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      The Courage to be Free review: Ron DeSantis bows and scrapes to Trump

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      ReviewThe Courage to be Free review: Ron DeSantis bows and scrapes to TrumpOn the page, the Florida governor doesn’t show much courage about the man he must beat to be the Republican nomineeThe latest polls place Ron DeSantis and Joe Biden in a footrace for 2024. Florida’s 44-year-old Republican governor leads the octogenarian president by a whisker. More Americans like DeSantis than otherwise. Whether he can capture the Republican nomination, however, remains an open question. He has not yet declared his candidacy and trails Donald Trump in hypothetical matchups. Then again, no one else comes close.DeSantis praises Trump for ‘enhancing my name recognition’ in new bookRead moreSaid differently, Trump and his legacy remain forces for any Republican to reckon with. Nikki Haley, an announced candidate for the GOP nomination, can barely mention his name. She wants to supplant her ex-boss by eliding him. A bold strategy.DeSantis is patient. He will probably wait to announce until late spring, when the Florida legislature adjourns. For the moment, he expects us to be content with The Courage to Be Free, a memoir-cum-288-page-exercise in sycophancy and ambition tethered to a whole lot of owning the libs.It is a mirthless read, lacking even the gleeful invective of Never Give an Inch, the former secretary of state Mike Pompeo’s own opening shot on the road to 2024. Predictably, DeSantis berates the left as unpatriotic and ruinous, all while prostrating himself before his former patron.“I knew that a Trump endorsement would provide me with the exposure to GOP primary voters across the state of Florida,” he admits, discussing his campaign for governor in 2018. “I was confident that many would see me as a good candidate once they learned about my record.”It’s all about bowing and scraping.“Trump also brought a unique star power to the race. If someone had asked me, as a kid growing up in the 80s and 90s, to name someone who was rich, I – and probably nearly all my friends – would have responded by naming Donald Trump.”DeSantis was born in 1978. Growing up, he would have seen Trump’s fortunes plummet and his first marriage hit the skids.Apparently, 80s and 90s success stories – Steve Jobs of Apple, say, or Bill Gates of Microsoft – failed to cross DeSantis’s radar. These days, by contrast, the governor has a heap of scorn for the giants of tech. He depicts big tech as censorious, concentrated and “woke”. He reiterates his disdain for Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and George Soros, financier and liberal patron.DeSantis criticizes Zuckerberg’s Center for Technology and Civic Life for funding election operations. He contends that such private-public partnerships undermine public faith in electoral integrity and give Democrats a boost. He says nothing about Citizens United, the 2010 supreme court decision that set corporate money loose on US elections, other than to distinguish campaign donations from ballot mechanics. This weekend, at the Four Seasons hotel in Palm Beach, DeSantis will host a getaway for the deep-pocketed set.DeSantis also fails to examine the ties that bound the Mercer family – DeSantis donors and Trump stalwarts – with Facebook and Zuckerberg. In 2014, Cambridge Analytica, a now-defunct company then partly owned by the Mercer family, used Facebook to illegally harvest personal data. Steve Bannon, who would become Trump’s 2016 campaign chairman, was a board member and officer. He denies personal culpability.The Mercers own Breitbart News, which Bannon once led. Parler, owned by Rebekah Mercer, allegedly provided connective tissue for the January 6 insurrection. In the run-up to the riot, the network emerged as a forum for violent threats, so much so that it warned the FBI of “specific threats of violence being planned at the Capitol”.On the page, not surprisingly, DeSantis does not examine the January 6 attack. He does loudly take credit for a Florida law that would have regulated platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Here, again, he omits crucial details. Namely, federal courts found the law unconstitutional: it violated first-amendment free-speech protections.“Put simply, with minor exceptions, the government can’t tell a private person or entity what to say or how to say it,” wrote Kevin Newsom, a Trump-appointed judge on the 11th circuit. “We hold that it is substantially likely that social media companies – even the biggest ones – are private actors whose rights the first amendment protects.”Florida is urging the supreme court to review the case. Adding to the drama, Trump filed an amicus brief. The high court awaits a submission from the justice department.True to form, DeSantis brands the “national legacy press” as the “pretorian guard of the nation’s failed ruling class” and seconds Trump’s claim that the “fake news media” is the “enemy of the American People”. Yet for all of this media-bashing in the name of supposed truth, the governor omits the role of Fox News in propagating fake news about the presidential election and defamation cases brought against the news channel.How Dominion Voting Systems filing proves Fox News was ‘deliberately lying’Read moreOff the page, on that issue, DeSantis is at least mildly subversive. Recently, he featured the attorney Elizabeth “Libby” Locke at a confab dedicated to attacking the press and gutting US libel law. Significantly, Locke is representing Dominion Voting Systems in its $1.6bn defamation suit against Fox News arising from allegedly false reporting on the 2020 election. The case is set for an April trial in Delaware.“DeSantis hosting Dominion lawyer Libby Locke! He is showing his true colors!” So shrieked Mike Lindell, AKA the MyPillow guy and Trump adviser, on Twitter.DeSantis thinks he can have it both ways. Democrats would do well to take him literally and seriously. Last fall, he won re-election by a jaw-dropping 19 points, attracting more than two in five working-class minority voters and making serious inroads among African Americans.His book recounts all this. So far, the Democrats have offered little by way of response. At the polls, low taxes, plenty of sunshine and Jimmy Buffet’s greatest hits are a tough combination to beat.
      The Courage to Be Free: Florida’s Blueprint for America’s Revival is published in the US by HarperCollins
      TopicsBooksRon DeSantisDonald TrumpUS elections 2024RepublicansFloridaUS politicsreviewsReuse this content More

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      Feminism taught me all I need to know about men like Trump and Putin | Rebecca Solnit

