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      Republicans accuse Biden of hypocrisy over classified documents discoveries

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      Republicans accuse Biden of hypocrisy over classified documents discoveriesHouse oversight chair requests Delaware visitor logs as Democrats stress difference from Trump classified records case Republicans pounced on the discovery on Saturday of more classified documents at Joe Biden’s residence, accusing the president of hypocrisy and questioning why the records were not brought to light earlier.There’s one winner in the Biden documents discovery: Donald TrumpRead moreBiden lawyers have discovered at least 20 classified documents at his residence outside Wilmington, Delaware, and at an office in Washington used after he left the Obama administration, in which he was vice-president.It is not yet clear what exactly the documents are, but Biden lawyers have said they immediately turned over the documents to the National Archives. This week, the attorney general, Merrick Garland, appointed a special counsel, former US attorney Robert Hur, to look into the matter.The materials are already a political headache for Biden. When the FBI raided Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort to obtain classified material the former president kept, Biden said: “How could that possibly happen? How anyone could be that irresponsible?”On Sunday, Don Bacon, a Nebraska Republican, told ABC’s This Week: “It just just reminds me of that old adage, ‘If you live in a glass house don’t throw stones.’ And I think President Biden was caught throwing stones.”James Comer of Kentucky, the new chair of the House oversight committee, told CNN’s State of the Union: “While he was doing this, he knew very well that he himself had possession of classified documents so the hypocrisy here is great.”There is no evidence Biden was aware he had the documents. His lawyers have said they were misplaced.Comer also noted Biden’s attorneys discovered the classified material on 2 November, days before the midterm elections, and questioned why the discovery hadn’t been made public earlier.“Why didn’t we hear about this on 2 November, when the first batch of classified documents were discovered?” he said.Comer has requested visitor logs for Biden’s Delaware residence from January 2021 to the present as well as additional communications about the search for documents, CNN reported.Marc Short, who was chief of staff to Mike Pence in the Trump administration, told NBC’s Meet the Press: “Why’d they hold it? Why didn’t anybody talk about it? Is it because of the midterm elections they didn’t want to interfere with?”Even though two special counsels are looking into how both Trump and Biden handled classified material, there are key differences between the cases.Trump had hundreds of classified files and rebuffed government efforts to return them. The White House has said the 20 or so Biden documents were inadvertently misplaced and turned over as soon as they were discovered.Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the House oversight committee, told CNN: “We were delighted to learn that the president’s lawyers, the moment they found out about the documents that day, turned them over to the National Archives, and ultimately to the Department of Justice.“That is a very different posture than what we saw with Donald Trump. He was fighting for a period of more than eight months to not turn over hundreds of missing documents that the archives was asking about.“There are some people who are trying to compare having a government document that should no longer be in your possession to inciting a violent insurrection against the government of the United States,” Raskin added, referring to the 6 January 2021 attack on Congress Trump incited after losing the 2020 election to Biden.“And those are obviously completely different things. That’s apples and oranges.”The California Democrat Adam Schiff, the former chair of the House intelligence committee, praised the appointment of a special counsel in the Biden matter and said he wanted Congress to do its own intelligence assessment of the Biden and Trump materials.But Debbie Stabenow, a Democratic senator from Michigan, acknowledged that the discovery of additional documents on Saturday was “certainly embarrassing” and that Republicans would use it as a distraction.“It’s embarrassing that you would find a small number of documents, certainly not on purpose,” she told NBC.Biden’s lawyers, she said “don’t think [this] is the right thing and they have been moving to correct it … it’s one of those moments that obviously they wish hadn’t happened.“But what I’m most concerned about, this is the kind of things that the Republicans love.”TopicsJoe BidenBiden administrationDonald TrumpTrump administrationUS politicsUS national securityRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

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      McCarthy may be speaker, but Trump is the real leader of House Republicans

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      AnalysisMcCarthy may be speaker, but Trump is the real leader of House RepublicansDavid Smith in WashingtonAfter Trump’s pick for speaker narrowly won, what sway will the former president hold over Congress’s Republican majority? Like an exhausted marathon runner, Kevin McCarthy had just about staggered across the finish line. But even at 2.11am, with tempers frayed and eyes bleary, the newly elected speaker of the US House of Representatives wanted to single out one person for praise.“I do want to especially thank President Trump,” McCarthy told reporters after prevailing in the longest election for speaker since before the civil war. “I don’t think anyone should doubt his influence. He was with me from the beginning.”‘It’s going to be dirty’: Republicans gear up for attack on Hunter BidenRead moreThe gushing tribute obscured the complexity of Donald Trump’s intervention in the election for speaker – and what sway he might hold over the narrow Republican majority in the new Congress.The week that followed brought a series of extremist actions and appointments that appear designed to resonate with his rightwing base. But whether House Republicans’ agenda will ultimately complement or conflict with Trump’s 2024 presidential election campaign remains uncertain.McCarthy’s election as speaker took four gruelling days, 15 roll call votes and concessions that he might come to regret. Trump’s endorsement appeared impotent for much of that time, even among some of the former president’s champions in Congress. As he made calls in the dying hours of Friday night, a memorable photo showed Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene attempting to give her phone, with “DT” on the line, to colleague Matt Rosendale, only for him to wave it away.But in the end, Trump’s man won – a sign that he remains important if not decisive. McCarthy duly felt obliged to heap praise on the kingmaker. He also made a somewhat optimistic claim: “This is the great part: because it took this long, now we learned how to govern.”That was immediately put to the test. On Monday evening, Republicans passed legislation to cut funding that was intended to bolster the Internal Revenue Service on a party-line vote. The speaker proclaimed: “Promises made. Promises kept.” Democrats called it a deficit-raising windfall for wealthy tax cheats at the expense of the majority that has no chance of passing in a Senate they still control.On Tuesday, Republicans formed a panel to tackle what they perceive as rampant abuse of power in the federal government, not least by law enforcement agencies investigating Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election results and handling and storing of presidential records at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida.The subcommittee focusing on “the weaponization of the federal government” falls under the judiciary committee, headed by Congressman Jim Jordan of Ohio, who has repeatedly said Trump should become president again. It will have access to classified information, a privilege usually reserved for the intelligence committees in the House and Senate.Its “investigate the investigators” mandate was doubtless music to the ears of Trump, who has spent years airing grievances at rallies about a “deep state” conspiracy that led to the Russia investigation and two impeachments. Democrat Jamie Raskin, a prominent member of the now dissolved January 6 committee, called the new panel an “insurrection protection team”.US House of Representatives: who’s who in the new leadership?Read moreOn Wednesday, Republicans targeted abortion. Their majority passed a resolution to condemn attacks on anti-abortion facilities, including crisis pregnancy centers, and a separate bill that would impose new penalties if a doctor refused to care for an infant born alive after an abortion attempt. Neither is expected pass the Democratic-led Senate.The moves were condemned by liberals but did not go as far as some conservatives would have liked – a tacit acknowledgment that abortion has become politically awkward for Republicans since last year’s supreme court decision that overturned Roe v Wade after half a century. Trump has blamed anti-abortion hardliners for Republicans’ disappointing midterm elections results.Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said: “Would you start with that, if you were in their position, having just lost a midterm election effectively because of the abortion issue? What was that doing there in the first place? Forty-eight hours of the actual Congress and this unorganized? Just amazing. There must be a stupidity chemical in the Washington water system.”McCarthy also spent the week fending off questions over calls for fabulist New York congressman George Santos to resign and the deal he struck with the House Freedom Caucus during his epic election battle. Like the Tea Party before it, the House Freedom Caucus is fixated on small government and less spending. Media reports suggest that it intends to seek cuts to entitlement programs such as social security and Medicare as well as to defense and law enforcement.It is all part of an “extreme Maga Republican agenda”, according to Democrats.Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, said in a statement: “In the last week Republicans have given a free pass to wealthy tax cheats, empaneled a committee to undermine and threaten law enforcement, undercut women’s healthcare, and put forward a draconian budget plan that will lead to cuts to Medicare and social security and defunding the police.”There was a further statement of intent in House committees. Despite claiming to have embraced diversity and inclusion, Republicans named fewer women as committee chairs than men named Mike. The new chairs also have records that suggest they are ready to push Trump’s “Make America great again” agenda.Jordan, leading the judiciary panel, has amplified Trump’s “big lie” that the 2020 election was stolen and refused to comply with a subpoena issued by the January 6 committee over his communications with the former president.The new chair of the oversight committee, James Comer, has co-sponsored a national abortion ban that could have imprisoned doctors, amplified false claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election and called attempts to investigate the January 6 insurrection a “political stunt”, “a big show” and “illegitimate”.2024 Veepstakes: who will Donald Trump choose as his running mate?Read moreJason Smith, chair of the ways and means committee, has supported cutting social security and Medicare, voted to overturn the 2020 election and described the January 6 committee as a “sham” that was “designed to attack President Trump”. Jodey Arrington, chair of the budget committee, has adopted similar positions.Mark Green, chair of the homeland security committee, has introduced legislation to build a border wall and called for the homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, to resign. He has also asserted that being “transgender is a disease” and said America must “take a stand on the indoctrination of Islam in our public schools”. Green identifies as a creationist and has argued against the theory of evolution.At first glance, it has the makings of a Trump caucus ready to do its master’s bidding and aid his run for the White House. Joe Walsh, a former Republican congressman, said: “Most of what they’re going to focus on is a bunch of revenge stuff for Trump, for how they believe Trump was treated, and a lot of this culture war bullshit.“I’m convinced that a big part of what all these investigations involve is a lot of these guys believe the 2020 election was stolen from Trump: the FBI did it, the justice department did it. Trump and the Republicans declared war on the FBI some years ago so they’re going to go after them.”That McCarthy credited Trump with helping him secure the gavel “tells you exactly still where Trump stands in the party”, Walsh added. “McCarthy said that publicly, which is why Trump is still the king of the GOP hill unless something happens.”It was McCarthy who initially condemned Trump over the January 6 assault on democracy only to then make a pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago a few weeks later and signal that all was forgiven. Now that Trump has backed McCarthy for speaker, despite significant opposition from his own base, he might expect the California Republican to repay the favour in 2024.But Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, has doubts. “McCarthy is going to go where the winds blow,” he said. “To begin with, as a speaker he has to recognise where everyone in his conference is so he could very easily tell Trump at least during the early part of 2023, ‘Look, I’ve got a five-vote majority. I’ve got people who love you, I’ve got people who hate you, you know I love you but I’ve got to keep this group together.’“He may not like that but, if McCarthy did anything other than that in the initial jousting phases of the primary, McCarthy would be a poor political strategist. And McCarthy may lack certain attributes necessary to be a speaker but reading the room is not something he lacks.”As Trump’s star wanes, rivals signal presidential nomination campaignsRead moreThere are other icebergs on the horizon. Congress faces an agenda of must-pass bills to fund the government, resupply a military depleted by decades of war and support for Ukraine, authorise farming programmes and raise the nation’s borrowing limit to avert a disastrous federal default. In this context, an obsessive Republican pursuit of dead-on-arrival bills and Biden investigations could backfire on Trump.Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington, said: “Between opposition within their party, between the Senate and the presidency, they’re not going to win anything. What it’s going to do is be a constant reminder to people of the extremes of the far right and Trump is so firmly associated with them. Substantively they’re alike but stylistically they’re alike as well. It’s bad for him. It paints him into a real corner.”Kamarck, who served in Bill Clinton’s White House, added: “The thing that was amazing about his presidency was that, unlike any other president before him, he did not ever seek to expand his base. He was purely and simply happy with his factional base. The demographics of his factional base are that they’re old so every year that he relies on that base gets more and more problematic.“He’s simply weak. And he’s going to have challengers for the 2024 Republican nomination which will make him look weaker.”TopicsDonald TrumpRepublicansKevin McCarthyHouse of RepresentativesUS politicsanalysisReuse this content More

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      The Fight of His Life review: Joe Biden, White House winner

