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      Trump insider says ‘some accurate stuff’ in profile of moribund 2024 campaign

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      Trump insider says ‘some accurate stuff’ in profile of moribund 2024 campaignEx-president calls magazine reporter who likened him to Norma Desmond of Sunset Boulevard a ‘shaky and unattractive wack job’ Rejecting a New York Magazine story which said his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 was all but moribund a little more than a month after he announced it, Donald Trump subjected the writer to misogynistic abuse.As Trump’s star wanes, rivals signal presidential nomination campaignsRead moreOlivia Nuzzi, Trump said, was “a shaky and unattractive wack job”.The former president also called Nuzzi’s story “fake news”, insisted “her ‘anonymous sources’ don’t exist (true with many writers)” and said: “I’m happily fighting hard for our GREAT USA!”The Guardian, however, has seen messages in which a veteran Trump campaign insider says there is “some accurate stuff in” Nuzzi’s piece and, when told “time catches up with all of us”, answers: “True”.Nuzzi’s story, The Final Campaign, ran under a pointed subtitle: “Inside Donald Trump’s sad, lonely, thirsty, broken, basically pretend run for re-election. (Which isn’t to say he can’t win).”The piece quoted numerous anonymous advisers, including one who said: “It’s not there. In this business, you can have it and have it so hot and it can go overnight and it’s gone and you can’t get it back. I think we’re just seeing it’s gone. The magic is gone.”When such insiders were asked why Trump was running for the White House again, Nuzzi wrote: “Few … are certain of the answers.“‘It seems like a joke,’ said one ex–Trump loyalist, a former White House official. ‘It feels like he’s going through the motions because he said he would.’”She also said Trump was “sensitive about smallness” and compared his isolation at Mar-a-Lago in Florida to the predicament of Norma Desmond, the character played by Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard, a movie Trump is known to adore.Nuzzi wrote of “a washed-up star locked away in a mansion from the 1920s, afraid of the world outside, afraid it will remind him that time has passed”.Trump faces extensive legal jeopardy, from the January 6 investigation and four House referrals to the Department of Justice; from the department’s own investigation; from an investigation of his election subversion in Georgia; from investigations of his business and tax affairs; and a rape allegation he denies.Nuzzi also wrote that Trump, 76, does sometimes leave his resort – to go to his golf course in the Florida city of Doral. There, Nuzzi wrote, he “meets regularly with an impressive, ideologically diverse range of policy wonks, diplomats and political theorists for conversations about the global economy and military conflicts and constitutional law – and I’m kidding. He goes there to play golf.“‘He just goes, plays golf, comes back and fucks off. He has retreated to the golf course and to Mar-a-Lago,’ one adviser said. ‘His world has gotten much smaller. His world is so, so small.’”Trump still polls strongly with Republicans, though he now has a serious rival in the notional GOP primary: Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida.Nuzzi has repeatedly made headlines with stories about Trump and his close allies, including, in 2019, a series of startling exchanges with Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor who became Trump’s attorney and is now in legal jeopardy of his own.Speaking to CNN on Monday, Nuzzi was asked how she thought Trump would react to her piece.“It’s like an 8,000- or 9,000 word-piece,” she said. “I don’t know that he’s going to be sitting down to read it. I think he’ll probably just look at the cover, look at the headline and think ‘Eh, fake news,’ and move on from there.”Trump did call the piece fake news but he also resorted to abuse.Sunset Boulevard at 70: we’re all Norma Desmond nowRead moreWriting on his Truth Social platform, the former president said he agreed to an interview with “a once very good, but now on its ‘last legs’ and failing, New York Magazine.“The reporter was a shaky and unattractive wack job, known as ‘tough’ but dumb as a rock, who actually wrote a decent story about me a long time ago. Her name, Olivia Nuzzi.”On Monday night, Nuzzi responded – but not with a written rejoinder.Seemingly replying to Trump’s claim she was “dumb as a rock”, the writer tweeted two pictures of Trump at the White House in August 2017, during a solar eclipse.Trump was not wearing shades. In both pictures, he stared straight at the sun.TopicsDonald TrumpUS politicsUS elections 2024newsReuse this content More

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      As Trump’s star wanes, rivals signal presidential nomination campaigns

