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      in Elections

      Mike Pence testifies to grand jury about Donald Trump and January 6

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      Mike Pence testified before a federal grand jury on Thursday in Washington about Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, according to a source familiar with the matter, a day after an appeals court rejected a last-ditch motion to block his appearance.The former vice-president’s testimony lasted for around seven hours and took place behind closed doors, meaning the details of what he told the prosecutors hearing evidence in the case remains uncertain.His appearance is a moment of constitutional consequence and potential legal peril for the former president. Pence is considered a major witness in the criminal investigation led by special counsel Jack Smith, since Trump pressured him to unlawfully reject electoral college votes for Joe Biden at the joint session of Congress, and was at the White House meeting with Republican lawmakers who discussed objections to Biden’s win.The two interactions are of particular investigative interest to Smith as his office examines whether Trump sought to unlawfully obstruct the certification and defrauded the United States in seeking to overturn the 2020 election results.Pence had privately suggested to advisers that he would provide as complete an account as possible of what took place inside and outside the White House in the weeks leading up to the 6 January Capitol attack, as well as how Trump had been told his plans could violate the law.His appearance came the morning after the US court of appeals for the DC circuit rejected an emergency legal challenge seeking to block Pence’s testimony on executive privilege grounds, and Trump ran out of road to take the matter to the full DC circuit or the supreme court.The government has been trying to get Pence’s testimony for months, starting with requests from the justice department last year and then through a grand jury subpoena issued by Smith, who inherited the complicated criminal investigation into Trump’s efforts to stay in power.The subpoena came under immediate challenges from Trump’s lawyers, who invoked executive privilege to limit the scope of Pence’s testimony, as well as from Pence’s lawyer, who argued his role as president of the Senate on 6 January meant he was protected from legal scrutiny by the executive branch.Both requests to limit the scope of Pence’s testimony were largely denied by the new chief US judge for the court James Boasberg, who issued a clear-cut denial to Trump and a more nuanced ruling to Pence that upheld that he was protected in part by speech or debate protections.Still, Boasberg ruled that speech or debate protections did not shield him from testifying about any instances of potential criminality.The former vice-president’s team declined to challenge the ruling. But Trump’s legal team disagreed, and filed the emergency motion that was denied late on Wednesday by judges Gregory Katsas, Patricia Millett and Robert Wilkins.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionStarting weeks after the 2020 election, Trump tried to cajole Pence into helping him reverse his defeat by using his largely ceremonial role of the presiding officer of the Senate on 6 January to reject the legitimate Biden slates of electors and prevent his certification.The effort relied in large part on Pence accepting fake slates of electors for Trump – now a major part of the criminal investigation – to create a pretext for suggesting the results of the election were somehow in doubt and stop Biden from being pronounced president.The pressure campaign involved Trump, but it also came from a number of other officials inside and outside the government, including Trump’s lawyer John Eastman, other Trump campaign-affiliated lawyers such as Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani, and dozens of Republican members of Congress.Pence was also unique in having one-on-one discussions with Trump the day before the Capitol attack and on the day of, which House January 6 select committee investigators last year came to believe was a conspiracy that the former president had at least some advance knowledge. More