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      ReviewThe Fight of His Life review: Joe Biden, White House winner Chris Whipple’s assured account of the president’s first two years in power after beating Trump is fascinating and timely“Maybe we don’t suck as much as people thought.”That was the email the White House chief of staff, Ron Klain, sent to Chris Whipple at 1.16am after the 2022 midterms, as it became clear Democrats were likely to hold the Senate and lose far fewer seats in the House than almost every reporter predicted.Whipple’s inside look at Joe Biden’s White House is a ringing confirmation of Klain’s judgment. Though Whipple’s friendships within the Washington press corps prevent him from saying so, this is a book-length rebuke of the incompetence of legions of reporters who have persistently underestimated this extraordinary president.A crucial reason for Democrats’ midterm success was Biden’s instinct to emphasize the importance of reproductive rights and the Republican threat to democracy. Reporters derided him, insisting voters only cared about the price of gas. And yet, as Whipple writes, “exit polls showed that both concern for democracy and a backlash against the supreme court’s Dobbs decision had been winning issues”.How will Biden handle a hostile Republican House and what does it mean for 2024?Read moreThe brilliant and likable Klain began his career clerking for Byron White, John F Kennedy’s only appointee to the supreme court. Klain is the second-most important character in this book, after Biden. He was a great source with many great stories to tell, and Whipple has a special fondness for White House chiefs of staff, the subject of one of his previous volumes.One of many mini-scoops in the book is a description of a Zoom meeting Klain had, a month before Biden’s inauguration, with 18 former chiefs of staff, including George W Bush’s Josh Bolten, who in 2016 tried unsuccessfully to get all former Republican chiefs to declare Donald Trump unfit to be president. Dick Cheney and James Baker refused to do so.At the end of Biden’s first year in office, Klain hailed “the most successful first year of any president ever. We passed more legislation than any president in his first year” – including the American Rescue Plan and the bipartisan infrastructure bill. “We created more jobs than any president in his first year” and – least noted – “we got more federal judges confirmed than any president since Nixon.”Which was all the more astonishing with a 50-50 Senate and a slim House majority. Sixty years ago, to enact Medicare and the rest of the Great Society, Lyndon Johnson needed huge Democratic majorities in the House and Senate.In 2022, long after everyone assumed the West Virginia senator Joe Manchin had killed it, the Build Back Better bill came roaring back to life as the Inflation Reduction Act. To corral Manchin, the administration had to give up on an extension of the child tax credit and throw in a pipeline. But in return there was a $391bn investment in energy and fighting the climate crisis.A big reason Biden struggled in the polls was a decision that required more political courage than anything his three predecessors did: withdrawal from Afghanistan.Biden understood the folly of the war back in 2009, when generals Stanley McChrystal and David Petraeus begged Barack Obama for a troop surge even after Petraeus acknowledged that the Afghan government was a “criminal syndicate”.According to Bob Woodward, then Vice-President Biden went to the heart of the matter: “If the government’s a criminal syndicate a year from now, how will troops make a difference?”Woodward reported that Obama’s special envoy, Richard Holbrooke, was the only other clear-eyed adviser, explaining: “All the contractors for development projects pay the Taliban for protection and use of roads, so American and coalition dollars help finance the Taliban. And with more development, higher traffic on roads and more troops, the Taliban would make more money.”Obama approved a surge of 40,000 troops anyway.Whipple adopts the conventional wisdom about the Afghanistan withdrawal, calling it “a whole-of-government failure” in which “everyone got nearly everything exactly wrong”. He assumes an orderly withdrawal was possible without a reliable Afghan fighting force – an idea for which I have never seen any serious evidence.But unlike other commentators, Whipple at least includes some of the real reasons for the chaos, including a decision driven by Stephen Miller. The leading xenophobe in the Trump White House was determined to destroy the special immigrant visa program, the only way Afghans who worked for the US could come here. In 2020, Trump virtually closed the program, creating a backlog of 17,000 applicants. One of Whipple’s sources described the attitude of the Trump administration this way: it felt America “wasn’t ready to have a lot of hook-nosed, brown-skinned Muslims … coming into this country”.Leon Panetta, a veteran of the Clinton and Obama administrations always quick to jump on CNN to attack his former bosses, compared Biden’s handling of the withdrawal to John F Kennedy’s disastrous invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs.To Whipple, Klain shoots back: “Joe Biden didn’t pay a trillion dollars to these people to be trained to be the army. He wasn’t out there saying for years, as Leon was, that we had built a viable fighting force. Leon favored the war. Leon oversaw the training of the Afghan army … if this was Biden’s Bay of Pigs, it was Leon’s army that lost the fight.”Trump’s political fate may have been decided – by a Georgia grand juryRead moreWhipple makes one other point about Afghanistan. “As an operational success,” the evacuation “ranked with the Berlin airlift.” In 17 days and 387 sorties, the US evacuated 124,000 people.One of the largest sections of Whipple’s book describes Biden’s prescience about Vladimir Putin’s plan to invade Ukraine, and the extraordinary efforts the Biden administration has made to unite Nato and send weapons to Kyiv.Even Panetta was impressed.“This war in Ukraine has really strengthened Joe Biden’s image as a world leader,” he said. “His confrontation with Putin is going to determine what the hell his legacy is going to be as president. I think it’s that big a deal.”
      The Fight of His Life: Inside Joe Biden’s White House is published in the US by Scribner
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      The Observer view on the secret garage files that could deal a severe blow to Joe Biden’s hopes | Observer editorial

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      The Observer view on the secret garage files that could deal a severe blow to Joe Biden’s hopesObserver editorialMore harmful than the alleged misplacement of classified documents will be a further erosion of trust in US politics It is almost a Washington tradition that, sooner or later, a sitting president will face investigation by a federal special counsel or special prosecutor – the terms are interchangeable. In recent history, only Barack Obama has escaped this fate and that was not for lack of opponents accusing him of nefarious misdeeds.Now it’s Joe Biden’s turn and wolves are once again baying at the door of the Oval Office.At first glance, last week’s revelations that old, possibly outdated classified documents had been found at a thinktank where Biden worked after leaving the vice-presidency in 2017, and in a garage at his home in Delaware, may not seem such a big deal. But such a view fails to understand the way Washington works. Significant or not, the find has given the flailing Republican party a stick with which to beat the president and it has seized it with grateful alacrity.A clutch of GOP-controlled committees in Congress has already launched a series of investigations, in addition to the independent special counsel inquiry ordered by Biden’s attorney-general, Merrick Garland. They want to know whether national security was compromised; whether Biden’s son Hunter – a longtime Republican target – had access to the files; and why the White House failed to admit their existence until forced to do so by a CBS TV scoop.Crucially, Biden’s opponents are posing the classic Watergate questions: what did the president know, when did he know it and was there a cover-up? It’s a sad fact that whatever Biden says now or in the course of what are likely to be wearying, attritional months of testimony and hearings, many Americans will not believe him. The distrust that infects and distorts US politics can only be expected to deepen.The distraction of attention from Biden’s agenda and achievements is one of many prospective