Donald Trump

Subterms

    More stories

    • 188 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump attorney general Barr a liar, bully and thug, says fired US attorney in book

      by

      Trump attorney general Barr a liar, bully and thug, says fired US attorney in bookIn memoir, Geoffrey Berman recounts clashes before a botched firing he insists was politically motivated Donald Trump’s second attorney general, William Barr, is stupid, a liar, a bully and a thug, according to a hard-hitting new book by Geoffrey Berman, the US attorney for the southern district of New York whose firing Barr engineered in hugely controversial fashion in summer 2020.Mar-a-Lago a magnet for spies, officials warn after nuclear file reportedly foundRead more“Several hours after Barr and I met,” Berman writes, “on a Friday night, [Barr] issued a press release saying that I was stepping down. That was a lie.“A lie told by the nation’s top law enforcement officer.”Trump’s politicization of the US Department of Justice was a hot-button issue throughout his presidency. It remains so as he claims persecution under Barr’s successor, Merrick Garland, regarding the mishandling of classified information, the Capitol attack and multiple other investigations.Berman describes his own ordeal, as Barr sought a more politically pliant occupant of the hugely powerful New York post, in Holding the Line: Inside the Nation’s Preeminent US Attorney’s Office and its Battle with the Trump Justice Department, a memoir to be published next week. The Guardian obtained a copy.Berman testified in Congress shortly after his dismissal. He now writes: “No one from SDNY with knowledge of [his clashes with Barr over two and a half years] has been interviewed or written about them. Until now, there has not been a firsthand account.”Berman describes clashes on issues including the prosecution of Michael Cohen, Trump’s former fixer, and the Halkbank investigation, concerning Turkish bankers and government officials helping Tehran circumvent the Iran nuclear deal.Barr was also attorney general under George HW Bush. He has published his own book, One Damn Thing After Another: Memoirs of an Attorney General, in which he discusses SDNY affairs but does not mention Berman. Promoting the book, Barr told NBC he “didn’t really think that much about” his former adversary.Berman calls that “an easily disprovable lie”.In Berman’s book, Barr is a constant presence. Describing the Halkbank case, Berman says Trump’s closeness to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the Turkish president, meant Barr was, “always eager to please his boss, appeared to be doing Trump’s bidding” by leaning on Berman to drop charges.Berman says Barr told him he, Barr, would be “point person” for the administration on Halkbank, which Berman found “odd”.“This is a criminal case being run out of New York, right? As attorney general, Barr had a role to play. But why as White House-designated point person? That was problematic.”Berman says Barr tried to block the SDNY to benefit Trump politically. In June 2019, he says, he was summoned to a meeting where Barr told him the Halkbank case “implicates foreign policy” and, “his voice … steadily rising”, asked: “Who do you think you are to interfere?”He writes: “I’ve seen bullies work before. In fact he had used the same words with me a little more than a year before” over the appointment of Berman’s deputy, Audrey Strauss, without Barr’s approval.Berman adds: “I would describe Barr’s posture that morning as thuggish. He wanted to bludgeon me into submission.”Berman turned Barr down. He also says he told Barr a proposal to offer individuals in the Halkbank case a non-prosecution agreement without disclosing the move would be “a fraud on the court”.The Halkbank issue eventually dropped away, after Trump and Erdoğan fell out over the US withdrawal from Syria. But Barr and Berman’s enmity remained.Berman also gives his version of events in June 2020, when Barr summoned him to a meeting at the Pierre hotel in New York City.William Barr told Murdoch to ‘muzzle’ Fox News Trump critic, new book saysRead moreBerman first delivers a sharp aside about Barr’s ostentatious travel, his apparent ambitions – Berman speculates that the attorney general wanted to be secretary of state in Trump’s second term – and an infamous, secretive meeting between Barr and Rupert Murdoch that Berman calls “a scene right out of HBO’s Succession”.Berman says he did not know why Barr wanted to meet him, but thought it might be because he had refused to sign a letter attacking Bill de Blasio, then mayor of New York, over the application of Covid restrictions to religious services and protests for racial justice. Berman did not sign, he writes, because he could not be seen to act politically.At the Pierre, he says, Barr, who with his chief of staff was not wearing a mask indoors, said he wanted to “make a change in the southern district”. Berman says he knew what would come next, given changes elsewhere to instal Barr allies and moves to influence investigations of Trump aides including Roger Stone and Michael Flynn.“The reason Barr wanted me to resign immediately was so I could be replaced with an outsider he trusted,” Berman writes, adding that he was sure he could be removed other than by the judges who appointed him to fill the office on an interim basis in 2018, or by Senate confirmation of a successor.Berman turned down Barr’s offer. He says Barr then made an “especially tawdry” suggestion: that if Berman moved to run the DoJ civil division, “I could leverage it to make more money after I left government”. Berman says Barr also asked if he had civil litigation experience, a question Berman deems “almost comical”. Then Barr threatened to fire him.Berman “thought to myself, what a gross and colossal bully this guy is to threaten my livelihood”. He did not budge. Barr said he would think of other jobs. After the meeting, Berman writes, Barr asked if he would like to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission. Berman says that job “was not [Barr’s] to offer”, as the SEC chair is nominated by the president and Senate confirmed.Berman says he agreed to talk to Barr again after the weekend. Instead, that night Barr issued a press release saying Berman had agreed to resign.“It was a lie, plain and simple,” Berman writes. “I clearly told him I was not stepping down. Barr [was] the attorney general … in addition to being honest, he should be smart. And this was really stupid on his part – a complete miscalculation … he should have known at this point that I was not going to go quietly.”William Barr’s Trump book: self-serving narratives and tricky truths ignoredRead moreIn a press release of his own, Berman said he had not resigned. The next day he showed up for work, greeted by a swarm of reporters. Then, in a public letter Berman now calls “an idiotic diatribe”, Barr said Berman had been fired by Trump.Barr did drop a plan to replace Berman with an acting US attorney, instead allowing Berman’s deputy, Strauss, to succeed him. Berman says that enabled him to step aside in good conscience. He calls Barr’s move a “surrender”.Berman describes both his belief he was fired because his independence represented “a threat to Trump’s re-election” and Trump’s insistence to reporters on the day of the firing that he had not fired Berman – Barr had.“Barr’s attempt to push me out,” he writes, “was so bungled that he and Trump couldn’t even get their stories straight.”TopicsBooksWilliam BarrUS politicsDonald TrumpLaw (US)RepublicansTrump administrationnewsReuse this content More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Nuclear secrets reportedly found at Mar-a-Lago are ‘gamechanger’, experts say – live

