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      With Trump in trouble, Republicans step up assault on DoJ and FBI

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      When Merrick Garland was nominated to the US supreme court by Barack Obama, Republicans refused to grant him a hearing. Now that Garland is the top law enforcement official in America, the party seems ready to give him one after all – an impeachment hearing.Republicans on Capitol Hill are moving up a gear in a wide-ranging assault on the justice department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation that would have been unthinkable before the rise of Donald Trump. The party that for half a century claimed the mantle of law and order has, critics say, become a cult of personality intent on discrediting and dismantling institutions that get in Trump’s way.“I often think, what would Richard Nixon say?” observed Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. “He was the original ‘law and order’ president, with that slogan. What would he think now the party is going after the primary institutions of law and order, at least at the federal level? The law and order party has become the paranoid party.”The trend, apparent for years, has become palpable since Republicans gained narrow control of the House of Representatives in January. Within a month they had set up a panel, chaired by Trump loyalist Jim Jordan, to investigate “the Weaponization of the Federal Government” and examine what they allege is the politicisation of the justice department and FBI against conservatives.Their frustrations intensified last month when Trump became the first former president to face federal criminal charges, over his alleged mishandling of classified documents. Far from condemning a potential law-breaker in their own ranks, nearly all Trump’s rivals for the presidential nomination in 2024 accused the FBI of political bias, with some even calling for its abolition and vowing to pardon him if elected.Many Republicans then spoke of a “two-tiered” justice system when Joe Biden’s son Hunter struck a plea deal with federal prosecutors over tax evasion and gun possession charges that will keep him out of prison. A former Internal Revenue Service (IRS) employee has alleged political interference in the investigation and accused Garland of failing to tell Congress the truth, a claim Garland denies.Some Republicans, especially on the far right, are now demanding Garland’s impeachment, a sanction that no cabinet official has suffered since 1876. Kevin McCarthy, the House speaker, told the conservative Fox News network recently: “Someone has lied here. If we find that Garland has lied to Congress, we will start an impeachment inquiry.”Meanwhile, Christopher Wray, the director of the FBI, is discovering that his status as a Trump appointee offers no immunity against the Republican onslaught.In May congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, a leading Trump ally, introduced articles of impeachment against him, claiming that “the FBI has intimidated, harassed, and entrapped American citizens that have been deemed enemies of the Biden regime” and that he “has turned the FBI into Joe Biden and Merrick Garland’s personal police force” with “Soviet-style tactics”.Last month the House oversight committee was poised to hold Wray in contempt until he agreed to let all its members review a 2020 document containing bribery allegations against Biden – allegations that Democrats say were examined and dismissed by the justice department during Trump’s presidency.Wray is now due to testify at a House judiciary committee hearing, chaired by Jordan, on Wednesday, with topics likely to include Trump’s indictment, Hunter’s plea deal and the special counsel John Durham’s criticism of the FBI’s Russia investigation.Greene has also introduced impeachment articles against Biden and other members of the cabinet and indicated that she intends to force floor votes on her resolutions. This would doubtless create a spectacle for conservative TV channels and satisfy a desire among the “Make America great again” (Maga) base to avenge Trump after years of hearings in which he was the accused.However, any impeachments would be dead on arrival in the Democratic-controlled Senate and could backfire among the electorate at large, with many voters sensing a desperate attempt to distract from policy debates.Sabato commented: “It would excite their activists, but most Americans would be repulsed and shake their heads and say, these people need to get their house in order, then we’ll consider voting for them. I’m sure Biden, in a way, hopes he is impeached, and the others too.“It’s a waste of time: there’s no chance of the conviction in the Senate. They just sticking the knife in their own chest. They’re committing suicide. It’s fine, go right ahead, have a good time!”Kyle Herrig, executive director of the Congressional Integrity Project watchdog, agreed. He said: “The party of Maga is following the leader, Donald Trump, who is currently in serious legal troubles across the country. The party seems willing to try to deflect from those legal problems by running interference vis-a-vis investigations that they’re doing in Congress. What they’re doing is playing 30% of their base without realising you need another 20% to win elections.”Some establishment Republicans are aware of such dangers and reluctant to abandon the party’s law-and-order credentials, not least because they see crime as a major talking point in next year’s elections. It is a particularly awkward issue for 18 Republican members of the House from districts that Biden won in the 2020, all of whom have good reason to avoid voting with extremists such as Greene. The internal struggle threatens a political headache for McCarthy.Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “There are definitely people in the Republican party and in Congress who would like to proceed to impeach the head of the justice department, Garland, to go after the head of the FBI and to even go after Joe Biden.“But there are cooler heads who appreciate that the kind of paranoia-infected Trump contagion is wrong and could be a real setback for the 2024 election.“Independent voters, who tend to swing US elections that have become so close, don’t buy into the Trump line. You don’t see support for this unhinged view that the justice department and the FBI are somehow corrupt. There’s not support for that except in the fringe of the Republican party. The question, though, is does the fringe of the Republican party have enough leverage, particularly in the House of Representatives, to force impeachment votes and other measures?”The acrimony threatens to dominate the rest of the year in an already unproductive Congress. Republicans might take aim at law enforcement budgets and have already withheld more funding for a new FBI headquarters.Their stance represents a stunning reversal for a party with a long tradition of pitching itself as pro-police and tough-on-crime, from Nixon speaking of cities “enveloped in smoke and flame” to Ronald Reagan’s embrace of mass incarceration. It has its roots in the years of political attacks by Trump against an alleged “deep state” that is out to get him – and, by extension, his supporters.His rancour towards the FBI began in earnest when the bureau scrutinised alleged ties between his 2016 election campaign and Russia while deciding not to prosecute him opponent, Democrat Hillary Clinton, for using a private email server when she was secretary of state. Then FBI director James Comey rebuked Clinton, calling her handling of classified information careless, but said there was no clear evidence she or her aides intentionally broke laws.Trump’s relentless broadsides via campaign rallies and social media had an effect: a Reuters/Ipsos poll in February 2018 found that three out of four Republicans thought the FBI and justice department were actively seeking to undermine Trump through politically motivated investigations.The sowing of distrust reached full bloom with a baseless conspiracy theory that the 6 January 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol was a hoax orchestrated by the bureau. Seen through this prism, each FBI investigation of those involved and each justice department prosecution of them is a violation, not an affirmation, of law enforcement.Kurt Bardella, who was a spokesperson and senior adviser for Republicans on the House oversight committee from 2009 to 2013, said: “It’s really something to watch the political party that spent the 2022 midterms hollering about being pro-law enforcement and anti-defund the police when now they’re using all of their resources and their very narrow House majority to do exactly that: tear down law enforcement and defund the police.”Bardella, now a Democratic strategist, added: “It seems like Republicans love the idea of law enforcement except when it comes to white-collar crime and when it comes to people of their own. It’s interesting that they want two sets of justice systems: one that looks the other way and condones the multitude of crimes that their leader, Donald Trump, has been accused of and another justice system for just about everybody else.” More

