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      Fani Willis and Judge Scott McAfee draw challengers in Fulton county primary

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      The embattled Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, and F Judge Scott McAfee have drawn re-election opponents for the 12 May primary ballot as qualification closes for Georgia’s 2024 election cycle. Willis will also face a Republican in November.Christian Wise Smith is challenging Willis in the Democratic primary. Smith is an attorney from Sandy Springs, Georgia. and a former prosecutor who came in third in the 2020 race behind Willis and the previous Fulton county district attorney, Paul Howard.In 2020, Smith’s campaign was to the left of Willis, arguing for an end to death penalty prosecutions, an end to cash bail and the decriminalization of marijuana. He marched with Black Lives Matter activists during the George Floyd protests in Atlanta, and made the prosecution of Atlanta police officers for the fatal shooting of Jimmy Atcheson a centerpiece of his campaign. He was also critical of the prosecution of teachers in the Atlanta cheating scandal – a prosecution led by Willis as an assistant district attorney.In contrast, Willis drew support from moderate Democrats and Republicans – who are often politically irrelevant in deep blue Fulton county – who were deeply dissatisfied with Howard’s approach to prosecution in an environment of rising crime, as well as with allegations of corruption in his office. With nothing else on the ballot, Willis went on to trounce Howard in a runoff that August, replacing a 20-year-incumbent; Smith endorsed Howard.Republicans will have Courtney Kramer on the general election ballot challenging Willis. Kramer is an Atlanta attorney who assisted former president Donald Trump’s legal team in Georgia, including working with Trump lawyer Ray Smith during the “fake elector” effort that led to the indictment of Trump and 18 others by Willis’ office. Kramer is also the former executive director of True the Vote and represented the organization in court cases against Fair Fight Action, the advocacy organization founded by Stacey Abrams.Willis has been under legal fire since court filings revealed that she had been in a relationship with Nathan Wade, special prosecutor on the Trump case in Georgia. McAfee is expected to rule next week on whether she and the Fulton county office will remain prosecutors in the trial, or if instead it will be assigned to another prosecutor.McAfee, who presides over the Trump election interference and racketeering case in Fulton County, faces two challengers from the left: Robert Patillo, a progressive attorney and talk show host in Atlanta, Tiffani Johnson, a former senior staff attorney for Fulton county judge Melynee Leftridge.McAfee, 34, who served as prosecutor both in Fulton county and for the US Department of Justice, is a Federalist Society conservative appointed to the bench by Governor Brian Kemp in 2023. Judicial appointees in Georgia must subsequently run for office in order to fill the remainder of a term.Patillo, 39, has practiced civil rights law for more than 15 years in Georgia. He also has a long-running radio show on Atlanta’s WAOK, in which his occasionally-idiosyncratic political views have an airing.“There are a lot more things that are broken in the Fulton county court, that deserve attention, more than Fani and the Trump trial,” Patillo said. “There are people who have been in that jail for five years awaiting trial. Anyone who is going to be a judge needs a plan to bring these cases to court.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionJohnson worked for the Davis Bozeman law firm, also notable for civil rights cases in Atlanta.Judicial races are nonpartisan in Georgia, but Fulton county has a three-to-one Democratic voter advantage. More

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      Texts reveal Trump co-defendant Chesebro’s role in ‘fake electors’ plot

