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      ‘You have to run’: Romney urged Biden to take down Trump, book says

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      ‘You have to run’: Romney urged Biden to take down Trump, book saysGabriel Debenedetti, author of book on Biden’s relationship with Obama, reports call on night of 2018 midterms On the night of the 2018 midterm elections, as a wave of anti-Trump sentiment swept Democrats to take control of the House, top Republican Mitt Romney urged Joe Biden to run for president.‘Unhinged’ Rudy Giuliani drank and ranted about Islam, new book claimsRead more“You have to run,” said Romney, the Republican presidential nominee Biden and Barack Obama defeated in 2012, speaking to the former vice-president by phone.The same night, Romney was elected a US senator from Utah, a post from which he would twice vote to convict Donald Trump in impeachment trials.Romney’s exhortation to a man then seen as a likely challenger to Donald Trump in 2020 will probably further enrage the former president, his supporters and the Republican party they dominate.The Biden-Romney call is described in The Long Alliance: The Imperfect Union of Joe Biden and Barack Obama, a book by Gabriel Debenedetti that will be published next week. The Guardian obtained a copy.Describing how Biden spent 6 November 2018, Debenedetti writes: “Biden spent election night glued to his phone as usual … He talked to most of the candidates he’d campaigned for, and plenty he didn’t, either to congratulate or console them, or just to catch up.“This time felt better than 2016” – when Trump beat Hillary Clinton for the presidency – “in part because Democrats were winning big, at least in local races and in the House.“But it was also because of a refrain [Biden] kept hearing, and not always from the most expected sources.“At one point he connected with Mitt Romney, who’d been easily elected to the Senate that night as a rare Trump-opposing Republican. They were warm as Biden cheered Romney’s win.“Then Obama’s old rival got to the point: You have to run, Romney said.”In a note on sourcing, Debenedetti says his book is “primarily the product of hundreds of interviews” with “colleagues, aides, rivals, confidants, allies and eyewitnesses from every stage” of Obama and Biden’s careers since 2003.He also says: “When someone’s words are rendered in italics, that indicates an approximation based on the memories of sources who did not recall exact wordings.” Romney’s opposition to Trump is long established, if not entirely consistent.In 2016, the former Massachusetts governor spoke out against Trump, decrying his behaviour on the campaign trail and calling him a “phony” and a “fraud”. After the election, he said he did not vote for the Republican nominee, writing in his wife’s name instead.Trump attorney general Barr a liar, bully and thug, says fired US attorney in bookRead moreNonetheless, Romney then flirted with working for Trump, pitching to be secretary of state. He generally voted with his president after taking his seat in the Senate.But the relationship was never smooth – Trump called Romney a “pompous ass” – and in 2019 Romney told the New York Times: “People say to me, ‘If you’re critical of the president you’re hurting the party.’ No I’m not – I’m laying out a path for the party post the president.”In 2020, when Trump was impeached for blackmailing Ukraine for dirt on rivals including Biden, Romney became the first senator ever to vote to convict and remove a president of his own party.He said he did not vote for Trump in that year’s election – but refused to say if he voted for Biden.In 2021, Trump was impeached a second time, for inciting the Capitol attack. Romney voted to convict again.TopicsBooksMitt RomneyJoe BidenDonald TrumpUS politicsUS elections 2020US midterms 2018newsReuse this content More

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      Pressure on Trump loyalist Jeffrey Clark as ex-DoJ colleague works with prosecutors

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      Pressure on Trump loyalist Jeffrey Clark as ex-DoJ colleague works with prosecutors Cooperation from Ken Klukowski could spur charges against Clark, who schemed with Trump to overturn election results in GeorgiaLegal pressure on Jeffrey Clark, the former justice department lawyer who schemed with Donald Trump and others to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia and other states, is expected to rise with the cooperation of another ex-DoJ lawyer who worked with him, say former prosecutors.FBI materials seized from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home included 90 empty foldersRead moreThe cooperation from the ex-lawyer, in tandem with other evidence obtained by prosecutors, could help spur charges against Clark – a close ally of then president Trump – and benefit prosecutors as they go after bigger targets.Clark, then an assistant attorney general, played a key role at the DoJ towards the end of the Trump administration, which overlapped with plotting by Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman and Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows to persuade Georgia and other states to use “fake electors” for Trump, instead of ones that Joe Biden won.In Trump’s desperate efforts to block Biden’s win, he turned to Clark for help at the suggestion of congressman Scott Perry, who had also touted him to Meadows, according to emails revealed by the House January 6 committee investigating the Capitol riot by Trump supporters.Trump met Clark alone in mid-December, and for a few weeks talked about replacing acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen with Clark, until Trump was told bluntly at a raucous White House meeting by Rosen and his deputy, plus White House counsel Pat Cipollone, that doing so would spur mass resignations at the