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      Biden to nominate Elliott Abrams, who lied over Iran-Contra, to key panel

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      Joe Biden intends to nominate Elliott Abrams, a former Trump appointee on Venezuela and Iran who was famously convicted for lying to Congress over the Iran-Contra affair, to the bipartisan US Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy.The announcement came wrapped in a list of eight Republican picks for bipartisan boards and commissions released in a White House statement on Monday.“It’s definitely a way to reach out to neoconservatives, and to throw them a bone,” said the historian and journalist Eric Alterman, who has written about Abrams since the 1980s. “It’s a risky move on Biden’s part.”Abrams, 75, has held senior positions in three Republican administrations, rising to prominence during a controversial run as assistant secretary of state under Ronald Reagan.During Reagan’s second term, a congressional investigation found that senior administration officials secretly facilitated the sale of arms to the Iranian government and used the money to support the Contras, a rightwing rebel group in Nicaragua – the Iran-Contra affair.Abrams, who was assistant secretary of inter-American affairs from 1985 to early 1989, later pleaded guilty to two charges of illegally withholding information from Congress – including his role in soliciting $10m from Brunei – during two October 1986 hearings, one before the Senate foreign relations committee and a second before the House intelligence committee.Biden, then a Delaware senator, was a member of the Senate foreign relations committee at the time.Abrams has drawn backlash for his support for the El Salvadoran government, whose army in 1981 massacred nearly 1,000 civilians in the village of El Mozote during its civil war against a coalition of Soviet-backed leftwing groups.A 1992 Human Rights Watch report said Abrams, as assistant secretary of state for human rights, “distorted” information to discredit public accounts of genocide. Abrams also backed US aid to the Guatemalan military dictator Efraín Ríos Montt, who was later convicted for genocide and crimes against humanity, during the Guatemalan civil war.“We only have, really, this example of legally defined genocide where the United States was complicit – and Elliott Abrams was the person who made that policy,” said Alterman, referring to US support for the Guatemalan government under Ríos Montt.Congressional Republicans likely pushed Biden to tap Abrams to the commission, said Brett Bruen, the president of media company the Global Situation Room and a former US diplomat.“It would be seen as interference should Biden not accede to those recommendations,” he said.A White House official said: “It’s standard for Republican leadership to put nominees forward for these boards and commissions, along with President Biden’s own nominees.”.There are seven seats on the diplomacy panel, four of which were vacant as of March, according to a state department notice. It is housed within the Office of the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, a post that sat empty until Biden nominated Elizabeth Allen to lead the office in January. She began in June.Bruen said: “The vacancies on the commission underline a major missing piece in Biden’s early pledge to restore America’s image on the international stage.”Nick Cull, a public diplomacy professor at the University of Southern California, said Biden was not alone in neglecting key posts, citing a report by former executive director of the commission Matthew Armstrong that found the under-secretary job has been vacant for nearly half the time since it was created in 1999.Most recently, Abrams was appointed by Trump to serve as a special envoy for Venezuela as the state department ramped up its efforts to force out Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro. Trump also appointed Abrams as special envoy to Iran in 2020.Abrams was reportedly in the running to be Trump’s deputy secretary of state before being cut from the list of contenders over his criticism of Trump during the campaign trail.He also served in senior national security roles during George Bush’s administration, and is currently a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Washington-based thinktank Council on Foreign Relations.Once nominated, Biden’s appointees must be confirmed by the Senate. But recent picks have languished. A floor vote to confirm Julie Su, the acting secretary of Labor, to the official cabinet post has been delayed for months. More

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      Trump valet Walt Nauta pleads not guilty in Mar-a-Lago documents case – as it happened

