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      Prosecutors are charging Trump using laws made to fight the KKK. Here’s why | Sidney Blumenthal

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      On Tuesday, in response to the federal case brought by special prosecutor Jack Smith over Trump’s alleged role in the January 6 insurrection, Trump threatened a new round of violence – or “bedlam” – if he loses the election. In early February, the US supreme court will also rule on the Colorado supreme court’s decision to disqualify Trump from the state’s ballot for his part in the insurrection.The two cases might appear to be disconnected, but they are inseparable in law and history. They are united by Congress’s Reconstruction-era action to enforce the 14th amendment’s extension of constitutional rights against the former Confederates’ campaign of racial and political violence – the Ku Klux Klan Acts of 1870 and 1871.Smith has indicted Trump under the KKK Act, which incorporates the 14th amendment, section 3, of the constitution. The Colorado court’s disqualification comes under the third section of the amendment, which disqualifies from office anyone who has engaged in insurrection against the United States. There are clear and compelling reasons why Trump has been indicted under the KKK Act and disqualified under the 14th amendment, section 3. Those reasons are stated in the indictments and court rulings.Trump has been charged on the same grounds that Klansmen were prosecuted, not only during Reconstruction but also during the civil rights era of the 1960s, and he has been removed from the ballot on the same basis as Confederate traitors were removed from elective office. Complacent commentators have dismissed the charges that Trump has brought on himself, hoping to calm the waters by vainly demonstrating their fair-mindedness. But the law is not somnambulant forever and the historical reality underlying it cannot be erased as it was in the aftermath of the dismantling of Reconstruction in a ‘lost cause’ of false conciliation.Through the civil war amendments, the newly freed slaves began to establish themselves as citizens with equal protection under the law and the right to vote. By 1867, in 10 of the 11 former Confederate states, 80% of eligible black men had registered to vote. Blacks and whites enacted new state constitutions and elected Republicans to state and federal offices, including many African Americans. Almost at once they were subjected to a reign of terror.The Ku Klux Klan, established in 1866 and led by former Confederate officers, mobilized to deprive black Americans of their rights, and spread across the south to reimpose white supremacy. Reconstruction was subverted by a violent counterrevolution proclaimed as “Redemption”. Nearly 10% of the black delegates to those constitutional conventions were murdered.In 1867, the Congress passed the Military Reconstruction Act, dividing the south into five districts to be governed under the authority of Union generals. No former Confederate state could be considered legitimate or receive congressional representation until it held a democratically elected convention that adopted the 14th amendment. The Military Reconstruction Act excluded from the conventions anyone who fell under section 3 of the 14th amendment, which barred those who had taken an oath to the constitution but violated it by engaging in insurrection from holding many offices in the postwar United States.When states applied for readmittance the Congress authorized each one with legislation stating they had qualified under section 3. Four southern states – South Carolina, Texas, Arkansas and Alabama – incorporated section 3 into their new constitutions.The state of Georgia was readmitted on this basis in 1869. But as President Ulysses Grant stated in his first annual message to the Congress later that year, white Democrats in the Georgia legislature “in violation of the constitution which they had just ratified (as since decided by the supreme court of the State) … unseated the colored members of the legislature and admitted to seats some members who are disqualified by the third clause of the fourteenth amendment to the Constitution – an article which they themselves had contributed to ratify”.As a result, the Congress deprived Georgia of its federal representation until members of the legislature swore an oath of eligibility or had been cleared from the disability by Congress, as stipulated by the 14th amendment. From the start, Congress’s actions made it clear that when section 3 was ratified, it came into force carrying real consequences for violations.Behind these removals and oaths was a surging Klan that staged hundreds of violent nighttime raids, lynchings, rapes, church and school burnings, and whippings of black citizens, as well as assassinations of white Republicans. The Klan is estimated to have killed anywhere from 2,500 to 20,000 people during Reconstruction.The grand dragon of the KKK, the former Confederate general John B Gordon, testified before a congressional committee to disclaim any knowledge of the Klan: “I do not know anything about any Ku Klux organization … We never called it Ku Klux, and therefore I do not know anything about Ku Klux.” By contrast, the Klan’s grand wizard, the former Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest, who ordered the massacre of black troops after their surrender during the war, explained that blacks “were becoming very insolent”, and that “this [Ku Klux Klan] was got up to protect the weak, with no political intention at all”.The KKK Act was Congress’s attempt to stamp out the Klan’s domestic terrorism. It criminalized using “force, bribery, threats, intimidation, or other unlawful means” to interfere with any citizen’s right and ability to vote.Striking at former Confederates who were commanding the Klan, the act then prescribed imprisonment of “any person who shall hereafter knowingly accept or hold any office under the United States, or any State to which he is ineligible under the third section of the fourteenth article of amendment of the Constitution of the United States … ” Under the KKK Act, Grant’s attorney general, Amos Akerman, successfully prosecuted more than 1,100 cases against members of the Klan, effectively breaking it up.In the 1872 campaign, a large faction of the national Republican party opposed the KKK Act and advocated reconciliation with the south. They called themselves the Liberal Republican party and aligned with the Democrats against Grant’s re-election. The Amnesty Act of 1872, lifting the disability of section 3, was a sop to outflank the Liberal Republicans and marked the beginning of the end of Reconstruction. Still, Grant was re-elected, winning eight southern states with a black-white coalition.Post-Klan terrorist organizations – the White League in Louisiana, the White Liners in Mississippi and the Red Shirts in South Carolina – sprang up across the South to use paramilitary force to seize state governments. The Republicans lost their House majority in 1874; Democrats cut the justice department’s budget for enforcing the KKK Act. The 1876 presidential election was decided in a literal smoked-filled room through a deal in which the Republican candidate, Rutherford B Hayes, would become president in exchange for the withdrawal of federal troops from the south.The final contemporaneous effort at an enforcement act, the Federal Elections Act of 1890, drafted by Congressman Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts, would have provided US marshals to secure elections in the states, but was defeated in the Congress. In 1896, the supreme court ruling in Plessy v Ferguson upholding segregation was the capstone on a series of court decisions