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      in US Politics

      Ron DeSantis to meet UK ministers on tour to boost foreign policy credentials

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      Ron DeSantis is due to spend Friday in Britain on the last leg of a world tour aimed at enhancing his foreign policy credentials before an expected run for the Republican nomination.Formally, DeSantis will meet the foreign secretary, James Cleverly, and the business secretary, Kemi Badenoch, in his role as governor of Florida, the third most populous US state.Nigel Farage’s new rightwing Reform UK party is also trying to secure a meeting with DeSantis, Politico reported on Thursday.Despite being greeted by the prime ministers of Japan and South Korea on earlier legs of the trip, he won’t meet the British prime minster, Rishi Sunak – in part because it is not standard diplomatic protocol for a prime minister to meet a US governor, UK officials say.There is additionally an issue of logistics, with Sunak in Scotland on a pre-planned trip to the Conservatives’ conference there.DeSantis’s visit is not completely on a pretext. The UK regularly ranks as Florida’s top business partner, and there are more than 600 British businesses in the state, employing more than 50,000 Floridians. However, the timing of DeSantis’s tour, which has also included Japan, South Korea and Israel, has been dictated by the brewing primary contest with Donald Trump. It is a race in which he is trailing badly, though as he pointed out on the Japanese leg of the trip, the numbers could change when he formally declares his bid.The fact he has not officially entered the race has not stopped attacks from the Trump camp, who view him as the only serious challenger. While Trump boasts of his personal rapport with some of the world’s leaders, suggesting it gives him a unique ability to resolve big conflicts around the world, DeSantis’s previous experience abroad is limited to his deployment as a legal adviser to a Navy Seal team in Iraq, and some limited travel as Florida governor. This trip, and the accompanying footage of handshaking with foreign officials, will provide a rebuttal to claims he is too inexperienced in the ways of the world to be president.“It’s an irony that people like him who make the case that America should focus more on itself, also sees it as indispensable to go around and present themselves in a dog and pony show to the world,” Elisabeth Braw, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said.Trump is due to be in the UK next week for a visit to his golf course in Scotland.Such tours are a rite of passage for presidential candidates. In 2008, Barack Obama, who also had a foreign policy experience deficit, visited Afghanistan, Iraq, Jordan, Israel, Germany, France and the UK. On the last three stops, Obama met Angela Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy and Gordon Brown. But, unlike DeSantis, he had already secured the nomination at that point.The inclusion of Tokyo and Seoul in DeSantis’s tour is telling, a reflection of how the centre of US foreign policy has shifted.“I think it really does indicate a growing focus in US foreign policy generally, but even in the public consciousness, on the Indo-Pacific, on competition with China,” Emma Ashford, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center thinktank, said. “I think the fact that he chose to go there really does suggest that’s the direction foreign policy is moving.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIsrael has long been a must-do for US presidential hopefuls on tour, though now that is more true of Republicans, who are generally in lockstep with Benjamin Netanyahu’s hard-right government, than Democrats. It has been called the “new Iowa” for Republican hopefuls – a primary for the Jewish and evangelical vote.In his speech at the Museum of Tolerance in Jerusalem on Thursday, DeSantis repeated a story about how he had used water from the Sea of Galilee to baptise his children. He talked about “Judeo-Christian values” binding the two countries. The only mention of the world “Palestinian” was in a line about terrorism.DeSantis disowned the Biden administration’s criticism of Netanyahu’s efforts to curb the independence of the judiciary, saying: “It shouldn’t be for us to butt in to these important issues”, but there was nothing of substance separating his position from Trump’s.The one area of policy difference with the Republican frontrunner is over Ukraine. DeSantis’s support for a ceasefire and for less US involvement sparked a backlash from the more hawkish end of the Republican party, and Cleverly can be expected to echo those misgivings. DeSantis has tried to hedge his position, potentially opening space between his stance and Trump’s pro-Moscow inclinations.DeSantis’s world tour has come at an awkward time, as support among congressional Republicans has slid towards Trump in his absence, but the fact that he felt he had to leave the US at all, suggests that the maxim foreign policy does not matter in US presidential elections is not always true.“Differences over foreign policy can matter in the team-building phase of the campaign,” Daniel Drezner, professor of international politics at Tufts University, said. “This seems like a box-checking exercise and actually a horribly timed one from DeSantis’s perspective, because the last thing you want to do, when your campaign is faltering, is go overseas.” More

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      ‘Worst-case scenario’: Rick Wilson on Tucker Carlson, presidential nominee