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      From 6h agoDonald Trump’s valet Walt Nauta has pleaded not guilty to federal charges related to hiding secret government documents at the former president’s south Florida resort, Reuters reports.Donald Trump’s aide Walt Nauta appeared in Miami federal court for a brief hearing where he pleaded not guilty to six charges related to concealing secret government documents at Mar-a-Lago. Neither Trump nor Nauta’s cases are expected to be resolved anytime soon, but a new survey found most Americans would like the former president’s trial to conclude before the 2024 election, if not the Republican primaries. Meanwhile, the investigation into Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election continues, with a former top Republican lawmaker in Arizona confirming he spoke to the FBI.Here’s what else happened today:
      Newly unsealed portions of the affidavit used to justify federal agents’ search of Mar-a-Lago last year revealed some fresh details of the investigation.
      A top Senate Democrat vowed to move forward with legislation to impose a code of ethics on the supreme court after a term marked by controversies.
      Marjorie Taylor Greene had a rough day, with Joe Biden zinging her in a speech and a group of fellow rightwing Republicans booting her out of their caucus.
      Cocaine in the White House: not as uncommon as you might think.
      For as long as we live, and as long as our children live, and our children’s children, and their children, and their children, and their children, and their children, and for generations to come, school funding in Wisconsin will increase.
      On the campaign trail, former vice-president Mike Pence defended his actions on January 6, when he rejected Donald Trump’s request that he meddle in Congress’s certification of Joe Biden’s election victory.The moment came during a meeting with voters in Iowa, and saw Pence elaborate on statements he made when announcing his campaign for the Republican nomination last month:Polls indicate Trump remains far and away the favorite for the Republican presidential nomination next year.Senate Democrats will move forward with legislation imposing a court of ethics on the supreme court, after a term in which the conservative-led bench struck down affirmative action and Joe Biden’s student loan relief plan while dealing with a swirl of ethics controversies.Dick Durbin, the Democratic chair of the Senate judiciary committee, says the body will take up the legislation when lawmakers return from the current Independence Day break:
      ‘God save the United States and this Honorable Court!’ These are the words spoken by the Marshal when she gavels the Supreme Court into session. But many questions remain at the end of the Court’s latest term regarding its reputation, credibility, and ‘honorable’ status. I’m sorry to see Chief Justice Roberts end the term without taking action on the ethical issues plaguing the Court—all while the Court handed down decisions that dismantled longstanding precedents and the progress our country has made over generations.
      The highest court in the land should not have the lowest ethical standards. That’s why, as I previously announced, the Senate Judiciary Committee will mark up Supreme Court ethics reform legislation when the Senate returns after the July 4th recess. An announcement on the timing of this vote will be made early next week.
      Since the Chief Justice has refused to act, the Judiciary Committee must.
      In a May hearing on the supreme court’s ethics following revelations of ties between conservative justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch and parties with interests in its decisions, Republicans made clear they were opposed to any ethics legislation, potentially derailing chances of any bill getting through Congress.Congress is on recess and lawmakers are dispersed across the country, taking time off, meeting with constituents, and, if you are Missouri’s Republican senator Josh Hawley, getting called out by their local newspaper for a loose relationship with the truth. The Guardian’s Ed Pilkington tells the tale:Josh Hawley has become the poster boy for blurring fact and fiction in the era of Donald Trump: the Republican senator from Missouri will forever be remembered as having raised a manly fist in solidarity with January 6 protesters at the US Capitol then, hours later, having been caught on security camera fleeing the rioting mob he helped to incite.But even for a public figure known for his use of trolling imagery to foment culture wars, Hawley’s current record is impressive. His local Missouri newspaper, the Kansas City Star, has had to call him out twice in almost as many weeks for his egregious distortion of the facts.Earlier this week, Hawley reframed Independence Day on Twitter as a great Christian event, quoting the founding father Patrick “Give me liberty, or give me death!” Henry as saying that America was founded “not on religions but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ. For this very reason, peoples of other faiths have been afforded asylum, prosperity, and freedom of worship here.”In addition to getting voted out of her rightwing House caucus, Marjorie Taylor Greene was today turned into a laugh line by Joe Biden.Speaking in South Carolina about his efforts to boost domestic manufacturing, he said he would attend the groundbreaking of a factory in the rightwing lawmaker’s district:The president has lately taken to singling out Republicans who voted against the bipartisan infrastructure law he signed in 2021, but then applauded the fact their districts or states were set to benefit from its billions of dollars in funds.For what it’s worth, Politico reports that Marjorie Taylor Greene has been kicked out of the House Freedom Caucus.Greene is one of the most prominent far-right lawmakers in Congress, and known for all sorts of stunts and incidents. The Freedom Caucus is a grouping of rightwing Republican lawmakers in the House of Representatives, many of whom supported the effort to stop Kevin McCarthy from becoming speaker for days in January, until he acceded to their demands.You would think they would get along, but as Politico reports, they apparently do not. The disagreement, which culminated in the group voting to expel Greene, appears to center on her support for McCarthy and his agenda, including his deal with Joe Biden to raise the debt ceiling:The Biden administration is expected to announce a new Ukraine weapons aid package on Friday – and it will include cluster munitions, two US officials have told Reuters.The weapons, which were first used during the second world war, typically release large numbers of smaller bomblets and are notorious for killing civilians.They do not always explode, posing a future risk to civilians, and were banned by most of the world under a 2008 treaty called the Convention on Cluster Munitions, which the US, Russia and Ukraine did not sign.You can read the latest updates from the Russia-Ukraine war in our live blog:Joe Biden has spoken of his economic plans – or “Bidenomics” at a manufacturing plant in South Carolina.The US president told the audience that he had created more jobs than any other US president in the first two years of an administration. He said inflation is down, job satisfaction up and more working-age Americans are in jobs.CNN has a clip of his remarks:Donald Trump’s aide Walt Nauta appeared in Miami federal court for a brief hearing where he pleaded not guilty to six charges related to concealing secret government documents at Mar-a-Lago. Neither Trump nor Nauta’s cases are expected to be resolved anytime soon, but a new survey found most Americans would like the former president’s trial to conclude before the 2024 election, if not the Republican primaries. Meanwhile, the investigation into Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election continues, with a former top Republican lawmaker in Arizona confirming he spoke to the FBI.Here’s what else has happened today:
