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      See how they run: did Trump's former allies get out in time?

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      In the 16th century, mice and rats were credited with knowing when a rotten house was on the verge of collapse.
      This evolved into the idiom about fleeing a sinking ship, but the original version suggested more prescience, an ability to anticipate oblivion and get out ahead of time.
      The question hovering over the officials quitting the White House is whether they have left it too late, whether they will carry the Donald Trump stain no matter how fast they run.
      The education secretary, Betsy DeVos, the transport secretary, Elaine Chao, and the deputy national security adviser, Matt Pottinger, are among at least a dozen officials and aides who have resigned since a mob of the president’s supporters stormed the US Capitol on Wednesday, leading to five deaths, including that of a police officer.
      Other former loyalists without a formal position in the administration have joined the scramble for cover by publicly renouncing Trump.
      “There is no mistaking the impact your rhetoric had on the situation, and it is the inflection point for me,” DeVos said in her letter quitting the cabinet. The mayhem in the Capitol was “unconscionable for our country”, she said.
      The president’s attempt on Thursday to distance himself from the mob by saying those who “broke the law will pay” and pledging an “orderly transition” to Joe Biden on 20 January was viewed in part as an attempt to stem more White House defections.
      “It shows there’s a backing away from Trump within his administration,” said Geoffrey Kabaservice, the author of Rule and Ruin: the Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party. “It’s partly about people looking at their political legacies and reputations and believing that Trump is damaged goods at this point.”
      The shocking disorder in Washington DC would taint Trump and his children and greatly diminish their sway over the Republican party, said Kabaservice. As a Trump critic he welcomed the officials’ resignations. “I guess late conversion is better than no conversion at all.”
      Chao, who is married to the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, said in her resignation letter the violence “deeply troubled me in a way that I simply cannot set aside”.
      Mick Mulvaney, a former White House chief of staff, said Trump’s incitement of the mob compelled him to quit as special envoy to Northern Ireland. He predicted more resignations but said not all disillusioned staff would leave. “Those who choose to stay, and I have talked with some of them, are choosing to stay because they’re worried the president might put someone worse in,” Mulvaney told CNBC.
      Others to leave include Tyler Goodspeed, the acting chairman of the White House council of economic advisers, Stephanie Grisham, the first lady’s chief of staff, Sarah Matthews, the deputy White House press secretary, and Ryan Tully, a senior adviser on Russia.
      The fate of those fleeing an administration in its twilight is unclear.
      For Republicans who disdained Trump’s incendiary rhetoric on race, immigration and other issues it feels rather late. “You have to wonder why it took them so long to see what Trump is,” said John Pitney, a Claremont McKenna College political scientist and former Republican congressional aide.
      “Did they not understand his character? Did they not know of the many times he winked at violence? The resignations would have had much more force if they had come months or years ago,” said Pitney, author of Un-American: the Fake Patriotism of Donald Trump.
      Recently minted ex-Trumpers will occupy an awkward position in a GOP that is splitting between those who had warned of Trump’s damage to the country and party and those who still align with the president’s policies and supporters.
      “Trump is more toxic than before. But he still has the support of a shockingly large fraction of Republican voters,” said Pitney. “As long as he wants to be politically active, he will be a force in the party. I don’t think he’s going away, for one simple reason: politics is his main source of income. He can continue to line his pockets by selling merchandise and otherwise monetising his status. He will need the money for the colossal legal fees he will face in the years ahead.”
      Some former officials, even those who left the administration before Wednesday’s mayhem, say they have struggled to find work because of association with the president.
      “People who are hiring see everything that’s happened and have to question your morals and ethics – especially in terms of what continues to happen today – on why you chose to work for that environment,” Olivia Troye, a former homeland security and White House official who left in August, told Politico.
      A defence official who is seeking another job told the news site that one potential employer had compared Trump administration staff to the Hitler Youth. “That attitude is not helpful,” the official said. More

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      US jobs numbers drop dramatically as Covid cases soar across the country

