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      Appeasing Donald Trump Won’t Work

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      I’m going to begin this column with a rather unusual reading recommendation. If you’ve got an afternoon to kill and want to read 126 pages of heavily footnoted legal argument and historical analysis, I strongly recommend a law review article entitled “The Sweep and Force of Section Three.” It’s a rather dull headline for a highly provocative argument: that Donald Trump is constitutionally disqualified from holding the office of president.In the article, two respected conservative law professors, William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen, make the case that the text, history and tradition of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment — a post-Civil War amendment that prohibited former public officials from holding office again if they “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” or gave “aid or comfort” to those who did — all strongly point to the conclusion that Trump is ineligible for the presidency based on his actions on and related to Jan. 6, 2021. Barring a two-thirds congressional amnesty vote, Trump’s ineligibility, Baude and Paulsen argue, is as absolute as if he were too young to be president or were not a natural-born citizen of the United States.It’s a fascinating and compelling argument that only grows more compelling with each painstakingly researched page. But as I was reading it, a single, depressing thought came to my mind. Baude and Paulsen’s argument may well represent the single most rigorous and definitive explanation of Section 3 ever put to paper, yet it’s difficult to imagine, at this late date, the Supreme Court ultimately either striking Trump from the ballot or permitting state officials to do so.As powerful as Baude and Paulsen’s substantive argument is, the late date means that by the time any challenge to Trump’s eligibility might reach the Supreme Court, voters may have already started voting in the Republican primaries. Millions of votes could have been cast. The Supreme Court is already reluctant to change election procedures on the eve of an election. How eager would it be to remove a candidate from the ballot after he’s perhaps even clinched a primary?While I believe the court should intervene even if the hour is late, it’s worth remembering that it would face this decision only because of the comprehensive failure of congressional Republicans. Let me be specific. There was never any way to remove Trump from American politics through the Democratic Party alone. Ending Trump’s political career required Republican cooperation, and Republicans have shirked their constitutional duties, sometimes through sheer cowardice. They have punted their responsibilities to other branches of government or simply shrunk back in fear of the consequences.In hindsight, for example, Republican inaction after Jan. 6 boggles the mind. Rather than remove Trump from American politics by convicting him in the Senate after his second impeachment, Republicans punted their responsibilities to the American legal system. As Mitch McConnell said when he voted to acquit Trump, “We have a criminal justice system in this country.” Yet not even a successful prosecution and felony conviction — on any of the charges against him, in any of the multiple venues — can disqualify Trump from serving as president. Because of G.O.P. cowardice, our nation is genuinely facing the possibility of a president’s taking the oath of office while also appealing one or more substantial prison sentences.Republicans have also punted to the American voters, suggesting that any outstanding questions of Trump’s fitness be decided at the ballot box. It’s a recommendation with some real appeal. (In his most recent newsletter, my colleague Ross Douthat makes a powerful case that only politics can solve the problem of Donald Trump.) “Give the people what they want” is a core element of democratic politics, and if enough people “want” Trump, then who are American politicians or judges to deprive them? Yet the American founders (and the drafters of the 14th Amendment) also knew the necessity of occasionally checking the popular will, and the Constitution thus contains a host of safeguards designed to protect American democracy from majorities run amok. After all, if voting alone were sufficient to protect America from insurrectionist leaders, there would have been no need to draft or ratify Section 3.Why are Republicans in Congress punting to voters and the legal system? For many of them, the answer lies in raw fear. First, there is the simple political fear of losing a House or Senate seat. In polarized, gerrymandered America, all too many Republican politicians face political risk only from their right, and that “right” appears to be overwhelmingly populated by Trumpists.But there’s another fear as well, that imposing accountability will only escalate American political division, leading to a tit-for-tat of prosecuted or disqualified politicians. This fear is sometimes difficult to take seriously. For example, conservative podcaster Ben Shapiro raised it, arguing that “running for office now carries the legal risk of going to jail — on all sides.” Yet he had himself written an entire book calling for racketeering charges against Barack Obama.That said, the idea that vengeful MAGA Republicans might prosecute Democrats out of spite is credible enough to raise concerns outside the infotainment right. Michael McConnell, a conservative professor I admire a great deal (and one who is no fan of Donald Trump), expressed concern about the Section 3 approach to disqualifying Trump. “I worry that this approach could empower partisans to seek disqualification every time a politician supports or speaks in support of the objectives of a political riot,” he wrote, adding, “Imagine how bad actors will use this theory.”In other words, Trump abused America once, and the fear is that if we hold him accountable, he or his allies will abuse our nation again. I think Professor McConnell’s warnings are correct. Trump and his allies are already advertising their plans for revenge. But if past practice is any guide, Trump and his allies will abuse our nation whether we hold him accountable or not. The abuse is the constant reality of Trump and the movement he leads. Accountability is the variable — dependent on the courage and will of key American leaders — and only accountability has any real hope of stopping the abuse.A fundamental reality of human existence is that vice often leaves virtue with few good options. Evil men can attach catastrophic risks to virtually any course of action, however admirable. But we can and should learn lessons from history. George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, two of our greatest presidents, both faced insurrectionary movements, and their example should teach us today. When Washington faced an open revolt during the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794, he didn’t appease the rebels, instead mobilizing overwhelming force to meet the moment and end the threat.In 1861, Lincoln rejected advice to abandon Fort Sumter in South Carolina in the hope of avoiding direct confrontation with the nascent Confederate Army. Instead, he ordered the Navy to resupply the fort. The Confederates bombarded Sumter and launched the deadliest war in American history, but there was no point at which Lincoln was going to permit rebels to blackmail the United States into extinction.If you think the comparisons to the Whiskey Rebellion or the Civil War are overwrought, just consider the consequences had Trump’s plan succeeded. I have previously described Jan. 6 as “America’s near-death day” for good reason. If Mike Pence had declared Trump the victor — or even if the certification of the election had been delayed — one shudders to consider what would have happened next. We would have faced the possibility of two presidents’ being sworn in at once, with the Supreme Court (and ultimately federal law enforcement, or perhaps even the Army) being tasked with deciding which one was truly legitimate.Thankfully, the American legal system has worked well enough to knock the MAGA movement on its heels. Hundreds of Jan. 6 rioters face criminal justice. The movement’s corrupt lawyers face their own days in court. Trump is indicted in four jurisdictions. Yet all of that work can be undone — and every triumph will turn to defeat — if a disqualified president reclaims power in large part through the fear of his foes.But the story of Washington and Lincoln doesn’t stop with their decisive victories. While 10 members of the Whiskey Rebellion were tried for treason, only two were convicted, and Washington ultimately pardoned them both. On the eve of final victory, Lincoln’s second Inaugural Address contained words of grace that echo through history, “With malice toward none, with charity for all.”Victory is not incompatible with mercy, and mercy can be indispensable after victory. But while the threat remains, so must the resolve, even if it means asking the Supreme Court to intervene at the worst possible time. Let me end where I began. Read Baude and Paulsen — and not just for their compelling legal argument. Read and remember what it was like when people of character and conviction inhabited the American political class. They have given us the tools to defend the American experiment. All we need is the will.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected] The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Republicans Wanted a Special Counsel Investigation of Hunter Biden. Now Many Oppose It.

