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      Republican who voted to impeach Trump projected to win primary

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      Republican who voted to impeach Trump projected to win primaryDan Newhouse, one of 10 members of Congress to vote for impeachment, set to beat Trump-backed Loren Culp in Washington state Dan Newhouse, one of the few Republican House members to vote in January in favor of the impeachment of Donald Trump, is poised to move forward to the general election in Washington state, according to a projection by the Associated Press.Viktor Orbán turns Texas conference into transatlantic far-right love-inRead moreNewhouse was one of 10 Republicans who voted in January to have Trump impeached, even ahead of explosive revelations about the former president’s support and endorsement of the January 6 riots just a year prior.This victory comes on the heels of another fellow Republican supporter of the impeachment, Peter Meijer, losing his votes in Michigan.Republican Loren Culp, who has been backed by Trump in the election, was a close second to Newhouse in Washington’s fourth congressional district, garnering the second highest number of Republican votes in four out of the eight counties. In some of the counties where Newhouse won, however, he received almost double the number of votes as Culp.Sign up to First Edition, our free daily newsletter – every weekday morning at 7am BSTCulp was up against six other Republican candidates, and will face Doug White, the district’s only Democratic candidate, in November for the general election.Despite his victory, the journey has rarely been smooth for Newhouse. Following his vote for impeachment in January, six Republican leaders in his district demanded his resignation.He defended his position, claiming he “made a decision to vote based on my oath to support and defend the constitution”.On 2 August, he had majority votes in three out of those six counties that had voted for his resignation.TopicsRepublicansUS politicsWashington stateDonald TrumpnewsReuse this content More

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      Viktor Orbán turns Texas conference into transatlantic far-right love-in

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      Viktor Orbán turns Texas conference into transatlantic far-right love-in The authoritarian Hungarian leader was embraced as a kindred spirit by Trump fans at the CPAC event in Dallas“The globalists can all go to hell,” declared Viktor Orbán. “I have come to Texas!”The crowd roared, whooped and gave a standing ovation as if at a campaign rally for former US president Donald Trump. It was evident they saw in Orbán a kindred spirit – a blunt weapon to wield against liberal foes.Orbán urges Christian nationalists in Europe and US to ‘unite forces’ at CPACRead moreThe Hungarian prime minister was the opening speaker at this week’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Dallas, Texas, and perhaps the most vivid demonstration yet of the mutual and rapidly growing affinity between the far right in America and Europe.Orbán, who has been prime minister for 12 years, boasted about his hardline stance on illegal immigration, law and order and “gender ideology” in schools. He touted a rise in marriages and fall in abortions. He was unapologetic in his defence of blood-and-soil nationalism and contempt for “leftist media”.And extraordinarily for a foreign leader, he overtly sided with an opposition party – the Republicans – rather than the incumbent Democrats, paying homage to Trump at his golf club in Bedminister, New Jersey, while ignoring Joe Biden at the White House.Calling for Christian nationalists to “unite forces”, Orbán told CPAC: “Victory will never be found by taking the path of least resistance. We must take back the institutions in Washington and in Brussels. We must find friends and allies in one another. We must coordinate the movements of our troops because we face the same challenge.”He noted that US midterm elections will be later this year followed by the presidential contest and European parliamentary elections in 2024. “These two locations will define the two fronts in the battle being fought for western civilisation. Today, we hold neither of them. Yet we need both.”Rarely has the alliance between nationalist parties across the Atlantic been so bold, overt and unshackled. CPAC was once the domain of cold warrior Ronald Reagan. But in recent years guest speakers have included the Brexit cheerleader Nigel Farage and Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, niece of the far-right French politician Marine Le Pen.On Friday the lineup included Steve Bannon, who has worked with openly racist far-right leaders across Europe and once leased a medieval monastery outside Rome to run a “populism bootcamp”.Bannon is former executive chairman of Breitbart News, which he once described as “the platform of the ‘alt-right’”, a movement associated with efforts to preserve “white identity” and defend “western values”. He served as chief strategist in the Trump White House and is now facing prison after being convicted of contempt of Congress for failing to comply with the January 6 committee.CPAC Texas also heard from the Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who railed against the media and told the audience: “When I said that I’m a