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      As Trump’s star wanes, rivals signal presidential nomination campaignsRepublicans vying for the party’s nomination have taken the ex-president’s midterm losses as a sign for them to step up Potential rivals to Donald Trump for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination will this week be reading the runes of political fortune with their families ahead of the New Year – typically the time that nomination contenders begin to make themselves formally apparent.January 6 report review: 845 pages, countless crimes, one simple truth – Trump did itRead moreAmid a lackluster start to Trump’s own campaign and a string of scandals and setbacks to hit the former US president due to his links to far-right extremists and his own legal problems, a field of potential rivals is starting to emerge for a contest that only a few months ago many thought was Trump’s alone for the taking.They include multiple ex-members of Trump’s own cabinet, including his own former vice-president, his former UN ambassador and his former spy chief. Adding to that are a raft of rivals with their own political power bases, such as Florida’s increasingly formidable right-wing governor, Ron DeSantis.Now the hints of ambitions to taking on Trump are coming thick and fast, especially in the wake of the defeat of a host of Trump-backed candidates in November’s midterm elections which have triggered a reckoning with Trump’s grip on the Republican party.“I can tell you that my wife and I will take some time when our kids are home this Christmas – we’re going to give prayerful consideration about what role we might play,” former vice-president Mike Pence, 63, told CBS’ Face the Nation last month.Maryland’s term-limited Republican governor Larry Hogan, and Nikki Haley, South Carolina’s former governor and US ambassador to the UN, have said the holidays would also be a time for deliberation.“We are taking the holidays to kind of look at what the situation is,” Haley said in November. Hogan, a fierce critic of Trump, told CBS last week “it won’t be shocking if I were to bring the subject up” with his family during the break. Come January, he said, he would begin taking advice to “try to figure out what the future is”.“I don’t feel any pressure or any rush to make a decision … things are gonna look completely different three months from now or six months from now than they did today,” Hogan, 66, added.Others in the running are also readily apparent. Former secretary of state Mike Pompeo’s team has reached out to potential campaign staff in early primary states, the Washington Post reported over the weekend. “We figured by the first quarter next year, we need to be hard at it if we’re going to do it,” Pompeo, 58, said in an interview with Fox News.Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson is reportedly talking to donors to determine his ability to fund the 18-month “endurance race” of a nomination process. Hutchinson has said that Trump’s early declaration, on 15 November, had “accelerated everyone’s time frame”.“So the first quarter of next year, you either need to be in or out,” the outgoing, 72-year-old governor told NBC News earlier this month.New Hampshire governor Chris Sununu, 48, said this week he doesn’t believe Trump could win in 2024. He’s voiced concerns that the Republican party could repeat the nomination experience of 2016, when he was a contender, when a large, divided field allowed Trump’s “ drain the swamp” insurgent candidacy to triumph.“We just have to find another candidate at this point,” Sununu told CBS News. While Trump could be the Republican nominee, he added, he’s “not going to be able to close the deal”.Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin, 56, has said he’s “humbled” to be part of the 2024 discussions but in the convention of most candidates, he’s focused on his day job.Youngkin telegraphed his fiscal conservative credentials to wider Republican big-money interests by pushing $4bn in tax cuts through the Virginia legislature and meeting with party megadonors in Manhattan in June.“2024 is a long way away,” he recently told Fox News. “We’ll see what happens”.Helping to break the gender-lock on potential candidates is also South Dakota governor Kristi Noem. Her name has emerged as a potential Trump running mate, but she recently said he did not present “the best chance” for Republicans in 2024.“Our job is not just to talk to people who love Trump or hate Trump,” Noem, 51, told the New York Times in November. “Our job is to talk to every single American.”The biggest dog in the potential race – aside from Trump himself – is by far Florida’s DeSantis, who recently won re-election in his state by a landslide. Some of the Republican party’s biggest donors have already transferred their favors from Trump, 78, toward the 44-year-old governor.Republican mega donor and billionaire Ken Griffin, who moved his hedge fund Citadel from Chicago to Miami last year, described Trump as a “three-time loser” to Bloomberg a day after the former president’s declaration.“I don’t know what he’s going to do. It’s a huge personal decision,” Griffin said of DeSantis. “He has a tremendous record as governor of Florida, and our country would be well-served by him as president.”Similarly, Stephen Schwarzman, CEO of private-equity giant Blackstone, told Axios he was withdrawing his support from Trump for 2024 but stopped short of backing DeSantis. “America does better when its leaders are rooted in today and tomorrow, not today and yesterday,” he said. “It is time for the Republican party to turn to a new generation of leaders.”DeSantis has yet to rule a run in or out, but has signaled his interest by beginning to plant ads on Google and Facebook that target an audience beyond Florida.But in the post-midterm political environment, with Trump-backed candidates performing poorly in most contests, and the former president besieged by investigations and questions about his associations, the running is open.Maryland’s Hogan has described Trump as vulnerable, and “he seems to be dropping every day”. Hutchinson has said “you never know when that early front-runner is going to stumble”. Polls suggest Trump trails DeSantis in a nomination head-to-head, but leads over Pence and Haley.Other potential names in the pot include Texas governor Greg Abbott, 65; Florida senator Rick Scott, also 65; former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, 60; and Texas senator Ted Cruz, 52, who ran for the Republican nomination in 2016.In a provocatively titled “OK Boomers, Let Go of the Presidency” column last week, former George W Bush advisor Karl Rove warned that 2024 may resemble 1960 when voters were ready for a generational shift. In that year, they went for the youngest in the field, John F Kennedy, aged 43.“Americans want leaders who focus on the future,” Rove wrote in the Wall Street Journal. “The country would be better off if each party’s standard bearer came from a new generation … It’s time for the baby boomers and their elders to depart the presidential stage. The party that grasps this has the advantage come 2024”.TopicsRepublicansDonald TrumpRon DeSantisUS politicsNikki HaleyMike PompeoMike PencefeaturesReuse this content More

