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      Trump said sorry to Cruz for 2016 insults, Paul Manafort says in new book

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      Trump said sorry to Cruz for 2016 insults, Paul Manafort says in new bookIn a memoir obtained by the Guardian, former campaign manager risks embarrassing powerful rivals with description of apology Donald Trump made an uncharacteristic apology to Ted Cruz after insulting his wife and father during the 2016 campaign – only for the Texas senator still to refuse to endorse Trump at the Republican convention.Paul Manafort admits indirectly advising Trump in 2020 but keeping it secret in wait for pardon Read moreIn a new memoir, Trump’s then campaign manager, Paul Manafort, writes: “On his own initiative, Trump did apologise for saying some of the things he said about Cruz, which was unusual for Trump.”The telling vignette – possibly an embarrassing one for two powerful Republicans who have since formed an alliance of convenience – is contained in Political Prisoner: Persecuted, Prosecuted, but Not Silenced, which will be published in the US next month. The Guardian obtained a copy.Manafort was Trump’s campaign manager between May and August 2016.Imprisoned on tax charges in a case arising from the investigation of Russian election interference and links between Trump and Moscow, Manafort did not turn on Trump and received a pardon just before the end of Trump’s time in power.In his memoir, he denies collusion with Russia, bemoans his experiences at the hands of the US justice system, admits indirectly advising Trump in 2020 while in home confinement, and expresses strong support for another Trump campaign in 2024.In 2016, in a brutal primary, Trump insinuated Cruz’s wife was ugly and linked his father to the assassination of John F Kennedy. He also questioned whether Cruz, born in Canada, was qualified to be US president and coined a lasting nickname, Lyin’ Ted.Manafort’s description of a Trump apology for such slurs may come as a surprise to both men.Trump is famous for never apologising, whether in his business career or in his seven-year careen across the US political scene.And when Cruz eventually came onside with Trump, in September 2016, he said: “Neither he nor his campaign has ever taken back a word they said about my wife and my family.”Now Manafort says Trump did apologise – and to Cruz’s face at that.Describing a meeting meant to get Cruz’s support before the convention in Cleveland in July, Manafort writes that the senator said he would work with the man who beat him into second in the primary but would not formally endorse him, “because his supporters didn’t want him to”.Manafort writes: “It was a forced justification for someone who is normally very logical. Trump didn’t buy it.”Trump nonetheless apologised, Manafort writes, then “told Cruz he considered him an ally, not an enemy, and that he believed they could work together when Trump was president.”At least initially, Trump’s effort was in vain. In his speech at the convention, Cruz did not endorse Trump and was booed by the crowd. The senator’s wife, Heidi Cruz, was escorted out of the arena, out of concern for her safety. Manafort accuses Cruz’s aides of “double dealing” and describes Trump declaring “This is bullshit” as the senator spoke, then walking to the back of the convention hall, “effectively pulling the attention away from Cruz and undercutting his speech.“Cruz then got the message that there was a technical issue – a legitimate glitch – and the volume went out on his speech.”Footage of the speech does not clearly show such a technical glitch.Cruz, Manafort writes, was “very upset. It took months to bring that relationship back. But eventually Cruz came around to supporting Trump, and Trump harboured no ill will.”Whether Cruz and Trump will harbour any ill will for Manafort, for undercutting Cruz’s claim never to have received an apology and for saying Trump delivered a rare one, remains of course to be seen.TopicsBooksDonald TrumpTed CruzRepublicansUS elections 2016US politicsPolitics booksnewsReuse this content More

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      Republicans who aided coup attempt sought blanket presidential pardons

