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      Trump promises ‘fully expedited approvals and permits’ to billionaire investors in the US – live

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      As he closed his speech at the Brookings Institution, Joe Biden singled out Project 2025 as being particularly harmful, and said he hoped Donald Trump does not follow the rightwing blueprint’s proposals to remake the US government.“I pray to God the president-elect throws away Project 2025. I think it’d be an economic disaster for us and the region,” Biden said.Trump has publicly repudiated Project 2025, but since winning re-election has appointed conservatives involved in drawing up the document to positions in his incoming administration. Here’s more on what they might do:We’re pausing this blog for now. Thanks for following along.

      In a speech billed at promoting his economic accomplishments, Joe Biden warned Donald Trump against imposing tariffs and cutting taxes – two of the key planks of his successful re-election campaign. The president also defended America’s dominant role in global affairs, and said implementing Project 2025 would result in “economic disaster”.

      Earlier in the day, Senate Democrats convened a hearing meant to explore the implications of Trump’s vow to carry out mass deportations of undocumented immigrants. Senate judiciary committee chair Dick Durbin said such deportations “would damage our economy and separate American families”. Lindsey Graham, the top-ranking Republican on the committee, promised senators would get to work on a “transformational border security bill” as soon as Trump takes office.
      Here’s what else happened today:

      Adam Schiff, a Democratic former member of the January 6 committee, said he did not think it was necessary for Biden to issue pre-emptive pardons to the panel’s members, despite Trump’s threats to jail them.

      Mitch McConnell, the 82-year-old outgoing Senate Republican leader, suffered a fall, but has been cleared to get back to work.

      The New York attorney general, Letitia James, reportedly told Trump’s attorneys she will keep pursuing the $454m-plus judgment levied against him for business fraud.

      Matt Gaetz is joining rightwing broadcaster One America News Network as an anchor.

      Trump was up late last night, writing weird stuff about Canada.
      Adam Schiff, a Democratic former member of the January 6 committee, said he did not think it was necessary for Joe Biden to issue pre-emptive pardons to those involved in the bipartisan House investigation of the attack on the Capitol.In an interview over the weekend, Donald Trump alleged that the committee had destroyed its evidence, and the committee members “should go to jail”. The committee’s report and its supporting documents remain publicly available online.Speaking at the Capitol, Schiff, who was just sworn in as a senator representing California, said:
      I don’t think the incoming president should be threatening his political opponents with jail time. That’s not the kind of talk we should hear from the president in a democracy. Nor do I think that a pardon is necessary for the members of the January 6th Committee.
      We’re proud of the work we did in that committee. It was fundamental oversight obligation to investigate the first attempt to interfere with the peaceful transfer of power in our history.
      Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell was injured in a fall today, but has been cleared to get back to work, his office said.“Leader McConnell tripped following lunch. He sustained a minor cut to the face and sprained his wrist. He has been cleared to resume his schedule,” a spokesperson for the long-serving Senate Republican leader said.McConnell, 82, is in his final weeks leading the party in the Senate. John Thune will be the GOP leader next year, when the party takes the majority in the chamber.Last year, reports emerged that McConnell had suffered multiple falls, and he also repeatedly appeared to freeze up in public. He is expected to continue serving as a senator representing Kentucky through 2026, when his current term expires.Further deepening his unusually close ties with billionaires, Donald Trump has promised “fully expedited approvals and permits” to people who invest $1bn or more in the United States.Writing on Truth Social, Trump said:
      Any person or company investing ONE BILLION DOLLARS, OR MORE, in the United States of America, will receive fully expedited approvals and permits, including, but in no way limited to, all Environmental approvals. GET READY TO ROCK!!!
      Trump has nominated several billionaires to his cabinet, and put the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, and fellow billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy in charge of the quasi-governmental “Department of Government Efficiency”. Here’s more about that:Dozens of Nobel laureates have banded together to urge the Senate to reject Robert F Kennedy Jr, the conspiracy theorist who Donald Trump nominated to lead the department of health and human services. Here’s more, from the Guardian’s Robert Tait:Seventy-seven Nobel laureates have signed a letter urging the US Senate to reject Robert F Kennedy Jr as Donald Trump’s nominee for health and human services secretary, arguing that he is unfit and would put American public health “in jeopardy”.It is believed to be the first time in living memory that Nobel prize winners have united against a presidential cabinet pick, and comes against a backdrop of Kennedy’s public support for discredited theories, including a claim that childhood vaccines cause autism.In their letter, prize winners in the fields of medicine, chemistry, physics and economics castigate Kennedy for a “lack of credentials” and point out that he has been “a belligerent critic” of some of the agencies that he would oversee, including the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).“The proposal to place Mr Kennedy in charge of the federal agencies responsible for protecting the public health of American citizens and for conducting the medical research that benefits our country and the rest of humanity has been widely criticised on multiple grounds,” the laureates say in the letter, first obtained by the New York Times.Donald Trump’s picks for FBI director and attorney general have former federal prosecutors worried, the Guardian’s Peter Stone reports:By tapping two combative ultra-loyalists to run the FBI and the justice department, Donald Trump has sparked fears they will pursue the president-elect’s calls for “revenge” against his political foes and sack officials who Trump demonizes as “deep state” opponents, say ex-justice department prosecutors.Kash Patel and Pam Bondi, who Trump has nominated to run the FBI and Department of Justice, respectively, have been unswerving loyalists to Trump for years, promoting Trump’s false claims that his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden was due to fraud.Patel was a top lawyer on the House intelligence panel under rightwing member Devin Nunes for part of Trump’s first term and then held a few posts in the Trump administration including at the national security council advising the president.Bondi, a recent corporate lobbyist and an ex-Florida attorney general, defended Trump during his first impeachment and was active on the campaign trail during the late stages of his 2024 run.Patel and Bondi have each echoed Trump’s calls for taking revenge against key Democrats and officials, including ones who pursued criminal charges against Trump for his aggressive efforts to overturn his 2020 defeat and his role in inflaming the January 6 attack on the Capitol that led to five deaths.Trump has lavished praise on both picks, calling Patel a “brilliant lawyer” and “advocate for truth”, while hailing Bondi as “loyal” and “qualified”. But critics say their rhetoric and threats are “incredibly harmful to public trust” in the two agencies undermining the integrity of the FBI and justice department, and potentially spurring violence.Alternatively, Merchan could choose to uphold the verdict and proceed to sentencing or delay the case until Trump leaves office.Trump will be the first president, former or current, to be a convicted criminal.In more Trump legal news, the president-elect might lose his months-long fight to reverse his conviction on 34 counts of falsifying business records, the Associated Press reports.Prosecutors are trying to convince Judge Juan M Merchan, acting justice of the New York state supreme court in New York county, to preserve Donald Trump’s hush money criminal conviction before he becomes president. This way, the case would be permanently suspended, allowing Trump’s conviction to stand and bar any attempts to appeal.Trump’s legal team has urged Merchan to dismiss the case and argue letting it go on would cause unconstitutional “disruptions” to his presidency.Some background: Trump has been convicted of manipulating documents to conceal a $130,000 payment to pornographic film actor Stormy Daniels in order to quiet her claim that they had sexual relations more than a decade ago. Trump denies any wrongdoing.Here’s more, from the AP:
      Prosecutors are urging a judge not to throw out President-elect Donald Trump’s hush money criminal conviction but suggesting a willingness to end the case in a way that would preserve the verdict while avoiding punishment or a protracted legal fight.
      In court papers made public on Tuesday, the Manhattan district attorney’s office proposed an array of options for keeping the historic conviction on the books, including asking Judge Juan M. Merchan to consider treating the case the way he would when a defendant dies.
      That would effectively put the case into a permanent state of suspended animation. Trump’s conviction would stand, but everything would freeze, including any appeal action. It is unclear if that option is viable under New York law.
      “As applied here, this Court could similarly terminate the criminal proceeding by placing a notation in the record that the jury verdict removed the presumption of innocence; that defendant was never sentenced; and that his conviction was neither affirmed nor reversed on appeal because of presidential immunity,” prosecutors wrote in an 82-page filing.
      Among the other options prosecutors proposed was delaying sentencing until after Trump leaves office in 2029. However, they were adamant that the conviction should stand, arguing that Trump’s impending return to the White House should not upend a jury’s finding.
      In a speech billed at promoting his economic accomplishments, Joe Biden warned Donald Trump against imposing tariffs and cutting taxes – two of the key planks of his successful re-election campaign. The president also defended America’s dominant role in global affairs, and said implementing Project 2025 would result in “economic disaster”. Earlier in the day, Senate Democrats convened a hearing meant to explore the implications of Trump’s vow to carry out mass deportations of undocumented immigrants. Senate judiciary committee chair Dick Durbin said such deportations “would damage our economy and separate American families”. Lindsey Graham, the top-ranking Republican on the committee, promised senators would get to work on a “transformational border security bill” as soon as Trump takes office.Here’s what else is going on:

      New York attorney general Letitia James reportedly told Trump’s attorneys she will keep pursuing the $454m-plus judgment levied against him for business fraud.

      Matt Gaetz is joining rightwing broadcaster One America News Network as an anchor.

      Trump was up late last night, writing weird stuff about Canada.
      As he closed his speech at the Brookings Institution, Joe Biden singled out Project 2025 as being particularly harmful, and said he hoped Donald Trump does not follow the rightwing blueprint’s proposals to remake the US government.“I pray to God the president-elect throws away Project 2025. I think it’d be an economic disaster for us and the region,” Biden said.Trump has publicly repudiated Project 2025, but since winning re-election has appointed conservatives involved in drawing up the document to positions in his incoming administration. Here’s more on what they might do:With Donald Trump mulling pulling the country back from its international alliances and commitments, Joe Biden argued that it was essential that the United States remains dominant in global affairs.“If we do not lead the world, what nation leads the world?” Biden, his voice raised, said in a speech to the Brookings Institution, a prominent Washington DC thinktank. “Who pulls Europe together, who tries to pull the Middle East together? How do in the Indian Ocean? What do we do in Africa? We, the United States, lead the world.”Referring to economic policies pursued by his administration and others that Trump has vowed to reverse, Biden said: “My hope and belief is that the decisions and investments that are now so deeply rooted through the nation, it’s going to be politically costly and economically unsound for the next president to disrupt.”Joe Biden singled out Donald Trump’s proposals to impose steep tariffs on US allies and rivals alike and to extend tax cuts enacted during his first administration as policies that would undermine the economy’s health.“By all accounts, the incoming administration is determined to return the country … [to] trickle-down economics, and another tax cut for the very wealthy that will not be paid for, or if paid for, is going to have a real cost, once again, causing massive deficits or significant cuts in basic programs of healthcare, education, veterans benefits,” Biden said.“On top of that, he seems determined to impose steep, universal tariffs on all imported goods brought to this country on the mistaken belief that foreign countries will bear the cost of those tariffs, rather than the American consumer. Who do you think pays for this? I believe this approach is a major mistake. I believe we’ve proven that approach is a mistake over the past four years, but … we will know in time what will happen.”Joe Biden has generally refrained from criticizing Donald Trump since his presidential election victory, but subtly needled his Republican successor in a speech where the president defended his economic record.“Next month, my administration will end, and a new administration will begin. Most economists agree the new administration is going to inherit a fairly strong economy, at least at the moment, an economy going through fundamental transformation that’s laid out a stronger foundation and a sustainable, broad-based, highly productive growth,” Biden said. “It is my profound hope that the new administration will preserve and build on this progress.”Later on, Trump singled out Trump for criticism over his handling of the pandemic. “The previous administration, quite frankly, had no plan, real plan, to get us through one of the toughest periods in our nation’s history,” Biden said.And though Trump campaigned on tearing up Biden’s legislative accomplishments – and has the votes to do it, thanks to Republican victories that will give them control of Congress – the president predicted that undoing his 2022 effort to overhaul the nation’s infrastructure will be impossible, since it benefits so many red states.“We had infrastructure week for four years, nothing got built,” Biden said, in yet another dig at Trump.“Everybody said when I wanted to have an infrastructure bill that mattered, over $1.3tn, we’d never get it done. We got it done. The next president has a gameplan I laid out, and by the way, he’s going to find, since I made a promise I’d invest as much in red states as blue, he’s gonna have trouble not doing it. He’s gonna have a lot of red state senators that are opposed to all of it and voted for it deciding it’s very much in their interest to build the facilities that are on the block.”A Senate hearing on mass deportations ended on a bitter note, with a series of back-and-forths between Republicans on the committee and a majority witness invited to testify about the cost and economic impact of removing millions of immigrants from the labor force.Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, repeatedly testified that he did not support “open borders” despite Republican senators claiming he did.Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana spent his allotted time questioning Reichlin-Melnick about old tweets while Thom Tillis, a Republican from North Carolina, called him a part of the problem. A pre-election report published by the American Immigration Council, which supports comprehensive immigration reform, found that mass deportations on the scale Donald Trump has proposed would cost at least $315bn and would hurt the economy, especially in key industries like agriculture and constructionThe exchanges underscored just how polarized Congress is over the issue and how little appetite there is for compromise in an area that was at the heart of Trump’s re-election pitch. In a sign that Democrats are scrambling for a response, several senators stressed their agreement with Republicans and Trump that immigrants with a criminal record should be deported, while also talking about the importance of protecting Dreamers.Matt Gaetz, who resigned his seat in Congress after Donald Trump nominated him as his attorney general, only to withdraw his nomination after reports emerged of sexual misconduct, has joined the One America News Network (OAN), a rightwing outlet.Starting in January, Gaetz will host a one-hour prime-time show aptly titled “The Matt Gaetz Show”, and also co-host a video podcast, the network announced.“OAN is blazing a trail in media, embracing not just traditional news but the platforms where Americans are going – streaming, apps, podcasts, and social media. I couldn’t be more thrilled to join OAN’s forward-thinking team and be part of this revolutionary expansion,” Gaetz said in a statement.New York attorney general Letitia James has told Donald Trump’s attorneys that she will continue pursuing a $454m civil fraud judgment her office won against the president-elect, despite his looming inauguration, the Hill reports.Trump’s lawyers had asked her to support vacating the judgment, citing his presidential election victory. In a letter in response, James said: “Mr. Trump’s upcoming inauguration as the next president of the United States has no bearing on the pendency of defendants’ appeal in this action. “An appeals court heard arguments in September in Trump’s challenge to the civil fraud judgment, which centered on claims that he inflated his wealth to secure better lending conditions. Here’s more: More

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      Key US unit fighting disinformation abroad in jeopardy ahead of Trump return