Christian nationalist, I have nothing to be ashamed of because that’s what most Americans are.” The event will close on Saturday with Trump who, like Orbán, has faced scrutiny over his relationship with Russia’s Vladimir Putin.Peter Montgomery, a senior fellow at the non-profit group Right Wing Watch, said: “Rightwing leaders, and especially the religious right leaders in the US, love Viktor Orbán for the same reasons they love Vladimir Putin. This overt embrace of Christian nationalism, willingness to use strongman tactics and the power of the government to enforce so-called traditional values about family and sexuality.”Montgomery added: “We’ve actually seen some signs of that illiberalism and authoritarianism on the Trumpist right in their efforts to ban the teaching of racism in schools, in their aggressive attacks against LGBTQ materials and information in schools and libraries, and even their encouragement of harassment and violence that we’ve seen against election officials and school board members.“All those signs are signs of a disturbing embrace of authoritarianism on the US right and Orbán is a model and a hero for that to them.”Orbán has few bigger fans than Tucker Carlson, a Fox News host who interviewed him during a week-long broadcast from Hungary last year. Carlson has promoted “great replacement theory” – the baseless claim of a plot to turn white people into a minority through immigration – in 400 of his shows, according to an analysis by the New York Times.Orbán’s visit to the US came amid backlash over anti-migrant remarks in which he warned that Europeans must not “become peoples of mixed race” and cited The Camp of the Saints, a 1973 French novel by Jean Raspail that portrays a dystopia in which a flotilla of south Asian people invade France. The novel has also been promoted by Trump allies such as Bannon and Stephen Miller.Rick Wilson, co-founder of the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group, said: “Orbán represents a quiet part out loud element of today’s Republican party. That quiet part out loud is the overt appeal to racial politics, the not-bothering-to-hide-it white supremacy element of the global alt-right and authoritarian movement. Donald Trump was the thing that let it loose in the US.“Orbán has struck a set of blows against the media in Hungary, which is one of their main targets here. He has overtly embraced the sort of white replacement politics that are so popular with the Tucker Carlson set and a lot of the other folks that are members of the American Maga [Make America great again] movement.”Wilson, author of Everything Trump Touches Dies, added: “Those things have all added up to giving Orbán a kind of fanboy following in the US of people who were once conservative Republicans and who are now racially driven authoritarian wannabes. He’s the guy who’s pulling it off at a scale that Donald Trump didn’t achieve in the US.”That appeal includes a stealth attack on democracy. Critics say that Hungary’s judiciary, media and other institutions are suffering death by a thousand cuts as Orbán slowly and surely consolidates power. His rightwing Fidesz party has drawn legislative districts in Hungary in a way that makes it very difficult for opposition parties to win seats – not dissimilar to partisan gerrymandering efforts for state legislative and congressional seats in America. The process currently favors Republicans because they control more of the state legislatures that create those boundaries.And at CPAC, purveyors of Trump’s “big lie” – the false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him – held prominent slots. Mike Lindell, chief executive of MyPillow, pushed preposterous conspiracy theories about voting machines. Several speakers denounced the congressional investigation into the January 6 insurrection as a sham.Kurt Bardella, an adviser to the Democratic National Committee, said of Orbán: “They see a blueprint for fascism. They see someone who embodies the Republican party’s values of obstructing free and fair elections, of undermining democratic institutions, of expanding government power and politicising the judicial branch, marginalising minority communities and corrupting the pillars of a free society.“When you talk about an autocratic regime, that’s what Prime Minister Orbán is in Hungary and it’s exactly the blueprint that Republicans are hoping to follow here in the United States of America. It’s not surprising in the least that, especially in a place like CPAC Texas, these rightwing white nationalists are embracing someone like Orbán.”Earlier this year, when CPAC held an event in Europe, it naturally chose Hungary. Orbán remains an outlier on the continent – for now. Le Pen lost the French presidential election to Emmanuel Macron, though she gained the far right’s biggest share of the vote yet. In Italy Giorgia Meloni, leader of a party with neofascist origins, is strongly positioned to become prime minister after snap elections this autumn.Robert P Jones, founder and chief executive of the Public Religion Research Institute thinktank in Washington and author of White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity, said: “There is this identifiable movement. The difference in many of the European countries is it is represented in minority parties.“In the US now, I think it’s safe to say that this ethno-religious vision of the country has taken over one of our two major political parties. Even demographically speaking, nearly seven in 10 Republicans are white and Christian today in a country that’s only 44% white and Christian. You can see that identity taking hold as the animating beating heart of the party. It’s a really dangerous situation.”TopicsCPACThe far rightViktor OrbánUS politicsRepublicansHungaryfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Dick Cheney attacks Donald Trump as ‘greatest threat to our republic’

