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      Negotiating with post-Trump Republicans is like dealing with a toddler’s tantrum

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      They say that negotiating with a toddler is like a hostage situation: only one side of the discussion wants to defuse the crisis.Welcome to Washington in the post-Trump era, as the United States stares down the barrel of debt default.The fate of the global economy now rests in the hands of the grown-ups inside the Biden administration and the tantrum-prone children who populate the House Republican caucus.This is not a fair fight. One side is happy to defecate on the floor. The other side has no choice but to clean up the mess.The spiritual leader of this crappy caucus is of course the man-child who has built an entire post-presidency from the grievances he blathers about every day.Freewheeling in front of a televised audience of his fans on CNN last week, Donald Trump displayed the kind of mastery of finance that has led to his multiple bankruptcies over the course of his dismal career of business failures.“I say to the Republicans out there – congressmen, senators – if they don’t give you massive cuts, you’re going to have to do a default,” said the unindicted co-conspirator of an insurrection to overthrow the United States government.When pushed whether he really meant what he said about having to “do a default”, Trump just shrugged it all off.“Well, you might as well do it now because you’ll do it later,” he explained. “Because we have to save this country. Our country is dying. Our country is being destroyed by stupid people, by very stupid people.”Now if there’s one thing Trump and his Trumpy Republicans understand, it’s the thinking of very stupid people.Who else would know that very stupid people are going to do something very stupid like a totally unnecessary default on sovereign debt? So you may as well get ahead of them by doing something very stupid like that yourself, sooner rather than later.To be clear, Trump and his Trumpy Republicans think this whole default thing is just some kind of brain fog. “It’s really psychological more than anything else,” he told CNN. “And it could be very bad. It could be maybe nothing. Maybe it’s – you have a bad week or a bad day.”A bad week, a bad day – or even, and just hear me out here, a bad couple of generations.Here’s what happened last time the House Republicans drove the global economy to the edge of debt default, back in 2011 when President Obama was grappling with the Tea Party Republicans.The credit ratings agencies downgraded United States debt for the first time in 70 years, which ended up costing the government more money to sustain its debt. A brilliant outcome.To be clear, the debt ceiling debate is not about the grotesque size of federal spending. That is the budget debate, and both parties have enjoyed spending massive amounts of debt over many decades.The debt ceiling is a technical measure to decide whether the Congress – which approved of those budgets – is going to pay its own bills.This is not a new crisis or even a fast-moving one. It is as predictably slow as it is gob-smackingly dumb.The United States actually reached its debt limit in January, around the time the Democrats handed over the House to the Republicans after last year’s congressional elections. Yes, they could have lifted the debt ceiling themselves, but decided to lob the grenade to the next Congress.So for the last four months, treasury officials have been shuffling around large pots of cash to stay within their limit of what is now a $31.4tn debt. Apparently we have not yet reached the gazillion phase of American borrowing.These financial shenanigans will exhaust themselves in all of two weeks, give or take a few days or weeks. Some Republicans have suggested that treasury could just pick and choose a few bills to leave unpaid. Those Republicans can’t spell insolvent.Trump for one knows how this is going to play out. Not because he’s a genius, although clearly he thinks he is. But because he knows that only one side is going to behave like grown-ups and that side isn’t his own.“I don’t believe they’re going to do a default because I think the Democrats will absolutely cave because you don’t want to have that happen,” he told CNN.That of course is what Obama did. And that is what Joe Biden has already indicated he will do. Earlier this week, Biden said he was “confident” that there would be an agreement to avoid default.“We’re going to come together because there’s no alternative way to do the right thing for the country,” he said. “We have to move on.”By “we,” he meant his own Democrats. The man on the other side of the Oval Office sofa was Kevin McCarthy, the catastrophically weak House speaker, whose majority – and job – rests on the internal monologues of just a handful of Trumpy Republicans.The side that needs to be house-trained is sadly, barely, in control of the House. If McCarthy loses just four or more of his own 222 members, he is doomed. Which means we are all doomed.Until recently, Democrats inside the White House and Congress have insisted on a “clean” bill to raise the debt ceiling. They abandoned that position this week, as Biden toyed with the idea of a bunch of budget cuts. Republicans want to see $4.8tn of cuts, mostly to stuff that only Democrats seem to care about, like feeding poor working families or dealing with the climate crisis.Democrats are witnessing the slow centrification of their own White House. Team Biden is preparing to junk the last two years of progressive policies in favor of some classic pandering to the right ahead of a tight presidential election. After trying to look tough on migrants on the southern border, they now want to look tough on spending – especially spending on social welfare.This is the kind of politics that inspires and satisfies nobody. McCarthy cannot win the debt ceiling battle because his Trumpy caucus thinks the cuts are not enough and it’s fine to default. Biden cannot win because he is ready to dump his party’s principles and priorities to avoid default and defeat next year.Somewhere in the middle of this, working families that need support will find there is less food each month and higher medical bills. But the debt default crisis will dissipate, until the next one, and most swing voters don’t need to worry about the people whose safety net is about to get shredded.It’s really psychological more than anything else.
      Richard Wolffe is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Christiane Amanpour criticises CNN decision to hold Trump town hall – video

