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      Political violence has marked the 2024 race – but risks rise after election day

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      A year punctuated by two assassination attempts, high levels of threats and harassment, and a number of troubling, violent incidents in the lead-up to election day will culminate on Tuesday with an election deemed existential by all sides.It’s the first presidential election since the January 6 insurrection, a reminder of the ways political violence can manifest that leaves Americans with a fear that such an attack could happen again. Those who study the attack and its participants say they aren’t convinced criminal convictions against them will fully deter those involved on January 6 from future political violence, but that the biggest threat is a lone actor, not a large, coordinated event.In the last few weeks, a man in Arizona was allegedly stockpiling weapons and plotting a “mass casualty” event, according to police who arrested him for shooting at Democratic party offices. The person behind explosive devices that burned hundreds of ballots in two drop boxes in Oregon and Washington is suspected to be a metalworker who could be planning more attacks. Arguments at polling places over political paraphernalia, banned at the polls in some places, have become physical. A young man waved a machete at a polling place in Florida.The risk of political violence only increases after election day, experts say, once races are called. Certain places could become targets of people or groups upset about results or who claim fraud.“The strategic value of political violence will go up once there’s an initial winner,” said Robert Pape, director of the Chicago Project on Security and Threats at the University of Chicago. “I would not say the left is totally off the hook, but it’s most dangerous on the right, simply because Trump did it before.”Trump and his supporters have turned to incendiary rhetoric in recent days, contributing to the tense environment. A speaker at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally called Kamala Harris the devil, while another spoke of the “slaughter” of Democrats. Trump said on Thursday that the former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney should face being under fire with rifles “shooting at her”.Social media platforms have enabled some of the conditions that could lead to offline violence. Militias are using Facebook to organize, and in some instances, Facebook has auto-generated militia pages, Wired reported. X, formerly Twitter, has become a frequent source of election disinformation that could be weaponized to stir people up post-election. The platform created a new “election integrity community” where users can post unsubstantiated claims of fraud. Online forums frequented by the far right are showing patterns similar to those that preceded the January 6 attack.“It’s absolutely possible that someone motivated by mis- or disinformation that they see online about some polling place in their community could show up with a gun and try to enforce vigilante justice,” said Brian Hughes, associate director of the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab at American University.Alex Jones, the longtime conspiracist, has issued reports on his show for several days warning of a deep state plot to sow chaos around the voting process. “And then there will be a big disputed election and it will get Democrats and Republicans all mad at each other, and that’s the civil war conditions,” Jones said on a broadcast this week.Elections officials emphasize that voting is still very safe in the US, and the threat of political violence should not deter people from casting a ballot. Levels of political violence have actually been lower this year than recent years, but there has been a continuation of high levels of threats and harassment, said Shannon Hiller, executive director of the Bridging Divides Initiative at Princeton University, which studies and tracks political violence. Elections officials in particular have been consistent targets of threats and harassment campaigns. Concerns about political violence among local elected officials have also risen.“Whether it’s bad actors or foreign actors, even trying to create that environment of fear is part of what people are doing to undermine our democracy,” Hiller said. “So the best way to push back on that is to remind folks it’s very safe and secure to vote and people feel confident to do so.”Still, voters feel a sense of unease. A recent survey of swing state voters by the Washington Post found fears that there would be violence if Trump loses the election. In six swing states, 57% of voters said they were at least somewhat worried about Trump supporters turning violent if he loses, far more than the percentage of voters who feared the same for a Harris loss.January 6 memory holeThe January 6 insurrection serves to some as a reminder of what a riled-up populace ready to take action for political aims can do. But for Trump, it’s now a “day of love”. He has promised to pardon many of those involved in the attack and referred to them as political prisoners.Having a leader encourage acts of violence