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    Mark Meadows testifies in bid to move Georgia election case to federal court

    Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff under Donald Trump, has testified for nearly three hours in a hearing to move his Georgia election interference case from state to federal court on Monday.Meadows was charged alongside Trump and 17 other defendants for conspiring to subvert the 2020 election in a Georgia superior court. He faces two felony charges, including racketeering and solicitation of a violation of oath by a public officer.But Meadows is arguing that he acted in his capacity as a federal officer and thus is entitled to immunity – and that his case should be heard before a federal judge.Meadows swiftly filed a motion to move his case to the federal US district court of northern Georgia after Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney, handed down her indictment.According to the indictment, Meadows arranged the infamous call between Trump and Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, where the former president asked Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to block Biden’s victory.He also at one point instructed a White House aide to draft a strategy memo for “disrupting and delaying” the electoral certification process on 6 January 2021, according to the indictment. Yet Meadows denied doing that on Monday, calling it the “biggest surprise”.Meadows testified for about three hours on Monday, surprising legal experts who widely expected him to keep mum.“Those were challenging times, bluntly,” said Meadows, testifying about his time as Trump’s chief of staff during the pandemic and through the 2020 election, according to CNN. “I don’t know if anyone was fully prepared for that type of job.”He also testified that his duties involved sitting in on nearly all of Trump’s meetings, which he would help arrange with various states and agencies, according to ABC News. “There was a political component to everything that we did,” said Meadows, referring to his actions during the final weeks of the Trump administration.Willis subpoenaed Raffensperger, along with his office’s chief investigator Frances Watson, to testify during the Monday hearing.According to the indictment, Meadows asked Watson if there was “a way to speed up Fulton county signature verification in order to have results before Jan 6 if the trump campaign assist financially”. He claimed on Monday that he was not trying to offer federal funds but rather asking if there was a financial constraint.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMeadows was booked at the Fulton county jail after voluntarily surrendering last Thursday. He filed an emergency motion to block his arrest but a judge denied his request. Meadows was released shortly after arriving at the jail, earlier entering a $100,000 bail agreement.Moments before Meadows’ federal court hearing, Judge Scott McAfee, who is overseeing the Fulton county election interference case, said all 19 defendants would be arraigned on 6 September in 15-minute increments. Meadows is set to be arraigned at 10.30am local time, following Trump, Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman and Sidney Powell.Three other defendants have filed motions to remove their cases from Fulton county. Jeffrey Clark, a former justice department official, along with Georgia fake electors David Shafer, Shawn Still and Cathy Latham, are each seeking to move their cases to federal court.Trump is expected to file a similar request in the coming weeks. More

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    ‘Bring them to justice’: Georgia town residents demand answers in Trump election plot

