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      Clarence Thomas discloses travel paid for by rightwing billionaire five years later – as it happened

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      Clarence Thomas, the conservative supreme court justice, has belatedly acknowledged that he went on two trips paid for by rightwing billionaire Harlan Crow, NBC News reports.The admission comes in an amended financial disclosure covering 2019:Last year, ProPublica broke the story of the entanglements between Thomas and other conservative supreme court justices, including Samuel Alito, and rightwing figures with interests before the court such as Crow.It drew objections from Democrats, who called for the supreme court to adopt an enforceable ethics code. But their efforts to hold the conservative-dominated body to account have been stymied by a lack of cooperation from the justices, and the fact that they do not have the votes to pass legislation addressing the court.In a speech on the Normandy coastline, Joe Biden honored the US soldiers who stormed the strategic Pointe du Hoc on D-day, and likened the war against Nazi Germany to today’s struggle against Vladimir Putin. The day before, Biden gave a rare sit-down interview to ABC News, and hit back at Donald Trump’s comment that his executive order on immigration was “weak and pathetic”. “Is he describing himself?” Biden quipped. In Washington DC, supreme court justice Clarence Thomas returned to the news when he belatedly disclosed that he had gone on two trips with conservative activist Harlan Crow – which generated much controversy among Democrats when they were first revealed last year.Here’s what else happened today:
      Trump raked in big bucks at a fundraiser hosted by tech figures in San Francisco.
      Late-night hosts cracked wise about Biden’s age as the president visited D-day veterans who were even older than him.
      The supreme court may issue more opinions next Thursday. Trump’s immunity petition and two major abortion cases remain pending before the conservative-dominated court.
      Rudy Giuliani is looking to sell his apartment as he goes through bankruptcy.
      More GOP senators are pledging not to work with the Democrats over Trump’s felony convictions.
      Meanwhile, the ranks of Republican senators who have signed a pledge vowing not to work with Democrats on issues like spending bills and confirming judges in protest of Donald Trump’s conviction have grown.Eight Republicans initially signed on after a jury found Trump guilty of felony business fraud charges last week, and the number has now grown to 14, Utah’s Mike Lee announced:Donald Trump’s felony conviction may have been a boon for his fundraising, but as the Guardian’s Joan E Greve reports, it may be costing him support in his general election rematch against Joe Biden:After a Manhattan jury found Donald Trump guilty on 34 felony counts last week, Republicans rallied around the former president, insisting the verdict would only damage Joe Biden’s standing in the presidential election.But some new polling data casts doubt upon that argument, as a small but crucial number of Americans in key voting blocs appear to be moving toward Biden in the aftermath of the verdict.According to a post-verdict analysis of nearly 2,000 interviews with voters who previously participated in New York Times/Siena College surveys, Trump’s advantage over the president has narrowed from three points to one point. That shift may seem insignificant, but it could prove decisive in a close presidential election, as is expected in this year’s contest. In 2020, just 44,000 votes across three battleground states prevented a tie in the electoral college.Perhaps more worrisome for Trump is the specific areas where he appears to be bleeding support. According to the Times analysis, disengaged Democratic-leaning voters and those who dislike both Trump and Biden were more likely to say that the verdict made them reconsider their options in the election.Donald Trump may be raking in the dough, but the same cannot be said for some of his closest allies.His attorney Rudy Giuliani is moving to sell his Manhattan apartment, after he late last year filed for bankruptcy:Giuliani’s financial woes intensified in December, when two Georgia election workers won a massive defamation judgment against him after he falsely claimed they tampered with ballots in the swing state after the 2020 election:San Francisco is known for its liberal politics, but Donald Trump yesterday brought in $12m from a fundraiser in the city hosted by tech and crypto entrepreneurs friendly to his campaign to the White House, Reuters reports.Trump has seen a fundraising surge following his conviction last week on felony business fraud charges in New York. Here’s more from Reuters about how yesterday’s fundraiser, which brought Trump-flag waving supporters to San Francisco’s chilly, foggy streets, came about:
      Venture capitalists David Sacks and Chamath Palihapitiya, as well as Sacks’ wife Jacqueline, held the reception and dinner with Trump at the Sacks’ swanky mansion in the Pacific Heights neighborhood, according to an invitation seen by Reuters.
      The gathering – where top tickets were $500,000 per couple – was sold out, a source with knowledge of the fundraiser told Reuters. It raised some $12 million, according to Republican National Committeewoman Harmeet Dhillon and another source.
      While San Francisco is heavily liberal – Democrat Joe Biden won 85% of the city’s vote in the 2020 election against then-President Trump – a growing number of high-profile local venture capitalists and crypto investors have thrown their support behind Trump ahead of his November rematch against Biden.
      “President Trump is relaxed, happy, and cracking jokes about AI,” Dhillon, a conservative lawyer, posted on X from the event.
      Executives from crypto exchange Coinbase, crypto investor twins Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss and other crypto leaders were in attendance, Dhillon added. Trump talked about how Senator Elizabeth Warren, who has warned about crypto being used by scam investors and criminals, is “going after crypto,” according to Dhillon.
      Biden last week vetoed what he described as a Republican-led resolution that would “inappropriately constrain the SEC’s ability to set forth appropriate guardrails and address future issues” relating to cryptocurrency assets.
      Trevor Traina, a San Francisco-based tech executive and former Trump ambassador to Austria, said business regulations implemented during Biden’s presidency had alienated some people in the tech industry.
      Joe Biden’s re-election campaign has just released a television advertisement slamming Donald Trump for comments it characterizes as derogatory towards the US military and its veterans.Its release comes after the president spent the last couple of days marking the 80th anniversary of D-day, including with a speech earlier today about the importance of democracy. See the ad here:The supreme court may issue another batch of opinions on Thursday, 13 June, when it will next convene for a non-argument session.The conservative-dominated body has a number of high-profile matters it has yet to weigh in on. These include Donald Trump’s petition for immunity from federal prosecution for trying to overturn the 2020 election, and two cases dealing with abortion access. One deals with whether abortion pill mifepristone can remain available, and the other over whether the Biden administration can require federally funded hospitals carry out abortions in emergencies, even in states with bans on the procedure.And despite the demands of Democrats, conservative justice Samuel Alito is poised to consider Trump’s immunity case, even though reports emerged that flags supporting rightwing causes were displayed at his properties.Other justices cashed in on book deals.Conservative justices Brett Kavanaugh, collected $340,000 in royalties from the Javelin Group and Regnery Publishing for a book that has not yet been published and Neil Gorsuch, reported $250,000 from royalties for his book “Over Ruled: The Human Toll of Too Much Law,” which will be published by HarperCollins.Also included in newly released annual reports of the finances of the supreme court justices are details surrounding Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who collected nearly $900,000 last year for her upcoming memoir and was gifted four Beyoncé concert tickets by the singer valued $3,700.Thomas belatedly reported the trips paid for by Crow, including a hotel room in Bali, Indonesia as well as food and lodging in Sonoma County, California, a region known for its fine wine.Thomas’s amendments to include Crow’s gifts are part of the financial disclosures of almost all nine supreme court justices that were released on Friday. (Justice Alito received a nearly three-month extension to release his).Clarence Thomas’s acknowledgement of travel with conservative billionaire Harlan Crow comes after Democrats recently demanded supreme court justice Samuel Alito recuse himself from cases dealing with the 2020 election after two flags linked to rightwing causes were reported to have flown at his properties. Last week, Alito declined to that, the Guardian’s Ed Pilkington reports:Justice Samuel Alito is rejecting calls to step aside from supreme court cases involving the former president Donald Trump and January 6 defendants because of the controversy over flags that flew over his homes.In letters to members of Congress on Wednesday, Alito says his wife was responsible for flying an upside-down US flag over his home in 2021 and an “Appeal to Heaven” flag at his New Jersey beach house last year.Neither incident merits his recusal, he wrote.“I am therefore duty-bound to reject your recusal request,” he wrote.The court is considering two major cases related to the 6 January 2021 attack by a mob of Trump supporters on the Capitol, including charges faced by the rioters and whether the former president has immunity from prosecution on election interference charges.Alito has rejected calls from Democrats in the past to recuse on other issues.The New York Times reported that an inverted American flag was seen at Alito’s home in Alexandria, Virginia, less than two weeks after the attack on the Capitol.Clarence Thomas, the conservative supreme court justice, has belatedly acknowledged that he went on two trips paid for by rightwing billionaire Harlan Crow, NBC News reports.The admission comes in an amended financial disclosure covering 2019:Last year, ProPublica broke the story of the entanglements between Thomas and other conservative supreme court justices, including Samuel Alito, and rightwing figures with interests before the court such as Crow.It drew objections from Democrats, who called for the supreme court to adopt an enforceable ethics code. But their efforts to hold the conservative-dominated body to account have been stymied by a lack of cooperation from the justices, and the fact that they do not have the votes to pass legislation addressing the court.In attendance for Joe Biden’s speech earlier at Pointe du Hoc was John Wardell, a 99-year-old veteran who came ashore about a week-and-a-half after D-Day.For late-night talkshow hosts, Biden’s visit with World War II veterans was the perfect opportunity to crack wise about the president’s advanced age. Here’s our round-up of their zingers:Before he began speaking at Pointe du Hoc, Joe Biden was given a tour of the site by its superintendent, Scott Desjardins.The White House pool reporter covering the president today spoke to Desjardins, who said Biden was impressed by the bravery of the US army rangers that scaled the promontory and fought off German counter attacks for two-and-a-half days.“He was impressed of course. This is an impressive story. It’s hard not to be impressed,” said Desjardins, who noted Biden saw a link to the importance of Nato:
      He made it very clear that this is required. No one can go at this alone anymore.
      Joe Biden spoke from atop a former German bunker at Pointe du Hoc, a promontory that was a site of a fierce battle on D-Day:Forty years ago, Ronald Reagan spoke from the very same spot:When it comes to marking D-day’s anniversary, times have certainly changed, as C-SPAN points out.Joe Biden’s speech today was mostly about the importance of democracy, though he did name drop Vladimir Putin, and liken the threat he poses to Europe to that of the Nazis.Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy joined Biden and other western leaders for the commemoration in France, but when Barack Obama marked the occasion 10 years ago, Putin was in attendance: More

