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      At least three members of Congress targeted in ‘swatting’ incidents

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      At least three members of Congress reported “swatting” incidents over the past week, with the New York Republican Brandon Williams being the latest to reveal that he was subject to an act of criminal harassment that generally involves prank-calling 911 to get a heavily armed Swat team to show up at the target’s home.Williams, who has represented central New York since 2023, said police from Auburn, New York, had come to his home on Christmas Day after receiving a call claiming there was a crisis at his home.Williams said the police, recognizing his address, called in advance to alert him but only after the swatting incident had disrupted his family holiday. Williams said he suspected his pro-Israel positions were behind the prank since pro-Hamas signs had been left at his home.The congressman later told CBS News that he told his family to assemble in the kitchen and to keep their hands visible when police arrived. He said he suspects public officials are being increasingly targeted, including by agitators seek to disrupt the lives of elected officials.“There are so many things going on in our society that are disrupting our systems,” Williams told the outlet. “Swatters are disrupting police, getting them out on these fake calls. This could be targeted at judges, state officials and law enforcement too.”“Swatting” became a holiday feature for several politicians from both parties at the end of 2023.The Florida Republican senator Rick Scott said on Thursday that he had also been the target of a hoax call.“Last night, while at dinner with my wife, cowards ‘swatted’ my home in Naples. These criminals wasted the time & resources of our law enforcement in a sick attempt to terrorize my family,” Scott said in a social media post.A spokesman for the Naples police department told CBS News that the person who made the call told dispatchers that a man had “shot his wife with an AR-15 three times while she was sleeping.”Police said that within 15 minutes they had confirmed the report was false.“This is very much an active and ongoing investigation,” the department added.In a third incident, the Georgia Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene said that she, too, had been swatted. In a social media post on Christmas Day, Greene said: “I was just swatted. This is like the 8th time. On Christmas with my family here.”She later claimed that both of her daughters’ homes were targeted.“Both my [daughters’] houses just got swatted today. Big thanks to the police who responded! We appreciate you and support you! Whoever is doing this, you are going to get caught and it won’t be funny to you anymore,” she wrote on X, tagging the FBI.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe Maine secretary of state, Shenna Bellows, who last week ruled that Donald Trump was ineligible to appear on the state’s 2024 primary ballot after his allegedly insurrectionist actions of 6 January 2021, was the target of a “swatting call” on Friday night, according to state police.Police said they had received a call at 8.15pm from an unknown male, saying that he had broken into her home in Manchester, Maine. Police responded but found no one inside the home, according to WMTV.Bellows later posted on Facebook that she and her husband were not home “when threats escalated, and our home address was posted online”.“This behavior is unacceptable,” she added. “The non-stop threatening communications the people who work for me endured all day yesterday is unacceptable. It’s designed to scare not only me but also others into silence, to send a message.”In an FBI alert about swatting in 2022, the agency warned that “individuals who engage in this activity use technology, such as caller ID spoofing, social engineering, TTY and prank calls to make it appear that the emergency call is coming from the victim’s phone.”The law enforcement agency added that patterns of swatting had evolved.“Traditionally, law enforcement has seen swatters directing their actions toward individuals and residences. Increasingly, the FBI sees swatters targeting public places such as airports, schools and businesses. Another recent trend is so-called celebrity swatting, where the targeted victims are well-known personalities.” More

