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      Trump ally Lindsey Graham told ex-cop Capitol rioters should be shot in head

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      Trump ally Lindsey Graham told ex-cop Capitol rioters should be shot in headMichael Fanone recounts meeting with South Carolina Republican senator in book to be published next week02:36Republican senator and Trump ally Lindsey Graham told a police officer badly beaten during the Capitol attack that law enforcement should have shot rioting Trump supporters in the head, according to a new book.Capitol attack officer Fanone hits out at ‘weasel’ McCarthy in startling interviewRead more“You guys should have shot them all in the head,” the now ex-cop, Michael Fanone, says the South Carolina Republican told him at a meeting in May 2021, four months after the deadly attack on Congress.“We gave you guys guns, and you should have used them. I don’t understand why that didn’t happen.”On January 6, Fanone was a Metropolitan police officer who came to the aid of Capitol police as Trump supporters attacked. He was severely beaten, suffering a heart attack and a traumatic brain injury.He has since resigned from the police, testified to the House January 6 committee and become a CNN analyst. His book, Hold the Line, will be published next week.Politico reported the remarks Fanone says were made by Graham. The site also said Fanone secretly recorded other prominent Republicans, among them Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader and possibly the next speaker, who has also stayed close to Trump.Politico said Fanone told McCarthy efforts to minimize the Capitol insurrection were “not just shocking but disgraceful”. McCarthy reportedly offered no response.Last week, Rolling Stone published an extraordinarily frank interview in which Fanone, a self-described lifelong Republican, called McCarthy a “fucking weasel bitch”. McCarthy did not comment.According to Politico, Fanone told Graham he “appreciated the enthusiasm” the senator showed for shooting rioters “but noted the officers had rules governing the use of deadly force”.Fanone says the meeting with Graham was also attended by Harry Dunn, a Capitol police officer who has also testified in Congress, and Gladys Sicknick and Sandra Garza, the mother and partner of Brian Sicknick, an officer who died after the riot.Fanone says Graham snapped at Gladys Sicknick, telling the bereaved mother he would “end the meeting right now” if she said more negative things about Trump.Nine deaths, including officer suicides, have been linked to the Capitol attack. The riot erupted after Trump told supporters to “fight like hell” to overturn his defeat by Joe Biden, which he maintains without evidence was the result of electoral fraud. Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s attorney, urged Trump’s supporters to stage “trial by combat”.Testimony to the House January 6 committee has shown Trump knew elements of the crowd were armed but told them to march on the Capitol and tried to go with them.Representatives for Graham did not comment to Politico. The senator was previously reported to have advocated the use of force against Capitol rioters on the day itself.The Divider review: riveting narrative of Trump’s plot against AmericaRead moreThat same day, Graham seemed to abandon his closeness to Trump. In a Senate speech hours after the Capitol was cleared, he said: “Count me out.” Days later, he said he had “never been so humiliated and embarrassed for the country”.But like most Republicans, McCarthy literally so, Graham returned to Trump’s side. Like all but seven Republican senators, Graham voted to acquit in Trump’s second impeachment trial, for inciting the Capitol attack.He recently predicted “riots in the streets” if Trump is indicted for retaining classified documents after leaving the White House.In their recent book, The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021, Peter Baker of the New York Times and Susan Glasser of the New Yorker quote Graham as calling Trump “a lying motherfucker” … but “a lot of fun to hang out with”.TopicsBooksUS Capitol attackUS politicsRepublicansUS SenateUS CongressUS policingnewsReuse this content More

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      Capitol attack: Proud Boys leader pleads guilty to seditious conspiracy

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      Capitol attack: Proud Boys leader pleads guilty to seditious conspiracyJeremy Bertino, 43, enters guilty plea for his role in plot to stop transfer of presidential power from Trump to Biden on January 6 A North Carolina man pleaded guilty on Thursday to plotting with other members of the far-right Proud Boys to violently stop the transfer of presidential power after the 2020 election, making him the first member of the extremist group to plead guilty to a seditious conspiracy charge.Jeremy Bertino, 43, has agreed to cooperate with the justice department’s investigation of the role that Proud Boys leaders played in the mob’s attack on the Capitol on 6 January 2021, a federal prosecutor said. Judge Timothy Kelly agreed to release Bertino pending a sentencing hearing that was not immediately scheduled.Bertino also pleaded guilty to a charge of unlawfully possessing firearms in March in Belmont, North Carolina. Kelly accepted his guilty plea to both charges during a brief hearing after the case against Bertino was filed on Thursday.Prosecutor Erik Kenerson said estimated sentencing guidelines for Bertino’s case recommend a prison sentence ranging from four years and three months to five years and three months. The civil war-era seditious conspiracy charge carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.Former Proud Boys national chairman Henry “Enrique” Tarrio and four other group members also have been charged with seditious conspiracy for what prosecutors say was a coordinated attack on the Capitol to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral victory.A trial for Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs, Zachary Rehl and Dominic Pezzola is scheduled to start in December.A trial started this week in Washington for the seditious conspiracy case against the founder of the Oath Keepers and other members of the anti-government militia group for their participation in the attack.More than three dozen people charged in the Capitol siege have been identified by federal authorities as leaders, members or associates of the Proud Boys.Two of them Matthew Greene and Charles Donohoe pleaded guilty to conspiring to obstruct an official proceeding, the January 6 joint session of Congress for certifying the electoral college vote.TopicsUS Capitol attackUS politicsThe far rightnewsReuse this content More

