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      First Trump co-defendant pleads not guilty in Georgia election case – live

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      From 2h agoDonald Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows spent yesterday arguing that he should be tried in federal, rather than state, court, after being accused of attempting to stop Joe Biden’s election win in Georgia three years ago. In a surprise move, Meadows, who was Trump’s top White House deputy during the time of his re-election defeat, took the stand to argue that his phone calls and meetings with state officials were all part of his government job, and not political activities, as Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis has alleged.Legal experts say a federal court trial could give Meadows’ defense team more options to argue his innocence, and would also expand the jury pool beyond the Democratic-heavy Atlanta area to the counties around it, which lean more Republican.The judge handling the case, Steve Jones, did not rule yesterday, but said he would do so quickly. If he does not before 6 September, Jones said Meadows will have to appear in state court to be arraigned on the charges, as will all the other defendants who have not entered their pleas yet. Should he find in Meadows’s favor, it could benefit other defendants who have made similar requests, including Jeffrey Clark, a former justice department official that Trump tried to appoint acting attorney general. Trump, himself, is also expected to request to move his trial to Georgia federal court.For more on yesterday’s hearing, here’s the full report from the Guardian’s Mary Yang:
      The sprawling 41-count indictment of Donald Trump and 18 other defendants in Fulton county had its first test on Monday as Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff, took the stand before a federal judge over his request to move his Georgia election interference case from state to federal court.
      Meadows testified for nearly three hours before the court broke for lunch, defending his actions as Trump’s chief of staff while avoiding questions regarding whether he believed Trump won in 2020.
      Meadows faces two felony charges, including racketeering and solicitation of a violation of oath by a public officer. But Meadows argued that he acted in his capacity as a federal officer and thus is entitled to immunity – and that his case should be heard before a federal judge.
      Meadows swiftly filed a motion to move his case to the federal US district court of northern Georgia after Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney, handed down her indictment.
      In a response, Willis argued that Meadows’ actions violated the Hatch Act, a federal law that prohibits government officials from using their position to influence the results of an election and were therefore outside his capacity as chief of staff.
      “There was a political component to everything that we did,” testified Meadows, referring to his actions during the final weeks of the Trump administration.
      And here’s video of Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s comments on the approaching Hurricane Idalia:Hurricane Idalia’s ill winds could be blowing some good for Florida’s governor Ron DeSantis as he takes a break from the presidential campaign trail to oversee storm preparations in his state.The Republican, who is sinking in the race for his party’s nomination, has become an almost permanent fixture on national TV during his emergency briefings, drawing far more exposure than had he remained on the stump in Iowa and South Carolina.He was asked about it at his morning press conference in Tallahassee, and replied with a word soup that essentially said it’s no big deal:
      With Hurricane Ian [which struck Florida last September] we were in the midst of a governor’s campaign. I had all kinds of stuff scheduled, not just in Florida, around the country. You know, we were doing different things. And do what you need to do.
      It’s going to be no different than what we did during Ian. I’m hoping that this storm is not as catastrophic… we do what we need to do, because it’s just something that’s important, but it’s no different than what we’ve done in the past.
      In his place on the campaign trail, DeSantis has left his wife and chief surrogate Casey DeSantis to speak for him. At South Carolina congressman Jeff Duncan’s Faith and Freedom event in Anderson on Monday night, attendees were treated to a stirring speech about her children’s romp through the governor’s mansion:The ill will towards Donald Trump in Georgia extends even into the Republican party, with the state’s lieutenant governor blaming him for a host of issues and saying voters would be foolish to nominate him again, the Guardian’s Martin Pengelly reports:Donald Trump has “the moral compass of an axe murderer”, a Republican opponent in Georgia said, discussing the former president’s legal predicament in the southern US state and elsewhere but also his continuing dominance of the presidential primary.“As Republicans, that dashboard is going off with lights and bells and whistles, telling us all the warning things we need to know,” Geoff Duncan told CNN on Monday.“Ninety-one indictments,” Duncan said. “Fake Republican, a trillion dollars’ worth of debt [from his time in the White House], everything we need to see to not choose him as our nominee, including the fact that he’s got the moral compass of a … more like an axe murderer than a president.“We need to do something right here, right now. This is either our pivot point or our last gasp as Republicans.”Duncan was the lieutenant governor of Georgia when Trump tried to overturn his defeat there by Joe Biden in 2020, an effort now the subject of 13 racketeering and conspiracy charges.Last week, Atlantans were greeted with the spectacle of Donald Trump’s motorcade heading to the Fulton county jail, where the ex-president was formally arrested and then released after being indicted in the Georgia election subversion case.Most Americans will remember the day for the mugshot it produced, the first ever taken of a former US president, but the Washington Post reports that for residents of the Atlanta neighborhood his lengthy and heavily guarded convoy passed through, it was a unique and emotionally conflicted experience.“I see them bringing people to Rice Street every day,” 39-year-old Lovell Riddle told the Post, referring to the local jail. “But this was like a big show, this was a circus. He had this big police escort and all of that. If it were me or any other Black man accused of what he is accused of, we would have already been under the jail and they would have thrown the keys away.”Here’s more from their report:
      The areas that Trump traveled through Thursday are deeply intertwined with America’s record of racial strife and discrimination. Even the street signs reflect the connection: Lowery Boulevard, named for the Atlanta-based Black minister and civil rights advocate who founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference alongside Martin Luther King Jr, was until 2001 named for a Confederate general.
      On Trump’s way down Lowery to the jail, he passed Morehouse College, the historically Black institution that is King’s alma mater; the Bankhead neighborhood, where rappers T.I. and Lil Nas X grew up and found inspiration; and the English Avenue community, where the local elementary school was dynamited during the contentious integration of the city’s public schools.