    On Saturday afternoon, roughly 70 people gathered on folding chairs in a sweltering church meeting room in the small town of Douglas, about 200 miles (322km) south-east of Atlanta, Georgia. Less than a week earlier, Donald Trump and 18 of his allies were indicted in Fulton county for efforts to overturn the 2020 election, including allegedly entering the Coffee county elections office less than a mile away and copying the state’s voter software and other data.County residents at the town hall raised concerns about the lack of accountability for those who played a role in copying software and other data, and said they felt insecure about the safety and integrity of future elections.“People think, ‘He’s been indicted in Atlanta, so it’s over,’” 80-year-old county resident Jim Hudson said to the room, referring to Trump. “[But] how do we regroup? How do we become a county not referred to as ‘Crooked Coffee’?”The Rev Bruce Francis read a message from Bishop Reginald T Jackson, who oversees 500 Black churches in Georgia, referring to “troubling improprieties” that had brought this town of about 12,000 residents to the world’s attention.“The nation is now aware of the travesty that happened in 2020,” he read. “What do we do to make sure it doesn’t happen again?”The “travesty” was what Marilyn Marks, the town hall’s main speaker, called “the largest voting system breach in US history”. It happened in January 2021, when multiple people working on behalf of Donald Trump allegedly entered the Coffee county elections office and copied software and other digital information from the agency’s computers, gaining access to the entire elections system of the state of Georgia, home to about 7.9 million registered voters.The digital information obtained is now in an unknown number of hands, meaning that future elections could be affected in Georgia and in other states that use Dominion Voting Systems and other equipment made by partner companies. The breach has been publicly reported for more than a year, but was launched into a global spotlight on 14 August, when the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, issued indictments to Trump and 18 others. Several people were indicted for their direct role in the Coffee county breach, and nearly half the group had some kind of involvement in the incident, according to Marks.It wasn’t federal, state or local investigators who turned up evidence of the incidents, but Marks’ nonprofit organization, the Coalition for Good Governance. The group obtained video, text messages and other information about what happened in Douglas as part of a lawsuit against Georgia, now in its sixth year, that seeks to force the state to switch from computers to hand-marked paper ballots in elections, due to vulnerabilities in digital voting systems. Seventy percent of US voters mark ballots by hand.The town hall was the first occasion for residents of Douglas to hear a detailed explanation of how events that took place in their own back yard had become headlines, what those events mean for future elections and, perhaps most important, who among their neighbors had not been held accountable, what can be done to change that and how to prevent such a breach from happening again.Local residents wanted to know whether their personal information was “floating around in cyberspace”, if poll workers in Coffee county would be safe in future elections, and whether “money was exchanged for favors” during any of the visits to the local elections office by Trump’s associates.Hanging over the room were not just the challenges members of small communities face when their own neighbors are implicated in serious wrongdoing, but, also, the issue of race.Coffee county is about 68% white, but most of the attendees at the town hall were Black. One white woman said she had urged other white locals to attend, but was met with indifference.Many were also aware that one of the more prominent locals present – city commissioner of 24 years and voting rights activist Olivia Coley-Pearson – was persecuted for years by the state for helping disabled and illiterate voters, while state election officials have shown little interest in investigating the breach, according to Marks. Coley-Pearson is Black; Trump’s associates involved in the breach here have all been white.Before Marks began her talk, titled, “What the hack happened in Coffee Co?”, Hudson, a retired lawyer, addressed the room. A thin, soft-spoken man, Hudson told those gathered how, as a seventh-generation Georgian and county resident, he felt had “skin in the game” when it came to the breach. “That’s why, when I discovered what happened, I was so disappointed,” he said.He lamented there had been “no independent investigation by our officials … [and] almost no local press coverage”.Hudson suggested there needs to be an independent, local investigation and a plan for the future – “So this never occurs again in our county,” he said. The first reform, he said, should be that “the elections department office should never be used for a partisan meeting again”. The crowd applauded.Marks took the stage. “Coffee county is the central foundation for this incredible indictment that the world is watching,” she said. The nonprofit director recounted how Atlanta bail bondsman Scott Hall called her on 7 March 2021 and told her that he and others had been to Douglas and “scanned all the equipment … imaged all the hard drives, scanned every ballot … all the poll pads – everything”.On Tuesday morning, Hall became the first defendant named in last week’s indictments to surrender to authorities in Fulton county. He was shortly thereafter released on $10,000 bond.Marks went on to detail how local elections director Misty Hampton – also indicted last week – communicated with people in Trump’s orbit, including Mike Lindell, the MyPillow CEO who has repeatedly backed conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. Later, Hampton’s replacement found the business card of Doug Logan, CEO of Cyber Ninjas, the group that performed a discredited audit of Arizona’s votes, in the county elections office, according to information Marks uncovered. Lindell and Logan remain unindicted.She pointed the room to “unanswered questions”: what happened to Hampton’s emails and laptop, which state investigators say they haven’t been able to obtain, and when did local election board members and the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, learn of the breach? Also, why did local elections board member Eric Chaney, seen on video obtained by Marks welcoming Scott Hall and others into the elections office, remain on the board until September of last year? Chaney is also unnamed in Willis’s indictments.“You can’t wait on the state,” Marks told the room. “It’s up to local people to demand accountability.”Cliff Albright, co-founder of the national group Black Voters Matter, took the stage and told the audience that he knew what it was like to be dealing with political controversy in a small town in the south, “where everybody knows what car you drive, and whether you’ve been at a meeting”.Albright also reminded the audience what was at stake, pointing to Coley-Pearson, who faced multiple felony charges for allegedly breaking election laws. Coley-Pearson was never found guilty, but has suffered greatly from years of legal battles, she told the Guardian.“They put all this money and time into investigating one woman?” Albright asked the room, again bringing applause. “And then you’re talking about the largest breach in US history? My message to the secretary of state and the county … is ‘Act like you care about it!’”Then Coley-Pearson addressed her neighbors. “This is so important,” she said. “This is a threat to our democracy.” She noted that she had invited local elected officials from the county commission, the city commission and the board of elections – and only two came.Referring to the breach, she said: “They felt like they could come to Coffee county because ain’t nobody gonna get involved except for Olivia and her few folks … [but] we’ve worked too hard … to let them take our rights away!”Afterward, 70-year-old Alphermease Moore, who is Black and a Coffee county resident, noted that she was part of the local high school’s first integrated graduating class, in 1971.“I was in Coffee high school’s first integrated group and was hoping, 50 years later, that things would be different. But the same things happening then are happening now,” she said, referring to Coley-Pearson’s prosecution on the one hand, and the lack of accountability for local white officials on the other. “It’s a constant climb.”Standing outside the church, Hudson was emotional. He had learned about the breach months ago, after reading about it in the national press. “I was stunned. I could not believe it.”Hudson, a well-known, longtime white resident of Coffee county, has been writing the county commission and board of elections, seeking an independent investigation. He attended an elections board meeting this spring and remarked, “If this was Olivia Coley-Pearson [who breached the elections system], she’d be in jail already.”Douglas resident Larry Nesmith has been active in local Democratic party politics for 14 years. He said he would have been at the board of elections office on 7 January 2021, when the first visit by Trump’s associates occurred, but Hampton “told me not to come”.Months later, he said, “I found out what happened on TV. I was shocked to find out. I feel our board of elections tried to cover [it] up. There’s no way they didn’t know.”“Those responsible need to be held accountable,” he added. “These are people I know. Those who haven’t been indicted need to be. Bring them to justice. Don’t let them walk away!” More

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    Why Trial Dates for Trump’s Georgia Case Are So Uncertain

