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      in US Politics

      Attorney in Mike Lindell martial law plan denies knowing of pro-Trump plot

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      A US army cyber attorney has expressed confusion at apparent plans among Trump allies to place him in a senior national security role, as part of a mooted move to impose martial law and reverse the president’s election defeat.A day after his name and location appeared in notes carried into the White House by the My Pillow founder, Mike Lindell, Frank Colon told New York magazine he was “just a government employee who does work for the army” at Fort Meade, in Maryland.Reporter Ben Jacobs added that Colon “seemed befuddled [over] why he would be floated to the president in any senior role and said that he never met Lindell”, although he said he had “seen him on TV”.Ads for his sleep-aiding pillows made the mustachioed Lindell a familiar figure on American screens before he emerged as a leading Trump ally and booster.The president was this week impeached a second time, for inciting supporters to attack the US Capitol on 6 January, leaving five people dead. Trump will leave office on Wednesday, when Joe Biden becomes the 46th president. Nonetheless, Trump still has not conceded defeat in an election he claims without evidence was stolen through mass voter fraud. Lindell has insisted Trump will begin a second term.“I get called into a lot of projects for the Pentagon,” Colon told Jacobs, formerly of the Guardian, saying such projects included the Operation Warp Speed programme for coronavirus vaccine development and delivery.He also said it “would be odd to reach that far down” in the Department of Defense for a role like national security adviser, but also said “people know me in the Pentagon” because not many people practise cyber law.Jacobs reported that though Colon said he did not use Twitter, an account under the name Frank Colon Esq contained messages supportive of Trump and said of Biden: “If you need the military to protect you from the people during your fraudulent inauguration the people didn’t vote for you.”Lindell did not respond to the pool reporter at the White House on Friday, when his notes were captured by a photographer from the Washington Post. He did not comment to New York magazine.But on Friday the New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman reported that Lindell had been “carrying the notes for an attorney he’s been working with to prove the election was really won by Trump, wouldn’t say who it was. Said some of it related to reports Trump is now unable to see because he doesn’t have Twitter.”Twitter and other platforms banned Trump after the Capitol attack, in which a police officer who confronted rioters and a supporter of the president shot by law enforcement were among those who died. Multiple arrests have been made amid reports of further pro-Trump protests before the inauguration.Haberman said Lindell’s White House meeting was “brief” and “contentious”.“Lindell,” she wrote, “insists the papers he was holding, which were photographed and visible, didn’t reference ‘martial law’. An administration official says they definitely referenced martial law.“But an administration official says Trump wasn’t really entertaining what Lindell was saying. Lindell also seemed frustrated he wasn’t getting more of a hearing.”Haberman also reported that “among the items on Lindell’s list was replacing [national security adviser Robert] O’Brien”. More

