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      Bernie Sanders demands answers on Israel’s ‘indiscriminate’ Gaza bombing

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      The US’s support for Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza is facing new scrutiny in Washington following a proposed resolution by the independent senator Bernie Sanders that could ultimately be used to curtail military assistance.It is far from clear whether Sanders has the support to pass the resolution, but its introduction in the Senate this week – by an important progressive ally of the US president, Joe Biden – highlights mounting human rights and political concerns by Democrats on Capitol Hill.Citing the killing of nearly 19,000 people and wounding of more than 50,000 in Gaza since Hamas’s brutal 7 October attack, Sanders said it was time to force a debate on the bombing that has been carried out by the rightwing government of the Israel prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the US government’s “complicity” in the war.“This is a humanitarian cataclysm, and it is being done with American bombs and money. We need to face up to that fact – and then we need to end our complicity in those actions,” Sanders said in a statement.If passed, the resolution would force the US state department to report back to Congress any violations of internationally recognized human rights caused by “indiscriminate or disproportionate” military operations in Gaza, as well as “the blanket denial of basic humanitarian needs”.The state department would also have to report back on any actions the US has taken to limit civilian risk caused by Israeli actions, a summary of arms provided to Israel since 7 October, an assessment of Israel’s compliance with international humanitarian law in Gaza, and a certification that Israeli security forces have not committed any human rights violations.“We all know Hamas’s brutal terrorist attack began this war,” Sanders said. “But the Netanyahu government’s indiscriminate bombing is immoral, it is in violation of international law, and the Congress must demand answers about the conduct of this campaign. A just cause for war does not excuse atrocities in the conduct of that war.”Any such resolution would have to clear the Senate but only require a simple majority. It would also have to pass the House and be signed by the White House.The resolution includes details about the extensive use of US arms, including massive explosive ordinance, such as Mark 84 2,000lb bombs and 155mm artillery, and includes “credible findings” by human rights monitors and press organizations about the use of US arms in specific strikes that killed a large number of civilians.If the resolution were to pass, the administration would have 30 days to produce the requested report. After it is received, Congress would under US law be able to condition, restrict, terminate or continue security assistance to Israel.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionCongress has not requested such a resolution since 1976.Sanders has come under pressure from progressive Democrats to support calls for a ceasefire. Instead, the senator has previously called for a “humanitarian pause” to allow more aid into Gaza.In a letter to Biden this week, Sanders called on the US president to withdraw his support for a $10.1bn weapons package for Israel, which is contained in a proposed supplemental foreign aid package, and for the US to support a UN resolution it has previous vetoed demanding an immediate humanitarian ceasefire. More

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      Would the US survive a second Trump presidency? – podcast

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      Last week, Donald Trump was asked whether he would use power as retribution if he were to win a second term in the White House. The former US president responded that he would in fact abuse his power – but only on his first day in office. He followed up by saying: “After that, I’m not a dictator.”
      So what would a Trump presidency 2.0 look like? Would a second term be as catastrophic as the critics believe? And what would be the impact of a Trump sequel not only on the US but on the world?
      This week, Jonathan Freedland speaks to Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic, whose latest issue is dedicated entirely to a single topic: If Trump wins

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know More

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      Rudy Giuliani defamation trial: jury deliberating on damages for former election workers – live

