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      What a relief I’ve been denied my favourite election day hobby – hating fellow Americans | Emma Brockes

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      What a relief I’ve been denied my favourite election day hobby – hating fellow Americans Emma BrockesWhen things going less badly than planned is a small win, the lack of a revival of Trump-backed candidates is cheering In the playground on Tuesday, we stood in a huddle and indulged in the primary joy of election day: loathing one’s fellow Americans. In New York, where I live, the only close race was the race for governor, where the choice between Kathy Hochul, the Democrat incumbent, and Lee Zeldin – a pro-Trump, anti-abortion Republican – threatened to mess with the very idea of the city.Early lessons from the US midterm elections as votes are still being countedRead more“You know who I really hate?” said a friend who had taken the train in from Long Island to vote.I did know. Democrats take more pleasure in hating other Democrats than in hating Republicans. “Andrew Cuomo,” I said.“Yup. If he’d kept his dick in his pants we wouldn’t be here.” A line that could, sadly, be applied to any number of men in American politics. “Now we’re going to end up with a Republican governor because people won’t vote for a woman.”That was midday on Tuesday, when it still seemed probable, per polling and received wisdom about the midterms, that the dominant party in government would suffer the most losses. Anxiety about the economy and inflation; the impression that President Biden is too old; the ugly face of Trumpism apparently not yet vanquished; plus the usual superstitions and defeatist instincts of the left: all led to a mood among Democrats on Tuesday that fell somewhere between panic and gloom.So we did what people in denial do: we told ourselves that, when the results came in overnight, the worst eventuality might actually – sound the counter-intuitition klaxon! – be for the best. A friend had a friend who was a political analyst at Brown (this was how the conversations on Tuesday played out), and she said that it would be no bad thing if the Democrats lost control of Congress because in two years’ time that would mean Republicans would have to carry the can when people voted in the presidential election.This kind of worked. But then there were the races that were so starkly depressing that no amount of fancy footwork could neutralise them. Chief among these was the Pennsylvania Senate race between Dr Oz, the rightwing TV host who said in a recent debate that abortion was a matter between “women, doctors and local political leaders”, and the Democratic candidate, John Fetterman.The importance of this race was underscored when both Biden and Barack Obama turned up to stump for Fetterman on Saturday, undoing all the detachment I’d managed to achieve about the midterms. Watching Obama do his thing in front of a stadium of people in Pittsburgh was intensely moving. It was also a hard reminder of how far we had fallen since 2008. Accustomed as most Americans are these days to seeing the apparent lunatic in any race win, Obama’s appearance seemed to guarantee Oz would ascend to the Senate.Fetterman won with 50.4% of the vote. Kathy Hochul won with 52.5% of the vote. That the size of the relief was so huge, on Wednesday morning, was an indication both of how slim the margins were, and how little we needed to feel some hope. By midday, while it was still unclear whether Congress would remain in the hands of the Democrats, it was apparent there would be no red wave. There was no big revival in support for Trump-backed candidates. And there were some hugely cheering results from the centre of the country, where for example in Kentucky voters defeated the anti-abortion constitutional amendment. For the first time in ages, it was possible to think warmly of people one was used to dismissing as nutters.There were some let-downs among the reliefs. JD Vance, the bearded memoirist turned ultra-right Republican, won the Senate seat in Ohio. Beto O’Rourke lost out once again to Greg Abbott in Texas, and Stacey Abrams was defeated in Georgia. The satisfaction of seeing Trump’s candidates underperform on Wednesday was, meanwhile, eclipsed in part by Ron DeSantis winning decisively in the gubernatorial race in Florida. DeSantis, a more credible version of Trump, remains the most dangerous indication that the movement is alive and well.Still, slight gains, or at least losses on a smaller scale than anticipated, made for a whiplash effect midweek. In the playground on Tuesday, as the kids ran around, we returned to the subject of all the people who were ruining the country. On Wednesday, it was time to feel something else: relief, joy and the disorienting novelty of things going better than planned.
      Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist
      TopicsUS midterm elections 2022OpinionUS politicsNew YorkKathy HochulJoe BidenDemocratsRepublicanscommentReuse this content More

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      AOC vows to champion LGBTQ+ rights after hecklers storm New York event

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      AOC vows to champion LGBTQ+ rights after hecklers storm New York eventHecklers were attacking a policy providing affordable housing for LGBTQ+ people The progressive congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has said she will stand up for LGBTQ+ rights after an attack by hecklers caused chaos during a recent speaking event in the Astoria neighborhood of Queens, New York.The Democrat from New York met the heckles at the back of the Boys and Girls Club with dancing, the video of which has gone viral on social media.“AOC has got to go,” the protesters shouted in unison to the sound of a beating drum.These homophobes were yelling Westboro Baptist-style anti-LGBT+ slogans. What do you think I’m gonna do? Take them seriously?😂💃🏽🪩If you want to associate w/ their views, that’s your business.But NY-14 will ALWAYS have a champion for LGBTQ+ people on my watch. Period. 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️💕 https://t.co/aFTp8hv8SH— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) October 23, 2022
      On Saturday, Ocasio-Cortez responded to the video, saying the hecklers “were yelling Westboro Baptist-style anti-LGBT+ slogans. What do you think I’m gonna do? Take them seriously?“If you want to associate with their views, that’s your business.”Referring to the 14th congressional district of New York she represents, Ocasio-Cortez added: “But NY-14 will always have a champion for LGBTQ+ people on my watch. Period.”A video online of the 19 October confrontation between Ocasio-Cortez and the hecklers showed one of them badgering her about how a policy providing affordable housing for LGBTQ+ seniors would discriminate against heterosexual people.Another heckler shouts “there’s only two … genders” – a concept that is discriminatory toward people who identify as non-binary.One heckler held up a homemade sign in support of Tina Forte, a rightwing candidate from Rockland county running against Ocasio-Cortez in the midterms.Last month, the local news outlet NY1 reported that Forte was at the US Capitol during the January 6 attack staged by supporters of Donald Trump.In a video posted on the day, Forte is seen wearing a pro-Trump beanie on the steps of the Capitol. The video showed her standing next to a large caricature of Nancy Pelosi, saying “we will not allow this election to be stolen from us” even though Joe Biden beat Trump in the 2020 presidential race.Hey @SpeakerPelosi this ones for you pic.twitter.com/0uWJwyP5I0— Tina40 (@RealTina40) January 6, 2021
      In response to questions about her whereabouts on 6 January, Forte has said: “I went there to shine light on the election. I did nothing. I didn’t participate in anything that went on that day, from what I see on videos or anything that they want to call it. I’m not going to say I regret it because I don’t.”As Forte’s campaign vows to “stop socialism”, Ocasio-Cortez is expected to easily win reelection to a third term during the 8 November midterms.Polls show the congresswoman holds a significant lead over Forte. Her campaign has raised more than $11m (£9.8m) while Forte has raised less than $1m (£887,995).Last week was not the first time that a video of Ocasio-Cortez dancing went viral. A video of her dancing on a rooftop while she was a student at Boston University went viral on the day she was sworn in to her first term in 2019, with her opponents on the political right wing trying to use it to embarrass her and her supporters, drowning out that criticism with positive reactions.TopicsAlexandria Ocasio-CortezUS politicsNew YorknewsReuse this content More

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      Trump Organization to face criminal tax fraud charges in New York court on Monday

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      Trump Organization to face criminal tax fraud charges in New York court on MondayFormer CFO is expected to testify about off-the-books compensation scheme to evade paying payroll taxes The Trump Organization is set to face criminal tax fraud charges on Monday in New York in a trial that could start to tease out the many allegations against the company and by extension its patriarch, Donald J Trump.It comes as the former US president faces a maze of legal troubles and mounting costs – by some estimates running at close to $4m a month to his leadership Pac – over his attempts to overturn his 2020 election loss, the removal of government documents from the White House when he left office and a defamation case relating to a rape allegation.Republicans’ lawless leaders at odds with midterm law and order messageRead moreMonday’s case is centered on charges that his