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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

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      Wednesday briefing: Could the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago be a gamechanger?

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      Wednesday briefing: Could the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago be a gamechanger?In today’s newsletter: After Donald Trump’s Florida home is ‘raided’, legal experts weigh in on whether the documents retrieved could rule him out of a comeback in the 2024 presidential election

      Sign up here for our daily newsletter, First Edition
      Good morning – and apologies for the unfamiliar name in your inbox. With Archie away, they’ve given me a go at First Edition this morning. And where else to start but with Donald Trump and his run-in with the FBI.The Feds weren’t searching for the “love letters” from Kim Jong-un. Those had already been returned by Trump after a back-and-forth with the US National Archives. Nonetheless, when federal investigators raided the former US president’s Mar-a-Lago residence on Monday, they were still looking for documents related to his time in office.Trump has no shortage of legal troubles, but the FBI search was a sharp escalation in the investigation into Trump’s potentially unlawful removal and destruction of White House records after he left office in 2021. And it’s likely to have consequences for the 2024 presidential election – whether the FBI’s action produces criminal charges or not.But why is it happening now and is there actually a chance Trump could be prevented from running for office again? All that, after the headlines.Five big stories
      Cost of living | Boris Johnson has said he is “absolutely certain” his successor will offer help to households, as annual bills were forecast to top £4,200 by January. Tory leadership hopeful Liz Truss, meanwhile, rejects energy bill help as “Gordon Brown economics”.
      Sport | Serena Williams, one of the greatest athletes of all time and a 23-time grand slam singles champion, has announced that she is retiring from professional tennis.
      Climate crisis | The UK is braced for drought conditions until October, with rivers forecast to be low and exceptionally low in central and southern England, according to the UK Centre of Ecology and Hydrology.
      Russia | A Russian airbase in Crimea has been damaged by several large explosions, killing at least one person; it is unknown if it was the result of a long-range Ukrainian missile strike.
      Royal Mail | More than 115,000 UK postal workers are to stage a series of strikes in the coming weeks; the Communication Workers Union (CWU) said it would be the biggest strike of the summer so far to demand a “dignified, proper pay rise”.
      In depth: ‘You don’t start something you can’t finish’Of course, Trump reacted with trademark calm as the FBI marched through Mar-a-Lago. Actually, in a hyperbolic statement, he expressed his anger at the raid: “Such an assault could only take place in broken, Third-World Countries. Sadly, America has now become one of those Countries, corrupt at a level not seen before. They even broke into my safe!”Trump went on to compare the FBI search to Watergate, where individuals with ties to Richard Nixon’s re-election committee burgled the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office building in Washington. The former president isn’t totally off to draw on that reference point: the raid took place on the anniversary of Nixon’s resignation in 1974; and Trump is suspected of breaking a law, the Presidential Records Act, brought in during the late 1970s to stop post-Nixon presidents tampering with presidential records.But it’s unlikely that Trump and I talk to the same legal experts.What happenedAgents at the FBI, the US federal crime agency, executed a search warrant at Trump’s home at the Mar-a-Lago resort, Florida, at about 9am on Monday. Sources familiar with the matter told the Guardian that the raid was part of an investigation into the former president’s removal and destruction of White House records after he left office in 2021.Trump was golfing in New Jersey when the search took place. Speaking to Fox News, Trump’s son Eric said he had told his father that the search was taking place and that it was related to presidential documents.This is not the first time that Trump’s treatment of official documents – which presidents are required to preserve – has made the news (see recent pictures of ripped-up notes in the bottom of toilet bowls, above). But it is a significant escalation in the affair.Why the raid took placeThe FBI had a search warrant, issued by a federal judge in Florida. The application for the warrant would have detailed why the bureau wanted access to the property and the type of evidence it expected to find. It also should have specified the items to look for and seize.