or “fear and loathing” of the other side “creates a permission structure for people who want to commit acts of violence to go ahead and do so. They feel more justified, and they expect that they’ll be protected,” Hughes said.Experts don’t believe the US Capitol could see a similar attack because of precautions taken since January 6, but state capitols and other buildings may not be as prepared.Pape has studied those involved in January 6. So far, more than 1,300 have been arrested for their actions that day, the vast majority of whom were not clearly affiliated with a domestic extremist group like the Proud Boys or Oath Keepers. Most of those sentenced have since stayed off the radar and are not commenting online about their political beliefs, Pape has found. Of those who do speak publicly about their charges or beliefs, many have doubled down on the issues that motivated them after the 2020 election. They have continued to express support for Trump and for election fraud narratives.Billy Knutson of South Dakota was charged for his actions on January 6 and has since rapped about the insurrection: “Since they stole the election we living behind enemy lines … We are the people, we won’t be defeated / No peace and no quarter, we never retreated.”Jake Lang, who is alleged to have swung a baseball bat at police on January 6, has been in prison for more than three years awaiting trial. He has brought in more than $240,000 in an online fundraiser on GiveSendGo, the rightwing crowdfunding site, to fund a “J6 truther” website: “This is the single most important thing you can do to support the Jan 6 political prisoners and help exonerate these brave patriots,” he tells donors. He has also been helping set up a “network of election deniers and conspiracists” known as the North American Patriot and Liberty Militia, or Napalm, Wired reported.The “patriot wing” of the DC jail where some violent January 6 participants are being held may be further radicalizing the people staying there, a New York Magazine report posited. Extremism experts told the magazine that “its inmates might re-enter society more primed to take violent action than they were before the Capitol riot”.By reframing what January 6 was, Trump has given permission for his supporters to take similar action again, political violence experts warn.Lone actors a riskA memo from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) warned in September that there was a “heightened risk” of domestic violent extremists mobilizing “against ideological opponents, government officials, and law enforcement in an attempt to initiate a civil war” until at least early 2025. The document, obtained by the public records watchdog group Property of the People, said the threat comes from lone offenders, as large group action would probably be deterred by the January 6 convictions.The two assassination attempts against Trump could inspire copycats or retaliation, the agency said. “Real or perceived mistakes or discrepancies in the electoral process” could also play into broader election fraud narratives that stir up domestic violent extremists. Issues like mass migration could drive these extremists.“Widespread or high-profile civil unrest, mass immigration, or crimes by migrants or minorities perceived as threatening the United States may drive some DVEs [domestic violent extremists] to mobilize to violence to ‘save America’ from perceived threats,” the memo said. “For example, online users discussed the potential of a sweeping Executive Order that would have given some migrants citizenship, with one user stating, ‘Biden does that executive order, we shoot all democrat officials. And the supporting federal agents.’”Another DHS and FBI intelligence bulletin obtained by Property of the People from early October said the threat was heightened until inauguration day in January 2025 and extremists could use tactics such as “physical attacks, threats of violence, swatting and doxing, mailing or otherwise delivering suspicious items, arson, and other means of property destruction”. The memo also said there was potential for violence based on grievances related to immigration, LGBTQIA+ rights and abortion access.Surveys have shown increased support for the use of violence to achieve political goals. When support for violence is more mainstream, it can nudge volatile people who are considering taking action over the edge because they believe they are fulfilling a popular mandate, Pape said.“There’s a political cause that they sense from the media is popular, and then they want some of that popularity and fame for themselves, so they do a violent act in the name of that political cause,” Pape said.The risk of violence doesn’t automatically dissipate after the election. But while a Trump loss could inspire his supporters to take action, it could also release the hold he has on the right.“When you have a very influential leader who acts as the center of gravity for a movement that engages in threats and even violence, when the leader recedes from you, that center of gravity has a way of dissolving, and the problems have a way of dissipating,” Hughes said. “So there is a possibility that the outcome of this election will in itself improve the problem somewhat.” More