      by

      The reported discovery of information about a foreign nation’s nuclear secrets in materials found at Donald Trump’s private residence is horrifying intelligence experts.Federal agents seized the document during their search of Mar-a-Lago, the former president’s Palm Beach mansion in Florida, last month, the Washington Post reported. It appears to confirm officials’ worst fears about the nature of the intelligence he should have returned to the National Archives.Shawn Turner, former director of communications for US national intelligence, was searing in his criticism during an interview Wednesday on CNN’s New Day:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}The fact we now know there were highly classified, restricted access documents about another country’s nuclear defense capabilities stored at Mar-a-Lago is a gamechanger with regard to the risk it poses to our national security.
      That these documents may have been seen by unauthorized personnel … tells individuals what our capabilities are with regard to intelligence collection related to nuclear programs.
      More important is it identifies or exposes our gaps with regard to intelligence collection.
      The bottom line is others are going to look at this information and determine what we know and don’t know, and they’re going to make decisions about their nuclear programs based on that information. And that is an extremely dangerous thing.The Post’s reporting is only the latest twist in a weeks-long saga over the justice department’s investigation into his handling of classified materials after he left office in January 2021.Trump, who is mulling another run for the presidency in 2024, attacked the department at a weekend rally where he called the FBI and DoJ “vicious monsters”.Many others, including Trump’s former attorney general, William Barr, have defended the investigation into his retention of government records, saying that it posed a major national security risk.Read more:FBI found document on foreign nuclear defenses at Mar-a-Lago – reportRead moreA judge today struck down a 1931 anti-abortion law in Michigan, months after suspending it, saying, “A law denying safe, routine medical care not only denies women of their ability to control their bodies and their lives – it denies them of their dignity. Michigan’s Constitution forbids this violation of due process.”The law had long been inactive prior to the overturning of Roe v Wade and made it illegal to perform abortions unless there was a life-threatening emergency. Judge Elizabeth Gleicher said the law “compels motherhood”, prevents a woman from determining the “shape of her present and future life” and “forces a pregnant woman to forgo her reproductive choices and to instead serve as ‘an involuntary vessel entitled to no more respect than other forms of collectively owned property’”.Michigan’s Democratic governor praised the ruling, but warned it was likely to be challenged and said there were “extremists who will stop at nothing to ban abortion even in cases of rape and incest”. Today, the courts ruled once again Michigan women have the right to make medical decisions for themselves.However, this decision is likely to be challenged, and we know that there are extremists who will stop at nothing to ban abortion even in cases of rape and incest.— Governor Gretchen Whitmer (@GovWhitmer) September 7, 2022
      The decision comes amid an ongoing court battle that will determine whether another anti-abortion measure is on the ballot before voters in Michigan this year. The full story on Gleicher’s decision: Judge strikes down Michigan’s strict 1931 anti-abortion lawRead moreHi all – Sam Levin here in Los Angeles taking over our live coverage for the rest of the day. A new report suggests that hundreds of US law enforcement officers, elected officials and military personnel were listed on leaked documents as members of the Oath Keepers, a far-right extremist group linked to the Jan 6 2021 insurrection. The Anti-Defamation League Center on Extremism reviewed 38,000 leaked names on a membership list of the group and said it identified more than 370 people believed to be active members of police agencies, in addition to more than 100 people currently in the military, the AP reports. The review also identified more than 80 people running for office or currently serving as elected officials as of this summer. The list included sheriffs and police chiefs, the AP said. Some of the officials contacted by the AP responded they were members years ago but were no longer active. In recent years, there has been escalating concerns about links between police departments and far-right extremist groups in the US, a problem that was widely scrutinized after the insurrection, where off-duty officers were present. Last week, a retired New York police officer received the longest sentence yet for his involvement in the attack on the Capitol, during which he assaulted an officer with a flagpole. The full story on the Oath Keepers leak: Oath Keepers membership rolls feature police, military and elected officialsRead moreCertain prominent legal experts aren’t pulling their punches this afternoon, already skeptical of the ruling by the federal judge in Florida granting Donald Trump’s request to have a special master interrupt and oversee the Department of Justice’s review of documents seized by the FBI from the former president’s residence at Mar-a-Lago.Harvard’s Laurence Tribe, as pithy as usual, has quote tweeted former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann over what needs to happen next in the court case – and not long after.A good list. I’d offer a friendly amendment to item 2:2. Indict Trump before this December. https://t.co/Zl4GiT3v2B— Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw) September 7, 2022
      Tribe wrote for the Guardian today that the ruling two days ago on the special master by Aileen Cannon, the federal judge in West Palm Beach, “has to rank high in the annals of the worst reasoned judicial decisions in American history”.He warns: “If it signals that judicial Trumpism has spread more broadly than we thought, there may be danger ahead to our entire system of equal justice.”Tribe wrote the piece with former federal prosecutor Dennis Aftergut and you can read the rest of it here.Tribe also notes that Trump’s attorney general Bill Barr has called Cannon’s ruling “deeply flawed”. (Barr also called it “a crock of shit”.)But he adds in a tweet: “I’m glad Bill Barr is making the rounds on his “dismantle Trump” tour, but if it’s a “rehabilitate Barr” tour, count me out.”I’m glad Bill Barr is making the rounds on his “dismantle Trump” tour, but if it’s a “rehabilitate Barr” tour, count me out . . . https://t.co/ELnloUmIn2— Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw) September 7, 2022
      The rehab tour started in earnest with the main round of January 6 hearings, and no matter what it does or doesn’t do for Barr, his testimony to that House committee’s inquiry did a lot for the congressional investigation itself (as well as for Ivanka Trump’s view of who won the 2020 election, apparently).Reporters at the White House press briefing are wondering if the US has had contact with any other countries over the reported discovery of a foreign power’s nuclear secrets among classified documents hoarded by ex-president Donald Trump.White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre is sticking closely to her previous position of flat-out refusing to comment on the justice department’s investigation into Trump’s handling of secret material, but does say this:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}We don’t have any calls to foreign governments to read out at this time on this particular issue as known.
      When it comes to this specific issue, the ODNI [office of the director of national intelligence] is in the middle of an assessment, and DoJ [justice department] is in the middle of an ongoing criminal investigation. So I’m not going to comment.It should be noted that Jean-Pierre is not saying no such calls have taken place, nor is she saying they have. She’s just saying that she has nothing that she can share.We’ve hopped across the White House from the East Room to the briefing room, to join press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.Monkeypox is first on the agenda. Robert Fenton, White House national monkeypox response coordinator, says the country has ample supplies of vaccines to supply the most at-risk.“Our focus is to reach the remainder of the eligible population where they are,” he says, citing the success of thousands of doses being administered over the weekend at pride events in Louisiana, Georgia and elsewhere.“These events demonstrate our strategy is working.”Dr Demetre Daskalakis, deputy response coordinator, says the population at highest risk is largely men who have sex with other men.“It’s important people know a safe and effective vaccine is available for those who need it,” he says.“It’s important we speak to the community in a way that doesn’t stigmatize them. [The virus] doesn’t distinguish between people based on their sexual orientation or gender.”Michelle Obama’s speech from her portrait unveiling at the White House is worth a read. The day, the former first lady said, belongs not to her or Barack Obama, and it’s not even about the paintings:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Too often in this country, people feel like they have to look a certain way or act a certain way to fit in. They have to make a lot of money, or come from a certain group or class or faith in order to matter.
      But what we’re looking at today, a portrait of a biracial kid with an unusual name and the daughter of a water pump operator and a stay at home mom, what we are seeing is a reminder that there’s a place for everyone in this country.
      Because, as Barack said, if the two of us can end up on the walls of the most famous address in the world, it is so important for every young kid who is doubting themselves to believe that they can too..css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}That is what this country is about. It’s not about blood or pedigree or wealth. It’s a place where everyone should have a fair shot. Whether you’re a kid taking two buses and a train just to get to school, or a single mother who’s working two jobs to put some food on the table.
      Or an immigrant, just arriving, getting your first apartment, forging a future for yourself in a place you dreamed of.
      That’s why for me this day isn’t about me or Barack. It’s not even about these beautiful paintings. It’s about telling that fuller story, a story that includes every single American in every single corner of the country so that our kids and grandkids can see something more for themselves.
      And as much as some folks might want us to believe that that story has lost some of its shine, that division, and discrimination and everything else might have dimmed its light, I still know deep in my heart, that what we share, as my husband continues to say, is so much bigger than what we don’t.
