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      Rudy Giuliani pleads not guilty to Georgia election racketeering charges

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      Rudy Giuliani on Friday pleaded not guilty to Georgia charges that accuse him of trying, along with former president Donald Trump and others, to illegally overturn the results of the 2020 election in the state.In filing his not guilty plea with the court, the former New York mayor and Trump attorney also waived his right to appear at an arraignment hearing set for 6 September. He joins the former president and at least 10 others in forgoing a trip to Atlanta to appear before a judge in a packed courtroom with a news camera rolling.Trump and Giuliani are among 19 people charged in a sprawling, 41-count indictment that details a wide-ranging conspiracy to thwart the will of Georgia’s voters who had selected Democratic nominee Joe Biden over the Republican incumbent.The charges against Giuliani, along with other legal woes, signal a remarkable fall for a man who was celebrated as “America’s mayor” in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attack. He now faces 13 charges, including violation of Georgia’s anti-racketeering law, the federal version of which was one of his favorite tools as a prosecutor in the 1980s.Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney, has said she wants to try all 19 defendants together. But the legal wrangling has already begun in a slew of court filings since the indictment was filed on 14 August.Several of those charged have filed motions to be tried alone or with a small group of other defendants, while others are trying to move their proceedings to federal court. Some are seeking to be tried quickly under a Georgia court rule that would have their trials start by early November, while others are already asking the court to extend deadlines.Due to “the complexity, breadth, and volume of the 98-page indictment”, Giuliani asked the judge in Friday’s filing to give him at least 30 days after he receives information about witnesses and evidence from prosecutors to file motions. Normally, pretrial motions are to be filed within 10 days after arraignment.Also Friday, Brian Kemp, the Georgia governor, appointed a three-person panel to consider whether Shawn Still should be suspended from his state senate post while his prosecution is ongoing. Under Georgia law, Kemp is supposed to appoint such a panel within 14 days of receiving a copy of the indictment. The panel, in turn, has 14 days to make a written recommendation to Kemp. The Republican governor named Chris Carr, the attorney general, as required by the law, as well as Republican state senate majority leader Steve Gooch and Republican state house majority leader Chuck Efstration.Still is a swimming pool contractor and former state Republican party finance chair. He was one of 16 Georgia Republicans who signed a certificate falsely stating that Trump had won the state, declaring themselves the state’s “duly elected and qualified” electors. Still was one of only three members of that group who was indicted.Still was elected to the Georgia state senate in November 2022 and represents a district in Atlanta’s northern suburbs. It’s unclear whether the panel will find grounds to suspend Still, because the constitution specifies that officials should be suspended when a felony indictment “relates to the performance or activities of the office”. The three-person commission can have a hearing for Still including lawyers. More

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      ‘I wouldn’t give him a nickel’: one-time Giuliani donors rule out legal aid

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      As he attempts to meet mounting legal fees incurred in large part through his work for Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani will reportedly not get “a nickel” from one billionaire who backed his campaign for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination – or, apparently, much from many others previously big donors.“I wouldn’t give him a nickel,” the investor Leon Cooperman told CNBC. “I’m very negative on Donald Trump. It’s an American tragedy. [Rudy] was ‘America’s mayor’. He did a great job. And like everybody else who gets involved with Trump, it turns to shit.”Brian France, a former Nascar chief executive, was slightly more conciliatory. But he told the same outlet his wallet was staying shut: “I was a major supporter of Rudy in 2008 and at other times. I’m not sure what happen[ed] but I miss the old Rudy. I’m wishing him well.”Donald Trump happened to Rudy.Giuliani, now 79, was once a crusading US attorney who became New York mayor in 1993 and led the city on 9/11 and after. Capitalising on the resultant “America’s mayor” tag, he ran for the Republican nomination to succeed President George W Bush. Briefly leading the polls, he raised $60m but flamed out when the race got serious.When Giuliani struggled with drink and depression, his former wife has said, Trump gave him shelter. When Trump himself entered presidential politics, in 2016, Giuliani became a vociferous surrogate. When Trump entered the White House, Giuliani failed to be named secretary of state but did become the president’s aide and attorney.In that capacity he fueled Trump’s first impeachment, over attempts to find dirt on opponents in Ukraine, and helped drive the hapless attempt to overturn Trump’s defeat by Joe Biden in 2020, which has spawned numerous criminal charges.Of 91 criminal counts faced by Trump, 17 are related to election subversion. Four were brought by the justice department special counsel Jack Smith. Thirteen were brought by Fani Willis, the district attorney of Fulton county, Georgia.Giuliani also faces 13 counts in Georgia, under racketeering and conspiracy statutes. Like Trump he denies wrongdoing. Also like Trump, he faces other challenges too.Smartmatic, a voting machines company, made Giuliani a target of a $2.7bn defamation suit. This week, Giuliani was ruled liable for defamation against two Georgia elections workers. A former personal assistant, Noelle Dunphy, sued for $10m, alleging sexual assault and harassment. Giuliani has also been investigated by legal authorities.A lawyer for the former mayor has said in court he is struggling to meet his expenses. On the Upper East Side in New York, his luxury apartment is up for sale.CNBC found other former supporters to say they would not help Giuliani now. A personal assistant to Ken Langone said the co-founder of Home Depot did not plan to donate to Giuliani’s legal defense fund. A “Wall Street veteran” said he did not want to be named because “he didn’t want to be bothered by Trump or Giuliani”.Ted Goodman, a Giuliani adviser, told CNBC: “I get that it’s more expedient to say nasty things about the mayor in order to stay in good graces with New York’s so-called ‘high society’ social circles and the Washington cocktail circuit, but I would remind these same people that Rudy Giuliani is the most effective federal prosecutor in American history, he improved the quality of life for more people than any mayor in American history, and he comforted the nation following September 11.“No one can take away his great accomplishments and contributions to the country.”Attempting to stave off attempts to take away his freedom, Giuliani is due on 7 September to host a fundraiser at Trump’s Bedminster club in New Jersey. The Republican frontrunner is due to appear, but he is widely reported to have resisted pleas for significant monetary assistance.CNBC also quoted two anonymous New York Republican operatives. One said: “Rudy should have a statue built in his honor for saving the city. But instead he is a clown figure amongst the donor class and needs to run begging for money to pay for a legal defense in which he tried to overturn an election.” More