negatives for the president. Another is the unfair, potentially disastrous conflation of his alleged wrongdoing with the ostensibly much more serious case of his predecessor. Donald Trump is accused of secreting hundreds of contemporary classified papers at his Florida home and refusing to hand them over.Biden previously accused Trump of “irresponsible” behaviour, words that are now being thrown back in his face. Suggestions that the misplacing of the documents was a mere oversight or act of forgetfulness play into the hurtful Republican narrative of a senile, incompetent 80-year-old president.Biden did not help himself by joking that his garage was a secure space because he keeps his classic Corvette car there. If the word “Corvette-gate” has not already entered the lexicon, it soon will.The extent of the damage to Biden and the Democrats will depend in part on whether Trump, the Republicans and their Fox News boosters succeed in sustaining and widening the scandal. They will propagate lies, disinformation and conspiracy theories.The White House will try to play down the affair. Yet if, for example, the special counsel discovers the documents – reportedly relating to Ukraine, Iran and the UK – are not merely historical but contain current, sensitive or embarrassing secrets, Biden could be in deep water, politically and legally.It’s almost exactly two years since Biden took office. After a rough start, his fortunes have steadily improved. Inflation is sharply down, Covid is mostly over (unlike in China), Russia is losing in Ukraine, Democrats did better than expected in the midterm elections and Maga Trump-ism continues to divide House Republicans. An announcement of a Biden run for a second term had been expected soon. All these gains suddenly appear in jeopardy and all because of a few dusty boxes of files.TopicsUS politicsOpinionJoe BidenRepublicansDonald TrumpeditorialsReuse this content More

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      There’s one winner in the Biden documents discovery: Donald Trump

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      There’s one winner in the Biden documents discovery: Donald TrumpBiden’s retention of classified papers is different from the Mar-a-Lago case, but it is a big setback for his administration The discovery of government secrets at two locations associated with Joe Biden appears to have produced one big political winner: Donald Trump.The White House was in rare crisis mode last week as it emerged that lawyers for Biden had found classified material at his thinktank in Washington DC and home in Delaware. At an unusually contentious press briefing, one TV correspondent dubbed the affair “garage-gate”.The justice department appointed a special counsel to investigate Biden’s handling of classified documents from his time as vice-president. It was a rare setback for an administration that promised to be transparent and scandal-free. It also complicated an investigation into Trump over an ostensibly similar matter.‘It’s going to be dirty’: Republicans gear up for attack on Hunter BidenRead moreAnother special counsel is already examining the ex-president’s retention of top secret papers at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida estate and club. Although the situations are very different, the nuances and subtleties are likely to be lost in the court of public opinion.“This may be pure sloppiness on Biden’s part or the Biden team’s part but it doesn’t matter,” said Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. “In the public mind, now they will say, ‘Well, a pox on both your houses. You’re both guilty. Shame on you both.’ It’s over.”The issue could become a continuing political headache for Biden, Sabato added. “It’s just a real distraction. It was totally unnecessary. Every White House makes mistakes and this is a big one they made.”Despite superficial similarities, the two cases are like chalk and cheese. In January last year the National Archives retrieved 15 boxes of documents from Trump’s home, telling justice department officials they contained “a lot” of classified material.In August, after prolonged resistance from Trump’s associates to requests and even a justice department subpoena, FBI agents took about 33 boxes and containers of 11,000 documents from Mar-a-Lago, including roughly 100 with classification markings found in a storage room and an office. The FBI warrant showed it was investigating crimes including the wilful retention of national defence information and efforts to obstruct a federal investigation.The Biden papers are far less voluminous. First it emerged that a “small number” with classified markings had been found in November in a locked closet at the Penn Biden Center thinktank in Washington.Speaking to reporters on Tuesday in Mexico City, the president claimed that he was surprised when he was informed about them. His lawyers “did what they should have done” when they immediately alerted the National Archives, he said. “I don’t know what’s in the documents.”Then came news that a second batch of classified documents had been discovered in the garage at Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, and one additional classified page was found in his personal library there. Again, his lawyers informed the archives.Biden’s offence is seen by analysts as significantly less grave than his predecessor’s. Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond in Richmond, Virginia, said: “Given what we know now, it seems that there is a difference in kind, rather than degree, between Trump’s case and Biden’s case.Classified documents: how do the Trump and Biden cases differ?Read more“For example, quantitatively and qualitatively, Trump’s cavalier and even intentional misconduct regarding the documents, especially those related to national security, appears substantially more egregious than Biden’s apparent neglectful behaviour in not safeguarding certain documents.”Even so, the White House refused to disclose the content and exact number of the Biden records, how they arrived at his thinktank and home , why they stayed there and why the administration waited more than two months to acknowledge their discovery.The questions deepened on Saturday when the White House lawyer Richard Sauber revealed that a total of six pages of classified documents had been found in Biden’s personal library in Wilmington; the administration had previously said only a single page came to light there and insisted that the search was “complete”.White House reporters, who have endured lean times since the wildly norm-busting Trump presidency, have seized on the day-by-day revelations like hungry lions. In the kind of confrontation seldom seen over the past two years, Peter Doocy of the conservative Fox News network asked Biden bluntly: “Classified material next to your Corvette: what were you thinking?”The president replied: “I’m going to get a chance to speak on all this, God willing, soon, but as I said earlier this week, people – and, by the way, my Corvette is in a locked garage. OK? So, it’s not like they’re sitting out in the street.”Merrick Garland, the attorney general, selected Robert Hur, a Trump-appointed former US attorney, to investigate the matter. Many legal commentators suggested that a special counsel would not normally have been warranted but the move reflected Garland’s sensitivity to the unique political dynamics.Trump himself seized on the news, seeking to use it to undermine the investigation into his actions. “It’s over,” he told conservative talk radio host Mark Levin. “When all of these documents started coming out and Biden had them, it really changed the complexion and the intensity that they were showing to me because, you know, what they did is – I don’t say far worse, I did nothing wrong – what they did is not good. What they did is bad.”In reality, the twist is unlikely to affect the justice department’s decision making with regard to charging Trump. But it could make a criminal case a harder sell to voters, fuelling the scepticism of congressional Republicans and others who have doubted the basis for a viable prosecution.Jay Town, who served as US attorney in the northern district of