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      in US Politics

      Can Trump still run in 2024 after his indictment – and can he pardon himself?

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      Donald Trump’s most recent indictment marked the first time the former president has faced criminal consequence for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. A historic moment on its own, the indictment was all the more extraordinary because it came as Trump is running to return to the White House and is the frontrunner to win the Republican nomination.Here’s a look at what the most recent charges could mean for Trump.Do the charges mean Trump can’t run for president? If convicted, can he be blocked from holding office?No. The US constitution does not bar those convicted of a crime from running for president.There could be a pathway to blocking him, however, through the constitution’s 14th amendment. That provision says that someone cannot hold office if they have taken an oath to the United States, as Trump did when he was inaugurated, and engage in “insurrection or rebellion” against the country. There’s likely to be a flurry of separate civil lawsuits in state courts seeking to disqualify Trump on that basis. Some activists have already begun a push to disqualify Trump in Georgia, Colorado, Oregon, Nevada and California.“The new charges against Trump, and especially a conviction on those charges, would bolster the case that Trump should be disqualified under the 14th amendment. But much is uncertain here, and I expect attempts to disqualify Trump to go forward regardless of what happens with the new charges,” Richard Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California, Los Angeles, wrote in an email.Last year, a judge in New Mexico used the 14th amendment to remove a county commissioner from his post after the commissioner was found guilty on federal charges related to January 6. It was the first time since the civil war that an official had been removed from their post for engaging in an insurrection.Noah Bookbinder, the president of the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (Crew), which filed the New Mexico case, said his organization had already been planning to file civil cases to disqualify Trump under the 14th amendment. He noted that the 14th amendment doesn’t require a criminal conviction to mount a challenge and that litigation is likely to be ongoing while Trump’s criminal charges are pending.“Obviously an indictment and particularly a conviction would strengthen the case under the 14th amendment,” he said.What do Trump’s most recent charges mean for his re-election campaign?Legally, the charges do not block Trump from continuing to run for president. After his initial court appearance in Washington, he is likely to continue his campaign as usual.Politically, just as he has done after his other two indictments, Trump is likely to seize on the charges and try to spin them to his advantage. “They’re not indicting me, they’re indicting you. I just happen to be standing in the way,” he said in Pennsylvania last weekend. “Every time the radical left Democrats, Marxists, communists and fascists indict me, I consider it actually a great badge of honor … Because I’m being indicted for you.”With few exceptions, Trump’s Republican rivals in the presidential race have hesitated to use the criminal charges to attack the former president.Financially, the charges are likely to add to an already enormous bill for legal fees. Trump’s political action committee has already spent $40m on legal fees this year alone, as his campaign continues to burn through cash.If convicted before election day, Trump would probably be unable to vote in the 2024 race. He is a registered voter in Florida, which bars anyone convicted of a felony from voting while they are serving a criminal sentence. In order to vote, those convicted must complete their sentence, including any parole and probation, and repay any costs associated with their case.What happens if Trump goes on trial during the presidential primaries?A trial in the middle of the presidential primary would be a blockbuster moment in American politics. It would offer an unvarnished look at all of the ways Trump knowingly tried to subvert the results of the 2020 election, with key aides and allies forced to testify under oath. The trial would not be televised, since federal courts do not allow cameras in the courtroom.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“A trial is the best chance to educate the American public, as the January 6 House committee hearings did to some extent, about the actions Trump allegedly took to undermine American democracy and the rule of law,” Hasen wrote in the online newsmagazine Slate. “Constant publicity from the trial would give the American people in the middle of the election season a close look at the actions Trump took for his own personal benefit while putting lives and the country at risk.”Practically, it’s unclear what impact a trial would have on Trump’s campaigning. While it could pull him off the campaign trail, Trump favors large rallies that are typically held in the evening or on weekends.Trump’s legal schedule for next year remains unclear. He already has criminal trials scheduled in Manhattan in March over hush-money payments and another in May over his handling of classified documents. It’s not yet clear when the trial related to his efforts to overturn the election will be. Jack Smith, the special counsel prosecuting the case, has sought a speedy trial.What happens if Trump is found guilty after winning the GOP nomination?A conviction after Trump wins the GOP nomination is unlikely to have any real practical effect. If convicted, he will almost certainly appeal the case all the way to the US supreme court, where there is a conservative supermajority. The conviction would also only further efforts to get him disqualified from the ballot under the 14th amendment.What happens if Trump wins the election next November?If Trump takes office while the charges are still pending against him, he’s likely to move to quickly get rid of the charges. He would almost certainly appoint an attorney general who would fire Smith. If he has already been convicted, Trump could theoretically pardon himself, an untested legal idea.A Trump win would also throw the justice department into uncharted legal territory. While the department has long held that a sitting president can’t be prosecuted, it’s unclear how that would affect a prosecution of a former president that began when he was out of office.“It would be very chaotic. It would put a lot of stress on our democratic system,” Bookbinder said. “You certainly don’t want a situation where Donald Trump would try to use the presidency to get himself out of criminal liability.” More

