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      Trump rails against election result at rally ahead of crucial Georgia Senate runoff

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      Donald Trump has held his first political rally since losing the presidential election, delivering an incoherent speech laced with baseless conspiracies theories about election fraud and attacks on Republican state officials in Georgia who have refused to help him subvert the results.In front of a crowd of thousands of mostly maskless, non-socially distanced supporters in south Georgia, Trump repeatedly claimed, falsely, that he had won the presidential election, and called for those in government with “courage and wisdom” to help him reverse the result.The president’s rally, on a cold evening at a regional airport in the small city of Valdosta, came ahead of a critical US Senate runoff election in January, which will decide control of the upper house and ultimately play a decisive role in president-elect Joe Biden’s ability to legislate.Trump had ostensibly travelled to Georgia as a show of support for the two Republican Senate candidates for the January poll, Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, but spent the majority of speech railing against the results of the presidential election.He began his speech, which lasted more than 90 minutes, by falsely claiming he had won the state of Georgia, which he lost to Joe Biden by over 12,000 votes in a result that was certified by the Republican secretary of state more than two weeks ago.“They cheated and they rigged our presidential election, but we will still win it,” Trump falsely claimed. “And they’re going to try and rig this [Senate] election too.”The president read from a prepared list of nonsensical evidence that he said highlighted his victory. This included arguing that by winning the states of Ohio and Florida he had in fact won the entire election, and also that winning an uncontested Republican party primary earlier this year was proof he had won against Biden in November.Trump lost the electoral college vote by 306 votes to 232 and the popular vote by over 7m. His campaign has launched numerous legal challenges in various states. An Associated Press tally showed that of roughly 50 cases brought by Trump’s campaign and his allies, more than 30 have been rejected or dropped, and about a dozen are awaiting action.Trump vented fury at the Republican governor of Georgia, Brian Kemp, a one-time political ally of the president, who has resisted calls to join Trump’s attempts to overturn the result in the state.“Your governor could stop it very easily if he knew what the hell he was doing,” Trump told the crowd.He added: “For whatever reason your secretary of state and your governor are afraid of Stacey Abrams” – a reference to the former Democratic gubernatorial candidate, who is a staunch voting rights advocate and helped drive turnout in the election and secure the state for Biden.The rally came hours after the Washington Post reported that Trump pressured Kemp to overthrow the results of the election in the state during a Saturday morning phone call. Trump pushed Kemp to convene a special session of the state legislature in a bid to send Trump backing presidential electors when the electoral college convenes on 14 December. Kemp denied the request, the Post reported.Trump then made a similar demand on Twitter in the afternoon.The president also demanded an audit of absentee ballot signatures in the state, which Kemp does not have the power to authorise.At the rally, which was reminiscent of many of his campaign rallies, Trump railed against coronavirus and resulting restrictions, and stoked fears of tax changes under a Democratic administration.He also claimed if he thought he had lost the presidential election, he would be “a very gracious loser”. “I’d go to Florida … I’d take it easy” he said. More

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      Trump heads for Georgia but claims of fraud may damage Senate Republicans

