US elections 2020

Subterms

    More stories

    • 175 Shares159 Views

      in Elections

      Pence has ‘no plans to testify’ against Trump but vows to ‘obey the law’

      by

      Former vice-president and 2024 Republican presidential candidate Mike Pence said that he has “no plans to testify” against Donald Trump but vowed to “obey the law”.In a recent interview after federal prosecutors charged Trump over his efforts to overturn his defeat in the 2020 presidential election, Pence was asked by CBS correspondent Major Garrett whether he would be a witness against Trump if the case went to trial.Pence replied: “In this case, we’ve stood firmly for the rule of law. I took a stand, we challenged in court the scope of any testimony that I could provide, because as [the former] president of the Senate, the constitution provides me with the protections that are afforded to members of Congress. We won that at the lower court level and ultimately, we responded to a subpoena, and I have no plans to testify.“But people can be confident we’ll obey the law. We’ll respond to the call of the law, if it comes and we’ll just tell the truth.”Garrett went on to ask Pence whether he regards the latest indictment against Trump as political persecution, a claim that rightwing media outlets have been promoting in attempts to undermine the ex-president’s charges.Trump is accused of conspiracy to defraud the United States and one count of conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding in connection with his supporters’ attack on the Capitol on January 6 2021, the day that Congress met to certify his loss to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential race.Pence said: “I’ve been very concerned about politicization at the justice department for years. I’ve been deeply troubled to see the double standard between the way that the justice department has gone after the president … and the way they seem to … take no interest in getting to the bottom of allegations of corruption around” Biden’s family.The Democratic incumbent president’s son Hunter Biden is facing tax- and gun-related charges filed by prosecutors.Nonetheless, Pence added he didn’t want to “prejudge” the indictment against Trump.“I don’t know whether the government has the evidence beyond a reasonable doubt to support this case,” Pence said during the interview, scheduled to air Sunday morning on CBS’s Face the Nation. “[Trump] is entitled to the presumption of innocence.”Pence vowed to “clean house” at the justice department, should he become the next president, saying that he will appoint “men and women at the highest levels … in this country that will restore the confidence of the American people in equal treatment under the law.”In response to whether he believed Trump can receive a fair trial in Washington DC’s federal courthouse, Pence replied that he has “every confidence” that the former president will make his case before a judge.“I’m never going to waver in making it clear to people that whatever the outcome of this indictment and – wherever it goes – I know I did my duty … to the constitution.”Earlier this week, Pence told Fox News that Trump and his “gaggle of crackpot lawyers” asked him to “literally reject votes” during the certification process.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAccording to the indictment, Trump pressured Pence repeatedly from late December to early January to reject electoral college votes, including on Christmas Day.At one point, Trump allegedly told the former vice-president, “You’re too honest,” a phrase that the Pence campaign has since capitalized on by selling “Too Honest” merchandise.Pence, in a separate interview Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union, said: “I’ve been called worse. … I’m more than happy to wear that label.”In a typically combative post on his Truth Social platform, Trump denied saying Pence was “too honest”.“He’s delusional,” said Trump’s post, which also dismissed Pence as “not a very good person”.Trump’s charges related to his 2020 defeat were contained in one of three indictments pending against him as of Sunday. He is also facing charges in New York state stemming from hush money payments to porn actor Stormy Daniels. And he is also facing a separate federal indictment pertaining to his allegedly illicit hoarding of government secrets at his Florida resort after he left the Oval Office.Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges against him. He is widely seen as the frontrunner to clinch the Republican nomination for president, with the rest of the field – including Pence – trailing him substantially in the polls. More

    • 200 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Finally, three reasons for Donald Trump to be afraid: a courtroom, a jury and the truth