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      in US Politics

      'It's not their party any more': Trump leaves Republicans deeply fractured

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      Sign up for the Guardian’s First Thing newsletterThe rancorous four-year administration of Donald Trump will reach its denouement on Wednesday with the twice-impeached president committing one final act of enmity: dropping a match to ignite a civil war inside his Republican party.Trump heads for the sanctuary of Mar-a-Lago, his Florida resort, a bitterly divided party floundering in his wake. Republicans lost the presidency and both houses of Congress in his last two years in office, while the Capitol riot, failures in the response to Covid-19 and Trump’s lies about a “stolen” election are fresh in the minds of Republican detractors.Many party members believe such fractures will be exposed in swing states and across primary elections in the coming months and years, as moderates seek to loosen the influence of Trump and his supporters.“This president, in his irrational, illegal and seditious conduct, has been enabled by his Republican congressional cult, and there’s been no restraints placed on him by that cult,” the Watergate veteran Carl Bernstein told CNN this week.One faction, Trump loyalists determined to punish elected Republicans who supported impeachment after the attack on the Capitol, features a number of new Congress members blindly devoted to Trumpism and determined to move the party even further right.More than 100 Republican members of the House and a handful of senators voted to oppose certification of Joe Biden’s victory in November’s presidential election that Trump falsely insists he won.Some have been reluctant to condemn the Trump-fuelled mob who invaded the US Capitol, or threats of more armed insurrection this weekend and around the inauguration on Wednesday that have prompted an unprecedented lockdown in Washington, thousands of national guard troops activated to prevent disruption.“This isn’t their Republican party any more,” the president’s oldest son, Donald Trump Jr, said of moderate Republicans at a rally that preceded the insurrection. “This is Donald Trump’s party.”Against them stands the traditional wing of the party, figures such as the outgoing Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, and the No 3 House Republican, Liz Cheney, keen to put Trump in the rearview mirror and forge a credible challenge in the 2022 midterms.That bloc includes congressmen such as Adam Kinzinger, a Trump critic from Illinois who was asked by the New York Times if Republicans were expecting the acrimony of recent months to continue.“Hell yes we are,” said one of 10 Republican congressmen to vote for impeachment this week.Asked how he thought the moderate wing could limit or eliminate Trump’s cast-iron grip on the party, Kinzinger said: “We beat him.”Trump, who is reported to be mulling another run at the presidency in 2024, if he is not convicted in the Senate and barred from holding office, has amassed a huge war chest from supporters who thought they were donating to the failed efforts to overturn the election result.Even if he does not run again, family members are predicted to carry the torch. His daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, have bought property in Miami with an eye to challenging Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican senator, in 2022. Despite recent fealty, Rubio has a history of speaking against Trump.Such intra-party battlegrounds are expected to include Wyoming and South Dakota, where Cheney and the No 2 Senate Republican, John Thune, have drawn Trump’s ire.Cheney, the daughter of the former vice-president Dick Cheney, is facing calls to resign from colleagues angered by her accusations of betrayal by Trump and her vote for impeachment.Thune, one of the first Republicans to publicly acknowledge Biden’s general election victory, is likely to be “primaried”, an aggressive campaign by members of a politician’s own party to replace them as a candidate in upcoming elections.“I suspect we will see a lot of that activity in the next couple of years out there for some of our members, myself included,” Thune told the Times.Many eyes, meanwhile, will be on the fortunes of newly elected rightwingers and fierce Trump apologists such as Marjorie Taylor-Greene, a QAnon conspiracy theory supporter from Georgia, and Lauren Boebert of Colorado, a gun rights supporter who has threatened to bring her weapons into the House.Senior Republicans, including McConnell, are seeking to prevent more extreme politicians from seeking higher office. Scott Reed, a McConnell ally and former Republican strategist, told the Times: “In 2022, we’ll be faced with the Trump pitchfork crowd, and there will need to be an effort to beat them back.“Hopefully they’ll create multi-candidate races where their influence will be diluted.”The Trump camp is also looking for revenge beyond Washington. Efforts are under way to oust governors in Arizona, where Doug Ducey was criticised for certifying Biden’s victory, and in Georgia, where Trump has called for Brian Kemp to resign.Georgia elected two Democratic senators earlier this month, taking control of the chamber away from Republicans. Trump is furious at Kemp and other officials who in an explosive phone call resisted his demand that they “find” enough votes to overturn his presidential election defeat in the state. More