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      The Global Engagement Center (GEC), a state department unit critical to combating foreign disinformation, will not receive a multi-year extension in the latest National Defense Authorization Act, putting its future operations in jeopardy.The next chapter of the GEC – which only addresses foreign influence operations outside the United States – now relies on Congress to come up with an extension some other way by 24 December, or the United States faces a potential gap in their international disinformation response capabilities.In response to the NDAA snub over the weekend, a state department spokesperson told the Guardian: “As our adversaries continue to ramp up their efforts globally, it’s counterintuitive – and dangerous – to weaken or worse yet dismantle, the US’s leadership in this critical mission.”The GEC is looking to be the latest institutional target to get hit by congressional Republicans, who have grown increasingly skeptical of the center and other US agencies for allegedly censoring conservative viewpoints. Last year, the Republican-led House judiciary committee labelled the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency as “the nerve center” of the government’s social media censorship apparatus.The GEC has been instrumental in exposing significant disinformation campaigns in Latin America and Moldova, including a complex Russian operation in Africa called the “African Initiative” this year. This campaign sought to undermine US and western influence by spreading conspiracy theories about US-funded health programs through social media, websites and Telegram channels.Bipartisan supporters, including Chris Murphy, a Connecticut senator, and John Cornyn, a Texas senator, had proposed an amendment to extend the center’s mandate through 2031, but the effort ultimately failed to make it into the final NDAA text.Marco Rubio, a Florida senator, Trump’s pick for secretary of state, has long been vocal about his concerns about foreign influence operations by way of China and Russia. His office did not respond to a request for comment on whether it would back the state’s GEC entering a new era.Several prominent Republican lawmakers, including the outgoing House foreign affairs chair Michael McCaul, have criticized the GEC for allegedly overstepping its mandate. Those lawmakers argue that the center, through its connection with the UK-based Global Disinformation Index, has been complicit in labeling conservative media outlets as high-risk for spreading disinformation.“A win for free speech and Main Street America!” the House Committee on Small Business posted on X on Tuesday. “The shuttering of the State Department’s Global Engagement Center means there is one less way for unelected bureaucrats to violate Americans’ First Amendment rights.”According to the center’s own assessment, countries like China have invested “billions of dollars” to exert global information control through disinformation and propaganda. More

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      Trump picks Maga darling Harmeet Dhillon to lead civil rights cases at DoJ

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      Donald Trump picked Harmeet Dhillon, a Maga darling and ardent supporter, to lead civil rights cases at the US Department of Justice, a sign of major changes ahead in the agency’s priorities.Dhillon made her name in Maga circles by taking on culture-war cases as a San Francisco lawyer and became a fixture in rightwing media, appearing often on Fox shows. She has filed various lawsuits over election “integrity” issues and supported Trump’s quests to overturn results in 2020.In announcing Dhillon’s nomination, Trump cited a laundry list of cases she’s working on, including “taking on Big Tech for censoring our Free Speech, representing Christians who were prevented from praying together during COVID, and suing corporations who use woke policies to discriminate against their workers”.He also mentioned how Dhillon’s lawsuits on election law fought to “ensure that all, and ONLY, legal votes are counted”.“In her new role at the DOJ, Harmeet will be a tireless defender of our Constitutional Rights, and will enforce our Civil Rights and Election Laws FAIRLY and FIRMLY,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.“I’m extremely honored by President Trump’s nomination to assist with our nation’s civil rights agenda,” Dhillon wrote on Twitter/X after the nomination. “It has been my dream to be able to serve our great country, and I am so excited to be part of an incredible team of lawyers led by @PamBondi. I cannot wait to get to work!”Trump previously announced Pam Bondi, the former attorney general of Florida and a Trump defense attorney, as his pick to lead the justice department.As a lawyer in California, Dhillon has sued the University of California, Berkeley for its speech policies, represented rightwing undercover operation Project Veritas and the former Fox host Tucker Carlson, and filed lawsuits over pandemic restrictions. She served as a legal adviser to Trump in 2020 and ran to replace Ronna McDaniel as chair of the Republican National Committee in 2023, seeking to make the party organization more Trump-friendly. During the 2024 election, she was dispatched to Arizona by the Trump campaign, a decision that some saw as a sign the campaign was ready to make aggressive legal moves if needed to win there.She founded a legal non-profit, the Center for American Liberty, which uses the courts to go after violations of civil liberties and defend against the “coordinated assault on our civil liberties from corporations, politicians, socialist revolutionaries, and inept or biased government officials”, the organization’s website says.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionA Guardian investigation in 2023 found that the non-profit paid Dhillon’s law firm, Dhillon Law Group, at least $1.32m, which experts said was “problematic”. The reporting also noted that Dhillon was paid a $120,000 salary from the non-profit for working two hours a week.Democracy Docket said Dhillon has emerged as “one of the leading legal figures working to roll back voting rights across the country”. It tracked Dhillon or other attorneys at her firms as being involved in more than a dozen lawsuits across the states that challenged voting rights, election processes or Trump’s eligibility for office. She defended Trump in the Colorado case challenging his ability to run for office because of the January 6 insurrection.“Democrats are conspiring to commit the biggest election interference fraud in world history, right before our eyes, as government officials avert their eyes to the mockery of the constitution and our laws,” she said in late 2023 of efforts to keep Trump off the ballot. “This is a low point in American history.”Dhillon also faced hateful backlash from the far-right over her religion after appearing at the Republican convention in 2024. Dhillon, who is Sikh, gave a Sikh prayer at the convention, which some far-right figures called blasphemous. Before her rise in Trumpworld, she gained public attention for writing legal memos defending Sikhs who wore turbans from racial profiling after the 9/11 attacks. More

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      The Guardian view on Trump’s threat to the media: time to pass the Press Act

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      Fears of a press crackdown under Donald Trump’s second term deepened with his nomination of Kash Patel as FBI director – given his calls for retribution against journalists. Yet a rare chance to protect press freedom has emerged. The bipartisan Protect Reporters from Exploitative State Spying (Press) Act, the strongest press freedom legislation in US history, is on the brink of a vote. While President-elect Trump has urged Republicans to block it, the Senate could still deliver it to Joe Biden before the lame-duck session ends in January.The Press Act would ban secret government demands for journalists’ communications from tech giants such as Google or Verizon and protect reporters from jail for refusing to reveal sources. For investigative reporters to do their jobs – holding government officials to account for corruption and wrongdoing – they need to be able to protect the confidentiality of their sources. With courts recently weakening already-imperilled “reporter’s privilege” protections, this bill would finally give journalists in the US federal protections comparable to those afforded to other relationships where confidentiality is paramount, such as lawyers and clients, doctors and patients, and spouses.The bill has something for both Democrats and Republicans to like. The Press Act’s broad and nonpartisan definition of “journalist” takes into account the modern media landscape: you don’t have to work full-time for a mainstream media organisation to be covered. Freelancers, independent reporters writing Substack newsletters and even journalists posting primarily to social networks such as X would be included. It protects right-leaning journalists just as much as anyone at the New York Times or the Guardian.It also has commonsense national security exceptions (like preventing a terrorist attack or an imminent threat of violence) without diluting the bill’s strong protections. It’s worth remembering that Democratic administrations have abused their powers to go after the first amendment rights of journalists just as much as Republicans. The Obama administration brought a record number of prosecutions against whistleblowers, and was implicated in several government spying scandals, including secretly targeting journalists at the Associated Press and Fox News.Even the Biden administration, before reversing course after public outrage, continued pursuing at least some of the surveillance orders against news outlets that the first Trump administration initiated. That’s why, in an age of extreme political polarisation, the Press Act is about as bipartisan as it gets. The House passed the bill early in 2024 unanimously, with several prominent Republicans publicly touting its importance. The bill also has powerful co-sponsors in the Senate, ranging from Democrats such as Ron Wyden and Dick Durbin, the judiciary committee chair, to Trump-supporting Republicans like Mike Lee and Lindsey Graham.Even the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson supports the bill, as he made clear in a recent interview he did with the former Fox News and CBS reporter Catherine Herridge, who was subpoenaed to reveal a source for a story she wrote several years ago. She was recently in front of the DC court of appeals, where her lawyers argued that forcing reporters to reveal their sources in court sends a chilling effect to countless others around the country. For the bill to pass, the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, must make it a priority. The lame-duck session is only a few weeks long; if senators don’t act now, we may not have this opportunity for another decade or more.

      Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

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      ‘Incredibly harmful’: why Trump’s FBI and DoJ picks scare civil liberties experts

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      By tapping two combative ultra-loyalists to run the FBI and the justice department, Donald Trump has sparked fears they will pursue the president-elect’s calls for “revenge” against his political foes and sack officials who Trump demonizes as “deep state” opponents, say ex-justice department prosecutors.Kash Patel and Pam Bondi, who Trump has nominated to run the FBI and Department of Justice, respectively, have been unswerving loyalists to Trump for years, promoting Trump’s false claims that his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden was due to fraud.Patel was a top lawyer on the House intelligence panel under rightwing member Devin Nunes for part of Trump’s first term and then held a few posts in the Trump administration including at the national security council advising the president.Bondi, a recent corporate lobbyist and an ex-Florida attorney general, defended Trump during his first impeachment and was active on the campaign trail during the late stages of his 2024 run.Patel and Bondi have each echoed Trump’s calls for taking revenge against key Democrats and officials, including ones who pursued criminal charges against Trump for his aggressive efforts to overturn his 2020 defeat and his role in inflaming the January 6 attack on the Capitol that led to five deaths.Trump has lavished praise on both picks, calling Patel a “brilliant lawyer” and “advocate for truth”, while hailing Bondi as “loyal” and “qualified”. But critics say their rhetoric and threats are “incredibly harmful to public trust” in the two agencies undermining the integrity of the FBI and justice department, and potentially spurring violence.Patel promised last year on Steve Bannon’s show to “go out and find the conspirators, not just in government but in the media … who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections”.Patel, 44, who last year published a “deep state” enemies list as part of a book, added:“We’re going to come after you … Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out. But yeah, we’re putting you all on notice.”At the end of his first term as Trump scrambled aggressively to block Biden’s win, he briefly tried to install Patel as number two at the FBI or the CIA for support, but the idea died when the then attorney general, Bill Barr, vowed “over my dead body”.Meanwhile, Bondi, 59, told Fox News last year that when Trump wins “you know what’s going to happen: the Department of Justice, the prosecutors will be prosecuted, the bad ones. The investigators will be investigated. Because the deep state … they were hiding in the shadows.”Bondi added: “But now, they have a spotlight on them, and they can all be investigated, and the House needs to be cleaned out. Because now we know who most of them are; there’s a record of it, and we can clean house next turn. And that’s what has to happen.”Fears about the two nominees were compounded by Trump’s comments on Meet the Press on Sunday when he said he wouldn’t tell the justice department to prosecute his political enemies, but added threateningly that the House members on the panel that investigated the January 6 insurrection “should go to jail”.Ex-justice department prosecutors worry that Trump’s two picks will exact retribution against Trump foes, undermining the independence of both the justice department and the FBI and damaging the rule of law.“The rhetoric of Bondi and Patel is incredibly harmful to public trust in our government institutions and the reputations of individual public servants,” said Barbara McQuade, a former top prosecutor in eastern Michigan who now teaches law at the University of Michigan. “There’s absolutely no public evidence of wrongdoing to ‘rig’ the 2020 election.“Pledges to prosecute the prosecutors and investigate the investigators based on the complete absence of evidence is reckless because even if investigations do not materialize, unhinged members of the public will hear these bombastic accusations as a call to action.”Similarly, the former justice department inspector general Michael Bromwich said: “Bondi and Patel are election deniers, in the face of the adjudication of more than 60 cases rejecting claims of election fraud in 2020. This is alarming.“Members of the Senate judiciary committee have a duty to explore the basis of those often-repeated beliefs. If Bondi and Patel maintain that the election was stolen, they either are liars – and lying under oath is a crime – or they are so detached from reality that they shouldn’t be trusted to run a two-person convenience store, much less the DoJ and the FBI.”The former federal prosecutor and Columbia law professor Daniel Richman likens Trump’s nominees to his heavy reliance in his real estate career on Roy Cohn, the late mafia lawyer and chief counsel to rightwing senator Joseph McCarthy.“Still casting about for a Roy Cohn replacement, Trump has gone to people like Bondi and Patel whose loyalty comes from their utter dependence on his favor,” Richman said.Richman added: “But their lack of experience with the agencies he wants them to lead promises a rocky road ahead, both for them and the agencies.”Richman noted: “Presidents can pardon and otherwise kill cases and his loyal minions can disrupt agency operations, but I suspect they will soon be railing at what they call ‘resistance’ and what everyone else calls rule-following.”Such concerns about both nominees have been reinforced by their eager echoing of Trump’s conspiratorial obsession of going after “deep state” foes, as well as their old ties to Trump and backgrounds.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionPatel, who lacks experience leading an agency, shares Trump’s obsession and vindictiveness towards political critics and the press who Trump has branded an “enemy of the people”.Last year in his book Government Gangsters, Patel went further in an appendix where he included 60 “members of the Executive Branch Deep State” that consisted largely of top Democrats and Trump critics. Patel also wrote that Trump “must fire the top ranks of the FBI”.“Then, all those who manipulated evidence, hid exculpatory information, or in any way abused their authority for political ends must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” Patel said.Patel’s incendiary comments and writings could lead to confirmation problems by the US Senate during hearings. Chris Wray, who Trump appointed as director after firing James Comey in 2017 and who Trump has often criticized, has three years left in his 10-year term, so he would have to resign or be fired to make way for Patel.“Kash Patel is manifestly unqualified,” said the ex-federal prosecutor Paul Rosenzweig. “Given his intemperate support for retribution against the deep state and Trump’s political ‘foes’, he is temperamentally unqualified for the job.”While Bondi is an equally staunch Trump loyalist, she is expected to have fewer confirmation problems. Trump tapped her for the post within hours of his first candidate for AG, the ex-Florida congressman Matt Gaetz, dropping out after serious allegations arose of sexual misconduct that led to a House ethics inquiry while he was in office.Still, Bondi’s vociferous election denialism and attacks on the so-called “deep state” represent a sharp break historically with the rhetoric of attorneys general which critics are raising strong fears about.After Trump’s defeat in 2020, Bondi co-chaired the law and justice section at the pro-Trump America First Policy Institute, which has supplied a few of Trump’s new picks, including billionaire Linda McMahon for education secretary.Bondi also spent several years as a lobbyist for the powerhouse Florida firm led by the Republican fundraiser Brian Ballard, where her clients included Amazon, General Motors, and the government of Qatar.Often seen as a political operator, Bondi has ties to Trump that go back further and have raised some red flags. When Bondi was Florida’s attorney general in 2013, Trump donated $25,000 to a Pac backing her re-election. The donation’s timing drew scrutiny given that Bondi’s spokesperson told a newspaper just days before the donation that the AG’s office was reviewing a class-action lawsuit by New York which had been filed against Trump University for fraud.Veteran prosecutors warn that if the Senate confirms Bondi and Patel they could create a climate for violence against Trump’s foes.“I’m more worried about threats, harassment and political violence than I am in the success of baseless investigations,” McQuade said. “Bondi and Patel will be unable to get bogus charges past a grand jury, a judge or a trial jury, but someone who believes this deep state nonsense could decide to take matters into their own hands.”Looking ahead, Bromwich stressed too that if Patel and Bondi pursued baseless inquiries, they could boomerang.“Lawyers and investigators who willingly participate in the pursuit of a revenge and retribution agenda risk losing not only the respect of their peers but their future livelihoods. In particular, lawyers who initiate investigations and pursue prosecutions without factual predicates risk being the subject of ethics complaints and the loss of their law licenses.” More