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      Jim Clyburn backs Biden all the way: ‘he’s delivered for this country’

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      InterviewJim Clyburn backs Biden all the way: ‘he’s delivered for this country’David Smith in WashingtonSouth Carolina congressman says Biden delivered for the country and put it back on track, making him a powerful contender for 2024 He was described as the most important politician of 2020. James Clyburn’s endorsement performed a political defibrillation on Joe Biden’s flatlining campaign, reversing his fortunes and sending him on his way to the White House.Joe Biden indicates he’ll run in 2024, following Democrats’ midterms winsRead moreMidway through Biden’s first term, the South Carolina congressman has no regrets. On the contrary, as America’s first octogenarian president spends the holidays deciding whether to run for re-election in 2024, Clyburn is backing him all the way.“I’m supporting him and I hope he makes that decision too,” he tells the Guardian by phone. “He’s delivered for this country. He’s put this country back on track towards a more perfect union. If you look at the production of his administration in this Congress he’s had to work with, we’ve been the most productive since 1965.”Biden’s roll call of legislative achievements includes coronavirus relief, infrastructure investment, historic climate spending, a boost for computer chip manufacturing and scientific research and measures on gun safety and military veterans’ benefits. And like a unicycle juggler on a tightrope, he did it with tenuous majorities in the House and Senate.Clyburn adds: “Joe Biden has delivered exactly what the country needs and that’s why we were rewarded the way we were on [midterm] election day. There were people predicting there was going be this ‘red wave’ and Democrats were going to lose by 60.”Why congressman James Clyburn was the most important politician of 2020Read moreThey lost only by nine, largely due to redistricting in California, Florida and New York.But doubts remain. While Biden often maintains a punishing schedule and grills his aides on minute policy details, there are moments when the 80-year-old mangles words and looks his age. Polls suggest many voters feel he is too old for the job. He is older than Ronald Reagan was when he completed his second term. If Biden serves a full second term, he will be 86 at the end.Clyburn is something of an expert on this issue: he is 82 and not slowing down. He speaks to the Guardian having attended a state dinner with the French president Emmanuel Macron that went well past midnight, then appeared on MSNBC at 8am. A couple of days later he will have a late night at the John F Kennedy Center for the performing arts honours ceremony. He also finds time to pump out a podcast, Clyburn Chronicles.Clyburn will remain in leadership when Democrats become the minority in the House next month. While the outgoing speaker, Nancy Pelosi, 82, and 83-year-old majority leader, Steny Hoyer, are making way for a new generation, Clyburn will serve as assistant Democratic leader, the number four position.He explains: “If we are going to regain the majority, we’re going to have to do so maintaining some stability in our caucus, being inclusive in our caucus and, if you look at the leadership table, the south is not represented there. Rural America is not represented there. I represent both.“The majority of Black people in this country still live in the south and for some strange reason every time people start talking about African Americans, they start talking about inner-city New York, Philadelphia, Chicago. That’s not where African Americans live. That’s where the media focus and one of the reasons our party is not doing as well as we should is because we have not developed the kind of rural policies that we need to develop.“That’s why I was so much of a stickler for broadband being in the infrastructure law. That’s why I’m always pushing for community health centres, because I can assure you where we have this kind of attention being paid to people’s healthcare needs, to their housing needs, is where we do better.”The new House Democratic leader will be Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the first Black person to head a party in Congress.Clyburn reflects: “The first, always you’ve got to be happy, but you want to make sure that the first performs in such a way there won’t be a problem getting the second.“When I was first elected to Congress, I was 52 years old. That’s the age Jeffries is today and getting elected leader of our caucus. That’s the way things work. My dad was not allowed to get a college degree because of state law and so I came here to Congress at 52. He’s the leader of our caucus at 52. That’s how things evolve.”Republicans will have the speaker’s gavel. Kevin McCarthy’s struggle to win election is indicative of a potentially bumpy ride as moderates clash with far-right members. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, once seen as fringe figure, is backing McCarthy and might soon be calling the shots. Some observers fear the party will give fresh impetus to white nationalism and political violence.Clyburn says: “I have no fears of that. These people are going to do what they want to do and I would hope that the Republicans would put the needs of the country above the partisanship of any one person in their party. If they go down that road, they are going to have to deal with failure. It’s just that simple.”Donald Trump’s influence over Republicans appears to be diminishing in the wake of the midterms, a series of self-inflicted wounds and a damning report by the House January 6 committee. But Clyburn, who has compared Trump to Benito Mussolini, is not writing him off yet.“Trumpism is still there. It’s still a big deal. Trump brought a lot of people out from under the rocks that they’d been hiding under and so long as he’s out there, these people are going to be out there. What we’ve got to do is be very careful. Thomas Jefferson is sometimes credited with having said: ‘ternal vigilance is the price of liberty.’”So what does he make of Trump’s most likely rival for the 2024 Republican nomination, Ron DeSantis of Florida?“He’s more moderate and just as dangerous because the policies are the same. Trumpism is Trumpism, no matter where it comes from. These -isms, you have to be careful with.”Some Democrats might be tempted to say better the devil you know. Trump has lost election after election. If he is the Republican standard bearer in 2024, polls suggest he will lose to Biden again. But Clyburn is not rooting for Trump to be the nominee.“We need to have a legitimate, serious discourse when we decide on the presidency,” he says. “I don’t want to win the presidency by default. I want to win the presidency by having the best proposals.”TopicsJoe BidenDemocratsUS politicsSouth CarolinaDonald TrumpinterviewsReuse this content More