Manhattan-headquartered real estate company defrauded New York tax authorities by awarding “off the books” compensation over 15 years to company executives, including lease payments for cars, apartment rent and tuition fees for relatives in lieu of some salary, enabling the company to evade paying payroll taxes.If found guilty, the company, which is run by Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump, could face $1.6m in fines and find its ability to operate hotels, golf courses and other assets impeded.But the trial will likely be most interesting for its subplots and how it intersects with a separate, civil investigation by New York state attorney general Letitia James that harvested a 200-page indictment last month accusing the Trump Organization, Trump and three of his adult children of overstating property values and Trump’s net worth to get favorable bank loans and insurance coverage.The Manhattan investigation into Trump’s company has followed its own rocky path to a jury trial. It began under district attorney Cyrus Vance Jr and is now in the hands of his successor, Alvin Bragg. Two prosecutors who led the investigation resigned in February, with one saying felony charges should be brought against the former president.Lawyers for the Trump Organization have claimed the case is a “selective prosecution” motivated by opposition to Trump’s political views – a claim that the judge overseeing the case, Juan Merchan, has rejected. They also said that prosecutors are seeking to punish Trump’s company because “a handful of its officers allegedly failed to report fringe benefits on their personal tax returns”.But the stakes for both parties – prosecutor and defendant – are high. Unlike Trump’s floundering efforts to challenge the 2020 election results, the Trump Organization has brought in an A-team of lawyers to counter claims by a matched array of prosecutors to meet a high burden of proof in criminal trials.Eyes and ears will be on the testimony of the Trump Organization’s then chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg, 75, who was charged in the DA’s 2021 indictment but has since pleaded to 15 counts ranging from grand larceny to tax fraud to falsifying business records in exchange for his testimony.Weisselberg has been subpoenaed to testify but he is not a cooperating witness. Still, his five-month sentence agreed to with prosecutors depends on truthful testimony. Crucially, the Manhattan DA ensured that Weisselberg’s sentencing would be deferred until after the case.To prove the company is guilty, the government is entitled to impute liability from not only Weisselberg but also other executives at the firm, potentially including Donald Trump himself, who they may try to show were aware of the alleged tax scheme.“It’s strategically a really difficult case both for Weisselberg and Trump because they could end winning the battle and losing the war,” says Andrew Weissmann, a former federal prosecutor who now teaches law at New York University.“If they do a typical defense cross-examination of Weisselberg and they catch him in some sort of lie then his deal is over and the pressure on him to flip [on Trump] is going to be that much greater.”Under the circumstances, the Trump Organization’s lawyers can’t simply try to eviscerate the credibility of Weisselberg, Weissmann points out, without potentially rewarding investigators with evidence that their larger quarry, Trump himself, knew of the arrangements to reward executives with untaxed compensation.“The idea that Trump didn’t know is going to be the critical thing that Weisselberg is asked about. If he denies that Donald Trump knew, you can see the judge saying, ‘I don’t believe it and I’m going to take that into account when I sentence you.’”Under those circumstances, Merchan could kick Weisselberg’s sentence up to 15 years in prison, not five months on Rikers Island – an onerous sentence for a 75-year-old.Further, Letitia James’s civil complaint makes an allegation that Weisselberg committed fraud by make false representations to the Zurich North American insurance company. In theory, Weisselberg could be still charged by Bragg if his testimony is deemed untruthful.“Clearly, they still want Weisselberg to cooperate,” Weissmann says.But as the trial gets under way next week, there is a sense that Bragg’s case could be easier to prove than James’s complaint, which centers on building valuations but requires a lower burden of proof.“Bragg’s allegations are much more concrete because they allege making payments that were clearly part of the person’s salary, keeping track of them, but only reporting what was listed as salary,” Weissmann says.“The problem for the defense is that if they say this is a gray area and isn’t a crime, they have to say that Weisselberg is lying. If the judge agrees, Weisselberg is in a tough position.”TopicsDonald TrumpUS crimeNew YorkDonald Trump JrUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Is the US better prepared for a nuclear blast today than it was 60 years ago?