“The Department of Justice knows that initiating an investigation of a past president, especially one who is still politically active, will be a powder keg,” says Christopher Slobogin, professor of law at Vanderbilt University. “It also knows that if no charges are forthcoming, the department will have major egg on its face given the high-profile nature of this case. You don’t start something like this you can’t finish. The federal judge who issued the warrant knows all of this. So I assume both the DOJ and the judge made absolutely sure they had crossed all their Ts and dotted all their Is before moving forward.”It is not clear whether that warrant was directly related to the apparent disappearance of evidence linked to the 6 January 2021 riot on Capitol Hill. Bob Woodward, of Watergate scoop fame, reported in March that call logs turned over to the House committee investigating the insurrection had an unexplained gap of seven hours and 37 minutes covering the period when the violence was unfolding.But we do know that in February the US chief archivist wrote to Congress. In that letter, he confirmed that the National Archives and Records Administration (Nara), which looks after presidential documents and records, had found classified documents in 15 boxes of materials taken to – and then returned from – Mar-a-Lago. It had then informed the justice department. “Because Nara identified classified information in the boxes, Nara staff has been in communication with the Department of Justice,” wrote the chief archivist, David Ferriero.The oversight committee at the House of Representatives has also opened a separate investigation that noted “removing or concealing government records is a criminal offense”.Christina Bobb, a Trump lawyer and TV host, said she had seen the contents of the search warrant and that the agents were looking for presidential records or classified material. She added that agents seized around a dozen boxes during the raid. The warrant stating the grounds for the search would have been left at Mar-a-Lago when the FBI gained access to the property.In terms of what happens next, Slobogin adds: “The DOJ will look over what it finds, combine it with what it already has, perhaps conduct other searches or seek subpoenas, and then decide whether it wants to proceed to a grand jury, which will decide whether formal criminal charges, in the form of an indictment, should be brought.”What is the Presidential Records Act?Trump has Richard Nixon to thank for the PRA. Congress moved to stop the disgraced ex-president – I’m referring to Nixon here, btw – from destroying his records by passing the Presidential Recordings and Materials Preservation Act.Its descendant is the 1978 Presidential Records Act, which requires presidents and vice-presidents to preserve their records. Those records include everything from official documents to handwritten notes, phone logs, tapes and emails. Destruction of a document requires the archivists’ permission.The purpose of the act, among other things, is to help congress and law enforcement investigate wrongdoing, to keep a record of presidential history and help subsequent incumbents in the White House understand what their predecessors had been up to. The Washington Post reported that Trump was warned about the act early on in his presidency, when his first two chiefs of staff expressed concern about documents being ripped up.On Monday, photographic evidence emerged of wads of paper in White House toilets, embellished with what appeared to be Trump’s telltale handwriting and inscribed with his favourite type of pen: a Sharpie. The photographs were released by the Axios news site in advance of the publication of Confidence Man, a book by the New York Times journalist Maggie Haberman.What it means for Trump and re-electionIt is worth taking a look at US federal law, specifically section 2071 of title 18 of the United States Code. Whoever “wilfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, or destroys” a government record or document faces a fine or a three-year jail sentence.But here’s the kicker: if you’re convicted, you shall be “disqualified from holding any office under the United States”.This where the raid could be a gamechanger, according to Marc Elias, who was the top lawyer for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. On Twitter, he flagged the disqualification provision in section 2071 and called the search a “potential blockbuster in American politics”. So could Trump be ruled out of a comeback in the 2024 presidential election?Don’t punch the air just yet. Trump would have to be convicted first and, even then, there are strong legal arguments that the US constitution, not criminal law, sets eligibility criteria for the highest office in the land. Elias admitted later that an attempt to disqualify Trump would be challenged on that basis – it’s a question that could go all the way to the supreme court (which has three Trump appointees on it). Still, he adds, get the popcorn out.What Republicans thinkAs you would expect, Trump’s base has been energised by this. Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, the extreme rightwing Republican who doesn’t do civic discourse, variously tweeted “DEFUND THE FBI” and “Save America STOP COMMUNISM! Impeach Joe Biden!!”Accusations of a politically motivated stitch-up flew immediately, with the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, Ronna McDaniel, describing the raid as an “abuse of power”.She added: “Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Countless times we have examples of Democrats flouting the law and abusing power with no recourse. Democrats continually weaponize the bureaucracy against Republicans …”Such language helps position Trump, once again, as an anti-establishment figure being denied a rightful crack at the presidency by those bad people at the Department of Justice and elsewhere. Hours after fulminating at the search, he posted a campaign video on his Truth Social network. It was filmed before the search but contained lines that will be an obvious narrative for a presidential run.