      Newly unsealed portions of the affidavit used to justify federal agents’ search of Mar-a-Lago last year revealed some fresh details of the investigation.
      Cocaine in the White House: not as uncommon as you might think.
      For as long as we live, and as long as our children live, and our children’s children, and their children, and their children, and their children, and their children, and for generations to come, school funding in Wisconsin will increase.
      Meanwhile, answers remain elusive in the cocaine discovered in the White House over the weekend (though Donald Trump didn’t fail to mention it in yesterday’s Truth social tirade). But as the Guardian’s Wilfred Chan reports, the presence of drugs in the executive mansion should not come as a surprise:Cocaine in the White House? Chances are it’s not the first time – and the drug could well have been used by at least one past president, according to a leading presidential historian.Lab tests confirmed that a white substance found inside the building on Sunday was indeed cocaine, the Secret Service told reporters. The discovery, on the floor near an entrance to the West Wing that’s commonly used by tour groups, led to a security alert and a brief evacuation of the executive mansion. Authorities are working to figure out who brought the drug into the building. (At the time, Joe Biden and his family were at Camp David in Maryland.)Still, there’s good reason to think that coke has entered the US presidential office on past occasions – and that its most famous user may have been Franklin D Roosevelt.Rusty Bowers, the former Republican speaker of Arizona’s House of Representatives, told CNN that he had spoken to FBI agents looking into the campaign by Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election result:Last year, Bowers told the January 6 committee that Trump had pressured him to send Congress a fake slate of electors. The then-president and his allies made the request of lawmakers and officials in several states critical to Joe Biden’s election win.Bowers was later ousted from his post by a Trump-endorsed primary challenger.Donald Trump’s valet Walt Nauta has left the courthouse in Miami, Reuters reports, after he pleaded not guilty to six federal charges related to hiding classified government documents at Mar-a-Lago.He did not respond to reporters’ questions as he left the building. Legal proceedings for both Nauta and Trump are expected to take months.A post by Donald Trump on his Truth social account kicked off a chain of events that led to an armed man being arrested near Barack Obama’s house, the Associated Press reports.Trump uses the social network, which he owns, as his main platform ever since being booted off Twitter after the January 6 insurrection (his account there has since been reactivated by owner Elon Musk, but remains dormant).According to the AP, the former president posted what he said was the address for Obama’s home on Truth, a soon after, an armed man was arrested nearby. Here’s more from their report:
      Former President Donald Trump posted on his social media platform what he claimed was the home address of former President Barack Obama on the same day that a man with guns in his van was arrested near the property, federal prosecutors said Wednesday in revealing new details about the case.
      Taylor Taranto, 37, who prosecutors say participated in the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol, kept two firearms and hundreds of rounds of ammunition inside a van he had driven cross-country and had been living in, according to a Justice Department motion that seeks to keep him behind bars.
      On the day of his June 29 arrest, prosecutors said, Taranto reposted a Truth Social post from Trump containing what Trump claimed was Obama’s home address. In a post on Telegram, Taranto wrote: “We got these losers surrounded! See you in hell, Podesta’s and Obama’s.” That’s a reference to John Podesta, the former chair of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Democratic presidential campaign.
      Taranto also told followers on his YouTube live stream that he was looking to get a “good angle on a shot,” prosecutors said.
      A federal defender representing Taranto did not immediately return a phone message seeking comment. But in a motion seeking to have him released pending trial, the lawyer wrote that Taranto was not a flight risk, had a family in Washington state and had served in Iraq before being honorably discharged from the U.S. Navy.
      “Mr. Taranto has been available and in plain sight for the last two and a half years,” wrote the lawyer, Kathryn D’Adamo Guevara.
      Newly released portions of an affidavit have revealed more about what prompted federal agents to search Mar-a-Lago last August. Here’s more on that, from the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell:Federal prosecutors used surveillance footage to determine within weeks of collecting subpoenaed classified documents from Donald Trump last year that there might be more national security materials at Mar-a-Lago, according to newly unsealed descriptions in the FBI search warrant application.Much of the justification for executing a search warrant on Trump’s residence in Florida was detailed in the sprawling indictment charging him with retention of national defense information and obstruction of justice.But the parts of the affidavit released on Thursday – filed by the justice department after the federal magistrate judge in the Trump documents case ordered the release – provided a clearer explanation of the probable cause used to justify the FBI search.Reuters reports that Walt Nauta’s arraignment lasted just a few minutes, with the aide to Donald Trump heading into a conference room afterwards and not answering questions from reporters.Attorney Stanley Woodward entered Nauta’s plea in the hearing that was also attended by Sasha Dadan, the lawyer he hired to represent him in Florida. More