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      Dick Cheney attacks Donald Trump as ‘greatest threat to our republic’Vice-president under George W Bush denounces, in campaign ad for daughter Liz, ‘coward … who lost his election, and lost big’ Dick Cheney has branded Donald Trump the greatest “threat to our republic”, in a new campaign ad for his daughter, Liz Cheney, who is running for re-election in Wyoming.“In our nation’s 236-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump,” said Cheney, who served as vice-president for two terms under George W Bush.Alex Jones: Sandy Hook family seeks punitive damages beyond $4.1m awardRead moreCheney said: “He tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him.“He is a coward. A real man wouldn’t lie to his supporters. He lost his election, and he lost big. I know it, he knows it, and deep down I think most Republicans know it.”Cheney went on to speak about how proud he was of his daughter “for standing up to the truth, doing what’s right, honoring her oath to the constitution when so many in our party are too scared to do so”.The one-minute ad featured the elder Cheney’s sharpest public attacks against Trump to date. Best known as the most powerful vice-president in American history, and a major figure in leading the US to war in Iraq, he has taken to defending his daughter in her fight against Trump.“There’s nothing more important she will ever do than lead the effort to make sure Donald Trump is never near the Oval Office. And she will succeed,” he said in the ad.The younger Cheney has been widely praised from liberals as vice-chairwoman of the House select committee investigating the January 6 attack. Cheney has been one of Trump’s most pointed critics, accusing him of violating the constitution for his role in the insurrection.In return, she has been largely ostracized from her party. Cheney faces an uphill re-election battle against the Trump-backed candidate Harriet Hageman, who maintains that the 2020 election was stolen.“Liz Cheney has long forgotten she works for Wyoming (or perhaps she never knew), not the Radical Democrats,” Hageman tweeted on Thursday. “Wyoming deserves a Congresswoman who will represent us AND our conservative values. It’s time to retire elitist Liz Cheney.”Though Cheney has at least a million dollars more in donations to her campaign against Hageman, she was 22 points behind Hageman in a July poll conducted by the Casper Star-Tribune.In an interview with CNN on Thursday, Cheney said she does not expect to lose on 16 August.“I really believe that the people of Wyoming fundamentally understand how important fidelity to the constitution is – understand how important it is that we fight for those fundamental principles on which everything else is based,” she said.TopicsRepublicansWyomingUS politicsDick CheneyDonald TrumpnewsReuse this content More

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      Trump-backed candidate Kari Lake projected to win Republican nod for Arizona governor

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      Trump-backed candidate Kari Lake projected to win Republican nod for Arizona governorFormer news anchor campaigned on proposed election measures, including bans on vote-counting machines and voting by mail Kari Lake, a former news anchor who has embraced Donald Trump’s false claims that voter fraud cost him the 2020 election, has been projected to win the Republican nomination for governor of Arizona.Lake campaigned on enacting many new election measures, including getting rid of vote-counting machines and banning voting by mail.Edison Research and NBC News both projected Lake’s victory late on Thursday over Karrin Taylor Robson, who was endorsed by Trump’s former vice-president, Mike Pence.Along with primary wins for Mark Finchem as Republican nominee for secretary of state and Abraham Hamadeh for state attorney general, Arizona, a key swing state, is now facing three election-denier candidates for its top positions overseeing the conduct of elections – including certifying the results.According to NBC, Lake had 46.8% of the vote to Taylor Robson’s 44% with 90% of the expected vote counted.Lake did not dispute the results of her own election victory. She said it showed that people “forgotten by the establishment just delivered a political earthquake”.TopicsArizonaDonald TrumpUS politicsRepublicansUS midterm elections 2022newsReuse this content More

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      On the chopping block? Ron Johnson denies threatening social security