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      Mystery artist leaves neo-Nazi tiki torch ‘tribute’ to Trump near White House

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      The unknown artist or artists who fashioned a swirled bronze piece of feces on a replica of the former US House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s desk – and placed it on the National Mall recently – appear to have struck again.This time, the artistic-political commentary is focused not on the 6 January 2021 US Capitol attack carried out by Donald Trump supporters, when a participant did indeed defecate on Pelosi’s desk. Instead, the display satirically evokes the notorious white nationalist Unite the Right tiki torch parade through Charlottesville’s University of Virginia campus in August 2017, with some marchers chanting: “Jews will not replace us”.A tiki torch statue titled The Donald J Trump Enduring Flame was placed on display in Washington DC’s Freedom Plaza, a few blocks from the White House, on Monday. The plaque beneath the piece alludes to how the former president referred to “some very fine people on both sides” at the rally, which led to the murder of a counterprotestor demonstrating against white supremacy.“This monument pays tribute to President Donald Trump and the ‘very fine people’ he boldly stood to defend when they marched in Charlottesville, Virginia,” the plaque reads.Alluding to remarks from Trump at the time that the media had treated people at the rally “absolutely unfairly”, the plaque adds: “While many have called them white supremacists and neo-Nazis, President Trump’s voice rang out above the rest to remind all that they were ‘treated absolutely unfairly’. This monument stands as an everlasting reminder of that bold proclamation.”View image in fullscreenThe timing and placement of the scatological and torch works come as artists have sought ways to interpret the moment through satire. In September, a vast model of a naked Trump was placed on a highway outside Las Vegas, prompting complaints from local Republican officials supporting his second run for the presidency in the 5 November election against Kamala Harris.But the tiki torch is a more direct commentary on political undercurrents that have resurfaced in the closing days of the 2024 election, with the vice-president and her Democratic allies warning that a return to the White House for Trump risks a slide into authoritarianism.Torchlight parades were a feature of German national socialism in the 1930s. After a spell that returned the tiki to non-political purposes, including lighting summer barbecues and repelling mosquitoes, the Charlottesville rally reimbued them with sinister connotations.After the deadly Unite the Right rally, Tiki Brand Products of Wisconsin put out a statement that the brand “was not in any way associated with the events that took place in Charlottesville and … deeply saddened and disappointed.“We do not support their message or the use of our products in this way,” the company added.Civic Crafted LLC, the maker of the desk and tiki torch pieces, was granted a temporary license for display by the US park service. The agency said last week that when issuing permits it “does not consider the content of the message to be presented”.Vandals removed Pelosi’s name from the desk and poop piece soon after it was installed and drew crowds. An inscription on the piece said it was meant to honor “the brave men and women who broke into the United States Capitol on January 6 2021 to loot, urinate and defecate throughout those hallowed halls in order to overturn an election” that Trump lost to Joe Biden.For its part, the 9ft tiki torch went largely unnoticed after it was put up, according to the Washington Post.“I think it’s a perfect piece of satirical sculpture in its placement, in its timing, in its execution,” Eric Brewer, 56, told the Post. “It may be a warning sign of what could be to come.”The park service permit allows the tiki torch work to remain in place until Thursday. More

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      Kamala Harris to urge voters to ‘turn the page’ on era of Trump

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      With the presidential race deadlocked a week before election day, Kamala Harris will call on voters to “turn the page” on the Trump era, in remarks delivered from a park near the White House where the former president spoke before a mob of his supporters stormed the US Capitol in a last effort to overturn his 2020 loss.The Harris campaign has described the remarks as a major address that will underline the vice-president’s closing message, in a location she hopes will remind voters precisely why the electorate denied Trump a second term four years ago. She is expected to cast Trump as a divisive figure who will spend his term consumed by vengeance, leveraging the power of the presidency against his political enemies rather than in service of the American people.“Tomorrow, I will speak to Americans about the choice we face in this election—and all that is at stake for the future of this country that we love,” she wrote on X.Although the vice-president frames the stakes of the 2024 election as nothing less than the preservation of American democracy, her speech is anticipated to strike an optimistic and hopeful tone, standing in stark contrast to the dark, racist themes that animated Trump’s grievance-fueled rally at Madison Square Garden.In New York on Sunday, Trump repeated there that the gravest threat facing the US was the “enemy within”. In recent days, Harris has amplified warnings of her opponent’s lurch toward authoritarianism and open xenophobia. Her campaign is running ads highlighting John Kelly, a marine general and Trump’s former chief of staff, saying that the former president met the definition of a fascist. Harris has said she agrees.“Just imagine the Oval Office in three months,” Harris said, previewing her message at a rally in Kalamazoo, Michigan, on Saturday. “It is either Donald Trump in there stewing over his enemies’ list, or me, working for you, checking off my to-do list.”