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      Trump valet arraigned over role in classified documents case

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      Waltine “Walt” Nauta, widely known for his role as Donald Trump’s personal valet, was arraigned on Thursday over his role in the federal classified documents case.Nauta, 40, arrived in the former president’s orbit by way of a military assignment.Trump’s “body man”, as he would become known, was raised as one of six siblings in the village of Agat, Guam, which has a population of about 4,515. His aunt Elly Nauta told the Washington Post in March that he was always a “good boy” and had enlisted in the Navy as a cook in 2001 “to see the world”.After rising to the rank of culinary specialist, Nauta was assigned to presidential food service in 2012, which prepares meals for the president and first family, as well as catering dinners for visiting heads of state.Nauta worked in a small White House passageway connecting the West Wing to a private dining room. After Trump was elected president, Nauta was assigned to Trump’s military valet. It fell to him to answer the presidential call button, often to serve Diet Cokes, sometimes Big Macs.“Everyone realized Walt is the one who Trump knows and feels comfortable with. So let’s just give Trump what he wants, which is familiarity,” a former official told the Post.But he was not regarded as a political operator, doing no more or less than what was required of him. When Trump’s term ended in January 2021, Nauta followed the ex-president to Florida.“There was a need for someone who wasn’t too proud to get a new tie, pick up dry cleaning, follow him around on the golf course, staff his dinners, do things that a lot of people just aren’t dying to spend their whole life doing,” a Trump adviser told the Post.But Nauta now faces six federal charges, including conspiracy to obstruct justice, corruptly concealing a document or record, and making false statements, over his alleged role in the classified documents case.According to the government, Nauta moved boxes from the White House in the dying days of Trump’s presidency, repeatedly moved them again at Trump’s direction at Mar-a-Lago, and then lied about it to investigators.The allegations include claims that Nauta discovered that several boxes in a storage room at Mar-a-Lago had fallen, spilling classified documents, and photographed the mess that allegedly included documents restricted to the “Five Eyes” western intelligence alliance.Later asked by investigators if he knew where the boxes had been stored, he allegedly said: “I wish, I wish I could tell you. I don’t know. I don’t – I honestly just don’t know.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionNauta’s inclusion as an alleged co-conspirator in the case was met with opposition by Trump last month who described him as “a wonderful man” who had “served proudly with me in the White House, retired as senior chief, and then transitioned into private life as a personal aide”.Trump accused the government of “trying to destroy” Nauta’s life.Former White House attorney Ty Cobb told the Associated Press last month that he feels sorry for Nauta, whom he described as a dutiful worker who “nods and then does what he’s been told to do”.Nauta’s aunt Elly told the Post that her nephew had relayed to the family that he was merely following instructions when he moved the boxes at Mar-a-Lago.“He told his mom there’s nothing to worry about. He didn’t do anything wrong. All he was instructed [to do] was to put the boxes where they were supposed to go,” she said. More

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      Surveillance footage of Trump boxes paved way for FBI’s Mar-a-Lago search

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      Federal prosecutors used surveillance footage to determine within weeks of collecting subpoenaed classified documents from Donald Trump last year that there might be more national security materials at Mar-a-Lago, according to newly unsealed descriptions in the FBI search warrant application.Much of the justification for executing a search warrant on Trump’s residence in Florida was detailed in the sprawling indictment charging him with retention of national defense information and obstruction of justice.But the parts of the affidavit released on Thursday – filed by the justice department after the federal magistrate judge in the Trump documents case ordered the release – provided a clearer explanation of the probable cause used to justify the FBI search.Last June, shortly after Trump’s lawyers returned a folder of 38 classified documents to prosecutors after being issued a subpoena, prosecutors subpoenaed footage from surveillance cameras in the vicinity of the storage room, the affidavit said.The hard drive that was turned over in July 2022 included tapes from a camera called “South Tunnel Liquor” that recorded the gold-painted door to the storage room and had a field of vision just wide enough to capture the exit to the tunnel leading back to the rest of the Mar-a-Lago property.When prosecutors reviewed the footage, they noticed that Trump’s valet Walt Nauta had removed more than 50 boxes from the storage room but did not bring the same number back before Trump’s then lawyer Evan Corcoran looked through them for any classified documents.“The current location of the boxes removed from the storage room but not returned to it is unknown,” said the FBI agent on the investigation who drafted the affidavit, adding that it was clear from the lack of a lid that at least one of the boxes that Nauta removed contained documents.Prosecutors suspected that Trump might have kept some classified documents as his lawyers had only returned 38 papers, a far smaller number than they had anticipated given the 15 boxes Trump sent to the National Archives earlier in the year contained 200 classified documents.The conclusion inside the justice department’s national security division, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter and the language in the affidavit, was that 50 boxes should have yielded hundreds of classified documents if 15 boxes yielded 200.The suspicion that Trump had played what a federal judge later referred to as a “shell game” with the boxes during the criminal investigation last year proved to be correct when the FBI executed the warrant in August 2022 and seized 103 classified documents from the storage room and Trump’s office.Other parts of the affidavit – including the discussion about whether Trump declassified the documents provided by his close associate Kash Patel, who the Guardian has reported was granted immunity in the criminal investigation – are still redacted.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionA Trump spokesperson said in a statement that the affidavit showed Trump was open to curing his retention of national security documents but “the weaponized DOJ rejected this offer of cooperation” in an effort to “inflict maximum political damage” on his 2024 campaign.The US magistrate judge Bruce Reinhart, who approved the justice department’s application for a search warrant for Mar-a-Lago, ordered more parts of the affidavit to be made public after the Guardian and other news organizations filed a motion last week seeking the document to be released.Prosecutors last month charged Trump with violating the Espionage Act for retaining national security documents. They also charged Trump and Nauta with conspiring to obstruct justice by causing classified documents to not be returned to the government by moving the boxes out of the storage room.The former president has pleaded not guilty to all charges in federal district court in Miami. Nauta also pleaded not guilty when he appeared for his arraignment on Thursday that was rescheduled after he was unable to find a Florida-based lawyer. More

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      Boris Johnson claims he ‘reminded’ Trump about key role in Ukraine aid

