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      Trump official admits family separation policy 'should never have been implemented'

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      For the first time, a senior Trump administration official who helped implement family separation has condemned the hardline immigration policy, which made it possible for the government to take more than 3,000 children, including infants, from their parents at the US-Mexico border in 2018.In response to a damning report published on Thursday by the US justice department’s internal watchdog on the “zero-tolerance” policy, which made family separation possible, the former deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein said the policy “should have never been proposed or implemented”.The justice department’s Office of Inspector General’s (OIG) long-awaited report said department leadership knew the policy would result in children being separated from their families and that the former US attorney general Jeff Sessions “demonstrated a deficient understanding of the legal requirements related to the care and custody of separated children”.“We concluded that the Department’s single-minded focus on increasing immigration prosecutions came at the expense of careful and appropriate consideration of the impact of family unit prosecutions and child separations,” the report said.The OIG said justice department leadership “did not effectively coordinate” with the relevant agencies before implementing zero-tolerance, despite being aware of the challenges created by increasing prosecutions of adult asylum seekers under the policy.In a conference call in May 2018, Sessions told prosecutors: “We need to take away children,” according to notes taken by people on the call and provided to the OIG.Rosenstein, who publicly denounced the policy for the first time on Thursday, told the OIG he had known the zero-tolerance policy would result in family separations. He also told investigators he had not been involved with the formulation of the policy and had received reassurances about it that he now believed were wrong.In July 2020, the Guardian reported that Rosenstein had made comments in a conference call with US attorneys charged with implementing the policy that in effect meant that no child was too young to be separated from their parents.The call came after US attorneys on the south-west border had repeatedly raised concerns about how zero-tolerance was supposed to be operated. A month after the policy had been in place, to help attorneys, a list of questions was drafted for DHS and HHS, which included: “How does DHS deal with infants?”At that point, it was clear no agency had a master list of separated children.In a statement provide to the Guardian on Thursday, Rosenstein said he and his colleagues at the justice department “faced unprecedented challenges” compared with work he had done as a US attorney under previous presidential administrations.“Since leaving the Department, I have often asked myself what we should have done differently, and no issue has dominated my thinking more than the zero-tolerance immigration policy,” Rosenstein said. “It was a failed policy that never should have been proposed or implemented. I wish we all had done better.”Sessions, who resigned in November 2018, announced the zero-tolerance policy in April 2018. Facing intense pressure nationally and abroad, the Trump administration stopped mass family separations in June 2018, though asylum-seeking families continue to be separated today at a smaller scale.Family separation, which legal experts and doctors said constituted torture, was supported by multiple federal agencies.The homeland security department (DHS) separated families at the border and detained the parents, the health department eventually took custody of children separated from their parents and the justice department leadership provided the legal framework that made separations possible.The justice department OIG report confirms earlier watchdog reports from the other agencies’ monitors, which found inadequate tracking systems were in place.A January 2019 report from the health department OIG found the Trump administration might have separated thousands of migrant children from their parents at the border for up to a year before family separation was a publicly known practice.The lead attorney on an ongoing family separation lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, Lee Gelernt, said: “This new report shows just how far the Trump administration was willing to go to destroy these families. Just when you think the Trump administration can’t sink any lower, it does.“The Biden-Harris administration will inherit the legacy of family separation, and we don’t doubt that more horrific details will continue to emerge,” Gelernt said. “We need them to act with urgency – every day without action makes it harder to find and reunite families.”Dick Durbin, a Democratic US senator from Illinois, said he would hold the justice department officials responsible to account as the incoming chair of the US Senate judiciary committee. “Those who planned and executed the zero-tolerance policy will have to live with the knowledge that their cruelty and cowardice are responsible for the scars these children will carry for the rest of their lives,” Durbin said.Despite being the driving force behind the zero-tolerance policy, Sessions refused to be interviewed by OIG investigators.The report said Sessions told US attorneys on the south-west border that families would be quickly prosecuted and reunited, even though doing so was, “in most cases, a practical and legal impossibility”. The former homeland security secretary Kirstjen Nielsen has repeatedly defended her decision to enforce the zero-tolerance policy, which was announced in April 2018. More

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      Sorry, try Obama's house: Secret Service barred from using Ivanka Trump's bathrooms