      Our democracy is so much stronger than our differences.Joe Biden has tweeted about his “old pals act” at the White House on Wednesday, the vice-president turned president greeting his former boss Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama for the unveiling of their portraits.“Someone once said that if you’re looking for a friend in Washington get a dog,” Obama said during his speech in the East Room.“Our family was lucky enough to have two wonderful dogs. But I was even luckier to have a chance to spend eight years working day and night with a man who became a true partner and a true friend.“Joe, it is now America’s good fortune to have you as president”.Barack and Michelle, welcome back. pic.twitter.com/wcdBvfMcGg— President Biden (@POTUS) September 7, 2022
      Mar-a-Lago – the Palm Beach resort and residence where Donald Trump reportedly stored nuclear secrets among a trove of highly classified documents for 18 months since leaving the White House – is a magnet for foreign spies, former intelligence officials have warned.The Washington Post reported that a document describing an unspecified foreign government’s defences, including its nuclear capabilities, was one of the many highly secret papers Trump took away from the White House when he left office in January 2021.There were also documents marked SAP, for Special-Access Programmes, which are often about US intelligence operations and whose circulation is severely restricted, even among administration officials with top security clearance.Potentially most disturbing of all, there were papers stamped HCS, Humint Control Systems, involving human intelligence gathered from agents in enemy countries, whose lives would be in danger if their identities were compromised.The Office of the Director of National Intelligence is conducting a damage assessment review which is focused on the sensitivity of the documents, but US officials said it is the job of FBI counter-intelligence to assess who may have gained access to them.That is a wide field. The home of a former president with a history of being enthralled by foreign autocrats, distrustful of US security services, and boastful about his knowledge of secrets, is an obvious foreign intelligence target.“I know that national security professionals inside government, my former colleagues, [they] are shaking their heads at what damage might have been done,” John Brennan, former CIA director, told MSNBC.“I’m sure Mar-a-Lago was being targeted by Russian intelligence and other intelligence services over the course of the last 18 or 20 months, and if they were able to get individuals into that facility, and access those rooms where those documents were and made copies of those documents, that’s what they would do.”Barack Obama also thanked artists Robert McCurdy and Sharon Sprung for their respective portraits of himself and Michelle Obama.“He captures every wrinkle of your face, every crease of your shirt, [and] you’ll note he refused all of my requests to make my ears smaller,” he said.“He also talked me out of wearing a tan suit, by the way,” he added to laughter and applause, a nod to the social media firestorm he created back in 2014 when he wore one.“What you realize when you’re sitting behind that desk, and what I want people to remember about Michelle and me, is that presidents and first ladies are human beings. “I’ve always described the presidency as a relay race. You take the baton from someone, you run your leg as hard and as well as you can, and then you hand it off to someone else, knowing that your work will be incomplete. “The portraits hanging in the White House chronicle the runners in that race.Having unveiled his portrait, Barack Obama is now paying tribute to Joe Biden, saying it is “America’s good fortune” to have him as president:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}You have guided us through some perilous times, you have built on and gone beyond the work we all did together to expand healthcare, to fight climate change, to advance social justice and to promote economic fairness.
      Thanks to you our faith in our democracy and the American people, the country is better off than when you took office. He also acknowledged his aides, staffers and colleagues from his time in the White House. Many are in the audience in the East Room:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}For eight years, even longer for some of you, I drew on your energy and dedication and your goodness. You inspired me and I never wanted to disappoint you.
      Even during the toughest times it was all of you that kept me going. It’s good to be back and see all of you…what’s been a special joy to see what’s happened since.
      [But] I am a little disappointed I haven’t heard anyone naming a kid Barack yet.“Or Michelle…” the former first lady interjected from beside him.Joe Biden is acknowledging Barack Obama as his inspiration for everything he does as president.Speaking at the official unveiling of the former president and first lady, Michelle Obama, at the White House, Biden said:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}With Barack as our president we got up every day and went to work full of hope, for real, full of purpose, and excited about the possibility before us.
      Few people I’ve ever known have more integrity, decency, and moral courage than Barack Obama.
      Mr President, nothing could have prepared me better, and more, to become president of the United States than to be your side for eight years. I mean it from the bottom of my heart.
      No matter what the issue was, no matter how difficult, no matter what it was about, you never did what it was the easy way, the easy way out. It was never about doing it that way, it was always about doing what was right.To that end, Biden cited Obama’s signature achievement, passage of the Affordable Care Act, nicknamed Obamacare, which survived a bumpy passage and overcame Republican opposition in the Senate to become law:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}He never gave up on the simple truth that health care was a right for all Americans when so many were telling him, including me at one point, take the compromise, take the compromise… we weren’t sure we get anything done.
      You refused. You went big. And now the Affordable Care Act is there permanently and it’s even being improved.Here are the portraits:JUST UNVEILED: The official @WhiteHouse portraits of @BarackObama & @MichelleObama. pic.twitter.com/dDTxblOe5e— Peter Alexander (@PeterAlexander) September 7, 2022
      Joe Biden is speaking at the White House, where he is unveiling the official portraits of former first lady Michelle Obama, and 44th president Barack Obama, whom he served as vice-president.“Barack and Michelle, welcome home,” the president began.Here’s a video interview with the portraits’ artists, Robert McCurdy and Sharon Sprung.New York state is ending a 28-month-old Covid-19 mandate requiring masks on trains, buses and other modes of public transit, governor Kathy Hochul said at a news conference today, Reuters reports..css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Starting today masks will be optional. We have to restore some normalcy to our lives…Masks are encouraged but optional,” Hochul said, citing recent revised guidance from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).New York first adopted the mandate in April 2020 as Covid-19 was rampaging in the New York City area..css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}It’s always been a visible reminder that something is not normal here, and it was there for the right reason. It protected health and now we’re in a far different place,” Hochul said.In April, the Biden administration decided to no longer enforce a US mask mandate on public transportation after a federal judge in Florida ruled the directive was unlawful. New York declined to adopt the Biden policy in April.In recent months, many riders in New York had stopped observing the mask policy.Hochul said masks will still be required in some places like adult care facilities and some other medical facilities.The US Justice Department appealed the Florida judge’s ruling invalidating the transportation mask mandate, but a federal appeals court has not yet set the case for oral arguments.It’s been a lively morning in US political news and there’s more to come. The unveiling at the White House of the official portraits of Barack and Michelle Obama is just ahead, with Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in attendance, and the White House press briefing with Karine Jean-Pierre follows not long after that. We’ll be watching for any other significant breaking news and will bring it to you as it happens.Here’s where things stand:
      Former Trump administration defense secretaries Jim Mattis and Mark Esper have joined a group of retired military officers who have written an open letter warning of an “extremely adverse environment” for the military – a thinly-veiled attack on the former president’s efforts to use servicemen and women to advance his political goals.
      Andrew McCabe, former deputy director of the FBI says federal agents “absolutely had to go in” to retrieve highly classified documents from Donald Trump’s private residence relating to the nuclear secrets of a foreign power.
      Donald Trump’s legal jeopardy could be heightened by the reported discovery of a foreign nation’s nuclear secrets among his hoard of improperly retained classified materials, some experts believe.
      The reported discovery of information about a foreign nation’s nuclear secrets in materials found at Donald Trump’s private residence in the FBI search last month is horrifying intelligence experts. The legal and security situation was already extremely serious and the further revelation has been called “a gamechanger”.
      Massachusetts is on course to elect its first woman and first gay governor after Maura Healey won the Democratic primary on Tuesday and a Trump-backed candidate, Geoff Diehl, won the Republican contest to face her.Healey, the state attorney general, said: “I am honored to receive the Democratic nomination … Together, we’re going to win in November and build a Massachusetts that works for everyone.”Massachusetts has a long record of electing moderate Republicans. Only one Democrat – Deval Patrick, from 2007 to 2015 – has been governor since 1991.Healey, a former college and professional basketball player, has been attorney general since 2015. Polls give her huge leads over Diehl.The Republican backs Donald Trump’s lie that his defeat by Joe Biden in the 2020 election was the result of electoral fraud, opposed the extension of mail-in voting, opposed public health mandates in the Covid pandemic and supports the supreme court decision overturning Roe v Wade, the 1973 ruling that guaranteed the right to abortion.The abortion issue alone has driven electoral successes that have Democrats hoping they can prosper in the midterm elections.On Monday, Trump – the de facto leader of a party dominated by supporters Biden has called “semi-fascist” – told Massachusetts Republicans that Diehl would push back against “ultra-liberal extremists” and “rule your state with an iron fist”.Full-story:Massachusetts set to elect first female, gay governor over Trumpist opponentRead more More