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      Although some G.O.P. lawmakers see the appointment of David C. Weiss as a vindication of their strategy, others criticize the now-scuttled plea deal he struck with Mr. Biden.Congressional Republicans have for months repeatedly written to Attorney General Merrick B. Garland demanding he appoint a special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden, the president’s son, over his business dealings.Some even demanded that a specific man be named to lead the inquiry: David C. Weiss, the Trump-appointed Delaware U.S. attorney who has long investigated the case.But on Friday, after Mr. Garland elevated Mr. Weiss to special counsel status, Republicans in Congress reacted publicly not with triumph, but with outrage. “David Weiss can’t be trusted and this is just a new way to whitewash the Biden family’s corruption,” Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee wrote on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.The reaction was a notable political development, one that underscored both how Mr. Weiss, a Republican, has fallen in conservative circles, and how deeply it has become ingrained in the G.O.P. to oppose the Justice Department at every turn.“The reality is this appointment is meant to distract from, and slow down, our investigations,” said Representative Jason Smith, Republican of Missouri and chairman of Ways and Means, one of three congressional committees looking into the Biden family’s finances.But in interviews, away from social media and television appearances, the reaction of many Republicans to Mr. Weiss’s appointment was more nuanced. Privately, some in the G.O.P. were chalking up the development as a victory.The party had worked for years to elevate the Hunter Biden case — which Democrats have long dismissed as a partisan obsession of the right — to a scandal equivalent to those dogging former President Donald J. Trump, who has faced two impeachment trials, two special counsel investigations and three indictments totaling 78 felony counts against him. Those indictments include charges of conspiracy to defraud the United States and willfully retaining national defense information after he left office.By contrast, Hunter Biden has thus far been accused of two misdemeanor crimes stemming from his failure to pay taxes on more than $1.5 million in income related to his overseas business deals, and one felony count of illegally possessing a firearm while being a drug user.After leaving his job as a lobbyist while his father was running to become vice president more than a decade ago, Hunter Biden, a Yale-educated lawyer, and partners entered into a series of international business relationships, often with firms seeking influence and access within the United States. Mr. Biden was paid handsomely, even as he descended into drug addiction, and Republicans have accused him and his family of corruption. But they have not produced evidence that any of the overseas money went to President Biden or that the president influenced U.S. policy to benefit his son’s business partners.“This appointment is meant to distract from, and slow down, our investigations,” said Representative Jason Smith, Republican of Missouri and chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, which is looking into the Biden family’s finances.Brendan Smialowski/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesEven as they objected to Mr. Weiss, some Republicans said the appointment appeared to be an acknowledgment that the allegations they had made deserved a serious investigation. It promised to keep Hunter Biden’s misdeeds in the news — and in the courts — for longer than Democrats would like as the 2024 presidential election heats up. And it ensured that in the minds of some voters the names Trump and Biden would both be linked to scandal, even if Republicans have not proved any wrongdoing by the current president.In an interview with Newsmax, a top Trump adviser, Jason Miller, appeared to echo both sentiments, and foreshadowed coming attacks.Mr. Miller said the appointment of Mr. Weiss “stinks” and accused the prosecutor of sitting on his hands for years. But, he added, ”I do want to make sure that my Republican brethren” don’t ”lose sight of the big prize here.”He described the appointment of a special counsel as “a direct acknowledgment that Hunter Biden did something wrong,” and he recalled President Biden saying in a 2020 debate with Mr. Trump that he had not done anything wrong.Since Mr. Weiss announced a proposed plea deal in June with Mr. Biden — an agreement that would have allowed him to avoid jail time on tax and gun charges but has since fallen apart — Republicans in Congress have sharply criticized the government, accusing the Justice Department of leniency with the president’s son as they conduct their own investigations in an effort to tie his overseas business dealings to the president. House Republicans have also brought forth two I.R.S. agents who worked on Mr. Weiss’s investigation and claimed there had been political interference.One allegation made by the I.R.S. agents was that Mr. Weiss had sought to bring charges against Hunter Biden in Washington and California but had been rebuffed by prosecutors in those jurisdictions who declined to partner with him. The order appointing Mr. Weiss to special counsel authorizes him to bring charges in any jurisdiction.Alyssa DaCunha, a co-chair of the congressional investigations practice at the law firm WilmerHale, said she believed House Republicans’ investigations and their criticisms of the proposed plea deal had “caught the attention” of the Justice Department.“There’s a real need to make sure that whatever charging decisions are made are very, very well supported and the department can really stand behind them,” Ms. DaCunha said. “It seems like this will extend the life of the investigation, and so there are lots of ways in which this is going to complicate the narrative for Democrats moving forward and give the Republicans lots of leverage.”Some House Republicans close to Mr. Trump acknowledged they were pleased with the announcement of the special counsel. For Mr. Trump, in particular, it provided him with the investigation he has long desired to be able to depict the Biden family as corrupt, even as Hunter Biden’s alleged crimes are significantly less severe than the charges Mr. Trump is facing.Mr. Trump’s statement did not suggest that he viewed the appointment of a special counsel as a bad development, merely that it had come late, something his advisers also argued in private.Hunter Biden’s plea deal on tax and gun charges fell apart in court last month.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesMike Pence, the former vice president who is now running against Mr. Trump, was among the few well-known Republicans to openly praise Mr. Weiss’s appointment.But other Republicans were worried the development could be used to block their investigations. Mr. Weiss had pledged to testify on Capitol Hill this fall, but those Republicans predicted he could now cite the special counsel investigation to refuse to do so.The announcement also gives President Biden and Mr. Garland some political cover against Republican accusations that Mr. Trump is a victim of a two-tier system of justice, placing the investigation outside the normal workings of the Justice Department. It could also undercut Republican arguments that an impeachment inquiry of the president is necessary.“In the near term, it gives Republicans the ability to say it legitimizes what they’ve been looking into and it helps give more momentum to their different oversight activities,” said Michael Ricci, a former top communications official to two Republican House speakers and a current fellow at Georgetown University’s Institute of Politics and Public Service. “But in the longer term, the White House will absolutely use this as an argument against any kind of rush into impeachment.”Several Republicans said their respect for Mr. Weiss had declined after he entered into the plea deal with Hunter Biden.Senator Chuck Grassley, Republican of Iowa, who had once called for Mr. Weiss to be made special counsel, said he no longer stands by that belief. “Given the underhanded plea deal negotiated by the U.S. attorney from President Biden’s home state, it’s clear Mr. Weiss isn’t the right person for the job,” Mr. Grassley said.Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, had once called for Mr. Weiss to be made special counsel but said the plea deal changed his mind. Kenny Holston/The New York TimesBut Democrat-aligned groups saw something else in the Republicans’ about-face: disingenuousness.“House Republicans’ opposition to Trump appointee David Weiss’s appointment as special counsel is nothing more than another political stunt,” said Kyle Herrig, the director of the Congressional Integrity Project, an advocacy group that defends President Biden from congressional investigations. “After months of calling for this, their dismay makes clear that they will stop at nothing to weaponize Congress to interfere with an ongoing investigation and harm Joe Biden.” More

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      AOC leads call for federal ethics investigation into Clarence Thomas