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      Donald Trump will return to the campaign trail on Saturday – not, notionally at least, in his quixotic and doomed attempt to deny defeat by Joe Biden, but in support of two Republicans who face January run-offs which will decide control of the US Senate.The president and first lady Melania Trump are due to appear in Valdosta, Georgia at 7pm local time.“See you tomorrow night!” Trump tweeted on Friday, as Vice-President Mike Pence stumped in the southern state.But the president couldn’t help tying the Senate race to his baseless accusations of electoral fraud in key states he lost to Biden.“The best way to insure [sic] a … victory,” he wrote, “is to allow signature checks in the presidential race, which will insure [sic] a Georgia presidential win (very few votes are needed, many will be found).“Spirits will soar and everyone will rush out and VOTE!”To the contrary, many observers postulate that Trump’s ceaseless baseless claims that the election was rigged could depress turnout among supporters in Georgia, handing a vital advantage to Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, the Democratic challengers to senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue.If Ossoff and Warnock win, the Senate will be split 50-50, Kamala Harris’s vote as vice-president giving Democrats control. Polling in both races is tight.Trump’s recalcitrance is being encouraged by congressional Republicans. On Saturday the Washington Post reported that only 25 of 247 Republican representatives and senators have acknowledged Biden’s victory.Biden won the electoral college by 306-232, the same result Trump said was a landslide when it landed in his favour over Hillary Clinton. The Democrat is more than 7m ballots ahead in the national popular vote, having attracted the support of more than 81 million Americans, the most of any candidate for president.Democrats performed less well in Senate, House and state elections, however, making the Georgia runoffs vital to the balance of power in Washington as leaders look for agreement on much-needed stimulus and public health measures to tackle the Covid-19 pandemic and its attendant economic downturn.Earlier this week, two lawyers who have both been involved in legal challenges to Biden’s victory and trafficked in outlandish conspiracy theories, Lin Wood and Sidney Powell, told Trump supporters not to vote in Georgia unless Republican leaders act more aggressively to overturn the presidential result.“We’re not gonna go vote 5 January on another machine made by China,” Wood said on Wednesday. “You’re not gonna fool Georgians again. If Kelly Loeffler wants your vote, if David Perdue wants your vote, they’ve got to earn it. They’ve got to demand publicly, repeatedly, consistently, ‘Brian Kemp: call a special session of the Georgia legislature’.“And if they do not do it, if Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue do not do it, they have not earned your vote. Don’t you give it to them. Why would you go back and vote in another rigged election?”After a rush of defeats on Friday, Trump has won one election-related lawsuit and lost 46. But he continues to attack, in Georgia slamming Governor Brian Kemp and secretary of state Brad Raffensperger for overseeing a contest in which the state went Democratic for the first time since 1992.Matt Towery, a former Georgia Republican legislator now an analyst and pollster, told Reuters Trump could help in the state “if he spends most of his time talking about the two candidates, how wonderful they are, what they’ve achieved.“If he talks about them for 10 minutes and spends the rest of the time telling everyone how terrible Brian Kemp is, then it will only exacerbate things.”Gabriel Sterling, the Republican manager of Georgia’s voting systems, this week blamed the president and his allies for threats of violence against election workers and officials. On Friday, he said: “I think the rhetoric they’re engaged in now is literally suppressing the vote.”At a rally in Savannah, the vice-president was greeted by chants of “stop the steal”.“I know we’ve all got our doubts about the last election,” Pence said, “and I actually hear some people saying, ’Just don’t vote.’ My fellow Americans, if you don’t vote, they win.”Kemp and Loeffler missed campaign events on Friday after a young aide to the senator was killed in a car crash.Former president Barack Obama held a virtual event in support of Warnock and Ossoff. From Wilmington, Delaware, where he continues preparations to take power on 20 January, Biden said he would travel to Georgia at some point, to campaign with the Democratic candidates. More

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      Pardon me! Will Trump be indicted? Politics Weekly Extra podcast

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      As the US justice department investigates an alleged ‘bribery for pardon’ scheme at the White House, Jonathan Freedland and David Smith delve into the many possible legal issues Donald Trump could face after 20 January

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      Might Donald Trump, once stripped of the near-total immunity that came with his office, face the full might of the law? Could he be charged with crimes, or even go to jail? Or might he pardon himself in advance? Jonathan Freedland and the Guardian’s Washington bureau chief, David Smith, go through the many potential scenarios that could play out once Trump is no longer the commander-in-chief. Let us know what you think of the podcast and send us your questions to podcasts@theguardian.com Help support the Guardian by going to gu.com/supportpodcasts More

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      Donald Trump believes in clemency and mercy. But only for his friends and family | Jill Filipovic