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      Kenneth Chesebro was eager to help.It was five days after the 2020 presidential election and Joe Biden was projected to defeat Donald Trump and win Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes. Trump’s campaign was requesting a recount. Chesebro, a little-known Harvard-educated lawyer, believed there were abnormalities in the election and emailed Jim Troupis, a friend and former Wisconsin judge, to offer to help with any of the campaign’s legal efforts.Chesebro tacked on a thought at the end of his message. If there were still questions about irregularities while Wisconsin’s members of the electoral college cast their votes for Joe Biden, Congress might not have to accept the result of the election.“If these various systemic abuses can be proven, and found to be pivotal in a court decision and/or detailed legislative findings, I don’t see why electoral votes certified by Evers (at least if court proceedings are still pending on the ‘safe harbor’ days) should be counted over an alternative slate sent in by the legislature, whose decisions should have primacy,” he wrote in an email on 8 November 2020. “At minimum, with such a cloud of confusion, no votes from WI (and perhaps also MI and PA) should be counted, perhaps enough to throw the election to the House.”The short email was the earliest seed of what would come to be known as the “fake elector” scheme – a national effort led by Chesebro to get Congress to reject legitimate slates of electors in favor of pro-Trump slates. It was a critical piece of Trump’s anti-democratic effort to overturn the 2020 election and now lies at the center of two criminal cases against Trump.Chesebro has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to file false documents, a felony, in Georgia, and was sentenced to five years of probation and $5,000 restitution. He is an unnamed co-conspirator in the federal election interference case against Trump. Troupis, who currently sits on a judicial ethics panel in Wisconsin, has not been criminally charged for his role in the scheme.“The resolution of this litigation provides much-needed transparency into how the fraudulent electors scheme was conceived and developed, and it exposes the key roles both Troupis and Chesebro played not only in executing the scheme in Wisconsin, but also around the nation,” Law Forward, Georgetown University Law Center’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection (ICAP) and Stafford Rosenbaum, the legal groups who brought the civil case, said in a statement.Chesebro did not immediately return a request for comment.“It is the duty of lawyers to vigorously represent their clients, regardless of their popularity, within the bounds of the law. Our representation was vigorous and ethically appropriate,” Troupis said in a statement.Five days after his email, on 13 November, Troupis invited Chesebro to be part of the “legal briefing” team. Chesebro, who had been peppering Troupis with tweets he came across, replied that he was available to join “any call today on 20 mins notice”.“In the meantime, I’m still reading up on election law,” he added.Five days later, Chesebro sent what is now a well-known memo outlining the fake elector scheme. With the subject line “The Real Deadline for Settling a State’s Electoral Votes”, the document offered a legal justification to throwing out the valid votes of Americans across the country and would become a roadmap for what was to unfold over the next few weeks.In the emails, Chesebro floated multiple avenues to challenge the election in Wisconsin – attempting to solve the puzzle of actually getting a court to side with them.“I should add a note about a more aggressive version of this strategy,” he wrote to Troupis on 19 November, arguing that the state legislature could justify choosing its own electors by casting doubt on the official process – which had changed during the pandemic to expand absentee voting. “The beauty of this is that the Republican legislators, if they adhere carefully to this theory, can emphasize that they’re simply acting in the interests of the State,” he added.Clever legal arguments would be important, but so would the perception, among Republican voters, that the 2020 election had been tainted by rampant fraud.“The whole idea is a long shot. Probably it would only be viable if by early December there was a palpable sense among conservatives that there was a concerted effort by Democrats to steal this election in multiple states,” he wrote.Chesebro pointed to numerous pandemic-era practices as potential legal challenges: “Democracy in the Park” events staffed by poll workers in Madison parks where voters could drop off their ballots ahead of election day and the use of ballot “drop boxes” were two particularly troubling practices, in Chesebro’s mind, and could form the basis for an objection.The documents also show how Chesebro sought to use conservative media to get the attention of conservatives on the Wisconsin supreme court. As they discussed various theories of wrongdoing in 18 November, Chesebro suggested “tipping off” conservative radio hosts. “Mostly to maximize the chance that [supreme court of Wisconsin] justices hear about this quickly and prejudge the case?” he wrote, adding a winking emoji to the text.In mid-December, after the Wisconsin supreme court declined to overturn the state’s election results, Chesebro sent Troupis a screenshot of a text that appears to joke about killing Brian Hagedorn, a conservative justice who cast a critical vote in the case. “We’re thinking of inviting Hagedorn on the plane and solving that problem at high altitude, over water…” the message says. It’s not clear who the message is from.Outside of the legal strategy, the documents also show how Chesebro was willing to assist with any detail, no matter how small – from brainstorming a media strategy to offering to coordinate on logistics. He drafted up a press release on the Wisconsin alternate electors meeting, only backtracking when Michael Roman, a top Trump aide, made clear in a 14 December email that the plan was not to be shared with the media.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionChesebro offered an alternative idea – rather than a local media blitz, a message about their effort could come from the top – “Like a tweeted statement by Ellis, and follow up on-camera explanation by RG, and or follow up tweet by the President?” he replied, apparently in reference to Trump campaign lawyers Jenna Ellis and Rudy Giuliani. “Much wiser heads on that sort of thing than me!”View image in fullscreenLater, as he and Roman tried to figure out how to get the fake elector documents to the Capitol on January 6, Chesebro offered different flights and routes a congressional aide can take as they fly into Washington.Those who know Chesebro have been baffled at how he got caught up in the fake elector scheme. The messages hint at a sense of excitement in being involved with Trump and his closest aides. After Troupis and Chesebro met with Trump in the Oval Office on 15 December, Chesebro texted Troupis a picture of Troupis on what appears to be a private plane.A few days after that meeting, Trump sent out a tweet inviting supporters to Washington on January 6. “Be there, will be wild,” Trump said. Chesebro sent the tweet to Troupis and wrote: “Wow. Based on 3 days ago, I think we have a unique understanding of this.”And on January 6, Troupis praised Chesebro’s work as senators began to object to the electoral college vote. “You got Arizona. Well done Ken! History is made,” he wrote in a text message. Chesebro replied with a picture of him on the mall smiling in front of the Washington monument. He later followed up with a smiling selfie of him and the far-right host Alex Jones. “Hanging with Alex Jones,” Chesebro wrote. “Lol. I told him to put you on his show.”The next morning, after the attack on the capitol, Chesebro suggested Trump surrogates should lay blame on antifa and poor security that was under the control of Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi. He also suggested Trump could put the episode behind him by inviting Biden and Harris over for coffee on the morning of the inauguration. “He could lighten it up with a couple of well-placed jokes.”About an hour later, he said it was “stupid to have a rally on Jan. 6”. “Original plan was Jan. 5 right? Would have been perfect to have a Jan. 5 rally, then told people to go home, so focus would be on debate in Congress.” He also added Mike Pence was to blame for giving Trump hope of overturning the election and then not following through.On 22 February, the US supreme court dismissed a request filed by Troupis and Chesebro on behalf of the Trump campaign to revisit the Wisconsin election results.“So sorry,” Chesebro wrote.“You’re [sic] work was incredible Ken. I am honored to have been a part of it,” Troupis replied.“I am honored you invited me to help at all. Would have been worth it even if we’d gotten no votes and had never met the President – just being on a team with the guts to represent someone with an important case who other lawyers shunned was worth it,” Chesebro said. More