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      Republicans who aided coup attempt sought blanket presidential pardonsMatt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Ted Cruz among those who requested to be let off after attempting to overturn election results The Republicans Matt Gaetz and Mo Brooks sought a blanket pardon of members of Congress involved in Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn his defeat by Joe Biden through lies about electoral fraud, the House January 6 committee revealed on Thursday.A witness said Andy Biggs of Arizona, Louie Gohmert of Texas and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania also contacted the White House about securing pardons. The same witness, former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, said she heard Marjorie Taylor Greene, an extremist from Georgia, wanted a pardon too.Capitol attack panel details Trump’s pressure on DoJ to support fraud claimsRead moreThe committee displayed an email written by Brooks, of Alabama, on 11 January 2021, five days after the deadly attack on the US Capitol by Trump supporters.Brooks, who delivered a fire-breathing speech at a rally before the Capitol riot, sought pre-emptive pardons for “every congressman and senator who voted to reject the electoral college vote submissions of Arizona and Pennsylvania”.A total of 147 Republicans lodged such votes, even after the Capitol was stormed, an attack that endangered the life of the vice-president, Mike Pence, and to which a bipartisan Senate committee linked seven deaths.Senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, potential rivals to Trump for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, were among them.For the January 6 committee, the Illinois Republican Adam Kinzinger said Brooks “emailed the White House, quote, ‘pursuant to a request from Matt Gaetz [of Florida]’, requesting a pardon for Representative Gaetz, himself and unnamed others.“Witnesses told the select committee that the president considered offering pardons to a wide range of individuals connected to the president,” Kinzinger added.Jan 6 Committee reveals Mo Brooks emailed the White House requesting a pardon for Rep Matt Gaetz and “every Congressman and Senator who voted to reject the electoral college vote submissions of Arizona and Pennsylvania” pic.twitter.com/try0PCsiIV— nikki mccann ramírez (@NikkiMcR) June 23, 2022
      It has been widely reported that Trump allies sought January 6-related pardons before Trump left office, and that Trump considered offering pre-emptive pardons to himself and family members. He has repeatedly floated the idea of pardoning Capitol rioters should he return to power.The January 6 committee previously revealed that John Eastman, the law professor who pushed Pence to overturn election results, contacted Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney, to ask if a pardon was possible.In testimony played on Thursday, Eric Herschmann, a Trump White House lawyer, said of Gaetz: “The general tone was, ‘We may get prosecuted because we were defensive of the president’s positions on these things.’“The pardon that he was discussing, requesting was as broad you could describe, from the beginning of time up until today, for any and all things.“He mentioned Nixon and I said Nixon’s pardon was never nearly that broad.”Richard Nixon resigned in 1974 over the Watergate scandal, involving political dirty tricks and their cover-up. He was pardoned by Gerald Ford, his successor in office.Barr feared Trump might not have left office had DoJ not debunked fraud claimsRead moreIn other testimony played on Thursday, Hutchinson, a former assistant to Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, said: “Mr Gaetz, Mr Brooks, I know both advocated for there to be a blanket pardon … pre-emptive pardons.“Mr Gaetz was personally pushing for a pardon … since early December. I’m not sure why. He reached out to me to ask if he could have a meeting with Mr Meadows about receiving a presidential pardon.”Hutchinson listed the other Republicans who requested pardons.On Twitter, Gaetz said: “The last Republican president to be sworn in without congressional Democrats objecting to electors was George HW Bush.” He did not immediately comment about the pardon revelations.Kinzinger said: “The only reason I know to ask for a pardon is because you think you’ve committed a crime.”TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsDonald TrumpUS Capitol attackUS politicsTed CruzRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

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      Win for Ted Cruz as supreme court strikes campaign contribution limit