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      On his recent visit to the US, Boris Johnson “reminded” Donald Trump he “actually played an important role” in supporting and arming Ukraine against its Russian invaders, the former British prime minister said, adding that British aid to Kyiv was “enabled” by Trump’s example.Johnson made the claim about the notoriously pro-Russian former president – and brushed off mention of Trump’s impeachment for blocking military aid to Ukraine – in an interview on One Decision, a podcast hosted by Sir Richard Dearlove, a former chief of the British intelligence service MI6, and the journalist Julia Macfarlane. The episode was released on Thursday.Johnson resigned as Conservative leader and prime minister in July last year, amid scandals including Partygate, over lockdown breaches in Downing Street during the Covid pandemic. Last month, found to have misled parliament, he resigned as an MP. He has since become a columnist for the Daily Mail, a move found to have breached parliamentary rules.Trump lost the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden, a defeat he refuses to accept, advancing the lie that it was the result of electoral fraud.Having survived a second impeachment, for inciting the deadly January 6 assault on Congress, and despite facing 71 criminal charges and the prospect of more, Trump is the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination next year.The two oft-disgraced ex-leaders met at an undisclosed US location in May. Johnson’s attempt to persuade Trump to back Ukraine was widely reported then.Speaking to One Decision, Johnson said: “One of my reasons for going to the United States [was] because clearly, American politics is getting into that pre-election period of ferment and I’m very concerned just to get over the message that whatever you people may be hearing, what other people may be thinking, the war in Ukraine is immensely important, and Ukrainian victory is essential, and it’s the only way out.”Republican presidential hopefuls including Trump’s nearest challenger, Ron DeSantis, have stoked controversy by appearing to question US support for Ukraine.During his own time in power, Trump was widely held to be too close to the Russian president, Vladimir Putin. Since leaving the White House, Trump has refused to commit to continuing US support for Kyiv in its efforts to expel Russian invaders, should he return to office.At a CNN town hall in May, Trump said: “Russians and Ukrainians, I want them to stop dying. And I’ll have that done in 24 hours.”On One Decision, Johnson said: “I just think it’s very important if you have a chance to talk to people like Donald Trump, just to get … over [that] I know in my heart that Ukrainians are going to win. I know they deserve to win.“And I know that America has played a crucial role in making sure that is the right outcome. I think it’s important to remind somebody like Donald Trump, you know, he actually played an important role.”Asked by Dearlove if Trump was a threat to Ukrainian chances of winning the war, Johnson said: “Don’t forget who sent the first Javelins [missiles] out. It was Donald Trump.”The US approved the sale of Javelin anti-tank missiles to Kyiv in 2018. It was later revealed that Trump blocked further military aid as part of a scheme to seek dirt on his enemies, including Biden, that resulted in his first impeachment.Macfarlane said: “It was also Donald Trump who withheld military aid to Ukraine.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionJohnson said Trump’s military aid “actually enabl[ed] us in the UK in a way” to send arms to Kyiv.His recent meeting with Trump, Johnson said, produced “a very free-flowing energetic conversation, as you’d expect. And what I find, actually, with the Republican party in in the United States, is that, of course, they’re anxious about the expense, and that’s the role of Congress. [But] they strongly support the Ukrainians.”Saying his hosts should question Trump themselves, Johnson added: “My view is that whatever happens in the race for the White House I think America will be steadfast. And I think that the big geopolitical reasons for continued American support for Ukraine will be overwhelming for whoever’s there.”Asked about DeSantis’s controversial characterisation of the war in Ukraine as a “territorial dispute”, a statement the Florida governor was forced to swiftly walk back, Johnson said there was an “isolationist” element in Republican ranks but it was “ever thus”.As prime minister and after leaving office, Johnson has enjoyed warm welcomes in Ukraine. On the One Decision podcast, he was also asked about his claim that Putin threatened an attack on the UK.Putin was “creepily playful”, Johnson said, adding that the Russian president was really trying to “reframe what he’s done, which was a barbaric invasion of an innocent neighbor, as a confrontation between a nuclear-armed Nato and Russia”.Calling Biden’s stewardship of aid to Kyiv “outstanding” and “amazing”, the former prime minister also said allies of Ukraine “all need to speed up” nonetheless. More

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      The Age of Insurrection review: how the far right rose – and found Trump