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      Given that Donald Trump treats the office of the presidency like a personal branding tool, and deals with adversity like a two-bit mafioso, this moment was perhaps predictable: the president is reportedly considering pre-emptively pardoning three of his children, his son-in-law, and associates including Rudy Giuliani. He has already pardoned or commuted the sentences of several of his friends and associates, which should raise some eyebrows – why do so many people who surround this president wind up charged with a crime, in jail, or bracing themselves for criminal charges? And why is the supposedly law-and-order “pro-life” Republican party shrugging as this president excuses the criminality of his kin and his cronies while he refuses to intervene to save anyone from execution – and in fact, is using what little time he has left in office to reinstate barbaric practices like death by firing squad?We all know Trump didn’t drain the swamp. But in his last two months in office, he is sending a clear message about who and what he and his party value. It’s not Christian mercy, or hard-nosed law and order, or even the sanctity of life. It’s power, dominance and a thick line between two Americas: one connected, white, power-hungry and lawless, and the other at its mercy.As Trump’s term winds down, the White House is reportedly besieged with requests from lackeys and sycophants and hangers-on and D-list celebrities who all believe the president may grant them a get-out-of-jail-free card (or, in the case of his children and Giuliani, who have not been charged or convicted of any crimes, a get-out-of-ever-being-held-accountable card). Even the Tiger King has made his case to the president.Many expect that the president will issue a flurry of pardons and commutations, and this largesse will be bestowed much like the measly 11 pardons and commutations he’s issued so far: on people who worked for him, people who supported him, people could incriminate him and people who personally impress him (sometimes via reality television stars, because we are living in the worst of times).Trump has refused to use his powers for good, and has been appalling harsh on those who have been over-sentencedHe’s granted clemency almost entirely to his friends, advisers, supporters and loyalists, with a few war criminals and conservative cultural icons thrown in for good measure. The only people he has used his pardon power to help who fall outside that characterization are either famous but long-dead historical figures and Alice Marie Johnson, who was serving a life sentence for a non-violent drug offense – and whose case he only learned about because reality television star Kim Kardashian West brought it to his desk.What he largely hasn’t done is use the presidential clemency power for its highest purpose: to correct serious injustice and act with compassion.Despite touting himself as a president who has done more for criminal justice reform than any other, the opposite is actually true: Trump has refused to use his powers for good, and has been appalling harsh on those who have been over-sentenced. Several people on federal death row have appealed to the president for clemency – not to go home, just to not be killed by the state. So far, Trump has ignored them. The list of those who are still alive includes Brandon Bernard, who was just 18 when he joined a group of friends for what he thought was going to be a carjacking and a robbery; one of his friends ended up murdering the couple the group robbed, in a brutal act Bernard had not foreseen and was horrified by. At trial, Bernard’s lawyer, who had never argued a federal death penalty case before, barely mounted a defense and failed to call important witnesses. Several members of the jury that convicted him now say that he should not be executed. And there’s Lisa Montgomery, the only woman on federal death row, who committed an awful crime – she murdered a pregnant woman and stole her baby – but also has a severe and debilitating mental illness, and, her lawyers say, was psychotic when she committed that heinous crime. More

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      in US Politics

      Ivanka Trump quizzed as part of inauguration fund lawsuit

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      Ivanka Trump was interviewed by attorneys alleging that Donald Trump’s 2017 inauguration committee misused donor funds, a new court filing reveals.The document, first reported by CNN on Wednesday, shows that Ivanka Trump, the president’s oldest daughter and a senior White House adviser, was interviewed on Tuesday by attorneys from the Washington, DC, attorney general’s office.The office has filed a lawsuit alleging waste of the nonprofit’s funds, accusing the committee of making more than $1m (£746,000) in improper payments to the president’s Washington, DC, hotel during the week of the inauguration in 2017.As part of the suit, they have subpoenaed records from Ivanka Trump; the first lady, Melania Trump; Thomas Barrack Jr, a close friend of the president who chaired the inaugural committee, and others. Barrack was also interviewed last month.Trump’s inaugural committee spent more than $1m to book a ballroom at the Trump International Hotel in the nation’s capital as part of a scheme to “grossly overpay” for party space and enrich the president’s own family in the process, the District of Columbia’s attorney general, Karl Racine, alleges.He has accused the committee of misusing nonprofit funds and coordinating with the hotel’s management and members of the Trump family to arrange the events.“District law requires nonprofits to use their funds for their stated public purpose, not to benefit private individuals or companies,” Racine has said. “In this case, we are seeking to recover the nonprofit funds that were improperly funnelled directly to the Trump family business.”The committee raised an unprecedented $107m to host events celebrating Trump’s inauguration in January 2017, but its spending has drawn continued scrutiny.In a statement, Alan Garten, from the Trump Organization, said that “Ms Trump’s only involvement was connecting the parties and instructing the hotel to charge a ‘fair market rate,’ which the hotel did.” More

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      US justice department investigates alleged 'bribery for pardon' scheme at White House