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      The dying days of the Trump administration have been plagued by yet more scandal in the form of riots, Twitter bans and impeachment. Now the Washington Post has added another: water closet gate.
      In a multi-bylined article one of America’s top investigative news outlets has chronicled in leg-crossing detail the apparently extreme difficulty that the Secret Service detail assigned to Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump have had in finding a place to go to the bathroom.
      According to the Washington Post the president’s daughter and her top White House adviser spouse have apparently exiled the squad of men and women assigned to keep them from harm’s way from using the toilets in their sprawling Washington DC mansion.
      “Instructed not to use any of the half-dozen bathrooms inside the couple’s house, the Secret Service detail assigned to President Trump’s daughter and son-in-law spent months searching for a reliable restroom to use on the job,” the paper reported, citing neighbors and law enforcement official.
      It quoted one law enforcement official as saying: “It’s the first time I ever heard of a Secret Service detail having to go to these extremes to find a bathroom.”
      It added that Secret Service members in the couple’s detail who were desperate to relieve themselves had resorted to a porta-potty, as well as bathrooms at the homes of Barack Obama and Vice-President Mike Pence.
      The solution to the problem was not a cheap one. Since September 2017, the paper reported, the federal government rented the stricken Secret Service members a basement studio with a bathroom for the purposes of them going to the loo. The cost to taxpayers? Some $3,000 a month.
      A White House spokesperson denied the couple restricted agents from their home. But the Post stuck by its investigative guns, saying: “That account is disputed by a law enforcement official familiar with the situation, who said the agents were kept out at the family’s request.”
      The Post’s story is unlikely to endear Washington citizens – or indeed many other Americans – to Ivanka Trump and her husband as they leave office after four high-profile years in Donald Trump’s administration. Multiple reports have already gleefully detailed the couple’s likely rejection from the New York and Washington DC social circles in which they have previously moved.
      Not that the couple will lack for a place to call home. They have recently bought a $30m plot of land on an exclusive island in Florida nicknamed the Billionaire’s Bunker. More

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      Last two federal executions under Trump can proceed, court rules

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      A US appeals court ordered that the last two scheduled federal executions under Donald Trump’s outgoing administration could proceed on Thursday and Friday, overturning a stay from a lower court delaying them until March to allow the two condemned men to recover from Covid-19.The US Department of Justice announced last month that Corey Johnson, 52, and Dustin Higgs, 48, had been diagnosed with Covid-19 but that it would proceed with their executions this month.Both men, convicted in separate murders, are being held on death row at a federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana.On Tuesday, Judge Tanya Chutkan of the US district court ordered the executions be delayed until at least 16 March to allow the condemned men to heal, siding with medical experts who said their coronavirus-damaged lungs would result in inordinate suffering if they were to receive lethal injections.A split panel of judges at US court of appeals for the District of Columbia circuit overturned Chutkan’s stay by a 2-1 vote overnight on Wednesday.Lawyers for the two men asked the appeals court to reconsider the ruling by filing a petition on Thursday morning seeking a so-called rehearing en banc.“We will ask the full court to step in to reinstate the stay, but it is time for the government to stop carrying out super-spreader executions,” Shawn Nolan, a federal defender representing Higgs, said in a statement.Trump, a longstanding advocate of capital punishment, oversaw the resumption of federal executions last summer after a 17-year hiatus as the novel coronavirus continued to spread.Death row inmates, at least two of their lawyers and multiple prison and execution staff have since become ill with Covid-19.The president-elect, Joe Biden, will be inaugurated next Wednesday, and says he will seek to abolish the death penalty.Higgs was convicted of overseeing the kidnapping and murder of three women on the Patuxent Research Refuge in Maryland in 1996. He did not kill anyone himself, which his lawyers have argued is grounds for clemency.Johnson was convicted of murdering seven people in Virginia in 1992 as part of a drug-trafficking ring. His lawyers say he has an intellectual disability that means it would be unconstitutional to execute him.Their lawyers, citing medical experts who testified in court, say that their damaged lung tissue would rupture more quickly than usual after lethal doses of pentobarbital, a powerful barbiturate, had been administered.There could be a period of several minutes in which the men experience drowning as their lungs filled with bloody fluids – a pulmonary edema – before the drug rendered them insensate or killed them, the lawyers argued, calling it a form of torture.Earlier this week, Lisa Montgomery became the first woman executed in the US by the federal government in almost seven decades, after an appeal to the US supreme court failed. More

