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      Trump: US justice department appeals judge’s Mar-a-Lago investigation hold

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      Trump: US justice department appeals judge’s Mar-a-Lago investigation holdDoJ seeks to continue reviewing a batch of classified documents seized during an FBI search of Donald Trump’s Florida home The justice department asked a federal appeals court on Friday to lift a judge’s order that temporarily barred it from reviewing a batch of classified documents seized during an FBI search of former president Donald Trump’s Florida home last month.The department told the 11th circuit US court of appeals in Atlanta that the judge’s hold, imposed last week, had impeded the “government’s efforts to protect the nation’s security” and interfered with its investigation into the presence of top-secret information at Mar-a-Lago. It asked the court to remove that order so work could resume, and to halt a judge’s directive forcing the department to provide the seized classified documents to an independent arbiter for his review.Special master in Trump documents case described as fair and no-nonsenseRead more“The government and the public would suffer irreparable harm absent a stay” of the order, department lawyers wrote in their brief to the appeals court.US district judge Aileen Cannon’s appointment of a so-called special master to review the documents, and the resulting legal tussle it has caused, appear certain to slow by weeks the department’s investigation into the holding of classified documents at the Florida property after Trump left office. The justice department has been investigating possible violations of multiple statutes, including under the Espionage Act, but it remains unclear whether Trump, who has been laying the groundwork for a potential presidential run, or anyone else might be charged.The FBI says it took about 11,000 documents, including roughly 100 with classification markings found in a storage room and an office, while serving a court-authorized search warrant at the home on 8 August. Weeks after the search, Trump lawyers asked a judge to appoint a special master to conduct an independent review of the records.Cannon granted the request last week, assigning a special master to review the records and weed out any that may be covered by claims of attorney-client or executive privilege. She directed the department to halt its use of the classified documents for investigative purposes until further court order, or until the completion of the special master‘s work.On Thursday night, she assigned Raymond Dearie, the former chief judge of the federal court based in Brooklyn, to serve in the role. She also declined to lift her earlier order, citing ongoing disputes about the nature of the documents that she said merited a neutral review by an outside arbiter.“The Court does not find it appropriate to accept the Government’s conclusions on these important and disputed issues without further review by a neutral third party in an expedited and orderly fashion,” she wrote.The justice department on Friday night told the appeals court that Cannon’s injunction “unduly interferes with the criminal investigation”, prohibiting investigators from “accessing the seized records to evaluate whether charges are appropriate”. It also prevents the FBI from using the seized records in its criminal investigation to determine which documents, if any, were disclosed and to whom, the department said.Though Cannon has said investigators are free to do other investigative work that did not involve a review of the documents, the department said on Friday that that was largely impractical. Noting the discovery of dozens of empty folders at Mar-a-Lago marked classified, it said the judge’s hold appeared to bar it from “further reviewing the records to discern any patterns in the types of records that were retained, which could lead to identification of other records still missing”.The department also asked the appeals court to reject Cannon’s order that it provide the newly appointed special master with the classified documents, suggesting there was no reason for the arbiter to review highly sensitive records that did not involve questions of legal privilege.“Plaintiff has no claim for the return of those records, which belong to the government and were seized in a court-authorized search,” department lawyers wrote. “The records are not subject to any possible claim of personal attorney-client privilege. And neither Plaintiff nor the court has cited any authority suggesting that a former President could successfully invoke executive privilege to prevent the Executive Branch from reviewing its own records.”Cannon has directed Dearie to complete his work by 30 November and to prioritize the review of the classified documents. She directed the justice department to permit the Trump legal team to inspect the seized classified records with “controlled access conditions” something government lawyers said on Friday was needless and harmful.On Friday, Dearie, a former federal prosecutor, scheduled a preliminary conference with Trump lawyers and justice department lawyers for Tuesday afternoon.TopicsDonald TrumpUS politicsTrump administrationFBIMar-a-LagonewsReuse this content More

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      January 6 panel could release report on Trump and Capitol attack before midterms – as it happened