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      The CNN anchor Christiane Amanpour said she strongly disagreed with her network’s decision to host a town hall event with Donald Trump last week and had had ‘a very robust exchange of views’ with Chris Licht, the chief executive under fire for approving and then defending the decision to stage it. ‘I would have dropped the mic at ‘nasty person’, but then that’s me, she said at Columbia Journalism School in New York. Trump called the CNN moderator, Kaitlan Collins, a ‘nasty person’, one of number of raucous moments during the event More

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      The fall of Rudy Giuliani, once the toast of New York, continues unabated | Lloyd Green

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      From “America’s mayor” to a human punchline, Rudy Giuliani’s descent continues unabated. On Monday, news broke of the septuagenarian Giuliani being slammed with a $10m sexual harassment and unpaid wages lawsuit brought by Noelle Dunphy, 43, a former aide. The mighty have fallen.Once he was the toast of town. As a federal prosecutor he sent a congressman to jail, locked up mobsters and indicted white-collar criminals. As mayor, he made the streets again feel safe. Love him or hate him, crime precipitously dropped on his watch.In the days and months following 9/11, he projected strength, confidence and reassurance. He had braced himself for a calamity; he just didn’t know its source or when it would happen. He was steady when crunchtime arrived.As mayor, his tenure was consequential. His eight years at city hall rank up there with Fiorello La Guardia, Michael Bloomberg and Ed Koch. All that feels like aeons ago.These days, Giuliani and the words “defendant” and “buffoon” stand adjacent. He remains under criminal investigation by a Georgia prosecutor. Beyond that, he is a defendant in at least three separate pending election-related defamation lawsuits.His life is tumultuous. He is plagued by an image problem. His appearance in Borat 2 will forever haunt him.Watching him shove his hands down his pants was pathetic and pitiable. His awkwardness and desperation remain indelible.But it doesn’t end there. In the aftermath of Donald Trump’s defeat at the hands of Joe Biden, hair dye running down Rudy’s face became another unforgettable scene in American political lore.It presaged what followed. In that moment, you knew that Rudy had gone off the rails, worse that he possessed no limits when it came to Trump.Yet Giuliani’s latest woes cannot be described as wholly surprising. He always possessed a penchant for drama and a tropism for the transgressive. He loved the opera and his life emerged as operatic. As a prosecutor, he dressed up “undercover”. Then as mayor, he performed onstage in drag with Trump.All that came with a darker side. The warning signs were there. We just chose to ignore them.Amid his first campaign for mayor, in 1989, a story broke of a concentration camp survivor, Simon Berger, being held in federal custody, facing a blackboard that read “Arbeit Macht Frei”, the slogan written across the gates of Auschwitz. Berger would be acquitted. Decades later, Dunphy alleged that Giuliani has a problem with Jews.Fast forward to May 2000. Giuliani publicly announced that he was leaving Donna Hanover, his second wife. No one was more shocked than Hanover. Rudy had shredded the boundary between public and private.A year later, Rudy attempted to stretch out his term as mayor beyond its legal limits. Then again, his mother was a fan of Mussolini and his father spent time for armed robbery at Sing Sing, a prison located in upstate New York.Rudy also sought to make Bernie Kerik, his police commissioner, head of US homeland security. That went badly. Kerik eventually wound up in prison and George W Bush was left to do clean-up on aisle seven.During the 2016-17 presidential transition, rumours swirled of Giuliani coveting an appointment as secretary of state. That moment never arrived.There were “whispers from the staff ‘about his health and stability’,” Michael Wolff wrote in Fire and Fury, his 2018 blockbuster.To be sure, they were the same whispers echoed at a pre-inaugural lunch held at a Manhattan steakhouse by veterans of Giuliani’s time at city hall, and those with significant ties to the Trump administration.For the record, Dunphy’s pleadings are replete with references to Giuliani and alcohol.Giuliani and Ukraine made headlines, too. He and his buddies played Inspector Clouseau. In the end, Giuliani avoided prosecution, but Igor Fruman and Lev Parnas were convicted on federal charges.The political dexterity and judgment that Giuliani once demonstrated has vanished. He is conscious of the decline. “I don’t care about my legacy,” he adds. “I’ll be dead.”Nearly three years after the 2020 election, Trump refuses to concede and remains the frontrunner for the Republican nomination. “Giuliani, on the other hand, [is] finished in every conceivable way,” wrote Giuliani biographer Andrew Kirtzman.Along the way, Rudy’s future grows bleaker and more mirthless. More