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      The most irresponsible thing you can do these days is look away from the worst-case scenario.” So says Rick Wilson. In the week Fox News fired Tucker Carlson, Wilson’s worst-case scenario is this: a successful Carlson campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.Wilson is a longtime Republican operative turned co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project and a media company, Resolute Square, for which he hosts the Enemies List podcast.He says: “Tucker is one of the very small number of political celebrities in this country who has the name ID, the personal wealth, the stature to actually declare and run for president and in a Republican primary run in the same track Donald Trump did: the transgressive, bad boy candidate, the one who lets you say what you want to say, think what you want to think, act how you want to act, no matter how grotesque it is.“Among Republicans, he’s a beloved figure. He’s right now in the Republican universe a martyr – and there ain’t nothing they want more than a martyr.”Carlson’s martyrdom came suddenly on Monday, in the aftermath of the settled Dominion Voter Systems defamation suit over Trump’s election lies and their broadcast by Fox News. The primetime host, a ratings juggernaut, was gone.On Wednesday night, the New York Times reported that Carlson’s dismissal involved “highly offensive and crude remarks” in messages included in the Dominion suit, if redacted in court filings. Carlson, 53, released a cryptic video in which he said: “Where can you still find Americans saying true things? There aren’t many places left, but there are some … see you soon.”Other than that, he has not hinted what’s next. To many, a presidential campaign may seem unthinkable. To Wilson, that is precisely the reason to think it.Before Trump launched in 2016, “people used to say, ‘Trump? There’s no way he’ll run. He’s a clown. He’s a reality TV guy. Nobody ever is gonna take that seriously’ … right up until he won the nomination. And then they said, ‘Oh, don’t worry, it can’t be that bad. What could possibly be as bad as you think?’ Well, everything.“And so I think we live in a world where the most irresponsible thing you can do is look away from the worst-case scenario. I do believe that if Tucker ran for president, there is an argument to be made that he’s the one person who could beat Trump.”In the words of the New York Times, at Fox Carlson created “what may be the most racist show in the history of cable news – and also … the most successful”. Pursuing far-right talking points, he channelled the Republican base.Now he has lost that platform. Wilson discounts a move to another network or a start-up, like the Daily Caller Carlson co-founded in 2010, after leaving CNN and MSNBC. But to Wilson, Carlson has precious assets for any political campaign: “He has an understanding of the camera, he has an understanding of the news media, infrastructure and ecosystem. He can present. He can talk.”Which leads Wilson to Ron DeSantis, still Trump’s closest challenger in polling, though he has not declared a run. Carlson “is unlike Ron DeSantis. He can talk to people, you know? He is the guy who can engage people on a on a human basis. Ron is not that guy.”The Florida governor has fallen as Trump has surged, boosted by his own claimed martyrdom over his criminal indictment and other legal problems. DeSantis has also scored own-goals, from his fight with Disney to his failure to charm his own party, perceived personal failings prompting endorsements for Trump.Wilson thinks DeSantis’s decision to run in a “Tucker Carlson primary”, courting the far right, may now rebound.“DeSantis’s people had been bragging for a year. ‘Oh, we’re winning the Tucker primary. His audience loves us. We’re gonna be on Tucker.’ And it was an interesting dependency. It was an advantage that DeSantis was booked on Fox all the time and on Tucker, and mentioned on Tucker very frequently. But that has now disappeared. Fox is all back in on Trump.”Wilson knows a thing or two about Republican fundraising. If Carlson ran, he says, he would “absolutely destroy with small donors. He would raise uncounted millions. Mega-donors would would not go for it. The racial aspect of Tucker is not exactly hidden. I think that would be a disqualifier for a lot of wealthy donors. But Tucker could offset it. He would be a massive draw in that email fundraising hamster wheel.“Remember, in 2016 the large-donor money for Trump was very late in the game. Before that, they were all with Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz or Chris Christie.“I have very high confidence you’re gonna see another iteration of, you know, ‘We love you Ron, we’re never leaving you Ron,’ and then they’re gonna call him one day and say, ‘Hey, Ron, I love you, man. But you’re young. Try again next time.’ And they’ll hang up with Ron and go, ‘Mr Trump, where do I send my million dollars?’“I’ve been to that rodeo too many times now.”So if Carlson does enter the arena, and does buck DeSantis into the cheap seats, can he do the same to Trump?“This iteration of Trump’s campaign is a lot smarter than the last one. I predict they would say, ‘Let’s bring Tucker in as VP and stop all this chaos, be done with it. You know, there are very few good options [for Trump] if Tucker gets in the race.”Joe Biden and Kamala Harris versus Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson? It seems outlandish.“Again, I think the worst thing we can do is imagine the worst-case scenario can never happen. Because the worst-case scenario has happened any number of times in the last eight years.” More