Alabama during the Trump administration, told the Associated Press: “I don’t think that it impacts Trump’s legal calculus at all, but it certainly does impact the political narrative going forward. To the extent that the political narrative is a consideration, it does make it harder to bring charges against former President Trump as it relates to the documents seized at Mar-a-Lago.”Joe Biden may have broken the Espionage Act. It’s so broad that you may have, too | Trevor TimmRead moreThe drama is unfolding just after Republicans took control of the House of Representatives eager to target the federal government with accusations of politically motivated prosecutions. On Friday, Jim Jordan, chair of the House judiciary committee, announced an investigation into Biden’s handling of classified documents, particularly what the justice department knew about the matter.Republicans are also well practised in the political art of false equivalence and “whataboutism”. During the 2016 presidential election campaign, allegations that the Trump campaign was colluding with Russia were effectively neutralised by a controversy over rival Hillary Clinton’s private email server.The week’s events dealt an unexpected blow to Biden as approval ratings were rising, inflation was slowing and Republicans had just endured a chaotic election for House speaker. They also threw a lifeline to Trump, whose 2024 presidential election campaign made a wretched start. But he still faces myriad investigations into his business affairs and his role in the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.TopicsJoe BidenThe ObserverDonald TrumpRepublicansDemocratsUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Trump’s political fate may have been decided – by a Georgia grand jury

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      Trump’s political fate may have been decided – by a Georgia grand juryPanel that considered whether ex-president committed crimes in trying to overturn 2020 election defeat could recommend prosecution Even as Donald Trump prepares to dial up his campaign to take back the White House, the former US president’s political and personal fate may already have been decided by the secret workings of a grand jury in Georgia.The 23-member panel, convened to consider whether Trump and others committed crimes in trying to overturn his defeat in Georgia when it appeared the state might decide the outcome of the entire 2020 presidential election, was dissolved on Monday after submitting its conclusions and asking that they be made public.Two years on from the Capitol riot: the toxic legacy of Trump’s big lieRead moreIf the grand jury’s report recommends prosecution, a county district attorney in Atlanta, Fani Willis, will face the most consequential decision of her career – whether, for the first time in American history, to charge a former president with a criminal offence.That could result in Trump sitting behind bars in Georgia when he expects to be out on the campaign trail. Provided he is not already serving time as the result of a federal investigation into his attempts to pressure election officials in several other states to rig the vote and his part in the 6 January 2021 storming of the Capitol.A judge has scheduled a hearing later this month to consider arguments over whether the grand jury’s report should be made public while Willis, the Fulton county district attorney, scrutinises its findings.In November, the day before Trump announced he was again running for the White House, the Brookings Institution in Washington published a report that concluded he is “at substantial risk of prosecution” in Georgia including for improperly influencing government officials, forgery and criminal solicitation. The report said Trump may even be vulnerable to charges under anti-racketeering laws written to combat the mafia.Norman Eisen, the lead author of the Brookings report and former White House special counsel for ethics and government reform, said he thinks charges against Trump are “highly likely”.“The evidence is powerful and the law is very favourable to the prosecutors in Georgia,” he said. “I believe the [special grand jury] report very likely calls for the prosecution of Trump and his co-conspirators.”Eisen said that the federal case is not as far along but that the congressional committee investigating the events of January 6 laid out a “powerful case” for charges against Trump.He said that the prosecution of a former president would be “momentous”.“But, of course, so was Trump’s decision to lead an attempted coup. That was momentous in a very negative way. This is momentous as a defence of the rule of law and American democracy,” said Eisen.Georgia prosecutors have warned at least 18 other people that they are targets of the investigation and could be charged, including Trump’s close ally and lawyer, the former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani who has, among other things, been accused of spreading conspiracy theories in testimony to the Georgia legislature.Willis launched her investigation into “a multistate, coordinated plan by the Trump campaign to influence the results” just weeks after the former president left office. The investigation initially focused on a tape recording of Trump pressuring Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to conjure nearly 12,000 votes out of thin air in order to overturn Joe Biden’s win.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. 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.The Fulton county district attorney has told state officials that her office is investigating an array of crimes against Trump and others, including criminal solicitation to commit election fraud, intentional interference with the performance of election duties, conspiracy and racketeering. Convictions potentially carry significant prison sentences.Fulton superior court approved the appointment of the special grand jury last year at Willis’s request. She reflected on the consequence of investigating a former president as the jurors began their work.“I don’t want you to think I’m naive or I don’t get the gravity of the situation,” Willis told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “I get the gravity of it … But it’s just like every other case. You just have to do your due diligence.”Special grand juries are rare in Georgia. Unlike the regular kind, they cannot indict. But they can sit for much longer and have wider powers to subpoena. Willis recognised that if she was to build a case against such a divisive political figure as Trump, and convince a jury in a criminal trial, the evidence would have to be rock solid, and that would take time and depth.Willis used the grand jury’s powers to good effect. She called a parade of witness, including many of Trump’s closest allies and lawyers. Some fought their subpoenas including Senator Lindsey Graham who went all the way to the US supreme court in a failed attempt to avoid giving evidence.The star witness was Raffensperger, a Republican who voted for Trump and oversaw his state’s elections. When the numbers stacked up against the president in Georgia, Trump knew where to turn.Raffensperger spoke to the special grand jury for several hours in June. Georgia’s secretary of state has not commented publicly about his testimony but in his book, Integrity Counts, Raffensperger recounts receiving a call from Trump as he sat in his kitchen with his wife, Tricia, on 2 January 2021. He put the president on speakerphone.Raffensperger had an idea what to expect. Trump had already “tweeted insults and threats at me and Georgia governor Brian Kemp”. For an hour, the president tried to persuade Raffensperger to overturn the vote.“So, we’ve spent a lot of time on this and if we could just go over some of the numbers, I think it’s pretty clear that we won. We won very substantially in Georgia,” Trump said on the call.Raffensperger said he was tempted to interrupt and disagree but did not out of respect.Trump went on: “I just want to find 11,780 votes … because we won the state.”Raffensperger told the president he “could not do that because the data did not support it”.Trump tried to claim that the vote had been rigged by alleging that ballot boxes were stuffed and other irregularities. Then the president said: “All of this stuff is very dangerous stuff when you talk about no criminality. I think it’s very dangerous for you to say that.”Raffensperger saw that for what it was.