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      Is the US better prepared for a nuclear blast today than it was 60 years ago?Despite advances in technology and decades of research, experts worry we are still underprepared to handle a blast – and the aftermath If you look hard enough, you’ll spot faded yellow signs proclaiming “Fallout shelter” around New York City. They are remnants of a cold war program that signaled spaces within ordinary buildings – from schools to banks to the Brooklyn Bridge – with adequate supplies and walls thick enough for riding out a nuclear blast safely.Many of these windowless shelters housed little more than rats and sewage before the practice was terminated in 1979. In 2017, the city’s department of education ordered the “misleading” signs removed from its buildings, but many others remain –– vestiges of nuclear fears that never materialized.All you wanted to know about nuclear war but were too afraid to askRead moreThose fears feel a little more real again amid Vladimir Putin’s repeated nuclear threats. In July, New York mayor Eric Adams’s office published a public service announcement about what to do in case of a blast. A couple of weeks ago, nuclear preparedness re-entered headlines when the Department of Health and Human Services announced it was buying a supply of the anti-radiation drug Nplate, though the agency denied it was in response to any specific threat.All of this raises the question: are we better prepared today to survive a nuclear blast than we were 60 years ago, when it seemed all we could do was head to the basement and pray?Jeff Schlegelmilch has been trying to answer this question for years as the head of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness, a Columbia University research program that works with government agencies. But while the United States has made many advances in nuclear preparedness since the cold war, “some of those have eroded because of funding cuts and attention going elsewhere,” he said.One of the biggest challenges is educating the public, which requires sustained communication –– something that’s become nearly impossible given today’s political polarization and short attention spans, Schlegelmilch said. Because of this, disaster preparedness officials look for “teachable moments” like big news events to get their messaging through. And while we’re not currently at the level of “everybody to the bunker, grab your helmet”, this is an important opportunity to get people informed, he said.In the event of a nuclear incident, preparedness experts agree you should shelter inside a building with thick walls and remain for at least 24 hours to avoid the worst of radioactive fallout while awaiting further instructions, or “Get inside, stay inside, stay tuned,” the phrase recited in a recent New York City public service announcement. If there is a nuclear explosion, text messages called Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEAs) will probably be sent out.What may be of larger concern in the nuclear preparedness realm are issues likely to emerge after any initial blast. Aside from a scenario of total Armageddon, it’s likely millions of people would survive but need urgent care. And while Schlegelmilch said government agencies have been doing “very serious” behind-the-scenes work for many decades, he worries it’s not nearly enough. “When it comes to special needs, when it comes to more of the social aspects, we’re still not as ready,” he said.Two of the most important offices overseeing the US’s nuclear preparedness efforts – the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), and the less well-known Administration of Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR), the disaster response division of the Department of Health and Human Services – have summed up their approach for allocating scarce resources after a nuclear disaster in two giant guidebooks. Fema’s Planning Guide for Response to a Nuclear Detonation, last updated in May, and ASPR’s 212-page A Decision Makers Guide: Medical Planning and Response for a Nuclear Detonation, last refreshed in 2017, are meant to offer expertise to officials in the event of a crisis on everything from nuclear fallout patterns to recommended messaging to triaging burn victims.Both agencies have also invested heavily in tech tools including dashboards that aim to give decision-makers live visualizations of unfolding disasters, and Fema’s “Improvised Nuclear Device City Planner Resource Tool” –– kind of an apocalyptic SimCity that lets officials visually game out what a nuclear blast might look like and how to respond. These hi-tech investments can feel reassuring, but they aren’t nearly enough on their own. Although ASPR maintains the US’s strategic national stockpile, a cache of lifesaving drugs including anti-radiation medicine, Schlegelmilch said health resources in the aftermath of a nuclear blast, or the ability to distribute the resources it has, greatly concern him. He is particularly worried that there won’t be sufficient mental health and social services: “Those are areas which people will always say are very important, but we don’t see the additional resources.” And in the aftermath of any potential nuclear catastrophe, there will be far more people who need those services than will be available, he said.One of the main problems is that there have been huge cuts to disaster preparedness programs that were enacted after 9/11. A key program, ASPR’s Hospital Preparedness Program (HPP), described as the “primary source of federal funding for healthcare system preparedness and response” for large-scale emergencies and disasters, lost 62% of its funding by 2021. There also doesn’t seem to be political will to invest more in disaster preparedness, despite the Covid pandemic. “It’s really shocking to me that we aren’t seeing a more cohesive push for preparedness in the face of what we’ve all just gone through,” Schlegelmilch said. “A lot of it comes down to the polarization in our politics –– and that’s a very, very dangerous path to go down. It’s preventing us from taking the kinds of actions that are staring us in the face.”Schlegelmilch said that same polarization could also cause mayhem in the aftermath of a nuclear event: if you thought Covid misinformation was bad –– imagine nuclear blast deniers.