    Some defendants have already sought to move the case to federal court, while others are seeking speedy or separate trials.Even as former President Donald J. Trump and his 18 co-defendants in the Georgia election interference case turned themselves in one by one at an Atlanta jail this week, their lawyers began working to change how the case will play out.They are already at odds over when they will have their day in court, but also, crucially, where. Should enough of them succeed, the case could split into several smaller cases, perhaps overseen by different judges in different courtrooms, running on different timelines.Five defendants have already sought to move the state case to federal court, citing their ties to the federal government. The first one to file — Mark Meadows, Mr. Trump’s chief of staff during the 2020 election — will make the argument for removal on Monday, in a hearing before a federal judge in Atlanta.Federal officials charged with state crimes can move their cases to federal court if they can convince a judge that they are being charged for actions connected to their official duties, among other things.In the Georgia case, the question of whether to change the venue — a legal maneuver known as removal — matters because it would affect the composition of a jury. If the case stays in Fulton County, Ga., the jury will come from a bastion of Democratic politics where Mr. Trump was trounced in 2020. If the case is removed to federal court, the jury will be drawn from a 10-county region of Georgia that is more suburban and rural — and somewhat more Trump-friendly. Because it takes only one not-guilty vote to hang a jury, this modest advantage could prove to be a very big deal.The coming fights over the proper venue for the case are only one strand of a complicated tangle of efforts being launched by a gaggle of defense lawyers now representing Mr. Trump and the 18 others named in the 98-page racketeering indictment. This week, the lawyers clogged both state and federal court dockets with motions that will also determine when the case begins.Already, one defendant’s case is splitting off as a result. Kenneth Chesebro, a lawyer who advised Mr. Trump after the 2020 election, has asked for a speedy trial, and the presiding state judge has agreed to it. His trial is now set to begin on Oct. 23. Another defendant, Sidney Powell, filed a similar motion on Friday, and a third, John Eastman, also plans to invoke his right to an early trial, according to one of his lawyers.Soon after Mr. Chesebro set in motion the possibility of an October trial, Mr. Trump, obviously uncomfortable with the idea of going to court so soon, informed the court that he intended to sever his case from the rest of the defendants. Ordering separate trials for defendants in a large racketeering indictment can occur for any number of reasons, and the judge, Scott McAfee, has made clear the early trial date applied only to Mr. Chesebro.Mr. Trump’s move came as no surprise. As the leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, he is in no hurry to see the Georgia matter, or the other three criminal cases against him, go to trial. In the separate federal election interference case Mr. Trump faces in Washington, D.C., his lawyers have asked that the trial start safely beyond the November 2024 general election — in April 2026.In Georgia, the possibility that even a portion of the sprawling case may go to trial in October remains up in the air. The removal efforts have much to do with that.There is a possibility that if one of the five defendants seeking removal is successful, then all 19 will be forced into federal court. Many legal scholars have noted that the question is unsettled.“We are heading for uncharted territory at this point, and nobody knows for sure what is in this novel frontier,” Donald Samuel, a veteran Atlanta defense attorney who represents one of the defendants in the Trump case, Ray Smith III, wrote in an email. “Maybe a trip to the Supreme Court.”The dizzying legal gamesmanship reflects the unique nature of a case that has swept up a former president, a number of relatively obscure Georgia Republican activists, a former publicist for Kanye West and lawyer-defendants of varying prominence. All bring their own agendas, financial concerns and opinions about their chances at trial.And of course, one of them seeks to regain the title of leader of the free world.Some of the defendants seeking a speedy trial may believe that the case against them is weak. They may also hope to catch prosecutors unprepared, although in this case, Fani T. Willis, the district attorney, has been investigating for two and a half years and has had plenty of time to get ready.Fani T. Willis, the district attorney, has been investigating the case for two and a half years. Kenny Holston/The New York TimesAnother reason that some may desire a speedy trial is money.Ms. Willis had originally sought to start a trial in March, but even that seemed ambitious given the complexity of the case. Harvey Silverglate, the lawyer for Mr. Eastman, said he could imagine a scenario in which a verdict might not come for three years.“And Eastman is not a wealthy man,” he said.Mr. Silverglate added that his client “doesn’t have the contributors” that Mr. Trump has. “We are going to seek a severance and a speedy trial. If we have a severance, the trial will take three weeks,” he predicted.How long would a regular racketeering trial take? Brian Tevis, an Atlanta lawyer who negotiated the bond agreement for Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s former personal lawyer, said that “the defense side would probably want potentially a year or so to catch up.”“You have to realize that the state had a two-year head start,” he said. “They know what they have, no one else knows what they have. No discovery has been turned over, we haven’t even had arraignment yet.”In addition to Mr. Meadows, Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department official, is already seeking removal, as is David Shafer, the former head of the Georgia Republican Party; Shawn Still, a Georgia state senator; and Cathy Latham, the former chair of the Republican Party in Coffee County, Ga. Mr. Trump is almost certain to follow, having already tried and failed to have a state criminal case against him in New York moved to federal court.Former President Donald J. Trump informed the court that he intended to sever his case from the rest of the defendants.Doug Mills/The New York TimesThe indictment charges Mr. Meadows with racketeering and “solicitation of violation of oath by public officer” for his participation in the Jan. 2, 2021 call in which Mr. Trump told the Georgia secretary of state that he wanted to “find” enough votes to win Georgia. The indictment also describes other efforts by Mr. Meadows that prosecutors say were part of the illegal scheme to overturn the 2020 election.Mr. Meadows’s lawyers argue that all of the actions in question were what “one would expect” of a White House chief of staff — “arranging Oval Office meetings, contacting state officials on the president’s behalf, visiting a state government building, and setting up a phone call for the president” — and that removal is therefore justified.Prosecutors contend that Mr. Meadows was in fact engaging in political activity that was not part of a chief of staff’s job.The issue is likely to be at the heart of Mr. Trump’s removal effort as well: In calling the secretary of state and other Georgia officials after he lost the election, was he working on his own behalf, or in his capacity as president, to ensure that the election had run properly?Anthony Michael Kreis, an assistant law professor at Georgia State University, said that the indictment may contain an Easter egg that could spoil Mr. Trump’s argument that he was intervening in the Georgia election as part of his duty as a federal official.The indictment says that the election-reversal scheme lasted through September 2021, when Mr. Trump wrote a letter to Georgia’s secretary of state asking him to take steps to decertify the election.Mr. Trump, by that point, had been out of federal office for months.“By showing the racketeering enterprise continued well beyond his time in office,” Mr. Kreis said in a text message, “it undercuts any argument that Trump was acting in a governmental capacity to ensure the election was free, fair and accurate.” More