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      Jury deliberations have officially begun in Rudy Giuliani’s federal defamation case. The Guardian’s Sam Levine reports on the three categories of damages sought by Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss:There are three categories of damages that Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss are asking for in their federal lawsuit against Rudy Giuliani: compensatory damages, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and punitive damages.The compensatory damages are what the jury feels is necessary to repair the damages to the reputation Freeman and Moss suffered because of 16 defamatory statements Giuliani made about them. The two women are asking the jury to award $24m each in that category alone.The damages for intentional infliction of emotional distress are designed to separately compensate Freeman and Moss for emotional damage they suffered as a result of Giuliani’s statements. The plaintiffs simply asked the jury to use their best judgment there.Lastly, punitive damages are supposed to be an additional punishment for Giuliani for his reckless conduct. The plaintiffs did not ask the jury for a specific amount, but asked the jury to choose a number that would “send a message” to deter other powerful people from engaging in similar conduct.In case you missed some of the court action, here are some highlights from this week…
      Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss both testified about the disastrous effects of lies spread by Rudy Giuliani and others who put them at the center of an election conspiracy theory. They shared examples of the racist, harassing, threatening messages they received after being publicly named by election deniers.
      Freeman said she had to leave her home for safety reasons. She hired a lawyer to help keep her name off any home-related documents for her new place. She feels like she’s lost who she is, her good name, in this web.
      Moss detailed how these actions made her anxious to even leave the house and caused her son to get harassed, eventually failing his classes. She said she still doesn’t really go out.
      Giuliani was initially expected to testify. But after two separate incidents of him doubling down, his team did not put him on the stand. His lawyer said the women had been through enough, but also pointed to Gateway Pundit, the rightwing media outlet, as more culpable for the harassment.
      Ashlee Humphreys, a professor from Northwestern University and an expert witness of Freeman and Moss, walked through the significant reputational damage done to Freeman and Moss, showing how their names are now associated with election fraud.
      Freeman and Moss’ lawyer, Michael Gottlieb, said they hope the case sends a clear message to people launching smear campaigns not to do it.
      The jury is now deliberating over the amount of damages to award Freeman and Moss, as the judge has already decided Giuliani defamed them. The award could be as much as $43 million.
      As we await the jury, a reminder of what’s at stake for Rudy Giuliani…Most obviously, Giuliani could be on the hook for massive financial damages for defaming Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss. The jury has the ability to award up to $43 million. It’s unclear whether Giuliani has the kind of money – he didn’t turn over documents that would’ve shown his financial state.As a reminder, the judge in this case has already decided Giuliani defamed the former elections workers. The jury is deciding how much that should cost him.Beyond the money, the case serves as a harbinger for other defamation cases that seek to hold people or entities spreading election lies accountable. And beyond this case, Giuliani faces criminal charges in the sprawling Georgia election subversion case.Giuliani’s legacy – whatever was left of it after the past few years – will be cemented by these cases. As the Daily Beast’s Jose Pagliery wrote in a piece about Giuliani’s rough circumstances today: “For Giuliani, 2023 will likely end in penniless defeat. But 2024 could be even worse—it could actually end with him in prison.”Chuck Schumer has praised the Senate’s passage of the National Defense Authorization Act and criticized what he called the “partisan race to the bottom we’re seeing at in the House.”In a tweet on Thursday, Schumer went on to say:
      “While the Senate is strengthening American national security, House Republicans are wasting time on a clown-car impeachment inquiry that will go nowhere.”
      As we wait for the jury deliberations to complete in Rudy Giuliani’s federal defamation trial, the leaders of the House and Senate have issued two very different statements on the border crisis.In a tweet on Thursday, House speaker Mike Johnson wrote:
      “The border is not just a crisis, it’s a catastrophe. The House took action to secure our border. It’s time for the Senate and the White House to do the same.”
      Meanwhile, Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer wrote:
      “Republicans say action on the border is urgent. If they’re serious about getting something done, they should not be so eager to go home. There is a lot of work left to do.”
      Speaking of Donald Trump’s mounting legal issues, his defense in the 2020 federal election interference case may get a boost from the supreme court.The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports:A decision by the US supreme court to take a case linked to the January 6 attack on the Capitol could have consequences altering the trajectory of the criminal case against Donald Trump over his effort to overturn the 2020 election as well as for hundreds of other people prosecuted for the riot.The nation’s highest court has agreed to consider whether federal prosecutors can charge January 6 riot defendants with a statute that makes it a crime to obstruct an official proceeding of Congress – a charge also filed against Trump in his 2020 election interference case.The decision by the conservative-dominated court to take up the matter complicates and could delay Trump’s trial in federal district court in Washington, which is currently scheduled for next March.For the full story, click here:Meanwhile, Rudy Giuliani’s former boss, Donald Trump, is once again claiming that he is part of a “witch hunt.”Posting on Truth Social on Thursday, Trump wrote:
      “Biden had 150 Suspicious Activity Reports!!! I never had one!!! As the media has reported, my banks were thrilled with me as a customer, yet I get sued by the Racist A.G. of New York State. WITCH HUNT!”
