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      in US Politics

      Trump Organization and financial chief charged in a tax-related investigation

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      The Trump Organization and its chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, have been charged in a tax-related investigation, marking the first criminal charges against the former president’s company since prosecutors began investigating it three years ago, two people familiar with the matter told the Associated Press.Multiple news outlets including the New York Times and the Washington Post reported the indictment on Wednesday evening, citing sources familiar with the matter.The move marks the latest stage of an escalating battle between New York prosecutors and the former president. The charges against the Trump Organization and Weisselberg remained sealed Wednesday night, but were expected to involve alleged tax violations related to benefits the company gave to top executives, possibly including use of apartments, cars and school tuition, people familiar with the case said.While no charges are expected to be brought against Trump personally the charges mark an extraordinary turning point for the former president and more are likely to follow. New York prosecutors are still investigating allegations of “hush money” paid to women who say they had sexual relations with Trump, and claims of real-estate price manipulation.The charges are a severe blow to the Trump Organization, which may now find it more difficult to raise money as the case continues. They also pose a challenge to Trump’s apparent political ambitions. The former president has begun a series of campaign style rallies and is positioning himself for another run at the presidency in 2024.Prosecutors have been pressing Weisselberg, 73, to cooperate with their investigations but with little success so far.No one other than Trump has such a thorough knowledge of the Trump Organization. “They are like Batman and Robin,” Jennifer Weisselberg, ex-wife of Allen Weisselberg’s son Barry told the New York Times. Jennifer Weisselberg has aided Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance investigation into Trump’s business after a contentious divorce, supplying hundreds of pages of tax documents.Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer, testified before Congress in 2019 that Weisselberg helped orchestrate a cover-up to reimburse him for a $130,000 payment made to the adult film actor Stormy Daniels, who has claimed she had sex with Trump.Cohen also testified that he and Weisselberg concocted phoney valuations of Trump’s real estate holdings to devalue assets for tax purposes while inflating them for loan agreements.Vance and the New York state attorney general, Letitia James, are investigating both those allegations.A grand jury was recently empaneled to weigh evidence, and James said she was assigning two of her lawyers to work with Vance on the criminal inquiry while she continues a civil investigation of Trump.The Manhattan district attorney’s office did not respond to a request for comment from the Guardian.Trump had blasted the investigation in a statement Monday, deriding Vance’s office as “rude, nasty, and totally biased”.Trump Organization lawyers met virtually with Manhattan prosecutors last week in a last-ditch attempt to dissuade them from charging the company. Prosecutors gave the lawyers a Monday deadline to make the case that criminal charges shouldn’t be filed.Ron Fischetti, a lawyer for the Trump Organization, told the AP this week that there was no indication Trump himself was included in the first batch of charges.“There is no indictment coming down this week against the former president,” Fischetti said. “I can’t say he’s out of the woods yet completely.”Weisselberg, a loyal lieutenant to Trump and his real estate-developer father, Fred, came under scrutiny, in part, because of questions about his son’s use of a Trump apartment at little or no cost.Prosecutors investigating untaxed benefits to Trump executives have also been looking at Matthew Calamari, a former Trump bodyguard turned chief operating officer, and his son, the company’s corporate director of security. However, a lawyer for the Calamaris said Wednesday that he didn’t expect them to be charged.“Although the DA’s investigation obviously is ongoing, I do not expect charges to be filed against either of my clients at this time,” said the lawyer, Nicholas Gravante.The company and Weisselberg were expected to make their first court appearance Thursday. More