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      in Elections

      Donald Trump to appear in court over attempt to overturn 2020 US election

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      Donald Trump is due to appear in court on Thursday after federal prosecutors indicted the ex-president for attempting to overturn the 2020 election, as Democrats and progressives welcomed the charges but many Republicans rallied behind him.Prosecutors will outline the four conspiracy and obstruction counts Trump faces and a judge will set bail conditions in the latest criminal case before the former president, weeks after he was charged with retaining national defence information.The judge will also set out a schedule for pretrial motions and discovery. Both sides are likely later to file motions seeking to shape what evidence and legal arguments will be permitted at the eventual trial, which could be many months away.Many Republicans – elected officials and voters – have unashamedly backed Trump, seeking to portray the charges against him as a selective and politically motivated prosecution and a Democratic plot to derail his 2024 re-election bid.That pattern largely held after Wednesday’s indictment, which was brought by the special counsel Jack Smith and filed in federal district court in Washington, with most Republicans pivoting to criticise Trump’s successor, Joe Biden.The House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, called the indictment an attempt “to distract from news” about Republican allegations of corruption involving Hunter Biden, the president’s son, “and attack the frontrunner” to face Biden next year.The Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, Trump’s leading rival for the Republican nomination, said he had yet to read the indictment, but he vowed to “end the weaponisation of the federal government”, suggesting the case was being used to target a political enemy.DeSantis did not mention Trump by name but promised that if he was elected president he would “ensure a single standard of justice for all Americans”, adding: “One of the reasons our country is in decline is the politicisation of the rule of law.”The latest charges means the former president has been impeached twice, arrested twice and indicted three times: over attempted election subversion, hush-money payments to a porn actor, and the alleged mishandling of classified documents.Despite the charges – and the prospect of more to come, over alleged election subversion in Georgia – he leads national Republican polling by more than 30 points. Nothing prevents criminal defendants from campaigning or taking office if they are convicted.Strategists said that while the indictments could help Trump solidify support with his base and win the Republican nomination, they could prove less helpful in next year’s election, when he will have to win over more sceptical moderates and independents.Republican condemnation of the former president was rare. Will Hurd, a former Texas congressman, said Trump’s presidential bid was “driven by an attempt to stay out of prison and scam his supporters into footing his legal bills”.Hurd added: “Furthermore, his denial of the 2020 election results and actions on 6 January show he’s unfit for office.” If Republicans “make the upcoming election about Trump, we are giving Joe Biden another four years in the White House”, he said.Mike Pence, Trump’s former vice-president, who refused to bow to pressure not to certify the election results, said the latest indictment was “an important reminder anyone who puts himself over the constitution should never be president of the United States”, adding that Trump’s candidacy meant “more distractions”.Most, however, implicitly backed the former president, although often without naming him. The South Carolina senator Tim Scott claimed that “Biden’s justice department” was “hunting Republicans, while protecting Democrats”.Byron Donalds of Florida, a hard-right Trump ally, said Trump was the victim of “selective use of … the federal government” while prosecutors “concoct sweetheart deals for Hunter [Biden], Hillary [Clinton] and the rest of the Democrat darlings”.Democrat and progressive reactions to the indictment reflected the deep divide in US politics. Nancy Pelosi, a former House speaker who oversaw two Trump impeachments, said the charges outlined “a sinister plot”.The House Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries, and the Democratic Senate leader, Chuck Schumer, said Trump’s third indictment “illustrates in shocking detail … a months-long criminal plot led by the former president to defy democracy and overturn the will of the American people”.Noah Bookbinder, the president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, called the latest charges “the most significant [Trump] has yet faced because they address the most serious offense he committed: trying to block the peaceful transfer of power and keep himself in office”.Michael Waldman of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s School of Law said the magnitude of the indictment “matches the magnitude of what Trump tried to do, which is to overthrow the constitutional system to stay in office”.Meagan Hatcher-Mays, of the campaigning group Indivisible, highlighted why Republicans still backed Trump, whom polls put level with Biden if the pair face each other again in 2024.“Republicans only care about their power,” she said, “and they will stop at nothing to stay in it. Trump is … just the loud, obnoxious tip of the iceberg.” More