eviscerating Reconstruction laws. Not until Plessy was overturned in Brown v Board of Education in 1954 with the rise of the civil rights movement did the civil war amendments and their enforcement stir to life again.In 1964, three civil rights workers were murdered by members of the Ku Klux Klan and the local police in Neshoba county, Mississippi. The justice department brought the case against 18 killers under the federal conspiracy statutes of the KKK Act before a grand jury presided over by federal judge William Harold Cox, a diehard segregationist. Cox dismissed the charges brought under section 241 of the KKK Act – a “conspiracy against rights”, extending federal criminal jurisdiction over private actors interfering with other citizens’ “free exercise of enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States”.The circuit court upheld Cox on the ground that section 241 does not include rights protected by the 14th amendment. The justice department appealed to the US supreme court, represented in the case by the solicitor general, Thurgood Marshall, who had argued the Brown case for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.On 28 March 1966, in United States v Price, et al, known as the Mississippi Burning case, the court ruled unanimously that section 241 was applicable. The decision, written by Justice Abe Fortas, reviewed the history of the civil war amendments. “We think that history leaves no doubt that, if we are to give Section 241 the scope that its origins dictate, we must accord it a sweep as broad as its language,” he wrote. “In this context, it is hardly conceivable that Congress intended Section 241 to apply only to a narrow and relatively unimportant category of rights. We cannot doubt that the purpose and effect of Section 241 was to reach assaults upon rights under the entire Constitution, including the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, and not merely under part of it.”It is precisely under section 241 of the Ku Klux Klan Act, upheld by the supreme court in an opinion that establishes the broadest possible application, that the justice department indicted Donald Trump on 1 August 2023. The indictment was not restricted to Trump’s activities during the January 6 US Capitol riot, but to the period of his conspiracy to stage a coup, a span that began after the election to the day he left office.To wit, count 4: “From on or about November 14, 2020, through on or about January 20, 2021, in the District of Columbia and elsewhere, the Defendant, DONALD J. TRUMP, did knowingly combine, conspire, confederate, and agree with co-conspirators, known and unknown to the Grand Jury, to injure, oppress, threaten, and intimidate one or more persons in the free exercise and enjoyment of a right and privilege secured to them by the Constitution and laws of the United States – that is, the right to vote, and to have one’s vote counted.”The special prosecutor then made clear that the law that Trump had violated was the pertinent section of the KKK Act: “In violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 241.”Trump’s indictment under the KKK Act is the core of the charges against him. To convict him, there would be no need to determine definitively whether his incitement at the White House rally on 6 January 2021 makes him responsible for the assault on the Capitol, whether he obstructed a federal procedure or his state of mind during the insurrection. He would be held accountable for his centrality in the entire broad conspiracy under section 241 – under an expansive interpretation already decided by the supreme court. Moreover, section 241 does not require an overt act in furtherance of “conspiracy against rights”, though it does require intent. It also does not require an act of violence.The 14th amendment, section 3, provides a disqualification for insurrectionists. It was a self-executing document, just as was the 13th amendment abolishing slavery. The Congress enacted a series of enforcement acts – the first and second Reconstruction Acts, and the first Civil Rights Act. As President Grant and the Congress stated in the crisis over Georgia in 1869, the only means to remove the “disability” of disqualification was by an act of the Congress as stipulated in section 3 – an amnesty. The very existence of a remedy providing for the removal of the disqualification implies that the law is self-executing, as Grant and the Congress understood.The Ku Klux Klan Act, which specifically included section 3, was a further instrument to deal with a new insurrection. During Reconstruction that section was used within the KKK Act to suppress precisely that insurrection. Grant and the Congress knew that the 14th amendment was not limited to the insurrection that forced the civil war, but also was a governing constitutional document applicable to future insurrections.None of Trump’s defenders have suggested pursuing the proper remedy that is given within section 3, namely a congressional amnesty for him. To do so would be an admission that he was guilty of engaging in an insurrection against the United States. There would be no need for an amnesty unless there was a crime. An amnesty would be analogous to a pardon. But, with flagrant irresponsibility, virtually all of the Republican presidential primary candidates have offered that they would pardon Trump. They signaled that he has committed crimes and yet must be unaccountable. Still, despite their own logic, or illogic, they avoid discussing an amnesty.A number of commentators opine that Trump must not be held to account because it would arouse his enraged followers and violate the spirit of direct democracy (never mind the spirit of the law). Others assert that liberals who speak about the rule of law are perverse elitists who, by supporting Trump’s disqualification, reveal their true contempt for the people’s will. They urge relief for Trump as a naive gesture of good faith, as if even-handedness will encourage tolerance and pluralism. In short, the mechanism for the preservation of democracy must be withheld in the name of democracy.Meanwhile, at the federal appeals court hearing on his claim that he is immune from all prosecution because he is exempt from the 14th amendment, Trump threatened that if his trials proceed, if he fails to be granted “absolute immunity”, and if he loses the election, there would be “bedlam” – yet another incitement to insurrection.Taking his 14th amendment argument to its logical conclusion, his attorney, D John Sauer, argued before the three-judge panel that Trump could order the military to assassinate an opponent and be protected from indictment unless he was first impeached and convicted by the Senate. His statement attempted to elevate to a constitutional immunity Trump’s notorious remark in 2015: “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK?” Trump’s attorney seemed unaware or indifferent that by the same logic President Biden could with impunity order the assassination of Trump.In 1927, Trump’s father, Fred Trump, 21 years old, was arrested, according to police records, at a Ku Klux Klan rally in Queens, New York, where 1,000 robed and hooded Klansmen marched through the streets. “This never happened,” Donald Trump said when the story reappeared in 2022. “Never took place. He was never arrested, never convicted, never even charged. It’s a completely false, ridiculous story. He was never there! It never happened. Never took place.”The Trump trials have put the civil war and Reconstruction amendments on trial again – “the results of the war”, as Grant called it. Trump’s indictment under section 241 of the KKK Act tests the federal government’s ability and willingness to secure basic voting rights and defend the constitution. Or else there will be “bedlam”.
