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      Trump to argue he is immune from January 6 charges as polls show him leading Republican field – US politics live

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      A new year has dawned, but the contours of the race for the Republican presidential nomination are much the same as they were throughout all of 2023. Donald Trump continues to lead in polls of the field, with the support of 62% of voters in a USA Today/Suffolk University poll released yesterday. Soon, we’ll have more than polls to go on when gauging the race for the nomination. The Iowa GOP caucuses are less than two weeks away on 15 January, and will give us an idea of whether Trump’s strong polling edge will translate to votes.Trump is as busy in court as he is on the campaign trail, dealing with the four criminal indictments that were issued against him last year. The matter closest to going to trial is his federal charges over trying to overturn the 2020 election, which is set for a 4 March start date in Washington DC. Trump is trying to convince judges at various levels that he is immune from the charges, and is expected to today file the final brief on the matter to a federal appeals court. We will see what he, or more accurately, his lawyers, have to say for themselves when it comes in.Here’s what is going on today:
      The House and Senate are both out, though lawmakers are still bargaining over government funding levels, military assistance to Ukraine and Israel and potential changes to US immigration policy.
      Joe Biden is returning to Washington DC from vacation in the US Virgin Islands.
      Two planes collided at Tokyo’s airport, leaving five people dead as Japan recovers from Monday’s earthquake. Follow our live blog for the latest on this developing story.
      Police have arrested a man who broke into the Colorado supreme court building and opened fire early this morning, CNN reports.The assailant took an unarmed security guard hostage after shooting out a window and entering the building in downtown Denver, but the Colorado state patrol said no injuries resulted from the incident. In late December, the court had in a 4-3 ruling disqualified Donald Trump from the state’s ballot for his involvement in the January 6 insurrection.Here’s more on the shooting, from CNN:
      Tuesday’s incident began unfolding around 1:15 a.m. and ended nearly two hours later, when the suspect surrendered to police, according to the news release.
      “There are no injuries to building occupants, the suspect, or police personnel,” the release said, adding there was “significant and extensive damage to the building.”
      The incident began with a two-vehicle crash at 13th Avenue and Lincoln Street in Denver, near the Ralph L. Carr Colorado Judicial Center, which houses the state supreme court.
      A person involved in that crash “reportedly pointed a handgun at the other driver,” the release said. That individual then shot out a window on the east side of the judicial center and entered the building.
      The individual encountered an unarmed security guard, held the guard at gunpoint and took the guard’s keys before going to other parts of the building, including the seventh floor, where he fired more shots, the release said.
      The suspect called 911 at 3 a.m. and surrendered to police, the release said.
      In addition to arguing in court, Donald Trump has taken to issuing personal attacks against the prosecutors who have brought charges against him in three states and the District of Columbia. As the Guardian’s Peter Stone reports, experts fear his campaign of insults could do real damage to America’s institutions:As Donald Trump faces 91 felony counts with four trials slated for 2024, including two tied to his drives to overturn his 2020 election loss, his attacks on prosecutors are increasingly conspiratorial and authoritarian in style and threaten the rule of law, say former justice department officials.The former US president’s vitriolic attacks on a special counsel and two state prosecutors as well as some judges claim in part that the charges against Trump amount to “election interference” since he’s seeking the presidency again, and that “presidential immunity” protects Trump for his multiple actions to subvert Joe Biden’s 2020 victory.But ex-officials and other experts say Trump’s campaign and social media bashing of the four sets of criminal charges – echoed in ways by his lawyers’ court briefs – are actually a hodgepodge of conspiracy theories and very tenuous legal claims, laced with Trump’s narcissism and authoritarian impulses aimed at delaying his trials or quashing the charges.Much of Trump’s animus is aimed at the special counsel Jack Smith, who has charged him with four felony counts for election subversion, and 40 felony counts for mishandling classified documents when his presidency ended.Just days ago, prosecutors on special counsel Jack Smith’s team argued that granting Donald Trump immunity from the charges he faces for trying to overturn the 2020 election would threaten US democracy, the Associated Press reports:Special counsel Jack Smith urged a federal appeals court Saturday to reject former president Donald Trump’s claims that he is immune from prosecution, saying the suggestion that he cannot be held to account for crimes committed in office “threatens the democratic and constitutional foundation” of the country.The filing from Smith’s team was submitted before arguments next month on the legally untested question of whether a former president can be prosecuted for acts made while in the White House.Though the matter is being considered by the US court of appeals for the District of Columbia circuit, it’s likely to come again before the supreme court, which earlier this month rejected prosecutors’ request for a speedy ruling in their favor, holding that Trump can be forced to stand trial on charges that he plotted to overturn the results of the 2020 election.The outcome of the dispute is critical for both sides especially since the case has been effectively paused while Trump advances his immunity claims in the appeals court.Prosecutors are hoping a swift judgment rejecting those arguments will restart the case and keep it on track for trial, currently scheduled for 4 March in federal court in Washington. But Trump’s lawyers stand to benefit from a protracted appeals process that could significantly delay the case and potentially push it beyond the November election.After Donald Trump’s lawyers file their last written arguments in the case over his immunity claim today, they will meet alongside prosecutors from special counsel Jack Smith’s office next Tuesday to make oral arguments before the Washington DC-based federal appeals court.It’s unclear when the three-judge panel deciding the matter will rule, but the issue could then make its way to the supreme court. Last month, Smith asked the nation’s highest judges to immediately take up Trump’s claim that his position as president makes him immune from charges related to attempting to overturn the 2020 election, but the court declined to do so, saying the issue needed to follow the normal appeals process before getting to them.A new year has dawned, but the contours of the race for the Republican presidential nomination are much the same as they were throughout all of 2023. Donald Trump continues to lead in polls of the field, with the support of 62% of voters in a USA Today/Suffolk University poll released yesterday. Soon, we’ll have more than polls to go on when gauging the race for the nomination. The Iowa GOP caucuses are less than two weeks away on 15 January, and will give us an idea of whether Trump’s strong polling edge will translate to votes.Trump is as busy in court as he is on the campaign trail, dealing with the four criminal indictments that were issued against him last year. The matter closest to going to trial is his federal charges over trying to overturn the 2020 election, which is set for a 4 March start date in Washington DC. Trump is trying to convince judges at various levels that he is immune from the charges, and is expected to today file the final brief on the matter to a federal appeals court. We will see what he, or more accurately, his lawyers, have to say for themselves when it comes in.Here’s what is going on today:
      The House and Senate are both out, though lawmakers are still bargaining over government funding levels, military assistance to Ukraine and Israel and potential changes to US immigration policy.
      Joe Biden is returning to Washington DC from vacation in the US Virgin Islands.
      Two planes collided at Tokyo’s airport, leaving five people dead as Japan recovers from Monday’s earthquake. Follow our live blog for the latest on this developing story. More