“I felt then – and still believe today – that this was a threat,” he wrote. “Others obviously thought so, too, because some of Trump’s more radical followers have responded as if it was their duty to carry out this threat.”Raffensperger said he and his wife were subject to death threats.Willis had more than the witness’s word for it. Raffensperger recorded the call, providing powerful and indisputable evidence.The Fulton county district attorney brought a parade of other witnesses before the grand jury including the then White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and Graham, who placed calls to Raffensperger to suggest he should throw out some absentee ballots.Giuliani is likely to have been asked about false testimony he gave to Georgia legislators the month after the presidential election, including claims that voting machines were rigged and that thousands of teenagers below the voting age had cast ballots. A New York court suspended his licence to practice law last year over his “demonstrably false and misleading statements regarding the Georgia presidential election results”.Willis has also gathered evidence about attempts to pressure a Fulton county poll worker and her daughter to wrongly say they committed election fraud by ballot stuffing, the sudden resignation of a US attorney in Atlanta under pressure from Trump officials to more aggressively investigate alleged election fraud, and of an IT services company hired by one of Trump’s lawyers that illegally copied confidential voter data from voting machines.Those who have worked with Willis say she is unlikely to shy from prosecuting Trump if she deems it appropriate. She is known to be a fan of anti-racketeering laws, having used them to prosecute public school teachers who were part of a cheating scandal.If Willis decides to press ahead with the case, she will need to convene a regular grand jury which has the authority to hand down indictments.Trump has dismissed the threat to his freedom with his usual bluster. He described his conversation with Raffensperger as “perfect” and the hearings as a “witch-hunt”. He has called Willis’s investigation a “political prosecution” and “racist”, presumably because she is Black.TopicsDonald TrumpGeorgiaUS politicsUS elections 2020featuresReuse this content More

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      Democrats plan defense as Republicans ramp up investigations into president and Hunter Biden – as it happened

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      Republicans on the House judiciary committee have announced their own investigation of the classified documents found at Joe Biden’s home and former office, sending a letter to the attorney general, Merrick Garland, demanding details of the inquiry.“We are conducting oversight of the Justice Department’s actions with respect to former Vice President Biden’s mishandling of classified documents, including the apparently unauthorized possession of classified material at a Washington, D.C. private office and in the garage of his Wilmington, Delaware residence. On January 12, 2023, you appointed Robert Hur as Special Counsel to investigate these matters. The circumstances of this appointment raise fundamental oversight questions that the Committee routinely examines. We expect your complete cooperation with our inquiry,” the committee’s chair Jim Jordan along with congressman Mike Johnson said in a letter.The letter notes that the documents were first discovered just before the midterm elections in November, and accuses the justice department of departing “from how it acted in similar circumstances,” notable the inquiry into government secrets found at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. The committee members demand Garland turn over an array of documents related to the Biden investigation by 27 January.The investigation is the second to be announced by the House GOP since reports of the documents’ discovery first emerged this week. The other is being pursued by James Comer of the oversight committee, who is playing a major role in the Republicans’ campaign of investigations against the White House.Donald Trump’s organization was fined $1.6m by a judge after being convicted of tax fraud charges, but the Manhattan district attorney hinted that’s not the end of his investigation into the former president’s businesses. Meanwhile in Washington, House Republicans demanded more information about the classified documents found at Joe Biden’s home and former office, while the top Senate Democrat said special counsel Robert Hur should be allowed to look into the matter without interference.Here’s what happened today:
      Biden doesn’t trust his Secret Service detail, according to a new book about his presidency.
      Treasury secretary Janet Yellen warned the US government will soon hit its debt limit, and could run out of money by June.
      Special counsel Jack Smith wants to talk to two people hired by Trump’s attorneys to look for any secret materials in his possession.
      Congress will convene for the annual State of the Union address on 7 February.
      Who is George Santos really? Two Daily Beast reporters try to get to the bottom of the fabulist congressman’s saga in an interview with the Guardian’s Politics Weekly America podcast.
      Last week, the much-talked-about George Santos of New York was sworn into the House. The Democrats and even some Republicans think he should have resigned after he admitted to lying about a lot of things during his campaign.So who is the real George Santos? How likely is it that he’ll see out his full term in office? And does his success tell us more about the state of US politics than it does an individual’s misgivings? Jonathan Freedland and Will Bredderman of the Daily Beast discuss the man behind the lies on the Guardian’s Politics Weekly America podcast:Politics Weekly AmericaCan George Santos outrun his lies? Politics Weekly AmericaSorry your browser does not support audio – but you can download here and listen https://audio.guim.co.uk/2020/05/05-61553-gnl.fw.200505.jf.ch7DW.mp300:00:0000:29:31Attorney general Merrick Garland has asked Robert Hur to handle the investigation into Biden’s classified documents, putting a justice department veteran whose most recent government service was as a Donald Trump-appointed US attorney in a role that could upend his presidency.Semafor reports that Democrats remember his work as US attorney for Maryland fondly. “He handled himself with real professionalism when he was U.S. attorney in Maryland,” the state’s Democratic senator Ben Cardin said, while Jamie Raskin, a House Democrat from the state and noted Trump foe, said Hur had a “good reputation.”Rod Rosenstein, who was deputy attorney general under Trump, said Hur was his “point person” for dealing with one of the men the former president liked least: Robert Mueller, the special counsel who led the investigation into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election.The House armed services committee is also requesting details about the classified documents found in Joe Biden’s possession.The committee’s Republican chair Mike Rogers earlier this week wrote to two defense officials requesting details on what the documents contained, and how they had been handled.You can read the letter below:Read the full letter here ⬇️https://t.co/Y98CJppa8M pic.twitter.com/7Yz5uCZqdV— Armed Services GOP (@HASCRepublicans) January 12, 2023
