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      ‘He’s a wannabe dictator’: Democrat has DeSantis in his sights in Florida primary

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      ‘He’s a wannabe dictator’: Democrat has DeSantis in his sights in Florida primaryCharlie Crist, a former Republican, is campaigning for governor by warning about the dangers of Ron DeSantis and the far right Charlie Crist exuded a smooth confidence as he bounded into the room, a conference hall at a teachers union building in downtown Tampa, Florida, earlier this month.He may be facing a primary election to be the Democratic candidate in the next gubernatorial election, but Crist’s focus seems already set on the general in November – and the far-right Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, he hopes to unseat.“He’s the most arrogant governor I’ve ever seen in my life,” Crist said to the assembled teachers who nodded in agreement. “It is shocking, it really is. Enough is enough.”As primary voters in the state cast their ballots today, polls forecast that Crist, a Florida political mainstay, is likely to win by a substantial margin against his closest Democratic opponent, the state’s agriculture commissioner, Nikki Fried.The 66-year-old has run the gamut of political office in the state, from Republican governor and attorney general, to an incumbent Democratic congressman. Crist memorably joined the Democratic party in 2012, citing an extremist takeover of the Republican party.Now a political centrist and one of the first in Congress to endorse Joe Biden’s presidential candidacy in 2020, he finds himself increasingly taken aback at the state of his former party.“The leadership of today’s Republican party is gone. There is no leadership,” he said. “It’s lurching from one culture war to another, attacking the LGBTQ community, attacking African American voters, attacking women and the right to choose.”A day before Crist sat down with the Guardian, DeSantis suspended and effectively fired a Democratic prosecutor in the state for refusing to enforce Florida’s new abortion law that bans the procedure after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The move was described as extremist overreach of executive power, and Crist, a mild-mannered man who chooses his words carefully, compared DeSantis to a dictator.“I’m not one to use those sort of strong words, unless they’re true. And in this case, it’s true,” Crist said. “We need to realize what this guy is doing. He wants to be president of the United States, and he’s using Florida as his proving ground to do it.“He’s a barbaric, wannabe dictator.”DeSantis is widely believed to be considering a run for the 2024 presidency, and has fundraised over $160m since 2019. Meanwhile, his tenure has ushered in a wave of extreme rightwing legislation in the state – from laws drastically limiting the discussion of gender and sexual identity in classrooms, to banning the teaching of critical race theory to a sweeping voter suppression law.DeSantis’s tenure and Donald Trump’s 2020 election victory in Florida, in which he increased his margin from 2016 – point to an increasing lurch to the right in Florida, which has long been viewed as America’s most significant swing state.No Democratic presidential candidate has won Florida since 2012, leading many observers to argue the state is losing its purple status – a term that signifies a swing state, one that can move from Republican to Democrat, and vice versa.Crist, predictably, argues the opposite, pointing to the election which saw DeSantis take the governor’s mansion in 2018 on a razor-thin 0.4 margin.But whatever the state’s current political disposition, whoever receives the nod to face DeSantis in November is likely to endure a ferocious election cycle. Although Crist’s status as a veteran Florida political operator seems likely to win him the party’s nomination, it has also been used by Fried as a tool to attack.In particular, Fried characterizes his record on abortion as inconsistent, pointing to his appointment of three state supreme court judges who are set to rule on Florida’s new law. Crist appointed the state’s chief justice, a formerly anti-abortion politician named Charles Canady, and acknowledges it’s a decision he will regret if the law is upheld.When asked why a candidate who has already occupied the governor’s mansion once as a Republican, who has been such a familiar face for so long, could stand a chance of success against a rising star of the Republican party, Crist reverts to values.“I think we need relief, and a better future. My parents raised me the way they did, and I’m offering that decency to my state,” he said. “I know that most Floridians are good, decent people.”TopicsUS politicsFloridaUS midterm elections 2022newsReuse this content More

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      Florida voters head to primary polls as Democrats look to break losing streak