      Trump has been indicted four times, including on cases surrounding the 2020 federal election interference, the Georgia state election interference, classified documents found at his Florida Mar-a-Lago resort, and hush money payments made to adult film star Stormy Daniels.With the jury in deliberations, here is the Guardian’s Sam Levine’s report on the plaintiffs’ plea to award them each with $24m in damages to repair their reputations:A Washington DC jury should “send a message” to other powerful people by granting substantial damages award against Rudy Giuliani for spreading lies about two Georgia election workers, a lawyer for the pair said.“The message is don’t do it,” Michael Gottlieb, a lawyer representing Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss, said in his closing statement to eight jurors on the fourth day of the defamation case. “They say when someone shows you who they are, believe them. Mr Giuliani has shown us over and over and over again that he will not take our clients names out of his mouth. Facts do not and will not stop him.“He’s telegraphing that he will do this again. Believe him,” he said.For the full story, click here:Federal judge Beryl Howell said that usually the upper boundary of permissible punitive damage is four times the compensatory damages, the Guardian’s Sam Levine reports. Both Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss are asking the jury to award $24m to each of them in compensatory damages.Jury deliberations have officially begun in Rudy Giuliani’s federal defamation case. The Guardian’s Sam Levine reports on the three categories of damages sought by Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss:There are three categories of damages that Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss are asking for in their federal lawsuit against Rudy Giuliani: compensatory damages, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and punitive damages.The compensatory damages are what the jury feels is necessary to repair the damages to the reputation Freeman and Moss suffered because of 16 defamatory statements Giuliani made about them. The two women are asking the jury to award $24m each in that category alone.The damages for intentional infliction of emotional distress are designed to separately compensate Freeman and Moss for emotional damage they suffered as a result of Giuliani’s statements. The plaintiffs simply asked the jury to use their best judgment there.Lastly, punitive damages are supposed to be an additional punishment for Giuliani for his reckless conduct. The plaintiffs did not ask the jury for a specific amount, but asked the jury to choose a number that would “send a message” to deter other powerful people from engaging in similar conduct.US district judge Beryl Howell told the jury that the court has already found that the defendants’ statements harmed plaintiffs, the Guardian’s Sam Levine reports.Howell went on to tell jurors that it is their job to quantify that harm.During closing arguments, the plaintiffs’ lawyer Michael Gottleib pushed back against Rudy Giuliani’s lawyers who claimed that Giuliani should not be defined by what has happened in recent times.“This case is not about Rudy Giulani is or what he did in his past. It’s about what he did. What he did to Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss… It’s not about the Yankees and 9/11 or the US attorneys office and taking on the mob,” Gottlieb said.Closing arguments have now been completed in Rudy Giuliani’s defamation trial and US district judge Beryl Howell is reading instructions to the jury.Overall, the plaintiffs are asking for at least $24m in damages for Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss. They asked the jury to use their discretion to decide how much in additional damages to wayward.Michael Gottlieb, a lawyer for the pair, asked the jury to award an amount that would “send a message” to powerful figures who are seeking to spread lies about ordinary people like Moss and Freeman.In his own closing, Joeseph Sibley asked the jury to give a lesser award that was directly related to the documented amount of money the two women had lost.He also sought to distance Giuliani from the violent threats the women faced, placing the responsibility instead on the Gateway Pundit. “More likely than not, this is the party that sort of doxed these women,” he said.And he also asked the jury to judge Giuliani based not just on his conduct towards Moss and Freeman, but based on the totality of his career.He said:
      “Rudy Giuliani is a good man. I know that some of you may not think that. He hasn’t exactly helped himself with some of the things that have happened in the last few days,” he said. “The idea of him being a racist, or him encouraging racist activity, that’s really a low blow. That’s not who he is. He overcame negative stereotypes.”
      Speaking about Rudy Giuliani, his lawyer Joseph Sibley said, “If he actually encouraged violence against these women, one would hope he would be in jail but that’s not what he did,” Law & Crime’s Brandi Buchman reports.He went on to add that racist and violent vitriol does not “naturally flow” from Giuliani, Buchman reports.Sibley also said that Giuliani “is a good man,” adding, “I know some of you may not think that.”The defense has begun its closing arguments.Joseph Sibley, Rudy Giuliani’s lawyer, told the court that the plaintiffs’ are asking “to award a catastrophic amount of damages against my client,” Law & Crime’s Brandi Buchman reports.“When you see my client’s state of mind, you’re going to say, you should have been better but weren’t as bad as the plaintiffs make you out to be,” he said.Sibley added that Giuliani “showed up, it’s not like he completely didn’t participate in the litigation,” Buchman reports.Michael Gottlieb, one of the lawyers representing Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, has just completed his closing argument. In his final remarks, he asked the jury to send a message to other powerful people with whatever punitive damages it chose to levy against Rudy Giuliani.“The message is, ‘Don’t do it,’” he said. “He has no right to offer defenseless civil servants up to a virtual mob in order to overturn an election.”Gottlieb asked the jury to award Freeman and Moss $24m each in damages to repair the damage to their reputation from 16 defamatory statements Giuliani made about them.He asked the jury to use their discretion to determine punitive damages as well as much how much to award for intentional infliction of emotional distress.“Ruby Giuliani used his power to scapegoat Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss,” he said. “He didn’t see them as human beings.”Joe Sibley, Giuliani’s lawyer, is about to begin his closing statement. More