      Before the motorcade came through, residents and office workers rushed to get spots on sidewalks, stoops and balconies. Trump, who has proclaimed his innocence, later recounted on Newsmax that he had been greeted by “tremendous crowds in Atlanta that were so friendly.” Some cellphone videos that ricocheted around social media showed a different reaction, with people shouting obscenities or making crude gestures as the convoy sped by.
      Those who were there suggest the response was more complicated, with Trump’s unexpected arrival — and rapid departure — prompting feelings of catharsis and anger, awe and disgust, indignance and pride.
      Coryn Lima, a 20-year-old student at Georgia State University, was walking home from his aunt’s house when he noticed the commotion. Officials hadn’t announced the motorcade’s route in advance, but police cordoning off a two-mile stretch of Lowery Boulevard was a sure sign.
      As news spread that Trump was coming through on his way to the jail, where he would be fingerprinted and required to take a mug shot, the neighborhood took on a carnival air. Lima said his neighbors ran out of their homes with their kids to grab a spot, like they might for a parade. There were also people he didn’t recognize: Some had signs supporting Trump, others came with profanity-laced posters denouncing him.
      The moment came and went with a flash, Lima said, with Trump’s motorcade, which consisted of more than a dozen cars, moving down the street “extremely fast.” But Lima said it had still been “cathartic.”
      “From what I’ve been told by people around my age, Trump is like a supervillain,” Lima said. “And he’s finally getting caught for all of his supervillain crimes.”
      Speaking of courts, conservative supreme court justice Amy Coney Barrett spoke at a conference yesterday, where she declined to weigh in on efforts pushed by Democrats to force the judges to adopt a code of ethics. That’s unlike fellow conservative Samuel Alito, who spoke out forcefully against the campaign. Here’s the Associated Press with the full report:The US supreme court justice Amy Coney Barrett told attendees at a judicial conference in Wisconsin that she welcomed public scrutiny of the court. But she stopped short of commenting on whether she thinks the court should change how it operates in the face of recent criticism.Barrett did not offer any opinion – or speak directly about – recent calls for the justices to institute an official code of conduct.She took questions from Diane Sykes, chief judge of the seventh US circuit court, at a conference attended by judges, attorneys and court personnel. The event came at a time when public trust in the court is at a 50-year low following a series of polarizing rulings, including the overturning of Roe v Wade and federal abortion protections last year.Barrett did not mention the ethics issues that have dogged some justices – including conservatives Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito and the liberal Sonia Sotomayor.“Public scrutiny is welcome,” Barrett said. “Increasing and enhancing civics education is welcome.”Here are some thoughts from former US attorney Barb McQuade on why Mark Meadows wants to be tried in federal court, and whether his motion will succeed:Donald Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows spent yesterday arguing that he should be tried in federal, rather than state, court, after being accused of attempting to stop Joe Biden’s election win in Georgia three years ago. In a surprise move, Meadows, who was Trump’s top White House deputy during the time of his re-election defeat, took the stand to argue that his phone calls and meetings with state officials were all part of his government job, and not political activities, as Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis has alleged.Legal experts say a federal court trial could give Meadows’ defense team more options to argue his innocence, and would also expand the jury pool beyond the Democratic-heavy Atlanta area to the counties around it, which lean more Republican.The judge handling the case, Steve Jones, did not rule yesterday, but said he would do so quickly. If he does not before 6 September, Jones said Meadows will have to appear in state court to be arraigned on the charges, as will all the other defendants who have not entered their pleas yet. Should he find in Meadows’s favor, it could benefit other defendants who have made similar requests, including Jeffrey Clark, a former justice department official that Trump tried to appoint acting attorney general. Trump, himself, is also expected to request to move his trial to Georgia federal court.For more on yesterday’s hearing, here’s the full report from the Guardian’s Mary Yang:
      The sprawling 41-count indictment of Donald Trump and 18 other defendants in Fulton county had its first test on Monday as Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff, took the stand before a federal judge over his request to move his Georgia election interference case from state to federal court.
      Meadows testified for nearly three hours before the court broke for lunch, defending his actions as Trump’s chief of staff while avoiding questions regarding whether he believed Trump won in 2020.
      Meadows faces two felony charges, including racketeering and solicitation of a violation of oath by a public officer. But Meadows argued that he acted in his capacity as a federal officer and thus is entitled to immunity – and that his case should be heard before a federal judge.
      Meadows swiftly filed a motion to move his case to the federal US district court of northern Georgia after Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney, handed down her indictment.
      In a response, Willis argued that Meadows’ actions violated the Hatch Act, a federal law that prohibits government officials from using their position to influence the results of an election and were therefore outside his capacity as chief of staff.
      “There was a political component to everything that we did,” testified Meadows, referring to his actions during the final weeks of the Trump administration.
      Good morning, US politics blog readers. Last week brought shock and spectacle to the political scene in the form of Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis’s indictment of Donald Trump and 18 others on charges related to trying to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election, resulting in the group traveling to Atlanta to be formally arrested and have their mugshots taken – yes, even Trump. Now the case enters the more mundane territory typical of all legal defenses. Yesterday, the first of Trump’s co-defendant’s, attorney Ray Smith, entered a not guilty plea in the case, waiving an arraignment that is scheduled to take place for Trump and the others on 6 September.Meanwhile, we are awaiting a ruling after Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows spent Monday in court, arguing that he should be tried in the Georgia case at the federal rather than the sate level. The judge’s decision could come at any time (though may not arrive for a few days), and if he rules in Meadows’s favor, it could open him up to new defenses and potentially a more conservative jury pool.Here’s what’s going on today:
      The Biden administration just announced 10 drugs that it will seek to negotiate the prices paid under Medicare, in part of a major push to reduce health care costs for older Americans. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will hold an event to announce the effort at 2pm eastern time.
      An excerpt of the first major book about Biden’s presidency has just been released, concerning how the president handled the chaotic and controversial withdrawal of Afghanistan.
      White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre takes questions from reporters at 1pm ET. More