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      Feminism taught me all I need to know about men like Trump and PutinRebecca SolnitLike all abusive men, dictators seek to control who can speak and which narratives are believed. The only difference is scaleAs the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfolded, I was reminded over and over again of the behaviour of abusive ex-husbands and boyfriends. At first he thinks that he can simply bully her into returning. When it turns out she has no desire to return, he shifts to vengeance.Putin insisted that Ukraine was rightfully part of Russia and didn’t have a separate existence. He expected his army to grab and subjugate with ease, even be welcomed. Now his regime seems bent on punitive destruction – of energy infrastructure, dwellings, historic sites, whole cities – and rape, torture and mass murder. This too is typical of abusers: domestic-violence homicides are often punishment for daring to leave.Everything I needed to know about authoritarianism I learned from feminism, or rather from feminism’s sharp eye when it comes to coercive control and male abusers. Sociologist and gender violence expert Evan Stark, in his book Coercive Control, defined the title term as one that subsumes domestic violence in a larger pattern of isolation, intimidation and control. (The book has been so influential that in the UK, coercive control is now recognised as a crime.) The violence matters, Stark writes, “but the primary harm abusive men inflict is political, not physical, and reflects the deprivation of rights and resources that are critical to personhood and citizenship”. This connects it directly to what dictators and totalitarian regimes do to the people under their rule – it’s only a matter of scale. And the agenda at all scales is to control not just practical matters, but fact, truth, history; who can speak and what can be said.The antithesis of this is, of course, democracy, which is likewise a principle that works at all scales. A marriage can be called democratic if both parties exercise power equally and are unconstrained and unintimidated by the other. Equally, a marriage can be a little tyranny in which one gains and the other surrenders rights and powers through the union, which was until recently how marriage was defined legally and socially. Likewise we call democratic those nations in which national decisions are (however imperfectly) made by representatives elected by, and accountable to, the public.At the very root of tyranny, no matter whether it’s personal or public life, lies the belief that the agency and agenda of others is illegitimate, that only the would-be tyrant should control the household or the nation. You can see this in authoritarian politicians’ rejection of the outcome of elections – Donald Trump, or in the Maga candidate Kari Lake’s unsuccessful run for Arizona governor, or the 8 January riot in Brasília to reject Lula’s victory.One term formerly used to describe relationships between an abusive man and a manipulated woman, gaslighting, became an indispensable word in public life when Trump became president. The gaslighting, the bullying, the fury to crush dissent, the assumption that he should be in charge of everything including facts, the rage, the insistence that every other power and voice is illegitimate: these are all hallmarks of dictators in the domestic and the political sphere. He began his presidency in the shade of a recording in which he infamously advocated grabbing women “by the pussy”; he ended it in the shadow of an insurrection that was a refusal to accept the verdict rendered by more than 80 million voters and the rules laid down by the US constitution.What’s striking about gaslighting is that it’s an attempt to push a lie or a distortion by using advantages of power, including credibility and social status, to overwhelm the gaslit person or people – or populace. It’s another kind of violence, not against bodies, but facts and truth. In stories of abusive households, the Trump administration and histories of authoritarianism, the men in charge regarded fact, truth, history and science as rival systems of power to be crushed or overwhelmed. And they are rival systems: a democracy of information means what prevails is what’s demonstrably true and substantiated, whether or not it’s convenient to whoever’s in power.That gaslighting was a staple of the Soviet Union is well known through the work of George Orwell and later historians (when I wrote about Orwell, I found a striking example cited by Adam Hochschild: that when Stalin’s demographers showed that the Soviet population was declining, he had them killed, causing the next round of demographers to offer more pleasing numbers). It’s also true in brutal households, where the first rule is that one must not say that it’s brutal, lest more violence transpire.Another way that studies of domestic abuse inform our political understanding is “Darvo”, an acronym that the domestic violence expert Jennifer Freyd coined in 1997 for how abusers respond in court or when otherwise challenged. It stands for deny, attack, reverse victim and offender. You insist that anyone mentioning what you’ve done is insulting you, is a liar, then insist that your accuser is the abuser and you are the victim, and keep shouting it until you believe it and maybe convince others. Freyd herself, with another psychologist, recently noted “a growing trend in the world of civil litigation: alleged perpetrators of interpersonal violence are filing defamation lawsuits against the individuals who have named them as abusers … For abusers, these lawsuits are an opportunity to enforce Darvo through civil litigation.”Trump is trying to make a comeback. It’s not working | Lloyd GreenRead moreDarvo happens all the time in political life. In the US, the Republicans have a pattern of claiming to defend what they’re attacking and to be the victims of what they’re perpetrating. Or as the New York Times columnist Charles M Blow put it in January, describing the agenda of the new Republican majority in the lower house of Congress: “Understanding that they can’t throw federal investigators off the trail of multiple conservatives – including, and perhaps principally, Donald Trump – they have decided to complicate those investigations by kicking up so much dust that the public has a hard time discerning fact from fiction.” The very mention of those crimes is treated as an insult and an outrage, with those complicit the offended parties, and so they shout down the evidence. Prolonged loud noise is an effective tactic.Blow mentions that the Republicans in the house are creating the select subcommittee on the weaponization of the federal government, which will label the pursuit of Republican crimes, notably Trump’s around January 6, as baseless political vendettas. It’s, of course, a cover-up masquerading as a crusade. He continues: “The Republicans are using a fundamentally Trumpian tactic, accusing others of that which one is guilty of. It was Donald Trump, not the Democrats, who attempted to weaponize the federal government against his enemies.” That’s Darvo at its purest.Individuals can be bullied into silence and obedience. So can whole populations. And so can facts and truth. Democracy matters at all scales.
      Rebecca Solnit is a Guardian US columnist
      TopicsDonald TrumpOpinionRepublicansVladimir PutinFeminismDomestic violenceUS politicscommentReuse this content More

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      First lady signals Joe Biden will seek second presidential term – as it happened