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      Win for Ted Cruz as supreme court strikes campaign contribution limitConservative majority rules in favor of rightwing Texas senator but Elena Kagan warns ‘quid pro quo corruption’ the likely result The six conservatives who dominate the US supreme court ruled in favour of the hard-right Texas senator Ted Cruz in a case seeking to remove limits on campaign finance spending, in a ruling that one dissenting justice said would open the door to “quid pro quo corruption”.Nancy Pelosi: supreme court ‘dangerous to families and to freedoms’Read moreIn Federal Election Commission v Ted Cruz for Senate, the Republican senator challenged limits on the use of post-election contributions to pay back loans by candidates to their own campaigns.During his 2018 re-election victory over Beto O’Rourke, Cruz loaned his campaign $260,000, which was $10,000 over the limit for repayments that were allowable using donations received after the election. The limits were set by the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, widely known as McCain-Feingold after the senators who steered it into law. Cruz was repaid $250,000 and sued in federal court to regain the rest of his loan.Observers argued that Cruz deliberately overspent by a small amount in order to sue to overturn the law and therefore be allowed to recoup a much larger amount, $545,000, than he never recovered after loaning his 2012 campaign more than a million dollars.According to the new ruling written by the chief justice, John Roberts, and backed by the other five conservatives on the nine-member court, “The government has not shown that [the law] furthers a permissible anticorruption goal, rather than the impermissible objective of simply limiting the amount of money in politics.”Critics say Roberts has led a court determined to remove all limits on money in politics, thereby corrupting the American political process itself.Particularly at issue is Citizens United v Federal Elections Commission, a 2010 ruling which said private entities have the same free speech rights as individuals and therefore should not face limits on campaign donations. Roberts explicitly referred to the case in his decision.“This court has recognised only one permissible ground for restricting political speech: the prevention of ‘quid pro quo’ corruption or its appearance,” he wrote.The liberal justice Elena Kagan, in dissent, argued that the ruling would enable precisely such “quid pro quo corruption”.“All the money does is enrich the candidate personally at a time when he can return the favor – by a vote, a contract, an appointment,” she wrote.“It takes no political genius to see the heightened risk of corruption – the danger of ‘I’ll make you richer and you’ll make me richer’ arrangements between donors and officeholders.”Ian Milhiser, senior correspondent at Vox and author of The Agenda: How a Republican Supreme Court is Reshaping America, wrote that the six Republican appointees on the court had “escalated” a long-running “war with campaign finance laws” with a ruling that would be “a boon to wealthy candidates”.“Now that this limit on loan repayments has been struck down, lawmakers with sufficiently creative accountants may be able to use such loans to give themselves a steady income stream from campaign donors.”In return, Milhiser said, candidates “may be inclined to reward donors who help them recoup the cost of personal loans”.The Agenda review: how the supreme court became an existential threat to US democracyRead moreRichard Painter, a former White House ethics chief under the Republican president George W Bush, tweeted about how he saw the implications of the ruling: “Loan your campaign lots of money, get elected, then fundraise so people can buy favors by donating money that goes right into your personal bank account. That’s bribery of a federal official, not free speech.”“This court needs more justices,” he added, referring to the growing calls to increase the size of the court in order to remedy the rightwing lurch exemplified by the draft ruling indicating the imminent fall of the right to abortion.TopicsTed CruzRepublicansUS political financingUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Cruz: Biden promise to put Black woman on supreme court is racial discrimination

