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      Mitch McConnell's impeachment speech was just a hostage video | Lloyd Green

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      The Republicans’ twin losses in the Georgia Senate runoffs have bound Mitch McConnell to Donald Trump for as long as the Kentuckian remains in office. The ex-president owns the Republican party. The Senate minority leader? He’s a rent-collector in a banker’s shirt.To McConnell’s disgust, so evident in his excoriation of Trump on the Senate floor on Saturday, moments after voting to acquit, he must labour in Trump’s shadow. Nationally, Kentucky’s senior senator is even more disliked than Marjorie Taylor Greene, Georgia’s conspiracy-mongering congresswoman.Even among Republicans, McConnell is relatively unpopular, and unlike Liz Cheney of Wyoming he is unwilling to risk their wrath. McConnell suffers his own precarity.The fact is, GOP senators who bucked Trump on impeachment offer cautionary tales for those who dare to cross him. By Saturday night, at least three had received home-state smackdowns.The Louisiana GOP censured Bill Cassidy while the chairs of the North Carolina and Pennsylvania parties upbraided their renegade senators. Richard Burr “shocked” Tar Heel Republicans while Pat Toomey “disappointed” those in the Keystone state. Both had already announced they will not seek re-election.But not all those who are leaving the Senate followed suit. Rob Portman of Ohio and Richard Shelby of Alabama fell into line. One more time.Trump risked turning Pence into a corpse and ultimately went unpunished. That hangman’s noose was built to be usedWhat was once the proud party of Lincoln and Reagan is now a Trump family rag – something to be used and abused by the 45th president like his bankrupt companies, namesake university and hapless vice-president, Mike Pence.If the impeachment trial established anything, it is that Trump risked turning Pence into a corpse and ultimately went unpunished. That hangman’s noose was built to be used.[embedded content]Yet even the former vice-president has remained mum and his brother, Greg Pence, a congressman from Indiana, voted against impeachment. Talk about taking one for the team.In the end, devotion to a former reality show host literally trumped life itself. The mob belongs to Trump – as the Capitol police can attest. So much for the GOP’s embrace of “law and order”. When it mattered most, it counted least.Like Moloch, Trump has elevated human sacrifice and personal devotion into the ultimate test. His indifference to Covid’s ravages was a harbinger of what came next, his raucous and at times violent rallies mere warm-up acts.When Trump mused about shooting some on Fifth Avenue and getting away with it, he wasn’t joking. He was simply stating a fact.His acquittal ensures that he and his family will be a force to be reckoned with over the next four years. Faced with a possible primary challenge from Ivanka Trump, Florida senator Marco Rubio months ago lavished praise on a Trump caravan that swarmed a Biden bus in Texas. He was ahead of the curve.Among the presidential wannabes, only Ben Sasse has grown a spine. His chances of winning are close to nilSince then, Nikki Haley, Trump’s first United Nations ambassador and a one-time South Carolina governor, has twisted herself into a pretzel to craft a message that will keep her former boss disarmed while convincing donors to empty their wallets. Good luck with that.Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley are in a competition all their own as to who makes a better doormat. Among the 2024 presidential wannabes, only Ben Sasse has grown a spine. His chances of winning the brass ring are close to nil.A church-going Presbyterian, Sasse got it wrong when he announced that “politics isn’t about the weird worship of one dude”. The Senate’s vote says otherwise.Still, McConnell’s post-trial denunciation of Trump had some value. On top of labeling Trump “practically and morally responsible” for the events of 6 January, he provided an invitation and roadmap for law enforcement and the justice department.“President Trump is still liable for everything he did while he’s in office,” McConnell said. “He didn’t get away with anything yet.”Already, prosecutors have homed in on Trump’s strong-arm efforts to overturn Georgia’s elections. Manhattan’s district attorney, Cyrus Vance, is locked in a death duel before the supreme court over Trump’s tax returns.Talk about synchronicity. Just hours before Saturday’s vote, reports emerged of Vance having expanded his investigation into Trump and four of his properties over loans extended by subsidiaries of Ladder Capital, a finance operation that also lent to Jared Kushner.Politically, Trump will likely hit the road for a vengeance tour aimed at those who opposed him. McConnell may yet emerge as another punching bag. And if Trump does, don’t expect anyone to have McConnell’s back. It is Trump’s party now. Everyone else is expendable. More