      by

      I blame the father. Frederick Trump raised his children, one in particular, to believe that the world was divided into winners and losers and that there was no greater crime than to fall into the latter category. In 2020, Donald Trump was ready to bring down the American republic rather than admit before the shade of his dead father that he had lost a presidential election. Scholars speak of “losers’ consent” as an essential prerequisite of a democratic system: without it, there can be no peaceful transfer of power. For two and a half centuries, that model held in the US. But in 2020 it ran into a man who would rather destroy his country than wear the scarlet letter L on his forehead.The result is the indictment against Trump that arrived this week, the third – with one more expected – and easily the most serious. Across 45 pages, Trump is charged with plotting to overturn a democratic election – to thwart the will of the voters who had rejected him at the ballot box and thereby remain in power.The weary assumption is that, like the two previous indictments, this will not much damage Trump’s prospects in the 2024 election and might even boost them: a major national poll this week found him crushing all his Republican rivals for the party’s presidential nomination and dead even in the presumed match-up against Joe Biden. Even so, this case, whose court date will be set on 28 August, could scarcely be more significant. It will be the first great trial of the post-truth age.None of this should come as a surprise. Trump never hid who he was or what he intended. In 2016, he refused to say whether he would accept the outcome of the election he fought against Hillary Clinton: “I’ll keep you in suspense,” he said, and he was similarly coy four years later.Nor did he conceal his belief that his seat in the Oval Office put him above the law. Referring to the second article of the US constitution, he told an audience of teenagers in 2019, “I have an Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president.”As for the impunity granted to him by his supporters, who give him more cash every time another felony charge lands, that too was foretold – by Trump himself. Back in January 2016, he predicted that he could stand on Fifth Avenue and “shoot somebody” and he would not lose any voters. So far, murder has not appeared on any Trump charge sheet, but the prescience of the remark still stands.More subtly, Trump revealed, and reveals, much of himself in the attacks he makes on others. He is currently insistent that he is the victim of Biden’s “weaponised” Department of Justice, suggesting that the independent federal prosecutors who drew up this week’s indictment were, in fact, mere partisan hacks doing the bidding of the president. And yet it is not Biden but Trump himself who has signalled that, if returned to the White House, he would end the independence of the criminal justice system, as part of a takeover of swathes of the administrative state, concentrating colossal power in his own hands. “What we’re trying to do is identify the pockets of independence and seize them,” one senior Trump lieutenant told the New York Times. It is Trump, not Biden, who envisages using the justice department as a hit squad against his enemies: he has promised, if re-elected, to order a criminal investigation into the current president. Again, no surprise: remember the way Trump led the 2016 crowds in anti-Clinton chants of “lock her up”.But just because we can’t claim to be surprised does not mean we shouldn’t be shocked. Several crucial principles are at stake in this case. One is that every vote must count: the victims of Trump’s conspiracy were the tens of millions of Americans who voted for Biden, whose ballots would have been cast aside had the ex-president prevailed.Another is that nobody is above the law. While Trump claims to be the victim of political persecution, the truth is that it would have been an intensely political decision not to pursue him, especially when more than 1,000 of his devotees have been charged for storming the Capitol on 6 January 2021. If they can be prosecuted for seeking to overturn the 2020 election, why can’t he?But perhaps the central principle at stake here is that there is such a thing as the truth. Trump has challenged that notion from the very start. Not just by lying – he’s not the first politician to do that – but by seeking to shake public faith in the very idea that truth is even possible.The former president spread specific lies claiming decisive electoral fraud in key states – as the indictment memorably puts it, “These claims were false, and the defendant knew that they were false” – in order to construct the big lie of a stolen election. He built an alternative reality on that lie that persists to this day – a reality made up, incidentally, of the kind of “alternative facts” to which we were introduced within hours of his taking office. That episode related to the seemingly trivial matter of the size of his inauguration crowd. But it established Trump’s post-truth position: that there are no commonly accepted facts – not even those you can see with your own eyes – only claim and counter-claim.That’s why one of Trump’s go-to lines has long been “Nobody really knows”. (“Nobody really knows” if climate change is real was a 2016 classic of the form.) In a blizzard of competing claims, the blinded citizen can either retreat, confused, or else be guided by the leader who kindly tells them what is true and what is not. That was the Putin manoeuvre – his power rests on it – and Trump has made it his own. Not for nothing is his personal social media platform called Truth.Now, though, Trump’s brand of post-truth is set to face its most severe challenge. As the Economist notes this week, “a courtroom is a place where reality counts … In court, truth means something”. Up until now, Trump has succeeded in persuading half the country that they cannot trust awkward, discomforting facts, including those uncovered by federal investigators, because all such people – FBI agents, judges – are tools of the deep state. Every morsel of evidence can be dismissed as the handiwork of the “globalists and communists” who constitute America’s “corrupt ruling class”.The tactic has been remarkably effective. The acid of Trumpian post-truth has corroded large parts of the US system already, breaking public trust in elections, the media and much else. Will the courtroom that hears the United States of America v Donald J Trump be able to shut it out and remain free of its sulphuric touch? On the answer, much more than the fate of one poisonous man – shaped by a poisonous father – depends.
      Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist More

    • 163 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump pleads not guilty to four charges over efforts to overturn 2020 election