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      Trump is a ‘populist, authoritarian narcissist’, says ex-speaker Paul Ryan

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      Donald Trump is “not a conservative”, the former Republican House speaker Paul Ryan said, but “a populist, authoritarian narcissist”.The former vice-presidential pick, who led the House majority for two years when Trump was president, also praised the Republicans Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for opposing Trump to the cost of their congressional careers.Ryan, from Wisconsin, left Congress in 2019 and now sits on the board of Fox Corp, parent company of Fox News. He was speaking to Kevin Kajiwara, co-president of Teneo Political Risk Advisory, in a podcast interview recorded in November but widely noticed this week.Voices on both sides of the main political aisle have criticised Ryan for not strongly opposing Trump when he ran for the Republican nomination in 2016, or through four chaotic years in the White House that ended in the deadly January 6 attack on Congress.When stepping down Ryan praised Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, widely blamed for increasing inequality and the national deficit, as one of his biggest achievements along with increasing defense spending.Trump was impeached twice, including for January 6, but escaped conviction and now dominates polling for the next Republican presidential nomination.He does so despite facing 91 criminal charges, including 17 related to attempted election subversion, and civil threats including a business fraud trial and a defamation suit arising from a rape claim a judge called “substantially true”.Kajiwara asked Ryan how he thought history would judge Kinzinger and Cheney, conservative Republicans from Illinois and Wyoming who stood against Trump and sat on the January 6 committee before being forced out of Congress.“Look,” Ryan said, “Trump’s not a conservative. He’s an authoritarian narcissist. So I think they basically called him out for that. He’s a populist, authoritarian narcissist.“… All of his tendencies are basically where narcissism takes him, which is whatever makes him popular, makes him feel good at any given moment.“He doesn’t think in classical liberal-conservative terms. He thinks in an authoritarian way. And he’s been able to get a big chunk of the Republican base to follow him because he’s the culture warrior.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHistorians searching for the roots of Trumpism have generally looked to the 1990s, when another Republican speaker, Newt Gingrich, turned Congress into a scorched-earth battleground; to the rise of Fox News; or to opposition to Barack Obama, the first Black president, particularly through the Tea Party movement.Ryan, an economic conservative who was Mitt Romney’s running mate in 2012, continued: “There has to be some line, some principle that is so important to you that you’re just not going to cross, so that when you’re brushing your teeth in the morning, look yourself in the mirror, you like what you see. I think Adam and Liz are brushing their teeth, liking what they see.“And I think a lot of people in Congress … on the second impeachment, they thought Trump was dead. They thought after January 6, he wasn’t going to have a comeback. He was dead, so they figured, ‘I’m not going to take this heat, vote against this impeachment, because he’s gone anyway.’“But … he’s been resurrected. There’s lots of reasons for that. But he has been. So I think there’s a lot of people who already regret not getting him out of the way when they could have. So I think history will be kind to those people who saw what was happening and called it out, even though it was at the expense of their wellbeing.” More

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      An ‘abortion abolitionist’ became an Oklahoma senator. The fringe is celebrating its big victory