    • 150 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      Mar-a-Lago a magnet for spies, officials warn after nuclear file reportedly found

      by

      Mar-a-Lago a magnet for spies, officials warn after nuclear file reportedly foundFormer intelligence chiefs say national security officials are ‘shaking their heads at what damage might have been done’ Mar-a-Lago – the Palm Beach resort and residence where Donald Trump reportedly stored nuclear secrets among a trove of highly classified documents for 18 months since leaving the White House – is a magnet for foreign spies, former intelligence officials have warned.FBI found document on foreign nuclear defenses at Mar-a-Lago – reportRead moreThe Washington Post reported that a document describing an unspecified foreign government’s defences, including its nuclear capabilities, was one of the many highly secret papers Trump took away from the White House when he left office in January 2021.There were also documents marked SAP, for Special-Access Programmes, which are often about US intelligence operations and whose circulation is severely restricted, even among administration officials with top security clearance.Potentially most disturbing of all, there were papers stamped HCS, Humint Control Systems, involving human intelligence gathered from agents in enemy countries, whose lives would be in danger if their identities were compromised.The Office of the Director of National Intelligence is conducting a damage assessment review which is focused on the sensitivity of the documents, but US officials said it is the job of FBI counter-intelligence to assess who may have gained access to them.That is a wide field. The home of a former president with a history of being enthralled by foreign autocrats, distrustful of US security services, and boastful about his knowledge of secrets, is an obvious foreign intelligence target.“I know that national security professionals inside government, my former colleagues, [they] are shaking their heads at what damage might have been done,” John Brennan, former CIA director, told MSNBC.“I’m sure Mar-a-Lago was being targeted by Russian intelligence and other intelligence services over the course of the last 18 or 20 months, and if they were able to get individuals into that facility, and access those rooms where those documents were and made copies of those documents, that’s what they would do.”US investigates fake heiress who infiltrated Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resortRead moreLast month, the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project reported that a Russian-speaking immigrant from Ukraine was able to mingle with the former president’s family and friends at Mar-a-Lago, posing as Anna de Rothschild, presenting herself as being an heiress of the banking dynasty.Inna Yashchyshyn, the daughter of a truck driver who emigrated to Canada, regaled those around her with tales of vineyards and estates and growing up in Monaco, and even met the former president in person, getting herself photographed with him on a golfing green.There is no evidence that Yashchyshyn was a spy, but the episode underlined how easy it is to get into Mar-a-Lago. During Trump’s presidency, two Chinese women were caught trespassing there on separate occasions.One of them, Yujing Zhang, was in possession of four mobile phones, a laptop, an external hard drive, and a thumb drive later found to carry malware. In her hotel room, investigators found nine USB drives, five SIM cards and a “signal detector” device for spotting hidden microphones or cameras. She was found guilty of unlawfully entering a restricted building and making false statements to a federal officer, and deported to China in 2021.The guests, invited or otherwise, are not the only security concern. In 2021, the Trump Organization sought 87 foreign workers for positions at Mar-a-Lago, with wages starting at $11.96 an hour.“Any competent foreign intelligence service, whether those belonging to China, those belonging to Iran, to Cuba, certainly including Russia are … and were interested in gaining access to Mar-a-Lago,” Peter Strzok, former deputy assistant director of counter-intelligence at the FBI, told MSNBC.TopicsMar-a-LagoFBIUS politicsDonald TrumpNuclear weaponsnewsReuse this content More

    • 188 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      The Democrats’ best message for the midterms: democracy is in grave peril | Osita Nwanevu