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      A far-right US youth group is ramping up its movement to back election deniers

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      Turning Point USA, a far-right youth group known for its fundraising prowess and for promoting election-conspiracy theories, is mounting a multimillion-dollar mobilization drive via its advocacy arm in the swing states of Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin.Arizona-based TPUSA, a non-profit co-founded in 2012 by then 18-year-old Charlie Kirk that’s become a key ally in Donald Trump’s Maga ecosystem, has launched the drive through Turning Point Action, which has raised tens of millions of dollars and is hiring hundreds of full-time employees in the three states, according to its spokesperson, Andrew Kolvet.While its current fundraising drive is to support the voter-outreach efforts, TP Action is likely to help finance other political advocacy initiatives, including ousting some key Arizona election officials who disputed claims of election fraud in 2020.Dubbed “chase the vote”, the drive is being supplemented by another get-out-the-vote campaign that TP Action is starting with the Christian nationalist and televangelist Lance Wallnau.Together with Wallnau and some other Maga allies like Moms for America, TP Action is planning a “courage tour” in the same three swing states to enlist pastors and their churches in the voter-mobilization drive, which will include booths in churches to register voters.TP Action’s fledgling campaign is aimed at identifying and registering “patriotic” voters, encouraging early voting and getting voters to the polls in November, according to its website. Billed as the “first and most robust conservative ballot-chasing operation”, TP Action’s drive could benefit Trump and Maga-allied candidates in the three states.The new political advocacy drives come after TPUSA and TP Action sparked strong criticism from veteran Republicans, watchdog groups and analysts for backing several hard-right candidates in Arizona who were defeated in 2022, and pushing conspiracies about election fraud, Covid-19 and other issues.“TPUSA has a radicalized worldview that they use as a litmus test” in backing candidates, said Kathy Petsas, a GOP district leader in Phoenix. “When it comes to the general elections that matter, their ROI is lousy.”Notably, four top Arizona candidates in 2022 who were backed by TP Action lost to Democrats, including ex-Fox News anchor Kari Lake in her race for governor, and Mark Finchem in his bid to become secretary of state.“Virtually every major race they touched they lost in the general election in Arizona,” the former Arizona congressman Matt Salmon said. “Everyone Trump endorses they get behind. It’s not clear if it’s the tail wagging the dog, or vice versa.”Kolvet pushed back on criticism of the group’s 2022 results, noting that TP Action only spent $500,000 in total in several states in 2022, but that this year it intends to mount a much better-financed and robust effort, hiring hundreds of full-time employees for its “chase the vote” drive and seeking to raise an eye-popping $108m dollars.View image in fullscreenTP Action’s aggressive fundraising could prove useful in other election-related projects this year that the group is likely to get involved with.Austin Smith, a state legislator and TP Action’s enterprise director, in a tweet this week signaled an effort to oust several key election officials in the state’s largest county, Maricopa, in primaries this July.Smith said “[we] need to clean house in Maricopa county” and cited, among other officers, the county recorder, the Republican lawyer Stephen Richer, who rejected unsubstantiated claims of voting fraud in 2020 and 2022.Kolvet said TP Action to date hasn’t joined the effort, but added that “it’s more likely than not we’ll get involved in some of these races. We’re going to get behind conservative candidates.”One key example: TP Action in February endorsed Trump loyalist Kari Lake’s 2024 Arizona senate campaign.Kirk and TPUSA’s strong fundraising talents could prove helpful to TP Action’s current drive. TPUSA’s annual revenues have soared in recent years with help from leading rightwing donors including the Bradley Impact Fund, which chipped in $7.8m in 2022, the Ed Uihlein Family Foundation and dark-money behemoth Donors Trust.TPUSA has also benefited mightily from hosting several gaudy gatherings at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club and in tony Arizona venues that have drawn some big donors and conservative stars like the representatives Marjorie Taylor Green and Matt Gaetz, and Don Trump Jr.These events and mega-donor checks have helped make TPUSA a fundraising goliath: the group’s revenues soared from $39.8m dollars in 2020 to $55.8m in 2021 and $80.6m in 2022, according to public records.TPUSA now employs 450 people and has broadened its focus from fighting left and “woke” influence on campuses to other culture war fronts by setting up a Turning Point Faith unit that’s hosted large gatherings at churches featuring Wallnau and other Christian nationalist figures.Notwithstanding TPUSA’s fundraising successes, the organization and Kirk have been buffeted by criticism on multiple fronts. Late last year, Kirk ignited a political firestorm in mainstream GOP circles by using his eponymous radio show and an Arizona bash to make incendiary attacks on the late civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr, which recycled old and unverified slurs about King, and disparaged Black airline pilots.During a major TPUSA event in Arizona in December, Kirk opined that “MLK was awful. He’s not a good person. He said one good thing he actually didn’t believe.”