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      Republicans have betrayed American democracy – and boosted the world's dictators

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      This is not even about Donald Trump any more. It’s about a Republican party that has lost its way, forgotten its core values, and kicked American democracy in the guts.It’s about justice, common sense, and honour, and how they were trampled deep into the churned-up ground of Capitol Hill by a mob of liars and dissemblers who call themselves GOP senators.It’s about how a nation, most favoured on earth, that cast itself as a shining light in enveloping darkness discovered it had feet of clay and laws that did not stand.Just imagine how this latest impeachment travesty – which, despite its last-minute twists and turns, has resulted in acquittal – is viewed in Pyongyang, Minsk, Damascus and other hangouts of dictators, autocrats and war criminals.Myanmar’s generals, universally reviled for this month’s coup, might be forgiven for asking: why is your insurrection so much more excusable than ours?Vladimir Putin, struggling to get past the Navalny conspiracy and Black Sea palace corruption scandal, has been handed a lifeline by Ted Cruz and the rest, abetted by Trump’s third-choice hack lawyers.If an American president can behave like this and get away with it, then who’s to say what Putin’s mafia cronies get up to is so very bad? This is the Trumpists’ morally repugnant, relativist argument. And talking of morality, where are those legions of God-fearing, Trump-worshipping Christian fundamentalists when you really need to draw a line between right and wrong? Praying for the second coming of Mike Pompeo, perhaps.Xi Jinping is not a man who jokes a lot. Global domination is a serious business, after all. It takes a toll. But even China’s big cheese must have cracked a smile as democracy took a beating and the world turned upside down.Everyone likes a Houdini act. Trump’s performance is the political equivalent of going over Niagara Falls in a barrel weighted down by redundant Fox News anchors.We know about China’s rise. But America’s fall?Trump never respected the US constitution. His second impeachment has made a mockery of that hallowed text. Ironically, he claimed it was unconstitutional. He’s the expert.Yet Senate Republicans did not have to follow him over the cliff. Where do they go from here? Who knows? To an all-night bar perhaps, slurping down Kentucky mint juleps in honour of Mitch McConnell.It’s about them now. Senior GOP leaders – the Gain Over Principle party – are discredited beyond redemption. With a handful of exceptions, they abandoned their sworn duty. They gave America the finger.They should all be impeached, too. Except they would acquit themselves. More

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      The GOP representative at center of Trump impeachment trial drama

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      Jaime Herrera Beutler, the congresswoman for south-west Washington state at the center of last-minute drama at Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial, has been a rare Republican supporter of the Democrat-led effort to convict the former president of “inciting violence against the government of the United States”.Herrera Beutler, who has served as a representative since 2011, made her support to impeach Trump known six days after the Capitol riot in early January. “The president of the United States incited a riot aiming to halt the peaceful transfer of power from one administration to the next,” Herrera Beutler said then.In the statement, Herrera Beutler described Republican leader Kevin McCarthy as “pleading with the president to go on television and call for an end to the mayhem, to no avail”.Late on Friday, Herrera Beutler went further, saying she was told by McCarthy that Trump initially sided with supporters. She urged Republican “patriots” to come forward and share what they know about the conversation in which Trump is alleged to have told McCarthy that rioters at the Capitol were “more upset about the election” than the congressional minority leader was.For a few tense hours it looked as if Herrera Beutler might upset the whole impeachment trial, as Democrats, backed by a handful of Republicans, suddenly decided she needed to be called as a witness – a move that would ensure Republicans would call witnesses too.But amid scenes of farce, chaos and frantic negotiations, a deal was struck to merely read Herrera Beutler’s statements into the record, in lieu of personal testimony. Suddenly, the prospect of weeks of lengthy witness testimony in the impeachment trial receded again.But the incident has focused senators to focus – even if briefly – on what Trump knew and when he knew it on the day of the riot, something that may leave a lingering impact on how the American public views the trial.Herrera Beutler first came to national attention in 2014, when then speaker John Boehner introduced her 13-month-old daughter Abigail, who has Potter’s syndrome, a rare condition in which a child is born without kidneys, to the legislative chamber with the Johns Hopkins doctor, Jessica Bienstock, who had helped save her life.Herrera Beutler later co-sponsored a bipartisan bill that would allow children on the Medicaid program with complex medical conditions to seek specialty care outside their coverage areas.She also drew attention as one of a growing number of women balancing motherhood and elected political life. At the time of her daughter’s birth, she was just the ninth lawmaker in history to have a baby while serving in Congress.Now again she is a rare politician: an eloquent voice in her Trumpist-dominated party, arguing for a return of the party to its pre-Trump values and standards of political life.In her 12 January statement on the Capitol riot, the congresswoman wrote: “I understand the argument that the best course is not to further inflame the country or alienate Republican voters. But I am also a Republican voter. I believe in our constitution, individual liberty, free markets, charity, life, justice, peace and this exceptional country. I see that my own party will be best served when those among us choose truth.” More