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      Trump wins proxy battle with DeSantis over pick for Kentucky governor

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      Donald Trump scored a proxy victory over Ron DeSantis on Tuesday, the Republican presidential frontrunner’s preferred candidate beating the choice of the Florida governor, Trump’s closest rival, in a gubernatorial primary in Kentucky.Daniel Cameron, the first major-party Black nominee for governor in Kentucky history, will face the Democratic incumbent, Andy Beshear, in November.Cameron, the state attorney general, claimed a convincing victory over a 12-candidate field including Kelly Craft, who was United Nations ambassador in the Trump administration and who won a late endorsement from DeSantis.Beshear easily beat two challengers in his own primary.Cameron is the first Black Kentucky attorney general and would be its first Black governor. He played up the historic nature of his nomination in his victory speech, saying he would “embody the promise of America, that if you work hard and if you stand on principle, anything is possible”.“To anyone who looks like me, know that you can achieve anything,” Cameron said. “Know that in this country and in Kentucky, all that matters are your values.”Kentucky will be one of the most closely watched states in November, analysts seeking clues for the 2024 presidential race. Beshear is a popular governor but he will face a tough re-election bid in a Republican-dominated state after a first term marked by the Covid pandemic, natural disasters and a mass shooting that killed one of his closest friends.Beshear touted his stewardship of Kentucky’s economy and blasted the tone of the Republican primary.“Right now somewhere in America, there is a CEO deciding where to move their business and they’re considering Kentucky,” Beshear told supporters on Tuesday. “Let me ask you: is seeing people talk down our state and our economy, insult our people and stoke divisions going to help that next company choose Kentucky? Of course not.”In 2019, Beshear used the attorney general’s office as a springboard to the governorship. As attorney general, he challenged executive actions by the then Republican governor, Matt Bevin, who he then beat narrowly.If Beshear follows his campaign formula from 2019, he will avoid talking about Trump or dwelling on polarizing national issues. He is also expected to draw on his family’s strong political brand – his father, Steve Beshear, is a former two-term Kentucky governor.Cameron succeeded Beshear as attorney general and mounted numerous challenges against state and national Democratic policies, essentially halting Covid-era restrictions. Beshear says his actions saved lives and that he leaned on guidance from Trump’s Covid taskforce.A former aide to the Republican US Senate leader, Mitch McConnell, Cameron is one of the most prominent Black Republicans. His victory will play into Trump’s efforts to solidify his lead in the presidential primary.Rivalry between Cameron and Craft dominated the Kentucky primary. Cameron endured an advertising blitz by Craft’s campaign and an outside group that portrayed Cameron as an “establishment teddy bear”. A pro-Cameron group returned fire.Cameron’s handling of an investigation into the fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor by Louisville police in 2020, which contributed to nationwide protests for policing reform, could now come under renewed scrutiny.Announcing a grand jury’s findings, Cameron said jurors “agreed” homicide charges were not warranted because officers were fired upon. Three jurors said Cameron’s staff did not give them an opportunity to consider homicide charges.Cameron must also build party unity. He has previously bridged the rift between Trump and McConnell. Previously the senator’s legal counsel, he made a high-profile pitch for Trump at the Republican convention in 2020. More