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      The recovery in the US jobs market collapsed in December, the last full month of Donald Trump’s presidency, as coronavirus infections soared across the country.The US lost 140,000 jobs in December, down from a gain of 245,000 in November, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The loss ended seven months of jobs growth with the leisure and hospitality sector once again bearing the biggest losses.The unemployment rate stayed at 6.7%, close to twice as high as it was in February before Covid-19 hit the US. It is also three percentage points higher than the 4.5% rate Trump inherited from his predecessor Barack Obama.Some 372,000 jobs were lost in food services and drinking places, offsetting gains in other areas, as Covid-19 infections and deaths rose sharply across the country. “The decline in payroll employment reflects the recent increase in coronavirus (Covid-19) cases and efforts to contain the pandemic,” the BLS said.Four million Americans have been unemployed for 27 weeks or more – technically defined as long-term unemployed – accounting for 37% of those out of work. Unemployment rates for black (9.9%) and Latino (9.3%) workers remained sharply higher than for white Americans (6%).After months of wrangling Congress passed a $900bn stimulus package in December but the relief came too late for many. Joe Biden has pledged more aid for those hit by the pandemic’s economic fallout but areas like hospitality are likely to continue suffering until the virus is under control.Friday’s latest jobs report comes after months of worrying signs in the jobs market. On Thursday the labor department said another 787,000 people had filed first-time claims for jobless benefits in the week ending 2 January. The figure was slightly lower than the previous week but remained more than twice as high as pre-pandemic levels.On Wednesday ADP, the US’s largest payroll supplier, said the private sector had shed 123,000 jobs from November to December, the first decline since April 2020. Losses were primarily concentrated in retail, leisure and hospitality – all areas that suffered heavy losses in the first wave of the pandemic. On the same day minutes from the last Federal Reserve meeting showed policymakers expected the escalating number of coronavirus cases “would be particularly challenging for the labor market in coming months”.The crisis has left millions of Americans facing food shortages and homelessness as unemployment officers across the country have struggled to keep up with the huge numbers of claims.According to the Associated Press only three states, North Dakota, Rhode Island and Wyoming, have met the federal standard of getting benefit payments out to successful claimants within three weeks for 87% of applicants. More

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      Trump adviser resigns and two other senior officials consider quitting

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      Donald Trump’s deputy national security adviser, Matt Pottinger, has resigned, and two other senior White House officials – the national security adviser, Robert O’Brien, and the deputy chief of staff, Chris Liddell – are reportedly considering stepping down after a mob of Donald Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol building.Pottinger’s departure comes amid speculation that others will also quit after the US president incited and praised rioters while continuing to air baseless grievances over his loss of the presidency.So far six officials associated with Trump and his inner circle have said they are quitting, including members of the first lady Melania Trump’s team, after the deadly violence that surrounded the Congressional vote to certify Joe Biden’s presidential election victory in November.Senior Republican figures have also indicated splits from the president.Tweeting from his personal account, O’Brien – a staunch Trump loyalist – praised the behaviour of the vice-president, Mike Pence, who resisted Trump’s pressure to overturn the election certification, , while making no mention of Trump.“I just spoke with Vice President Pence. He is a genuinely fine and decent man,” he tweeted. “He exhibited courage today as he did at the Capitol on 9/11 as a Congressman. I am proud to serve with him.”In further fall out that underlined the fracturing of the Trump administration’s inner circles, Marc Short, Pence’s chief of staff, indicated to journalists he had been banned from the White House by Trump after the president “blamed” him for advice he gave to Pence on Trump’s demands he overturn the election result.According to reports in the US media, some senior administration officials have also begun talking informally about invoking the 25th amendment to remove the president before his term expires on 20 January, while calls are also growing for a second impeachment to ensure Trump cannot run for public office again.In stark language that underlined the toxic and swirling sense of crisis, the Washington Post quoted one administration official describing Trump’s behaviour on Wednesday as that of “a monster,” while another said the situation was “insane” and “beyond the pale”.Two of the first lady’s top aides resigned on Wednesday night including Stephanie Grisham, a longtime Trump loyalist who previously served as White House press secretary. Anna Cristina Niceta, the White House social secretary, also resigned.The deputy White House press secretary, Sarah Matthews, also announced her resignation, saying she was “deeply disturbed” by the storming of the Capitol.“I was honoured to serve in the Trump administration and proud of the policies we enacted. As someone who worked in the halls of Congress I was deeply disturbed by what I saw today,” Matthews said in a statement. “I’ll be stepping down from my role, effective immediately. Our nation needs a peaceful transfer of power.”The sense of anger within a Republican party at war with itself was increasingly in full view. “[Trump] screwed his supporters, he screwed the country and now he’s screwed himself,” a 2016 Trump campaign official told Politico.The former New Jersey governor Chris Christie – who said he repeatedly tried to call Trump during the crisis – also laid the blame squarely at Trump’s feet.“The president caused this protest to occur,” Christie told ABC News. “He is the only one who can make it stop.” More

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      'Morale has been gutted': can Biden restore the DoJ's battered reputation?

