Robert F Kennedy Jr

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      RFK Jr draws quite a crowd – what does it mean for 2024?

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      Wearing a Robert Kennedy Jr campaign T-shirt, Kevin O’Keeffe found there was standing room only as the candidate, introduced as “Bobby Kennedy”, walked on a sunbaked stage decked with hay bales to whoops and applause.“He supports freedom of speech, and he’s questioned the efficacy of the vaccine, which is legitimate at this point,” said O’Keeffe, 52, who works for a telecommunications company in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. “I like his views on foreign policy and keeping us out of the war. He cares about his fellow Americans in a way that a lot of the politicians nowadays I don’t think really do.”He was far from alone in rooting for Kennedy at the Iowa state fair in Des Moines last weekend. The longshot challenger to Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination in 2024 drew one of the biggest and most energetic crowds, outnumbering conventional politicians on the Republican side. The shouts of “We love you, Robert!” and “Thank you, Robert!”, and subsequent mobbing of Kennedy for handshakes and selfies, hinted at the stirrings of a movement.In a nation that has seen plenty of political convulsions over the past decade, Kennedy, a 69-year-old environmental lawyer who has never before run for public office, is proof that Americans’ appetite for insurgents and outsiders, mavericks and populists, remains undimmed. Even when a campaign traffics in anti-vaccine conspiracy theories and has been hit by antisemitism scandals.Kennedy rose to prominence during the coronavirus pandemic because of his strident and widely condemned opposition to vaccines. He has styled himself as a hammer of the elites – quite a feat for a scion of one of America’s most storied political dynasties. He has scrambled old political allegiances, striking an anti-establishment nerve on the far left and far right over the Ukraine war and other issues.Brandy Zadrozny, a senior reporter for NBC News, summed up his supporters as “anti-vaxxers, conspiracy theorists, internet contrarians, billionaire tech bros, Camelot nostalgists and rightwing provocateurs who seem to be pumping Kennedy as a spoiler candidate”.In his speech from the Des Moines Register newspaper’s political soapbox, Kennedy wore blue jeans and a white shirt with rolled-up sleeves. He spoke of his father, former attorney general Robert Kennedy, and uncle, President John F Kennedy, as figures from a golden age when America was the envy of the world.His campaign chairman, Dennis Kucinich, held up a map as Kennedy railed against proposed pipelines that would run through Iowa to transport liquefied carbon dioxide away from ethanol plants for burial underground. It was a retro, 20th-century presentation but more locally targeted than many candidates offered.Such is the celebrity-style clamor for Kennedy that, for an interview with the Guardian, he slipped away from the crowds and sat in the back of a black limousine with security detail present. Kucinich, a former congressman and past presidential contender, offered to take an Uber back to the hotel but Kennedy insisted that he climb in too, then asked an aide for some fried bacon from the fair.His uncle, Ted Kennedy, was once floored by the simple question, “Why do you want to be president?” This Kennedy does have an answer for that one: “I’m running for president because I feel like I’m losing my country and because I feel like the Democratic party is going in a bad direction. In particular, it has become the party of war – the Ukraine war was an unnecessary war.“It has become the party of censorship. It’s become the party of a pugnacious neocon-driven foreign policy and a Wall Street-driven domestic policy. Those are all the opposite of the Democratic party that I grew up with, so I’m running to bring the party back to its traditional values.”The political class was rattled in 2016 by the two-headed insurgency of not only Donald Trump on the right but Bernie Sanders on the left, channeling frustrations with the status quo in very different ways. Kennedy argues that Democrats, once the party of the poor and middle class, now own most of the nation’s wealth and dominate its richest counties.“Americans feel ignored by both political parties,” he said. “Their wealth is being strip mined by large corporations, corporate interests, and you’re seeing a level of desperation that I’ve never seen in this country. They just don’t feel that anybody’s listening, and they felt like Bernie was maybe listening, and they felt like Donald Trump was maybe listening as well.”Many are disturbed by Kennedy’s flirtations with the far right, including racists and antisemites. He has appeared on Infowars, a channel run by Sandy Hook conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, and granted interviews to pro-Trump extremists Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson. A Super Pac supporting Kennedy’s presidential run owes half its money to a longtime Republican mega-donor and Trump backer, according to campaign finance