Donald Trump

Subterms

    More stories

    • 150 Shares119 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump’s legal woes pick up speed as Republican 2024 race heats up

      by

      As Donald Trump runs again for the White House, he’s dogged by four criminal investigations that have gained momentum, including two focused on Trump’s zealous drive to overturn his 2020 election loss, raising the odds he will face charges in one or more inquiries in coming weeks or months, say former federal prosecutors.All four inquiries have accelerated in recent months with numerous subpoenas to close Trump associates and testimony by key witnesses before grand juries in Washington DC, Georgia and New York, that pose growing legal threats to Trump, plus several of his ex-lawyers and allies.Two investigations are homing in on Trump’s nonstop efforts to thwart his 2020 election loss with bogus fraud charges, while others are looking into Trump’s retention of hundreds of classified documents post his presidency, and Trump’s role in a $130,000 hush money payment in 2016 to porn star Stormy Daniels with whom he allegedly had an affair.An indictment of Trump in the Daniels hush money case could even come within days. Trump’s fears over the issue even prompted him to post on social media about being arrested this week in New York, triggering a flood of Republicans to issue statements of support despite Trump calling for protests against any such move.The four inquiries have been examining separately whether Trump violated several laws including obstruction of an official proceeding and defrauding the United States by his actions to overturn the 2020 election, and breaking other statutes.The multiple investigations of Trump, two of which are being led by justice department special counsel Jack Smith, are unparalleled for an ex president – especially as he seeks the White House again, say ex-prosecutors.“It seems quite possible, or even likely, that Trump will be defending himself in four different criminal cases as he is campaigning for president in 2024,” said Barbara McQuade, former US attorney for eastern Michigan. “Making court appearances in New York, Georgia, Florida and Washington DC while also maintaining a campaign schedule may prove to be a daunting task.”McQuade added: “Trump, no doubt, will use criminal charges as a fundraising tool and as a way to portray himself as the eternal victim. On some level, he may relish the spectacle of it all, but it seems likely that accountability is headed his way.”Other ex-prosecutors say Trump’s legal travails are unique for a presidential candidate.“The sheer number and diversity of criminal investigations of Trump’s conduct are totally unprecedented for a major candidate in modern times,” said Dan Richman, a Columbia University law professor and ex-prosecutor in New York southern district.The criminal inquiry by the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, into Trump’s efforts to reverse his 2020 defeat in Georgia with his high-pressure call to the secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, on 2 January 2021 asking him to “find 11,780 votes”, and other calls, is expected to bring charges against him and some close allies in coming months, say ex-prosecutors.In late January, Willis said a special grand jury had completed a seven-month inquiry involving interviews with 75 witnesses in her investigation which reportedly had at least 17 targets, including Trump and his former personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani.A number of indictments have reportedly been recommended by the special grand jury, and Willis has said a decision is “imminent” about convening a regular grand jury that Georgia law requires before she brings any charges.Separately, Smith’s inquiry into Trump’s drive to thwart Joe Biden’s election seems to be in its late stages, in light of subpoenas this year to former vice-president Mike Pence and Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows, both potentially key witnesses to Trump’s drive to block Biden from taking office. Ex-prosecutors say Meadows is a subject of the investigation.Those subpoenas “show that the January 6 investigation is serious and narrowing,” said Paul Pelletier, former acting chief of the justice department’s fraud section.Smith has secured grand jury testimony from other key figures including Pence’s former top aide Marc Short and his former chief counsel Greg Jacob, plus former White House counsel Pat Cipollone as part of his inquiry into whether Trump’s actions before and during 6 January 2021 violated an official proceeding and defrauded the government.On another legal front, Smith has also been leading a wide ranging inquiry into Trump’s retention of hundreds of classified documents at Mar a Lago after he left