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      Oath Keepers founder accused of ‘armed rebellion’ on January 6 at trial

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      Oath Keepers founder accused of ‘armed rebellion’ on January 6 at trialStewart Rhodes and four associates face the rare civil war-era charge of seditious conspiracy for attacking the US Capitol The founder of the Oath Keepers extremist group and four associates planned an “armed rebellion” to keep Donald Trump in power after he lost the election, a federal prosecutor contended on Monday as the most serious case yet went to trial involving the attack on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021.Stewart Rhodes and his band of far-right militants were prepared to go to war to stop Joe Biden from becoming president, assistant US attorney Jeffrey Nestler told jurors.The group celebrated the Capitol attack as a battle they had won and continued their plot even after Biden’s November 2020 electoral victory was certified by Congress in the early hours of 7 January, Nestler alleged.Capitol attack officer Fanone hits out at ‘weasel’ McCarthy in startling interviewRead more“Their goal was to stop, by whatever means necessary, the lawful transfer of presidential power, including by taking up arms against the United States government,” the prosecutor said during his opening statement. “They concocted a plan for armed rebellion to shatter a bedrock of American democracy.”Rhodes and the four others are the first January 6 defendants to stand trial on the charge of seditious conspiracy, a rare civil war-era charge that calls for up to 20 years behind bars, which they deny. The stakes are high for the US Department of Justice (DoJ), which last secured a seditious conspiracy conviction at trial nearly 30 years ago.Rhodes’ attorney painted a far different picture, describing the Oath Keepers as a “peacekeeping” force. He accused prosecutors of building their case on cherry-picked evidence from messages and videos and told jurors that the “true picture” would show that the Oath Keepers had merely been preparing for presidential orders they expected from Trump but never came.“Stewart Rhodes meant no harm to the Capitol that day. Stewart Rhodes did not have any violent intent that day,” Rhodes’ attorney, Phillip Linder, said. “The story the government is trying to tell you today is completely wrong.”On trial with Rhodes, of Granbury, Texas, are Kelly Meggs, leader of the Florida chapter of the Oath Keepers, Kenneth Harrelson, another Florida member of the group, Thomas Caldwell, a retired US navy intelligence officer from Virginia, and Jessica Watkins, who led an Ohio militia group. They face several other charges as well.About 900 people have been charged and hundreds convicted in the Capitol attack. Rioters stormed police barriers, fought with officers, smashed windows and temporarily halted the certification of Biden’s electoral victory.Prosecutors told jurors the insurrection was no spontaneous outpouring of election-fueled rage but part of a detailed, drawn-out plot to stop Biden from entering the White House.Rhodes began plotting to overturn Biden’s victory right after the election, Nestler said.He told his followers during the planning stage that “it will be torches and pitchforks time if they (Congress) don’t do the right thing”, according to an encrypted Signal message he sent to his followers that was shown to the jury by prosecutors.During a December media interview, Rhodes called senators “traitors” and warned that the Oath Keepers would have to “overthrow, abort or abolish Congress”.Before coming to Washington, they set up “quick reaction force” teams with “weapons of war” stashed at a Virginia hotel, the prosecutor said.As Oath Keepers stormed the Capitol, Rhodes stayed outside, like “a general surveying his troops on a battlefield”, Nestler said. After the attack, the Oath Keepers were “elated”, Nestler said.“These defendants were fighting a war and they won a battle on January 6 … but they planned to continue waging that war to stop the transfer of power prior to Inauguration Day. Thankfully their plans were foiled,” Nestler said.Defense attorneys say the Oath Keepers came to Washington only to provide security at events for figures such as Trump ally Roger Stone before the president’s big outdoor rally behind the White House. Rhodes has said there was no plan to attack the Capitol and that the members who did acted on their own.Rhodes’ lawyer told jurors that his client will take the stand to argue that he believed Trump was going to invoke the Insurrection Act and call up a militia. TopicsUS Capitol attackDonald TrumpJoe BidenUS politicsLaw (US)newsReuse this content More

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      Capitol attack officer Fanone hits out at ‘weasel’ McCarthy in startling interview