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      Rightwing extremism has always been a feature of American life, from the diehard supporters of slavery in the 19th century to the 20,000 fascists who filled Madison Square Garden in 1939 and the violent opponents of integration who beat and killed civil rights workers and leaders throughout the 1960s.Today, this ugly tradition of hatred is perpetuated by dozens of vile groups, from the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers to the Family Research Council and a slew of Christian nationalist organizations.But as the investigative reporter David Neiwert argues in his terrifying new book, there is one terrible difference: the relentless mainstreaming of such disgusting ideas. The white nationalist ideology which inspired Payton Gendron to travel 200 miles to massacre 10 people in a Black Buffalo neighborhood is becoming as American as cherry pie.Neiwert shows such extremism has been “widely adopted” from “the highest reaches of the Republican party” to broadcasts by Tucker Carlson, “the most popular cable talk show host” until Fox News fired him.The surge in rightwing extremism inspired by the election of the US’s first Black president was reflected in an explosion in militia groups during Barack Obama’s first year in office. Then came Donald Trump, the first modern president to celebrate white supremacists. He praised “fine people on both sides” in Charlottesville, Virginia, where in August 2017 neo-Nazis clashed with counter-protesters, and he embraced the Proud Boys in 2020, telling them to “stand back and stand by”.The collaboration between such a president and the high-speed locomotive of social media has had disastrous consequences. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have brought American wackos together faster than any previous medium.Neiwert is a former senior writer for Daily Kos, the admirable progressive website founded by Markos Moulitsas 21 years ago. But Neiwert’s work goes back further. When he started out, he saw rightwing extremism as “an excellent bet” to propel a career in journalism, “an endless wellspring of human misery, social disruption and frightening violence – the kind of behavior that always makes news”.When Timothy McVeigh killed 168 by blowing up a truck outside a federal building in Oklahoma City, it became clear to Neiwert that the far right was “an existential threat not just to innocent people in its vicinity, but to democracy itself … What was striking … was how frequently their rhetoric waded into open sedition.” What Neiwert has learned over decades is one of the essentials lessons of his book: “They never ever give up … They are relentless in finding new ways to insinuate their toxic beliefs within the mainstream of American politics.”Neiwert offers some of the most detailed descriptions I have read of the movement’s biggest moments, including Charlottesville and the January 6 Capitol attack. His rigorous reporting produces many details new to me, including the fact that when a Swat team evacuated congressmen from a balcony on January 6, the officers drew guns on insurgents “outside the balcony doors” and forced them to “lie prone” as the legislators escaped.After Charlottesville, as a correspondent for the Southern Poverty Law Center, Neiwert covered events that advanced the right’s strategy for “simultaneously intimidating the general public while generating a phony narrative blaming leftists … for the brutality they themselves inflicted”. Now, he documents how so many far-right conspiracies have made their way into the mainstream, especially the great replacement theory, which says progressives want to flood the country with immigrants, to undermine white citizens.How successful has this effort been? In 2020, the Republican party refused to withdraw support from of any of the “64 GOP candidates … with QAnon connections”. In 2022, a poll found that nearly 70% of Republicans believed in the great replacement theory. Last week, the Washington Post reported the adoption of the great replacement theory as far away as Tunisia, where President Kais Saied sparked “evictions, firings, arrests and brutal assaults” of Black Africans, causing a surge in their efforts to escape to Europe.When Ron DeSantis’s press secretary, Christina Pushaw, said that any opponent of the Florida governor’s “don’t say gay bill” was “probably a groomer or a least you don’t denounce the grooming of 4-8 year old children”, she used language “directly inspired by the hysterical QAnon conspiracy cult … in no time at all, Pushaw’s tweets made ‘grooming’ a mainstream rightwing talking point”.Neiwert’s book is full of reminders of how social media promote rightwing lies. When a veteran of the Tea Party movement teamed up with two ex-writers for Steve Bannon’s Breitbart News to start a “Stop the Steal” Facebook group in November 2020, it got 300,000 followers in 24 hours. Facebook took the page down but Bannon started his own page the same day, then changed its name to “Own Your Vote”. The associated groups “amassed 2.5 million followers. YouTube, another giant purveyor of hatred and lies, hosted Stop the Steal videos which attracted 21m views and 863,151 likes.”No one has been more important to the mainstreaming of extreme rightwing views than Trump. Neiwert says the 45th president has “perfected a three-step tango with the radical right – a dance in which he’d pull them close in an embrace, spin away while staying connected, and then pull them back to close quarters. Acknowledge, deny, validate. Lather, rinse, repeat.”The book ends with a horrifying description of how the the movement has metastasized since the January 6 attack. By fall 2021, Proud Boys and “patriots” were everywhere, harassing “LGBTQ+-friendly teens at libraries, mask-promoting school board members and mall shops that required masks”. In Trump-loving rural areas, daily life “had become filled with foreboding, intimidation, threats and ugliness, all emanating from authoritarian rightwingers directing their aggression at anyone who failed to follow their dictates”.America’s only hope lies in the power of important books like this one to inspire decent citizens to redouble their efforts to defeat these vile scourges of freedom and democracy.
      The Age of Insurrection is published in the US by Melville House More

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      US investigators zone in on Trump election-plot lawyer John Eastman

