federal criminal indictment charging him with pushing illegal schemes to overturn his 2020 election loss is prompting ex-Department of Justice officials and scholars to criticize such claims as bogus and as threats to the rule of law.
      Special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into Trump and his attempts to overturn the 2020 election obtained a trove of direct messages that the former president sent to others privately through his Twitter account, according to newly unsealed court documents. A court filing last week showed federal prosecutors obtained a search warrant in January directing Twitter to produce “data and records” related to Trump’s Twitter account as well as a non-disclosure agreement prohibiting Twitter from disclosing the search warrant. The social media platform delayed complying, prompting a federal judge to hold Twitter in contempt and fine it $350,000, the filing showed.
      Americans are deeply divided along party lines in their views of Trump’s actions in the most recent criminal cases brought against him, according to a new poll.
      We reported earlier that the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, has proposed that Donald Trump’s trial on election interference charges start on 4 March 2024.Willis’s suggested date is just one day before Super Tuesday, when 15 states are scheduled to hold primaries or caucuses to select their 2024 candidates.Willis submitted her recommendation in a court filing which also requested arraignment for the defendants charged in the Georgia election case to take place during the week of 5 September.Trump is set to be on trial in New York on 25 March 2024 on separate charges connected to a $130,000 payment he made to Stormy Daniels, a porn star, with whom he is alleged to have had an extramarital affair.He is also set to go on trial in Florida in May on charges of retaining classified documents after leaving office.The US has faced some tough times in recent years, Biden says. Despite this, he says the economy is stronger and better than any other industrial nation in the world right now.He accuses Republicans of having repeatedly tried to repeal key parts of the Inflation Reduction Act, and of taking credit for private investments and the jobs coming into their states. “That’s OK,” he says. “I’m proud of the historic law my administration passed, but it’s not about me. It’s about you.”
      Bidenomics is just another way of saying restore the American dream.
      Biden says the US is investing more than $50bn to build up resilience to the impacts of climate change. He vows to cut carbon pollution by half by 2030.The Inflation Reduction Act is helping families save thousands of dollars in energy bills every year, he says. Consumers will save an estimated $27bn in electric bills between now and 2030, he says.
      When I say climate means jobs, I mean good paying union jobs.
      Biden says his administration is also boosting the nation’s energy security after years in which China dominated the clean energy supply chains.He says the time is over in which the answer has been to find the cheapest labor, and then to import the product from abroad. “Not any more,” he says. “We are building it here and sending the product over here.”The Inflation Reduction Act is projected to help triple wind power and increase solar power eightfold by 2030, he says.Biden says the Inflation Reduction Act is bringing jobs back to the US.
      We’re leaving nobody behind. We’re investing in all of America, in the heartland and coast to coast.
      The Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, has proposed a trial commencement date of 4 March 2024 for Donald Trump and his 18 co-defendants in the Georgia election interference case.Willis also asked to schedule arraignments for the defendants for the week of 5 September, according to a court filing.Biden says more jobs have been created in the two years since he took office than any administration has in a single four-year term.The US has more jobs than before the pandemic, he says, and workers are finding better, higher-paying and higher-satisfaction jobs.Meanwhile, unemployment and inflation are down, he says. He attributes inflation falling to “corporate profits coming back down to earth”.President Joe Biden has started his speech marking the first anniversary of the Inflation Reduction Act, which he described as “one of the most significant laws … of taking on a special interest and winning”.Biden begins thanking Vice-President Kamala Harris and members of Congress who played a “pivotal” role in getting the bill passed. “Everyone was telling us there’s no possibility with the divided Congress the way it was,” he said.As we wait for Joe Biden to take the stage, here is some lunchtime reading on the Georgia election investigation.As part of Georgia district attorney Fani Willis’s delivery of a 41-count indictment against former president Donald Trump and 18 others, the racketeering charge also lists 30 “unindicted co-conspirators”.Here is the Guardian’s explainer on those individuals and their involvement in the alleged 2020 presidential election fraud:President Joe Biden is set to deliver an address at approximately 2.30pm on the anniversary of the Inflation Reduction Act.We will bring you the latest updates of Biden’s remarks.It is the nature of conspiracy theories to turn tragedy into grist, to transform grief and human suffering into an abstract game. The latest horrifying example came out of news late July that Barack Obama’s chef Tafari Campbell had drowned in the waters off Martha’s Vineyard.What was a terrible accident and a tragic loss for Campbell’s family and friends was almost immediately seized upon by the paranoid corners of the internet as proof that somehow Barack and Michelle Obama had been involved in an assassination.It was not the first time that conspiracists have seized on a senseless death as proof of a deeper plot: the 1993 suicide of Vince Foster, lawyer in the Clinton White House, and the murder of the DNC staffer Seth Rich during the 2016 presidential campaign were both used as proof of a “Clinton body count” by the right wing, a playbook that was immediately resurrected as news of Campbell’s death broke. The difference was that those earlier conspiracy theories were focused almost entirely on the Clintons, while the current iteration is far more diffuse and its targets far more wide-reaching.Campbell’s death, these conspiracists claim, is not just proof of the Obamas’ criminality but of a massive network of treasonous child sex traffickers – an elaborate and convoluted narrative all too well known to us now as QAnon. QAnon appeared in 2017 and quickly spread through the far right, before beginning to wane in the wake of Joe Biden’s inauguration.But it hasn’t disappeared entirely, and understanding the conspiracy theory’s rise and fall – and the awful legacy it has left us – reveals a great deal about the modern landscape of partisan paranoia. It also offers some clues on how best to fight back.Read the full story here.Donald Trump is testing the limits of what the federal judge presiding over his 2020 election subversion case will tolerate after warning the former president against making inflammatory remarks.US district court judge Tanya Chutkan last week admonished Trump against violating the conditions of his release put in place at his arraignment, warning that inflammatory remarks from the former president would push her to schedule the trial sooner.Trump immediately tested that warning by posting on Truth Social messages that largely amplified others criticizing Chutkan. “She obviously wants me behind bars. VERY BIASED & UNFAIR,” Trump wrote on Monday.Trump has waged a similarly defiant campaign against others involved in criminal cases against him, including special counsel Jack Smith and Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis, the New York Times reported.
      Some lawyers have said that if Mr. Trump were an ordinary citizen issuing these attacks, he would be in jail by now. The question is whether Mr. Trump will face consequences for this kind of behavior ahead of a trial.