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      in Elections

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

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

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      in US Politics

      Florida senator Rick Scott’s house ‘swatted’ by police

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      The Republican Florida senator Rick Scott has said that his home was “swatted” on Wednesday night.While dining with his wife, Ann, local Naples authorities responded to what was revealed to be a prank call intentionally made to lure resources like a Swat team to a location to respond to a false threat of danger, otherwise known as a “swatting call”.Scott responded to the incident on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.He said: “Last night, while at dinner with my wife, cowards ‘swatted’ my home in Naples. These criminals wasted the time & resources of our law enforcement in a sick attempt to terrorize my family.”Naples police called the incident an active and ongoing investigation.In a statement, Naples police said: “On December 27, 2023, at approximately 9:02pm, Naples Police dispatchers received a call on our non-emergency line from an individual stating that a shooting occurred … Within 15 minutes, we were able to confirm that the events did not occur, and the incident was a swatting event.”Other US politicians were also recently targeted by swatting call attempts. On Christmas Day, authorities arrived at the home of the Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene in Rome, Georgia, in response to a swatting call to a suicide hotline from a man who falsely claimed he shot his girlfriend at Greene’s home and was going to kill himself.That same morning, Greene wrote on X: “I was just swatted. This is like the 8th time. On Christmas with my family here. My local police are the GREATEST and shouldn’t have to deal with this. I appreciate them so much and my family and I are in joyous spirits celebrating the birth of our savior Jesus Christ!”Last year, Greene was targeted by more swatting attempts. In November, a Georgia man was charged with threatening to kill Greene, her family and her staff.In New York, Congressman Brandon Williams was also targeted by swatting calls on Christmas Day.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOn X, Williams thanked law enforcement officers who responded to the call.“Our home was swatted this afternoon. Thanks to the Deputies and Troopers who contacted me before arriving. They left with homemade cookies and spiced nuts! Merry Christmas everyone!” he tweeted.Authorities from the Cayuga county sheriff’s office confirmed that they, along with New York state police, responded “to a report of a reported confessed shooting incident” at Williams’s home. More

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      in US Politics

      New York governor vetoes bill to make conviction challenges easier

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      The New York governor, Kathy Hochul, vetoed a bill days before Christmas that would have made it easier for people who have pleaded guilty to crimes to challenge their convictions, a measure that was favored by criminal justice reformers but fiercely opposed by prosecutors.The Democrat said the bill’s “sweeping expansion of eligibility for post-conviction relief” would “upend the judicial system and create an unjustifiable risk of flooding the courts with frivolous claims”, in a veto letter released on Saturday.Under existing state law, criminal defendants who plead guilty are usually barred from trying to get their cases reopened based on a new claim of innocence, except in certain circumstances involving new DNA evidence.The bill passed by the legislature in June would have expanded the types of evidence that could be considered proof of innocence, including video footage or evidence of someone else confessing to a crime. Arguments that a person was coerced into a false guilty plea would have also been considered.Prosecutors and advocates for crime victims warned the bill would have opened the floodgates to endless, frivolous legal appeals by the guilty.The Erie county district attorney, John Flynn, the president of the District Attorney’s Association of the State of New York, wrote in a letter to Hochul in July that the bill would create “an impossible burden on an already overburdened criminal justice system”.The legislation would have benefitted people such as Reginald Cameron, who was exonerated in 2023, years after he pleaded guilty to first-degree robbery in exchange for a lesser sentence. He served more than eight years in prison after he was arrested alongside another person in 1994 in the fatal shooting of Kei Sunada, a 22-year-old Japanese immigrant. Cameron, then 19, had confessed after being questioned for several hours without attorneys.His conviction was thrown out after prosecutors reinvestigated the case, finding inconsistencies between the facts of the crime and the confessions that were the basis for the conviction. The investigation also found the detective that had obtained Cameron’s confessions was also connected to other high-profile cases that resulted in exonerations, including the Central Park Five case.Various states including Texas have implemented several measures over the years intended to stop wrongful convictions. Texas amended a statute in 2015 that allows a convicted person to apply for post-conviction DNA testing. In 2017, another amended rule requires law enforcement agencies to electronically record interrogations of suspects in serious felony cases in their entirety.“We’re pretty out of step when it comes to our post-conviction statute,” Amanda Wallwin, a state policy advocate at the Innocence Project, said of New York.“We claim to be a state that cares about racial justice, that cares about justice period. To allow Texas to outmaneuver us is and should be embarrassing,” she said.In 2018, New York’s highest court affirmed that people who plead guilty cannot challenge their convictions unless they have DNA evidence to support their innocence. That requirement makes it very difficult for defendants to get their cases heard before a judge, even if they have powerful evidence that is not DNA-based.Over the past three decades, the proportion of criminal cases that make it to trial in New York has steadily declined, according to a report by the New York State Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. About 99% of misdemeanor charges and 94% of felony charges in the state are resolved by guilty pleas.“In my work, I know there there are a lot of circumstances where people plead guilty to crimes because they are advised or misadvised by their attorneys at the time,” said Donna Aldea, a lawyer at the law firm Barket Epstein Kearon Aldea & LoTurco. “Sometimes they’re afraid that if they go to trial, they’ll face much worse consequences, even if they didn’t commit the crime.”She said the state’s criminal justice system right now is framed in a way that makes it impossible for people to challenge their guilty pleas years later when new evidence emerges, or when they are in a better financial position to challenge their convictions. More