      Sidney Blumenthal is a Guardian US columnist. He is former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth More

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      Trump’s novel take on January 6: calling convicted rioters ‘hostages’

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      Supporters of Donald Trump have long been forced to suspend their belief in reality: expected to believe, against all evidence to the contrary, that the one-term president won the 2020 election, hasn’t committed any crimes and is a successful businessman.But as another tight presidential election looms, the recent efforts by Donald Trump to reimagine the people imprisoned for their role in the January 6 insurrection as “hostages”, and to downplay the horrors of that day as a peaceful protest, could have serious ramifications for democracy and his own party, onlookers have warned.Trump, who has been charged with four federal crimes in relation to the riot at the Capitol in 2021, has repeatedly sought to whitewash the event. But in recent days – and backed up by Elise Stefanik, one of the most powerful Republicans in the House – he has used the term “hostages” prominently as a description of the hundreds of people prosecuted and jailed for their actions attacking the US Capitol.The terminology worries some experts who see it as explicitly undermining the US legal system by saying its treatment of Trump supporters is illegitimate – something he has repeatedly tried to do while he faces a multitude of prosecutions himself.At rallies and television interviews, Trump and Stefanik have also pitched a novel history of January 6 that requires anyone aware of the events that day to ignore or forget what they witnessed and read.Rather than engaging in a storming of the seat of US democracy that left 140 police officers injured and four people dead, people that day acted “peacefully and patriotically”, Trump said in a recent speech in Iowa.Of the hundreds of people imprisoned for their role in the attack, for crimes including assaulting police officers, illegally entering federal grounds with a weapon and seditious conspiracy, Trump had a similarly positive spin.“Some people call them prisoners. I call them hostages,” Trump said.“Release the J6 hostages, Joe [Biden]. Release them, Joe. You can do it real easy, Joe.”In Trump’s fresh telling, the tens of thousands of people from across the US who gathered on January 6 quietly voiced their concerns about the electoral process, apparently doing nothing more than engaging in a sort of elf-like merriment.“A beautiful day,” Trump has called it, which featured “great, great patriots”.Some have already bought into the idea.“I have concerns about the treatment of January 6 hostages,” Stefanik, who as chair of the House Republican conference is one of the most powerful GOP members in Congress, said in an interview over the weekend.“I believe that we’re seeing the weaponization of the federal government against not just President Trump, but we’re seeing it against conservatives.”The idea that the Trump supporters charged in connection with the insurrection have been mistreated is false. An analysis by the Intercept found that, actually, federal judges “have overwhelmingly issued sentences far more lenient than justice department prosecutors sought”.And apart from being untrue, this sanitizing of political violence is particularly troubling ahead of a presidential election between Trump and Joe Biden that could be just as tight as the 2020 race.“People convicted of violently assaulting police officers and conspiring to overthrow the government are not ‘hostages’,” Jamie Raskin, a Democratic congressman who served on the January 6 select committee, wrote on X.“Stefanik must apologize to the families of 130 people being held hostage by Hamas right now. Her pandering to Trump is dangerous.”It’s not just Democrats who are concerned.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“It’s outrageous and it’s disgusting,” said Liz Cheney, the former Republican congresswoman who has been a vocal critic of Trump, told Face the Nation.“It’s a disgrace, and you cannot say you are a member of a party that believes in the rule of law, you cannot say you are pro-law enforcement if you then go out and you say these people are ‘hostages’, it’s disgraceful.”Some serving Republicans, including those in vulnerable swing districts, also distanced themselves from the hostages concept this week, in a sign that the revisionism of January 6 could become a source of division.“Not my choice of words, but to each his own,” Jen Kiggans, a Republican congresswoman who defeated an incumbent Democrat in 2022, told the Washington Post. “It’s not what I describe them as, no.”“They’re criminal defendants, not hostages,” Brian Fitzpatrick, a Republican congressman whose Pennsylvania district voted for Biden over Trump in 2020.Don Bacon, a Republican whose district also chose Biden in 2020, told the New Republic: “I don’t defend people who hit cops, who vandalized our Capitol.”For Trump the claims of mistreatment appear to be a strand of his enduring complaint that the Biden administration has “weaponized” the justice department – mostly against himself.The treatment of January 6 convicts has generally taken second place behind Trump lashing out at the 91 charges he is facing, many relating to his attempts to subvert the results of the 2020 election.But even if Trump’s newfound concern for others proves to be merely an attempt to exonerate himself from blame, his supporters seem to genuinely believe his claims.In the fervid environment that is Truth Social, the social media platform Trump established in a huff after he was banned from Twitter, people have breathlessly echoed Trump’s claims about “hostages” being subjected to ill-treatment.The people convicted are variously referred to as “PRISONERS OF WAR!!!!”, victims of “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” and “political prisoners”.Trump’s base, it seems, are happy to continue to suspend disbelief. But the furore has illustrated an unwanted split in the Republican party in what will be a key year at the polls – and more broadly, the attempt to exculpate the people who stormed the Capitol has dark implications ahead of a stormy presidential election. More

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      Trump warns of ‘bedlam’ if criminal cases bar him from White House