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      ‘A formulaic game’: former officials say Trump’s attacks threaten rule of law

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      As Donald Trump faces 91 felony counts with four trials slated for 2024, including two tied to his drives to overturn his 2020 election loss, his attacks on prosecutors are increasingly conspiratorial and authoritarian in style and threaten the rule of law, say former justice department officials.The former US president’s vitriolic attacks on a special counsel and two state prosecutors as well as some judges claim in part that the charges against Trump amount to “election interference” since he’s seeking the presidency again, and that “presidential immunity” protects Trump for his multiple actions to subvert Joe Biden’s 2020 victory.But ex-officials and other experts say Trump’s campaign and social media bashing of the four sets of criminal charges – echoed in ways by his lawyers’ court briefs – are actually a hodgepodge of conspiracy theories and very tenuous legal claims, laced with Trump’s narcissism and authoritarian impulses aimed at delaying his trials or quashing the charges.Much of Trump’s animus is aimed at the special counsel Jack Smith, who has charged him with four felony counts for election subversion, and 40 felony counts for mishandling classified documents when his presidency ended.Trump’s chief goal in attacking Smith, whom he’s labelled a “deranged lunatic”, and other prosecutors and judges is to delay his trials well into 2024, or until after the election, when Trump could pardon himself if he wins, experts say.Similarly, Trump has targeted the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, who has brought a racketeering case in Georgia against Trump and 18 others for trying to overturn Biden’s win there, branding her a “rabid partisan”.Right before Christmas, Trump’s lawyers asked an appeals court in Washington to throw out Smith’s four-count subversion indictment, arguing that his actions occurred while he was in office and merited presidential immunity, and Trump in a Truth Social post on Christmas Eve blasted Smith for “election interference”.In an 82-page brief rebutting Trump’s lawyers on December 30, Smith and his legal team wrote that Trump’s efforts to overturn the election results in 2020 “threaten to undermine democracy,” and stressed Trump’s sweeping immunity claims for all his actions while in office “threatens to license Presidents to commit crimes to remain in office.”Former justice department officials say Trump’s rhetoric and tactics to tar prosecutors and judges are diversionary moves to distract from the serious charges he faces – especially for trying to subvert the 2020 election.“Claiming the federal criminal cases or the Georgia Rico action are election interference, and railing constantly about the character of the prosecutors, judges and others, is just a formulaic game to Trump,” Ty Cobb, a White House counsel during the Trump years and a former DoJ official, said.“Delay is his major strategic objective in all these cases. These criminal cases were started because of Trump’s criminal acts and his refusal to allow the peaceful transfer of government for the first time in US history. Trump’s constitutional objections to the trial-related issues are all frivolous including his claim of presidential immunity and double jeopardy.”Cobb added that Trump’s “everyone is bad but me and I am the victim” rants, lies and frivolous imperious motions and appeals are just his “authoritarianism in service of his narcissism”.Other ex-officials offer equally harsh assessments of Trump’s defenses.“The reality is that Trump has clearly done a series of illegal things and the system is holding him to account for things that he’s done,” said the former deputy attorney general Donald Ayer, who served during the George HW Bush administration. “He’s telling more lies to mischaracterize prosecutions that we should be thankful for.”Yet Trump keeps escalating his high-voltage rhetoric and revealing his authoritarian tendencies. Trump even bragged that Russian president Vladimir Putin in December echoed Trump’s charges of political persecution and election interference to bolster his claims.“Even Vladimir Putin … says that Biden’s – and this is a quote – ‘politically motivated persecution of his political rival is very good for Russia because it shows the rottenness of the American political system, which cannot pretend to teach others about democracy’,” Trump told a campaign rally in Durham, New Hampshire.For good measure, Trump complimented two other foreign authoritarian leaders, calling Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, “highly respected” and North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un “very nice”.In November Trump sparked fire for slamming his opponents on the left as “vermin”, a term that echoed Adolf Hitler’s language, and the ex-president has more than once pledged in authoritarian style to appoint a special prosecutor to “go after” Biden and his family.Likewise, critics have voiced alarm at Trump’s vow of “retribution” against some powerful foes in both parties if he’s re-elected, including ex-attorney general Bill Barr. That pledge fits with Trump painting himself a victim of a vendetta by “deep state” forces at the justice department, the FBI and other agencies Trump and his allies want to rein in while expanding his executive authority, if he’s the Republican nominee and wins the presidency again.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionCritics say Trump’s attacks on the prosecutions are increasingly conspiratorial.“Of course, it’s true that Trump is the undisputed master of election interference, so he certainly knows the field,” Democratic congressman Jamie Raskin, a leading Trump critic in the House, said.“It’s hard to think of a greater case of election interference than what Trump did in 2020 and 2021. His claim of election interference is meant to give him a kind of political immunity from the consequences of his criminal actions.“He’s basically inviting the public to believe that the legal system’s response to his stealing government documents or trying to overthrow an election are illegal attempts to interfere with his political career.”Raskin noted there was some Trump-style logic to citing Putin in his defense.“We know Putin is Trump’s hero and effective cult master,” the congressman said. “So it makes sense that Trump would try to elevate him as a kind of moral arbiter. Trump would love a world where Vladimir Putin would decide the integrity of elections and prosecutions. Wouldn’t that be nice for the autocrats?”Trump’s modus operandi to stave off his trials is emblematic of how he has operated in the past, say some ex-prosecutors.“Trump has a habit of picking up allegations made against him and, like a kid in the playground, accusing the critics of doing the same thing”, such as crying “electoral interference”, said the Columbia law professor and former federal prosecutor Daniel Richman.Richman stressed that “I wouldn’t assume Trump is trying to mimic other authoritarians. He just shares their values, or the lack of them.”Other scholars see Trump’s desperate defenses and incendiary attacks on the legal system as part of his DNA.“The Trump team is looking to cobble together a defense for the indefensible,” said Timothy Naftali, a senior research scholar at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs. “Trump has long been looking for and finding ways to protect himself whenever he crosses legal lines. This is who he is.”Naftali suggested: “Trump announced his second re-election bid much earlier than is traditional for major candidates. A likely reason why he announced so early – and then hardly campaigned for a long time – was to pre-empt any indictments so that he could later denounce them as ‘election interference’ and perhaps undermine any future trials. This is a man who lies and creates a reality most favorable to him.”More broadly, Raskin views Trump’s attacks on the legal system as hallmarks of fascist rulers.“Fascism is all about the destruction of the rule of law in the service of a dictator. It’s important for Trump to continue to attack our essential legal institutions. He’s also gotten to the point of dehumanizing his opponents by using words like ‘vermin’. Violence permeates his rhetoric,” he said.“Trump feels entirely emboldened by his supporters. He’s been given license by the Republican party to go as far as he wants.” More