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      Without proof, top Trump adviser accuses January 6 committee of destroying evidence – as it happened

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      Jason Miller, a top adviser to Donald Trump, went on CNN earlier today to defend the president-elect’s assertion that the bipartisan House committee tasked with investigating the January 6 insurrection destroyed evidence.Trump used that claim to then argue that the lawmakers who took part in the investigation should go to jail. The assertion appears factually wobbly, since the committee’s report and its evidence remains easily accessible online.Asked in the CNN interview if Trump would have Kash Patel, his nominee to lead the FBI, go after the committee members, Miller responded:
      I do have to take issue with saying that the select committee didn’t go and destroy records. They have wiped everything out …
      Other committees have looked through and said that those records are gone, that they don’t exist, that they’re not there. Even Republicans who are now in charge have said that those records are gone, that they’re not there. So I would completely take issue with that. We’re going to have to agree to disagree, but they got rid of it.
      But he seemed to moderate Trump’s comments slightly, arguing that the president-elect expects Patel and Pam Bondi, Trump’s pick for attorney general, “to apply the law equally”:
      He wants everyone who he puts into key positions of leadership, again, whether that’s Pam Bondi as the AG, Kash Patel, the FBI, or anybody else, to apply the law equally to everybody. Now, that means, if you’re somebody who’s committed some very serious crimes, who’s committed very serious felonies, who’s, for example, leaked confidential information, in direct violation of laws that are in place, well, then, obviously, that sets you up for different things …
      But as far as the politics aspect, if you listen to the entire interview with President Trump, he said he’s going to leave that up to the law enforcement agents in charge, including Pam Bondi and Kash Patel.
      Donald Trump this weekend made clear he would pardon rioters facing charges or convicted of involvement in January 6, while saying members of the bipartisan House committee that investigated the violence “should go to jail”. That prompted a response from its vice-chair, Republican former congresswoman Liz Cheney, who rejected his criticism, saying: “Trump attempted to overturn the 2020 presidential election and seize power.” Meanwhile, the supreme court turned aside an effort by Trump’s attorneys to lift the gag order imposed on him in his hush-money case.Here’s what else happened today:

      Jason Miller, a top adviser to Trump, said the House committee that investigated January 6 destroyed evidence, but provided no proof for his claim. He also slightly walked back Trump’s quip that the lawmakers involved should be jailed.

      Markwayne Mullin, a Republican senator, said the January 6 committee members do not “have a reason to be afraid now”, but that their work is worth of investigating.

      Jim Clyburn, a veteran Democratic congressman, warned that Trump’s comments should be taken seriously, adding that they were reminiscent of the rhetoric that led to the rise of Jim Crow.

      Two senators proposed a constitutional amendment to impose term limits on supreme court justices, but it faces long odds.

      Chuck Grassley, the Iowa Republican who will chair the Senate judiciary committee next year, sent the FBI director and his deputy a letter saying they should resign for not cooperating with Congress and politicizing the bureau.
      Donald Trump’s nominee for defense secretary is back on Capitol Hill for more meetings with Republican senators, including Joni Ernst, whose views on him are seen as vital to his chances of confirmation.Ernst, a combat veteran and sexual assault survivor, has signaled hesitance with confirming Hegseth, after reports emerged of his excessive drinking and poor treatment of women, including a sexual assault allegation.Hegseth and Ernst met again today, but it wasn’t clear if the senator had made up her mind about Trump’s Pentagon pick. As he left her office, Hegseth said that it was a “very good meeting”, but little else.Chuck Grassley, the long-serving Iowa senator who will chair the chamber’s judiciary committee next year, has called for the FBI director, Christopher Wray, and his deputy to resign, saying they politicized the agency and refused to cooperate with him.Should Wray and his deputy FBI director, Paul Abbate, heed Grassley’s call, it would clear the way for Senate Republicans to confirm the former defense official Kash Patel to the job. Patel has drawn concern for calling for the imprisonment of journalists and vowing to radically downsize the FBI.In a letter sent to Wray, Grassley wrote:
      Rather than turn over a new leaf at the FBI, you’ve continued to read from the old playbook of weaponization, double standards, and a relentless game of hide-and-seek with the Congress. As your tenure as FBI director comes to an end, I want to take this opportunity to tell you where you went wrong, for the benefit of the bureau and that of your successor.
      Grassley went on to criticize Wray and Abbate for not being forthcoming enough on a range of matters, including sexual harassment claims made by female FBI employees, the vetting of evacuees from Afghanistan, and its agents’ search of Mar-a-Lago for classified materials Donald Trump was accused of hiding there.Grassley concludes:
      For the good of the country, it’s time for you and your deputy to move on to the next chapter in your lives. I’ve spent my career fighting for transparency, and I’ve always called out those in government who have fought against it. For the public record, I must do so once again now. I therefore must express my vote of no confidence in your continued leadership of the FBI. President-elect Trump has already announced his intention to nominate a candidate to replace you, and the Senate will carefully consider that choice. For my part, I’ve also seen enough, and hope your respective successors will learn from these failures.
      If they do not step down, Trump has the power to fire them.In his interview with NBC, Donald Trump also mulled putting his health secretary nominee, Robert F Kennedy Jr, in charge of researching the very vaccines he has pushed conspiracy theories against. Here’s more, from the Guardian’s Robert Tait:Donald Trump has said Robert F Kennedy Jr, his nominee for health secretary, may investigate a supposed link between vaccines and autism – despite a consensus among the medical establishment debunking any such connection.In a wide-ranging interview with NBC, the US president-elect claimed an investigation was justified by the increasing prevalence of autism diagnoses among American children over the past 25 years.“When you look at what’s going on with disease and sickness in our country, something’s wrong,” Trump said after the interviewer, Kristen Welker, asked him if he wanted to see some vaccines eliminated – a position for which Kennedy has argued.“If you take a look at autism, go back 25 years, autism was almost nonexistent. It was, you know, one out of 100,000 and now it’s close to one out of 100.”According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), one out of every 36 children in the US were diagnosed with autism in 2020, compared with one in 150 in 2000.Kennedy, a noted vaccine sceptic, has repeatedly peddled discredited theories that the conditions is caused by childhood vaccinations.“I do believe that autism does come from vaccines,” he said in a 2023 Fox News interview in which he called for more vaccine testing.“We should have the same kind of testing place or control trials that we have for other every other medication. Vaccines are exempt from pre-licensing control trials, so that there’s no way that anybody can tell the risk profile of those products, or even the relative benefits of those products before they’re mandated. We should have that kind of testing.”Jason Miller, a top adviser to Donald Trump, went on CNN earlier today to defend the president-elect’s assertion that the bipartisan House committee tasked with investigating the January 6 insurrection destroyed evidence.Trump used that claim to then argue that the lawmakers who took part in the investigation should go to jail. The assertion appears factually wobbly, since the committee’s report and its evidence remains easily accessible online.Asked in the CNN interview if Trump would have Kash Patel, his nominee to lead the FBI, go after the committee members, Miller responded:
      I do have to take issue with saying that the select committee didn’t go and destroy records. They have wiped everything out …
      Other committees have looked through and said that those records are gone, that they don’t exist, that they’re not there. Even Republicans who are now in charge have said that those records are gone, that they’re not there. So I would completely take issue with that. We’re going to have to agree to disagree, but they got rid of it.
      But he seemed to moderate Trump’s comments slightly, arguing that the president-elect expects Patel and Pam Bondi, Trump’s pick for attorney general, “to apply the law equally”:
      He wants everyone who he puts into key positions of leadership, again, whether that’s Pam Bondi as the AG, Kash Patel, the FBI, or anybody else, to apply the law equally to everybody. Now, that means, if you’re somebody who’s committed some very serious crimes, who’s committed very serious felonies, who’s, for example, leaked confidential information, in direct violation of laws that are in place, well, then, obviously, that sets you up for different things …
      But as far as the politics aspect, if you listen to the entire interview with President Trump, he said he’s going to leave that up to the law enforcement agents in charge, including Pam Bondi and Kash Patel.
      The idea is not new. Similar bills, like the Supreme Court Tenure Establishment and Retirement Modernization Act of 2023, which was introduced in the US house of representatives and has more than 60 co-sponsors, also calls for 18-year terms for supreme court justices and the establishment of a process for the president to appoint a new justice every two years.Another bill introduced this year by Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, called the Judicial Modernization and Transparency Act, also called for overhauling the supreme court. But unlike the amendment proposed by Welch and Manchin, this would not limit their terms, but rather the total number of justices, allowing for expanding the court from nine to 15.The Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law says supreme court justices are getting appointed at younger ages and living longer than they used to, which means they are sitting on the court longer than usual.Donald Trump appointed more justices during his first term than Barack Obama or George W Bush did during each of their two-term presidencies respectively.About two-thirds of Americans support imposing term limits on the members of the nation’s highest court, according to the results of the the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Constitution Day Civics Survey released in September.Although Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who co-authored the proposed amendment to limit the supreme court justice terms with Welch, is seen as an obstructionist by Democrats, this latest proposal is a popular idea within the party.The progressive House member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez last year said: “We have a broad level of tools to deal with misconduct, overreach and abuse of power in the supreme court [that] has not been receiving the adequate oversight necessary in order to preserve their own legitimacy.“And in the process, they themselves have been destroying the legitimacy of the court, which is profoundly dangerous for our entire democracy.”Manchin left the party in May and registered as an independent after criticism for pushing against Joe Biden’s ambitious legislative goals, like those related to tackling the climate crisis or taxing the wealthy.Senator Pete Welch of Vermont took to X to announce his amendment to impose term limits on supreme court justices. He wrote:
      No other major democracy in the world gives lifetime seats to judges who sit on their highest court. It leads to divisive confirmation processes and reduced trust from the public.
      Donald Trump this weekend made clear he would pardon rioters facing charges or convicted of involvement in January 6, while saying members of the bipartisan House committee that investigated the violence “should go to jail”. That prompted a response from its vice-chair, Republican former congresswoman Liz Cheney, who rejected his criticism, saying: “Trump attempted to overturn the 2020 presidential election and seize power”. Meanwhile, the supreme court turned aside an effort by Trump’s attorneys to lift the gag order imposed on him in his hush-money case.Here’s what else has happened today so far:

      Markwayne Mullin, a Republican senator, said the January 6 committee members do not “have a reason to be afraid now”, but that their work is worth of investigating.

      Jim Clyburn, a veteran Democratic congressman, warned that Trump’s comments should be taken seriously, adding that they were reminiscent of the rhetoric that led to the rise of Jim Crow.

      Two senators proposed a constitutional amendment to impose term limits on supreme court justices, but it faces long odds.
      The Democratic senator Peter Welch and independent senator Joe Manchin have proposed a constitutional amendment that would impose term limits on supreme court justices, saying such a move is necessary to restore faith in the nation’s highest court.“The current lifetime appointment structure is broken and fuels polarizing confirmation battles and political posturing that has eroded public confidence in the highest court in our land. Our amendment maintains that there shall never be more than nine justices and would gradually create regular vacancies on the Court, allowing the President to appoint a new justice every two years with the advice and consent of the United States Senate,” said Manchin, who is weeks away from concluding his 14 years of representing West Virginia.The senators cited one of many surveys that found dismal approval ratings for the court, where conservatives have a six-justice supermajority and liberals a three-justice minority. Welch, a recent arrival in the chamber who represents Vermont, said:
      Taking action to restore public trust in our nation’s most powerful Court is as urgent as it is necessary. Setting term limits for Supreme Court Justices will cut down on political gamesmanship, and is commonsense reform supported by a majority of Americans.
      Here’s how their proposal would work:
      The amendment would institute nonrenewable, 18-year terms for new U.S. Supreme Court Justices, with a new term starting every two years …
      The proposed amendment would not adjust the tenure of sitting Justices, but rather institute a transition period to maintain regular vacancies as current Justices retire. During that period, 18-year terms will begin every two years, regardless of when a current Justice leaves the bench. Once a current Justice retires, the newly appointed Justice will serve out the remainder of the next open 18-year term. The amendment would not change the overall number of Justices on the Court.
      It’s unlikely the idea will go far, particularly with Republicans in January assuming the majority in the chamber tasked with confirming the president’s appointments to the supreme court.It’s also proven difficult to win ratification of constitutional amendments. None has been approved since 1992, and the process typically requires the approval of supermajorities in the Senate and House of Representatives, as well as the legislatures in three-fourths of states.Police in Pennsylvania are reportedly questioning a man in connection with the murder of the UnitedHealthcare CEO, Brian Thompson, in New York City last week.News of Thompson’s murder was greeted with sympathy and cheers on some corners of social media, particularly from people who are critical of the insurer’s treatment of its customers. Over the weekend, the Democratic congressman Ro Khanna reacted to that sentiment by saying it is a sign that the US healthcare system needs real reform. Here’s more:
      Progressive congressperson Ro Khanna has sympathy for the murdered UnitedHealthcare CEO, Brian Thompson – yet at the same time is not surprised that the killing reignited a national dialogue about inequities in the US healthcare system, he said in an interview on Sunday.
      ‘It was horrific,’ the California Democrat said on ABC This Week with respect to the slaying of Thompson, whose survivors include his widow and two sons ages 16 and 19. ‘I mean, this is a father we’re talking about – of two children, and … there is no justification for violence.
      ‘But the outpouring afterwards has not surprised me.’
      Khanna told the show’s host, Martha Raddatz, that he agreed with fellow liberal and US senator Bernie Sanders when he wrote recently on social media: ‘We waste hundreds of billions a year on health care administrative expenses that make insurance CEOs and wealthy stockholders incredibly rich while 85 million Americans go uninsured or underinsured. Health care is a human right. We need Medicare for all.
      ‘After years, Sanders is winning this debate,’ Khanna said, referring to the Vermont senator’s support for a single-payer national health insurance system seen in other wealthy democracies. More

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      ‘Currying favor with Trump’: Eric Adams’ rightward drift sparks speculation as prosecution looms