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      in US Politics

      Jury in Rudy Giuliani defamation trial urged to send message: ‘Don’t do it’

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      A Washington DC jury should “send a message” to other powerful people by issuing substantial damages against Rudy Giuliani for spreading lies about two Georgia election workers, a lawyer for the pair said.“The message is don’t do it,” Michael Gottlieb, a lawyer representing Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss, said in his closing statement to eight jurors on the fourth day of the defamation case. “They say when someone shows you who they are, believe them. Mr Giuliani has shown us over and over and over again that he will not take our clients names out of his mouth. Facts do not and will not stop him.“He’s telegraphing that he will do this again. Believe him,” he said.Gottlieb asked the jury to award Freeman and Moss each at least $24m in damages to repair the damage to their reputation Giuliani caused by spreading lies about them after the 2020 election. He urged the jury to use their best judgment to determine how much to award in additional punitive damages to award as well as damages for intentional infliction of emotional distress.“Rudy Giuliani used his power to scapegoat Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss,” Gottlieb said. “He didn’t see them as human beings.”“He has no right to offer defenseless civil servants up to a virtual mob in order to overturn an election,” he added.In a reversal, Giuliani’s attorney announced he would not take the witness stand on Thursday. “We feel like these women have been through enough,” Joseph Sibley, Giuliani’s attorney, said in court.In his closing statement, Sibley sought to distance Giuliani from the threats and harassment Freeman and Moss endured. Instead, he laid the blame at the far-right news outlet The Gateway Pundit which he said was the first place Freeman and Moss were identified by name and urged readers to harass them. Freeman and Moss are separately suing the outlet for defamation in a Missouri court.“More likely than not, this is the party that sort of doxxed these women,” he said.Sibley acknowledged Giuliani had wronged Moss and Freeman, but urged the jury to judge the former New York City based on the context of his whole career.“Rudy Giuliani is a good man. I know that some of you may not think that. He hasn’t exactly helped himself with some of the things that have happened in the last few days,” he said. “The idea of him being a racist, or him encouraging racist activity, that’s really a low blow. That’s not who he is.”Invoking Abraham Lincoln’s call of “malice towards none and charity for all” he said that the jury should issue more moderate damages to send a message of compassion to the country during a moment of political divisiveness. Unmentioned, of course, was that Giuliani and Donald Trump have played a key role in creating that divisiveness with vitriolic rhetoric.Todays closing arguments mark the end of a closely watched trial that is seen as another key test of the ability of defamation law to police election misinformation.Throughout the week, Moss and Freeman, gave harrowing testimony about how Giuliani’s lies upended their lives. Among other things, Moss said she was afraid to go anywhere alone and Freeman said she was afraid to give anyone her name and still wears a mask and sunglasses in public so she will not be recognized.Beryl Howell, the US district judge, has already found him liable for defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and civil conspiracy. The only question for the eight-member jury is how much to award in damages.Sibley, Giuliani’s attorney, has sought to undercut claims that Freeman and Moss need millions of dollars to repair their reputation and that they suffered harm that amounts to such a high sum.Giuliani was twice reprimanded by Howell this week for statements he made outside the courthouse. On Monday, he said he would prove what he said about Moss and Freeman was true. On Tuesday, he attacked lawyers representing Moss and Freeman.“When I testify, you’ll get the whole story and it will be definitively clear what I said was true and that whatever happened to them, which was unfortunate if other people overreacted, but everything I said about them is true,” he had said on Monday. “Of course I don’t regret it, I told the truth.”That never came to fruition. Gottlieb made sure the jury noticed.“Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, it turns out are miles and miles away from ordinary. They are heroes. After everything they went through, they stood up and they said no more,” Gottlieb said in his closing statement. “They opened themselves up to you and the public, and unlike some other people, they testified here under oath.” More