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      On the chopping block? Ron Johnson denies threatening social securitySpokesman for Wisconsin senator targeted by Democrats in midterms says he is not trying to end spending on key programs A swing-state Republican senator denied threatening social security and Medicare, after Democrats accused him of putting them “on the chopping block”.‘I can’t live on $709 a month’: Americans on social security push for its expansionRead moreRon Johnson, who entered Congress on the Tea Party wave of 2010, is up for re-election in Wisconsin. As they attempt to keep hold of the Senate, Democrats think they have a chance of winning the seat.In an interview with The Regular Joe Show podcast, Johnson said social security and Medicare, crucial support programs for millions of older and disabled Americans and their dependents, should no longer be considered mandatory spending.“If you qualify for the entitlement, you just get it no matter what the cost,” Johnson said. “And our problem in this country is that more than 70% of our federal budget, of our federal spending, is all mandatory spending. It’s on automatic pilot … you just don’t do proper oversight. You don’t get in there and fix the programs going bankrupt.”He added: “What we ought to be doing is we ought to turn everything into discretionary spending so it’s all evaluated so that we can fix problems or fix programs that are broken, that are going to be going bankrupt. As long as things are on automatic pilot, we just continue to pile up debt.”Democrats pounced. Chuck Schumer of New York, the Senate majority leader, referred to Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan when he said: “They’re saying the quiet part out loud. Maga Republicans want to put social security and Medicare on the chopping block.”A Johnson spokesperson said Schumer was “lying”.The spokesperson said Johnson’s “point was that without fiscal discipline and oversight typically found with discretionary spending, Congress has allowed the guaranteed benefits for programs like social security and Medicare to be threatened.“This must be addressed by Congress taking its responsibilities seriously to ensure that seniors don’t need to question whether the programs they depend on remain solvent.”Social security payments average just over $1,600 a month.Last year, Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, told the Guardian: “The nation is really facing a retirement income crisis, where too many people aren’t going to be able to retire and maintain savings to live on. It’s a very strong system, but its benefits are extremely low by virtually any way you measure them.”Democrats see Republican threats to so-called “entitlements” – programs paid for by taxes and relied upon by vulnerable people – as a potent electoral issue. Polls show strong bipartisan support.From Joe Biden to leaders in Congress, Democrats have seized on a plan published by Rick Scott of Florida, the chair of the Republican Senate campaign committee.Scott proposed that all Americans should pay some income tax and that all federal laws should expire after five years if Congress does not renew them.The senator insisted he was “not going to raise anybody’s taxes” – despite saying more people should pay tax. He also said Congress “needs to start being honest with the American public and tell them exactly what we’re going to do to make sure they continue to get their Medicare and their social security”.But his own leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said: “We will not have, as part of our agenda, a bill that raises taxes on half the American people and sunsets social security and Medicare within five years.”Wisconsin will hold its primaries on Tuesday. Johnson is being challenged by the current lieutenant governor, Mandela Barnes.Jessica Taylor of the Cook Political Report told Wisconsin Public Radio Johnson was national Democrats’ “No 1 incumbent … that they are targeting”.TopicsRepublicansWisconsinUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Time is running out. The justice department must indict Trump | Laurence H Tribe and Dennis Aftergut

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      Time is running out. The Department of Justice must indict and convict TrumpLaurence H Tribe and Dennis AftergutIf Trump or any of the likely Republican nominees win in 2024, they will immediately move to protect those who attempted to overturn the 2020 election On Tuesday CNN reported that key January 6 texts have been erased by officials of Donald Trump’s defense department in addition to homeland security and the Secret Service. Not even a clueless Hamlet could avoid smelling “something rotten in the state of Denmark”.With the growing list of deletions, there is a whole new criminal conspiracy to investigate: one to destroy evidence of the grave federal crimes already under investigation. Nothing so focuses the prosecutorial mind or underscores the need to accelerate a criminal investigation as evidence that the investigation’s target may have plotted to erase the proof of his wrongdoing that is needed to hold him accountable.Trump’s attempted coup continues – even after January 6 hearings are over for now | Robert ReichRead moreThe attorney general, Merrick Garland, knows that the fish always rots from the head. On 26 July, the Washington Post broke news that the justice department’s investigation is focused on Donald Trump himself. Time is of the essence in bringing his case to indictment.Indeed, a moving target who gives every indication that he plans to strike again must trigger a different cost-benefit calculus in the inevitable debates both within and outside the justice department