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      The decline of Proud Boys: what does the future hold for far-right group?

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      During the the Trump era, the far-right Proud Boys rode high, enjoying presidential support, recruiting thousands of men, and, as the self-nominated nemesis of leftist Antifa activists, participating in a string of violent street altercations around the country.But now since Trump’s election loss and the aftermath of the 6 January attack on the Capitol in Washington DC, a series of blows dealt by law enforcement, elected officials and their own leaders have shaken the extremist fraternity that the Southern Poverty Law Center describes as a hate group.The cumulative impact has experts wondering about the Proud Boys’ long-term future.Since their foundation in 2016 by the far-right Canadian media personality and entrepreneur Gavin McInnes, the all-male group – who wear uniform clothing, enforce bizarre initiation rituals, eschew masturbation, and reward violence with higher degrees of membership – have been an outsized presence on the landscape of pro-Trump extremism, and successful in promoting themselves as the most militant part of his coalition.But their role in the Capitol insurrection especially has brought far less welcome attention.Law enforcement agencies have connected at least 10 Capitol arrestees with the Proud Boys in criminal complaints and affadavits. Those charged include leaders like the Florida combat veteran and conspiracy theorist Joe Biggs and Washington state’s Ethan Nordean, whose prominence rose in the group after he was caught on film attacking an antifascist during a 2018 riot in downtown Portland, Oregon.Biggs – a former employee of Alex Jones’s conspiracy-minded Infowars network – was central in organizing incursions into the city of Portland in 2019 and 2020, each of which drew Fred Perry-clad militants from around the country to confront antifascists and city authorities.He is now charged with impeding Congress, unauthorized entry to the Capitol, and disorderly conduct. However, the affidavit supporting the charges also alleges Biggs was involved in extensive radio communications with other Proud Boys on the day. The allegations of coordination between members of the group may hint at more charges to come.Alex Newhouse, a researcher at the Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism at the Middlebury Institute, said in a telephone conversation that it was likely that “more conspiracy charges being levied on some of these people in the future”.Shannon Reid, an assistant professor in criminology at the University of North Carolina, said the strategy in these cases resembles the one prosecutors often use in pursuit of criminal enterprises, where the aim is to “pick up as many people as humanly possible and to hope that they just plead out”.The cases against Biggs and Nordean turn what had been the Proud Boys’ greatest weapon – social media – against them as authorities have detailed their alleged misdeeds using material that they and others posted online.For example, a grand jury indictment of a Texan, Nicholas Decarlo, and the founder of the group’s Hawaiian chapter, Nicholas Ochs, alleges that they together inscribed “Murder the media” on the front door of the Capitol before stealing a Capitol police officer’s handcuffs. In an affidavit, an FBI special agent says that they determined that Ochs had been in the building from his own Twitter account.Meanwhile, Dominic Pezzola and William Pepe allegedly conspired with each other in a sequence of events which included Pezzola assaulting a Capitol police officer, stealing his riot shield, and then using it to smash in one of the Capitol’s windows. The evidence cited in affidavits includes Pezzola’s account on the shuttered conservative-friendly social media service, Parler, and videos posted online by other rioters.The FBI says that another arrestee, Bryan Betancur, was wearing a Proud Boys cap at the rally. They also say that Betancur is a “self-professed white supremacist” who discussed carrying out school shootings and expressed support for Charlottesville killer, James Fields.He was placed inside the Capitol building by signals from his court-ordered ankle monitoring device, a parole condition related to an earlier offense.Newhouse said that voluminous social media evidence suggests that “this was carefully planned and extensively communicated in the moment”. The connection between Proud Boys and other extremist organizations – previously noted on several occasions by US law enforcement – has now led to the first instance of the group being outlawed. Last Wednesday, the Canadian parliament formally