      by

      Donald Trump pleaded not guilty Thursday to federal charges over his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, marking the third time this year that the former president has been forced to respond to a criminal indictment.Trump was arrested and arraigned on four felony counts outlined in special counsel Jack Smith’s indictment: conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding and conspiracy against rights.The arraignment came two days after Smith’s office filed its indictment, accusing Trump of executing a “criminal scheme” to remain in office even after it became clear that he had fairly lost the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden.Trump traveled from his Bedminster Club in New Jersey to Washington on Thursday with his lawyers and several top aides to appear at the arraignment. He was formally arrested at the E Barrett Prettyman federal courthouse, just blocks from the US Capitol, where the deadly January 6 insurrection unfolded.Sitting in the courtroom Thursday, Trump was accompanied by two of his attorneys, John Laura and Todd Blanche. Smith also attended the arraignment, which was overseen by US magistrate judge Moxila Upadhyaya. After entering his plea of not guilty, Trump was released on the conditions that he adhere to all federal, state and local laws and avoid discussing the case with any witnesses. The next hearing in the case has been set for 28 August.Smith’s 45-page indictment asserts that Trump and his associates disseminated lies alleging widespread fraud in the 2020 election while convening slates of fake electors in key battleground states. The indictment also listed six co-conspirators who were not charged in the indictment.While they were unnamed, the descriptions of five of the six matched those of the Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, John Eastman, Ken Chesebro as well as the former US justice department official Jeff Clark. According to Smith’s indictment, Trump and his associates’ relentless campaign of misinformation culminated in the insurrection, which claimed the lives of at least seven people.“Despite having lost, the Defendant was determined to remain in power,” the indictment reads. “So for more than two months following election day on November 3, 2020, the Defendant spread lies that there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the election and that he had actually won. These claims were false, and the Defendant knew that they were false.”The charges in Washington represented the second indictment filed by Smith, who previously charged Trump in June with retaining national security documents at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida and obstructing the government’s efforts to retrieve them. That case is currently scheduled to go to trial in May 2024.Trump has also been indicted in an unrelated case by the Manhattan district attorney, who charged him over hush-money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election. He is expected to be indicted a fourth time in Georgia, where he may face racketeering charges over his election subversion efforts.Trump’s legal team has already sought to delay the trials in New York and Florida, arguing the cases should not move forward until after the 2024 presidential election. Trump remains the frontrunner in the Republican presidential primary, and his nomination would set up a rematch against Biden in the general election next November.But Smith said Tuesday that his office would “seek a speedy trial so that our evidence can be tested in court and judged by a jury of citizens”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn a post shared to his social media platform Truth Social on Thursday, Trump said he viewed the indictment as “a great honor because I am being arrested for you”, speculating that the criminal charges would actually bolster his presidential campaign. Meanwhile, Joe Biden, who is currently on vacation in Delaware, maintained his silence on the arraignment, ignoring reporters’ questions about the case.Trump also demanded that his case be moved out of Washington to “an impartial Venue, such as the politically unbiased nearby State of West Virginia”, where he won by 39 points in 2020. Writing on Truth Social, Trump claimed it would be “impossible” to receive a fair trial in Washington, which he lost by 87 points in 2020. The chances of a court venue charge appear slim, given that similar arguments in other federal January 6 cases have proven unsuccessful.As Trump made his way to Washington for the arraignment, some of his supporters gathered outside the E Barrett Prettyman federal courthouse to welcome the former president. Anti-Trump protesters also congregated outside the courthouse, holding signs that read, “Save our democracy!” and “Lock him up”.Upadhyaya oversaw the Thursday hearing because magistrate judges typically handle the more routine or procedural aspects of court cases, such as arraignments, but the case itself has been assigned to US district court judge Tanya Chutkan, a former assistant public defender who was nominated to the bench by Barack Obama.Chutkan is expected to set a trial date at the next hearing, but Trump’s lawyers already indicated Thursday they disagree with Smith’s push for a speedy timeline.“All we would ask, Your Honor, is the opportunity to fairly defend our client,” Lauro said. “But in order to do that, we’re going to need a little time.” More

    • 188 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump is hoping his ‘free speech’ defense will work. It won’t | Margaret Sullivan

      by

      When Jack Smith announced the latest indictment of Donald Trump this week, the special prosecutor’s language was remarkably clear.Smith used the phrase “fueled by lies” about Trump’s role in the January 6 riot at the US Capitol. (Trump officially pleaded not guilty today to charges that he conspired to defraud the United States, to disenfranchise voters and to obstruct the post-election transfer of power.)Smith didn’t hesitate to use the word “heroes” to describe the Capitol police and other law enforcement officials who tried to protect the seat of American democracy. “They are patriots,” he added, “and they are the very best of us.”And he asked Americans to perform a simple, patriotic act: read the indictment. Those who comply will find equally forthright language there. The indictment – clearly intended for citizens, not just lawyers – does not mince words or pussyfoot.More importantly, if they followed Smith’s urging, they quickly would find the response to the “free speech” defense that’s getting so much play by Trump’s political and media allies. Those allies are trying to make the case that speech – even false speech – cannot be a crime in America.“What the government would have to prove in this case, beyond a reasonable doubt, is that speech is not protected by the first amendment, and they’ll never be able to do that,” Trump’s defense lawyer John Lauro said in a CBS News interview.But the indictment anticipates that argument, and addresses it quickly – on the second page of this 45-page indictment.“The Defendant had a right, like every American, to speak publicly about the election and even to claim, falsely, that there had been outcome-determinative fraud during the election and that he had won,” it acknowledges. It adds that the former president also had the right to challenge the election through legal means like recounts, audits or lawsuits. (Trump, of course, did do these things, to no avail.)Lying? Sure, that’s within the law. Challenging election results? Legal, too.But then came the “unlawful” part: not mere words but criminal actions. Specifically, perpetrating conspiracies to discount legitimate votes and subvert the election results. In short, making concerted efforts to prevent the peaceful transfer of power – the very heart of American democracy.Sorry, but the first amendment is not down with that.“There is no First Amendment privilege to commit crimes just because you did it by speech,” Samuel Buell, a Duke University law professor who led the justice department’s prosecution of Enron, told the New York Times.In Buell’s even simpler terms: “Tony Soprano can’t invoke the first amendment for telling his crew he wants someone whacked.”Examples abound. If you believe that the US currency system is unlawful, then you have a right to go around and tell everybody they have a right to print their own money.That’s protected free speech.“But the moment you start printing your own money and putting it into traffic, you are engaging in counterfeiting,” as Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin told the Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus.And that’s a crime that the first amendment wants no part in protecting.You can hear high-pitched and logic-free versions of that defense at nearly every moment on Fox News, which has convinced its viewers that Trump is a victim of a weaponized justice system.How convinced are they? Very. More than 90% of likely Republican primary voters who rely on Fox as their main news source and who stay away from mainstream media, do not think Trump committed serious crimes, according to one poll taken shortly before the latest legal chapter. Only 5% disagree.But a jury who takes these charges seriously should be a different matter.“Jack Smith’s indictment is straightforward and narrow but boy, it packs a punch,” the prominent attorney Neal Katyal said on MSNBC this week. “It’s clean, it’s calculated and I feel like it’s almost certainly going to result in a conviction.”We won’t know if that’s accurate for many months, despite the prosecution’s obvious intention to put this trial on a fast track.But if the foundation of Trump’s defense really turns out to be first amendment protection, Katyal’s prediction should be proven right.A jury, especially a Washington DC jury, surely won’t fail to see a crucial difference.Protected speech is one thing. Criminal action – conspiring to overthrow an election result – is quite another.
      Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture More