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      Why Trump’s ‘vile’ attacks against Carroll after verdict could be ‘chilling for survivors’

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      After a New York jury found Donald Trump liable for sexually abusing advice columnist E Jean Carroll, sexual violence advocacy groups and experts are having mixed responses to the verdict, particularly in light of Trump’s public attacks against the decision and Carroll, and as top Republicans have rushed to his defense.Despite the verdict and the jury awarding about $5m in compensatory and punitive damages to Carroll, Trump and a handful of Republican lawmakers have remained defiant: a move which sexual violence experts have condemned as risking re-traumatizing survivors.But at the same time they have hailed Carroll’s victory as holding to account one of the most powerful men in the world. As Carroll launched her suit in the wake of the #MeToo movement, the trial has been seen as a validation – not just of her own quest for justice – but of a broader search for accountability for those who have been sexually abused.The symbolism of the jury’s decision was powerful and could be inspirational for others take take action.“This case highlights the importance of opening retrospective windows for survivors to come forward… It elevates how difficult it is to heal and attempt to pursue justice… Sexual violence is a deep trauma that takes time to heal and opening a retrospective window is reflective of that fact,” Tamika Payne, the acting director of the New York State Coalition Against Sexual Assault, told the Guardian.“These windows are just the first step in addressing a realistic timeframe for survivors to come forward,” she added, making a point to note that New York’s recent Adult Survivors Act, which opened a one-year window for survivors whose statute of limitations has expired to file a civil lawsuit, expires in November.Laura Palumbo, a spokesperson for the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, echoed similar sentiments.“We hope [this case] can bring hope to survivors that it is possible for the truth to be heard even years after the assault has happened… Common challenges that we see survivors have…[include]…the way that trauma impacts the brain and how it can affect the level of detail and information they are able to recall about the assault,” Palumbo explained.“It is really impactful to see that a survivor’s story and experience was heard and believed in this way,” she continued.Similarly, America’s largest nonprofit anti-sexual assault organization, the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network said: “We thank E Jean Carroll, who will inspire survivors to come forward to tell their stories and face perpetrators. This case demonstrates that all perpetrators, no matter how powerful, can and will be held accountable.”Anne Coughlin, a law professor at the University of Virginia specializing in criminal law, rape and feminist jurisprudence, hailed the verdict as a victory but also noted the chilling effect that Trump’s response may have on survivors.“One can construe the verdict as a triumph for the rule of law – after a public trial, a jury found one of the most powerful men in the world responsible for sexual assault – and as a vindication of the right of women to be free from forced sex. The verdict sends the message that, contrary to Trump’s remarks on the Access Hollywood tape, celebrity men cannot ‘do anything’ to women,” Coughlin told the Guardian.“But the run-up to the trial, the trial itself, and the aftermath are going to be chilling for survivors… [Carroll] is not the garden-variety survivor…in terms of the amount of support, clout and credibility that she was able to bring to the trial,” she said.