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      Cruz: Biden promise to put Black woman on supreme court is racial discriminationJustices have been chosen on grounds of identity before, as Trump did when he picked a woman to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg The Republican senator Ted Cruz complained on Sunday that Joe Biden’s promise to nominate a Black woman to the supreme court was an instance of racial discrimination – but also claimed the GOP would not drag the eventual nominee “into the gutter” in confirmation hearings.The US supreme court is letting racist discrimination run wild in the election system | Carol AndersonRead more“Democrats today believe in racial discrimination,” Cruz told Fox News Sunday. “They’re they’re committed to it as a political proposition. I think it is wrong to stand up and say, ‘We’re going to discriminate.’”Biden made his promise on the campaign trail in 2020. Stephen Breyer, the oldest justice on the court, announced his retirement last month.James Clyburn, the South Carolina congressman and House whip, was instrumental in securing Biden’s promise. He has pushed for the nomination of J Michelle Childs, a judge from his state who has also attracted support from Lindsey Graham, like Cruz an influential Republican on the Senate judiciary committee.Childs is reported to be on a short list of three.“This administration is going to discriminate,” Cruz insisted. “What the president said is that only African American women are eligible for this slot, that 94% of Americans are ineligible.”The Texas senator’s host, Bill Hemmer, did not point out that justices have been chosen on grounds of identity before.The last Republican president, Donald Trump, promised to pick a woman to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg, then did so when the liberal lion died in September 2020. Cruz championed the nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, a hardline Catholic conservative.As a result of Trump’s three picks, conservatives outnumber liberals on the court 6-3. The replacement of Breyer, which could be Biden’s sole nomination if Republicans win back the Senate, will not alter that balance.Cruz is an accomplished conservative provocateur. On Sunday, he chose a provocative example of a jurist who he said would not qualify for consideration by Biden: Merrick Garland.“Merrick Garland, whom Barack Obama nominated to the supreme court, was told, ‘Sorry, you’re the wrong skin color and wrong gender, you’re not eligible to be considered.’”Garland is now attorney general, and thus unlikely to be considered for a supreme court seat in any eventuality.Furthermore, Cruz was among Senate Republicans who were not sorry to block even a hearing for Garland when he was nominated to replace Antonin Scalia in early 2016, claiming the conservative died too close to an election for a replacement to be considered.Cruz was also among Republicans who were not sorry to replace Ginsburg with Coney Barrett less than two months before the 2020 election.The Texas senator also said he would consider Biden’s nominee “on the record and I’m confident the Senate judiciary committee will have a vigorous process examining that nominee’s record. And what I can tell you right now is we’re not going to do what the Democrats did with Brett Kavanaugh.”Kavanaugh faced accusations of sexual assault, which he vehemently denied. Democratic failed to block his confirmation.“We’re not going to go into the gutter,” Cruz said. “We’re not going to engage in personal slime and attacks. We’re going to focus on the nominee’s record on substance and what kind of justice she would make. And that’s the constitutional responsibility of the Senate.”TopicsUS supreme courtTed CruzRepublicansUS politicsLaw (US)RacenewsReuse this content More

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      Surprised to see US Republicans cozying up to the European far right? Don’t be | Cas Mudde