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      The House committee investigating January 6 plans to release preliminary findings into the attack on the Capitol sometime in October, meaning voters may be digesting new details of the insurrection as the midterms approach, Axios reports.The committee has tentative plans to hold its first public hearing since July on 28 September, and Axios reports that its members are meeting today to flesh out the rest of their schedule. The Democratic chair Bennie Thompson said an early version of its report into the attack will come out in October. “The goal is to have … some information pushed out, obviously, before the November election,” he said, adding that the time between the late-September hearing and the 8 November election “won’t be a quiet period.”The committee’s public hearings held in June and July dredged up highly publicized details of the attack and Donald Trump’s actions before, during and after that put the former president and his Republican allies on the defensive. That dynamic may repeat in the two months ahead, assuming the committee is able to match its earlier revelations.For a sense of how the committee is thinking in relation to its impact on the midterms, here are the thoughts of one of its Democratic members, Jamie Raskin: “There are those partisans of former President Trump that will denounce anything we do, so we’re not going to jump through hoops to please people who will call anything we do partisan.”The run-up to the 8 November midterms will be even more eventful than usual, after the January 6 committee made clear its plans to release more details of the attack on the Capitol in the weeks ahead. Meanwhile, a federal judge has approved the appointment of a special master to review documents seized by the government from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, while stopping the justice department from further examining them until the master has finished his work.Here’s what else happened today:
      President Joe Biden will meet with the families of two Americans detained in Russia, while Moscow has yet to act on a reported prisoner-swap offer made to secure their freedom.
      The White House condemned GOP governors’ transportation of migrants to Washington, DC and Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts.
      Donald Trump has apparently embraced the QAnon conspiracy theory to shore up his support base amid mounting legal problems.
      Lawmakers faced rancor and strife of all kinds, including a condemnation at a committee hearing, a feud on a flight and a kicking outside the Capitol.
      No, the White House did not hire a satanist as the deputy coordinator of its monkeypox response.
      West Virginia’s Republican governor Jim Justice has signed a recently passed abortion ban into law, making it the latest state to crack down on the procedure after the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade last June.Today I signed HB 302 – a bill that protects life.I said from the beginning that if WV legislators brought me a bill that protected life and included reasonable and logical exceptions I would sign it, and that’s what I did today.Read the bill ⬇️https://t.co/G7i9DTirSN— Governor Jim Justice (@WVGovernor) September 16, 2022
      The legislation approved by the GOP-controlled state legislature is intended to shut down the state’s only abortion clinic, but contains some exceptions for minors and victims of rape and incest.West Virginia passes sweeping abortion ban with few exceptionsRead moreElsewhere on Thursday, the partisan venom went airborne, when Senator Ted Cruz encountered a supporter of Democrat Beto O’Rourke on a flight.The Texas senator’s camera-wielding foe, whose identity remains unclear, captured their encounter on video, in which he challenged Cruz’s stance on gun control and asked him to name a victim of the May shooting in the town of Uvalde:Senator Cruz was on my flight, and I asked him to name any of the Uvalde victims. He couldn’t. Texas deserves better than spineless hacks like this. Right the wrongs of 2018, and make @betoorourke our next Governor. #betoforgovernor #cancuncrus #uvaldestrong pic.twitter.com/AW34oxuUNv— Beto For Everyone (@Nathan_VBB) September 15, 2022
      Cruz defeated O’Rourke when he stood against him for Senate in 2020. O’Rourke is currently trying to unseat Texas governor Greg Abbott, who is running for a third term.The congressional tumult extended beyond committee chambers on Thursday, when video appeared to show rightwing Republican House representative Marjorie Taylor Greene kicking an activist as they argued about gun control.The Georgia lawmaker herself posted a lengthy video of the encounter. The alleged kicking happens at about the 1:15 mark:These foolish cowards want the government to take away guns & the rights of parents to defend their children in schools.You have to be an idiot to think gun control will create a utopian society where criminals disarm themselves and obey the law.“Gun-free” zones kill people. pic.twitter.com/1T37HH8jEO— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) September 15, 2022