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      When Bill Barr was invited to speak at the conservative-leaning Hillsdale College, Michigan, in September, he leapt at the chance to respond to criticism that he had politicized the justice department that he led in order to benefit his political master, Donald Trump.The then US attorney general, who stepped down from the post last month , began his speech by arguing that there had to be political input at the top of the Department of Justice (DoJ) in order for it to be publicly accountable. Then he turned to his own staff and, in response to recent complaints that he had improperly overruled the decisions of career prosecutors, gave them a good tongue-lashing.“Name one successful organization where the lowest-level employees’ decisions are deemed sacrosanct,” he said. “Letting the most junior members set the agenda might be a good philosophy for a Montessori preschool, but it’s no way to run a federal agency.”Comparing hard-working, highly trained public servants to kindergartners might pass as motivational leadership in the Bill Barr school of management. But to many DoJ attorneys, it summed up life in the Trump era.For four years, they have watched the president trash the historic norm of the agency’s independence from White House interference. Trump has referred to the DoJ as “the Trump justice department”, and made repeated vicious attacks on top officials, including the attorney generals whom he himself appointed.Senior officials have resigned in unprecedented numbers after Trump attempted on multiple occasions to use the justice department as his own personal weapon in battles with his political enemies.The morale and the reputation of the department has been gutted because of undue political influenceBarr, who was Trump’s longest-serving attorney general, behaved in similar fashion, leaving the impression with many observers that the department under his leadership was in the pocket of the president. He sought a more lenient sentence for Trump’s buddy Roger Stone, and moved to drop the criminal case against the former national security adviser Michael Flynn.“The morale and the reputation of the department has been gutted because of undue political influence on the decisions of career staff,” Vanita Gupta, a former head of the DoJ’s civil rights division, told the Guardian. “Barr literally compared career prosecutors to toddlers.”Barr’s derisive comment is symbolic of the challenge now facing President-elect Joe Biden as he seeks to restore confidence in this battered and bruised pillar of American democracy.“The department needs to be rebuilt by new leadership committed at every turn to decisions made on the law and on the facts, and not on what the president wants,” said Gupta, who now heads the Leadership Conference on Civil & Human Rights.The first priority for Biden as he seeks to put the DoJ back on the rails will be to show to the American people, in both word and deed, that he intends to respect the independence of the agency with respect to specific criminal cases. Where Trump stated that he had the “absolute right to do what I want with the justice department”, Biden has pledged to take a different path.In a joint CNN interview with the vice president-elect, Kamala Harris, Biden guaranteed that he would avoid telling the justice department how to do its job. “Any decision should be based on the law, should not be influenced by politics,” was how Harris put it.Biden may well find his best intentions sorely tested early on in his presidency. The Trump administration has been busy planting legal landmines in his path.Last month, the US attorney in Delaware – a Trump appointee – opened an investigation into the tax affairs of the president-elect’s son, Hunter Biden. What happens to that inquiry once the new administration takes office may define just how much independence the 46th president is willing to grant his attorney general.In any case, merely abiding by the traditional norm of DoJ prosecutorial independence may be insufficient to repair the damage of the Trump era. Gupta said: “We came dangerously close to our democratic norms being undermined, so it won’t be enough to go back to the old ways – it’s going to be incumbent on the new administration to learn the lessons and act on them.”Bob Bauer, who was White House counsel from 2010 to 2011, also believes that special measures are now needed to shore up the independence of the agency. “You cannot expect everything to return to normal just because Donald Trump has left the scene,” he said.Bauer took a leave of absence as a law professor at New York University to advise Biden during