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    Defiant Trump seeks to gain advantage by using mugshot in fundraising push

    Donald Trump’s campaign sought to turn his public disgrace into a political weapon on Friday by raising funds and creating merchandise with his glowering prison mugshot.The mugshot, a historic first for a former US president, was made public after a 20-minute booking at the decrepit prison in Atlanta, Georgia, on Thursday, over charges that Trump ran a criminal racket to overturn the 2020 election in the state.The 77-year-old was fingerprinted and listed in jail records as inmate P01135809, with blue eyes and blond or strawberry hair. He gave his height as 6ft 3in (1.91m) and his weight as 215 pounds (97.5kg): some 24lb less than the White House doctor reported in 2018.On Friday, the remaining indicted co-conspirators, among them the former justice department official Jeffrey Clark, surrendered themselves at the jail. Legal wrangling over procedure to trial continued. One co-conspirator, the attorney Kenneth Chesebro, saw his request for a speedy trial granted, a date set in October. Lawyers for Trump said they did not want a quick trial.The Georgia indictment was Trump’s fourth but the first to produce a mugshot, a medium often associated with drug dealers or drunk drivers. In the picture, the one-time most powerful man in the world is seen scowling at the camera while wearing his customary blue suit, white shirt and red tie. The image flashed up on screens across the nation and ran on the front pages of the New York Times, the Washington Post and newspapers around the world.But while millions saw a symbol of justice finally catching up with an unrepentant plotter, proof no one is above the law, millions saw a face of defiance, the indelible image a martyr targeted by his enemies.Released on $200,000 bail, Trump wasted no time in seeking advantage. On X, formerly known as Twitter, he posted the mugshot and the words “Election interference. Never surrender!” with a link to his website, which directs to a fundraising page.It was his first post since 8 January 2021, when Twitter suspended his account after the Capitol attack. His account was reinstated last November, shortly after Elon Musk bought the company, but Trump had stuck with his own Truth Social platform.The post came as Trump was flying back to New Jersey. He has 86.6 million followers on X, dwarfing his rivals in the 2024 race, and used the platform as a personal megaphone before and during his presidency. But it remained unclear whether the post was a one-off or not. Trump posted the same message on Truth Social, writing: “I love Truth Social. It is my home!!!”Trump’s 2024 campaign plastered the mugshot on flasks, mugs, T-shirts and other merchandise. An email advertised a T-shirt: “Breaking news: The mugshot is here.” It said: “This mugshot will forever go down in history as a symbol of America’s defiance of tyranny.”The mugshot appears to be a necessary cash cow, given how much money Trump’s campaign is spending on lawyers as he battles 91 criminal charges in four jurisdictions. It could also be a rallying point for his effort to win back the White House, perhaps his best hope of avoiding prison.His son, Donald Trump Jr, told reporters after the first Republican debate in Milwaukee on Wednesday: “It’s going to be the most iconic photo in the history of US politics, if not perhaps the history of the United States.”Asked by the Guardian if his father was afraid of going to prison, Don Jr replied: “We’ve gotten so used to this, we don’t even think about it. We’re joking around because we understand exactly what’s going on and hopefully the American people wake up to exactly what’s going on as well.“This is the stuff that the Democrat [sic] party and many in the media actually would be outraged about and are outraged about when it’s happening in Russia. When it happens in the United States, they’re strangely quiet and that’s very telling.”Far-right Republicans joined in the incendiary rhetoric. Sarah Palin, a former Alaska governor and vice-presidential nominee, told the rightwing Newsmax network: “Those who are conducting this travesty and creating this two-tier system of justice, I want to ask them what the heck, do you want us to be in civil war? Because that’s what’s going to happen.”She added: “We’re not going to keep putting up with this.”There is no evidence Joe Biden or Democrats have interfered in the process that led to Trump’s indictments, which are set to collide with next year’s election.In an another head-spinning week, Trump’s arraignment came a day after he skipped the debate, choosing instead an interview with the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson that was posted on X.When the candidates were asked if they would support Trump even if he had a criminal conviction, four instantly raised their hands and two, Ron DeSantis and Mike Pence, wavered before following suit. Chris Christie made an awkward gesture and only Asa Hutchinson kept his hand down.Trump dominates polling. Charlie Sykes, editor of the Bulwark website and a former conservative radio host, said: “If you would have told someone back in 2015 that a candidate for president had been indicted for obstruction, racketeering, false witnessing, had tried to stage a coup, and yet was still actually in the race, they would have thought you were out of your mind.“Think about how the moral standards of the political party have changed. Think about what’s happened to the party of law and order that basically says, ‘Yeah, Donald Trump may be a criminal, but he’s our criminal, and we’re OK with that.’”Republicans return to Milwaukee in less than a year for a convention that will anoint their candidate to take on Biden. Sykes said: “There’s a real possibility Donald Trump will, by the time he comes back to Milwaukee, be a convicted felon, and will be wearing an ankle bracelet when he accepts the Republican nomination.” More