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      Capitol attack officer Fanone hits out at ‘weasel’ McCarthy in startling interviewMichael Fanone makes candid and profane remarks about Republicans in Rolling Stone interview as he promotes memoir In an extraordinarily candid and profane interview with Rolling Stone, Michael Fanone – the former Washington police officer who was seriously hurt at the US Capitol during the January 6 attack – called the Republican House leader, potentially the next speaker, a “fucking weasel bitch”.Oath Keepers to stand trial on charges of seditious conspiracyRead moreFanone said past Republican giants would be unimpressed with Kevin McCarthy.“I think at night, when the lights are turned off, Abe Lincoln and Ronald Reagan have some pretty choice words to say about the fact that they have to hang on Kevin McCarthy’s wall,” Fanone said.“They did some fucking above-average things. And they’ve got to adorn the wall of this fucking weasel bitch named Kevin McCarthy, with his fake fucking spray-on tan, whose fucking claim to fame, at least in my eyes, is the fact that he amassed a collection of Donald Trump’s favorite-flavored Starburst, put them in a Mason jar, and presented them to fucking Donald Trump.“What the fuck, dude?”Fanone’s remarks came as he promoted his memoir, Hold the Line, which will be published next week.The title refers to Fanone’s actions on 6 January 2021, when he, a DC Metropolitan officer, answered calls from Capitol police and rushed to confront Trump supporters storming Congress in an attempt to stop certification of the outgoing president’s defeat to Joe Biden in the 2020 election.Fanone suffered a heart attack and a traumatic brain injury. He has since left the police and emerged, with other officers, as a key witness in hearings held by the House January 6 committee. The riot has been linked to nine deaths, including suicides among law enforcement officers. More than 900 rioters have been charged, some with seditious conspiracy.In his Rolling Stone interview, Fanone also had harsh words for far-right Republicans including Marjorie Taylor Greene (“Put her in the tinfoil-hat brigade”) and Josh Hawley.Of Hawley, the Missouri senator, Fanone said: “He comes down there, flashes the sign of solidarity, [and] riles up this fucking crowd.”Hawley was famously pictured raising a fist to protesters – a picture he has used for fundraising purposes.Fanone continued: “I would’ve had more respect for him if he said, ‘Charge,’ and fucking rushed the first fucking group of police officers that he could possibly fucking find. But he didn’t. He ran like a bitch as fast as he fucking could to the closest safe room in the fucking Capitol building.”Josh Hawley, senator who ran from Capitol mob, mocked by home paperRead moreAmong other startling footage from the Capitol on January 6, the House committee has shown security video in which Hawley is seen running through the Capitol as the mob breaks in.Fanone, now an analyst for CNN, said his new mission in life was to “wag[e] a one-man war against Donald Trump and the fucking people that refuse to accept reality”.Of Republicans under McCarthy and as high in the party as Trump who have sought to downplay the Capitol attack, he said: “You call [January 6] a ‘tourist day’, You say it was ‘hugs and kisses’. I’m going to be that fucking inconvenient motherfucker that pops his head up every time you say some stupid shit like that.”He also said he does not want to be thought of as an American hero, in part because “Motherfuckers think [former vice-president] Mike Pence is a goddamn hero” for resisting Trump’s scheme to stay in power, and “don’t lump me in with that fucking pathetic coward”.Discussing his work for CNN, Fanone described how he has had to moderate his language on air – and how he “did get in a lot of trouble for saying I thought history was going to shit on Mike Pence’s head”.“They thought that it was inciteful language,” Fanone also remarked. “I said, ‘Listen’ – this is an actual conversation I had – ‘if a person named History takes a shit on Mike Pence’s head, I will apologise for having incited that behavior. But until a person named History literally takes a shit on Mike Pence’s head, I’m not saying shit, nor do I regret what I said, because history is going to shit on Mike Pence’s head.’”He added: “History is going to be busy.”Fanone said he thought most of those who physically attacked the Capitol might eventually be brought to account but doubted that those who incited the riot, from Trump down, would face the consequences of their actions.Congressman Jamie Raskin: ‘I’ll never forget the terrible sound of them trying to barrel into the chamber’Read more“To me,” he said, “every last one of them should have been charged with sedition. These guys love 1776” – the year of the American revolution – “so much. They should be damned glad we’re not in 1776 because I’m pretty sure they would all end up on the fucking business end of a musket or the gallows.”Fanone did have kind words for one congressman: Jamie Raskin of Maryland, a Democrat on the January 6 committee. But Fanone said the professor of constitutional law, being a “super-intellectual type”, was “not designed for what lies ahead” in a divided America.Fanone also said he was publishing his memoir because he was going “broke” after resigning his job.“I’m pretty sure that’s why people do things like this,” he said. “I said the things that I said for free and fucking destroyed my career, made my job untenable, and then tried to make hard lemonade out of lemons.”TopicsBooksUS Capitol attackUS policingUS politicsPolitics booksRepublicansUS CongressnewsReuse this content More

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      Oath Keepers to stand trial on charges of seditious conspiracy