the White House, a potential violation of three laws – the Presidential Records Act, obstruction and the Espionage Act.Meanwhile, a grand jury convened by the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, to look into Trump’s alleged arranging hush money payments of $130,000 via his ex-lawyer Michael Cohen to Daniels in 2016, heard testimony from Cohen this week.Last week, Trump declined an invitation by the DA’s office to testify, a sign reportedly that he could soon be indicted.Trump has blasted all the investigations as politically motivated and said he’s done nothing illegal, decrying Smith’s appointment as “part of a never ending witch-hunt”.But ex-prosecutors see huge legal headaches ahead for Trump, and probable charges at least in the Georgia invsstigation.“With the Manhattan DA now presenting evidence to a grand jury, Trump now faces four credible criminal investigations – unprecedented for the most hardened criminals, never mind a former president who is seeking to enter the White House again,” Pelletier said.“Of all the investigations, Georgia appears likely to bring the most serious charges imminently against Trump. The Mar-a-Lago document investigation has picked up speed, but, frustratingly, appears to be on a more cautious and deliberate track.”Other former federal prosecutors see strong signs that in Georgia charges against Trump, and some of his top lawyers and allies are coming.“There is little doubt that a number of indictments are on the horizon in Georgia. My sense is that the Fulton county DA is putting the final touches on bringing Rico [racketeering] charges involving Trump and others” said former US attorney Michael Moore, of Georgia.“Trump will surely be the main player, and I expect to see some well-known names in upcoming indictments,” adding that Trump, as well as Meadows and Giuliani “are likely to each see more of the inside of a courtroom than any of them might like”.Trump has dubbed his call to Raffensperger as “perfect”.Moore noted: “There will be an unavoidable overlap of efforts by the Fulton DA and the special counsel. The efforts to overturn the 2020 election had both state and federal implications even while dealing with the same facts.“The ability of the special counsel to delve into conduct across many jurisdictions may prove especially useful when looking at the efforts to string together the fake electors schemes in multiple states,” referring to a scheme the justice department has focused on involving efforts by Giuliani and others to replace electors in key states Biden won with Trump electors.Other ex-prosecutors note significant overlap between the Georgia probe investigation and the special counsel’s, both of which threaten Trump, Giuliani, ex-Trump lawyer John Eastman and others.“While Trump’s calls to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and other Georgia state officials appear to be at the center of the Fulton county DA’s probe, that investigation likely extends to efforts by Trump’s legal team, including Rudy Giuliani, to convince Georgia legislators to overturn the election results,” said Richman.“Yet the legal team’s nationwide efforts by Giuliani, Eastman and others – encouraged by Trump to an extent that will need to be clarified – to present slates of phony electors to Congress and to otherwise disrupt the electoral certification also seems to be at the heart of one prong of Jack Smith’s federal investigation.”Not surprisingly, Trump’s legal expenses to fend off these investigations and other legal headaches involving personal and corporate matters have been hefty.According to federal records, Trump spent about $10m last year out of his political action committee to pay law firms representing him in the four criminal inquiries, plus cases involving the Trump Organization and lawsuits.Those costs will surely mount for Trump as the investigations ratchet up subpoenas of top former Trump allies to build their cases before grand juries, as Smith has been doing in the two inquiries he’s spearheading.“Prosecutors tend to conduct investigations in concentric circles, starting at the outer edges and then progressing ever inward with the target at the center,” McQuade said. “They want to arm themselves with as much information as possible when they question those who are closest to the target. Now that Smith is serving subpoenas on Meadows and Pence, it seems that he has entered the final circle of his investigation.”Little wonder that as Trump runs for the White House again, quite a few Republicans are feeling very edgy.“It does not bode well for the Republican party if Trump should be indicted and win the nomination,” said former Pennsylvania Republican congressman Charlie Dent. “The electoral outcome would be disastrous for the GOP. How much losing can we take?” More