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      Five House Democrats led by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York wrote to the US attorney general, Merrick Garland, to demand a federal investigation of the conservative supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, over his acceptance of undeclared gifts from billionaire rightwing donors.“We write to urge the Department of Justice to launch an investigation into … Clarence Thomas for consistently failing to report significant gifts he received from Harlan Crow and other billionaires for nearly two decades in defiance of his duty under federal law,” the Democrats said.As well as Ocasio-Cortez, a progressive popularly known as AOC, the letter was signed by Jerrold Nadler of New York, the ranking Democrat on the House judiciary committee; Jamie Raskin of Maryland, a professor of constitutional law; Ted Lieu of California; and Hank Johnson of Georgia.This week saw publication of a bombshell ProPublica report which said Thomas had taken 38 undeclared vacations funded by billionaires and accepted gifts including expensive sports tickets.The report followed extensive reporting by ProPublica and other outlets including the New York Times regarding Thomas’s close and financially beneficial relationships with Crow, a real-estate magnate, and other influential businessmen.Thomas, 75, denies wrongdoing, claiming never to have discussed with his benefactors politics or business before the court. He has said he did not declare those benefactors’ gifts, over many years, because he was wrongly advised.Ethics experts say that Thomas broke federal law by failing to declare such largesse.Supreme court justices are nominally subject to the same ethics rules as all federal justices but in practice govern themselves.The chief justice, John Roberts, has rebuffed requests for testimony in Congress. Democrats on the Senate judiciary committee have advanced supreme court ethics reform but it will almost certainly fail, in the face of Republican opposition.Calls for Thomas to resign or be impeached and removed have proliferated but are also almost certain to fail. Confirmed in 1991, Thomas is the most senior of six conservatives on a nine-member court tipped dramatically right by three justices installed during the presidency of Donald Trump.In their letter to Garland on Friday, Ocasio-Cortez and her fellow Democrats noted that Thomas’s wife, Ginni Thomas, is “a far-right activist who often champions conservative causes that come before the court”.They were addressing, they said, “a matter of critical importance to the integrity of our justice system”.Outlining reporting about Thomas, the representatives said his “consistent failure to disclose gifts and benefits from industry magnates and wealthy, politically active executives highlights a blatant disregard for judicial ethics as well as apparent legal violations.“No individual, regardless of their position or stature, should be exempt from legal scrutiny for lawbreaking … as a supreme court justice and high constitutional officer, Justice Thomas should be held to the highest standard, not the lowest and he certainly shouldn’t be allowed to violate federal law.”Refusing to hold Thomas accountable, the Democrats said, “would set a dangerous precedent, undermining public trust in our institutions and raising legitimate questions about the equal application of laws in our nation.“The Department of Justice must undertake a thorough investigation into the reported conduct to ensure that it cannot happen again.” More

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      ‘Unprecedented, stunning, disgusting’: Clarence Thomas condemned over billionaire gifts

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      Conservative US supreme court justice Clarence Thomas has been condemned for maintaining “unprecedented” and “shameless” links to rightwing benefactors, after ProPublica published new details of his acceptance of undeclared gifts including 38 vacations and expensive sports tickets.Pramila Jayapal, a Washington state Democrat and chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, rendered an especially damning verdict.“Unprecedented. Stunning. Disgusting. The height of hypocrisy to wear the robes of a [supreme court justice] and take undisclosed gifts from billionaires who benefit from your decisions. 38 free vacations. Yachts. Luxury mansions. Skyboxes at events. Resign,” she posted.From the Senate, Dick Durbin of Illinois, the Democratic judiciary committee chair, said: “The latest … revelation of unreported lavish gifts to Justice Clarence Thomas makes it clear: these are not merely ethical lapses. This is a shameless lifestyle underwritten for years by a gaggle of fawning billionaires.”The ProPublica report followed extensive previous reporting, by the non-profit and competitors including the New York Times, of undisclosed gifts to Thomas from a series of mega-rich donors.Supreme court justices are nominally subject to ethics rules for federal judges but in practice govern themselves.Durbin said Thomas and Samuel Alito, another arch-conservative justice who did not declare gifts, had “made it clear they’re oblivious to the embarrassment they’ve visited on the highest court in the land.“Now it’s up to Chief Justice [John] Roberts and the other justices to act on ethics reform to save their own reputations and the court’s integrity. If the court will not act, then Congress must continue to” do so.Roberts has rejected calls to testify, saying Congress cannot regulate his court. Durbin has advanced ethics reform but its chances are virtually nil, with Republicans opposed in the Senate and in control of the House.Thomas denies wrongdoing, claiming never to have discussed with his benefactors politics or business before the court and to have been wrongly advised about disclosure requirements. Nonetheless, condemnation was widespread.Adam Schiff, a House Democrat running for Senate in California, said: “The scope of Justice Thomas’ undisclosed receipt of luxury vacations from billionaires takes your breath away. As does this court’s arrogant disregard of the public. Every other federal court has an enforceable code of ethics – the supreme court needs the same.”Thomas joined the court in 1991, becoming the second Black justice in place of the first, Thurgood Marshall.Sherrilyn Ifill, former director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) legal fund, said Thomas had created “a crisis and we need to start treating it as such. Our profession, the Senate judiciary committee, newspaper editorial boards, and the chief [justice] will need to summon the courage needed to call for what, by now, should be the obvious next step.”Robert Reich, a former US labor secretary now a Berkeley professor and Guardian columnist, pointed to what that “next step” might be, saying Thomas “must resign or be impeached if [the supreme court] is going to retain any credibility”.Only one justice, Samuel Chase, has ever been impeached – in 1804-05. He was acquitted in the Senate. In 1969, the justice Abe Fortas resigned under threat of impeachment, over his acceptance of outside fees.Now, Republican control of the House renders impeachment vastly unlikely. Nor is Thomas likely to resign, particularly as Democrats hold the Senate, able to reduce conservative dominance of the court should a rightwinger vacate the bench.Nonetheless, calls for Thomas to go continued.Ted Lieu, a California congressman, said Thomas “has brought shame upon himself and the United States supreme court … no government official, elected or unelected, could ethically or legally accept gifts of that scale. He should resign immediately”.Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a campaign group, said: “If three times makes a pattern, what does 38 times make? We’ll tell you: the fact that Clarence Thomas has taken 38 luxury trips with billionaires without disclosing them means this kind of ethical lapse is part of his lifestyle. He needs to resign.” More

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      How Jack Smith Structured the Trump Election Indictment to Reduce Risks

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      The special counsel layered varied charges atop the same facts, while sidestepping a free-speech question by not charging incitement.In accusing former President Donald J. Trump of conspiring to subvert American democracy, the special counsel, Jack Smith, charged the same story three different ways. The charges are novel applications of criminal laws to unprecedented circumstances, heightening legal risks, but Mr. Smith’s tactic gives him multiple paths in obtaining and upholding a guilty verdict.“Especially in a case like this, you want to have multiple charges that are applicable or provable with the same evidence, so that if on appeal you lose one, you still have the conviction,” said Julie O’Sullivan, a Georgetown University law professor and former federal prosecutor.That structure in the indictment is only one of several strategic choices by Mr. Smith — including what facts and potential charges he chose to include or omit — that may foreshadow and shape how an eventual trial of Mr. Trump will play out.The four charges rely on three criminal statutes: a count of conspiring to defraud the government, another of conspiring to disenfranchise voters, and two counts related to corruptly obstructing a congressional proceeding. Applying each to Mr. Trump’s actions raises various complexities, according to a range of criminal law experts.At the same time, the indictment hints at how Mr. Smith is trying to sidestep legal pitfalls and potential defenses. He began with an unusual preamble that reads like an opening statement at trial, acknowledging that Mr. Trump had a right to challenge the election results in court and even to lie about them, but drawing a distinction with the defendant’s pursuit of “unlawful means of discounting legitimate votes and subverting the election results.”While the indictment is sprawling in laying out a case against Mr. Trump, it brings a selective lens on the multifaceted efforts by the former president and his associates to overturn the 2020 election.