declared the Proud Boys a terrorist group, citing their “misogynistic, Islamophobic, antisemitic, anti-immigrant and/or white supremacist” ideology and their association with “white supremacist groups”.The designation opens the way for any crimes committed by Proud Boys to be prosecuted as terrorist acts. It also means that any fundraising, travel, recruitment and training for the group can be prosecuted, and members can be added to no-fly lists or denied entry to Canada.Meanwhile, parliamentarians in Australia are pushing their government to follow suit, after McInnes was denied entry to the country on character grounds in 2018.In the US, while criminal acts can be prosecuted as domestic terrorism, it has not been possible to designate domestic groups as terrorist, and, at least in theory, the first amendment prevents authorities from surveilling domestic groups on the basis of their political beliefs, even if those beliefs encompass an advocacy of violence.Increasingly over the life of the Trump administration, however, Democratic politicians advocated for just such an approach to rightwing extremists.Now, the first bill aimed at addressing rightwing extremism as domestic terrorism has been introduced to Congress by the Illinois Democrat Brad Schneider and has attracted bipartisan sponsorship.If passed it would set up dedicated domestic terrorism units within the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI. It would also require those departments to report to Congress twice a year on domestic terrorism incidents and hate crimes, and their progress in dealing with such cases.In a telephone conversation, Schneider said that while he had first proposed a version of the bill in 2017, before he had become aware of the group, the Proud Boys were “certainly a troubling group, in their rhetoric and their actions”.“We have seen what they’ve done in various places, whether it was in Washington last year or it with the insurrection in the capital last month,”Schneider added, calling the latter event an attack “not just members of Congress, but the foundation of our government, our constitution, and our republic”.Other events have compounded the effects of the additional scrutiny. During the Trump presidency, police in cities from California to Kalamazoo were regularly accused of having a soft touch when it came to the Proud Boys and their far-right allies, and these claims have been borne out in nationwide studies. But since the election, local agencies around the country have appeared more ready to respond with force when the group’s street protests become violent.Police have used batons, gas and other “non-lethal” weapons on Proud Boys in Salem, Oregon, and Washington DC during December and January. Some Proud Boys have remarked on the apparent sea change: in a podcast released on 4 January, Nordean, the Washington state arrestee, said that “the police are starting to become a problem,” even though “we’ve had their back for years”.On 2 February, those comments were quoted in the criminal complaint detailing Nordean’s alleged participation in the riot.Just before the riot, Enrique Tarrio, the chair of the Proud Boys, was arrested on charges related to the vandalism of a black church and illegal weapons. Then, last week, it was revealed that he had been a “prolific” police informant.Since the revelation that he had been a police informant, Proud Boyschapters in Nevada, Missouri and Alabama have publicly announced theirdeparture from the main organization on the messaging platform,Telegram. On the same platform, the also-departed Oklahoma Proud Boyshave exchanged barbs with Tarrio and other leaders.Tarrio took over leadership of the group after McInnes ostentatiously resigned as a member following Guardian reporting that revealed that federal authorities considered them an extremist group.Notwithstanding his earlier public disavowals, in 2020 McInnes attended and spoke at the group’s annual WestFest event in Las Vegas in 2020, and has persisted in advocating for the group in the online outlets available to him, including his Telegram and Parler accounts.Though the Proud Boys may be reeling now, Newhouse warns that opposing a Democratic president gives them a similar opportunity to previous waves of rightwing militancy, like the militia movement in the Clinton years, and its revival as the so-called Patriot Movement during Obama’a time in office.“I don’t think they’re going anywhere,” he said. “The more extreme fringe actors are going to gain influence,” with some Proud Boys drifting into adjacent extremist groups in the Boogaloo movement or neo-Nazism.“De-radicalization is one of the hardest problems,”Newhouse said, “harder even than preventing acts of terrorism.” More