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    Final Trump co-defendants surrender to authorities in Georgia – live

    From 4m agoTwo of the last co-defendants who were indicted in Georgia along with Donald Trump for attempting to overturn Joe Biden’s election win in the state three years ago surrendered to authorities today.According to Fulton county jail records, Chicago-based publicist Trevian Kutti turned herself in after being charged with threatening election worker Ruby Freeman. Also surrendering today was Stephen Lee, a longtime police chaplain in Georgia who traveled to Freeman’s home and identified himself as a pastor trying to help.Here’s a rundown of all the 19 defendants named in Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis’s sprawling indictment, which is centered on the Trump campaign’s attempt to prevent Biden from winning Georgia’s electoral votes weeks after the ballots had been counted:A social media post viewed nearly six million times of what appears to be Donald Trump fans wildly celebrating in a bar as the mugshot of the former president is broadcast on a large screen, appears to be a well-crafted hoax.The Lincoln Project, a political action committee founded by disenchanted Republicans, shared the video on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, but Newsweek claims: “the footage is actually of England soccer fans…and has been widely edited as a meme.”The Lincoln Project post doesn’t say where the video was sourced, just the words ‘TRUMP MUGSHOT JUST DROPPED’. Since posting the video 12 hours ago, the Lincoln Project has defiantly reposted the footage twice more.Ahead of the surrender, Donald Trump shook up his legal team and retained the top Georgia attorney Steven Sadow, who filed a notice of appearance with the Fulton county superior court as lead counsel, replacing Drew Findling. Trump’s other lawyer in the case, Jennifer Little, is staying on.The reason for the abrupt recalibration was unclear, and Trump’s aides suggested it was unrelated to performance. Still, Trump has a record of firing lawyers who represented him during criminal investigations but were unable to stave off charges.Findling was also unable to exempt Trump from having his mugshot taken, according to people familiar with the matter – something that personally irritated Trump, even though the Fulton county sheriff’s office had always indicated they were uninterested in making such an accommodation. His mugshot was not taken in his other criminal cases.In a clear sign of her belief that her team is ready to go to trial immediately, Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis on Thursday asked for the trial of all 19 defendants to start on 23 October after one of the co-defendants.Trump’s legal team filed a motion opposing such a quick trial date within hours, underscoring the former president’s overarching strategy to delay proceedings as much as possible – potentially until after the 2024 presidential election.Willis’ request to schedule the trial of Trump and his 18 co-defendants to begin in October came after one of the co-defendants, Trump’s former lawyer Kenneth Chesebro, apparently gambled and requested a speedy trial.In a court filing, Trump attorney Steve Sadow notified a judge that Trump will soon file a motion to sever his case from Chesebro – indicating the diverging interests of the people ensnared in the indictment.Sadow also said Trump will seek to sever his case from “any other co-defendant who makes a similar request” for a quick trial. He wrote:
    President Trump further respectfully puts the Court on notice that he requests the Court set a scheduling conference at its earliest convenience so he can be heard on the State’s motions for entry of pretrial scheduling order and to specially set trial
    Among the defendants who surrendered to Georgia authorities early this morning was Jeffrey Clark, the former justice department official charged with violating the state’s Rico act and criminal attempt to commit false statements and writings.Clark, who worked as assistant attorney general for the DOJ’s civil division from September 2020 to January 2021, was booked at the Fulton county jail on Friday morning and released on a $100,000 bond.In the indictment, prosecutors said Clark pushed to send out an official justice department letter claiming that investigators had “identified significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election in multiple States.” Donald Trump supported Clark and planned to name him acting attorney general until he was threatened with mass resignations if he did so, according to the indictment.On Tuesday, Clark had asked a judge to prohibit Fulton county Fani Willis from arresting him by a Friday deadline, arguing that his case should be handled by federal courts because of his work as a federal officer.US district judge Steve Jones denied Clark’s request, as well as a similar request by former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.Marjorie Taylor Greene, the rightwing extremist Republican congresswoman, posted a mocked-up mugshot on X, formerly known as Twitter, in a show of solidarity with Donald Trump after his surrender to Fulton county officials.Alongside the hashtag MAGAMugshot, Greene wrote:
    I stand with President Trump against the commie DA Fani Willis who is nothing more than a political hitman tasked with taking out Biden’s top political opponent.
    Vivek Ramaswamy has described himself as an “outsider”, accusing rivals for the Republican presidential nomination of being “bought and paid for” by donors and special interests.But the 38-year-old Ohio-based venture capitalist, whose sharp-elbowed and angry display stood out in the first Republican debate this week, has his own close ties to influential figures from both sides of the political aisle.Prominent among such connections are Peter Thiel, the co-founder of tech giants PayPal and Palantir and a rightwing megadonor, and Leonard Leo, the activist who has marshaled unprecedented sums in his push to stock federal courts with conservative judges.Ramaswamy is a Yale Law School friend of JD Vance, the author of the bestselling memoir Hillbilly Elegy who enjoyed success in finance before entering politics. At Yale, Vance and Ramaswamy attended what the New Yorker called an “intimate lunch seminar for select students” that was hosted by Thiel. Last year, backed by Thiel and espousing hard-right Trumpist views, Vance won a US Senate seat in Ohio.Thiel has since said he has stepped back from political