“The strength of the indictment is that it is very narrowly written,” said Ronald S. Sullivan Jr., a Harvard Law School professor and former public defender. “The government is not attempting to prove too much, but rather it went for low-hanging fruit.”For one, Mr. Smith said little about the violent events of Jan. 6, leaving out vast amounts of evidence in the report by a House committee that separately investigated the matter. He focused more on a brazen plan to recruit false slates of electors from swing states and a pressure campaign on Vice President Mike Pence to block the congressional certification of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory.That choice dovetails with Mr. Smith’s decision not to charge Mr. Trump with inciting an insurrection or seditious conspiracy — potential charges the House committee recommended. By eschewing them, he avoided having the case focus on the inflammatory but occasionally ambiguous remarks Mr. Trump made to his supporters as they morphed into a mob, avoiding tough First Amendment objections that defense lawyers could raise.For another, while Mr. Smith described six of Mr. Trump’s associates as co-conspirators, none were charged. It remains unclear whether some of them will eventually be indicted if they do not cooperate, or whether he intends to target only Mr. Trump so the case will move faster.Mr. Smith chose to say very little about the violent events of Jan. 6 and instead focused on the scheme to recruit slates of fake electors and the pressure Mr. Trump brought upon Vice President Pence.Jason Andrew for The New York TimesAmong the charges Mr. Smith did bring against Mr. Trump, corrupt obstruction of an official proceeding is the most familiar in how it applies to the aftermath of the 2020 election. Already, hundreds of ordinary Jan. 6 rioters have been charged with it.To date, most judges in Jan. 6 cases, at the district court and appeals court level, have upheld the use of the statute. But a few Trump-appointed judges have favored a more narrow interpretation, like limiting the law to situations in which people destroyed evidence or sought a benefit more concrete than having their preferred candidate win an election.Mr. Trump, of course, would have personally benefited from staying in office, making that charge stronger against him than against the rioters. Still, a possible risk is if the Supreme Court soon takes up one of the rioter cases and then narrows the scope of the law in a way that would affect the case against Mr. Trump.Proving IntentSome commentators have argued in recent days that prosecutors must persuade the jury that Mr. Trump knew his voter fraud claims were false to prove corrupt intent. But that is oversimplified, several experts said.To be sure, experts broadly agree that Mr. Smith will have an easier time winning a conviction if jurors are persuaded that Mr. Trump knew he was lying about everything. To that end, the indictment details how he “was notified repeatedly that his claims were untrue” and “deliberately disregarded the truth.”“What you see in Trump — a guy who seems to inhabit his own fictional universe — is something you see in other fraud defendants,” said David Alan Sklansky, a Stanford University law professor. “It’s a common challenge in a fraud case to prove that at some level the defendant knew what he was telling people wasn’t true. The way you prove it is, in part, by showing that lots of people made clear to the defendant that what he was saying was baseless.”Moreover, the indictment emphasizes several episodes in which Mr. Trump had firsthand knowledge that his statements were false. Prosecutors can use those instances of demonstrably knowing lies to urge jurors to infer that Mr. Trump knew he was lying about everything else, too.The indictment, for example, recounts a taped call on Jan. 2 with Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, in which Mr. Trump shared a series of conspiracy theories that he systematically debunked in detail. But on Twitter the next day, Mr. Trump “falsely claimed that the Georgia secretary of state had not addressed” the allegations.And on Jan. 5, Mr. Pence told Mr. Trump that he had no lawful authority to alter or delay the counting of Mr. Biden’s electoral votes, but “hours later” Mr. Trump issued a statement through his campaign saying the opposite: “The vice president and I are in total agreement that the vice president has the power to act.”Vice President Pence appears during House committee hearings investigating Jan. 6. The indictment suggests Mr. Trump knew he was lying about what Mr. Pence had told him on January 5.Doug Mills/The New York TimesIn any case, several rioters have already argued that they did not have “corrupt intent” because they sincerely believed the election had been stolen. That has not worked: Judges have said that corrupt intent can be shown by engaging in other unlawful actions like trespassing, assaulting the police and destroying property.“Belief that your actions are serving a greater good does not negate consciousness of wrongdoing,” Judge Royce C. Lamberth wrote last month.Mr. Trump, of course, did not rampage through the Capitol. But the indictment accuses him of committing other crimes — the fraud and voter disenfranchisement conspiracies — based on wrongful conduct. It cites Mr. Trump’s bid to use fake electors in violation of the Electoral Count Act and his solicitation of fraud at the Justice Department and in Georgia, where he pressured Mr. Raffensperger to help him “find” 11,780 votes, enough to overcome Mr. Biden’s margin of victory.“Whether he thinks he won or lost is relevant but not determinative,” said Paul Rosenzweig, a former prosecutor who worked on the independent counsel investigation into President Bill Clinton. “Trump could try to achieve vindicating his beliefs legally. The conspiracy is tied to the illegal means. So he has to say that he thought ‘finding’ 11,000 votes was legal, or that fake electors were legal. That is much harder to say with a straight face.”Proving Mr. Trump’s intent will also be key to the charges of defrauding the government and disenfranchising voters. But it may be easier because those laws do not have the heightened standard of “corrupt” intent as the obstruction statute does.Court rulings interpreting the statute that criminalizes defrauding the United States, for example, have established that evidence of deception or dishonesty is sufficient. In a 1924 Supreme Court ruling, Chief Justice William H. Taft wrote that it covers interference with a government function “by deceit, craft or trickery, or at least by means that are dishonest.” A 1989 appeals courts ruling said the dishonest actions need not be crimes in and of themselves.This factor may help explain the indictment’s emphasis on the fake electors schemes in one state after another, a repetitive narrative that risks dullness: It would be hard to credibly argue that Mr. Trump and his co-conspirators thought the fake slates they submitted were real, and the indictment accuses them of other forms of trickery as well.The opening of the Michigan Electoral College session at the State Capitol in 2020. The indictment emphasizes Mr. Trump’s involvement in fake electors schemes in several swing states.Pool photo by Carlos Osorio“Some fraudulent electors were tricked into participating based on the understanding that their votes would be used only if the defendant succeeded in outcome-determinative lawsuits within their state, which the defendant never did,” it said.A Novel ChargeThe inclusion of the charge involving a conspiracy to disenfranchise voters was a surprising development in Mr. Smith’s emerging strategy. Unlike the other charges, it had not been a major part of the public discussion of the investigation — for example, it was not among the charges recommended by the House Jan. 6 committee.Congress enacted the law after the Civil War to provide a tool for federal prosecutors to go after Southern white people, including Ku Klux Klan members, who used terrorism to prevent formerly enslaved Black people from voting. But in the 20th century, the Supreme Court upheld a broadened use of the law to address election-fraud conspiracies. The idea is that any conspiracy to engineer dishonest election results victimizes all voters in an election.“It was a good move to charge that statute, partly because that is really what this case really is about — depriving the people of the right to choose their president,” said Robert S. Litt, a former federal prosecutor and a top intelligence lawyer in the Obama administration.That statute has mostly been used to address misconduct leading up to and during election, like bribing voters or stuffing ballot boxes, rather than misconduct after an election. Still, in 1933, an appeals court upheld its use in a case involving people who reported false totals from a voter tabulation machine.It has never been used before in a conspiracy to use fake slates of Electoral College voters from multiple states to keep legitimate electors from being counted and thereby subvert the results of a presidential election — a situation that itself was unprecedented.Mr. Trump’s lawyers have signaled they will argue that he had a First Amendment right to say whatever he wanted. Indeed, the indictment acknowledged that it was not illegal in and of itself for Mr. Trump to lie.But in portraying Mr. Trump’s falsehoods as “integral to his criminal plans,” Mr. Smith suggested he would frame those public statements as contributing to unlawful actions and as evidence they were undertaken with bad intentions, not as crimes in and of themselves.Mr. Trump at Reagan National Airport Thursday following his court appearance. Mr. Trump’s legal team has signaled they will argue that he had a First Amendment right to say whatever he wanted.Doug Mills/The New York TimesA related defense Mr. Trump may raise is the issue of “advice of counsel.” If a defendant relied in good faith on a lawyer who incorrectly informed him that doing something would be legal, a jury may decide he lacked criminal intent. But there are limits. Among them, the defendant must have told the lawyer all the relevant facts and the theory must be “reasonable.”The indictment discusses how even though White House lawyers told Mr. Trump that Mr. Pence had no lawful authority to overturn Mr. Biden’s victory, an outside lawyer — John Eastman, described in the indictment as Co-Conspirator 2 and who separately faces disbarment proceedings — advised him that Mr. Pence could.Several legal specialists agreed that Mr. Trump has an advice-of-counsel argument to make. But Samuel W. Buell, a Duke University law professor, said Mr. Smith was likely to try to rebut it by pointing to the repeated instances in which Mr. Trump’s White House legal advisers told him that Mr. Eastman was wrong.“You have to have a genuine good-faith belief that the legal advice is legitimate and valid, not just ‘I’m going to keep running through as many lawyers as I can until one tells me something I want to hear, no matter how crazy and implausible it is,’” Mr. Buell said. More

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      ¿A qué edad deberían retirarse los políticos?