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      Florida voters head to primary polls as Democrats look to break losing streakLong considered a swing state, Republicans have a considerable edge heading into this election season Florida voters will head to the polls on Tuesday to determine which candidates will have the chance to face off in this November’s general election. Voters will cast ballots in races for the governorship and Congress, all the way down to circuit courts and local school boards.Democrats are competing to run against the state’s governor, Ron DeSantis, and US senator Marco Rubio, both of whom are considered potential Republican presidential candidates for 2024. On the House side, a new congressional map drawn by DeSantis is expected to give Republicans a hefty advantage in the November midterms.Although Florida has long been considered a swing state, Republicans have a considerable edge heading into this election season. Republicans last year overtook Democrats in Florida’s voter registration rolls. And Donald Trump carried the state by three points in the 2020 presidential race, although Joe Biden defeated him in the electoral college while also winning the national popular vote by four points.Since then, DeSantis has approved new voting restrictions to limit access to voting by mail and ballot drop boxes in Florida, sparking allegations from the justice department of racial discrimination. Those methods were more likely to be used by Biden supporters in 2020 than voting at a polling place on election day, according to the Pew Research Center.With the new House map in place, Republicans are expected to win 20 of Florida’s 28 congressional seats, up from the party’s current control of 16 of the state’s 27 seats. The state’s additional House seat resulted from the latest round of redistricting.Republicans’ severe gerrymandering, which will severely curtail Black political power in Florida, has made many of the state’s congressional races a foregone conclusion this fall. Not a single one of Florida’s House races is considered a toss-up for the general election, according to the Cook Political Report. That means that the winners of the Tuesday primaries are very likely to be elected to Congress this fall.The anticlimactic forecast for Florida’s House races has many election watchers turning their attention to statewide races. All eyes will be on Florida’s Democratic gubernatorial primary, with Charlie Crist, a Democratic congressman and former governor, running against Nikki Fried, the state’s agriculture commissioner.Crist and Fried have attacked DeSantis over his aggressive approach to culture war issues in Florida, which may preview the governor’s 2024 presidential campaign. Just this month, DeSantis drew a lawsuit from a state prosecutor whom the governor suspended after the attorney said he would not enforce a 15-week abortion ban.DeSantis last week also announced charges against 20 people for illegally voting, a move meant to highlight the work of a new office aimed at uncovering voter fraud. The governor provided few details about the charges, and voting rights advocates have denounced the arrests as voter intimidation.“Quite frankly, he is anti-democracy,” Crist told MSNBC on Sunday. “I am a Democrat running to protect democracy, to protect a woman’s right to choose, and I’m running against an autocrat who wants to be dictator of America.”But DeSantis is not backing away from his far-right agenda, instead choosing to double down on the political strategy. DeSantis has issued endorsements in dozens of non-partisan school board races, and he has campaigned alongside candidates who have backed his calls for more “parents’ rights” in the classroom.DeSantis has made education a central part of his platform after signing multiple laws aimed at limiting what can be taught to Florida children. Earlier this year, DeSantis signed a bill restricting the discussion of race and racism in the classroom and the workplace. DeSantis in March approved a bill forbidding instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity for students in kindergarten through third grade, a measure that has been attacked by critics as a “don’t say gay” law. More recently, DeSantis put his signature on a bill requiring students be taught about the “victims of communism” each November.Despite those controversial policies, DeSantis heads into the general election with a clear advantage over his Democratic challengers. DeSantis has amassed a campaign war chest of more than $100m, and he has consistently led his potential opponents in recent polls.Florida’s Senate race has provided Democrats with more optimism, as Rubio – a former and potentially future Republican presidential candidate – seeks a third term in office. Congresswoman Val Demings has led the pack of Democratic candidates seeking to defeat Rubio, and polls indicate she may have an opportunity to do so.A University of North Florida poll taken this month found that Demings had the support of 48% of likely general election voters, compared with 44% for Rubio.But Democrats know to take nothing for granted because they have previously been on the losing end of heartbreakingly close races in Florida. The state proved to be an exception to Democrats’ “wave” of victories in 2018, when the incumbent senator Bill Nelson and gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum were both narrowly defeated by their Republican opponents.Tuesday could provide some key clues as to whether Democrats will finally be able to break their Florida losing streak.TopicsFloridaUS midterm elections 2022US politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      The Florida Primary for Governor is Mostly About Ron DeSantis