“We’re raised to think the world is very deterministic, and if we can just figure out all the variables, we can crack the code and know what we need to do. My experience is that the world is much more chaotic, with spheres of probability: we know what will make us more likely to do well in an adverse event. So I’m okay with incremental progress, as long as it’s in the right direction,” he said, adding that even without a nuclear blast, preparing for one will help us survive other disasters, like pandemics and climate change.“When we look at the root causes of disasters as an intersection of all these different aspects of civil society, we do see common threads,” Schlegelmilch said. “There’s value in investing in resilience, there’s value in investing in the future.”TopicsNew YorkNuclear weaponsUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Can Democrats win tight midterm races with a pro-choice message? Pat Ryan says yes

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      InterviewCan Democrats win tight midterm races with a pro-choice message? Pat Ryan says yesPoppy NoorThe congressman won a swing upstate New York district with a progressive platform – and says Democrats can use his playbook When Democrat Pat Ryan got elected to New York’s 19th – a largely rural district in upstate New York that swung for Trump in 2016 and only narrowly elected Biden in 2020 – people were surprised.His contender in the August special election, Marc Molinaro, was a well-known local politician who entered the political arena when he was just 18, becoming the mayor of Tivoli, which is in the district, at 19. Molinaro was the favorite to win: leading in the polls, by as much as 10 points, right up to the moment Ryan claimed victory.The special election was watched with bated breath, as a tight race in a swing seat that could be a harbinger in the midterm elections, where Democrats are fighting to keep a slim House majority come November. Now, people are looking at Ryan’s campaign as a political playbook for how to win other tight races across the country.Many credit Ryan’s win to seizing the political moment around the fierce fight for abortion rights in the US.Just hours after the constitutional right to abortion was dismantled by the US supreme court on 24 June, Ryan, a US army vet, released a campaign ad making his stance clear. In a surprising twist, the video tied his military service to the attack on abortion.“How can we be a free country if the government tries to control women’s bodies? That’s not the country I fought to defend,” he said in the ad.It was a much-needed balm at a time when the Democratic party was being criticized at the national level for lacking a sense of urgency in responding to the fall of Roe v Wade, the landmark decision that had protected abortion rights in the US for several generations.“I think what is missing in our politics right now is just speaking from the heart, rather than poll testing,” Ryan told the Guardian when asked why he thought that message on abortion resonated.Then, a few months into Ryan’s campaign, the Republican senator Lindsey Graham introduced a bill that would ban abortion at the national level, after 15 weeks. The bill never would have had enough support to pass, but it didn’t matter: after months of the Republicans saying abortion rights should be put to the states, Graham appeared to have revealed his party’s hand in pushing for a national crackdown.“They showed themselves to be extremists. Suddenly, we saw the new Republican platform was wanting to criminalize abortions at the national level,” said Ryan.His special election win gives him just a few months representing New York’s 19th before he has to run again in the midterms. And the abortion message is one he continues to campaign on.“There was just another set of horrific reporting out of Ohio, where at least two teenage women under the age of 18 were raped and forced to fly to other states, just to get reproductive health care. That’s just as barbaric. And that’s not who we are as a country,” he said.Adding that he thinks the Democrats will hold the house and the Senate, he continued: “We absolutely have to restore those decisions back to women, and away from politicians, frankly.”Ryan just introduced a bill to make abortion medication legal at the national level. If it passes, it will undermine states’ attempts to ban abortion, considering that more than half of US abortions are completed using medication.His pledge is again a foil to the national party’s mostly lackluster attempts to curtail the destruction of abortion rights across the US, with Joe Biden’s own abortion bill coming under fire precisely because it failed to make it easier for Americans to access abortion pills.It may seem strange that a candidate like Ryan – who wants to pass gun control laws, raise taxes on the wealthy and make abortion pills nationally accessible – would win in a district that elected Trump.But it’s the way he ties together seemingly progressive ideals under the banner of freedom thats seems to resonate. He talks about seeing voters in his own district on the campaign trail. Whether in some of the most rural and conservative parts of his district, at events with small business owners, or speaking to younger people, he says abortion rights came up over and over.So to him, the playbook is simple.“All we have to do is show Americans that we understand how existential this fight is. The fight for reproductive freedom; for voting rights; the fight against gun violence; the fight for our democracy. We need to draw attention to how un-American it is to take away these freedoms,” said Ryan.Does he feel it is contradictory, to stand for the rights of American women, or children at threat of being gunned down in American schools, when he participated in a war and occupation that led to the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians?“I have said publicly that the decision to go to war in Iraq and the way we conducted it – there’s an awful lot we should have done better,” he said.“I personally had to wrestle with seeing my fellow soldiers and innocent civilians – whom I had built relationships with – put at risk. Seeing war very close and personally, you see the darkest and the most evil in human nature come forward. We need people in Congress who understand the seriousness of sending our young men and women into combat. War has to be our absolute last resort,” he said.And with this call for unity he hopes he can win in November.“We’re so divided. And for a long time politicians have pitted people against each other, but we showed in the special election that we can take so-called ‘wedge issues’ and remind people that we actually share these values in common – things like reproductive freedom. This is a moment where we have to be clear-eyed about the stakes,” he says.“Authenticity, and just being a normal human being – that is something that is in short supply right now in our politics.”TopicsUS politicsNew YorkAbortionHouse of RepresentativesfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Two injured in shooting outside New York governor candidate’s home

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      Two injured in shooting outside New York governor candidate’s homeTeenage boys, both 17, treated in hospital after being hit by gunfire from moving car outside home of Lee Zeldin in town of Shirley New York congressman and Republican gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin says his family is safe after two teenagers were shot outside his Long Island home on Sunday afternoon.The boys, both 17, were walking with a third teenager on the street in Shirley, New York, where Zeldin lives when they were hit by gunfire from a moving car, local police said.The wounded teens then tried to hide in Zeldin’s yard, ducking under his porch and into the bushes, while the person who was with them fled.Zeldin and his wife were not at home at the time of the shooting, but their teenage daughters were in the kitchen doing homework when they heard gunshots and screaming, the congressman said.“One of the bullets was actually found 30ft (9.14m) from where they sitting,” Zeldin said at a news conference late on Sunday.Police said the wounded teens were treated at an area hospital for injuries that were not life-threatening.Authorities didn’t release their names.“At this time investigators have no reason to believe there is any connection between the shooting and the residence,” said a statement from the Suffolk county police department, whose jurisdiction includes Shirley.Zeldin said he did nt know either of the injured teens. He said his 16-year-old daughters locked themselves in a bathroom and called 911.The congressman added that he and his family were shaken but OK.Zeldin and his wife were returning from a parade in the Bronx when the shooting occurred. He said police officers were at his home investigating on Sunday evening and were looking over the home’s security cameras.Police said they had no information to release about who fired the shots.Zeldin is challenging New York’s Democratic governor, Kathy Hochul, in an election set for 8 November, and he has made violent crime a focus of his campaign. He has called for the state’s bail laws to be toughened, among other measures.“Like so many New Yorkers, crime has literally made its way to our front door,” Zeldin said Sunday.It is the second scare he has had in several months. In July, while Zeldin campaigned in upstate New York, a man approached him onstage and thrust a sharp object near the congressman’s head and neck.He was uninjured, and the attacker was arrested.Hochul said in a statement posted on Twitter that she had been briefed on the shooting outside Zeldin’s home.“As we await more details, I’m relieved to hear the Zeldin family is safe and grateful for law enforcement’s quick response,” the governor said.TopicsNew YorkUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      ‘He’s done’: how Donald Trump’s legal woes have just gotten a lot worse

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      ‘He’s done’: how Donald Trump’s legal woes have just gotten a lot worseNew York civil lawsuit accusing Trump family of ‘staggering’ fraud could derail presidential bid, experts say Donald Trump’s legal perils have become insurmountable and could snuff out the former US president’s hopes of an election-winning comeback, according to political analysts and legal experts.On Wednesday, Trump and three of his adult children were accused of lying to tax collectors, lenders and insurers in a “staggering” fraud scheme that routinely misstated the value of his properties to enrich themselves.The civil lawsuit, filed by New York’s attorney general, came as the FBI investigates Trump’s holding of sensitive government documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida and a special grand jury in Georgia considers whether he and others attempted to influence state election officials after his defeat there by Joe Biden.The former US president has repeatedly hinted that he intends to run for the White House again in 2024. But the cascade of criminal, civil and congressional investigations could yet derail that bid.01:13“He’s done,” said Allan Lichtman, a history professor at American University, in Washington, who has accurately predicted every presidential election since 1984. “He’s got too many burdens, too much baggage to be able to run again even presuming he escapes jail, he escapes bankruptcy. I’m not sure he’s going to escape jail.”Allen Weisselberg, Trump Organization financial chief, pleads guilty to tax fraudRead moreAfter a three-year investigation, Letitia James, the New York attorney general, alleged that Trump provided fraudulent statements of his net worth and false asset valuations to obtain and satisfy loans, get insurance benefits and pay lower taxes. Offspring Don Jr, Ivanka and Eric were also named as defendants.At a press conference, James riffed on the title of Trump’s 1987 memoir and business how-to book, The Art of the Deal.