about when enough proof has been gathered to indict responsibly – and when it would be a dereliction of duty to delay further.The former president’s insistence that he has nothing to be remorseful about (other than not marching to the Capitol) makes that debate seem academic. And the steps being taken at his behest even now in battleground states to replace 2020’s failure with 2024’s success redouble the urgency. Shakespeare’s Brutus had it right when he said, in Julius Caesar: “We must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures.”In these circumstances, prudence counsels running the clock backwards to set clear benchmarks for moving forward. Any calculation of how to proceed must start with two pessimistic premises. First, that Trump will run in 2024 and could win. Second, that if any of the likely Republican nominees wins, the next administration will be one that is eager to scrap any prosecution of the last.Hence, the goal must be to secure a conviction before November 2024, and in any event, no later than 20 January 2025, when the next presidential term begins. It is already too late for all appeals from any such conviction to be exhausted by that date, but the key to holding the chief conspirator accountable is a jury verdict of guilt.Consider this: the trial of insurrectionist Guy Reffitt occurred 13 months after his original indictment. That trial, and its delaying pre-trial motions, were incalculably less complex than Trump’s would be. One can easily anticipate motions that, if denied, might go far up the appellate chain.It is not hard to imagine a majority of supreme court justices in no great hurry to resolve motions upon which the start of trial could depend. One can easily conceive a 20-month or longer period with the former president indicted but not yet tried. If Trump is not formally charged until January 2023, that would imply a multi-month trial starting in September or October. Should he run for president and win in November, we would have a president-elect in the middle of a criminal trial.Part of why a lengthy post-indictment/pre-verdict period is foreseeable is that federal district courts are bound to protect an accused’s rights to full airing of pre-trial claims and the time needed to file and argue them. Trump will have many pre-trial claims, setting out his serial and inexhaustible list of grievances, the imagined violation of his rights, his purported immunity from prosecution as a former president and the overriding unfairness of it all.Some district court judges more than others will balance protections for the accused with accountability’s pragmatic need for speed. Importantly, even the four Trump-appointed district court judges in DC have often shown little sympathy for those charged with perpetrating the events of January 6 or resisting their investigation. On 1 August, Judge Dabney Friedrich sentenced Reffitt to more than seven years in prison, the longest sentence to date.Judge Tim Kelly refused to dismiss indictments against Proud Boy leaders who were part of the January 6 siege. Judge Carl Nichols brooked no nonsense in Steve Bannon’s July trial, deliberately preventing it from becoming the “political circus” Bannon sought to make it.On the other hand, among eight judges who have considered defendants’ motions to dismiss federal charges of obstructing an official government proceeding – Congress’s January 6 election certification session – Nichols was the lone outlier who dismissed the count. That is one of the main charges that observers believe federal prosecutors could bring against Trump.The point is that if Trump were to be indicted, the Department of Justice cannot count on a favorable judge putting it on a jet stream to an actual trial. So what does that mean for precisely when Trump must be formally indicted?Thankfully, it doesn’t imply the impossible. The Department of Justice could pull an experienced prosecutor or two from every US attorney’s office and put them together on the case.With all stops pulled, prosecutors still have time to do what is needed before year end. The tasks include talking to witnesses that the January 6 House committee interviewed and deposed, which is well under way. Cassidy Hutchinson, principal aide to Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows, and Vice-President Mike Pence’s top aides, Marc Short and Greg Jacobs, are now working with the Department of Justice or appearing before its grand jury.Cooperation is already reported to have begun among the lawyer-enablers of Trump’s coup plotting. With the investigation’s accelerating aim at Trump, every potential target’s defense counsel has surely discussed with the target the advantages of an early offer to plead guilty and cooperate. Early birds get better worms.On 2 August, the federal grand jury investigating the lead-up to the January 6 insurrection subpoenaed the former White House counsel Pat Cipollone. Department of Justice prosecutors are reported to be preparing to go to court to secure his testimony about his conversations with Trump if Cipollone again declines to disclose them on grounds of executive privilege.The task ahead is massive, but if attacked with supreme urgency, it can get done. The building blocks for a trial of Donald Trump must be put into place with alacrity. In no case more than this one, the perfect cannot be the enemy of the good. The clock is ticking.