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      Democrats would love to defeat Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida in November. But first they must nominate a challenger who can win in a state where they seem to perpetually fall short.HOLLYWOOD, Fla. — On the first day of early voting in Broward County, Florida’s Democratic mecca, Jared Brown, a 41-year-old lawyer who until recently had never attended a Democratic Party meeting, drove to the polls in suburban Hollywood, slipped on a party T-shirt and grabbed a clipboard to go knock on voters’ doors.He was motivated by anger.Anger at Republicans in general — for appointing conservative judges, redirecting money from public schools and governing in a way that struck him as “authoritarian” — and anger at one Republican in particular: Gov. Ron DeSantis, whose polarizing persona has come to suck up all of the state’s political oxygen.“It’s too offensive,” Mr. Brown said of the culture wars stoked by the governor and state lawmakers. “If you don’t fight them now,” he added, “it’s just not going to get any better.”Going into Tuesday’s primary election, Florida Democrats like Mr. Brown are angry, especially at the ascendant Mr. DeSantis and the way he seems to them to act like someone who already has his eye on the White House. But it is not clear that in the choices they have to challenge him — Representative Charlie Crist, who served as governor from 2007 to 2011, and Nikki Fried, the state’s agriculture commissioner — they have someone who can beat him.“DeSantis is running for president,” said Ann Ralston, 69, as she prepared for a long, sweaty day volunteering for no fewer than seven down-ballot Democratic candidates, whose logos she had pinned on her clothes, turning herself into a human billboard. “It’s a foregone conclusion,” she said.Representative Charlie Crist, who served as Florida governor from 2007 to 2011, greeted people at Mo’s Bagels & Deli in Aventura this month.Saul Martinez for The New York TimesMs. Fried and Mr. Crist have each cast themselves as the more viable alternative and the truer Democrat, but each is defined as much by their perceived limitations as their strengths: Mr. Crist for already losing two statewide races since being elected governor, and Ms. Fried for her short time in public life.To win, Democrats are fighting history as well as themselves. After four election cycles of close losses, the national donors whom they need to help finance expensive statewide campaigns appear unengaged this time. So do some voters.“It’s an emotional narrative about Florida,” said Andrea Cristina Mercado, the executive director of Florida Rising, a racial justice organization. “‘Florida has broken my heart too many times.’”Money usually flows into the state after the primary. But this year, she worries that Florida is not even on some donors’ radar.More Coverage of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsLiz Cheney’s Lopsided Loss: The Republican congresswoman’s defeat in Wyoming exposed the degree to which former President Donald J. Trump still controls the party’s present — and its near future.2024 Hint: Hours after her loss, Ms. Cheney acknowledged that she was “thinking” about a White House bid. But her mission to thwart Donald J. Trump presents challenges.The ‘Impeachment 10’: With Ms. Cheney’s defeat, only two of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. Trump remain.Alaska Races: Senator Lisa Murkowski and Sarah Palin appeared to be on divergent paths following contests that offered a glimpse at the state’s independent streak.“The right wing says every chance they can that ‘Florida is red, Florida is red,’ and it seems that Democrats are buying into that,” she said, noting that people who live in the state know it feels more closely divided than it looks.“We don’t want DeSantis to just walk into the White House,” she added. “We’re trying to do what needs to be done with Scotch tape and paper clips.”Whether Democrats nominate the more disciplined happy warrior Mr. Crist or the more unpredictable, feisty Ms. Fried might matter less than the state party’s longstanding problems. The failings have been clear for years — a thin candidate bench, weak party infrastructure, undisciplined messaging, mounting losses with Latinos — but leaders have struggled with how to address them. Last year, the number of active voters registered as Republicans surpassed Democrats for the first time in history, and the G.O.P. edge has only continued to grow.Nikki Fried, Florida’s agriculture commissioner, is the only Democrat elected to statewide office since 2018.Saul Martinez for The New York TimesManny Diaz, the executive director of the Florida Democratic Party, said in an interview that since taking over in 2021, he had built an internal voter database, trained volunteers and created a detailed county-level campaign plan. Michael R. Bloomberg, the former New York mayor, who is friendly with Mr. Diaz, recently gave the party $1 million, which is far less than the tens of millions Mr. Bloomberg spent in Florida two years ago.“I’m confident that we will get funding,” Mr. Diaz said.In 2018, Mr. DeSantis defeated Andrew Gillum, who would have become Florida’s first Black governor, by about 32,000 votes — less than half a percentage point — making the state a rare bright spot for Republicans. Some Democrats concluded that they would have won with a more moderate candidate, a hypothesis that Mr. Crist would now test. Others insisted that they only came as close as they did because of the excitement surrounding Mr. Gillum. Ms. Fried would be Florida’s first female governor.For now, Democrats’ most buzzy statewide candidate is Val B. Demings, the Orlando congresswoman challenging Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican. Ms. Demings and Mr. Rubio have already attacked each other in ads, and recent Democratic polls have shown the race to be close, though Mr. Rubio is still considered the favorite. More

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      Ron DeSantis Rallies With Doug Mastriano and J.D. Vance