department and in the counsel’s office.Clark, whose cellphone and other electronic equipment was seized by federal agents in a June search on his home, worked with former DoJ lawyer Ken Klukowski, who is now cooperating with prosecutors, on a draft letter to top Georgia state legislators and the governor which falsely claimed that department had “significant concerns” about election fraud there and in other states.The letter, which was never sent despite Clark’s efforts, also suggested that legitimate Biden electors be replaced with ones for Trump.Other potential evidence against Clark could surface in cellphones that the FBI seized over the summer that belonged to Eastman and Perry, both of whom have filed lawsuits to block investigators from accessing their phones.Moreover, Cipollone, who witnessed and was appalled by Trump’s idea of installing Clark to replace Rosen, according to testimony by a top DoJ official to the January 6 panel, testified on 2 September to a grand jury in Washington looking at Trump’s efforts to overturn the election and the Capitol attack.While the substance of Cipollone’s testimony is unknown, other evidence about his views of Clark and Trump’s flirtation with promoting Clark to lead the DoJ could add to legal pressure on Clark.Former federal prosecutor Michael Zeldin said Klukowski’s cooperation with prosecutors may help make cases against other top Trump loyalists, as well as Clark.“When pursuing conspiracy cases, prosecutors look for ‘weak links’ among the co-conspirators, to wit, people willing to cooperate. The closer to the hub of the conspiracy, the better,” Zeldin told the Guardian.“In the case of the Georgia false electors scheme, the two people who jump out as logical witnesses are Ken Klukowski and Jeffrey Clark. Both appear to have been intimately involved in the scheme, and both have a great deal to lose if convicted of a crime.”Zeldin said Klukowski’s cooperation with federal prosecutors could be “very bad news” for Clark, Giuliani, and Eastman, who were involved in the “fake electors” schemes in several states, including Georgia.Zeldin added: “Beyond these immediate probable targets, Klukowski may have insight into the role Mark Meadows is said to have played in orchestrating Trump’s efforts to set aside the Georgia election results.”Similarly, Barbara McQuade, a former US attorney for Eastern Michigan, told the Guardian that “Clark may find himself in serious legal jeopardy with the seizure of phones as well as the reported cooperation of Ken Klukowski … Clark would be the most significant wrongdoer here, and so it seems likely that efforts to flip other witnesses would focus on him.”If Clark is charged with a crime, McQuade added, “he might find it appealing to cooperate. Reports indicate that he met alone with Trump to discuss efforts to undermine election results. He could potentially be a valuable witness. This up-the-chain approach is the kind of strategy prosecutors use in organized crime cases.”McQuade noted in particular that “Clark may be helpful to investigating the fake electors scheme in light of his draft letter to state legislatures suggesting they convene to appoint alternate slates of electors. “The letter that Clark wanted to send to top Georgia legislators and the governor, which Klukowski helped draft, was cited at a hearing of the House January 6 panel in late June, by vice-chairman Liz Cheney.The letter stated falsely that “the Department of Justice is investigating various irregularities in the 2020 election for President of the United States” and that the DoJ had “identified significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election in multiple states including the state of Georgia”.Former attorney general William Barr, and Rosen, who succeeded Barr in December 2020 as acting attorney general, had rejected claims by Trump and his allies of significant voting fraud in 2020.However, former acting deputy attorney general Richard Donoghue told the House January 6 panel that Clark pursued his own investigations and that, despite failing to find evidence of widespread fraud, Clark pressed ahead with drafting a baseless letter which both Donoghue and Rosen had flatly rejected signing and sending.Donoghue testified he repeatedly told Clark that his actions boiled down to using the DoJ to meddle in the presidential election. Donoghue recalled that Clark responded, “I think a lot of people meddled in this election.”Donoghue also told the House panel in a deposition that Cipollone had warned Trump that the draft letter falsely stating that DoJ had significant concerns about fraud was like a “murder- suicide pact” which would “damage everyone who touches it” if it were sent to Georgia officialsClark’s draft letter was rife with false statements about the election and his actions at DoJ to help Trump prompted the DC bar to file ethics charges against him alleging that his draft letter to Georgia officials represented dishonest conduct and breached legal ethics.Rachel Semmel, a spokesman for Center for Renewing America, where Jeff Clark is the Director of Litigation, blasted the DoJ inquiries involving Clark and others. .”Biden’s DoJ has made its focus attacking Americans, including attacking the legal qualifications of one of the only top lawyers at the DOJ who had the interests of the American people at heart.”Former DoJ prosecutors say Klukowski’s cooperation in conjunction with evidence that prosecutors seem to have obtained about Clark’s role pushing Trump’s false election claims at DoJ, could be quite useful.“ If Klukowski can help deliver the goods on Clark, you may be on your way to Perry and Meadows who promoted Clark to Trump, possibly to Giuliani and Eastman, and ultimately Trump,” said former federal prosecutor Dennis Aftergut.Likewise, McQuade sees potential bonuses for prosecutors as they probe Clark and the fake electors schemes.“Working up the chain, prosecutors could potentially flip Clark and Perry to get to Meadows, and Meadows to get to Trump,” McQuade said “Each link in the chain would seem to have information that could be useful to prosecuting the next link up.”TopicsDonald TrumpUS elections 2020US politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Ginni Thomas lobbied Wisconsin lawmakers to overturn 2020 election