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      in US Politics

      Trump and Tucker Carlson were codependent. Their venn diagram was one angry white circle

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      At an 18 February 2017 rally, Donald Trump railed against immigrants and violence. He was unusually focused on Sweden, warning the crowd about recent terrorist attacks in the country: “You look at what’s happening last night in Sweden. Sweden, who would believe this?” If a terrorist attack in Sweden seemed unbelievable, it’s because it was. There had been no attack by immigrants the night before Trump spoke. The most recent attacks on Sweden, at the time, were a series of bombings between November 2016 and January 2017 that were allegedly connected to the neo-Nazi group the Nordic Resistance.People in Sweden shared photographs of their very un-bombed houses. Reporters did their due diligence and wrote stories about how nothing at all had happened in Sweden the previous night. It was a news cycle of nothing. But all that nothing could not persuade the president he was wrong. Trump repeated the story over and over. He was right, he insisted in multiple interviews: Sweden had been bombed by immigrant terrorists and he knew because he’d seen it on Tucker Carlson Tonight.Trump and Carlson were locked in a folie à deux that made each other’s careers. As Trump demanded a wall between Mexico and the United States, Carlson aired show after show cherry-picking stories to inflate the dangers of immigration. As Trump railed against Muslims, Carlson aired aggrieved segments about Macy’s selling hijabs. Together, they tapped into a nativist anger in America. Trump’s audience was Carlson’s audience. The Venn diagram was one big white angry circle. And Carlson even went further than Trump. While Trump encouraged his supporters to get vaccinated, Carlson likened the vaccine to Nazi experiments.There are still questions about exactly why Fox fired Carlson on Monday morning. But it’s clear that in his wake, he leaves wreckage. Not just from advising his elderly viewers that they didn’t need the vaccine. Not just from downplaying the insurrection as “mostly peaceful” and “embarrassingly tepid”. Not just for normalizing racist and neo-Nazi ideology or for the way he demonized individuals he disagreed with even if they weren’t public figures. But in the way he redefined truth and helped define the Trump presidency. He certainly wasn’t the first, or even the most eloquent, but Carlson was the loudest John the Baptist leading the way of the Trump era, evangelizing for a politics built on petty grievances and outrage.And the connection between Trump and Carlson wasn’t accidental. They often texted and conversed. Trump sought Carlson’s advice on his presidential run. And while past presidents have had close relationships with media figures, theirs was more transactional. Carlson’s disinformation informed Trump’s approach to his presidency and Trump capitalized on the anger Carlson incited.Richard West, professor of communications studies at Emerson College and author of a forthcoming book on the media, told me that Carlson elevated “factitis” to an art. Factitis, as West defines it, is “[an]irrational fear and avoidance of reporting facts”.“He ushered in this perception that whatever you think is OK, whatever you feel can be viewed as real and factual,” West says. “And it has to be because I’m on TV reading a teleprompter. Years ago, we used to call this blogging. Now it’s called TV anchorship on Fox.”West described the symbiosis of Carlson’s influence, which peaked under the Trump administration, as the “Tucker-Trump transactional threat”. He describes it as a feedback loop, “where one person reports something that’s not a fact. The other says, ‘That’s true.’ And the other one says, ‘Yes, I told you it was true.’ It’s just kind of an odd transactional aversion to truth.”The journalist Brian Stelter, former host of CNN’s Reliable Sources, described the cratering legacy of Carlson more succinctly. “Tucker Carlson made cable news cruder, uglier, more toxic. And as much as he turned on some fans, he also turned off a lot of people.”Trump and Carlson knew that one of the most powerful tools at their disposal was scapegoating individuals, often those not used to the media spotlight. The researcher Nina Jankowicz was targeted by Carlson after she was appointed to head the newly formed Disinformation Governance Board of the US Department of Homeland Security. The board was disbanded after it became the target of disinformation, and Jankowicz is still dealing with harassment. She told me in an interview that she could always tell when she’d been mentioned on Carlson’s show, by the fresh new wave of harassment. She doesn’t hold out hope that whoever replaces Carlson will be better: “And even if they replace Tucker with somebody who is more palatable, that legacy is one of lying for profit, lying for sport and lying without regard to the consequence of your lies. And that has really engendered this kind of normalization of political violence in America.”Jankowicz wasn’t the only woman Carlson targeted; it was regular feature on his show. The reporters Kim Kelly, Taylor Lorenz, and Lauren Duca all experienced Carlson’s ire. Sometimes they lost their jobs as a result, but they always received harassment from his fans, an army of angry viewers, ready to focus their vitriol on any target. The Trump-Carlson legacy is to transform both the right and the left into a nation of shitposters, a republic of dunk tweeters. A place where cruelty and disinformation is a bankable business model.I interviewed Carlson for a profile in the Columbia Journalism Reviewin 2018. I asked him if he felt responsible for the words he spoke, and the impact he had. I’d seen loved ones echo Carlson’s language about Black people and immigrants, in ways so nasty it left me devastated.My life and my community were cratered by Carlson’s rhetoric. He was dismissive and accused me of promoting censorship. But since the profile was published, it’s become clear that the lives of his viewers and the people he targeted where just rhetorical strategy to him. There was no care or concern over the damage he caused or the lives he ruined. And until his recent firing, there were very few consequences.At the time, people I talked to for the story insisted that Carlson didn’t believe what he said because it was just entertainment. And as his texts from the Dominion lawsuit show, he didn’t believe some of what he was claiming every night. But anyone who has read Hamlet knows that you become what you pretend you are. People die; a kingdom was ruined.Trump is running for re-election now without Carlson’s platform. What that does to his political power remains to be seen.But there’s no doubt that another of Murdoch’s apostles will take his place on Fox’s nightly lineup, just as Carlson replaced Bill O’Reilly. Maybe his replacement will be even more extreme, more willing to spin conspiracy theories for the Maga right. From O’Reilly to Glenn Beck to Carlson – that has tended to be the direction of travel.Like John the Baptist, despite having his head severed and delivered to Rupert Murdoch on a platter, Carlson’s gospel of hate will endure. It’s too embedded in the nature of American politics – both its tone and its language – to divest ourselves of it. And it’s too profitable. Carlson’s legacy is very real and we’re living in its ruins. More