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      in US Politics

      Former aides warn of ‘running out of time’ to prevent Trump re-election

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      The re-election of Donald Trump in 2024 could “end American democracy as we know it”, according to three women who worked for him in the White House during his chaotic term in office.All three gave testimony to the US House committee investigating Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat as well as the 6 January 6 Capitol attack staged by his supporters. And they warned in an unprecedented television interview on Sunday that time was short to prevent a second Trump administration in which they insist his behavior would be much worse.“People in general have short memories, and might forget the chaos of the Trump years,” Sarah Matthews, a former deputy White House press secretary who resigned on the day of the deadly Capitol riot, said on ABC’s This Week.“They also might not just be paying attention to what he’s saying now – and the threat to democracy that exists. It does really concern me if he makes it to the general [election] that he could win. I’m still hopeful that we can defeat him in the primaries, but we’re running out of time.”Matthews was joined in the interview by former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, a key witness against Trump during the House committee’s public hearings in 2022, and Alyssa Farah Griffin, his former communications director, who said she dreaded him returning to office.“Fundamentally, a second Trump term could mean the end of American democracy as we know it, and I don’t say that lightly,” Griffin said.“We all witnessed him trying to steal a democratic election before and go into historic and unconstitutional lengths to do so. That just shows he’s willing to basically break every barrier to get into power and to stay into power.“What scares me as much as him and his retribution is the almost cult-like following he has, the threats, the harassment, the death threats that you get when he targets you, is really horrifying and has no place in our American discourse.”About two days before the interview aired, someone placed a fake emergency call to police that prompted armed officers to arrive at the home of Maine’s secretary of state, Shenna Bellows, after she removed Trump from the state’s presidential primary under the US constitution’s insurrection clause. Bellows was not home when the attempted “swatting” call was made.Hutchinson, ex-aide to Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows, said voters needed to believe Trump when he said he would be a dictator on his first day back in the White House.“The fact that he feels that he needs to lean into being a dictator alone shows that he is a weak and feeble man,” she said.Matthews, meanwhile, said Trump had already signaled what his second administration would look like.“We don’t need to speculate because we already saw it play out,” she said.“To this day, he still doubles down on the fact that he thinks that the election was stolen and fraudulent. And his rhetoric has just gotten increasingly erratic. He’s literally called for things like doing away with parts of the constitution, [and] wanting to weaponize the department of justice to enact revenge on his political enemies.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I knew that coming forward and speaking out against Donald Trump I could … face security threats, or death threats, online harassment. Despite all the personal sacrifice, I knew that ultimately it was the right thing to do. I just would encourage others to come forward because they’re running out of time in order to try to stop Trump from being in the Oval Office again.”The courage of the three women in speaking against Trump was a recurrent theme in the interview by This Week’s co-anchor Jonathan Karl. Martin and Hutchinson spoke of secret meetings in the basement of the Capitol with Liz Cheney, one of only two Republicans who sat on the House committee, and their loss of friendships with others in the Trump White House who felt the women had betrayed them.“There were critical parts of history that the public would not know if not for Cassidy Hutchinson,” Griffin said.“Other senior officials witnessed them, but did not come forward. They did not testify, whether it was credible threats about the attack on the Capitol, that people showing up that day were going to be armed, that there was a scheme to try to stop the vice-president certifying the election.“I credit these women who are younger than me and had not as senior of titles, and stepped forward. For me, I want to be able to look my future kids in the eye and say when history called, I did the right thing, and I had the courage to do it.“That matters to me more than any future job or power structure that might exist if he’s president again.” More