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      in US Politics

      Washington and state capitols brace for violence from armed Trump supporters

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      Washington DC and capitols across the US are bracing for violence this weekend after law enforcement officials warned that armed pro-Trump insurrectionists are planning to swarm the cities in the days before President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration
      Security measures have been dramatically strengthened following the 6 January attack on the Capitol by supporters of Donald Trump and members of far-right groups that left five people dead, including a police officer.
      The planned demonstrations and threat of violence, which come as the country still battles the coronavirus pandemic, have had a chilling effect on plans for Biden and Kamala Harris’s inauguration on 20 January. Trump is expected to leave the White House for the final time that morning.
      An inauguration rehearsal ceremony that was set for Sunday was postponed until Monday over security concerns, Politico reported. The National Mall is expected to be closed to the public on inauguration day.
      Following a briefing from Secret Service and FBI authorities, Biden also canceled his plans to ride the Amtrak train from his home town of Wilmington, Delaware, to Washington for the inauguration.
      The House oversight committee sent letters to 27 prominent travel companies on Friday, urging them to use “screening measures” to prevent their services from being used to facilitate plots ahead of Biden’s inauguration. The companies included car rental giants Avis and Hertz and hotel chains Marriott and Hyatt.
      In an internal FBI memo first reported by ABC earlier this week, officials warned: “Armed protests are being planned at all 50 state capitols.”
      “The FBI received information about an identified armed group intending to travel to Washington, DC on [Saturday] 16 January … They have warned that if Congress attempts to remove Potus via the 25th amendment, a huge uprising will occur,” the document noted.
      The memo also said the group planned “to ‘storm’ government offices including in the District of Columbia and in every state” on 20 January.
      Efforts to remove the president from office faltered, but on Wednesday, Trump became the first US president to be impeached twice, after the House of Representatives condemned him for inciting a violent insurrection and encouraging a mob of his supporters to storm the US Capitol.
      Organizers of the planned unrest are believe to have moved their activities from mainstream social media websites to more secretive online forums to avoid detection, but some details about plans have emerged. In an online advert for a “Million Militia March” scheduled for inauguration day in Washington, a caption read: “The Trumpists will be keeping DC and the military busy on the 20th as you can see.”
      The FBI is also reported to be monitoring “various threats to harm President-Elect Biden ahead of the presidential inauguration” and “additional reports indicate threats against VP-Elect Harris and Speaker Pelosi”.
      Security measures to stave off violence in Washington and across the country have been extensive. Federal and local authorities have already set up a security zone downtown and 20,000 national guard members will deploy to Washington. Federal security authorities have also asked officials in Virginia to close all crossings into downtown Washington between 6am Saturday and 6am on 21 January, the Washington Post reported.
      State capitols, some of which have already seen the resumption of legislative sessions, started ramping up security this week. The New York police department is sending 200 officers to the state Capitol to assist with security, a top NYPD official said on Thursday. And national guard members were sent to Olympia, Washington, to support security efforts this week — arresting two protesters who tried to enter the capitol building without authorization, NPR reported.
      Safety concerns have spurred Michigan officials to erect a 6ft fence around the state’s capitol building. The last time authorities used fencing at the capital was in 1994 – when the Klu Klux Klan held a demonstration there, Mlive.com reported.
      Michigan capitol authorities have also banned the open carry of guns inside the building following an armed anti-lockdown protest this spring. Several participants in that demonstration were later accused of plotting to kidnap Michigan’s Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer.
      In Austin, Texas, national guard members and state troopers secured the capitol building when the legislature met on Tuesday. One man, a member of a group named Patriots for America, was removed from Capitol grounds for toting an AR-15 rifle.
      New details about the Capitol riot emerged on Friday, demonstrating just how close the violent mob got to the vice-president, who was overseeing the electoral vote certification of Biden’s victory when the building was breached.
      Pence was not evacuated from the Senate chamber for about 14 minutes after rioters entered the Capitol. Many shouted that Pence was a “traitor” as they made their way towards his location, according to the Washington Post. Pence was moved to a room off the chamber just moments before rioters entered the chamber.
      Federal prosecutors in Arizona this week described how the rioters involved in the 6 January attack on the Capitol had intended “to capture and assassinate elected officials”.
      The disclosure in a court filing came as prosecutors pushed for the detention of Jacob Chansley, the QAnon conspiracy theorist who was photographed wearing horns in the US Senate chamber and standing at Pence’s desk.
      “Strong evidence, including Chansley’s own words and actions at the Capitol, supports that the intent of the Capitol rioters was to capture and assassinate elected officials in the United States government,” prosecutors alleged.
      The charges against Chansley “involve active participation in an insurrection attempting to violently overthrow the United States government”; prosecutors also warned in their detention memo that “the insurrection is still in progress”. More

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      in US Politics

      Republicans must repudiate Trump – or live with the consequences forever | Geoffrey Kabaservice

