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      How did transgender children in the US become so politicized? | Moira Donegan

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      The politicization of transgender children in the US is one of the most astounding coups of propaganda and organized animus in recent history. Rarely has so much attention and rage been directed at such a minuscule number of people, and more rarely, still, have those people been the most vulnerable and blameless among us: kids and teens.The first state to pass a ban on transition-related care for minors was Arkansas, in April 2021; less than four years later, more than half of states have such a ban on the books. In 2016, North Carolina lost an estimated $3.76bn in revenue following boycotts after they passed a law banning trans people, including transgender students, from using appropriate restrooms in public facilities; now, 14 states have such bathroom bans on the books, and the boycotts have receded.These changes in public attitudes towards trans youth – from a broad if imperfect sentiment of tolerance to a widespread and politically weaponized attitude of hostility toward a small minority of kids – did not emerge by accident. It was the product of a deliberate, conscious effort to radicalize large swaths of the United States, and significant chunks of state policy, into a hostility towards a few children.That effort seems set to bear fruit now, at the US supreme court, in US v Skrmetti, a lawsuit brought by the ACLU and the Biden Department of Justice challenging Tennessee’s HB1, a sweeping ban on transition-related care for minors that was passed in 2023. The law prohibits any puberty blockers or hormones from being prescribed for the purposes of gender transition, but it does not prohibit these medications from being prescribed for any non-transition-related purpose. A minor can be prescribed puberty blockers, for instance, if their doctor believes they are experiencing early onset, or “precocious”, puberty; they cannot be prescribed puberty blockers to delay the onset of a puberty that may change their bodies in ways they do not desire for gender identity-related reasons.That means, too, that a child assigned male at birth could access, say, testosterone treatment, but a child assigned female at birth could not. In oral arguments on Wednesday, solicitor general Elizabeth Prelogar and Chase Strangio of the ACLU – the first trans attorney to argue before the supreme court – explained that this was a straightforward case of sex discrimination, and hence needed to be subjected to a heightened standard of judicial review under the 14th amendment’s equal protection clause.It will not be. A majority of the court’s conservatives seemed poised to uphold the ban on transgender healthcare, though for a variety of different reasons. Brett Kavanaugh made his usual mealy-mouthed paean to states’ rights, an argument he always makes in questions of federally guaranteed equality provisions, but not before extolling the hypothetical suffering of teenagers who may access gender-affirming care but then later come to regret it. (One wonders if there are any choices from his own adolescence that Brett Kavanaugh has come to regret.) Clarence Thomas and chief justice John Roberts, meanwhile, both advanced the idea that the physiological differences between male and female bodies could moot the equal protection clause’s reach, giving states broad leeway to regulate medicine in ways that would uphold gender hierarchy.For his part, Samuel Alito also seemed interested in the idea that states might have a right to effect gender discrimination via their regulation of medicine. He repeatedly cited the 1974 case Geduldig v Aiello, in which the supreme court ruled that states could discriminate on the basis of pregnancy, and that pregnancy discrimination was not sex discrimination – because even though only female people become pregnant, not all of them are pregnant all of the time. (At the time, Congress found the outcome in Geduldig so egregious that it passed a law clarifying that pregnancy discrimination does count as sex discrimination for the purposes of federal civil rights law, and the precedent was largely mooted, but Alito’s controlling opinion in Dobbs has revived it.)But Alito, true to form, did not confine his opining to the notion that discrimination against trans people does not count as sex-based discrimination: he went on to suggest that trans people are not quite real, peppering Strangio, in a scene that seemed intended to humiliate the trans attorney, with questions about whether trans identity was truly an “immutable” characteristic. For his part, Strangio responded with a dignity and respect that Alito’s line of questioning did not merit.It was not the only low moment. James Matthew Rice, the Tennessee solicitor general who defended the ban in court, repeatedly compared gender affirming care with suicide, as well as to lobotomies and eugenics. During his time, justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor, with occasional assists from Elena Kagan, tried to chase Rice down on the inconsistencies in his own argument.Tennessee claimed, after all, that the law did not discriminate on the basis of patients’ sex, but rather on the basis of the purpose of their treatment; when the liberal justices pointed out that this was a distinction without a difference, because the purpose of the treatment was dependent on the patients’ sex, Rice simply repeated his assertion that there was a difference, there, somewhere. Jackson, in particular, worked to get Rice to explain his position for some time. He declined to.To call the Tennessee ban sex-neutral is laughable, almost insulting. The statute itself makes gender conformity its explicit justification in its text, saying that it aims to prohibit “sex inconsistent treatment”, or anything that “might encourage minors to become disdainful of their sex”. The law has long included sex role stereotyping within the purview of sex discrimination; Tennessee has sought to enforce sex roles, and sexed embodiment, with the force of the state. There is no good faith reading of the law that would allow it to withstand the scrutiny that the 14th amendment requires. But luckily for Tennessee, this is not a good faith court.