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      Oath Keepers to stand trial on charges of seditious conspiracyGroup allegedly discussed paramilitary training and ‘quick reaction force’ to get weapons to Capitol quickly on January 6 The highest-profile prosecution to stem from the January 6 attack on the US Capitol gets under way on Monday in Washington DC, where the founder and four members of the far-right Oath Keepers group will stand trial in federal court on civil war-era charges of seditious conspiracy.It’s a high-stakes trial for the US government, which will attempt to prove that Stewart Rhodes and his associates spent weeks marshaling members of the group to prepare to use violence to deny the certification of the 2016 election and keep Donald Trump in the White House.The five charged with seditious conspiracy – Rhodes, Kelly Meggs, Jessica Watkins, Kenneth Harrelson and Thomas Caldwell – face 20 years in prison if convicted. Two of the 11 people indicted in the case – Brian Ulrich and Joshua James – have pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy. The remaining four will be tried separately.Court documents show that the Oath Keepers – described by the government as “a large but loosely organized collection of individuals, some of whom are associated with militias” that “explicitly focus on recruiting current and former military, law enforcement and first-responder personnel” – were among the individuals and groups who forcibly entered the Capitol.Before the rally, the group had allegedly discussed paramilitary training and setting up a “quick reaction force” at a Virginia hotel that could get weapons into Washington quickly if required and had equipped themselves with thousands of dollars’ worth of guns and tactical gear, including a shotgun, scope, sights and night-vision devices.But while Rhodes, who established the Oath Keepers in 2009, is not accused of entering the Capitol, cellphone records allegedly show he was communicating with Oath Keepers who had and was seen with members of the group afterwards.The trial, which is expected to last about five weeks, comes as at least 919 people have been arrested and charged with crimes relating to what many, before and after the events of January 6, have called an attempted coup d’etat. More than 400 have pleaded guilty or been convicted at trial.But the trial comes with risks for the government, which has not invoked seditious conspiracy laws since failing to successfully prosecute members of the far-right Hutaree militia in Michigan in 2010 in a case that was ultimately dismissed for insufficient evidence.“Americans should be wary of government’s stretching ‘sedition’ charges in ways that might set troubling precedents for a US administration,” said Jim Sleeper, former professor of political science at Yale University.At the same time, he says, “the Oath Keepers’ and their leadership’s well-documented record of excess – and Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice record of discretion and indeed of caution – incline me to trust this use of the act.”According to attorney Bill Swor, who defended the Hutaree group, the circumstances are observably different. In that case, he says, there was no plan and no action was taken. In this, there appears to be evidence that several of the alleged conspirators broke into the Capitol and delayed Congress’s certification of the electoral college count.“Taking the government at their claim that these individuals were acting to disrupt or prevent Congress from discharging its constitutional duty is a significant difference,” he said.“In our case there was a vague assertion that our clients were planning a hostile, violent attack. But government witnesses testified that there was no specific plan and this was just talk and preparation, not against the government but against the forces of the antichrist who would be expressed in … an invading force of United Nations blue helmets.“There was no suggestion that our clients had undertaken any steps to do anything beyond ‘training’ in their immediate geographical area,” Swor adds.In the government’s case against the Oath Keepers, members traveled from across the US with a specific plan, accumulated firearms and brought them to suburban Washington and would have transported them to the seat of government if necessary. “Not only do you have the express purpose but acts taken in preparation to execute a plan,” Swor added.Rhodes’s attorneys have said their defense will focus on their client’s belief that Trump was going to invoke the Insurrection Act and call up a militia to support his attempt to stay in power. His actions, then, were not seditious because they were only designed in anticipation of what they believed would soon become lawful.“What the government contends was a conspiracy to oppose United States laws was actually lobbying and preparation for the President to utilize a United States law to take lawful action,” Rhodes’s attorneys, James Lee Bright and Phillip Linder, said in a court filing.Other defendants have argued that they traveled to Washington to provide security for VIPs or rally-goers from anti-fascist protesters, or antifa.According to the government, Rhodes sent a message to an Oath Keepers chat two days after the presidential election to reject the election results. “We aren’t getting through this without a civil war,” Rhodes allegedly wrote. “Too late for that. Prepare your mind, body, spirit.”Court documents further allege that Rhodes spearheaded an online meeting with members of the group in which he outlined a plan to stop the transfer of power to Joe Biden. After that, prosecutors say, members of the alleged conspiracy began recruiting, training and coordinating their activities.A month later, on 11 December, Rhodes allegedly posted on a group chat that if Biden were to take office, “it will be a bloody and desperate fight. We are going to have a fight. That can’t be avoided.”The day before certification on 5 January, the alleged conspirators transported their weapons to Washington. The following morning, Rhodes messaged: “We will have several well equipped QRFs outside DC. And there are many, many others, from other groups, who will be watching and waiting on the outside in case of worst case scenarios.”However the Oath Keepers trial is resolved, Swor says, the case may serve to set standards around where the individual rights to speak out and protest contravene laws protecting the functioning of government. In the case of the Sedition Act, the law was passed to curb the activities of the Ku Klux Klan, which opposed laws protecting African Americans and Catholics after the US civil war.If nothing else, the contrast between the Hutaree and Oath Keeper cases could establish “clear, bright lines and what is, and what is not, sedition,” Swor says. “In the Hutaree case, the goal was to be prepared to respond to an invasion or defend the government. In the Oath Keepers case, the government’s theory is that these people planned and took action, and that the purpose of their activity was to prevent the government from acting.”TopicsUS Capitol attackThe far rightnewsReuse this content More

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      Confidence Man review: Maggie Haberman takes down Trump