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      Mark Meadows testifies in bid to move Georgia election case to federal court

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      Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff under Donald Trump, has testified for nearly three hours in a hearing to move his Georgia election interference case from state to federal court on Monday.Meadows was charged alongside Trump and 17 other defendants for conspiring to subvert the 2020 election in a Georgia superior court. He faces two felony charges, including racketeering and solicitation of a violation of oath by a public officer.But Meadows is arguing that he acted in his capacity as a federal officer and thus is entitled to immunity – and that his case should be heard before a federal judge.Meadows swiftly filed a motion to move his case to the federal US district court of northern Georgia after Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney, handed down her indictment.According to the indictment, Meadows arranged the infamous call between Trump and Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, where the former president asked Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to block Biden’s victory.He also at one point instructed a White House aide to draft a strategy memo for “disrupting and delaying” the electoral certification process on 6 January 2021, according to the indictment. Yet Meadows denied doing that on Monday, calling it the “biggest surprise”.Meadows testified for about three hours on Monday, surprising legal experts who widely expected him to keep mum.“Those were challenging times, bluntly,” said Meadows, testifying about his time as Trump’s chief of staff during the pandemic and through the 2020 election, according to CNN. “I don’t know if anyone was fully prepared for that type of job.”He also testified that his duties involved sitting in on nearly all of Trump’s meetings, which he would help arrange with various states and agencies, according to ABC News. “There was a political component to everything that we did,” said Meadows, referring to his actions during the final weeks of the Trump administration.Willis subpoenaed Raffensperger, along with his office’s chief investigator Frances Watson, to testify during the Monday hearing.According to the indictment, Meadows asked Watson if there was “a way to speed up Fulton county signature verification in order to have results before Jan 6 if the trump campaign assist financially”. He claimed on Monday that he was not trying to offer federal funds but rather asking if there was a financial constraint.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMeadows was booked at the Fulton county jail after voluntarily surrendering last Thursday. He filed an emergency motion to block his arrest but a judge denied his request. Meadows was released shortly after arriving at the jail, earlier entering a $100,000 bail agreement.Moments before Meadows’ federal court hearing, Judge Scott McAfee, who is overseeing the Fulton county election interference case, said all 19 defendants would be arraigned on 6 September in 15-minute increments. Meadows is set to be arraigned at 10.30am local time, following Trump, Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman and Sidney Powell.Three other defendants have filed motions to remove their cases from Fulton county. Jeffrey Clark, a former justice department official, along with Georgia fake electors David Shafer, Shawn Still and Cathy Latham, are each seeking to move their cases to federal court.Trump is expected to file a similar request in the coming weeks. More

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      Trump’s federal trial in election subversion case set for March 2024

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      Donald Trump’s criminal trial for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results will take place on 4 March 2024, the federal judge presiding over the case in Washington ruled on Monday, marking a sharp repudiation of the former president who had sought to delay the case for years.The schedule set by US district court judge Tanya Chutkan means Trump’s first trial defending himself against prosecutors and the special counsel Jack Smith will be the election subversion case – and it will come during the height of the 2024 Republican primary season.“The events giving rise to this case occurred at the end of 2020 and the beginning of 2021. To propose trying this case over five years later risks the real danger that witnesses become unavailable or their memories may fade,” Chutkan said. “My primary concern here, as it is, in every case, is the interest of justice and that I’ve balanced the defendant’s right to adequately prepare.”Trump pleaded not guilty earlier this month to charges filed in federal district court in Washington that he conspired to defraud the United States, conspired to obstruct an official proceeding, obstructed an official proceeding and engaged in a conspiracy against rights.The former president had asked ahead of the hearing for the trial to take place in April 2026, citing the supposed “median time” of 29.2 months that it took to convict defendants in cases that involved the charge of conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding.But prosecutors had argued in response that using the median time as a benchmark was misleading because it included the time it takes for jury selection, trial, verdict and several months of sentencing deliberation, rather than just the duration of pre-trial proceedings.The judge set a trial for 4 March 2024 – hewing to the government’s January 2024 trial date request – explaining that she agreed that the Trump legal team’s statistics were “misleading” adding that one of the cited cases was one she is currently overseeing and delayed because of Covid-19 issues which didn’t apply to Trump.The date means Trump will be in the federal courthouse in Washington starting the day before Super Tuesday of the Republican primaries. Chutkan reiterated that Trump, like any other criminal defendant, would have to “make the trial date work regardless of his schedule”.At the hearing, Chutkan said that to make her determination she would instead consider the volume of discovery materials prosecutors were turning over to the defense and what a reasonable time would be for Trump’s lawyers to review the 12m pages of evidence.The judge also explained that the Speedy Trial Act, which requires criminal cases to go to trial within 70 days of indictment, exists to protect not just Trump but the public interest in ensuring the timely administration of justice.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe theme of Chutkan’s questioning of Trump’s lead lawyer, John Lauro, repeatedly returned to her contention that he did not have to read every one of the 12m pages anew because many of the documents were duplicative and the key facts were made public by the House January 6 select committee.The judge said that she considered the government as having made a considerable effort to produce the discovery in an organized and keyword-searchable manner that should expedite their review. “You are not going to get two years,” she said.Lauro objected to the judge’s characterization that the facts and legal theories were not new and emphasized that the Trump legal team needed extended time to review each of the pages, though he did not address his comments that the indictment was a regurgitation of the committee’s report.The prosecutors seized on Lauro’s prior public comments to argue that the Trump legal team were not looking at the material for the first time. “When Mr Lauro appeared on multiple news programs and podcasts following the indictment, he described a number of defenses he plans to raise.” More

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      ‘Bring them to justice’: Georgia town residents demand answers in Trump election plot