    • 150 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      Who is Tanya Chutkan, the judge assigned to Trump’s January 6 case?

      by

      A federal judge who has emerged as one of the toughest authorities against rioters who participated in the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol will soon meet her most high-profile defendant: Donald Trump.Tanya Chutkan, a 2014 appointee of former president Barack Obama, was randomly assigned to oversee the case on Tuesday after a federal grand jury indicted the former president on four counts related to his attempt to subvert the 2020 presidential election, including conspiracy and obstruction of official proceedings.Chutkan was born in Jamaica, where she trained as a classical dancer, and moved to the US where she attended George Washington University before earning her JD at the University of Pennsylvania School of Law, according to the DC district court website. She worked as a public defender in DC for a decade before joining the private law firm where she specialized in “litigation and white-collar criminal defense”.Chutkan has ruled on a Trump case before. She once blocked an attempt by Trump to refuse the House January 6 select committee’s request for White House files in the months after the election. That decision released mounds of evidence that shaped the committee’s investigation, according to Politico.In her November 2021 ruling, Chutkan described the attack as an “unprecedented attempt to prevent the lawful transfer of power from one administration to the next [that] caused property damage, injuries, and death”.But that case involved only legal questions about court proceedings and did not require her to rule on Trump’s role in the riot.Chutkan is also the only judge who has delivered stricter sentences against January 6 defendants than requested by federal prosecutors. In December 2021, she imposed the longest sentence at the time for a January 6 rioter – 63 months in jail for Robert Palmer, a Florida man who sprayed Capitol police with a fire extinguisher.“It has to be made clear that trying to violently overthrow the government, trying to stop the peaceful transition of power and assaulting law enforcement officers in that effort is going to be met with absolutely certain punishment,” she said at his sentencing, justifying lengthy jail time.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionEleanor Norton, the US congresswoman who has represented DC since 1991, recommended Chutkan, then a partner at a private law firm, to the post in 2013, according to a press release at the time. Chutkan became the third Black woman ever to serve on the sole DC district court, joining Ketanji B Jackson, now a supreme court justice, on the bench in 2014.A different federal judge, Moxila A Upadhyaya, presided over Trump’s arraignment at a federal courthouse in DC on Thursday afternoon. More

    • 188 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Trump to hear obstruction and conspiracy charges for Jan 6 indictment in court – live