      Laurence H Tribe is the Carl M Loeb University professor and professor of constitutional law emeritus at Harvard Law School
      Dennis Aftergut is a former federal prosecutor, currently of counsel to Lawyers Defending American Democracy
      TopicsUS politicsOpinionDonald TrumpUS Capitol attackJanuary 6 hearingsRepublicansMerrick GarlandcommentReuse this content More

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      Election denialism remains powerful in Republican politics | The fight to vote

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      Election denialism remains powerful in Republican politicsRepublican nominees in Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania are on the verge of claiming offices where they would have enormous power over elections Get the latest updates on voting rights in the Guardian’s Fight to vote newsletterHello, and Happy Thursday,I’m writing this as we’re still digesting the results of Tuesday’s primary elections in several states, the latest test of whether Republican candidates who have embraced lies about the 2020 election can get the backing of GOP voters. So far, the results only add to the considerable evidence showing election denialism remains remarkably powerful in Republican politics.One of the most consequential results on Tuesday was in Arizona, where Mark Finchem, a state lawmaker, easily won the Republican nomination to run for secretary of state, a position from which he would oversee elections. Few people in Arizona have fought as aggressively to overturn the 2020 election as Finchem has – he first tried to block Congress from recognizing Joe Biden’s legitimate victory in the state, and has since sought to spread misinformation and decertify the election, which is not possible.Finchem now joins Kristina Karamo in Michigan, Jim Marchant in Nevada, and Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania as Republican nominees on the verge of claiming offices where they would have enormous power over elections (Karamo and Marchant are running for secretary of state, Mastriano is running for governor, where he would get to appoint the secretary of state). So far, three of the four secretary of state candidates Trump has endorsed have won (the one exception came in Georgia’s primary).“Having even one election denier in a statewide office would be a five-alarm fire for our elections,” Joanna Lydgate, CEO of States United Action, which is tracking election deniers running for office, said in a statement. “Recent primaries – particularly in Arizona and Michigan – should worry all of us as Americans. But voters have the power here. They can slow this trend in the primaries to come, and they can stop it in its tracks in the general election.”Before Tuesday’s vote, Finchem, who was endorsed by Trump, encouraged supporters to congregate at voting sites to watch for wrongdoing. “Stand 75ft away from the entrance of the polls,” Finchem told a crowd recently, according to the Arizona Mirror. “The mere fact that you are there watching scares the hell out of them.”“If Mark Finchem is victorious this November, it could jeopardize the integrity of the 2024 presidential election and possibly could subvert the will of the people for years to come,” Ellen Kurtz, the founder and president of iVote, a liberal group focused on voting rights and elections, said in a statement. “No one who attempts to stop the peaceful transfer of power by attending a violent, deadly attack on our Capitol deserves to be on any ballot.”There’s deep concern that these officials, if elected, could use the power of their office to attempt to overturn the results of a valid election.Last week, I asked Chuck Coughlin, a Republican consultant in Arizona, what he thought Finchem would do if he was in charge of a future election and the result was in doubt. “He would not fall in line. He would follow the Donald Trump script of doing everything possible to be a disrupter if the election outcome is anything but what he wanted. I don’t see any go-along-to-get-along in Mark Finchem,” he told me.Kari Lake, a Republican who made election denialism a pillar of her campaign, also is leading in the Arizona governor’s race. Votes are still being counted, but if she wins, it would place election denialism front and center in a state where top Republicans have aggressively embraced it.There was one other big victory for Trump on Tuesday. Rusty Bowers, the term-limited GOP speaker of the Arizona House, lost his primary to a Trump-backed challenger in a state senate race. Bowers played a central role in rebuffing Trump’s efforts to overturn the election in his state and was censured by the state GOP after he testified in front of the panel investigating the January 6 attack.Acknowledging the headwinds he faced for going against the former president, Bowers told NBC before the primary it would be a “miracle” if he won.Also worth watching …
      Arizona’s attorney general debunked a claim from Cyber Ninjas that nearly 300 dead people could have voted in the 2020 election in Arizona
      Some voters were stealing pens from voting sites in Arizona, egged on by a conspiracy theory
      A retired supreme court justice hired by Wisconsin Republicans to review the 2020 race publicly said in March lawmakers should consider decertifying the race. Privately, he said doing so was “a practical impossibility”.