“We’re a nation that has weaponized its law enforcement against the opposing political party like never before. We’ve never seen anything like this. We’re a nation that no longer has a free and fair press. Fake news is about all you get. We are a nation where free speech is no longer allowed.”Barack Obama’s former strategy guru, David Axelrod, knows a thing or two about when a political narrative is being shaped. “This is why Trump is going to run. He wants to portray any criminal probe or prosecution as a plot to prevent him from once again becoming Potus. Many of his followers will believe it – as they did his lies about the last election.”Our Washington DC bureau chief, David Smith, says the FBI action already seems to have galvanised Trump and the Republican party. “The general rule with Trump is, what does not kill him makes him stronger. In the hours since news of the FBI raid emerged, it’s been unnerving to see the Republican party rally around him. Even foes such as Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, and Mike Pence, the former vice-president who split with Trump over the January 6 insurrection, have expressed concern over the FBI’s actions and demanded answers.“Potential rivals for the 2024 Republican nomination such as Florida governor Ron DeSantis have done likewise, asserting without evidence that it’s political persecution by the ‘deep state’ – the word of the day has been ‘weaponisation’. They realise they have to stay in lockstep with the Make America Great Again base,” says Smith. “And Trump and other Republicans are fundraising off the raid. It’s been galvanising for him and increases the likelihood of him running for president again – unless, of course, he is prosecuted, charged and put on trial.”Perhaps the search could end up being to Trump’s benefit.What else we’ve been reading
      Steve Jobs’s favourite designer and king of micro-pleating, Issey Miyake, died yesterday. I learned much about him in this warm tribute in Esquire. Hannah J Davies, deputy editor, newsletters
      Shaun Walker spoke with Ukrainian refugees in Warsaw and Budapest – many of them women, children and elderly people – about their anguish at being away from home and their new lives in safe houses and shelters. Craille Maguire Gillies, production editor, newsletters
      I am a lifelong lover of the humble spud – fried, roasted or otherwise. Nigel Slater’s recipe for warm potato salad with smoked salmon is everything that I love about his cooking: classy comfort food that makes life feel better and, says Slater, “sumptuous” in a wrap. Hannah
      Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman’s insatiable ambition is put in chilling context by the Economist in its Editor’s Picks podcast, a weekly selection of stories from the magazine. Craille
      The Guardian’s chief culture writer Charlotte Higgins writes entertainingly about seeing her 2013 book Under Another Sky: Journeys in Roman Britain reimagined on stage – as a romcom. Hannah
      SportAthletics | Jessica Ennis-Hill’s former coach Toni Minichiello has been banned for life from training athletes after an investigation found he had engaged in sexually inappropriate behaviour, emotional abuse and bullying.Football | Rangers have reached the Champions League play-off with a thrilling 3-0 win over Union Saint-Gilloise to go through on a 3-2 aggregate.Tennis | Tumaini Carayol pays tribute to one of the greatest athletes ever, after Serena Williams announced her decision to retire from sport: “Over her 27‑year career, Williams set the marker that matters for all who follow her, no asterisks needed.” The front pagesThe Guardian’s lead today is “Johnson: new PM ‘certain’ to bail out households over cost of living”. The Metro has “Wake up zombies” as Martin Lewis the “consumer champ” calls for the government to act over energy bills. The i says “Truss softens on ‘handouts’ for cost of living” while the Express offers its endorsement – “In Liz we trust” – leading with a comment piece to that effect by Leo McKinstry. The Times has “Universities blacklist ‘harmful’ literature”. The Telegraph has “Inflation stealth tax of £30bn looms” – it says millions of people face being dragged into higher tax bands. The Financial Times reports “New powers to override City regulators win Truss backing”, which it calls a “Rare show of policy unity with Sunak”. The Mail’s splash is “Minority of babies now born to married couples”. The Mirror’s front-page lead concerns ex-footballer Ryan Giggs, who is on trial in Manchester on charges of assault and coercive and controlling behaviour, which he denies. “‘Giggs cheated on me with 8 women’” is their headline, while the Sun has “He came at me & headbutted me. I could taste blood”. The trial is expected to last two weeks.Today in FocusThe UK’s energy-bill crisis explainedBig oil companies are making record profits while consumer energy bills soar. Finance reporter Jasper Jolly explains why.Cartoon of the day | Martin RowsonThe UpsideA bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all badCBeebies is taking on Shakespeare – and the premise is not as daft as you might think. They’ve tackled the Proms and, for the last few years, a shortened Shakespeare, all of which is performed on stage and then broadcast later. This year it is partnering with London’s Globe theatre on a new production of As You Like It for the under-sixes – with some non-binary casting, but minus the melancholy subplots – which will run until tonight and be screened next year. Catherine Shoard has entertaining conversations with the Globe director Michelle Terry – who’s on a mission to demystify Shakespeare, “the earlier the better” – and CBeebies actors including Steven Kynman: “You cannot fool children. They will see through you. They’re like sniffer dogs for insincerity.”Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every SundayBored at work?And finally, the Guardian’s crosswords to keep you entertained throughout the day – with plenty more on the Guardian’s Puzzles app for iOS and Android. Until tomorrow.
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      in US Politics