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      Dos momentos preocupantes que involucraron a los senadores Dianne Feinstein y Mitch McConnell provocaron preguntas sobre el envejecimiento de los líderes electos.Tras una serie de momentos preocupantes en Estados Unidos la semana pasada, a los ciudadanos, a los estrategas e incluso a los políticos les resulta imposible eludir una pregunta incómoda: ¿hasta qué edad se puede ocupar un cargo público?Durante años, como les sucede a tantos hijos de padres que envejecen en Estados Unidos, los políticos y sus asesores en Washington trataron de eludir esa difícil conversación y no dijeron nada sobre las preocupaciones que suscitan sus líderes octogenarios. Pudieron mantenerse en silencio gracias a las tradiciones de una ciudad que dota a las figuras públicas con un batallón de asistentes que gestionan casi toda su vida profesional y personal.“No sé cuál sea el número mágico, pero me parece que, como regla general, pues, cuando tienes más de ochenta es hora de pensar en relajarte un poco”, dijo Trent Lott, de 81 años, quien fue líder de la mayoría republicana del Senado y se retiró a los 67 años para fundar su propia empresa de cabildeo. “El problema es que te eligen para un mandato de seis años, estás en excelente forma, pero cuatro años después puede que no estés tan bien”.La semana pasada, dos episodios que han sido objeto de un minucioso escrutinio han hecho que el tema de envejecer con dignidad en un cargo público salga de los pasillos del Congreso estadounidense y se convierta en tema de conversación nacional.El miércoles, circuló en internet y en las noticias un video en el que se puede ver al senador Mitch McConnell, de 81 años, paralizarse durante 20 segundos frente a las cámaras. Menos de 24 horas después, apareció otro video de la senadora Dianne Feinstein, de 90 años, en el que se le veía confundida cuando se le pidió votar en una comisión.Desde hace meses, se ha venido desarrollando un debate político sobre la cuestión de la edad, a medida que Estados Unidos se enfrenta a la posibilidad de una contienda presidencial entre los candidatos de mayor edad de la historia del país. El presidente Joe Biden, de 80 años, quien ya es el presidente más veterano en la Casa Blanca, aspira a un segundo mandato, y Donald Trump, de 77 años, lidera la contienda de las elecciones primarias republicanas.“Cuando digo que tenemos que pasar la batuta a las generaciones más jóvenes, no estoy hablando de personas muy jóvenes”, dijo Dean Phillips, representante por Minnesota, de 54 años, el único demócrata en el Congreso que declaró que Feinstein debería dimitir y que Biden no debería presentarse a la reelección. “Solo me refiero a una generación razonablemente menos mayor”, explicó.El hiato de McConnell creó una nueva oportunidad para que los contendientes más jóvenes planteen la cuestión de un modo más enérgico. El viernes, el gobernador de Florida, Ron DeSantis, de 44 años, uno de los principales aspirantes republicanos a la presidencia, criticó la gerontocracia política del país.“Los funcionarios solían servir en su mejor momento y luego le pasaban la batuta a la siguiente generación, y me parece que esta generación no ha estado tan dispuesta a hacer esto”, dijo DeSantis a la comentarista conservadora Megyn Kelly y señaló que Biden se convirtió en senador en 1973, cinco años antes de que DeSantis naciera.Cabe destacar que Trump, quien tendría 82 años al final de un segundo mandato, defendió a Biden, al afirmar que el presidente no debe ser menospreciado por su edad. “No es un anciano”, publicó Trump este mes en Truth Social, su plataforma de redes sociales. “De hecho, ¡la vida empieza a los 80!”.Los médicos de Biden han dicho que goza de buena salud. Se sabe menos de la salud de Trump tras su salida de la Casa Blanca.Desde que en junio Biden cayó al suelo tras tropezar con un saco de arena, los asistentes de la Casa Blanca se han vuelto cada vez más sensibles a cualquier insinuación de que está disminuido físicamente.Ahora suele utilizar una escalera más corta para subir al Air Force One, observación que apareció en un reportaje de Politico y que llevó a sus asistentes a difundir 13 fotos de presidentes anteriores que también utilizaron escaleras que parecen tener una longitud similar. Desde principios de mayo no ha ido a comprar el helado que tanto le gusta ni se le ha visto en ningún otro comercio para hacer una visita improvisada a la ciudadanía. La Casa Blanca dice que la apretada agenda de viajes de Biden no ha permitido tales paradas este verano.Algunos de los principales asesores de Biden argumentan que su campaña debería abordar directamente el tema de la edad como una ventaja política —y una realidad innegable— en lugar de evitar el tema.“La edad es un superpoder”, declaró Jeffrey Katzenberg, magnate de Hollywood de 72 años, a quien Biden nombró copresidente de su campaña. “No puedes huir de ella porque tienes 80 años, ¿verdad? No se puede negar. He sido del bando que cree firmemente que es una de sus mayores ventajas”.Las encuestas indican que los electores opinan distinto, pues a muchos demócratas les preocupa la edad de Biden en medio de los ataques republicanos. En un sondeo realizado por YouGov el año pasado, la mayoría de los estadounidenses están a favor de que haya límites de edad para los servidores públicos que llegan a un cargo mediante elecciones, pero no hubo ningún consenso sobre el límite exacto. Poner un límite de 60 años impediría que el 71 por ciento del Senado pudiera ejercer su cargo, mientras que un tope de 70 años haría que el 30 por ciento de los legisladores fueran inelegibles, halló un análisis del grupo.En Dakota del Norte, un activista conservador empezó esta semana a circular peticiones para forzar un referéndum estatal el año que viene que prohibiría a cualquier persona que para el final de su mandato tenga 81 años postularse o ser electa para un escaño en el Congreso.Cuando Biden es interrogado por el tema de la edad, minimiza las preocupaciones con bromas y hace énfasis en su experiencia política. McConnell adoptó una estrategia similar cuando dijo a los periodistas que bromeó con el presidente sobre su lapsus de salud diciéndole que “se tropezó con un saco de arena”, una referencia a cómo Biden se rio de su propia caída.Está claro que ni siquiera una buena ocurrencia puede acabar con la realidad del envejecimiento. Tras la parálisis de McConnell, diversos artículos plantearon interrogantes sobre su estado de salud, ya que en marzo se ausentó del trabajo durante varias semanas por una conmoción cerebral.Por su parte, Feinstein, quien ha tenido problemas de memoria y se ausentó varios meses del Senado mientras se recuperaba de un herpes zóster, en ocasiones ha parecido incapaz de responder a preguntas sobre su estado de salud.Exasistentes afirman que parte del problema es la relación de interdependencia que se desarrolla entre los políticos y su equipo. Si un senador o senadora se retira, todo su personal —integrado por varias decenas de personas— puede quedarse sin trabajo de un día para otro.¿Y quién quiere decirle al jefe que, tal vez, ya pasó su mejor momento? Puede ser más fácil simplemente disimular los desafíos haciendo que los asistentes elaboren políticas, limiten el acceso a los reporteros y traten de evitar momentos sin un guion definido.“El Senado es un lugar tan cálido y reconfortante que puedes vivir dentro de esa burbuja”, dijo Jim Manley, de 62 años, quien trabajó para los senadores Ted Kennedy y Harry Reid. “Tienes personal a tu entera disposición, gente que te abre las puertas todo el tiempo”.Mientras que otros sectores tienen edades de jubilación obligatoria, incluidas algunas empresas que cotizan en bolsa y compañías aéreas, los congresistas han sido renuentes a adoptar políticas que equivaldrían a votar para verse obligados a dejar su cargo. Ni siquiera los votantes parecen ponerse de acuerdo sobre cuándo es suficiente y se muestran divididos cuando se les pregunta por un límite de edad concreto.La decisión de abandonar un puesto tan importante y poderoso es difícil, pero la alternativa —envejecer ante la opinión pública— podría ser peor, advirtieron algunos senadores retirados.“Es desgarrador, vergonzoso, pero cada quien decide cómo enfrentar la realidad”, dijo Chuck Hagel, de 77 años, quien fue senador por Nebraska y dejó el cargo en 2009. “La realidad es que no vamos contrarreloj, sino que todos envejecemos. A mis 77 años, comparados con los 62 que tenía cuando dejé el Senado, ahora tengo dolores que ni siquiera sabía que tendría”.Lisa Lerer es corresponsal de política nacional que cubre campañas electorales, votaciones y poder político. Más sobre Lisa LererReid J. Epstein cubre campañas y elecciones desde Washington. Antes de unirse al Times en 2019, trabajó en The Wall Street Journal, Politico, Newsday y The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Más sobre Reid J. Epstein More