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      On Saturday afternoon, roughly 70 people gathered on folding chairs in a sweltering church meeting room in the small town of Douglas, about 200 miles (322km) south-east of Atlanta, Georgia. Less than a week earlier, Donald Trump and 18 of his allies were indicted in Fulton county for efforts to overturn the 2020 election, including allegedly entering the Coffee county elections office less than a mile away and copying the state’s voter software and other data.County residents at the town hall raised concerns about the lack of accountability for those who played a role in copying software and other data, and said they felt insecure about the safety and integrity of future elections.“People think, ‘He’s been indicted in Atlanta, so it’s over,’” 80-year-old county resident Jim Hudson said to the room, referring to Trump. “[But] how do we regroup? How do we become a county not referred to as ‘Crooked Coffee’?”The Rev Bruce Francis read a message from Bishop Reginald T Jackson, who oversees 500 Black churches in Georgia, referring to “troubling improprieties” that had brought this town of about 12,000 residents to the world’s attention.“The nation is now aware of the travesty that happened in 2020,” he read. “What do we do to make sure it doesn’t happen again?”The “travesty” was what Marilyn Marks, the town hall’s main speaker, called “the largest voting system breach in US history”. It happened in January 2021, when multiple people working on behalf of Donald Trump allegedly entered the Coffee county elections office and copied software and other digital information from the agency’s computers, gaining access to the entire elections system of the state of Georgia, home to about 7.9 million registered voters.The digital information obtained is now in an unknown number of hands, meaning that future elections could be affected in Georgia and in other states that use Dominion Voting Systems and other equipment made by partner companies. The breach has been publicly reported for more than a year, but was launched into a global spotlight on 14 August, when the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, issued indictments to Trump and 18 others. Several people were indicted for their direct role in the Coffee county breach, and nearly half the group had some kind of involvement in the incident, according to Marks.It wasn’t federal, state or local investigators who turned up evidence of the incidents, but Marks’ nonprofit organization, the Coalition for Good Governance. The group obtained video, text messages and other information about what happened in Douglas as part of a lawsuit against Georgia, now in its sixth year, that seeks to force the state to switch from computers to hand-marked paper ballots in elections, due to vulnerabilities in digital voting systems. Seventy percent of US voters mark ballots by hand.The town hall was the first occasion for residents of Douglas to hear a detailed explanation of how events that took place in their own back yard had become headlines, what those events mean for future elections and, perhaps most important, who among their neighbors had not been held accountable, what can be done to change that and how to prevent such a breach from happening again.Local residents wanted to know whether their personal information was “floating around in cyberspace”, if poll workers in Coffee county would be safe in future elections, and whether “money was exchanged for favors” during any of the visits to the local elections office by Trump’s associates.Hanging over the room were not just the challenges members of small communities face when their own neighbors are implicated in serious wrongdoing, but, also, the issue of race.Coffee county is about 68% white, but most of the attendees at the town hall were Black. One white woman said she had urged other white locals to attend, but was met with indifference.Many were also aware that one of the more prominent locals present – city commissioner of 24 years and voting rights activist Olivia Coley-Pearson – was persecuted for years by the state for helping disabled and illiterate voters, while state election officials have shown little interest in investigating the breach, according to Marks. Coley-Pearson is Black; Trump’s associates involved in the breach here have all been white.Before Marks began her talk, titled, “What the hack happened in Coffee Co?”, Hudson, a retired lawyer, addressed the room. A thin, soft-spoken man, Hudson told those gathered how, as a seventh-generation Georgian and county resident, he felt had “skin in the game” when it came to the breach. “That’s why, when I discovered what happened, I was so disappointed,” he said.He lamented there had been “no independent investigation by our officials … [and] almost no local press coverage”.Hudson suggested there needs to be an independent, local investigation and a plan for the future – “So this never occurs again in our county,” he said. The first reform, he said, should be that “the elections department office should never be used for a partisan meeting again”. The crowd applauded.Marks took the stage. “Coffee county is the central foundation for this incredible indictment that the world is watching,” she said. The nonprofit director recounted how Atlanta bail bondsman Scott Hall called her on 7 March 2021 and told her that he and others had been to Douglas and “scanned all the equipment … imaged all the hard drives, scanned every ballot … all the poll pads – everything”.On Tuesday morning, Hall became the first defendant named in last week’s indictments to surrender to authorities in Fulton county. He was shortly thereafter released on $10,000 bond.Marks went on to detail how local elections director Misty Hampton – also indicted last week – communicated with people in Trump’s orbit, including Mike Lindell, the MyPillow CEO who has repeatedly backed conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. Later, Hampton’s replacement found the business card of Doug Logan, CEO of Cyber Ninjas, the group that performed a discredited audit of Arizona’s votes, in the county elections office, according to information Marks uncovered. Lindell and Logan remain unindicted.She pointed the room to “unanswered questions”: what happened to Hampton’s emails and laptop, which state investigators say they haven’t been able to obtain, and when did local election board members and the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, learn of the breach? Also, why did local elections board member Eric Chaney, seen on video obtained by Marks welcoming Scott Hall and others into the elections office, remain on the board until September of last year? Chaney is also unnamed in Willis’s indictments.“You can’t wait on the state,” Marks told the room. “It’s up to local people to demand accountability.”Cliff Albright, co-founder of the national group Black Voters Matter, took the stage and told the audience that he knew what it was like to be dealing with political controversy in a small town in the south, “where everybody knows what car you drive, and whether you’ve been at a meeting”.Albright also reminded the audience what was at stake, pointing to Coley-Pearson, who faced multiple felony charges for allegedly breaking election laws. Coley-Pearson was never found guilty, but has suffered greatly from years of legal battles, she told the Guardian.“They put all this money and time into investigating one woman?” Albright asked the room, again bringing applause. “And then you’re talking about the largest breach in US history? My message to the secretary of state and the county … is ‘Act like you care about it!’”Then Coley-Pearson addressed her neighbors. “This is so important,” she said. “This is a threat to our democracy.” She noted that she had invited local elected officials from the county commission, the city commission and the board of elections – and only two came.Referring to the breach, she said: “They felt like they could come to Coffee county because ain’t nobody gonna get involved except for Olivia and her few folks … [but] we’ve worked too hard … to let them take our rights away!”Afterward, 70-year-old Alphermease Moore, who is Black and a Coffee county resident, noted that she was part of the local high school’s first integrated graduating class, in 1971.“I was in Coffee high school’s first integrated group and was hoping, 50 years later, that things would be different. But the same things happening then are happening now,” she said, referring to Coley-Pearson’s prosecution on the one hand, and the lack of accountability for local white officials on the other. “It’s a constant climb.”Standing outside the church, Hudson was emotional. He had learned about the breach months ago, after reading about it in the national press. “I was stunned. I could not believe it.”Hudson, a well-known, longtime white resident of Coffee county, has been writing the county commission and board of elections, seeking an independent investigation. He attended an elections board meeting this spring and remarked, “If this was Olivia Coley-Pearson [who breached the elections system], she’d be in jail already.”Douglas resident Larry Nesmith has been active in local Democratic party politics for 14 years. He said he would have been at the board of elections office on 7 January 2021, when the first visit by Trump’s associates occurred, but Hampton “told me not to come”.Months later, he said, “I found out what happened on TV. I was shocked to find out. I feel our board of elections tried to cover [it] up. There’s no way they didn’t know.”“Those responsible need to be held accountable,” he added. “These are people I know. Those who haven’t been indicted need to be. Bring them to justice. Don’t let them walk away!” More