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      Confidence Man review: Maggie Haberman takes down Trump The New York Times reporter presents a forensic account of the damage he has done to AmericaMaggie Haberman, the New York Times’ Trump whisperer, delivers. Her latest book is much more than 600 pages of context, scoop and drama. It is a political epic, tracing Donald Trump’s journey from the streets of Queens to Manhattan’s Upper East Side, from the White House to Mar-a-Lago, his Elba. There, the 45th president holds court – and broods and plots his return.Kushner camping tale one of many bizarre scenes in latest Trump bookRead moreHaberman gives Trump and those close to him plenty of voice – and rope. The result is a cacophonous symphony. Confidence Man informs and entertains but is simultaneously absolutely not funny. Trumpworld presents a reptilian tableau – reality TV does Lord of the Flies.For just one example, Mark Meadows, Trump’s last White House chief of staff, is depicted as erratic and detestable. Then there’s the family. Haberman reports how, after the 2016 election, Melania Trump won a renegotiated pre-nuptial agreement. Haberman also describes Trump repeatedly dumping on his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. If only he looked like Tom Brady and spoke in a deeper register. If only Ivanka had not converted to Judaism.The abuse gets absurd – even a kind of baroque. According to Haberman, at one 2020 campaign strategy meeting Trump implied Kushner might be brutally attacked, even raped, if he ever went camping: “Can you imagine Jared and his skinny ass camping? It’d be like something out of Deliverance.”The reader, however, should not weep for Jared. In Haberman’s telling, he is the kid who was born on third base and mistakes his good fortune with hitting a triple. For his part, Kushner is shown trashing Steve Bannon, the far-right ideologue who was campaign chair and chief White House strategist but was forced out within months.Haberman catches Kushner gleefully asking a White House visitor: “Did you see I cut Bannon’s balls off?”To quote Peter Navarro, like Bannon now a former Trump official under indictment, “nepotism and excrement roll downhill”.As it happens, Bannon’s testicles grew back. Like Charlie Kushner, Jared’s father, he received a Trump pardon. Bannon also helped propagate the big lie that Trump won the election, stoking the Capitol attack.These days, Bannon awaits sentencing, convicted of contempt of Congress. He also faces felony fraud charges arising from an alleged border-wall charity scam. In Trump’s universe, there is always a grift.For Confidence Man, Haberman interviewed Trump three times. He confesses that he is drawn to her, like a moth to a flame.“I love being with her,” he says. “She’s like my psychiatrist”.The daughter of Clyde Haberman, a legendary New York Times reporter, is not flattered or amused. She sees through her subject.“The reality is that he treats everyone like they are his psychiatrists,” Haberman writes. “All present a chance for him to vent or test reactions or gauge how his statements are playing or discover how he is feeling.”Also, Trump and Haberman have not always had a rapport. When he was president, she would interview him and he would attack her. In April 2018, Trump tweeted that Haberman was a Clinton “flunkie” he didn’t know or speak with, a “third-rate reporter” at that. He called her “Maggot Haberman” and even contemplated obtaining her phone records to identify her sources.Trump is 76 but he remains the envious boy from a New York outer borough, face pressed against the Midtown glass. Haberman is not the only Manhattan reporter he has courted and attacked. In 2018, he threatened Michael Wolff for writing Fire and Fury, the Trump book that started it all. Later, he welcomed Wolff to Mar-a-Lago.Haberman vividly captures Trump’s lack of couth. For just one example, according to Haberman the president chose to enrich his first meeting with a foreign leader, Theresa May, by asking the British prime minister to “imagine if some animals with tattoos raped your daughter and she got pregnant”.Each of Trump’s three supreme court justices voted to overturn Roe v Wade. One might wonder how the young woman in Trump’s hypothetical would feel about that.Haberman also pierces Trump’s refusal to release his tax returns. All that talk about an “audit” was a simple dodge, birthed on a campaign plane.In the run-up to Super Tuesday, the crucial day of primaries in March 2016, aides confronted Trump about his taxes. The candidate, Haberman writes, “thought for a second about how to ‘get myself out of this’, as he said. He leaned back, before snapping up to a sudden thought.01:13“‘Well, you know my taxes are under audit. I always get audited … So what I mean is, well I could just say, ‘I’ll release them when I’m no longer under audit. ‘Cause I’ll never not be under audit.’”These days, the Trump Organization faces criminal tax fraud charges. Together with Ivanka, Don Jr and Eric, his children from his first marriage, Trump is also being sued for fraud by Letitia James, the New York attorney general.As a younger reporter, Haberman did two stints at the New York Post, Rupert Murdoch’s flagship US tabloid. Murdoch’s succession plans – it’s Lachlan, he told Trump – appear in Confidence Man. So does Tucker Carlson, the headline-making Fox News host and kindred spirit to Vladimir Putin.Trump made up audit excuse for not releasing tax returns on the fly, new book saysRead moreAccording to Haberman, Carlson met Kushner and demanded Trump commute Roger Stone’s conviction for perjury.“What happened to Roger Stone should never happen to anyone in this country of any political party,” Carlson reportedly thundered, threatening to go public.Stone has since emerged as a central figure in the January 6 insurrection. Apparently, he has a thing for violence. For some Republicans, a commitment to “law and order” is elastic.When it comes to the attempt to overturn the election and the Capitol attack it fueled, Trump’s fate rests with prosecutors in Washington DC and Fulton county, Georgia.That old campaign chant from 2016, “Lock her up”? It carries its own irony.
      Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America is published in the US by Penguin Random House
      TopicsBooksDonald TrumpTrump administrationUS politicsRepublicansUS elections 2016US elections 2020reviewsReuse this content More