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      PITTSBURGH — Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, widely seen as the Republican who poses the biggest threat to Donald J. Trump if they both run for president in 2024, blitzed through Pennsylvania and Ohio on Friday during a national tour with hard-right candidates that was clearly intended to elevate his standing and earn political capital with potential future leaders in battleground states.Before an audience of more than 1,000 at an event in Pittsburgh nominally meant to help the Republican nominee for governor of Pennsylvania, Doug Mastriano, Mr. DeSantis delivered a 40-minute address that had the trappings of a speech by a national candidate: bits of personal biography, blasts at the Biden administration and boasts of his Florida accomplishments, which were heavy on cultural messages.“We can’t just stand idly by while woke ideology ravages every institution in our society,” Mr. DeSantis proclaimed, citing laws he has signed to bar transgender athletes from girls’ and women’s sports and to ban instruction of gender identity and sexual orientation in early grades.As he aims to wrest control of the conservative movement, Mr. DeSantis is appearing with some of its highest-profile and most incendiary figures — midterm candidates who, unlike him, have relentlessly pushed the fiction that the 2020 election was stolen. His rallies on Friday for Mr. Mastriano and J.D. Vance, the Republican nominee for Senate in Ohio, came five days after an event for Kari Lake, the G.O.P. pick for governor of Arizona, and Blake Masters, the nominee for Senate there.The catch: All of these candidates identify with Mr. Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement and have his endorsement.That leaves Mr. DeSantis walking a fine line as he tries to build alliances with Mr. Trump’s chosen 2022 candidates while simultaneously conveying the message that the Republican Party does not belong only to the former president.Mr. DeSantis and his allies may see a political opening in Mr. Trump’s mounting legal problems. But at the same time, the former president is widely expected to embark on a third run for the White House, and the investigations surrounding him have prompted Republicans to circle wagons around their embattled leader, reaffirming his power over the party.In Pittsburgh, Mr. DeSantis began his speech with a personal slide show that was typical of how a candidate might be introduced at a political convention.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesSupporters of Mr. DeSantis believe he can appeal to many Republicans as a figure who fights the same cultural battles as Mr. Trump but without the chaos and with the ability to win over some moderate voters beyond the party’s base.“DeSantis leans into and leads on the important policy issues people care about, but he does so without the off-putting craziness that turns off independent and swing voters — the people you need to win Pennsylvania,” said Matthew Brouillette, the leader of an influential conservative political group in the state. “They gave Trump a chance in 2016, but had enough in 2020. It’s time to move on.”More Coverage of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsLiz Cheney’s Lopsided Loss: The Republican congresswoman’s defeat in Wyoming exposed the degree to which former President Donald J. Trump still controls the party’s present — and its near future.2024 Hint: Hours after her loss, Ms. Cheney acknowledged that she was “thinking” about a White House bid. But her mission to thwart Donald J. Trump presents challenges.The ‘Impeachment 10’: With Ms. Cheney’s defeat, only two of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. Trump remain.Alaska Races: Senator Lisa Murkowski and Sarah Palin appeared to be on divergent paths following contests that offered a glimpse at the state’s independent streak.In Pittsburgh, Mr. DeSantis began his speech with a personal slide show that was typical of how a candidate might be introduced at a political convention, including a picture of him as a toddler in a Pittsburgh Steelers hat.The governor, who has a reputation as a sometimes wooden speaker, stood throughout his address behind a rostrum as if giving a lecture, holding on to its edges with his hands.Mr. DeSantis attacked Democrats’ newly passed climate, health and tax law by zeroing in on its hiring of more than 80,000 Internal Revenue Service employees.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesBut the crowd reacted enthusiastically, frequently jumping to its feet as he spoke of how under his watch, Florida had banned what he called “ballot harvesting,” or the practice of voters depositing ballots for other people, as well as prohibited schools from enacting mask mandates during the pandemic.He attacked Democrats’ newly passed climate, health and tax law by zeroing in on its hiring of more than 80,000 Internal Revenue Service employees over a decade, meant in part to restore the agency’s depleted enforcement staff. Echoing conspiracy theories on the right about the hires, which the Biden administration says will not result in new audits of households earning under $400,000, Mr. DeSantis claimed that the increased staffing was “absolutely going to hit people who are small business folks, contractors, handymen, you name it.”On Tuesday, Florida Democrats will decide whether to nominate Representative Charlie Crist or Nikki Fried, the state’s agriculture commissioner, to challenge Mr. DeSantis in November. Mr. DeSantis’s national profile has allowed him to raise more than $130 million in campaign cash, making him a formidable incumbent.Democrats know they face long odds to defeat him, but they have recently begun to believe there is a narrow path to do so, in part because of voter frustration over the elimination of federal abortion rights and a new Florida law restricting abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. More