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      in US Politics

      Democrats cite Ku Klux Klan Act in suits over ‘Trump Train’ Texas bus incident

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      A convoy of Trump supporters that swarmed a Biden-Harris campaign bus on a Texas highway last October violated the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, which prohibits violent election intimidation, two new lawsuits allege.One suit targets drivers in the self-described “Trump Train”, saying they conspired to intimidate and harass Biden-Harris campaigners.The other suit names as defendants law enforcement officials in San Marcos, Texas, saying they “abdicated” their responsibility to protect the bus “despite repeated calls for help”.The lawsuits were filed by Eric Cervini, an author and volunteer; Wendy Davis, a former Texas state senator and a Biden campaign surrogate; David Gins, now a White House staffer; and Timothy Holloway, the bus driver. Cervini was driving his own car.The FBI previously confirmed it was investigating the incident in which a pack of vehicles flying flags in support of Trump’s re-election effort besieged a Biden bus on a Texas highway.Court documents say some members of a New Braunfels Trump Train were “identified in media reports and on social media as having taken part in the 6 January 2021 insurrection” at the US Capitol.Court papers also say Congress passed the Ku Klux Klan Act in the aftermath of the civil war and during Reconstruction “to prevent groups from joining together to obstruct free and fair federal elections by intimidating and injuring voters, or denying them the ability to engage in political speech”.The members of the Trump Train “openly and wilfully violated that statutory command”, court papers say.In February a Democratic congressman from Mississippi, Bennie Thompson, joined with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People to sue Donald Trump and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani under the KKK Act, accusing them of conspiring to incite the Capitol attack.The new lawsuits were filed on 24 June in federal court in the western district of Texas. They claim that on 27 October, when the Biden campaign made plans for the bus tour public, Trump Train members in Alamo City and New Braunfels plotted “to intercept and intimidate the bus as it traveled through Bexar, Comal, Hays and Travis counties”. As the bus traveled from Laredo to San Antonio on the morning of 30 October, papers say, about 15 to 20 Trump Train vehicles were spotted on a “feeder road” near the I35 interstate. The bus left the highway due to safety concerns and reached San Antonio.However, court papers say, some Trump Train members “were not dissuaded, and began deploying to pre-planned positions along I-35”. Alamo City Trump Train members started posting on Facebook that they were heading to the highway and would wait for the bus while others said they were in position, court documents say.When the bus left San Antonio, papers say, campaign members started seeing social media posts about “the converging of vehicles”. When the bus left San Antonio city limits, a police escort departed. Not long after, court papers say, “Trump Train vehicles converged on the bus”.The papers say: “Vehicles – most of them large trucks and SUVs – displayed a variety of flags, including Trump campaign flags, Confederate battle flags and many others. The Trump Train began harassing the bus by surrounding it, forcing it to slow down, honking, yelling and making hand gestures. Vehicles started getting close to the bus and taking videos.”[embedded content]After the bus arrived in New Braunfels, a staffer called police, who sent vehicles to escort the bus. “As soon as the police arrived, the Trump Train resumed driving at around the posted speed limit and stopped harassing the bus passengers,” court documents say.“When the bus tour reached the New Braunfels-San Marcos city line, however, the New Braunfels police dropped off, and the Trump Train resumed its harassing behavior.”The bus passengers say they were “terrified” and called police dispatchers in New Braunfels and San Marcos, asking for an escort. San Marcos police “refused to send an escort and said officers would be looking out for traffic violations as usual”, court documents say, adding: “They said that unless the Biden-Harris campaign was reporting a crime, we can’t help you.’”Campaign staffers say they “pleaded” for help. But while San Marcos police “assured” them they would send backup, court documents say, none came.San Marcos police did not immediately respond to a request for comment.One Trump Train participant is alleged to have “side-swiped” a campaign staffer’s SUV. A campaign event was cancelled.Davis, who rose to national attention with a 13-hour filibuster in an attempt to block a draconian abortion bill in 2013, said: “We filed this lawsuit because everyone should be able to engage in peaceful political activity free from fear, intimidation, or threats of violence.” More

    • 213 Shares179 Views

      in US Politics

      Derek Chauvin sentenced to 22 and a half years for murder of George Floyd – latest news

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      Key events

      Show

      3.55pm EDT
      15:55

      Chauvin given 22 and a half years for George Floyd murder

      1.42pm EDT
      13:42

      Health secretary ordered to investigate Fort Bliss migrant children complaints

      1.28pm EDT
      13:28

      Charges possible in Trump Organization investigation – report

      12.50pm EDT
      12:50

      Republican congressman compares Democrats to Nazis

      12.17pm EDT
      12:17

      DoJ sues over Georgia voting rights measure – full report

      12.05pm EDT
      12:05

      Georgia governor slams DoJ voting rights lawsuit

      11.10am EDT
      11:10

      Justice Department sues Georgia over voting law

      Live feed

      Show

      5.43pm EDT
      17:43

      Gabrielle Canon here, taking over from the west coast for the evening.
      Minnesota Governor Tim Walz has tweeted his reaction to the Chavin sentence it “historic” but agreeing with others that more needs to be done.
      “This is a positive step toward justice, but our work is not done. We’ve known all along that accountability in the courtroom is not enough,” he says.