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      US Capitol police officer Eugene Goodman awarded Congressional Gold Medal

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      Eugene Goodman, the Capitol police officer who led violent rioters away from lawmakers during the 6 January attack, has been awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by the US Senate.The Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, called the vote at the end of Friday’s impeachment proceedings, noting Goodman’s “foresight in the midst of chaos, and his willingness to make himself a target of the mob’s rage so that others might reach safety”.The Senate voted to award Goodman the medal – the highest honor Congress can bestow – by unanimous consent, meaning there were no objections. The medal has traditionally been used to honor military officers for distinguished service.Goodman was in the Senate chamber as Schumer spoke, and the entire Senate stood and turned toward him, giving him a standing ovation. He put his hand on his heart.Goodman, who was promoted to acting deputy sergeant-at-arms for the Senate after his performance during the Capitol riot, has been in the chamber for much of the impeachment trial. As an armed mob of Trump supporters bore down on the Capitol, threatening lawmakers including Mike Pence, the former vice president, Goodman intercepted, engaging rioters and leading them away from the Senate chamber.In new videos aired as part of House Democrats argument that former president Donald Trump incited the insurrection, Goodman was also shown leading the Republican senator Mitt Romney to safety as he unknowingly headed toward a location where the mob had gathered.“I was very fortunate indeed that officer Goodman was there to get me in the right direction,” Romney told reporters on Wednesday. He said he was unaware until he saw the footage that Goodman had potentially saved his life.A decorated army veteran who served from 2002 to 2006, Goodman, 40, is from Maryland. Last month, he escorted vice-president Kamala Harris and her husband, Douglas Emhoff, to the inauguration ceremony.“He is wholly deserving of the highest civilian honor bestowed by Congress, and I’m glad the Senate acted quickly on our legislation to recognize the quick thinking and bravery of this great Marylander with a Congressional Gold Medal,” said Maryland senator Chris Van Hollen in a statement. “I urge my colleagues in the House to quickly follow suit.”House leader Nancy Pelosi this week introduced plans to honor the officer. More

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      Mike Pence's 'nuclear football' was potentially at risk during Capitol riot

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      The dramatic footage of the 6 January insurrection shows the mob was within 30 metres of Mike Pence, when he made his escape. But there was a chilling detail that even the House prosecutors missed. With the then vice-president on that terrifying day, was an air force officer carrying the “football”, a large black briefcase carrying nuclear launch codes.The codes in the vice-president’s football are not activated unless the president is dead or incapacitated. But the implications of it falling into the hands of rioters are still chilling.“If the mob had seized Pence’s nuclear football, they may not have been able to order an actual launch but the public may not have known that,” Tom Collina, director of policy at the Ploughshares Fund disarmament advocacy group, said. “Parading the nuclear button around would have caused widespread panic and chaos as authorities scrambled to respond.”The secret service bodyguards around Pence would most likely have defended the suitcase with deadly force, but if the pro-Trump mob had managed to seize it, they would have come away, not just with the codes used to identify the vice-president and authenticate his orders, but also the encrypted communications equipment used to make the call to the National Military Command Center in the Pentagon.Most damaging of all, they would have all the nuclear attack options instantly available around the clock to the US commander-in-chief. That list of options used to be in a weighty handbook, but according to Fred Kaplan, author of The Bomb: Presidents, Generals, and the Secret History of Nuclear War, it has been condensed over the decades into a series of laminated cards, “like a menu at Wendy’s”, as one officer put it to Kaplan.Not only would disclosure of that menu represent one of the worst security breaches imaginable, the encrypted communication equipment would tell an adversary a lot of how the US would respond to a major attack.“They could glean all sorts of information about its structure and technology so it’s very significant,” said Hans Kristensen, director of the nuclear information project at the Federation of American Scientists.Nuclear experts have questioned whether this cold war relic that provides such an obvious target for adversaries and terrorists, is still necessary. But the Trump era has also shone a bright light on the question of whether one individual should continue to have sole authority to launch the US nuclear arsenal.Collina, co-author of The Button, a book on the presidency and nuclear weapons, said: “Of course the even bigger danger was that Trump had his own football that could have been used to end civilization as we know it.”In other words, perhaps the only thing scarier than the football being surrounded by a mob is the thought of Trump being alone with it. More

