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      in Elections

      Trump lawyers ask judge to push January 6 trial to April 2026

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      Lawyers for Donald Trump asked the judge in Washington DC overseeing his federal election interference trial to push back the start date to April 2026, almost 18 months after the next presidential election and more than two years from the trial date proposed by the US government.The former president’s legal team filed the request to the US district court judge Tanya Chutkan, after Trump was indicted earlier this month on charges that he conspired to defraud the United States, conspired to obstruct an official proceeding, obstructed an official proceeding and engaged in a conspiracy against rights.Federal prosecutors in the office of the special counsel Jack Smith had proposed to schedule the trial for the start of January 2024, saying there was a significant public interest in expediting the prosecution.“A January 2 trial date would vindicate the public’s strong interest in a speedy trial,” prosecutors wrote, adding: “It is difficult to imagine a public interest stronger than the one in this case in which the defendant – the former president of the United States – is charged with three criminal conspiracies.”In their court filing on Thursday, Trump’s attorneys argued a years-long delay was necessary due to the “massive” amount of information they will have to review and because of scheduling conflicts with the other criminal cases Trump is facing.“If we were to print and stack 11.5 million pages of documents, with no gap between pages, at 200 pages per inch, the result would be a tower of paper stretching nearly 5,000 feet into the sky. That is taller than the Washington Monument stacked on top of itself eight times, with nearly a million pages to spare,” Trump’s team wrote.In their 16-page filing, the lawyers also argued that putting Trump, who is a candidate for the 2024 Republican nomination in a bid to reclaim the White House, on trial this coming January would mark a “rush to trial”.They argue that would violate his constitutional rights and be “flatly impossible”, adding: “The government’s objective is clear: to deny President Trump and his counsel a fair ability to prepare for trial.”Chutkan has said she wants to set a trial date at her next scheduled hearing on 28 August.Twice impeached and now indicted in four cases, Trump faces criminal charges in New York, Florida, Washington DC and Georgia over a hush-money scheme during the 2016 election, his alleged mishandling of classified documents and his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.He also faces a civil trial beginning this October in the investigation into his business interests led by the New York attorney general, Letitia James.And on Friday, the New York judge Lewis Kaplan declared that Trump had filed a “frivolous” appeal against his decision not to dismiss the first of writer E Jean Carroll’s two defamation lawsuits against him. She is seeking $10m and a jury in May found him liable for sexual abuse and defamation of Carroll in 1996, awarding her $5m in damages. More

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      in US Politics

      Georgia Republican lawmaker moves to impeach Trump prosecutor Fani Willis

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      A Republican state senator in Georgia has moved to impeach the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis.The move comes in the wake of Willis’s delivery of a 41-count indictment against the former president Donald Trump and his operatives on state racketeering and conspiracy charges over efforts to reverse Trump’s 2020 presidential election loss in the state.On Thursday, Colton Moore wrote a letter to Governor Brian Kemp in which he called for an emergency review of Willis’s actions.“We, the undersigned … hereby certify to you … that in our opinion an emergency exists in the affairs of the state, requiring a special session to be convened … for all purposes, to include, without limitation, the review and response to the actions of Fani Willis,” Moore wrote.Moore, who represents senate district 53, posted his letter on Twitter alongside the caption: “As a Georgia state senator, I am officially calling for an emergency session to review the actions of Fani Willis.“America is under attack. I’m not going to sit back and watch as radical left prosecutors politically TARGET political opponents,” he added.In a statement reported by the rightwing media outlet Breitbart, Moore said: “We must strip all funding and, if appropriate, impeach Fani Willis.”Moore appears to have also launched a website for the official petition of Willis.“Corrupt district attorney Fani Willis is potentially abusing her position of power by pursuing former president Donald J Trump, and I am calling on my colleagues in the Georgia legislature to join me in calling for an emergency session to investigate and review her actions and determine if they warrant impeachment.“The politically motivated weaponization of our justice system at the expense of taxpayers will not be tolerated. I am demanding that we defund her office until we find out what the hell is going on. We cannot stand idly by as corrupt prosecutors choose to target their political opposition,” the website read underneath a headline of “God. Guns. Liberty. Leadership.”Moore’s announcement triggered praise from several conservatives online, with one person writing: “Finally a Republican with courage. So refreshing to see someone FIGHT instead of sit back and say ‘there’s nothing we can do.’”Another user wrote: “Finally, a Republican with a backbone.”“Republicans who walk the walk are my kind of Republicans,” someone else wrote.Following Willis’s delivery of the 41-count indictment, the Fulton county district attorney, who is African American, has faced a wave of racist abuse online including from Trump, who, using a thinly veiled play on the N-word, wrote on Truth Social: “They never went after those that Rigged the Election … They only went after those that fought to find the RIGGERS!” More