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      Revealed: White House liaison sought derogatory info on E Jean Carroll from DoJ official

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      The White House liaison to the Department of Justice (DoJ), Heidi Stirrup, sought out derogatory information late last year from a senior justice department official regarding a woman who alleges she was raped by Donald Trump, according to the person from whom Stirrup directly sought the information.
      The revelation raises the prospect that allies of the US president were directly pressing the justice department to try to dig up potentially damaging information on a woman who had accused Trump of sexually attacking her.
      E Jean Carroll, a journalist and advice columnist, sued Trump in November 2019, alleging he had defamed her when he denied her account of having been raped by him. Carroll alleges Trump sexually assaulted her in a dressing room in Bergdorf Goodman, a high-end Manhattan department store, in either late 1995 or early 1996.
      Trump at the time responded to her allegations by claiming Carroll was “totally lying” and attempted to ridicule her by saying “she’s not my type”. Those and similar comments led Carroll to sue him.
      Stirrup apparently believed the justice department had information that might aid the president’s legal defense in the suit. The attorney who Stirrup sought information from regarding Carroll said that Stirrup approached them not long after a judge had ruled the justice department could not take over Trump’s defense.
      Stirrup asked if the department had uncovered any derogatory information about Carroll that they might share with her or the president’s private counsel. Stirrup also suggested that she could serve as a conduit between the department and individuals close to the president or his private legal team.
      Stirrup also asked the official whether the justice department had any information that Carroll or anyone on her legal team had links with the Democratic party or partisan activists, who might have put her up to falsely accusing the president.
      Earlier, Trump himself, without citing any evidence, suggested that his political opponents were behind the allegations: “If anyone has information that the Democratic party is working with Ms Carroll or New York Magazine [to whom Carroll first told her story], please notify us as soon as possible,” Trump said.
      The official from whom Stirrup sought information admonished Stirrup, telling her that her request was inappropriate.
      The official recalled “conveying to her in the strongest possible terms” that it was wrong in the first place to seek out such information, and instructed her not to do so in the future.
      When it was learned Stirrup had later sought out non-public information from other justice department officials about other ongoing investigations, including around election fraud, and non-public information in regards to matters of interest to the White House, Stirrup was told she was unwelcome at the justice department and banned from the building.
      On 3 December the Associated Press, citing three sources, reported Stirrup’s banning “after trying to pressure staffers to give up sensitive information about election fraud and other matters she could relay to the White House”. It has not been previously reported, however, that one of the issues that led to Stirrup’s banning was her seeking out information about the Carroll case.
      It is unclear whether Stirrup was acting on her own or at the direction of the White House when it comes to the Carroll case.
      But many see it as unlikely that Stirrup was making her inquiry entirely independently. Stirrup served as the liaison to the justice department during a period when the White House was removing its liaisons to virtually every major federal agency who they believed might be disloyal – while informing their replacements that they would no longer reporting to the agencies they were assigned to but rather directly to the White House.
      A justice department spokesperson declined to comment, saying that they had been unsuccessful in uncovering more information.
      The outcome of the Carroll defamation case may have immense political and legal consequences for Trump.
      Steve Vladeck, a University of Texas law professor, said that if the case comes to trial, Trump will have to “provide evidence and give testimony about the underlying rape allegation” and he could run the risk of perjury.
      Not testifying truthfully during a civil case can have severe consequences for a president or other high-profile political figure. When former president Bill Clinton was sued for sexual harassment, and later admitted to giving misleading testimony in that case, he was impeached by the House of Representatives, acquitted by the US Senate after a trial, and voluntarily surrendered his license to practice law for five years.
      Judge Lewis Kaplan, of the southern district of New York, who considered the justice department’s attempt to take over Trump’s legal counsel, noted in a 26 October ruling, that any finding that Trump defamed Carroll would probably be considered an implicit finding by a jury that Trump indeed raped Carroll.
      “The question as to whether Mr Trump in fact raped Ms Carroll appears to be at the heart of her lawsuit. That is so because the truth or falsity of a defendant’s alleged defamatory statements can be dispositive of any defamation case,” Kaplan said.
      In early September, the justice department, at the direction of the then attorney general, William Barr, sought to replace Trump’s private legal counsel with department attorneys, to defend him from Carroll’s lawsuit. Justice officials contended that while accusing Carroll of lying and further attacking her, Trump was acting in his official capacity as the president of the United States.
      Kaplan ruled that the justice department could not take over Trump’s defense, concluding Trump’s alleged defamation of Carroll had nothing to do with his official duties as president or “the operation of government” or “within the scope of his employment”.
      The justice department pledged to appeal Kaplan’s decision. But it is unlikely the justice department of Joe Biden will move forward with any such appeal.
      Justice officials and outside legal observers say the department’s position that the president was acting in official capacity while allegedly defaming his alleged rape victim – from about 20 years earlier – is a position that would be unlikely to prevail with most judges.
      Last week, while announcing that he was nominating the federal appeals court judge Merrick Garland to be his new attorney general, the president-elect said he would end Trump’s practice of “treating the attorney general as his personal lawyer and the department as his personal firm”. More