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      Donald Trump expects indictment ‘any day now’ in 2020 election subversion case – live

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      Devon Archer, a former business partner of Hunter Biden, said Hunter sought to create an “illusion of access” to his father Joe Biden to impress clients and business associates, but he insisted the then vice-president was never directly involved in any deals.The Republican-led House oversight committee conducted a more than-five hour interview with Archer as part of its expanding congressional inquiry into the Biden family businesses.The interview focused on the 2010s, when Hunter Biden sat on the board of the Ukraine energy company Burisma and his father was vice-president under President Barack Obama.Both Republican and Democratic lawmakers inside the closed-door interview said Archer testified that over the span of 10 years, Hunter Biden put his father on the phone around 20 times while in the company of associates but “never once spoke about any business dealings”, AP reported.Democratic Representative Dan Goldman told reporters that Archer testified that Hunter sold the “illusion of access” to his father and “tried to get credit for things that [Hunter] had nothing to do with”.But Republican representative Andy Biggs, who has co-sponsored legislation to impeach Biden, said Archer’s testimony implicated the president and quoted the witness as saying Burisma could not have survived without the “Biden brand”. He told reporters:
      I think we should do an impeachment inquiry.
      The Susan B Anthony List, the nation’s leading anti-abortion group, called Florida governor and GOP presidential candidate Ron DeSantis’ failure to support federal abortion restrictions “unacceptable”.DeSantis signed into law a controversial six-week abortion ban in Florida in April. In a recent interview with Megyn Kelly, DeSantis was asked if he would support abortion bans at the federal level.He replied:
      I’ve been a pro-life governor. I’ll be a pro-life president and I’ll come down on the side of life.
      DeSantis added that he would “be a leader with the bully pulpit to help local communities and states advance the cause of life but he avoided answering if he would enact a federal abortion ban.In response, Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B Anthony Pro-Life America group, criticized DeSantis, saying that “a pro-life president has a duty to protect the lives of all Americans”.Dannenfelser said in a statement:
      Gov. DeSantis’s dismissal of this task is unacceptable to prolife voters. A consensus is already formed. Intensity for it is palpable and measurable.
      A super PAC backing Democratic presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr raised $6.47m in July, according to a press release from American Values 2024.The press release noted that American Values 2024 has received donations from both Democrats and Republicans, including the Trump mega donor Timothy Mellon, Democratic Party donor Abby Rockefeller, and Gavin de Becker, a security consultant close to Jeff Bezos.Mellon said in the press release:
      The fact that Kennedy gets so much bipartisan support tells me two things: that he’s the one candidate who can unite the country and root out corruption and that he’s the one Democrat who can win in the general election.
      The super PAC said it raised $6.47m in July, bringing its total fundraising for Kennedy to about $16.82m.About $5m of that haul came during his testimony in front of the House judiciary select subcommittee on the weaponization of the federal government, according to the press release.Kennedy’s appearance before the House subcommittee on 20 July came days after he told reporters at a press dinner that Covid-19 had been “ethnically targeted” at Caucasians and Black people, while Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people had greater immunity.The false claim was enthusiastically embraced by neo-Nazi groups, while being condemned by scientists and Jewish organizations.Donald Trump is demanding Republican support for impeaching Joe Biden over corruption allegations against Hunter Biden, the president’s surviving son.“Any Republican that doesn’t act on Democrat fraud should be immediately primaried and get out,” Trump told a rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, on Saturday.Republicans hold the US House, where impeachment would start, by just five seats. GOP members in Democratic areas seem likely to suffer at the polls next year.“If they’re not willing to do it,” Trump said, “we’ve got a lot of good, tough Republicans around.
      People are going to run against ’em, and people are going to win. And they’re going to get my endorsement every single time. They’re going to win ’cause we win almost every race when we endorse.
      Factcheckers dispute that. Surveying the 2022 midterms, the New York Times said: “Mr Trump endorsed more than 250 candidates, and his 82% success rate is, on the surface, impressive. But the vast majority of those endorsements were of incumbents and heavy favorites to win.”The paper added:
      In the 36 most competitive House races … Mr Trump endorsed candidates in five contests. All five lost.
      Trump’s influence on key Senate races won by Democrats has been widely discussed.In Pennsylvania, Trump also called for conditioning aid to Ukraine in its war with Russia on White House cooperation with investigations of Hunter Biden. Trump’s own first impeachment was for withholding aid to Ukraine in an attempt to uncover dirt on the Bidens. Pundits noted the irony.“So much for denying the quid pro quo, as he did in 2019,” said Peter Baker, the Times’ chief White House correspondent.A month out from the first debate of the Republican presidential primary, Donald Trump’s domination of the field increases with each poll.On Monday, the first 2024 survey from the New York Times and Siena College put Trump at 54% support. His closest challenger, Ron DeSantis, was at 17%. No one else – including Mike Pence, Tim Scott and Nikki Haley – was higher than 3%.DeSantis’s hard-right campaign is widely seen to be out of fuel and on a glide path to destruction. Trump dominates early voting states and in national averages leads the Florida governor by more than 30 points.Fani Willis, the district attorney of Fulton county, Georgia, is “ready to go” with indictments in her investigation of Trump’s election subversion. In Washington, the special counsel Jack Smith is expected to add charges regarding election subversion to 40 counts already filed over the former president’s retention of classified records.Trump already faces 34 criminal charges in New York over hush-money payments to the porn star Stormy Daniels. Referring to Trump being ordered to pay $5m after being found liable for sexual abuse and defamation against the writer E Jean Carroll, a judge recently said Carroll proved Trump raped her. Lawsuits over Trump’s business affairs continue.Heading for trials in primary season, Trump denies wrongdoing and claims political persecution. But his chaos-agent campaign, which he has said he will not abandon even if convicted and sentenced, does not just threaten the national peace. It threatens his own party.Joe Biden just decided to keep the US Space Command headquarters in Colorado, rather than move it Alabama, the Associated Press reports. And, surprising as it might seem, Biden’s decision may soon be caught up in the debate over abortion access.First, a recap: Donald Trump created Space Force in 2019, and near the end of his presidency ordered it moved from its temporary home in Colorado Springs, Colorado to Huntsville, Alabama. Biden has now reversed that decision, dealing a blow to the economy of a deeply Republican state whose senator Tommy Tuberville has lately been blocking hundreds of military promotions in protest of defense department policies intended to help service members obtain abortions.While there is no indication yet that Biden’s decision has anything to do with Tuberville’s blockade, the president has personally decried the senator’s campaign, calling it “ridiculous” and saying it threatens the military’s readiness.Here’s more on the decision, from the AP:
      The officials said Biden was convinced by the head of Space Command, Gen. James Dickinson, who argued that moving his headquarters now would jeopardize military readiness. Dickinson’s view, however, was in contrast to Air Force leadership, who studied the issue at length and determined that relocating to Huntsville, Alabama, was the right move.