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      in US Politics

      Trump expected to challenge removal of name from states’ primary ballots

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      Donald Trump is reportedly expected to file legal challenges early next week to rulings in Maine and Colorado knocking him off primary ballots amid mounting pressure on US supreme court justices to rule on whether his actions on 6 January 2021 constitutionally exclude him from seeking a second term in the White House.The New York Times said that Trump’s legal moves could come as early as Tuesday.The impending collision of legal, constitutional and political issues comes after the two states separately ruled that the former US president was ineligible under a constitutional amendment designed to keep Confederates from serving in high office after the civil war.In Maine, the secretary of state, a political appointee, issued the ruling and a challenge will be filed in state court. Meanwhile, in Colorado the decision was made by the state’s highest court and will probably have a swifter passage to the conservative-leaning US supreme court – should it wish to hear the case.The conservative justices on the supreme court are sympathetic to “originalism”, which holds that the meaning of the constitution and its amendments should be interpreted by what its authors wrote. On the other side are justices more in tune with a contemporary application of the spirit of the original wording.The precise wording of the passage in question – section 3 of the 14th amendment – says anyone who has taken the oath of office, as Trump did at his 2017 inauguration, and “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof”, is ineligible.But at the heart of the anticipated challenges will be whether individual states have the authority to interpret constitutional matters outside their own constitutions. “Every state is different,” Shenna Bellows, Maine’s secretary of state, said on Friday. “I swore an oath to uphold the constitution. I fulfilled my duty.”The rulings have received pushback from elected officials. California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, said Trump should be beaten at the polls and back-and-forth ballot rulings in states are a “political distraction”.After Maine’s decision on Thursday, Republican senator Susan Collins said voters in her state should decide who wins the election – “not a secretary of state chosen by the legislature”. Former New Jersey governor and trailing nomination rival Chris Christie told CNN the rulings make Trump “a martyr”.“He’s very good at playing ‘poor me, poor me’. He’s always complaining,” Christie added.Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, told Fox News that the Maine decision violates Trump’s right to due process – a jury decision on the now-delayed insurrection case. Former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley said: “It should be up to voters to decide who gets elected.”One Trump adviser, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Washington Post that all state appeals court decisions on multiple efforts to kick Trump off state primary ballots – 16 have failed, 14 are pending – have ruled in the former president’s favor.“We don’t love the Colorado ruling, of course, but think it will resolve itself,” the adviser said.According to the New York Times on Saturday, Trump has privately told people that he believes the US supreme court will rule against the decisions. But the court has also been wary of wading into the turbulent constitutional waters of Trump’s multiple legal issues.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionLast week, the court denied special counsel Jack Smith’s request to expedite a ruling on whether Donald Trump can claim presidential immunity over his alleged crimes following the 2020 election.But the argument that voters, and not courts or elected officials, should decide elections has been under stress since the 2000 election when Republican George W Bush was elected after a stinging legal battle with then vice-president Al Gore over Florida ballot recounts that was ultimately decided by the court.According to the Times, Trump is concerned that the conservative justices, who make up a “supermajority”, will be worried about the perception of being “political” and rule against him.Conversely, the justices might not want to be steamrollered into making decisions on a primary ballot timetable set by individual states that are themselves open to accusations of political coloring.For now, both the Maine and Colorado decisions are on hold. The Colorado Republican party has asked the US supreme court to look at the state’s decision, and Trump is anticipated to repeat that request and has said he will appeal the Maine decision.Maine’s Republican party chair, Joel Stetkis, told the Washington Post that “Shenna Bellows has kicked a hornet’s nest and woken up a sleeping giant in the state of Maine. There’s a lot of people very, very upset that one person wants to take away their choice.”Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung told the outlet: “We are witnessing, in real time, the attempted theft of an election and the disenfranchisement of the American voter.”Democrats in blue states, he said, “are recklessly and un-Constitutionally suspending the civil rights of the American voters by attempting to summarily remove President Trump’s name from ballots. These partisan election interference efforts are a hostile assault on American democracy.” More