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      A little more than a week ago, most Americans – perhaps even many of Donald Trump’s supporters – were ready for the 45th president and his administration to pass into the history books. Now Trump is making us all live through history.On 6 January, the US Capitol was sacked by a pro-Trump mob, the first large-scale occupation of the citadel of American democracy since the British burned it during the War of 1812. The mob succeeded in forcing Congress to evacuate and halting the constitutional ceremony of certifying the electoral college votes – another first. Now Trump, who was charged by the House of Representatives with “incitement of insurrection” for his role in the riot that left five dead, has become the first president in history ever to be impeached twice.Ten Republicans in the House voted to impeach Trump, the largest number of lawmakers ever to support impeaching a president from their own party. But then, in the words of Representative Liz Cheney, a Republican from Wyoming who holds the third-highest position in the House Republican leadership, “There has never been a greater betrayal by a president of the United States of his office and his oath to the constitution.”Trump is unlikely to become the first president removed from office, since the outgoing Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, won’t reconvene the Senate until the day before Joe Biden will be sworn in as the next president. But if the Senate does eventually vote to convict Trump, he will become the first ex-president ever to be barred from holding any future federal office.McConnell has, shockingly, told colleagues that he is open to convicting Trump. In the view of many party strategists, Republicans might be better off if Trump were prevented from running again. The possibility of a 2024 Trump campaign freezes out potential successors and prevents the party from moving in new and more positive directions. The president arguably cost his party its Senate majority with his lies and conspiracy theories about the election, which depressed Republican turnout in the pivotal Georgia senatorial races. His role in inciting the Capitol riot disgraced his party as well as his legacy. Tellingly, almost no Republicans attempted to defend him during the impeachment hearings. Instead, many warned that impeachment would further enrage Trump’s followers when what’s needed is national unity and healing.Of course, this come-together plea is rank hypocrisy from those who encouraged Trump’s shredding of the social fabric, believing that his attempt to tear the country apart would leave them with the bigger half. The claim that lions would lie down with lambs if Democrats would drop their vindictive harassment of the outgoing president conveniently overlooks the fact that the Capitol invasion happened only because Trump pushed the Big Lie that Democrats, the media, and the Deep State stole the election. And nearly two-thirds of Republicans in Congress made themselves complicit in Trump’s lie by voting to overturn the election results, even in the wake of that deluded, destructive and deadly riot.Representative Peter Meijer, a newly elected Republican from Michigan who was one of the 10 Republicans to vote for impeachment, observed that many of his party colleagues argued that since millions of Americans believe the election was stolen, therefore Congress would be justified in preventing Biden from taking the presidency. But, he pointed out, most of the voters who believe in this false reality do so precisely because they have heard it from Trump and his congressional enablers. “That doesn’t make it right. That doesn’t make it accurate. It means that you lied to them, and they trusted you and they believed your lies.”Nonetheless, 45% of Republican voters, according to a recent YouGov poll, approve of the storming of the Capitol. And that’s largely because 72% of Republicans, according to another survey, say that they don’t trust the accuracy of the 2020 election results.So long as millions of Americans believe in Trump’s Big Lie, the country becomes ungovernable and civil war beckons. If you believe what Trump and his Republican enablers tell you, you will consider Joe Biden to be “an illegitimate president”, as Trump put it in his 6 January speech, and the members of his administration to be usurpers. Why then should you pay taxes to such a government or respect its laws? Why wouldn’t you support the violent overthrow of that government, even if that revolutionary vanguard was led by the kind of neo-fascists who planned the Capitol invasion and erected a gallows outside? As Representative Meijer observed, the logical conclusion of this line of thinking makes it likely that we’ll see “political assassinations or some type of additional attempts to take lives by the folks who feel emboldened by what’s happened”.Most of Trump’s supporters would probably recoil from the charge that they’re pushing America toward civil war and revolutionary carnage. To accept the Big Lie, however, requires you to believe that the entire US justice system, in which even Trump-nominated judges rejected every baseless claim of electoral fraud asserted by his legal team, is also part of the conspiracy. And such a widespread rejection of courts and the law would shatter the political and social stability on which the country’s free-market capitalism depends.Unsurprisingly, many corporations and institutions have cut ties with Trump and his businesses and suspended contributions to those congressional Republicans who challenged Biden’s victory. Many of the party’s mega-donors have also turned off the cash spigot, worrying about reputational damage from being seen to support Trump’s false election claims and the ensuing Capitol riot.If the party has an ideology it’s what the French call je-m’en-foutisme, a contemptuous indifference toward othersWhat, really, does the Republican party believe in now other than the imperative of maintaining Trump in power? So long as the party clings to Trump’s Lost Cause, it rejects business, law and order, national unity, the constitution, fiscal responsibility, traditional morality, democratic norms and nearly everything else that Republicans once claimed to stand for.If the party has an ideology it’s what the French call je-m’en-foutisme, a contemptuous indifference toward others. It was exemplified by the House Republicans during the Capitol siege who, sheltering with colleagues in a secure location, mocked requests that they wear masks; now three of the Democratic lawmakers who were there have become infected with Covid-19. If Trump’s Republican party has a motto, it’s the Arizona state Republican chair Kelli Ward’s urging the president to “Cross the Rubicon” – that is, to imitate Julius Caesar’s treasonous action that led to civil war and the collapse of the Roman Republic.If there is to be civil war, one hopes that it will be bloodless and confined to the Republican party. The party needs to separate itself from those who undermine our civil order by maintaining that Democrats stole the election. The Republican lawmakers who voted against certifying the election should be given off-ramps, perhaps in the form of opportunities to acknowledge Biden’s legitimacy. The party should support efforts like the new Republican Accountability Project to channel donations to legislators who face primary challenges as a result of voting for Trump’s impeachment or removal. The party should make sincere efforts to persuade its base voters to return to reality. And it should accept and perhaps facilitate the departure of the worst bitter-enders into the political wasteland of a third party.Democrats and others who have little love for the Republican party may rejoice that Trump has brought it so low. But just as the first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, warned that the government could not stand as a house divided, the country cannot now endure if one of the two major political parties rejects the legitimacy of the other when it wins elections and attempts to govern. It has to become a country with two more-or-less normal parties or none. If Trump-inspired radicalism on the right isn’t checked by responsible actors on both sides, history will record this moment as the beginning of the end of American democracy.Geoffrey Kabaservice is the director of political studies at the Niskanen Center in Washington, as well as the author of Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party More