      TopicsUS midterm elections 2022Fight to voteUS politicsUS voting rightsRepublicansfeaturesReuse this content More

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      MyPillow chief spends tens of millions in fresh crusade to push Trump’s big lie

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      MyPillow chief spends tens of millions in fresh crusade to push Trump’s big lie Mike Lindell says he has poured up to $40m into wave of lawsuits and a new movie as US experts warn of threat to democracyMyPillow chief executive Mike Lindell, a fervent Donald Trump ally, says he has poured $35-40m into a wide crusade – a wave of lawsuits to get rid of voting machines that he faults for Trump’s defeat, a new movie about voting fraud, and a hefty legal stable – to promote charges that the 2020 election was riddled with fraud, despite a flood of contrary evidence.In his frenetic quest to dispense with electronic voting equipment that he has often charged are defective, Lindell is hosting a two-day “Moment of Truth” summit on 20 and 21 August in Missouri, that he expects will draw 200 federal and state officials and staff, as well as hundreds of representatives from groups nationwide who have investigated election fraud this year and in 2020.Trump lawyers feel heat as legal net tightens on plot to overturn electionRead moreOn a related front to boost his cause, a small segment of the summit will feature 10 conservative sheriffs who have become increasingly active in fighting purported election fraud, who Lindell told the Guardian he invited so they would have “a platform to get their voices heard”.One leading voice is slated to be former Arizona sheriff Richard Mack, who runs the rightwing Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA). The organization hosted a July meeting in Las Vegas that Lindell attended and publicized via a TV operation he owns, and has taken the unorthodox step of making monitoring election fraud its top priority, which Mack has dubbed a “holy cause”.The upcoming Lindell summit underscores the growing roles of him and his allies in a sprawling network waging a multi-front war to push Trump’s “big lie” about the 2020 elections, and mobilize activists to ramp up their scrutiny of the fall elections as poll workers and poll watchers. These moves could curb voting rights and intimidate voters, say election watchdogs.The “big lie” network has been bolstered by other multimillionaires including Patrick Byrne, the former chief executive of Overstock, and at least $1m from a Donald Trump political action committee.Byrne co-founded the America Project with retired army Lt Gen Michael Flynn just a few months after they attended a meeting with Trump in December 2020, where wild schemes to overturn Joe Biden’s win were discussed. He has boasted of pouring $3m into a self -styled “election integrity” drive to hunt for potential fraud by training activists in poll watching and canvassing.Non-partisan election spending analysts warn of threats to democracy in the new voting blitzes that mega-donors who promote Trump’s “big lie” are underwriting.“Mega-donor spending, long associated with Super Pacs and non-profits, is now also aimed at shaping even how our elections are administered,” said Sheila Krumholz, who leads OpenSecrets, which tracks campaign money. “Election administration is critical infrastructure in a democracy and should not be determined by partisan power-brokers.”However, the burgeoning “big lie” ecosystem seems to have other priorities: it includes nonprofits such as the Texas-based True the Vote, which co-sponsored the CSPOA Las Vegas summit in July, and has teamed up with another sheriffs’ group, Protect America Now, run by Arizona sheriff Mark Lamb, to form an alliance to police this year’s voting for fraud.Another influential activist with strong fundraising ties on the right is Cleta Mitchell, a former Trump campaign lawyer who has spearheaded numerous “election integrity” summits in key swing states and is a leading figure at the Conservative Partnership Institute, to which Trump’s leadership Pac last year gave $1m.Mitchell participated in Trump’s infamous call on 2 January 2021 with the Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger, where Trump urged him to “find” 11,870 votes to block Biden’s win there. Mitchell was subpoenaed last month by a special grand jury in Georgia investigating whether Trump’s call and other related efforts broke state laws.The “big lie” advocates have spent tens of millions of dollars pushing baseless claims of widespread election fraud in 2020 as they have built an infrastructure of loyalists in swing states to be poll watchers and poll workers, and helped enact new laws in 18 states since 2021 that include new limits on absentee voting and other measures to make voting more difficult.Despite powerful evidence presented to the House panel investigating the January 6 Capitol attack, including former attorney general Bill Barr’s comments that he told Trump there was no evidence of significant fraud in 2020, and numerous studies showing that voting fraud is historically small, the pro-Trump network seems to be growing.“It is troubling to see conspiracy theorists investing money in a network designed to spread their lies about the 2020 election,” said Sean Morales-Doyle, the acting director of the voting rights and elections program at the Brennan Center for Justice. “They are using those conspiracies in an attempt to cause real harm to voters, and to our democracy. In the search for non-existent fraud, they are turning American citizens against their neighbors, who seek only to exercise their fundamental right to vote.”Morales-Doyle added: “Now, it seems that election deniers have begun recruiting law enforcement to their cause. At a time when both voters and election workers have cause to fear intimidation and harassment, it is shameful that law enforcement officers would compound that fear rather than offering them protection.”Some police chiefs too are very troubled by law enforcement officials getting involved in elections.