donations. But he has backed Ramaswamy’s business career, supporting what the New Yorker called “a venture helping senior citizens access Medicare” and, last year, backing Strive Asset Management, a fund launched by Ramaswamy to attack environmental, social and governance (ESG) policies among corporate investors. Vance was also a backer.Ramaswamy’s primary vehicle to success has been Roivant, an investment company focused on the pharmaceuticals industry founded in 2014.The Roivant advisory board includes figures from both the Republican and Democratic establishments: Kathleen Sebelius, US health secretary under Barack Obama; Tom Daschle of South Dakota, formerly Democratic leader in the US Senate; and Olympia Snowe, formerly a Republican senator from Maine.Read the full story here.Vivek Ramaswamy, the 38-year-old biotech entrepreneur and GOP presidential hopeful, took in $450,000 in the hours after his appearance at the first Republican primary debate on Wednesday.Ramaswamy, a political newcomer whose bid for the GOP nomination has been hit by recent scandals over remarks that suggested sympathy for conspiracy theories around the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the January 6 assault on the Capitol, took in an average donation of $38, campaign spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told AP on Thursday.Ramaswamy has largely been self-funding his campaign. On Wednesday night, he repeatedly said all the other presidential candidates onstage in Milwaukee were “bought and paid for” by donors.The Guardian’s columnist Margaret Sullivan writes how Ramaswamy is America’s demagogue-in-waiting.Mere minutes after Donald Trump’s mugshot was released, the Trump campaign had already turned the image into a merchandizing opportunity.The former president’s re-election campaign announced in an email that it would give away a “free” T-shirt with Trump’s mugshot printed on it for $47.The caption on the shirt reads “NEVER SURRENDER” – which is literally what Trump was doing when the mugshot was taken on Thursday.Even as he remains the clear frontrunner for the Republican nomination, Donald Trump’s indictments are likely to take a toll on his prospects of winning the presidential election, according to a new poll.The Politico magazine/Ipsos poll suggests Americans are taking the cases against Trump seriously and that a majority are skeptical of his attempts to portray himself as a victim of a legally baseless witch-hunt.About 51% of respondents – 14% of Republicans and 88% of Democrats – said Trump is likely guilty in the federal case in which he is charged with conspiracy to defraud the US and conspiracy against rights. Another 52% said he is likely guilty in the federal case regarding his alleged mishandling of classified documents.Nearly 60% of respondents said they wanted the federal trial in Trump’s 2020 election subversion case to take place before the 2024 Republican primaries begin next year. Federal prosecutors have proposed the trial begin 2 Jan 2024, while Trump’s lawyers have pushed for a April 2026 trial start date.Nearly one-third of respondents said that a conviction in the federal trial in Trump’s 2020 election subversion case would make them less likely to support Trump, including 34% of independents.And half of the country said Trump should go to prison if he is convicted in the justice department’s 2020 election case, according to the poll.CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski points out that Donald Trump is polling better than he did at any point in 2020.The former president faces 91 felony counts and has been charged with attempting to subvert democracy, risking national security secrets and falsifying business records in connection with a hush money payment to an adult film star.Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and Republican vice-presidential nominee, said a second US civil war is “going to happen” if state and federal authorities continue to prosecute Donald Trump.“Those who are conducting this travesty and creating this two-tier system of justice, I want to ask them what the heck, do you do want us to be in civil war? Because that’s what’s going to happen,” Palin told Newsmax on Thursday night.
    We’re not going to keep putting up with this.
    Palin was speaking to the rightwing network as Trump surrendered at a jail in Fulton county, Georgia, and a historic mugshot was released.Academics have long warned of the potential for Trump to stoke violence worse than the attack on Congress on 6 January 2021, when supporters he told to “fight like hell” to stop certification of Biden’s victory stormed the Capitol building. Nine deaths have been linked to the riot.Barbara F Walter, author of How Civil Wars Start: And How To Stop Them and a CIA advisor, has written:
    No one wants to believe that their beloved democracy is in decline, or headed toward war.
    But “if you were an analyst in a foreign country looking at events in America – the same way you’d look at events in Ukraine or Ivory Coast or Venezuela – you would go down a checklist, assessing each of the conditions that make civil war likely.
    And what you would find is that the United States, a democracy founded more than two centuries ago, has entered very dangerous territory.
    Donald Trump described his experience of being booked at the Fulton county jail on Thursday as “terrible” and “very sad” after he surrendered to authorities on felony charges related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.Speaking to Newsmax after flying out of Georgia, Trump said he was treated “nicely” during his booking process but said his arrest was a “very sad day for the country”. He said:
    I took a mugshot. I’d never heard the words mug shot. They didn’t teach me that at the Wharton School of Finance.
    He added:
    I went through an experience that I never thought I’d have to go through, but then I’ve gone through the same experience three other times. In my whole life, I didn’t know anything about indictments. And now I’ve been indicted, like, four times
    In a separate interview with Fox News, Trump said:
    It is not a comfortable feeling – especially when you’ve done nothing wrong.
    Trump faces 13 charges in Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis’ sprawling racketeering case, including violating the state’s racketeering act, soliciting a public officer to violate their oath, conspiring to impersonate a public officer, conspiring to commit forgery in the first degree and conspiring to file false documents. More