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      Ginni Thomas lobbied Wisconsin lawmakers to overturn 2020 election The wife of supreme court justice Clarence Thomas urged a Wisconsin state senator and representative to do their ‘duty’ Ginni Thomas, the wife of the US supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, lobbied lawmakers in Wisconsin as well as Arizona in November 2020, seeking to overturn Joe Biden’s victories over Donald Trump in both swing states.Thomas emailed lawmakers in support of Trump’s lie that Biden won thanks to electoral fraud.Cheney and Kinzinger tee up possible January 6 subpoena for Ginni ThomasRead moreThe Washington Post reported Thomas’s efforts in Arizona earlier this summer. On Thursday it detailed her efforts in Wisconsin, citing emails obtained under public-records law.Thomas emailed a Wisconsin state senator and a state representative, both Republican, on 9 November, two days after the election was called for Biden.The messages used the same text as those sent to Arizona officials and were also sent using a form-emailing platform.The subject line read: “Please do your constitutional duty!”The text said: “Please stand strong in the face of media and political pressure. Please reflect on the awesome authority granted to you by our constitution. And then please take action to ensure that a clean slate of electors is chosen for our state.”Ginni Thomas did not comment to the Post. Nor did a supreme court spokesperson.Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a watchdog group, said: “Ginni Thomas tried to overthrow the government. Clarence Thomas gets to rule on that attempt to overthrow the government. See the problem?”After the deadly attack on the Capitol on 6 January 2021 by supporters Trump told to “fight like hell” to overturn his defeat, Clarence Thomas was the only justice to say Trump should not have to give White House records to the investigating House committee.Ginni Thomas is now known to have been in touch with Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, and John Eastman, a law professor who claimed the vice-president, Mike Pence, could stop certification on January 6, about attempts to overturn the election.The House January 6 committee asked Thomas to voluntarily sit for an interview and provide documentation. Her lawyer, the Post said, told the committee she was willing but he did not think she had to.In July, Liz Cheney, the committee vice-chair, told CNN: “The committee is engaged with counsel. We certainly hope that [Thomas] will agree to come in voluntarily but the committee is fully prepared to contemplate a subpoena if she does not.”No subpoena has been issued.Cheney is a stringent conservative but last month she lost her Republican primary in Wyoming, over her opposition to Trump.She has become popular with some on the left but others have grown frustrated, particularly over the lack of an attempt to compel Ginni Thomas to testify.On Thursday, Elie Mystal, justice correspondent for the Nation, tweeted: “Answer the question ‘Why wasn’t Ginni Thomas subpoenaed by the January 6 committee?’ before you ask me to roll with Liz Cheney.”One of the Wisconsin lawmakers who Thomas contacted, the state senator Kathy Bernier, spoke to the Washington Post.She said: “As we went through the process and the legal challenges were made and discounted by the judicial system, there was nothing proven as far as actual voter fraud.”Bernier also said she did not link Ginni Thomas’s actions to her husband’s position.“I was married for 20 years,” she said. “I took on some identity of my husband, but I had my own mind. Just because you’re married to someone doesn’t mean that you’re a clone.”TopicsUS newsUS Capitol attackDonald TrumpClarence ThomasUS politicsRepublicansArizonanewsReuse this content More

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      ‘The US could lose the right to vote within months’: Top official warns on threat to democracy

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      Interview‘The US could lose the right to vote within months’: Top official warns on threat to democracyLauren Gambino in Washington Jena Griswold urges Americans to pay attention to crucial but often overlooked races for secretary of stateColorado’s secretary of state, Jena Griswold, is warning anyone who will listen that the fate of free and fair elections in the United States hangs in the balance in this November’s midterm contests.In many of the most competitive races for offices with authority over US elections, Republicans nominated candidates who have embraced or echoed Donald Trump’s myth of a stolen election in 2020.‘It’s an American issue’: can Georgia’s candidate for secretary of state save democracy?Read moreGriswold, who chairs the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State (Dass) and is running for re-election, is urging Americans to pay attention to the once-sleepy down-ballot contests for secretary of state – lest they lose their democracy.