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      in Elections

      Billionaires backed Republicans who sought to reverse US election results

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      An anti-tax group funded primarily by billionaires has emerged as one of the biggest backers of the Republican lawmakers who sought to overturn the US election results, according to an analysis by the Guardian.The Club for Growth has supported the campaigns of 42 of the rightwing Republicans senators and members of Congress who voted last week to challenge US election results, doling out an estimated $20m to directly and indirectly support their campaigns in 2018 and 2020, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.About 30 of the Republican hardliners received more than $100,000 in indirect and direct support from the group.The Club for Growth’s biggest beneficiaries include Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, the two Republican senators who led the effort to invalidate Joe Biden’s electoral victory, and the newly elected far-right gun-rights activist Lauren Boebert, a QAnon conspiracy theorist. Boebert was criticised last week for tweeting about the House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s location during the attack on the Capitol, even after lawmakers were told not to do so by police.Public records show the Club for Growth’s largest funders are the billionaire Richard Uihlein, the Republican co-founder of the Uline shipping supply company in Wisconsin, and Jeffrey Yass, the co-founder of Susquehanna International Group, an options trading group based in Philadelphia that also owns a sports betting company in Dublin.While Uihlein and Yass have kept a lower profile than other billionaire donors such as Michael Bloomberg and the late Sheldon Adelson, their backing of the Club for Growth has helped to transform the organization from one traditionally known as an anti-regulatory and anti-tax pro-business pressure group to one that backs some of the most radical and anti-democratic Republican lawmakers in Congress.Here’s the thing about the hyper wealthy. They believe that their hyper-wealth grants them the ability to not be accountable“Here’s the thing about the hyper wealthy. They believe that their hyper-wealth grants them the ability to not be accountable. And that is not the case. If you’ve made billions of dollars, good on you. But that doesn’t make you any less accountable for funding anti-democratic or authoritarian candidates and movements,” said Reed Galen, a former Republican strategist who co-founded the Lincoln Project, the anti-Trump campaigners.Galen said he believed groups such as the Club for Growth now served to cater to Republican donors’ own personal agenda, and not what used to be considered “conservative principles”.The Lincoln Project has said it would devote resources to putting pressure not just on Hawley, which the group accused of committing sedition, but also on his donors.The Club for Growth has so far escaped scrutiny for its role supporting the anti-democratic Republicans because it does not primarily make direct contributions to candidates. Instead, it uses its funds to make “outside” spending decisions, like attacking a candidate’s opponents.In 2018, Club for Growth spent nearly $3m attacking the Democratic senator Claire McCaskill in Missouri, a race that was ultimately won by Hawley, the 41-year-old Yale law graduate with presidential ambitions who has amplified Donald Trump’s baseless lies about election fraud.That year, it also spent $1.2m to attack the Texas Democrat Beto O’Rourke, who challenged – and then narrowly lost – against Cruz.Other legislators supported by Club for Growth include Matt Rosendale, who this week called for the resignation of fellow Republican Liz Cheney after she said she would support impeachment of the president, and Lance Gooden, who accused Pelosi of being just as responsible for last week’s riot as Trump.Dozens of the Republicans supported by Club for Growth voted to challenge the election results even after insurrectionist stormed the Capitol, which led to five deaths, including the murder of a police officer.The Club for Growth has changed markedly as the group’s leadership has changed hands. The Republican senator Pat Toomey, who used to lead the group, has recently suggested he was open to considering voting for Trump’s impeachment, and criticised colleagues for disputing election results. Its current head, David McIntosh, is a former Republican member of Congress who accompanied Trump on a final trip to Georgia last week, the night before Republican candidates David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, both heavily supported by the Club for Growth, lost runoff elections to their Democratic opponents.Neither the Club for Growth nor McIntosh responded to requests for comment.Public records show that Richard Uihlein, whose family founded Schlitz beer, donated $27m to the Club for Growth in 2020, and $6.7m in 2018. Uihlein and his wife, Liz, have been called “the most powerful conservative couple you’ve never heard of” by the New York Times. Richard Uihlein, the New York Times said, was known for underwriting “firebrand anti-establishment” candidates like Roy Moore, who Uihlein supported in a Senate race even after it was alleged he had sexually abused underage girls. Moore denied the allegations.A spokesman for the Uihleins declined to comment.Yass of Susquehanna International, who is listed on public documents as having donated $20.7m to the Club for Growth in 2020 and $3.8m in 2018, also declined to comment. Yass is one of six founders of Susquehanna, called a “crucial engine of the $5tn global exchange-traded fund market” in a 2018 Bloomberg News profile. The company was grounded on the basis of the six founders mutual love of poker and the notion that training for “probability-based” decisions could be useful in trading markets. Susquehanna’s Dublin-based company, Nellie Analytics, wages on sports.In a 2020 conference on the business of sports betting, Yass said sports betting was a $250bn industry globally, but that with “help” from legislators, it could become a trillion-dollar industry.A 2009 profile of Yass in Philadelphia magazine described how secrecy pervades Susquehanna, and that people who know the company say “stealth” is a word often used to describe its modus operandi. The article suggested Yass was largely silent about his company because he does not like to share what he does and how, and that those who know him believe he is “very nervous” about his own security.Yass, who is described in some media accounts as a libertarian, also donated to the Protect America Pac, an organisation affiliated with Republican senator Rand Paul. The Pac’s website falsely claims that Democrats stole the 2020 election. More