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      An alleged “bribery for pardon” scheme at the White House is under investigation by the justice department, according to a court filing unsealed on Tuesday.
      The heavily redacted document does not name Donald Trump or other individuals and leaves many unanswered questions, but comes amid media reports that the US president is considering sweeping pardons before he leaves office next month.
      It shows that the justice department investigation alleges that an individual offered “a substantial political contribution in exchange for a presidential pardon or reprieve of sentence”.
      Two individuals acted improperly as lobbyists to secure the pardon in the “bribery-for-pardon schemes”, as the document puts it. All three names are blacked out.
      On Tuesday night, a justice department official told Reuters that no US government official is the “subject or target” of investigation into whether money was funnelled to the White House in exchange for a presidential pardon.
      Trump issued a brief response on Tuesday night, resorting to one of his favourite phrases to criticise the media even though the details were contained in official court papers. “Pardon investigation is Fake News!” he tweeted.
      The watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (Crew) tweeted in response: “It’s hard to overstate how big a deal the phrase ‘bribery-for-pardon schemes’ is.”
      The document was unsealed by the district court for the District of Columbia, in Washington. Some of its 20 pages are entirely redacted, implying that revealing the details now might jeopardise an ongoing investigation.
      They discuss a review by chief judge Beryl Howell in late August of a request from prosecutors for documents gathered for the bribery investigation. More than 50 digital devices including iPhones, iPads, laptops, thumb drives and computer drives were seized after investigators raided unidentified offices. It was not clear why Howell decided to release the filing now.
      Trump last week pardoned Michael Flynn, his former national security adviser, who had twice pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI. The New York Times reported on Tuesday that Trump and Rudy Giuliani, his personal lawyer, discussed as recently as last week the possibility of a “pre-emptive pardon”. Giuliani tweeted a denial.
      The court disclosure unleashed a whirlwind of speculation in Washington. The Democrat Adam Schiff, the chair of the House of Representatives’ intelligence committee, told the MSNBC network: “People shouldn’t presume – and there may be a tendency to leap to the – that this may involve some of the personalities that have been very much in the news and are worried about their criminal liability.
      “It may be someone that we’ve never heard of that wants a pardon and is well-heeled and therefore in a position to make a sizeable contribution. So it doesn’t have to be any of the parties that we think that may want a pardon: the [Paul] Manaforts, the Giulianis and others. It could be someone completely different but, at the end of the day, someone in that chain has to be close enough to the White House where they could conceivably deliver on the official act of pardon if the bribe were paid.”
      Reuters contributed reporting More

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      Trump’s legacy is the plague of extreme lies. Truth-based media is the vaccine | Richard Wolffe

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      Normal presidents start to think about their legacy long before the final weeks of their time inside the West Wing. But if there’s anything we have learned from the lab rat experiment of the last four years, it’s that Donald Trump is entirely abnormal.Whether he knows it or not – and all the evidence suggests he knows nothing worth knowing – Trump’s legacy is the toxic politics of lies: a permanent campaign of fabrications and falsehoods.No matter that he clearly lost the 2020 election by landslide margins in the electoral college and the popular vote. What matters is the never-ending sense of grievance that someone or something, somewhere – liberals, minorities, judges, reporters – have conspired to wrong Trump and oppress his long-suffering fans.This is the narrative of the fascist story forever: you are not to blame for your suffering because it was contrived by others – immigrants and outsiders, wielding wealth and power in the shadows.Trump did not invent this story and likely has no idea where it came from, other than his own obvious genius. He did not invent the notion that brazen lies can buy you a delusional base. He wasn’t the first to put the bull in the bully pulpit of the presidency.But he was the first to run a White House like a Joe McCarthy witch hunt, unleashing social media to cower an entire party into a posture of pure cowardice.Trump’s Republicans will be with us long after the soon-to-be-ex-president succumbs to the overdue tax bills of the IRS, the calling-in of his massive property debts, and the long-brewing fraud cases of New York state’s prosecutors.These Trumpist Republicans are his legacy, as much as a supreme court stacked against the popular vote, science and all good sense.They are people like Elise Stefanik in upstate New York. Stefanik is a Harvard graduate whose career began alongside Republican moderates such as Tim Pawlenty, the former Minnesota governor, and Josh Bolten, Bush’s second term chief of staff. But now she’s a full Trumpista, mimicking his campaign style of insults and defending him through his impeachment for corruptly twisting national security to dig up dirt on Joe Biden.They are people like Tom Cotton, the Arkansas senator and 2024 presidential hopeful. Cotton is already campaigning against immigrants and says he’ll oppose Biden’s nominee for homeland security because he was part of a giant conspiracy of Democratic donors to sell green cards to the Chinese. In fact the conspiracy involved just three cases, and is the same cash-for-citizenship program that triggered investigations into Trump’s son-in-law and confidant Jared Kushner. But why spoil the soundbite?They are people like Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor, who spent most of the 2020 campaign sounding like a Trump clone but has now disappeared from public view, even as he continues to stop local officials from enforcing mask-wearing to slow the spread of the pandemic.Trump’s Republicans will be with us long after the soon-to-be-ex-president succumbs to the overdue tax bills, the massive property debts, and the long-brewing fraud casesThis political plague of extreme lies did not start four years ago.George W Bush and Karl Rove won the 2004 election by suggesting that Democrats would open the nation’s doors to Islamist terrorists. That was before the second term was demolished by their own nativists who sunk their plans for immigration reform. Those anti-immigrant forces found a natural home in the so-called Tea party that denied Barack Obama’s citizenship, and later populated Trump’s White House and justice department.The good news is that we already have a vaccine. It’s the best way to protect yourself from demagogues, deception and delusions. It separates fact from fiction. It recalls recent history to place the present in some kind of meaningful context.It’s called the news media, and you can help. You can be an informed citizen by reading established news media first, not your social feed or email. You can share stories from the truth-tellers who have no problem calling out the liars.You can even pay for the truth that journalists deliver every day, no matter how much sewage pours through social media feeds and email inboxes. It doesn’t cost much when you think about how much we’ve paid during these last four years of chaos and corruption.We can’t stop the Trumpistas from Trumping. We can’t stop the rest of them from pretending like they were never big Trump fans in the first place.But we can stop them running away from the facts or their record. We can remind them how they failed to stop Trump’s corruption and this murderous pandemic.We can stop them skewing the political spectrum so far that the Biden team tacks to center ground that is already six steps to the right.We can hold the new White House to its promises at the same time as holding the old Republican party to what used to be its principles.But this work comes at a price. Back in the late 19th century, the French writer Gustave Le Bon wrote that “the crowd” has never rewarded the truth.“They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error, if error seduce them,” he wrote. “Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim.”You can reward the truth if you want to. It’s one of the best ways to demolish the legacy of the last four years. More