“Kirk’s cheapening of Martin Luther King’s legacy and disparaging remarks about Black pilots hurt our cause, and don’t help it,” Salmon of Arizona said, adding that Kirk is “one of the strongest voices for factionalism in the party”.Other GOP veterans also voiced harsh critiques.“Kirk chases conspiracies that animate his followers and generate funds,” the long-time GOP consultant Tyler Montague said. “Kirk has used this method to push conspiracies about election fraud, Christian nationalism, anti-immigrant xenophobia, and now he’s opened a new front in racism with his Martin Luther King attacks.”Montague’s comments are in keeping with earlier criticism of Kirk for promoting Trump’s unsubstantiated claims of election fraud in 2020.Kirk and TP Action collaborated with about a dozen other groups to bring busloads of Trump allies to DC to attend Trump’s 6 January March to Save America rally that preceded the mob attack on the Capitol.View image in fullscreenPrior to the rally, Kirk predicted in a tweet it “would likely be one of the largest and most consequential in American history”, but he quickly deleted the tweet after the day’s violence.Independent analysts who study misinformation criticize Kirk’s penchant for pushing conspiracies and false narratives on the Charlie Kirk Show, which runs daily on the evangelical Salem Radio Network.“The Charlie Kirk Show consistently ranks high in the top 100 shows on Apple podcasts, and has been a leader in spreading false and unverified claims,” said Valerie Wirtschafter, a Brookings Institution fellow in AI and emerging technologies.Kirk’s dubious claims range “from the idea that the Covid-19 vaccine was poison, to the belief that the election was stolen in 2020 with fraudulent ballots, to claims that purported Ukrainian bioweapons facilities are somehow linked to Anthony Fauci,” she added.Kirk had company in backing Trump’s election fraud claims, which could pose legal risks to a top TP Action official: Tyler Bowyer, the COO, who also had that title with TPUSA, and who was one of Arizona’s 11 fake electors for Trump in 2020. He and the other fake electors are facing a state attorney general probe.The 11 fake electors filmed themselves signing documents stating they were legitimate electors, even though the then GOP governor, Doug Ducey, had certified Biden’s win by more than 10,000 votes.Bowyer, an Arizona GOP national committeeman who signed paperwork falsely claiming that Trump had won, introduced a resolution at a Republican National Committee meeting that began in late January seeking to get the RNC to indemnify RNC members in multiple states who had been fake electors and who face legal bills due to state probes.Bowyer justified his resolution by writing on X that “we need to send a clear signal that the RNC will defend those who serve as electors against Democratic radicals trying to criminalize civic engagement and process”.The resolution didn’t pass, but to appease Trump backers the RNC pledged to “vocally” back individuals who “lawfully” served as Trump electors in states that Biden actually won.Prosecutors in three states have brought charges against fake electors for sending certificates to Congress falsely stating Trump had won their states, and the justice department has probed fake elector schemes in multiple states in its wide-ranging inquiry into efforts by Trump and his allies to thwart Biden’s election.Serendipitously, right before the RNC meeting, TP Action hosted a two-day summit dubbed Restoring National Confidence, which drew several big-name election deniers including My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell, ex-Trump senior White House strategist Steve Bannon and Don Jr.In a tweet, Don Jr wrote: “It was great speaking to all my friends at the Turning Point Restoring National Confidence Summit earlier this week.”The tight ties between TPUSA and Don Jr were underscored in 2020 when TPUSA paid a company owned by Don Jr $333,000 to buy copies of one of his books, which TPUSA gave away as part of a fundraising drive, according to the Associated Press.But watchdog groups are alarmed by TPUSA and TP Action’s record of promoting the ex-president’s bogus claims of election fraud, and candidates in Arizona in 2022 who espoused similar election falsehoods. They’re bracing for more in another heated election year.“They’ve backed conspiracy theorists for high office, mobilized activists around the ‘big lie’ and hired one of Arizona’s fake electors to help run their campaign arm,” said Heather Sawyer, the president of the watchdog group American Oversight.“Since January 6, TPUSA has become an animating force behind the election-denial movement.” More