      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Georgia’s payback machine: Fani Willis resists subpoenas by state lawmakers over Trump prosecution

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      Even before Project 2025 made it a Republican goal to use federal power to bring progressive prosecutors to heel, the Fulton county, Georgia, district attorney, Fani Willis, found herself in the crosshairs of conservative state legislators angered by her prosecution of Donald Trump.That conflict found its way into yet another courtroom on Tuesday. Willis’s office defended itself against a subpoena by a state senate committee, which had demanded her appearance to explain how she might have spent money on Nathan Wade, her former special prosecutor and paramour, in the prosecution of now president-elect Trump and others charged in the election interference case. She rejected two subpoenas issued by the Senate special committee on investigations demanding her testimony and a barrel full of documents about the relationship, her office’s finances and the case.The future of the Trump election interference case in Georgia remains unclear. The state appeals court canceled a hearing scheduled for this week, in which Trump and other defendants had sought to remove Willis as prosecutor on the case. The appeal cited Willis’s relationship with Wade, arguing that the financial entanglement between the two created a conflict of interest that should force a recusal.The appeals court could – and often does – rule without hearing oral arguments. It could scuttle the case entirely, order Willis to be removed as prosecutor, sever Trump from the trial or allow the case to move forward as is.Federal prosecutors rolled up their cases after Trump won election to a second term, noting that the federal government cannot prosecute a sitting president. The Georgia case remains the only one left to prosecute against Trump, with 14 co-defendants still in legal jeopardy.Anger over that prosecution has come from multiple flanks within the Republican party. Even as the former Georgia governor Roy Barnes argued on behalf of Willis before the Fulton superior court judge Shukura Ingram on Tuesday that the state senate subpoenas were unconstitutional, another judge issued an order declaring her office in violation of the state’s Open Records Act in another case.Conservative legal activists from Judicial Watch sued Fulton county after Willis’s office refused to turn over records of her communications with the special counsel Jack Smith and the House January 6 committee. The Fulton county superior court judge Robert McBurney ordered her office to turn the records over within five days.View image in fullscreenRepublicans want to know how Willis might have coordinated Trump’s prosecution with the Department of Justice and, ultimately, the Biden White House. But they are also contemplating how the results of the committee investigation may lead legislators to rewrite laws to take authority away from district attorneys, to cut Willis’s budget or to otherwise limit her authority to prosecute wayward Republicans.Willis has said she views this as political harassment and is fighting them all the way down, likening it to the legislative movement that created a state panel that could remove local prosecutors.Willis’s office argued before that committees representing only the statehouse or the state senate do not have subpoena power: both chambers must issue a subpoena as a joint act under the Georgia state constitution.“The operative word is ‘general assembly’,” argued Barnes. The term refers to both chambers of the Georgia legislature together, he said. “Only the general assembly has the right of subpoena. Not the senate. Not the house.”Willis’s office argued that a subpoena cannot be issued when the general assembly is not in session, as the committee did in this case, and that the subpoenas are overbroad relative to limitations made in Georgia’s Open Records Act and a common-law sense of separation of powers. Barnes argued that legislative oversight over state spending is being used by hostile politicians on a fishing expedition-as-harassment, citing the Mazars decision by the US supreme court seeking Trump’s financial records from his accountants.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“This wrought committee created by one set of the general assembly says, ‘Oh, wouldn’t it be fun for us to just drag the district attorney down and see what she’s got on old Donald Trump,’” Barnes said. “Well, Fani Willis had an affair with Nathan Wade. This is a pretext. We would be blind not to see what all of us see. This was nothing but singling out one person who’s been duly elected in this circuit, and duly re-elected, to embarrass her. It’s not for any legitimate legislative reason.”Josh Belinfante, representing the senate committee, argued that the district attorney is challenging the constitutionality of subpoena power for all legislative committees, and that doing so gets between lawmakers and their duty.“They’re investigating … these allegations that may show that existing state laws – including those establishing the processes for selecting, hiring and compensating special assistant district attorneys – are inadequate,” Belinfante said. “It is necessary to determine whether the alleged conduct of District Attorney Willis, if proven to be true in whole or in part, should be addressed by the enactment of new laws or prompt some change in state appropriations, or both.”Legislators began looking at the actions of district attorney before the Trump case rocketed to the top of their attention, Belinfante said. Arguments were made that one provision of state statute could be used to limit the authority of the legislature that passed that statute in the first place.“It is presumed that the general assembly can act unless the constitution says otherwise,” Belinfante said. “There is no constitutional prohibition against investigations.”Belinfante noted that the state constitution empowers each chamber to establish legislative committees, and that – in the absence of an expressed prohibition – that gives each chamber the power to issue subpoenas without consulting the other chamber.No Georgia court has ever examined the subpoena power of the state legislature as Ingram has been asked to do on Tuesday, legal experts say. More