    • 175 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump in panic mode as he braces for likely charges in Stormy Daniels case

      by

      Donald Trump is bracing for his most legally perilous week since he left the White House, with the Manhattan district attorney likely to bring criminal charges against him over his role in paying hush money to adult film star Stormy Daniels, as he huddled this weekend to strategize his legal and political responses.The former US president has posted in all-caps on his Truth Social platform that he expected to be “ARRESTED ON TUESDAY OF NEXT WEEK” and called for his supporters to engage in protests – an ominous echo of his tweets urging protests in the lead-up to the January 6 US Capitol attack.Trump’s post was nothing more than guesswork about when Alvin Bragg might bring charges, sources close to Trump said, after he saw media reporting that the district attorney’s office had contacted the US secret service about security in the event of an indictment.The grand jury in New York hearing evidence in the resurrected 2016 hush money case is now expected to hear from one more witness on Monday, making it unlikely that an arrest would come the following day because it could take additional hours to draft charging papers.That witness is reportedly Robert J Costello who is appearing at the request of Trump’s legal team. Costello was once a legal adviser to Cohen but the two have since fallen out. Costello’s testimony is likely to be aimed at undermining Cohen’s.But the frenzied posts from Trump reflected his deep panic and anxiety over the imminence and likelihood of criminal charges, the sources said, not least because he is powerless to stop the district attorney’s office from moving forward with a case that will take the US into new legal territory as Trump revs up his 2024 campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.Trump and his allies have suggested in recent days that an indictment in the hush money case could benefit him politically – the Republican base might see the years-old case as a genuine “witch-hunt” as he has claimed – but it is also true that Trump himself is deeply fearful of criminal charges.Trump discussed the hush money case every day last week, and his advisers say they have run through various scenarios in the event of an indictment, including whether he would initially travel to New York for an arraignment, or appear remotely from his Mar-a-Lago resort.Trump has expressed interest in appearing in person at the Manhattan criminal court, where he believes he can turn proceedings into a spectacle before a gaggle of reporters, sources said, and raised the prospect on Saturday afternoon as he travelled to Oklahoma for an NCAA wrestling championship.But some members of his legal team have advised against making such an appearance in person, citing security issues among other concerns, and have suggested he allow them to negotiate an agreed-upon surrender date and a remote initial appearance when they are notified of charges.Trump’s legal team has separately focused on a defense strategy. The outside counsel – Joe Tacopina and Susan Necheles – have reasoned that a hush money case centered on campaign finance violations could be weak after a similar prosecution against Democratic senator John Edwards failed in 2012.If the indictment alleges the hush money violated campaign finance laws, the Trump lawyers are expected to argue that it fails the “irrespective test” – that Trump would have paid Daniels irrespective of the 2016 campaign to avoid the embarrassment because he was already a public figure.Trump may face an uphill struggle with those arguments, given the fact that having “mixed motives” to protect himself personally and to protect his campaign could leave him liable, and the timing of the payments suggests there was an urgency to pay the money before the end of the 2016 campaign.In response, the Trump legal team is expected to argue that because Daniels tried to sell her story about an affair with Trump in 2011, and she was told then to “leave Trump alone. Forget the story”, that proves her silence was desired long before Trump was running for president.Trump’s lawyers recently made these arguments to the district attorney’s office when Necheles went in to urge Bragg to drop the case, the Guardian previously reported. But all signs indicate that Bragg will move ahead with the case all the same in an unprecedented indictment of a former US president – and one seeking to return to the Oval Office.The investigation concerns $130,000 that Trump made to Daniels through his then lawyer Michael Cohen in the final days of the 2016 campaign. Trump later reimbursed Cohen with $35,000 checks using his personal funds, and Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to federal charges involving the hush money.The district attorney’s case is likely to focus on how Trump and the Trump Organization handled the reimbursements. According to court filings in the federal case, the Trump Organization falsely recorded the payments as legal expenses, referencing a legal retainer with Cohen that did not exist.The district attorney’s office has had at least seven top Trump aides and advisers testify before the grand jury in recent weeks, including Cohen, who testified for around two hours on Wednesday – his second appearance – and every juror was said to have asked a question, suggesting an engaged grand jury.That is a typical sign for prosecutors as they weigh potential charges, legal experts say, because it could indicate the grand jury found him to be a compelling witness – and a jury at an eventual trial might be similarly convinced. More

    • 150 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Manhattan DA warns of ‘attempts to intimidate’ after Trump calls for protest