      Governor Tim Walz
      (@GovTimWalz)
      Today, Judge Cahill gave Derek Chauvin a historic sentence. This is a positive step toward justice, but our work is not done. We’ve known all along that accountability in the courtroom is not enough. https://t.co/mlLijFciIf

      June 25, 2021

      “The statements today from George Floyd’s family and members of the community were painful but powerful,” he continues. “Now, as Derek Chauvin faces years behind bars, we must come together around our common humanity and continue on towards justice for all”.
      The stataement echoed the statement the governor issued on April 20, when Chauvin was found guilty of murdering George Floyd, when he said that systemic change was needed to prevent this from happening again.
      Here is more from his statement in April:

      “Too many Black people have lost—and continue to lose—their lives at the hands of law enforcement in our state.”
      “Our communities of color cannot go on like this. Our police officers cannot go on like this. Our state simply cannot go on like this. And the only way it will change is through systemic reform.”
      “We must rebuild, restore, and reimagine the relationship between law enforcement and the communities they serve. We must tackle racial inequities in every corner of society—from health to home ownership to education. We must come together around our common humanity.”
      “Let us continue on this march towards justice.”

      Updated
      at 5.47pm EDT

      5.27pm EDT
      17:27

      Evening summary

      That’s it for me. Here’s a recap of what happened today:

      Derek Chauvin was sentenced to 22 years in prison for the death of George Floyd.
      Here’s Joe Biden responding to the ruling.
      The UFO report is out.
      Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida addressed the building collapse and efforts by rescue workers there.
      The Manhattan district attorney informed attorneys for Donald Trump that criminal charges could be filed against the family business.

      5.13pm EDT
      17:13

      Here’s Al Sharpton reacting to the ruling. Like Ellison, he said the ruling was not enough. Sharpton noted that the ruling is “longest sentence they’ve ever given but it is not justice. Justice is George Floyd would be alive.”

      ABC News
      (@ABC)
      Rev. Al Sharpton on Derek Chauvin 22.5-year sentence: “Had they done sentences like this before, maybe Chauvin would not have thought he would have gotten away with it.” https://t.co/IuuRKnTv3s pic.twitter.com/vw7mGKzXvh

      June 25, 2021

      5.06pm EDT
      17:06

      Some reaction from various corners of Twitter to the Chauvin ruling:

      Jemele Hill
      (@jemelehill)
      If you’re wondering if Derek Chauvin’s sentence is fair, Chauvin will be 60 years old when he’s released from prison after serving 15 years of his 22 1/2-year sentence. George Floyd was murdered by Chauvin when he was 46. Floyd can never resume his life. Chauvin can.

      June 25, 2021

      Meena Harris
      (@meena)
      Just a reminder that Chauvin being sentenced to 22 years in prison is not justice. George Floyd being alive today — along with countless other black people murdered by the police — is justice. There’s no achieving justice from a system that is fundamentally unjust.

      June 25, 2021

      W. Kamau Bell
      (@wkamaubell)
      White people, do not celebrate Derek Chauvin’s sentence. Figure out how you can put the same attention & activism on all police murders of Black people that you put on George Floyd. Your work is not done.

      June 25, 2021

      Harry Litman
      (@harrylitman)
      Presumptive sentence for the crime for a person of Chauvin’s criminal history is 12.5 years. So in effect Judge Cahill imposed an additional 10 years for the aggravating factors. Remember, Chauvin waived his right for a jury to determine & probably jury would have found even more

      June 25, 2021

      5.02pm EDT
      17:02

      My colleague Adam Gabbatt had a long dispatch about the UFO report:

      The mystery of UFOs seen in American skies is likely to continue following the release of the US government’s highly anticipated UFO report.
      The report released Friday afternoon made clear that while American intelligence officials do not believe aliens are behind the UFOs – or what scientists prefer to call unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) – that were observed by Navy pilots, they cannot explain what the flying objects are.
      The report confirms that the observed phenomena are not part of any US military operations.
      The Pentagon studied over 140 incidents reported by Navy pilots of UFOs seen over the last two decades for the report, many of which were seen during the summer of 2014 into the spring of 2015.
      The release of the report caps a six-month wait, since a group of elected officials succeeded in including the Intelligence Authorization Act for fiscal year 2021 in a $2.3tn coronavirus relief bill signed by Donald Trump last December.
      The act ordered government agencies to provide a declassified “detailed analysis of unidentified aerial phenomena data and intelligence” and “a detailed description of an interagency process” for reporting UFOs.
      The discussion of UFOs – at government level or outside it – has been stigmatized for decades. While some have used the UAP materials as fodder for theories on alien life, officials have pointed to the possible threat of the UAPs being from an adversary using technology unknown to the US.