reports.Kennedy insists that he is happy to receive support from across the spectrum and focus on issues that united Americans rather than divide them. He said: “My message is a populist message. The Republicans are appealing to a populist base and I appeal to the same base. I appeal to working people, middle class people and the poor.”So what did he make of Trump’s presidency? Kennedy seemed a little reluctant to reply and kept his answer short: “I don’t think it was the shining apex of American exceptionalism.”Trump is facing 91 criminal charges across four cases, many related to an attempted coup after his 2020 election defeat. Democrats warn starkly that his return to the White House could spell the end of American democracy. But again Kennedy swerved: “There’s authoritarian impulses on both sides. On one side it’s the authoritarianism of rightwing demagoguery, and on the left it’s the authoritarianism of the elites, which is equally dangerous because it involves censorship.”Equally dangerous? “I would say equally dangerous,” he reiterated. “What do you think is more dangerous? The attack on the Capitol building on January 6 or the revelations that the White House has been using the CIA and the FBI to censor its critics? What do you think is more dangerous for the republic? Both parties are doing things that are equally dangerous.”He added: “Once a government can silence its critics it has licence for every atrocity and so it’s shocking to me that people in the Democratic party now think it’s OK to silence people. I’ve never thought that’s right. I’ve always spoken to people who I don’t agree with. That’s an important part of being American.”It is an exercise in false equivalence fueled by personal animus. Kennedy accuses the government of colluding with social media companies to deny his freedom of speech, making him the first person censored by the White House after Biden’s inauguration. In reality he was suspended from platforms such as Instagram and Twitter for spreading coronavirus vaccine misinformation.Without the pandemic, it might be argued, there would be no Kennedy candidacy. He has long promoted bogus theories linking vaccines to autism, antidepressants to school shootings and chemicals present in water sources to transgender identity. But now his anti-scientific views have moved from the fringe to resonate with millions of people, especially consumers of rightwing media.His anti-vaccine charity, Children’s Health Defense, prospered during the pandemic, with revenues more than doubling in 2020 to $6.8m, according to filings made with charity regulators. Kennedy has repeatedly invoked Nazis and the Holocaust when talking about measures aimed at mitigating the spread of Covid, such as mask requirements and vaccine mandates. In 2021 he published a book, The Real Anthony Fauci, in which he accused America’s top infectious disease expert of assisting in “a historic coup d’etat against western democracy”.In his Guardian interview, Kennedy is unrepentant, saying: “Show me where I got one thing wrong.” He tossed out far-fetched claims that might have been plucked from dark corners of the web: “The British study that just came out said 98% of the people who died were triple vaccinated”; “If you look at the data, countries that were least vaccinated had the least Covid deaths”. He did not take the vaccine himself and did catch the virus but “it didn’t stop me from skiing”.Earlier this year the UN’s World Health Organization declared an end to Covid as a public health emergency, stating that immunity increased due to “highly effective vaccines” developed in record time. A modelling study by the Commonwealth Fund and Yale School of Public Health at the end of last year found that Covid vaccines kept more than 18.5 million people in the US out of the hospital and saved more than 3.2 million lives.Kennedy’s own family have distanced themselves from him. Jack Schlossberg, President Kennedy’s grandson, said in an Instagram video: “He’s trading in on Camelot, celebrity, conspiracy theories and conflict for personal gain and fame. I’ve listened to him. I know him. I have no idea why anyone thinks he should be president. What I do know is, his candidacy is an embarrassment.”But at the state fair there was a significant constituency thrilled to hear Kennedy keep saying the unsayable, renewing questions about what the rise of such candidates tells America about itself and its yearning. Gail Buffington, 62, wearing a white “Kennedy 2024” cap and “RFK Jr for president 2024” T-shirt, said: “I believe in freedom of speech, peace and civil liberties. Trump drew a large crowd too, and I was in that crowd, and I got nothing but thumbs up from everybody.” More

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      Unrepentant Robert Kennedy Jr attempts to revive campaign after antisemitism accusations