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      Court upholds Steve Bannon’s conviction for defying Jan 6 committee subpoena – as it happened

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      A federal appellate court ruled unanimously today to uphold Steve Bannon’s conviction of contempt for refusing to comply with a subpoena issued by the House special committee on the January 6 capitol attack. It’s a blow for the far-right media executive who helped usher Donald Trump into office in 2016 and was a key architect of the former president’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election. Bannon was originally sentenced to four months in prison; this ruling makes his incarceration a real possibility, although he could appeal the decision again.Here’s what else happened today:
      Trump’s 2024 campaign will be “lean,” according to a Washington Post report, which also revealed numerous swing state officials’ worries that they lack critical campaign resources ahead of the 2024 election.
      Paul Manafort offered his consulting services to a Chinese media venture after Trump pardoned him in 2020 – and is likely to join the Trump 2024 campaign soon.
      Unsealed court documents reveal two political consultants pleaded guilty to charges that they conspired to commit money laundering with Democratic congressman Henry Cuellar of Texas, who the Department of Justice has charged with receiving bribes from foreign entities.
      Rudy Giuliani can’t stop fanning the flames of election conspiracy theories – a habit that got his show on the conservative talk radio station WABC, in New York, cancelled.
      Rudy Giuliani’s show on the conservative talk radio station WABC in New York was cancelled after Giuliani continued to platform falsehoods about the 2020 election – a violation of the radio station’s policy.According to the New York Times, which first reported the cancellation, Giuliani had been warned repeatedly to stop discussing election lies on air.“We’re not going to talk about fallacies of the November 2020 election,” John Catsimatidis, who owns the station, told the New York Times. “We warned him twice.”In a 9 May letter to Treasury secretary Janet Yellen, Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren this week urged the Treasury to step up measures recommended by the Treasury Advisory Committee on Racial Equity (TACRE).“I am concerned that the recommendations made by members of the TACRE remain in limbo at Treasury,” Warren wrote in the letter, which was first reported by Reuters. Warren requested the department provide a timeline by May 23 for implementing the remaining proposals.The Disney heiress and activist Abigail Disney blasted South Dakota governor Kristi Noem and the Republican Party in an email to voters, per an exclusive Guardian report from Martin Pengelly:Evoking the classic Disney tearjerker Old Yeller, in which a family is forced to put down their beloved dog, the US film-maker and campaigner Abigail Disney exhorted voters to oppose the Republican party of Kristi Noem, the South Dakota governor whose story of killing Cricket, a 14-month-old dog, shocked the world and seemingly dynamited her hopes of being Donald Trump’s running mate.“My great-uncle Walt Disney knew the magic place animals have in the hearts of families everywhere,” Disney wrote in an email released by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) and obtained exclusively by the Guardian.“When he released Old Yeller, the heart wrenching story stayed with people because no one takes the killing of a family pet lightly.“At least that’s what I thought until I read about potential Trump VP Kristi Noem shooting her family’s puppy – a story that has shocked so many of us.”U.S. Department of Agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack announced today plans to unleash funding to mitigate the spread of bird flu in cattle – a measure intended to slow the spread of the virus.The spread of the virus to dairy cows poses an immediate risk to the workers in close contact with livestock and has raised concerns about the virus mutating and spreading to humans.Officials have promised nearly $200m for tracking and testing, and to compensate farmers who have taken a loss due to the spread of the virus.Two months after the Supreme Court ruled that the state of Colorado lacked the authority to ban Donald Trump from the ballot there, a separate fight over ballot access is playing out in Ohio, over Joe Biden’s eligibility to appear on the ballot this fall.The partisan fight that has been brewing for months escalated this week when the GOP-controlled state legislature blew past a Thursday deadline to pass legislation ensuring the president will have ballot access in November.Because the Democratic National Convention falls after the state’s certification deadline for presidential candidates, the state legislature was tasked with passing a law to push that deadline ahead.But Republicans in the state say they will grant Biden ballot access only if they garner the votes to also pass legislation banning foreign nationals from donating to state referendum campaigns – a push that stems from their anger over donations from a Swiss billionaire to Democratic-backed ballot measures in the state last year.Unsealed court documents reveal two political consultants pleaded guilty to charges that they conspired to commit money laundering with Democratic congressman Henry Cuellar of Texas.Cuellar’s former campaign manager, Colin Strother, and consultant Florencio “Lencho” Rendon, are now cooperating with the Department of Justice in its case against the Texas Democrat.Cuellar and his wife, Imelda, were indicted last week for allegedly accepting nearly $600,000 in bribes from a Mexico City bank and an oil and gas company owned by the government of Azerbaijan.Joe Biden and Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaigns are a study in contrasts.While Biden spends his Friday fundraising on the west coast, making campaign stops in California and Washington, Trump sits through another day of his New York trial over Trump’s alleged falsification of business records in connection with hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 presidential election.And while the Biden campaign has launched a massive fundraising campaign, Trump’s operation appears strained amid his legal battles. According to a report today in the Washington Post, swing state GOP operatives are worried they lack critical campaign infrastructure ahead of the 2024 general election (the Trump campaign insists that’s not the case).Donald Trump’s fixer and former lawyer Michael Cohen is expected to appear in court Monday – his testimony in the hush money case will be key, given Cohen’s role in facilitating the $130,000 payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. You can follow updates on the case on the Guardian’s live trial blog here:In the unanimous decision by a federal appellate court to uphold Steve Bannon’s conviction of contempt, circuit court judge Brad Garcia wrote that Bannon “deliberately refused to comply with the Select Committee’s subpoena in that he knew what the subpoena required and intentionally did not respond; his nonresponse, in other words, was no accident.”Bannon has maintained that he refused to comply with the congressional subpoena from the special House committee