      Needless to say, this is turning into a headache for Democrats in Congress.The party has been on a roll lately, doing much better in the November midterms than expected and then being gifted with Republican disarray in the House and a surprisingly quiet presidential campaign from Donald Trump.Now, they’re back to playing defense after Joe Biden was found to be doing something similar to what has gotten Trump into so much trouble: possessing classified documents. There are substantial differences to the two cases, but party leaders nonetheless are being called upon to answer for their president.“It’s much too early to tell,” Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer today replied on CNN, when asked if he believes Biden broke the law. “I think president Biden has handled this correctly. He’s fully cooperated with the prosecutors … it’s total contrast to president Trump, who stonewalled for a whole year.”With special prosecutors looking into both men’s cases, Schumer called for patience. “We should let it play out, we don’t have to push them in any direction or try to influence them,” he said. “Let the special prosecutors do their job,” Schumer said, adding that he supports the appointment of Robert Hur to that role in the Biden case.You can watch the full interview here:Republicans on the House judiciary committee have announced their own investigation of the classified documents found at Joe Biden’s home and former office, sending a letter to the attorney general, Merrick Garland, demanding details of the inquiry.“We are conducting oversight of the Justice Department’s actions with respect to former Vice President Biden’s mishandling of classified documents, including the apparently unauthorized possession of classified material at a Washington, D.C. private office and in the garage of his Wilmington, Delaware residence. On January 12, 2023, you appointed Robert Hur as Special Counsel to investigate these matters. The circumstances of this appointment raise fundamental oversight questions that the Committee routinely examines. We expect your complete cooperation with our inquiry,” the committee’s chair Jim Jordan along with congressman Mike Johnson said in a letter.The letter notes that the documents were first discovered just before the midterm elections in November, and accuses the justice department of departing “from how it acted in similar circumstances,” notable the inquiry into government secrets found at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. The committee members demand Garland turn over an array of documents related to the Biden investigation by 27 January.The investigation is the second to be announced by the House GOP since reports of the documents’ discovery first emerged this week. The other is being pursued by James Comer of the oversight committee, who is playing a major role in the Republicans’ campaign of investigations against the White House.Joe Biden will make the annual State of the Union speech on 7 February, after the president accepted a formal invitation from House speaker Kevin McCarthy:It is my solemn obligation to invite the president to speak before a Joint Session of Congress on February 7th so that he may fulfill his duty under the Constitution to report on the state of the union. pic.twitter.com/YBmzLxs3Iz— Kevin McCarthy (@SpeakerMcCarthy) January 13, 2023
      In a statement confirming his attendance, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre struck a bipartisan tone. “The President is grateful for and accepts Speaker McCarthy’s prompt invitation to address the peoples’ representatives in Congress,” she said. “He looks forward to speaking with Republicans, Democrats, and the country about how we can work together to continue building an economy that works from the bottom up and the middle out, keep boosting our competitiveness in the world, keep the American people safe, and bring the country together.”Looping back to Donald Trump’s legal troubles, here’s a little more about the situation in New York and beyond.The Trump Organization’s sentencing doesn’t end Trump’s battle with Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg, who said the sentencing “closes this important chapter of our ongoing investigation into the former president and his businesses. We now move on to the next chapter,” the Associated Press writes.Bragg, in office for little more than a year, inherited the Trump Organization case and the investigation into the former president from his predecessor, Cyrus Vance Jr.At the same time, New York attorney general Letitia James is suing Trump and the Trump Organization, alleging they misled banks and others about the value of its many assets, including golf courses and skyscrapers – a practice she dubbed the “art of the steal” – a parody of Trump’s long-ago bestselling ghostwritten book about getting rich The Art of the Deal.James, a Democrat, is asking a court to ban Trump and his three eldest children from running any New York-based company and is seeking to fine them at least $250 million. A judge has set an October trial date and appointed a monitor for the company while the case is pending.Trump faces several other legal challenges as he ramps up his presidential campaign.A special grand jury in Atlanta has investigated whether Trump and his allies committed any crimes while trying to overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia.Last month, the House January 6 committee voted to make a criminal referral to the Justice Department for Trump’s role in sparking the violent insurrection at the US Capitol. The FBI is also investigating Trump’s storage of classified documents.During last year’s Trump Org trial, assistant district attorney Joshua Steinglass told jurors that Trump himself had a role in the fraud scheme, showing them a lease that the Republican signed himself for now-convicted finance chief Allen Weisselberg’s perk apartment that was kept off the tax books.“Mr Trump is explicitly sanctioning tax fraud,” Steinglass argued.Joe Biden this weekend will become the first sitting US president to speak at a Sunday service at Ebenezer Baptist church in Atlanta, Georgia, where civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr was a pastor.Biden is expected to address the ongoing struggle to protect voting rights in the US, despite his failure a year ago to persuade Congress to pass key related legislation, to the exasperation of activists and organizers, especially in Georgia and the south.At the White House press briefing ongoing now, former Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, now senior adviser for public engagement at the White House, talked of the importance of the president’s visit this Sunday, ahead of Martin Luther King Day, the federal holiday that marks the birthday of the assassinated icon.She said that there was “more work to do” to protect democracy and acknowledged that the Biden administration’s two pieces of voting rights legislation have not made it through Congress.She noted that Biden has been invited to the church by Georgia’s recently re-elected Democratic senator Raphael Warnock, who is a pastor at the Ebenezer Baptist church. The church was also regularly attended by the late congressman and lifelong civil rights activist John Lewis.Biden will meet members of King’s family and leaders of the civil rights movement in Atlanta during his visit on Sunday and Monday.Lance Bottoms joined White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, who pointed out that she and the former mayor are examples of “Black women who have broken barriers” on the shoulders of the civil rights movement.Donald Trump’s organization was fined $1.6m by a judge after being convicted of tax fraud charges, but the Manhattan district attorney hinted that’s not the end of his investigation into the former president’s businesses. Meanwhile in Washington, the Treasury secretary warned the US government will hit its legal borrowing limit on Thursday and could default in the summer, unless Congress acts to increase it. Republicans controlling the House have said they won’t cooperate unless government spending is cut, ensuring this is going to turn into a big fight at some point.Here’s what else has happened today so far:
      Joe Biden doesn’t trust his Secret Service detail, according to a new book about his presidency.
      The top House Republican government watchdog is trying to link his investigation into Hunter Biden’s business dealings with the inquiry into classified documents found at the president’s properties.
      Special counsel Jack Smith wants to talk to two people hired by Trump’s attorneys to look for any secret materials in his possession.