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      in Elections

      Trump loses appeal to stop Pence from testifying in January 6 investigation

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      A federal appeals court has denied Donald Trump’s emergency motion to block Mike Pence from testifying in a criminal investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election, paving the way for the special counsel examining the matter to obtain potentially inculpatory accounts of Trump’s desperate bid to stay in power.The sealed ruling by the US appeals court for the DC circuit on Wednesday marks the end of Trump’s efforts to keep Pence from divulging information to federal prosecutors, unless his legal team takes the unlikely step of challenging the decision before the full DC circuit or the supreme court.Pence is considered a potentially consequential witness because Trump pressured him to unlawfully reject electoral college votes for Joe Biden at the joint session of Congress and was at a December 2021 meeting at the White House with Republican lawmakers who discussed objections to Biden’s win.The two interactions are of particular investigative interest to the special counsel Jack Smith as his office examines whether Trump sought to unlawfully obstruct the certification and defraud the United States in seeking to overturn the 2020 election results.Prosecutors have been trying to get Pence’s testimony for months, starting with requests from the justice department last year and then through a grand jury subpoena issued by Smith, who inherited the sprawling criminal investigation.The subpoena was challenged by Trump’s lawyers, who invoked executive privilege to limit the scope of Pence’s testimony, as well as by Pence’s lawyer, who argued his role as president of the Senate on January 6 meant he was protected from legal scrutiny by the executive branch.Both requests to limit the scope of Pence’s testimony were largely denied by the new chief US judge for the court James Boasberg, who issued a clear-cut denial to Trump and a more nuanced ruling to Pence that upheld that he was protected in part by “speech or debate” protections.As a result, the former vice-president’s team declined to challenge the ruling. But Trump’s legal team disagreed, and filed an emergency motion to the US appeals court for the DC circuit – which was denied late on Wednesday by judges Gregory Katsas, Patricia Millett and Robert Wilkins.A lawyer on the team representing Trump in the special counsel cases could not say whether they would appeal the ruling to a higher court, though such a move is not expected.In the wake of election day, Trump tried to pressure Pence into helping him reverse his defeat by using his largely ceremonial role as the presiding officer of the Senate on January 6 to reject legitimate slates of electors for Biden and prevent his certification.The effort relied in large part on Pence accepting fake slates of electors for Trump – a scheme that is also the subject of the criminal investigation – to create a pretext for casting doubt on the election results and stopping Biden from becoming president.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe pressure campaign stemmed from Trump alongsidefigures inside and outside the government, including Trump’s lawyer John Eastman, other Trump campaign-affiliated lawyers like Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani and dozens of Republican members of Congress.Pence was among the few people who had one-on-one discussions with Trump on the day of and the day before the Capitol attack, which House January 6 select committee investigators last year concluded was a conspiracy that the former president had some advance knowledge of.Since Pence is precluded from testifying about any preparations for his role as presiding officer of the Senate it remains unclear how illuminating his testimony might be for prosecutors.But Pence’s team has long maintained in private that he can testify about other efforts by Trump, the Trump campaign and outside individuals to overturn the 2020 election results that could speak to their state of mind in the weeks from November 2020 to Biden’s inauguration. More