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      More Than a Thousand Mourners Pack Church to Honor Student Killed in Georgia

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      Laken Riley, whose death became enmeshed in the nation’s bitter debate over immigration, was remembered as a warm and caring woman who “shined so bright.”More than 1,000 mourners braved the rain and blustery chill outside to pack the Woodstock City Church on Friday for the funeral of Laken Riley, the 22-year-old nursing student killed last week on the University of Georgia campus, 70 miles away.Laken Riley in a photo from a social media account. Ms. Riley was attacked while out jogging on Feb. 22. She was pursuing a nursing degree at Augusta University, after having been a student at the University of Georgia until May.“When the world loses someone like Laken, whose light consistently shined so bright, it seems that much darker in their absence,” Samer Massad, the lead pastor of the nondenominational church that Ms. Riley and her family attended, said in a statement before the funeral on Friday afternoon. He continued: “Laken was special. She was a gift to anyone who knew her.”Jose Antonio Ibarra, 26, a migrant from Venezuela who entered the United States illegally in September 2022, was charged with her murder in a case that was immediately thrust into the bitter national debate over immigration. He was staying in an apartment complex less than a mile from the University of Georgia’s intramural fields where Ms. Riley’s body was found near a wooded running path..Instead of flowers, Ms. Riley’s family requested donations that would be used to cover funeral expenses, establish a scholarship in her name and create a foundation to focus on women’s safety and homicide awareness. Red, rubber bracelets reading “Laken Hope Riley Foundation” were handed out to those in attendance at the funeral service.Nearly $180,000 had been raised by Friday afternoon. More

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      Judge hears closing arguments in ‘daytime soap opera’ Fani Willis hearing

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      A Fulton county judge began hearing closing arguments on Friday afternoon in a three-day evidentiary hearing to determine whether the district attorney Fani Willis should be disqualified from handling the election interference against Donald Trump because of her romantic relationship with a deputy handling the case.The hearing has offered a dramatic deviation from the racketeering case against the former US president and 14 remaining co-defendants for trying to overturn the election in Georgia.The matter kicked off in January when Michael Roman, a Republican operative and one of the defendants in the case, filed a motion claiming Willis financially benefitted from the case because of a romantic relationship with Nathan Wade, a top prosecutor in the case. Trump and several other defendants later joined the request.Willis and Wade both admitted to a romantic relationship, but both said it only began after he was hired on 1 November 2021. They both testified about vacations they had taken together and revealed personal details about a romantic relationship that they say only began in 2022, after he was hired, and ended last summer.A star witness who was supposed to undercut their claims ultimately failed to produce meaningful evidence.On the surface, the question at the heart of the matter was whether Willis had a conflict of interest because of her relationship with Wade. But over several hours of testimony, lawyers for Roman, Trump and the other defendants did not produce any concrete evidence showing that she did.Willis testified that she repaid Wade in cash for any travel they had taken together – a claim that drew skepticism from defense lawyers, but no evidence to prove otherwise.“This was a disqualification hearing that quickly denigrated into a daytime soap opera,” said J Tom Morgan, a former district attorney in DeKalb county, a Fulton county neighbor. “Have they proven a conflict of interest, where this all started, absolutely not.”Lawyers may use Friday’s hearing to try and introduce additional evidence, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported, including cellphone records that defense lawyers say undercut Wade’s claims that he never spent the night at Willis’s condo.It’s not exactly clear what the standard Scott McAfee, the judge overseeing the case, will use to determine whether Willis should be disqualified. Georgia law allows for a prosecutor to be disqualified if there is an actual conflict of interest. Experts say state law has long established this high bar to clear and the defendants in the case have not done so.But McAfee has suggested that defense lawyers may not need to prove an actual conflict, but merely the appearance of one. “I think it’s clear that disqualification can occur if evidence is produced demonstrating an actual conflict or the appearance of one,” he said at a recent hearing.Robert CI McBurney, a different Fulton county judge who was overseeing the case at an earlier stage, disqualified Willis from investigating a fake elector after she appeared at a fundraiser for his political rival. That appearance, he said, would lead to questions about her motives in every step of the case, which was enough to disqualify her.A disqualification would upend the case and delay it past the 2024 election. The Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia, a state agency, would have the sole discretion to reassign the case to another prosecutor, and there’s no timeline for how long that could take.But even if Willis and Wade aren’t disqualified, defense attorneys have used the hearings to damage the two prosecutors’ judgment and credibility in the public’s eye.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBy bringing to light something they failed to disclose on their own, they’ve seeded the impression that the two were trying to conceal something.While it may not stand up legally, defense lawyers have also showed text messages from an associate of Nathan Wade’s in which he says the affair “absolutely” began before he was hired (the witness, Terrence Bradley, later testified he was only speculating). They also put a former friend of Willis on the stand that said she was certain the relationship began before Wade was hired. And they have also sought to introduce cellphone evidence that could undermine Wade’s claims he never spent the night at Willis’s condo before the relationship began.“I was standing in the grocery store and I would guess that the two women in front of me have not really paid much attention to this case or the politics,” Morgan said. “But they start talking about the text messages … it’s more interesting. People who haven’t paid any attention to this all of a sudden are paying attention to it.”Morgan also said the timing or existence of a relationship between Willis and Wade wasn’t really relevant to whether there was a conflict of interest. But during the hearing, the two prosecutors had boxed themselves in to a story that the romantic relationship only began after Wade was hired.Any evidence that comes to light questioning that undermines their credibility and could lead to accusations of perjury. Willis herself has said with certainty that the relationship definitely did not begin until after Wade was hired, but also acknowledged that it was difficult to say exactly when a romantic relationship begins.“It’s not like when you’re in grade school and you send a little letter saying, will you be my girlfriend? and you check it,” she said during one point in the hearing.More than anything, Trump’s team has succeeded in muddying the waters of the case and taking the attention off his efforts to undermine democracy. Willis underscores that when she testified during the first day of the hearing.“You’re confused. You think I’m on trial. These people are on trial for trying to steal an election in 2020. I’m not on trial, no matter how hard you try to put me on trial,” she said. More