“There’s no place for politics in policing,” Paul Penzone, the police chief of Arizona’s Maricopa county, told the Guardian. “We are seeing a radical movement, including some local law enforcement, of people who are committed to destroying trust in our system for their own selfish gain.“We must fight against it, or our nation will no longer be the democratic standard.”Critics notwithstanding, “big lie” advocacy looks to be broadening.For instance, Lindell’s efforts to wage war on alleged voting fraud have expanded in recent months as he has financed lawsuits to ditch voting machines in numerous states including Arizona, which Biden won. He also plowed about $1m into a new film on voting fraud by former Fox News reporter Lara Logan, which is slated to debut at his summit.Lindell predicts the film will have a “huge” impact. Logan, who was ousted from Fox after making an incendiary comparison between Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to the president, and the infamous Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, told Lindell she could “[not] find any place where there wasn’t fraud.”The summit, which will be broadcast on Lindell TV and streamed on Lindell’s FrankSpeech.com, is also scheduled to include several of the lawyers Lindell has tapped for his litigation, plus a team of cyber specialists who have done research on election fraud, Lindell said.The upcoming summit seems to underscore other ties that Lindell has been forging with Mack, the former sheriff, and his association. Mack’s Las Vegas meeting was live-streamed on Lindell’s eponymous Lindell TV, and Lindell interviewed Mack, a former board member of the far-right Oath Keepers, on his own show, The Lindell Report, on 13 July. Lindell and Mack also held a joint press event in Las Vegas where they touted how sheriffs could play key roles in fighting alleged voting fraud.Mack’s Las Vegas event also garnered more exposure due to True the Vote’s co-sponsoring, a move that reflects the Texas group’s aggressive drive to mobilize sheriffs to monitor elections.True the Vote’s recent launch of ProtectAmerica.Vote, in tandem with Arizona sheriff Mark Lamb, highlights a burgeoning alliance between the group and some sheriffs.The website for ProtectAmerica.Vote offers a sweeping mission statement that includes efforts to “empower sheriffs” and “connect citizens and sheriffs” as part of a wide-ranging drive to ferret out potential voting fraud.Other drives to promote Trump’s big lie have witnessed more fundraising and alliances to help beef up voting scrutiny for the fall elections.Mitchell’s summits, for instance, have benefited from strong links to well-heeled conservative groups who have been co-sponsors, including Tea Party Patriots Action and FreedomWorks. As senior legal fellow at CPI, Mitchell has led the summits in swing states such as Georgia, Arizona, Pennsylvania and North Carolina, and boasted of creating a “movement” to fight alleged voting fraud by recruiting poll watchers and poll workers.To that end, Mitchell and CPI have helped set up local and state taskforces, and supplied a 19-page “Citizens’ Guide to Building an Election Integrity Infrastructure”. The CPI manual suggests traditional poll monitoring methods, plus, ominously, urging its activists to be “ever-present” inside election offices and to follow “every step” of vote-by-mail operations.Further, CPI has witnessed a big jump in its overall revenues, which benefit a variety of the group’s conservative programs, including its election integrity initiative, since last year, when it recruited Mitchell and Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows as senior partner. Founded by former South Carolina senator Jim DeMint in 2017, CPI raked in $19.7m in 2021, up from $7.3m in 2020, according to its latest annual report.Besides hauling in $1m from Trump’s leadership Pac, the group seems to have gotten a boost from a letter Trump wrote, praising its role “helping to build out the vital infrastructure we need to lead the America First movement to new heights”.Meanwhile, when Byrne unveiled the America Project’s “election integrity” drive, dubbed Operation Eagles Wings, that he ponied up $3m to launch this year, he named Flynn and longtime Trump confidant Roger Stone as special advisers. The move set off alarm bells with voting watchdogs such as Morales-Doyle, who deemed it a “sham”, in part because of the duo’s ties to several Oath Keepers and Proud Boys charged in the Capitol attack.Byrne, like Stone and Flynn, is known for conspiratorial and debunked efforts to prove the 2020 election was rigged. With Operation Eagles Wings he has boasted of plans to educate “election reform activists” to handle election canvassing, grassroots work and fundraising “to expose shenanigans at the ballot box.”Byrne has described the operation’s mission as ensuring “there are no repeats of the errors that happened in the 2020 election”, and stressed the “need to protect the voting process from election meddlers who care only about serving crooked special-interest groups that neither respect nor value the rule of law”.Looking ahead, Morales -Doyle stressed that the Trump-allied election denialist movement poses multiple threats to democracy.“The ramifications of the lie that the 2020 election was rigged reach far beyond the events of January 6. This lie has fueled a variety of new threats to our democracy, including changes to state law, harassment of election workers, and the recruitment of poll watchers, poll workers, and vigilante canvassers.”Still, he added: “We must keep in mind that our democracy is resilient, and that there are federal and state laws in place to protect voters and others from those that seek to undermine it.”TopicsUS newsDonald TrumpRepublicansUS politicsUS elections 2020newsReuse this content More