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      When Dusty Deevers won his race to become an Oklahoma state senator on Tuesday night, he wasted no time in making sure his new constituents knew what he stood for.“Here in Oklahoma, it’s time to abolish abortion, abolish pornography, abolish the state income tax and give power and equal representation back to the people!” the Republican posted on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.Deevers’ use of the term “abolish abortion” is no mere rhetorical flourish. On his campaign website, Deevers has identified himself as an “abortion abolitionist” – an adherent of a hardline, fringe segment of the anti-abortion movement that, in Oklahoma and elsewhere, is growing in the wake of the fall of Roe v Wade.Opposition to abortion is rooted in the belief that fetuses are people, worthy of rights and protections. But the mainstream “pro-life” movement posits that abortion patients should not be punished, since they are seen as the bamboozled victims of nefarious doctors and the “abortion industry”. Typically, abortion bans target abortion providers, not patients.Abortion “abolitionists,” on the other hand, hold what they believe to be a more ideologically consistent stance: if a fetus is a person, then abortion is tantamount to murder. And patients should be punished accordingly.Roe’s overturning has made a broader range of anti-abortion ideas look acceptable, as well as cast a spotlight on the contradictions and limits in current anti-abortion law, said Mary Ziegler, a University of California, Davis School of Law professor who studies the legal history of reproduction. In turn, that’s emboldened the abolitionists.“It’s not an easy question about how you can be consistent and exempt women from punishment,” Ziegler said. The abolitionists, she says, are essentially saying: “‘We’re the pragmatists, because if a lot of abortions are self-managed, or involve medical practitioners from out of state or even out of the US altogether, how do you propose meaningfully enforcing [bans] if you’re not going to punish women or other pregnant folks?“They’ve also been hated because people who are not opposed to abortion didn’t know that they existed,” Ziegler added. “And people who are opposed to abortion are not happy that people discovered that they existed.”Over the last several years, “abortion abolitionists” and their ideology have quietly amassed popularity in churches, state legislatures and online. Several abolitionist organizations filed an amicus brief in the decision that overturned Roe. Abolitionists Rising – which features a video of Deevers on its website – has almost 200,000 subscribers on YouTube, with at least one video with more than half a million views. (Deevers did not immediately reply to an interview request.) The YouTube account of Apologia Studios, which is run by prominent abortion “abolitionist” and pastor Jeff Durbin, has more than 500,000 subscribers.In 2023, legislators in at least nine states introduced bills that would advance the abortion abolition cause, such as by erasing provisions in laws that explicitly protect pregnant people from being prosecuted for having abortions. At least two of those bills explicitly cite the 14th amendment, which was originally passed to ensure that formerly enslaved people had equal rights, to extend rights and protections to fetuses.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe anti-abortion movement has a long history of drawing comparisons between their cause and that of pre-civil war abolitionists trying to end US slavery, as well as civil rights crusaders. For decades, they have tried to use the 14th amendment to establish fetuses’ right to personhood, a push that is seeing renewed interest post-Roe.However, anti-abortion “abolitionists” often draw a line between their work and that of the mainstream pro-life movement. Not only do they frequently disdain the pro-life label, but while the pro-life movement has increasingly sought to portray its mission as secular, anti-abortion “abolitionists” are staunchly and openly Christian.“I think that the abolitionist movement is a litmus test for how much the anti-abortion movement needs to win or wants to win in democratic politics versus other means,” Ziegler said. “If you need to win with voters, abolitionists are not going to get anywhere, ever.”There is little support for severe punishments for people who get illegal abortions. Although 47% of US adults believe that women who have illegal abortions should face some form of penalty, just 14% think they should serve jail time, according to a 2022 poll by the Pew Research Center. “Abolitionists” don’t necessarily believe that people should face the death penalty for abortions. “I do believe that the unjustified taking of human life, if provable, ultimately, justly, ought to be capital punishment,” Durbin told the New York Times last year. “However, I don’t trust our system today to deal that out.”None of the “abolitionist”-style bills ultimately advanced very far in state legislatures this year. Still, they can be something of a PR nightmare for Republicans and the mainstream pro-life movement. After a host of news articles about South Carolina’s Prenatal Equal Protection Act, which would allow people who have abortions to face the death penalty, 10 Republican state legislators asked to remove their names as sponsors of the bill.That bill died in committee.While these bills technically focus on abortion seekers, in reality they would probably also be used to penalize people of color or poor people who have unintended pregnancy losses, according to Farah Diaz-Tello, senior counsel and legal director of If/When/How, a legal advocacy group for reproductive justice.“We know who the targets of these laws would be, because they’re the people who are already criminalized for pregnancy outcomes. So we would see an escalation of that status quo,” Diaz-Tello said. “Things that for people of wealth and privilege would be considered a tragedy end up being charged as a crime against people of color, in particular Black women, and people who are in poverty.”Deevers won his seat in the Oklahoma state legislature after its former occupant resigned for another job. On his campaign website, Deevers says that he supports Oklahoma’s version of the Prenatal Equal Protection Act, which was introduced in 2023. That bill eliminates language that would block Oklahoma prosecutors from targeting pregnant people for “causing the death of the unborn child”. Its sponsor, whose 2020 election was supported by the abolitionist group Free the States, did not immediately reply to a request for comment.“This bill would abolish abortion by making preborn children equal under law and closing the loopholes which allow for self-managed abortion,” Deevers’ campaign website reads, adding, “I am 100% against abortion and for its abolition.” More