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      There will be “bedlam” in the US if criminal cases deny Donald Trump a White House return, said the former president who incited the deadly January 6 attack on Congress but who is the clear frontrunner for the Republican nomination this year.“I think they feel this is the way they’re going to try and win, and that’s not the way it goes,” Trump told reporters, referring to Joe Biden and Democrats, after a court hearing in Washington DC on Tuesday.“It’ll be bedlam in the country. It’s a very bad thing. It’s a very bad precedent. As we said, it’s the opening of a Pandora’s box.”Trump claims he is a victim of political persecution.Prosecutors say he committed 91 criminal offenses, regarding federal election subversion (four charges); state election subversion (13, in Georgia); retention of classified information (40, federal) and hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels, an adult film star who claimed an affair (34, in New York).Trump also faces civil trials over his business affairs and a defamation case arising from a rape allegation a judge called “substantially true”.Arising from his incitement of the attack on Congress on 6 January 2021 – an attempt to overturn his defeat by Biden now linked to nine deaths and more than 1,200 arrests – Trump also faces attempts to remove him from the ballot under the 14th amendment to the US constitution, introduced after the civil war to stop insurrectionists running for office.Trump has appealed removal in Maine in that state. An appeal against his removal in Colorado will be argued at the US supreme court.On Tuesday, Trump chose to attend an appeals hearing in his federal election subversion case, listening as his lawyers argued he enjoys immunity for anything done while president.One judge asked if a president would be immune to prosecution if he ordered Seal Team 6, an elite special forces unit, “to assassinate a political rival”.For Trump, D John Sauer, a former Missouri solicitor general, said a president “would have to be impeached and convicted” before being prosecuted for any such action.Trump was impeached (for a second time) for inciting the Capitol attack. Republicans in the Senate ensured he was acquitted.Representing Jack Smith, the special counsel, James Pearce said Trump’s lawyers were proposing “an extraordinarily frightening future”.Speaking to reporters, Trump referred to speeches by Biden around the January 6 anniversary, saying of the charges against him: “When they talk about threat to democracy, that’s your real threat to democracy.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionClaiming he did “nothing wrong, absolutely nothing”, he nonetheless repeated his claim: “If it’s during the time [in office], you have absolute immunity.”A reporter asked: “You just used the word ‘bedlam’. Will you tell your supporters now, ‘No matter what, no violence’?”Trump walked away.Polling shows a criminal conviction may reduce Republican support for Trump. The trial in the federal election subversion case is due to begin on 4 March, in the middle of the GOP primary. As in other cases, Trump’s appeal is widely seen as an attempt to delay proceedings.His prediction of “bedlam” stoked widespread alarm.Maya Wiley, chief executive of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, alluded to Republican endorsements of Trump when she said his “warnings” were “heard by too many as calls to action. Every Republican should come forward and repeat these simple and unequivocal words: ‘Political violence is never acceptable … it has no place in the democracy. None.’ This isn’t a game.”Tim O’Brien of Bloomberg News, a longtime Trump-watcher, recapped remarks in court and added just one word: “Fascism”. More

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      Capitol rioter falsely accused of being double agent sentenced to probation

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      A man targeted by rightwing conspiracy theories about the US Capitol riot was sentenced on Tuesday to a year of probation for joining the January 6 attack by a mob of fellow Donald Trump supporters.Ray Epps, a former Arizona resident who was driven into hiding by death threats, pleaded guilty in September to a misdemeanor charge. He received no jail time, and there were no restrictions placed on his travel during his probation, but he will have to serve 100 hours of community service.He appeared remotely by video conference and was not in the Washington courtroom when chief judge James Boasberg sentenced him. Prosecutors had recommended a six-month term of imprisonment for Epps.Epps’s sentencing took place in the same building where Trump was attending an appeals court hearing as the Republican former president’s lawyers argued he is immune from prosecution on charges he plotted to overturn the results of the 2020 election he lost.The Fox News Channel and other rightwing media outlets amplified conspiracy theories that Epps, 62, was an undercover government agent who helped incite the Capitol attack to entrap Trump supporters.Epps filed a defamation lawsuit against Fox News last year, saying the network was to blame for spreading baseless claims about him.Epps told the judge that he now knows that he never should have believed the lies about a stolen election that Trump and his allies told and that Fox News broadcast.“I have learned that truth is not always found in the places that I used to trust,” said Epps, who asked for mercy before learning his sentence.The judge noted that many conspiracy theorists still refuse to believe that the Capitol riot was an insurrection carried out by Trump supporters. The judge said he hopes that the threats against Epps and his wife subside so they can move on with their lives.“You were hounded out of your home,” the judge said. “You were hounded out of your town.”Federal prosecutors have backed up Epps’s vehement denials that he was a government plant or FBI operative. They say Epps has never been a government employee or agent beyond serving in the US marines from 1979 to 1983.The ordeal has forced Epps and his wife to sell their property and businesses and flee their home in Queen Creek, Arizona, according to his lawyer.“He enjoys no golf, tennis, travel, or other trappings of retirement. They live in a trailer in the woods, away from their family, friends, and community,” attorney Edward Ungvarsky wrote in a court filing.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe internet-fueled accusations that upended Epps’s life have persisted even after the justice department charged him with participating in the January 6 siege.