      by

      The Democrats’ best message for the midterms: democracy is in grave perilOsita NwanevuRepublicans’ efforts to delegitimize the electoral process should trouble us greatly. Democrats ought to hammer this home We’re nearing the end of a summer that’s been a real boon for the Biden administration and Democrats in Washington. The White House finally announced a partial student loan forgiveness plan that will deliver some long-awaited relief to millions of borrowers. The Dobbs decision in June and its aftermath have triggered a public backlash that’s reinforced support for abortion rights and opened the eyes of many Americans to the pro-life movement’s radicalism on the issue. The Department of Justice is evidently in the middle of a quite serious investigation into Donald Trump’s handling of classified documents ⁠— one that’s put him at the top of the headlines again in spectacular fashion and may well end in his prosecution. And, most consequentially, after a months-long stalemate, Congress managed to pass a flawed, but genuinely historic bill ⁠— the hilariously and shrewdly named Inflation Reduction Act, which happens to be, among other things, the largest single climate package ever passed by any country.All these developments have fueled optimism that November’s midterms might not be as bad for Democrats as many have feared. And there’s some evidence that the party really has gotten a bounce: according to FiveThirtyEight’s polling average, Democrats have taken a narrow lead on the generic congressional ballot for the first time since last fall. Still, history strongly suggests Democrats are likely to lose at least the House. The party holding the White House has lost House seats ⁠— 26 on average ⁠— in all but two midterms since World War II. Republicans only need to gain four in order to take the chamber this year. And despite better numbers for Democrats as a whole, the polls suggest voters are still down on both President Biden and the state of the economy, although things might change a bit on both fronts as inflation eases.It’s doubtful rhetoric alone will shorten the long odds Democrats face heading into November. But it’s worth thinking through what the strongest possible message for the party might be. As it stands, their main focal point, beyond Congress’ accomplishments thus far in Biden’s term, has been the threat Donald Trump and his allies pose to the democratic process. Last week, Biden kicked off campaign season in earnest with a major address on just that subject. “Maga Republicans do not respect the Constitution,” he told his audience in Philadelphia. “They do not believe in the rule of law. They do not recognize the will of the people. They refuse to accept the results of a free election. And they’re working right now ⁠— as I speak, in state after state ⁠— to give power to decide elections in America to partisans and cronies, empowering election deniers to undermine democracy itself.”Democrats’ hopes rise for midterms amid backlash over abortion accessRead moreWhile his critics in the press have called the speech divisive and overly partisan, Biden went out of his way to absolve most Republicans from responsibility for the January 6th attack and Trump’s wrongdoing. “Not every Republican, not even the majority of Republicans, are Maga Republicans,” he said. “Not every Republican embraces their extreme ideology. I know because I’ve been able to work with these mainstream Republicans.” And one of the most prominent promoters of the Democratic line recently has been a Republican who Biden wants Americans to consider representative of the party. “I feel sad about where my party is, “ Wyoming Congresswoman Liz Cheney said in an interview last month. “I feel sad about the way that too many of my colleagues have responded to what I think is a great moral test and challenge of our time – a great moment to determine whether or not people are going to stand up on behalf of the democracy, on behalf of our republic.” But while thousands of Democrats switched parties to back her against Harriet Hageman, a Trump-endorsed candidate and former Trump critic who’s supported his election claims, Cheney was handily defeated in her primary by more than 30 points — more proof, as though we really needed it, that Trumpism is the Republican Party’s mainstream. In suggesting otherwise, Biden intends to send the American people a partially defensible message ⁠— that support for democracy and the rule of law are principles that should transcend our political affiliations. And they should. But democracy and the rule of law aren’t just abstract ideals ⁠— they’re the means by which we solve our material problems. Republican efforts to usurp and delegitimize the electoral process should trouble us not just because they’re unfair and destabilizing, but because they advance the interests of the wealthy and powerful, who benefit from the conservative policy agenda. By attacking our elections and the right to vote, conservatives hope to rob us of opportunities to shore up and empower working class Americans on issues from health care to labor rights. And this is the point Democrats should emphasize ⁠— especially given that the pivotal constituencies in the electorate, swing and Trump-curious voters, are clearly ambivalent about, or willing to overlook, Republican violations of democratic norms.It’s encouraging that Biden himself seems to understand this on some level. In his speech, Biden said that Trump’s supporters in the Republican party “spread fear and lies […] told for profit and power.” Later, he added that the “soul of America” is defined by egalitarian principles ⁠— “that all deserve justice and a shot at lives of prosperity and consequence,” he said, “and that democracy must be defended, for democracy makes all these things possible.” This passage echoed remarks he’d made during the signing of the IRA, which he touted as an example of what can get done when democracy works as it should. “It’s about delivering progress and prosperity to American families,” he said of the bill. “It’s about showing the American people that democracy still works in America — notwithstanding all the talk of its demise — not just for the privileged few, but for all of us.”Of course, the process of getting to the IRA colorfully illustrated some of the ways democracy isn’t really working in America. Thanks to the power afforded to one very stubborn man from West Virginia in the Senate, popular policies like paid leave and more expansive climate measures were left on the chopping block. And the anticipated emissions reductions in the IRA will, like the long-troubled Medicaid expansion component of the Affordable Care Act, depend largely on the cooperation of state governments that are controlled by Republicans across much of the country and are working to disenfranchise Democratic voters. Components of the For the People Act ⁠— now ancient history politically speaking ⁠— would have gone some way towards evening out the already-skewed playing field in the states and combatting Republican voter suppression efforts. Its failure is one of the signal disappointments of this Congress. And Democrats will only get another crack at it, in another majority, if they manage to convince voters that the fight for democracy is, in fact, a partisan and material struggle ⁠— a fight against a party that cannot be redeemed and is animated in its attacks on our norms and elections by more than just loyalty to Donald Trump.Liz Cheney, heralded now as a profile in courage, should be presented by Democrats as an object lesson here. It genuinely matters that she backed Trump with her votes over 90% of the time over the course of her tenure in the House, including her opposition to Trump’s first impeachment. It was doubtless as obvious to her as it was to most Americans that Trump was dangerous, and it can’t have been much of a surprise that a man who lied about voter fraud in an election he had won in 2016 went on to assail the democratic process after his loss. But she stood with him ⁠— willing to indulge his abuses of power up until, almost literally, the last minute ⁠— because he was implementing policies she supports.Cheney’s turn against Trump was less an indictment of his character than a vote of no confidence, after his loss, in his remaining utility to the party. And while few Republicans have been as bold in repudiating him, there’s palpable interest among the right’s powers that be in potential successors like Ron DeSantis, who’s winning plaudits from high-profile Trump critics like The Atlantic’s David Frum even as he echoes Trump’s anti-democratic rhetoric and conspiracy theories from his perch in Florida. The simple truth is that most of the Republicans and conservatives Biden prefers still place protecting the power of capital well above protecting democracy and the rule of law on their list of concerns. That’s not an argument that will bring Americans together. But realistically, nothing will. And politics is, at the end of the day, about presenting voters with clear choices and stakes. The Democrats have a powerful case to make: return them to power and they’ll do what they can to safeguard democracy from a Republican party fully and irretrievably controlled by bosses and billionaires intent on dominating ordinary Americans. That message might not work magic in time for the midterms. But it’s worth a shot.
      Osita Nwanevu is a Guardian US columnist
      TopicsDemocratsOpinionRepublicansJoe BidenUS midterm elections 2022US politicsDonald TrumpcommentReuse this content More

    • 138 Shares119 Views

      in US Politics

      Why did a judge grant Trump’s request for a ‘special master’?

      by

      Why did a judge grant Trump’s request for a ‘special master’?Critics say the decision to stop reviewing documents seized from Mar-a-Lago until a special master is appointed is ‘unprecedented’ and ‘insane’ Monday’s decision by a US federal judge to stop the investigation of Donald Trump’s seizure of classified documents until a “special master” reviews them has thrown the political and legal worlds into uproar – pitting those who believe the ex-president has special legal privileges against those who think he should be treated like any other citizen.The procedural victory for Trump means the Department of Justice will have to press pause on its effort to determine whether the former president may have illegally run off with classified documents from the White House and kept them at his home in Mar-a-Lago. William Barr defends FBI and justice department over Mar-a-Lago searchRead moreJudge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, agreed to his request that a special master, a kind of independent mediator, review the roughly 11,000 documents that the FBI discovered and seized when it searched Mar-a-Lago last month – some of which the FBI said were marked “classified”, “secret” and “top secret”.Courts occasionally appoint special masters – typically retired judges or lawyers – to decide if materials seized by subpoenas or search warrants are protected by attorney-client privilege, and therefore exempt from use in court. Unusually, Cannon also authorized the special master in this case to look for documents protected by “executive privilege”.Executive privilege is the controversial legal doctrine that US presidents, and their staffs, can refuse certain legal demands if they impair national security or the functions of the executive branch.What makes the situation even more bizarre is that Trump, a former president, is invoking executive privilege against the current executive branch of the US government.In 1974, when Watergate prosecutors subpoenaed tapes from the White House, Richard Nixon memorably argued that the tapes were protected by executive privilege. The supreme court ruled against him.Cannon’s decision, however, has lawyers for the justice department frantically rushing to respond. She has given both the department and Trump’s legal team until Friday to agree on a list of potential special masters.The justice department can appeal Cannon’s ruling, but the court of appeals that would probably hear the appeal is heavily dominated by Trump-appointed judges. Cannon herself was appointed to the federal bench by Trump in 2020 and is a member of the Federalist Society, a conservative legal organization.In her 24-page ruling, she held that Trump faced “unquantifiable potential harm by way of improper disclosure of sensitive information to the public”.Although the justice department has a “filter” team to review documents for privilege before criminal investigators or prosecutors see them, Cannon argued that the process was faulty. In two instances, she said, potentially privileged materials were seen by the prosecution team.Some legal experts criticized Cannon’s order as abnormal and unduly protective of Trump. The decision is “an unprecedented intervention by a federal district judge into the middle of an ongoing federal criminal and national security investigation”, Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas, told the New York Times.On Twitter, Neal Katyal, a professor of national security law at Georgetown and a former acting US solicitor general, described Cannon’s reasoning as “so bad it’s hard to know where to begin”.The judge enjoined “the entire investigation because some of the material might be subject to executive privilege”, Katyal wrote.Yet executive privilege “isn’t some post-presidential privilege that allows presidents to keep documents after they leave office. At most, it simply means these are executive documents that must be returned to the archives. It doesn’t in any way, shape, or form mean they can’t be used in a criminal prosecution about stolen docs.”Katyal also criticized the idea that the court should be mindful of the risk of undue “reputational harm” to Trump. “That’s insane,” he wrote. Every criminal defendant experiences “reputational harm. Are we now going to have special masters in every [criminal] investigation?”Trump’s former attorney general William Barr recently criticized Trump’s legal maneuvers in an interview with the New York Times. “I think it’s a crock of shit,” Barr said. “I don’t think a special master is called for.”A separate review of the documents by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which is reviewing them to assess their national security implications, will continue unaffected.TopicsDonald TrumpUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