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      Biden condemns impeachment inquiry: ‘a baseless political stunt’

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      The House on Wednesday authorized the impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden, with every Republican rallying behind the politically charged process despite lingering concerns among some in the party that the investigation has yet to produce evidence of misconduct by the US president.The 221-212 party-line vote put the entire House Republican conference on record in support of an impeachment process that can lead to the ultimate penalty for a president: punishment for what the constitution describes as “high crimes and misdemeanors”, which can lead to removal from office if convicted in a Senate trial.Biden, in a rare statement about the impeachment effort, questioned the priorities of House Republicans in pursuing an inquiry against him and his family.“Instead of doing anything to help make Americans’ lives better, they are focused on attacking me with lies,” Biden said following the vote. “Instead of doing their job on the urgent work that needs to be done, they are choosing to waste time on this baseless political stunt that even Republicans in Congress admit is not supported by facts.”Authorizing the months-long inquiry ensures that the impeachment investigation extends well into 2024, when Biden will be running for re-election and seems likely to be squaring off against Donald Trump – who was twice impeached during his time in the White House. The former president has pushed his GOP allies in Congress to move swiftly on impeaching Biden, part of his broader calls for vengeance and retribution against his political enemies.The decision to hold a vote came as speaker Mike Johnson and his team faced growing pressure to show progress in what has become a nearly year-long probe centered around the business dealings of Biden’s family members. While their investigation has raised ethical questions, no evidence has emerged that Biden acted corruptly or accepted bribes in his current role or previous office as vice-president.“We do not take this responsibility lightly and will not prejudge the investigation’s outcome,” Johnson and his leadership team said in a joint statement after the vote. “But the evidentiary record is impossible to ignore.”House Democrats stood in united opposition to the inquiry resolution Wednesday, calling it a farce perpetrated by those across the aisle to avenge the two impeachments against Trump.“This whole thing is an extreme political stunt. It has no credibility, no legitimacy, and no integrity. It is a sideshow,” Massachusetts representative Jim McGovern said during a floor debate.Some House Republicans, particularly those hailing from politically divided districts, had been hesitant in recent weeks to take any vote on Biden’s impeachment, fearing a significant political cost. But GOP leaders have made the case in recent weeks that the resolution is only a step in the process, not a decision to impeach Biden. That message seems to have won over skeptics.“As we have said numerous times before, voting in favor of an impeachment inquiry does not equal impeachment,” Minnesota representative Tom Emmer, a member of the GOP leadership team, said at a news conference Tuesday.Emmer said Republicans “will continue to follow the facts wherever they lead, and if they uncover evidence of treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors, then and only then will the next steps towards impeachment proceedings be considered”.Most of the Republicans reluctant to back the impeachment push have also been swayed by leadership’s recent argument that authorizing the inquiry will give them better legal standing as the White House has questioned the legal and constitutional basis for their requests for information.A letter last month from a top White House attorney to Republican committee leaders portrayed the GOP investigation as overzealous and illegitimate because the chamber had not yet authorized a formal impeachment inquiry by a vote of the full House. Richard Sauber, special counsel to the president, also wrote that when Trump faced the prospect of impeachment by a Democratic-led House in 2019, Johnson had said at the time that any inquiry without a House vote would be a “sham”.Dusty Johnson, the South Dakota Republican congressman, said this week that while there was no evidence to impeach the president, “that’s also not what the vote this week would be about”.“We have had enough political impeachments in this country,” he said. “I don’t like the stonewalling the administration has done, but listen, if we don’t have the receipts, that should constrain what the House does long-term.”Don Bacon, the Nebraska Republican representative, who has long been opposed to moving forward with impeachment, said that the White House questioning the legitimacy of the inquiry without a formal vote helped gain his support. “I can defend an inquiry right now,” he told reporters this week. “Let’s see what they find out.”House Democrats remained unified in their opposition to the impeachment process, saying it is a farce used by the GOP to take attention away from Trump and his legal woes.“You don’t initiate an impeachment process unless there’s real evidence of impeachable offenses,” said representative Jerry Nadler, the ranking Democrat on the House judiciary committee, who oversaw the two impeachments into Trump. “There is none here. None.”Democrats and the White House have repeatedly defended Biden and his administration’s cooperation with the investigation thus far, saying it has already made a massive trove of documents available.Congressional investigators have obtained nearly 40,000 pages of subpoenaed bank records and dozens of hours of testimony from key witnesses, including several high-ranking justice department officials currently tasked with investigating the president’s son, Hunter Biden.While Republicans say their inquiry is ultimately focused on the president himself, they have taken particular interest in Hunter Biden and his overseas business dealings, from which they accuse the president of personally benefiting. Republicans have also focused a large part of their investigation on whistleblower allegations of interference in the long-running justice department investigation into the younger Biden’s taxes and his gun use.Hunter Biden is currently facing criminal charges in two states from the special counsel investigation. He’s charged with firearm counts in Delaware, alleging he broke laws against drug users having guns in 2018, a period when he has acknowledged struggling with addiction. Special counsel David Weiss filed additional charges last week, alleging he failed to pay about $1.4m in taxes over a three-year period.Democrats have conceded that while the president’s son is not perfect, he is a private citizen who is already being held accountable by the justice system.“I mean, there’s a lot of evidence that Hunter Biden did a lot of improper things. He’s been indicted, he’ll stand trial,” Nadler said. “There’s no evidence whatsoever that the president did anything improper.” More