      by

      From 6h agoGood morning. It is around 6am in Washington DC, where today we expect to see the 45th president of the United States, Donald Trump, in court.The former president is accused of conspiring to defraud the United States government, conspiring to obstruct an official proceeding, conspiring against rights, and obstruction and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding. Here is what we know and what we are expecting:
      Trump’s third appearance in a courtroom as a criminal defendant is expected at 4pm Eastern time (9pm BST).
      Prosecutors in Washington will outline the four conspiracy and obstruction counts and a judge will set bail conditions.
      The magistrate judge, Moxila Upadhyaya, will set a schedule for pre-trial motions and discovery.
      Both sides are likely later to file motions seeking to shape what evidence and legal arguments will be permitted at trial, which could be many months away.
      In a possible preview of Trump’s defence, his lawyer John Lauro called the indictment “an attack on free speech and political advocacy”, implying Trump’s lies about election fraud were protected under the constitutional right to freedom of expression.
      This is Martin Belam in London. I’ll be covering the build-up to Donald Trump’s court appearance for the next couple of hours before handing over to my colleagues in the US. You can reach me at martin.belam@theguardian.com.Republican representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has called the indictment against Donald Trump a “political assassination.”Greene, a staunch Trump ally, tweeted on Thursday:
      “Today’s indictment of President Trump is a political assassination attempt by Joe Biden and his henchmen to remove the leading presidential candidate from the ballot in 2024.”
      “The American people will reelect President Trump! #Trump2024,” she added.
      Mike Pence has hit back at the “gaggle of crackpot lawyers” that worked with Donald Trump to allegedly attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.The Guardian’s Adam Gabbatt reports:Trump was charged with four felonies this week over his attempts to meddle with the presidential election. The 45-page indictment shows that Pence was a crucial figure in Jack Smith, the special counsel, being able to bring those charges.“Contemporaneous notes” taken by Pence, and referred to in the indictment, document how Trump and his advisors pressured Pence to reject the certification of the election in January, which could have resulted in the House of Representatives handing Trump a second-term in office.On Wednesday, as Trump and his legal team attempted to downplay those efforts – one of Trump’s lawyers suggested that they only asked Pence to do “pause the voting” on January 6 – the usually meek Pence reacted angrily.“Let’s be clear on this point. It wasn’t just that they asked for a pause,” he told Fox News.“The president specifically asked me, and his gaggle of crackpot lawyers asked me, to literally reject votes, which would have resulted in the issue being turned over to the House of Representatives, and literally chaos would have ensued.”For the full story, click here:Donald Trump has vowed to get his revenge on Joe Biden and his attorney general for charging him “with as many crimes as can be concocted”.Posting on Truth Social, the former president wrote:
      Look, it’s not my fault that my political opponent in the Democrat Party, Crooked Joe Biden, has told his Attorney General to charge the leading (by far!) Republican Nominee & former President of the United States, me, with as many crimes as can be concocted so that he is forced to spend large amounts of time & money to defend himself. The Dems don’t want to run against me or they would not be doing this unprecedented weaponization of “Justice.” BUT SOON, IN 2024, IT WILL BE OUR TURN. MAGA!
      US Marshals have been seen inside the federal courthouse where Donald Trump is to due to appear later today.A group of heavily armed men, including members of the service’s special operations unit, were seen arriving inside the court with tactical gear and rifles, CNN reported. A bomb-sniffing dog, a black lab named Legend, was also seen on patrol, as well as Secret Service agents patrolling inside the building.From NBC’s Ryan J Reilly:Federal prosecutors have charged Donald Trump over his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, the latest criminal case before the former president that comes just weeks after he was charged with retaining national defense information.You can read the indictment here in full:Biotech entrepeneur and GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy appeared outside the federal courthouse in Washington in an attempt to boost his visibility.In a video posted to Twitter, Ramaswamy questioned why Trump has been indicted in three “supposedly independent prosecutions” in the midst of a presidential election. “The government does not trust the people to select their leaders,” he said.When Donald Trump appears at the E. Barrett Prettyman Federal Courthouse in Washington, DC this afternoon to answer the indictment brought against him by special counsel Jack Smith for allegedly trying to overturn his 2020 election loss, he will not be formally arrested or have his mugshot taken.The former president will undergo digital fingerprinting as part of the booking process at the federal courthouse, and will be required to provide his social security number, date of birth, address, and other personal information, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday, citing US Marshals Service spokesman Drew Wade.Trump will not have his photograph taken during his processing, “since he’s already easily recognizable and there are already many photographs available”.He will also not be placed under arrest, according to Wade. In accepting the indictment on Tuesday, US Magistrate Judge Moxila Upadhyaya issued a summons for his appearance, not an arrest warrant.For those involved with the House select committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol, special counsel Jack Smith’s indictment brought a collective sigh of relief, according to a Washington Post report.For them, the indictment served as the start of a final stage of accountability for Donald Trump and his allies that the committee long sought, but also as a validation of the group’s work, the paper wrote, citing sources.
      The indictment also elevated their findings outside of the political arena, where their work was subject to constant allegations of partisanship, bringing the credibility of the criminal justice system.
      Retired group chats were revived and calls placed to old colleagues as lawmakers and investigators absorbed the news.
      Tim Heaphy, the lead investigator for the committee, told the paper:
      As I read the indictment, it really struck me how closely it hews to our structure and our findings. Facts are what matters. And lawyers get too much credit for facts. We gathered really important facts because a lot of people came forward and gave us those facts. Those same facts are leading to a criminal indictment of the former president.
      The indictment comes more than two years after a group of Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the US Capitol in an attempt to disrupt the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election. The January 6 attack, which has already resulted in more than 1,000 arrests, caused the deaths of seven people, a bipartisan Senate report found.Despite the deadly consequences of the Capitol insurrection, past efforts to hold Trump accountable for the violence and his broader election subversion campaign have fallen short. The House voted to impeach Trump for inciting the insurrection, but he was acquitted by the Senate. The House then passed a bill calling for the formation of an independent commission to investigate the Capitol attack, but that proposal also failed in the Senate.House Democrats instead created a select committee to examine the origins and impact of the January 6 insurrection, and the panel held a series of hearings that painted a damning picture of a president hellbent on remaining in office even after it became clear he had fairly lost his bid for reelection. The select committee ultimately voted to refer Trump to the justice department for criminal prosecution, but the panel itself could not advance charges against the former president.Kristy Parker, a former federal prosecutor and now counsel at the nonpartisan nonprofit Protect Democracy, said:
      The select committee did an outstanding job of presenting a lot of evidence that they gleaned from their interviews with people who essentially were willing to cooperate, but criminal investigators and prosecutors have the ability to subpoena people.
      Unlike Donald Trump’s first two indictments, the former president’s third set of criminal charges stands out as the first major legal effort to hold him accountable for attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election.Pro-democracy experts welcomed the indictment as a victory for the rule of law that could help fortify America’s election systems in the face of ongoing threats from Trump and his allies.The indictment charges Trump with four counts: conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights in his relentless pursuit to reverse the outcome of the 2020 election and remain in office.“This is one of the worst things any American president has ever done,” said Michael Waldman, president and CEO of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s School of Law.
      The magnitude of the indictment matches the magnitude of what Trump tried to do, which is to overthrow the constitutional system to stay in office.
      The significance of the indictments extends beyond accountability, Parker argued. As Trump and his allies continue to spread lies about rampant voter fraud and threaten the foundation of America’s system of government, the recently announced criminal charges could send a chilling message to anyone else considering similar anti-democratic efforts in the future.“We have been kind of living under a question mark ever since the events of January 6, and that question mark has been: are we as a country going to be able to hold this person accountable, even though he was the 45th president of the United States?” Kristy Parker, a former federal prosecutor and now counsel at the nonpartisan nonprofit Protect Democracy, said.
      If you let a person like that walk away without any kind of accountability, then the chances of something like what we saw on January 6 happening again are extremely high.
      Here are some key takeaways from the latest indictment:Trump faces four chargesThe former president is accused of conspiring to defraud the United States government, conspiring to obstruct an official proceeding, conspiring against rights, and obstruction and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding.In the 45-page indictment, prosecutors laid out their case in stark detail, alleging Trump knowingly spread false allegations about fraud, convened false slates of electors and attempted to block the certification of the election on January 6.The former president was ‘determined to remain in power’Federal prosecutors said Trump was “determined to remain in power”. Prosecutors said that for two months after his election loss, Trump spread lies to create an “intense national atmosphere of mistrust and anger” and “erode public faith in the administration of the election”. They cited an example in Georgia, where Trump claimed more than 10,000 dead people voted in four days even after the state’s top elections official told him that was not true.There are six un-indicted co-conspiratorsThe indictment included six un-indicted co-conspirators as part of Smith’s inquiry, including four unnamed attorneys who allegedly aided Trump in his effort to subvert the 2020 election results, as well as an unnamed justice department official and an unnamed political consultant.While unnamed in the document, the details in the indictment indicate that those people include Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, John Eastman, Ken Chesebro as well as the former US justice department official Jeff Clark.The special counsel wants a speedy trialIt’s unclear yet when the case will go to trial, but special counsel Jack Smith said his office will seek speedy proceedings. Smith said in a press conference on Tuesday:
      I must emphasize that the indictment is only an allegation and that the defendant must be presumed innocent until proven guilty, beyond a reasonable doubt, in a court of law.
      Indictments won’t disqualify Trump from officeTrump’s indictments will not bar him from seeking the presidency again, nor will any conviction. However, if he’s convicted, there would likely be lawsuits seeking to disqualify him from the ballot under the 14th amendment, which bars those who have engaged in “insurrection or rebellion” from holding office. But Congress could override that disqualification in the 14th amendment by two-thirds vote.The indictment follows a path laid by the House January 6 committeeThe congressional panel, which was created to investigate the insurrection, concluded last December recommending criminal charges. Over the course of the investigation, the committee conducted more than 1,000 interviews, collected more than a million documents and interviewed key witnesses. In public hearings, some held at prime time, investigators aired dramatic and damning footage, making the case that Trump “was directly responsible for summoning what became a violent mob” despite understanding that he had lost the election.The justice department received what the committee had uncovered, but conducted its own interviews and used its authority to gain key evidence that wasn’t easily accessible to Congress.The final charges against Trump include ones that the committee had recommended, including conspiracy to defraud the United States.Members of the media and public are lining up outside the federal courthouse in Washington, where Donald Trump is expected to appear at 4pm Eastern time (9pm BST).The chief of the Capitol Police told reporters on Wednesday that the force is “prepared for whatever might happen”. He said there is “security plan in place” but declined to go into specifics.Donald Trump’s former attorney general William Bar said he believes Trump “knew well he lost the election” and that special counsel Jack Smith has more evidence to prove that the former president knew the 2020 election was not stolen.Barr, who resigned as Trump’s attorney general weeks after the election in December 2020, told CNN:
      At first I wasn’t sure, but I have come to believe he knew well he had lost the election.
      He went on to say that the four charges Trump is accused of in the latest indictment are just the “tip of the iceberg” and that Smith has “a lot more evidence” against him.
      I think there is a lot more to come, and I think they have a lot more evidence as to President Trump’s state of mind.
      “It would not come out very well for him” if Trump took the stand on that defense, Barr said, adding that he doubted if the former president “remembers all the different versions of events he has given over the last few years.”Good morning from Washington DC. Thursday’s arraignment follows the release of a 45-page indictment that alleges that Donald Trump repeated false claims of election fraud, despite repeated warnings from multiple people in his circle, including senior leaders in the Department of Justice and senior attorneys who had been appointed by Trump, and the former vice-president Mike Pence, who told him “he had seen no evidence of outcome-determinative fraud”.The indictment describes a conspiracy which, at its core, involves Trump and his co-conspirators allegedly trying to dupe Pence into falsely suggesting the outcome of the 2020 election had been in doubt.To do so, prosecutors say Trump tried to use the Department of Justice to open “sham election fraud investigations” and repeatedly tried to co-opt Pence into rejecting electoral college votes for Joe Biden in an effort to stop his election win being certified.When that failed, the indictment says, Trump tried to block the certification and exploited the January 6 Capitol attack by trying to push false claims of election fraud and to convince members of Congress to continue to delay the certification.The indictment also listed six co-conspirators who were not charged in the indictment. While they were unnamed, the descriptions of five of the six matched those of the Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, John Eastman, Ken Chesebro as well as the former US justice department official Jeff Clark.This is Léonie Chao-Fong taking over the blog in Washington. You can reach me at leonie.chao-fong@theguardian.comMy colleague in New York, Sam Levine, has put together this useful guide to some of the possible scenarios and outcomes from this criminal legal action against Donald Trump. He addresses some of the key unknowns, like for example “If convicted, can Trump be blocked from holding office?”, “What happens if Trump goes on trial during the presidential primaries?” and “could Trump theoretically pardon himself if he goes on to win the Republican nomination and then the election?”Donald Trump has used his Truth Social platform to issue an early morning screed to call for a change of venue in the trial.Labelling it a “fake ‘case’” which has been “brought by crooked Joe Biden and deranged Jack Smith”, Trump suggested “politically unbiased” West Virginia as a venue, arguing it is impossible for him to get a fair trial in Washington, which he described as “95% anti-Trump”.The message suggests that anybody who thought Trump might temper his language, in light of the charges he faces, was misguided.In the Washington Post this morning, one lawyer is quoted suggesting that the case could hinge on whether the prosecution can prove what is going on inside Donald Trump’s mind. It quotes Robert Kelner, who it describes as a veteran DC lawyer, saying:
      I think the entire indictment really turns on the question of Trump’s intent. Arguably, there isn’t any smoking-gun evidence in the indictment regarding intent, though there is certainly circumstantial evidence. At the heart of the case is really a metaphysical question of whether it’s even possible for Donald Trump to believe that he lost the election, or lost anything else, for that matter.
      [Special Counsel Jack] Smith needs to show that all of the false statements Trump made about the election, which the indictment chronicles in great detail, were understood by Trump to be false; otherwise, it becomes a case about political speech and first amendment rights.
      There is a decades-old question about whether, in the privacy of his own office or bedroom, Donald Trump admits to things that he doesn’t admit publicly or whether, even when he’s staring at himself in the bathroom mirror shaving, he’s telling himself the same lies that he tells the rest of us. I don’t think we know the answer. It may be an unanswerable question.
      In his response to the indictment on Tuesday, Donald Trump’s statement described it as a “pathetic attempt by the Biden Crime Family and their weaponized Department of Justice to interfere with the 2024 Presidential Election”.“Biden Crime Family” has become the latest epithet that Donald Trump drops into his statements in the hope that it will be picked up and amplified by his followers.The former president has a knack for pithy phrases and nicknames which become shortcuts and memes for his fans – think rallies chanting “Lock her up” about opponent “Crooked Hillary” Clinton in the 2016 election or Trump dubbing his opponent “sleepy Joe” in 2020.It isn’t just those in the Democratic party who have been on the receiving end. He has labelled his Florida governor opponent for the 2024 nomination “Ron DeSanctimonious” and Ted Cruz earned the Trump name “Lyin’ Ted”.“Biden Crime Family” isn’t an original Trump phrase though, but one that has been floating around Republican circles for some time. In fact only a week ago Jill Biden’s first husband was using the phrase in a New York Post interview about his experience of dealing with the president and his wife after the split.The “crime family” name derives from a continued Republican fascination with the legal worries of Biden’s son Hunter, who has pleaded not guilty to tax and gun charges. Overseas dealings involving the Biden family have been subject to a House Oversight Committee investigation, which is yet to report any wrongdoing. More