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      Gov. Ron DeSantis Announces Arrests in Florida for Election Fraud

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      Seven weeks after Florida’s state government opened a new office of election crimes and security, Gov. Ron DeSantis said on Thursday that 17 people had been charged with casting illegal ballots in the 2020 election, in which 11.1 million Floridians voted.The governor called the arrests “a first salvo” in a long-overdue crackdown on voting crimes. Critics called the announcement a publicity stunt that said less about voter fraud than about holes in the state’s election security apparatus that had allowed the violations to occur in the first place.Mr. DeSantis, who is seeking re-election this year and is widely considered to be running an unannounced campaign for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, has made action against voter fraud a centerpiece of his tenure as governor. He offered crucial backing last year to legislation tightening the rules for registering to vote and casting ballots. The State Legislature allotted $1.1 million for his 15-person election crimes office after he proposed its creation late last year.But while the specter of widespread fraud has become a staple of Republican political rhetoric, there is no evidence that election crimes are a serious problem in Florida or anywhere else in the nation. There and elsewhere, most violations appear to involve people who ran afoul of laws that restrict voting by former felons, or people who cast two ballots, usually in separate states where they spend different parts of the year.Experts say that many of those violations appear to be inadvertent. The 17 people charged on Thursday were all felons, convicted of murder or sex offenses, who were barred by law from casting ballots. All but one were men, and all but two were in their 50s or older.Casting an ineligible ballot is a felony punishable by up to five years’ imprisonment and up to $5,000 in fines. “That was against the law, and now they’re going to pay for it,” Mr. DeSantis said.The governor said more arrests were forthcoming, and suggested that they would include so-called double voters and noncitizens who cast illegal ballots — another offense that experts say is frequently the result of confusion about voting rules.He added that a paucity of voting fraud prosecutions in recent years reflects a lack of enforcement, not a lack of fraud. “Now we have the ability with the attorney general and statewide prosecutors to bring these cases on behalf of the state,” he said. He said that if anyone is thinking of committing electoral crimes: “Don’t do it, because we’re coming for you.”Local law enforcement officials made a flurry of voting-related arrests this spring after a researcher who scanned voting rolls claimed to have found scores of convicted sex offenders who cast ballots in 2020, although a constitutional amendment bars them from voting.A group that advocates restoring voting rights to former felons said on Thursday that none of the 17 people arrested would have faced charges had the state not allowed them to register and vote, despite their ineligibility.“When someone registers to vote, it is the responsibility of the state to utilize its vast resources to determine a person’s eligibility,” Desmond Meade, the executive director of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, said at a news conference. “And once that person is eligible to vote, that person is issued a voter identification card.”Mr. Meade said state money would be better spent on improving voter registration systems to screen out potentially ineligible voters than on finding and prosecuting them.“What we’ve seen today is an indication that the system is broken,” he said. “These individuals should never have gotten to this point.”Mr. DeSantis’s announcement drew quick rebuttals from two Democrats who are vying to oppose him in the November election for governor.“Everybody wants elections to be secure, but Ron DeSantis — who has never refuted Donald Trump’s Big Lie — is the last person we can trust with ‘election police,’” Nikki Fried, the state agriculture commissioner and Florida’s highest-ranking Democrat, said in a statement. “As governor, I will disband this force and return jurisdiction back to local authorities.”Representative Charlie Crist, a former Florida governor, who is running against Ms. Fried in next week’s primary election, said in a statement that Mr. DeSantis’s news conference was “about playing politics, intimidating Democratic voters and his desire to run for president, not securing elections.” More

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      Judge orders DoJ to prepare redacted Trump search affidavit for possible release