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      Jamie Raskin: electoral college is a ‘danger to the American people’

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      Jamie Raskin: electoral college is a ‘danger to the American people’Democratic congressman says recent changes to electoral college laws are unlikely to stop another January 6 Recent reforms to the laws governing the counting of electoral college votes for presidential races are “not remotely sufficient” to prevent another attack like the one carried out by Donald Trump supporters at the Capitol on January 6, a member of the congressional committee which investigated the uprising has warned.January 6 report review: 845 pages, countless crimes, one simple truth – Trump did itRead moreIn an interview on CBS’s Face the Nation, the Maryland House representative Jamie Raskin on Sunday renewed calls echoed by others – especially in the Democratic party to which he belongs – to let a popular vote determine the holder of the Oval Office.“We should elect the president the way we elect governors, senators, mayors, representatives, everybody else – whoever gets the most votes wins,” Raskin said. “We spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year exporting American democracy to other countries, and the one thing they never come back to us with is the idea that, ‘Oh, that electoral college that you have, that’s so great, we think we will adopt that too’.”After Trump served one term and lost the Oval Office to Joe Biden in 2020, he pressured his vice-president Mike Pence to use his ceremonial role as president of the session where both the Senate and House of Representatives met to certify the outcome of the race and interfere with the counting of the electoral college votes.Pence refused, as supporters of the defeated Trump stormed the Capitol and threatened to hang the vice-president on the day of that joint congressional session in early 2021. The unsuccessful attack was linked to nine deaths, including the suicides of traumatized law enforcement officers who ultimately restored order.Raskin was one of nine House representatives – including seven Democrats – who served on a panel investigating the January 6 uprising.The committee recently released an 845-page report drawing from more than 1,000 interviews and 10 public hearings that, among other findings, concluded Trump provoked the Capitol attack by purposely disseminating false allegations of fraud pertaining to his defeat as part of a plot to overturn his loss. Committee members also recommended that federal prosecutors file criminal charges against Trump and certain associates of his.Hundreds of Trump’s supporters who participated in the Capitol attack have been charged, with many already convicted.Raskin said the US insistence on determining presidential winners through the electoral college facilitated the attempt by Trump supporters to keep him in power.“There are so many curving byways and nooks and crannies in the electoral college that there are opportunities for a lot of strategic mischief,” Raskin told Face the Nation host Margaret Brennan, adding that the institutions which prevented the Trump-fueled Capitol attack “just barely” did so.As part of a government spending package passed Friday, Congress updated existing federal election laws to clarify that the vice-president’s role in the proceedings to certify the results of a race is just ceremonial and merely to count electoral votes. It also introduced a requirement for 20% of the members of both the House and Senate to object to a state’s electoral college vote outcome when it had previously taken just one legislator from each congressional chamber to do so.Raskin on Sunday said those corrective measures are “necessary” yet “not remotely sufficient” because they don’t solve “the fundamental problem” of the electoral college vote, which in 2000 and 2016 allowed both George W Bush and Trump to win the presidency despite clear defeats in the popular vote.Another House Democrat – Dan Goldman of New York – went on MSNBC’s the Sunday show and made a similar point, saying that US lawmakers “need to be thinking about ways that we can preserve and protect our democracy that lasts generations”.Many Americans are taught in their high school civics classes that the electoral college prevents the handful of most populated areas in the US from determining the presidential winner because more voters live there than in the rest of the country combined.‘Hatred has a great grip on the heart’: election denialism lives on in US battlegroundRead moreStates generally determine their presidential electoral vote winner by the popular vote.But most give 100% of their electoral vote allotment to the winner of the popular vote even if the outcome is razor-thin. Critics say that, as a result, votes for the losing candidate end up not counting in any meaningful way, allowing for situations where the president is supported only by a minority of the populace.Meanwhile, such scenarios are preceded by a convoluted process that most people don’t understand and whose integrity can be assailed in the court of public opinion by partisans with agendas. That happened ahead of the Capitol attack even though Trump lost both the popular and electoral college votes to Biden handily.“I think,” Raskin said, “that the electoral college … has become a danger not just to democracy, but to the American people.”TopicsUS politicsElectoral reformUS Capitol attackDonald TrumpDemocratsRepublicansUS voting rightsnewsReuse this content More