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      Jamie Raskin: grieving congressman leads push to impeach Trump

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      For Jamie Raskin, the Democratic congressman and constitutional law professor who is leading the push to impeach Donald Trump for a second time, the last fortnight has been tumultuous.He lost his son 25-year-old son, Tommy, who had struggled with depression, on New Year’s Eve.Seeing it as his duty, Raskin attended last week’s certification of Joe Biden’s presidential victory in Congress with members of his family, from whom he was separated as a mob of pro-Trump extremists stormed the Capitol building.Despite these profound emotional shocks, Raskin has spent the last week drafting the article of impeachment against Trump over his role in inciting the storming of Congress, which is likely to be voted on by the House of Representatives later on Wednesday.The day before the storming of the Capitol, Raskin had buried his son, who died after leaving his family a note. “Please forgive me,” he had written. “My illness won today. Please look after each other, the animals, and the global poor for me. All my love, Tommy.”As he stood to speak in the debate on the certification less than 24 hours later, Raskin – who had pinned a piece of black cloth to his lapel – received a standing ovation from fellow members of Congress on both sides of the aisle, who were aware of his recent loss and that he had still come to vote.Not long afterwards, the Trumpist mob broke in.Since then, Raskin has authored the House resolution that called on the vice-president, Mike Pence, to invoke the 25th amendment and declare Trump unable to complete his term, which expires next week. Pence ruled out doing that Tuesday night.The chamber quickly moved to the article of impeachment, which Raskin also helped draft. He has been clear about why he has needed to push through the difficult emotions he and his family have been confronting to hold Trump to account.“The president is a lethal danger to the American republic and the American people,” Raskin told the Atlantic magazine last week as he began drawing up the article of impeachment. “There has been nothing like this since the civil war.”And as Raskin told the Washington Post, he felt his son’s presence throughout the recent events. “I felt him in my heart and in my chest,” he said. “All the way through the counting of the electoral college votes and through the nightmare of the armed attack on the Capitol.”His son, a law student, as Raskin explained to the paper, had once asked him a question that had focused his mind.For a class about the first amendment issue of freedom of speech, Tommy Raskin had asked his father about “incitement to imminent lawless action”, and whether a government official who had sworn an oath to uphold the constitution should be held to a higher standard.“That ironically is going to be the critical issue for us talking about Donald Trump,” said Raskin. “Some people are saying: ‘Well, Donald Trump was just exercising his free speech.’ As president of the United States, he cannot be encouraging, counselling and inciting mobs that go and attack the Capitol of the United States.”Raskin is clear about what the US is confronting in the aftermath of the assault on Congress.“The president didn’t want to let go, and the fruit of his obsession with his big lie that he had actually won the election was this nightmarish assault on Congress,” Raskin said. “The president has become a clear and present danger to the republic.”“That is the groundwork for fascism, when you add racism, antisemitism, conspiracy theory and magical thinking. That is an absolute powder keg in terms of an assault on democracy,” Raskin said of the riot in an interview. “So we have to be very tough, and very strong right now in defending the constitution and democracy.”During the storming of Congress, Raskin’s thoughts were mostly on his 23-year-old daughter, Tabitha, and his son-in-law, who had accompanied him to the Capitol and were separated in the mayhem.When they were eventually reunited, Raskin assured his daughter that the next time she went to the Capitol, it would be calmer. “Dad, I don’t think there’s gonna be a next time,” she replied.Associated Press contributed to this reportIn the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or by emailing jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org. More