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      OpinionUS politicsSurprised to see US Republicans cozying up to the European far right? Don’t beCas MuddeBefore Trump, only relatively fringe American conservatives had open connections to the international far right. Today, the ties have mainstreamed Fri 15 Oct 2021 06.15 EDTLast modified on Fri 15 Oct 2021 07.12 EDTThis weekend Texas senator Ted Cruz spoke about how “we all face the same challenges, including a bold and global left, that seeks to tear down cherished national and religious institutions”. Nothing to see here, you might think – except that he was not addressing a local branch of the Republican party in Texas, or a conservative US media outlet. He was speaking on screen to an audience of thousands in Madrid, at a meeting of the Spanish far-right party Vox. It was one of many recent outreaches to the global far right by US rightwing figures, which seem to have increased since the ouster of Donald Trump.Is the so-called “Populist International”, so often foretold but never realized, finally taking shape? And will the US conservative movement play a leading role in it? Or is this more about domestic politics than global domination?Unsurprisingly, given that the US conservative movement, like the Republican Party, covers a broad range of different shades of often far-right ideology, different people have spoken to different types of far-right groups. There are at least four major strands of far-right international networks in which US “conservatives” of all levels participate.The first and most important is the global Christian right. The US Christian right has long been a global player and has been particularly active in post-communist Europe – as is captured well in the Netflix series The Family. They have found influential supporters in Russian president Vladimir Putin and, more recently, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán. It was at the latter’s invitation, at the bi-annual Budapest Demographic Summit in Budapest, that Mike Pence recently spoke, together with a broad variety of academics, church leaders and politicians from around the globe, including the French far-right maybe-presidential candidate Éric Zemmour.Budapest has also been the new promised land for the second strand, the so-called “national conservativism” movement – the brainchild of the Israeli think-tanker Yoram Hazony. National conservatism is a kind of far right for people who read, to put it dismissively – an attempt to merge the already ever-overlapping conservative and far-right ideologies and create a far-right movement fit for the cultural, economic and political elite. Tucker Carlson gave a keynote at a national conservatism summit in Washington DC in 2019 and recently took his Fox News show to Budapest, where he raved about Orbán and his regime. And the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) is said to be hosting its 2022 meeting in Budapest too.The third strand is the long-standing connections between some far-right Republicans and the usual suspects of the European far right, like the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) or French National Rally (RN), which are built on a shared ideological core of nativism, authoritarianism and populism. Connections between the European far right and Republican members of Congress go back decades; think of people like Steve King, the Iowa Republican, and Dana Rohrabacher, the California Republican. They were fairly marginalized within the party – and both have, ironically, lost their seats in the Trump era. It was largely with these groups that Steve Bannon created “the Movement”, which never moved beyond media hype.And, finally, we have the party that Cruz sent a supportive video message to, Vox in Spain. Almost completely under the radar, Vox has been building a conservative-far right network in the Spanish-speaking world, partly facilitated by the party’s Dineso foundation. Focused mostly on Latin America – and piggybacking on the Latin American right’s long-standing fight against “communism” and for conservative Christianity – the foundation has published a “Charter of Madrid” signed by more than 100 politicians and political activists from Europe and the Americas, including US conservative activist Daniel Pipes (anti-Islam) and Grover Norquist (anti-tax), as well as a host of Latin American MPs. The particular meeting Cruz spoke to was attended by various European far-right leaders, including Giorgia Meloni of Brothers of Italy (FdI), currently the biggest party in the polls, and André Ventura of Chega in Portugal.Obviously, these international networks overlap on many issues, most notably in their common opposition to the “global left” but also, in different gradations, to immigration, Islam and “gender ideology”. But they also disagree on central issues, from the importance of religious doctrine to the role of Russia, and consequently have very different and shifting memberships. And they differ in the role of the US conservative movement within the network.With the exception of the Christian right, which has long dominated the global movement, the US does not play a leading role in these networks. Even the “national conservatism” network is run by an Israeli and increasingly funded by Hungarians. Moreover, the various US Republicans who have recently participated in these meetings seem to use their international connections more for domestic gains – most notably in the fight for the Republican nomination (should Donald Trump not run) – than for the sake of building a Populist International.This is not to say there is nothing new to recent developments. In the pre-Trump era, only relatively marginal rightwing conservatives and Republicans had open connections to the international far right. Today, the ties between the broader US conservative movement and the global far right have become mainstreamed, from the Republican party to National Review, with fewer and fewer dissenting voices. Still, steeped in US exceptionalism, the US conservative movement remains mostly inward-looking, using international connections and events primarily for national political struggles. And the Populist International is still more media hype than political reality.
      Cas Mudde is Stanley Wade Shelton UGAF professor of international affairs at the University of Georgia, the author of The Far Right Today (2019), and host of the podcast Radikaal. He is a Guardian US columnist
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      Ted Cruz’s campaign may have spent $150,000 on copies of his book