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      January 6 panel’s body of work boosts DoJ case against Trump, experts say

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      January 6 panel’s body of work boosts DoJ case against Trump, experts sayFormer prosecutors say exhaustive report from Capitol attack committee ‘amounts to a detailed prosecution memo’ After 18 months of investigating Donald Trump’s drive to overturn his 2020 election loss, the House committee on the January 6 insurrection has provided the Department of Justice with an exhaustive legal roadmap as it pursues potential criminal charges against the former US president.Amid reports the committee is already co-operating with DoJ by sharing evidence garnered from 1,000 witness interviews and thousands of documents, former federal prosecutors say the panel’s work offers a trove of evidence to strengthen the formidable task of DoJ prosecutors investigating the former US president and his top loyalists.The wealth of evidence against Trump compiled by the panel spurred its unprecedented decision to send the DoJ four criminal referrals for Trump and some top allies about their multi-track planning and false claims of fraud to block Joe Biden from taking office.Although the referrals do not compel the justice department to file charges against Trump or others, the enormous evidence the panel amassed should boost its investigations, say ex-federal prosecutors.The massive evidence assembled by the panel was the basis for accusing Trump of obstruction of an act of Congress, inciting insurrection, conspiracy to defraud the US and making false statements“The central cause of January 6 was one man, former president Donald Trump, who many others followed,” the committee wrote in a detailed summary of its findings a few days before the release of its final 800-plus-page report on Thursday.The panel’s blockbuster report concluded that Trump criminally plotted to nullify his defeat in 2020 and “provoked his supporters to violence” at the Capitol with baseless claims of widespread voter fraud.Former prosecutors say the committee’s detailed factual presentation should boost some overlapping inquiries by DoJ including a months-long investigation into a fake electors scheme that Trump helped spearhead in tandem with John Eastman, a conservative lawyer who was also referred to the justice department for prosecution.“The January 6 committee’s final hearing and lengthy executive summary make out a powerful case to support its criminal referrals as to Trump, Eastman, and unnamed others,” former DoJ inspector general Michael Bromwich told the Guardian.“Although the referrals carry no legal weight, they provide an unusual preview of potential charges that may well be effective in swaying public opinion,” Bromwich said.Daniel Richman, a former federal prosecutor who is now a professor at Columbia Law School, also said the panel’s work should have a positive impact on the DoJ’s investigations.“Although the committee’s hearings gave a good preview of the criminal liability theories it has now laid out in its summary, the new [executive summary] document does an extraordinary job of pulling together the evidentiary materials the committee assembled,” Richman told the Guardian.“The committee’s presentation goes far beyond a call for heads to roll, and amounts to a detailed prosecution memo that the DoJ will have to reckon with.”Other former prosecutors said they agreed. “It is difficult to imagine that the DoJ could look at this body of facts and reach a different conclusion,” said Barbara McQuade, a former US attorney for eastern Michigan.“Although the committee’s referral to the justice department is not binding in any way, and the DoJ will make its own independent assessment of whether charges are appropriate, the most important parts of the report are the facts it documents.”That factual gold mine has caught the eye of special counsel Jack Smith, who attorney general Merrick Garland tapped last month to oversee the DoJ’s sprawling criminal inquiries into the January 6 insurrection.Smith, on 5 December, in a letter, asked for all of the committee’s materials related to its 18-month inquiry, as Punchbowl News first reported.After receiving the letter, the panel sent Smith’s team transcripts and documents, much of it concerning Eastman’s key role in promoting a fake electors scheme in tandem with Trump and others to block Biden’s certification by Congress.The House panel has also provided the DoJ all of former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows’ text messages and other relevant evidence.The committee has also shared transcripts of several witness interviews related to the fake electors ploy, plus the efforts by Trump and his loyalists to prod Georgia and some other states that Biden won to nullify their results.According to a Politico report, the transcripts the panel sent to the special counsel included interviews with several top Trump-linked lawyers such as former vice-president Mike Pence’s top legal counsel Greg Jacob, former White House counsel Pat Cipollone, former attorney general Bill Barr, Jeffrey Rosen, who succeeded Barr as AG, and Rosen’s deputy Richard Donoghue.Still, there are potential downsides to some of the evidence that the panel has made public in its extensive inquiries, say former prosecutors.“The enormous cache of evidence developed by the January 6 committee is a mixed blessing for the DoJ,” Bromwich said. “Although it undoubtedly provides evidence that the DoJ had not yet collected or developed, it will require time and resources to master and fully grasp its significance.”“More importantly, it may contain landmines of various kinds – for example, witnesses whose public testimony was powerful and unequivocal, but whose initial testimony was incomplete, misleading or false. That doesn’t matter in the context of a Congressional investigation; it matters a lot when a prosecutor needs to decide whether a witness will be vulnerable to attack on cross-examination based on the full body of their testimony.”Other former prosecutors say the panel’s exhaustive documentation and witness transcripts should on balance benefit the special counsel.“The committee report gives the special counsel not only the benefit of knowing what certain witnesses will say, it also lets him know what other witnesses won’t say,” Michael Moore, a former US attorney in Georgia, told the Guardian. “That type of intel gives him the ability to put together a stronger case with fewer surprises. More information is never a bad thing to a good lawyer.”On the broader legal challenges facing the DoJ, ex-prosecutors say the panel’s work should goad the department to work diligently to investigate and charge Trump and others the panel has referred for prosecution.“Normally, the department quietly exercises enormous discretion by hiding behind the mantra that it will pursue cases whenever the facts and law support doing so,” Richman said. “The public usually has to take its word for that, as it lacks the granular knowledge to make its own assessment.“Here, though it may disagree with the committee’s handling of the law and the evidence, there will be considerable pressure on the DoJ to either bring the specified cases or find a way to explain why it will not.”TopicsUS Capitol attackUS politicsDonald TrumpnewsReuse this content More