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      In her remarks, Harris will attempt to balance the existential and the economic – focusing on the threat Trump poses to American institutions while weaving in the Democrat’s plans to bring down costs and build up the middle class. She is expected to cast Trump as a tool of the billionaire class who would eliminate what is left of abortion access and stand in the way of bipartisan compromise when it does not suit him politically.Polls consistently show the economy and the cost of living are the issues most important to voters this election. Protecting democracy tends to be a higher priority for Democrats and voters planning to support Harris.In the final stretch of the campaign, Harris has emphasized the breadth of her coalition, especially her endorsements from a slew of former Trump administration officials and conservative Republicans such as Liz Cheney and her father, the former vice-president, Dick Cheney.Trump has sought to rewrite the history of 6 January, the culmination of his attempt to cling to power that resulted in the first occupation of the US Capitol since British forces set it on fire during the war of 1812. Trump recently declared the attack a “day of love” and said he would pardon the 6 January rioters – whom he has called “patriots” and “hostages” – if he is elected president.Hundreds of supporters have been convicted and imprisoned for their conduct at the Capitol, while federal prosecutors have accused Trump of coordinating an effort to overturn his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden. Trump maintains that he played no role in stoking the violence that unfolded, and still claims baselessly that the 2020 election was stolen from him.Harris’s campaign has sought to lay out the monumental stakes of the election while also harnessing the joy that powered the vice-president’s unexpected ascent to the top of the Democratic ticket.In an abbreviated 100-day campaign that Harris inherited from Biden after he stepped aside in July, the Democratic nominee has unified her party, raised more than a billion dollars, blanketed the airwaves and blitzed the battleground states. And yet the race remains a dead heat nationally and in the seven swing states that will determine who serves as the 47th president of the United States.After her speech, Harris will return to the campaign trail, where she will keep a frenetic pace until election day. More

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      Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes: ‘We want to make America hate again’

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      The founder of the Proud Boys, the far-right group that played a major role in the January 6 riot at the US Capitol and was memorably instructed by Donald Trump to “stand back and stand by”, has told the makers of a Trump documentary: “We want to make America hate again.”Gavin McInnes, the UK-born British Canadian citizen who co-founded Vice magazine and was influential in the New York hipster scene of the early 2000s before becoming a far-right militia figure, also claimed to the BBC that his group wasn’t responsible for what happened that day.“It was you,” he told the makers of the documentary, which has aired on the BBC’s Panorama strand. “If anyone should apologise … it should be the corrupt leftwing media, and I’ll accept your apology now if you want to do it.”The program – Trump: A Second Chance? – talks to ardent Trump supporters about their enduring support for the New York property developer and reality TV show figure who faced two impeachment inquiries during four years in office and has been indicted in four separate criminal cases since, including being found guilty of 34 felony counts.Polls suggest an exceptionally tight US presidential race, with the final few days of campaigning before next week’s vote characterized by Democrats’ claims that a second Trump term would plunge the US into a period of neo-fascism.At a packed Trump rally in New York’s Madison Square Garden on Sunday, the speakers rotated between patriotism and grievance, including a podcaster who called the unincorporated US territory of Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage”, made lewd comments about Latinos, depicted Jews as cheap and Palestinians as rock-throwers.McInnes, designated a “terrorist entity” by the Canadian government and described by Vanity Fair as “one of our era’s most troubling extremists”, was not at the January 6 protest. But about 50 members of the Proud Boy group faced charges for their part in the insurrection, which was staged to prevent the certification of the 2020 election.The Proud Boys chair, Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, 39, of Miami, Florida, was sentenced to 22 years in prison last year after being convicted of seditious conspiracy and other charges.The US attorney general, Merrick Garland, said the sentences that the Proud Boy members received reflected “the danger their crimes pose to our democracy” and Tarrio had “learned that the consequence of conspiring to oppose by force the lawful transfer of presidential power”.McInnes resigned from the Proud Boys in November 2018 after 10 members were charged in connection with a brawl on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. But in 2022, he was pictured in a black hoodie embroidered with the gold Proud Boy logo.McInnes said on his Get Off My Lawn podcast that he was wearing the Proud Boy regalia “as an homage to our brothers behind bars”.Last month, McInnes was scheduled to speak at dinner hosted by Uncensored America, a student organization at the University of South Carolina. The invitation misspelled Kamala Harris’s first name in a sexually suggestive way, the news station WIS 10 reported.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMcInnes’s planned appearance at the event sparked controversy over free speech on campus. A petition protesting against the event argued it contributed to “overall negative environment that the university continues to allow”.In response, McInnes said he would not be the one bringing hate to the event, and repeated the sentiment he offered to Panorama.“If you’re looking for violence you’re looking on the wrong side of the political spectrum. The left are the violent ones. They burnt down this country for two years straight. We had one riot on January 6,” he said.He said the dinner, a “roast” in colloquial terms, was set to “make fun of what could be the worst president in American history”, referring to Harris’s candidacy.The impending election is predicted in polls to fall along gender lines. Polls show men are more likely to say efforts to promote gender equality have gone too far and plan to vote for Trump. Women are more apt to say those efforts haven’t gone far enough, and plan to vote for Harris. The margins for each are split roughly 60-40. More