      4.50pm EDT
      16:50

      The much-awaited (at least to me) Director of National Intelligence report on UFOs is here. Read it.

      4.41pm EDT
      16:41

      Joe Biden was asked about his reaction to the Chauvin ruling. Here’s the pool report:

      Question: Do you have a reaction to Derek Chauvin being sentenced to 22.5 years in prison?
      Biden: “I don’t know all the circumstances that were considered but it seems to me, under the guidelines, that seems to be appropriate.”
      Thanks to the AP’s Darlene Superville for lending a good recording of the quote.
      More quotes coming.

      The Recount
      (@therecount)
      President Biden reacts to Derek Chauvin sentence of 22.5 years, saying “that seems to be appropriate.” pic.twitter.com/hNGv84W1LY

      June 25, 2021

      Updated
      at 4.51pm EDT

      4.32pm EDT
      16:32

      Oliver Laughland

      Just before sentencing Derek Chauvin to 22 and a half years, judge Cahill, known as a forthright and relatively brusque jurist, stated he had written a lengthy, 26 page sentencing memo to explain his thinking on the sentence, which is 10 years above the state guidance for second degree murder. “What the sentence is not based on is emotion or sympathy, but at the same time I want to acknowledge the deep and tremendous pain families are feeling, especially the Floyd family,” Cahill told the court.
      The document itself is filled with a lot legal reasoning, but the conclusion is worth reporting here as it’s a neat summary of Cahill’s thinking.
      He writes: “Part of the mission of the Minneapolis police department is to give citizens ‘voice and respect’. Here, Mr Chauvin, rather than pursuing the MPD mission, treated Mr Floyd without respect and denied him the dignity owed to all human beings and which he certainly would have extended to a friend or neighbor. In the court’s view, 270 months, which amounts to an additional 10 years over the presumptive 150 month sentence, is the appropriate sentence.”

      Updated
      at 4.36pm EDT

      4.17pm EDT
      16:17

      Here is the sentencing order on the Chauvin ruling in the Floyd case.

      4.16pm EDT
      16:16

      Attorney Ben Crump has also responded to the ruling.

      Ben Crump
      (@AttorneyCrump)
      22.5 YEARS! This historic sentence brings the Floyd family and our nation one step closer to healing by delivering closure and accountability.

      June 25, 2021

      4.15pm EDT
      16:15

      Ellison continues: “My hope for Derek Chauvin is that he uses his long sentence to reflect on the choices he made … my hope is that he takes the time to learn something about the man whose life he took.”
      Ellison is going on to say the sentencing “is not enough”.

      Updated
      at 4.19pm EDT

      4.14pm EDT
      16:14

      Ellison is now speaking.
      “The sentence that the court just imposed on Derek Chauvin … is one of the longest a former police officer has ever received for an unlawful use of deadly force,” Ellison said. “Today’s sentencing is not justice but it’s another moment of real accountability on the road to justice.”

      Updated
      at 4.19pm EDT

      4.12pm EDT
      16:12

      Attorney General Keith Ellison of Minnesota is about to speak about the ruling and Derek Chauvin’s sentencing. More