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      Rudy Giuliani liable for defaming Georgia election workers, judge rules

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      Rudy Giuliani, an attorney and close ally of Donald Trump, is liable for defaming two Georgia poll workers following the 2020 election, a federal judge has ruled in a default judgment.Giuliani failed to produce records during the discovery process while making “excuses” to shroud his noncompliance, according to the opinion by Judge Beryl Howell, of the federal US district court for the District of Columbia.“Donning a cloak of victimization may play well on a public stage to certain audiences, but in a court of law this performance has served only to subvert the normal process of discovery in a straightforward defamation case,” Howell wrote.Ruby Freeman, a election worker in Fulton county, Georgia during the 2020 election, sued Giuliani for defaming her and her daughter, Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, by repeatedly spreading baseless claims they committed election fraud, including rolling around suitcases of fake ballots.As a result of those baseless claims, Freeman and Moss, who are Black, became targets of harassment in the weeks after the election. Moss testified that she received threats and racist messages from strangers as a result had to go into hiding and change her appearance. The ruling, along with the Fox-Dominion settlement, marks the second time Giuliani, one of the most prolific spreaders of misinformation in the 2020 election, has been held liable.Giuliani admitted to making false statements but argued they were protected by the first amendment, in an earlier court filing.A Georgia state election board formally cleared Freeman and Moss, of wrongdoing in a 10-page report released in March.That report confirmed that the election tampering allegations against Freeman and Moss were “unsubstantiated and found to have no merit”.According to the Wednesday ruling, Giuliani is also liable for “intentional infliction of emotional distress, civil conspiracy and punitive damage claims”.Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, is facing 13 felony charges in the Georgia election interference case. He was booked in a Fulton county jail last week and was released after posting $150,000 bail.Yet Giuliani, 79, has struggled to pay his mounting legal fees, according to the New York Times, which reports that his bills add up to $3m. He put his Manhattan apartment up for sale for $6.5m in July, and has asked Trump to help cover some of the cost.Trump is set to host a fundraiser for Giuliani at his New Jersey golf club this September, and it will cost each guest $100,000 to attend.The defamation case will now go to trial to determine the amount of damages. While it is unclear how much Giuliani will be required to pay, Howell ruled that he owes $89,172.50, with interest, in attorney fees for Freeman and Moss on their successful motion to compel discovery. More

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      Rudy Giuliani mugshot released after he surrenders in Trump Georgia case – live