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      Biden could do so much good with pardons. Instead he bailed out his son | Tayo Bero

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      When Joe Biden announced on Sunday that he would be pardoning his son Hunter – who was facing sentencing in two federal criminal cases – he helped cement Donald Trump’s much-repeated argument that the American judicial system is rotten, politicized and in need of an overhaul.It’s a stupid refrain, but there are some heavy issues with Biden’s choice to do this now. What are we to make of the hypocrisy of a president who promised he’d “never interfere in the dealings of the justice department”, and swore even up until six weeks ago that he would not pardon his son? Or the fact that he just delivered Trump and the Republican party the kind of ammunition they need to justify pardoning, say, the orchestrators of the January 6 attack on the US Capitol? More morally troubling is that there’s a million other worthy causes that Biden could be using his pardon powers for.“No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son – and that is wrong,” Biden said in his official statement on the pardon. He also called Hunter’s conviction a “miscarriage of justice”.Sure, there’s validity to Biden’s claims that Hunter was singled out because of who his father is: prosecutors rarely ever charge people for illegal gun possession while being addicted to a controlled substance unless there’s a violent crime involved, for instance, and many other people who are nicked on late tax charges are allowed to resolve things through the civil courts.But political witch-hunt or not, the optics of Biden letting his son cut in line are terrible when there are thousands of people languishing in federal prisons who deserve this consideration. From inmates sitting on federal death row charged with faulty evidence, to the Black and brown people serving long jail terms for drug offenses or nonviolent crimes, the inequities in the US justice system and who it punishes or rewards are far too grave and well-documented for Biden to have thought this was the right move.Trump has promised to accelerate mass deportations and to carry out a spree of executions including for drug offenses, and he is actively seeking to re-incarcerate thousands of people who were released into federal home confinement during the pandemic. Biden’s lack of foresight and judicial inaction on these issues becomes even more shameful in light of Hunter’s pardon.Still, presidential pardons have always been something of a political loot bag for outgoing presidents – a gift for friends and family to be handed out before the party ends. Bill Clinton used his to clear his half-brother of old cocaine charges, while Trump pardoned Charles Kushner, his son-in-law’s father, for tax evasion among other charges.But that’s just family. Let’s not forget that Trump also spent his first term doling out these pardons to his merry band of thieves and liars including Steve Bannon, Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort and Roger Stone. And it is that track record that makes the fallout from Biden’s pardon so frightening, because Trump has already begun hinting at the ways he plans to capitalize on the decision.“Does the Pardon given by Joe to Hunter include the J-6 Hostages, who have now been imprisoned for years?” Trump wrote on Truth Social after the announcement. “Such an abuse and miscarriage of Justice!”Meanwhile, Trump’s Republican buddies have already found ways to shoehorn this moment into a defense of Trump’s most egregious Senate picks. “Democrats can spare us the lectures about the rule of law when, say, President Trump nominates Pam Bondi and Kash Patel to clean up this corruption,” Tom Cotton, the Arkansas senator, wrote on X.More than anything, the Hunter pardon and its fallout are reflective of the sad and un-funny joke that has become US politics and governance. Next month, Trump will be the first convicted felon ever sworn in as president in American history, and he’s already lining up the get-out-of-jail-free cards for his criminal friends. The difference is that now, any time Trump is criticized for his use of pardon power, he will be able to argue that Biden used those same powers to protect his own son.