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      in US Politics

      Giuliani championed organised crime act Rico. Now he’s charged under it

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      Rudy Giuliani has dined out for years on his aggressive use of Rico, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, which he wielded with dramatic effect against New York mobsters in the 1980s.For his pains, he was granted an award by the Italian government. Later, as New York City mayor, he turned his use of the anti-racketeering law into a vote-getter, presenting himself as the hero of Rico.As an in-joke, he handed the keys of the city to the cast of the Sopranos. Then he went on Saturday Night Live and bragged about “sticking it to organised crime”.He may not be laughing so loudly now.On Monday night Giuliani, Donald Trump and 17 other co-defendants were slapped with organised crime charges in Georgia under the state’s Rico law, for allegedly having been part of a vast conspiracy to overturn the 2020 presidential election. The hero of Rico had been hoist with his own petard.The grand jury indictment charges all of the 19 co-defendants, Giuliani included, with “racketeering activity” in Georgia and other states. It alleges that they acted together as a “criminal organisation” which engaged in illegal activities including forgery, filing false documents and conspiracy to defraud the state.The irony that Fani Willis, the district attorney of Fulton county who is leading the prosecution, chose to hit the hero of Rico with a Rico rap has not been lost on Giuliani watchers. Appointed as US attorney for the southern district of New York in 1983, he did not so much invent the anti-racketeering law, which was enacted in 1970, as become an early adopter in its use against organised crime.His most famous case, the 1986 prosecution known as the “commission” case, targeted eight defendants at the very top of one of the most powerful New York mafia families. “The verdict reached today has resulted in dismantling the ruling council of La Cosa Nostra,” Giuliani said after the convictions were secured in a 10-week trial.His victory demonstrated the huge potential of Rico as a prosecutorial tool against crime gangs. Instead of the traditional approach of picking out individual foot soldiers, one arduous case at a time, Rico allowed prosecutors to take out the entire upper leadership of the criminal enterprise in a single devastating blow.Giuliani may well be ruing his much-vaunted success. The “commission” case put Rico on the map, and since 1986 it has spread widely at both a federal level and across state jurisdictions – Georgia included.The Fulton county indictment makes a specific point of highlighting aspects of Giuliani’s behavior in the thick of the 2020 election that it alleges amounted to racketeering. It recounts some of the more lurid lies that he disseminated in front of the Georgia lawmakers in an attempt to persuade them to subvert Joe Biden’s electoral victory in the state.The falsehoods included his claim that 10,315 dead people had voted in the presidential election; that fraudulent ballots had been counted five times in a counting center; and that two poll workers, Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss, had passed around USB ports “as if they’re vials of heroin or cocaine” seeking to infiltrate the voting machines.In July, Giuliani admitted in court that his comments about Freeman and Moss were false. Moss testified to the January 6 committee that the supposed USB ports she had exchanged with her mother were in fact ginger mints.The indictment presents all these incidents not just as lies, but as the actions of a member of a criminal racketeering enterprise, designed to further the conspiracy and achieve its goal of keeping Trump in the White House despite his electoral defeat. That Giuliani should have exposed himself to a Rico prosecution in this way is puzzling to those who have followed his legal career.“Of all the defendants, Giuliani knows Rico better than anyone, he lived with it for decades,” said Michael Discioarro, a former prosecutor in the Bronx. “Rudy knows darn well where the line is drawn, and it’s surprising to me that he even put himself in that position.” More