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      Democratic presidential candidate Robert Kennedy Jr has said that he should have been “more careful” in making his recent false remarks about the “ethnic targeting” of the Covid pandemic.At a campaign debate in New York on Tuesday night, Kennedy sought to put the accusation of antisemitism that has engulfed his campaign behind him. But he stopped short of retracting his false claim that coronavirus had been targeted to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people from the impact of the disease.“I should have been more careful about what I said because I know anything I say will be distorted and weaponised against me,” he said.Speaking at a presidential campaign event hosted by the celebrity rabbi Shmuley Boteach, Kennedy said the charge of antisemitism had hurt him personally. “I have a thick skin, but the charge of antisemitism is one that cuts me, it hurts me. I haven’t said an antisemitic word in my life.”Kennedy’s bid for the White House has been contentious from the outset, given his embrace of virulent conspiracy theories that promote vaccine hesitancy. A political watchdog, the Congressional Integrity Project, recently released a report that set the candidate’s disputed views on Covid against years of antisemitic, racist and xenophobic remarks which it called “horrific” and “beyond the pale”. The report said that his promotion of anti-vaxxer conspiracy theories had “deadly real world consequences”.On Tuesday, Kennedy insisted that the barrage of criticism that he has faced in the past week was itself an attempt to silence his long-shot bid for the White House. He portrayed himself as the target of what he called an “infrastructure” that was set on destroying his campaign.“There’s a way to censor people through targeted character assassination – you use vile accusations to marginalise them, and that is the kind of censorship I’m now dealing with,” he said.Kennedy is the nephew of the assassinated president John F Kennedy, and son and namesake of Robert F Kennedy who was also assassinated, while he was running for the presidency in 1968. He is challenging Biden for the Democratic presidential nomination next year.Until the antisemitism furore erupted, Kennedy had been gaining more traction than many observers had expected. In some polls he was attracting up to 20% among Democratic voters.His campaign stumbled after Kennedy told reporters at a press dinner this month that Covid had been “ethnically targeted” at Caucasians and Black people, while Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people had greater immunity. The false claim was enthusiastically embraced by neo-Nazi groups, while being condemned by scientists and Jewish organizations.Critics pointed out that his remarks echoed antisemitic tropes that circulated widely during the pandemic which portrayed coronavirus as a global Jewish plot.Members of Kennedy’s own family denounced him for his “deplorable and untruthful” comments. Jack Schlossberg, a grandson of President Kennedy, posted an online video in which he called his cousin’s campaign “an embarrassment”, and Kennedy’s sister Kerry Kennedy and brother Joseph Kennedy II also unleashed harsh criticism.In trying to counter the charges of antisemitism on Tuesday night, Kennedy merely succeeded in doubling down on the false suggestion that China orchestrated the epidemic. He said there was no evidence the virus had been engineered, “and in any case it would not have been engineered by Jews – most of the experiments were in China, in Wuhan”.Hours before Kennedy appeared on stage with Boteach, the candidate was forced to find a new venue for the debate after the original host, the New York Society for Ethical Culture, cancelled the booking. Kennedy accused the society of bowing to pressure from Biden, which he said amounted to “political censorship”.The society responded with a tart statement that said Kennedy’s event had been “inconsistent” with its values, adding that no outside party had influenced the decision.Kennedy went on to make a lengthy speech in which he expressed his support for the state of Israel against claims that it was practising apartheid against the Palestinian people. “A major piece of my campaign will be explaining to Americans why that is wrong and making the case for Israel.”Since the antisemitism controversy exploded, Boteach has rallied to Kennedy’s side. The rabbi said he disagreed with the candidate’s views on vaccines – he has had four Covid vaccinations, he said – but dismissed the charge of antisemitism against him as a “disgusting, offensive lie”. More

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      in Elections

      January 6 grand jury to hear testimony from Trump aide – US politics live