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      Judge orders DoJ to prepare redacted Trump search affidavit for possible releaseJustice department opposed release of document but Florida federal judge said portions of it ‘could be presumptively unsealed’ The Justice department must redact the affidavit used to obtain the warrant to search Donald Trump’s resort in Florida in such a way not to jeopardise the investigation in case he decides to unseal the document next week, a federal magistrate judge ordered on Thursday.The surprise order from Judge Bruce Reinhart charted a middle ground between the justice department’s motion to oppose unsealing any part of the affidavit, and motions from a coalition of media outlets – and calls from the former president – to release the highly sensitive document.Allen Weisselberg, Trump Organization financial chief, pleads guilty to tax fraudRead moreRuling from the bench, the judge gave the justice department a week to propose redactions to the affidavit, which contains the probable cause used to justify the extraordinary search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort over his unauthorized retention of top secret and classified documents.“I’m not prepared to find that the affidavit should be fully sealed,” Reinhart said at a hearing in West Palm Beach.The judge said his decision was driven in part because it was important that the public have as much information as it could, though he conceded that the extensive redactions that are expected from the justice department could render the document essentially meaningless.Reinhart’s ruling came after the justice department disclosed for the first time that the criminal investigation surrounding the FBI’s seizure of classified and top secret documents from Mar-a-Lago – in potential violation of the Espionage Act – was still in its early stages.The justice department, represented in court by Jay Bratt, the chief of the counterintelligence section, argued against the release of any portion of the affidavit, saying it would reveal a roadmap of the investigation and chill cooperation from other witnesses who may come forward.Bratt said a redacted affidavit would show “nothing of substance” since it contained significant grand jury information and investigative techniques.The justice department also drew particular attention to the fact that the court had previously found probable cause of a violation of one of the obstruction statutes – with evidence of the obstruction at Mar-a-Lago – and that unsealing the affidavit could risk further obstruction.But Reinhart said in federal court in Palm Beach, Florida, that he was inclined to release parts of the affidavit. He gave the justice department until next Thursday at 12pm noon to propose redactions. “This is going to be a considered, careful process,” the judge said.Reinhart presided over arguments between the justice department and several media organizations. Trump has said he supports unsealing the affidavit but filed no motion of his own. One of his lawyers, Chrsitina Bobb, nonetheless attended the hearing to watch proceedings on Thursday.The justice department, however, did support unsealing several ancillary documents that would not jeopardise the integrity of the investigation, including the cover sheet to the search warrant application, and the court’s sealing order – which Reinhart agreed to make public.Those unsealed documents offered more detail about the case. Notably, the cover sheet showed the department’s descriptions of potential crimes at Mar-a-Lago: wilfull retention of national defense information, concealment or removal of government records, and obstruction of a federal investigation.In February, the US National Archives confirmed that officials found classified materials in 15 boxes of documents Trump improperly removed from the White House in violation of the 1978 Presidential Records Act. It said it recovered the boxes, and reported its findings to the justice department.The Washington Post reported last week that FBI agents were looking for highly secret documents relating to nuclear weapons during the raid. In a rare public statement, Garland said he had personally authorised the decision to seek the warrant.Trump, who is considering another presidential run in 2024, has sought to politicize the search of Mar-a-Lago, claiming without evidence that it is part of a wider conspiracy by Democrats to prevent him returning to the White House.Numerous senior Republicans raced to echo his allegation of a witch-hunt, attacking Garland and the justice department, and with some rightwing allies and extremists including congress members Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert calling for the FBI to be defunded.The House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, meanwhile, promised a House inquiry into Garland if Republicans win back control of the chamber in November’s midterm elections, warning the attorney general in a tweet to “preserve your documents and clear your calendar”.Also yesterday, the New York Times reported that the justice department sent a grand jury subpoena to the National Archives in May for all the documents it had supplied to the January 6 House committee, further deepening Trump’s legal peril.And in federal court in New York, Allen Weisselberg, former chief executive officer of the Trump Organisation, pleaded guilty to 15 charges of tax fraud. Trump sat for a deposition in a parallel civil investigation in New York into allegations the company misled lenders and tax authorities about asset values and invoked his fifth amendment protection against self-incrimination more than 400 times.Additionally, the former president faces legal peril in Georgia, where a grand jury is investigating efforts to reverse Biden’s narrow win in the key swing state.TopicsDonald TrumpFloridaUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      GOP governors rebuke party members’ ‘outrageous rhetoric’ over Trump search