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      Eric Adams was elected New York mayor as a centrist-sounding Democrat. A Black former cop who talked tough-on-crime but fit fairly squarely in the overwhelmingly Democratic politics of the city.But Adams was also always famed for his eccentricities and foibles – scandals over the true extent of his veganism, whether or not he might actually live in New Jersey, and some of the tall tales he would recount from his past.But few New Yorkers might have expected the most recent twist in the Adams’ story: his firm drift rightward, especially in the wake of Donald Trump’s election victory.In fact, Adams’ ever-closer relationship with Trump has sparked speculation as to exactly what the Democrat mayor of a famously liberal city – embroiled in deep legal troubles – might want from America’s soon-to-be Republican president.Recently, Adams did not dismiss switching to the Republican party, in which he had been a party member from 1995 through 2002, before turning Democrat. “I’m a part of the American party,” he said. “I love this country.”Last week alone Adams stunned observers with the depths of his rightward tilt on one of the key issues of the election: immigration. Adapting the language of extreme Republicans – who have fear-mongered over immigrant crime – Adams came out swinging for Trump, who plans a mass deportation of millions of immigrants as soon he gets back in the White House.“Well, cancel me because I’m going to protect the people of the city,” Adams said when asked if he plans to cooperate with Trump’s plan for federal deportation agents to remove migrants accused of felony crimes in the city.The comment came as Adams said he had requested a meeting with Trump’s incoming “border czar”, Tom Homan. Adams said he wanted “it clear that I’m not going to be warring with this administration”.He added: “I would love to sit down with the border czar and hear his thoughts on how we are going to address those who are harming our citizens. Find out what his plans are, where our common grounds are. We can work together.”Adams’ hard line adds a new wrinkle to how Democrat-led “sanctuary cities” such as New York, Los Angeles and Denver will adapt to the second Trump administration and raises the prospect that some top Democrat leaders may actively assist mass deportation.Adams is already looking to roll back sanctuary city laws approved by his predecessor, Bill de Blasio, that prohibit New York law enforcement – the NYPD and correction and probation departments – from cooperating with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents unless the cases involve suspected terrorists or serious public safety risks.View image in fullscreenSome moderate Democrats on the city’s usually progressive-leaning city council are supporting the move, with the councilmember Robert Holden calling in June for a repeal, saying: “Sanctuary city laws put all New Yorkers, both immigrants and longtime residents, in danger.”Kathy Hochul, New York’s governor, said recently that while she supports legal immigrants, including asylum seekers, she will cooperate with the Trump administration to remove immigrants who break the law. “Someone breaks the law, I’ll be the first one to call up Ice and say: ‘Get them out of here,’” Hochul said.But some observers look at Adams’ tack towards Trump and see other factors at play, beyond playing to a segment of the electorate tired of Democrats’ traditional softer positions on immigrants.Adams is facing a multi-count federal complaint over alleged fundraising abuses involving Turkey brought by the outgoing local US district attorney Damian Williams, a Joe Biden nominee. Adams’ trial is set for the spring, just as his mayoral re-election campaign moves into high gear.Trump has nominated Jay Clayton to be Manhattan’s top federal prosecutor. Clayton is known for bringing white-collar corruption cases while serving as commissioner of the US Securities and Exchange Commission but has no experience litigating criminal law cases, raising the question as to whether Adams is cozying up to Trump in the hope that the complaint will be dropped.Adams is also now on the same page as Trump when it comes to unfounded claims of the political weaponization of the Department of Justice. In September, Adams defiantly suggested prosecutors had gone after him because he had criticized Biden’s immigration policies.“Despite our pleas, when the federal government did nothing as its broken immigration policies overloaded our shelter system with no relief, I put the people of New York before party and politics,” he said. “I always knew that if I stood my ground for all of you, that I would be a target – and a target I became.”But amid all the fresh posturing there is no doubt that immigration is a thorny political issue.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMore than 200,000 people have come to New York over the past several years after entering the United States seeking asylum. The Adams administration has projected the cost of housing and support to New York taxpayers could hit $10bn by June next year, and Trump made pronounced inroads in the city in last month’s election, particularly among Asian voters and Hispanic voters.Yet Adams has struck a notably hard line and nationalistic language that echoes Trump. Last week, he floated the idea of deporting migrants who had been accused but not convicted of felony crimes.“If you come into this country and this city and think you are going to harm innocent New Yorkers, and innocent migrants and asylum seekers, this is not the mayor you want to be under,” Adams said last week. “I’m an American. Americans have certain rights. The constitution is for Americans. I’m not a person who snuck into this country.”That brought a pushback from civil rights groups.“Everyone residing in the United States regardless of their immigration status has specific inalienable rights under the constitution, including the right to due process,” said the New York Immigration Coalition.“Immigrant communities have been key to New York’s success, both past and present. The answer to the ongoing crisis in our city is not to turn our back on our values, but it’s to ensure fair treatment,” said Andrea Gordillo, a progressive Democrat candidate for the city council.It is possible that Adams’ recent sidling up to the incoming Trump administration is both a self-serving move and a pragmatic step in keeping with a shift in New York’s political coloring and a recognition of the reality of the next four years of Trump rule.“He’s currying favor with the Trump administration, and it’s smart for any New York mayor to have friends in Washington because the city always has problems,” said Hank Sheinkopf, a veteran Democratic strategist.“By playing that card he’s also playing to the population of the city that have moved not insignificantly to the center and away from the left. New Yorkers are angry about the basic conditions of life here and tired of paying the cost of the nation’s problems. By doing so he’s setting himself for re-election.”There is also no doubt Adams is also dealing with a nasty criminal situation. At least seven top Adams officials have resigned or announced plans to resign as a result of the federal criminal investigation.“Making it go away would a boon to Adams’ re-election chances. Whether it is or it isn’t, everything in politics is conspiratorial by nature,” says Sheinkopf. “Any New York mayor who wants to make an enemy of the White House is nuts. New York mayors need the president no matter who they are.”By the end of last week Adams was even being asked whether he intended to stay in the Democratic party and join the Republicans. His answer was hardly a firm no.“The party that’s most important for me is the American party – I’m a part of the American party,” he said. More

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      Kash Patel: how Trump’s FBI pick went from public defender to provocateur