“This investigation revealed that Donald Trump engaged in years of illegal conduct to inflate his net worth, to deceive banks and the people of the great state of New York. Claiming you have money that you do not have does not amount to ‘the art of the deal’. It’s the art of the steal,” she said.Her office requested that the former president pay at least $250m in penalties and that his family be banned from running businesses in the state.James cannot bring criminal charges against Trump in this civil investigation but she said she was referring allegations of criminal fraud to federal prosecutors in Manhattan as well as the Internal Revenue Service.Trump repeated his go-to defence that the suit is “another witch hunt” against him and again referred to James, who is Black, as racist, via his Truth Social platform, also calling her “a fraud who campaigned on a ‘get Trump’ platform, despite the fact that the city is one of the crime and murder disasters of the world under her watch!”But critics said the suit strikes at the heart of Trump’s self-portrayal as a successful property developer who made billions, hosted the reality TV show The Apprentice and promised to apply that business acumen to the presidency.Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard University, noted that the civil component “involves things of particular significance to Trump and his family and his organisation, namely their ability to defraud the public, to defraud banks, to defraud insurance companies, and to continue to subsist through corruption. Without all of that corruption, the entire Trump empire is involved in something like meltdown.”Tribe added: “Trump is probably more concerned with things of this kind than he is with having to wear an orange jumpsuit and maybe answer a criminal indictment … As a practical matter, this is probably going to cause more sleepless nights for Mr Trump than almost anything else.”No previous former president has faced investigations so numerous and so serious. Last month FBI agents searched Mar-a-Lago and seized official documents marked Top Secret, Secret and Confidential. Trump faces possible indictment for violating the Espionage Act, obstruction of a federal investigation or mishandling sensitive government records.As so often during his business career, Trump sought to throw sand in the legal gears. He bought time by persuading a court to appoint a judge, Raymond Dearie, as a special master to review the documents. But so far Dearie appears to be far from a yes-man. On Tuesday he warned Trump’s lawyers: “My view is you can’t have your cake and eat it too.”Special master in Trump case appears skeptical of declassification claimsRead moreThe ex-president also faces a state grand jury investigation in Georgia over efforts to subvert that state’s election result in 2020.The justice department is investigating his role in the deadly January 6 attack on the US Capitol by a mob of his supporters intent on preventing the certification of Biden’s election victory. Its efforts have been boosted by the parallel investigation by a House of Representatives committee, whose hearings are set to resume next week.In addition, the Trump Organization – which manages hotels, golf courses and other properties around the world – is set to go on trial next month in a criminal case alleging that it schemed to give untaxed perks to senior executives, including its longtime finance chief Allen Weisselberg, who alone took more than $1.7m in extras.In a further setback on Wednesday, arguably Trump’s worst-ever day of legal defeats, a federal appeals court permitted the justice department to resume its review of classified records seized from Mar-a-Lago as part of its criminal investigation.The former president, meanwhile, insisted that he did nothing wrong in retaining the documents. “There doesn’t have to be a process, as I understand it,” he told the Fox News host Sean Hannity. “If you’re the president of the United States, you can declassify just by saying: ‘It’s declassified’.”“Even by thinking about it, because you’re sending it to Mar-a-Lago or to wherever you’re sending it … There can be a process, but there doesn’t have to be.”Trump says you can declassify documents by just thinking about it pic.twitter.com/cFbQ1zclnq— Acyn (@Acyn) September 22, 2022
      Despite it all, Trump has been laying the groundwork for a potential comeback campaign and has accused Biden’s administration of targeting him to undermine his political prospects.Asked by a conservative radio host what would happen if he was indicted over the classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, Trump replied: “I think you’d have problems in this country the likes of which perhaps we’ve never seen before. I don’t think the people of the United States would stand for it.”Kurt Bardella, an adviser to the Democratic National Committee, said: “If the best defence you have for your conduct is: if you hold me accountable, there will be violence, that sounds like someone who has no business being either in public service or being outside of jail.”Bardella expressed hope that, at long last, Trump would be held to account. “Everything about Donald Trump has always been about the grift. It’s always been about the con. And now his unmasking is at hand.”TopicsDonald TrumpLaw (US)New YorkIvanka TrumpDonald Trump JrMar-a-LagoUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      New York attorney general announces civil lawsuit against Trump and family