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      in US Politics

      'Kind of unbelievable': US Republicans in Britain mull over Trump impact

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      Watching history unfold in Washington DC from her home in London, Jan Halper-Hayes admitted to being slightly incredulous about the images of Donald Trump supporters storming the US Capitol.“It was kind of in some ways unbelievable,” says the long-term activist in the Republican party and former vice-president of its UK branch. She claims she has received “good information” to indicate that “Antifa people” were present at the riot.The unsubstantiated claim that Antifa – a catch-all term used by the president and others to describe anti-Trump protest movements – had infiltrated the mob is one that some of his most die-hard supporters have clung to.That the idea has made the leap across the Atlantic underlines how the Republican diaspora have not been immune to some of the bitter controversies splitting the party in its homeland.In the UK, the Trump presidency has taken something of a toll on the local branch of Republicans Overseas, which largely operates as a social circle for expatriate supporters who organise a 4th July party each year and carry out voter registration.Some members, and particularly young women, previously involved with the group have stepped away since the president’s 2016 election and, in some cases, even voted for Joe Biden. Halper-Hayes, a former member of Trump’s White House transition team and visitor to his Mar-a-Lago resort, remains loyal nevertheless, insisting that it has never been hard to square support for Trump with traditional Republican values.“I knew him when I lived in New York, so I have known him through all his iterations. I was on his transition team, and from encounters and observations I can tell you that he is so friendly and funny. It’s a shame that he used Twitter for a nasty side because that’s not who he really is.“Whether I am in an Uber car or in a supermarket, people love Trump here in the UK. It’s the BBC and the Guardian that take on a different mainstream media narrative.”Molly Kiniry has a very different take on Trump. She watched his rise both within the party and in national US politics with what she says was “increasing amounts of horror”. She views his most recent conduct as “a manifestation of the mental instability that has been there all along”.Not that being a Republican supporter in an often left-leaning city like London was ever without complexities. “What I normally say when people express surprise that I’m a Republican is something to the effect of ‘I am, I just hide the horns very well’.”Casting her US presidential vote for Joe Biden this time came easily, says Kiniry, a former spokesperson for Republicans Overseas UK and now a graduate student at Cambridge who acknowledges that the president and his loyalists would likely regard her as a Rino [Republican in name only].Like others, she says she is looking forward to her party regaining its traditional identity. She remains optimistic. “I don’t think I would still be a registered Republican after the last five or six years if that was not the case.”She is withering about those who have stood by the president in the US seat of power and, as a native Washingtonian, admits that the destructive events in DC had cut deep. “I think the members who did not vote to impeach the president will have to answer to voters, and to history as well, quite frankly.”A third view of sorts is espoused by Greg Swenson, a spokesperson for Republicans Overseas, who insists that Trump managed to win over him and others who had originally wanted someone else to be the party’s 2016 candidate. It was notable today that the majority of the UK branch’s board were women, he says. “I criticised him, but I can say that I have been very happy with what he did.”As an investment banker, he was attracted in particular to Trump’s stewardship of the US economy. “I became more of a supporter as we saw the results, for example, of tax deregulation, but it was also the massive pushback against him from Democrats and the left. As they became more unhinged, the more dug in Trump supporters have become.”That said, Swenson confesses that he is relishing a spell “in opposition” after four years defending a president who, he concedes, “finally overdid it”. He adds: “Trump fatigue is exhausting for every one, whether they are supporters or opponents – so I’m kind of looking forward to it.” More