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      BooksTed Cruz’s campaign may have spent $150,000 on copies of his bookFollowing One Vote Away’s publication, the Republican senator’s campaign spent large sums of money at US chain Books-A-Million Alison FloodWed 18 Aug 2021 10.17 EDTLast modified on Wed 18 Aug 2021 10.25 EDTTed Cruz’s campaign spent more than $150,000 at US book chain Books-A-Million in the months after the Texas senator’s book was published, Forbes has reported.Cruz, who was prominent among the Republicans trying to block the certification of Joe Biden’s election, published One Vote Away: How a Single Supreme Court Seat Can Change History in September. A financial disclosure he filed on Monday, reported on by Forbes, shows he received almost $320,000 as an advance in 2020 from the book’s publisher Regnery Publishing.Ted Cruz threatens to burn John Boehner’s book over criticismsRead more“With a simple majority on the Supreme Court, the left will have the power to curtail or even abolish the freedoms that have made our country a beacon to the world. We are one vote away from losing the Republic that the Founders handed down to us. Our most precious constitutional rights hang by a thread,” says Regnery of the title. “In One Vote Away, you will discover how often the high court decisions that affect your life have been decided by just one vote.”The end-of-year report from Cruz’s committee, filed with the Federal Election Commission, reveals that two weeks after One Vote Away was published, his campaign spent $40,000 at Books-A-Million. Shortly afterwards, it spent a further $1,500, and in December, another $111,900. All of the purchases are described by the campaign as “books”, and Forbes speculated that they may have been used to boost his book sales, quoting Brett Kappel, a lawyer specialising in campaign finance, who said that “the FEC has issued a long series of advisory opinions allowing members to use campaign funds to buy copies of their own books at a discount from the publisher, provided that the royalties they would normally receive on those sales are given to charity”.Forbes previously reported what three other US senators had made from book deals in 2020: Elizabeth Warren earned $278,000, Tom Cotton $202,000, and Tammy Duckworth $382,000. All three used campaign funds to buy books, but Forbes said that their purchases were all under $20,000.A spokesperson for Cruz’s campaign told the magazine that the senator “has not received one cent of royalties in connection with any One Vote Away book sales”, but declined to reveal which books the campaign had spent more than $150,000 on.When Donald Trump Jr published Triggered in 2019, it made the New York Times bestseller list, but the newspaper’s charts included a dagger beside the book to indicate that “some retailers report receiving bulk orders”. The Republican National Committee denied making bulk orders at the time, and Trump Jr was angered by the suggestion that his sales had been artificially boosted, retweeting Republican strategist Andrew Surabian’s claim that “Don did multiple book signings where he sold 1,000+ books apiece. BookScan data will show he sold more books than the #2 and #3 books combined. Media/Dems want to pretend otherwise, but he was #1 on merit.”TopicsBooksUS politicsTed CruzTexasPublishingnewsReuse this content More

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      Ted Cruz threatens to burn John Boehner’s book over criticisms

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      Republican senator Ted Cruz has responded to fiery criticism from John Boehner with a tactic beloved of authoritarian regimes: threatening to burn his book.In an email to supporters, the Texas politician said he also might machine-gun or chainsaw the memoir, depending on how much his supporters paid for the privilege to watch.Boehner, a Republican congressman from Ohio for 24 years and House speaker from 2011 to 2015, published his book On the House this week. It contains strong criticism of political figures from Donald Trump to Barack Obama but hits Cruz especially hard.The senator who drove a government shutdown in 2013 is “Lucifer in the flesh”, Boehner has said.On the page, he writes: “There is nothing more dangerous than a reckless asshole who thinks he is smarter than everyone else.”The book also contains a memorable sign-off: “PS, Ted Cruz: Go fuck yourself.”But Cruz, who ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016 and may well do so again in 2024, is nothing if not a bomb-thrower himself, as well as a nimble opportunist.“John Boehner doesn’t like me much,” his fundraising email said. “That’s fine, I’m not a big fan of his either.”Calling the speaker-turned-lobbyist a “Swamp Monster” and accusing him of “an unhinged smear campaign”, the email told supporters Cruz had “put this trash right where it belonged, in my fireplace”.“But I didn’t finish it off just yet,” it added. Instead, the Texas senator announced a “72-hour drive to raise $250,000”, in which donors would “get to VOTE on whether we machine gun the book, take a chainsaw to it or burn the book to light cigars!”The email also said Cruz would livestream the evisceration or incineration.There is nothing new about American politicians shooting or eviscerating texts they don’t like in order to raise campaign dollars. Ask the Democratic senator Joe Manchin, who has both taken aim at Obamacare and fired his gun to defend it.But it could also be pointed out that Cruz’s attempt to stoke outrage – and dollars – might only succeed in bringing Boehner’s book to wider attention.As Ray Bradbury, author of the classic novel Fahrenheit 451, about a society which bans books, once said: “You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”On Thursday morning, On the House was the No 1 seller on Amazon. More

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      Tommy Robinson asked wealthy US backers to help him claim asylum