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      Pelosi reportedly resisted Democrats’ effort to impeach Trump on January 6 – as it happened

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      On January 6, “Republican tempers were running so hot against Trump that forcing them to choose sides in the Senate that week could easily have resulted in his impeachment, conviction, and disqualification from any future run for the White House,” The Intercept reported, based on the forthcoming book “Unchecked: The Untold Story Behind Congress’s Botched Impeachments of Donald Trump.”It would have been a massive break if it happened. GOP lawmakers in the House and Senate had generally grinned and beared it through the four years Trump had been in the White House, even when he said or did things that went against their stated beliefs. But the up-close violence of the insurrection changed things, according to the book written by two reporters from The Washington Post and Politico. Had the House gone through with impeaching Trump that very evening, a vote to convict may have won the two-thirds majority in the Senate needed to succeed, removing Trump from office and barring him from running again.Reality was much more tepid. The Democrat-controlled House did vote to impeach Trump a week after January 6, and a month later, when he had already left the White House, the Republican-held Senate took a vote on whether to convict him. While 57 senators, including seven Republicans and all Democrats, voted to do so, that was 10 votes short of the supermajority needed, meaning Trump escaped punishment for the insurrection – at least for now.The federal government once again avoided a shutdown hours before it was to start after the House passed a short-term funding bill, which now goes to Joe Biden’s desk. The president is back at the White House after attending the investiture of justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who joins a supreme court that a poll indicates is losing its public trust.Here’s what else happened today:
      Ginni Thomas spoke to the January 6 committee, but two of its members say the wife of conservative supreme court justice Clarence Thomas doesn’t appear to be involved in a wider plot to overturn the 2020 election.
      You might think Joe Manchin would enjoy all the power the 50-50 split in the Senate gives him, as a pivotal Democratic vote. You would be wrong, apparently.
      The White House hit back against Russia’s annexation of four Ukrainian regions, describing it as illegal and announcing new sanctions.
      Nancy Pelosi nixed an effort to impeach Donald Trump the evening after the January 6 insurrection, according to a new book that suggests a more immediate effort could have resulted in his conviction by the requisite two-thirds of the Republican-held Senate.
      Barack Obama worried about the justice department under Trump, but was convinced the country could make it four years with him in the White House, according to a meeting transcript obtained by Bloomberg.
      For a fee of $3 million, Donald Trump hired a former Florida solicitor general to help him deal with the justice department’s investigation into government secrets at Mar-a-Lago, but has ended up squabbling with the attorney instead.That’s the conclusion reached by a piece in The Washington Post that looks into the work of Christopher Kise, whom since joining Trump’s legal team has counseled him that the justice department just wanted to make sure no classified documents were at his Florida resort, and he’d be wise to try to reach a deal with them.Kise has found himself frustrated, the Post reports, as other lawyers on Trump’s team advocate a more aggressive approach that may get all involved into trouble. Here’s more from the story:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}A Wednesday night court filing from Trump’s team was combative, with defense lawyers questioning the Justice Department’s truthfulness and motives. Kise, whose name was listed alongside other lawyers’ in previous filings over the past four weeks, did not sign that one — an absence that underscored the division among the lawyers. He remains part of the team and will continue assisting Trump in dealing with some of his other legal problems, said the people familiar with the conversations, who like others interviewed for this article spoke on the condition of anonymity to reveal private talks. But on the Mar-a-Lago issue, he is likely to have a less public role.
      It is a pattern that has repeated itself since the National Archives and Records Administration first alerted Trump’s team 16 months ago that it was missing documents from his term as president — and strongly urged their return. Well before the May 11 grand jury subpoena, and the Aug. 8 search of Mar-a-Lago by the FBI, multiple sets of lawyers and advisers suggested that Trump simply comply with government requests to return the papers and, in particular, to hand over any documents marked classified.
      Trump seems, at least for now, to be heeding advice from those who have indulged his desire to fight.Eight years of Trump would be bad, but four manageable. The justice department should be watched like “white on rice”. And despite his insults and bombast, Donald Trump had been nothing but polite to him in person.That was some of what Barack Obama told a group of columnists in an off-the-record conversation three days before he left the White House in 2017. Such conversations between an American president and the press are rare and intended never to be made public, but Bloomberg got their hands on a transcript through a Freedom of Information Act request, which they published today. The discussion touched on a number of topics. Here’s what Obama had to say about whether Trump would do lasting damage to the country:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}I think that four years is okay. Take on some water, but we can kind of bail fast enough to be okay. Eight years would be a problem. I would be concerned about a sustained period in which some of these norms have broken down and started to corrode.Whether Trump would be inclined to start any new wars:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}I think his basic view – his formative view of foreign policy is shaped by his interactions with Malaysian developers and Saudi princes, and I think his view is, I’m going to go around the world making deals and maybe suing people. But it’s not, let me launch big wars that tie me up. And that’s not what his base is looking from him anyway. I mean, it is not true that he initially opposed the war in Iraq. It is true that during the campaign he was not projecting a hawkish foreign policy, other than bombing the heck out of terrorists. And we’ll see what that means, but I don’t think he’s looking to get into these big foreign adventures.His fears for the justice department:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}I would be like white on rice on the Justice Department. I’d be paying a lot of attention to that. And if there is even a hint of politically motivated investigations, prosecutions, et cetera, I think you guys have to really be on top of that.How Trump – who had promoted the lie that Obama was not born in the United States – had behaved around him since winning the 2016 election:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}His interactions with me are very different than they are with the public, or, for that matter, interactions with Barack Obama, the distant figure. He’s very polite to me, and has not stopped being so. I think where he sees a vulnerability he goes after it and he takes advantage of it.With hours remaining before the government would have shut down, the House of Representatives this afternoon approved a short-term spending bill that will keep it open through December 16.The measure was approved with 230 