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      in Elections

      US Capitol attack: first defendant in 6 January riot expected to be sentenced

      by

      Three years of probation, 40 hours of community service and $500.That is the punishment federal prosecutors have requested for the first Capitol rioter expected to be sentenced in court, Anna Morgan-Lloyd, a 49-year-old Donald Trump supporter from Indiana.“Best day ever. We stormed the capitol building,” Morgan-Lloyd wrote on Facebook on 6 January, prosecutors said. She added that she and her friend “were in the first 50 people in”, authorities said.With nearly 500 people already arrested and charged for their roles in the 6 January attack, the sentencing of Morgan-Lloyd, a grandmother from a small town in Indiana with no known connections to extremist groups, will be the first indication of what kinds of sentences federal judges may impose on the hundreds of people who invaded the Capitol during the official certification of Trump’s loss in the 2020 presidential election.While some members of extremist groups are facing more serious conspiracy charges for allegedly planning the violence at the Capitol in advance, and others are facing charges for assaulting law enforcement officers, many defendants, like Morgan-Lloyd, are facing only misdemeanor charges.Morgan-Lloyd has agreed to plead guilty to a single misdemeanor charge of “parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a Capitol building,” which carries a maximum penalty of six months’ imprisonment, and is scheduled to be sentenced by a federal judge on Wednesday afternoon.In a sentencing memo, federal prosecutors said Morgan-Lloyd and her friend Donna Sue Bissey were inside one hallway of the Capitol for a little over 10 minutes, that she did not engage in any acts of violence or destroy any government property, and that she did not appear to have planned her actions in advance or coordinated with any extremist groups.In a letter to the court, prosecutors said, the 49-year-old took responsibility for her actions, and wrote, “At first it didn’t dawn on me, but later I realized that if every person like me, who wasn’t violent, was removed from that crowd, the ones who were violent may have lost the nerve to do what they did.”Because she had no previous criminal record, Morgan-Lloyd quickly confessed to her participation and cooperated with law enforcement, and later expressed regret for what she had done, prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memo, they believed it was appropriate to request no prison time for Morgan-Lloyd, only an extended period of probation, community service, and a $500 restitution payment towards the nearly $1.5m in damages the Capitol building sustained during the invasion.“I think she’s learned a lot,” Morgan-Lloyd’s attorney, Heather Shaner, told the Guardian. “This has been a trauma for her, and she knows it was a trauma for the United States of America that people did what they did, and she would never do it again.”Shaner said that her client was “from a very small town and has had very limited life exposure”, and that she believed that many of the people who participated in the Capitol riots were “were uninformed or misinformed”.“She’s a very fine woman, and I hope she gets probation,” Shaner said.Prosecutors wrote that Morgan-Lloyd spent “approximately two days” incarcerated after she was initially arrested in February and that the time inside the criminal justice system was likely “eye-opening” and a deterrent to any future criminal behavior.The conditions of her probation should include barring her owning firearms, prosecutors requested.Unlike most federal defendants, who typically remain in detention before trial, the vast majority of people charged in the Capitol riots have already been released, a Guardian analysis found. The stark contrast in pretrial detention rates has prompted questions about whether the predominantly white Capitol defendants were getting different treatment from prosecutors and judges than most federal defendants, who are Black and Latino. More