    • 163 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump’s Mar-a-Lago legal victory starts search for special master – as it happened

      by

      Lawyers for Donald Trump are conferring with justice department counterparts to come up by Friday with a list of possible candidates to be the “special master” approved by a district court judge over the former president’s hoarding of classified documents.Aileen Cannon’s surprise ruling on Monday has delayed the department’s inquiry into Trump’s possession of government documents at his Florida residence. Some law experts are pointing out the “deeply problematic” nature of the decision, and the fact it was made by a jurist appointed by Trump himself.Samuel W Buell, a Duke University law professor, told the New York Times in an email:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}To any lawyer with serious federal criminal court experience who is being honest, this ruling is laughably bad, and the written justification is even flimsier.
      Donald Trump is getting something no one else ever gets in federal court, he’s getting it for no good reason, and it will not in the slightest reduce the ongoing howls that he is being persecuted, when he is being privileged.Cannon’s deadline of Friday doesn’t give much time for the two sides to agree candidates to act in the role of independent arbiter, typically a retired lawyer or judge, to go through material seized by the FBI at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago mansion. They will look be looking for any that might be beyond the scope of the warrant or protected by executive privilege or attorney-client privilege.The attorneys must submit a joint filing to the court by Friday.As the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell and Victoria Bekiempis report, a special master was used, for instance, to review materials seized in the searches of the homes and offices of two of Trump’s former attorneys – Rudy Giuliani and Michael Cohen.Trump’s former attorney general, William Barr, also called the special master request a “crock of shit”, in an interview with the New York Times.In a subsequent interview with Fox News, Barr said: “Even if [the documents] are subject to executive privilege, they still belong to the government. And any other documents that were seized… those were seize-able under the warrant”.Read more:Judge grants Trump’s request for special master to handle seized documentsRead moreThat’s all for today from our US politics blog. Thanks for being with us. Here’s what we looked at:
      Lawyers for Donald Trump began conferring with justice department counterparts to meet a Friday court deadline for a list of possible candidates to be the “special master” approved by a district judge over the former president’s hoarding of classified documents.
      Joe Biden said he would work with Britain’s new prime minister Liz Truss on the war in Ukraine, and bettering close ties. “I look forward to deepening the special relationship between our countries and working in close cooperation on global challenges, including continued support for Ukraine as it defends itself against Russian aggression” Biden said in a tweet.
      A New Mexico state district court judge disqualified county commissioner and Cowboys for Trump cofounder Couy Griffin from holding public office for engaging in insurrection at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021. State district court judge Francis Mathew ruled Griffin was permanently barred from holding or seeking local or federal office.
      Patrick Leahy, the eight-term Democratic senator for Vermont, has been nominated by Biden to become congressional representative for the US at the United Nations general assembly.
      Voters were at the polls in Massachusetts, where Republicans were choosing their nominee for governor in November’s midterms: election denier Geoff Diehl or moderate Chris Doughty.
      Please join us again tomorrow when Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama return to the White House for the unveiling of their official portraits.One more tweet from Joe Biden before we wrap for the day. He’s still underwater in the polls, and Democrats have their work cut out for them with exactly nine weeks to go until the midterm elections.But inside the White House, at least, there were smiles, as the president hosted a cabinet meeting Tuesday afternoon:Today, I met with my Cabinet to lay out how we’re going to swiftly implement recent legislative wins like the Inflation Reduction Act.This experienced and dedicated Cabinet is working to lower costs for families, create good-paying jobs, and increase American manufacturing. pic.twitter.com/liVG3y9O5b— President Biden (@POTUS) September 6, 2022
      Joe Biden will mark the 21st anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York and elsewhere by delivering remarks and laying a wreath at the Pentagon on Sunday, the White House said.Nearly 3,000 people died on 11 September 2001 when al-Qaida flew hijacked commercial airliners into the World Trade Center and Pentagon, while another jet crashed into a Pennsylvania field.Jill Biden, the first lady, will speak on Sunday at the Flight 93 national memorial observance in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Vice-president Kamala Harris and her husband Doug Emhoff, the second gentleman, will go to New York City for a commemoration ceremony at the national September 11th memorial.Joe Biden says he’s looking forward to working with Britain’s new prime minister Liz Truss on global challenges, including the war in Ukraine, and bettering the close ties between the US and UK.In a tweet, the president said: “I look forward to deepening the special relationship between our countries and working in close cooperation on global challenges, including continued support for Ukraine as it defends itself against Russian aggression”.Congratulations to Prime Minister Liz Truss.I look forward to deepening the special relationship between our countries and working in close cooperation on global challenges, including continued support for Ukraine as it defends itself against Russian aggression.— President Biden (@POTUS) September 6, 2022
      Biden told reporters before a cabinet meeting Tuesday afternoon that he would be calling Truss later in the day to offer his congratulations. But, according to Reuters, he declined to answer a question about whether the two leaders would discuss negotiations with the European Union over Northern Ireland.“We’re going to be talking about a lot of things,” he said.Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, was asked about possible bilateral tensions over Northern Ireland at her earlier briefing. She also would not say if the issue would come up in the call, but added:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}He has been clear about his continued interest in Northern Ireland. Our priority remains protecting the gains of the Belfast Good Friday Agreement and preserving peace, stability and prosperity for the people of Northern Ireland.While there was good news for Democrats in new polling from Navigator Research, as we reported earlier, there were also warning signs for Democrats, as the party prepares for the midterm elections this November.According to the progressive polling firm’s findings, Joe Biden’s approval rating remains in the tank, with 42% of voters approving of the president’s job performance while 56% disapprove.Biden’s approval rating, which has been underwater for more than a year, could sink Democrats’ hopes of retaining their narrow majorities in the House and the Senate. Historically, the president’s party loses congressional seats in the midterm elections.The economy could also prove to be a weakness for Democratic candidates this election cycle. When asked about which party they trusted more to handle specific issues, voters said they trusted Republicans more to rebuild the economy and address record-high inflation, Navigator found.Given that roughly three-quarters of US voters say the economy will be very important to their vote in this year’s congressional elections, Democrats will need to address those concerns if they want to avoid a Republican wave this fall.Some Democratic lawmakers and progressive groups are taking proactive steps to reframe the narrative around which party is better for the economy, as I reported over the weekend.We’ve heard little, correction, nothing so far of the progress of negotiations between lawyers for Donald Trump and the justice department over a list of candidates to become “special master” overseeing the classified documents inquiry.But that doesn’t mean nothing’s happening in the case. District judge Aileen Cannon, who ordered the appointment yesterday, has been busy on Tuesday, the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell has discovered:New: Judge Cannon — overseeing Trump special master case — rejects proposed amicus brief submitted by former DOJ and state officials who served in GOP admins that opposed appointing a special master, per new paperless order— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) September 6, 2022