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      Final Trump co-defendants surrender to authorities in Georgia – live

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      From 4m agoTwo of the last co-defendants who were indicted in Georgia along with Donald Trump for attempting to overturn Joe Biden’s election win in the state three years ago surrendered to authorities today.According to Fulton county jail records, Chicago-based publicist Trevian Kutti turned herself in after being charged with threatening election worker Ruby Freeman. Also surrendering today was Stephen Lee, a longtime police chaplain in Georgia who traveled to Freeman’s home and identified himself as a pastor trying to help.Here’s a rundown of all the 19 defendants named in Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis’s sprawling indictment, which is centered on the Trump campaign’s attempt to prevent Biden from winning Georgia’s electoral votes weeks after the ballots had been counted:A social media post viewed nearly six million times of what appears to be Donald Trump fans wildly celebrating in a bar as the mugshot of the former president is broadcast on a large screen, appears to be a well-crafted hoax.The Lincoln Project, a political action committee founded by disenchanted Republicans, shared the video on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, but Newsweek claims: “the footage is actually of England soccer fans…and has been widely edited as a meme.”The Lincoln Project post doesn’t say where the video was sourced, just the words ‘TRUMP MUGSHOT JUST DROPPED’. Since posting the video 12 hours ago, the Lincoln Project has defiantly reposted the footage twice more.Ahead of the surrender, Donald Trump shook up his legal team and retained the top Georgia attorney Steven Sadow, who filed a notice of appearance with the Fulton county superior court as lead counsel, replacing Drew Findling. Trump’s other lawyer in the case, Jennifer Little, is staying on.The reason for the abrupt recalibration was unclear, and Trump’s aides suggested it was unrelated to performance. Still, Trump has a record of firing lawyers who represented him during criminal investigations but were unable to stave off charges.Findling was also unable to exempt Trump from having his mugshot taken, according to people familiar with the matter – something that personally irritated Trump, even though the Fulton county sheriff’s office had always indicated they were uninterested in making such an accommodation. His mugshot was not taken in his other criminal cases.In a clear sign of her belief that her team is ready to go to trial immediately, Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis on Thursday asked for the trial of all 19 defendants to start on 23 October after one of the co-defendants.Trump’s legal team filed a motion opposing such a quick trial date within hours, underscoring the former president’s overarching strategy to delay proceedings as much as possible – potentially until after the 2024 presidential election.Willis’ request to schedule the trial of Trump and his 18 co-defendants to begin in October came after one of the co-defendants, Trump’s former lawyer Kenneth Chesebro, apparently gambled and requested a speedy trial.In a court filing, Trump attorney Steve Sadow notified a judge that Trump will soon file a motion to sever his case from Chesebro – indicating the diverging interests of the people ensnared in the indictment.Sadow also said Trump will seek to sever his case from “any other co-defendant who makes a similar request” for a quick trial. He wrote:
      President Trump further respectfully puts the Court on notice that he requests the Court set a scheduling conference at its earliest convenience so he can be heard on the State’s motions for entry of pretrial scheduling order and to specially set trial
      Among the defendants who surrendered to Georgia authorities early this morning was Jeffrey Clark, the former justice department official charged with violating the state’s Rico act and criminal attempt to commit false statements and writings.Clark, who worked as assistant attorney general for the DOJ’s civil division from September 2020 to January 2021, was booked at the Fulton county jail on Friday morning and released on a $100,000 bond.In the indictment, prosecutors said Clark pushed to send out an official justice department letter claiming that investigators had “identified significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election in multiple States.” Donald Trump supported Clark and planned to name him acting attorney general until he was threatened with mass resignations if he did so, according to the indictment.On Tuesday, Clark had asked a judge to prohibit Fulton county Fani Willis from arresting him by a Friday deadline, arguing that his case should be handled by federal courts because of his work as a federal officer.US district judge Steve Jones denied Clark’s request, as well as a similar request by former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.Marjorie Taylor Greene, the rightwing extremist Republican congresswoman, posted a mocked-up mugshot on X, formerly known as Twitter, in a show of solidarity with Donald Trump after his surrender to Fulton county officials.Alongside the hashtag MAGAMugshot, Greene wrote:
      I stand with President Trump against the commie DA Fani Willis who is nothing more than a political hitman tasked with taking out Biden’s top political opponent.
      Vivek Ramaswamy has described himself as an “outsider”, accusing rivals for the Republican presidential nomination of being “bought and paid for” by donors and special interests.But the 38-year-old Ohio-based venture capitalist, whose sharp-elbowed and angry display stood out in the first Republican debate this week, has his own close ties to influential figures from both sides of the political aisle.Prominent among such connections are Peter Thiel, the co-founder of tech giants PayPal and Palantir and a rightwing megadonor, and Leonard Leo, the activist who has marshaled unprecedented sums in his push to stock federal courts with conservative judges.Ramaswamy is a Yale Law School friend of JD Vance, the author of the bestselling memoir Hillbilly Elegy who enjoyed success in finance before entering politics. At Yale, Vance and Ramaswamy attended what the New Yorker called an “intimate lunch seminar for select students” that was hosted by Thiel. Last year, backed by Thiel and espousing hard-right Trumpist views, Vance won a US Senate seat in Ohio.Thiel has since said he has stepped back