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      in US Politics

      Of the criminal cases against Trump, Georgia’s may be the most important | Moira Donegan

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      Whether they like it or not, the three prosecutors who have now indicted Donald Trump in four different cases – the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, who is bringing charges in the Stormy Daniels hush money case; the special counsel Jack Smith, who is bringing federal charges against Trump in the Mar-a-Lago documents and January 6 cases; and now Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney who is bringing state charges against Trump regarding his attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election result in Georgia – are now the former president’s political opponents. They pose a greater risk to his political future than any of his primary rivals.This, at least, is how Trump is behaving as his presidential campaign lumbers toward 2024: as if he’s running against the prosecution. For one thing, Trump is acting like the prosecutions are political attacks. In the lead-up to the Georgia indictment, he aired TV ads attacking Willis. And for another, the cases are costing him a tremendous amount of money. A Pac that the former president is using to pay his mounting legal fees, Save America, recently requested a refund of a donation it had made to another group supporting Trump’s re-election effort. The money couldn’t go to campaign efforts, as had been planned, because it was needed to pay the legal fees. That’s how rapidly lawyers’ bills are adding up for the former president and his long list of indicted allies.That list got a lot longer late Monday night, when Willis’s office unsealed an indictment charging Trump and 18 others on charges derived from Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or Rico. Trump himself was charged with 13 felony counts stemming from his attempts to overturn the 2020 election, including not just racketeering but also soliciting a public officer to violate their oath, and numerous conspiracy and false statements charges.The wide-ranging indictment is the result of a two-and-a-half-year investigation undertaken using a special grand jury, and charges stem from incidents ranging from election day 2020 to September 2022, when defendants allegedly perjured themselves in testimony to the grand jury in an attempt to cover up the scheme. The query began after the release of audio of a call in which Trump urged the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to invalidate votes for Biden in majority-Black Atlanta and “find 11,780 votes” to allow Trump to win the state.Willis has taken a broad view of her mandate, taking advantage of state law’s expanded purview to charge much more expansively in Georgia than Jack Smith has under federal law. Willis has said in the past that she uses Rico charges to tell a complete story of a criminal enterprise to a jury, and the indictment is designed to allow her prosecutorial team to bring in out-of-state conduct in order to add context to the broader effort to overturn the election. The indictment depicts the effort to overturn the election results in Georgia and elsewhere as a criminal enterprise engaged in a conspiracy to commit illegal activity and then cover it up, with Trump as the syndicate boss.In addition to false statements about election fraud made by the likes of Rudy Giuliani to the Georgia legislature, the indictment also surveys conduct in places as far afield as Pennsylvania and Arizona; includes charges related to the false electors scheme in Georgia; and details a bizarre incident on 7 January 2021 in which a firm employed by the conspiracist Trump lawyer Sidney Powell illegally confiscated confidential election data from voting machines in rural Coffee county with the help of one of those fake electors, the Georgia state Republican official Cathy Latham.Giuliani, Powell and Latham are all co-defendants, along with figures such as the disgraced law professor John Eastman, the fake electors scheme architect Kenneth Chesebro, the Department of Justice official Jeff Clark, the Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis, the former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows, and the then Georgia Republican party chairman David Shafer. In addition to the 19 defendants, the indictment lists 30 unindicted co-conspirators.Willis has said that she plans to try all defendants at the same trial. That’s a recipe for chaos: 19 defendants means that there will be multiple defense teams, using multiple strategies to throw sand in the procedural gears of the court and delay, delay, delay. But it also creates many vulnerabilities for the former president: there will be a lot of opportunities for people to flip, and testify against Trump. And those co-defendants may have even more incentive to turn on their old boss than in the other cases, because in Georgia, the Rico charge faced by Trump and other defendants carries a mandatory minimum of five years in prison.Of the criminal cases against Trump, this is the most expansive and ambitious. It may also be among the most significant for the country. As a state charge, it cannot be crushed if Trump returns to power; in Georgia, due to a history of corruption and Klan affiliations among state officials, the governor does not have pardon power, and so Trump cannot look to the Republican governor, Brian Kemp, for reprieve. Alvin Bragg’s hush money case seems the weakest of the charges, and Jack Smith’s documents case appears to be the strongest. But though Trump’s flouting of the law both in and outside of office has been prolific, it is his attempts to overturn the will of the voters and illegally retain power that are the most dangerous for our country, most offensive to our nation’s shared aspiration to democratic self-rule.The fact that the scheme has not been punished – and that it seemed, for a while, as if neither Congress nor prosecutors would have the courage and political will to punish it – was a profound insult to American citizens. The coming months promise to be chaotic, vitriolic and stupid. Trump will try to spin the indictments as evidence of his martyrdom; his Republican allies will rally to his defense in whichever way they think will improve their own electoral prospects while also keeping them out of jail; journalists will be tasked with repeating, over and over, the bare facts, trying to etch out a legible sketch of reality for their readers amid the onslaught of cynical fictions.But the upcoming trials of Donald Trump, some of which appear to be on track to happen at the height of the presidential election, might also offer a thorough reckoning with what happened after the 2020 election, and an opportunity, for the first time, to truly hold the perpetrators accountable. That, at least, is much needed.Another specter hangs over this latest indictment of Trump, however. The conspiracy that followed the former president’s 2020 election loss seems to have been a scheme not just to stay in power but to spare the man humiliation. “I don’t want people to know that we lost,” the former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified that Trump told his advisers. “This is embarrassing.”If Trump loses again in 2024, he will face not only the prospect of embarrassment, but the prospect of jail time. We should all fear what he might do to avoid it.
      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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      in US Politics