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      First lady Jill Biden has given one of the clearest indications yet that Joe Biden will run for a second term, telling The Associated Press in an exclusive interview today that there’s “pretty much” nothing left to do but figure out the time and place for the announcement.Although Biden has long said that it’s his intention to seek reelection, he has yet to make it official, and he’s struggled to dispel questions about whether he’s too old to continue serving as president. Biden would be 86 at the end of a second term.“He says he’s not done,” the first lady said in Nairobi, the second and final stop of her five-day trip to Africa. “He’s not finished what he’s started. And that’s what’s important.”She added: “How many times does he have to say it for you to believe it?”Biden aides have said an announcement is likely to come in April, after the first fundraising quarter ends, which is around the time that Barack Obama officially launched his reelection campaign.First lady Jill Biden made clear she thinks her husband, Joe Biden, will stand for a second term – though we are still waiting for an announcement from the man himself. Otherwise, top American officials spent most of the day restating their support for Ukraine on the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion. Speaking before the UN security council, secretary of state Antony Blinken warned that anything less than Russia’s full withdrawal from the territory it seized will weaken the global body’s charter, while Biden highlighted the bipartisan nature of Washington’s support for Kyiv. Many Republicans do indeed support Ukraine’s cause – but others in the party argue it is a distraction from more pressing issues. This divide could prove crucial to the course of the war in the months to come.Here’s what else happened today:
      Blinken warned China against getting involved in the conflict by providing Russia with weapons.
      Kamala Harris condemned conservative efforts to block access to medication abortion nationwide.
      The American public is divided over how long to support Kyiv, with more Republicans preferring limits on US aid, and more Democrats in favor of helping them fight against Russia until the job is done.
      The Treasury announced new sanctions against Russian individuals and companies involved in the war effort, but such measures haven’t proven as successful as Washington has hoped.
      It turns out that Democrats in Congress have access to the 40,000 hours of footage Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy gave Tucker Carlson earlier this week.
      The White House has released a photo from earlier today, when Joe Biden marked the one-year anniversary of the invasion of Ukraine with its president Volodymyr Zelenskiy and the leaders of the G7, as America’s top allies are known.The group includes Canada, Germany, the European Union, Japan, Britain, France and Italy:Today, President Biden met with G7 Leaders and President Zelenskyy to continue coordinating our efforts to support Ukraine and hold Russia accountable for its war. pic.twitter.com/JDs4Z3geY4— The White House (@WhiteHouse) February 24, 2023
      As Biden inches closer to announcing what is widely expected (most importantly, by his wife) to be his re-election campaign, a poll released earlier this week brought good news for his standing among Democrats.The NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist Poll shows an even half of Democrats or Democratic-leaning independents believe the party has a better chance with Biden as the nominee, against 45% who think they’d be better off backing someone else. That’s an improvement for the president from November of last year, when it was roughly flipped: then, 54% wanted someone else, while a mere 38% backed Biden.The survey also had bad news for Donald Trump in his quest to be renominated for the presidency by the GOP. Among Republicans and independents who lean towards the party, 54% believe the GOP is best off with someone other than Trump as the nominee, while 42% thought the ex-president remained the best man for the job.Joe Biden will meet with congressional Democrats next week, Punchbowl News reports.His allies hold the majority in the Senate but lost control of the House following last November’s midterm elections, though only by a handful of seats. Punchbowl reports he will first meet with House Democrats during their annual retreat in Baltimore:Biden will speak to House Dems on Wednesday in Baltimore, @PeteAguilar announces https://t.co/qKpRM94FZe— John Bresnahan (@bresreports) February 24, 2023
      Then with senators:Schumer’s office says Biden will speak at a special Senate Dem caucus lunch next Thursday— Andrew Desiderio (@AndrewDesiderio) February 24, 2023
      Earlier this week, Democrats erupted in fury when they found out that Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy handed over to Tucker Carlson 40,000 hours of video footage surveillance and other cameras in the Capitol picked up on January 6.The concern was not only that it could reveal details of the building’s security, but also that Carlson, a conservative firebrand who has repeatedly downplayed the severity of the insurrection before his audience of millions, would use the footage to distort what happened that day.As it turns out, Democratic leaders in Congress have access to that footage as well. Washington Post opinion columnist Greg Sargent confirmed as much from the Capitol police. In his column today, he argues that Democrats should fight fire with fire, and release the footage to news organizations in an attempt to counter whatever Carlson has planned for what he’s been given.Let’s take a quick dip into Trumpworld, where the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell has an exclusive on the ongoing mess that is Donald Trump’s possession of classified materials:Donald Trump’s lawyers found a box of White House schedules, including some that were marked classified, at his Mar-a-Lago resort in December because a junior aide to the former president had transported it from another office in Florida after the FBI completed its search of the property.The former president does not appear to have played a direct role in the mishandling of the box, though he remains under investigation for the possible improper retention of national security documents and obstruction of justice. This previously unreported account of the retrieval was revealed by two sources familiar with the matter.Known internally as ROTUS, short for Receptionist of the United States, the junior aide initially kept the box at a converted guest bungalow at Mar-a-Lago called the “tennis cottage” after Trump left office, and she soon took it with her to a government-leased office in the Palm Beach area.The box remained at the government-leased office from where the junior aide worked through most of 2022, explaining why neither Trump’s lawyer who searched Mar-a-Lago in June for any classified-marked papers nor the FBI agents who searched the property in August found the documents.Around the time that Trump returned to Mar-a-Lago from his Bedminster golf club in New Jersey at the end of the summer, the junior aide was told that she was being relocated to a desk in the anteroom of Trump’s own office at Mar-a-Lago that was previously assigned to top aide Molly Michael.The junior aide retrieved her work belongings – including the box – from the government-leased office and took them to her new Mar-a-Lago workspace around September. At that time, the justice department’s criminal investigation into Trump’s retention of national security documents was intensifying.Several weeks after the junior aide moved into her new workspace, federal prosecutors told Trump’s lawyers in October that they suspected the former president was still in possession of additional documents with classified markings despite the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago on 8 August.Vice president Kamala Harris condemned the “partisan and political attacks” on reproductive rights that have put the fate of medication abortion in the hands of a single, conservative judge in Texas.Convening a White House meeting with reproductive rights advocates and providers on Friday, Harris addressed the pending lawsuit, brought by abortion opponents, that threatens the access to the abortion drug mifepristone.“This is not just an attack on women’s fundamental freedoms. It is an attack on the very foundation of our public health system,” Harris said.Medication abortion now accounts for the majority of abortions in the US. It is also used as a miscarriage treatment. Abortion rights advocates have warned that a decision to reverse a decades-old approval of the drug by the Federal Drug Administration would have “devastating” consequences for women’s reproductive health.Harris said the legal challenge, as well as legislative efforts in Republican-led states that would restrict access to medication abortion, amounted to an attempt by political activists to undermine the FDA’s authority, accusing them of trying to “question the legitimacy of a group of scientists and doctors who have studied the significance of this drug.”The vice president said supporters of the lawsuit should “look in their own medicine cabinets” and question whether they would be willing to do away with any FDA-approved medication that they use to alleviate pain and improve their quality of life. “Mifepristone is no exception to that process,” Harris said.The FDA approved mifepristone, in combination with a second drug, in 2000, deeming it a safe and effective way to terminate a pregnancy up to 10-weeks.During the pandemic, the FDA expanded access to the pills by allowing patients to obtain them by mail through telehealth rather than requiring in-person hospital or clinic visits. The agency further broadened the availability of the medication when it announced in January it would allow certified retail pharmacies to dispense mifepristone, known under the brand name Mifeprex.US District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk has not indicated when he will rule, but advocates are preparing for a possible decision as soon as today.Since the supreme court decision to end the Constitutional right to abortion, Harris has led the administration’s public response.During Friday’s roundtable, she said the participants would discuss ways to ensure Americans are aware of the lawsuit and its possible ramifications as well as what policymakers and providers could to ensure patients “have access to the medication that they need.”Last weekend, Joe Biden clandestinely traveled to Ukraine via a mode of travel he personally prefers, but which is unusual for a modern American president: a passenger train. The Guardian’s Peter Beaumont spoke to the man who made it happen:Alexander Kamyshin, the head of Ukraine’s railway company Ukrzaliznytsia, doesn’t get much sleep at the best of times. On Sunday night, as Joe Biden was being ferried into Ukraine in a 10-hour night journey from Poland – in a carriage now known as “Rail Force One”, he got almost none.Along with others involved in the secret operation to bring the US president to his meeting with Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Kamyshin watched the progress of the train in a command centre.A handsome bearded man sporting a hipster-ish braid of hair that falls over the shaved sides of his head, Kamyshin is deliberately vague about many of the details.But in the past year, his dedicated team has brought in world leaders, VIPs and diplomatic missions on an almost daily basis as part of a programme called “Iron Diplomacy”.Security is everything, he told the Guardian in an interview at Kyiv’s main railway station. “We have not had one leak. There have been no photographs from train attendants. We respect the confidence of the delegations.“It’s not a challenge. It’s our job that we do every day. Imagine,” he says with smile, “the president of the United States coming to a war-torn country by train.‘Rail Force One’: how Ukraine railways got Joe Biden safely to KyivRead moreHere’s a video that’s worth watching of Jill Biden describing her husband’s willingness to continue serving as president for a second term:— Zeke Miller (@ZekeJMiller) February 24, 2023
      First lady Jill Biden has long been described as a key figure in US president Joe Biden’s orbit as he plans his future – after today revealing to the Associated Press that he’s close to confirming he’ll seek a second term in the White House..css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Because I’m his wife,” she laughed, AP writes.But she brushed off the question about whether she has the deciding vote on whether the president runs for reelection..css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Of course he’ll listen to me, because we’re a married couple,” she said. But, she added later, “he makes up his own mind, believe me.”Biden did the interview in Kenya, during the second leg of her trip to Africa this week. Earlier she was in Namibia.First lady Jill Biden has given one of the clearest indications yet that Joe Biden will run for a second term, telling The Associated Press in an exclusive interview today that there’s “pretty much” nothing left to do but figure out the time and place for the announcement.Although Biden has long said that it’s his intention to seek reelection, he has yet to make it official, and he’s struggled to dispel questions about whether he’s too old to continue serving as president. Biden would be 86 at the end of a second term.“He says he’s not done,” the first lady said in Nairobi, the second and final stop of her five-day trip to Africa. “He’s not finished what he’s started. And that’s what’s important.”She added: “How many times does he have to say it for you to believe it?”Biden aides have said an announcement is likely to come in April, after the first fundraising quarter ends, which is around the time that Barack Obama officially launched his reelection campaign.Top US officials have restated their support for Ukraine on the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion. Speaking before the UN security council, secretary of state Antony Blinken warned that anything less than Russia’s full withdrawal from territory it seized will weaken the global body’s charter, while Joe Biden highlighted the bipartisan nature of Washington’s support for Kyiv. And indeed, many Republicans support Ukraine’s cause – but others in the party argue it is a distraction from more pressing issues. This divide could prove crucial to the outcome of the war in the months to come.Here’s what else has happened today so far:
      Blinken warned China against getting involved in the conflict by providing Russia with weapons.
      The American public is divided over how long to support Kyiv, with more Republicans preferring limits on US aid, and more Democrats in favor of helping them fight against Russia until the job is done.
      The Treasury announced new sanctions against Russian individuals and companies involved in the war effort, but such measures haven’t proven as successful as Washington has hoped.
      But the bipartisan comity over Ukraine has its limits. There’s been a definite increase over the past year in the number of lawmakers who have questioned Washington’s support to Ukraine, particularly among Republicans.Their argument is that Joe Biden cares more about Ukraine than various issues at home, especially those they’ve turned into cudgels against the administration such as border security, or the recent derailment of a train carrying toxic chemicals in East Palestine, Ohio.This tweet from GOP senator Josh Hawley captures the dynamic well:The Republican Party can be the party of Ukraine and globalists or the party of East Palestine and working Americans. Not both— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) February 24, 2023
      But it’s in the House where some of Ukraine’s biggest congressional foes can be found. “We can’t care more about Ukraine than we do our own country. President Biden has failed to lead on the train derailment, the border, inflation, crime, and so much more,” House Republican Jake LaTurner said in a statement released today.“The White House continues to prioritize Ukraine while leaving American communities behind. It’s unacceptable.”And while the Senate’s top Republican Mitch McConnell issued a statement of strong support for Ukraine today, his counterpart in the House, speaker Kevin McCarthy, has made no public statement that this blog is aware of.Back in Washington, Mitt Romney was one of several Republican lawmakers who tweeted strong statements of support for Ukraine on the war’s one-year anniversary – which caught the eye of Democratic president Joe Biden.Biden has been eager to play up the bipartisan nature of US support for Ukraine. Here’s what Romney, who represents Utah in the Senate and was the GOP’s nominee for president in 2012, had to say:It is in America’s interest to support Ukraine. If Russia can invade, subjugate, and pillage Ukraine with impunity, it will do the same again to others, and a world at war diminishes the security of Americans.— Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) February 23, 2023
      And here is Biden’s response:I think Senator Romney would be the first to tell you that we don’t always agree.But he knows what I know: that standing with Ukraine — and standing up for freedom — advances our national security. https://t.co/X67SkDIL6W— President Biden (@POTUS) February 24, 2023 More