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      Pompeo scraps Europe trip after EU leader calls Trump 'political pyromaniac'

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      US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has cancelled a trip to Europe at the last minute after European officials were publicly critical of Donald Trump’s role in last week’s storming of the Capitol.The official reason for the cancellation of the trip, originally to Brussels and Luxembourg, was the need to coordinate with a transition team from the incoming Biden administration, but it comes after the unprecedented attack on American democracy that stunned many world leaders and US allies.The Luxembourg leg of the trip was called off on Monday after its foreign minister Jean Asselborn called Trump “criminal” for inciting the attack.Asselborn described the outgoing US president to RTL radio as a “political pyromaniac who must be brought before a court”.Reuters and Fox News both quoted diplomatic sources as saying it was Luxembourg that had called off the meeting, a devastating snub from a tiny country for a secretary of state that continually claims to have restored “swagger” to the state department.Pompeo was also due to meet the Belgian deputy prime minister and foreign minister, Sophie Wilmes, who tweeted while the assault in Washington was underway, “These images are shocking, also because they hurt our democratic ideals.”“They show the extent of President-elect Biden’s task, which will be to unite American society around a common project. We trust him to do that.”Jens Stoltenberg, the Nato secretary general, who was due to have a dinner with Pompeo had described the scenes in Washington as “shocking” and said: “The outcome of this democratic election must be respected.” A Nato spokesperson confirmed that Pompeo had cancelled on Tuesday, giving as a reason the need to focus on the transition.Reuters reported that EU officials had declined to meet Pompeo on his last foreign trip, but a EU spokesperson denied there had been any plan or request for meetings with EU leaders.The state department, in a statement, attributed the cancellation to transition work before President-elect Joe Biden takes office on 20 January, even if until recently Pompeo had been reluctant to unequivocally recognise Biden’s win. Also on Tuesday, the US Ambassador to the United Nations Kelly Craft cancelled a planned visit to Taiwan. The state department declined further comment on European officials’ rejection of meetings with Pompeo.The cold shoulder was a contrast with Pompeo’s previous visits to Brussels, which is home to Nato and EU headquarters, over the past three years, where he has given key-note speeches on US policy and met the EU’s chief executive, even as Europe balked at Trump’s foreign policy. More

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      The Guardian view on democracy in America: the threat is real | Editorial

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      The inauguration of Joe Biden as US president on 20 January has become a touchstone moment in the history of American democracy. Following the outrage of last week’s storming of Congress by Donald Trump supporters, at least 10,000 members of the national guard will be deployed in Washington by this weekend. Reports have detailed FBI warnings of possible armed protests in the capital and across the United States in the days ahead. The area around the Washington Monument, close to where Mr Trump urged supporters to “fight” for his right to stay in office, has been closed to the public. The mood is fearful, febrile and somewhat surreal. In the words of one newspaper headline: “Is this America?”Since the foundation of the federal republic, the peaceful transition of power has been fundamental to America’s understanding of itself. In US democracy’s choreography, the presidential inauguration is designed as a moment of civic celebration that transcends partisan differences. That Mr Trump chose to mobilise an insurgency against the handover gives the measure of his narcissism, hubris and deranged will to power. Last week’s riot was not a one-off piece of performance theatre that got out of hand. The pitch for an assault on democracy had been rolled for months. In the autumn, speaking more like a mobster than a president, Mr Trump told the neo-fascist Proud Boys movement to “stand by”, and warned that the Democratic party would try to “steal” the election. Last week’s violent mayhem, which led to five deaths, was the culmination of a strategy to intimidate and discredit the democratic institutions of the country he leads.Democrat members of the House of Representatives are therefore right to launch impeachment proceedings for a second time against a rogue president. As the charge sheet states, Mr Trump incited “violence against the government of the United States”. Assuming Wednesday’s vote to impeach is passed in the Democrat-controlled House, the next stage will take place in the Senate, currently in recess until after Mr Biden’s inauguration. A two-thirds supermajority would be required to convict, but it seems improbable that a sufficient number of Republicans will do the right thing. Another shaming moment looms for a party that has abased itself at Mr Trump’s feet in the pursuit of power and lost its soul in the process.But even if legal process were to deliver Mr Trump his just deserts, the crisis of America’s growing polarisation – of which the president is a symptom as well as a cause – would remain. Tribalism has become a disabling virus in the US body politic, cracking the public square in two. Social media, belatedly under new scrutiny, is used by citizens to sustain alternate, conflicting realities: three in four Republican voters continue to believe that there was widespread voter fraud in November, despite the rulings of close to 100 judges to the contrary. As faith in the neutrality of public institutions declines, studies have shown a disturbing rise in the number of Americans – on both left and right – who believe that political violence is sometimes justified.Against this dismal backdrop, the theme of Mr Biden’s inauguration speech will be “America united”. It seems likely that it will be delivered in the shadow of impeachment proceedings against his predecessor, and a mass military presence. This is a script that should belong to a bingeworthy drama on Netflix during lockdown. Instead, it is America’s dystopian reality. The new president’s healing message will be the right one. Making it heard will be the defining challenge of his long political career. More