      The Washington Post has a write-up about the encounter between Voters of Tomorrow, a group representing Gen Z, and Greene, whom Democratic leadership booted from her committee assignments for a series of offensive remarks last year.The entire encounter is reminiscent of what Greene used to do before being elected to Congress in 2020. She appeared in Washington the year prior to follow for several blocks and heckle gun control activist David Hogg, a survivor of the 2018 shooting in Parkland, Florida.Meanwhile in the House of Representatives, rancor was the order of the day in a Thursday committee hearing when one Republican lawmaker’s comments to a witness prompted a rebuke from his Democratic colleague.“I’m trying to give you the floor, boo,” Republican Clay Higgins said as Raya Salter, a clean energy advocate, spoke before the House oversight committee.New York Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was not pleased by how her colleague from Louisiana treated Salter, who was talking about how the fossil fuel industry affected Black people and other racial minorities.“In the four years that I’ve sat on this committee, I have never seen members of Congress, Republican or Democrat, disrespect a witness in the way that I have seen them disrespect you today,” Ocasio-Cortez told Salter. “Frankly, men who treat women like that in public – I fear how they treat them in private.”In a statement to the Hill, Higgins said, “When radicals show up in front of my committee with an attitude talking anti-American trash, they can expect to get handled. I really don’t care if I hurt anybody’s feelings while I’m fighting to preserve our Republic.”Here’s a video of the exchange:Florida’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis said bringing migrants to Democratic-led areas of the country was necessary to draw attention to the government’s failures at the southern border, Richard Luscombe reports:Joe Biden has accused Ron DeSantis of “playing politics with people’s lives” for flying Venezuelan migrants to the wealthy liberal island community of Martha’s Vineyard without warning, while the legality of the Florida governor’s move is also under scrutiny.In what immigration activists and Democratic politicians have decried as a “political stunt”, DeSantis, who is expected to run for the Republican party’s presidential nomination in 2024, arranged for two charter planes of about 50 migrant adults and children to fly from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard on Wednesday.Claiming that “every community in America should be sharing in the burdens,” DeSantis told a press briefing he wanted to draw attention to what he claimed was a failure by the Biden administration to secure the US-Mexico border.DeSantis criticized for sending migrants to Martha’s Vineyard: ‘It’s un-American’Read moreOne migrant had to be taken to urgent care upon arriving in Washington. Another wasn’t aware that he was arriving on the Massachusetts island of Martha’s Vineyard until his plane began its descent.Those were some of the anecdotes White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre relayed as she continued her condemnation of Republicans governors sending migrants from the southern border to Democratic-run communities.“This should not be happening,” she said. “Republican officials should not be using human beings as political pawns.”White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre is echoing Joe Biden last night in slamming Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, after he arranged for a group of migrants from Venezuela to be flown to the small Massachusetts island, without warning to the state or a true explanation to the people being transported.She said DeSantis did not notify Massachusetts that “migrant children, in need of food and shelter, were about to land on their doorstep.”Jean-Pierre added: “These vulnerable migrants were misled about where they were headed.”She said they were told they were going to Boston and misled about what benefits they would be provided when they arrived, “promised shelter, refuge benefits and more”.She accused the Florida leader, and Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas, who has unilaterally been bussing thousands of migrants awaiting the processing of their immigration applications in the US to Democratic-led cities New York, Washington and Chicago, of “the tactics of smugglers in places like Mexico and Guatemala”.“And for what? A photo op? Because these governors care about creating political theater, not creating actual solutions,” Jean-Pierre fumed.She accused Republicans of treating humans like “chattel in a cruel, pre-meditated political stunt”.From the White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. https://t.co/kKrEtpMa1q— Danny Usher (@dsurte66) September 16, 2022
      White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre is due to brief the media shortly, in Washington DC. The session has been put back slightly from its original 1pm ET scheduling.Joe Biden is due to meet South African president Cyril Ramaphosa at the White House early afternoon.The US president plans to fly to the UK tomorrow, ahead of Queen Elizabeth’s state funeral on Monday.But on Sunday he plans to have his first meeting with the brand new British prime minister, Liz Truss. She met the Queen as incoming prime minister just two days before the monarch’s death last Thursday, providing the world with the last official photographs of the Queen, at Balmoral, smiling and wearing a tartan skirt.And as the campaigns rev up for the US midterm elections in early November, the White House has just said that Biden will hit the trail, traveling to Orlando, Florida, on Tuesday to attend a Democratic National Committee rally.Then next Wednesday, Biden plans a major speech in New York at the United Nations general assembly, where he will expand on the theme he is hammering on this autumn – the battle between the forces of democracy and autocracy, including within the US.Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has also now been confirmed as a speaker at UNGA and will address world leaders via a video-link from is country, embattled since the invasion by Russia six months ago.If readers want to dive into live news of all the developments in the war, do follow our global blog on the topic, here.And for news on Queen Elizabeth and the British royal family, as thousands queue to see the casket of the monarch as she lies in state in London, follow developments in our blog out of London, as they happen, here.The run-up to the 8 November midterms will be even more eventful than usual, after the January 6 committee made clear its plans to release more details of the attack on the Capitol in the weeks ahead. Meanwhile, a federal judge has approved the appointment of a special master to review documents seized by the government from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, while stopping the justice department from further examining them until the master has finished his work.Here’s what else has happened today:
      President Joe Biden will meet with the families of two Americans detained in Russia, while Moscow has yet to act on a reported prisoner-swap offer made to secure their freedom.
      Donald Trump has apparently embraced the QAnon conspiracy theory to shore up his support base amid mounting legal problems.
      No, the White House did not hire a satanist as the deputy coordinator of its monkeypox response.
      One of the biggest outstanding questions the January 6 committee is trying to answer is what the Secret Service knew about the attack, and why agents acted the way they did as the Capitol was being stormed.Questions have swirled around the Secret Service as its actions were brought to light, particularly after it was revealed that it deleted much of agents’ communications from around the time of the insurrection. Bloomberg reports that the committee has obtained documents, text messages and other materials from the Secret Service that could answer some of those questions. “It’s a combination of a number of text messages, radio traffic, that kind of thing. Thousands of exhibits,” the committee’s chair Bennie Thompson said earlier this week.It was unclear if any of what had been turned over were the communications from January 5 and 6 that were reported as erased. Another committee member, Zoe Lofgren, said some of what had been obtained was “relevant”.Secret Service watchdog suppressed memo on January 6 texts erasureRead moreThe House committee investigating January 6 plans to release preliminary findings into the attack on the Capitol sometime in October, meaning voters may be digesting new details of the insurrection as the midterms approach, Axios reports.The committee has tentative plans to hold its first public hearing since July on 28 September, and Axios reports that its members are meeting today to flesh out the rest of their schedule. The Democratic chair Bennie Thompson said an early version of its report into the attack will come out in October. “The goal is to have … some information pushed out, obviously, before the November election,” he said, adding that the time between the late-September hearing and the 8 November election “won’t be a quiet period.”The committee’s public hearings held in June and July dredged up highly publicized details of the attack and Donald Trump’s actions before, during and after that put the former president and his Republican allies on the defensive. That dynamic may repeat in the two months ahead, assuming the committee is able to match its earlier revelations.For a sense of how the committee is thinking in relation to its impact on the midterms, here are the thoughts of one of its Democratic members, Jamie Raskin: “There are those partisans of former President Trump that will denounce anything we do, so we’re not going to jump through hoops to please people who will call anything we do partisan.”If there’s one thing Donald Trump likes, it’s people who like him. The Associated Press reports that the former president has reached out to a new group of friends: QAnon supporters.While saying as recently as 2020 that he didn’t know much about the convoluted conspiracy theory-turned-movement, he has lately made several social media posts embracing some of its ideas. The AP reports that it may be a way to shore up his support base as he deals with an array of legal troubles, like the Mar-a-Lago investigation:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}The former president may be seeking solidarity with his most loyal supporters at a time when he faces escalating investigations and potential challengers within his own party, according to Mia Bloom, a professor at Georgia State University who has studied QAnon and recently wrote a book about the group.
      “These are people who have elevated Trump to messiah-like status, where only he can stop this cabal,” Bloom told the AP on Thursday. “That’s why you see so many images (in online QAnon spaces) of Trump as Jesus.”
      On Truth Social, QAnon-affiliated accounts hail Trump as a hero and savior and vilify President Joe Biden by comparing him to Adolf Hitler or the devil. When Trump shares the content, they congratulate each other. Some accounts proudly display how many times Trump has “re-truthed” them in their bios.
      By using their own language to directly address QAnon supporters, Trump is telling them that they’ve been right all along and that he shares their secret mission, according to Janet McIntosh, an anthropologist at Brandeis University who has studied QAnon’s use of language and symbols.
      It also allows Trump to endorse their beliefs and their hope for a violent uprising without expressly saying so, she said, citing his recent post about “the storm” as a particularly frightening example.A survey published earlier this year found that belief in QAnon has surged ever since Trump left the White House.Belief in QAnon has strengthened in US since Trump was voted out, study findsRead more More