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      US court skeptical of bid to access congressman’s phone in January 6 inquiry

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      US court skeptical of bid to access congressman’s phone in January 6 inquiryAt issue is whether a protection afforded by the constitution applies to ‘informal’ fact-finding by members of CongressA federal appeals court appeared skeptical on Thursday of the justice department’s interpretation of US Congress members’ immunity from criminal investigations and whether it allowed federal prosecutors to access House Republican Scott Perry’s phone contents in the January 6 investigation.The department seized Perry’s phone in the criminal investigation last year and was granted access to its contents by a lower court, until Perry appealed the decision on the grounds that the speech or debate clause protections barred prosecutors from seeing his messages.January 6 insurrection has proved an obsession for Fox News’s Tucker CarlsonRead moreTwo of the three DC circuit judges appeared unconvinced about the justice department’s reading of the clause – the constitutional provision that shields congressional officials from legal proceedings – though it was unclear whether that would lead to them ruling against prosecutors.The court did not issue a ruling from the bench during the partly unsealed hearing, but the judge’s decision could have far-reaching implications for witnesses like Perry and even Mike Pence in the January 6 investigation, as well as the constitutional power and scope of the protection itself.The two Trump-appointed judges, Gregory Katsas and Neomi Rao, indicated they could rule in two ways: that messages with people outside Congress are not confidential at all, or that Perry could not be prosecuted or questioned about the messages, but that prosecutors could gain access to them.The supreme court has ruled in several instances on the speech or debate clause. While the exact nature of the protection remains vague, it has generally found the protection to be “absolute” as long as the conduct came in furtherance of legislative activity.At issue is whether Perry’s communications with third parties as he sought to assist Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results – and in particular, “informal” fact-finding – could be classified as legislative activity that would fall under the speech or debate clause.Perry’s main lawyer, John Rowley, argued that the congressman was protected from being forced to give up roughly 2,200 messages on his phone to prosecutors because they amounted to legislative work as he prepared for the 6 January certification and possible election reform legislation.But the justice department’s lawyer John Pellettieri disputed Rowley’s broad reading of the clause and argued that such “informal” fact-finding that had not been authorized by Congress as an institution meant Perry was acting unilaterally and therefore beyond the scope of the protection.Katsas and Rao sharply quizzed the justice department on its position that only committee-authorized investigations were protected under the speech or debate clause, and how any other fact-finding could not be a legislative activity.Katsas ran the department through various scenarios, including whether a recording of a call made by a member of Congress to a third party that they would use to inform how they voted on specific legislation would be protected – to which the department replied that it would not.“So a member who is not on a committee has no fact-finding ability?” Rao asked.Katsas added that he found it “odd” that “a member working to educate himself or herself” on how to vote would not be covered by the protection.The justice department argued in response that the conduct had to be “integral” to actual “legislative procedures” to be protected, and warned that the speech or debate clause would otherwise include anything members of Congress did so long as they claimed it was legislative work.The department also suggested that the conduct had to be “bona fide” legislative work – which prompted a response from Katsas that judges were not supposed to consider the motive and the behind-the-scenes decision-making of members of Congress.At the end of the hearing, Perry’s lawyer Rowley added that the department’s narrow interpretation of the speech or debate clause – that it had to be authorized and integral to actual legislative procedure – would mean the minority in Congress would have no protection in researching legislation.The hearing also revealed the previously sealed ruling by the chief US judge for the District of Columbia, Beryl Howell, in December that Perry was appealing: Howell had decided that Perry’s fact-finding messages were not protected because they were not part of a formal congressional investigation.TopicsUS Capitol attackUS constitution and civil libertiesUS politicsRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

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      Democrats condemn McCarthy for handing Capitol attack footage to Tucker Carlson – as it happened