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      Hugo Lowell reports:
      Just in: A federal judge has denied former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows’ request for an emergency order to prevent his arrest at Fulton County jail while he tries to have his case removed to federal court.
      Furthermore:
      A federal judge has denied former Trump Justice department official Jeff Clark’s request for an emergency stay to avoid having to surrender at Fulton County jail, after he filed to have his case removed to federal court. Clark has until Friday at noon to travel to Atlanta for booking.
      In a fundraising email to supporters, the South Carolina senator Tim Scott offers a (very basic) taste of what he might offer on the debate stage in Milwaukee tonight.“If you had told 7-year-old Tim Scott he would one day be on a presidential debate stage, he would NOT believe you,” the email says.Seven-year-old Tim might also not have believed that his grown-up self would take his debate stage bow with just 1% support, a mere 51 points behind the frontrunner, Donald Trump. But I digress.The email continues: “I’m a child of divorce. When I was 7, my mom, my older brother, and I moved into a two-bedroom rental house that we shared with my grandparents.“My Mama and Granddaddy told me you can be bitter or you can be better. You can be a victim or you can choose victory. Well Friend, I’m ready to choose victory!“Tonight, I’ll share why the truth of my life disproves the Left’s lies and why I believe America can do for anyone what she’s done for me.”What Scott might do in the primary remains of course to be seen. He has big support from the Oracle billionaire Larry Ellison and with a big debate performance, who knows.But the signs are not particularly rosy, even when one zeroes in on Iowa, the first state to vote and one where evangelical Christians, a key Scott constituency, are strong.At the weekend, a major poll from NBC News and the Des Moines Register gave the senator third place. That was better than his position in national averages, linked to above. But though Scott had 9% support, Ron DeSantis of Florida had 19% and Trump – thrice-married and an adjudicated rapist yet still the No1 choice for Christian conservatives – had 42%.Our Washington bureau chief reports from Milwaukee, ahead of tonight’s Republican debate …Donald Trump is missing from the first Republican primary debate but his supporters are not. Nine hours before kick-off, they were roving outside the venue wearing “Make America great again” caps and brandishing signs mocking the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis.Some of the former president’s allies in the US Congress, such as Matt Gaetz of Florida and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, are also on here. Sitting in a hotel lobby, Greene told the Guardian that she backs Trump’s decision to stay away.“I told him to skip it,” the far-right congresswoman and conspiracy theorist said. “It’s a waste of his time.“He’s winning by over 60%, poll after poll depending on what state you’re looking at and the national poll. It’s a complete waste of his time to step out on a stage and be the centre of the attacks when he has a four-year record as president that everybody wants back and none of those people on the stage have anything that they can compare to him.”There has been speculation that Trump could choose Greene as his running mate.She said: “Well, I’d have to think about it and consider it. It’s talked about frequently and I know my name is on a list but really my biggest focus right now is serving the district that elected me.“That’s of course a decision that President Trump has to make. I don’t know who that person is going to be and I don’t even think they’re going to be on that debate stage. I’ll argue that. But, of course, that’s up to him. But I would be honoured and consider it. But my most important job is, of course, to serve the American people and I’ll help him do whatever in any way I can.”Greene said the three Republicans she talks to most frequently are Trump, Kevin McCarthy, speaker of the House of Representatives, and James Comer, chairman of the House oversight committee. Do they all seem to be on the same page?“A lot of times, yeah. Not all the time but a lot of times. It just depends on the issue.”Trump is expected to surrender at the Fulton county jail on Thursday evening on racketeering and conspiracy charges, over his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. It is Greene’s home state but she dismisses the sweeping indictment as “garbage” and has not read it.“I wouldn’t waste five seconds of my time,” she said.Booking pictures of those Trump aides and allies who have so far surrendered in Georgia have now been released.Here is the official booking picture of Giuliani:Here are some for more of the co-defendants:Some levity, of a sort, for those wanting a slightly different angle on what until relatively recently would have been the outlandish, outrageous prospect of a former US president being booked at an Atlanta jail on charges including racketeering and conspiracy, related to an attempt to overturn an election.Bookies are offering punters the chance to bet on what Donald Trump’s recorded weight will be when he surrenders at the Fulton County Jail tomorrow. As the Daily Beast puts it, perennially pleasingly snarky…
      The line currently sits over/under 278.5lb, a far cry from the 244lb White House physician Sean Conley recorded for Trump in 2020.
      As the Beast also notes, part of punters’ interest in the former president’s avoirdupois is fueled by the purest schadenfreude, if I might overdo the pretentious italics. Trump, of course, has a habit of abusing his opponents, critics and enemies – see Christie, Chris and O’Donnell, Rosie, passim – about their body mass index.Trump’s height will also be taken. His 2020 White House physical said he was 6ft 3in tall. There is speculation, widespread, that the truth is different:Here’s a slightly fuller version of comments from Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor turned Trump attorney, after his surrender in Atlanta on charges including conspiracy and racketeering.Speaking to reporters, and laughing as he did so, Giuliani said he was “very, very honoured to be involved in this case because this case is a fight for our way of life”.“This indictment is a travesty,” he said. “It’s an attack on not just me, not just President [Donald] Trump, this is an attack on the American people. If this could happen to me, who is probably the most prolific prosecutor maybe in American history and the most effective mayor for sure, it can happen to you.”Giuliani was indeed a prolific prosecutor, back in New York before he became mayor and briefly, after leading New York on and after 9/11, dreamt of a rise to the White House.As US attorney in Manhattan, he memorably cracked down on organised crime by using racketeering statutes.It’s safe to say his current predicament in relation to similar such statutes … has been noticed by quite a few observers.I typed “Giuliani irony” into Google, and this and this and this came up. And more.Here, meanwhile, is some further reading about what Michael Cohen, another Trump attorney who turned on his old boss after being sent to jail, had to say the other day about Trump, Giuliani and the concept of payment for legal services rendered …Doug Burgum, governor of North Dakota and GOP presidential candidate, said he will consult a physician before deciding if he will participate at tonight’s debate, after injuring his leg at a basketball game yesterday.Speaking to CNN’s Dana Bash, Burgum said his debate walkthrough went well despite tearing his achilles tendon.Fulton County officials have released the mug shot of Kenneth Chesebro, the alleged architect of Donald Trump’s fake electors plot.Chesebro surrendered at the Fulton county jail earlier on Wednesday.Here’s the mug shot, as shared by CBS’ Scott MacFarlane:Rudy Giuliani claims he is being indicted because he was a lawyer for Donald Trump.The former New York mayor accuses the FBI of having “stole(n) my iCloud account the day that I began representing Donald Trump”.Rudy Giuliani says the Fulton county district office’s case against him, Donald Trump and his co-defendants is “an attack on the American people”.“If they can do this to me, they can do this to you,” he tells reporters.Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis “will go down in American history for having conducted one of the worst attacks on the American constitution”, Giuliani says.Rudy Giuliani is speaking to reporters after he surrendered to authorities at the Fulton county jail on charges that he helped lead a racketeering enterprise and conspired to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in the state of Georgia.Asked if he regretted attaching his name to Donald Trump, Giuliani replied:
      I am very, very honoured to be involved in this because this case is a fight for our way of life.
      This indictment is a travesty. It’s an attack on not just me, not just President Trump, not just the people in this indictment, some of them I don’t even know.
      Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis sharply rejected efforts by two of Donald Trump’s co-defendants – former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Jeffrey Clark – to move their sprawling racketeering cases to federal court.From my colleague Sam Levine:Rudy Giuliani left Manhattan in the morning to travel to Atlanta with his lead lawyer, John Esposito, on a private jet, though the source of the funding for the plane remains uncertain given Giuliani has struggled financially in the wake of mounting legal bills.Giuliani’s financial trouble stemming from having to retain lawyers for the congressional and federal criminal investigations into efforts to subvert the 2020 election results have become particularly acute in recent weeks, according to two people familiar with the matter.The money problems have been exacerbated by Giuliani’s recent setbacks in court – including in a defamation case against two Georgia election workers he falsely accused of stealing ballots – and the suspension of his law license over his election subversion efforts means he has few income streams.The situation has led to Giuliani listing his Manhattan apartment for sale for more than $6m. He also travelled to Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in April to ask the former president to help pay his legal bills after Trump rejected his earlier entreaties for support, the people said.When that trip failed to convince Trump to have his Save America political action committee pay for Giuliani’s legal bills, in the way that Trump has doled out $21m for aides’ legal bills tied up in the criminal investigations, Giuliani’s son Andrew made his own trip to see Trump.Trump has never explained why he has consistently refused to help Giuliani, but people in his orbit point to Trump’s complaints that Giuliani was defeated in almost every 2020 election lawsuit that he brought.But the meeting with Andrew Giuliani appears to have helped, and Trump agreed to attend two fundraisers, the people said. Trump will host a $100,000-per-person fundraiser at his Bedminster club in New Jersey next month, according to an invitation reviewed by the New York Times.Rudy Giuliani’s surrender to authorities at the Fulton county jail marks a jarring moment for Giuliani, a former federal prosecutor who made his name with aggressive racketeering cases, now facing a racketeering charge himself.Alongside Donald Trump, Giuliani faces the most charges in the sprawling 41-count indictment handed up by a grand jury last week that described how he played a principal role in marshalling fake slates of electors among other schemes to reverse Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election.The bond for Giuliani was set at $150,000 after his lawyers met with the Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis earlier in the day. The amount was slightly less than the $200,000 bond for Trump but more than the $100,000 bond for another former Trump lawyer, Sidney Powell.Meanwhile, Joe Biden and his family are on vacation in Lake Tahoe.The president, first lady and members of the Biden family “are taking a Pilates class followed by a spin class”, the White House said earlier.AP’s Seung Min Kim shared a photo of Biden after his pilates and spin classes:Democrats will be denied political oxygen on Wednesday night but hope to turn this to their advantage by framing all the Republican candidates as Donald Trump-adjacent extremists.At a press conference on the top floor of a downtown Milwaukee hotel, Jaime Harrison, chair of the Democratic National Committee, said:
      Tonight, in prime time, Americans will have an opportunity to see in action the most extreme, the most divisive, the most chaotic slate of presidential candidates in history when these Maga 2024 Republicans take the debate stage here in Milwaukee, and I don’t know if it’s going to be a debate, but more like a circus.
      They may try to differentiate themselves but the truth is that every single one of these candidates from Donald Trump on down are extreme.
      Harrison went on to list the candidates one by one, setting out their positions on abortion, pushing conspiracy theories and past associations with the Tea Party or Trump.
      No matter who you pick, this group is as extreme as it gets. A bag full of Maga apples and they are all rotten. They are wildly out of step with the American people.
      He attempted to draw a contrast between the two parties. “We believe that our better days as a nation are ahead of us, not behind us. They believe that our better days are behind us and that is the difference in this election.
      Joe Biden wakes up every day thinking about how to make the lives of the American people better. They wake up every day thinking about how do I get back in power? That is the difference between the Democratic party led by Joe Biden and a Republican party led by Maga extremists.
      Satya Rhodes-Conway, the mayor of Madison, Wisconsin, accused Republicans of pushing a national abortion ban. “Let me be crystal clear about this: the 2024 Maga Republican presidential candidates are running on their extreme anti-choice records,” she said.
      I’m sure that they’re going to talk about freedom on the debate stage tonight. But what about the freedom to make my own health care decisions? I guess that their version of freedom doesn’t include women.
      Rhodes-Conway added:
      Here’s the bottom line: the American people don’t want anything to do with their abortion bans. Voters in states all across this great country, including right here in Wisconsin, have made it clear that the craven abortion bans are wildly unpopular and out of step with the American public.
      Rudy Giuliani has turned himself in at the Fulton county jail over charges tied to his efforts to help Donald Trump overturn the 2020 presidential election.The former New York City mayor and longtime Trump ally faces 13 charges that include racketeering, soliciting lawmakers to violate their oaths of office, making false statements and conspiracy counts dealing with the recruitment of fake electors.Here’s a look at the Fulton county jail records, as shared by NBC’s Blayne Alexander:Rudy Giuliani has arrived at the Fulton county jail and surrendered to authorities, according to the county sheriff’s website.The former New York mayor and lawyer for Donald Trump faces charges in the sprawling Georgia elections racketeering case. At a meeting earlier today with Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis’ team, Giuliani’s bond was set at $150,000.“I’m feeling very, very good about it because I feel like I am defending the rights of all Americans, as I did so many times as a United States attorney,” Giuliani told reporters in New York this morning. More