      Trump supporters gather after FBI searches his Mar-a-Lago home – video

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      Supporters of former US President Donald Trump have gathered outside the Mar-A-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, after the FBI executed a search warrant at his residence. The move by the FBI is the latest indication of an intensifying criminal investigation by the justice department into his affairs

      What lawsuits and investigations is Donald Trump facing?
      What is Mar-a-Lago? Trump’s ‘winter White House’ at the centre of FBI investigation
      FBI searches Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home More

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      in US Politics

      Russian man spent years as puppeteer behind US political groups, officials say

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      Russian man spent years as puppeteer behind US political groups, officials sayAleksandr Viktorovich Ionov charged over accusations he sought to spread division and propaganda and meddle in elections A Russian man orchestrated a yearslong effort to puppeteer political groups in Florida, Georgia and California to sow discord in the US, spread pro-Russia propaganda and meddle in American elections, justice department officials alleged on Friday.Aleksandr Viktorovich Ionov of Moscow was charged with conspiring to have US citizens act as illegal agents of the Russian government, according to a justice department statement. If convicted, he faces up to five years in prison.The indictment against Ionov was linked to a raid by federal agents of the Uhuru Movement’s headquarters in St Petersburg, Florida, on Friday, the Tampa Bay Times reported, citing US officials.The Uhuru Movement belongs to the African People’s Socialist party and purports to unite “African people as one … for liberation, social justice, self-reliance and economic development”.At a news conference on Friday, a Uhuru leader declared openly that his group was “in support of Russia” and dismissed the raid as an attack meant to isolate Africans in the US who are fighting for liberation.“We can have relationships with whoever we want to make this revolution possible,” said the leader, Eritha “Akile” Cainion.The movement’s St Petersburg headquarters recently made headlines for unrelated reasons after a man using a flamethrower set fire to a flag flying outside the building, leading to his arrest.According to the justice department, Ionov was acting on behalf of the FSB Russian intelligence agency when he financially supported the groups at the center of the case, none of which are explicitly named in the indictment. He allegedly ordered them to publish pro-Russian lies and coordinated actions by them intended to further Russian interests.The department also claimed Ionov influenced a US political group in Florida under his control to interfere in local elections, supporting the St Petersburg, Florida, political campaigns of two people in 2017 and 2019. It listed the group and individuals as “unindicted co-conspirators” but did not name them.From at least December 2014 to March 2022, the department said, Ionov and at least three other Russian officials engaged in a malign foreign influence campaign targeting the US.Separately, the US treasury department on Friday imposed sanctions on Ionov, his fellow Russian national Natalya Valeryevna Burlinova, and four Russian entities it accused of backing the Kremlin’s mission of interfering in elections abroad, including in the US and Ukraine.According to the justice department, the four entities in question are: the Anti-Globalization Movement of Russia (AGMR), which Ionov founded and presides over; Ionov Transkontinental; Stop-Imperialism; and the Center for Support and Development of Public Initiative Creative Diplomacy (Picreadi).The Russian embassy in Washington did not immediately reply to an email seeking comment on the indictment or the US sanctions, which among other things block the property in American jurisdiction of those named.Reuters contributed this reportTopicsUS politicsRussiaFloridaBiden administrationnewsReuse this content More