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      The anti-immigration activist Tommy Robinson asked wealthy American backers to help him claim asylum in the US, the Guardian has learned, while his team approached the Republican senator Ted Cruz’s office about securing a visa.Court documents released in the US show the English Defence League founder discussed moving his family to Texas in 2019, where he would earn money by speaking at venues “including evangelical churches”.Such was the influence of Robinson’s supporters that they asked advisers to Cruz, the Republican former presidential candidate, for legal advice on securing an extended visa for “someone who needs protection”.Terry Giles, a prominent American businessman and friend of Cruz, told the Guardian he asked the senator’s office for assistance but did not disclose that the visa was for Robinson.Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, remains one of the UK’s highest-profile rightwing campaigners despite being banned from mainstream social media and beset by legal problems. The Luton-born activist has described people who fled the Syrian war as “fake refugees” who should be “sent back”.Documents released by a US district court in Pennsylvania shed light on how Robinson’s influence extends to high levels in the US, where conservative groups have previously funded his activities in Britain.The 38-year-old has received hundreds of thousands of pounds in donations from wealthy international backers as well as ordinary supporters. He recently claimed to be bankrupt at the high court in London, where he is due to defend himself in a libel trial later this month.A record of a meeting between Robinson and his most influential supporters at the Four Seasons hotel in London in early 2019 describes Giles, 72, as “actively working with Senator Cruz to advance Tommy’s visa”.The Houston-based businessman, who previously ran the presidential campaign for Republican Ben Carson in 2015, was “mainly concerned with bringing Tommy and his family to Houston, by getting a visa; getting them into a new house/school/life; and getting him on to the speaking circuit, including evangelical churches,” according to the memo.Giles confirmed the account of the meeting, which was also attended by Robinson, his solicitors, a Ukip adviser, the rightwing Canadian pundit Ezra Levant and Lisa Barbounis, an executive for the Middle East Forum, a conservative US thinktank that donated tens of thousands of pounds towards Robinson’s legal fees and rallies.He said Robinson asked him to explore the potential to move his family to the US due to “serious threats to his family”. He added: “This was the way [Robinson] described it: if things get worse and my family is in danger, what can I do to help them? Is there anything in the United States that could assist in that regard?“We were just looking into the possibilities so that I could advise them of all of the different things that they could be looking at, including applying for asylum.”Robinson, who publicly appealed to Donald Trump to grant him political asylum, lost interest in moving to the US “once he realised that he couldn’t go back to the UK if he declared asylum”, according to the files.Barbounis said in her memo that Robinson’s contempt of court case “impedes the visa process” and added: “We all agreed that to get the outstanding charges from hanging over Tommy’s head and to advance our collective plans for him in the US he should try to settle [the case]. Tommy seemed reluctant but said he would think it over.”The documents show the Middle East Forum was central to Robinson’s efforts to obtain a visa. Barbounis told her boss, Daniel Pipes, in January 2019 that “Cruz’s guy called Tommy yesterday and said they were discussing it next week”. Cruz’s office said it had no records of helping Robinson secure a visa.Pipes replied that “we need a patron in the USG [US government]” and suggested enlisting Paul Gosar, a Republican congressman. Barbounis replied that Gosar was “willing but didn’t have enough recognition with the embassy” and that she had contacted Sebastian Gorka, previously an adviser to the then president, Donald Trump, who had “said he would pass it along. Nothing materialised.”Gorka did not dispute being approached about a visa for Robinson. He said it was “an amusing story” for a “gutter rag like the Commie Guardian”.Giles and Barbounis appear to have been the main advocates for moving Robinson to the US, according to the documents.Pipes, the director of the Middle East Forum, told the Guardian he opposed Robinson moving to the US and did not want to facilitate it but that he had previously wanted the activist to visit to discuss free speech issues. He added: “In retrospect, MEF regrets funding the events supporting Mr Robinson. Accordingly, we have cut all relations with him.”The files were released by the court as part of a dispute between the Middle East Forum and several former employees regarding sexual harassment allegations, which it denies. More