      Tayo Bero is a Guardian US columnist More

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      in US Politics

      What is a presidential pardon and how has it been used in the US?

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      Joe Biden’s decision to pardon his son Hunter on Sunday for any federal crimes “he committed or may have committed” between 1 January 2014 and 1 December 2024 has brought renewed focus on the expansive power the US constitution gives the president to grant official clemency.It’s a power that presidents have deployed since George Washington, who pardoned those involved in the Whiskey Rebellion, to Donald Trump, who pardoned his political allies.What is the pardon power?The presidential pardon power is explicitly outlined in the US constitution.Section 2 of article II says that the president has the power to “grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment”. The president’s power only applies to federal crimes, not state ones. It also does not apply to cases of impeachment.The founders took the pardon power from England, where there was a longstanding tradition of the king’s ability to issue mercy pardons. There was some debate about whether Congress should be required to give approval of pardons and whether there should be an exception for treason, but Alexander Hamilton pushed the constitutional convention to include a broad pardon power solely vested in the president. “As men generally derive confidence from their numbers, they might often encourage each other in an act of obduracy, and might be less sensible to the apprehension of suspicion or censure for an injudicious or affected clemency. On these accounts, one man appears to be a more eligible dispenser of the mercy of government, than a body of men,” he wrote in Federalist no 74, one of a series of essays to promote the ratification of the constitution.When it came to treason, he argued that the president could deploy the pardon power as a tool to negotiate and unify the country. “In seasons of insurrection or rebellion, there are often critical moments, when a welltimed offer of pardon to the insurgents or rebels may restore the tranquillity of the commonwealth; and which, if suffered to pass unimproved, it may never be possible afterwards to recall,” he wrote.Bernadette Meyler, a law professor at Stanford University who studies British and US law, described it as “the one emergency power written into the constitution, other than the suspension of habeas corpus.“It’s one thing that is a concession to the idea that there might be certain unforeseen circumstances that the president would have to intervene in,” she said. “It goes along with the president’s control also over the army and navy and military power because, in the context that it was being contemplated, it was really being thought about as another tool within the ability to control domestic unrest.” How has the pardon power been used?George Washington issued the first pardons in 1795 to two men who were involved in the Whiskey Rebellion, a violent uprising in Pennsylvania to protest a tax on whiskey and other alcohol products by the nascent federal government.A key moment in the pardon power came after the civil war, when president Andrew Johnson issued “a full pardon and amnesty” to any person “who, directly or indirectly, participated in the late insurrection or rebellion” during the civil war. This and similar pardons around the same time led the US supreme court to interpret the pardon power to allow the president to grant broad amnesty to a group of people and not just for specific crimes already committed, Meyler said.After Richard Nixon resigned the presidency in the 1970s after Watergate, Gerald Ford issued a full and unconditional pardon for any crimes.In 1977, Jimmy Carter issued a mass pardon for those who had dodged the draft for the Vietnam