from political donations. But he has backed Ramaswamy’s business career, supporting what the New Yorker called “a venture helping senior citizens access Medicare” and, last year, backing Strive Asset Management, a fund launched by Ramaswamy to attack environmental, social and governance (ESG) policies among corporate investors. Vance was also a backer.Ramaswamy’s primary vehicle to success has been Roivant, an investment company focused on the pharmaceuticals industry founded in 2014.The Roivant advisory board includes figures from both the Republican and Democratic establishments: Kathleen Sebelius, US health secretary under Barack Obama; Tom Daschle of South Dakota, formerly Democratic leader in the US Senate; and Olympia Snowe, formerly a Republican senator from Maine.Read the full story here.Vivek Ramaswamy, the 38-year-old biotech entrepreneur and GOP presidential hopeful, took in $450,000 in the hours after his appearance at the first Republican primary debate on Wednesday.Ramaswamy, a political newcomer whose bid for the GOP nomination has been hit by recent scandals over remarks that suggested sympathy for conspiracy theories around the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the January 6 assault on the Capitol, took in an average donation of $38, campaign spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told AP on Thursday.Ramaswamy has largely been self-funding his campaign. On Wednesday night, he repeatedly said all the other presidential candidates onstage in Milwaukee were “bought and paid for” by donors.The Guardian’s columnist Margaret Sullivan writes how Ramaswamy is America’s demagogue-in-waiting.Mere minutes after Donald Trump’s mugshot was released, the Trump campaign had already turned the image into a merchandizing opportunity.The former president’s re-election campaign announced in an email that it would give away a “free” T-shirt with Trump’s mugshot printed on it for $47.The caption on the shirt reads “NEVER SURRENDER” – which is literally what Trump was doing when the mugshot was taken on Thursday.Even as he remains the clear frontrunner for the Republican nomination, Donald Trump’s indictments are likely to take a toll on his prospects of winning the presidential election, according to a new poll.The Politico magazine/Ipsos poll suggests Americans are taking the cases against Trump seriously and that a majority are skeptical of his attempts to portray himself as a victim of a legally baseless witch-hunt.About 51% of respondents – 14% of Republicans and 88% of Democrats – said Trump is likely guilty in the federal case in which he is charged with conspiracy to defraud the US and conspiracy against rights. Another 52% said he is likely guilty in the federal case regarding his alleged mishandling of classified documents.Nearly 60% of respondents said they wanted the federal trial in Trump’s 2020 election subversion case to take place before the 2024 Republican primaries begin next year. Federal prosecutors have proposed the trial begin 2 Jan 2024, while Trump’s lawyers have pushed for a April 2026 trial start date.Nearly one-third of respondents said that a conviction in the federal trial in Trump’s 2020 election subversion case would make them less likely to support Trump, including 34% of independents.And half of the country said Trump should go to prison if he is convicted in the justice department’s 2020 election case, according to the poll.CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski points out that Donald Trump is polling better than he did at any point in 2020.The former president faces 91 felony counts and has been charged with attempting to subvert democracy, risking national security secrets and falsifying business records in connection with a hush money payment to an adult film star.Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and Republican vice-presidential nominee, said a second US civil war is “going to happen” if state and federal authorities continue to prosecute Donald Trump.“Those who are conducting this travesty and creating this two-tier system of justice, I want to ask them what the heck, do you do want us to be in civil war? Because that’s what’s going to happen,” Palin told Newsmax on Thursday night.
      We’re not going to keep putting up with this.
      Palin was speaking to the rightwing network as Trump surrendered at a jail in Fulton county, Georgia, and a historic mugshot was released.Academics have long warned of the potential for Trump to stoke violence worse than the attack on Congress on 6 January 2021, when supporters he told to “fight like hell” to stop certification of Biden’s victory stormed the Capitol building. Nine deaths have been linked to the riot.Barbara F Walter, author of How Civil Wars Start: And How To Stop Them and a CIA advisor, has written:
      No one wants to believe that their beloved democracy is in decline, or headed toward war.
      But “if you were an analyst in a foreign country looking at events in America – the same way you’d look at events in Ukraine or Ivory Coast or Venezuela – you would go down a checklist, assessing each of the conditions that make civil war likely.
      And what you would find is that the United States, a democracy founded more than two centuries ago, has entered very dangerous territory.
      Donald Trump described his experience of being booked at the Fulton county jail on Thursday as “terrible” and “very sad” after he surrendered to authorities on felony charges related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.Speaking to Newsmax after flying out of Georgia, Trump said he was treated “nicely” during his booking process but said his arrest was a “very sad day for the country”. He said:
      I took a mugshot. I’d never heard the words mug shot. They didn’t teach me that at the Wharton School of Finance.
      He added:
      I went through an experience that I never thought I’d have to go through, but then I’ve gone through the same experience three other times. In my whole life, I didn’t know anything about indictments. And now I’ve been indicted, like, four times
      In a separate interview with Fox News, Trump said:
      It is not a comfortable feeling – especially when you’ve done nothing wrong.
      Trump faces 13 charges in Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis’ sprawling racketeering case, including violating the state’s racketeering act, soliciting a public officer to violate their oath, conspiring to impersonate a public officer, conspiring to commit forgery in the first degree and conspiring to file false documents. More