    • 100 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘Political germ warfare’: rightwing media fervently defend Trump

      by

      After he was indicted for the third time, Donald Trump reacted with his now-standard, twin-pronged approach: first, expressing outrage and denying the charges, and second, asking his many loyal supporters for money.But the former US president, who faces four charges over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, also found defenders among rightwing media in America which has often fervently defended him, sometimes flying in the face of reality to do so.In the minutes after the Trump indictment was filed in federal district court in Washington, conservative commentators rapidly scrambled to his defense. Rightwing pundits lined up to compare the charges to “criminalizing thoughts” and the dropping of “fifteen dozen” atomic bombs – and that was just on Fox News.Rightwing TV channel Newsmax, which has drained some of Fox News’s audience in recent months, brought on Rudy Giuliani, an unnamed co-conspirator in Tuesday’s indictment, who railed for seven minutes about Hillary Clinton’s emails and Biden being a “crooked president”.In America’s rightwing media ecosystem it was a largely united front. News outlets repeatedly pressed the idea that Trump’s free speech was being criminalized: that the former president had done nothing more than talk about the election being stolen.The effort, perhaps deliberately, ignored prosecutors’ allegations that Trump had convened false slates of electors and attempted to block the certification of the election on January 6.“This is like lawfare, they call it,” Jesse Watters, Fox News’s newly-installed prime-time host, railed in the moments after the indictment was announced. “Legal warfare. If this was political, this would be, like, a political war crime. This is overkill. This is political germ warfare. These are political war crimes. It’s an atrocity. It’s, like, not just dropping one atomic bomb, you drop 15 dozen.”Those claims were made on Fox News’s The Five show, which Watters co-hosts. By the time he got to his 8pm show, he hadn’t calmed down.Watters assembled a panel of experts, which included Alina Habba, a former Trump attorney who now works for Trump’s political action committee and Lara Trump, Trump’s daughter-in-law.In the wake of the 2020 election Trump “did exactly what you would want a president to do”, Lara Trump said.“He upheld and defended the constitution of the United States by trying to ensure that we indeed had a free and fair election. That was his whole goal, that’s what he wanted to ensure was going on,” she said.“[And] what about his first amendment freedom of speech.”Sean Hannity, a friend of Trump who was disciplined by Fox News in 2018 for appearing on stage at a Trump campaign rally, brought John Lauro, a Trump attorney, on to his 9pm show.“This is the first time, in the history of the United States, that the Justice Department has weaponized and politicized political speech,” Lauro claimed.Newsmax, meanwhile, went where Fox News – the channel recently settled a lawsuit after repeating the kind of claims that Giuliani lobs out incessantly – apparently feared to tread. The right-wing channel hauled on an emotional Giuliani, who referenced his own book as he criticized Jack Smith, the special counsel who brought the indictment.“You don’t get to violate people’s first amendment rights, Smith,” Giuliani said. “No matter who the hell you are, no matter how sick you are with Trump derangement syndrome.”There were some calmer voices of dissent in conservative media. One anyway: the Wall Street Journal.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn an op-ed the editorial board of the Journal, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch, criticized Trump’s behavior in the aftermath of the 2020 election, but worried that the indictment “potentially criminalizes many kinds of actions and statements by a president”.“You don’t have to be a defender of Donald Trump to worry about where this will lead,” the editorial board wrote.“It makes any future election challenges, however valid, legally vulnerable to a partisan prosecutor.”Away from the non-rightwing media, the interpretation was largely covered in a sober fashion in the US. The mainstream newspapers New York Times and the Washington Post stuck to a undramatic descriptions of the charges, while ABC News reported on the “sweeping indictment” Trump faces – noting it was his third in the last four months.None of that mattered among conservatives.One America News Network pivoted to Hunter Biden – always a source of interest among right-wing news – with an OANN correspondent pushing an emerging conspiracy theory that the Trump indictment was timed to coincide with Biden Jr’s tax charges trial.Elsewhere, a senior editor of the Blaze website suggested that the Republican-led House should force a government shutdown – which could see about 800,000 federal employees furloughed or forced to work without pay – in the hope that the case against Trump would collapse.Perhaps the most berserk take, however, was the one pushed by Trump’s own campaign.“The lawlessness of these persecutions of President Trump and his supporters is reminiscent of Nazi Germany in the 1930s, the former Soviet Union, and other authoritarian, dictatorial regimes,” the campaign posted to Truth Social.On a day when the rightwing media seemed willing to do and say anything to defend their man, none of them was willing to go as far as that. More

    • 175 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      The Guardian view on Donald Trump’s new indictment: America needs this trial | Editorial

      by

      The indictment served on Donald Trump on Monday marks the beginning of a legal reckoning that is desperately required, if American democracy is to properly free itself from his malign, insidious influence. Mr Trump already faces multiple criminal charges relating to the retention of classified national security documents and the payment of hush money to a porn star. But the gravity of the four counts outlined by the special counsel, Jack Smith, is of a different order of magnitude.Mr Trump stands accused of conspiring, in office, to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election. Following Joe Biden’s victory, the indictment states, Mr Trump “knowingly” used false claims of electoral fraud in an attempt “to subvert the legitimate election results”. A bipartisan congressional committee report last year came to similar conclusions and provides much of the basis for the charges. But this represents the first major legal attempt to hold Mr Trump accountable for events leading up to and including the storming of the Capitol by a violent mob on 6 January 2021.The stakes could hardly be set higher. Democratic elections and the peaceful transfer of power are the cornerstones of the American republic. The testimony given to Congress indicates that Mr Trump used his authority to try to bully federal and state officials into supporting his claims that the election had been “stolen” from him. Repeatedly told that his assertions were baseless, he then mobilised a hostile crowd on 6 January to intimidate lawmakers charged with ratifying Mr Biden’s victory.It is inconceivable that Mr Trump should not be made to answer for actions that imperilled the constitutional and democratic functioning of the United States. The prosecutors’ case will hinge on their ability to prove that he knew his claims of a stolen election were bogus. But beyond the trial itself, it would be foolish to underestimate Mr Trump’s ability to turn even this situation to his own political advantage.The legal fronts on which Mr Trump is now engaged will drain his financial resources. But a narrative of victimhood and persecution has become, and will remain, the galvanising theme of his campaign. Two previous criminal indictments saw his poll ratings lift, helping him to establish a huge lead in the race for the Republican presidential nomination for 2024. Whatever the evidence to the contrary, a sizable proportion of American voters will continue to back Mr Trump’s self-serving version of reality.One of the most dangerously polarising elections in US history thus looms as, over the next 15 months, Mr Trump uses political cunning to evade the legal net that is closing around him. Through his lawyers, he will do all he can to delay matters, hoping eventually to dictate the course of events from the White House. For his part, Mr Smith said on Monday that the justice department will seek “a speedy trial”.It is in the interests of American democracy, to which Mr Trump represents a clear and present danger, that the justice department gets its wish. A healthy body politic cannot allow its founding values and core principles to be trashed with apparent impunity. Prosecutors will need to proceed with care and be alert to the complex political dynamics. But this climactic reckoning in court needs to take place before Mr Trump gets the chance to besmirch the country’s highest office all over again. More