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      Biden says US democracy is under threat. Here’s what he can do to help fix it | Stephen Marche

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      Biden says US democracy is under threat. Here’s what he can do to help fix itStephen MarcheWe don’t need lofty rhetoric about democracy. We need to pack the courts, fight partisan gerrymandering, campaign finance reform and more In the run-up to the midterm elections, liberal America is starting to realize how much danger it’s in. The right has been openly, defiantly stoking the fires of civil war since at least 2008 – openly promoting secession, political violence and the overturning of electoral outcomes. Now the left, slowly, probably too late, is having some of the same discussions about the catastrophic failure of American political institutions. Biden’s speech in Philadelphia, his attempt to set the agenda for the midterms, mattered in this respect if in no other. The Democratic leader has finally, against all instinct, acknowledged the risk of national collapse.I’m 65 and have $300,000 in student debt. I and other older debtors are going on strike | Lystra Small-CloudenRead more“As I stand here tonight, equality and democracy are under assault,” the president declared. “We do ourselves no favor to pretend otherwise.” He even allowed himself to be specific, going so far as to call the Republican party under Trump “a threat to democracy”. Biden has a gift for stating what has been obvious to everyone as if he were thinking it for the first time. Still, his diagnosis was accurate, which is what made his proposed solution to the threat so frighteningly shallow: “I’m asking our nation to come together, unite behind the single purpose of defending our democracy regardless of your ideology.”That’s not good enough. It’s nowhere even close to good enough. If the president of the United States declares that democracy in his country is under assault, then he needs to announce in the next breath what he’s doing about it, not try to exploit it for temporary political gain in a single election cycle.A recent poll found that more than 40% of Americans believe that a civil war is likely with the next decade. The past two years have seen the rot of American government accelerate, even as Biden has made real legislative progress. That’s the irony of these midterms. Biden has made hugely significant strides on matters of policy, on climate crisis, on infrastructure, on education during his first two years. At the same time, the forces tearing America apart are more intense than they were during the Trump years.Since the Dobbs decision, American women have come to exist in a patchwork of legal statuses, not only between states but even on county level. Just as before the first civil war, the question of free movement between different jurisdictions is once again unclear. The Mar-a-Lago raid has created a situation in which there are no good options: the government must either arrest an ex-president or allow classified secrets to fill up random closets. Already the fundamental question of civil war is in the air: how do you deal legally with citizens who want to destroy the basis of law? The success of election deniers across American states has created inevitable conflict over 2022 and 2024. The peaceful transition of power is more doubtful now than it has been at any period since the 19th century.The drift towards disunion is not in Biden’s control if, indeed, it is in anyone’s control at this point. Hyper-partisanship is increasing and increasingly violent. Trust in institutions continues to decline. The sense of legitimacy in the press and the courts continues its long slide. Biden’s approach to the collapse of American institutions is institutionalist, and he is trying to make his faith in institutions the focus of the next election cycle. But the current crisis requires more than politics as usual, and more than Biden is providing.If you want to take America off the high boil, promote open primaries, not vacuous calls to national unity. Independent redistricting commissions to fight partisan gerrymandering, campaign finance reform to pull America back from the black hole of dark money, and a general overhaul of the Federal Election Commission are, at this point, obviously necessary on the most basic level if American democracy is to survive. They are also against the interests of both parties. They are not on the table in 2022.A pro-democracy agenda also requires a genuine reckoning with the opponents of democracy. The US supreme court is already dive-bombing into illegitimacy, passing through theocracy on its way to irrelevance. Biden is not preserving the legitimacy of the court by choosing not to stack it. He is only ensuring that an already illegitimate court will be opposed to democracy.How far Biden can enact a pro-democracy agenda is dubious, of course, and every year, from now on, it will become more dubious. Biden seems to have nothing more to offer than the old soaring rhetoric that somehow still has people who will listen to it: “This is where the United States constitution was written and debated. This is where we set in motion the most extraordinary experiment of self-government the world has ever known,” he said, flanked by marines. Then he put the onus for defending that experiment on the American people.That’s an alibi, an abrogation of responsibility. Biden was elected in 2020 to defend US democracy, but the solution to America’s crisis is not political but structural. It doesn’t require the American people to vote one way or another in order to enact one or another legislative agenda but to find a different way to govern themselves.The first portion of the Biden administration has revealed a clandestine tragedy: the president has loved American institutions so much that he cannot bring himself to do what’s required to save them.
      Stephen Marche is the author of The Next Civil War
      TopicsUS politicsOpinionJoe BidenBiden administrationDemocratsRepublicansDonald TrumpcommentReuse this content More