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      in US Politics

      Donald Trump raped me, writer E Jean Carroll testifies in New York court

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      The advice columnist E Jean Carroll told a New York jury on Wednesday that Donald Trump raped her, leaving her unable to have a romantic relationship, and then “shattered my reputation” by denying the attack occurred.Carroll testified in her civil lawsuit seeking damages for battery – after Trump allegedly sexually assaulted her in a New York department store changing room in 1996 – and for defamation, after he accused her of lying and perpetrating a hoax when she went public with her accusations in a book.“I’m here because Donald Trump raped me, and when I wrote about it, he said it didn’t happen. He lied and shattered my reputation. I’m here to try and get my life back,” she told the jury.Trump denies the accusations.Before Carroll testified, Judge Lewis Kaplan warned Trump may have crossed the line into jury-tampering after the former president posted an attack on his social media site, Truth Social, calling Carroll’s accusations a “made-up SCAM” and a “witch-hunt”.Kaplan called Trump’s post “entirely inappropriate” and warned they could become “a potential source of liability” for him.After she took the stand, Carroll described running into Trump as she was leaving the Bergdorf Goodman luxury department store.“He said, ‘I need to buy a gift, come help me,’” she said. “I was delighted.”Carroll said she suggested a handbag and then a hat for the woman Trump said he was buying for but he wasn’t interested.“He picked up a fur hat and he was petting it like a cat or a dog. Then he said, ‘I know, lingerie,’” she said. “He led the way to the escalator.”Carroll described Trump as very talkative, and herself as “absolutely enchanted”.“I was delighted to go to lingerie with him. He was very funny,” she said.Carroll said Trump “snatched up” a grey-blue bodysuit in the lingerie department and demanded she try it on. “I had no intention of putting it on. I said, ‘You put it on, it’s your colour,’” she told the court.Carroll said Trump suggested they both try it on, and motioned toward the dressing room. She said she did not take it seriously.“Donald Trump was being very light. It was very joshing and very funny,” she said. “I was flirting the whole time, probably.”But, she said, the mood changed rapidly after they stepped into the dressing room.“He immediately shut the door and shoved me up against the wall. He shoved me so hard my head banged. I was extremely confused,” she said. “I pushed back and he thrust me back against the wall again, banging my head again.”Carroll told the jury the situation “turned absolutely dark”.“He leaned down and pulled down my tights,” she said. “I was pushing him back. It was quite clear I didn’t want anything else to happen.”Carroll described the former president’s attempts to kiss her as “a shocking thing”.“My whole reason for being alive at that moment was to get out of the room,” she said.But Carroll said she could not escape Trump’s grip. Speaking quietly and slowly, she said he raped her.Carroll said she escaped after she was able to lift her knee and push him off. She fled the store.Carroll said she will always regret going into the dressing room with Trump, describing it as “very stupid”.“It left me unable to ever have a romantic life again,” she said.Later, Carroll shed tears as she explained that she found it impossible to even smile at a man she was attracted to after the alleged rape, and that she had not had sex since.Carroll said she continued to put on a public face of the “invincible old lady” but that the “private E Jean is not that cheerleader”. She acknowledged that in her book she had claimed not to have suffered mental anguish as a result of the alleged assault, but said that was her “public person” speaking while her private self suffered.Carroll also admitted there was a contradiction between her role as an advice columnist telling readers to seek therapy or go to the police, and her own failure to do either.Carroll said she considers Trump “evil” and thought he was a “terrible” president, but denied bringing the lawsuit against him because of her political views.“I’m not settling a political score. I’m settling a personal score,” she said.Carroll said she had been subject to considerable abuse by Trump and his supporters for going public about the alleged attack, including the then president’s dismissal of her as a liar. Carroll said she had expected him to say they had a consensual encounter, not deny it altogether.“It hit me and it laid me low because I lost my reputation. Nobody looked at me the same. It was gone. Even people who knew me looked at me with pity in their eyes, and the people who had no opinion now thought I was a liar and hated me,” she said. “The force of hatred coming at me was staggering.”Carroll said she was also fired from her advice column at Elle magazine after 26 years.Asked if she regretted accusing Trump given the consequences, Carroll’s voice broke.“I regretted this about 100 times but, in the end, being able to get my day in court finally is everything,” she said, through tears.The trial continues.
      Information and support for anyone affected by rape or sexual abuse issues is available from the following organisations. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support on 0808 500 2222. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html More