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      in US Politics

      Trump impeachment risks bogging down early days of Biden presidency

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      The prospect of Donald Trump facing a bitter impeachment trial in the US Senate threatens to cast a shadow over the earliest days of Joe Biden’s presidency, as Washington on Thursday headed into a militarized virtual lockdown ahead of next week’s inauguration.With warnings of more violent protests being planned following the pro-Trump mob’s deadly attack on the US Capitol last week, some Republican members of Congress who voted for the unprecedented second impeachment of the president fear they are in personal danger.Peter Meijer, a Michigan Republican who voted along with the Democratic majority in the House on Wednesday to impeach Trump, on the charge of incitement of insurrection – after he encouraged the riot in a futile attempt to overturn his election defeat by force – said some of his colleagues were hiring armed escorts and acquiring body armor out of fear for their safety.“When it comes to my family’s safety, that’s something that we’ve been planning for, preparing for, taking appropriate measures,” Meijer told MSNBC.“Our expectation is that somebody may try to kill us,” he said.“Our expectation is that somebody may try to kill us.” — Rep. Peter Meijer (R-MI), who voted to impeach Trump, says he and other lawmakers believe their lives are in danger following yesterday’s impeachment.He also says they are altering their routines and buying body armor. pic.twitter.com/stOO00OKYD— The Recount (@therecount) January 14, 2021
      There is no schedule yet for when the House may present the article of impeachment – essentially the charge against Trump – to the Senate for trial.Trump was acquitted at his first impeachment trial in the Senate early last year after being charged with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, stemming from his request that Ukraine investigate Joe Biden and his son Hunter ahead of the 2020 election.The Senate resumes full session on the eve of the inauguration events on 20 January to install Biden as the 46th US president and Kamala Harris as his vice-president.A swift impeachment trial would entangle Biden’s urgent efforts to have his cabinet choices confirmed by the Senate and fire up his agenda to tackle the raging coronavirus pandemic as well as the related economic crisis and vaccination chaos.There is no real prospect of Trump being ousted before Biden takes office next Wednesday, after the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, rejected Democratic calls for a quick trial in the Republican-led chamber, saying there was no way to finish it before Trump leaves office.Biden, meanwhile, has urged Senate leaders to avoid an all-consuming trial during his first days in the White House so that they can focus on the crises facing his incoming administration.“I hope that the Senate leadership will find a way to deal with their constitutional responsibilities on impeachment while also working on the other urgent business of this nation,” Biden said in a statement on Wednesday night.Biden’s inauguration events have already been scaled back due to security concerns and the risks of spreading infection during the Covid-19 pandemic.The west front of the Capitol building, where the swearing-in occurs and which was overrun by marauding rioters invading the US Congress last week, is now fortified by fencing, barriers and thousands of national guard troops. Soldiers have been sleeping sprawled in the marble corridors of the complex.Trump himself is increasingly isolated at the White House and “in self-pity mode”, according to several reports.Under the US constitution, a two-thirds majority is needed in the Senate to convict Trump, before or after he leaves office, meaning at least 17 Republicans in the 100-member chamber would have to join the Democrats.McConnell’s vote would be crucial. At Trump’s first impeachment, no House Republicans voted in favor of charging him and all Republicans in the Senate voted to acquit him except for Utah’s Mitt Romney.If McConnell signaled to his caucus that he would vote to convict Trump this time, that could give other senators the cover they needed to follow suit if they believed privately that Trump deserved it but feared a backlash from voters.On Wednesday, McConnell released a note to Republican senators in which he did not deny that he backed the impeachment push, the New York Times reported. The leader said that he had “not made a final decision on how I will vote, and I intend to listen to the legal arguments when they are presented to the Senate”.McConnell and some other senior Republicans may see conviction as a way to prevent Trump being a liability to the party in the future, and therefore an opportunity.If Trump is already out of office by the time of the trial, historical precedent suggests the Senate could disqualify him from holding office in the future with only a simple majority vote.But the legal details and what would happen, including if Trump attempted to pardon himself in his last days in the White House, are far from resolved.The Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, set to become majority leader when Biden takes office, said that no matter the timing, “there will be an impeachment trial in the United States Senate, there will be a vote on convicting the president for high crimes and misdemeanors, and if the president is convicted, there will be a vote on barring him from running again.”The Florida Republican senator Marco Rubio has warned, meanwhile, that the impeachment process risks making Trump a martyr to his diehard supporters.Rubio told NBC he thought Trump bore some responsibility for the attack on the Capitol, which happened on the day both chambers of Congress were meeting in order to certify Joe Biden’s victory, but that putting Trump on trial could make things worse.“It’s like pouring gasoline on fire,” he said, noting that some who were displeased with Trump “after seeing what happened last week, sort of reckoning with the last four years – now all of a sudden they’re circling the wagons and it threatens to make him a martyr.”No US president has ever been removed from office via impeachment. Three – Trump in 2019, Bill Clinton in 1998 and Andrew Johnson in 1868 – were impeached by the House but acquitted by the Senate. Richard Nixon resigned in 1974 rather than face impeachment. More