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      Kevin McCarthy’s protracted battle to win election as speaker of the House had far-reaching consequences. His decision to release a massive trove of surveillance footage from January 6 to Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson is one of them.It was lawmakers on the GOP’s right wing who held up McCarthy’s election as speaker for days last month, resulting in an unheard-of 15 rounds of balloting. McCarthy only won their support by making a number of promises – and releasing the January 6 footage was apparently among them.“I promised,” McCarthy told the New York Times, when asked why he gave Carlson the footage. “I was asked in the press about these tapes, and I said they do belong to the American public. I think sunshine lets everybody make their own judgment.”The speaker said he wanted to ensure Carlson, who has claimed the insurrection was a “false flag” attack and generally tried to downplay it, without evidence, “exclusive” access to the footage, but could release it to other outlets later. As for Carlson, he told the Times he was taking the footage “very seriously” and had a large team reviewing it.Democrats cried foul after Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy sent about 40,000 hours of footage of the January 6 insurrection to Tucker Carlson – Fox News’s best-known conservative commentator, who has repeatedly downplayed the attack. Meanwhile, special prosecutor Jack Smith moved to pre-empt former vice-president Mike Pence’s attempt to get out of testifying before a grand jury investigating Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss. Expect to hear more about that in weeks and days to come.Here’s what else happened today:
      Transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg visited the Ohio village where a train derailment sparked fears of toxic contamination, and expressed regret for not stopping by sooner.
      Trump and FBI director Christopher Wray could be deposed as part of a lawsuit by two former bureau employees – unless Joe Biden stops it.
      The United States has seen a disturbing streak of extremist-driven mass killings, a new report found.
      The latest Twitter feud is between New York mayor Eric Adams and congressman and fabulist George Santos.
      Did you know? Jon Tester has only seven fingers.
      Two former FBI agents will be allowed to depose Donald Trump and the bureau’s director Christopher Wray as part of a lawsuit against the government, Politico reports.But in an unusual twist, Joe Biden could put a stop to the deposition by asserting executive privilege. The lawsuit stems from the FBI’s firing of Peter Strzok, an agent who it was revealed exchanged text messages disparaging Trump with Lisa Page, an attorney for the bureau who resigned. Strzok was involved in the investigation into ties between Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and Russia, and the then-president attacked the pair repeatedly once the exchanges were revealed.According to Politico, the pair are suing the FBI alleging breach of privacy for releasing their messages, while Strzok is contesting his firing. Here’s more from the report:.css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}In the suits, Strzok and Page contend that Trump and his Justice Department appointees were carrying out a political vendetta.
      The Justice Department and the FBI have both denied that Trump’s public attacks played any role in the bureau’s decision to fire Strzok, saying it was a decision arrived at by career officials and carried out without political pressure. They’ve argued that deposing Trump or Wray would shed little light on decisions that were made by others at the FBI.
      But Jackson’s ruling suggests there might be evidence that she thinks only Trump and Wray can provide. She noted that her decision was rooted in an analysis of the “apex doctrine,” which requires litigants to first seek information from figures at lower rungs of an organization before pursuing testimony of more senior officials.
      Jackson also indicated that the depositions would be limited to a “narrow set of topics” that were defined in a sealed hearing on Thursday.Joe Biden today nominated a Wall Street insider to take over as president of the World Bank from David Malpass, a Trump nominee who drew fire for comments questioning climate change, and will be leaving the post early. But as Phillip Inman reports, Ajay Banga may not get a warm welcome from anti-poverty groups:Joe Biden has nominated a former boss of Mastercard with decades of experience on Wall Street to lead the World Bank and oversee a shake-up at the development organisation to shift its focus to the climate crisis.The US president’s choice of Ajay Banga, an American citizen born in India, comes a week after David Malpass, a Donald Trump appointee, quit the role.The World Bank’s governing body is expected to make a decision in May, but the US is the Washington-based organisation’s largest shareholder and has traditionally been allowed to nominate without challenge its preferred candidate for the post.Malpass, who is due to step down on 30 June, was nominated by Trump in February 2019 and took up the post officially that April. He is known to have lost the confidence of Biden’s head of the US Treasury, Janet Yellen, who with other shareholders wanted to expand the bank’s development remit to include the climate crisis and other global challenges.Joe Biden nominates former Mastercard boss Ajay Banga to lead World BankRead moreOne of the best known progressive voices currently on television is Mehdi Hasan of MSNBC. He sat down with the Guardian’s David Smith to discuss everything from being British to how to report the news in these hyper-partisan times: One evening this month on cable television, Mehdi Hasan interviewed Ilhan Omar, who had just been ousted from a House of Representatives panel by Republicans still worshipping at Donald Trump’s altar of intolerance.The significance of the moment was not lost on Hasan.“When I was growing up, I never imagined I’d see, on primetime, a Muslim host interviewing a Muslim politician. Tonight, I did the interview,” the 43-year-old tweeted afterwards. “I also never thought I’d see double standards on terrorism bluntly addressed on primetime, but tonight I got to address it. Thanks @MSNBC.”For those who criticise the American news media as too white, too Christian, too complacent, too inward looking, too pompous (“democracy dies in darkness”), too prone to herd mentality and too deferential to authority, Hasan has come along in the nick of time.He is a British-born Muslim of Indian descent, anti-establishment muckraker and unabashed lefty with a bias towards democracy. As a former columnist and podcaster at the Intercept, and ex-presenter on Al Jazeera English, he used to worry that MSNBC would find him too edgy, too iconoclastic. But he says the network has been entirely supportive: he hosts weekly shows on MSNBC and NBC’s streaming channel Peacock.One explanation is that, unlike shock jocks, bomb throwers and social media stars on the right, his show undeniably does substance. During the US military withdrawal from Afghanistan, it featured the Afghan perspective at length. When the war in Ukraine erupted, Hasan offered a 10-minute monologue about the fascist philosopher who informs Vladimir Putin’s worldview. After the police killing of Tyre Nichols, an African American man in Memphis, he discussed critical race theory and policing with two leading academics.Clearly, Hasan is not afraid to be an outlier. For one thing, he is personally opposed to abortion, though he condemned last year’s overturning of Roe v Wade and believes the law should uphold a woman’s right to choose. For another, he is still fastidious about taking precautions to avoid the coronavirus even as nearly everyone else seems to have thrown caution to the winds.‘Biden’s the most impressive president of my lifetime’: Mehdi Hasan on Fox News, tough questions and post-Trump politicsRead moreA day after he confirmed he would seek another term next year in what is sure to be a closely fought contest, Montana’s Democratic senator Jon Tester had a new message for Americans: I only have seven fingers.Don’t take it from us, take it from him:RT if you’re ready to send a seven-fingered dirt farmer from Montana back to the Senate. pic.twitter.com/1zE95IRsSQ— Jon Tester (@jontester) February 23, 2023
      The culprit was a meat ginder. And no, this is not the first time he brought the childhood accident up on the campaign trail.At her daily briefing, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre defended transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg from those who say he waited too long to visit East Palestine, Ohio.Republicans have argued Buttigieg shirked his duties by not visiting the village that’s been grappling with the aftermath of a chemical spill sooner. Here’s what Jean-Pierre had to say about that:WH Press Sec. Karine Jean-Pierre condemns “bad faith attacks” on Transportation Sec. Pete Buttigieg amid growing scrutiny of his handling of the Ohio derailment:“If you remember Elaine Chao…when there was these types of chemical spills, nobody was calling for her to be fired.” pic.twitter.com/sEpNLr2jA6— The Recount (@therecount) February 23, 2023