war. At the end of his term in 1992, George HW Bush pardoned six people involved in the Iran-Contra affair, including the former defense secretary Caspar Weinberger.In his last day in office in 2001, Bill Clinton pardoned his half-brother and gave an extremely controversial pardon to Marc Rich, a fugitive convicted of financial crimes whose ex-wife had been a major donor to Democrats and the Clinton campaign. Barack Obama granted clemency to more than 1,700 people while in office, including hundreds who had been convicted of non-violent drug offenses.Who did Donald Trump pardon?Trump did not hesitate to use the pardon power during his presidency to help political allies. He pardoned Charles Kushner, the father of his son-in-law Jared. The elder Kushner had pleaded guilty years earlier to tax evasion and witness tampering (Trump has now tapped him to be ambassador to France).He pardoned his political adviser Steve Bannon, who faced charges of defrauding donors on a charity related to building a wall at the southern border. He also pardoned Paul Manafort, who served as a top official on his 2016 campaign, and Trump ally Roger Stone.Trump pardoned the former New York City police commissioner Bernard Kerik, the conservative personality Dinesh D’Souza, and Elliott Broidy, a major Republican donor. He also pardoned the rapper Lil Wayne and Alice Marie Johnson, a woman who had spent decades in prison for drug offenses but earned considerable attention after Kim Kardashian took on her cause.Trump has said he will issue a mass pardon for those involved in the January 6 attacks, a move that would end years of work by the justice department to investigate and criminally prosecute those involved in the attacks.Do other countries have a pardon power?The power to pardon is one that widely exists around the world, said Andrew Novak, a professor at George Mason University who is the author of Comparative Executive Clemency: The Constitutional Pardon Power and the Prerogative of Mercy in Global Perspective.But the United States is somewhat unique in allowing its chief executive the ability to pardon without having to get input or sign-off from others.“Biden can grant a pardon without input from anybody, which is much more of like a medieval English king conception of the pardon power, which is kind of ironic,” he added. “We have kind of an old-fashioned conception of the pardon power, at least generally.”“Having this unlimited pardon power that’s more similar to like 1700s England than it is to the current state of affairs in the western world,” he added. “In most countries in Europe, and the comparators in the developed world, they require input from someone else.” That requirement for input, Novak said, can somewhat limit a pardon being used to serve political or personal interests, the way it can be used in the US.Many countries also don’t allow for a pardon before conviction, Novak said, and there has been a movement over the last few decades in other countries for more transparency to ensure that proper processes are followed.About half of constitutions around the world limit the pardon power to something that can only occur after conviction, are only for specified offenses, or require an executive to consult others, Novak said. It’s uncommon for countries to have a ban on self-pardoning or pardoning a family member, he added.“Maybe it’s not common because the circumstance doesn’t arise very often,” he said. “The pardon power has always been a corruption risk going back to medieval times and can be used for many forms of self-dealing, like shielding one’s close associates or supporters.”The US founders understood impeachment to be an important check on the pardon power, Meyler said. “As we’ve seen it’s extremely hard to actually convict on an impeachment so that has proved to be really a fictional limitation on the president’s power.” More