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      ‘Donald’s an idiot’: Michael Cohen says Trump’s rebuffing of Giuliani could backfire

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      Donald Trump is an “idiot” for not paying legal expenses incurred by his attorney the former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani in the Georgia election subversion case, Trump’s former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen said.“Donald’s an idiot,” Cohen told CNN of the former president. “Let me just be very clear when it comes to paying money, he is truly an idiot.“He has not learned yet that [there are] three people you don’t want to throw under the bus like that: your lawyer, your doctor and your mechanic. Because one way or the other, you’re going to go down the hill and there’ll be no brakes.”Trump faces 13 charges in Georgia, including racketeering and conspiracy. With bond set at $200,000, he has said he would turn himself in at an Atlanta jail on Thursday.Eighteen Trump allies were also charged. Giuliani faces 13 counts including racketeering, an irony widely noted given his past as a crusading US attorney in New York, cracking down on organised crime.CNN reported last week that Giuliani in April went to Trump’s Florida home, Mar-a-Lago, to ask for help paying mounting bills also concerning other work while Trump was in the White House. Giuliani was largely rebuffed, CNN said.Cohen was long close to Trump, his work including making the hush-money payments to the porn star Stormy Daniels that are now the subject of 34 criminal charges against Trump in New York state.Trump also faces charges regarding federal election subversion and retention of classified documents, for a total of 91 counts. Such unprecedented legal jeopardy, also including civil cases concerning his business affairs and defamation arising from an allegation of rape, have not stopped him dominating the race for the Republican presidential nomination.Cohen turned on Trump after he was sentenced to three years in prison for offenses including tax fraud and lying to Congress. Becoming a leading Trump critic, he has testified against Trump in court. Last month, Cohen reached an undisclosed settlement with the Trump Organization over his own unpaid fees.Regarding Trump’s bond in Georgia, Cohen told CNN: “At the end of the day, $200,000, he’ll have no problem with raising the money. Worse comes to worse, he’ll go to his stupid supporters to do it and they’ll just pony up to one of his various” fundraising committees.“But I find it ironic or comical that I had to post a $500,000 bond for another man having an affair and [me] receiving back the money … and his is $200,000 for trying to overturn a free and fair election. I just don’t see the correlation, but it is what it is.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionCohen suggested Giuliani would be wise to “flip” on Trump.“Allegedly from Rudy’s own mouth, he claims that he has a smoking gun, information about Donald,” Cohen said. “Well, if that’s true … I don’t have to suggest anything to Rudy. He’s the one that basically came up with this concept of strong-arming when he was head of the southern district of New York. He’s going to need to speak and he’s going to need to speak before everybody else does.”Giuliani’s work for Trump also included digging for political dirt in Ukraine, efforts which contributed to Trump’s first impeachment.Cohen said: “The job that Rudy did for Donald, I don’t know if I would pay either. But at the end of the day, when your life is basically hanging on the line once again, you just don’t really want to throw another lawyer under the bus.” More

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      Trump’s legal woes are part of his quasi-religious mythology of martyrdom | Sidney Blumenthal