      Hugo Lowell reports on the latest developments in the saga over Mike Pence’s testimony, or otherwise, in the US justice department investigation of January 6 and related election subversion…The special counsel investigating Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election issued a motion to compel testimony from Mike Pence in recent days – after the Trump legal team sought to block his appearance on executive privilege grounds, sources familiar with the matter said.The compulsion motion against Pence marks a pre-emptive move by the special counsel to rebut the executive privilege arguments before Pence had even made an appearance before the federal grand jury in Washington DC pursuant to a subpoena issued last month, the sources said.While Pence has suggested he would contest the subpoena, the Guardian has previously reported that is understood to involve him at least appearing before the grand jury and asserting the so-called speech or debate protection for congressional officials to specific questions.The Trump special counsel, Jack Smith, appears to have issued the motion to compel – earlier reported by CBS News – not in response to Pence’s expected actions, but in response to a recent executive privilege motion filed in the case by Trump’s legal team seeking to stop Pence testifying in the investigation.Full story:Motion to compel Pence’s January 6 testimony is rebuttal to Trump team, sources sayRead moreAdam Gabbatt takes a look at what Tucker Carlson has said about the January 6 attack, and what he might say next now Kevin McCarthy has given the Fox News host 44,000 hours of Capitol security footage…In the two years since the US Capitol attack, Tucker Carlson has described the violent assault on American democracy connected to the deaths of nine people as “vandalism” and a “forgettably minor” outbreak of “mob violence”.The Fox News host has said the attack on Congress by supporters of Donald Trump, which has prompted more than 900 arrests, was a “false flag” operation, part of alleged persecution of conservatives by shady government forces. Carlson even devoted much of a conspiracy-laden TV series to undermining the severity of the attack.It is not difficult to imagine, then, what Carlson might do with the 44,000 hours of Capitol surveillance footage from January 6 handed to him exclusively by Kevin McCarthy, the Republican House speaker. In fact Carlson gave an indication on his show on Monday night.“Our producers, some of our smartest producers, have been looking at this stuff and trying to figure out what it means and how it contradicts or not the story we’ve been told for more than two years,” Carlson said.He added: “We think already in some ways that it does contradict that story.”Read on:The January 6 insurrection has proved an obsession for Tucker CarlsonRead moreA Texas man who assaulted a police officer during the US Capitol riot and also threatened the New York Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was sentenced on Wednesday to 38 months in prison.Garret Miller, 36 and from Richardson, Texas, was “at the forefront of every barrier overturned, police line overrun, and entryway breached within his proximity” on January 6 and was twice detained outside the building, prosecutors said.On the night after the riot, he tweeted: “Assassinate AOC.”As the Associated Press reports, when Miller was arrested at his home near Dallas two weeks after the riot, he “was wearing a shirt that read ‘I Was There, Washington DC, January 6, 2021’, with a picture of President Donald Trump on it.“… Miller has already spent more than two years behind bars since his arrest, and with credit for good behavior he’s expected to serve another eight months, according to his lawyer, F Clinton Broden”.More than 1,000 people have been charged over the Capitol attack. Slightly under half have, like Miller, pleaded guilty.Miller has also expressed remorse. His lawyer, Broden, told the AP: “It should be always be remembered that although Garret is fully responsible for his individual actions that day, his actions and the actions of many others were a product of rhetoric from a cult leader that has yet to be brought to justice.“Garret Miller was not the name on the flag carried by those who invaded our Capitol on this dark day in our nation’s history.”That, of course, was Trump. The former president was impeached for inciting the insurrection but acquitted as enough Senate Republicans stayed loyal. He is still under investigation by the US justice department, to which the House January 6 committee made four criminal referrals.Regardless, Trump remains the favourite to win the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.David DePape, the suspect in the attack last year on Paul Pelosi, the husband of the then House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, is due to appear in state court on 12 April, his public defender said earlier.DePape faces state and federal charges over the attack, in which Pelosi was attacked with a hammer and seriously wounded.Here’s some reading about the case – and how politicians and pundits on the right sought to capitalise on it, and then retreated:Paul Pelosi attack: rightwing pundits backtrack after release of police videoRead moreDemocrats are crying foul after Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy sent about 40,000 hours of footage of the January 6 insurrection to Tucker Carlson – Fox News’s best-known conservative commentator, who has repeatedly downplayed the attack. Meanwhile in court, former vice-president Mike Pence is planning his strategy to quash a subpoena from the special prosecutor investigating the insurrection, among other things, while Republican lawmaker Scott Perry is trying to stop the justice department from accessing his cellphone.Here’s what else has happened today so far:
      Transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg visited the Ohio village where a train derailment has sparked fears of toxic contamination, and expressed regret for not stopping by sooner.
      The United States has seen a disturbing streak of extremism-driven mass killings, a new report found.
      The latest Twitter feud is between New York mayor Eric Adams and congressman and fabulist George Santos.
      In Florida, authorities have released the name of a journalist who was one of two people shot dead near the scene of a murder earlier that same day, the Guardian’s Sam Levine reports:A Florida journalist killed near Orlando on Wednesday was identified as 24-year-old Dylan Lyons.Lyons, a reporter for Spectrum News 13, was fatally shot on Wednesday afternoon while at the scene of a murder. Officials said Keith Melvin Moses, 19, shot Lyons and a colleague before walking into a nearby home and shooting a woman and her nine-year-old daughter. The girl died.Lyons’ colleague, Jesse Walden, a photographer, was in critical condition but able to speak with investigators, according to Greg Angel, a station news anchor.John Mina, the Orange county sheriff, said Moses ambushed Lyons and Walden as they were at the scene of a murder Moses is accused of committing. It was not clear if Moses knew Lyons and Walden were members of the media.Officials identify Florida journalist killed while reporting at scene of murderRead moreMass killings linked to extremism in the United States are on the rise, as are the number of victims of these incidences, according to a new report. Here’s the latest on that, from the Associated Press:The number of US mass killings linked to extremism over the past decade was at least three times higher than the total from any other 10-year period since the 1970s, according to the Anti-Defamation League.The ADL report also found that all extremist killings identified in 2022 were linked to rightwing extremism, with an especially high number linked to white supremacy.They include a racist mass shooting at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, that killed 10 Black people and a mass shooting that killed five people at an LGBTQ+ nightclub in Colorado Springs.“It is not an exaggeration to say that we live in an age of extremist mass killings,” the report from the ADL Center on Extremism says.Between two and seven extremism-related mass killings occurred every decade from the 1970s to the 2000s but in the 2010s that number rocketed to 21, the report found.The trend has continued with five extremist mass killings in 2021 and 2022, as many as there were during the 2000s.The number of victims has risen too. Between 2010 and 2020, 164 people died in ideological extremist-related mass killings, according to the report. That was much more than in any other decade except the 1990s, when the bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City killed 168.US mass killings linked to extremism at highest level in decades, report findsRead moreIn his visit to the Ohio community where a freight train’s derailment earlier this month sparked fears of severe pollution, transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg expressed regret for not speaking out about the disaster sooner:Transportation Sec. Pete Buttigieg admits he waited too long to address the train derailment disaster in East Palestine, Ohio:“I felt strongly about this and could’ve expressed that sooner.” pic.twitter.com/i3DD12VV62— The Recount (@therecount) February 23, 2023
      The stop in the village of East Palestine by Buttigieg, who is considered a rising star in the Democratic party and was a candidate in the 2020 presidential election, came less than a day after an appearance by Donald Trump, where the former president criticized the Biden administration:“Get over here.”— Donald Trump’s message to President Biden during his visit to East Palestine, Ohio after the train derailment disaster pic.twitter.com/eRiWy9vurW— The Recount (@therecount) February 22, 2023
      Democrats have hit back at Trump, saying he rolled back safety regulations on the railroad and chemical industries during his time in the White House:Trump’s environmental rollbacks in focus on visit to Ohio toxic train siteRead moreNot 24 hours after Donald Trump came and went from East Palestine, Ohio, transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg paid a visit to the scene of the freight train derailment that spilled toxic chemicals in the community.Here’s a clip of his visit, from CNN:This morning, Transportation Sec. Pete Buttigieg is on the scene of the Norfolk Southern train derailment disaster in East Palestine, Ohio. pic.twitter.com/fHiHXmKT13— The Recount (@therecount) February 23, 2023 More