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      in Elections

      Michigan supreme court rules that Trump will stay on state ballot

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      Donald Trump will remain on Michigan’s state ballot after a ruling from the Michigan supreme court on Wednesday, which upheld a lower court order.The move sets the stage for the former president to participate in the Michigan primary despite accusations that he led an insurrection against the United States.The court’s decision not to move forward with a case against Trump sets the court in sharp contrast to the Colorado supreme court, which recently ruled to strip Trump from its state primary ballot because of his role in the January 6 riot at the US Capitol.In Michigan, as in Colorado, the challengers have invoked section 3 of the US constitution’s 14th amendment, which broadly blocks people from holding government office if they “have engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the US government. Legal experts are divided on whether this provision, written against the backdrop of the US civil war, applies to the office of the president. There are also questions as to whether Trump’s actions around January 6 legally constitute “insurrection or rebellion”.Colorado’s decision is currently paused on appeal. Special counsel Jack Smith has asked the US supreme court to fast-track the decision, but the nation’s highest court – which is dominated 6-3 by conservatives – has declined. However, the court will likely weigh in soon.The Michigan supreme court justices did not give a reasoning for their Wednesday decision.“We are not persuaded that the questions presented should be reviewed by this court,” the justices wrote in an unsigned, one-paragraph order.However, in a dissent where she largely agreed with the court’s order, Justice Elizabeth Welch said that procedural differences may make the difference in Colorado and Michigan’s election laws. The challengers in the case, she added, may “renew their legal efforts as to the Michigan general election later in 2024 should Trump become the Republican nominee for President of the United States or seek such office as an independent candidate”.Free Speech for the People, the group that brought the lawsuit, stressed that the Michigan supreme court’s decision was made on procedural grounds.“We are disappointed by the Michigan Supreme Court’s decision,” said Ron Fein, legal director of Free Speech For People, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said in a statement. But, Fein added: “The decision isn’t binding on any court outside Michigan and we continue our current and planned legal actions in other states to enforce Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment against Donald Trump.”Michigan is expected to be a battleground state in the 2024 US presidential election. Its primary is set for 27 February 2024. More

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      Colorado’s ruling to disqualify Trump sets up a showdown at supreme court

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      The Colorado ruling disqualifying Donald Trump from the ballot because he incited an insurrection on January 6 sets up another high-stakes, highly controversial political intervention by the US supreme court – a conservative-dominated panel to which Trump appointed three stringent rightwingers.Compromised in progressive eyes by those appointments and rulings including the removal of the federal right to abortion, the court was already due to decide whether Trump has immunity from prosecution regarding acts committed as president.Arising from one of four criminal indictments that have generated 91 charges, that case – concerning elected subversion if not incitement of insurrection – has produced intense scrutiny of Clarence Thomas, the longest-serving justice and a hardline conservative also at the centre of an ethics scandal.Thomas’s wife, Ginni Thomas, is a hard-right activist who was deeply involved in attempts to overturn Trump’s 2020 defeat by Joe Biden, a defeat which according to Trump’s lie was the result of electoral fraud.With the Colorado ruling, calls for Clarence Thomas to recuse from cases involving Trump will no doubt increase – and no doubt continue to be ignored.On Tuesday, the progressive strategist Rachel Bitecofer said: “Justice Thomas will get to weigh in on whether Trump engaged in insurrection for the same plot his own wife helped