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      Acquitting Trump would spell grave danger for US democracy | Jonathan Freedland

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      Rare is the trial that takes place at the scene of the crime. Rarer still is the trial where the jurors are also witnesses to, if not victims of, that crime. Which means that the case of Donald Trump should be open and shut, a slam-dunk. Because those sitting in judgment saw the consequences of what Trump did on 6 January. They heard it. And, as security footage played during this week’s proceedings showed, they ran for their lives because of it.
      And yet, most watching the second trial of Trump – only the fourth impeachment in US history – presume that it will end in his acquittal. They expect that fewer than 17 Republican senators will find the former president guilty of inciting an insurrection and so, lacking the required two-thirds majority, the verdict will be not guilty. Barring a late spasm of conscience by the senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, Trump will pronounce himself vindicated, the case against him a hoax and he will be free to run again in 2024 – and to loom over his party as its dominant presence at least until then.
      That fact alone should quash the temptation to regard the current proceedings, which could conclude this weekend, as a footnote to the Trump era, one to be safely tucked away in the history books. The reverse is true. The likely acquittal suggests the danger of Trump has far from passed: the threat he embodied remains live and active – and is now embedded deep inside the US body politic.
      The Democratic members of the House of Representatives acting as prosecutors have laid out an unanswerable case. Vividly and with extensive use of video, they have reminded senators – and the watching public – of the vehemence and violence of the mob that stormed the Capitol last month, how Trump supporters attacked police officers, even using poles carrying the American flag to bludgeon those in uniform. They’ve shown how close the rioters came to finding elected officials, how they hunted them down marbled corridors and stone staircases, looking for “fucking traitors”. They had a gallows and noose ready.
      Naturally, Republicans have bitten their lip and said how awful it all was – but have insisted none of it can be blamed on Trump. So the prosecution reminded them of Trump’s words on the day, telling the crowd within striking distance of Congress to head over there, “to show strength” and to “fight like hell”. Oh, but only “idiots” could take such language literally, say Trump’s defenders. Except those who sacked the Capitol took it very literally, filmed as they told the besieged police that they had been “invited” there by the president, that they were “fighting for Trump” at his urging. They believed they were following his explicit instructions.
      The incitement was not confined to that speech, but began long before – and continued after – the rioting started. Trump whipped up the Washington crowd that bitter January day, but he’d been whipping up his supporters for nearly a year, telling them the 2020 election would be stolen, that the only way he could possibly lose would be if the contest was rigged. The big lie that drove the crowd to break down the doors and run riot was that Trump had won and Joe Biden had lost the election – that a contest that was, in fact, free and fair was instead fraudulent, despite 59 out of 60 claims of voter fraud being thrown out of courts across the US through lack of evidence. Their aim was to stop the formal certification ceremony, to “stop the steal” – as Trump had demanded they must for several months.
      So much for incitement before the riot. Among the most shocking facts laid bare this week was that Trump’s incitement persisted even after the violence was under way. One of the former president’s most ardent supporters, Alabama senator Tommy Tuberville, let slip that he had told Trump by phone that vice-president Mike Pence had had to be removed from the chamber for his own safety. And yet, minutes after that call, Trump tweeted an attack on Pence for failing to have “the courage” to thwart Biden’s victory, all but painting a target on the VP’s back.
      Couple that with Trump’s failure to do anything to stop the violence once it had begun – the two-hour delay before sending backup for the police – and the picture is complete: a president who urged a murderous mob to overturn a democratic election by force, who watched them attempt it, who did nothing to stop it and even directed their anger towards specific, named targets. Put it this way, what more would a president have to do to be found guilty of inciting an insurrection?
      Republicans have sought refuge in the first amendment, saying Trump’s words were protected by his right to free speech, or else that it’s improper to convict a president once he’s left office. Most legal scholars wave aside those arguments, but let’s not pretend Republicans’ objections are on legal grounds. They are not acting as sincere jurors, weighing the evidence in good faith. If they were, then three of them would not have met Trump’s legal team to discuss strategy on Thursday, in what is surely a rather novel reading of jury service.
      No, the law is not driving these people to say Trump should be given a free pass for his crime. It is fear. They felt fear on 6 January, when some of them went on camera to beg Trump to call off his mob, but they feel a greater fear now. They fear the threat Trump made in his speech that day, when he told the crowd “we have to primary the hell out of the ones that don’t fight”. Republican senators fear internal party challenges from Trumpists in their states, and they fear a base that is now the obedient creature of Donald Trump. Their only way out, they think, is to acquit a man they surely know – must know – is guilty as charged.
      The consequences are perilous. Most directly, Trump will be able to run again, and will be free to try the same trick anew – unleashing his shock troops to ensure his will is done. If Trump loses, say, the New Hampshire primary in 2024, what’s to prevent him urging his devotees to “stop the steal” once more? Even after Trump is gone, a grim precedent will exist. House Democrat Jamie Raskin was right to warn Republicans that acquittal would “set a new terrible standard for presidential misconduct”. When a future president doesn’t get their way, they can simply incite violence against the system they are pledged to defend.
      Still, the greatest danger is not in the future. It is clear and present. It is that one of the US’s two governing parties is poised to approve the notion that democracy can be overturned by force. By acquitting Trump, the Republicans will declare themselves no longer bound by the constitution or the rule of law or even reality, refusing to break from the lie that their party won an election that it lost. This poison is not confined to the extremities of the US body politic. It is now in its blood and in its heart.
      Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist More