“What we can expect from the extreme Republicans running across this country is to undermine free and fair elections for the American people, strip Americans of the right to vote, refuse to address security breaches and, unfortunately, be more beholden to Mar-a-Lago than the American people,” Griswold, 37, said in an interview with the Guardian.She added: “For us, we are trying to save democracy.”It’s a daunting task, especially in a political environment that has historically favored the party out of power in Washington. But the primary results so far have laid bare the stakes, she said: “The country could lose the right to vote in less than three months.”Having failed to overturn the 2020 vote, Trump and his loyalists are now strategically targeting positions that will play a critical role in supervising the next presidential election, turning many of the 27 secretary of state contests this year into expensive, partisan showdowns.If elected, Griswold fears that these Trump-backed candidates would weaponize their posts, either by sowing doubts about the results of an election their party loses – or by trying to subvert it outright.In Arizona, Mark Finchem, a prominent election denier who said he would not have certified Joe Biden’s victory in the state, is now the Republican nominee for secretary of state in Arizona. In Michigan, Kristina Karamo, who baselessly claimed to have witnessed voter fraud as an election observer in 2020, is the Republican party’s choice to be the state’s chief election official. And in Pennsylvania, where the governor appoints the secretary of state, the Republican gubernatorial nominee is Doug Mastriano, a far-right lawmaker who led the brazen attempt to reverse Biden’s victory in his state and chartered buses to the rally that preceded the Capitol riot.In November, Griswold will face Pam Anderson, a Republican former county clerk who prevailed in her party’s primary over an election conspiracy theoristindicted for tampering with election equipment. Anderson is running on a pledge to keep politics out of elections administration and analysts anticipate a competitive race.Campaigning across Colorado, Griswold said she sees signs that voters are attuned to the real risks posed by candidates with contempt for the democratic process. On several occasions recently she said voters have broken down in tears over the right to vote.“The stakes are really high but I also think people understand what’s at stake and that’s why you’re seeing this level of enthusiasm,” Griswold said.Underscoring the point, she emphasized the association’s growth. Before 2021, Dass had no full-time employees. It now has eight. And the group has already surpassed its fundraising goal for the cycle, amassing $16m so far – more than 10 times what it raised in the 2018 cycle.“There’s a huge amount of enthusiasm from Democratic donors and the grassroots,” she added. “But, I will say, the Republicans are also seeing a lot of enthusiasm.”Not long ago, secretaries of state operated in relative obscurity, toiling behind the scenes to complete all manner of bureaucratic duties. Chief among them in most – but not all – states was to ensure the smooth and safe administration of American elections. Many viewed the role as ministerial in nature, far removed from the partisan battles confronting other statewide offices.That changed in the tumultuous aftermath of the 2020 election. In his brazen attempt to seize a second term, Trump turned his attention to the guardians of state elections: secretaries of state, county clerks, election board members and other officials in battleground states. Falsely claiming the results had been tainted by fraud, he pressured them to reverse his defeat.The elections officials who stepped forward to resist the defeated president’s fantastical claims and defend the integrity of their elections quickly became the targets of harassment, intimidation and violent threats.Griswold was among the most prominent voices challenging Trump over his attacks on vote by mail, a fixture of Colorado elections. The confrontations made her a lightning rod on the Maga (Make America Great Again) right. Mike Lindell, the CEO of MyPillow, once, incredibly, accused her of murder, an outlandish claim he said was only an “analogy”.The effect is a near-daily torrent of threats, many violent and eerily “descriptive”.“It gets to the point where it is really hard to do your job when someone’s telling you over and over how they’re going to hang you,” she said.Threats of violence are an escalating problem across the spectrum of public life in America: from the White House down to local school boards. It is even worse for women and people of color.Since 2020, local election officials, the vast majority of whom are women, say political attacks, safety concerns and misinformation are driving them from public service at all levels.Griswold, who in 2018 became the youngest secretary of state in the country, worries about the “dampening effect” the toxic stream of abuse has on women in politics. In December, she spoke to a woman who wanted to run for the Colorado state legislature, but told her: “I have a six-year-old son. I see the threats against you and I can’t do it.”For that reason, Griswold said she pushed for more security for her office.“The threshold for us to get violent threats is much lower, so we experience things that a lot of people would never expect in this country,” she said.She continued: “The federal government needs to take this seriously. States need to take this seriously. And that’s one of the reasons why we need more women elected – to understand that it’s not hysteria to say, ‘I should have security because someone is telling me repeatedly that they’re going to come kill me.’”Despite Griswold’s efforts, Trump’s lies have gained purchase among conservative voters in her state.