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      in US Politics

      Donald Trump charged over efforts to overturn 2020 presidential election

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      Federal prosecutors have charged Donald Trump over his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, the latest criminal case before the former president that comes just weeks after he was charged with retaining national defense information.The latest charges compound the mounting legal peril for Trump, the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican nomination, after he was indicted earlier this year in Miami for illegally retaining classified documents, and in New York for paying hush money to an adult film star before the 2016 election.Trump is also expected to face state charges in Georgia over Trump’s efforts there to reverse his defeat to Joe Biden in the 2020 election. The Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, has signalled her intent to file multiple indictments around the first two weeks of August.More details soon … More

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      in US Politics

      Trump’s latest charges will only deepen his determination to win in 2024

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      A tunnel lit by torchlight. An attempt to delete incriminating camera footage. A “boss” whose orders must be obeyed. And all to no avail.The latest criminal charges against Donald Trump, the former US president, conjure images of the hapless Watergate burglars or a mob movie with elements of farce.But while they deepen Trump’s legal perils, analysts say, they will only harden his determination to regain the White House as his best chance of staying out of jail. Opinion polls show he remains the runaway frontrunner for the Republican nomination in 2024.Trump, who left office in January 2021, pleaded not guilty in Miami last month to federal charges of unlawfully retaining classified government documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida and obstructing justice. Prosecutors allege that he put some of America’s most sensitive national security secrets at risk.On Thursday they updated the indictment by accusing the former president of scheming with his valet, Walt Nauta, and a Mar-a-Lago property manager, Carlos De Oliveira, to hide surveillance footage from federal investigators after they issued a subpoena for it.It was left to others to dwell on the irony of Trump, who spent much of the 2016 campaign savaging rival Hillary Clinton for deleting emails from a computer server as secretary of state, now standing accused of trying to delete security footage at his home.Video from the property would play a significant role in the investigation because, prosecutors say, it shows Nauta moving boxes of documents in and out of a storage room – including a day before an FBI visit to the property – at Trump’s direction.According to the indictment, Nauta met De Oliveira at Mar-a-Lago on 25 June 2022. They went to a security guard booth where surveillance video is displayed on monitors and walked with a torch through a tunnel where the storage room was located, observing and pointing out surveillance cameras.Two days later, according to the indictment, De Oliveira walked through a basement tunnel with a Trump employee to a small room known as an “audio closet”. The two men had a conversation supposed to “remain between the two of them”.De Oliveira asked how many days the server retained footage. De Oliveira allegedly told the employee that “the boss” wanted the server deleted and asked: “What are we going to do?”The indictment asserts that Trump called De Oliveira before and after the incident, and that Nauta and De Oliveira were also in contact.Prosecutors further allege that, during a voluntary interview with the FBI last January, De Oliveira lied when he said he “never saw nothing” with regard to boxes at Mar-a-Lago.De Oliveira was added to the indictment, charged with obstruction and false statements related to that FBI interview. This could impact the trial date, currently set for May next year, by which stage the Republican nomination may well have been decided.Along with two new charges of obstruction of justice, there was another new count of retaining classified material. Special counsel Jack Smith describes a July 2021 incident in which Trump bragged about a “plan of attack” against another country in an interview at his golf resort in Bedminster, New Jersey.The former president then waved around the classified documents to his guests: a writer, publisher and two Trump staff members who all lacked security clearances “This is secret information,” he said, according to a recording cited in the documents, claiming that, “as president I could have declassified it” – but he had not.The indictment says the document was returned to the federal government on 17 January 2022, which is the date Trump provided 15 boxes of records to the National Archives.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump now faces 40 criminal counts in the classified documents case alone. Ty Cobb, a former Trump White House lawyer, told CNN: “I think this original indictment was engineered to last a thousand years and now this superseding indictment will last an antiquity. This is such a tight case, the evidence is so overwhelming.”The new charges were made public hours after Trump said his lawyers met with justice department officials investigating his attempts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden, in a sign that another set of criminal charges could come soon.Trump is the first former US president to face criminal charges. He has already been indicted twice this year, once in New York over hush-money payments to an adult film star and once already over the classified documents. He could also face charges in the state of Georgia over attempts to meddle in the 2020 election there.But in an interview on Friday he insisted being sentenced and convicted would not force him out of the race. Trump told conservative radio host John Fredericks: “Not at all. There’s nothing in the constitution to say that it could … And even the radical left crazies are saying not at all, that wouldn’t stop [me] – and it wouldn’t stop me either.”Such courtroom dramas would cast a long shadow over Trump’s candidacy among millions of voters during a presidential election with Joe Biden next year. Voters have repeatedly shown their apathy towards Trump and his Maga (“Make America Great Again”) extremism in elections in 2018, 2020 and 2022.As with previous legal developments, Biden remained silent on the issue on Friday, doubtless aware that any comment on Trump’s fate would be construed as political interference.But for now the legal woes have not hurt Trump standing in the race for the Republican nomination. Indeed, his lead over nearest rival Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, has actually grown. A Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll earlier this month showed Trump leading DeSantis 47%-19% among Republicans, a wider lead than his 44%-29% lead before the first indictment in New York in March.Many Republicans continue to rally to Trump’s defence, echoing his baseless allegations of a “deep state” conspiracy. Senator Josh Hawley told Fox News: “It’s so brazen right now, what they’re doing. It is really a subversion of the rule of law. I mean, they’re taking the rule of law, turning it on its head, and we cannot allow this to stand.”Even most of Trump’s rival in the Republican primary have been reluctant to criticise Trump for fear of alienating his base. But one of them, former congressman Will Hurd, let rip in an interview on CNN. He said: “I am not a lawyer. But if you are deleting evidence, it’s because you know you’re committing a crime.”Hurd added: “Donald Trump is running for president in order for him to stay out of jail. These are serious crimes. These are serious accusations. Donald Trump is a national security risk and he needs to be beaten in a primary so we can be done with him once and for all.” More