organise. Extraordinary.”Earlier, in a scene of extraordinary Washington pageantry, Biden addressed Thomas and the other justices at a memorial service for Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman to sit on the court.Speaking at the National Cathedral, the president delivered a passage that would within hours assume greater significance.To O’Connor, Biden said, the court was “the bedrock of America. It was a vital line of defence for the values and the vision of our republic, devoted not to the pursuit of power for power’s sake but to make real the promise of America – the American promise that holds that we’re all created equal and deserve to be treated equally throughout our lives.”Citing that need for equality before the law, some prominent observers said the supreme court should uphold the Colorado ruling.J Michael Luttig, a conservative former judge who testified before the House January 6 committee and has written with the Harvard professor Laurence Tribe on the 14th amendment, called the Colorado ruling “historic”, “masterful” and “brilliant”.“It will be a test of America’s commitment to its democracy, to its constitution and to the rule of law,” Luttig told MSNBC, adding: “Arguably, when it is decided by the supreme court, it will be the single most important constitutional decision in all of our history.“… It is an unassailable … decision that the former president is disqualified from the presidency because he conducted, engaged in or aided or supported an insurrection or rebellion against the United States constitution.”But others were not so supportive.Jonathan Turley, a conservative law professor from George Washington University who has appeared as a witness for House Republicans seeking to impeach Biden on grounds of supposed corruption, told Fox News: “This court has handed partisans on both sides the ultimate tool to try to shortcut elections. And it’s very, very dangerous.“This country is a powder keg, and this court is throwing matches at it. And I think it’s a real mistake. I think they’re wrong on the law. You know, January 6 was many things, most of it not good. In my view it was not an insurrection, it was a riot.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“That doesn’t mean the people responsible for that day shouldn’t be held accountable. But to call this an insurrection for the purposes of disqualification would create a slippery slope for every state in the union.“This is a time where we actually need democracy. We need to allow the voters to vote to hear their decision. And the court just said, ‘You’re not going to get that in Colorado, we’re not going to let you vote for Donald Trump.’ You can dislike Trump, you can believe he’s responsible for January 6, but this isn’t the way to do it.”Adopted in 1868, section three of the 14th amendment barred former Confederates from office after the civil war. But it has rarely been used. In Trump’s case, much legal argument has centered on whether the presidency counts as an office, as defined in the text. In Colorado, a lower court found that it did not. The state supreme court found that it did. That argument now goes to the highest court in the land.After the Colorado ruling, many observers also pointed out that Trump has not been convicted of inciting an insurrection, or charged with doing so. He was impeached for inciting an insurrection on January 6 but acquitted at trial in the Senate, where enough Republicans stayed loyal.What is clear is that thanks to Colorado, a US supreme court already racked by politics and with historically low approval ratings will once again pitch into the partisan fight. On Tuesday, Trump seized on the Colorado ruling as he has his criminal indictments: as battle cry and fundraising tool. His Republican opponents also slammed the ruling.Last month, the Pulitzer prize-winning historian Eric Foner, an expert on the civil war and Reconstruction, spoke to the Guardian about 14th amendment challenges to Trump, including in Colorado. A successful case, Foner said, would be likely to act on Trump like “a red flag in front of a bull”.So, it seems clear, will anything the US supreme court now does regarding the Colorado ruling.On Wednesday a Trump attorney, Jay Sekulow, said on his own internet show he expected the court to act quickly, with “the next 10 days … critical in this case” and oral arguments likely by mid-January. His son and co-host, Jordan Sekulow, countered that a slow-moving case could not be counted out. More