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      January 6 insurrection has proved an obsession for Fox News’s Tucker Carlson

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      AnalysisJanuary 6 insurrection has proved an obsession for Fox News’s Tucker CarlsonAdam GabbattWhatever the TV host claims the footage from Kevin McCarthy shows will be worth taking with a generous pinch of saltIn the two years since the US Capitol attack, Tucker Carlson has described the violent assault on American democracy connected to the deaths of nine people as “vandalism” and a “forgettably minor” outbreak of “mob violence”.Kevin McCarthy denounced for giving January 6 tapes to Fox News hostRead moreThe Fox News host has said the attack on Congress by supporters of Donald Trump, which has prompted more than 900 arrests, was a “false flag” operation, part of alleged persecution of conservatives by shady government forces. Carlson even devoted much of a conspiracy-laden TV series to undermining the severity of the attack.It is not difficult to imagine, then, what Carlson might do with the 44,000 hours of Capitol surveillance footage from January 6 handed to him exclusively by Kevin McCarthy, the Republican House speaker. In fact Carlson gave an indication on his show on Monday night.“Our producers, some of our smartest producers, have been looking at this stuff and trying to figure out what it means and how it contradicts or not the story we’ve been told for more than two years,” Carlson said.He added: “We think already in some ways that it does contradict that story.”The January 6 insurrection has proved an obsession for Carlson.He has devoted countless hours of his nightly show to defending the paticipants, belittling politicians who investigated the attack, and advancing conspiracy theories.In Patriot Purge, a documentary that ran on the Fox Nation streaming service in November 2021, Carlson led a multipronged attack against the accepted version of what happened on January 6.Across the three-part series, which attempted to downplay what actually took place while passing off any violence as not the fault of Trump supporters, Carlson dabbled in conspiracy theories and gave a clue as to what we can expect once his producers are done with the Capitol footage.Carlson used Patriot Purge to claim, without evidence, that the insurrection was actually an FBI-led operation intended to “purge” Trump voters in a “new war on terror”.He hosted guests who claimed, without evidence, that antifascist activists were seen “changing clothes” into “Trump gear” before the attack began. This claim was overlaid, Media Matters reported, with a clip of a man putting on a sweatshirt. It’s likely Carlson will fish out similar clips over the coming weeks.The Fox News host has also repeatedly said police were to blame for hundreds of people illegally entering the Capitol.“Why did authorities open the doors of the Capitol to rioters and let them walk in, usher them in the doors?” Carlson said last year. “That’s utterly bizarre. You saw that live. No one’s ever explained it.”No one has ever explained it because, according to multiple fact checks, it didn’t happen. Whether that will stop Carlson plucking footage to support the lie remains to be seen.Whatever happens, it seems unlikely Carlson’s analysis will produce findings similar to those of the bipartisan House committee which investigated the attack.The committee, which conducted more than a thousand interviews and reviewed much of the footage Carlson has now been given, found that Trump was “was directly responsible for summoning what became a violent mob”, and that the attack was part of an orchestrated “scheme” to overturn the results of the 2020 election.Fox News did not respond to a request for comment about Carlson’s access to the January 6 footage.Democrats, as might be expected, responded furiously, a wave of party grandees suggesting McCarthy had made the move to appease the far-right of the Republican party which opposed his bid to be speaker.As targets of many of the January 6 rioters, Democrats are also worried for their safety in future. Jamie Raskin, the Marylander who served on the January 6 committee, called McCarthy’s move an “ethical collapse”.“What security precautions were taken to keep this from becoming a roadmap for 2024 insurrection?” Raskin asked on Twitter.Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, said the footage would “allow those who want to commit another attack to learn how Congress is safeguarded”.“By handpicking Tucker Carlson, Speaker McCarthy laid bare that this sham is simply about pandering to Maga election deniers, not the truth,” Schumer wrote in a letter to his colleagues.“If the past is any indication, Tucker Carlson will select only clips that he can use to twist the facts to sow doubt of what happened on January 6 and feed into the propaganda he’s already put on Fox News’ air, which based on recent reports he may not even believe himself.”That was a reference to a batch of Carlson’s text messages made public as part of a $1.6bn defamation lawsuit against Fox News from Dominion Voting Systems, which appeared to show the host’s private views do not always match what he says on air.How Dominion Voting Systems filing proves Fox News was ‘deliberately lying’Read moreIn one text following the 2020 election Carlson described Trump, who he spent hours praising on his show, as a “demonic force” good at “destroying things.“He’s the undisputed world champion of that,” Carlson wrote. “He could easily destroy us if we play it wrong.”Other Carlson messages described Sidney Powell, an attorney who claimed Dominion machines flipped votes from Trump to Joe Biden, as “a lunatic”, while conceding “there wasn’t enough fraud to change the outcome” of the election.In all, it suggests that whatever Carlson and his team now dig out of the January 6 security footage, and whatever Carlson claims that footage shows, will be worth taking with a generous pinch of salt.TopicsUS Capitol attackFox NewsUS politicsRepublicansThe far rightanalysisReuse this content More

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      Kevin McCarthy denounced for giving January 6 tapes to Fox News host