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      in US Politics

      Trump lawyers say Mar-a-Lago boxes contained foreign leader briefings

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      Donald Trump’s lawyers in the Mar-a-Lago documents investigation found the 15 boxes the former president returned to the National Archives a year after the end of his presidency mostly contained briefings for calls with foreign leaders, according to a new letter they sent to Congress.The majority of the letter – seen by the Guardian and earlier reported by CNN – served to characterize Trump’s retention of classified-marked documents as inadvertent, and due to White House staffers sweeping all documents into boxes during a chaotic departure at the end of the administration.But the 10-page letter that was sent to the House and Senate intelligence committees also revealed the order in which the documents were placed, as well as their contents, inside 15 boxes the National Archives struggled to retrieve for months and precipitated the criminal investigation.The investigation into Trump’s potential retention of national defense information and obstruction of justice led by special counsel Jack Smith is ongoing, though it may be near its end given prosecutors have subpoenaed almost everyone who conceivably could have knowledge of the matter.Trump’s two main lawyers involved in the documents investigation – Tim Parlatore and Jim Trusty – in late December last year formally asked the National Archives for access to the 15 boxes that Trump had returned through the relevant provision in the Presidential Records Act.The request was granted several weeks later, and Parlatore and Trusty went to one of the top floors in the main National Archives building overlooking the National Mall and started going through the boxes, which they found preserved just as when Trump had sent them up from his Mar-a-Lago resort.The boxes, according to the letter, contained a mixture of documents from the White House that were grouped by date and included newspapers, magazines, notes, letters and daily presidential schedules.Where there had been classified documents – which was what prompted the National Archives to first alert the justice department to start an investigation last year – officials had inserted placeholder pages that described the document that had been removed, the letter said.“That allowed Parlatore and Trusty to discern what the documents were, as well as what other materials in the boxes were in proximity … The vast majority of placeholder inserts refer to briefings for phone calls with foreign leaders that were located near the schedule for those calls.”The letter then described the ensuing criminal investigation as “misguided” because, in their eyes, the way the boxes were packed was indicative of White House staff pulling all documents into the boxes during a chaotic “pack-out” process at the end of the Trump administration.Left unsaid was that the criminal investigation has evolved since the initial referral.The obstruction part of the investigation is centered on Trump’s incomplete compliance with a subpoena last May that demanded the return of any classified-marked documents in his possession. That was after documents he returned earlier to the National Archives included 200 that were classified.Last June, Corcoran searched Mar-a-Lago and produced about 30 documents with classified markings to the justice department, and had another Trump lawyer, Christina Bobb, sign a certification that attested to compliance with the subpoena “based on the information provided to me”.But the justice department developed evidence that more documents that were marked as classified remained at the resort, according to court filings, and when the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago in August they found 101 documents marked as classified in a storage room and in Trump’s office.Last month, Corcoran was ordered by a senior US judge to testify and hand over his notes to the grand jury hearing evidence in the case, piercing his attorney-client privilege protections through the crime-fraud exception because Trump might have used his advice in furtherance of a crime.The special counsel is also investigating whether Trump violated the Espionage Act, and prosecutors have recently asked witnesses whether Trump ever showed a map to donors or a book author, a person familiar with the matter said. More

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      in US Politics

      Bannon ally handed four-year prison term over Trump border-wall fraud

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      Brian Kolfage, a US air force veteran and former associate of the Trump ally and adviser Steve Bannon, was sentenced on Wednesday to more than four years in prison after admitting to conspiring to defraud donors to a campaign to build a wall along the US-Mexican border, as promised by the former president.Bannon, 69 and a former campaign chair and White House strategist for Trump, was also charged in the case but received a presidential pardon in the final hours of Trump’s term.Bannon remains a prominent presence in far-right media and politics. In September, he was indicted in New York state court in Manhattan on money laundering and conspiracy charges over the planned wall. He pleaded not guilty. Trump’s pardon of Bannon covered federal crimes but not alleged state crimes.Kolfage, 41, lost his legs and right hand in a rocket attack in Iraq. In the federal case, he pleaded guilty last year to misappropriating funds meant for the We Build the Wall campaign.On Wednesday a US district judge, Analisa Torres, announced the 51-month sentence at a hearing in federal court in Manhattan.Andrew Badolato, 58, another former Bannon associate, also pleaded guilty and was sentenced to three years in prison.“The fraud perpetrated by Mr Kolfage and Mr Badolato went well beyond ripping off individual donors,” Torres said. “They hurt us all by eroding the public’s faith in the political process.“Badolato and Kolfage led the fundraising push alongside Bannon, Trump’s former campaign chair and White House strategist.Federal prosecutors in Manhattan had recommended Kolfage spend 51 months in prison and Badolato 41.Kolfage was accused of taking more than $350,000 and spending it on boat payments, jewelry and cosmetic surgery. He also pleaded guilty to tax charges.Lawyers for Kolfage proposed he be sentenced to home detention, citing his medical needs. Badolato’s lawyers said three years of probation would have been sufficient for their client because he was less culpable.Another defendant, 52-year-old Timothy Shea, was convicted in October. He is set to be sentenced in June. More