“Fear of demented extremists has no apparent end in sight so long as those who spread hate and lies about Mr Epps don’t speak loudly and publicly to correct the messaging they delivered,” Epps’s lawyer wrote.Epps pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct on restricted grounds, a charge punishable by a maximum of one year behind bars. Prosecutors say Epps encouraged the mob to storm the Capitol, helped other rioters push a large metal-framed sign into a group of officers and participated in “a rugby scrum-like group effort” to push past a line of police officers.A prosecutor, Michael Gordon, said Epps does not deserve to be inundated with death threats but should serve jail time for his conduct on 6 January 2021.“He didn’t start the riot,” Gordon told the judge. “He made it worse.”Epps’s lawyer sought six months of probation without any jail time. Ungvarsky said his client went to Washington on 6 January 2021 to peacefully protest against the certification of the electoral college vote for Joe Biden over Trump. More

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      Federal appeals judges begin hearing on Trump immunity arguments – live

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      Judge Karen Henderson gets into what the appeals court’s options are going forward.Trump attorney John Sauer says he thinks the judges should remand the case back to the lower district court, with instructions to go through the indictment and consider whether each alleged act is an official act, or private conduct.Sauer’s position is that private conduct can be prosecuted, but officials acts cannot, and that all the acts in the indictment are official acts.Judge Karen Henderson moved on to what acts are official acts for a president, saying, “I think it’s paradoxical to say his constitutional duty to say that the laws be faithfully executed allows him to violate the law”.Sauer replied that a president’s actions can never be examinable by the courts.Judges Karen Henderson and Michelle Childs pressed John Sauer on comments Donald Trump uttered while in office, when he conceded that no former officeholder is immune from investigation and prosecution.Senators might have relied on that to acquit Trump in the impeachment that followed the January 6 insurrection, Henderson said.Sauer replied that he disagrees with the judges’ interpretation of that line, which has been memorialized in the congressional record. He says the term “officeholder” would pertain to lesser government officials, not the president, and, in any case, Trump was referring to being investigated generally.Judge Florence Pan started off her questioning of Trump lawyer John Sauer by offering a novel scenario.“Could a president who ordered Seal Team Six to assassinate a political rival and was not impeached, could he be subjected to criminal prosecution?” Pan asked.After some back and forth, Sauer said, “Qualified yes, if he’s impeached and convicted first.”Circuit judge Florence Pan is putting Trump lawyer John Sauer in a tough spot. After Sauer said that presidents can be prosecuted so long as there’s impeachment and conviction in the Senate, Pan asks if he is conceding that presidents actually do not have absolute immunity, and that if president can be prosecuted, don’t “all of your separation of powers and policy arguments fall away”?Live television cameras are not allowed in federal courtrooms.But live audio is, and you can listen to the back and forth between Donald Trump’s lawyers and the three judges at the top of the page. The former president is not expected to address the court.Donald Trump’s lawyers have begun making their arguments to a panel of three federal appeals judges that the former president cannot be prosecuted for trying to overturn the 2020 election because the events took place while he was president.The three federal judges hearing the case are now in the courtroom.They are Michelle Childs, who was appointed by Joe Biden, Karen Henderson, a George HW Bush appointee, and Florence Pan, another Biden appointee.Donald Trump’s lawyers have arrived in the courtroom where a federal appeals court will consider whether he is immune from charges related to trying to overturn the 2020 election.Representing Trump today is former Missouri solicitor general John Sauer. Also in attendance for the former president are lawyers John Lauro, Greg Singer, Emil Bove and Stanley Woodward.There is at least one anti-Trump demonstrator waiting in the foul weather to greet the former president, WUSA9 reports:Since it’s 42 degrees Fahrenheit and raining in Washington DC today, do not expect the lively crowds that gathered for Donald Trump’s August arraignment to convene once again for his potentially pivotal immunity hearing.The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell, who is covering the hearing from within the E Barrett Prettyman federal courthouse, saw no supporters, protesters or lookie-loos outside, and this morning’s wire photos of the building show a pretty unremarkable scene:Good morning, US politics blog readers. Donald Trump is taking a break from the campaign trail today to appear in a Washington DC federal appeals court, where his lawyers will attempt to convince a three-judge panel that his “presidential immunity” prevents him from facing trial for trying to overturn the 2020 election. The stakes will be the highest of any court hearing for Trump since he was first indicted on the charges by special counsel Jack Smith in August, and if the former president prevails, Smith’s prosecution will end. We do not expect to get a decision today, and whichever way the three judges – two appointed by Joe Biden, and one by George HW Bush, rule, chances are the issue will go to the supreme court.Trump is not required to attend the hearing, but is using the proceedings as an opportunity to juice his claims of political persecution ahead of Monday’s Iowa Republican caucuses, which he is expected to win. “I was looking for voter fraud, and finding it, which is my obligation to do, and otherwise … running our Country”, the former president wrote yesterday on his Truth Social network. The hearing kicks off at 9.30am eastern time.Here’s what else is happening today:
      Nikki Haley’s support has peaked in New Hampshire, or perhaps not. Ahead of the state’s 23 January Republican primary, a Boston Globe/Suffolk University/USA Today poll reports she has 26% support compared with Trump’s 46%. But a CNN poll conducted by the University of New Hampshire shows a much closer race, with Trump at 39%, and Haley at 32%.