      The US government will hit the legal limit on how much debt it can carry on 19 January, but it should have enough money to operate until at least early June, Treasury secretary Janet Yellen said Friday.“I am writing to inform you that beginning on Thursday, January 19, 2023, the outstanding debt of the United States is projected to reach the statutory limit. Once the limit is reached, Treasury will need to start taking certain extraordinary measures to prevent the United States from defaulting on its obligations,” the secretary wrote in a letter to Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy.“While Treasury is not currently able to provide an estimate of how long extraordinary measures will enable us to continue to pay the government’s obligations, it is unlikely that cash and extraordinary measures will be exhausted before early June.”Republicans in the House have signaled they won’t agree to increase the debt ceiling unless the Biden administration and its Democratic allies in Congress agree to reduce spending, though it remains unclear what areas of the budget the GOP wants to cut. Raising the borrowing limit is one of the few pieces of leverage House Republicans have over the Democrats, but the strategy is not without risks. A failure to increase the ceiling could lead to the United States defaulting on its debt for the first time in its history, likely with serious consequences for the economy.The Republican-controlled House Oversight Committee is attempting to make two alleged scandals into one: the investigation of classified materials found at Joe Biden’s properties, and their inquiry into his son Hunter Biden’s business activities.The committee’s chair James Comer has sent the White House a new demand for information about whether Hunter had access to the garage at Joe Biden’s Delaware residence where it was revealed yesterday some classified material was found:🚨 @RepJamesComer presses the White House about classified docs stashed at Biden’s Wilmington home.We have docs revealing this address appeared on Hunter’s driver’s license as recently as 2018, the same time he was cutting deals with foreign adversaries.Time for answers. pic.twitter.com/663qG3REm4— Oversight Committee (@GOPoversight) January 13, 2023
      Even before Biden took office, Republicans have been trying to find evidence of corruption in Hunter Biden’s business dealings, and of his father’s involvement. They have had mixed results in doing that, but this week’s revelations that classified materials were found at Biden’s residence and an office he once used in Washington DC have given them new material to attack his administration. Yesterday, the justice department appointed a special counsel to look into the matter.The trial of members of the Proud Boys militia group over their involvement in the January 6 insurrection is continuing in Washington DC, today with testimony from a Capitol police officer.Thomas Loyd’s testimony contains fresh reminders of the violence that day, as Politico reports:Radio transmissions show Capiotl Police leaders pleading with officers to get off the inaugural stage scaffolding, worried it was going to collapse. “If they’re going to lock the capitol down, we can’t be up here when they breach,” someone yells.— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) January 13, 2023
      “They’re coming and we can’t stop them from breaching,” someone else says on the radio, as police were overwhelmed near the lower west terrace. There were repeated concerns about lack of “hard gear” for officers to defend themselves.— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) January 13, 2023
      Joe Biden doesn’t trust his Secret Service detail, fearing that some of them remain loyal to Donald Trump, Vox reports, citing a new book about his presidency.“The Fight of His Life” by Chris Whipple chronicles the past two years of Biden’s presidency from a positive perspective, according to Vox, and in particular shows the degree to which he loathes his predecessor. Biden, for instance, believes the White House’s Resolute desk was “tainted” by Trump’s use and unsuccessfully asked to swap it out for one used by Democratic icon Franklin D Roosevelt.When it comes to the Secret Service, he minds what he says around them, believing that agents harbor sympathies for the former president. He also thinks they lied about an incident where his dog Major bit an agent. Reached by Vox, the White House wouldn’t comment directly on the book’s content. More

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      Trump to ramp up efforts to secure 2024 Republican nomination after slow start

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      Trump to ramp up efforts to secure 2024 Republican nomination after slow startEvents aim at giving ex-president a narrative reset after being criticized for his ‘low energy’ and inactivity, sources say Donald Trump is scheduled to venture out of his Mar-a-Lago resort and conduct a swing of presidential campaign events later this month, ramping up efforts to secure the Republican nomination after facing hefty criticism around the slow start to his 2024 White House bid, according to sources familiar with the matter.The former US president is expected to travel to a number of early voting states for the Republican nomination – the specific states have not been finalized – around the final weekend of January, the sources said, where he is slated to announce his state level teams.The move comes after a slow start to the campaign and an announcement speech at Mar-a-Lago that has been widely panned as “low energy” and inactive in terms of events, further knocking Trump’s political image after key Senate candidates he endorsed in November’s midterms faced embarrassing defeats.That has apparently given enough confidence for a host of Republicans to prepare their own White House runs and though Trump says he believes a wide field will be beneficial, he seems set to face possible candidates including Florida governor Ron DeSantis and ex-cabinet officials like Nikki Haley.Trump’s quick blitz of travel on his private plane is aimed at giving him something of a narrative reset, the sources said, as well as conveying a sense of swagger and the insurgency feel of his 2016 presidential campaign that he has told advisers in recent weeks he is determined to recapture.The campaign has otherwise planned for Trump to gradually increase the number of political events this year, while it first spends time building out the wider political operation with the aim of starting to peak in activity at the start of election year.The idea, the sources said, is to do the less glamorous but operationally necessary groundwork now, when Trump remains the only declared candidate for the presidency, to build as large of a head start as possible for when DeSantis or others formally enter the 2024 fray.In the weeks since Trump announced his candidacy at Mar-a-Lago last November, the campaign appears to have spent the majority of its time building its fund-raising operation based off small-donor lists that his political action committees have amassed since 2016.Trump has historically had among the best lists in politics and the team has started to transfer the rich data of names, email address, phone numbers and contributions histories over to the campaign.The snag has been that the lists are technically owned by his Pacs, and the campaign has needed to find workarounds to access the data; for instance, Trump has raised money through another Pac that shares proceeds between an entity like Trump’s Save America Pac and the 2024 campaign.The campaign has also focused on expanding the pool of potential donors, one source familiar with the matter said. In recent weeks, it has stepped up efforts to identify moderate Republican voters who have supported Trump politically but have not made contributions for possible ad targeting.Trump has endorsed this strategy of completing the groundwork while he remains the only declared candidate for 2024, people close to the campaign said, and has largely shrugged off his initial anger at having the launch derided as “low energy” after a disappointing midterms for the GOP.Still, Trump has remained attuned to criticism that the campaign had a slow start and appears to have taken steps to make the leadership team for his latest bid for the White House similar to the 2016 team, which featured a group of core aides and advisers.The campaign is being helmed by Susie Wiles, the top political adviser to Trump for the past two years who helped him win Florida in his previous two presidential bids, and Chris LaCivita, a veteran strategist and former political director for the National Republican Senatorial Committee.Both Wiles and LaCivita are considered seasoned political operatives who know how to run successful campaigns but Wiles in particular is expected to be an asset for 2024 as Florida governor Ron DeSantis considers a presidential run, given she previously worked as a top adviser for DeSantis.The group of top aides also includes former White House political director Brian Jack, former Trump 2016 campaign rapid response director Steven Cheung serving as the senior adviser for communications, Justin Caporale who helped create some of the most memorable Trump rallies in the past, and Trump’s in-house counsel Boris Epshteyn.But even as Trump assembles what Republican operatives consider the gold standard for a presidential campaign team, whether he heeds their advice over the long term remains an issue.The former president invariably turns to informal advisers on all topics and over the objections of his professional team, particularly when he finds people who might be willing to affirm his own ideas and impulses, or find him convenient exits to otherwise uncomfortable realities.To be sure, part of the reason for Trump’s early 2024 campaign announcement was his own eagerness to begin a new campaign. But it was also a result of advice that declaring his candidacy might make the justice department less inclined to pursue criminal investigations or indictments against him.That theory did not pan out, and the 2024 campaign launch led the Attorney General Merrick Garland to appoint a special counsel whose prosecutors have in fact been even more aggressive and escalatory than before Trump announced his third bid for the White House, the Guardian has previously reported.The legal blowback underscores how Trump at times has demonstrated a remarkable ability for self-sabotage, such as when he was waived off taking a meeting with the disgraced rapper Kanye West but did it anyway, and ended up also having dinner with white supremacist Nick Fuentes.Advisers have also wrestled with Trump’s impulses for airing grievances about the 2020 election, even when the topic was shown to be a loser in the midterm elections. But even at his campaign launch, Trump could not help himself, and discussed it at length in his speech.TopicsDonald TrumpUS elections 2024US politicsRepublicansnewsReuse this content More