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      From 2h agoA federal grand jury investigating Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election will hear testimony from an aide who was with the former president for much of the day on 6 January 2021, according to multiple reports.William Russell, a former White House aide who now works for Trump’s presidential campaign, is scheduled to testify before he grand jury convened by special counsel Jack Smith, both CNN and NBC reported.Russell, who has previously testified before the grand jury, served in the Trump White House as a special assistant to the president and deputy director of advance, before moving to Florida to work as an aid to Trump after he left office.Multiple former senior Trump White House officials have testified before the grand jury in the special counsel’s investigation into the January 6 insurrection. Among those who have testified are Trump’s son-in-law and former White House senior adviser, Jared Kushner, and former top Trump aide, Hope Hicks.In April, Mike Pence testified for seven hours behind closed doors, meaning the details of what he told the prosecutors in the case remain uncertain.House speaker Kevin McCarthy has denied he privately promised former president Donald Trump that he would get legislation passed that would erase Trump’s two impeachments.According to a Politico report, Trump was outraged at McCarthy for withholding his endorsement of his presidential run in the 2024 election. In an interview last month, McCarthy expressed doubt that Trump was the “strongest” candidate to defeat Joe Biden and win back the White House next year.“He needs to endorse me – today!” Trump is said to have fumed to his staff on his way to a campaign event in New Hampshire. McCarthy called Trump to apologize after the interview, claiming he misspoke, sources told CNN at the time.In return for delaying that endorsement, according to Politico, McCarthy pledged that he would get the House to vote to expunge” both impeachments against the former president. The outlet said McCarthy had promised to do so before Congress leaves for an August recess. Recess begins in less than two weeks.In 2019, a Democrat-controlled House voted to impeach Trump for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress after he asked Ukraine to investigate his presidential election rival, Joe Biden, and his son on unsubstantiated corruption accusations.The House impeached Trump for a second time in 2021 for his actions ahead of the deadly January 6 attack on the US Capitol by his supporters. The Senate acquitted him both times, thanks to the votes of Republicans. McCarthy voted against impeaching Trump both times.“There’s no deal,” McCarthy told a reporter in the Capitol on Thursday, Reuters reported.The South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, the top Republican on the Senate judiciary committee, accused Democrats of trying to “destroy” the supreme court and said the ethics bill “is an assault on the court itself”.Congress should stay out of the court’s business, Graham said.Opening the committee meeting, Senate judiciary chair Dick Durbin said the legislation would be a “crucial first step” in restoring confidence in the court.Graham vowed, in response, that “all of us are going to vote no”. From NBC’s Sahil Kapur:Here’s a rundown of the ethical controversies supreme court justices have been involved in.Real estate transactionsClarence Thomas’s friend Harlan Crow, the Texas Republican billionaire mega-donor, bought three properties that the conservative justice and his family owned, including Thomas’s childhood home in Savannah, Georgia, where Thomas’s mother still lives. Crow made significant renovations, cleared blight and let Thomas’s mother live there rent-free. The cost was more than $100,000 but was not disclosed.Justice Neil Gorsuch sold a 40-acre property he co-owned in rural Colorado after he became a justice, Politico reported. Brian Duffy, the chief executive of Greenberg Traurig, which has had more than 20 cases before the supreme court, bought the property in 2017. Gorsuch disclosed the sale and reportedly made between $250,000 and $500,000, but he left blank the buyer’s identity.School supportCrow paid thousands of dollars in private school tuition for two boarding schools that Thomas’s great-nephew attended, ProPublica reported. The transaction was not disclosed.An investigation by the Associated Press revealed how colleges and universities attract supreme court justices to campuses as a way to generate donations for institutions, raising ethical concerns around a court that, unlike other government agencies, does not have a formal code of conduct. The visits have resulted in all-expenses-paid teaching opportunities and book sales.Money to partnersThe Republican activist Leonard Leo paid Thomas’s wife, Ginni, $25,000 for polling services in January 2012, telling the Republican pollster Kellyanne Conway to make “no mention of Ginni”, the Washington Post reported. It’s unclear whether that is a direct ethical concern for Clarence Thomas but it may constitute a conflict of interest.Ginni, who also attended the January 6 attack at the Capitol, reportedly exchanged text messages with the then White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, encouraging him to support then president Donald Trump’s false election fraud claims aimed at subverting the results of his 2020 electoral defeat. The Judicial Education Project, a law firm tied to Leo, filed a brief to the supreme court in the landmark case that eventually gutted the Voting Rights Act not long after the payment was made.Roberts’ wife, Jane Sullivan Roberts, ran a legal recruiting firm that raised ethical concerns since she made millions of dollars in commissions from placing lawyers at firms, some of which appeared before the court. The New York Times obtained a letter from a former colleague of Roberts to the US justice