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      View image in fullscreen@font-face{font-family:Guardian Headline Full;src:url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:300;font-style:normal}@font-face{font-family:Guardian Headline Full;src:url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-LightItalic.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-LightItalic.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-LightItalic.ttf) 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      “A lot of people say he’s crazy,” Donald Trump is reported to have once said of Kash Patel. “I think he’s kind of crazy. But sometimes you need a little crazy.”If Trump gets his way, crazy will now be coming to the FBI, the 116-year-old national security and law enforcement agency charged with protecting the US from terrorism, cybercrime and other threats.Last weekend the president-elect said he would nominate Patel as FBI director, the latest in a series of incendiary names plucked from the rightwing media ecosystem. Joy Reid, a host on the liberal MSNBC network, told viewers that he “might be the worst pick in the worst cabinet in US history”.She was far from alone in raising concerns over Patel’s inexperience, extremism and subservience to Trump. The 44-year-old has called for “major, major reform” of the FBI that could include shutting down its headquarters, slashing its intelligence operations, and targeting officials and journalists who leak information. He has praised the QAnon conspiracy-theory movement, stating: “There’s a lot of good to a lot of it.” The Guardian has also learned of fresh questions over the conduct of Patel’s non-profit foundation.His appointment is not yet a done deal. Trump would have to oust the current FBI director, Christopher Wray, whom he appointed in 2017 and who was supposed to remain in the post until 2027. Patel still faces the Senate confirmation process, in which senators would get the chance to examine his origin story, unremarkable legal career and emergence as a bombastic Trump provocateur.Kashyap “Kash” Patel is the son of Indian immigrants. His parents, of Gujarati ancestry, moved to the US in the 1970s after his father, Pramod, fled the oppressive regime of Idi Amin in Uganda. Pramod became a financial officer for an aviation company.Patel was born and raised in Garden City, a well-to-do village on Long Island, New York, living in a home that included his father’s eight siblings. In his memoir, he writes of an extended family setting off for Disney World every year in a 15-car convoy and watching the New York Islanders play ice hockey. His official biography on the Pentagon website notes: “Kash is a life-long ice hockey player, coach, and fan.”Raised Hindu, he was one of the few students of colour at Garden City high school. His senior yearbook quotation, taken from the Jewish theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel, was: “Racism is man’s gravest threat – the maximum of hatred for a minimum reason.”Patel’s early exposure to the legal world came through caddying for affluent defence lawyers as they played golf at the local country club. He gained qualifications from the University of Richmond, in Virginia, and the University College London Faculty of Laws in Britain before graduating from Pace University Law School in New York in 2005.But Patel writes in his book: “Dreams of the sky-high salary at the prestige law firms never materialized,” because “nobody would hire me”. Eventually he took a job as a local public defender in Miami-Dade county, Florida, followed by work as a federal public defender in the southern district of Florida.But by then he had become more conservative, he writes, making his choice of career a “strange fit”. He describes his public defender colleagues as “the far left of the left wing”. He was also increasingly suspicious of prosecutors from the justice department, foreshadowing his fierce critique of the so-called deep state.As a lawyer, Patel had a reputation for being good but not great. The New York Times reported: “Mr Patel’s former colleagues remember him for offering himself as a prize in a charity auction of eligible bachelors, for wildly patterned socks and for having his suits custom-made on visits to India.”View image in fullscreenThe paper quoted Patel’s former supervisor Michael Caruso, who led the southern district of Florida office at the time, as saying: “My enduring image of him is with his shoes off and his feet up on the desk, reading the Wall Street Journal.”But in late 2013 Patel found work in Washington as a terrorism prosecutor in the justice department’s national security division. He has asserted that he was the “lead prosecutor” of the perpetrators of the 2012 attack on a diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans; in fact he was not part of the trial team but rather a junior justice department staff member.Patel first came to prominence in Trump’s orbit as an outspoken critic of the FBI’s investigation into potential ties between Russia and Trump’s 2016 presidential election campaign.As a staffer on the House of Representatives’ intelligence committee, chaired at the time by the Republican congressman Devin Nunes, Patel helped write a four-page report – dubbed the “Nunes memo” – that detailed what it said were errors the justice department had made in obtaining a warrant to surveil a former Trump campaign adviser.He made a positive impression on some in the administration. Sean Spicer, Trump’s first White House press secretary, said: “These questions about his qualifications are a dog whistle. The guy has served in several senior positions in the intelligence world.“He’s tenacious, he’s hard working, he wants to get to the bottom of a lot of stuff. There’s no question he wants to shake things up. Washington needs to be shaken up and the leadership of the FBI has lost the trust of the American people and it needs to be restored.”Spicer added: “He’s funny, he’s intelligent. I’ve enjoyed hanging out with him. He’s a loyal friend, too: he’s someone who sticks by his friends. I understand why the left is worried about him but he’s someone who can get things done.”In 2019, Patel served on the White House national security council before becoming chief of staff to the then acting defence secretary, Christopher Miller. He denied allegations that he ran a clandestine backchannel to Trump regarding Ukraine.The former attorney general William Barr wrote in his memoir that, when Trump tried to appoint Patel as deputy director of the FBI, Barr told another official that it would only happen “over my dead body”. Gina Haspel, then the director of the CIA, also threatened to resign over the prospect of Patel becoming her deputy there.Patel also played a role in several legal investigations into Trump. In 2022 he appeared before the Washington grand jury investigating Trump’s hoarding of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida after receiving immunity for his testimony. He was part of a small group of supporters during Trump’s recent criminal trial in New York who accompanied him to the courthouse, telling reporters that Trump was the victim of an “unconstitutional circus”.Since Trump left office, Patel has expressed his loyalty through commercial ventures. Records show that he earned hundreds of thousands of dollars a year from consulting for Trump-related entities, including a political action committee and the company that owns Truth Social.He wrote a book called Government Gangsters, part memoir and part screed against the deep state, and children’s books that lionise Trump. The Plot Against the King features a thinly veiled Hillary Clinton as the villain going after “King Donald” while Patel plays a wizard who thwarts her plans.He has also promoted various products marketed to Trump supporters including a dietary supplement that claims to be a Covid-19 vaccine “detoxification system”. He helped produce And Justice for All, a rendition of The Star-Spangled Banner sung by a group of men incarcerated for their role in the Capitol riot.In addition, Patel launched the Kash Foundation, a non-profit organisation that funds defamation lawsuits, offers help to people including families of the January 6 rioters, and peddles merchandise such as branded socks and other clothing with the “K$H” logo.View image in fullscreenThe foundation has drawn scrutiny over its financial practices, the Guardian can disclose. Its tax filings in both 2022 and 2023 reported that it did not compensate its board members, according to the watchdog group Accountable.US. But an updated version of the filings reveal that the organisation paid more than $275,000 to a company owned by its vice-president, Andrew Ollis.A further disclosure, detailing the contractual agreement between the Kash Foundation and Ollis’s company, indicates that Ollis would receive a minimum of tens of thousands of dollars every year. The Kash Foundation did not respond to a request for comment on the discrepancy.Tony Carrk, executive director of Accountable.US, said: “Not known for his subtlety, Kash Patel has sought to make money off the Trump brand in several ways including selling a children’s book on election denialism. This enrichment also appears to extend to his friends and partners. Sadly, this appears to be the same old Trump economic model that only looks out for the lucky few at everyone else’s expense.”Meanwhile Patel has become a regular guest on rightwing podcasts and livestreamed shows hosted by Steve Bannon, Tim Pool, Benny Johnson and Stew Peters, a conspiracy theorist identified by Right Wing Watch for promoting anti-LGBTQ+ bigotry, white nationalism and virulent antisemitism.On Bannon’s War Room podcast last year, Patel vowed: “We’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections.”And in an interview on the Shawn Ryan Show in September, Patel declared: “I’d shut down the FBI Hoover Building on day one and reopen it the next day as a museum of the ‘deep state’. Then, I’d take the 7,000 employees that work in that building and send them across America to chase down criminals. Go be cops. You’re cops – go be cops.”This resolve to upend the FBI and radically reshape its mission is already causing alarm among the bureau’s agents. Frank Figliuzzi, a former assistant director of the FBI who served there for 25 years, said: “I am getting calls from people primarily at headquarters who are saying as soon as Trump won the election, they realised they were in for a destructive period for the institution regardless of who got nominated.“Many people are probably saying, ‘Hey, here’s my résumé, can you help spread the word? I’m looking for a job.’ Now, since Patel has been nominated, more of those calls are coming. There are people who are out there trying to look for other work.”Figliuzzi predicted that, if field agents feel there is political interference in their work, for example in which cases to pursue and which to drop, there will be “tremendous pushback”. He added: “In this age where nominees are remarkably unqualified, that’s not what worries me most. What worries me most is his blind allegiance to Trump and willingness to do anything for him.”Trump, who will be sworn in next month, has teed up a cabinet of disrupters and extremists tainted by scandal. Matt Gaetz, his first choice for attorney general, was forced to withdraw amid allegations of sexual misconduct and replaced by Pam Bondi, an election denier. Pete Hegseth, nominated for defence secretary, is facing a barrage of accusations about womanising, infidelity and heavy drinking.Charlie Sykes, a conservative author and broadcaster, said: “In many ways Kash Patel is the most nakedly aggressive appointment because Kash Patel has made it very clear that he has no respect for the institution, that he would use it as an institution of retribution, that he has no other agenda other than personal loyalty to Donald Trump. Trump has appointed as the head of the FBI someone whose agenda is to destroy the FBI.”He added: “There’s a big question mark over whether he is confirmable but it makes it very clear what Trump’s agenda is going to be. He may not get Matt Gaetz, he may not get Kash Patel, he may not get Peter Hegseth, but we have a very clear idea of the direction that he is going. He wants absolute loyalists to himself who are committed to running roughshod over the institutions that they’re being appointed to.”The Associated Press contributed reporting More