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      in US Politics

      Ex-Trump lawyer says evidence against him ‘overwhelming’ in Mar-a-Lago case

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      A former Trump White House lawyer said the evidence against the former president over his handling of classified documents was now “overwhelming” and would “last an antiquity”, after new charges were filed in the case on Thursday.“I think this original indictment was engineered to last a thousand years and now this superseding indictment will last an antiquity,” Ty Cobb told CNN. “This is such a tight case, the evidence is so overwhelming.”In June, the special counsel Jack Smith indicted Trump on 37 counts regarding his handling of classified records after leaving the White House.On Thursday, in a superseding indictment filed in a Florida court, four more charges were outlined. A second Trump staffer, the Mar-a-Lago maintenance worker Carlos De Oliveira, was charged, alongside Walt Nauta, Trump’s valet. Nauta previously pleaded not guilty.Trump was accused of attempting to destroy evidence and inducing someone else to destroy evidence. He also faces a new count under the Espionage Act, for keeping a document about US plans to attack Iran which he memorably discussed on tape.Trump denies all wrongdoing, in the documents case and in other cases including the criminal investigation in New York in which he faces 34 charges relating to hush-money payments to an adult film star.On Thursday night, on his Truth Social platform, the former president complained about another investigation, of Joe Biden’s own retention of classified material. Trump also called Smith “deranged”.A spokesperson called the new charges “nothing more than a continued desperate and flailing attempt” by the Biden administration to “harass” Trump and “those around him”.On Thursday, Trump told the conservative radio host John Fredericks he had handed over security video footage prosecutors now say he ordered deleted.“These were security tapes,” he said. “We handed them over to them … I’m not even sure what they’re saying.”Smith is also expected to indict Trump over his attempted election subversion. So are prosecutors in Georgia, regarding the former president’s attempts to overturn his defeat by Biden there.Found liable for sexual abuse and defamation against the writer E Jean Carroll, and fined about $5m, Trump also faces investigations of his business affairs.But his legal problems have not dented his popularity with his party. In polling regarding the Republican nomination for president in 2024, Trump has clear leads in early voting states and is approximately 30 points ahead of his nearest challenger, the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, in national polling.Trump told Fredericks he will not end his campaign even if he is convicted and sentenced.“They went after two fine employees yesterday, fine people,” Trump said. “They’re trying to intimidate people so that people go out and make up lies about me. Because I did nothing wrong.”Cobb represented Trump during the investigation by another special counsel, Robert Mueller, into Russian election interference in the 2016 election and links between Trump and Moscow. The attorney later told the Atlantic he did not regret working for Trump, saying: “I believed then and now I worked for the country.”On Thursday, he told CNN: “It’s very difficult to imagine how Trump said that his lawyers met with Jack Smith today to explain to him that he hadn’t done anything wrong [Trump’s claim in the election subversion case], on the same day that Jack Smith produces this evidence of overwhelming evidence of additional wrongdoing.“So this is, I think, par for the course.”Cobb also said he was sure Trump had been advised by his own lawyers “not to destroy, move [documents] or obstruct this grand jury subpoena in any way.“So this is Trump going not just behind the back of the prosecutors, this is Trump going behind the back of his own lawyers and dealing with two people” – Nauta and De Oliveira – “who are extremely loyal”. More

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      in US Politics

      Hunter Biden: what just happened with his plea deal?