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      US supreme court to hear January 6 appeal that could affect Trump trial

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      The supreme court on Wednesday said it will hear an appeal that could upend hundreds of charges stemming from the Capitol riot, including against the former president Donald Trump.The justices will review an appellate ruling that revived a charge against three defendants accused of obstruction of an official proceeding. The charge refers to the disruption of Congress’s certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential election victory over Trump.That is among four counts brought against Trump in the special counsel Jack Smith’s case that accuses the 2024 Republican presidential primary frontrunner of conspiring to overturn the results of his election loss. Trump is also charged with conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding.The court’s decision to weigh in on the obstruction charge could threaten the start of Trump’s trial, currently scheduled for 4 March. The justices separately are considering whether to rule quickly on Trump’s claim that he cannot be prosecuted for actions taken within his role as president. A federal judge has already rejected that argument.The supreme court will hear arguments in March or April, with a decision expected by early summer.The obstruction charge, which carries up to 20 years behind bars, has been brought against more than 300 defendants and is among the most widely used felony charges brought in the huge federal prosecution following the deadly insurrection on 6 January 2021, when a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in an attempt to keep Biden, a Democrat, from taking the White House.At least 152 people have been convicted at trial or pleaded guilty to obstructing an official proceeding, and at least 108 of them have been sentenced, according to an Associated Press review of court records.A lower-court judge had dismissed the charge against Joseph Fischer, a former Boston police officer, and two other defendants, ruling it did not cover their conduct. The justices agreed to hear the appeal filed by lawyers for Fischer, who is facing a seven-count indictment for his actions on January 6, including the obstruction charge.The other defendants are Edward Jacob Lang, of New York’s Hudson valley, and Garret Miller, who has since pleaded guilty to other charges and was sentenced to 38 months in prison. Miller, who is from the Dallas area, could still face prosecution on the obstruction charge.Judge Carl Nichols of the US district court found that prosecutors stretched the law beyond its scope to inappropriately apply it in these cases. Nichols ruled that a defendant must have taken “some action with respect to a document, record or other object” to obstruct an official proceeding under the law.The justice department challenged that ruling, and the appeals court in Washington DC agreed with prosecutors in April that Nichols’s interpretation of the law was too limited.Other defendants, including Trump, are separately challenging the use of the charge.More than 1,200 people have been charged with federal crimes stemming from the riot, and more than 700 defendants have pleaded guilty. More

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      Liz Cheney read my book: a historian, Lincoln and the lessons of January 6