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      Highest-profile January 6 trial begins with Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio

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      Highest-profile January 6 trial begins with Proud Boys leader Enrique TarrioChairman of militia group and four others are charged with seditious conspiracy related to Capitol insurrection The January 6 committee investigating the attack on the Capitol may have issued its huge final report, but the wheels of the justice system in the US are grinding on and one of the most high-profile trials emerging from the insurrection is about to begin in earnest.Jury selection began last week with the seditious conspiracy trial against ex-Proud Boys national chairman Enrique Tarrio and four others involved in the far-right, often violent militia group.From Liz Cheney to Donald Trump: winners and losers from the January 6 hearingsRead moreTarrio and his co-defendants in the Washington DC federal court trial – Ethan Nordean, Zachary Rehl, Dominic Pezzola and Proud Boy organizer Joe Biggs – are charged with seditious conspiracy and other counts related to the attack that delayed congressional certification of Joe Biden’s election victory, injured dozens of police officers and is linked to multiple deaths. They have all pleaded not guilty to the charges.A fifth man charged in this case, Charles Donohoe, pleaded guilty in April to conspiring to attack the Capitol. Under Donohoe’s plea deal, he agreed to cooperate against his co-defendants. Approximately 900 people have now been arrested in the Capitol attack, with prosecutors securing convictions against hundreds.The start of the trial comes amid a wider reckoning with those responsible for the January 6 attack.Several hours after jury selection started on Monday in the Proud Boys trial, the House committee probing the deadly insurrection issued some of its findings – and made a criminal referral against Trump to the US Department of Justice, recommending charges. The trial also comes several weeks after two leaders of the Oath Keepers – another far-right group – were found guilty of seditious conspiracy for their involvement in the insurrection.Federal prosecutors allege that Nordean, Biggs, Rehl and Pezzola were among the 100 Proud Boys who convened alongside the Washington Monument at 10am on 6 January. They met around the time that Trump was addressing thousands of supporters in a park called the Ellipse.These soon-to-be rioters in that group then made their way to the Capitol. Around 1pm, one of them broke through police, spurring the violence that would consume Capitol Hill, court documents allege.Nordean, Rehl, Biggs and Pezzola allegedly led the mob and were among the first people to push past police. Biggs allegedly recorded a video where he observed the mob and said: “We’ve taken the Capitol,” per court documents.Tarrio was not in Washington DC during the insurrection, as he had been arrested two days prior for allegedly vandalizing a Black Lives Matter sign at a historical Black church during a December 2020 demonstration. Prosecutors contend that Tarrio was among the leaders of this conspiracy to thwart election certification.Several days before the riot, Tarrio posted about “revolution” on social media, prosecutors said in court papers. In an encrypted messaging group which prosecutors maintain was created by Tarrio, one member purportedly said: “Time to stack those bodies in front of Capitol Hill,” per the Associated Press.Despite being arrested several days prior, Tarrio heralded the rioters’ attack, writing “don’t [expletive] leave” on social media and later posting “we did this…” prosecutors said.While there appears to be extensive evidence against these men, much of which has long been in the public record, prosecutors must show more than their in-person or social media presence that day to prove seditious conspiracy.“They’re going to have to show an agreement between two people or more, they’re going to have to show a common scheme or a common plan,” said Los Angeles criminal defense and appellate attorney Matthew Barhoma, founder of Barhoma Law.“Showing up on January 6 at the same time doesn’t mean that a conspiracy indeed existed. They’re going to have to go a little bit beyond that to show there is a common agreement – basically a smoking gun in the sense that they intended to overthrow the government,” he added. “They’re going to have to show that they wanted to act in a common plan in furtherance of that plan to overthrow the government or to delay or hinder the United States government.”‘These are conditions ripe for political violence’: how close is the US to civil war?Read moreThat said, “seditious conspiracy is actually in some ways, much easier to prove than regular criminal conspiracy,” explained longtime attorney Ron Kuby, a longtime criminal defense attorney with a focus on civil rights.“Seditious conspiracy is the only conspiracy that does not require proof of an overt act on the part of participants,” Kuby said. “Generally speaking, a conspiracy is an agreement between two or more people to do something unlawful, and in all other conspiracy cases, at least one of the participants has to take a substantial step toward that unlawful purpose.”“Here, it’s really a sidenote, footnote, endnote and asterisk. They don’t have to prove an overt act, what they they have to prove there was an agreement to oppose the lawful authority of the United States of America by force.“There’s a tsunami of evidence, both in terms of what was said among the participants, which the FBI has obtained and decrypted as well as what they did, which is all well-documented on video.”Although evidence appears to abound, one possible defense strategy would be to portray the alleged plotters as buffoons. “These guys were angry knuckleheads but you know, they’re not planning to overthrow the government,” Kuby said of this possible approach.It’s unclear whether these Proud Boys members would go along with that, even if this could help their cases.“The natural impulse of every defense lawyer is to portray their clients in a fashion which is most likely to result in acquittal, but that’s not necessarily the way most defendants want to be portrayed,” Kuby said. “The Proud Boys may not want to be portrayed as loud-mouthed knuckleheads who were just egging each other on to say dumber and dumber things because they’re not that bright.”Tarrio’s attorneys have contended that he didn’t tell or encourage anyone to storm the Capitol or act violently, while Nordean’s lawyer alleged that justice department prosecutors were singling him out because of his political beliefs, the AP reported.In an email to the Guardian, Tarrio’s attorney, Nayib Hassan, said: “Mr Tarrio is looking forward to the start of the trial. We look forward to making our presentation of the evidence and acquitting Mr Tarrio of the governments allegations.”Rehl’s lawyer reportedly wanted the judge to dismiss the indictment on First amendment grounds, claiming the charges were rooted in free speech issues. Asked for comment, Biggs’s attorney, Norm Pattis, said in an email: “We look forward to the presentation of evidence in this case. We stand by his plea of not guilty.”TopicsUS Capitol attackJanuary 6 hearingsLaw (US)The far rightUS politicsJoe BidenDonald TrumpnewsReuse this content More