      The House returns today after the holiday break, and we get a better sense of whether rightwing lawmakers are prepared to reject a framework announced over the weekend to prevent a government shutdown.
      Joe Biden has no public events, but White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre will brief reporters at 2pm. More

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      Trump avoids mention of US Capitol attack on 6 January anniversary

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      Donald Trump largely ducked speaking about the January 6 attack on the US Capitol during a campaign speech Saturday, which he delivered on the third anniversary of the insurrection, reflecting the degree to which Republican voters have absolved the former president of responsibility for that day’s deadly consequences.Trump’s remarks came a day after Joe Biden appeared in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, and spoke about how his presidential predecessor had urged his supporters to “fight like hell” shortly before they staged the Capitol attack.Trump brought up January 6 only once as he addressed hundreds of supporters in the town of Newton, Iowa, nine days before that state’s Republican caucuses are scheduled to kick off the 2024 presidential campaign. He repeated previous claims that the Democrat Biden, whom he is likely to face in a general election rematch in November, is the true threat to democracy.“You know this guy [Biden] goes around and says I’m a threat to democracy,” Trump said. “No, he’s a threat because he’s incompetent. He’s a threat to democracy.”“Nobody thought J6 was even a possibility,” Trump said later, without elaborating.Trump also attacked the former Republican representative Liz Cheney, who has been sharply critical of Trump since the January 6 attack, when a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol as legislators were certifying Biden’s 2020 election victory.On the other hand, Biden has repeatedly called Trump a threat to democracy on the trail, and that messaging has emerged as a central theme of his campaign so far.“We saw with our own eyes the violent mob storm the United States Capitol,” Biden said Friday. Referring to Trump, Biden continued: “He told the crowd to ‘fight like hell,’ and all hell was unleashed. He promised he would right them. Everything they did, he would be side by side with them. Then, as usual, he left the dirty work to others. He retreated to the White House.”Biden’s remarks were a clear attempt to balance out the approach at recent campaign events in Iowa by Trump’s – and those backing other Republican presidential hopefuls – who have downplayed the significance of January 6. Many of them have also embraced conspiracy theories regarding the events of that day.Trump himself has suggested during previous campaign stops that undercover FBI agents played a significant role in instigating the attack, an account not supported by official investigations.More than 1,200 people have been charged with taking part in the riot, and more than 900 have either pleaded guilty or been convicted following a trial.Nine deaths have been linked to the attack, including law enforcement suicides.Yet on Saturday, Hale Wilson, a Trump supporter from Des Moines who was at the Newton event, said of the attack: “It wasn’t really an insurrection. There were bad actors involved that got the crowd going.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump has been in Iowa to curry support before the state’s Republican caucus on 15 January, which is the first contest of the Republican presidential nominating contest. He currently leads all competitors by more than 30 percentage points in the state, according to most polls.Polls have also shown that a rematch with Biden later this year could be close and competitive despite 91 criminal charges pending against Trump, who was twice impeached during his time in the Oval Office.The criminal charges against Trump are for trying to subvert his defeat to Biden in the 2020 race, illegally retaining government secrets after he left the White House and giving hush-money payments to the adult film actor Stormy Daniels, who has reported having a sexual encounter with the former president during an earlier time in his marriage to Melania Trump.Trump additionally has grappled with civil litigation over his business practices and a rape allegation which a judge deemed to be “substantially true”.Biden on Friday said Trump’s January 6 denial betrayed an attempt “to steal history the same way he tried to steal the election”.“There’s no confusion about who Trump is or what he intends to do,” Biden remarked.