department and Congress inquiring about the connection.Luxury tripsFor more than two decades, Thomas accepted millions of dollars’ worth of luxury trips on private planes and “superyachts”, and vacations from his friend Crow without reporting them on financial disclosure forms, ProPublica reported. Crow has said that he did not attempt to influence Thomas politically or legally nor did he discuss pending supreme court cases. Thomas said he was told he was not required to disclose the trips. Notably, a company linked to Crow was involved in at least one case before the US supreme court, Bloomberg reported. Thomas did not recuse himself from the case.Justice Samuel Alito reportedly took a private jet to an all-expenses-covered fishing trip to Alaska, paid for by the hedge fund billionaire and conservative mega-donor Paul Singer. NPR reports that Singer has been involved in 10 appeals to the supreme court. In an unprecedented move, Alito defended himself in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, declaring he did not have to recuse himself and followed what he “understood to be standard practice”.The Senate judiciary committee is expected to vote today on a bill that would require the supreme court to adopt a code of ethics.Senate Democrats have called for a measure to establish a code of conduct for the supreme court justices similar to those that other government agencies must follow.The bill, unlikely to pass in a divided Congress, would demand the court create a code within 180 days and establish rules on recusals related to potential conflicts of interest and disclosure of gifts and travel.The panel vote comes after months of scrutiny on the court over ethical controversies supreme court justices have been involved in.Senate judiciary committee chair, Dick Durbin, said this week:
      Just about every week now, we learn something new and deeply troubling about the justices serving on the supreme court, the highest court in the land in the United States, and their conduct outside the courtroom.
      Let me tell you, if I or any member of the Senate failed to report an all-expense paid luxury getaway or if we used our government staff to help sell books we wrote, we’d be in big trouble.
      The bill would need at least nine GOP votes to pass, and Republicans appear united against it, arguing that the legislation would undermine the separation of powers and “destroy” the court.Twice impeached and now twice arrested and indicted. Donald Trump faces serious charges in New York and Florida over a hush-money scheme during the 2016 election and his alleged mishandling of classified documents.And more criminal charges could be on the way for Trump in Georgia and Washington DC. Here is where each case against Trump stands:Classified documents case in FloridaStatus: Trump pleaded not guilty; trial scheduled for AugustCharges: 31 counts of willful retention of national defense information under the Espionage Act, conspiracy to obstruct justice and false statements and representations, among othersHush-money case in New YorkStatus: Trump pleaded not guilty; trial forthcomingCharges: 34 felony charges of falsifying business recordsJanuary 6 case in WashingtonStatus: Subpoenas issued by grand juryPotential charges against Trump: Obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the government and incitement of an insurrection2020 election meddling case in GeorgiaStatus: Grand jury report finished; charging decisions expected this summerPotential charges against Trump: Election code violationsE Jean Carroll lawsuits in New YorkStatus: First lawsuit going to trial; second lawsuit on appealAllegations against Trump: Defamation and sexual abuseRead the full story here. Donald Trump has said he has until midnight tonight to testify before the federal grand jury deciding whether to indict him over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.Targets of criminal investigations rarely speak to grand juries, as they are usually advised by their attorneys to not take up invitations to meet with the grand jury because any statements provided in that setting could be used to help build a case against them in the event that they’re charged.Trump has not exercised that right in the two other criminal cases in which he’s been charged, Politico’s Kyle Cheney writes. Recent witnesses who have appeared before the grand jury investigating Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election were reportedly asked about the former president’s state of mind surrounding the January 6 insurrection.Federal prosecutors asked multiple former senior Trump White House officials to speak to Trump’s mindset in the days and weeks after losing the 2020 election, leading up to 6 January, according to a New York Times report. Witnesses including Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, were asked if he had privately acknowledged that he had lost the election, it said. Kushner is understood to have said that it was his impression that Trump truly believed the election was stolen.The line of questioning suggested prosecutors were trying to determine if Trump acted with corrupt intent as he sought to remain in power, the paper