his presidential campaign. Speaking to the Guardian in a personal capacity, he said that he was fearful that norms that just about survived the Trump onslaught could be shattered if a more efficient demagogue entered the White House in future.You cannot expect everything to return to normal just because Donald Trump has left the scene“Somebody could come along and execute on the threat to use the department to pursue political enemies more effectively than Trump did. Rather than wait for a more shrewd, deft, competent Trump to appear, it makes sense to deal with this as an institutional crisis that needs addressing.”In his new book, After Trump: Reconstructing the Presidency, Bauer and his co-author Jack Goldsmith set out reforms they would like to see put in place to protect the DoJ from any future authoritarian president. They include introducing a new executive rule that would overtly instruct all 115,000 employees of the justice department to “answer in all their actions not to partisan politics but to principles of fairness and justice”.The authors also propose that Congress put in writing that any prospective attorney general must satisfy the Senate confirmation process that they are a “person of integrity”. Changes would be made to the special counsel system to clarify in what circumstances presidents can be investigated, and to shield the investigators from White House efforts to remove them.Any move by the Biden administration to introduce new rules on DoJ independence is likely to face opposition. Michael Mukasey, a former federal judge who served as US attorney general under George W Bush, told the Guardian that in his view any such measures would be unnecessary and unfounded.Mukasey said that criticism that the DoJ had been politicised in its decision making within the Trump administration was inaccurate. “There have been many actions by the justice department that were directly contrary to the president’s wishes.”He pointed to the decision of Trump’s first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, to recuse himself from the investigation into Russian collusion – an action which mightily displeased the president. He also cited Barr’s lament to ABC News in February that Trump’s tweets were making it “impossible for me to do my job”. “That was hardly consistent with the White House view,” Mukasey said.In Mukasey’s analysis, attempts by the incoming administration to try to change the department either through internal procedures or legislation would be misplaced. “I think we in this country sometimes have a fascination with mechanical solutions to problems – if we tinker with this or that, we can fix things.”Instead, the focus should be on finding the right caliber of personnel to fill top jobs. “The principal lesson of the past four years is that we need good, sound people in all positions from the White House on down. If you have them you are fine, if you don’t have them, then you can have all the mechanical bells and whistles you like” but they won’t make a difference.The Biden administration will also be under pressure to restore the central role played by the DoJ in combatting police brutality and discrimination in the wake of the George Floyd protests. Under Trump, the department’s engagement in policing reform has withered on the vine.On his final day in office as attorney general, Sessions issued a memo that scrapped consent decrees – court-backed agreements that allowed the DoJ to drive through essential reforms within police forces found to be engaging in racial profiling, excessive use of force, or unjustified killing of unarmed black men.Under Barack Obama, 14 consent decrees were imposed on wayward police agencies; under Trump, there have been none.Gupta said that the Biden administration needed to withdraw the Sessions memo on day one. “The gutting of civil rights enforcement across the board has been such a setback for communities around the country, and restoring it has to be a priority,” she said.Similarly, Gupta urged the incoming Biden team to move swiftly to rebuild the civil rights division as a key defender of the right to vote. In the Trump era, that feature of the justice department’s work faded too, with Barr accommodating the president’s baseless claims of massive voter fraud in the election by allowing federal prosecutors to investigate the matter – prompting another high-profile resignation. Barr waited until well after the 3 November election to announce publicly that there was no evidence of widespread voter irregularities.“It’s high time in this country that we stopped politicizing voting rights and treat it like it is – a core value,” Gupta said. More