      Reuters and the Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      Five truths about what happened three years ago that Trump wants you to forget | Robert Reich

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      Three years ago this week, the United States Capitol was attacked by thousands of armed loyalists of Donald Trump, some intent on killing members of Congress.Roughly 140 police officers were injured in the attack. Four people died. Capitol police officer Brian D Sicknick, who participated in the response, passed away the following day. Another Capitol police officer and a Washington DC police officer who also responded to the attack have since died by suicide.January 6, 2021, will be remembered as one of the most shameful days in US history. Yet three years later, Americans remain confused and divided about the significance of what occurred.Let me offer five basic truths:The events of January 6 capped two months during which Donald Trump sought to reverse the outcome of the 2020 election.In the wake of the election, Trump repeatedly asserted that he had won and Biden had lost, without any basis in fact or law. Sixty federal courts as well as Trump’s own Departments of Justice and Homeland Security concluded that there was no evidence of substantial fraud.Trump summoned to the White House Republican lawmakers from Pennsylvania and Michigan to inquire about how they might alter the election results.He called two local canvassing board officials in Wayne county, Michigan, that state’s most populous county and one that overwhelmingly favored Biden.He phoned Georgia’s Republican secretary of state to “find 11,780 votes”, according to a recording of that conversation, adding that “the people of Georgia are angry, the people of the country are angry. And there’s nothing wrong with saying that, you know, um, that you’ve recalculated.”He alluded that Georgia’s secretary of state would face criminal prosecution if he did not do as Trump told him: “You know what they did and you’re not reporting it. You know, that’s a criminal – that’s a criminal offense. And you know, you can’t let that happen. That’s a big risk to you and to Ryan, your lawyer. That’s a big risk.”He pressed the acting US attorney general and deputy attorney general to declare the election fraudulent.When the deputy said the department had found no evidence of widespread fraud and warned that it had no power to change the outcome of the election, Trump replied: “Just say that the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me.”Trump and his allies continued to harangue the attorney general and top justice department officials nearly every day until January 6.Trump plotted with an assistant attorney general to oust the acting attorney general and pressure lawmakers in Georgia to overturn the state’s election results. Trump ultimately decided against it after top department leaders pledged to resign en masse.Trump then incited the attack on the Capitol.For weeks before the attack, Trump urged his supporters to come to Washington for a Save America protest on January 6, when Congress was scheduled to ceremonially count the electoral votes of Joe Biden’s win.He tweeted on December 19: “Big protest in DC on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!” On December 26: “See you in Washington, DC, on January 6th. Don’t miss it. Information to follow.”On December 30: “JANUARY SIXTH, SEE YOU IN DC!” On January 1: “The BIG Protest Rally in Washington, DC will take place at 11:00 A.M. on January 6th. Locational details to follow. StopTheSteal!”At a rally he held just before the violence began, Trump repeated his lies about how the election had been stolen. “We will never give up,” he said. “We will never concede. It will never happen. You don’t concede when there’s theft involved. Our country has had enough. We will not take it any more.”He told the crowd that Republicans were fighting like a boxer with his hands tied behind his back, overly respectful of “bad people”.Instead, he said, Republicans are “going to have to fight much harder … We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them, because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong … We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country any more.”He then told the crowd that “different rules” applied to them.“When you catch somebody in a fraud, you are allowed to go by very different rules. So I hope Mike [Pence] has the courage to do what he has to do, and I hope he doesn’t listen to the Rinos [Republicans in name only] and the stupid people that he’s listening to.”Then – knowing that members of the crowd were armed – he dispatched them to the Capitol as the electoral count was about to start. The attack on the Capitol came immediately after.He watched the attack on television from the White House. For three hours, he made no attempt to stop it or ask his supporters to refrain from violence.Trump’s attempted coup continues to this day.Trump still refuses to concede the 2020 election. He continues to assert it was stolen.He has presided over a network of loyalists and allies who sought to overturn the election and erode public confidence in it by mounting partisan state “audits” and escalating attacks on state election officials.A year later, on 6 January 2022, Trump hosted a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. “Remember,” he said, “the insurrection took place on November 3rd. It was the completely unarmed protest of the rigged election that took place on January 6th.” (Reminder: some were, in fact, armed.)Trump then referred to the House investigation of the attack on the Capitol: “Why isn’t the Unselect Committee of highly partisan political hacks investigating the CAUSE of the January 6th protest, which was the rigged Presidential Election of 2020?”He went on to castigate “Rinos”, presumably referring to his opponents within the party, such as Republican representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, who sat on the January 6 committee. “In many ways a Rino is worse than a Radical Left Democrat,” Trump said, “because you don’t know where they are coming from and you have no idea how bad they really are for our Country.” He added: “the good news is there are fewer and fewer Rinos left as we elect strong Patriots who love America.”Trump then led a purge of congressional Republicans who had failed to support him. He endorsed a primary challenger to Cheney, who lost her re-election bid in Wyoming. Kinzinger left Congress.Trump is now running for president again, with a wide lead over other Republican candidates for the nomination.During his campaign, he has called January 6, 2021, “a beautiful day” and described those imprisoned for the insurrection as “great, great patriots” and “hostages”. At his campaign rallies he has played a recording of The Star-Spangled Banner sung by jailed rioters, accompanied by his recitation of the pledge of allegiance.On Saturday, Trump will spend the third anniversary of the January 6 attack at two rallies in Iowa.Trump has still not been held accountable.Trump’s post-riot impeachment was rejected by Republican senators, including the Senate leader, Mitch McConnell, who claimed there were better ways to hold him accountable than impeaching him.Although the House January 6 committee had no direct power to hold Trump accountable, its revelations