      ‘He is absolutely in my view testing the judge and testing the limits, almost daring and taunting her,’ said Karen Agnifilo, who has a three-decade legal career, including as the chief assistant in the Manhattan district attorney’s office. Ms. Agnifilo added that Mr. Trump is so far benefiting from his status as a candidate for office, facing fewer repercussions from the judges in the cases than other vocal defendants might.
      Trump could be found in violation of the conditions of his release, which could entail a fine or even being sent to jail, the report writes.Calls to violence have proliferated across far-right sites since the charges against Donald Trump in the Georgia case were made public on Monday night.Several Gab posts reproduced images of nooses and gallows and called for Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney in Georgia, and grand jurors who delivered the charges to be hanged. And posts on Patriots.win combined the wordplay with direct calls to violence.Earlier this month, Willis wrote to Fulton county commissioners and judges to warn them to stay vigilant in the face of rising tensions ahead of the release of the indictment. She told them that she and her staff had been receiving racist threats and voicemails since she began her investigation into Trump’s attempt to subvert the election two years ago. She said:
      I guess I am sending this as a reminder that you should stay alert over the month of August and stay safe.
      As Willis’s investigation approached its climax, Trump intensified his personal attacks on her through social media. He has accused her of prosecutorial misconduct and even of being racist herself.Willis has rebuffed his claims as “derogatory and false”.Trump has also unleashed a barrage of vitriol against Jack Smith, the special counsel who earlier this month brought four federal charges against Trump over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Trump has referred to the prosecutor, who is white, as “Deranged Jack Smith”.The judge in the federal case, Tanya Chutkan, has warned him to be careful not to make inflammatory public comments about the proceedings, saying she would “take whatever measures are necessary” to prevent intimidation of witnesses or contamination of the jury pool.Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney in Georgia who is prosecuting Donald Trump and 18 other allies over efforts to overturn the 2020 election, is facing a flurry of racist online abuse after the former president attacked his opponents using the word “riggers”, a thinly veiled play on the N-word.Hours after Willis had released the indictments on Monday night, Trump went on his social media platform Truth Social calling for all charges to be dropped and predicting he would exonerated. He did not mention Willis by name, but accused prosecutors of pursuing the wrong criminal targets.“They never went after those that Rigged the Election,” Trump wrote.
      They only went after those that fought to find the RIGGERS!
      Willis is African American. So too are the two New York-based prosecutors who have investigated Trump, the Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg who indicted him in April over alleged hush-money payments, and Letitia James, the state attorney general who is investigating Trump’s financial records.Trump’s allusion to the racial slur was immediately picked up by his supporters on far-right platforms including Gab and Patriots.win. The sites hosted hundreds of posts featuring “riggers” in their headlines in a disparaging context.The word has also been attached to numerous social media posts to Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss. The two Black poll workers from Atlanta were falsely accused by some of the 19 defendants in the Fulton county case of committing election fraud during the 2020 vote count, and the indictment accuses Trump allies of harassing them.The attorney representing Donald Trump in his Georgia case once donated to the campaign of Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney who filed charges against the former president on Monday.Drew Findling, who is on the team of lead Trump attorneys fighting against Rico charges in Georgia, has backed several Democrats, including donating $1,440 to Willis’ successful primary campaign in July 2020, Federal Election Commission records obtained by Rolling Stone reveal.Findling also donated $8,400 to Joe Biden’s winning campaign, records show.Findling is an attorney who has represented rap artists like Gucci Mane, Migos and Cardi B. He also has tweeted critically of Trump, calling him in 2018 “the racist architect of fraudulent Trump University”. More

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      Trump is undermining the entire US judicial system with another big lie | Robert Reich

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      Not content with trying to destroy America’s trust in the US election system with his big lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him, Donald Trump is now trying to destroy America’s trust in the US judicial system with another big lie.The second big lie is that judges, prosecutors, witnesses and juries are corruptly prosecuting Trump as a means of keeping him from being re-elected.Late on Monday, following a two-and-a-half-year investigation by the Fulton county, Georgia, district attorney, Fani Willis, a grand jury there charged the former president and 18 others with criminally seeking to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 victory in Georgia.This fourth indictment marks another step in the US’s slow but steady process of criminal justice. It is another illustration that no one is above the law.Willis and her staff deserve the nation’s thanks, as do special counsel Jack Smith and his staff at the justice department, who have brought evidence to other grand juries of Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election nationwide and to steal secret documents.None of this is easy work under the best of circumstances. With a rogue former president fanning the flames of anger and recrimination, the work is also potentially dangerous.Trump has called Willis “corrupt”, and worse. He has called Smith “deranged”, among many other epithets and baseless charges. He has leveled similar charges against judges who have already been assigned to hear the cases against him.We know all too well of the violent proclivities of a subset of Trump supporters. His wild statements endanger people. Willis and her staff have already been threatened, as has Smith, and potential witnesses.On Monday morning, for example, before the Georgia grand jury even met, Trump posted that he “had been reading reports” that former Georgia lieutenant governor Jeff Duncan would be testifying before the grand jury.Trump then charged that Duncan “was, right from the beginning of this Witch Hunt, a nasty disaster for those looking into the Election Fraud that took place in Georgia. He refused having a Special Session to find out what went on … and fought the TRUTH all the way.”Was Duncan intimidated by Trump’s post when he testified on Monday? Did he alter or downplay his testimony out of fear of retribution by a Trump supporter?We may never know. But the mere possibility of intimidation is itself troubling.Trump’s conditions of release at his arraignment in Washington earlier this month included a vow – which Trump swore to uphold – that he would not intimidate or harass witnesses and officers of the court or threaten the administration of justice.Yet Trump has not ceased posting inflammatory invective against potential witnesses, against potential jurors in Washington DC, New York and Georgia, against judges who have been assigned to hear the cases against him, and against Willis, Smith and other prosecutors.The possibility that his threats might silence potential witnesses, or that his rants might intimidate jurors, prosecutors and judges, cannot be dismissed. It is incumbent on the courts to stop Trump, even if it requires revoking his release from jail pending his trials.Trump’s invective is also having a more insidious effect. By casting the criminal justice system as corrupt and partisan – as part of a conspiracy to prevent him from being re-elected – Trump is undermining public trust in that system.Republican members of Congress have joined Trump in charging that Democrats have “weaponized” the prosecutions against him, even though those prosecutions come through grand juries composed of average citizens.More than half of Republicans – including 77% of self-identified Maga Republicans – say the indictments and investigations against Trump are an attack on people like them, according to a CBS News/YouGov poll taken soon after the most recent indictment.