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      On 16 or perhaps 17 July 2024, in Milwaukee, the Republican national convention will likely nominate as its presidential candidate a convicted criminal. When Donald Trump ascends the podium to accept the nomination for his third time he will probably have been found guilty months earlier of having staged an attempted coup to overthrow American democracy – “conspiring to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election, obstruct the certification of the election results, and discount citizens’ legitimate votes”, in the words of special counsel Jack Smith.The US district court judge Tanya Chutkan has announced that she will set the trial date at the next hearing on Trump’s case on 28 August. Smith has sought a 2 January 2024 start date for a trial to last an estimated six weeks into mid-February. Trump’s attorneys have preposterously suggested a date in April 2026. If Judge Chutkan fixes the trial for any time before 1 June 2024, Trump will accept the Republican nomination after its verdict is rendered.And if the date is earlier than June, Republican primaries will be conducted at the same time as the trial. Day by day, the compounding of the doubled events will incite his followers to redouble their fervor and devotion. Rocket fuel will be pumped on to the fire of Trump’s campaign. While the closing statements are delivered to the jury, Republicans will, if the polls hold, have already voted overwhelmingly for Trump and reduced his opponents’ chances to ashes.The day of the first contest, the Iowa caucuses, 15 January, is also the day that his second defamation trial with E Jean Carroll begins. The judge in that case, in New York, Lewis A Kaplan, found in July that Trump had “raped” her. “Indeed, as the evidence at trial recounted … makes clear, the jury found that Mr Trump in fact did exactly that,” he said. So Trump will mount the stage at the convention, regardless of the legal verdict about the January 6 riot at the US Capitol, or any other verdict, as an adjudicated rapist.All told, so far, Trump faces 91 criminal counts in four jurisdictions. Three other elaborate trials will follow his January 6 case, if it is scheduled any time in January or February. His trial date in New York is tentatively on the calendar for 25 March 2024. In that case, he is charged by the Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg “for falsifying New York business records in order to conceal damaging information and unlawful activity from American voters before and after the 2016 election. During the election, Trump and others employed a ‘catch and kill’ scheme to identify, purchase, and bury negative information about him and boost his electoral prospects. Trump then went to great lengths to hide this conduct, causing dozens of false entries in business records to conceal criminal activity, including attempts to violate state and federal election laws.”But Bragg has suggested he would postpone this trial to allow the January 6 federal case to be first.Trump’s trial in the Mar-a-Lago presidential records case is on the calendar in Florida for 20 May 2024, where he is charged with the illegal and willful theft of national security documents and obstruction of justice.Even more than during the gripping performance of his various indictments, the theatre of his trials will subsume politics. There will not be another campaign, some semblance of a normal campaign of the past, a fantasy campaign, separate from Trump’s trials. The scenes from courtroom to courtroom will overlap with the primaries – the final ones taking place on 4 June 2024 – only intensifying the zeal of his base. And then Trump’s battle with the law will engulf the general election.The trials are a continuous spectacle, featuring an all-star cast in far-flung locations. Political reporters are barely heard from, while legal analysts fill the airwaves. Every twist and turn, every motion, every argument is the breathless lead story. Everyone, from prosecutors to co-conspirators, named and unnamed, indicted and unindicted, are characters in Trump’s new reality show – part violent action movie (the insurrection), part sleazy porn flick (Stormy Daniels), part conspiracy thriller (Mar-a-Lago), and part mafia drama (the fake elector racket).But the Trump trials are more than his means; they are his ends. The trials are not the sideshow, but the heart and soul of Trump’s campaign. They have become his essential fundraising tool to finance his defense, his platform for whipping up his followers into a constant state of excitement, and his instrument for dominating the media to make himself the center of attention and blot out coverage of anyone else.The trials are the message. They are the drama around which Trump plays his role as the unjustly accused victim, whose rights are trampled and who is the martyr for his oppressed “deplorables”. He is taking the slings and arrows for them. The narcissist is the self-sacrificing saint. The criminal is the angel. The liar is the truth-teller. If any Republican lapses in faithfulness, they are more than a mere doubter or skeptic, but a betrayer and traitor. Trump’s trials are the rigorous trial of his followers’ faith. Rejection of temptation in an encounter with an impertinent fact that might raise a qualm shows purity of heart. Seduction by fact must be resisted. The siren song of critical thinking must be cast out as sin. Trump’s convictions are the supreme test of his followers’ strength of conviction.Republicans are not prisoners of Trump’s narcissistic rage. They don’t reject it. They don’t regret it. They don’t apologize. They mirror it. They mimic it. They exult in it. It is the gratification they receive for passing through the ordeal of belief. His rage is their reward. It is their cheap vicarious defiance of the evil-doers: the establishment, the globalists, the Fauciists, the FBI, the Barbie movie. As Trump has received target letters, so judges, district attorneys, the special counsel, and their wives, too, must be targets. Fair game is fair play. Hallelujah!Poor Mike Pence, who Trump chose as his running mate to balance his sinfulness with Christian virtue, benightedly still believes that truthfulness, righteousness and clean hands makes him the ideal evangelical avatar. He has positioned himself on the Republican issues as a scold of Trump’s fall from grace on abortion. Pence is in favor of a national ban, not leaving it to the states like Trump, as if issues matter. His humility as a godly servant leader, for years imitating every gesture of Trump’s, reached its abrupt end in his refusal to drink from Trump’s poisoned chalice.Yet Pence’s embrace of scripture in the form of the constitution has not beatified him to the evangelicals. There is no worldly subject that can grant him absolution from being perceived as Trump’s Judas. His steadfastness is scorned. His blamelessness is derided. “I’m glad they didn’t hang