      The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the decision ahead of the announcement.
      The president, they said, believes that keeping the command in Colorado Springs would avoid a disruption in readiness that the move would cause, particularly as the U.S. races to compete with China in space. And they said Biden firmly believes that maintaining stability will help the military be better able to respond in space over the next decade.
      House Republicans have announced an investigation into the deal reached between Hunter Biden and the justice department that would have seen the president’s son plead guilty to tax charges and enter a diversion agreement to resolve a gun charge.Biden was expected to formally accept the agreement with prosecutors during a federal court hearing in Delaware last week, but judge Maryellen Noreika objected to portions of the deal and ordered the two sides to renegotiate it and present it to her at a future date.Republicans have for years accused the president’s son of corruption, and since it was announced have called the plea agreement a “sweetheart deal”. In a letter to attorney general Merrick Garland, the Republican chairs of the House judiciary, ways and means and oversight committees demand a range of documents and explanations from the justice department.“The Department’s unusual plea and pretrial diversion agreements with Mr. Biden raise serious concerns — especially when combined with recent whistleblower allegations — that the Department has provided preferential treatment toward Mr. Biden in the course of its investigation and proposed resolution of his alleged criminal conduct,” the committee chairs write. Earlier this month, the House oversight committee heard from two Internal Revenue Service agents who claimed politicization of the Hunter Biden investigation, despite statements from the Donald Trump-appointed US attorney who led the case that he had the ultimate authority to bring charges.The letter marks the latest instance of the House GOP using the chamber’s powers to investigate the Biden administration. Since the start of the year, it has launched investigations into topics including the “weaponization” of the federal government under the Biden administration, and the state and federal prosecutions targeting Trump.A small group of progressive lawmakers led by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders on Monday urged the United States to bring lawsuits against the fossil fuel industry for its alleged efforts to sow doubt about the climate crisis.“The actions of ExxonMobil, Shell, and potentially other fossil fuel companies represent a clear violation of federal racketeering laws, truth in advertising laws, consumer protection laws, and potentially other laws, and the Department must act swiftly to hold them accountable for their unlawful actions,” reads the letter, which was also signed by Democratic senators Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Jeff Merkley of Oregon.The letter, addressed to attorney general Merrick Garland, references the well-documented climate misinformation campaign waged over decades by oil and gas companies, and the dozens of lawsuits filed by states, municipalities, and the District of Columbia about that campaign.The letter was sent as swaths of the United States bake under sweltering temperatures. This summer’s record-breaking heatwaves in America and southern Europe, which have put tens of millions of people under heat advisories, would have been “virtually impossible” without climate change, according to a recent study by scientists at World Weather Attribution.The senators also implore the Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission and other law enforcement agencies to file their own lawsuits against parties who participated in climate deception, and request a meeting with Garland.“The polluters must pay,” the senators wrote.Andy Biggs, a rightwing Republican member of the oversight committee, said Devon Archer revealed that Hunter Biden’s family name helped Ukrainian natural gas firm Burisma’s business.That’s according to Punchbowl News:Fox News reports a unnamed source saying the same:It is unclear if Biden actually participated in the meetings, or just took the calls to speak with his son, as Democratic congressman Dan Goldman, who attended the interview with Archer, characterized the conversations.However, Punchbowl reports Biggs said Archer had no knowledge of an unverified bribery allegation against Joe and Hunter Biden that was reported to the FBI:Following the Republican-led House oversight committee’s interview with Devon Archer, a former business partner of Hunter Biden, a Democratic lawmaker on the committee downplayed the president involvement in his son’s business.Archer testified that Hunter would call up Joe Biden during business meetings in the period when they served on the board of Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma, but only for “casual conversation,” Democratic congressman and committee member Dan Goldman said, Punchbowl News reports.“The witness was very, very consistent, that none of those conversations ever had to do with any business dealings or transactions,” Goldman said, adding that Hunter and Joe Biden spoke frequently.“[Biden] says hello to someone that he sees his son with. What is he supposed to say? ‘Hi, son. No, I’m not gonna say hello to the other people at the table or the other people on the phone.’”Here’s more of Goldman’s comments to the press:Several Republican presidential candidates have vowed that, in the as-of-now unlikely scenario that they are elected to the White House next year, they would pardon Donald Trump. But as the Guardian’s Ramon Antonio Vargas reports, former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson is trying to distinguish himself by promising to do no such thing:Former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson has said it is “inappropriate” for some of his fellow Republican presidential hopefuls to publicly discuss potentially pardoning Donald Trump, who is their party’s frontrunner for its 2024 nomination despite his mounting criminal charges.“Anybody who promises pardons during a presidential campaign is not serving our system of justice well,” Hutchinson said Sunday on CBS’s Face the Nation. “And it’s inappropriate.”The remarks from Hutchinson cut a stark contrast with comments from other Republicans in the running for the presidency, who said they would pardon Trump if they eventually defeated the Democratic incumbent, Joe Biden.Nikki Haley, once South Carolina’s governor and the Trump White House’s United Nations ambassador, has said she would be inclined to pardon the former president if she won the election to help the country “move forward”.Former New York city police commissioner Bernard Kerik, a leading Trump ally, will meet with special counsel Jack Smith in the coming days as part of the federal investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election.Kerik’s attorney told CNN on Sunday that the special counsel’s office will meet with Kerik and his lawyers “in about a week” to discuss efforts taken by former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani to investigate potential election fraud in the wake of the 2020 election. He said:
      We have a meeting scheduled in about a week with the special counsel’s office to talk about a lot of the efforts that the Giuliani team was taking at the time to investigate fraud, and that’s really going to get into, you know, the core of whether they can charge somebody with having corrupt intent.
      The meeting will come after Kerik turned over thousands of pages of documents to the special counsel’s office connected to the debunked voter fraud claims made by Trump and Giuliani.In early 2020, Trump pardoned Kerik for crimes including tax fraud and lying to investigators, for which Kerik had been sentenced to four years in jail. Later that year, Kerik worked with Giuliani on attempts to overturn Joe Biden’s victory, a push which culminated in the failed but deadly January 6 attack on Congress.Donald Trump said he expects he could be indicted “any day now” as part of special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the January 6 insurrection.Smith has been looking into Trump’s efforts to remain in office following his 2020 election defeat to Joe Biden. Federal prosecutors have assembled evidence to charge Trump with three crimes, the Guardian has reported: obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the United States, and a statute that makes it unlawful to conspire to violate civil rights.Trump, posting to Truth Social on Monday, wrote:
      I assume that an Indictment from Deranged Jack Smith and his highly partisan gang of Thugs, pertaining to my “PEACEFULLY & PATRIOTICALLY Speech, will be coming out any day now, as yet another attempt to cover up all of the bad news about bribes, payoffs, and extortion, coming from the Biden ‘camp.’ This seems to be the way they do it. ELECTION INTERFERENCE! PROSECUTORIAL MISCONDUCT!