“I AM BEING ARRESTED FOR YOU,” Trump posted in all caps on 3 August, the day of his indictment in Washington for seeking to overthrow the 2020 election.“I’m being indicted for you,” Trump said in June, after being charged with retaining government secrets.A century ago, the world witnessed fascist leaders who sought to fuse their identities with their followers while sowing distrust in all other institutions, so that followers lost their capacities for independent thought and accepted whatever the leaders said as truth.If a substantial portion of the American public comes to believe that the judges, juries and prosecutors seeking to hold Trump accountable for trying to overturn the 2020 election are part of the same trumped-up plot to keep him from becoming president, the US’s 244-year experiment in self-government is seriously jeopardized.Trump’s second big lie is almost as dangerous to the future of American democracy, and to the rest of the world that looks to the US for leadership, as was his first.The second big lie should be understood as an extension of Trump’s attempted coup.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com More

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      Giuliani championed organised crime act Rico. Now he’s charged under it

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      Rudy Giuliani has dined out for years on his aggressive use of Rico, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, which he wielded with dramatic effect against New York mobsters in the 1980s.For his pains, he was granted an award by the Italian government. Later, as New York City mayor, he turned his use of the anti-racketeering law into a vote-getter, presenting himself as the hero of Rico.As an in-joke, he handed the keys of the city to the cast of the Sopranos. Then he went on Saturday Night Live and bragged about “sticking it to organised crime”.He may not be laughing so loudly now.On Monday night Giuliani, Donald Trump and 17 other co-defendants were slapped with organised crime charges in Georgia under the state’s Rico law, for allegedly having been part of a vast conspiracy to overturn the 2020 presidential election. The hero of Rico had been hoist with his own petard.The grand jury indictment charges all of the 19 co-defendants, Giuliani included, with “racketeering activity” in Georgia and other states. It alleges that they acted together as a “criminal organisation” which engaged in illegal activities including forgery, filing false documents and conspiracy to defraud the state.The irony that Fani Willis, the district attorney of Fulton county who is leading the prosecution, chose to hit the hero of Rico with a Rico rap has not been lost on Giuliani watchers. Appointed as US attorney for the southern district of New York in 1983, he did not so much invent the anti-racketeering law, which was enacted in 1970, as become an early adopter in its use against organised crime.His most famous case, the 1986 prosecution known as the “commission” case, targeted eight defendants at the very top of one of the most powerful New York mafia families. “The verdict reached today has resulted in dismantling the ruling council of La Cosa Nostra,” Giuliani said after the convictions were secured in a 10-week trial.His victory demonstrated the huge potential of Rico as a prosecutorial tool against crime gangs. Instead of the traditional approach of picking out individual foot soldiers, one arduous case at a time, Rico allowed prosecutors to take out the entire upper leadership of the criminal enterprise in a single devastating blow.Giuliani may well be ruing his much-vaunted success. The “commission” case put Rico on the map, and since 1986 it has spread widely at both a federal level and across state jurisdictions – Georgia included.The Fulton county indictment makes a specific point of highlighting aspects of Giuliani’s behavior in the thick of the 2020 election that it alleges amounted to racketeering. It recounts some of the more lurid lies that he disseminated in front of the Georgia lawmakers in an attempt to persuade them to subvert Joe Biden’s electoral victory in the state.The falsehoods included his claim that 10,315 dead people had voted in the presidential election; that fraudulent ballots had been counted five times in a counting center; and that two poll workers, Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss, had passed around USB ports “as if they’re vials of heroin or cocaine” seeking to infiltrate the voting machines.In July, Giuliani admitted in court that his comments about Freeman and Moss were false. Moss testified to the January 6 committee that the supposed USB ports she had exchanged with her mother were in fact ginger mints.The indictment presents all these incidents not just as lies, but as the actions of a member of a criminal racketeering enterprise, designed to further the conspiracy and achieve its goal of keeping Trump in the White House despite his electoral defeat. That Giuliani should have exposed himself to a Rico prosecution in this way is puzzling to those who have followed his legal career.“Of all the defendants, Giuliani knows Rico better than anyone, he lived with it for decades,” said Michael Discioarro, a former prosecutor in the Bronx. “Rudy knows darn well where the line is drawn, and it’s surprising to me that he even put himself in that position.” More

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      Trump prosecutor Fani Willis faces racist abuse after indicting ex-US president

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      Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney in Georgia who is prosecuting Donald Trump and 18 other allies over efforts to overturn the 2020 election, is facing a flurry of racist online abuse after the former president attacked his opponents using the word “riggers”, a thinly veiled play on the N-word.Hours after Willis had released the indictments on Monday night, Trump went on his social media platform Truth Social calling for all charges to be dropped and predicting he would exonerated. He did not mention Willis by name, but accused prosecutors of pursuing the wrong criminal targets.“They never went after those that Rigged the Election,” Trump wrote. “They only went after those that fought to find the RIGGERS!”Willis is African American. So too are the two New York-based prosecutors who have investigated Trump, the Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg who indicted him in April over alleged hush-money payments, and Letitia James, the state attorney general who is investigating Trump’s financial records.Trump’s allusion to the racial slur was immediately picked up by his supporters on far-right platforms including Gab and Patriots.win. The sites hosted hundreds of posts featuring “riggers” in their headlines in a disparaging context.The word has also been attached to numerous social media posts to Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss. The two Black poll workers from Atlanta were falsely accused by some of the 19 defendants in the Fulton county case of committing election fraud during the 2020 vote count, and the indictment accuses Trump allies of harassing them.Calls to violence have proliferated across far-right sites since the charges were made public on Monday night. Several Gab posts reproduced images of nooses and gallows and called for Willis and grand jurors who delivered the charges to be hanged. And posts on Patriots.win combined the wordplay with direct calls to violence.Earlier this month, Willis wrote to Fulton county commissioners and judges to warn them to stay vigilant in the face of rising tensions ahead of the release of the indictment. She told them that she and her staff had been receiving racist threats and voicemails since she began her investigation into Trump’s attempt to subvert the election two years ago.“I guess I am sending this as a reminder that you should stay alert over the month of August and stay safe,” she said.As Willis’s investigation approached its climax, Trump intensified his personal attacks on her through social media. He has accused her of prosecutorial misconduct and even of being racist herself.Willis has rebuffed his claims as “derogatory and false”.Trump has also unleashed a barrage of vitriol against Jack Smith, the special counsel who earlier this month brought four federal charges against Trump over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Trump has referred to the prosecutor, who is white, as “Deranged Jack Smith”.The judge in the federal case, Tanya Chutkan, has warned him to be careful not to make inflammatory public comments about the proceedings, saying she would “take whatever measures are necessary” to prevent intimidation of witnesses or contamination of the jury pool. More