“Trump’s intransigence after the verdict, his vile comments about Carroll at the CNN Town Hall, and his supporters’ gleeful rejection of the significance of the verdict – all of these things may send a message to survivors about how costly it is for them to speak up and seek justice,” added Coughlin.Following the verdict, Trump lashed out on his social media platform Truth Social, writing: “I have absolutely no idea who this woman is. This verdict is a disgrace – a continuation of the greatest witch hunt of all time!”Meanwhile, a handful of Republican lawmakers have thrown their support behind Trump.Senator Bill Hagerty of Tennessee condemned the verdict as the latest act in the “legal circus” surrounding Trump, telling Fox News: “I think we’ve seen president Trump under attack since before he became president… This has been going on for years. He’s been amazing in his ability to weather these sorts of attacks and the American public has been amazing in their support through it.”Florida senator Marco Rubio said: “That jury’s a joke, the whole case is a joke,” while Oklahoma senator Markwayne Mullin said that he believes it is “very difficult” for Trump to get a fair trial “in any of these liberal states”, Politico reports.Others appeared to dismiss the gravity of the case, with former vice-president Mike Pence saying:, “It’s just one more story focusing on my former running mate that I know is a great fascination to members of the national media, but I just don’t think it’s where the American people are focused.”Sexual advocacy groups have condemned Trump’s denials and his Republican defense, calling them dangerous and belittling to survivors.“To say sexual violence is a horrific crime and we need all these resources, but then for there not to be a similar outrage when the response is how it is, is gaslighting,” Payne told the Guardian.“Any form of sexual violence is the most intrusive, traumatizing violation that a person can experience and to politicize it diminishes the trauma that it is. And is one of the reasons that so many survivors choose not to report, not to seek civil remedies. Their response directly contributes to the stigma and silence that survivors endure,” she said.Similarly, Palumbo criticized the politicization of Carroll’s trial and explained the silencing effect it may have on others.“Even if there are a lot of focal supporters of them or a decision is in their favor, they can face a lot of public criticism, threats of harm…and that has such a silencing effect for other survivors.“When a survivor’s story and experience is politicized in this way, our society takes away their voice and their power,” said Palumbo.“It is very retraumatizing for survivors of sexual assault to hear other survivors be discredited… We as a society have to think about how we are responding to those survivors in public and private ways,” she said.On Thursday, Carroll’s lawyers said that she may sue Trump for a third time after his “disgusting, vile, foul” comments about her on CNN. Meanwhile, Trump’s lawyers have filed an appeal against the $5m judgment awarded to Carroll.With the legal battle between Carroll and Trump showing no signs of winding down anytime soon, Coughlin remains concerned about the efficacy of the law in protecting survivors.In response to a question about what further legal steps should be taken in the case, Coughlin told the Guardian:“This question assumes that law is the institution that can bring about the cultural changes necessary to protect women against sexual violence. Law cannot do that work alone, no way. To be sure, survivors must continue to report and bring cases, and, where appropriate, prosecutors must pursue criminal charges vigorously. But the whole point of the #MeToo movement is that the law has failed and is continuing to fail survivors. And the reactions to the verdict in the Carroll case show that we still have a ways to go.” More