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      Kevin McCarthy denounced for giving January 6 tapes to Fox News hostRepublican House speaker says he promised to release footage of deadly attack as Democrats denounce release to Tucker CarlsonTop Democrats in Washington cried foul after Kevin McCarthy, the new Republican House speaker, released more than 40,000 hours of surveillance footage from the January 6 US Capitol attack to Tucker Carlson, the far-right Fox News host who has consistently downplayed the deadly riot.The Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, told colleagues McCarthy’s decision “poses grave security risks” and “needlessly expos[es] the Capitol complex to one of the worst … risks since 9/11”.Democrats condemn McCarthy for handing Capitol attack footage to Tucker Carlson – live Read moreBut McCarthy told the New York Times he had “promised” to release the footage, apparently as part of dealmaking with which he clinched the speakership after far-right rebels forced him through 15 nominating votes.“I was asked in the press about these tapes,” McCarthy added, “and I said they do belong to the American public. I think sunshine lets everybody make their own judgment.”McCarthy said he wanted to give Carlson “exclusive” access to the footage, but could release it to other outlets later.Carlson, a prominent voice in far-right media, has claimed the insurrection was a “false flag” attack and generally tried to downplay it without offering evidence. He told the Times he was taking the footage released by McCarthy “very seriously” and had a large team reviewing it.Nine deaths, including law enforcement suicides, have been linked to the attack on Congress by Trump supporters seeking to block certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 election win, fueled by Trump’s lie about widespread electoral fraud.Trump was impeached for inciting the attack but acquitted when enough Senate Republicans stayed loyal. He continues to run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024. The US Department of Justice is investigating January 6 but has not yet acted on criminal referrals regarding Trump made last year by a House committee.A possible Republican challenger to Trump, his former vice-president, Mike Pence, is expected to fight a grand jury subpoena as part of the justice department’s January 6 investigation.Pence would be a key witness, offering unique insight into conversations with Trump and the efforts to stop certification of the 2020 presidential election, a process over which Pence ultimately presided.Pence was at a December 2021 meeting at the White House with Republican lawmakers who discussed objections to Biden’s win. Pence also spoke to Trump one-on-one on 6 January, when Trump was imploring him to unlawfully reject electoral college votes for Biden at the joint session of Congress.Those two interactions are of particular investigative interest to the justice department-appointed special counsel, Jack Smith, as his office examines whether Trump sought to unlawfully obstruct certification and defrauded the US by seeking to overturn the 2020 election.However, experts in constitutional law this week told the Guardian that Pence had a good chance of success in his attempt to avoid having to testify by citing the speech or debate clause, the constitutional provision that protects congressional officials from legal proceedings related to their work.On Wednesday, Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic House minority leader, followed Schumer in protesting McCarthy’s decision to release January 6 footage to Carlson and Fox News.“The apparent transfer of video footage represents an egregious security breach that endangers the hardworking women and men of the United States Capitol police, who valiantly defended our democracy with their lives at risk on that fateful day,” the New York congressman said.Jeffries noted that the House January 6 committee, a panel consisting of seven Democrats and two anti-Trump Republicans which operated in the last Congress but disbanded when Republicans took control of the chamber, had enjoyed access to the footage McCarthy has now released.The January 6 committee, Jeffries said, was “able to diligently review [the footage] … with numerous protocols in place to protect the safety of the members, police officers and staff who were targeted during the violent insurrection.“There is no indication that these same precautionary measures have been taken in connection with the transmission [to Carlson] of the video footage at issue.“Unfortunately, the apparent disclosure of sensitive video material is yet another example of the grave threat to the security of the American people represented by the extreme Maga Republican majority” – a reference to Trump’s campaign slogan “Make America great again”.In his letter to colleagues, Schumer said the footage showed where cameras are located in the Capitol and other details of security arrangements.The New York senator added: “Giving someone as disingenuous as Tucker Carlson exclusive access to this type of sensitive information is a grave mistake by Speaker McCarthy that will only embolden supporters of the big lie [about voter fraud and the 2020 election] and weaken faith in our democracy.”TopicsUS Capitol attackRepublicansUS politicsKevin McCarthyDonald TrumpFox NewsnewsReuse this content More

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      Former attorney general in key state withheld evidence debunking 2020 election fraud

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      Former attorney general in key state withheld evidence debunking 2020 election fraudRepublican Mark Brnovich’s successor releases reports that debunked claims of fraud in Maricopa county in 2020 electionThe former attorney general of Arizona, Mark Brnovich, failed to release documents that showed his office’s investigation into the 2020 election did not find evidence of widespread fraud in the state’s most populous county.The Washington Post reported on Wednesday that Brnovich would not turn over public records that detailed his investigators’ findings. His successor, the Democratic attorney general Kris Mayes, released the records, which showed several reports that debunked rampant claims of election problems in Maricopa county.Revealed: Trump secretly donated $1m to discredited Arizona election ‘audit’ Read moreBrnovich, a Republican, was running for US Senate in 2022 while his office oversaw an investigation into the 2020 election. He released two reports related to the work – one that showed just one example of a dead person voting and one “interim report” that made nebulous, unfounded criticisms of the county’s elections.But the unreleased reports show Brnovich’s investigators did not agree with some assertions he made publicly, such as that the county did not follow proper signature verification procedures or that the county had not been responsive to his requests for information.In an interview with the Guardian on Wednesday, Mayes said her office discovered a bunch of unfulfilled records requests upon taking over in January. She also wanted to find any potential final report for the 2020 investigation, which was not found.Her office released two additional interim reports and an investigative summary, which are all publicly posted on the attorney general’s website now.“This office has a solemn duty to be honest and transparent with the people of Arizona,” Mayes said. “The dark cloud cast over the 2020 and 2022 elections because of the insane conspiracy theories perpetrated by high-profile election deniers could have and should have been stopped, especially as it related to Maricopa county and its elections officials. I believe the people of Arizona had a right to know this information before the 2022 election. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen.”The investigation is considered closed, though there are hundreds more documents going through the redaction process that will be released once the office has completed that process.The office under Brnovich spent about 10,000 hours on the investigation and each of its 60 investigators spent at least some time on it, the Post reported.Mayes said it is hard to put a dollar figure on how much that cost the state or taxpayers, but the whole effort was clearly a “distraction from the core mission of this office”.“But I also want to say I’m incredibly proud of the work the agents and support staff who worked on these investigations did. They did so diligently, thoroughly and professionally, as they do all of their work here,” she said.Mayes said she did not get any insight into why Brnovich did not release the information while he was in charge, saying Brnovich would need to answer that for himself. Brnovich did not respond to a request for comment.“This kind of failure to release information to the people of Arizona is not how this office will operate moving forward under my leadership,” Mayes said. “My administration will be truthful and transparent.”The Post report compelled elections officials throughout the state to comment on the revelations, especially those who Brnovich had previously criticized publicly.Clint Hickman, the chairman of the Maricopa county board of supervisors, said he was “absolutely disgusted” that Brnovich concealed reports on the 2020 election and applauded Mayes for finally releasing the documents. He implored people who care about elections to read the reports.“This was a gross misuse of his elected office and an appalling waste of taxpayer dollars, as well as a waste of the time and effort of professional investigators,” Hickman said in a statement.He pointed to the onslaught of threats and harassment the board, elections officials and election workers have faced while false claims of impropriety in the 2020 election lingered for years.“For three years, my colleagues have been called traitors, cheaters, and liars … and those are just the names I can print,” Hickman said. “It has been absolute hell on all of us, but I would do it again in a second and I believe that every member of this board would do it again because all of us stayed within the law.”Stephen Richer, the county’s Republican recorder, noted two elements of the reports where investigators contradicted Brnovich’s interim report by saying the county had been responsive and followed signature verification procedures. Those notes from investigators “distinctly show the ways in which our office cooperated with and supported the attorney general’s office in the development of last year’s interim report,” Richer said.Arizona’s Secretary of state Adrian Fontes, a Democrat who in 2020 was the Maricopa county recorder, said he was “deeply disappointed by the wasteful and pointless actions by a top law enforcement official who diverted thousands of hours of staff time to pursue unfounded allegations of election fraud”.TopicsArizonaThe fight for democracyUS politicsUS elections 2020RepublicansnewsReuse this content More