      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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      in US Politics

      Republicans decry special counsel announcement in Hunter Biden investigation – as it happened

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      From 3h agoThe US house committee on oversight and accountability has issued a statement on attorney general Merrick Garland’s announcement of David Weiss’s appointment as special counsel.“The DoJ is attempting a Biden family coverup,” the committee said.The statement continued:
      “This is part of the DoJ’s efforts to attempt a Biden family coverup in light of our Committee’s mounting evidence of President Joe Biden’s role in his family’s schemes selling “the brand” for millions of dollars to foreign nationals.
      The justice department’s misconduct and politicization in the Biden criminal investigation already allowed the statute of limitations to run with respect to egregious felonies committed by Hunter Biden.
      Justice department officials refused to follow evidence that could have led to Joe Biden, tipped off the Biden transition team and Hunter Biden’s lawyers about planned interviews and searches, and attempted to sneakily place Hunter Biden on the path to a sweetheart plea deal.
      Let’s be clear what today’s move is really about. The Biden justice department is trying to stonewall congressional oversight as we have presented evidence to the American people about the Biden family’s corruption.”
      The committee said that it will continue the Biden family’s money trail and interview witnesses to determine whether foreign actors targeted the Biden family.It is slightly past 4pm in Washington DC. Here’s a wrap-up of the day’s key events:
      In a surprise announcement on Friday, the US attorney general, Merrick Garland, announced that he has appointed US attorney in Delaware, David Weiss, as special counsel in the investigation of Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s son. Garland said that Weiss had told him earlier this week that his investigation had “reached a stage at which he should continue his work as a special counsel, and he asked to be so appointed.”
      Prominent Republicans including Kevin McCarthy, Nikki Haley and Steve Scalise have criticized Weiss’s appointment, with many calling the appointment a “sham” and an attempt by the DoJ to protect the Biden family.
      The US judge Tanya Chutkan, presiding in the federal criminal investigation alleging Donald Trump tried to subvert the 2020 presidential election, rejected Trump’s request to designate witness transcripts and videos as non-sensitive (and thereby exclude them from the protective order requested by the prosecution).
      Chutkan said at the first hearing after Trump was arraigned on federal charges in the election case: “Trump has the right to free speech but that right is not absolute.”
      Federal prosecutors and attorneys for Donald Trump attended a court hearing in Washington DC, over special counsel Jack Smith’s request to limit Trump’s ability to publicly reveal evidence collected during the criminal investigation into the insurrection on 6 January 2021.
      The White House said on Friday that it is open to training Ukrainian pilots to fly F-16 fighter jets in the US if training capacity is reached in Europe. Reuters reports White House spokesperson John Kirby saying that Washington is eager to move forward with the training.
      That’s it from me, Maya Yang, as we wrap up the blog for today. Thank you for following along.The White House said on Friday that it is open to training Ukrainian pilots to fly F-16 fighter jets in the US if training capacity is reached in Europe.Reuters reports White House spokesperson John Kirby saying that Washington is eager to move forward with the training.Nikki Haley, one of the Republican presidential candidates and Donald Trump’s former US ambassador to the UN, told Fox News that she does not trust the justice department’s decision to appoint David Weiss.“I don’t trust it. I don’t think the American people trust it. I don’t think that the American people trust the Department of Justice or anything that this is going to do. I think this was meant to be a distraction,” Reuters reports Haley saying.Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for ex-president Donald Trump, issued a statement on David Weiss’s appointment, accusing the justice department of protecting the Biden family.Reuters reports the statement:
      “Crooked Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, and the entire Biden Crime Family have been protected by the Justice Department for decades even though there is overwhelming evidence and credible testimony detailing their wrongdoing of lying to the American people and selling out the country to foreign enemies for the Biden Cartel’s own financial gain.
      If this special counsel is truly independent – even though he failed to bring proper charges after a four year investigation and he appears to be trying to move the case to a more Democrat-friendly venue – he will quickly conclude that Joe Biden, his troubled son Hunter, and their enablers, including the media, which colluded with the 51 intelligence officials who knowingly misled the public about Hunter’s laptop, should face the required consequences.”
      Another prominent Republican has warned against David Weiss’s appointment, with the Republican House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, warning that “this action by Biden’s DoJ cannot be used to obstruct congressional investigations.”
      “If Weiss negotiated the sweetheart deal that couldn’t get approved, how can he be trusted as a special counsel?
      House Republicans will continue to pursue the facts for the American people,” he said.
      Steve Scalise, the majority leader of the House of Representatives, also weighed in David Weiss’s appointment, calling it a “sham”.
      “Don’t be fooled. Garland appointing Weiss as a sham special counsel on Hunter is a way to block info from Congress while claiming they’re investigating.
      Weiss approved the sweetheart plea deal. This is an even better deal for Hunter since charges may never come. Outrageous,” he tweeted.
      Republican representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, who also serves as chairman of the House judiciary committee, also lambasted David Weiss’s appointment.In a tweet on Friday, Jordan said:“David Weiss said he didn’t have the power he needed and wanted special counsel status.”He went on to say, “Thought we had the plea agreement all worked out. Now Weiss needs to be special counsel? What?”The US house committee on oversight and accountability has issued a statement on attorney general Merrick Garland’s announcement of David Weiss’s appointment as special counsel.“The DoJ is attempting a Biden family coverup,” the committee said.The statement continued:
      “This is part of the DoJ’s efforts to attempt a Biden family coverup in light of our Committee’s mounting evidence of President Joe Biden’s role in his family’s schemes selling “the brand” for millions of dollars to foreign nationals.
      The justice department’s misconduct and politicization in the Biden criminal investigation already allowed the statute of limitations to run with respect to egregious felonies committed by Hunter Biden.
      Justice department officials refused to follow evidence that could have led to Joe Biden, tipped off the Biden transition team and Hunter Biden’s lawyers about planned interviews and searches, and attempted to sneakily place Hunter Biden on the path to a sweetheart plea deal.
      Let’s be clear what today’s move is really about. The Biden justice department is trying to stonewall congressional oversight as we have presented evidence to the American people about the Biden family’s corruption.”
      The committee said that it will continue the Biden family’s money trail and interview witnesses to determine whether foreign actors targeted the Biden family.Here is some context to explain how Hunter Biden and David Weiss arrived at this moment, from our recent analysis.Last month, Hunter Biden arrived in a Delaware courtroom expecting to finalize a plea agreement with federal prosecutors over two misdemeanor tax charges.Hours later, Hunter Biden unexpectedly pleaded not guilty to the charges after the judge overseeing the case expressed skepticism about the specifics of the proposed deal. The court adjourned without a clear next step – until today.Weiss, who has just been made special counsel, has been investigating Hunter Biden since 2018 over potential violations of tax and gun laws. Weiss, who was appointed by Donald Trump, announced earlier this year that his office had reached a plea agreement with the president’s son. As well as admitting the charges of tax violations, Biden would enter a pre-trial diversion program on a separate felony gun charge.Prosecutors were expected to recommend two years of probation, with Biden avoiding jail.The pre-trial diversion program would have ultimately resulted