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      The Guardian view on Trump's second impeachment: urgent and necessary | Editorial

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      The wheels of justice are slowly but remorselessly closing in on Donald Trump and his gang. Mr Trump’s second impeachment is unprecedented in two extraordinary ways. No other president in American history has been institutionally censured with a second impeachment. Mr Trump must now carry this unique double burden of disgrace into history. But the second impeachment has also been the most rapidly crafted of them all. That is because, unlike its predecessors, it is an urgent response to a clear and present danger to American democracy.Only last week, Mr Trump was still actively using the presidential bully pulpit to promote his lies about the 2020 election result and urge his supporters to march on the US Capitol to challenge the vote. Today, rightly cut off from his social media following and in the wake of a 232-197 congressional vote against him on Wednesday, he is ineluctably becoming a humbled – though never a humble – figure. Mr Trump remained defiant and mendacious in a White House video this week, but he now faces a second Senate trial and the very real prospect, if he is found guilty, of being barred from holding office ever again. This is not the future that Mr Trump planned for himself.A year ago, when Mr Trump was first impeached for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, the vote to put him on trial went almost wholly along party lines. This week, in the second impeachment, party loyalty was still very strong, but there were significant shifts and cracks within the Republican party. Ten House Republicans voted with the Democrats, including the third most senior in the party leadership, Liz Cheney. Several others, notably the party’s House leader, Kevin McCarthy, tried to triangulate between a previously unthinkable readiness to denounce Mr Trump and a long-familiar reluctance to stand up to him by voting for impeachment. Nevertheless, the majority of Republicans, who a week ago had also voted to challenge a number of electoral college results, again remained cravenly loyal to Mr Trump.Yet Mr Trump’s grip on the Republican party is slowly beginning to loosen. This is partly because some newly announced sceptics in the party have finally found their voices as the clock nears midnight for the Trump presidency. The most significant of these is Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate leader, who has worked in lockstep with the Trump White House for the past four years. Recently re-elected for another six-year Senate term, he now hints that he is pleased about the impeachment and may even vote for it in a trial. It is an opportunity that he should give himself, by supporting an early scheduling.As ever with Senator McConnell, there is political calculation at work here. But he is not alone in that. Democrats were rightly outraged at what happened on 6 January. But their grip on the House was reduced in November and the Senate is evenly balanced, so impeachment may help them leverage fresh support in next year’s midterm elections, to which many minds have now turned. Democrats have an interest in making Republican candidates choose between condemning or backing Mr Trump. Those who condemn him may face selection challenges from the right, perhaps splitting the vote; those who support him will be targeted as lackeys of a disgraced president. It could prove a win-win approach.These have been 10 days that shook the world. Mr Trump’s incitement of an insurrectionary assault on the Capitol that led to five deaths was a terrible act. An exceptional assault on democracy had to be met with an exceptional display of resolution and retribution. The present and future safety of the republic demanded no less. It had to be a response that recognised the seriousness of what happened on 6 January and one that, at the same time, reasserted the authority of the constitution. The House of Representatives has done that. It has cleansed the stables. The response reflects well on the strength of America’s institutions and public values. The stage is now set for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to lead America towards a different kind of future – if they can do it and if the country is willing to follow. More