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      GOP governors rebuke party members’ ‘outrageous rhetoric’ over Trump search Larry Hogan describes comparisons of the FBI to Nazi Germany’s secret police, made by Florida senator Rick Scott, as dangerous A handful of Republican governors have criticized the “outrageous rhetoric” of their party colleagues in the US Congress, who have accused federal law enforcement officers of a politicized attack on former president Donald Trump after executing a court-approved search warrant on his Florida home this week.Maryland governor Larry Hogan, a Republican moderate, described attacks by party members as both “absurd” and “dangerous”, after a week in which certain Republicans have compared the FBI to the Gestapo and fundraised off the slogan: “Defund the FBI”.Speaking to ABC News on Sunday, Hogan described the comparisons of the FBI to Nazi Germany’s secret police, made by Florida senator Rick Scott, as “very concerning to me, it’s outrageous rhetoric”.He added: “It’s absurd and, you know, it’s dangerous,” especially after an armed man enraged by the raid was killed in Ohio when he tried to invade an FBI office. “There are threats all over the place and losing faith in our federal law enforcement officers and our justice system is a really serious problem for the country.”On Monday, FBI agents executed a search warrant at the former president’s private members club and residence in south Florida with an unsealed warrant later revealing Trump is under investigation for potential violation of the Espionage Act and obstruction of justice over his alleged mishandling of classified documents.The episode inflamed conservative commentators and politicians still deeply loyal to the former president, and was followed by the attack on the FBI field office in Cincinnati, Ohio, on Thursday, which led to a six-hour armed standoff that left the lone gunman shot dead.Hogan, who is rumored to be considering a run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, argued that many of his colleagues in Washington had been “jumping to conclusions without any information, which I think was wrong”.He added that revelations in the unsealed warrant were a “serious concern” but argued investigators should provide further details on the contents of the seized documents.Hogan’s comments were followed by remarks from Arkansas’s Republican governor Asa Hutchinson, who appeared on CNN on Sunday and partially mirrored his Maryland counterpart.“If the GOP is going to be the party of supporting law enforcement, law enforcement includes the FBI,” Hutchinson, a former US prosecutor and private practice attorney, said.He added: “We need to pull back on casting judgment on them. … No doubt that higher ups in the FBI have made mistakes, they do it, I’ve defended cases as well, and I’ve seen wrong actions. But we cannot say that whenever they [FBI officers] went in and did that search that they were not doing their job as law enforcement officers.”The comments marked a growing split on the extremist rhetoric from certain Republican party members following the execution of the search warrant. Many senior senate Republicans have remained largely quiet in the wake of the unprecedented law enforcement action, while others have appeared on conservative news channels supporting baseless accusations that the FBI planted evidence during the search.The Republican congresswoman from Wyoming Liz Cheney, a ranking member on the House committee investigating the January 6th attack on the US capitol, has condemned her colleagues’ rhetoric as “sickening”.“I have been ashamed to hear members of my party attacking the integrity of the FBI agents involved with the recent Mar-a-Lago search,” Cheney wrote on Thursday. “These are sickening comments that put the lives of patriotic public servants at risk.”Her stance is slowly being mirrored by other House Republicans after the warrant was made public on Friday.Dan Crenshaw, a Republican congressman from Texas told Axios on Saturday that sloganeering against the FBI “makes you look unserious”. And ranking homeland security committee member John Katko told the website: “This is not something you rush to judgment on. … It’s incumbent upon everybody to take a deep breath.”Meanwhile on Sunday, the White House continued refraining from commenting on the search warrant. Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre repeatedly declined to answer questions on the matter during an interview with ABC News, citing the US justice department’s independence on law enforcement matters.When shown video of comments made by House Republican Elise Stefanik, a staunch Trump loyalist, who described the search as “complete abuse and overreach” by the FBI, Jean-Pierre broadly fired back.She said: “The Department of Justice, when it comes to law enforcement, is independent. This is what we believe, and this is what the president has said. This is not about politicizing anything. That is not true at all.”Jean-Pierre added a reminder that US attorney general Merrick Garland was confirmed by the US Senate in bipartisan vote, and that Trump nominated FBI director Christopher Wray to his position in 2017.TopicsDonald TrumpFBIUS politicsRepublicansFloridanewsReuse this content More

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      FBI searched Trump’s home seeking classified presidential records – sources