you,” a man said to Pence at the Iowa state fair. That man’s sentiment is the current definition of moderate Republicanism.The precise source of Trump’s permanent campaign of trials can be traced to before the election of 2016, when his inveterate dirty trickster Roger Stone coined the “Stop the Steal” slogan to claim Trump had been robbed by Senator Ted Cruz in the Colorado caucuses. That falsehood became Trump’s “Stop the Steal” con before the 2020 election, which metastasized into his coup and insurrection, and now the prosecutions. (Last week, a Danish film-maker who has produced a documentary about Stone released previously unseen video of him laying out the details of the fake electors scheme on 5 November 2020, two days after the election. It seems doubtful that Stone was the originator of the conspiracy. The idea was floated in February 2020 at a closed meeting to the rightwing Council on National Policy, whose president, Tom Fitton, later called on Trump to pardon Stone. Fitton sent Trump a memo on 31 October 2020, three days before the election, advising him to declare before the ballots were counted, “We had an election today – and I won.” Fitton has been identified by a number of news organizations as Unnamed Co-Conspirator Individual 1 in the Georgia indictment.)But Trump’s career in crime is an epic story that antedates his election fraud. The Georgia indictment charging him with operating a “criminal enterprise” is overdue by almost 50 years. His coup d’état is the coup de grâce. But the enormity of his conspiracy to overturn the election ultimately depended upon the weak reed of Pence, who proved surprisingly unpliable. Trump brought the lessons he learned in the demimonde of New York to Washington.He always wanted his Roy Cohn, his model lawyer and mouthpiece. His credentials were nonpareil. Cohn was born and bred in the clubhouse political culture of graft and favoritism, Joe McCarthy’s vicious counsel, returned to the city as its number one fixer, from the mob to the Catholic archdiocese, who had won his own acquittals in four criminal trials for bribery and conspiracy when the Trumps – father Fred, with his real-estate empire in the outer boroughs, and his son Donald, on the make in the Big Apple – hired him in 1974 to get them off the hook of a federal suit for housing discrimination against black tenants. On advice of counsel, Trump repeatedly perjured himself, Cohn dragged the case out, and the Trumps ignored Department of Justice decrees. Cohn claimed the case was created by “planted malcontents”. Trump, meanwhile, got his real-estate license, and Cohn would set him up with the mob to build Trump Tower.But Roy Cohn was only one part of what Trump required to operate. He also needed the prosecutors to lay off. He needed his Robert Morgenthau, scion of one of New York’s most distinguished families, personification of civic virtue, the US attorney for the southern district of New York for a dozen years and the district attorney of Manhattan for 35 years, “my friend, the late, GREAT, Robert Morgenthau”, as Trump called him after his death at 100. Morgenthau brought Trump on to the board of the Police Athletic Association, hosted a tribute dinner to him and accepted campaign contributions. He never opened a single investigation into Trump, and always felt there was nothing to see.Soon after Rudy Giuliani was appointed the US attorney for the southern district in 1983, Trump was bounced out of New York by the bankers. Trump’s profligacy and mismanagement crashed his monumental casino and hotel, the Taj Mahal in New Jersey, built with mob help, and he could not secure his loans. Giuliani was busy elsewhere, prosecuting the five families of the mafia, under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (Rico) of 1970, the first time the act was applied in a major case. His pioneering use of the Rico statute made Giuliani’s reputation. Trump and Giuliani circled each other in a strange dance of outsized egos.Giuliani threw in with Trump late in the game, during the 2016 campaign, when he manipulated his network of FBI agents in and around the New York office to raise the pressure on director James Comey to reopen the already closed investigation into Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s emails because of the existence of a computer owned by her aide Huma Abedin and accessed by her husband Anthony Weiner. Comey succumbed. His public announcements were decisive in shifting marginal votes in swing states to Trump. (The FBI chief of counter-intelligence in the New York office at the time, Charles McGonigal, closely connected to Giuliani, pleaded guilty this week to money-laundering payments from a sanctioned Russian oligarch.)Trump’s next task for Giuliani was to troll through the back alleys of Ukraine seeking disinformation on Joe Biden to discredit him as the Democratic candidate in 2020. Giuliani’s efforts were an essential element in Trump’s scheme that prompted him to attempt extorting Volodymyr Zelensky into trading fabricated dirt on Biden for missiles desperately needed to defend Ukraine against Russia. Trump was impeached for the first time.Giuliani was the master of Rico. He knew better than anyone how the law worked and the mafia operated. The first he used to forge his image as a crime-fighter; the second he emulated on Trump’s behalf. So, the wielder of Rico was ensnared under Rico. He learned first-hand how the mafia did its business. He discovered how to organize a racket into an effective hierarchy. He learned the potential value of intimidating innocents. From this point of view, he saw the Republican party as a racket in the making, from the Republican National Committee to the Republican Association of Attorneys General to the state parties, all constituent families of a mafia, with Giuliani himself as the consigliere to the capo di tutti capi.“This criminal organization,” stated the Georgia indictment, “… constituted an ongoing organization whose members and associates functioned as a continuing unit for a common purpose of achieving the objectives of the enterprise.” Giuliani was indicted on 13 counts, including racketeering, making false statements, harassment and intimidation of an election worker, and election fraud. The former prosecutor is the prosecuted. He is struggling to meet his attorney’s fees. He complains that he is owed $300,000 from Trump for non-payment for his counsel.The trials have become Trump’s engine for capturing his third Republican nomination. His celebrity has been transformed into a passion play of victimization. His problem is that the trials are not shows.
      Sidney Blumenthal is the author of The Permanent Campaign, published in 1980, and All the Power of the Earth: The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln 1856-1860, the third of a projected five volumes. He is the former assistant and senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and senior adviser to Hillary Clinton More