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      Capitol police officer who steered mob away from Senate chambers hailed a hero

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      A police officer is being hailed for his role steering an angry mob away from the Senate chambers during Wednesday’s deadly storming of the US Capitol by a pro-Trump mob.Capitol Police officer Eugene Goodman, identified by CNN reporter Kristin Wilson, could be seen in video footage distracting rioters away from the chamber as police raced to secure the area.In the confrontation, Goodman puts himself between a man wearing a black QAnon T-shirt and a hallway leading to the Senate chambers, then shoves the person to induce him and the crowd to chase Goodman towards officers in the opposite direction.Here’s the scary moment when protesters initially got into the building from the first floor and made their way outside Senate chamber. pic.twitter.com/CfVIBsgywK— Igor Bobic (@igorbobic) January 6, 2021
      Capitol Police did not respond to a request regarding the identity of the officer. The efforts by Goodman, who is Black, gave police the time needed to race to lock the doors to the Senate chamber, according to the Washington Post.Several lawmakers have praised Goodman’s actions.Jaime Harrison, an associate chair of the Democratic National Committee, tweeted: “The word hero does not appropriately describe officer Eugene Goodman. His judgment & heroism may have saved our Republic.” Harrison called for Goodman to be considered for the congressional gold medal.Correction.. Congressional Gold Medal— Jaime Harrison (@harrisonjaime) January 10, 2021
      US Representative Bill Pascrell wrote on Twitter on Sunday: “As Trump’s fascist mob ransacked the US Capitol, this brave USCP [United States Capitol police] officer kept murderous rioters away from the Senate chamber and saved the lives of those inside. God bless him for his courage.”Congressman Scott Peters tweeted: “Officer Eugene Goodman strategically led an angry mob away from the Senate floor during last week’s insurrection. His courage & decisive action likely saved lives. We owe Officer Goodman & many other law enforcement officers who kept us safe that day a debt of gratitude.”Several members of Congress with military experience, including Ruben Gallego and Jason Crow, have also been praised for calming frightened colleagues and helping with the evacuation during the chaos.Trump, who has sought unsuccessfully to overturn his November election loss to Joe Biden by falsely claiming widespread fraud, had called on supporters gathered in Washington to protest against the congressional counting of electoral votes certifying Biden’s victory.Five people including a Capitol police officer died as a result of Wednesday’s rioting and dozens of people have been charged.Among the mob who stormed the Capitol were individuals who waved Confederate flags and wore clothing carrying insignia and slogans espousing white supremacist beliefs.The chief of the Capitol police resigned after the attack and a federal prosecutor said he would charge any Capitol police member found to be complicit.Two Capitol police officers have been suspended as a result of their actions during the attack. Tim Ryan, a Democratic senator of Ohio, said on Monday that one of the officers took a selfie with someone and the other put on a “Make America Great Again” hat. He said of the latter that the “interim chief determined that to be qualifying for immediate suspension”. More