votes in favor and 201 against. All Democrats voted for it, along with 10 Republicans. The Senate passed the bill yesterday and it now heads to Joe Biden’s desk, where his signature is expected.Beyond just keeping the government open, the spending measure allocates another $12 billion or so in aid to Ukraine, as well as additional money for disaster relief in a swath of US states. Had Congress not reached an agreement, the federal government would have run out of money on Saturday.Ginni Thomas’s testimony before the January 6 committee was hotly anticipated amid a cascade of reports in recent months showing her efforts to pressure officials nationwide to take conspiracy theories about the outcome of the 2020 election seriously.As alarming as those reports were, considering they came from the wife of a sitting supreme court justice, Politico reports that committee members aren’t convinced she had much to do with the violence that unfolded at the Capitol or the legal effort to stop Joe Biden’s win. Bennie Thompson, the committee’s Democratic chair, said Thomas’s views were “typical” of those who believe, baselessly, that Biden had stolen the vote nearly two years ago. Jamie Raskin, another Democratic committee member, replied “I can’t say,” when asked if Thomas had given the panel any new leads. “She absolutely has a First Amendment right to take whatever positions she wants, and that means she can take as deranged a position she wants about the 2020 election,” he added.Ginni Thomas lobbied Wisconsin lawmakers to overturn 2020 election Read moreSpeaking of the January 6 committee, Fox News has some details of when it may hold its next public hearing, after one scheduled for this week was postponed due to Hurricane Ian’s approach:1/6 commitee Chairman Thompson says no hearing next week. But there will be a hearing before the election. Says interim report will come before November. No witnesses at next hearing— Chad Pergram (@ChadPergram) September 30, 2022
      Another factor fueling the decline in trust in the supreme court, at least among Democrats, may be Ginni Thomas, the wife of conservative justice Clarence Thomas and promoter of conspiracy theories surrounding the 2020 election. As Ed Pilkington reports, she stuck to those claims during an interview with the January 6 committee yesterday:Ginni Thomas, the hard-right conservative whose activities have raised conflict of interest concerns involving her husband, the US supreme court Justice Clarence Thomas, has told the committee investigating the January 6 insurrection that she still believes the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump.Bennie Thompson, the Democratic chair of the committee, told reporters following the almost five-hour private interview with Thomas that she held fast to her claim that massive fraud in the 2020 election had put Joe Biden in the White House. When asked by reporters if Thomas still believed that to be true, Thompson replied: “Yes.”The stolen election conspiracy theory – widely propagated by Trump – has never been substantiated with evidence and has been thoroughly debunked over the past two years.Ginni Thomas still believes Trump’s false claim the 2020 election was stolenRead moreCiting a US Supreme Court decision earlier this year, gun rights groups and firearms owners have launched another attempt to overturn Connecticut’s ban on certain semiautomatic rifles that was enacted in response to the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.A new lawsuit was filed Thursday in federal court by three gun owners, the Connecticut Citizens Defense League and the Second Amendment Foundation. They are seeking to overturn the state prohibition on what they call “modern sporting arms” such as AR-15-style rifles like the one used to kill 20 first-graders and six educators at the Newtown school in 2012, The Associated Press reports..css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}We all deserve to live in safe communities, but denying ownership of the most commonly owned firearms in the country is not the way to achieve it. The recent US Supreme Court decision … has opened the door to this challenge, and we believe Connecticut will be hard pressed to prove its statutes are constitutional,” Holly Sullivan, president of the Connecticut Citizens Defense League, said in a statement.Connecticut attorney general William Tong hit back..css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Connecticut’s gun laws save lives, and we are not going back. We will not allow weapons of war back into our schools, our houses of worship, our grocery stores, and our communities. I will vigorously defend our laws against any and every one of these baseless challenges,” Tong said.In June, the Supreme Court broadly expanded gun rights in a 6-3 ruling by the conservative majority that overturned a New York law restricting carrying guns in public and affected a half-dozen other states with similar laws.President Joe Biden has had a busy one, bouncing from the supreme court, where he attended the investiture of new justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, then back to the White House, where he celebrated the Jewish new year Rosh Hashanah and is set to give an update about the damage done by Hurricane Ian. While it was a day for ceremony at the supreme court, a new poll reaffirmed that the court’s rightward shift has taken a toll on public trust.Here’s what else happened today:
      You might think Joe Manchin would enjoy all the power the 50-50 split in the Senate gives him, as a pivotal Democratic vote. You would be wrong, apparently.
      The White House hit back against Russia’s annexation of four Ukrainian regions, describing it as illegal and announcing new sanctions.
      Nancy Pelosi nixed an effort to impeach Donald Trump the evening after the January 6 insurrection, according to a new book that suggests a more immediate effort could have resulted in his conviction by two-thirds of the Republican-held Senate.
      The supreme court has released a photo of its new lineup, which includes Ketanji Brown Jackson:Here’s the new #SCOTUS. Photo Cred: Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States pic.twitter.com/J3bocuG5Y0— Nicole Ninh (@nicninh) September 30, 2022
      Speaking alongside vice-president Kamala Harris at a White House ceremony to celebrate the Jewish New Year Rosh Hashanah, Joe Biden made a prediction: Harris may be the first female vice president, but she won’t be the last, and a woman may succeed him in the presidency as well.The speech just wrapped up, and you can watch it here:The president changed his schedule up a bit, and decided to speak at the new year ceremony before his planned speech on Hurricane Ian.While Joe Biden didn’t speak publicly at Ketanji Brown Jackson’s investiture to the supreme court, he offered a brief comment about it on Twitter:This morning, I attended Justice Jackson’s investiture. She’s a brilliant legal mind, extraordinarily qualified, and is making history today.In fact, we’ve appointed 84 federal judges so far. No group of that many judges has been appointed as quickly, or been that diverse.— President Biden (@POTUS) September 30, 2022
      While running for president, Biden pledged to nominate a Black woman to the court, and Jackson satisfied that promise. As for the 84 federal judges appointed, that’s a nod to the rapid clip of judicial confirmations Democrats have achieved in the Senate, where they have prioritized leaving their mark on the federal judiciary.President Joe Biden will soon deliver remarks on Hurricane Ian, which did terrible damage to Florida earlier this week, and now threatens Georgia and South Carolina.Here’s the White House’s live stream of the speech:For the latest news on the devastating storm, check out The Guardian’s live blog:Hurricane Ian: death toll in Florida rises as storm bears down on South Carolina – liveRead more More