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      Joe Biden issues ‘full and unconditional’ pardon to son Hunter

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      Joe Biden has issued “a full and unconditional” pardon to his son Hunter Biden covering convictions on federal gun and tax charges, the US president said in a statement released by the White House on Sunday.The decision marks a reversal for the president, who had repeatedly said he would not use his executive authority to pardon his son or commute his sentence.Hunter Biden was scheduled to be sentenced for his conviction on federal gun charges on 12 December. He was scheduled to be sentenced in the tax case four days later.In the statement, Joe Biden said that he had long maintained that he would “not interfere with the Justice Department’s decision-making, and I kept my word even as I have watched my son being selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted”.But, he argued, “it is clear that Hunter was treated differently”, adding that the charges in the case “came about only after several of my political opponents in Congress instigated them to attack me and oppose my election”.Hunter Biden was found guilty in Delaware in June on three felony counts relating to his purchase of a handgun in 2018. He had written on his gun-purchase form, falsely, that he was not a user of illicit drugs.He pleaded guilty to nine federal tax charges in Los Angeles in September, opting for an “open” plea, where a defendant pleads guilty to the charges and leaves his sentencing fate in the hands of the judge.The tax charges carried up to 17 years behind bars and the gun charges were punishable by up to 25 years, though federal sentencing guidelines were expected to call for far less time and it was possible the president’s son would have avoided prison time entirely.The pardon covers all “offenses against the United States which he has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014 through December 1, 2024, including but not limited to all offenses charged or prosecuted”.Joe Biden said on Sunday evening that his son had been prosecuted when “without aggravating factors like use in a crime, multiple purchases, or buying a weapon as a straw purchaser, people are almost never brought to trial on felony charges solely for how they filled out a gun form”.He noted in the statement that “those who were late paying their taxes because of serious addictions, but paid them back subsequently with interest and penalties, are typically given non-criminal resolutions”.Biden accused his political opponents of singling out his 54-year-old son.“No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son – and that is wrong,” he said.“There has been an effort to break Hunter – who has been five and a half years sober, even in the face of unrelenting attacks and selective prosecution. In trying to break Hunter, they’ve tried to break me – and there’s no reason to believe it will stop here. Enough is enough.”Biden departed for Angola later on Sunday evening for what may be his last foreign trip as president before leaving office.Speculation had been mounting that the president would issue a pardon since Hunter was seen with his father in Nantucket over the Thanksgiving break.Donald Trump had said in October that he would not be surprised if Hunter Biden were to receive a pardon.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I wouldn’t take it off the books,” Trump said. “See, unlike Joe Biden, despite what they’ve done to me, where they’ve gone after me so viciously … And Hunter’s a bad boy.”On Sunday, Trump reacted with outrage, writing on his social network: “Does the Pardon given by Joe to Hunter include the J-6 Hostages, who have now been imprisoned for years? Such an abuse and miscarriage of Justice!” Just one day earlier, though, Trump had reminded Americans that he himself had previously used the pardon power to wipe away convictions of those close to him. In his final weeks in office, Trump pardoned Charles Kushner, the father of his son-in law, Jared Kushner, as well as multiple allies convicted in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. On Saturday, Trump announced plans to nominate the elder Kushner to be the US ambassador to France.Republicans have long zeroed in on Hunter Biden’s difficulties – questions around lucrative foreign consultancies, broken relationships and a crack cocaine addiction – in an effort to politically damage his father.A laptop Hunter Biden left in a Delaware repair shop that made its way into Republican hands formed a scandal in the closing days of the 2020 election. Republicans claimed that the so-called “laptop from hell”, which featured images of Hunter posing with guns, sex workers and crack cocaine, was suppressed by media favorable to Democrats.Hunter Biden later published a book, Beautiful Things: a Memoir, that detailed his struggles as a drug addict. The Biden family denied more serious accusations that Hunter’s profitable financial arrangements with businesspeople in Ukraine and China amounted to graft using the family name.James Comer, one of the Republicans leading congressional investigations into Biden’s family, denounced the pardon. “The charges Hunter faced were just the tip of the iceberg in the blatant corruption that President Biden and the Biden Crime Family have lied about to the American people,” Comer wrote on X. “It’s unfortunate that, rather than come clean about their decades of wrongdoing, President Biden and his family continue to do everything they can to avoid accountability.”“I have admitted and taken responsibility for my mistakes during the darkest days of my addiction – mistakes that have been exploited to publicly humiliate and shame me and my family for political sport,” Hunter Biden said in a statement on Sunday, adding he had remained sober for more than five years.“In the throes of addiction, I squandered many opportunities and advantages … I will never take the clemency I have been given today for granted and will devote the life I have rebuilt to helping those who are still sick and suffering.”Hunter Biden’s legal team filed Sunday night in both Los Angeles and Delaware asking the judges handling his gun and tax cases to immediately dismiss them, citing the pardon.In the statement announcing the pardon, Joe Biden said that for his “entire career” he had followed a simple principle: to tell the truth to the American people.“Here’s the truth: I believe in the justice system, but as I have wrestled with this, I also believe raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice – and once I made this decision this weekend, there was no sense in delaying it further. I hope Americans will understand why a father and a president would come to this decision.”Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report. More

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      Trump transition team signs agreement to begin takeover from Biden