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      Hunter Biden, son of President Joe Biden, arrived in a Delaware courtroom on Wednesday morning 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 on Wednesday afternoon without a clear path forward, and prosecutors plan to continue to hammer out the details of a potential deal in the coming weeks. Here’s where the case stands so far:What has Hunter Biden been charged with?The office of the US attorney of Delaware, David Weiss, has been investigating Hunter Biden since 2018 over potential violations of tax and gun laws. Weiss, who was appointed by Donald Trump, announced last month that his office had reached an agreement with Hunter Biden in which the president’s son would plead guilty to two federal misdemeanor tax violations while entering a pre-trial diversion program on a separate felony gun charge.Would the deal have allowed Hunter Biden to avoid jail?Yes, prosecutors were expected to recommend two years of probation for Hunter Biden’s tax violations. 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.What questions did the judge raise on Wednesday?The US district judge Maryellen Noreika, a Trump appointee, expressed concern about her role in enforcing the terms of the plea agreement struck between prosecutors and Hunter Biden’s lawyers.“It seems to me like you are saying ‘just rubber stamp the agreement, Your Honor,’” Noreika said. “This seems to me to be form over substance.”Prosecutors and Hunter Biden’s attorneys also clashed over whether the agreement would protect the president’s son from additional charges in the future. At one point, Weiss said the investigation into Hunter Biden was ongoing, but he would not share details on the inquiry.What happens next?Noreika 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. It remains possible that Noreika will accept the plea deal at a future hearing, but she made clear she would not do so without more clarification about the details of the agreement.Has the White House weighed in on the news?The White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, said on Wednesday afternoon that she had not yet spoken to the president about the latest news on his son’s case.“Hunter Biden is a private citizen, and this was a personal matter for him,” Jean-Pierre said. “As we have said, the president [and] the first lady, they love their son, and they support him as he continues to rebuild his life. This case was handled independently, as all of you know, by the justice department under the leadership of a prosecutor appointed by the former president.”Jean-Pierre referred additional questions about the case to the Department of Justice and Hunter Biden’s defense team.How did Republicans react to the development?Republicans celebrated the unexpected complication in Hunter Biden’s case, and they called on Noreika to throw out the plea deal entirely.“Today District Judge Noreika did the right thing by refusing to rubber-stamp Hunter Biden’s sweetheart plea deal,” said Congressman James Comer, the Republican chair of the House oversight committee. “But let’s be clear: Hunter’s sweetheart plea deal belongs in the trash.”Comer pledged that the oversight committee would continue examining Hunter Biden and his business dealings, which have become a central focus of Republicans’ investigative work since they regained control of the House in January. More

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      in US Politics

      Woman in anti-LGBTQ+ supreme court case did make wedding site after all, report says