said.A federal grand jury investigating Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election will hear testimony from an aide who was with the former president for much of the day on 6 January 2021, according to multiple reports.William Russell, a former White House aide who now works for Trump’s presidential campaign, is scheduled to testify before he grand jury convened by special counsel Jack Smith, both CNN and NBC reported.Russell, who has previously testified before the grand jury, served in the Trump White House as a special assistant to the president and deputy director of advance, before moving to Florida to work as an aid to Trump after he left office.Multiple former senior Trump White House officials have testified before the grand jury in the special counsel’s investigation into the January 6 insurrection. Among those who have testified are Trump’s son-in-law and former White House senior adviser, Jared Kushner, and former top Trump aide, Hope Hicks.In April, Mike Pence testified for seven hours behind closed doors, meaning the details of what he told the prosecutors in the case remain uncertain.What the potential charges means for Trump is unclear.Prosecutors have been examining various instances of Trump pressuring officials like his former vice-president Mike Pence, but Trump’s efforts to obstruct the transfer of power could also be construed as conspiring to defraud voters more generally.The other two statutes, meanwhile, suggest a core part of the case against Trump is focused on the so-called fake electors scheme and the former president’s efforts to use the fake slates in a conspiracy to stop the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s election win on 6 January 2021.The target letter did not cite any seditious conspiracy, incitement of insurrection or deprivation of rights under color of law – other areas for which legal experts have suggested Trump could have legal risk.Last year, the House select committee that investigated the Capitol attack concluded that Trump committed multiple crimes in an attempt to reverse his 2020 defeat to Joe Biden, including conspiracy to defraud the United States and obstruction of an official proceeding.The committee issued symbolic criminal referrals to the justice department, although at that point the justice department had since stepped up its criminal investigation with the addition of new prosecutors in spring 2022 before they were folded into the special counsel’s office.House investigators also concluded that there was evidence for prosecutors to charge Trump with conspiracy to defraud and obstruction of an official proceeding. They also issued referrals for incitement of insurrection, which was not listed in the target letter.Should prosecutors charge Trump in the federal January 6 investigation, the case could go to trial much more quickly than the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case – before the 2024 election – because pre-trial proceedings would not be delayed by rules governing national security materials.Federal prosecutors investigating Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results have evidence to charge the former president with three crimes, including section 241 of the US legal code that makes it unlawful to conspire to violate civil rights, two people familiar with the matter said.The potential charges detailed in a target letter sent to Trump by prosecutors from the office of special counsel Jack Smith, who also charged Trump with retaining classified documents last month, was the clearest signal of an imminent indictment.Prosecutors appear to have evidence to charge Trump with obstruction of an official proceeding and conspiracy to defraud the United States based on the target letter, two statutes that the House select committee examining the January 6 Capitol attack issued criminal referrals for last year.The target letter to Trump identified a previously unconsidered third charge, the sources said. That is section 241 of title 18 of the US code, which makes it unlawful to conspire to threaten or intimidate a person in the “free exercise” of any right or privilege under the “Constitution or laws of the United States”.The statute, enacted to protect the civil rights of Black voters targeted by white supremacy groups after the US civil war, is unusual because it is typically used by prosecutors in law enforcement misconduct and hate crime prosecutions, though its use has expanded in recent years.Donald Trump has until Thursday midnight to respond to special counsel Jack Smith and tell his office whether he will appear before a grand jury in the justice department’s investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.A letter sent to Trump by prosecutors from Smith’s office on Sunday identified the former president as a “target” in the probe into the January 6 insurrection, Trump posted to his Truth Social website on Tuesday. He wrote:
      Deranged Jack Smith, the prosecutor with Joe Biden’s DOJ, sent a letter … stating that I am a TARGET of the January 6th Grand Jury investigation, and giving me a very short 4 days to report to the Grand Jury, which almost always means an Arrest and an Indictment.