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      The Divider review: riveting narrative of Trump’s plot against America

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      The Divider review: riveting narrative of Trump’s plot against America Peter Baker and Susan Glasser offer a beautifully written, utterly dispiriting history of the man who attacked democracyThe US labors in Donald Trump’s shadow, the Republican party “reborn in his image”, to quote Peter Baker and Susan Glasser. Trump is out of office but not out of sight or mind. Determined to explain “what happened” on 6 January 2021, when Trump supporters attacked the Capitol, the husband-and-wife team examines his term in the White House and its chaotic aftermath. Their narrative is riveting, their observations dispiriting.Trump chief of staff used book on president’s mental health as guideRead moreThe US is still counted as a liberal democracy but is poised to stumble out of that state. The stench of autocratization wafts. Maga-world demanded a Caesar. It came close to realizing its dream.In electing Trump, Baker and Glasser write, the US empowered a leader who “attacked basic principles of constitutional democracy at home” and “venerated” strongmen abroad. Whether the system winds up in the “morgue” and how much time remains to make sure it doesn’t are the authors’ open questions.Trump spoke kindly of Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and Kim Jong-un. He treated Volodymyr Zelenskiy of Ukraine as a plaything, to be blackmailed for personal gain.In a moment of pique, Trump sought to give the Israeli-controlled West Bank to King Abdullah of Jordan. For Benjamin Netanyahu, the former and possibly future prime minister of Israel, he had a tart “fuck him”.At home, the US is mired in a cold civil war. Half the country deems Trump unfit to hold office, half would grant him a second term, possibly as president for life. Trump’s “big lie”, that the 2020 election was stolen, is potent.The tectonics of education, religion and race clang loudly – and occasionally violently. The insurrection stands as bloody testament to populism and Christian nationalism. The cross and the noose are icons. The Confederacy has risen.Baker is the New York Times’s chief White House correspondent. Glasser works for the New Yorker and CNN. Their book is meticulously researched and beautifully written. Those who were in and around the West Wing talk and share documents. Baker and Glasser lay out receipts. They conducted more than 300 interviews. They met Trump at Mar-a-Lago, “his rococo palace by the sea”, to which we now know he took more than 300 classified documents.“When we sat down with [him] a year after his defeat,” Baker and Glasser write, “the first thing he told us was a lie.”Imagine that.Trump falsely claimed the Biden administration had asked him to record a public service announcement promoting Covid vaccinations. Eventually, he forgot he had spun that yarn. It never happened.Baker and Glasser depict a tempestuous president and a storm-filled presidency. Trump’s time behind the Resolute Desk translated into “fits of rage, late-night Twitter storms, abrupt dismissals”. The authors now compare Trump to Napoleon, exiled to Elba.Congress impeached him twice. He never won the popular vote. His legitimacy flowed from the electoral college, the biggest quirk in the constitution, a document he readily and repeatedly defiled. Tradition and norms counted little. The military came to understand that Trump was bent on staging a coup. The guardrails nearly failed.The führer was a role-model. Trump loudly complained to John Kelly, his second chief of staff, a retired Marine Corps general and a father bereaved in the 9/11 wars: “You fucking generals, why can’t you be like the German generals?”“Which generals?”“The German generals in world war II.”“You do know that they tried to kill Hitler three times and almost pulled it off?”It’s fair to say Trump probably did not know that. He dodged the Vietnam draft, suffering from “bone spurs”, with better things to do. He is … not a reader.In Trump’s White House, Baker and Glasser write, Kelly used The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, a study by 27 mental health professionals, as some sort of owner’s manual.A week before Christmas 2020, Trump met another retired general, the freshly pardoned Michael Flynn, and other election-deniers including Patrick Byrne, once a boyfriend of Maria Butina, a convicted Russian agent. Hours later, past midnight, Trump tweeted “Big protest in DC on January 6th … Be there, will be wild!”In that moment, the fears of Gen Mark Milley, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff who saw the coup coming, “no longer seemed far-fetched”. Now, as new midterm elections approach, Republicans signal that they will grill Milley if they retake the House.Baker and Glasser also write of how Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump sought refuge from the Trumpian storm, despite being his senior advisers. They endeavored to keep their hands clean but the muck cascaded downward.Not everyone shared their discomfort. Donald Trump Jr proposed “ways to annul the will of the voters”. Rick Perry, the energy secretary, pushed for Republican state legislatures to declare Trump the winner regardless of reality.“HERE’s an AGGRESSIVE STRATEGY,” a Perry text message read.Trump’s increasing tirade against FBI and DoJ endangering lives of officialsRead moreIn such a rogues’ gallery, even the wife of a sitting supreme court justice, Ginni Thomas, stood ready to help. Mark Meadows, Trump’s last chief of staff, was a child who yearned for his parent’s affection. He would say and do anything. And yet he managed to spill the beans on Trump testing positive for Covid before debating Biden. Trump called Meadows “fucking stupid”. Meadows has since complied with subpoenas issued by the Department of Justice and the January 6 committee.Baker and Glasser conclude by noting Trump’s advanced age and looking at “would-be Trumps” who might pick up the torch. They name Ron DeSantis, Josh Hawley and Tucker Carlson.On Thursday, Trump threatened violence if he is criminally charged.“I think you’d have problems in this country the likes of which perhaps we’ve never seen before,” he said. “I don’t think the people of the US would stand for it.”As Timbuk 3 once sang, with grim irony: “The future’s so bright, I gotta wear shades.”
      The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021 is published in the US by Penguin Random House
      TopicsBooksDonald TrumpTrump administrationUS Capitol attackUS politicsRepublicansThe far rightreviewsReuse this content More