in the gun charge being dropped, assuming Hunter Biden met certain terms laid out by prosecutors. The felony charge is otherwise punishable by up to 10 years in prison.Republicans had attacked the plea agreement as a “sweetheart deal” that reflected a double standard of justice, but legal experts note the charges brought against the president’s son are rarely prosecuted.The US district judge Maryellen Noreika at the time gave prosecutors and Hunter Biden’s defense team 30 days to further hash out the details of the agreement, and the court is expected to reconvene in the coming weeks to re-examine the case.Now we have a special counsel appointed, so it’s a brand new day.Hello again, US politics live blog readers, the news day took off straight away and continues fast and furious with high-profile connections between politics and criminal investigations from both sides of the party political world. There are more developments and reactions to come, so do stay with Guardian US. We’re also covering the tragic wild fires in Hawaii and you can follow that news, live, here.Here’s where things stand in political news:
      The US attorney general, Merrick Garland, announced that he has appointed US attorney in Delaware, David Weiss, as special counsel to continue his criminal investigation of Hunter Biden, president Joe Biden’s son.
      The US judge Tanya Chutkan, presiding in the federal criminal investigation alleging Donald Trump tried to subvert the 2020 presidential election, rejected Trump’s request to designate witness transcripts and videos as non-sensitive (and thereby exclude them from the protective order requested by the prosecution).
      Chutkan said at the first hearing after Trump was arraigned on federal charges in the election case: “Trump has the right to free speech but that right is not absolute.”
      Federal prosecutors and attorneys for Donald Trump attended a court hearing in Washington DC, over special counsel Jack Smith’s request to limit Trump’s ability to publicly reveal evidence collected during the criminal investigation into the insurrection on 6 January 2021.
      A court filing on Friday showed that Weiss had said the parties in the Hunter Biden case were at an impasse in their plea negotiations and that a trial was necessary.As special counsel, Weiss now has additional authority to investigate whether Biden engaged in improper business dealings.In a surprise announcement on Friday, the US attorney general, Merrick Garland, announced that he has appointed US attorney in Delaware, David Weiss, as special counsel in the investigation of Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s son.Weiss has been overseeing the investigation into the financial and business dealings of Hunter Biden.Garland said that Weiss had told him earlier this week that his investigation had “reached a stage at which he should continue his work as a special counsel, and he asked to be so appointed”.Garland said:
      Upon considering his request, as well as the extraordinary circumstances relating to this matter, I have concluded it is in the public interest to appoint him as special counsel.”
      Garland went on to say that he is confident that Weiss will carry out his responsibilities in an “even-handed and urgent manner”.As special counsel, Weiss will be permitted to “continue his investigation, take any investigative steps he wanted and make the decision whether to prosecute in any district”, Garland added.Garland’s surprise announcement comes amid the justice department’s investigations into Donald Trump, Joe Biden’s main rival in the 2024 presidential election who has been charged for efforts in overturning the 2020 presidential election results.Hunter Biden had been expected to finalize a plea agreement with federal prosecutors over two misdemeanor tax charges. However, he unexpectedly took a sudden turn and pleaded not guilty to the charges in court in Wilmington, Delaware, last month.The Guardian’s full explainer on the plea deal can be found here.When asked whether president Biden would end up pardoning his his son last month, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre replied: “No.”As special counsel, David Weiss will be permitted to “continue his investigation, take any investigative steps he wanted and make the decision whether to prosecute in any district”, Merrick Garland said. 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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      Special counsel proposes January 2024 trial date in Trump election case