      People who receive target letters from federal authorities are usually advised by their attorneys to not take up invitations to meet with the grand jury because any statements provided in that setting could be used to help build a case against them in the event that they’re charged.Good morning, US politics blog readers. The former president, Donald Trump, has quietly added a criminal defense attorney to his legal team as he faces a potential indictment in the justice department’s investigation into the January 6 insurrection.Attorney John Lauro, who has also represented Trump attorneys Christina Bobb and Alina Habba, is joining Trump’s legal team alongside Todd Blanche, according to sources, CNN reported late on Wednesday.Lauro will be solely focused on special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into Trump’s efforts to remain in office following his 2020 election defeat to Joe Biden, including the deadly 6 January 2021 riot in which his supporters overran the Capitol building in Washington DC.Federal prosecutors have evidence to charge the former president with three crimes, including section 241 of the US legal code that makes it unlawful to conspire to violate civil rights, the Guardian reported last night, citing two people familiar with the matter.Trump faces being charged with obstruction of an official proceeding and conspiracy to defraud the United States, two statutes that the House select committee examining the January 6 Capitol attack issued criminal referrals for last year.The target letter also identified a previously unconsidered third charge, the sources said. That is section 241 of title 18 of the US code, which makes it unlawful to conspire to threaten or intimidate a person in the “free exercise” of any right or privilege under the “Constitution or laws of the United States”.The potential charges detailed in a target letter sent to Trump by prosecutors from Smith’s office, who also charged Trump with retaining classified documents last month, was the clearest signal of an imminent indictment.Here’s what else we’re watching today:
      9am ET: Joe Biden will get his daily intelligence briefing.
      9am ET: The House will hold a hearing on online censorship. Democratic presidential hopeful, Robert F Kennedy, is expected to testify.
      10am ET: The Senate will meet to resume consideration of an EPA nomination and the NDAA.
      10.20am ET: Biden will leave for Joint Base Andrews, where he will fly to Philadelphia.
      10.45am ET: House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries will hold his weekly news conference.
      1pm ET: Biden will speak about “Bidenomics”. He will depart Philadelphia to return to the White House in the afternoon. More

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      Robert Kennedy Jr’s racist, antisemitic and xenophobic views go back decades, report says

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      Robert Kennedy Jr, a long-shot Democratic candidate for US president, has a long history of racism, antisemitism and xenophobia, and should be denied a national platform, according to a damning report seen by the Guardian.Kennedy, who provoked anger last week when he was filmed falsely suggesting that the coronavirus could have been “ethnically targeted” to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people, is due to testify at the US Capitol in Washington on Thursday.The Congressional Integrity Project, a political watchdog, called for Republicans to disinvite Kennedy after releasing a report that details his meetings with and promotion of racists, antisemites and extremist conspiracy theorists.“Kennedy embraces virtually every conspiracy theory in existence,” the report states. “His horrific antisemitic and xenophobic views are simply beyond the pale, and he has frequently met with and promoted antisemitic conspiracy theorists. Kennedy’s anti-vaccine conspiracies go back decades and have had deadly real world consequences.”Kennedy, an environmental lawyer, is running against Joe Biden in the Democratic presidential primary and has drawn big and enthusiastic crowds and polled as high as 20%. But the Project’s document argues that Kennedy’s recent comments about Jewish and Chinese people, which were quickly hailed by neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers as “100% correct”, were not an aberration but fitted a long pattern.Earlier this summer Kennedy touted a meeting with Ice Cube, a rapper who issued bizarre antisemitic tweets, and publicly defended musician Roger Waters, who was embroiled in controversy after donning a costume intended to evoke Nazi attire at a concert in Germany.The report says Kennedy has also repeatedly promoted and praised fringe online broadcaster James Corbett, a Sandy Hook and 9/11 conspiracy theorist who has claimed that “Hitler and the Nazis were 100% completely and utterly set up”.Kennedy has often allied himself with the National of Islam leader, Louis Farrakhan, who regularly unleashed tirades about alleged Jewish control of media and government. Kennedy met Farrakhan at his Chicago home in 