“I have a county that works behind bulletproof glass,” she said. “I have a county clerk who wears a bullet-proof vest. Much of their days are spent responding to conspiracy-fueled lawsuits and information requests intended to ‘gum up’ the system and bog down her office,” she added.And earlier this year, Tina Peters, a far-right county clerk in Colorado, was indicted on charges that she directed a breach of voting machines. The episode spurred Griswold to raise the alarm about “insider threats”.In Colorado’s June primary, Republican voters rejected Peters’ bid to be the state’s next secretary of state.Despite losing by nearly 15 percentage points, Peters claimed “fraud” had cost her the nomination and demanded a recount. The review, which Griswold called meritless and “based on conspiracies”, confirmed Peters’ loss.Republicans have accused Griswold of too often blurring the line between defending democracy and defending her seat. It’s a charge many elections officials are now grappling with: when they defend elections and push for reforms, they are often accused of partisanship.“We must reject that it is partisan to protect the right to vote. It’s not,” she said. “It’s the most American and democratic thing you can do.”As for her own election, Griswold said her record speaks for itself. Since the 2020 election, she has helped expand voting access and strengthen election security. Her office backed a slate of reforms that gives the Colorado secretary of state’s office the power to certify elections if local officials refuse to do so, guarding against a scenario that played out earlier this summer in New Mexico, when Republican officials refused to certify an election.The law also includes new protections against insider threats, making it a felony to compromise voting equipment or allow unauthorized access to the state’s voting systems, and stiffens the penalties for threatening election workers or “doxxing them” by publishing their personal information online. Another law passed earlier this year prohibits open-carry within 100 feet of a polling place.Four years ago, when Griswold first ran for the post, she never imagined the kind of challengers her office would face, among them “ensuring that democracy survived a pandemic and also a president of the United States trying to steal an election”.But for many secretaries of state, Griswold said the experience had only “further resolved our determination to not let people willing to destroy the country to win”.This year, Griswold said she is running with her eyes wide open to the peril facing American elections – and democracy – far beyond 2022.“The fight to try to take Americans’ freedoms, it won’t be over after the election – it won’t,” she said. “This is a long-term fight.”TopicsColoradoUS politicsUS midterm elections 2022DemocratsRepublicansUS elections 2020interviewsReuse this content More

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      Former Fox News politics editor says network stoked ‘paranoia and hatred’

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      Former Fox News politics editor says network stoked ‘paranoia and hatred’Chris Stirewalter, who was forced out after Donald Trump’s electoral defeat, says Fox failed its viewers with 2020 election coverage A former Fox News politics editor who was forced out of the conservative television network shortly after its opinions hosts’ preferred candidate Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential race has said that the channel failed its viewers with its election coverage.In his upcoming memoir, Chris Stirewalt says Fox News resigned its duty to prepare Trump followers for the possibility that he would lose, instead stoking the “black-helicopter-level paranoia and hatred” which fuels white supremacist groups but translates into big ratings.Has the love affair between Trump and Fox News gone sour?Read moreStirewalt’s Broken News: Why the Media Rage Machines Divides America and How to Fight Back also reiterates the belief held by many that Fox fired him because he always defended – even on-air – his team’s decision to declare Joe Biden the winner of Arizona’s 2020 electoral college votes on the same night that polls closed.The call enraged Trump, prompting the incumbent president and his allies to mount a pressure campaign aimed at getting Fox to retract the decision while that camp pushed forth lies that electoral fraudsters in other battleground states were stealing the election for Biden.The New York Times obtained and reported on an advance copy of the book.Fox officials have previously said that Stirewalt’s departure from the network in early 2021 was simply a layoff amid a broader company restructuring, and they have noted that the employee who was actually in charge of the desk that made the Arizona call during that fateful hour remains at the company.A statement from the network Monday also dismissed its former editor’s other recollections about his time at Fox News by saying, “Chris Stirewalt’s endless attempts at regaining relevance know no bounds.”Nonetheless, in his memoir, Stirewalt maintains that Fox News’s alliance with Trump and other Republican political candidates has nothing to do with ideology. Instead it has everything to do with delivering ratings and fattening profits, without caring that its top-rated host, Tucker Carlson, endorses conspiracy theories that radicalize violent, far-right white supremacists, including ones who staged the deadly January 6 Capitol attack.“Even in the four years since the previous presidential election, Fox viewers had become even more accustomed to flattery and less willing to hear news that challenged their expectation,” Stirewalt’s memoir adds.That was even the case when viewers’ expectations amounted to “black-helicopter-level paranoia and hatred”, according to the memoir.Stirewalt says his team’s decision to accurately project on election night that Trump had lost Arizona to Biden in front of an audience who had been thirsting for the Republican incumbent to cruise to victory over his Democratic challenger “came as a terrible shock to their system”. The memoir likens that call to “serving up green beans to viewers who had been spoon-fed ice-cream sundaes for years”.Stirewalt also expresses disbelief that Carlson’s viewers portray him as bravely discussing topics that are taboo to the mainstream when – according to the ousted editor – he is simply regurgitating the things his audience already believes.