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      What to know about the 30 unindicted co-conspirators in Georgia election investigation

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      The Georgia district attorney Fani Willis delivered an extensive 41-count indictment against former president Donald Trump and 18 others over their plot to subvert the 2020 US presidential election, unsealed late on Monday night. While each defendant faces a different list of charges, all 19 have been charged with racketeering in violation of Georgia’s powerful Rico (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) Act, which carries a sentence of five to 20 years.The racketeering charge also lists 30 “unindicted co-conspirators”, as participants in the “criminal enterprise in Fulton county, Georgia, and elsewhere”.Willis did not charge the 30 unnamed co-conspirators in her investigation, but that doesn’t mean they can never face penalties for their involvement in the election fraud plot to keep Trump in power.Here’s what to know about the 30 unnamed co-conspirators.13 unnamed Georgia Republican electorsDavid Shafer, Cathy Latham and Shawn Still are the three fake electors – out of 16 total – that are named as defendants in Willis’s indictment, charged with racketeering and other felonies. But the other 13 appear to be listed among the unnamed co-conspirators: “Individual 2, Individual 8, Individual 9, Individual 10, Individual 11, Individual 12, Individual 13, Individual 14, Individual 15, Individual 16, Individual 17, Individual 18, and Individual 19.”On 14 December 2020, the 16 Republican electors had met to cast fraudulent votes for Trump by signing a document titled “CERTIFICATE OF THE VOTES OF THE 2020 ELECTORS FROM GEORGIA’’ that declared a Trump victory, falsely claiming that they were the “duly elected and qualified Electors” from the state. They then mailed that document, attempting to file it in a Georgia district court.According to the indictment, the fake electors committed three felony offenses, including: impersonating a public officer, forgery in the first degree, and false statements and writings; and they attempted to commit a fourth felony offense of filing false documents, according to the unsealed indictment.Individual 3: references point to Trump adviser Boris EpshteynReferences to “Individual 3” within Willis’s indictment point to Boris Epshteyn, a political consultant and adviser to Trump, as one of the unindicted co-conspirators who aided the plot to subvert the election.Epshteyn, who is also believed to be one of the six co-conspirators in the federal investigation into Trump’s January 6 involvement by Jack Smith, attended a 19 November 2020 press conference on behalf of the Trump campaign along with Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis and Sidney Powell where they made false statements of election fraud.Epshteyn was also copied on previously reported emails that detail parts of the fake electors scheme, which the Willis indictment identifies as being received by Individual 3.Individual 4: references point to Robert Sinners, Trump 2020 campaign election day operations officialDavid Shafer sent a previously reported email to Robert Sinners on 20 November 2020, asking him to help Georgia bail bondsman Scott Hall “as needed”, which matches a reference involving “Individual 4” from the Willis indictment. Individual 4 was also copied on a number of messages asking for help with the 16 Georgia Republican electors scheme on 14 December 2020, to “avoid drawing attention” and ensure everything went according to plan.From the indictment: “On or about the 20th day of November 2020, DAVID JAMES SHAFER sent an e-mail to unindicted co-conspirator Individual 4, whose identity is known to the Grand Jury, and other individuals. In the e-mail, DAVID JAMES SHAFER stated that SCOTT GRAHAM HALL, a Georgia bail bondsman, “has been looking into the election on behalf of the President at the request of David Bossie” and asked unindicted co-conspirator Individual 4 to exchange contact information with SCOTT GRAHAM HALL and to “help him as needed.” This was an overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy.”Sinners sent the 14 December 2020 email referenced in the Willis indictment to Michael Roman and others saying: “All votes cast, paperwork complete, being mailed now. Ran pretty smoothly” which was previously presented by the House January 6 select committee.OthersIndividual 1: discussed with Trump on 31 October 2020 a draft speech for a widely televised 4 November 2020 news conference during which Trump falsely declared victory.Individuals 5 and 6: met with a group of Pennsylvania legislators at the White House on 25 November 2020 along with Trump, Mark Meadows, Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis to discuss holding a special session of the Pennsylvania general assembly.They also met with Arizona legislators, along with Giuliani and Ellis, on 30 November 2020 where the two Trump attorneys requested the Arizona legislators to unlawfully appoint Republican electors from their state.Individual 7: ‘Electors Whip Operation’Assisted with the fake electors scheme in six states – Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.This person is probably among a group of individuals associated with the Trump campaign whom Mike Roman enlisted to participate in his “Electors Whip Operation” – who kept track of Trump electors. That team included G Michael Brown, Peter McGinnis, James Fitzpatrick, Shawn Flynn, Jesse Law, Thomas Lane, Valerie Phillips McConahay, Robert Sinners and Ryan Terrill, as revealed by the House January 6 select committee.Individual 20: met with Trump, Giuliani, Powell and others at the White House where they “discussed certain strategies and theories intended to influence the outcome of the November 3, 2020, presidential election, including seizing voting equipment and appointing SIDNEY KATHERINE POWELL as special counsel with broad authority to investigate allegations of voter fraud in Georgia and elsewhere”. While the individual’s identity is unclear, the 18 December 2020 meeting was infamously “unhinged” as Trump and his allies screamed at White House aides who pushed back against their plan to overturn the election. Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser, and Patrick Byrne, the former CEO of Overstock.com, were among the Trump allies at that meeting.Individuals 21 and 22: copied on a 21 December 2020 email from Sidney Powell to the chief operations officer of SullivanStrickler LLC, who instructed him that they were to “receive a copy of all data” obtained by SullivanStrickler LLC from Dominion Voting Systems equipment in Michigan.Individual 23: Participated in a four-way phone call with Harrison Floyd, Trevian Kutti and Steve Lee on 5 January 2021.Coffee county, Georgia, voting machine data schemeIndividual 24: traveled with Scott Hall to Coffee county, Georgia on 7 January 2021. That day, Hall, Cathy Latham and Misty Hampton sought to unlawfully access voting machines at the Coffee county board of elections & registration office.Individuals, 25, 26, 27, 28, and 29: unlawfully sought to access data from voting machines in Coffee county, Georgia, at various points in January and February 2021.Individual 30: involved with the unlawful effort to access voting machine data. More

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      Trump has 10 days to turn himself in as Georgia governor says 2020 election ‘not stolen’ – live