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      in US Politics

      Hunter Biden indicted on tax charges in California in new criminal case

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      Hunter Biden has been indicted on nine tax charges in California, becoming the second indictment against the president’s son, adding fuel to a scandal that Republicans have been seizing on in the lead-up to the 2024 election.The state charges on Thursday follow federal firearms charges in Delaware alleging Biden unlawfully obtained a revolver in October 2018 after he falsely stated he was not using narcotic drugs.The new charges include three felonies and six misdemeanor offenses, and Biden faces a possible 17-year sentence if convicted.“The Defendant engaged in a four-year scheme to not pay at least $1.4 million in self-assessed federal taxes he owed for tax years 2016 through 2019,” the 56-page indictment said, adding that Biden “spent millions of dollars on an extravagant lifestyle rather than paying his tax bills”.In 2018 alone, the indictment read, Biden “spent more than $1.8 million, including approximately $772,000 in cash withdrawals, approximately $383,000 in payments to women, approximately $151,000 in clothing and accessories” among other expenditures.Biden’s lawyers did not immediately respond to an inquiry and the White House declined to comment.He had previously been on track to plead guilty to misdemeanor tax charges as part of a plea deal with prosecutors, which covered $4m in personal income taxes that he allegedly failed to pay in 2017 and 2018.But the agreement imploded in July after a judge raised questions about it. The deal had been pilloried as a “sweetheart deal” by Republicans, who have been investigating nearly every aspect of Biden’s business dealings as well as the justice department’s handling of the case. He eventually paid back taxes with a loan from a friend.The state charges come as Republicans in Congress have pushed forward with a possible impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden in connection with his son’s scandals. The House is on track to vote next week on authorizing a formal inquiry, although no evidence has emerged so far to prove that the president accepted bribes or engaged in an influence-peddling scheme, as some GOP representatives have suggested.Some Republicans have expressed doubt about a possible impeachment, questioning whether a case is merited. In September, witnesses brought in by Republicans on the House oversight committee said there was no evidence of crimes by Joe Biden, but also called for further investigation.Hunter Biden pleaded not guilty to the gun charges in Delaware, which marked the first time a sitting US president’s child faced criminal prosecution. His lawyer said at the time that the special counsel David Weiss was “bending to political pressure” by filing the indictment.Under the previous plea deal that fell apart, Hunter Biden would have been sentenced to two years of probation. In the draft agreement, prosecutors had noted that his struggles with addiction had worsened during the period after the death of his brother Beau Biden in 2015.Weiss, the attorney in Delaware, was appointed special counsel by attorney general, Merrick Garland, in August.The new case is set to add chaos to what will already be an extraordinary election year, in which the sitting president will be dealing with the fallout of his son’s possible trials, while his likely opponent, Donald Trump, is facing four separate criminal cases and 91 charges. More