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      House votes to formally authorize Biden impeachment inquiry

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      The House voted Wednesday to formally authorize the impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden, even as Republicans have failed to produce evidence showing that the president financially benefitted from his family’s business dealings.The House voted on partisan lines, 221-212 to launch the inquiry. The vote came hours after the president’s son, Hunter Biden, defied a subpoena to appear for a closed-door deposition with House members. Instead choosing to hold a press conference on Capitol Hill, Hunter Biden reiterated his willingness to testify publicly, an offer that House Republicans have rejected.“I am here to testify at a public hearing, today, to answer any of the committees’ legitimate questions,” Hunter Biden said. “Republicans do not want an open process where Americans can see their tactics, expose their baseless inquiry, or hear what I have to say.”Hunter Biden now faces two federal indictments on gun and tax charges. As he addressed reporters on Wednesday, Hunter Biden expressed regret over his past actions while denouncing Republicans’ “lies” about his family.In a statement, Joe Biden denounced the Republican action as a “baseless impeachment stunt”. He insinuated that Republicans are avoiding “the issues facing the American people”. “Instead of doing anything to help make Americans’ lives better, they are focused on attacking me with lies. Instead of doing their job on the urgent work that needs to be done, they are choosing to waste time on this baseless political stunt that even Republicans in Congress admit is not supported by facts,” Biden said. “The American people deserve better.”The impeachment inquiry will give Republicans more power to enforce subpoenas and defend their investigation in court. The White House has argued that House Republicans’ subpoenas are illegitimate because the full chamber never voted to authorize the inquiry, but that argument could be invalidated with a successful vote on Wednesday.Earlier on Wednesday, the Republican chairs of the House oversight committee and judiciary committee, James Comer of Kentucky and Jim Jordan of Ohio, said in a joint statement: “Today, the House will vote on an impeachment inquiry resolution to strengthen our legal case in the courts as we face obstruction from the White House and witnesses. Today’s obstruction by Hunter Biden reinforces the need for a formal vote.”The previous House speaker, Republican Kevin McCarthy, unilaterally launched the inquiry in September without a formal vote on the matter. At the time, a number of more moderate Republicans expressed concerns about launching a formal inquiry, given the lack of clear evidence about Biden’s involvement in his son’s business dealings.Meanwhile, Comer and Jordan have already indicated they will move to hold Hunter Biden in contempt of Congress if the resolution passes. House Democrats defended Hunter Biden’s decision to defy his subpoena, accusing Republicans of attempting to “cherry-pick” testimony to advance baseless allegations against the president.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“They wanted to conduct the deposition in a closed-door interview, so the public couldn’t see it and so they could continue to cherry-pick little pieces of evidence and distort and misrepresent what had taken place there,” Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House oversight committee, told reporters. “They have not laid a glove on President Biden, and they have no evidence of him committing any offense, much less an impeachable offense.”
      This story was amended on 13 December 2023 to accurately reflect the House votes for the inquiry to 221-212. More