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      How Donald Trump was found liable for sexual abuse – podcast

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      On Tuesday, a jury in New York found that the former US president Donald Trump sexually abused magazine writer E Jean Carroll in the 1990s and then defamed her by branding her a liar.
      On Wednesday, Trump made the same baseless claims about Carroll that led to him losing the case – this time, live on CNN to millions of viewers.
      This week, Jonathan Freedland talks to Guardian US columnist Margaret Sullivan about the fallout from the E Jean Carroll case. The pair discuss how the media should cover a 2024 presidential candidate who has been impeached twice, indicted by a federal court, and who is now legally defined as a sexual predator

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

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      CNN’s Trump debacle suggests TV media set to repeat mistakes of 2016

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      Donald Trump and CNN were in rare agreement: the former president’s hour of free prime-time television on Wednesday evening, dressed up as a “town hall” with Republican voters, was a triumph.“America was served very well by what we did last night,” CNN’s chief executive, Chris Licht, told skeptical members of his own staff at the network’s daily news conference the following morning.“You do not have to like the former president’s answers, but you can’t say that we didn’t get them.”As it happens, quite a lot of people said that not only did CNN fail to get answers but it was repeating the terrible mistake of 2016 when it treated Trump as an entertainer not a hostile politician by giving him hours of airtime to spout freely because he was good for ratings, and therefore profits.One of CNN’s own reporters, Oliver Darcy, was less enthused than his boss.“It’s hard to see how America was served by the spectacle of lies that aired on CNN Wednesday evening,” he said in his daily newsletter, Reliable Sources.Darcy then listed all that was wrong. The same old “professional lie machine” that is Trump ignoring the question, talking over the moderator, unleashing “a firehose of disinformation upon the country”.“And CNN aired it all. On and on it went. It felt like 2016 all over again,” he wrote.More than a few Republicans shared that view. Matthew Dowd, former chief strategist for the George W Bush’s 2004 presidential campaign, condemned the news network.“CNN was completely unprepared to hold Trump accountable. CNN has done a complete disservice to our democracy,” he wrote. “CNN, you failed journalism and our country.”The New York Times said Trump’s advisers were delighted: “They can’t believe he is getting an hour on CNN with an audience that cheers his every line and laughs at his every joke.”Which raises the question of how television, in particular, should cover Trump as the next election comes into focus. It’s a question even Fox News, which has fallen out with the former president, is now grappling with.Ted Koppel, former anchor of ABC News’s Nightline, asked what the alternative is to television time for a leading contender for a return to the White House.“So no more live political events, because politicians can be nasty? Because politicians can tell lies?” he told the New York Times. “I’m not sure that news organisations should necessarily be in the business of making ideological judgments. Is he a legitimate object of news attention? You bet.”Bob Schieffer, the former CBS news anchor who moderated presidential debates, took much the same position.“We’re in the business of telling people who’s running for what and what they stand for,” he said.But many Americans wondered if it had to be in front of a supportive, jeering audience that evidently included a fair number of his “Make America great again” supporters with little to restrain his torrent of lies, distractions and evasions.Mark Lukasiewicz, former vice-president at NBC News, said of the programme that the mistake was to do it live: “Proving again: Live lying works. A friendly Maga crowd consistently laughs, claps at Trump’s punch lines – including re sex assault and January 6 – and the moderator cannot begin to keep up with the AR-15 pace of lies.”Even Fox News recorded its most recent interviews with Trump.Writing in the Washington Post, Perry Bacon said CNN’s mistake was to say, in the words of its political director, David Chalian, that is it going to “treat Trump like any other presidential candidate”.“CNN should, of course, treat Trump differently from other candidates. His record of anti-democratic behavior makes him a much more dangerous potential president than other candidates,” wrote Bacon.“In 2016, the media not only played down Trump’s chances of winning, but also suggested Trump would not pursue the outlandish and far-right ideas that he was running on if he won. This attitude was summed up by an Atlantic article titled ‘Taking Trump Seriously, Not Literally’. This perspective was entirely wrongheaded.”Part of the problem is that few journalists in the US, striving for ill-defined objectivity and almost invariably deferential to present and former presidents, are a match for a man who views the established norms of interviewing and discussion as a provocation. As Kaitlan Collins proved, as she tried, and failed, to contain Trump, even as he called her a “nasty woman” on her own air.Bacon is not alone in worrying that Trump will continue to exploit CNN’s desperation to win back at least some of the Maga voters it lost when the former president led chants of “CNN sucks” at his rallies.That’s certainly how Trump saw it, writing on his Truth Social site shortly before the programme that CNN was “rightfully desperate to get those fantastic (TRUMP!) ratings once again.“Could be the beginning of a New & Vibrant CNN, with no more Fake News, or it could turn into a disaster for all, including me. Let’s see what happens?” he added.As it turned out, what was good for CNN and Trump was viewed by a large part of the rest of America as another disaster in the making. More

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      Trump rages after sexual abuse verdict but legal woes have only just begun