      Hillary Clinton is having none of Republicans’ “whataboutism” amid the controversy over Donald Trump’s hoarding of highly classified materials belonging to the US government at his private Florida residence.“But her emails …” is a longstanding call of Trump supporters, referring to the former secretary of state’s use of a private email server at her home while she was in office from 2009 to 2013. Trump led numerous chants of “lock her up” during his campaign rallies.The FBI concluded Clinton and her aides were “extremely careless” in their handling of classified information but that she should not face charges.Trump’s conservative faithful has been quick to resurrect the issue as their leader faces increasing scrutiny over his own actions. But as her own string of tweets today show, Clinton herself is not impressed:I can’t believe we’re still talking about this, but my emails…As Trump’s problems continue to mount, the right is trying to make this about me again. There’s even a “Clinton Standard.”The fact is that I had zero emails that were classified.— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) September 6, 2022
      A New Mexico state district court judge has disqualified county commissioner and Cowboys for Trump cofounder Couy Griffin from holding public office for engaging in insurrection at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, the Associated Press reports.State district court judge Francis Mathew issued a ruling today that permanently prohibits Griffin from holding or seeking local or federal office.Griffin was previously convicted in federal court of a misdemeanor for entering Capitol grounds on January 6, without going inside the building. He was sentenced to 14 days and given credit for time served.The new ruling immediately removes Griffin from his position as a commissioner in Otero County in southern New Mexico..css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Mr Griffin aided the insurrection even though he did not personally engage in violence. By joining the mob and trespassing on restricted Capitol grounds, Mr Griffin contributed to delaying Congress’s election-certification proceedings,” Mathew wrote..css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Griffin was notified of his removal from office by Otero County staff, who prevented him from accessing his work computer and office space at a county building in Alamogordo.
      Griffin, who served as his own legal counsel at a two-day bench trial in August, called the ruling a “total disgrace” that disenfranchises his constituents in Otero county.
      The ruling arrives amid a flurry of similar lawsuits around the country seeking to punish politicians who took part in January 6 under provisions of the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution, which holds that anyone who has taken an oath to uphold the Constitution can be barred from office for engaging in insurrection or rebellion.
      The lawsuit against Griffin was brought by three plaintiffs in New Mexico with support from the Washington-based Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
      The NAACP and progressive watchdog group Common Cause filed briefs in support of Griffin’s removal.
      Griffin, a Republican, forged a group of rodeo acquaintances in 2019 into the promotional group called Cowboys for Trump.The blank-check acquisition firm that agreed to merge with former US president Donald Trump’s social media company has failed today to secure enough shareholder support for a one-year extension to complete the deal, Reuters reports.At stake is a $1.3bn cash infusion that Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), which operates the Truth Social app, stands to receive from Digital World Acquisition Corp, the special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) that inked a deal in October to take TMTG public.The transaction has been on ice amid civil and criminal probes into the circumstances around the deal. Digital World had been hoping that the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which is reviewing its disclosures on the deal, would have given its blessing by now.Digital World chief executive Patrick Orlando told a special meeting of his shareholders today he would push back to noon on Thursday the deadline for the vote on extending the life of the SPAC by 12 months.Digital World needs 65% of its shareholders to vote in favor of the proposal, but the support as of late Monday fell far short, Reuters reported. Digital World did not disclose the margin on Tuesday.Digital World shares fell 17% to $20.74 in New York early Tuesday afternoon.Digital World is set to liquidate on Thursday and return the money raised in its September 2021 initial public offering to shareholders unless action is taken.Digital World shareholders had been given more than two weeks to vote on the SPAC’s extension and it is unclear if two additional days would make a difference.Most Digital World shareholders are individuals and getting them to vote through their brokers has been challenging, Orlando said last week.If Digital World fails to get enough shareholder support, its management has the right to unilaterally extend the life of the SPAC by up to six months.Trump appeared to manage expectations for the deal with a post over the weekend on Truth Social:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}I don’t need financing, ‘I’m really rich!’ Private company anyone???”
      Digital World has disclosed that the SEC, Financial Industry Regulatory Authority and federal prosecutors have been investigating the deal with TMTG, though the exact scope of the probes is unclear.It’s been a relatively quiet morning on the US politics front, although the White House has been defending itself against criticism that Joe Biden’s recent attacks on extremist Maga Republicans had alienated regular Republican voters.Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the 75m Republican voters who supported Donald Trump in 2020 “weren’t voting for attacking the Capitol, they weren’t voting for overruling an election. They were voting for philosophy he put forward.”Here’s what else has been happening:
      Biden will call the new British prime minister Liz Truss this afternoon to pass on his congratulations, Jean-Pierre said.
      Patrick Leahy, the eight-term Democratic senator for Vermont, has been nominated by Biden to become congressional representative for the US at the United Nations general assembly.
      It’s primary day in Massachusetts, where Republican voters are choosing their nominee for governor in November’s midterms: election denier Geoff Diehl or moderate Chris Doughty.
      Lawyers for Donald Trump are conferring with justice department counterparts to meet a Friday court deadline for a list of possible candidates to be the “special master” approved by a district judge over the former president’s hoarding of classified documents.
      The White House is defending itself against criticism that Joe Biden’s recent attacks on Maga Republicans as “semi-fascists”, and posing a threat to democracy, alienated the 75m voters who supported Donald Trump in the 2020 election.Even though the president noted in a primetime address in Pennsylvania last week that he was referring only to the extremist wing of the Republican party, not regular Republican voters, conservative commentators have seized on the speech as divisive.In Philadelphia, Biden warned that US democracy was imperiled by Trump and his supporters who “fan the flames” of political violence in pursuit of power at any cost.In her daily briefing, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}When people voted for Donald Trump they weren’t voting for attacking the Capitol, they weren’t voting for overruling an election. They were voting for philosophy he put forward, so I’m not talking about anything other than its inappropriate.
      It’s not only happening here, but other parts of the world where there’s a failure to recognize and condemn violence whenever it is used for political purposes, a failure to condemn an attempt to manipulate electoral outcomes, a failure to acknowledge when elections were won or lost.Talking specifically about the deadly 6 January Capitol insurrection incited by Trump and carried out by his supporters, Jean-Pierre added:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}We saw an insurrection, a mob that was incited by the person who occupied this campus, this facility, and at that time, and it was an attack on our democracy.
      Let’s not forget people died that day. Law enforcement were attacked that day. That was the danger that we were seeing at the time. That’s what the president has called out. And that’s what he’s going to continue to call out. More