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      The US is ‘absolutely’ ready for a female president, Harris says in NBC interview

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      Kamala Harris said that she has no doubt that the US was ready for a female president, insisting that Americans care more about what candidates can do to help them, rather than presidential contenders’ gender.The vice-president’s statement came during an interview with NBC News’s Hallie Jackson, who asked whether she thought the country was ready for a woman, and a woman of color, to be in the Oval Office. “Absolutely,” Harris said. “Absolutely.”“In terms of every walk of life of our country,” Harris said, “part of what is important in this election is really, not really turning the page – closing a chapter, on an era that suggests that Americans are divided.“The vast majority of us have so much more in common than what separates us and what the American people want in their president is a president for all Americans,” she said.Harris was asked why she hasn’t leaned into the historic nature of her candidacy – that she is a woman of color running for the presidency.“I’m clearly a woman. I don’t need to point that out to anyone,” Harris said with a laugh. “The point that most people really care about is: can you do the job and, do you have a plan to actually focus on them?”“That is why I spend the majority of my time listening and then addressing the concerns, the challenges, the dreams, the ambitions and the aspirations of the American people,” Harris continued, saying that Americans deserve a president focused on them, “as opposed to a Donald Trump, who is constantly focused on himself”.Harris also said she was aware that Trump might potentially try thwarting the presidential election results, noting that her team “will deal with election night and the days after as they come”.Harris said that she is focused on campaigning over the next two weeks while noting “we have the resources and the expertise and the focus” on any potential threats to election results. Jackson noted that Trump declared victory before all the votes were tallied in 2020.Trump, who has refused to accept the 2020 election results and claimed the race was stolen, has been stoking fears with unsubstantiated claims about voter fraud in the 2024 cycle. “This is a person, Donald Trump, who tried to undo the free and fair election, who still denies the will of the people who incited a violent mob to attack the United States Capitol, and 140 law enforcement officers were attacked, some who were killed. This is a serious matter,” Harris told Jackson.Trump supporters on 6 January 2021 stormed the US Capitol in an effort to prevent certification of Joe Biden’s victory. That day, four people died at the Capitol and a police officer working during the insurrection died several days later; four other police officers posted at the building on 6 January 2021 committed suicide, according to CBS News.“The American people are, at this point, two weeks out, being presented with a very, very serious decision about what will be the future of our country,” Harris also said.Jackson also asked about voters’ concerns about the economy, noting that many blame the US president for rising prices.Harris said her policies “will not be a continuation of the Biden administration” and with inflation, “I bring my own experiences, my own ideas to it.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionJackson noted that if Harris won, her victory might coincide with Republican control of Congress, which would thwart protecting abortion at the national level.“What concessions would be on the table?” Jackson asked.“I don’t think we should be making concessions when we’re talking about a fundamental freedom to make decisions about your own body,” Harris said.Harris said she would not “get into those hypotheticals” when asked if a pardon might be on the table for Trump.“I’m focused on the next 14 days.”Harris was pressed on the pardon topic, asked if she thought it could help the country move forward together and be less divisive.“Let me tell you what’s going to help us move on: I get elected to president of the United States.” More

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      Pelosi says she still hasn’t spoken to Biden since pressuring him to drop out