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      A young woman’s killing in Georgia stokes a familiar rightwing war

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      All murders are not treated equally.The killing of the 22-year-old nursing student Laken Riley on the campus of the University of Georgia on 22 February has drawn national media interest and political activity in ways that other homicide cases do not, in part because it provides an easy target for rightwing election sloganeering.Homicide rates fell by historic amounts last year after a spike in violence during the pandemic. Early estimates suggest that across the country violence has returned to near-60-year lows.Despite the data, most Americans believe violence is increasing because violence increasingly drives media attention. And the murder of any young woman by a stranger is bound to draw additional news coverage simply because these killings are rare. FBI statistics show 3,653 women were murdered in 2022 – comprising fewer than one in four victims – and according to data tracked by the Violence Policy Center, about 92% of women who are murdered know their attacker. The murder of Laken Riley by a stranger is statistically one in a million.Where Riley died adds to the attention.The campus of the University of Georgia holds particular social and political significance among Georgians. A murder on campus is, for many, a desecration of hallowed ground. UGA is a dominant force in Georgia sports culture. Three out of four college students in Georgia attend a state school, and the flagship university is a top goal for almost all of them. About a quarter of state legislators are University of Georgia alumni, as are five of Georgia’s 14 Congress members and Georgia’s governor, Brian Kemp.But the main reason we know Riley’s name, and not the names of the other 300-350 women killed by a stranger in the last year, or the names of the other eight people being held on a murder charge at the Clarke county jail, is because the suspect – 26-year-old Jose Ibarra – is an undocumented migrant who has been previously charged with a crime without being deported, and the victim is young, female and white. Of such things are press conferences born.“It is an understatement to say that this is a major crisis,” Kemp said on Monday morning during a news conference, attacking the Biden administration on its immigration enforcement policies. “Because of the White House’s failures, every state is now a border state. Laken Riley’s murder is just the latest proof of that.”Georgia’s state penitentiaries hold about 50,000 prisoners, and according to the Georgia department of corrections, about 1,600 prisoners had ICE detention orders at the end of January, up by about 100 since the start of Biden’s term as a result of increased enforcement activity. Of all Georgia’s prisoners, about 9,100 have been imprisoned for killing someone – murder, manslaughter or other homicides. Of the 7,050 murderers, 182 are subject to deportation.Estimates from the Pew Research Center suggest that Georgia’s undocumented population fell between 2011 and 2021 by more than 10%, to about 350,000, or about 3.2% of Georgia’s residents. Immigrants – legal and illegal – are less likely to be charged with an act of violence than the native-born US population.View image in fullscreen“There’s a long and unfortunate history of politicizing immigrants and suggesting that they commit crimes at higher rates,” said Michelle Mittelstadt, director of communications and public affairs for the Migration Policy Institute, and a UGA alumna. “As we’ve seen in US context … they see anecdotal reporting of individual, sad tragedies that they somehow extrapolate that this, therefore, means that a whole class of people are more likely to commit crime.”The media amplification of stories about an innocent female victim killed by a person of color is a historical trope in southern politics that harkens back to Reconstruction-era politics. Conservatives have made immigration central to their political messaging today, often disregarding the ugly history of this commentary when a case like the Riley murder presents itself.Enter Donald Trump.“Crooked Joe Biden’s Border INVASION is destroying our country and killing our citizens!” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “The horrible murder of 22-year-old Laken Riley at the University of Georgia should have NEVER happened! The monster who took her life illegally entered our Country in 2022 … and then was released AGAIN by Radical Democrats in New York after injuring a CHILD!!”Trump has habitually amplified murder cases when the victim is an American citizen and the accused is not. Laken Riley’s death has provided him another opportunity.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn 2016, the Trump campaign rallied around the prosecution of Jose Ines Garcia-Zarate, who was charged with fatally shooting Kathryn Steinle in San Francisco. Garcia-Zarate, a homeless undocumented migrant who had been repeatedly deported, was ultimately acquitted of murder in 2017 and subsequently pleaded guilty to a weapon possession charge.Legislators have begun agitating for changes to Georgia law in response to the Riley case.