      by

      The Manhattan district attorney widely expected to bring an indictment against Donald Trump this week has vowed that his staff will not be intimidated after the former US president called for his supporters to protest any action against him.Trump triggered a flurry of frantic headlines and statements from his political allies on Saturday when he posted a message on social media claiming he was set to be arrested this Tuesday on charges of hush payments to adult actor Stormy Daniels.An indictment from the office of Alvin Bragg is widely expected this week but officials, and Trump’s lawyers, have clarified they have no certainty as to timing or what actually will happen in court.But Bragg sent an email to his office, obtained by Politico, that did not mention Trump by name but that did appear to address the case, including widespread security fears around lower Manhattan courts in the wake of any indictment.“As with all of our investigations, we will continue to apply the law evenly and fairly, and speak publicly only when appropriate,” Bragg wrote.He added: “We do not tolerate attempts to intimidate our office or threaten the rule of law in New York… Our law enforcement partners will ensure that any specific or credible threats against the office will be fully investigated and that the proper safeguards are in place so all 1,600 of us have a secure work environment.”On Saturday afternoon, Trump supporters gathered at his Mar-a-Lago home and country club in Florida to show their support. Trump later boarded a private jet to fly from Palm Beach to Tulsa, Oklahoma, to attend a college wrestling tournament.Trump made no mention of a criminal indictment and arrest at the Tulsa event. He appeared alongside Senator Markwayne Mullin, congratulated the wrestlers and posed for pictures with supporters, according to pictures published by Tulsa World.Trump and Mullin sat in a boxed-off area and stayed for all 10 matches, while Mullin, a former wrestler, explained the finer points of the sport. Trump talked with fans between matches, but reporters were kept away.Speaking before Trump’s arrival, Mullin appeared to compare the likely charges against Trump with unproven and largely discredited claims that former secretary of state Hilary Clinton, Trump’s 2016 opponent, committed criminal security breaches while she served in the Obama administration.“They’ve been after the president (Trump) since Day 1,” Mullin was reported to have remarked. “Everybody sees this for what it is. It’s not what this country is about. We had an opportunity to get after Hilary, … and we didn’t.”“The [Manhattan] district attorney needs to concentrate on putting bad guys in jail,” he added.It was Trump’s first public appearance since he said in a social media post that he would be arrested over the payments made to Daniels, a month before the 2016 presidential election. If any indictment is handed down, it is likely to claim the payments were an illegal use of campaign finances. Trump received a standing ovation in Tulsa and held up a defiant fist as he arrived at the wrestling event while fans cheered. Earlier on Saturday, Trump had urged his supporters to “protest, protest, protest” in comments made on his Truth Social platform.Insider has reported that the grand jury looking at the case may still listen to one further witness on Monday, raising the prospect of any indictment coming later in the week.Michael Cohen, the former Trump attorney and “fixer” who was sentenced to three years in federal prison after pleading guilty to tax evasion and campaign-finance violations, said that Trump’s comments signaled a desire for “another violent clash”.“It’s eerily similar to the battle cry that he put out just prior to the Jan 6 insurrection, you know, especially including the call, you know, for protest,” Cohen told MSNBC. Cohen added that “it would have been smart for Donald to write ‘peaceful protest’, but he doesn’t want a peaceful protest”.Cohen also theorized that Trump would see his arrest as a potential boost to his 2024 presidential campaign as he frequently has sought to portray himself as at the center of a political “witch hunt”. More