“Carlson is rich and famous, yet he regularly rails about the ‘big, legacy media outlets’,” the memoir argues. “Somehow, nobody even giggles.“It does not take any kind of journalistic courage to pump out night after night exactly what your audience wants to hear.”Among the conspiracy theories that Carlson has espoused is the racist notion that white Americans, faced with declining birthrates, are being deliberately replaced through immigration. He suddenly went quiet on that idea after a white man who shot 10 Black people to death at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, cited it as his motivation.Stirewalt’s departure from Fox News – where he spent about 11 years – happened less than two weeks after a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in a desperate attempt to prevent the congressional certification of his defeat to Biden. A bipartisan Senate report linked at least seven deaths to that attack.Since then, Stirewalt has been vocally critical of Fox News and testified before the congressional committee investigating the Capitol attack, telling that panel he knew the Arizona call would be consequential because it involved a true battleground state on which Trump’s chances for victory depended.TopicsFox NewsTV newsTelevision industryUS television industryUS elections 2020US politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Cheney vows to fight other Republicans who embrace Trump’s election lie

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      Cheney vows to fight other Republicans who embrace Trump’s election lieCheney says two Republican US senators – Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley – have both made themselves ‘unfit for future office’ The former top Republican Liz Cheney, who lost her Wyoming seat in Congress last week when she was beaten in a primary by a Donald Trump-endorsed challenger, is threatening to turn her political muscle against other prominent politicians in her party who have embraced the former president’s attack on democracy.In an interview with ABC News aired on Sunday, she said that some of the best known Republican figures are now within her sights. She name-checked Kevin McCarthy, Ron DeSantis, Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley – all of whom have openly supported Trump’s lie that electoral fraudsters stole the 2020 presidential race from him and handed it to his Democratic rival, Joe Biden.In the wake of her Wyoming defeat, Cheney has announced plans to set up a new political organization and has indicated that she is considering a 2024 presidential run designed to stop Trump from re-entering the White House.Her comments on Sunday suggest that her plans to confront election deniers go much wider than Trump himself.“I’m going to be very focused on working to ensure that we can do everything we can [to] not … elect election deniers,” she said. “I’m going to work against those people, I’m going to work to support their opponents.”Cheney said that two Republican US senators – Cruz from Texas and Hawley from Missouri – have both made themselves “unfit for future office”. She said that “both know what the role of Congress is with respect to presidential elections and yet both took steps that fundamentally threatened the constitutional order”.Cruz was seminal in the Senate in devising a plot to block certification of Biden’s 2020 victory in six battleground states. Hawley was the first senator to object to Biden’s victory and famously raised his clenched fist to protesters outside the US Capitol on 6 January shortly before the violence erupted. He was later revealed to have fled the Capitol building running once the insurrection started.Cheney also had tough words in the ABC News interview for DeSantis, the governor of Florida, and McCarthy, the current House minority leader. McCarthy is a leading candidate to become Speaker should the Republicans take back the House of Representatives in November.McCarthy was initially critical of Trump’s role in unleashing the violent storming of the Capitol, privately telling fellow party leaders “I’ve had it with this guy”. But since then he has swung behind Trump’s anti-democratic movement.“My views on Kevin McCarthy are very clear,” Cheney said. “He’s been completely unfaithful to the constitution. … I don’t believe he should be the Speaker of the House.”She also accused DeSantis of campaigning for election deniers. “This is something that people have got to have real pause about,” Cheney said.The Wyoming congresswoman is vice-chairperson of the House committee which has been investigating the January 6 Capitol attack. She was also one of 10 Republicans who voted to impeach Trump after the breach of the Capitol compound – eight of whom will not be returning to Congress in January.The fact that those who stood up against Trump’s attempt to subvert American democracy have been almost universally forced from the party was revealing, she said, adding: “It says people continue to believe the lie, they continue to believe what [Trump] is saying which is very dangerous.”She continued: “It also tells you that large portions of our party, including the leadership of our party both at a state level in Wyoming as well as a national level with the RNC [Republican National Committee], is very sick.”Cheney would not specify whether or not she would run for the presidency in two years’ time. Nor would she say, in that case, whether she would run as a Republican or independent.She did say that if she ran it would be to win.Cheney’s direct threat to Trump and his most senior coterie of Republicans in Congress comes at a time of gathering peril for the former president. The FBI search of his home in Mar-a-Lago in Florida has riled up his supporters but has also heightened risk of prosecution for harboring confidential documents that could endanger national security.Earlier this month Trump invoked his constitutional right against self-incrimination in response to questions when he was deposed in a lawsuit brought by the attorney general of New York over his company’s financial statements. Last week Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, was called before a special grand jury in Atlanta, Georgia, investigating efforts to overturn the election results in that state.On Sunday Lindsey Graham, the Republican senator from South Carolina who was involved in Trump’s pressure campaign on Georgia officials to overturn the state’s election results, was granted a temporary reprieve by an appeals court from having to testify before the same grand jury in Fulton county.TopicsRepublicansLiz CheneyUS politicsDonald TrumpUS elections 2020newsReuse this content More