investigating the January 6 attacks on the advice of his former lawyer, Robert Costello – a justification the appellate court has rejected.Bannon could continue to appeal the case, including by turning to the U.S. Supreme Court.Far-right Trump ally Steve Bannon has, since Joe Biden was elected president in 2020, maintained the lie that the election was stolen from Donald Trump. Even as other figures in the conservative movement shy away from the claim, Bannon has made the falsehood a rallying cry. In March, the Guardian’s David Smith wrote about Bannon’s incendiary role in right-wing politics: Wearing an olive green jacket over a black shirt, Steve Bannon blew the doors off a subject that most other speakers had tiptoed around. “Media, I want you to suck on this, I want the White House to suck on this: you lost in 2020!” he roared. “Donald Trump is the legitimate president of the United States!”A thrill of transgression swept through the crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the National Harbor in Maryland. “Trump won!” Bannon barked, pointing a finger. “Trump won!” he repeated, shaking a fist. “Trump won!” he proclaimed again. His audience, as if hypnotised, chanted the brazen lie in unison.It was a blunt reminder that Bannon, an architect of Trumpism variously compared to Thomas Cromwell, Rasputin and Joseph Goebbels, remains a potent force in American politics as the 2024 US presidential election looms into view and the re-election of Trump looks a clear possibility.After Steve Bannon’s criminal conviction for refusing to comply with a subpoena from the special House committee investigating the January 6 capitol attack was upheld by a federal appeals court, the far-right political operative could soon be forced to begin a 4-month prison sentence initially ordered in 2022.Leaked audio showed that ahead of the 2020 general presidential election, Bannon was familiar with Trump’s plans to declare an early victory. Since 2020, he has continued to push falsehoods about the 2020 election and host prominent conspiracy theorists on his influential War Room podcast.When the House committee investigating the January 6 attacks issued a subpoena for Bannon, he refused to comply. The court’s decision to uphold his conviction delivers a blow to the Trump ally.A three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals has reportedly upheld Steve Bannon’s conviction on contempt charges for defying a congressional subpoena issued by the United States House select committee on the January 6 capitol attack.Paul Manafort returned to international consulting after Donald Trump pardoned him in 2020, The Washington Post reports.Manafort, in the years since obtaining clemency, worked on a Chinese streaming media venture. Now, the Post reports, Manafort is poised to join Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign. Manafort denied that his work on the Chinese media project would form a conflict of interest in the U.S.-China relationship.Before chairing Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, Manafort’s former firm, called Black, Manafort, and Stone notoriously lobbied U.S. congress on behalf of foreign governments – including on behalf of human rights-abusing dictatorships, among them the regime of Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines.Former president Donald Trump has adopted the legal strategy of stalling and stalling to ensure his most sensitive trials will take place after the election. That strategy is working, reports Sam Levine:As had been expected for months, Judge Aileen Cannon on Tuesday scrapped a 20 May trial date that had been set in south Florida over the former president’s handling of classified documents. The delay was almost entirely the doing of Cannon, a Trump appointee, who allowed far-fetched legal arguments into the case and let preliminary legal matters pile up on her docket to the point where a May trial was not a possibility.On Thursday, the Georgia court of appeals announced it would hear a request from Trump to consider whether Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney, should be removed from the election interference case against him because of a relationship with another prosecutor. The decision means both that Trump will continue to undermine Willis’s credibility and draw out the case. “There will be no trial until 2025,” tweeted Anthony Michael Kreis, a law professor at Georgia State University who has been closely following the case.The third pending case against Trump, a federal election interference case in Washington, also appears unlikely to go to trial before the election. The US supreme court heard oral arguments on whether Trump has immunity from prosecution last month and seemed unlikely to resolve it quickly enough to allow the case to move forward ahead of the election.Swing state GOP officials say they have not received key campaign resources ahead of the 2024 general presidential election, The Washington Post reports. This comes amid a funding crunch for Donald Trump’s campaign, which is looking lean as the former president faces mounting legal costs.Top campaign officials rejected the idea that their operation was suffering.But Republican Party officials in Arizona, Georgia and Michigan said they worried that their funding and operations would be insufficient – and that the campaign had not built out enough of an infrastructure in those key states.“There is no sign of life,” Kim Owens, an Arizona Republican Party operative, told the Post.Good morning! After easily surviving an attempt to oust him by the far-right congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, House speaker Mike Johnson appears to be basking in it. In an interview with Politico, Johnson – the conservative Republican who developed his career in the legal world of the Christian right and joined his colleagues in contesting the results of the 2020 election – waxed poetic about bipartisanship and consensus.He had high praise for House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, and proclaimed – of bipartisanship – that the American political system “doesn’t work unless you understand the principles that undergird it.”His praise came after the House easily quashed far-right congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene’s resolution to oust Johnson on Wednesday, as members of both parties came together in a rare moment of bipartisanship to keep the chamber open for business.The vote on the motion to table Greene’s resolution was 359 to 43, as 196 Republicans and 163 Democrats supported killing the proposal.Having said this, Johnson was just as quick to defend his role in attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Johnson, who led the effort to garner congressional Republican support for a Texas lawsuit attempting to overturn the election results in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, said he had no regrets over the legal maneuver.Here’s what’s going on today:
      Amid the former president’s mounting legal costs, Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign is taking a “lean” approach, Washington Post reports.
      Trump returns to court today, rounding out a week marked by detailed testimony from adult film star Stormy Daniels about her alleged affair with Trump.
      Joe Biden will participate in campaign events on the west coast this afternoon. More