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      in Elections

      Georgia prosecutors predict jail sentences in Trump 2020 election case

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      Fulton county prosecutors have signaled they want prison sentences in the Georgia criminal case against Donald Trump and his top allies for allegedly violating the racketeering statute as part of efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, according to exchanges in private emails.“We have a long road ahead,” the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, wrote in one email. “Long after these folks are in jail, we will still be practicing law.”The previously unreported emails, between Willis and defense lawyers, open a window on to the endgame envisioned by prosecutors on her team – which could inform legal strategies ahead of a potential trial next year, such as approaches toward plea deal negotiations.Prosecutors are not presently expected to offer plea agreements to Trump, his former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and his former election lawyer Rudy Giuliani, but left open the possibility of talks with other co-defendants, the Guardian previously reported.The emails also underscore the increasing breakdown in trust with a growing number of defense lawyers who have regarded prosecutors’ tactics – including Willis assuming she will win – as inappropriately aggressive and presumptuous given the case remains months from a potential verdict.The district attorney raised the prospect of defendants in prison in a 29 November exchange, which started with Trump’s lawyer Steve Sadow complaining about an incomplete Giuliani transcript the defense received in discovery, according to two people with direct knowledge of the emails.Willis responded that the defense lawyers would receive the full transcript in the next production of discovery and, in increasingly tense exchanges, took offense that she was not being referred to by her formal title as well as the implicit accusation that they were withholding evidence.“No one placed me here and I have earned this title,” Willis said, apparently taking umbrage that she was not referred to specifically as the district attorney, but as a prosecutor. “I’ve never practiced law by hiding the ball, I’ve enjoyed beating folks by making sure they have the entire file.”The email took a turn when Willis added that they should remain professional because their legal careers would continue even after the election case co-defendants went to jail. Willis signed off: “yours in service”.Trump and 18 co-defendants in August originally pleaded not guilty to charges that they violated Georgia’s state racketeering statute as they sought to overturn the 2020 election. In the following weeks, four of the 18 negotiated plea deals and extricated themselves from the case.The remark about jail caused consternation with some of the defense lawyers, who have been aghast that the district attorney’s office would throw around what they took as a prison threat in a cavalier manner, according to multiple people familiar with the situation.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionA spokesperson for Willis declined to comment.Relations between prosecutors and defense lawyers have been particularly strained in recent weeks, people close to the case have said, mainly since several media outlets published videotaped “proffer” statements that the former Trump lawyers Jenna Ellis, Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro gave as part of plea deals.The district attorney’s office had privately believed Trump’s team leaked the videos, only to be surprised when the lawyer for the former Coffee county elections official Misty Hampton acknowledged at a court hearing that he had disseminated videos to a certain news outlet.The leak of the proffer statements prompted prosecutors to seek an emergency protective order on discovery materials and to refuse to provide copies of any future proffer videos to defense lawyers, who would instead have to view them in the district attorney’s offices in Atlanta.In the separate federal 2020 election subversion case brought against Trump in Washington, the discovery materials were subject to a protective order almost as soon as Trump was charged. But special counsel prosecutors have not forced Trump’s lawyers to only view the discovery in person.The Fulton county superior judge Scott McAfee, who is presiding in the case, ultimately agreed to impose a protective order governing the release of discovery materials marked as “sensitive”, though the threat to only have proffer videos available in the district attorney’s offices was dropped. More

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      in Elections

      Six Nevada Republicans charged with casting fake electoral votes in 2020

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      Six Republicans who cast fake electoral votes for Donald Trump in Nevada in 2020 were charged with two felonies each by the state’s attorney general on Wednesday.The Democratic attorney general, Aaron Ford, announced the charges, saying a grand jury had decided to charge the six fake electors with “offering a false instrument for filing” and “uttering a forged instrument” for sending documents claiming to be the state’s electors.Fake electors in Georgia and Michigan have already been charged, while others of the seven states with similar schemes are still investigating the issue. A separate civil lawsuit in Wisconsin over the fake electors settled this week, with the Republicans who claimed Trump won the state acknowledging Biden’s victory and agreeing not to serve as electors next year.“When the efforts to undermine faith in our democracy began after the 2020 election, I made it clear that I would do everything in my power to defend the institutions of our nation and our state,” Ford said in a statement. “We cannot allow attacks on democracy to go unchallenged. Today’s indictments are the product of a long and thorough investigation, and as we pursue this prosecution, I am confident that our judicial system will see justice done.”Ford had previously said the state’s laws didn’t address a situation like this. The state legislature passed a bill to make it a felony to be a fake elector, but the governor vetoed the bill.The six Nevadans charged are Michael McDonald, Jesse Law, Jim DeGraffenreid, Durward James Hindle III, Shawn Meehan and Eileen Rice.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe filing a false instrument charge is a category C felony, punishable by up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine, while the uttering a false instrument charge is a category D felony, with potential for up to four years in prison and a $5,000 fine. More