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      in Elections

      US Capitol stormed: what we know so far

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      A mob of Donald Trump supporters stormed Capitol Hill and clashed with police on Wednesday afternoon, apparently driven by the prospect that they might stop the certification of the 2020 federal election in favour of Joe Biden. The attack came after Trump urged a crowd of supporters to march on the Capitol and undo his November election defeat.
      A woman shot in the chest on Capitol grounds as the pro-Trump mob stormed the building died soon afterwards. Earlier reports indicated the woman was in a critical condition after being shot in the chest as the Capitol was breached. Dustin Sternbeck, a spokesman for the DC police, confirmed the woman’s death.
      The mob managed to enter the Senate chamber where minutes earlier the election results were being certified. A rioter stepped on to the dais and, according to a reporter on the scene, yelled: “Trump won that election.”
      Donald Trump praised the mob as “very special” people. The president justified the violence by citing baseless claims of widespread election fraud. In a video that Twitter has since deleted from his account, the president urged his supporters to “go home”, but also gave legitimacy to the falsehoods that fuelled Wednesday’s attempted insurrection, calling the election “stolen” and telling the angry mob, “we love you”. Twitter, Facebook and Instagram have since locked the president’s accounts in order to address misinformation and the incitement of violence.
      Joe Biden called on Trump to “demand an end to this siege”. The president-elect said in a speech in Wilmington, Delaware, “It’s not a protest; it’s insurrection. The world is watching.” Former President George W Bush also used the term “insurrection”.
      Barack Obama said history would rightly remember the violence at the Capitol as a moment of great dishonour and shame for the nation. Obama said it should not have come as a surprise, and that for two months “a political party and its accompanying media ecosystem has too often been unwilling to tell their followers the truth”.
      Four hours after the breach, officials announced that the Capitol was secure. The siege was among the worst security breaches in American history. Senators were then escorted back into the Senate chamber to resume the certification of Biden’s victory. Vice-President Mike Pence opened the session, saying”: “To those who wreaked havoc in our Capitol today: You did not win. Violence never wins. Freedom wins. And this is still the people’s house … Let’s get back to work.”
      The DC police chief, Robert Contee, said 13 people had been arrested so far in connection to the “riot” at the US Capitol. During the protests over the police killing of George Floyd, more than 400 people were arrested, mostly for curfew violations.
      A curfew in Washington DC went into effect at 6pm and will be in place until 6am on Thursday. As the curfew kicked in, an announcement played at the Capitol that anyone still on the grounds after 6pm would be subject to arrest.
      Representatives Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have called for Trump to be impeached. Omar said that she was filing articles of impeachment.
      Facebook announced it would remove all photographs and and videos posted from the protest, as well as praise for the protests or calls to bring weapons to the protest or anywhere else in the US. The posts, “contribute to, rather than diminish, the risk of ongoing violence”, it said.
      Melania Trump’s chief of staff, Stephanie Grisham reportedly resigned, effective immediately, over the violence at the Capitol. Grisham was the former White House press secretary.
      The attacks were condemned by leaders around the world and within the US, though Trump allies including Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro maintained their support. More

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      Teargas and shots fired as pro-Trump mob rampages through Congress

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      This article is more than 1 year old Teargas and shots fired as pro-Trump mob rampages through Congress This article is more than 1 year old Presidential handover collapses into chaos as Trump supporters break through barricades and enter building Pro-Trump mob storms US Capitol – follow live The presidential handover collapsed into chaos on […] More

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      US Capitol in lockdown as Trump supporters clash with police

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      The presidential handover collapsed into chaos on Wednesday as an angry mob of Trump supporters stormed the United States Capitol.
      In unprecedented scenes the building was locked down with lawmakers inside as Donald Trump supporters clashed with police, broke through barricades and entered the building.
      As a mob of Trump supporters entered the building, people working inside were ordered by local safety officials to shelter in their offices. Shots were fired, according to ABC News, and a woman was shot although the details were not immediately clear. The National Guard was called to help to secure the Capitol.
      After breaching barricades Trump supporters were seen walking through the building, waving flags and clashing violently with security. One posted pictures purportedly from House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office where her quickly abandoned laptop appeared to be still on, others took selfies inside the Senate chamber.

      Members of Congress were told to don gas masks after teargas was deployed inside the building. Outside the building hundreds of supporters barged through police lines and took over the steps of the Capitol. Video showed injured police officers and violent tussles as they stormed the building.
      The move meant that the Senate and the House of Representatives both recessed its debate over congressional certification of Joe Biden’s electoral victory over Trump in November’s presidential election.
      Local media reported that Mike Pence was ushered out of the Senate and taken to a secure location. The Senate doors were closed and locked, and senators told to stay away from the doors and then evacuated.
      Trump, and his allies, have baselessly floated conspiracy theories that the election was somehow fraudulently won by the Biden, though there is no evidence to support this. At a rally before the riot began Trump falsely told supporters once more that the election had been rigged, referring to the counting of ballots in the 2020 election as “explosions of bullshit”.
      “We will never give up, we will never concede. You don’t concede when there’s theft involved,” Trump said.
      Earlier Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, had called for a “trial by combat” accusing Democrats of hiding evidence of malfeasance. “Who hides evidence? Criminals hide evidence. Not honest people,” he told the crowd.
      After Trump’s speech protestors marched towards the Capitol chanting: “Whose Capitol? Our Capitol.”
      The mayor of Washington DC, Muriel Bowser, ordered a curfew in America’s capital city that was set to begin at 6pm local time.
      The process that the protests halted was the certification of the electoral college vote which is typically a ceremonial – and largely perfunctory – affair. However, a group of Republican lawmakers – spurred on by Trump – are trying to turn the usually routine debate into Trump’s last stand and a bid to reverse his election defeat.
      President-elect Joe Biden denounced the violence at the Capitol. “At this hour, our democracy is under unprecedented assault, unlike anything we’ve seen in modern times,” he said.
      Trump, who still has not conceded that he lost the election, has spent the last several weeks attempting to pressure public officials to overturn Biden’s 306-232 election win.
      As the situation worsened Republicans and Democrats called on Trump to tell his supporters to go home. “The violence and destruction taking place at the US Capitol Must Stop and it Must Stop Now,” Pence wrote on Twitter.