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      From 6m agoMark Meadows, one of 19 people including Donald Trump who were criminally charged over efforts to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia, has filed to move the case into federal court.Meadows served as White House chief of staff under Trump. His lawyers have filed the petition to go from state to the US district court for the northern district of Georgia, arguing for the switch based on the idea that the charges stem from Meadows conduct in his capacity as an officer of the federal government.Trump is expected to make a similar move, which would allow him to seek a potentially friendlier jury pool and the chance of landing a judge that he appointed.“Nothing Mr. Meadows is alleged in the indictment to have done is criminal per se: arranging Oval Office meetings, contacting state officials on the President’s behalf, visiting a state government building, and setting up a phone call for the President,” Terwilliger wrote in the filing.The filing also indicates that Meadows plans to file a motion to dismiss the state’s case.John Eastman, who is considered one of the main architects of Trump’s strategy to overturn the 2020 election, and is one of the defendants in the Georgia case, plans to fight the indictment, according to his lawyer.“This is a legal cluster-bomb that leaves unexploded ordinances for lawyers to navigate in perpetuity,” said Eastman’s attorney Harvey Silverglate, in a statement. “It goes hand-in-glove with the recent effort to criminalize lawful political speech and legal advice.”Eastman, an attorney himself, is also identified as a co-conspirator in the federal inquiry on the January 6 insurrection. He is facing disciplinary charges in the State Bar Court of California due his development of a dubious legal strategy to overturn the 2020 presidential election by having former vice president Mike Pence interfere in the election certification.The charges against Trump were brought via Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (Rico) Act, which essentially allows prosecutors to link together different crimes committed by different people and bring criminal charges against a larger criminal enterprise. The law requires prosecutors to show the existence of a criminal enterprise that has committed at least two underlying crimes.Prosecutors have long used the federal Rico Act to go after the mafia. But Georgia’s version is even more expansive than the federal statute. It allows prosecutors in the state to bring racketeering charges if a defendant attempts or solicits a crime, even if they don’t bring charges for those crimes themselves.In the indictment by the state of Georgia, the state wrote: “Trump and the other defendants charged in this indictment refused to accept that Trump lost, and they knowingly and willfully joined a conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the election in favor of Trump. That conspiracy contained a common plan and purpose to commit two or more acts of racketeering activity.”Read more:Advocacy groups are outraged after the Arkansas department of education warned state high schools not to offer an advanced placement course on African American history.The admonition from Arkansas education officials is the latest example of conservative lawmakers limiting education on racial history, sexual orientation and other topics they label as “indoctrination”.The Arkansas Education Association (AEA), a professional organization of educators in the state, said the latest decision is of “grave concern” to its members and other citizens worried about “the abandonment of teaching African American history and culture”.“Having this course pulled out from under our students at this late juncture is just another marginalizing move that has already played out in other states,” said a statement from AEA president April Reisma, which was shared with the Guardian.In a statement to the Guardian, NAACP president and chief executive officer Derrick Johnson called the decision “abhorrent” and an “attempt to strip high school students of an opportunity to get a jumpstart on their college degree”.“Let’s be clear – the continued, state-level attacks on Black history are undemocratic and regressive,” Johnson said.
      The sad reality is that these politicians are determined to neglect our nation’s youth in service of their own political agendas.
      President Joe Biden traveled to a manufacturing warehouse in Wisconsin on Tuesday where he delivered remarks on the Inflation Reduction Act, a major piece of economic legislation he signed into law a year ago.Wisconsin is among the key states where Biden needs to persuade voters that his policies are having a positive impact on their lives, but polls show that most people know little about the Act or what it does, AP reported.“It’s really kind of basic: we just decided to invest in America again,” Biden said. “That’s what it’s all about.”The president chose to ignore Donald Trump in his speech, but he made the economic case personal by directly challenging the state’s Republican senator Ron Johnson, who he said “believes outsourcing manufacturing jobs is a great thing”.
      Administration officials say the trip is aimed at recognizing the effects of the law, which passed Congress on party-line votes. According to the White House, in Wisconsin, private firms have committed more than $3 billion in manufacturing and clean energy investments since Biden was sworn into office.
      The Fulton county court clerk released a statement acknowledging that it had published on its website a document about Donald Trump being criminally charged.At about midday on Monday, a two-page docket report posted to the Fulton county court website indicated charges against Trump including racketeering, conspiracy and false statements. The appearance of the report set off a flurry of news media activity, but then the document vanished.The court clerk has now said it had been testing its system before the grand jury voted later in the day on whether to indict Trump.Alabama Republicans defended their decision not to create a second majority-Black district in a hearing before a panel of federal judges over the state’s redrawn congressional maps.State Republicans continue to resist court orders, including from the supreme court in June, to amend the congressional maps to give Black voters increased political power and representation.The three-judge panel, which blocked the use of the state’s old map last year, will decide whether to let Alabama’s new districts go forward or step in and draw new congressional districts for the state. The results of the extended court battle could also determine whether Democrats pick up another seat in Congress, where Republicans currently hold a slim majority.In a surprise June decision, the supreme court upheld the panel’s earlier finding that the state’s then map – which had one Black-majority district out of seven in a state where more than one in four residents is Black – likely violated the federal Voting Rights Act.In response to the ruling, Alabama Republicans boosted the percentage of Black voters in the majority-white second congressional district, now represented by Republican representative Barry Moore, from about 30% to 39.9%, failing to give Black voters a majority which would allow them to elect their candidate of choice.Read the full story here.Florida governor and Donald Trump’s leading rival for the GOP presidential nomination in most polls, Ron DeSantis, was critical of the Georgia indictment.Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, DeSantis said the indictment was “an example of this criminalization of politics. I don’t think that this is something that’s good for the country”.He also accused Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis of using an “inordinate amount of resources” on the Trump case while failing to tackle crime.Donald TrumpOf course, at the center of the criminal investigation is Donald Trump. On 2 January 2021, Trump phoned the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, pressuring him “to find 11,780 votes” – the number of ballots needed to overturn Biden’s victory in Fulton county. News reports of that hour-long phone call kicked off Willis’s investigation.He also directed Mike Pence, then the vice-president, to reject the electoral vote in Georgia and other states revealed to be involved in what is now known as the “fake electors” scheme.Trump is facing several other charges in different courts, including mishandling of classified documents, his role in the January 6 Capitol insurrection and hush money payments to an adult film actor.Rudy GiulianiGiuliani, a former Trump campaign attorney and New York mayor, repeatedly spewed false claims of election fraud in the months following Biden’s 2020 victory. That December, he met with Georgia lawmakers and spewed baseless claims of election fraud such as a conspiracy by voting machine manufacturers to flip votes from Trump to Biden. The Department of Justice and the House January 6 committee have also investigated Giuliani for his role in orchestrating the false electors scheme, where Trump allies in multiple states produced fake certificates saying he won the election. A watchdog group found Giuliani to be a “central figure”. A disciplinary panel has said Giuliani should be disbarred.Mark MeadowsServing as Donald Trump’s chief of staff during the 2020 election and its aftermath, Meadows was at the center of hundreds of messages about how to keep Trump in power, according to texts he turned over to the House January 6 select committee. Meadows was also on the infamous phone call Trump placed to Raffensperger demanding he “find 11,780 votes”. A judge ordered Meadows to testify in the Georgia election investigation – though Meadows had repeatedly tried to avoid doing so.Jenna EllisEllis, a Trump campaign attorney and former Colorado prosecutor, spread multiple statements claiming voter fraud during the 2020 election and sent at least two memos advising Mike Pence to reject Biden’s victory in Georgia and other states. She was ordered to appear before the special grand jury in 2022. Earlier this year, the Colorado supreme court censured Ellis for making false statements and she acknowledged making misrepresentations as part of the agreement.Kenneth ChesebroAlso known as “co-conspirator 5” in special counsel Jack Smith’s federal election fraud inquiry, Chesebro has been revealed to be one of the main architects of the fake electors scheme –– which he described as a “bold, controversial plan”. The New York Times obtained a copy of a memo from Chesebro to a Wisconsin attorney laying out a three-pronged plan to overturn election results in six states, including Georgia, and keep Trump in power. Willis subpoenaed Chesebro to appear before the special grand jury but the New York-based attorney moved to quash it.Sidney PowellAn attorney associated with Trump’s campaign after the 2020 election, Powell, who filed a lawsuit against Brian Kemp, the governor of Georgia, alleging voter fraud, is thought to be “co-conspirator 3” in the federal investigation by Jack Smith. Along with Rudy Giuliani, Powell appeared regularly on conservative news networks where she spewed baseless claims of election fraud, including foreign rigging of voting machines and was one of the most prominent names in the defamation case brought upon Fox News by Dominion Voting Systems, whose individual case against Powell is still pending.Jeffrey ClarkA former justice department attorney, Clark has been identified as “co- conspirator 4” in the federal January 6 investigation. Clark allegedly tried to coerce justice department officials to sign a letter to officials in several states. He drafted a letter to Georgia officials in late December 2020 falsely claiming the justice department had “identified significant concerns” that may have impacted election results in multiple states, including Georgia –– but it remained unsent. He also reportedly plotted with Trump to oust the acting attorney general, but failed.John EastmanThought to be one of the main architects of Trump’s strategy to overturn the 2020 election, Eastman – identified as “co-conspirator 2” in the federal January 6 inquiry – drafted a six-step plan that directed Mike Pence to reject Biden’s victory.These are the people involved in the high-profile election investigation that could have far-reaching implications for Donald Trump, who may well face jail time if convicted, and his chances of winning the Republican nomination in 2024.Fani WillisFulton county district attorney Fani Willis, a famously tough prosecutor against gangs and organized crime, is overseeing the election investigation, which she launched in 2021, just weeks after being sworn in. A career Atlanta-area criminal prosecutor, Willis has been known to aggressively use Rico, an anti-racketeering law that is stronger in Georgia than under federal statute.Trump and his lawyers have sought to disqualify Willis from carrying out the investigation, filing motions to do so in March and July. Trump branded Willis a “young, ambitious, Radical Left Democrat ‘Prosecutor’” in a Truth Social post last year. Willis, a Democrat, is the first Black woman to serve as Fulton county DA.Robert McBurneyThe Fulton county superior court judge Robert McBurney was selected to supervise the special grand jury that put together recommendations for Willis’s investigation into Trump’s behavior surrounding election results. McBurney released a partial version of the panel’s final report in February, keeping the majority of its findings under seal. Trump’s lawyers targeted McBurney, a former prosecutor, for approving Willis’s special grand jury request, asking that he disqualify her from the case.The grand juriesWillis requested a special grand jury, assembled last May to aid her investigation into Trump and his allies’ meddling with election results. After eight months and 75 witness interviews, the jurors compiled a report with recommendations for the case. The panel was dissolved in January. Afterward, the foreperson, Emily Kohrs, hinted they recommended more than a dozen indictments, drawing backlash for her media blitz.McBurney has empaneled two regular grand juries – and one is likely to consider charges against Trump and his allies.Treasury secretary Janet Yellen said she accidentally ate a “magic mushroom” while on a recent trip to China.Yellen visit to Beijing last month included a stop at a Yunnan restaurant chain, where she ate the local jian shou qing.“So I went with this large group of people and the person who had arranged our dinner did the ordering,” she told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Monday.
      There was a delicious mushroom dish. I was not aware that these mushrooms had hallucinogenic properties. I learned that later.
      She said she had “read that if the mushrooms are cooked properly, which I’m sure they were at this very good restaurant, that they have no impact.” She added:
      But all of us enjoyed the mushrooms, the restaurant, and none of us felt any ill effects from having eaten them.
      Joe Biden said he will travel to Hawaii to visit the devastation left behind by the country’s deadliest wildfires in over a century, killing at least 99 people and reducing neighborhoods to ash.“My wife, Jill, and I are going to travel to Hawaii as soon as we can,” Biden said in his first public comments on the disaster since late last week.
      I don’t want to get in the way – I’ve been to too many disaster areas, but I want to go and make sure we got everything they need. I want to be sure we don’t disrupt the ongoing recovery efforts.
      Deputy press secretary Olivia Dalton said earlier today that the White House was having “active conversations” about when the Bidens could visit.Biden’s remarks at a wind and electric power manufacturing plant in Milwaukee were his first comments on the Maui wildfires since last week, when he declared a federal emergency. The period of silence drew criticism from Republicans, including Donald Trump.Joe Biden’s landmark climate legislation has been “disappointing” and failed to deliver protections to car industry workers confronted by the transition to electric vehicles, according to the head of the US’s leading autoworkers union, which has pointedly withheld is endorsement of the president for next year’s election.The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), signed by Biden a year ago this week, has bestowed huge incentives to car companies to manufacture electric vehicles without any accompanying guarantees over worker pay and conditions, Shawn Fain, president of the United Auto Workers (UAW), told the Guardian.“So far it’s been disappointing. If the IRA continues to bring sweatshops and a continued race to the bottom it will be a tragedy,” Fain said.