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      in Elections

      Court upholds Steve Bannon’s January 6 contempt of Congress conviction

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      Steve Bannon, the controversial hard-right strategist who has been influential in the thinking of Donald Trump, has lost his appeal against his conviction for contempt of Congress relating to the investigation into the January 6 insurrection.A unanimous ruling from a three-judge panel of the District of Columbia circuit court of appeals upheld Bannon’s conviction on Friday. The decision brings him closer to a four-month sentence behind bars meted out to Bannon for having resisted the terms of Congress’s subpoena against him.He has one last hope left to avoid a prison term – he could appeal to the full bench of the circuit court.Bannon was convicted of contempt charges at trial in July 2022, having been charged with two federal counts. He was accused of refusing to appear for a deposition and of refusing to provide documents to the committee in response to a subpoena.He was sentenced later that year to four months in prison. The punishment was put on hold after Bannon appealed.Bannon’s lawyers claimed in the appeal that he had not ignored the committee’s subpoena, but was acting out of concern that he might violate executive privilege objections raised by Trump.Bannon worked as Trump’s chief strategist in the White House during the first seven months of his presidency. He left the White House in August 2017 following controversy over Trump’s response to the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and now runs a popular podcast called the War Room.The January 6 committee was led by Democrats in the House of Representatives with the participation of some Republican Congress members. It concluded that Trump had engaged in a conspiracy to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and had not prevented a mob of his supporters attacking the US Capitol on 6 January 2021. More

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      in Elections

      New book details Steve Bannon’s ‘Maga movement’ plan to rule for 100 years

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      Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign chair and White House strategist, believed before the 2020 election and the January 6 attack on Congress that a “Maga movement” of Trump supporters “could rule for a hundred years”.“Outside the uniparty,” the Washington Post reporter Isaac Arnsdorf writes in a new book, referring to Bannon’s term for the political establishment, “as Bannon saw it, there was the progressive wing of the Democratic party, which he considered a relatively small slice of the electorate. And the rest, the vast majority of the country, was Maga.“Bannon believed the Maga movement, if it could break out of being suppressed and marginalised by the establishment, represented a dominant coalition that could rule for a hundred years.”Arnsdorf’s book, Finish What We Started: The Maga Movement’s Ground War to End Democracy, will be published next week. The Post published an excerpt on Thursday.A businessman who became a driver of far-right thought through his stewardship of Breitbart News, Bannon was Trump’s campaign chair in 2016 and his chief White House strategist in 2017, a post he lost after neo-Nazis marched in Charlottesville that summer.He remained close to Trump, however, particularly as Trump attempted to overturn his 2020 defeat by Joe Biden.That attempt culminated in the attack on Congress of 6 January 2021, when supporters Trump told to “fight like hell” to block certification of Biden’s win attacked the US Capitol.Nine deaths have been linked to the attack, including law enforcement suicides. More than 1,200 arrests have been made and hundreds of convictions secured. Trump was impeached for inciting the insurrection but acquitted by Senate Republicans.Notwithstanding 88 criminal charges for election subversion, retention of classified information and hush-money payments, and multimillion-dollar penalties in civil cases over fraud and defamation, the latter arising from a rape claim a judge called “substantially true”, Trump won the Republican nomination with ease this year.As a Trump-Biden rematch grinds into gear, Bannon remains an influential voice on the far right, particularly through his War Room podcast and despite his own legal problems over contempt of Congress and alleged fraud, both of which he denies.The “uniparty”, in Bannon’s view, as described by Arnsdorf, is “the establishment [Bannon] hungered to destroy. The neocons, neoliberals, big donors, globalists, Wall Street, corporatists, elites.”“Maga” stands for “Make America great again”, Trump’s political slogan.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionArnsdorf writes: “In his confidence that there were secretly millions of Democrats who were yearning to be Maga followers and just didn’t know it yet, Bannon was again taking inspiration from Hoffer, who observed that true believers were prone to conversion from one cause to another since they were driven more by their need to identify with a mass movement than by any particular ideology.”Eric Hoffer, Arnsdorf writes, was “the ‘longshoreman philosopher’, so called because he had worked as a stevedore on the San Francisco docks while writing his first book, The True Believer [which] caused a sensation when it was published in 1951, becoming a manual for comprehending the age of Hitler, Stalin and Mao”.Bannon, Arnsdorf writes, “was not, like a typical political strategist, trying to tinker around the edges of the existing party coalitions in the hope of eking out 50% plus one. Bannon already told you: he wanted to bring everything crashing down.“He wanted to completely dismantle and redefine the parties. He wanted a showdown between a globalist, elite party, called the Democrats, and a populist, Maga party, called the Republicans. In that match-up, he was sure, the Republicans would win every time.”Now, seven months out from election day and with Trump and Biden neck-and-neck in the polls, Bannon’s proposition stands to be tested again.
      Biden v Trump: What’s in store for the US and the world?On Thursday 2 May, 3pm EDT join Tania Branigan, David Smith, Mehdi Hasan and Tara Setmayer for the inside track on the people, the ideas and the events that might shape the US election campaign. Book tickets here or at theguardian.live More