    • 150 Shares119 Views

      in US Politics

      Birchers review: how the Republican far right gave us Trump and DeSantis

      by

      Out of sight but not forgotten, the John Birch Society is a husk of its old self. Still, its penchant for conspiracy theories courses in the veins of the American right. A mere 37% of Republicans believe Joe Biden beat Donald Trump legitimately. “January 6, I think, is probably second only to the 2020 election as the biggest scam in my lifetime,” says Tucker Carlson, the face of Fox News.Back in the day, the society trashed Dwight D Eisenhower and his successor as president, John F Kennedy. That Ike and JFK were war heroes made no difference. They were suspect. Eisenhower attempted to navigate around the Birchers. Kennedy used them as a foil. Dallas, where JFK was assassinated, was a Bircher hotbed.“Birchers charged that President Eisenhower abetted the communists, distributed flyers calling President John F Kennedy a traitor, and repudiated Nato,” Matthew Dallek writes in his in-depth examination of the society’s rise, fall and continued relevance.Dallek, a professor at George Washington University, is the son of Robert Dallek, a legendary presidential biographer. Under the subtitle How the John Birch Society Radicalized the American Right, Dallek’s book is quick-paced and well researched. However troubling, it is a joy to read.Dallek argues convincingly that despite the end of the cold war, amid which the Birchers were born, its antipathies and suspicions continue to animate and inflame, a reality Trump and his minions remember and Democrats forget at their peril.Dallek looks at how the Birchers’ ideas came to pollenate and populate the Republican party. It didn’t happen randomly or suddenly. The society never disappeared and nor did its ideas and resentments. The “quagmires in Afghanistan and Iraq” coupled with the “financial crisis and Great Recession” breathed fresh currency into isolationism, nativism and scorn for elites.Founded in 1958, at a secret meeting in Indianapolis led by Robert Welch, the candy manufacturer, the group took its name from a missionary and intelligence officer killed in 1945 by communists in China. Birch’s Christianity and the circumstances of his death were central to the society’s message.Original members included Fred C Koch, founder of Koch Industries and father of Charles and David, the hard-right political activists and billionaire donors.“In the 1930s [Fred Koch] had helped build oil refineries, first in Stalin’s Soviet Union and then in Hitler’s Germany, and his brushes with both regimes shaped his cold war philosophy,” Dallek writes.“In the USSR, he knew people who had been purged by Stalin … In contrast, he liked what he saw when he inspected his refineries in Nazi Germany.”Fascism came with the trappings of prosperity. These days, the Koch-funded Quincy Institute takes a dim view of US and western assistance to Ukraine.The John Birch Society is now obscure yet basks in undreamed-of success. Instead of railing against fluoridated water and embracing laetrile (an apricot derivative) as a cancer cure, the Birchers’ intellectual heirs dump on the Covid vaccine, roll the dice on polio and worship ivermectin as a miracle drug.Ron DeSantis, Florida governor and Trump mini-me, is all in with his nonstop attack on modernity and vaccination. Trump no longer reminds voters of Operation Warp Speed, the great success in combating the latest plague.The mortality gap between precincts populated by red and blue America says plenty, but Republican animus to vaccine mandates appears baked in. Fringy need not mean down and out. Just look at Ginni Thomas and her husband, Clarence Thomas, the conservative supreme court justice.Ginni Thomas, a longtime far-right activist entangled in Trump’s attempt to overturn the election up to and including January 6, grew up nestled in comfort. As Dallek points out, many in the Birchers’ ranks possessed a firm foothold in the middle and upper-middle classes.“A childhood neighbor recalled that Ginni Thomas’s parents were active in a losing 1968 referendum campaign in Omaha to ban putting fluoride in the water supply,” Dallek notes.“My Republican parents, who knew them well, certainly considered them Birchers,” the journalist Kurt Andersen recalls.Dallek reminds us of the bookstores opened by the society and the role played by female Birchers. Phyllis Schlafly, the great hard-right crusader, was a Bircher as well as a Harvard grad. She opposed the Voting Rights Act, wrote Barry Goldwater’s 1964 manifesto and successfully opposed the Equal Rights Amendment.Aloise Josephine Antonia Steiner, a non-Birch conservative and the mother of William Buckley, the founder of the National Review, encouraged an acquaintance to establish a society chapter. Buckley eventually – and circuitously – came to stand against the Birchers. Welch heaped praise on his mom.Race was always near the surface. The society attacked Brown v Board of Education, the 1954 supreme court decision which held that de jure racially segregated schools were unequal and unconstitutional. The Birchers, as Dallek recounts, branded the decision “procommunist”.Even now, Brown sticks in the craw on the right. Amy Coney Barrett, a Trump supreme court appointee, refers to Brown as inviolate super-precedent but Mollie Hemingway of the Federalist and Carrie Severino of the Judicial Crisis Network both attack its underpinnings.Decisions such as Brown, they wrote after the confirmation fight over Brett Kavanaugh, another Trump-picked conservative justice, “may have been correct in their result but were decided on the basis of sociological studies rather than legal principles”.“May”? Let that sink in.Another Republican primary is upon us. Trump again leads the way. The furor over his dinner with Ye, the antisemitic recording artist formerly known as Kanye West, and Nick Fuentes, the white supremacist, recedes. DeSantis loses ground. Authenticity and charisma matter. The governor parrots Trump and Carlson on Ukraine, flip-flopping in the process.Yet no other Republican comes close. The John Birch Society is still winning big.
      Birchers: How the John Birch Society Radicalized the American Right is published in the US by Hachette More

    • 175 Shares109 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump allies and rivals rally to his defence after he claims arrest is imminent