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    Mugshotted, Trump’s veneer of immunity cracked. Yet his wrath is bottomless | Lloyd Green

    On Wednesday night, Donald Trump won the Republican debate without showing up. One night later, he surrendered to law enforcement at the Fulton county, Georgia, jail. In the span of 24 hours, cameras captured the essence of the current presidential contest, namely the legal status of the prior occupant of the Oval Office. Whether Trump is a free man or a convict on election day 2024 will weigh heavily upon voters and the republic.At the debate, six of the eight contenders raised their hands when asked if they would back Trump if he were convicted. With the predictable exceptions of Chris Christie and Asa Hutchinson, the rest of the pack fell into line.Despite the fact that Trump was seemingly untroubled by January 6 rioters’ calls to hang Mike Pence from a makeshift gallows outside the US Capitol, the hapless vice-president declared his fealty. And if Pence declined to resist, then Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley could only be expected to acquiesce.Over the past eight years, the demarcation between the Republican rank and file and Trump’s core has disappeared. Each new indictment bolsters his grip on the Republican party. As a corollary, never-Trump Republicans are now independents and Democrats. Our politics convulses as the party of Lincoln vanishes.The scene outside the jail was controlled chaos. A cluster of Trump’s supporters descended upon the surrender site. His travails were theirs. By extension, they view the eventual judgments rendered in these cases as a verdict on them.Their taunt, “screw your feelings”, was always bravado. Yet the resentment is real. Perceived slights are a tremendous political motivator.Around 7.30pm, Trump entered the jail, one of the grimmest in the US, amid a phalanx of lawyers, Secret Service agents and state troopers. Within a half hour, he left the building. In between, the state of Georgia took his mugshot. For a brief moment, the system processed him as it might process a common criminal.But only for that moment and not exactly. Most criminal defendants do not fly into Atlanta via private jet or enter with the Secret Service in tow. Said differently, Trump is not the typical defendant.The cases brought by the special counsel Jack Smith; the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis; and the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg are dramas in which US democracy is on trial too. How we perceive ourselves and how others view this country will never be the same.Regardless, the day’s events stripped away the veneer of untouchability that Trump had cultivated over decades. He is in legal jeopardy. With hindsight, the verdict in the first E Jean Carroll case, that Trump had sexually abused the writer and then defamed her, presaged what has since followed.By contrast, dignity as traditionally understood was never Trump’s strong suit. He was always tabloid fodder and preferred it that way. John Barron and New York Post headlines were his own inventions.For Trump and his minions, the coming election is more than a rematch between aging men. It is about revenge – against the deep state, against the justice department and the FBI, against local prosecutors, against the media. His is a bottomless pit of wrath.At the debate, Haley derided Trump as the most disliked politician in the US. She may have a point, but only barely. A recent poll pegs Trump’s unfavourability at 56%. For Joe Biden and Kamala Harris the numbers are 55% and 52%, respectively.The polls also show Trump performing better today than he did in 2020. Ron DeSantis fades. Biden’s lead is narrow and tenuous. His record is on the line. Inflation, immigration and the US withdrawal from Afghanistan are all fair game.Likewise, Hunter Biden and his woes may return to bite his father. For whatever reason, the president will not distance himself from his wayward son. Inviting Hunter to a state dinner was not a one-off. Recently, the two families vacationed together at the Lake Tahoe home of Tom Steyer, the other billionaire who challenged Biden for the Democratic nomination. Love may actually be blind.For little more than a minute, Trump stood in the front of his jet and proclaimed himself not guilty. He then lumbered up the plane’s stairs while swaths of the country and the media waited for his mugshot to drop.He faces state charges, outside the purview of the president’s pardon power. Trump has reason to worry.His inmate number is P01135809. By 5 November 2024, those figures will be etched on the national psyche and splattered on campaign merchandise.
    Lloyd Green is an attorney in New York and served in the US Department of Justice from 1990 to 1992 More

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    Belligerence and hostility: Trump’s mugshot defines modern US politics

    Mugshots define eras.Bugsy Siegel peering malevolently from beneath his fedora in a 1928 booking photo summed up the perverse romance of gangsters in the prohibition age.Nearly half a century later, mugshots of David Bowie, elegantly dressed but dead-eyed after his arrest for drug possession, and a dishevelled Janis Joplin, detained for “vulgar and indecent language”, spoke to the shock waves created by 1960s counterculture.Now comes what Donald Trump Jr described as “the most iconic photo in the history of US politics” before the booking picture of his father glaring into the camera was even taken. But whether deeply divided Americans view the first ever mugshot of a former president as that of a gangster or a rock star is very much in the politics of the beholder.Trump’s hostility shines through as he turns his eyes up toward the camera above him and in his taut, downturned mouth as he is booked into the Fulton county jail on charges of trying to steal the 2020 presidential election. Dressed in a blue suit, white shirt and red tie, he makes no attempt to put on a smile like some of his co-defendants in their mugshots.The picture does not flatter but it does convey the message many of Trump’s supporters want to hear – belligerence.The six-pointed star of the Fulton county sheriff’s office badge and the name of the sheriff, Patrick Labat, sits in the top left hand corner of the picture. But some will be disappointed that Trump is not seen in the classic pose holding a board in front of his chest with his name and date of arrest.For all that, the former president’s supporters are already embracing the booking photo as a badge of honour and defiance. It will be held up as evidence that their man will not give up the fight against a system his followers see as ever more determined to bring him down and prevent him returning to the White House.Far-right congresswoman Lauren Boebert led the way with a tweet proclaiming: “Not all heroes wear capes.”The president’s detractors, on the other hand, will see the booking photo as evidence that even a man who was once the most powerful person in the land cannot escape the might of the justice system. Some will welcome anything that makes him look even a little bit more criminal as a confirmation that sooner or later he is going to prison. The accused may be presumed innocent until a plea or a jury says otherwise but mugshots can have a way of conveying guilt.For Trump though, the picture is likely to prove yet another money spinner. The mugshot’s rapid appearance on T-shirts, posters and, well, mugs glorifying a martyred Trump can be expected.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAs it happens, an official Trump fundraising website is already selling T-shirts and coffee mugs with an image manipulated to appear as if the former president is in a booking photo with height markers behind him and a board in front with his name and the date, “04 04 2023” – the day he was indicted in New York on fraud charges.Merchandise with the real thing is likely to sell briskly given the enthusiasm with which the former president’s supporters now treat each public humiliation as an accomplishment.Two impeachments and four sets of indictments, from financial fraud to a slew of charges over the 2020 election, have done little to damage Trump’s standing among the true believers, and have only bolstered his run for the Republican presidential nomination. Such is the strength of that belief that a recent CBS poll showed Trump voters trust him more than their own family members and religious leaders.Ordinary Americans have already got creative in response to the flood of indictments by mocking up pictures of the former president in an orange jump suit a la Guantánamo prison and in printing T-shirts with Trump in various states of detention with slogans declaring “Trumped up charges”, “Guilty AF”,“Guilty of winning” and “Legend”.There will be plenty who will challenge Don Jr’s claim that the mugshot has instantly become the most iconic photo in US political history. Pictures of John F Kennedy’s assassination or Martin Luther King Jr leading the march for freedom or a host of other historic moments will surely prove more enduring.But as with the gangsters and rock stars, Trump’s booking photo may come to define an era – one of unusual political turmoil that has yet to resolve whether his next mugshot is as an inmate. More