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      in US Politics

      Police records show threats to kill lawmakers in wake of Capitol attack

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      Washington’s Metropolitan police department recorded threats to lawmakers and public facilities in the wake of the 6 January attack on the Capitol, according to documents made public in a ransomware hack on their systems this month.The documents also show how, in the month following the Capitol attack, police stepped up surveillance efforts, monitoring hotel bookings, protests in other jurisdictions, and social media for signs of another attack by far-right groups on targets in the capital, including events surrounding the inauguration of Joe Biden as president.The revelation of the seriousness of the threats comes amid Republican opposition to forming a 9/11-style commission to investigate the January attack, which saw the Capitol roamed by looting mobs hunting for politicians and involved the deaths of five people.The police documents were stolen and published by the ransomware attack group Babuk, and some were redistributed by the transparency organization Distributed Denial of Secrets, from whom they were obtained by the Guardian. Various outlets last week published stories based on the data showing intelligence indicating that far-right Boogaloo groups planned to attack various targets in the capital.But another collection of documents labeled “chiefs intelligence briefings” shows a broad, cross-agency effort in the days following the attack on the Capitol to identify suspects, monitor and apprehend far-right actors, and anticipate further attacks on Washington around events like the inauguration of Joe Biden and the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump.In the aftermath of the riot, the attention of police and other law enforcement agencies was focused on far-right activity on social media platforms, and especially on a group calling itself Patriot Action for America.One 13 January bulletin said that the group had been “calling for others to join them in ‘storming’ state, local, and federal government courthouses and administrative buildings in the event POTUS is removed as president prior to inauguration day”.The bulletin also noted that the agency was facing broader challenges in monitoring far-right actors on social media websites, saying that “with the shutdown of Parler it has been a challenge to track down how activities are being planned”, and that they continued to “see more users on Gab and Telegram following the de-platforming of many accounts on more conventional social media companies”.The bulletin mentions a “possible second suspect” in the placement of pipe bombs near the DNC and RNC, who was “observed on video scouting/taking photographs in advance of the placement”, who “took a metro to the East Falls church stop and took a Lyft from there”.On 12 January, a bulletin noted that a supreme court agent had noticed “two vehicles stopped beside each other” outside the court building, and that in one an older white male was “videotaping the Capitol fence line and the court”, and in the other a passenger was “hanging out the window in order to videotape the court”.A 22 January bulletin mentions that in Pennsylvania a man was arrested after “transmitting interstate threats to multiple US senators of the Democratic party”, having stated that he was “going to DC to kill people and wanted to be killed by the police”. When Pennsylvania state police apprehended him “he was in possession of a rifle, two handguns, and a large quantity of ammunition”.A later bulletin described an incident in which a man with an illegal firearm was arrested after asking for directions to the “Oval Office”, and another man’s van was searched after he was observed sitting in the vehicle while parked outside the supreme court justice Sonya Sotomayor’s house.The same day’s bulletin mentioned that Metropolitan police were cooperating with Capitol police in investigating “a number of threats aimed at members of Congress as the Senate impeachment trial of Donald Trump nears”.The threats continued for weeks after the attack.Almost a month later, a bulletin reported that “an identified militia group member” in Texas was claiming that if their “operation failed at the US Capitol”, there was a “back-up plan” involving the group “detonating bombs at the US Capitol during the State of the Union”.The group was not named but was described as “a large organization allegedly with members from every state, which included individuals who were former military and law enforcement”.The documents also reveal how law enforcement agencies secured the cooperation of private companies, from ride-share companies to hotels.A bulletin includes the claim that “FBI [is] working with Lyft and Uber to identify riders to and from the protest locations”.The same bulletin carries detailed figures on reservations in hotels across the capital leading up to the inauguration on 20 January, which was secured by an unprecedented mobilization of law enforcement and the national guard.Two days later, another bulletin said that “MPD’s intelligence division has conducted extensive outreach with security directors of area hotels”, who they asked to be “vigilant for evidence of suspicious activity and firearms possession by hotel guests”. More

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      in US Politics

      Colorado man suspected in wife’s death allegedly voted for Trump in her name

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      A Colorado man suspected in the death of his wife, who disappeared on Mother’s Day last year, is also accused of submitting a fraudulent vote on her behalf for Donald Trump in November’s presidential election, court documents show.Barry Morphew told investigators he mailed the ballot on behalf of his wife, Suzanne Morphew, to help Trump win, saying “all these other guys are cheating” and that he thought his wife would have voted for Trump anyway, according to an arrest warrant affidavit signed by a judge in Chaffee county.Trump and his supporters in the Republican party claim Joe Biden won the White House through mass electoral fraud – a lie repeatedly thrown out of court.In December, the Washington Post reported that “only a handful of cases” of actual voter fraud had “resulted in criminal charges alleging wrongdoing”.Some of the charges, it said, were “against Republican voters aiming to help Trump … including a man charged with trying to cast a ballot in Pennsylvania for the president in the name of his deceased mother”.In Colorado, Morphew, 53, faces possible first-degree murder and other charges in connection with the disappearance of Suzanne Morphew on 10 May last year. He was arrested on 5 May and is being held in connection with that case.Morphew posted a widely viewed video on Facebook pleading for his wife’s safe return shortly after she disappeared.Authorities say the arrest was the result of an investigation that has failed to find Suzanne Morphew’s body. After conducting more than 135 searches across Colorado and interviewing 400 people in multiple states, investigators believe she is dead but have not found her body, the Chaffee county sheriff, John Spezze, has said.An arrest affidavit by an Chaffee county sheriff’s detective sergeant, Claudette Hysjulien, says the county clerk’s office received a suspicious mail ballot in Suzanne Chaffee’s name in October.Sheriff’s investigators saw the ballot, which had been mailed by the state to Suzanne Chaffee, lacked Suzanne’s signature, as required by law. Barry Morphew had signed it as a witness.Morphew was interviewed by two FBI agents about the ballot in April. Asked why he sent it, he told the agents, “Just because I wanted Trump to win,” according to the affidavit. “I just thought, give him another vote.”Asked if he knew it was illegal to send someone else’s ballot, Morphew replied: “I didn’t know you couldn’t do that for your spouse.”The affidavit says Morphew faces two new counts: felony forgery and misdemeanor ballot fraud. On Friday, Morphew was being advised of the new charges in Chaffee county district court. More