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      John Eastman, who was in the vanguard of lawyers plotting schemes involving “fake electors” and other ploys to help Donald Trump thwart Joe Biden’s win in 2020, is now under close scrutiny in federal and state investigations of Trump’s drives to stay in power, and faces possible disbarment in California, say former prosecutors.The former California law professor is one of several lawyers whose legal stratagems have been heavily examined by Special Counsel Jack Smith’s accelerating investigation into Trump and his allies’ efforts to block Biden from taking office.The fake electors scheme was a central part of Trump’s strategy to reverse his defeat.It was called that because Republican electors in seven key battleground states signed certificates falsely declaring themselves “duly elected and qualified” to affirm Donald Trump won the 2020 election.But Eastman has drawn scrutiny too in an overlapping inquiry in Georgia by Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis, who is expected to bring criminal charges in August against Trump and some of his legal gurus.The federal and Georgia inquiries have zeroed in on Trump legal advisers including Rudy Giuliani, who helped oversee the fake electors plot, and ex-justice department official Jeffrey Clark. Trump tried briefly to elevate Clark to attorney general in order to prod Georgia and several other swing states to substitute fake Trump electors for ones Biden actually won.Smith’s inquiry, which encompasses Trump’s inflammatory talk to a rally that Eastman and Giuliani also addressed before the Capitol attack on January 6, has accelerated with grand jury testimony from former vice-president Mike Pence and ex-chief of staff Mark Meadows. Smith has also gained cooperation from two Nevada fake electors who have testified before a Washington grand jury.Moreover, investigators from Smith’s office interviewed Giuliani under a “proffer” arrangement, which does not preclude charges against him, seeking to ferret out details about the fake electors plotting and related schemes, as the New York Times reported.Former DoJ prosecutors say Smith’s inquiry is making notable progress.“The pace of activity in the special counsel investigation into the fake electors scheme seems to be quickening,” with significant cooperation from key witnesses and a focus on Trump’s top legal advisers, former DoJ prosecutor Michael Zeldin told the Guardian.Other ex-prosecutors also see Smith’s inquiry gaining steam.“By obtaining testimony from fake electors, Smith may be better able to nail down what information and advice passed between these soldiers in the larger scheme and those Trump lawyers who helped to concoct it,” said Dan Richman, a law professor at Columbia and an ex-prosecutor in New York.“Testimony that, say, electors were advised to make false statements or given deliberately misleading advice would go far to showing a deliberate fraud by Trump’s ‘brain trust’ of lawyers, including Eastman.”Richman added: “Giuliani’s willingness to give a proffer likely reflects his desire to avoid charges by showing a lack of an intent to defraud. Smith’s readiness to accept the proffer likely reflects his interest in hearing what Giuliani had to say and avoiding a grand jury proceeding at which Giuliani might well invoke his fifth amendment privilege.”Other DoJ veterans see Meadows’ grand jury testimony as significant. “The cooperation of Meadows has the potential to help put a stake in the heart of Trump and other high level insurrectionists,” said Paul Pelletier, a former acting head of the DoJ’s fraud section.Smith, who was tapped as special counsel last November, and others at the justice department have spent months conducting their sprawling inquiry into Trump’s zealous efforts to cling to power, and his coterie of legal advisers. Last summer, federal agents seized the cell phones of Eastman and Clark, whose home was also raided.A harbinger of the potential legal headaches for Trump and his elite lawyers came late last year when a House panel that spent months investigating Trump and the January 6 insurrection and produced an 845-page report, referred Trump to the DoJ for prosecution, plus Eastman, Giuliani, Clark and lawyer Kenneth Chesebro.The referrals did not mandate DoJ action, but provided substantial evidence against Trump and those lawyers.The panel’s referral accused Trump of criminally engaging in “a multi-part conspiracy”, citing four specific crimes that seems to track what special counsel Smith is looking into: making false statements, obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the United States, and aiding or comforting insurrection, all of which were referred to the DoJ for prosecution.All four lawyers were referred for conspiring to defraud the United States. Except for Giuliani, the others were cited for conspiring to obstruct an official proceeding, referring to Congress certifying Biden’s win on 6 January.The panel noted when Eastman addressed the “stop the steal” rally on January 6 he floated a wild conspiracy theory about “secret folders” in voting machines that were used to cast votes for Democrats.The report also discussed a “coup memo” authored by Eastman which proposed avenues Pence could use to assist Trump in reversing his election loss, including unilaterally throwing out certain state electoral college votes.At House panel hearings, Pence’s then counsel Greg Jacob testified that Eastman acknowledged to him that his push with Trump to get Pence to reject Biden’s winning electoral college count would violate the Electoral Count Act, and that Trump too was informed that if Pence tried to block Biden’s certification it would be illegal.This June, Jacob testified at California bar hearings weighing disbarment of Eastman for making false public statements about voter fraud in the 2020 elections, and misleading courts. At the hearings, Jacob charged that Eastman’s advice to Pence “brought our profession into disrepute”.Eastman has denied breaking any laws, stating that he was engaged in “good faith” advocacy on a legal question that was not settled. Trump and the other lawyers referred for DoJ prosecution have all also denied violating any laws.But ex-federal prosecutor Paul Rosenzweig said he doubted Eastman will escape prosecution completely. “It will be surprising, indeed, if neither of those investigations ends in a criminal charge against Eastman, as well, possibly, as other lawyers and Trump himself.”But more broadly, DoJ veterans say it is unclear exactly what charges Smith may bring.“It remains to be seen whether the false electors scheme will serve as the basis of a standalone indictment or whether it will be merged into a broader case involving the multiple ways Trump and his allies attempted to reverse the outcome of the 2020 election,” former DoJ inspector general Michael Bromwich told the Guardian“A standalone case may have less jury appeal than a case in which it is one of many sets of tactics used to overturn the election,” he added, but noted that “a broader case will almost inevitably be longer, more complex, include numerous defendants, and be more difficult to try.”Any new federal charges against Trump would come on top of the 37-count indictment of Trump by Smith for retaining hundreds of classified and national security documents after he left office, and obstructing investigators seeking to retrieve them.Trump has pleaded not guilty and denounced the charges and the other probes as “witch-hunts”.Still, the Georgia inquiry into efforts to overturn Biden’s win there seems likely to create more headaches for Trump and some of his legal advisers. Willis has indicated that Giuliani, who testified after receiving a subpoena before a special grand jury, is a target of her broad inquiry. Eastman was reportedly advised by his own lawyer that he was probably a target and invoked the fifth amendment when subpoenaed to testify.A key focus of Willis’s inquiry has been Trump’s high-pressure call on 2 January 2021 to Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger, beseeching him to just “find” 11,780 votes to overturn his loss to Biden in the state. Willis’s scrutiny of Giuliani has looked at testimony he gave to Georgia legislators three times after Trump’s defeat, where he promoted discredited fraud claims and urged legislators to take action.A once star federal prosecutor, Giuliani had his law licence suspended in New York and DC in the wake of his misguided legal efforts to help Trump.Willis has said she will announce charging decisions in August, and experts say the Georgia inquiry looks poised to include criminal charges against Trump and some elite lawyers.“Lawyers have a professional responsibility to tell the truth, and they may face legal liability when they don’t,” former US attorney in Georgia Michael Moore said.“In the Georgia investigation, the intentional perpetration of a fraud, if borne out by the investigation, may land them in hot water. All indications are that the DA is looking at some lawyers as directors, not just bit players, in the story of attempted election fraud.” More