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    Trump’s jail spectacle is historic, but it won’t harm him politically

    One by one this week, they’ve made their way to 901 Rice Street, the address of the notorious Fulton county jail. Lawyers, government officials, a former state party chair and others have all surrendered to authorities after being charged as part of an alleged criminal effort to overturn the 2020 election.On Thursday, the head of that enterprise, Donald Trump, himself surrendered, marking another historic moment for a president who has reshaped the rules of American politics. This is the closest that Trump has been to a jail cell to date and serves as a blunt reminder that no American or former president is above the law.Like nearly everything Trump does, his surrender was orchestrated to be a spectacle. He deliberately timed his surrender, 7.30pm, to maximize cable news coverage. Reporters camped outside the jail all day on Thursday as temperatures reached mid-90s F and Trump supporters gathered for a demonstration. There was wall-to-wall news coverage of Trump’s motorcade and arrival at the jail. While politicians typically try and shift attention away from their criminal legal troubles, Trump has embraced it, feeding into the circuit by advertising his surrender time.Despite Trump’s brashness, the gravity of the moment is underscored by the venue where Trump surrendered. In his other three cases, Trump has surrendered in courthouses and then quickly appeared in a courtroom for an arraignment. On Thursday, he’ll turn himself in at a jailhouse that has been so beset by horrific conditions that it’s under investigation from the Department of Justice. For the first time, he’ll have to post a cash bond – $200,000 – to guarantee his release.In the other three instances, Trump has avoided the indignity of a mugshot. On Thursday, he got one that will be released to the public. For a man who cares deeply about perception, the image released on Thursday by the Fulton county sheriff will be inescapable, forever establishing him as the only president to ever be criminally prosecuted with a mugshot. It is also likely to be one that is forever part of America’s story – a snapshot of the president and a movement who tried to bend American institutions and tested the contours of American governance and the rule of law at every opportunity.In a sense it marks the end of a two-year chapter of investigating Trump’s efforts to lead a coup to overturn the 2020 election results. It also marks the beginning of the next chapter – the trials to convict him.Still, it would be a mistake to assume that the mugshot and the spectacle of Trump’s surrender at jail on Thursday will harm Trump politically. Instead, it is only likely to more deeply entrench support from those who back Trump and believe he is being persecuted.As both a candidate and president, Trump has made the politics of grievance, the feeling of being persecuted and wronged, central to his political identity. Trump is already using his indictments to rally his supporters. When he surrendered in New York earlier this year, officials waived a mugshot. Trump’s campaign quickly released a fake one and began fundraising with it instead.The booking, and the indictment that came before it, is also the latest step in what is likely to be a sustained and nasty battle, both in the public domain and in court, between Trump and Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney. Trump has already attacked Willis, a Democrat and the first Black woman to hold her office, saying – of all things – that she is racist. Willis has not responded to those attacks, and urged those in her office to ignore them, the Atlanta Journal Constitution reported.“You may not comment in any way on the ad or any of the negativity that may be expressed against me, your colleagues, this office in the coming days, weeks or months,” she wrote in an email earlier this month. “We have no personal feelings against those we investigate or prosecute and we should not express any.”Trump allies, both in Georgia and in Washington DC, have already begun separate efforts to make Willis’s work as difficult as possible. But Willis, who has a reputation for being an aggressive prosecutor, hasn’t blinked. So far, she’s headed off last-ditch efforts by Mark Meadows and Jeffrey Clark, two of Trump’s co-defendants, to avoid surrendering.For all the fanfare of Trump’s surrender, the most significant developments may be what happens far away from Rice Street and the Fulton county courthouse. Trump wields a commanding lead in the polls for the Republican nomination for president.Asked during the first Republican debate on Wednesday if they would support Trump if he was the nominee, nearly all of the candidates said yes. More