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      Why Biden blames Trump’s MAGA as a threat to democracy: Politics Weekly America | podcast

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      After Joe Biden delivered a landmark speech a couple of weeks ago warning that the extremism of Donald Trump’s Republican supporters now threatened the country’s democratic foundations, Jonathan Freedland speaks to the journalist Luke Mogelson, who has written a book chronicling the transformation of America in the run-up to January 6

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know

      Archives: NBC, Al Jazeera, the Guardian Send your questions and feedback to podcasts@theguardian.com Help support the Guardian by going to theguardian.com/supportpodcasts More

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      Judge proposed by Trump named special master in Mar-a-Lago records case

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      Judge proposed by Trump named special master in Mar-a-Lago records caseJudge Cannon appointed Judge Raymond Dearie to vet documents and denied the DoJ’s plea to continue reviewing the seized records A federal judge has named Raymond Dearie, a senior US district judge with experience handling US national security matters, as an independent arbiter to vet records seized by the FBI from Donald Trump’s Florida estate in an ongoing criminal investigation.Mar-a-Lago documents: Trump delaying tactics causing ‘irreparable harm’ – DoJRead moreFlorida-based US district judge Aileen Cannon on Thursday appointed Dearie to serve as a special master in the legal fight between Trump and the Department of Justice over government documents the former president kept at his Florida resort.Dearie was one of two candidates for the post proposed by the former president, and the US justice department had said it would not oppose his appointment.In her order, Cannon also rejected the justice department’s demand that prosecutors would be allowed to continue their review of the seized records while the dispute is ongoing, and their assertion that the investigation is urgent due to the highly classified and sensitive material in the records.“The court does not find it appropriate to accept the government’s conclusions on these important and disputed issues without further review by a neutral third party in an expedited and orderly fashion,” Cannon said in the ruling.Dearie, who is 78 and based in Brooklyn, is tasked with deciding whether any of the documents seized by the FBI during the August search are privileged – either due to attorney-client confidentiality or through a legal principle called executive privilege – and should be off limits to federal investigators.Dearie has until 30 November – after the midterms – to finish the review. Trump will be required to pay costs associated with the special master.Earlier this month, Cannon had granted a request by Trump’s lawyers to name a special master to vet the seized records. Mar-a-Lago a magnet for spies, officials warn after nuclear file reportedly foundRead moreTrump is under investigation by the justice department for retaining government records – some of which were marked as highly classified, including “Top Secret” – at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach after leaving office in January 2021. During a search of the property, FBI agents seized more than 11,000 records and 48 empty folders marked classified.The justice department also is looking into possible obstruction of the investigation after it found evidence that records may have been removed or concealed from the FBI when it sent agents to the property in June to try to recover all classified documents.Dearie served as US attorney in Brooklyn before being appointed to the federal bench there by Republican president Ronald Reagan in 1986, and was chief judge of that court from 2007 to 2011. He assumed what is called senior status – a sort of semi-retirement with a reduced case load – in 2011, a role in which he continues to serve.The justice department had said in a court filing on Monday that Dearie’s experience as a judge qualified him for the special master role, but opposed the other candidate proposed by Trump’s team, private attorney Paul Huck. Trump’s lawyers opposed the two retired federal judges proposed by the department.On the bench, Dearie was one of multiple judges presiding over cases against several men accused in 2009 of plotting to bomb New York City’s subway system at the direction of al-Qaida leaders.Dearie was appointed in 2011 to the foreign intelligence surveillance court, which reviews warrant applications from the US government on matters of national security, where he served until 2019.In 2017, he was one of four federal judges who approved warrants used to surveil former Trump campaign aide Carter Page amid concern about Trump campaign contacts with Russians, according to papers released to media outlets that sued for the records. The justice department had opposed Trump’s request for a special master to review the seized documents to see if any should be withheld from investigators as privileged. In ruling in favor of Trump’s request for a special master, Cannon rejected the department’s arguments that the records belong to the government and that because Trump is no longer president he cannot claim executive privilege. Cannon was appointed to the bench by Trump in 2020.The documents probe is one of several federal and state investigations Trump is facing from his time in office and in private business as he considers another run for the presidency in 2024.TopicsDonald TrumpMar-a-LagoFloridaFBIUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Trump’s ex-chief of staff Mark Meadows complies with January 6 subpoena