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      Josh Hawley's schooldays: ‘He made popcorn to watch the Iraq invasion’

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      Before Josh Hawley became known as a leader of the attempt to overturn the 2020 election in the US Congress, he was remembered by former students and staff at St Paul’s, the elite British school for boys where he spent a year teaching, as an aloof, rightwing political obsessive who had made himself popcorn to watch the US invasion of Iraq.The Republican senator from Missouri has been the target of ire of millions of Americans after he became the first senator to say he would object to election results. Ultimately, 146 congressional Republicans joined the rightwing lawmaker in seeking to block votes from Pennsylvania and Arizona from being counted, an extraordinary move that was seen as stoking the flames of a pro-Trump mob who attacked the US Capitol.Before the assault, Hawley was photographed walking past the crowd and raising his fist in salute to them.While Hawley has painted himself as a man of the “American heartland”, and has expressed contempt for what he says is the US’s liberal “elite”, the graduate of Stanford and Yale Law School, who once clerked for the supreme court chief justice, John Roberts, spent a year in suburban London in 2002, at the top all-boys private school St Paul’s that dates back to 1509.An examination of Hawley’s time there by the London-based magazine the Fence, found Hawley was not the first choice to serve as a “Colet fellow” at the prestigious private school, a role reserved for Ivy League graduates.But Hawley persuaded the interview board with what some called his intellectual rigor and drive.Hawley taught A-Level politics jointly with Rob Jones, a leftwing former policeman who was described fondly when he left in the school magazine as “able to create a fearsome reputation, but is also worshipped by his students. There cannot be many who have their own Facebook appreciation society.”The teaching style of the pair, former pupils said, was combative, with it apparent that Jones was on the left and Hawley on the right. “Rob had him take some lessons, he would sit with the boys and throw grenades every so often,” said one.Jack, a former student who is himself now a teacher, explained further: “Jones and Hawley would sit on opposite sides of the classroom. We’d get these photocopies of, you know, excerpts from Nietzsche or Marx or John Locke, for ideologies, given them in advance and told to highlight them. Then it was a debate, a discussion, about what conservatives think about society, is nationalism inherently aggressive, and so on and so on.“Fairly quickly it was known … you know, Hawley, he’s the conservative one, he’s the rightwing guy. But then, as I say, he didn’t hide it in discussions. He was forthright about defending his views even at that stage.”The ex-pupil added that Hawley was clearly highly intelligent. “I’m sad to see some of the things he’s saying now, the people he’s aligning with, and the simplistic, glib phrases he’s coming out with, but he’s a serious thinker and he was seriously impressive even back then. And everyone could see it. I think that’s why Jones was happy for him to take such a big load of the teaching, as it was very apparent that this was a very impressive young person,” he said.Hawley, who left comments on pupil’s essays in green ink, “could be quite tough at some points”, according to Jack.