      This is our generation’s defining moment with electric vehicles. The government should invest in US manufacturing but money can’t go to companies with no strings attached. Labor needs a seat at the table. There should be labor standards built in, this is the future of the car industry at stake.
      The UAW, which is based in the car-making heartland of Detroit and has around 400,000 members, has so far refused to endorse Biden for next year’s presidential election, a major political headache for a president who has called himself a “union guy” and counts upon organized labor as a key part of his base, particularly in crucial midwest states such as Michigan.The ire of unions has been a thorny problem in the Biden administration’s attempts to speed the proliferation of electric vehicles and cut planet-heating emissions from transportation, the largest source of US carbon pollution.Joe Biden is talking in Milwaukee at an Ingeteam factory, a company built on the drive for clean energy that manufactures onshore wind turbine generators.The US president is in the vital swing state of Wisconsin to talk about his “Bidenomics” policies to boost the embattled US middle class and US industries such as manufacturing, construction and semiconductor technology, especially those with strong union membership.He’s in Wisconsin on the eve of the anniversary of his signing into law a major bipartisan legislative plank, the healthcare, climate and tax package called the Inflation Reduction Act.The scene of Biden talking to crowds of union members cheering his touting of a “made in America” policy and green energy that he said has the potential to cheaper to power the US than fossil fuels provides a sharp contrast to his chief Republican rival for the White House, Donald Trump after the 2024 candidate hoping to return to the presidency was handed his fourth criminal indictment last night, in Georgia.Next week, the first Republican primary season debate will be held in Milwaukee.US president Joe Biden just stepped up to the podium to speak in Milwaukee. Union leaders and members are there and so are some of Wisconsin’s senior Democrats, the state governor Tony Evers, US Senator Tammy Baldwin and congresswoman Gwen Moore.After hailing his fellow Democrats, Biden is now lamenting the disastrous wildfires that have decimated parts of Maui in Hawaii.Biden said he wants to go there as soon as it’s feasible – “as soon as I can” – but isn’t rushing there immediately so as not to “get in the way”, as a presidential visit is always a huge project for any locality.Hello again, US politics live blog readers, it’s been a lively day so far as the ripples continue to spread from the late-night indictment unveiled in Georgia against Donald Trump and 18 codefendants, accusing them of an organized racket to overturn Trump’s defeat by Biden in one of the decisive state results of the 2020 presidential election.There will be a lot more news in the coming hours and we’ll continue to bring it to you as it happens. US president Joe Biden is about to speak in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.Here’s where things stand:
      Brian Kemp, the Republican governor of Georgia, responded to Donald Trump’s announcement that he would present an “irrefutable report” on election fraud in Georgia on Monday by saying: “The 2020 election in Georgia was not stolen.”
      Hunter Biden’s lead criminal defense attorney, Christopher Clark, asked a federal judge for permission to withdraw from the criminal case involving his client on the grounds he might be called to testify as a witness in future proceedings.
      Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, made a brief statement saying: “The most basic principles of a strong democracy are accountability and respect for the Constitution and rule of law. You either have it, or you don’t.”
      Carlos de Oliveira, the property manager of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, pleaded not guilty to multiple obstruction-related offenses in the case related to the former president’s alleged mishandling of classified documents.
      Republican politicians, including candidates for the presidency in 2024, are seeking to defend Donald Trump over the indictment in Georgia.
      Hillary Clinton said she did not “feel any satisfaction” about Donald Trump’s extreme legal predicament and instead felt “great profound sadness”.
      Donald Trump said he would present an “irrefutable report” on election fraud in Georgia on Monday at his private golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey.
      Yes. The US constitution does not prohibit anyone charged with a crime, nor anyone convicted of one, from holding office.The 14th amendment, however, does bar anyone who has taken an oath to protect the United States and engaged in “insurrection or rebellion” from holding office.Relying on that provision, a slew of separate civil lawsuits in state courts are expected in the near future to try to bar Trump from holding office. More

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      Georgia indictment lays out Trump election plot in all its shocking detail

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      There’s no other way to say it: the 98-page indictment handed down by a Fulton county grand jury on Monday represents the most aggressive effort to hold Donald Trump and allies accountable for their efforts to overturn the 2020 election.The document is staggering in its breadth and the ambition of its charges. The 41 counts of crimes in it, including 13 against Trump, detail the lies the former president and his co-defendants told the public about fraud to try and keep him in power. It doesn’t back away from charging Trump’s attorneys and inner circle with crimes for coordinating a plan to create slates of fake electors and to stop Congress from counting votes. Some of the state’s 16 fake electors themselves also face charges. And it also casts a wide net, not letting those who breached voting equipment and intimidated poll workers off the hook.Instead, the indictment tells perhaps the most comprehensive story to date of one of the most brazen efforts to date to subvert American democracy.Legally, the Georgia case may represent the biggest legal peril for Trump to date. If he wins the presidential election next year, Trump cannot pardon himself, something he could theoretically do if he is convicted on similar charges pending in federal court. In Georgia, a defendant must serve five years in prison before a pardon is even considered by the state board of pardon and paroles. Unlike many other states, the governor of Georgia does not have the ability to unilaterally pardon people.The focus of the indictment – Trump’s efforts to stay in power – is the same as the federal charges Jack Smith, the justice department special counsel, filed earlier this month. But the two cases are significantly different. Smith’s case focuses squarely on Trump and his specific efforts to overturn the election, leaving other co-conspirators unnamed and uncharged (for now). The Fulton county case, brought by Fani Willis, the district attorney, uses precise detail to place Trump at the center of a large criminal enterprise that includes nearly 50 people (19 of them are named, 30 are not).Of course, there is more of a risk to bringing a sprawling criminal indictment. The case is likely to be tied up in extensive procedural battles before even moving forward to a trial. Willis said Monday she intends to try all 19 defendants together, setting up a potential blockbuster, but complicated trial. Willis has not shied away from such challenges in the past, relying on the same Georgia racketeering statute at the heart of the Trump case to successfully get convictions against Atlanta teachers and is currently using them in a Rico case against the rapper Young Thug and the YSL gang.“Jack Smith seems to be on a mission to get this done and to focus on Donald Trump,” said Anthony Michael Kreis, a law professor at Georgia State University. The Georgia case, he said, was “very different”.