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      If the outcome of Donald Trump’s sexual assault trial wasn’t a foregone conclusion, his response to a jury finding he attacked the writer E Jean Carroll was all too predictable.The former president lashed out at the judge as biased and the jurors as “from an anti-Trump area”, meaning liberal New York, after they believed Carroll’s account of the millionaire businessman attacking her in a department store changing room in the mid-1990s. The jury ordered him to pay $5m in damages for “sexual abuse” and for defaming Carroll by accusing her of “a made-up SCAM” for political ends.Trump has taken a similar tack against the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, after pleading not guilty last month to 34 criminal charges over the payment of hush money to the porn star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 presidential election. Trump called Bragg, who is Black, an “animal” and a psychopath, and characterised the prosecution as purely political.All of this goes down well in sections of America.An audience of Republican voters at a CNN town hall with Trump on Wednesday laughed when he described his assault of Carroll as “playing hanky-panky in a dressing room” and called her a “whack job”.But in the coming months it’s going to get a lot harder for the former, and possibly future, American president to spin his legal problems as political persecution by Democratic elitists. Investigations against him are mounting, and even more troubled legal waters lie ahead for Trump – and some of his acolytes.Indictments in conservative Georgia are coming down the line and many of the key witnesses against Trump will be his fellow Republicans, including some who helped him try to rig the 2020 election.Similarly, investigations by a justice department special counsel into Trump’s actions leading up to the 6 January 2021 storming of the Capitol, and the stashing of classified documents at his Florida mansion, are being built on the accounts of aides and political associates who are potential witnesses against him.Norman Eisen, a former White House special counsel for ethics and government reform, said that as a result Trump’s legal troubles have only just begun.“He’s running into a buzzsaw and it’s called the rule of law. So he can go on and rant and rave up to a point but the legal authorities are in the process of holding him accountable,” he said.Leading the way is a prosecutor in Atlanta who is stacking up witnesses against the former president, almost all of them Republicans, over his attempt to rig the 2020 presidential election result in Georgia. They include some who tried to help Trump steal the vote but who have been persuaded to give evidence against him to save their own necks.The Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, has spent more than two years investigating the “multi-state, coordinated plan by the Trump campaign to influence the results”.Willis convened a special grand jury that sat for eight months and heard evidence from 75 witnesses before it recommended charges against more than a dozen people. The grand jury forewoman, Emily Kohrs, strongly hinted to the New York Times in February that Trump was on the list.Asked if the jurors recommended prosecuting the former president, Kohrs said: “You’re not going to be shocked. It’s not rocket science.”“It is not going to be some giant plot twist,” she added. “You probably have a fair idea of what may be in there. I’m trying very hard to say that delicately.”Willis had been expected to charge Trump and others this month, but indictments are not now likely before mid-July as prosecutors put together immunity deals to lure the former president’s Republican co-conspirators to testify against him and his top aides. Kohrs said prosecutors offered one witness immunity from prosecution in return for cooperation right in front of the grand jury.Then there are the Republicans who do not have to be coerced to tell the truth in court.Willis’s investigation initially focused on a tape recording of Trump pressuring Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to “find” nearly 12,000 votes to cancel out Biden’s win in a state that, at the time, looked as if it might decide the outcome of the entire presidential election.Trump has called the Georgia official an “enemy of the people” because he wouldn’t commit electoral fraud. But a jury might find Raffensperger all the more credible because not only is he a Republican, but he voted for Trump.The Georgia secretary of state spoke to the special grand jury for several hours, including about a call he recorded from Trump at the beginning of January 2021 pressuring him to manipulate the vote. While he has not commented publicly on his testimony, Raffensperger wrote a book, Integrity Counts, in which he details Trump threatening him.Other witnesses are more reluctant but may be all the more credible for that reason, including Georgia’s governor, Brian Kemp, who also came under pressure from Trump and his allies to overturn the election result. One of those on the phone to Kemp was Mark Meadows, Trump’s former chief of staff, who was also summoned to answer the grand jury’s questions.Willis expanded the investigation as more evidence emerged of Trump and his allies attempting to manipulate the results, including the appointment of a sham slate of 16 electors to replace the state’s legitimate members of the electoral college who do the formal business of selecting the president. The fake electors included the chair of the Georgia Republican party, David Shafer, and Republican members of the state legislature who have been warned that they are at risk of prosecution.Earlier this month it was revealed that at least eight of the fake electors have done a deal to give evidence in return from immunity from prosecution, although Shafer is not included.Eisen said the immunity deals are a sign that charges are in the offing.