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      in Elections

      Republican candidates grapple with post-Roe positioning on abortion

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      Eight Republican presidential hopefuls clashed over the future of abortion access on Wednesday night in the first debate of the 2024 election cycle.Without the specter of Roe v Wade looming overhead, the candidates faced a new litmus test on abortion: whether or not they support a nationwide ban on the procedure after 15 weeks of pregnancy.The former vice-president Mike Pence, former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson and South Carolina Senator Tim Scott all pledged to support a federal 15-week ban.The question from the moderator Martha MacCallum had noted that abortion had consistently been a losing issue for Republicans in state ballots since the Dobbs decision.Nevertheless just one candidate, the North Dakota governor, Doug Burgum, decisively rejected the idea that Congress ought to regulate abortion access.Burgum, who signed North Dakota’s six-week abortion ban in April, said the conservative mission to overturn Roe was predicated on the belief that states should be allowed to set their own rules on the procedure.“What is going to work in New York will never work in North Dakota and vice versa,” Burgum said.For decades, Roe v Wade offered Republican candidates a convenient boogeyman. The supreme court ruling was not just about abortion – swing state conservatives like Burgum could point to Roe as an example of federal overreach.But Wednesday’s debate signaled a schism in the GOP’s position on abortion.In a post-Roe landscape, one year after Senator Lindsey Graham first introduced a federal 15-week ban bill in Congress, Republicans were forced to choose between their purported support for states’ rights and their opposition to abortion access.Burgum was the lone voice that chose states’ rights.Pence and Scott, both evangelical Christians, said they support a 15-week ban because abortion is a “moral” question that necessitates federal intervention.Scott said states like “California, New York and Illinois” should not be allowed to offer broad access to the procedure.Pence said abortion was “not a states only issue, it’s a moral issue”.The former vice-president, who has centered abortion in his bid to court socially conservative voters, condemned his opponents for refusing to back a federal ban.“I’m not new to this cause,” Pence said on Wednesday night. “Can’t we have a minimum standard in every state in the nation?”In his opening remarks, Pence lauded the work of the Trump administration, which placed three conservative justices on the US supreme court and “gave the people a new beginning for the right to life”.Pence also criticized the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, who suggested that it would be difficult to gain the requisite congressional support to pass a federal abortion ban.Haley, the only woman on Wednesday’s debate stage, said Republicans should instead pursue pragmatic legislative goals that could garner bipartisan support in Congress.“Let’s find consensus, can’t we all agree that we should ban late-term abortions? Can’t we all agree that we should encourage adoptions?” she said.In his response, Pence directly addressed Haley: “Consensus is the opposite of leadership.”Susan B Anthony Pro-Life America, a powerful anti-abortion lobbying group, praised Pence, Hutchinson and Scott for offering “a clear, bold case for national protections for the unborn at least by 15 weeks”.“The position taken by candidates like Doug Burgum, that life is solely a matter for the states, is unacceptable for a nation founded on unalienable rights and for a presidential contender,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, the group’s president, in a statement on Wednesday night.Last month, Dannenfelser issued a similar condemnation of the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, for his reluctance to back a federal ban.DeSantis has supported bills restricting access to abortion – including a six-week ban in his own state of Florida, but has stopped short of saying he would support a federal ban.Dannenfelser said the Republican presidential candidate should “work to gather the votes necessary in Congress” to pass a national ban on abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy, adding that DeSantis’s failure to support the ban was “unacceptable”.“There are many pressing legislative issues for which Congress does not have the votes at the moment, but that is not a reason for a strong leader to back away from the fight,” she said in a statement last month.On Wednesday night, Fox News moderators twice asked DeSantis to clarify his position on federal abortion restrictions, but the Florida governor refused to provide a direct answer.“I’m going to stand on the side of life,” DeSantis said. “I understand Wisconsin is going to do it different than Texas, I understand Iowa and New Hampshire are going to be different, but I will support the cause of life as governor and as president.”Notably, Donald Trump – the presumed GOP frontrunner – skipped Wednesday night’s debate.Earlier this year, Trump criticized DeSantis’s position on abortion, calling Florida’s six-week ban “too harsh”.But the former president appears to share DeSantis’s hesitations about the federal 15-week ban, dodging questions about the proposed restrictions since launching his re-election campaign in March.The Guardian reported in April that Trump considers a federal abortion ban a losing proposition for Republicans, though his exact vision for the future of US abortion access remains unclear. More

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      in US Politics

      Fury at Michigan officials charged in 2020 false electors scheme: ‘This isn’t who we are’