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      Nancy Pelosi has admitted she still has not spoken to Joe Biden since her crucial intervention in July led to his decision to drop out of the presidential race, following a disastrously frail performance in a debate against Donald Trump.The former speaker of the House told the Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland on the Politics Weekly America podcast that although she continues to regard the US president as a great friend and longtime political ally, she felt a cold political calculation was necessary after the evidence of Biden’s failing mental acuity.“Not since then, no,” she said when asked if she had spoken to Biden since. “But I’m prayerful about it.”She added: “I have the greatest respect for him. I think he’s one of the great consequential presidents of our country,” she said. “I think his legacy had to be protected. I didn’t see that happening in the course that it was on, the election was on. My call was just to: ‘Let’s get on a better course.’ He will make the decision as to what that is. And he made that decision. But I think he has some unease because we’ve been friends for decades.”“Elections are decisions,” she added. “You decide to win. I decided a while ago that Donald Trump will never set foot in the White House again as president of the United States or in any other capacity … So when you make a decision, you have to make every decision in favor of winning … and the most important decision of all is the candidate.”Pelosi admitted that some in Biden’s campaign may not have forgiven her for her role in limiting Biden’s legacy to one term, but that a Trump victory would have equally reflected terribly on his legacy.Known as a uniquely influential House speaker, particularly during a Biden administration that passed major legislation on infrastructure and climate, Pelosi was widely seen as a senior Democrat willing to indicate that Biden should reconsider his bid for re-election when the polls showed Trump beating him badly.After Biden did step aside, Pelosi then encouraged the party to endorse Kamala Harris – and scored yet another victory when the vice-president named former congressman Tim Walz as her running mate.Pelosi has also been a longtime thorn in Trump’s side, frequently antagonizing him into posting long rants about her on social media, and publicly ripping up his State of the Union speech in 2020 on the podium of the House of Representatives, calling it a “manifesto of mistruths”.Explaining her unique ability to hold together a fragile coalition of centrist and progressive Democrats, Pelosi explained that she thought “leadership is about respect, about consensus building”, while deriding Trump’s ability to do anything of the sort, particularly with his hateful rhetoric towards immigrants, who he has described as “poisoning the blood of this country”.“I hardly ever say his name,” she says of Trump, instead describing him as “what’s-his-name”.“I think [Trump is] a grotesque word … You just don’t like the word passing your lips. I just don’t. I’m afraid, you know, when I grew up Catholic, as I am now, if you said a bad word, you could burn in hell if you didn’t have a chance to confess. So I don’t want to take any chances.“It’s up there with like, swearing.”In her new book, The Art of Power, Pelosi describes being the first woman speaker of the House, and her disappointment at the failure of Hillary Clinton’s campaign for president in 2016, but says she remains optimistic that Harris will make history where Clinton could not.“I always thought America was more ready for a woman president than a woman speaker of the House,” she told the Guardian. “The Congress of the United States is not a glass ceiling there. It’s a marble ceiling. And it was very hard to rise up there. But the public, I think, is better disposed … In Congress, they would say to me: “Understand this, there’s been a pecking order here for a long time of men who’ve been waiting for openings to happen and take their turn.” And I said: “That’s interesting. We’ve been waiting over 200 years.”She praised Harris, however, for not running as “the first woman or first woman of color. She’s running on her strength, her knowledge of policy and strategy and presentation and the rest. And I think that’s a different race than Hillary Clinton ran.”Noting that more women support Harris and more men support Trump by considerable margins, Pelosi said: “The reason that there’s such a gender gulf is because there’s such a gulf in terms of policies that affect women.”“A woman’s right to choose is a personal issue. It’s an economic issue, but it’s also a democracy issue. This is an issue about freedom, freedom to manage your own life.”“What is a democracy? It is free and fair elections. It’s a peaceful transfer of power. It’s independent judiciary and is the personal freedoms in the bill of rights of our constitution. And he is assaulting those by particularly harshly on women, harshly on women. Did you see the other day? He said Kamala Harris was retarded. This is a person running for president of the United States.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Has he no respect for the office? Has he no decency about how to communicate?”Pelosi spoke about her fear of political violence, noting that misinformation spread by Trump had caused an atmosphere in which US disaster response agency Fema had to withdraw rescue workers from parts of North Caroline hit by a hurricane after reports of trucks of militia saying they were hunting Fema workers.“This is springing from the top,” she said of Trump’s role in fomenting political violence. “He’s taking pride in doing it. Don’t take it from me, take it from him.”After an armed assailant attacked her husband, Paul Pelosi, in their home after breaking in with an intent to harm her, many Republicans made jokes – including Trump’s son Donald Jr, who suggested he would dress as Paul Pelosi for Halloween.“When it happened, what was so sad for my children and grandchildren was that [some Republicans] thought it was a riot – they were laughing and making jokes … his son, all those people making jokes about it, right away. We didn’t even know if he was going to live or die.”Asked if she agreed with the recent remarks of the former chairperson of the joint chiefs, Mark Milley, a Trump appointee, that Trump was “a fascist to the core”, Pelosi said:“Yes, I do. I do. And I know it’s interesting because Kamala Harris says, I’ve prosecuted people like Trump. I know men like that. No, I know him,” she said, stressing Trump.“There’s one picture of me leaving the Roosevelt Room at the cabinet meeting. And I’m pointing to him and I’m saying, I’m leaving this meeting because with you, Mr President, all roads lead to Putin. [Milley’s] comment, ‘fascist to the core’, speaks to the actions that he has taken. Trivialize the press, fake news – that is a tactic of fascist governments.”She added that a possible repeat of January 6 was a key reason for the importance of Democrats at least winning the House in 2024. “Hakeem Jeffries must have the gavel, which means that we have the majority of the votes to accept the results of the electoral college for the peaceful transfer of power.”‘“Nobody could have ever seen an insurrection incited by the president of the United States. But an outsider, as a loser in this election, once again, he might try that.”Later in the interview, Pelosi said Trump’s name, then caught herself. “I said his name. Oh my gosh. I hope I don’t burn in hell.” More