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      Donald Trump’s team announced on Tuesday it had signed an agreement to start the complex process of transferring control of the federal government to themselves, although the details of the plan suggested some breaks with standard practice.The incoming White House chief of staff Susie Wiles said the team would now be sending in “landing teams” into the various departments and agencies as it prepares to take over the bureaucracy of the executive branch.“After completing the selection process of his incoming cabinet, president-elect Trump is entering the next phase of his administration’s transition,” Wiles said. “This engagement allows our intended cabinet nominees to begin critical preparations.”But the agreement with the Biden administration, known as a memorandum of understanding, appeared to be a pared-down version of what is normally signed by presidential transitions with caveats that indicated a departure from usual restrictions.The signing of the memo normally unlocks up to $7.2m in government funding to help staffing costs and other expenses, as well as the use of government office space through the nonpartisan General Services Administration.The financial assistance comes with strings attached – the transition team has to agree to disclose its donors and impose a $5,000 limit on contributions – and the agreement was supposed to be signed months before the election.The transition team is normally supposed to sign an ethics agreement, which paves the way for transition aides to start receiving government information such as classified briefings and the granting of security clearances.The announcement by Wiles in a press release suggested that the Trump team had negotiated its own language around some of those restrictions.While the Trump team was committed to making the identities of its donors public, and would not accept any foreign contributions, Wiles said that it would not be using any government money and its entire operation would be privately funded.Government ethics experts have previously noted that such an arrangement would allow people seeking to curry favor with the Trump White House to donate directly to him, raising concerns about possible conflicts of interest.Wiles also said that the Trump team had its own ethics plan, rather than the formal government one, leaving unclear whether all relevant transition aides would be eligible to receive full government briefings that included classified information.That caveat on the ethics plan dovetailed with reporting by the Guardian that the Trump team is planning for political appointees to receive temporary security clearances on the first day and only face FBI background checks after it had taken over the bureau.Trump’s lack of interest in engaging with the formal transition stems from the first Trump administration, when officials turned over transition team records to the Russia investigation, according to people familiar with the matter.Trump has previously broken convention with the transfer of power. In 2016, his campaign organized what appeared to be a standard process, until Trump fired his transition team’s leadership after he won the election and cut off communications with the Obama administration.In 2020, Trump again seemed to follow standard procedure until immediately after the election, pressuring the General Services Administration to not recognize Joe Biden’s election win so his team could not access the federal financial assistance. More

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      Rudy Giuliani tells judge he can’t pay his bills in courtroom outburst

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      The former New York mayor and lawyer to Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, erupted in court on Tuesday, telling a judge: “I can’t pay my bills!”Sketches by courtroom artists, who create pictures for the media to use when cameras are not allowed in court, such as federal courts, showed a furious Giuliani, 80, pointing at the judge in his case, Lewis Liman.The hearing in federal court in Manhattan concerned a near-$150m judgment won by Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, two Georgia elections workers whom Giuliani defamed while advancing Trump’s lie that electoral fraud in 2020 cost him victory over Joe Biden.Liman said Giuliani had not been complying with orders to surrender assets.Giuliani said on Tuesday: “The implications you are making against me are wrong. I have no car, no credit card, no cash, everything I have is tied up, they have put stop orders on my business accounts, and I can’t pay my bills!”Giuliani’s fall has been spectacular. After making his name as a hard-charging prosecutor who took on organized crime, he was mayor for two terms, in office on 11 September 2001 and widely praised for his leadership after the terrorist attacks on the US. His 2008 presidential run flopped but Giuliani enjoyed a successful consulting and speaking career before allying himself with Trump when the property magnate entered Republican politics in 2015.Giuliani missed out on a cabinet appointment but became Trump’s personal attorney – work that fueled Trump’s first impeachment, in 2019 for blackmailing Ukraine for political dirt. Giuliani then became a prime driver of Trump’s failed attempt to overturn the 2020 election – work which produced criminal charges, to which he pleaded not guilty, the huge defamation judgment, and disbarments in Washington and New York.In New York on Tuesday, Giuliani’s lawyer told the judge his client had turned over assets including a Mercedes Benz sports car once owned by the film star Lauren Bacall. An attorney for Freeman and Moss said Giuliani had turned over the car but not the title to it. Attorneys for the two women have also said they have gained access to Giuliani’s $5m Upper East Side apartment in Manhattan, but have not secured “the keys, stock, or proprietary lease”.In court, the judge told Giuliani’s lawyer: “A car without a title is meaningless … your client is a competent person. He was the US attorney in the district. The notion that he can’t apply for a title certificate – ”Giuliani cut him off, saying: “I did apply for it! What am I supposed to do, make it up myself? Your implication that I have not been diligent about it is totally incorrect.”He then launched his outburst about financial problems.Giuliani’s lawyer asked Liman to extend deadlines, given he had only just started on the case after previous attorneys withdrew. Liman denied the request, saying: “You can’t restart the clock by firing one counsel and hiring another. He has already received multiple extensions, and missed multiple deadlines.”Trial is set for 16 January regarding whether Giuliani must also give Moss and Freeman his Florida home and four New York Yankees World Series commemoration rings. On Tuesday, Giuliani’s lawyer asked if the trial could be pushed back, so his client could attend inaugural events for Trump, who will be sworn in as president in Washington DC on 20 January. Liman said no.Outside court, Giuliani told reporters Liman was “going to rule against me. If you were sitting in the courtroom and couldn’t figure it out, you’re stupid.” He also said the judge’s “background is serious leftwing Democrat … about as leftwing as you get” – even while acknowledging Liman was nominated by Trump.Giuliani said he did not regret defaming Freeman and Moss.“I regret the persecution I have been put through,” he said. More