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      in US Politics

      Tim Scott ‘hopeful’ deal can be reached with Democrats on US policing reform

      by

      Tim Scott, the Republican senator leading negotiations with Democrats over police reform, who insisted during his rebuttal to Joe Biden’s address to Congress the US was not a racist country, said on Sunday he was “hopeful” a deal can be reached. Scott, from South Carolina and the only Black Republican in the Senate, said he saw progress in talks which stalled last summer as protests raged following the killings of George Floyd and other Black Americans.“One of the reasons why I’m hopeful is because my friends on the left aren’t looking for the issue, they’re looking for a solution, and the things that I offered last year are more popular this year,” the senator told CBS’s Face the Nation.“The goal isn’t for Republicans or Democrats to win, but for communities to feel safer and our officers to feel respected. If we can accomplish those two major goals, the rest will be history.”The talks are intended to break an impasse over the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which passed the House in March but is frozen by the 50-50 split in the Senate.Negotiations have taken on increasing urgency following the high-profile killings of Daunte Wright in Minneapolis and Andrew Brown in North Carolina, Black men shot in their vehicles by officers, killings which sparked outrage.“The country supports this reform and Congress should act,” Biden said on Wednesday during his address on Capitol Hill.I personally understand the pain of being stopped 18 times driving while BlackA panel including Scott, the New Jersey Democrat Cory Booker and Karen Bass, the author of the House bill and a Democrat from California, met on Thursday to discuss key elements including individual liability for officers who abuse their power or otherwise overstep the line.Republicans strongly oppose many of the proposals but Booker said it had been “a promising week”.Scott, a rising star in Republican ranks, said he was well-placed to help steer the discussion.“One of the reasons why I asked to lead this police reform conversation on my side of the House is because I personally understand the pain of being stopped 18 times driving while Black,” he said.“And I have also seen the beauty of when officers go door to door with me on Christmas morning, delivering presents to kids in the most underserved communities. So I think I bring an equilibrium to the conversation.”Scott said he was confident major sticking points in the Senate version of the proposed legislation could be overcome and the bill aligned to that which passed the House.“Think about the [parts] of the two bills that are in common … data collection,” he said. “I think through negotiations and conversations we are closer on no-knock warrants and chokeholds, and then there’s something called Section 1033 that has to do with getting government equipment from the military for local police.“I think we’re making progress there too, so we have literally been able to bring these two bills very close together.”The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, placed no timeline on when a revised version of the bill would get a vote.“We will bring it to the floor when we are ready, and we will be ready when we have a good, strong bipartisan bill,” she said on Thursday. “That is up to the Senate and then we will have it in the House, because it will be a different bill.”On the issue of whether lawsuits could be filed against police departments rather than individual officers, Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate majority leader, said: “We’re moving towards a reasonable solution.”Scott said the issue was “another reason why I’m more optimistic this time”.He said: “We want to make sure the bad apples are punished and we’ve seen that, through the convictions of Michael Slager when he shot Walter Scott in the back to the George Floyd convictions.“Those are promising signs, but the real question is how do we change the culture of policing? I think we do that by making the employer responsible for the actions of the employee.”Others senators in the negotiations include Dick Durbin of Illinois and Lindsay Graham of South Carolina, senior figures in their parties.Scott also broke with Republicans who support Donald Trump’s big lie that the presidential election was rigged, saying the party could only move on once it realised “the election is over, Joe Biden is the president of the United States”.On CNN’s State of the Union, Susan Collins, a moderate Republican senator from Maine, appeared to acknowledge Scott’s rising profile.“We are not a party that is led by just one person,” she said. “There are many prominent upcoming younger men and women in our party who hold great promise for leading us.” More