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      Appeals court pauses order for Graham to testify before Atlanta grand jury

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      Appeals court pauses order for Graham to testify before Atlanta grand juryRepublican senator was ordered on Friday to appear before grand jury investigating efforts to overturn 2020 election A federal appeals court on Sunday temporarily blocked a judge’s order requiring Republican senator Lindsey Graham to testify before a Georgia grand jury investigating efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in that state.The judge who ordered Graham’s appearance in front of the grand jury – Leigh Martin May – should determine whether the subpoena requiring the South Carolina senator testify before the panel should be quashed or modified in accordance with the US constitution’s speech or debate clause.Generally, scholars interpret the clause as shielding federal lawmakers from being compelled to face questioning from law enforcement in certain cases, and Graham had cited the provision in challenging a subpoena calling for him to testify before the Atlanta-based grand jury in question.May last week had ruled that prosecutors demonstrated “a special need for Mr Graham’s testimony on issues relating to alleged attempts to influence or disrupt the law administration of Georgia’s 2020 elections” despite the senator’s challenge. But Graham, who had been ordered to testify in the grand jury investigation on Tuesday, had indicated he would appeal on May’s ruling to a higher court.Judges Charles Wilson, Kevin Newsom and Britt Grant of the 11th US circuit court of appeals then ruled on Sunday that it would send the case back to May for her to determine whether Graham’s subpoena should at least be changed.May should solicit briefs on the issue from both sides on an expedited schedule, and after she rules again, the case would return to the appellate court, Sunday’s order said.All told, the order almost certainly means it could be a significant while before Graham appears in front of grand jurors – and even then, it may only be in a limited way, University of Richmond law professor Carl Tobias said to the Guardian on Sunday.Graham drew the grand jury investigation’s interest because he placed two calls to the Georgia’s top election official in 2020 and asked about ways to invalidate certain mail-in votes that helped buoy Joe Biden to victory over Donald Trump in that year’s presidential race.The senator and prominent Trump supporter is considered a subject – rather than a target – of the investigation being conducted by the grand jury in Atlanta. That panel is weighing the filing of criminal charges against the former Republican president and his allies for their alleged attempts to deny Georgia voters’ rejection of Trump in 2020 amid a desperate effort to keep him in the Oval Office despite Biden’s electoral college victory over him.Targets of the investigation include Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s former attorney.The Georgia grand jury investigation has applied considerable legal pressure on Trump, who is also facing a US justice department investigation over his unlawful retention of government documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort as well as an inquiry by New York state officials into his business practices there.Trump on Sunday went on his Truth Social platform and sought to persuade his followers that his multi-front legal struggle illustrated Democrats’ fear that he would again clinch the Republican presidential nomination for the 2024 election and challenge their leader Biden.Trump, who as of Sunday had not yet officially declared that he would once more pursue the White House in 2024, added: “I … may just have to [run] again.”TopicsGeorgiaUS politicsDonald TrumpUS elections 2020RepublicansnewsReuse this content More

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      Ousted Republican reflects on Trump, democracy and America: ‘The place has lost its mind’

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      InterviewOusted Republican reflects on Trump, democracy and America: ‘The place has lost its mind’ Ed Pilkington in Mesa, Arizona Rusty Bowers was speaker of Arizona’s house of representatives when he stood up to the former president’s demand that he overturn the election result. He paid the price but has no regretsRusty Bowers is headed for the exit. After 18 years as an Arizona lawmaker, the past four as speaker of the state’s house of representatives, he has been unceremoniously shown the door by his own Republican party.Arizona Republican who defied Trump and lost primary: ‘I’d do it again in a heartbeat’Read moreLast month he lost his bid to stay in the Arizona legislature in a primary contest in which his opponent was endorsed by Donald Trump. The rival, David Farnsworth, made an unusual pitch to voters: the 2020 presidential election had not only been stolen from Trump, he said, it was satanically snatched