      Mike Pence
      (@Mike_Pence)
      The violence and destruction taking place at the US Capitol Must Stop and it Must Stop Now. Anyone involved must respect Law Enforcement officers and immediately leave the building.

      January 6, 2021

      Trump tweeted: “I am asking for everyone at the U.S. Capitol to remain peaceful. No violence! Remember, WE are the Party of Law & Order – respect the Law and our great men and women in Blue. Thank you!”
      Ten minutes earlier he had attacked the vice-president for not having “the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution,” and backing his attempt to usurp the election results.

      Donald J. Trump
      (@realDonaldTrump)
      pic.twitter.com/Pm2PKV0Fp3

      January 6, 2021

      In a video Trump called on his supporters to go home but falsely claimed once more that the election had been “stolen”. “I know your pain, I know your hurt. We had an election that was stolen from us,” he said. “But you have to go home now. We have to have peace. Go home. We love you. You are very special.” More

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      The Guardian view on Julian Assange's extradition ruling: relief, not victory | Editorial

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      Donald Trump is using his last days in office to pardon those who do not deserve it. Among the most egregious recipients are the Blackwater security guards responsible for the Nisour Square massacre – the killing of unarmed civilians, including children, in Iraq. The president’s deplorable decision fits a pattern: just over a year ago, he pardoned a former army lieutenant found guilty of murder after ordering his men to fire at three Afghans, and a former US army commando facing trial over the killing of a suspected bombmaker.
      There has been no such mercy shown to a man whom the US is pursuing after he cast an unforgiving light on its abuses in Iraq and Afghanistan. Julian Assange’s future is dependent on the decisions of British courts. On Monday, district judge Vanessa Baraitser ruled that the WikiLeaks founder could not be extradited to the US, where he has been charged under the Espionage Act, including for publishing classified material.
      But she rejected defence arguments that the prosecution had misrepresented the facts and that he was being pursued for a political offence. She ruled against extradition only on the grounds that the risk of him killing himself was substantial, given his mental health and the conditions in which he was likely to be held – in isolation in a “supermax” high-security prison.
      This decision is a relief for Mr Assange and his family. But it is no cause for celebration for the defendant and his supporters, or for those concerned about press freedom more broadly. The American Civil Liberties Union has described charging him over publication as “a direct assault on the first amendment”. The ruling offers no protection to any journalist who might find themselves in Mr Assange’s position. It is no victory for the right to share material of clear public interest.
      Mr Assange’s lawyers will on Wednesday apply for bail on his behalf. Legal experts suggest that his chances are poor: he served a 50-week sentence for skipping bail after police removed him from the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he had fled to avoid extradition to Sweden over a sexual assault investigation that was subsequently dropped. But his prospects of avoiding extradition now appear considerably brighter; he has a family to consider; and his mental health and the physical risks posed by Covid in Belmarsh prison, where he has been held since April 2019, make the case for bail more pressing.
      Legal proceedings are likely to drag on for years – unless the US chooses to scrap these charges rather than appeal. It should do so. There is a shameful contrast between this administration’s simultaneous pardoning of men for horrific offences and the pursuit of a man who exposed war crimes. When Joe Biden takes office on 20 January, he cannot undo the damage caused by undue and unjust lenience. But he can, and should, let Mr Assange walk free. More