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      Giuliani visited Mar-a-Lago seeking help paying ‘ballooning’ legal fees – report

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      The New York mayor turned Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani made a largely fruitless visit to Mar-a-Lago to plead for help paying “ballooning” legal fees arising from work for the former president, CNN reported.Citing unnamed sources, the network said Giuliani met Donald Trump at his Florida resort in April. Trump, “who is notoriously strict about dipping into his own coffers, didn’t seem very interested” and only “verbally agreed” to help pay some bills and to support fundraisers for his ally, according to CNN.One source said “Trump only agreed to cover a small fee from a data vendor hosting Giuliani’s records”, a payment CNN said was made.Giuliani may have had reason to hope for more. Last year, a biographer, Andrew Kirtzman, reported that when Giuliani experienced problems with drinking and depression stoked by his failed presidential run in 2008, Trump gave him refuge at Mar-a-Lago, including the use of private tunnels to avoid press attention.Giuliani now faces proliferating legal difficulties and expenses arising from work including searching for dirt on Trump’s political enemies, which stoked Trump’s first impeachment, and challenging election results in states lost to Joe Biden.Giuliani’s own attorney, Adam Katz, this week told a judge in a case brought by a voting machines company, Smartmatic: “These are a lot of bills that he’s not paying. I think this is very humbling for Mr Giuliani.” The former mayor has put his New York apartment up for sale.In Georgia on Monday, Giuliani was indicted on 13 counts, including under anti-racketeering “Rico” laws he memorably used to target mobsters when he was the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan.Speaking to Newsmax, Giuliani lamented “a ridiculous application of the racketeering statute”, saying: “There’s probably no one that knows it better than I do.”Ken Frydman, a former Giuliani press secretary, told the New York Post: “You couldn’t invent such irony.” But plenty of observers were happy to delight in it in public.Under the headline “Wiseguys Rejoice at Seeing NYC Mafia Buster Rudy Giuliani Indicted on Trump Rico Charge”, the Messenger spoke to lawyers who have represented figures in organised crime.Murray Richman, a “veteran mob lawyer”, said he had discussed Giuliani’s charge with “several of my clients”.“You can quote me to say, ‘They’re fucking thrilled,’” Richman said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionJeffrey Lichtman, who represented John Gotti Jr, said: “All of my clients who had the misfortune of being prosecuted by him are laughing now. As am I … It’s not just an ironic result but it’s a just result. He was a horribly dishonest prosecutor and the wheel of karma is about to crush him.”Ron Kuby, who represented Stephen “Sigmund the Sea Monster” Sergio, said: “It is just delightful to watch the guy who expanded Rico prosecutions well beyond their original intent, and did so grasping for the biggest headlines … be indicted by the very law that he championed.”Speaking to CNN, an unnamed source noted that Trump’s reluctance to help Giuliani may prove unwise.“It’s not a smart idea,” the source said, noting how Trump’s relationship with a previous lawyer, Michael Cohen, deteriorated to the point that Cohen “flipped”, testifying against Trump in Congress and in court.On social media, Cohen told Giuliani: “I wouldn’t hold my breath if I was you. He didn’t pay you for your previous services (not that you accomplished anything other than make an asshole out of yourself). You have a better chance to raise the money from your ex-wives. I warned you!!!” More

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      Giuliani championed organised crime act Rico. Now he’s charged under it

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      Rudy Giuliani has dined out for years on his aggressive use of Rico, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, which he wielded with dramatic effect against New York mobsters in the 1980s.For his pains, he was granted an award by the Italian government. Later, as New York City mayor, he turned his use of the anti-racketeering law into a vote-getter, presenting himself as the hero of Rico.As an in-joke, he handed the keys of the city to the cast of the Sopranos. Then he went on Saturday Night Live and bragged about “sticking it to organised crime”.He may not be laughing so loudly now.On Monday night Giuliani, Donald Trump and 17 other co-defendants were slapped with organised crime charges in Georgia under the state’s Rico law, for allegedly having been part of a vast conspiracy to overturn the 2020 presidential election. The hero of Rico had been hoist with his own petard.The grand jury indictment charges all of the 19 co-defendants, Giuliani included, with “racketeering activity” in Georgia and other states. It alleges that they acted together as a “criminal organisation” which engaged in illegal activities including forgery, filing false documents and conspiracy to defraud the state.The irony that Fani Willis, the district attorney of Fulton county who is leading the prosecution, chose to hit the hero of Rico with a Rico rap has not been lost on Giuliani watchers. Appointed as US attorney for the southern district of New York in 1983, he did not so much invent the anti-racketeering law, which was enacted in 1970, as become an early adopter in its use against organised crime.His most famous case, the 1986 prosecution known as the “commission” case, targeted eight defendants at the very top of one of the most powerful New York mafia families. “The verdict reached today has resulted in dismantling the ruling council of La Cosa Nostra,” Giuliani said after the convictions were secured in a 10-week trial.His victory demonstrated the huge potential of Rico as a prosecutorial tool against crime gangs. Instead of the traditional approach of picking out individual foot soldiers, one arduous case at a time, Rico allowed prosecutors to take out the entire upper leadership of the criminal enterprise in a single devastating blow.Giuliani may well be ruing his much-vaunted success. The “commission” case put Rico on the map, and since 1986 it has spread widely at both a federal level and across state jurisdictions – Georgia included.The Fulton county indictment makes a specific point of highlighting aspects of Giuliani’s behavior in the thick of the 2020 election that it alleges amounted to racketeering. It recounts some of the more lurid lies that he disseminated in front of the Georgia lawmakers in an attempt to persuade them to subvert Joe Biden’s electoral victory in the state.The falsehoods included his claim that 10,315 dead people had voted in the presidential election; that fraudulent ballots had been counted five times in a counting center; and that two poll workers, Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss, had passed around USB ports “as if they’re vials of heroin or cocaine” seeking to infiltrate the voting machines.In July, Giuliani admitted in court that his comments about Freeman and Moss were false. Moss testified to the January 6 committee that the supposed USB ports she had exchanged with her mother were in fact ginger mints.The indictment presents all these incidents not just as lies, but as the actions of a member of a criminal racketeering enterprise, designed to further the conspiracy and achieve its goal of keeping Trump in the White House despite his electoral defeat. That Giuliani should have exposed himself to a Rico prosecution in this way is puzzling to those who have followed his legal career.“Of all the defendants, Giuliani knows Rico better than anyone, he lived with it for decades,” said Michael Discioarro, a former prosecutor in the Bronx. “Rudy knows darn well where the line is drawn, and it’s surprising to me that he even put himself in that position.” More