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      in US Politics

      Hakeem Jeffries singles out Republican ‘pro-Putin caucus’ opposing Ukraine aid

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      The Democratic US House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, has dismissed certain Republican colleagues as the “pro-Putin caucus” amid a congressional fight over whether to send more aid to Ukraine in its efforts to fend off Russian invaders.During an interview with CNN on Wednesday, Jeffries singled out the far-right House firebrands Marjorie Taylor Greene and Jim Jordan as the face of a “loud and … growing” movement aiming to undermine a $61bn military aid package that Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy lobbied for during a trip to Washington DC on Tuesday.Jeffries told the network that Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson, the ex-Fox News host who is friendly with the former president, were like-minded figures from outside Capitol Hill whose stance can only benefit the prospects of victory in Ukraine for the Russian leader, Vladimir Putin.“The pro-Putin caucus … is extreme,” the New York representative remarked. “And it seems increasingly clear that this pro-Putin caucus would like to see Vladimir Putin win in Ukraine.”This interview with Jeffries came as nearly all of the $62.3bn in Ukraine allocations previously approved by Congress had been used up after Russia’s invasion in February 2022. Greene, Jordan and other Republicans who hold a slim majority in the House have urged their fellow legislators to end monetary and military aid to Ukraine so that they can instead focus on issues at the US border with Mexico.Joe Biden on Tuesday said that position had prompted expressions of gratitude from Russian television personalities, who say it has helped the forces invading Ukraine. Nonetheless, the Democratic president’s administration was under pressure from Republicans to grant concessions on US-Mexico border security as a condition for a deal to provide continued aid for Ukraine.Zelenskiy went to the US capital on Tuesday and reportedly reassured legislators that such additional assistance would not go to waste because of corruption.Elsewhere in his CNN interview, Jeffries said a Russian victory in Ukraine “would be bad for America’s national security, which is why it’s an open question as to whether House Republicans are serious at all about funding the Ukrainian war efforts”.The network on Wednesday also asked Jeffries to address mounting Republican efforts to hold a formal vote to launch an impeachment inquiry into Biden.Republicans spent months investigating business dealings by Biden and his son Hunter in hopes of finding improprieties that could form a basis for an impeachment. Some in their party are worried that investigators have not found misconduct by the president, but House Republicans on Wednesday were nonetheless pushing for a vote to formally authorize an impeachment inquiry into Biden.Jeffries accused Republicans of doing Trump’s bidding by staging the effort to impeach Biden.Trump is facing more than 90 criminal charges accusing him of trying to illegally overturn his defeat to Biden in the 2020 presidential election, of improperly retaining government secrets after leaving the White House, and of illicitly paying hush money to a pornographic film performer. Assorted civil litigation has also threatened his business ventures and resulted in a rape accusation that a judge deemed “substantially true”.“There is zero evidence that President Biden has engaged in an impeachable offense,” said Jeffries, who called the proposed vote “a political hit job”. He added: “There is zero evidence that President Biden has engaged in any wrongdoing whatsoever. There is zero evidence that President Biden has broken the law.“The Republicans … can’t find a scintilla of evidence to justify this impeachment inquiry.” More