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      in US Politics

      ‘He believes in power and chaos’: alarm as Steve Bannon plots to propel Trump

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      Wearing an olive green jacket over a black shirt, Steve Bannon blew the doors off a subject that most other speakers had tiptoed around. “Media, I want you to suck on this, I want the White House to suck on this: you lost in 2020!” he roared. “Donald Trump is the legitimate president of the United States!”A thrill of transgression swept through the crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the National Harbor in Maryland. “Trump won!” Bannon barked, pointing a finger. “Trump won!” he repeated, shaking a fist. “Trump won!” he proclaimed again. His audience, as if hypnotised, chanted the brazen lie in unison.It was a blunt reminder that Bannon, an architect of Trumpism variously compared to Thomas Cromwell, Rasputin and Joseph Goebbels, remains a potent force in American politics as the 2024 US presidential election looms into view and the re-election of Trump looks a clear possibility.The former White House chief strategist may not be in daily contact with Trump any more but it scarcely matters: he is a vital source for the far-right ecosystem that shapes and animates the “Make America great again” (Maga) base.Bannon, 70, is currently appealing a criminal conviction and four-month prison sentence for defying a subpoena from the congressional committee investigating the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol. The committee heard evidence that Trump spoke to Bannon at least twice on January 5 and predicted that “all hell is going to break loose tomorrow”.In the meantime, he hosts a regular podcast called War Room, which propagates false narratives about the 2020 election and coronavirus vaccines but is given a veneer of respectability by guests including Elise Stefanik, the No 3 Republican in the House of Representatives, and other senior politicians.A pop-up War Room studio commanded a prime location at CPAC last week and featured guests such as Liz Truss, the former British prime minister. On the main stage, Bannon compared Trump to the Roman general Cincinnatus and declared: “His fate and destiny is to have the greatest political comeback in American history from November 5 to drive the vermin out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.“Biden, you and your crime family are nothing but trash, OK? And on 20 January of 2025 we’re going to take out the trash.”The Maga-regalia wearing crowd went wild, cementing Bannon’s status as a tribune of the movement heading into the 2024 presidential election.Charlie Sykes, a political commentator and author of How the Right Lost Its Mind, said: “At the moment Steve Bannon is the id of the American right and, if we’ve learned anything in the last eight years, it’s don’t assume because somebody sounds extreme and unhinged that they will not be influential in this party.”Sykes makes an analogy with drug dealers competing with each other by selling purer and stronger forms of methamphetamine, a highly addictive stimulant. “Steve Bannon is still peddling the most powerful meth out there.“Donald Trump does not look at Steve Bannon and think this guy is unhinged; he’s looking at Steve Bannon and saying this is exactly what I want to hear from my supporters. Steve Bannon knows what he’s doing and he will act as a gravitational pull on the rest of the right because they have to match him.”Unkempt and unpolished, Bannon is the opposite of a career politician. He is a former naval officer, Goldman Sachs investment banker and film producer. He was executive chairman of Breitbart News, which he once described as “the platform of the ‘alt-right’”, a movement that has embraced racism and antisemitism, and became chairman of Trump’s 2016 winning election campaign.His tenure at the White House was short and acrimonious as he clashed with the president’s daughter, Ivanka, and her husband Jared Kushner, who later described him as a “toxic” presence who accused him of “undermining the president’s agenda”. Trump himself may have been piqued by how much media attention Bannon was receiving and eventually branded him “Sloppy Steve”.But his ideas have proved harder to kill. Bannon continues to advocate the “deconstruction of the administrative state”, a radical downsizing of federal government bureaucracy, and an isolationist “America first” policy that he insists would keep the country out of a third world war. Such notions are percolating through to Republicans in Congress who oppose further military aid to Ukraine.Bannon also helps set the narrative on Trump’s signature issue, border security, blaming undocumented immigrants for crime, even thought studies have shown that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than other US residents, and advocating mass deportations as a solution.Bannon argues that biggest losers from the record influx of immigrants is the Black and Latino working class. “Every Black person, every Hispanic person in our country, vote for Trump,” Bannon said at CPAC last Saturday. “Trump will set you free because right now they’re enslaving you.”He then assured his overwhelmingly white audience: “They call you racist, they call you xenophobic, they call you nativist. Nothing could be further from the truth because they can’t win the intellectual argument. What they have to do is try to smear you and you don’t care because you know that’s not true.”Bannon has a sign on his mantelpiece that says, “There are no conspiracies but there are no coincidences” – placing him in a twilight zone between conspiracy theories and otherwise. War Room is his biggest mouthpiece. Last year a study by the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington found that almost 20% of its episodes contained a false, misleading or unsubstantiated statement, making it a bigger disinformation spreader than any other political podcast.Valerie Wirtschafter, a Brookings fellow who led the research, said War Room had been one of the most prominent platforms for election denialism even after networks such as Fox News pulled back. “The way he approaches things that are more conspiratorial in nature… he’s quite effective at considering the questions in a way that makes the audience think it’s not immediately evident that he’s confirming them. There’s this idea that he seems to be hearing all sides of the conversation.”As America braces for another divisive and volatile election, longtime Trump critics warn that Bannon still casts a long shadow. Rick Wilson, a co-founder of the Lincoln Project, said: “Steve Bannon is a if not the primary spiritual and intellectual force of this nationalist movement that is in control of the Republican party.“He is a very powerful figure in today’s GOP [Grand Old Party] and it is inescapable in some ways that he will play a central role in whatever Trump administration emerges if Trump wins. He is the architect. As an avowed Leninist, he is a guy who is trying to engineer the revolution in his image.”Asked what a Bannon return to the White House would mean, Wilson replied: “Concentration camps. This guy keeps saying out loud they’re the enemies of the people, our opponents are deserve what they get, this hyperbolic rhetoric. He believes in power and chaos and will do whatever he can if he gets it. Whatever he could get away with in that circumstance, he will get away with it.”Bannon has spent years courting far-right nationalist movements around the world and the results were on vivid display at CPAC. Nigel Farage, a former leader of the Brexit party in Britain, observed that a decade ago he was the sole foreign-born speaker at the conference but now it has become a hub for populists from countries including Argentina, Brazil, El Salvador, Hungary and Spain.Kurt Bardella, a Democratic strategist, said: “To his credit, and to America’s detriment, he was one of the first people to look outside of the American political system to find like minded public high-profile figures in foreign counties like Nigel Farage to play an outsized role in being messengers.”Truss, who was removed as prime minister after just 50 days, found common cause with Bannon in blaming a “deep state” supposedly dominated by the left. Bardella, a former Breitbart News spokesperson and Republican congressional aide, added: “For people like Farage and Liz Truss, Bannon extends to them a second lease on life. They’ve peaked in terms of their public service career; there’s nothing left for them to be able to realistically attain.“Here comes Bannon with this direct line to one of the two most powerful forces in American politics in Donald Trump: we will elevate you, you will have status, you will have the perception of influence, you again will be an influencer. These people are desperate for relevancy Bannon is giving them that combination of relevancy and legitimacy and access to power.” More

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      Immigration, Ukraine distrust and January 6 games: Republican agenda on display at CPAC