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      A Colorado woman who claimed her state’s support for same-sex marriage barred her from designing wedding websites, fueling a case that last month delivered a major US supreme court blow to LGBTQ+ rights, appears to have designed at least one wedding website before it was scrubbed from her archive.The discovery, by the New Republic, followed reporting by that outlet and the Guardian which showed the request for a site for a same-sex wedding that lay at the heart of the 303 Creative v Elenis supreme court case appeared to have been a fabrication.Represented by the rightwing Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the web designer behind 303 Creative, Lorie Smith, argued that her right to free speech, regarding her opposition to same-sex marriage, was “chilled” by a Colorado anti-discrimination law.Claiming Smith was unable to design any wedding websites at all, for fear of falling foul of the state law, her attorneys told the supreme court: “For six years, she has been unable to speak in the marketplace.”The six conservative justices who dominate the court ruled for Smith, delighting rightwingers and faith groups but appalling LGBTQ+ groups and other advocates of equal treatment under the law.Questions over the supposed request for service have lingered. On Monday, the New Republic added to such disquiet.The progressive magazine said that by using the Wayback Machine, a service from the Internet Archive, a researcher found what appeared to be an image of a wedding website designed by Smith around 2015.The image, in a folder of “Recent Website Projects”, showed a couple walking on a beach, under a couple’s names and section headings including “You’re invited”, “Schedule”, “Accommodations” and “Travel Guide & FAQs”.The name of the woman in the couple on the site matched the name on another image, for “Healthy4LifeColorado.com”. Other images were for a church, a site about French bulldogs and a campaign site for a Republican state politician. The last image matched a site currently live.The apparent wedding site was found by Kate Redburn, a fellow at Columbia Law School in New York.They told the New Republic: “I couldn’t believe it. The idea that she hadn’t made any wedding websites for anyone was so baked into the narrative around this case.”The magazine said “a Colorado woman whose name matched the name of the bride” did not respond to requests for comment.Through the ADF, Smith “acknowledged she had made the website as a gift for a family member and had subsequently removed it from her online portfolio before the lawsuit was filed”.On Twitter, the ADF accused the New Republic of “manufacturing its fifth desperate attack” on Smith.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Why? To impugn Lorie and delegitimise the landmark supreme court ruling in 303 Creative that protects every American’s free speech rights.”Saying Smith had “nothing to hide”, the ADF said she designed the wedding site as a gift for her sister in 2014, around the time she “started exploring whether she could create custom wedding websites as part of her business consistent with her faith”.The New Republic said the ADF “did not answer our questions about what knowledge its lawyers had of the website on Smith’s site”.Jennifer Pizer, chief legal officer at Lambda Legal, who worked on the 303 Creative case, described why questions about its provenance and conduct remained important, in light of the ruling handed down last month.“I think the public reaction we’re seeing is probably a mix of surprise, shock and anger that this case seems to have been contrived, and probably also that such an important court ruling might well have been based on facts that were not entirely true,” Pizer told the New Republic.“People seem to be expressing understandable distress at the idea that this impactful case was won by people who might have misled the court – it’s alarming for multiple reasons.”The ADF, Pizer said, “has been gunning for this result – and not just this result, but has been gunning to win licenses to discriminate against LGBTQ+ people and ways to undermine civil rights laws more broadly for many years.” More