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      Trump’s ex-chief of staff Mark Meadows complies with January 6 subpoenaMeadows is reportedly the highest-ranking Trump official known to have responded to a subpoena in the federal investigation The former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, who served under Donald Trump, has complied with a subpoena from the justice department investigation into the events surrounding the January 6 attack on the Capitol, CNN reported on Wednesday.Trump chief of staff used book on president’s mental health as White House guideRead moreThat makes him the highest-ranking Trump official known to have responded to a subpoena in the federal investigation, CNN said.The attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters led to several deaths, injured police officers and delayed certification of Joe Biden’s victory over Trump in the 2020 election.Meadows provided the same materials he gave to the House January 6 committee, satisfying the obligations of the subpoena, CNN reported, citing an unnamed source.Meadows initially cooperated with the January 6 committee in 2021 but later sued over the subpoenas.The US House of Representatives earlier this year voted to refer Meadows to the justice department for contempt of Congress. The department declined to charge him.Reuters could not immediately contact Meadows for comment. George Terwilliger, a lawyer who represents Meadows, did not immediately respond to an e-mailed request for comment.TopicsUS Capitol attackDonald TrumpUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Trump chief of staff used book on president’s mental health as White House guide

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      Trump chief of staff used book on president’s mental health as White House guideJohn Kelly secretly consulted The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, according to new book by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser Donald Trump’s White House chief of staff secretly bought a book in which 27 mental health professionals warned that the president was psychologically unfit for the job, then used it as a guide in his attempts to cope with Trump’s irrational behavior.Trump feared assassination by Iran as revenge for Suleimani death, book saysRead moreNews of John Kelly’s surreptitious purchase comes in a new book from Peter Baker of the New York Times and Susan Glasser of the New Yorker. The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021, will be published next week. The Guardian obtained a copy.The book Kelly bought, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, was a bestseller in 2017. In January 2018 its editor, then Yale psychiatrist Bandy Lee, described its aims in a Guardian column.She wrote: “While we keep within the letter of the Goldwater rule – which prohibits psychiatrists from diagnosing public figures without a personal examination and without consent – there is still a lot that mental health professionals can tell before the public reaches awareness.“These come from observations of a person’s patterns of responses, of media appearances over time, and from reports of those close to him. Indeed, we know far more about Trump in this regard than many, if not most, of our patients.“Nevertheless, the personal health of a public figure is her private affair – until, that is, it becomes a threat to public health.”Kelly, a retired general, became Trump’s second chief of staff in July 2017 – after Trump fired Reince Priebus by tweet – and left the job in January 2019.His struggles to impose order on Trump and his underlings and his virulent falling out with the president have been extensively documented. According to Baker and Glasser, who interviewed Kelly, the retired Marine Corps general bought a copy of The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump as he “sought help to understand the president’s particular psychoses and consulted it while he was running the White House, which he was known to refer to as ‘Crazytown’.”“Kelly told others that the book was a helpful guide to a president he came to consider a pathological liar whose inflated ego was in fact the sign of a deeply insecure person.”The authors report that Kelly’s view was shared by unnamed senior officials, quoting one as saying: “I think there’s something wrong with [Trump]. He doesn’t listen to anybody, and he feels like he shouldn’t. He just doesn’t care what other people say and think. I’ve never seen anything like it.”The 25th amendment, which provides for the replacement of a president unable to meet the demands of the job, was seriously discussed at the end of Trump’s presidency, after the Capitol attack he incited.Baker and Glasser say the amendment was tentatively discussed by cabinet members “within months of Trump taking office”. However, its flaws – if Trump opposed its use he would be all but impossible to shift – precluded further action.Trump regularly dismissed claims about his mental health and his staff’s worries about it. In January 2018, after the publication of Michael Wolff’s tell-all book Fire and Fury, Trump memorably told reporters he was “a very stable genius”.Kelly has regularly attacked Trump. In October 2020, CNN reported that Kelly told friends Trump’s dishonesty was “astounding … more pathetic than anything else” and called Trump “the most flawed person” he had ever met.Trump backed failed campaign coup against Kushner, Navarro book saysRead moreTrump blasted back, claiming Kelly “didn’t do a good job, had no temperament and ultimately he was petered out. He got eaten alive. He was unable to handle the pressure of this job.”The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump was a bestseller, hailed by the Washington Post as “the most daring book” of 2017. But it also stoked controversy over its discussion of the mental state of a public figure.In May 2020, Lee lost her job at Yale, in part, she said, over tweets about Trump. This month, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit in which Lee said she was wrongfully fired.TopicsBooksUS politicsDonald TrumpPolitics booksnewsReuse this content More