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      Trump January 6 case: five key points in the latest filing against former president

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      In a court filing unsealed on Wednesday, federal prosecutors argue that Donald Trump is not immune from prosecution over the January 6 riots because he acted in a private capacity, and took advice from private advisers.The indictment seeks to make this case – that Trump acted in his private capacity, rather than his official one – because of a US supreme court ruling in July that former presidents have broad immunity from criminal prosecution for official actions taken as president.It also reveals further details about Trump’s alleged mood and actions (or lack of action) on the day, building on evidence that was provided in earlier briefs.In response to the new filing, the Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung called the brief “falsehood-ridden” and “unconstitutional”. On Truth Social, Trump, writing in all-caps, called it “complete and total election interference.”Here are some key points made in the filing:‘Fundamentally a private’ schemeThe new court filing, in which Trump is referred to as “the defendant”, alleges that Trump’s plan that day was “fundamentally a private one”, and therefore not related to his duties as president but instead as a candidate for office.It reads: “The defendant asserts that he is immune from prosecution for his criminal scheme to overturn the 2020 presidential election because, he claims, it entailed official conduct. Not so. Although the defendant was the incumbent president during the charged conspiracies, his scheme was fundamentally a private one.“He extensively used private actors and his campaign infrastructure to attempt to overturn the election results and operated in a private capacity as a candidate for office.”The filing looks back to election day for Trump’s use of private advisers: “As election day turned to November 4, the contest was too close to project a winner, and in discussions about what the defendant should say publicly regarding the election, senior advisors suggested that the defendant should show restraint while counting continued. Two private advisors, however, advocated a different course: [name redacted] and [name redacted] suggested that the defendant just declare victory. And at about 2.20am, the defendant gave televised remarks to a crowd of his campaign supporters in which he falsely claimed, without evidence or specificity, that there had been fraud in the election and that he had won.”On 4 January, the filing says, a White House counsel was excluded from a meeting during which Trump sought to pressure Pence to help overturn the election result. Only a private attorney was present, the filing says: “It is hard to imagine stronger evidence” than this that Trump’s conduct was private.A presidential candidate alone in a dining room with Twitter and Fox NewsTrump’s day on 6 January started at 1am, with a tweet pressuring Pence to obstruct the certification of the results. Seven hours later, at 8.17am, Trump tweeted about it again. Shortly before his speech at the Ellipse, Trump called Pence and again pressured him to “induce him to act unlawfully in the upcoming session”, where Pence would be certifying the election results. Pence refused.At this point, according to the filing, Trump “decided to re-insert into his campaign speech at the Ellipse remarks targeting Pence for his refusal to misuse his role in the certification”.Trump gave his speech, and at 1pm, the certification process began at the Capitol.Trump, meanwhile, “settled in the dining room off of the Oval Office. He spent the afternoon there reviewing Twitter on his phone, while the dining room television played Fox News’ contemporaneous coverage of events at the Capitol.”It was from the dining room that Trump watched a crowd of his supporters march towards the Capitol. He had been there less than an hour when, at “approximately 2.24pm, Fox News reported that a police officer may have been injured and that ‘protestors … have made their way inside the Capitol.’“At 2.24pm, Trump tweeted, writing, ‘Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our country and our constitution, giving states a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!’”The filing reads: “The content of the 2.24pm tweet was not a message sent to address a matter of public concern and ease unrest; it was the message of an angry candidate upon the realization that he would lose power.”A minute later, the Secret Service evacuated Pence to a secure location.Trump, when told Pence had been evacuated, said: ‘So what?’The filing states that Trump said: “So what?” after being told that Pence had subsequently been taken to a secure location.The indictment notes that the government does not intend to use the exchange at trial. It argues, however, that the tweet itself was “unofficial”.The filing states that Pence “tried to encourage” Trump “as a friend” when news networks forecast a Biden win on 7 November. This again goes to the assertion that Trump acted in a private capacity.Pence allegedly told Trump: “You took a dying political party and gave it a new lease on life”.‘Fight like hell’ regardless The filing states Trump was overheard telling family members, amid his efforts to overturn the election results: “It doesn’t matter if you lose … you have to fight like hell.”“At one point long after the defendant had begun spreading false fraud claims, [name redacted] a White House staffer traveling with the defendant, overheard him tell family members: ‘It doesn’t matter if you won or lost the election. You still have to fight like hell.’”Trump knew his claims were falseThe filing states: “The evidence demonstrates that the defendant knew his fraud claims were false because he continued to make those claims even after his close advisors – acting not in an official capacity but in a private or campaign-related capacity – told them they were not true.”Among these advisers was a person referred to as P9, a White House staffer who had been one of several attorneys who represented Trump in his first impeachment trial in the Senate in 2019 and 2020, according to the filing.In one private conversation, “when P9 reiterated to the defendant that [name redacted] would be unable to prove his false fraud allegations in court, the defendant responded, ‘The details don’t matter.’”P9 at one point after the election told Trump “that the campaign was looking into his fraud claims, and had even hired external experts to do so, but could find no support for them.
      He told the defendant that if the Campaign took these claims to court, they would get slaughtered, because the claims are all ‘bullshit’.” More