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      A digital pinball game defending the January 6 insurrection. A panel discussion called Putting Our Heads in the Gas Stove. An eager crowd watching agent provocateur Steve Bannon interview former British prime minister Liz Truss for a tiny online audience.Every year the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, conjures a theatre of the absurd beside the Potomac River. This week something else slowly came into focus: three pillars of a Republican agenda that the party believes will provide a winning formula in the 2024 elections.First, speaker after speaker highlighted the crisis at the southern border, variously describing it as “a war zone” where “thugs, Islamic extremists and Chinese spies” are staging an “invasion”. Second, this year’s CPAC theme was “Where globalism goes to die”, a rare foregrounding of foreign policy that embraced “America first” isolationism and advocated no more funding for Ukraine.Finally, there was the contention that only Donald Trump can save American democracy. Speakers cast the Republican frontrunner as both as the underdog David, bravely battling political persecution, and a mighty Goliath tirelessly fighting for the forgotten and left behind. This was in striking contrast to Joe Biden, portrayed as both criminal mastermind and senile old man.“I’m just going to say it – Joe Biden and Kamala Harris suck,” said Kristi Noem, the governor of South Dakota, seen as a potential Trump running mate. “And we shouldn’t look to Congress for the answers – the gridlock on Capitol Hill is not going to break in time to save America. We need a president who will. And I have always believed – and supported the fact – that our next president needs to be President Trump.”This week marked the 50th anniversary of CPAC’s inaugural gathering, when Ronald Reagan, then the governor of California, urged conservatives to remain united. In 2015 the conference heard from establishment Republicans such as Jeb Bush. But since then it has marched rightward, each year proving more extreme than the one before. It has effectively become The Trump Show.It has also lost relevance. Under CPAC impresario Matt Schlapp, who faced multiple sexual assault allegations, many sessions took place in a half-empty ballroom. “Media Row”, which includes various live talk radio broadcasts, and “CPAC Central”, a marketplace for vendors, was diminished compared with past years, exposing empty and forlorn floor space. Instead of Fox News, a plethora of fringe podcasters and streamers held sway.But CPAC does provide a window to the soul of a Republican party in thrall to Trump. No issue is more central to his candidacy than immigration and resuming construction of a border wall. It was a constant talking point on the CPAC main stage.Elise Stefanik, another contender for Trump’s vice-presidential pick, said: “We had the most secure border in our nation’s history when President Trump left office … In Joe Biden’s America, every district is a border district. Every state is a border state. The southern border is being invaded.”In a session titled Trump’s Wall vs Biden’s Gaps, Thomas Homan, former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement under Trump, said: “The reason I wake up pissed off every day is because this administration – Joe Biden is the first president in the history of this nation who came in office and unsecured a border on purpose.”Describing Trump as the “greatest president in my lifetime”, Homan confidently predicted that the former president would destroy drug cartels in Mexico if re-elected. “President Trump will declare them a terrorist organisation. He will send a Hellfire rocket down there and he’ll take the cartels out.”There was little acknowledgment over four days of the positive contribution immigrants have made to American society. Instead there were nods to white nationalism, the “great replacement” theory and Trump’s recent assertion that illegal immigrations “poison” the bloodstream of the nation.Senator JD Vance, a devout Trump loyalist, told the gathering: “The reason why we have a border crisis is by design. Biden is invading the country with people who he knows are going to vote disproportionally for Democrats. California has five more congressional representatives than it should.“Do you know why? They count illegal aliens for purposes of assigning apportionment in Congress. So when these guys flood the country with millions of people who shouldn’t be here they destroy the voting power of citizens in our own republic. This is by design and this is maybe the last very good chance we have to stop it.”An examination of this topic in 2020 by the Pew Research Center found that if unauthorised immigrants were excluded from the apportionment count, California, Florida and Texas would each end up with one less congressional seat than they would have been awarded based on population change alone.Vance and others were quick to draw a contrast between the border crisis and Washington’s obsession with the war in Ukraine. They questioned why taxpayer dollars should fund a conflict 6,000 miles away instead of tackling problems at home. Many were quick to add disclaimers distancing themselves from Russian president Vladimir Putin – not always convincingly.Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama said: “We’re the one that forced this war because we kept forcing Nato on Ukraine and showing Russia, hey, we’re going to build military bases on your borders. And Putin said, no, no, you’re not going to do that.“I haven’t voted for any money to go to Ukraine because I know they can’t win. You hate that they’ve had 300,000 or 400,000 people killed, so – Russians also. You hate that we supported this. We’re pushing them out in front of the guns or out in front of the bus, I guess you’d speak. It’s an atrocity but they can’t win.”Tuberville added: “Donald Trump will stop it when he first gets in … He knows there’s no winning for Ukraine. He can work a deal with Putin.”View image in fullscreenThere was little support here for Congress to pass a national security bill that would provide military funding for Ukraine. In a speech headlined Burning Down the House, Matt Gaetz, a congressman from Florida, said: “What’s really left unsaid in this Ukraine aid debate is that Europe’s fecklessness is a direct result of them becoming national security welfare queens largely at your expense … America is not the world’s police force and we are not the world’s piggy bank. It is not sustainable.”In a jarring contrast from Reagan’s vision of American leadership, politicians from Britain, El Salvador, Spain and other parts of the world came to CPAC to rail against the sinister forces of “globalism”.Nigel Farage, a former leader of the Brexit party in Britain, observed that CPAC has become an international movement. “We all want the same things. We want international cooperation. We want trade. We want peace. We want common sense. We want it within the framework of the nation-state, not within the framework of the European Union or the United Nations – or the increasingly appalling World Health Organisation.”The audience erupted in cheers and applause.CPAC offered a preview of other Republican talking points for the campaign. There were plenty of references to inflation and the demonstrably false claim that Trump bequeathed a booming economy that Biden ruined. A session called No Woke Warriors nodded to culture wars and, despite recent evidence about its limited electoral potency, numerous speakers assailed transgender rights.The other common thread was a Trump worship that elevated him to the status of political martyr. Farage said the former president had been unfairly targeted by the justice system and commented: “I believe that Donald Trump is the bravest man I have ever met in my life.” Mark Robinson, lieutenant governor of North Carolina, opined: “We need warriors like President Trump, who is literally spending his golden years fighting for the survival of this nation.”And Noem put it this way: “President Trump broke politics in 2016 – he just did – and that’s a good thing. He’s real. He’s not perfect – none of us are – but he cares about you. He doesn’t think he’s better than you. Luckily, we are not going back to the old days of the Romneys and Cheneys. The Republican party is much bigger than that now. We are filled with blue collar workers, many cultures, perspectives and viewpoints.”Contrast will be key in the presidential election campaign. Biden, 81, was subjected to cheap shots and derogatory insults. At a discussion billed as Cat Fight? Michelle vs Kamala, rightwing commentator Kurt Schlichter commented: “I don’t think Joe Biden has any plans other than eating mush while watching Murder She Wrote. Two scoops. It will be tough to pry that desiccated old husk of a human being out of the White House.”Down in CPAC Central, attendees were clear about the priorities for the coming campaign. Barbara Hale, a retired property agent from Austin, Texas, who was wearing a “Trump was right” badge, said: “The most important thing is our border. If Trump would have been our president instead of Biden, the wall would have been finished.“We wouldn’t have this catastrophe that we have right now. I don’t know how anybody can vote Democrat today if you’re an American. I’m serious about that. If you love America, how can you vote to destroy America?”America has sent enough funding to Ukraine, Hale added: “Like Trump has said he was going to do it as soon as he becomes president, he’s going to go talk to Europe and say, OK, we’ve paid our share to Ukraine to help them. We want Ukraine to be free. They need to pony up some money and they need to get more serious about helping Ukraine, not just the United States of America.”Phil Cuza, 63, a saxophone player and retired police officer from New York, criticised corrupt politicians and district attorneys for “picking and choosing” who to prosecute. He added: “The southern border is extremely important because they’re undermining the whole country. It’s like having a house and you’re trying to dig underneath the house. Eventually the house will collapse if you don’t address that.”Rachel Sheley, 54, a cybersecurity practitioner from northern Kentucky, said: “We need to stop funding wars in other countries. I like Trump’s initiative to loan money to these countries if they need it but they need to be held accountable to pay the money back.“Our taxpayer money is going to these other places, some of which none of us ever travel to or get to. We don’t even know what’s going on in Ukraine. There’s no video or evidence of anything. I think it’s just a money-laundering scheme for the Democrats and the [George] Soros people.”Asked what she thought of Putin, Sheley replied bluntly: “I don’t care.”The marketplace featured everything from vibration plates to Trump glass art, from “Make America great again” shirts, hats and hammocks to a bus with a huge picture of the former president. There also a January 6-themed virtual pinball machine with the game modes “Political Prisoners”, “Have Faith”, “Babbitt Murder”, “It’s a Setup”, “Peaceful Protest”, “Fake News” and “Stop the Steal”, along with a photo of the “QAnon shaman” who stormed the Capitol and a screen showing footage from that day.It was the brainchild of software developer Jon Linowes, 65, an election denier from New Hampshire who believes a baseless conspiracy theory that Trump’s foes planned the insurrection a year in advance as a pretext for keeping him off the ballot. He said: “If Trump was in office now, Ukraine would never have happened. October 7 [in Israel] would never have happened. The border would be shut down.“All of these crises or situations that the Biden administration created were totally artificial and unnecessary and pathetic. We need someone like Trump with the strength and the fortitude to fix it if he can. If anyone can, he can. So that’s what I would expect. And I would expect him to pardon the J6 prisoners.” More