2015, with Farrakhan later tweeting that they discussed “a vaccine that is designed to affect Black males”.The Project details how Kennedy himself has frequently invoked Nazi Germany when pushing debunked theories about vaccines. He put out a video that showed the infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci with a moustache reminiscent of Adolf Hitler and used the word “holocaust” to describe children he believes were hurt by vaccines in 2015.Last year, at a Washington rally organized by his group Children’s Health Defense, Kennedy complained that people’s rights were being violated by public health measures that had been taken to reduce the number of people sickened and killed by Covid-19. He said: “Even in Hitler’s Germany, you could cross the Alps to Switzerland. You could hide in an attic like Anne Frank did.” He later apologised.For years, the document says, Kennedy has targeted a particularly dangerous form of vaccine denial at Black people. In 2021 at the height of the Covid-19 vaccination campaign, he released Medical Racism, a film that promoted disproven claims about the dangers of vaccines and explicitly warned communities of color to be suspicious of “sinister” vaccination campaigns.Several doctors and experts who participated in the film later denounced it and said they felt used and misled about the message of the documentary. Richard Allen Williams, founder of the Association of Black Cardiologists, called Children’s Health Defense “absolutely a racist operation” particularly dangerous to the Black community.In 2017, as a measles outbreak devastated Minnesota’s Somali-American community due to low vaccination rates, Kennedy continued to push his false claims that “science and anecdotal evidence suggest that Africans and African Americans may be particularly vulnerable to vaccine injuries including autism”.In a 2020 interview, Kennedy asserted without evidence that “People with African blood react differently to vaccines than people with Caucasian blood. They’re much more sensitive.”The following year, amid the Covid-19 pandemic, Kennedy recorded a webinar encouraging Black people to be skeptical of vaccines, claiming: “There has been abundant evidence … beyond any dispute that Blacks are disproportionately harmed by vaccine injury,” adding: “Blacks react completely differently to vaccines … we now know it’s just one huge experiment on Black Americans, and they know what is happening and they are doing nothing.”The report also argues that, from the earliest days of Operation Warp Speed, Kennedy has built “an anti-vaccine juggernaut” around opposition to Covid-19 vaccinations, which he has called “the deadliest vaccine ever made”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHe has sought to frame Covid vaccines as an elaborate conspiracy to enrich the medical establishment and big pharmaceutical companies. In a YouTube video, Kennedy accused Bill Gates of developing an “injectable chip” to enable the tracking of human movements and attempting to “genetically modify” humanity to “the flow of global information”.Kennedy has even accused his former anti-vaccine ally, Donald Trump, of selling out to Pfizer by developing vaccines.Such anti-scientific views go way back. Kennedy has claimed that fluoridated water is “drugging” children, HIV does not cause Aids and chemicals in the water are making people gay or transgender as well as pushing nonsensical conspiracy theories about wifi and 5G cellular networks.As the son of former attorney general Robert Kennedy, and nephew of former president John F Kennedy, Kennedy has caused anguish to one of America’s most storied political dynasties with his toxic views.In 2019 three relatives wrote an opinion column for the Politico website condemning his anti-vaccine advocacy, which they held partially responsible for a measles outbreak.The Congressional Integrity Project contends that Kennedy is a “Republican stooge” who is being embraced by the far right in an attempt to damage Biden. He has become a regular guest on Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News and other rightwing outlets. Far-right provocateurs Roger Stone, Steve Bannon, Alex Jones and Michael Flynn have praised him.Now Republicans have invited Kennedy to Congress. On Thursday he is due to address the House of Representatives’ select subcommittee on the weaponization of the federal government during a hearing to examine “the federal government’s role in censoring Americans”. The panel is chaired by the Trump loyalist Jim Jordan, who has been criticised for launching bogus investigations into Biden.Kyle Herrig, executive director of Congressional Integrity Project, said: “Giving RFK Jr a platform to spread dangerous conspiracy theories and xenophobic and antisemitic rhetoric is a new low for Jim Jordan – and that says something.“Jim Jordan should stop the charade and disinvite RFK Jr immediately. Allowing this hearing to go forward is shameless and beyond the pale. Maga Republicans’ desperation is on full display this week, proving once again that they have no credibility to conduct legitimate investigations.” More