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      The publication of Liz Cheney’s book, Oath and Honor, is bringing plaudits, once again, for her courage in calling out Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the constitution. From this historian, it brings a different kind of gratitude. Not only for her patriotism, which has already come at a cost, but for how she allowed the slow work of history to inform a fast-moving political situation that was rapidly becoming a crisis.In this case, the history was a little-known story about the vexed election of Abraham Lincoln, embedded in a book I wrote in 2020, Lincoln on the Verge: Thirteen Days to Washington. The book came out with almost laughably bad timing: in April 2020, just after Covid hit. Printing plants struggled to get the book to stores, stores struggled to stay open, all talks were canceled. After nearly a decade of research, it seemed like the book would go straight to the remainder bin. But as it turned out, people still read it, including members of Congress.Lincoln’s presidency is, of course, well known. It is difficult to imagine a world in which he is not looking over us from the Lincoln Memorial. But as I researched the presidential transition of 1860-61, I was surprised to discover just how much resistance he faced. He nearly didn’t make it to Washington at all.Then, as now, a significant subpopulation refused to accept the result of an election. We all grew up learning about the result: the civil war, which killed 750,000. In the weeks before Lincoln’s arrival, armed militias menaced Congress and there were rumors of a violent takeover of the Capitol, to prevent his inauguration. Seven states seceded before he arrived. Four would secede after.Passions came to a head on 13 February 1861, when Congress assembled to tally electoral certificates. Lincoln had clearly won, with 180 votes. The closest runner-up was the candidate of the south, John C Breckinridge, with 72. Amazingly, the certificates, carried in a wooden box, were sent to Breckinridge, who as the outgoing vice-president was also president of the Senate. If the certificates were miscounted, he would stand to benefit. Then Congress might interfere, as it did in 1824, when it denied the winner of the popular vote, Andrew Jackson, in the so-called “Corrupt Bargain” that put John Quincy Adams in power.To his eternal credit, Breckinridge counted honestly and Lincoln was confirmed. Another southerner, Gen Winfield Scott, posted soldiers around the Capitol and kept an anti-Lincoln mob from entering the House. Breckinridge would become a high-ranking Confederate but he helped to make Lincoln’s presidency possible.Strangely, these footnotes from my research began to come back to life at the end of 2020, during another interregnum, as Americans awaited the arrival of Joe Biden. Once again, there were dark rumors of violence, and a plot centered around the counting of the electoral certificates, to be held on 6 January 2021. The parallels are not perfect. In 1861, the country was weakened because a lame-duck president, James Buchanan, checked out. In 2021, an enraged president directed traffic. But still, I felt a sense of deja vu that fall.We all know the rest of the story. On the day of the count, Trump summoned a mob to disrupt the vote. They were more successful than in 1861, with results we are still dealing with. But they failed, thanks to bravery of the Capitol police and the members of Congress, including Cheney, who stood their ground.At the time, I wondered if anyone beside me was thinking about the eerie parallels to 1861. It turned out that Cheney was, for the simple reason that she was reading my book.I learned about her interest in profiles written during the hearings staged by the January 6 committee. I heard similar stories about Jamie Raskin, the Maryland Democrat and committee member who mentioned my book in his 2022 book, Unthinkable. They may have passed it to each other. Just that image, of a Democrat and a Republican sharing a recommendation, is heartening.In Cheney’s book, she describes reading my book in December 2020, remembering “chilling reading” as storm clouds gathered. Everything about her courage since January 6 would be familiar to the Americans of 1861 – northerners and southerners alike – who stood up for Lincoln. Many disapproved of him, or worried about rumors spread by his enemies. But they believed in democracy, and the constitution, and wanted to give him a chance. They were patriots in the old-fashioned sense.It is a simple thing to agree with our allies. What is harder is to agree with our adversaries, or at least to let them speak their piece. Democracy depends on that respect.When Lincoln finally arrived in Washington, after so many ordeals, he delivered a famous inaugural address, invoking our “better angels”. Since then, he has become something like the angel-in-chief, hovering over us, more present than most other ex-presidents. In 1963, he was looking over Martin Luther King Jr’s shoulder as he gave his “I Have a Dream” speech. In 1970, he gave some comfort to Richard Nixon when he wandered to the Lincoln Memorial to speak to anti-war protesters. To the rest of us, he can still appear unexpectedly, offering a form of communion. Or perhaps union is a better word, for a nation seeking desperately to find common ground.In his oft-quoted poem, The Cure at Troy, Seamus Heaney wrote of a “longed-for tidal wave”, a rare convergence when “justice can rise up” and “hope and history rhyme”. History does not always rhyme, despite the quote often attributed, falsely, to Mark Twain. But now and then, the convergences are real. Liz Cheney found one, and acted on it. This historian is grateful for every reader, but especially for one who read a book so well.
      Ted Widmer, distinguished lecturer at the Macaulay Honors College of the City University of New York, is the author of Lincoln on the Verge: Thirteen Days to Washington More