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      Steve Bannon hawks disinformation to support Trump as legal troubles mount

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      The far-right strategist and Donald Trump loyalist Steve Bannon is again playing an influential role in the propaganda circles around the former US president as he bids to return to the White House, even as Bannon faces a barrage of legal problems.The conspiratorial Bannon, who spearheaded part of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and served as chief White House strategist in the first half of 2017, is waiting to see if a federal appeals court overturns his obstruction of Congress conviction. He also faces other legal problems from New York fraud charges, former lawyers and potentially other fronts.But at the same time he is pushing a tidal wave of election disinformation on his War Room podcast to help Trump win the presidency again and promote a Maga-heavy policy agenda as Trump and his allies plot out authoritarian-style plans for a second presidency.Ex-justice department prosecutors, Democrats and Republicans say Bannon’s odds of winning his obstruction of Congress appeal are long, and foresee more legal headaches ahead for the pugnacious Make America Great Again guru, while analysts warn that by spreading election falsehoods and other misinformation he endangers democracy.At present, the biggest legal threat confronting Bannon is his two-count federal conviction and a four-month jail sentence for defying a House panel subpoena for documents and testimony concerning the January 6 insurrection and Trump’s efforts to overturn the election results.Last fall, Bannon appealed his contempt of Congress conviction for refusing the House subpoena, citing executive privilege and advice from a lawyer, even though he had long left the administration and the matters covered by the subpoena.Separately, Bannon is slated to be tried in May on New York charges of fraud and money laundering involving his key role in a private “We Build the Wall” Mexico venture that bilked thousands of investors out of about $25m, a scheme in which three Bannon associates have been convicted.Bannon last month sought to dismiss the charges, which alleged in part that $1m of the funds were improperly diverted to Bannon and a top associate, but Manhattan prosecutors wrote in a court filing that his argument “bears little resemblance to reality”.The charges by the Manhattan district attorney against Bannon, an alleged architect of the scheme to raise private funds for Trump’s abortive Mexico wall, mirror earlier ones from federal prosecutors against Bannon that Trump pardoned him for the night before leaving office.Experts say more legal scrutiny of Bannon could come on other fronts. The exiled Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui, a Bannon ally and benefactor who last year was charged by federal prosecutors in a billion-dollar fraud case, was charged again in January for running a “criminal enterprise” that bilked Chinese American dissidents out of tens of millions of dollars.Guo allegedly promoted a cryptocurrency scam, propaganda and other businesses, plus financing a lavish lifestyle including purchasing a yacht, on which Bannon in 2020 was arrested on the federal Mexico wall project charges.Among the businesses linked to Guo in the superseding indictment was the conservative social media platform Gettr, which he helped finance and launch in 2021 and which Bannon’s War Room has profited from. Guo is slated to be tried in April.Bannon’s War Room podcast has reaped tens of thousands of dollars a month in ads from Gettr, according to a source familiar with its operations and news reports.War Room, which regularly hosts staunch Trump allies such as the congresswoman Elise Stefanik and the My Pillow CEO, Mike Lindell, last year was named the top promoter among political podcasts of misinformation about elections, Covid-19 and other issues, according to a Brookings Institution study.Unfazed, Bannon told the New York Times his top ranking was a “badge of honor … What they call disinformation or misinformation we consider the truth.”A key figure in promoting the January 6 Save America rally, Bannon proved prescient shortly before the insurrection on his War Room podcast when he said “all hell is going to break loose tomorrow”.Former justice department prosecutors and members of both parties say Bannon’s legal woes are mounting.“Like former president Donald Trump, Steve Bannon’s sketchy business and political activities seem to be a magnet for criminal prosecutions and investigations,” said Paul Pelletier, an ex-acting chief of the Department of Justice’s fraud section.“With his criminal ‘Build the Wall’ fraud trial looming and his criminal contempt of Congress long-shot appeal pending, it appears Bannon’s penchant for associating with and profiting from unsavory characters and his own schemes will keep him busy fending off financial fraud investigations for the foreseeable future.“Bannon’s business and financial ties with Guo should certainly attract rigorous scrutiny,” he added.View image in fullscreenOther justice department alumni concur Bannon faces big legal headaches.“Bannon is nothing more than a garden variety fraudster,” said the ex-federal prosecutor Paul Rosenzweig. “He had the benefit of a patron in the White House who rewarded his loyalty and protected him.” But with Trump gone, “he is now going to pay the price.“His appeal will not succeed and his criminal trial in New York will result in conviction. Only a Trump victory in November can save him from the federal [obstruction] case and even that won’t suffice to save him in New York.”Bannon has pleaded not guilty to the various criminal charges he faces, and his attorney Harlan Protass did not respond to calls for comment.Still, the ex-Republican congressman Charlie Dent noted: “It’s absurd and nonsensical for Bannon to think he was protected by executive privilege for events that occurred when he was not a White House employee.”The Democratic congressman Jamie Raskin, a key member of the House panel that investigated the January 6 insurrection and Trump’s role in it, said: “Bannon seems to have been deeply enmeshed in the planning of the disruption of the peaceful transfer of power and the seizing of the presidency for Donald Trump.”Raskin noted: “Bannon is the intellectual ringleader of the Maga circus … In fact, he fancies himself not just the philosopher of white Christian nationalism in our country but the political strategist for allied autocrats and theocrats all over the world.”In that role, Bannon’s War Room podcast has loomed large, making him an influential figure in promoting Trump and Maga world views including falsehoods about the 2020 election and Covid-19.Bannon’s personal account shows he has nearly 7 million followers and on Gettr, where War Room is one of the most popular shows, more than 800,000 followers.Bannon’s close Gettr ties are underscored by his frequent mention of the platform on War Room. Valerie Wirtschafter, a Brookings fellow in emerging technologies and AI who led its podcast research, said that Gettr was referenced, often multiple times, in more than 60% of more than 1,000 episodes reviewed.Trump allies who were on War Room multiple times last year included Stefanik, Lindell and the ex-justice department assistant attorney general Jeff Clark, with whom Trump plotted to promote fake electors in several states that Biden won.Bannon has touted Clark, an unindicted co-conspirator in the special counsel Jack Smith’s four-count indictment of Trump over his attempts to subvert the election results, as attorney general if the former president wins another term. Clark was also indicted along with Trump and 17 others by the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, for trying to overturn Joe Biden’s win in Georgia.“Bannon’s War Room stands out – with claims about votes being switched by Dominion machines to Sharpies being used to disenfranchise voters to the Covid-19 virus being a plot to deny Trump a second term, among many, many others,” Wirtschafter said.While Bannon’s War Room keeps pushing Maga misinformation, the bombastic strategist faces other financial and legal woes.Robert Costello, a former Bannon lawyer who played a key role in Trump’s pardon of the strategist, filed a claim against him last year for $480,000 in monies owed. Costello and his firm won a summary judgment from New York’s supreme court to obtain payment, but Bannon, with Protass’s help, is fighting the ruling.Interestingly, Protass in a court filing last month wrote that an effort by Costello’s firm to access Bannon’s bank account and depose him “poses a significant risk of compromising” his fifth amendment right against self-incrimination with fraud charges against him pending in New York.Regarding Bannon’s upcoming Mexico wall fraud trial, Raskin said: “Given that three associates of Bannon have been convicted of the conduct charged in these events, it has to be a serious threat to Bannon too.”Bannon’s multiple legal problems do not surprise Raskin. “He has adopted the persona of bad boy lawlessness. Like Trump, Bannon considers himself way beyond the reach of the law.” More