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      in US Politics

      Fulton county prosecutors prepare racketeering charges in Trump inquiry

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      The Fulton county district attorney investigating Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in the state of Georgia has developed sufficient evidence to charge a sprawling racketeering indictment next month, according to two people briefed on the matter.The racketeering statute in Georgia requires prosecutors to show the existence of an “enterprise” – and a pattern of racketeering activity that is predicated on at least two “qualifying” crimes.In the Trump investigation, the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, has amassed enough evidence to pursue a racketeering indictment predicated on statutes related to influencing witnesses and computer trespass, the people said.Willis had previously said she was weighing racketeering charges in her criminal investigation, but the new details about the direction and scope of the case come as prosecutors are expected to seek indictments starting in the first two weeks of August.The racketeering statute in Georgia is more expansive than its federal counterpart, notably because any attempts to solicit or coerce the qualifying crimes can be included as predicate acts of racketeering activity, even when those crimes cannot be indicted separately.The specific evidence was not clear, though the charge regarding influencing witnesses could include Trump’s conversations with Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, in which he asked Raffensperger to “find” 11,780 votes, the people said – and thereby implicate Trump.For the computer trespass charge, where prosecutors would have to show that defendants used a computer or network without authority to interfere with a program or data, that would include the breach of voting machines in Coffee county, the two people said.The breach of voting machines involved a group of Trump operatives – paid by the then Trump lawyer Sidney Powell – accessing the voting machines at the county’s election office and copying sensitive voting system data.The copied data from the Dominion Voting System machines, which is used statewide in Georgia, was then uploaded to a password-protected site from where election deniers could download the materials as part of a misguided effort to prove the 2020 election had been rigged.Though Coffee county is outside the jurisdiction of the Fulton county district attorney’s office, folding a potential computer trespass charge into a wider racketeering case would allow prosecutors to also seek an indictment for what the Trump operatives did there, the people said.A spokesperson for Willis did not respond to requests for comment.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe district attorney’s office has spent more than two years investigating whether Trump and his allies interfered in the 2020 election in Georgia, while prosecutors at the federal level are scrutinizing Trump’s efforts to reverse his defeat that culminated in the January 6 Capitol attack.A special grand jury in Atlanta that heard evidence for roughly seven months recommended charges for more than a dozen people, including the former president himself, its forewoman strongly suggested in interviews, though Willis will have to seek indictments from a regular grand jury.The grand jury that could decide whether to return an indictment against Trump was seated on 11 July. The selection process was attended by Willis and two prosecutors known to be on the Trump investigation: her deputy district attorney, Will Wooten, and special prosecutor Nathan Wade.Charges stemming from the Trump investigation are expected to come between the final week of July and the first two weeks of August, the Guardian has previously reported, after Willis told her team to shift to remote work during that period because of security concerns.The district attorney originally suggested charging decisions were “imminent” in January, but the timetable has been repeatedly delayed after a number of Republicans who acted as fake electors accepted immunity deals as the investigation neared its end. More