      by

      Top Republicans, including some of Donald Trump’s potential rivals for the party’s 2024 presidential nomination, rushed to his defence after the former president said he expected to be arrested next week.On Saturday, Trump announced he would be arrested on Tuesday in a criminal case involving hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels, but there has been no official confirmation on the likelihood that charges will be brought.“The idea of indicting a former president of the United States is deeply troubling to me, as it is to tens of millions of Americans,” said former vice-president Mike Pence, who is widely expected to launch a campaign for the Republican nomination in the coming weeks.The reaction underscores the political risks faced by would-be opponents who are eager to convince voters that it is time to move on from the former president, but who must contend with the fact that he remains the most popular figure in the party.Trump garnered similar support last summer after the FBI searched his Mar-a-Lago club as part of an investigation into his handling of classified documents. The search also proved a fundraising boon.Among those coming to Trump’s defence on Saturday were House speaker Kevin McCarthy, who said a possible indictment would be “an outrageous abuse of power by a radical DA [district attorney] who lets violent criminals walk as he pursues political vengeance” against Trump.McCarthy said he would direct relevant Republican-led House committees “to immediately investigate if federal funds are being used to subvert our democracy by interfering in elections with politically motivated prosecutions”. McCarthy has not endorsed Trump’s White House campaign, but Trump helped McCarthy secure the speakership after a contentious campaign that required multiple rounds of voting.McCarthy’s predecessor as speaker, Democrat Nancy Pelosi, said in a statement, “the former president’s announcement this morning is reckless: doing so to keep himself in the news and to foment unrest among his supporters.”“He cannot hide from his violations of the law, disrespect for our elections and incitements to violence.”On Saturday, Trump posted a message on his Truth Social platform, referring to himself in the third person, saying: “The far and away leading Republican candidate and former president of the United States of America will be arrested on Tuesday of next week.”Law enforcement officials in New York have been making security preparations for the possibility that Trump could be indicted, but there has been no public announcement of any timeframe or any indictment.A spokesperson and a lawyer for Trump said later on Saturday that his post was based on media reports rather than any actual update from, or communication with, prosecutors. Trump’s post cited “illegal leaks from a corrupt and highly political Manhattan district attorney’s office”.The district attorney’s office declined to comment.In his post, Trump called on his supporters to “PROTEST, PROTEST, PROTEST!!!”The post evoked the message from the then-president that preceded the insurrection by extremist supporters at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 which ultimately failed to thwart the certification of Joe Biden’s victory.Pence, who has been escalating his criticism of the former president in recent weeks, said: “No one is above the law.” He added: “I’m confident President Trump can take care of himself. My focus is going to continue to be on the issues that are affecting the American people.”Pence had been noncommittal when asked on Thursday if Trump should drop out if he was indicted. “I think it’s a free country. Everybody can make their own decisions,” he said.Trump has said he would continue his presidential campaign even if indicted.Representatives for the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, another potential candidate who is seen as Trump’s most serious rival, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Former UN ambassador Nikki Haley, another declared candidate, did not address the investigation while campaigning in South Carolina.It emerged in January that Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg had made the surprise move to impanel a grand jury to hear evidence in the Daniels case, which had previously faded from the spotlight.Daniels met with investigators in Manhattan earlier this week to discuss Trump’s role in a $130,000 payment she received in 2016 aimed at dissuading her from going public during the election about claims she had a sexual liaison with the married Trump in 2006 – an infidelity Trump denies.In 2016 during the election that Trump went on to win, his then-lawyer, Michael Cohen, made the payment and arranged another payout to a different woman. Cohen has said that the money was paid at Trump’s direction.Federal prosecutors in 2018 charged Cohen with campaign finance crimes related to payments to Daniels and to a Playboy model, Karen McDougal, arguing that the payouts amounted to impermissible gifts to Trump’s election effort. Cohen pleaded guilty, served prison time and was disbarred. Federal prosecutors never charged Trump with any crime.Any charges in this case would most likely involve state crimes of falsifying business records, typically a misdemeanor but a felony if it was part of a cover-up or wider criminal wrongdoing, and here could revolve around campaign finance illegality.Kevin O’Brien, a former federal prosecutor and now a partner at Ford O’Brien in New York specialising in white-collar criminal defence, told the Guardian that for a felony charge, prosecutors would have to prove Trump showed an “intent to defraud” when his company “falsely accounted” for the payments to Daniels as legal expenses and effectively argue that the payments were synonymous with illegal donations to Trump’s 2016 election campaign, which would violate New York election law.O’Brien said that any criminal charges for Trump would be messy and confusing for voters and potential jurors alike.“How could this guy be running for president facing a conviction for an act of dishonesty that was indictable?” he said.Trump has cast the investigation as a “witch-hunt” and says he believes an indictment would help him in the 2024 race.Senator Lindsey Graham, a longtime Trump ally, agreed: “The prosecutor in New York has done more to help Donald Trump get elected.”Associated Press contributed to this article More