“There are certainly also questions surrounding the administration of justice at the local level, and house leadership will be pressing for answers over the coming days as to why exactly the suspect and his brother continued to roam freely in the Athens area,” wrote the Georgia House speaker, Jon Burns, the day after Ibarra’s arrest. Three bills are advancing quickly through the legislative process, one mandating that police and sheriff’s departments help identify, arrest and detain undocumented immigrants for deportation.The high-profile death in Athens, Georgia, intensified the spotlight on the county’s district attorney, Deborah Gonzalez, long a target for conservative lawmakers for progressive policies. Gonzalez has called for a special prosecutor for Ibarra’s case, and declared she would not pursue the death penalty.Congressman Mike Collins, who represents Athens in Congress, sent a letter to Athens’ mayor, Kelly Girtz, and the Clarke county sheriff, John Q Williams, yesterday demanding they end “sanctuary” policies for undocumented migrants. Collins cited the sheriff’s policy of refusing to comply with immigration detainers for 48-hour holds, and an Athens-Clarke county resolution “to foster a community where individuals and families of all statuses feel safe, are able to prosper, and can breathe free”.Georgia state law expressly forbids Georgia cities from adopting “sanctuary city” policies of noncompliance with federal immigration policies, but Collins suggested in the letter that Athens had become one “in word and deed”, citing the Center for Immigrations Studies’ listing the county as a sanctuary city.The Center for Immigration Studies was founded by the avowed white supremacist John Tanton and is itself listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.Leaders among Georgia’s immigrant-oriented organizations met on Wednesday to formulate a response to the politicization of the Riley murder. “I have a 21-year-old daughter that goes to college in Nashville, you know, and I worry about her constantly. And so my first reaction was as a father, as a human being – it was heartbreaking, you know, devastating,” said Santiago Marquez, CEO of the Latin American Association in Georgia.“My second reaction was one of great disappointment, because, you know, I just couldn’t anticipate what was going to come and … you know, there will be a lot of backlash in our community.” More

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      in Elections

      Suspect in UGA Killing Is Denied Bond as a Shaken Campus Mourns

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      As more details emerged about the suspect in the death of a nursing student, the community remained in shock of the first homicide on the campus in decades.A 26-year-old man charged with kidnapping and murdering a nursing student at the University of Georgia in Athens will remain in jail after he was denied bond at a hearing on Saturday, the authorities said.The suspect, Jose Antonio Ibarra, lived in an apartment complex about one mile from a wooded trail where the body of Laken Riley, 22, was found on Thursday afternoon, said Jeffrey Clark, the chief of university police. Ms. Riley, a student at nearby Augusta University and a former student at the University of Georgia, had been reported missing by friends after she did not return from a run. Mr. Ibarra, a resident of Athens who is not a U.S. citizen, migrated to the United States from Venezuela, the authorities said. He was arrested by the Border Patrol for crossing the border illegally in September 2022 and was released quickly with temporary permission to stay in the country, a federal law enforcement official said Saturday. That release, or parole, was a practice the administration used when officials were overwhelmed with high numbers of crossings. The administration ended that practice about six months later. It was typical for many Venezuelans to be released with permission to stay temporarily because they could not be repatriated back to their country due to strained diplomatic relations. Some six million Venezuelans have fled their troubled country, the largest population displacement in Latin America’s modern history.On Saturday, it was not clear what Mr. Ibarra’s immigration status was. Many conservative politicians, including Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia, on Saturday linked the killing to the immigration policies of President Biden, which they contend have overwhelmed the country with more migrants than the system can handle. Mike Johnson, the speaker of the House, urged the president to close the border. “House Republicans will continue to fight tooth and nail for a return to law and order,” Mr. Johnson said in a post on X.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in US Politics