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      Federal prosecutors asked the judge overseeing the criminal case against Donald Trump over his efforts to subvert the 2020 election to schedule the trial for the start of January 2024, saying there was a significant public interest in expediting the prosecution.The written filing from prosecutors in the office of the special counsel Jack Smith set an aggressive timetable that Trump’s lawyers are expected to seek to substantially delay, according to a person close to the former president.“A January 2 trial date would vindicate the public’s strong interest in a speedy trial,” prosecutors wrote. “It is difficult to imagine a public interest stronger than the one in this case in which the defendant – the former president of the United States – is charged with three criminal conspiracies.”The eight-page filing submitted to the US district court judge Tanya Chutkan, who will hear arguments from both sides about the scope of the protective order in the case on Friday, argued it gave sufficient time to Trump to prepare a defense.Last week, Trump pleaded not guilty to charges filed in federal district court in Washington that he conspired to defraud the United States, conspired to obstruct an official proceeding, obstructed an official proceeding and engaged in a conspiracy against rights.Among other things, the government said Trump’s legal team already appeared to know what arguments they intended to make at trial and what pre-trial motions they intended to file, and therefore were in a position to quickly go to trial.The prosecutors, for instance, sought to use the television appearances from Trump’s lawyer John Lauro – in which he discussed potential legal defenses and the possibility of filing a motion to change the trial venue to West Virginia – against him.“It appears that defense counsel is already planning which motions the defendant will file,” prosecutors said in one footnote. “On CBS’s Face the Nation on August 6, 2023, Mr Lauro stated, ‘We’re going to be identifying and litigating a number of motions that we’re going to file.’”The government also noted that Trump’s legal team had known about the facts of the case for at least a year after prosecutors first contacted them in June 2022, and one of the lawyers involved in that initial outreach, presumably Evan Corcoran, was at Trump’s arraignment.It also argued that Trump’s lawyers were wrong to characterize the Speedy Trial Act, which broadly mandates criminal cases to go to trial promptly, as existing for the benefit of the defendant and therefore allowing Trump to seek delays if he chooses.The speedy trial rules in fact exist to protect the rights of the public as well as the defendant, prosecutors wrote, citing an opinion from United States v Gambino that found: “The public is the loser when a criminal trial is not prosecuted expeditiously, as suggested by the aphorism, ‘justice delayed is justice denied’.”But the draft schedule proposed by the government, that would see evidence turned over to Trump through discovery completed by the end of August and jury selection at the start of December, is almost certain to be delayed because of complicating factors.The prosecution unexpectedly disclosed in a footnote that they intended to use classified information at trial, which means his case will be tried according to the time-consuming steps laid out in the Classified Information Procedures Act, or Cipa.Cipa essentially requires the defense to disclose what classified information they want to use at trial in advance, so the courts can decide whether to add restrictions. If the government feels the restrictions aren’t enough, they can decide whether they still want to continue with the case.While Cipa established a mechanism through which the government can safely charge cases involving classified documents, the series of steps that have to be followed means it takes longer to get to trial compared with regular criminal cases without national security implications. More