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      When the news broke in 2020 that 16 Republicans in Michigan had signed a certificate falsely claiming to be electors for Donald Trump, Rosemary Herweyer was dismayed to find a prominent local politician, Kent Vanderwood, listed among the signatories.“His willingness to sign a fake elector paper and try to send that in and negate Michigan’s actual vote speaks to his integrity,” Herweyer said of Vanderwood, who was then a member of the Wyoming, Michigan, city council. “How can I trust anything he does?”Vanderwood, who served on the city council for 16 years before being elected mayor of the city in 2022, now faces eight felony charges for his role as a false elector during the 2020 presidential election. Fifteen other Republicans, including the former co-chair of the Michigan GOP, have also been criminally charged.Since Michigan’s attorney general, Dana Nessel, announced the charges on 18 July – making the state the first to prosecute a full slate of false electors involved in the seven-state scheme – voters and good government groups have begun a push for elected officials involved to resign. Across the state, a mayor, a school board member and a township clerk whose role includes administering elections have each been arraigned and have pleaded not guilty, and in each community, constituents are pushing for accountability.“Over 2 million people voted for Joe Biden in Michigan, and Stan Grot decided that our votes didn’t matter,” said Alisa Diez, a Democratic party activist in Shelby Township, where Stanley Grot, one of the 16 false electors, currently serves as township clerk.After Grot was charged, the state stripped him of his ability to administer elections, but he remains in office.At a packed public meeting of the township board of trustees on 15 August, residents questioned Grot’s ability to serve as clerk, given the pending charges and the fact that he can no longer perform a key function of his post. “What, we pay him for a job he can’t do?” said Diez, who organized a protest at the meeting demanding Grot’s resignation. “It’s ridiculous.”Grot’s lawyer, Derek Wilczynski, said in a statement that there “is no merit to the charges alleged against Mr Grot”, and called the secretary of state’s directive that Grot pause his election-related responsibilities “improper”. Wilczynski added in an email to the Guardian that Grot “does not intend to resign his position as Township Clerk”.In a statement, Vanderwood’s attorney wrote that the mayor “had no intent to defraud anyone” when he signed his name as an elector in 2020 and added that Vanderwood “will not resign or voluntarily recuse himself from the important and completely unrelated work he is required to perform as the duly-elected Mayor of the City of Wyoming”.In Grand Blanc, a small city south of Flint, Michigan, Amy Facchinello, a school board member who in 2021 generated outrage for promoting the QAnon conspiracy theory on social media and now faces charges for her participation in forging the false electors’ certificate, could face a recall. On 14 August, the Genesee county elections commission approved a filing to recall Facchinello – meaning residents can begin to collect signatures to petition for an election.“Eight felony charges aren’t a good look for a school board member,” said Michelle Ryder, who filed the recall language. Ryder, who has two children in the school district, said school board meetings became chaotic and politicized during the pandemic, with Facchinello’s radical beliefs often a focal point.Ryder said she hoped the felony charges would inspire residents to recall Facchinello, whose term will otherwise end in 2026. “This is an opportunity for our community to say ‘this isn’t who we are,’” said Ryder.Facchinello and her attorney did not respond to a request for comment.Vanderwood, Grot, Facchinello and the 13 others charged met “covertly” in the basement of the Michigan Republican party headquarters in December 2020 to sign paperwork falsely claiming to be official electors, Nessel said, calling the action “an attempt to outmaneuver and circumvent the longstanding electoral college process”.The Michigan plan formed part of a broader push by Trump and his inner circle to overturn the results of the 2020 election by delivering alternate slates of electors for Trump and Pence in seven swing states. The multistate effort has emerged as a critical element in the prosecution of the former president and his allies, with several of Georgia’s false electors now facing charges in Fulton county.At least 17 fake electors across the US currently serve in public office, including the Arizona state senator Anthony Kern, Georgia’s lieutenant governor, Burt Jones and Robert Spindell, a member of the Wisconsin elections commission. The prosecutions in Michigan and Georgia have brought increased scrutiny on the false electors, and Arizona’s attorney general, Kris Mayes, has confirmed her office is investigating the slate of fake electors there.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionA coalition of activists and progressive organizers from groups including the Michigan League of Conservation Voters, All Voting Is Local Michigan, the Michigan League of Conservation Voters and the Michigan People’s Campaign are supporting efforts in Wyoming and Shelby Township to oust their elected officials who served as fake electors. In letters to the Wyoming city council and the Shelby Township board of trustees, the advocates, referring to themselves as the Democracy Coalition, called on the local governments to address the issue of the false electors.The charges, the group wrote, “raise serious concerns” about the officials’ ability to fulfill their responsibilities “in a manner that upholds the values and principles an elected official should abide by”.Daniel Rivera, an organizer with the Michigan League of Conservation Voters and a resident of Wyoming, Michigan, said he helped get the word out before a tumultuous city council meeting on 7 August, where residents lined up to call for their mayor’s resignation. “When I saw the formal charges, that’s where I decided to really push for recruiting folks to come to the meeting and provide public comment myself,” said Rivera. “As a resident, it just raises a lot of concerns, because we deserve to trust our government.”Herweyer, who worked the polls during the 2020 presidential election and spoke at the 7 August city council meeting, said she already believed Vanderwood’s role as a false elector in 2020 disqualified him for public office when he ran for mayor in 2022. The idea that a longtime civil servant had apparently participated in the effort to overturn the presidential election upset Herweyer deeply.“It didn’t take the [attorney general] filing charges to get me upset,” said Herweyer. “I wanted him off immediately.”But while some individuals like Herweyer were bothered by the news about Vanderwood back in 2020, the issue didn’t get much local play until the charges dropped.Ivan Diaz, a Kent county commissioner whose district includes parts of Wyoming, said the false electors news wasn’t a major campaign talking point during Vanderwood’s mayoral race, and that he was “pleasantly surprised” when residents flooded the city council meeting to demand the mayor’s resignation.“Once there were actual charges, I think it kind of just elevated to a situation where it’s [in] everybody’s awareness,” he said.Residents cannot launch a recall until Vanderwood’s first year in office concludes in December.“At that point, he’ll probably very much be in danger of being recalled,” said Diaz.
      This article was amended on 23 August 2023 to correct a name. More

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      in US Politics

      Trump co-defendant Mark Meadows asks judge to block his arrest in Georgia

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      Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff for Donald Trump, has asked a federal court to block his arrest in an emergency motion, according to court documents filed on Tuesday.Meadows, a named defendant in the sweeping election interference case against Donald Trump and 18 others in Fulton county, Georgia, has requested the case be moved to federal court, saying the charges concern his actions as an officer of the federal government.Trump’s legal team is also expected to argue that the case should be moved to federal court because he was acting in the capacity of president.In the Tuesday emergency motion, Meadows asked the court to “protect” him from arrest before a Monday, 28 August, hearing on his request to move the case out of the Fulton county superior court to the district court of northern Georgia.Meadows asked the court to either grant his removal request or issue an order prohibiting the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, from arresting him, according to the Tuesday motion.Last week, Willis set the deadline for the 19 defendants to voluntarily turn themselves in to the Fulton county jail, where they would be booked, for noon this Friday, 25 August.Willis rejected Meadows’ request for an extension on the deadline, according to Meadows’ emergency motion.“I am not granting any extensions. I gave 2 weeks for people to surrender themselves to the court. Your client is no different than any other criminal defendant in this jurisdiction. The two weeks was a tremendous courtesy,” Willis wrote in an email on Tuesday morning.Willis also indicated that if Meadows does not turn himself in by noon on Friday, he would be arrested, writing: “At 12:30 pm on Friday I shall file warrants in the system.”Meadows was charged with two felony counts, including violating the Georgia Rico Act and solicitation of violation of oath from a public officer, according to Willis’s indictment. Meadows was on the infamous phone call when Trump asked the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to “find” votes to overturn Biden’s victory in the state.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHe also received hundreds of text messages on 6 January 2021 alerting him and the White House of escalating violence at the US Capitol and asking Trump to intervene.Two of the 19 named defendants, Scott Hall and John Eastman, have turned themselves in and were booked at the Fulton county Rice Street jail on Tuesday.Another two named defendants, Jeffrey Clark and David Shafer, have joined Meadows in making requests that their cases be moved to federal court. More