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      Scott Atlas resigns as Trump pandemic adviser after controversial tenure

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      Scott Atlas has resigned as special adviser to Donald Trump, a White House official said on Monday, after a controversial four months during which he attacked science-based public health measures and clashed repeatedly with other members of the coronavirus taskforce.“I am writing to resign from my position as Special Advisor to the President of the United States,” Atlas said in a letter to Trump dated 1 December, according to Fox News, which first reported his resignation. Atlas later confirmed his resignation in a tweet.Atlas is a neuroradiologist and fellow at Stanford’s rightwing Hoover Institution, where he works on healthcare policy. He has no expertise or experience in infectious diseases or epidemiology, yet was nevertheless selected by Trump to advise the president on the pandemic.Atlas joined the White House this summer, where he clashed with top government scientists, including Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr Deborah Birx, as he resisted stronger efforts to contain the pandemic.Atlas attacked public health measures such as masks, stay-at-home orders and social distancing. He called on residents of Michigan to “rise up” against restrictions put in place by Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who had been the target of a kidnapping plot, leading to calls for his firing.Atlas repeatedly downplayed the threat of the virus, which has killed more than 265,000 Americans.He also promoted the idea that the US should aim to achieve “herd immunity”, a so-called strategy that would probably result in millions of deaths, and was repeatedly rebuked by public health and infectious disease experts, in addition to Stanford University and the Stanford faculty senate.His views also prompted Stanford to issue a statement distancing itself from the faculty member, saying Atlas “has expressed views that are inconsistent with the university’s approach in response to the pandemic”.“We support using masks, social distancing, and conducting surveillance and diagnostic testing,” the university said on 16 November. “We also believe in the importance of strictly following the guidance of local and state health authorities.”Atlas has been sharply criticized by public health experts, including Fauci, the leading US infectious disease expert, for providing Trump with misleading or incorrect information on the virus pandemic. He has downplayed the importance of face masks and this month said lockdowns had been “an epic failure” in stopping the virus’s spread.Atlas defended his role in his resignation letter, saying, “I cannot think of a time where safeguarding science and the scientific debate is more urgent.”The resignation comes as the country faces a deadly surge in coronavirus cases and record-high hospitalisations. The US is currently reporting more than 100,000 new coronavirus cases a day.Dr Celine Grounder, a member of Biden’s advisory panel on the crisis, greeted the news of the resignation with relief.“I’m relieved that in the future, people who are qualified, people who are infectious disease specialists and epidemiologists like me will be helping to lead this effort,” she told CNBC.“You wouldn’t go to a podiatrist for a heart attack and that was essentially what was happening.”Atlas was hired as a “special government employee”, which limited his service to government to 130 days in a calendar year, a deadline he reached this week. More