“All of these actors are being held to account,” he said. “What might lack in efficiency and expediency in Georgia is made up for in the fact that I think Fani Willis is really trying to tell a narrative here about what these individuals did in her view to undermine and destroy American democracy.”That story, according to the indictment, began the morning after election day in 2020. Speaking at the White House, Trump lied about the election results. As votes were still being counted, Trump claimed there was “a fraud” on the American public and said “frankly, we did win this election”, he said. The speech is “Act 1” in the indictment – the start of the conspiracy to keep Trump in power.The indictment goes on to do something extraordinary – it translates lies that Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell told about the election into criminal acts. When Giuliani and Powell falsely claimed fraud at a press conference at the Republican National Committee headquarters, they were furthering a criminal conspiracy. When Giuliani appeared at a Georgia legislative hearing and lied about fraudulent ballots being cast, he made false statements, a crime in Georgia, the indictment says.In one of its most significant sections, the indictment also brings criminal charges against two people who sought to intimidate and harass Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, two Fulton county election workers who were at the center of false claims of fraud amplified by Giuliani. Both women faced vicious harassment after the 2020 election that upended their lives. The indictment details how Trevian Kutti, a former publicist for Kanye West and R Kelly, worked with two other men, Harrison Floyd and Stephen Lee, to try and pressure Freeman into confessing to voter fraud. Kutti showed up at Freeman’s doorstep, eventually met with her, and told her to confess to voter fraud or else people would come for her within 48 hours and she would go to jail.Willis’s decision to translate the episode into criminal charges is significant. It underscores the breadth with which Willis is framing the conspiracy – no episode is too tangential, or harebrained, to escape her scrutiny. It also amounts to the first time that anyone has faced criminal charges related to the harassment of Freeman and Moss, two Black women who have come to symbolize the human toll of Trump’s lies about the election.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWillis also doesn’t shy away from charging the cadre of lawyers who sought to provide legal cover for Trump with fringe ideas. Ken Chesebro, a little-known lawyer who authored a key memorandum laying out a strategy for fake electors, was charged with multiple crimes, including conspiracy to commit forgery, conspiracy to impersonate a public officer, and conspiracy to commit false statements and writings. Jeffrey Clark, a justice department official who tried to pressure superiors to send a letter claiming fraud in Georgia, was charged with multiple crimes. As does John Eastman, the lawyer who tried to provide a legal pretext for Congress to overturn the election.For the first time, a high-level White House aide, Mark Meadows, also faces criminal charges. The indictment cites multiple meetings Meadows had with state lawmakers across the country to get them to try and overturn the election results. It also cites a December meeting Meadows and Trump held with John McEntee, another White House aide, in which he and Trump requested McEntee prepare a memo outlining how to delay the counting and certification of electoral college votes. The document outlines Meadows presence on the telephone call in which Trump infamously pressured Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes” to overturn the election. In doing so, Trump and Meadows committed a felony by soliciting Raffensperger to violate his oath as a public officer.Lastly, Willis makes it clear the story of Trump’s subversion includes efforts by his allies to breach voting equipment. Similar to charges filed in Michigan earlier this month, this marks a significant attempt to hold Trump accountable for efforts to sow doubt about the actual machinery of elections. As Trump claimed fraud, an election official in Coffee county helped his allies gain unauthorized access to voting equipment. The information extracted was passed on to other election deniers who were trying to prove the outlandish idea that the equipment was rigged.While Willis’s indictment is complex and contains 161 overt acts, she boils down the heart of it before even listing the charges.“Defendant Donald John Trump lost the United States presidential election held on 3 November 2020. One of the states he lost was Georgia. Trump and the other defendants charged in this indictment refused to accept that Trump lost, and they knowingly and willfully joined conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the election in favor of Trump,” she says.While she goes on to list all of the complex crimes Trump and allies committed, many of the paragraphs in the indictment end the same way, reminding the public that each action was “an overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy”. More

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      Governor Brian Kemp tells Trump Georgia’s 2020 election ‘was not stolen’

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      Georgia’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp, insisted on Tuesday that the 2020 presidential election in his state “was not stolen” in an apparent defense of the latest criminal indictment of Donald Trump.Kemp, who has clashed frequently with the former president over his false claim the election was rigged, responded on Twitter to an earlier post on Truth Social from Trump announcing a press conference next week at which he promised to present “irrefutable” evidence of fraud.“The 2020 election in Georgia was not stolen. For nearly three years now, anyone with evidence of fraud has failed to come forward – under oath – and prove anything in a court of law,” Kemp wrote in his tweet.“Our elections in Georgia are secure, accessible, and fair and will continue to be as long as I am governor. The future of our country is at stake in 2024 and that must be our focus.”Kemp’s message was immediately endorsed by Chris Christie, the Republican former governor of New Jersey who is challenging Trump for the party’s 2024 presidential nomination.“This is a strong leader telling the truth. Others should try it,” Christie wrote on Twitter, taking his own dig at Trump’s honesty.Trump has previously railed against Kemp and Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, the recipient of his infamous phone call demanding officials “find” enough votes to nullify Joe Biden’s win.That January 2021 conversation is believed to have been a central component of the investigation by the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, that led to Trump’s Monday night indictment on charges including forgery and racketeering.Kemp’s tweet referred to numerous failed efforts by Trump’s legal team in Georgia to overturn the result following Biden’s victory there by fewer than 12,000 votes. A judge dismissed one lawsuit alleging that 147,000 illegitimate ballots were wrongly counted, and the state’s supreme court refused to hear an appeal.That lawsuit was supported by David Perdue, a Trump ally and former senator who challenged Kemp for their party’s gubernatorial nomination in 2022. Perdue’s defeat was widely regarded as a significant blow to Trump’s ongoing campaign to reverse his own loss.It is the second time in five days that Kemp has tweeted a message directed at Trump, having accused him last week of putting himself “ahead of the future of our country” by declining to pledge support to the eventual 2024 Republican presidential nominee.Trump has been equally critical of Kemp, the two having feuded since Trump blamed his 2020 humiliation in Georgia on the governor.Kemp is among a number of senior Republicans, including Christie and Asa Hutchinson, the former governor of Arkansas, who have urged the party to move on from Trump, the leading candidate for its 2024 presidential nomination.Analysts say Kemp’s style of conservative leadership offers a blueprint for the future if Trump’s grip on the party should loosen. More