    • 138 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump deregulated railways and banks. He blames Biden for the fallout

      by

      When a fiery train derailment took place on the Ohio-Pennsylvania border last month, Donald Trump saw an opportunity. The former US president visited East Palestine, accused Joe Biden of ignoring the community – “Get over here!” – and distributed self-branded water before dropping in at a local McDonald’s.Then, when the Silicon Valley Bank last week became the second biggest bank to fail in US history, Trump again lost no time in making political capital. He predicted that Biden would go down as “the Herbert Hoover of the modrrn [sic] age” and predicted a worse economic crash than the Great Depression.Yet it was Trump himself who, as US president, rolled back regulations intended to make railways safer and banks more secure. Critics said his attacks on the Biden administration offered a preview of a disingenuous presidential election campaign to come and, not for the first time in Trump’s career, displayed a shameless double standard.“Hypocrisy, thy name is Donald Trump and he sets new standards in a whole bunch of regrettable ways,” said Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. “For his true believers, they’re going to take Trump’s word for it and, even if they don’t, it doesn’t affect their support of him.”The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank on 10 March and of New York’s Signature Bank two days later sent shockwaves through the global banking industry and revived bitter memories of the financial crisis that plunged the US into recession about 15 years ago.Fearing contagion in the banking sector, the government moved to protect all the banks’ deposits, even those that exceeded the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation $250,000 limit for each individual account. The cost ran into hundreds of billions of dollars.The drama reverberated in Washington, where Trump’s criticism was followed by that of Republicans and conservative media, seeking to blame Biden-driven inflation or, improbably, to Silicon Valley Bank’s socially aware “woke” agenda. Opponents saw this as a crude attempt to deflect from the bank’s risky investments in the bond market and more systemic problems in the sector.The 2008 financial crisis, triggered by reckless lending in the housing market, led to tough bank regulations during Barack Obama’s presidency. The 2010 Dodd-Frank Act aimed to ensure that Americans’ money was safe, in part by setting up annual “stress tests” that examine how banks would perform under future economic downturns.But when Trump won election in 2016, the writing was on the wall. Biden, then outgoing vice-president, warned against efforts to undo banking regulations, telling an audience at Georgetown University: “We can’t go back to the days when financial companies take massive risks with the knowledge that a taxpayer bailout is around the corner when they fail.”But in 2018, with Trump in the White House, Congress slashed some of those protections. Republicans – and some Democrats – voted to raise the minimum threshold for banks subject to the stress tests: those with less than $250bn in assets were no longer required to take part. Many big lenders, including Silicon Valley Bank, were freed from the tightest regulatory scrutiny.Sabato commented: “The worst example is the bank situation because that is directly tied to Trump and his administration and changes made in bank regulations in 2018. Yes, some Democrats voted for it, but it was overwhelmingly supported by Republicans and by Trump who heralded it as the real solution to future bank woes.”The minority of Democrats who supported the 2018 law have denied that it can be directly tied to this month’s bank failures, although Bernie Sanders, an independent senator from Vermont, was adamant: “Let’s be clear. The failure of Silicon Valley Bank is a direct result of an absurd 2018 bank deregulation bill signed by Donald Trump that I strongly opposed.”Sherrod Brown, a Democratic senator for Ohio who introduced bipartisan legislation to improve rail safety protocols, drew a parallel between the banks’ collapse to rail industry deregulation lobbying that contributed to the East Palestine train disaster. “We see aggressive lobbying like this from banks as well,” he said.Trump repealed several Barack Obama-era US Department of Transportation rules meant to improve rail safety, including one that required high-hazard cargo trains to use electronically controlled pneumatic brake technology by 2023. This rule would not have applied to the Norfolk Southern train in East Palestine – where roughly 5,000 residents had to evacuate for days – as it was not classified as a high-hazard cargo train.But the debate around the railway accident and bank failures points to a perennial divide between Democrats, who insist that some regulation is vital to a functioning capitalism, and Republicans, who have long claimed to believe in small government. Steve Bannon, an influential far-right podcaster and former White House chief strategist, framed the Trump agenda as “the deconstruction of the administrative state”.Antjuan Seawright, a Democratic strategist, said: “The Republican party has gotten by for many years on this idea that less is better. However, we’re now learning in this country that, as America continues to mature, in some cases more is better, and more has to be how we get to better. Otherwise the mistakes can spin out of control and cause generations of people long-term damage.”Biden called on Congress to allow regulators to impose tougher penalties on the executives of failed banks while Warren and other Democrats introduced legislation to undo the 2018 law and restore the Dodd-Frank regulations. It is likely to meet stiff opposition from the Republican-controlled House of Representatives and even some moderate Democrats.Biden has also insisted that no taxpayer money will be used to resolve the current crisis, keen to avoid any perception that average Americans are “bailing out” the two banks in a way similar to the unpopular bailouts of the biggest financial firms in 2008.But Republicans running for the 2024 presidential nomination are already contending that customers will ultimately bear the costs of the government’s actions even if taxpayer funds were not directly used. Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, said: “Joe Biden is pretending this isn’t a bailout. It is.”Another potential 2024 contender, Senator Tim Scott, the top Republican on the Senate banking committee, also criticised what he called a “culture of government intervention”, arguing that it incentivises banks to continue risky behavior if they know federal agencies will ultimately rescue them.Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “This is familiar ideological territory. The battle lines between liberalism and a fake conservatism appear to be playing out here. But the tragedy of the situation is that the liberals are right.“You do need government to regulate finance and, when you don’t, you get mischief making and bank failures but that point cannot be made if you’ve got Donald Trump inventing reality. He’s demonstrated that facts and position taking don’t matter. It’s an extraordinary political strategy but it’s even more devastating to our whole political system and our media that this could be allowed.”This poses a huge messaging challenge for Democrats, who after the 2008 financial crisis came up against the Tea Party, a populist movement feeding off economic and racial resentments. Long and winding explanations about the negative impacts of Trump era deregulation are a hard sell compared to the former president’s sloganeering in East Palestine.Wendy Schiller, a political science professor at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, said: “Once again we see that Trump is taking advantage of the Achilles’ heel of the Democratic party by telling voters that the Democrats like big government because it bails out industries and it never provides a bailout for the little guy.”Democrats’ efforts to point out that Trump was responsible for deregulation are unlikely to cut through, Schiller added.“Any time it takes more than 10 seconds to explain something, you’re done in politics. This is why Trump has catchy phrases, sound bytes. He understands that all voters see is that rich people made a bad investment and then more rich people are making sure that their money’s available to them within three days, coming off the heels of all the closures during Covid, lost business, lost income, people struggling, inflation.“Democrats don’t want to call it a bailout but it is a bailout. The high visibility of this bailout smothers anything else the Democrats are doing for the average voter. It’s a perfect issue for the Republicans. It’s not new that the Republicans will deregulate an industry and then it collapses and the Democrats have to save it. Look at American political and economic history of the last 50 years: this is exactly what happens.” More