did affect the 2022 midterms, where many Republican candidates who had supported Trump’s lies were defeated. It also laid a foundation for the justice department to indict Trump.The Republican presidential primaries have not held Trump accountable. To the contrary, the justice department’s indictment and a similar indictment in Georgia have apparently strengthened Trump’s grip on the nomination, as he uses them as evidence that he’s being persecuted.The Colorado supreme court and Maine’s secretary of state have determined that Trump should not be on their state ballots because of section 3 of the 14th amendment to the constitution, which bars someone who has previously sworn allegiance to the constitution but then engaged in an insurrection from holding public office. Trump has appealed the decisions.Trump maintains a demagogic hold over the Republican partyA belligerent and narcissistic authoritarian has gained a powerful hold over a large portion of the US, including the Republican party.According to recent polls, 70% of Republican voters believe his lie that the 2020 election was stolen. Thirty-four per cent of Republicans believe the FBI organized and encouraged the insurrection (compared with 30% of independents and 13% of Democrats).The Republican party is close to becoming a cult whose central animating idea is that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.Trump has had help, of course. Fox News hosts and social media groups have promoted and amplified his ravings for their own purposes. The vast majority of Republicans in Congress and in the states have played along.The 2024 election will be the final and probably last opportunity to hold Trump accountable for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, including his attempted coup three years ago today.The 2024 election may therefore be the last chance for American democracy to function.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His newest book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com More

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      ‘January 6 never ended’: alarm at Trump pardon pledge for Capitol insurrectionists

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      In the three years to the day since the insurrection at the US Capitol, great strides have been made in shoring up American democracy: hundreds of rioters have been prosecuted, legislation has been passed to bolster electoral safeguards and Donald Trump has been charged over his efforts to subvert the 2020 election.But as the country marks the third anniversary of one of its darkest days in modern times, a pall hangs in the air. It comes from Trump himself and his promise, growing steadily louder as the 2024 presidential election approaches, that if he wins he will pardon those convicted of acts of violence, obstructing Congress and seditious conspiracy on 6 January 2021.The scope of Trump’s pardon pledge is astonishing both for its quantity and quality. The former president has made clear that – should he be confirmed as the Republican presidential candidate and go on to triumph in the November election – he would contemplate pardoning every one of those prosecuted for their participation in the insurrection.Last May he reposted on his Truth Social platform the slogan: “Free all J-6 political prisoners”. A few months earlier he told a rightwing website that “we’ll be looking very, very seriously at full pardons”.A total or near-total pardon would encompass hundreds of cases. The US Department of Justice has conducted what it describes as the largest investigation in its history following the storming of the Capitol building and has so far secured almost 900 convictions either at trial or through guilty pleas.About 350 cases are still ongoing.Then there is the quality. Trump has specifically threatened to pardon Enrique Tarrio, the former leader of the extremist group the Proud Boys who with 22 years in prison has received the longest sentence yet handed down for the insurrection.Tarrio was found guilty of seditious conspiracy. Though he was not present in the Capitol compound on 6 January 2021, prosecutors presented evidence that he had helped coordinate the storming of the building and on the day itself had sent encouraging messages on social media.The judge at his sentencing, Timothy Kelly, said he was sending a strong message: “It can’t happen again,” he said.In September Trump told NBC News that he would “certainly look at” pardoning Tarrio. “He and other people have been treated horribly … They’ve been persecuted.”Jamie Raskin, the Democratic congressman from Maryland, said that Trump’s pledge to pardon rioters showed that “January 6 never ended. Today is January 6.”Speaking at an event on Friday organised by End Citizens United and Let America Vote in advance of the third anniversary, Raskin, who was present at the Capitol as the riot unfolded and who went on to lead the second impeachment of Trump following the upheaval, lamented how the former president wanted to set convicted criminals free. “Trump is out there saying he’s going to pardon people who engaged in political violence, who bloodied and wounded and hospitalized 150 of our officers.”Raskin added that Trump’s threat should be taken seriously. “We better believe him. I mean, he pardoned Roger Stone, a political criminal; he pardoned Michael Flynn, his disgraced former national security adviser,” he said. “Now he wants to pardon the shock troops of January 6, so he will have this roving band of people willing to commit political violence and insurrection for him – how dangerous is that?”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAs NPR has noted, anyone pardoned by Trump for felonies arising from 6 January 2021 would be entitled to legally own guns once more.Trump’s statements on possible pardons are in keeping with the general stance towards the insurrection he has expressed over the past three years. He has repeatedly described the attack as a “beautiful day” and those who took part in it as “great, great patriots” who since their arrests have become “hostages”.At his rallies, he has boomed through loudspeakers a recording of jailed January 6 rioters singing The Star-Spangled Banner.There are alarming indications that for a sizable portion of the US electorate, his whitewashing of that fateful day appears to be working. A poll from the Washington Post and the University of Maryland this week found that a quarter of all Americans think the FBI was probably or definitely behind the US Capitol assault – a figure rising to more than a third of Republicans.Biden has indicated that he will make January 6, and Trump’s response to it over the past three years, a key aspect of his re-election bid. The president put the threat posed to democracy by Trump at the centre of his first major speech of the 2024 election year.Biden’s address was delivered on Friday afternoon pointedly in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. That is where George Washington and the continental army were headquartered during the American revolution.A new advert released by the Biden campaign this week replays video footage of the storming of the Capitol three years ago. Biden is heard saying: “There is something dangerous happening in America. There is an extremist movement that does not share the basic beliefs of our democracy.” More