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      Trump camp rivalries come to fore over efforts to oust top adviser

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      Internal rivalries spilled into public view on Monday as Boris Epshteyn, a top adviser to Donald Trump, found himself at the center of an ouster effort over accusations he asked potential administration nominees to pay monthly consulting fees in exchange for lobbying for them to the president-elect.The maelstrom engulfing Epshteyn suggested that barely 20 days since Trump won the election, the knife-fight culture of the first Trump presidency, where bitter aides took any opportunity to remove rivals, had returned.Over the weekend, David Warrington, the Trump 2024 campaign’s general counsel, finalized the main conclusions of a review into Epshteyn that found he had unsuccessfully solicited tens of thousands of dollars from potential nominees including Scott Bessent, who has been tapped to be Treasury secretary.According to the review, one day after Trump met with Bessent for the first time in February, Epshteyn invited him to lunch at a hotel in Palm Beach, where he asked for a monthly retainer of at least $30,000 to promote his name at Mar-a-Lago in case Trump won the election.Bessent declined and complained to an aide that Epshteyn tried to shake him down. Later, when Epshteyn asked Bessent to invest $10m in a three-by-three basketball league, he declined but told associates Epshteyn would probably give him better access if he had taken up the offer.The review into Epshteyn, a longtime Trump adviser who has wielded outsized influence with Trump over cabinet picks and positions in key departments, also concluded Epshteyn’s employment and access to Trump should be terminated, according to two people briefed on the findings.But Epshteyn remained part of Trump’s inner circle as of Monday evening, with Trump riding high on the news that special counsel prosecutors had moved to dismiss the two federal criminal cases against him – a victory he credited to Ephsteyn.The first person that Trump called when prosecutors withdrew the cases against him was Epshteyn, according to two people with Trump at the time, which occurred just as CNN first reported the existence of the review into Epshteyn’s consultancy scheme.For the remainder of the day, Epshteyn was on the offensive as his allies dismissed the review as an attempt by Warrington to decapitate Epshteyn after he successfully pushed for Bill McGinley to be the White House counsel, rather than Warrington, who had also been in contention for the role.Epshteyn’s allies later portrayed the review as a political hit job capitalizing on Epshteyn’s role in pushing for the former congressman Matt Gaetz to get the nomination for attorney general before it sank under the weight of sexual misconduct allegations.Epshteyn denied the allegations. “I am honored to work for President Trump and with his team,” he said in a statement. “These fake claims are false and defamatory and will not distract us from making America great again.”If the failure of the Gaetz nomination was seen as an opportunity to oust Epshteyn, even in part, it may have been a miscalculation since the original idea to have Gaetz lead the justice department came from Trump himself, according to a person with direct knowledge of that conversation.One Trump adviser who does not care for Epshteyn speculated on Monday night that his influence was weakened by the allegations. But another Trump adviser suggested Epshteyn may have emerged stronger. “Trump isn’t impressed by a pile-on because that’s what all those prosecutors did to him,” the adviser said.Epshteyn’s staying power with Trump has remained constant over the years and surprised newcomers to Trump’s orbit. Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson have both remarked to associates that they did not understand why Trump placed so much trust in Epshteyn.The principal reason for that trust in the last two years, according to multiple aides and associates, has been because Trump has regarded him as a major reason for how he sidestepped legal peril during the 2024 campaign.Epshteyn assembled and oversaw the Trump legal team during the criminal investigations and in the multiple criminal cases, including when Trump found it nearly impossible to find capable lawyers to represent him. “Boris was always right,” Trump is said to have remarked about Epshteyn’s legal strategy.That endeared him to Trump, who has taken Epshteyn seriously on policy and personnel suggestions, even if they were derided by others on the Trump team. When Trump named his top picks for the leadership of the justice department, they were Trump’s personal lawyers who had all been recruited by Epshteyn. More