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      in US Politics

      Rudy Giuliani’s apartment searched as part of Ukraine investigation

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      Federal investigators have executed a search warrant at a New York office and private apartment belonging to Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of the city and personal lawyer to Donald Trump.Federal authorities have been examining whether Giuliani illegally lobbied the Trump administration in 2019 on behalf of Ukrainian officials and oligarchs, who at the same time were helping him search for dirt on Trump’s political rivals.Investigators had seized some of Giuliani’s electronic devices from the Upper East Side residence, and from his law office on Park Avenue, early on Wednesday, the New York Times reported.Giuliani’s own lawyer, Robert Costello, condemned the raids as “legal thuggery,” claiming his client had cooperated with prosecutors and offered to answer questions not involving his “privileged” communications with Trump.“What they did today was legal thuggery. Why would you do this to anyone, let alone someone who was the associate attorney general, United States attorney, the mayor of New York City and the personal lawyer to the 45th president of the United States,” he told the Wall Street Journal.Giuliani posted, then deleted, a tweet saying he would be giving a live statement about the raids during his afternoon radio show on WABC radio. When the show started at 3pm, Giuliani was missing and a guest host, Dominic Carter, was presenting.Giuliani was considered a heroic figure in New York politics for his role as a top mafia prosecutor and then as mayor during the 9/11 terror attacks. But his reputation nosedived during the Trump era as he became embroiled in numerous scandals involving the administration and his role as one of Trump’s most fervent cheerleaders and attack dogs.In the infamous “quid pro quo” episode, officials in Ukraine were alleged to be simultaneously attempting to “dig up dirt” on Trump’s political rivals, including Joe Biden, who was shortly to become the Democratic party’s presidential nominee.Biden’s son, Hunter, had business dealings in Ukraine when his father was Barack Obama’s vice-president earlier in the decade, including a seat on the board of Burisma, one of the country’s largest energy companies.The Foreign Agents Registration Act (Fara) makes it a federal crime to try to influence or lobby the US government at the request of a foreign official without informing the justice department.Giuliani was back at the heart of the news cycle after the 2020 presidential election last November. He was a leading proponent of “the big lie”, Trump’s false claim that the election was stolen from him by “widespread fraud” in the voting process.Giuliani became something of a laughing stock when he represented Trump in numerous failed legal challenges to the election result and made inept appearances in court and at press conferences.But the anti-democratic campaign ultimately led to the 6 January insurrection by Trump supporters at the US Capitol, during which five people lost their lives.According to the New York Times, the US attorney’s office in Manhattan and the FBI have been seeking a search warrant for Giuliani’s phones for months, which officials in Trump’s justice department continually sought to block.Following Trump’s departure from office in January, and confirmation in March by the US Senate of Biden’s pick Merrick Garland as attorney general, the justice department dropped its opposition.The Times noted that while the warrant is not an explicit accusation of wrongdoing against Giuliani, it showed the investigation was entering “an aggressive new phase”. The newspaper contacted the FBI and US attorney’s office, both of which, it said, declined to comment.In a tweet on Wednesday, Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal attorney who was sentenced to three years in prison after pleading guilty to tax evasion, campaign finance fraud and lying to Congress, and who has since become a Trump critic, said simply: “Here we go folks!!!”The New York Times further reported that the FBI also served a search warrant Wednesday on the Washington DC home of attorney Victoria Toensing, an associate of Giuliani and reported contact of Ukraine officials who were looking into the Bidens. Toensing, the newspaper said, has previously represented Dimitry Fitash, a Ukrainian energy billionaire with alleged mob contacts who is under indictment in the US for bribery.The Wall Street Journal said Costello told its reporters that authorities arrived at Giuliani’s apartment at 6am and seized his devices.He said the search warrant described the investigation as a probe into a possible violation of foreign lobbying rules and “sought communications between Mr Giuliani and individuals including John Solomon, a columnist who was corresponding with Mr Giuliani about his effort to push for investigations of Joe Biden in Ukraine”.Solomon, a conservative political operative and Giuliani ally, has been accused of using his columns in the Hill to help spread disinformation about the Bidens’ dealings in Ukraine, his writing earning praise from Trump and his acolytes, who called them worthy of a Pulitzer.The Hill, meanwhile, decided in 2018 to classify Solomon’s future contributions as “opinion.”Costello added that in recent years he had offered to answer investigators’ questions as long as they agreed to say what area they were looking at ahead of time. He said they declined the offer. “It’s like I’m talking to a wall,” Costello said.Prosecutors began looking into Giuliani after building an unrelated case against Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, two Soviet-born American citizens alleged to have aided his efforts in Ukraine and later charged with crimes including conspiracy and campaign finance violations.The Times said the investigators were looking into Giuliani’s push to remove the then US ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, whom Trump considered disloyal and obstructive, and whom he removed in May 2019.The Ukraine scandal, and Trump’s dark prediction during his notorious July 2019 call with the country’s prime minister Volodymyr Zelensky that Yovanovitch was “going to go through some things,” was the subject of Trump’s first impeachment trial. More