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      in Elections

      Why Trump Is Weakening

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      In Donald Trump’s quest to sustain his dominance over the Republican Party, his claim to have been robbed of victory in 2020 has been a crucial talisman, lending him powers denied to previous defeated presidential candidates. By insisting that he was cheated out of victory, Trump fashioned himself into a king-in-exile rather than a loser — an Arthur betrayed by the Mordreds of his own party, waiting in the Avalon of Mar-a-Lago to make his prophesied return.As with many forms of dark Trumpian brilliance, though, the former president is not exactly in conscious control of this strategy. He intuited rather than calculated his way to its effectiveness, and he seems too invested in its central conceit — the absolute righteousness of his “Stop the Steal” campaign — to modulate when it begins to reap diminishing returns.That’s a big part of why 2022 hasn’t been a particularly good year for Trump’s 2024 ambitions. Across 2021, he bent important parts of the G.O.P. back to his will, but in recent months his powers have been ebbing — and for the same reason, his narrative of dispossession, that they were initially so strong.While Ron DeSantis, his strongest potential rival, has been throwing himself in front of almost every issue that Republican primary voters care about, Trump has marinated in grievance, narrowed his inner circle, and continued to badger Republican officials about undoing the last election. While DeSantis has been selling himself as the scourge of liberalism, the former president has been selling himself mostly as the scourge of Brian Kemp, Liz Cheney and Mike Pence.Judging by early primary polling, the DeSantis strategy is working at the Trump strategy’s expense. The governor is effectively tied with the former president in recent polls of New Hampshire and Michigan, and leading him easily in Florida — which is DeSantis’s home state, yes, but now Trump’s as well.These early numbers don’t prove that Trump can be beaten. But they strongly suggest that if his case for 2024 is only that he was robbed in 2020, it won’t be enough to achieve a restoration.This is not because the majority of Republicans have had their minds changed by the Jan. 6 committee, or suddenly decided that actually Joe Biden won fair and square. But the committee has probably played some role in bleeding Trump’s strength, by keeping him pinned to the 2020 election and its aftermath, giving him an extra reason to obsess about enemies and traitors and giving his more lukewarm Republican supporters a constant reminder of where the Trump experience ended up.By lukewarm supporters, I mean those Republicans who would be inclined to answer no if a pollster asked them if the 2020 election was fairly won, but who would also reject the conceit — as a majority of Republicans did in a Quinnipiac poll earlier this year — that Mike Pence could have legitimately done as Trump wished on Jan. 6.That’s a crucial distinction, because in my experience as well as in public polling, there are lots of conservatives who retain a general sense that Biden’s victory wasn’t fair without being committed to John Eastman’s cockamamie plans to force a constitutional crisis. In the same way, there are lots of conservatives who sympathize in a general way with the Jan. 6 protests while believing that they were essentially peaceful and that any rioting was the work of F.B.I. plants or outside agitators — which is deluded, but still quite different from actively wishing for a mob-led coup d’état.So to the extent that Trump is stuck litigating his own disgraceful conduct before and during the riot, a rival like DeSantis doesn’t need the lukewarm Trump supporter to believe everything the Jan. 6 committee reports. He just needs that supporter to regard Jan. 6 as an embarrassment and Trump’s behavior as feckless — while presenting himself as the candidate who can own the libs but also turn the page.A counterargument, raised on Friday by New York Magazine’s Jonathan Chait, is that so long as those lukewarm supporters still believe the 2020 election was unfair, Trump will have a trump card over any rival — because if you believe a steal happened, “you are perfectly rational to select a candidate who will acknowledge the crime and do everything to prevent it from reoccurring.”But it seems just as possible for the lukewarm supporter to decide that if Trump’s response to being robbed was to first just let it happen and then ask his vice president to wave a magic wand on his behalf, then maybe he’s not the right guy to take on the Democratic machine next time.There is more than one way, in other words, for Republican voters to decide that the former president is a loser. The stolen-election narrative has protected him from the simplest consequence of his defeat. But it doesn’t prevent the stench of failure from rising from his well-worn grievances, his whine of disappointment and complaint.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTOpinion) and Instagram. More