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      Republican senator called Giuliani ‘walking malpractice’, January 6 report says

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      Republican senator called Giuliani ‘walking malpractice’, January 6 report saysMike Lee of Utah made comment in text message to Trump aide on evening after the Capitol attack A senator who received a voice message meant for another Republican on January 6 described the caller, Rudy Giuliani, as “walking malpractice”.January 6 report review: 845 pages, countless crimes, one simple truth – Trump did itRead moreThe piquant characterisation of the former New York mayor, then Donald Trump’s attorney and a leading proponent of his election fraud lie, was made in a text message sent by Mike Lee of Utah.The text was included in the final report of the House January 6 committee, which was released late on Thursday. Reporters immediately scoured its 845 pages for new details of Trump’s attempt to overturn his election defeat, leading to the attack on the Capitol.Lee’s comment is contained in a footnote to page 631. It says: “6 January 2021, text message from Senator Mike Lee to [national security adviser] Robert O’Brien at 10.55pm EST reading, ‘You can’t make this up. I just got this voice message [from] Rudy Giuliani, who apparently thought he was calling Senator Tuberville.“‘You’ve got to listen to that message. Rudy is walking malpractice.’”Giuliani was trying to contact Tommy Tuberville, from Alabama, before Congress reconvened to certify Joe Biden’s election victory, the process the rioters tried to stop.Biden’s win was certified, though not before 147 Republicans in the House and Senate objected to results in key states, shortly after rioters sought lawmakers to capture and perhaps kill, some chanting that they wanted to hang the vice-president, Mike Pence.The attack is now linked to nine deaths, including law enforcement suicides.Giuliani’s message was reported at the time. Referring to the Trump team’s efforts in key states, he said: “I’m calling you because I want to discuss with you how they’re trying to rush this hearing and how we need you, our Republican friends, to try to just slow it down so we can get these legislatures to get more information to you.“And I know they’re reconvening at eight tonight, but … the only strategy we can follow is to object to numerous states and raise issues so that we get ourselves into tomorrow – ideally until the end of tomorrow.“I know [Senate Republican leader Mitch] McConnell is doing everything he can to rush it, which is kind of a kick in the head because it’s one thing to oppose us, it’s another thing not to give us a fair opportunity to contest it.”McConnell would later vote to acquit Trump, in an impeachment trial arising from the Capitol attack, when conviction would have barred the former president from holding federal office again.In contrast, legal authorities now seem inclined to agree with Lee’s assessment of Giuliani’s unsuitability to practice as an attorney.Earlier this month, a preliminary disciplinary hearing of the Washington DC bar saw counsel argue that Giuliani, 78, should lose his license because of his attempt to undermine the election.Defending himself, Giuliani said: “I believe that I’ve been persecuted for three or four years, including false charges brought against me by the federal government.”Giuliani review: Andrew Kirtzman’s definitive life of Trump’s last lackeyRead moreThough his activities in support of Trump’s election subversion are the subject of numerous investigations, Giuliani has not been charged with any crime.His license to practise law in New York, the city he once led, was however suspended in June last year.Numerous reports and books have described Giuliani’s increasingly bizarre behaviour in his role as Trump’s attorney.His biographer, Andrew Kirtzman, concluded that while Trump remains a political player, running for the Republican nomination in 2024, “Giuliani … [is] finished in every conceivable way.”TopicsRudy GiulianiJanuary 6 hearingsUS Capitol attackUS politicsRepublicansDonald TrumpTrump administrationnewsReuse this content More