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      Pelosi criticises McConnell for failing to hold Trump accountable over January 6

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      Nancy Pelosi has criticised Mitch McConnell, the outgoing Senate minority leader, for failing to hold Donald Trump accountable for inspiring the violent January 6 mob to attack the US Capitol in a bid to overturn the 2020 presidential election.Pelosi, the former speaker of the House of Representatives whose office was vandalised in the attack, also told Semafor she felt sorry for McConnell, who has endorsed Trump’s current campaign for the White House despite being repeatedly insulted by the former president.McConnell “knew what had happened on January 6”, Pelosi said.“He said the president was responsible and then did not hold him accountable.”She added that she and other congressional leaders unsuccessfully begged Trump to send in the national guard while the mob besieged the building.In the days after the riot – which resulted in five deaths at the time, with four police officers killing themselves in the following seven months – McConnell gave a speech on the Senate floor in which he said Trump was “practically and morally responsible for provoking the events”.However, he voted to acquit Trump in a Senate trial after the House had impeached Trump for a second time. A Senate conviction, which needs a two-thirds majority to pass, could have barred Trump from holding elective office again. In the event, 57 senators – including just seven Republicans – voted to convict, 10 short of the numbers needed.McConnell’s vote contradicted his belief that Trump was guilty, according to the book This Will Not Pass, by the New York Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns. “If this isn’t impeachable, I don’t know what is,” the book quotes McConnell as saying, adding that he also said holding Trump to account should be left to the Democrats. “The Democrats are going to take care of the son of a bitch for us,” the book says he told two associates.Explaining the contradiction, McConnell apparently told a friend: “I didn’t get to be leader by voting with five people in the conference.”In 2022, McConnell criticised the Republican National Committee for censuring Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney, GOP House members at the time, over their role in a Democrat-led congressional investigation into January 6. Kinzinger and Cheney have since left Congress and are among several prominent Republicans who have endorsed Kamala Harris’s presidential candidacy.“It was a violent insurrection for the purpose of trying to prevent the peaceful transfer of power after a legitimately certified election from one administration to the next,” McConnell said in response to the censure.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAsked if she had any advice for McConnell – who will step down as the GOP leader in November but will remain in the Senate – Pelosi said: “I feel sorry for Mitch McConnell.”Pelosi has not always been so scathing. She issued a generous tribute when McConnell announced his decision to step down from the Senate leadership, saying: “Mitch McConnell is to be recognized for his patriotism and decades of service to Kentucky, to the Congress and to our country. He and I have worked together since we were appropriators … While we often disagreed, we shared our responsibility to the American people to find common ground whenever possible.”Trump has frequently targeted McConnell for abuse and has aimed racial slurs at his wife, Elaine Chao, who served as transportation secretary in his administration.The former president has variously described McConnell as a “broken-down crow”, a “stone-cold loser” and a “dumb son of a bitch”. More