      Find Me the Votes review: Fani Willis of Georgia, the woman who could still take down Trump

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      If this week’s hearing about Fani Willis’s affair with her assistant Nathan Wade has piqued America’s interest in the character of the Fulton county district attorney, Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman have written the perfect book for this moment.Isikoff has been a dogged investigator for the Washington Post, NBC and Yahoo, while his longtime friend and collaborator Klaidman is a former managing editor of Newsweek now a newly minted investigative reporter for CBS. Together they have produced the most readable and authoritative account to date of all of Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.At its center is a nuanced portrait of Willis, who at least until a couple of days ago appeared to be Trump’s most effective nemesis, having indicted him, his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and the former White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, as well as 16 other co-conspirators.Whether Willis’s affair with one of her principal assistants is a valid reason to force the presiding judge to dismiss her from the case remains to be seen. But the revelation seems to have been as much of a bombshell for her biographers as it was for everyone else.Contacted by the Guardian, both authors declined to predict the outcome of the current proceeding. But Isikoff sounded optimistic that Willis would survive this latest assault.“How did the relationship between Willis and Wade prejudice any of the other defendants?” Isikoff asked. “There is simply no evidence that it did.”Willis is a daughter of the civil rights movement. In the 1960s, her father, John C Floyd III, migrated from the politics of John F Kennedy and the non-violence of Martin Luther King Jr to the much tougher ideology of the Black Panther Party of Los Angeles, which he co-founded in 1967. After that he became a criminal defense and civil rights lawyer.Isikoff and Klaidman say Floyd’s odyssey gives us “a glimpse into his daughter’s pugnacious personality and her deep-seated loathing of bullies” – both of which were on prominent display when she defended herself in the hearing room.While it was her personal passion that brought Willis into an unwelcome spotlight, it was her own focus on allegations of sexual harassment against her previous boss and mentor that made her election as the first woman district attorney of Fulton county possible. Paul Howard became the first Black person to hold the job of Fulton county DA in 1996, and made Willis a star by giving her some of his Atlanta office’s most famous cases. She became famous as the lead prosecutor in an indictment of 35 public school officials for alleged violations of Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (Rico) Act. The Atlanta schools superintendent, six principals, two assistant principals and 14 teachers were accused of faking students’ test scores, in response to the requirements of No Child Left Behind.That law, championed by George W Bush, put schools at risk of losing federal aid if students didn’t meet minimum standards for success on standardized tests. All but one of the defendants was Black, which made the prosecution even more controversial. By the time Howard gave Willis the case she was chief of the office’s trial division. Isikoff and Klaidman say she proved a “hands-on micromanager” who “plunged into every detail of the case”. Its complexity turned out to be the perfect training for Willis to use the same Rico statute to go after Donald Trump and his co-conspirators.One of this book’s most important contributions is to remind us of the breadth and viciousness of the president’s efforts to undermine democracy – and the horrendous effects they had on the lives of decent, honest election officials in every swing state Trump lost.After multiple lawsuits alleging voter fraud were thrown out by nearly every judge who heard them, Trump famously turned his attention to the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, one of several Republicans whose resistance proved heroic. When Trump got Raffensperger and his assistants on the phone, they were shocked by how many QAnon conspiracy theories Trump seemed to have accepted as fact – just because so many of his supporters had retweeted them. A particular favorite of the president’s was the notion there had been 200,000 forged signatures on absentee ballots in Fulton county – even though the total number of absentee votes had been 148,319.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn the same call, Trump repeated the big lie that the Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Wandrea “Shaye” Moss had run between 18,000 and 56,000 bogus ballots through election scanners. Trump said Freeman was “known all over the internet”. This was the same lie promoted by Giuliani, which ultimately cost him a richly deserved verdict of $148m for libeling the two innocent women.In one of the many telling details of Isikoff and Klaidman’s book, the authors remind us that the other hero from that phone call was the Georgia deputy secretary of state, Jordan Fuchs.“Fuchs did what was arguably the single gutsiest and most consequential act of the entire post-election battle,” the authors believe. To protect her boss, she decided to tape the phone call – without telling Raffensperger. After the tape leaked to the Washington Post, it quickly became the single most powerful piece of evidence against the ex-president in any of the four prosecutions he is still facing.When you see all of Trump’s alleged crimes piled together in a single narrative, it is beyond belief that he remains the favorite of a majority of Republican primary voters. But these same facts should surely be enough to guarantee his defeat if he actually gets the chance to face the larger electorate in November.
      Find Me the Votes is published in the US by Twelve More