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      Republicans calling Trump’s tax returns ‘private’ don’t understand privacy | Jan-Werner Müller

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      Republicans calling Trump’s tax returns ‘private’ don’t understand privacyJan-Werner MüllerThe Trump years demonstrated that the norm of presidential candidates voluntarily releasing their returns is too weak Donald Trump’s biggest worries right now might not be about Congress having released six years of his tax returns. But it is an issue where Republicans can comfortably have it both ways: please Trump’s base, as they loudly perform indignation about Democrats’ conduct, even as they cease defending a politically weakened Trump against the charges of the January 6 committee.The Republican party has all but said that they will play tit-for-tat in the new Congress – investigations, impeachments, whatever it takes to troll Democrats and distract the public with political theater, as Republicans are unlikely to make good on campaign promises. Hence it is crucial to understand what made the release of Trump’s tax returns legitimate – and why Trump cannot appeal to privacy as a trump card – and why we must also put rules in place to prevent political witch-hunts.Kevin Brady – the top Republican on the House ways and means committee, which voted along partisan lines to release the returns – has warned that “the era of political targeting, and of Congress’s enemies list, is back and every American, every American taxpayer, who may get on the wrong side of the majority in Congress is now at risk.” Democrats, he alleges, have created “a dangerous new political weapon that overturns decades of privacy protections”.But in what sense is privacy really at stake here? Privacy is ultimately the right to control what is known about us. That right is not absolute, but it is crucial for developing intimate relationships, for experimenting with new ways of life, and, sometimes, for making a new start in circumstances when we need the luxury of appearing to others as strangers. Privacy matters for our lives with our nearest and dearest (while many legal theorists thought the right to abortion should not be justified as a matter of privacy, few would say there is no link at all); but it can also afford us anonymity, a key element in the arch-American enterprise of self-reinvention.This understanding contrasts with a conventional view according to which particular areas of life are automatically deemed private. Feminists spent decades arguing that the family should not be a black box such that everything happening inside it would remain unknown to outsiders, including the state. After all, deploying the private-public distinction this way enabled abuse of women and children by men who could deploy privacy as both shield and sword to cut down any criticism.In the same manner, it is a mistake to declare taxes automatically private. To be sure, people have a legitimate interest in not having their neighbors know their income, or the peculiar items they claim as deductions. But – unlike with intimate knowledge that really only a chosen few should know (such that sharing that knowledge is precisely a sign of intimacy) – most of us don’t mind that civil servants know something about us most other people don’t know. And that is because bureaucrats, unlike our neighbors, take no particular interest in us as individuals.Most of us happen not to be public figures. Public figures voluntarily give up some control over what is known about them – in fact, plenty of self-promoting celebrities force more information on us than we really care to know. But even public figures have an interest in privacy. After a recording was leaked, the whole world gawked at the Finnish prime minister, Sanna Marin, dancing and singing this summer, in a setting she had every reason to assume was private. She was right to complain about the leaked recording, and the (horrendously misogynist, needless to say) comments denying her the right to some private fun and release were wrong.Yet politicians wield the levers of state power in a democracy and are accountable to us in a way simply not true of pop stars and other famous figures. (Supreme court justices are an interesting case in-between.) The norm that presidential candidates release their tax returns is not about citizens’ nosiness, but their rightful concerns that powerful beings might be beholden to corporations and foreign powers – all red flags in Trump’s case in particular, of course.This rationale is not new. Nixon’s returns were analyzed by Congress; the Carter administration introduced mandatory audits of sitting presidents and vice-presidents. The Trump years demonstrate two things: that the informal norm of presidential candidates releasing returns is too weak, and that the system of mandatory auditing is not working.Both failed in the face of Trump. Trump appears not to have personally prevented the auditing during the first years of his presidency – but then again, that’s how autocracy works: underlings know what is expected without being told.Congress should pass laws to ensure both transparency and proper auditing of the most powerful in politics; none of that would have pernicious implications for other citizens, even fabulously famous ones.
      Jan-Werner Mueller teaches at Princeton and is a Guardian US columnist. His most recent book is Democracy Rules
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