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      Ginni Thomas still believes Trump’s false claim the 2020 election was stolen

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      Ginni Thomas still believes Trump’s false claim the 2020 election was stolenWife of US supreme court justice Clarence Thomas holds tight to stolen election conspiracy in interview with January 6 committee Ginni Thomas, the hard-right conservative whose activities have raised conflict of interest concerns involving her husband, the US supreme court Justice Clarence Thomas, has told the committee investigating the January 6 insurrection that she still believes the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump.Bennie Thompson, the Democratic chair of the committee, told reporters following the almost five-hour private interview with Thomas that she held fast to her claim that massive fraud in the 2020 election had put Joe Biden in the White House. When asked by reporters if Thomas still believed that to be true, Thompson replied: “Yes.”The stolen election conspiracy theory – widely propagated by Trump – has never been substantiated with evidence and has been thoroughly debunked over the past two years.In an opening statement to the committee, obtained by the New York Times, Thomas also insisted that she and her husband, the longest-serving member of America’s highest court, abided by an “ironclad rule” never to discuss cases coming before him.“It is laughable for anyone who knows my husband to think I could influence his jurisprudence – the man is independent and stubborn, with strong character traits of independence and integrity,” she said.But her dogged attachment to Trump’s lie that he was the true winner in 2020, repeated in front of the January 6 committee on Thursday, is certain to further heighten alarm about the impact of Thomas’s unrestrained hard-right activism on the credibility of the supreme court. Clarence Thomas has consistently refused to recuse himself from cases arising from the insurrection at the US Capitol despite his wife’s avid support for attempts to subvert the election result.Clarence Thomas was the sole justice among the nine members of the panel to oppose an order in January forcing hundreds of White House documents to be disclosed to the January 6 committee. Among those documents were texts sent by Ginni Thomas to Mark Meadows, then White House chief of staff, in the immediate aftermath of the 2020 election urging him to do all he could to overturn Biden’s victory.Ginni Thomas has also been exposed as having pressurized lawmakers in Arizona and Wisconsin, demanding that they block certification of Biden’s win in those states in an effort to swing the outcome to Trump.After the encounter with the committee, her lawyer said she had happily communicated with them “to clear up the misconceptions about her activities surrounding the 2020 elections”. He characterized her efforts after the election as “minimal and mainstream activity focused on ensuring that reports of fraud and irregularities were investigated”.TopicsClarence ThomasUS supreme courtDonald TrumpUS politicsUS Capitol attacknewsReuse this content More