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      Bannon used Confederate code words to describe Trump speech, book says

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      The far-right Donald Trump ally and adviser Steve Bannon used Confederate code words linked to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln to describe a speech by the former US president before his historic first criminal indictment, a new book says.On 6 March this year, addressing the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland, Trump took aim at Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney then widely expected to bring charges over hush-money payments to the porn star Stormy Daniels, thereby making Trump the first former president ever criminally indicted.Trump told his audience: “I am your warrior; I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution. I am your retribution.”In a forthcoming book, Tired of Winning: Donald Trump and the End of the Grand Old Party, Jonathan Karl, chief Washington correspondent for ABC News, writes: “When I spoke with Bannon a few days later, he wouldn’t stop touting Trump’s performance, referring to it as his ‘Come Retribution’ speech.“What I didn’t realise was that ‘Come Retribution’, according to some civil war historians, served as the code words for the Confederate Secret Service’s plot to take hostage – and eventually assassinate – President Abraham Lincoln.”Lincoln was shot at Ford’s Theatre in Washington on 14 April 1865, by John Wilkes Booth, an actor. The president died the following day.Karl is the author of two bestsellers – Front Row at the Trump Show and Betrayal – about Trump’s rise to the presidency, time in the White House and defeat by Joe Biden.In his third Trump book, excerpted in the Atlantic on Thursday, Karl quotes from a 1988 book, Come Retribution: The Confederate Secret Service and Assassination of Lincoln.“The use of the key phrase ‘Come Retribution’ suggests that the Confederate government had made a bitter decision to repay some of the misery that had been inflicted on the south,” the authors write. “Bitterness may well have been directed toward persons held to be particularly responsible for that misery, and Abraham Lincoln certainly headed the list.”Bannon, Karl writes, “actually recommended that I read that book, erasing any doubt that he was intentionally using the Confederate code words to describe Trump’s speech.“Trump’s speech was not an overt call for the assassination of his political opponents, but it did advocate their destruction by other means. Success ‘is within our reach, but only if we have the courage to complete the job, gut the deep state, reclaim our democracy, and banish the tyrants and Marxists into political exile forever,’ Trump said. ‘This is the turning point.’”In Karl’s estimation, the “Come Retribution” speech “was a turning point for Trump’s campaign” for re-election.Trump began his 2024 campaign sluggishly but then surged to huge leads over his Republican party rivals in national and key-state polling, despite a charge sheet now totaling 91 criminal counts and two civil trials, one over his business practices and one concerning a defamation claim arising from a rape allegation a judge called “substantially true”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionKarl writes: “The [federal] trial date for the charge of interfering in the 2020 election has been set for 4 March [2024]; for the hush-money case, it’s 25 March; for the classified-documents case, it’s 20 May.“As election day approaches and [Trump] faces down these many days in court, he will be waging a campaign of vengeance and martyrdom. He will continue to talk about what is at stake in the election in apocalyptic terms – ‘the final battle’ – knowing how high the stakes are for him personally. He can win and retake the White House. Or he can lose and go to prison.”Bannon is quoted as saying: “Trump’s on offense and talking about real things. The ‘Come Retribution’ speech had 10 or 12 major policies.”But, Karl writes, “Bannon knew that the speech wasn’t about policies in a traditional sense. Trump spoke about whom he would target once he returned to power.“‘We will demolish the deep state. We will expel the warmongers,’ Trump said. ‘We will drive out the globalists; we will cast out the communists. We will throw off the political class that hates our country … We will beat the Democrats. We will rout the fake news media. We will expose and appropriately deal with the RINOs. We will evict Joe Biden from the White House.“‘And we will liberate America from these villains and scoundrels once and for all.’” More