    • 150 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      Trouble for Trump’s Truth Social as investors back away from cash boost

      by

      Trouble for Trump’s Truth Social as investors back away from cash boostInjection of $1.3bn for former president’s media company looks set to be derailed because of lackluster investor support Donald Trump’s beleaguered social media company is facing further financial turmoil after a long-awaited $1.3bn cash injection looks set to be derailed due to lackluster investor backing.Shareholders of the special purpose acquisitions firm, which last year brokered a deal to take the Trump Media and Technology Group public, have not backed a one-year extension to complete the transaction, which threatens to spoil the merger.Trump Media and Technology Group is the company that launched the ex-president’s Truth Social platform.The $1.3bn cash infusion from Digital World Acquisition Corp has been on hold since last October due to civil and criminal investigations into the circumstances around the merger. The Nasdaq-listed acquisitions company requires the support of 65% of shareholders, who are mostly individual investors, for the extension it needs to try to secure the deal.The outcome of the vote will be announced at a special shareholders meeting on Tuesday, when it is likely to be more bad news for the former president. Digital World executives do not believe they will be able to muster enough shareholder support in time and have started to consider alternative options, Reuters reported.Options include a unilateral six-month extension against the wishes of shareholders, and another is extending the final vote deadline to attempt mustering up more support in hopes that the Financial Regulatory Authority and US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) will soon give the green light for the deal to proceed.If Digital World fails to come up with a stopgap solution before Tuesday’s shareholder meeting, it will be forced to liquidate its shares and return the money it raised in its initial public offering.Digital World, a so-called blank check company created specifically for the purpose of acquiring or merging with an existing business, has previously said that Trump’s media group has “sufficient funds” until April 2023.Trump leveraged his vast social media following throughout his presidency to fire up his base, rile opponents and hire and fire staff – a modus operandi which eventually led to his banishment from the most popular platforms.Trump has more than 4 million followers on Truth Social, where has been posting since April, which is just a fraction of the 89 million he had on Twitter. Twitter and Facebook banned Trump after his supporters staged the deadly January 2021 attack on the US Capitol in a desperate attempt to prevent the congressional certification of his defeat to Joe Biden in the previous year’s election.The app is currently available to download on Apple’s app store, and it was recently banned from Google Play where the vast majority of apps are downloaded for Android users. Google said the platform violates its policies on banning content that involves physical threats and could incite violence.It is unclear how Trump’s media company has been operating without access to Digital World’s funding, but last week it said that Truth Social is “on strong financial footing” and would soon begin running advertisements.Reuters contributed to this reportTopicsUS newsDonald TrumpUS politicsAppsnewsReuse this content More

    • 225 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      The Trump officials who took children from their parents should be prosecuted | Austin Sarat and Dennis Aftergut

      by

      The Trump officials who took children from their parents should be prosecutedAustin Sarat and Dennis AftergutThe border policy violated international law – and prosecuting those responsible may be the best way to prevent it from happening again In the Trump administration’s four years of undermining America’s image of decency, perhaps no policy did so as effectively, or as viciously, as his family separation policy – which separated 5,000 children, some as young as four months old, from their mothers and fathers.The theory behind the policy was that inflicting excruciating pain on thousands of parents and children separated at the border would deter migration to the US. It was another example of the Trump administration’s calculated cruelty.We now know something about why officials throughout the government went along with the family separation policy. They “were under orders from Trump”, Kevin McAleenan, the Department of Homeland Security’s commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, told Caitlin Dickerson of the Atlantic. McAleenan was “just following directions”, as Dickerson puts it. Those directions came from Stephen Miller, Trump’s fiercely anti-immigrant enforcer.Just following orders. We’ve heard that before from perpetrators of great wrongs.Whatever their reasons, the actions government officials took in pursuit of the family separation policy demand a response. Doing justice for the victims of the policy demands accountability for those who designed and implemented it. And deterring such conduct in the future is only possible if there are consequences for engaging in it.International law offers a framework for accomplishing those goals and for seeing the family separation policy for what it was: a crime against humanity.But before exploring that framework, let’s examine what we know about why government officials would go along with Trump and Miller’s calculated cruelty.In 1963, the Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram offered the best-known answer. Milgram enlisted subjects in a “learning experiment”. Their job was to apply what they thought were increasing levels of electrical shock to “learners” whenever they gave incorrect answers.Unknown to subjects, the “learners” were Milgram’s collaborators. They intentionally gave wrong answers and feigned excruciating pain as the voltage seemingly increased to severe shock. Under the direction of a “research administrator”, who became increasingly firm when subjects hesitated to apply more pain, two-thirds of them ended up administering the maximum dose of “electricity”.As Milgram put it: “The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study.”Evil, it turned out, was as banal as Hannah Arendt, the famed political theorist, described it in her celebrated chronicle, Eichmann in Jerusalem. This is the evil done by those without whose complicity Trump’s family separation policy could not have been carried out.Eichmann’s 1961 conviction, and those at Nuremberg, established the principle that individuals who claimed to be “just following orders” are as culpable for crimes they commit as those who give the orders.And the 1998 “Rome statute” created a forum that can provide accountability for the people who designed and implemented the family separation policy – the international criminal court.The Rome statute authorized the ICC to prosecute individuals who commit crimes against humanity, including “inhumane acts … [that] intentionally caus[e] great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health.”There is no question that systematic actions separating parents from children meet that definition.While the United States is one of only seven countries not to have ratified the Rome Statute, this fact should offer little solace to those who violate its principles. Here is why.First, under the “principle of complementarity”, the ICC may exercise its jurisdiction when a country is either unwilling or unable to investigate and prosecute crimes within its territory.Applying the complementarity doctrine, in 2011 the ICC initiated prosecution of Libya’s one-time dictator Muammar Gaddafi, though his country never ratified the Rome statute.Second, the Nuremberg principles that the United States wrote before the trials began justify prosecuting crimes against humanity in the complete absence of any agreement by an accused violators’ country. That Germany did not ratify those principles was no barrier to prosecution of Nazi officials at Nuremberg.Third, the US has signed other international agreements incorporating protections against crimes such as the ones implicated by Trump’s policy to separate families. For example, in 1992, President George HW Bush signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which Congress had ratified, making it the law of the land.Article 24 of the ICCPR provides that “[e]very child shall have, without any discrimination as to race, … national or social origin … the right to such measures of protection as are required by his status as a minor.” As the UN high commissioner for human rights emphasized in a 2010 report, “the principal normative standards of child protection are equally applicable to migrant children and children implicated in the process of migration.”Another relevant treaty under which American officials could be charged is the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, ratified by the US in 1988. It defines “torture” as “any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted … for such purposes as … punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed … when such pain or suffering is inflicted … at the instigation of a public official.”While the Biden administration has made considerable progress reuniting families, it has not moved quickly enough to completely end the policy. It is up to the public to ensure that result and to demand that Trump administration officials answer for making crimes against humanity a centerpiece of US immigration policy.There is more than enough binding law and precedent for bringing charges against those officials. They should have their day in court, where they can offer their legal defenses and explain to the world why they did what they did.Prosecutors at The Hague should bring before the bar of justice Trump officials who instituted the policy of separating children from their mothers and fathers. Humanity and history require it.
      Austin Sarat is a professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College and the author of Lethal Injection and the False Promise of Humane Execution
      Dennis Aftergut, a former federal prosecutor, is of counsel to Lawyers Defending American Democracy
      TopicsUS politicsOpinionDonald TrumpTrump administrationMigrationLaw (US)United NationscommentReuse this content More