      Carlos De Oliveira, the Mar-a-Lago property manager and third co-defendant in the special counsel’s classified documents case, declined to answer questions as he left the Miami courthouse.De Oliveira was escorted by federal agents and his attorney, John Irving, who said it was time for the justice department “to put their money where their mouth is” after charging his client.De Oliveira was added as a third defendant in Donald Trump’s complicated classified documents indictment on Thursday. He faces charges such as trying to obstruct justice, concealing records and documents, and making false statements to the FBI.De Oliveira, 56, was a valet, maintenance worker and more recently a property manager at Trump’s resort, Mar-a-Lago, according to the superseding indictment. The indictment said De Oliveira helped Trump’s personal valet, Walt Nauta, move 30 boxes of documents, from Trump’s residence to a storage room, and asked the person responsible for surveillance at the resort to delete the footage on behalf of Trump. He was also accused of draining the resort pool to flood the rooms that contained surveillance footage.When the FBI discovered the documents at Mar-a-Lago in August 2022, Trump allegedly called De Oliveira and said he would get him an attorney.Carlos De Oliveira, the property manager of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, made his first appearance in a Miami courtroom on Monday as part of the special counsel’s investigation into the former president’s alleged mishandling of classified documents.During the roughly 10-minute hearing, De Oliveira, the third and newest co-defendant in Trump’s classified documents case, heard the charges against him and received pre-trial orders. He was unable to enter a plea because he had failed to secure local counsel.Chief Magistrate Judge Edwin Torres granted an extension request, and the arraignment is now scheduled to take place on 10 August at the federal courthouse in Fort Pierce, Florida. De Oliveira was released on a $100,000 bond pending trial.De Oliveira was indicted on Thursday on four charges, including conspiracy to obstruct justice and making false statements to the FBI.Trump and his longtime valet, Walt Nauta, were charged in the classified documents case last month and face additional counts in the indictment that charged De Oliveira. Both Trump and Nauta have pleaded not guilty to the initial charges. More

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      Filthy Rich Politicians review: Matt Lewis skewers both sides of the aisle

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      When Covid began to ravage the US, Donald Trump lied through his teeth but Nancy Pelosi flaunted her assets. Trump repeatedly claimed the virus “would go away”. More than a million deaths followed. Pelosi, then House speaker, treated us to watching her eat $13-a-pint ice cream out of fridges that cost $24,000. Let them eat artisanal desserts?Forbes pegs Trump’s wealth at $2.5bn. Based on public filings, according to Matt Lewis in his new book, Filthy Rich Politicians, Pelosi and her husband’s net holdings are estimated to be north of $46m. In 2014, Trump lied when he said his tax returns would be forthcoming if and when he ran for office. In 2022, Pelosi successfully fought an attempt to ban members of Congress from trading stock. She, it was widely noted, does not trade stocks. But her husband does. Practically speaking, that is tantamount to a distinction with little difference.Despite it all, when Trump tore into Washington corruption, promising to “drain the swamp”, his message resonated. A congenital grifter, he knew what he was talking about.“Right now, your average member of the House is something like 12 times richer than the average American household,” Matt Lewis says. “And that, I believe, is contributing to the sense that the game is rigged.” More than half the members of Congress are millionaires.Lewis is a senior columnist at the Daily Beast and a former contributor to the Guardian. With his new book, he performs a valued public service, shining a searing light on the gap between the elites of both parties and the citizenry in whose name they claim to govern. Subtitled “The Swamp Creatures, Latte Liberals, and Ruling-Class Elites Cashing in on America”, Lewis’s book is breezy and readable. Better yet, it strafes them all. The Bidens and Clintons, the Trumps and Kushners, right and left – all get savaged.Looking right, Lewis mocks Steve Bannon and Ted Cruz for their faux populism, which he views as self-serving and destructive.“The very elites who seek to rule us also rile up the public to hate their fellow elites,” Lewis bitingly observes. “Although he claims to be a ‘Leninist’, Bannon is also ‘an alumnus of Harvard Business School, Georgetown School of Foreign Service, Goldman Sachs, Hollywood.’”As for Cruz, he graduated from Princeton and Harvard Law. The husband of a Goldman Sachs managing director, he helped pave the way for making loans by a candidate to their own campaign a money-making proposition. In a 2022 decision, in a case between Cruz and the Federal Elections Commission, the US supreme court ruled that a $250,000 loan repayment limit violated the first amendment and Cruz’s free speech rights. In plain English: a deep-pocketed incumbent can now tack on a double-digit interest rate to a campaign loan, win re-election, then essentially collect a handsome side bet. As Lewis notes, Cruz was already no stranger to ethical flimflam.Lewis also graphically lays out how swank vacation sites are de rigueur destinations for campaign fundraisers and political retreats – being in Congress is now a portal to spas, tennis and haute cuisine – and how book writing has emerged as the vehicle of choice for members of Congress to evade honoraria restrictions.Lewis quotes Marco Rubio telling Fox News: “The day I got elected to the Senate I had over $100,000 still in student loans that I was able to pay off because I wrote a book.” In 2013, Rubio received an $800,000 advance. A decade later, he branded Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan “unfair”.This, remember, is the same Florida man who once exclaimed: “It’s amazing … I can call up a lobbyist at four in the morning and he’ll meet me anywhere with a bag of $40,000 in cash.” Like many in government, Rubio blurs the line between the personal and the public.Lewis also tags Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, a member of the progressive “Squad” in the House, for cronyism amid the throes of Covid. At the time, she proposed legislation that would have canceled rent and mortgage payments while establishing a “fund to repay landlords for missed rent”. The bill went nowhere but as luck would have it, Squad members Ayana Pressley (Massachusetts) and Rashida Tlaib (Michigan) took in rental income as Covid blighted the land. In 2021, Pressley’s rental income surged by “up to $117,500”.As for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, perhaps the most visible Squad member, Lewis raps her for appearing at the 2021 Met gala wearing a backless gown emblazoned with the words “Tax the Rich”. AOC’s Devil Wears Prada moment, Lewis says, “underscores how far-removed today’s Democrats are from being the party of the working class”.It was not something Eleanor Roosevelt would have done.“Such stunts feed the sense that our public servants are indulging in hypocrisy and taking advantage of the system,” Lewis writes.Elsewhere, Lewis describes Greg Gianforte “allegedly body-slamming” Ben Jacobs, then of the Guardian, during a House campaign in Montana in 2018. Here, Lewis goes easy on Gianforte, who is now governor. Gianforte pleaded guilty, a fact Lewis acknowledges. With that plea, the Republican’s lack of self-control went beyond the realm of “alleged” and into established fact.Filthy Rich Politicians closes with a series of proposals to boost confidence in the system. Lewis calls for a ban on stock trading by members of Congress and their families, heightened transparency and increased congressional pay. The prospects for his proposals appear uncertain.Last week, Josh Hawley of Missouri – for whom, like Cruz and many other Republicans, Lewis’s wife has worked – and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York introduced the Ban Stock Trading for Government Officials Act. The public overwhelmingly supports the substance of the legislation. Whether Congress steps up remains to be seen.“Let me tell you about the very rich,” F Scott Fitzgerald once wrote. “They are different from you and me.”
      Filthy Rich Politicians is published in the US by Hachette More