“It was a great incentive to work hard and try and do better and see, gosh, would I be capable of writing an essay that wouldn’t be scrawled all over or, you know, would at least get some positive feedback. So, yeah, that was really the first time at St Paul’s where I really loved the education. And I did very well in A-Level politics because I was so, what’s the word – these lessons were exhilarating. And that inspired me to keep going with politics, and he had a lot to do with that,” Jack said.But not all of Hawley’s former pupils were as kind. “He ran my Oxbridge preparation classes. He’s useless, I didn’t get in,” remarked one graduate of Durham University.The reading material set by the young American teacher spoke to his Christian faith, with the devout Hawley setting Paul’s letter to the Romans as Oxbridge reading. In politics, Hawley also went beyond the syllabus to teach John Rawls, Michael Sandel, John Locke, Thomas Paine and other classic works of studying American democracy.More than anything, the prevailing impression left by Hawley on one pupil seems to be that of a politics wonk. “He was really, really into American political logistics. It was around the time of the 2004 election, or run-up to it, and he had his postal voting pack with him and was so proud and protective of it,” he said.Such was his tidiness – or “creepily American” appearance – that the best nickname his pupils could devise was “The All-American Hero”.“He looked like somebody who’s going to be president. If you imagined what a 22-year-old would look like before they became president, he was the figure. Can’t typecast better than that,” added one former charge.But what did his colleagues make of him? In a now-deleted tweet, Mike Sacks, a former Colet fellow who arrived two years after Hawley, said that a teacher asked him: “You’re not a fascist like that Joshua Hawley, are you?”Another described him as “too rightwing and Christian for my sensibilities”, but it seems Hawley did little to help himself in becoming friendly with the staff.“He made a point to keep himself aloof. My take on that is that he had an attitude that he was better, and that the sort of mingling and socializing was just below him, and not something he’d engage in. There were lots of opportunities to spend time together, either in the staff room or at drinks down at the pub – and he doesn’t drink, or he didn’t drink, let me put it that way. He’d never once go to the pub. Not once,” the ex-colleague said.Another former teacher, who says Hawley took an instant dislike to him, recalls an unfriendly Sunday morning encounter with Hawley at a bus stop, where he stayed wordless for 20 minutes as Hawley clutched a huge Bible full of colored ribbons to mark bits of scripture, off to an evangelical gathering.With few social appearances, staff actually remember little of Hawley, though one remembered incident seems striking.“The only anecdote I remember about him in the staff room is he made himself popcorn to watch the news coverage of the Iraq invasion. You know, shock and awe. […] Holding forth about how this is a good military move, and it’s a show of American strength. He was very hawkish,” a teacher recalled.“The common room is, I think, a bit more liberal – he really felt they weren’t quite as aligned with some of his morals. This kind of came across as him making his mark – maybe he was hamming it up a bit to make his point. But it’s not like popcorn was usual in the staff room. We are, after all, in London – we have tea and coffee, not exactly popcorn. He was quite excited about that kind of military endeavor. That was a funny, bizarre kind of moment,” the teacher added.Hawley’s connections to St Paul’s persisted after he left, attending a dinner celebrating the school’s 500th anniversary on 4 April 2009 at the Library of Congress in Washington DC and posing for a photograph with other former Colet fellows and the then High master, Dr Martin Stephen.But the events of attack on the Capitol on 6 January have changed St Paul’s attitude to their former employee.A spokesperson for the school said: “Like people the world over St Paul’s has been shocked by the scenes taking place in America and those resisting the delivery of the legitimate election process. Our records show Josh Hawley came over from the United States for 10 months as a postgraduate intern 18 years ago. We are relieved that democratic process is now prevailing in the US Capitol.” More