    • 125 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      YouTube reinstates Trump’s account after suspension over US Capitol attack

      by

      YouTube said on Friday it was lifting restrictions on Donald Trump’s official account which were imposed after the violent January 6 attack on Congress.Leslie Miller, vice-president of public policy, told Axios Trump’s “ability to upload new content is restored”.Miller said YouTube had “carefully evaluated the continued risk of real-world violence, balancing that with the importance of preserving the opportunity for voters to hear equally from major national candidates in the run up to an election.“This channel will continue to be subject to our policies, just like any other channel on YouTube.”Trump videos YouTube deemed to incite violence would not be reinstated, Axios reported.Twitter and Facebook have already lifted bans imposed in the aftermath of the Capitol riot. Trump has not returned to either, preferring his own platform, Truth Social.Trump will now be able to buy campaign ads on YouTube.The insurrection Trump incited on 6 January 2021, in an attempt to overturn his election defeat by Joe Biden, is now linked to nine deaths.More than a thousand arrests have been made and hundreds of convictions secured. Authorities have reportedly indicated more arrests to come.Trump was impeached but acquitted in his Senate trial when enough Republicans stayed loyal.Running for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, he enjoys clear leads in polling.He also faces civil and criminal legal jeopardy over the Capitol attack, other election subversion efforts, his retention of classified material, a hush money payment to a porn star, his financial affairs and a defamation trial arising from an allegation of rape.Trump denies all wrongdoing.He has also recorded a charity single in aid of imprisoned January 6 rioters.Twitter and Facebook have already lifted bans imposed in the aftermath of the Capitol riot. Trump returned to Facebook on Friday afternoon with a brief video clip for his 2024 presidential run with “I’M BACK” as the caption. He has not returned to Twitter, preferring his own platform, Truth Social.Jenna Ellis, a lawyer who worked on Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election, referred to the new owner of Twitter, who lifted that platform’s Trump ban in November, when she said of Trump’s YouTube return: “You have to wonder whether this would have ever happened without Elon Musk.” More