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      FBI searched Trump’s home seeking classified presidential records – sourcesSearch warrant executed by FBI agents suggests investigation comes with potentially far-reaching political ramifications for former president Federal investigators searched Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida on Monday bearing a warrant that broadly sought presidential and classified records that the justice department believed the former president unlawfully retained, according to two sources familiar with the matter.The criminal nature of the search warrant executed by FBI agents, as described by the sources, suggested the investigation surrounding Trump is firmly a criminal probe that comes with potentially far-reaching political and legal ramifications for the former president.FBI raid of Trump’s estate prompts Republican anger and 2024 speculationRead moreAnd the extraordinary search, the sources said, came after the justice department grew concerned – as a result of discussions with Trump’s lawyers in recent weeks – that presidential and classified materials were being unlawfully and improperly kept at the Mar-a-Lago resort.The unprecedented raid of a former president’s home by FBI agents was the culmination of an extended battle between Trump and his open contempt for the Presidential Records Act of 1978 requiring the preservation of official documents, and officials charged with enforcing that law.01:09For years, Trump has ignored the statute. But the criminal investigation into how he took dozens of boxes of presidential and classified records in apparent violation of that statute when he left the White House last year signals potential legal jeopardy for him for the first time.The statute governing the wilful and unlawful removal or destruction of presidential records, though rarely enforced, carries significant penalties including: fines, imprisonment and, most notably, disqualification from holding current or future office.But the justice department may take no further action now that it has secured what sources said were around 10 boxes’ worth of documents in addition to 15 boxes recovered from Mar-a-Lago earlier this year – but what it does next was not immediately clear.The FBI obtained a warrant for the search, meaning it showed there may be evidence of a crime at the location, which in this case would be the very presence of sensitive government documents that the justice department concluded should be held at the National Archives.The improper handling of classified materials raised the additional prospect that the FBI might have sufficient basis to open a counterintelligence investigation, amid concerns that the records could have been accessed by individuals not authorized to view secret documents.On his social media app, Trump on Tuesday denounced the search as a “coordinated attack” that included congressional and federal investigations into his role in the Capitol attack, and state-level probes in Georgia and New York as he weighs running for a second term.The search warrant appeared to be approved by Florida federal magistrate judge Bruce Reinhart. The attachment to the warrant, describing the “property to be seized”, broadly referred to classified documents and materials responsive to the Presidential Records Act, one of the sources said.The operation would have likely required approval from the highest echelons of the justice department, former officials and FBI agents said, including attorney general Merrick Garland, and the Trump-appointed FBI director Christipher Wray. An agency spokesperson declined to comment.One of Trump’s lawyers, Christina Bobb, later said the warrant sought “presidential records”. Trump has not released his copy of the warrant.In executing the search warrant on Monday, teams of FBI agents wearing nondescript clothes fanned out across the entirety of the Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Springs, Florida, the sources said. Trump was not there at the time of the raid and learned about it while he was in New York.The agents searched through storage areas in the basement of the property, the sources said, before moving to Trump’s office on the second floor of the main house, where a safecracking team opened a hotel-style safe, though that contained no records responsive to the warrant.Later, the FBI agents searched the residence of Trump and his wife, Melania, and navigated through the pocket-door that separates their separate rooms, one of the sources said. The FBI agents believed the records they were seeking were at Trump’s residence, the sources said, in part through the justice department’s talks with Trump’s lawyers – led by former assistant US attorney Evan Corcoran – about the retrieval of official records from the property.In early June, the sources said, four justice department officials, including the chief of counterintelligence and export control Jay Bratt, went down to Mar-a-Lago to ask about what materials Trump removed from the White House, and met with Corcoran and Bobb.The officials asked to see where the White House records were being kept. They were shown the storage facility in the basement where the boxes had been placed, and after looking around for some time, during which Trump dropped by to say hello, the officials left.Corcoran and Bobb continued to be in touch with the justice department in the weeks afterwards, and complied with a 8 June 2022 letter that asked the basement storage area to be secured with a lock, the sources said.The justice department is understood, at some point since the investigation was opened in April this year, to have asked for the return of classified materials. Trump’s lawyers are understood to have agreed, and indicated they would go through the boxes to comply with the request.But that otherwise cordial channel of communication appears to have somehow gone awry – prompting the justice department to take the aggressive step of seeking a search warrant to seize documents – though a person close to Trump disputed this assessment and called it an incomplete account.The exact inventory of what the FBI removed was still not clear late on Tuesday. Corcoran was in possession of the search return ‘receipt’ but appears to have not divulged its contents even to some associates.A spokesperson for Trump did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Corcoran declined to comment.TopicsDonald TrumpUS politicsFloridanewsReuse this content More