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      New York attorney general announces civil lawsuit against Trump and familyMove by Letitia James comes after culmination of years-long investigation of financial practices at the Trump Organization01:13The attorney general of New York state has filed a civil fraud lawsuit against Donald Trump and three of his children involved in the family real-estate business, for falsely inflating his net worth by billions in order to enrich himself and secure favorable loans.Don’t cheer for the Espionage Act being used against Donald Trump. It will backfire | Trevor TimmRead moreAnnouncing the suit in New York on Wednesday, Letitia James also said referrals had been made to federal prosecutors and the Internal Revenue Service – a move sure to anger the former US president and increase consternation among his inner circle about the depth of his legal predicament.Trump, Donald Trump Jr, Ivanka Trump and Eric Trump were all deposed during the New York investigation, which began when Trump was president and lasted for three years.The lawsuit seeks to bar all four Trumps from serving as executives in New York, and to prohibit the Trump Organization from acquiring any commercial real estate or receiving loans from New York-based entities for five years.James added: “The complaint demonstrates that Donald Trump falsely inflated his net worth by billions of dollars to unjustly enrich himself and to cheat the system, thereby cheating all of us. He did this with the help of the other defendants.”James said her office uncovered evidence of federal criminal violations including issuing false statements to financial institutions and bank fraud, and had referred the matter to the southern district of New York and the IRS.The lawsuit states: “The number of grossly inflated asset values is staggering, affecting most if not all of the real estate holdings in any given year.”The suit also seeks to recover at least $250m and to bar the Trump Organization chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, and comptroller, Jeffrey McConney, from serving in top roles of any company in New York.In a separate criminal investigation, in New York, Weisselberg, 75, has pleaded guilty to tax fraud.Noting how Trump and Weisselberg cited fifth-amendment protections against self-incrimination when refusing to answer questions at deposition, James said: “For too long, powerful, wealthy people in this country have operated as if the rules do not apply to them.“Donald Trump stands out as among the most egregious examples. Trump thought he could get away with the art of the steal but today that conduct ends.”Though the New York suit is not a criminal prosecution, James’s referral to federal prosecutors at the southern district of New York threatens further serious legal peril for the former president and his three adult children.Trump has repeatedly suggested he will run again for president in 2024. But he faces legal threats including possible indictment over his retention of classified records and multiple investigations of his attempts to overturn the 2020 election.The former president and his attorneys have castigated the New York investigation as a politically motivated “witch-hunt” – his default position under scrutiny – and insisted that the Trump Organization did not operate illegally.But in the 214-page complaint, James outlined an extensive record of alleged wrongdoing, such as fraudulently inflating the value of 23 properties including the Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, Trump Tower in New York and what was previously the Trump International hotel in Washington DC.James alleged that the defendants made more than 200 false and misleading asset valuations in financial statements between 2011 and 2021, and revealed strategies she said Trump and his organization used to commit fraud.Mar-a-Lago, the suit says, was valued as high as $739m when it should have been closer to $75m.James also said the Trumps “received a series of bank ordered appraisals for the commercial property at 40 Wall Street in New York City that calculated the value of the property at $200m as of August 2010 and $220m as of November 2012.“Yet in his 2011 statement, Mr Trump listed 40 Wall Street with a value of $524m, which increased to $530m over the next two years, more than twice the value calculated by the professionals.“Even more egregious, the $500m-plus valuation was attributed to information from the appraiser who valued the building at just over $200m.”Regarding Trump Tower, on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, James said: “Mr Trump represented that his apartment spanned more than 30,000 sq ft, which was the basis for valuing the apartment. In reality, the apartment had an area of less than 11,000 sq ft, something Mr Trump was well aware of.“Based on that inflated square footage, the value of the apartment in 2015 and 2016 was $327m. To this date, no apartment in New York City has ever sold for close to that amount. Tripling the size of the apartment for purposes of the valuation was intentional and deliberate fraud. Not an honest mistake.”Trump has consistently accused James of being politically motivated. Before James’s announcement, Bloomberg News reported that “members of Trump’s inner circle” saw the suit as “a fundraising opportunity for James, a Democrat facing re-election in November”.Trump has also claimed that the attorney general, who is Black, is racist.As James spoke, Donald Trump Jr tweeted: “The bullshit Dem[ocratic] witch-hunt continues!”Trump lawyer Alina Habba said the lawsuit “is neither focused on the facts nor the law, rather it is solely focused on advancing the attorney general’s political agenda,” accusing James of abusing her authority “by prying into transactions where absolutely no wrongdoing has taken place”.Habba said the allegations in the lawsuit are “meritless”.Summing up on Wednesday morning, James said: “I want to be clear. White-collar financial crime is not a victimless crime.”Repeating her allusion to Trump’s most famous ghosted book, she added: “Claiming you have money that you do not have does not amount to the art of the deal. It’s the art of the steal.“There cannot be different rules for different people in this country or in this state … No one is above the law.”
      The Associated Press contributed reporting
      TopicsDonald TrumpNew YorkUS politicsDonald Trump JrIvanka TrumpnewsReuse this content More