“We know that multiple fake electors have received immunity. That is another indication of trouble for Donald Trump because those deals are extended by prosecutors typically when they are preparing to bring a case, and they believe they have a case to bring,” he said.“So it’s a sign of prosecutorial seriousness. And it’s a sign that the district attorney can mount an effective case because these immunised fake electors can serve as tour guides for the jury into the plot, which we know ran all the way up to the Oval Office.”Ronald Carlson, a leading Georgia trial lawyer and professor at the University of Georgia’s law school, said prosecutors do not offer immunity lightly and any deal signals that witnesses will provide significant testimony against Trump and his team.“This is very, very much a straw in the wind. Immunity almost always comes with a requirement that the immunised witness provide testimony in a future criminal trial,” he said.“I think the electors will be very descriptive on how they were called together, what they did during their meeting, and then the end result, which was certifying a result for Trump.“Willis’s investigation also probed a seven-hour hearing at the Georgia state senate a month after the election orchestrated by Rudolph Giuliani, the former New York mayor and Trump’s personal lawyer and adviser.In what Georgia Public Broadcasting called “a series of fantastical claims and statements from various and sundry people touted as experts”, Giuliani led the way in falsely claiming that the state’s voting machines were rigged, thousands of votes were illegally cast, and suitcases of fake ballots were used to tilt the count in favour of Biden.Giuliani also urged the Georgia legislature to create the slate of fake electors, providing a direct link between what prosecutors are expected to portray as a criminal attempt to steal the election and Trump. At the same time, Giuliani led a blitz of legal challenges to the election result in courts across the country, all of which failed.Kohrs said that when Giuliani appeared before the grand jury he invoked attorney-client privilege to avoid answering many questions.Another Trump lawyer, John Eastman, was called as a witness to a plan to pressure the then vice-president, Mike Pence, to block the declaration of Biden’s win by Congress. The grand jury also called Sidney Powell, a Trump lawyer and conspiracy theorist who pushed false allegations that voting machines were rigged for which Fox News paid nearly $800m to settle a defamation suit.Several witnesses tried to avoid testifying. Senator Lindsey Graham went all the way to the US supreme court in a failed attempt to avoid appearing. Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, who attended meetings about invoking martial law and seizing voting machines, had to be ordered by a Florida judge to answer the grand jury’s questions.Carlson said that a parade of Republican witnesses, reluctant or willing, could prove very damaging to Trump.“As a prosecutor, if you can call witnesses who were close to the crown, so to speak, that impresses the jury,” he said.“What happens very, very frequently, especially in a mob case, is they’ll give immunity to one of the lower-echelon people to testify against the big boss. He doesn’t want to do it, but he’s got immunity and if he continues to resist, he can be held in contempt of court. Whether they want to do it willingly, or whether they are forced to do it under a grant of immunity, Willis is building a case that has a host of witnesses.”Eisen said the Georgia case is likely to be all the stronger for being largely built around the evidence of other Republicans.“The fact that his overtures were rejected by staunch Republican officials, Brad Raffensperger, the secretary of state, Brian Kemp, the governor, makes a difference. Just the sheer weight of the evidence of election interference in Georgia is material. The Georgia case is a very powerful one, the most powerful we’ve seen to date,” he said.Meanwhile, the special counsel appointed by the US justice department, Jack Smith, is conducting two criminal investigations involving Trump that again draw in Republicans whose testimony could be condemn the former president.The New York Times reported earlier this month that investigators probing Trump’s mishandling of classified documents have won the cooperation of someone who worked for him at his Mar-a-Lago mansion in Florida.Like Willis, the justice department is using subpoenas to force grand jury testimony from those who witnessed Trump’s actions including whether he had classified documents moved in order to hide them once it because known they were illegally stored in Florida.Again, Trump’s team has dismissed the investigation as a “politically motivated witch-hunt” aimed at keeping him from returning to the White House. But the former president didn’t help himself at the CNN town hall when he undercut his own lawyers by claiming that he had “every right” to take the documents from the White House.“I didn’t make a secret of it,” he said.So will Trump be a convicted criminal by the time of the presidential election in November 2024?“That is entirely possible,” said Eisen. “It’s also possible that with court delays and appeals, he may not face incarceration until after the next election. But what matters is that the charges are being brought. And that cues the issue up for the jury of the American people in the primaries and then in the general election.” More