by the “devil himself”.Bowers was ousted as punishment. The Trump acolytes who over the past two years have gained control of the state’s Republican party wanted revenge for the powerful testimony he gave in June to the January 6 hearings in which he revealed the pressure he was put under to overturn Arizona’s election result.This is a very Arizonan story. But it is also an American story that carries an ominous warning for the entire nation.Six hours after the Guardian interviewed Bowers, Liz Cheney was similarly ousted in a primary for her congressional seat in Wyoming. The formerly third most powerful Republican leader in the US Congress had been punished too.In Bowers’s case, his assailants in the Arizona Republican party wanted to punish him because he had steadfastly refused to do their, and Trump’s, bidding. He had declined to use his power as leader of the house to invoke an “arcane Arizonan law” – whose text has never been found – that would allow the legislature to cast out the will of 3.4 million voters who had handed victory to Joe Biden and switch the outcome unilaterally to Trump.Bowers has a word for that kind of thinking. “The thought that if you don’t do what we like, then we will just get rid of you and march on and do it ourselves – that to me is fascism.”Come January, Bowers will no longer be an Arizona politician. He can now speak his mind. He did just that, for more than two hours in an interview with the Guardian this week.He spoke his mind about the phone conversations he had with Trump and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani at the height of the stolen election mayhem in 2020. He spoke about the “clown circus” of Trump loyalists who tried to bully him into subverting the election, and about the “emotional violence” that has been embraced by increasingly powerful sections of the Republican party in Arizona and nationally.He spoke his mind too about the very real danger facing democracy in America today – to his astonishment, at the hands of his own party.“The constitution is hanging by a thread,” he told me. “The funny thing is, I always thought it would be the other guys. And it’s my side. That just rips at my heart: that we would be the people who would surrender the constitution in order to win an election. That just blows my mind.”‘I’m not a man of means’Bowers will talk about all that, and much more. But first, he wants to show me around his spiritual home. He arranged to meet me at his family’s ranch, “so you can see a bit of why I think the way I do”.The ranch is nestled in a hollow among desert hills about 90 minutes’ drive east of Phoenix, at the end of five miles of dramatically snaking dirt road. Fifteen months ago a wildfire swept through the area, destroying majestic cottonwoods and sycamores and sending flames high up above the hills. The main house came within 10 feet of being destroyed and his art studio, replete with many of his landscape paintings and a large portion of his legislative papers, were burnt to ashes.I ask him what this extraordinarily beautiful and harsh landscape reveals about his political character. “Well, I’m not a man of means,” he said. “We pay for things as we go. We are compelled to work, to do things with our hands. That gives you a different appreciation of life. Things have a bigger meaning.”Bowers said that his core values were instilled in him as a child growing up within a conservative Republican tradition. He is the father of seven children, one of whom, Kacey, died last year. “Family, faith, community – these are values at a very core level. You don’t survive out here, on land like this, alone.”A fourth-generation Arizonan, Bowers, 69, grew up within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, better known as the Mormon church. His faith, along with his other great passion for art – he is a painter and sculptor – is visible all around. The front of the main house is lined with three large bronzes depicting the epic 1,100-mile journey across America that the Mormons undertook in 1846-47.From the beginning, conservatism and the Republican party were interchangeable for Bowers. “Belief in God, that you should be held accountable for how you treat other people, those were very conservative thoughts and the bedrock of my politics.”He identifies as “pro-life”, sees the US constitution as being inspired by God, and voted for Trump in the 2020 election. “I campaigned for Trump, I went to his rallies, I stood up on the stage with him,” he said.Somewhere along the line, though, things started to come unstuck. A rift opened up between his old-school Republican values and those of a new cadre of activists who were energized by Trump and his embrace of conspiracy theories and strongman politics.In hindsight, Bowers now recognizes that the opening shots of the conflict were fired not around the 2020 presidential election but earlier in the year, in the initial days of Covid. Trump-fanatical Republicans in the Arizona house displayed in their anti-mask antics the same disdain for the rules, the same bullying style, that was later to erupt in the stolen election furor.“It was like a prep show,” he said.Then came the first signs of Trump’s refusal to accept defeat in the 2020 election. Bowers himself always expected that the presidential race in Arizona would be close. “We were very much aware that a demographic of women, 18 to 40, college-educated, professional, with small children, were not voting for Donald Trump,” he said.When the results were confirmed, and Biden had won by 10,457 votes, the slimmest margin of any state, Bowers was unsurprised. But such was the brouhaha as armed Trump supporters protested outside counting centers in Maricopa county demanding “audits” that he decided to take a look for himself.He gathered a group of trusted lawyers and went to investigate the counting process close up. “I saw incredible amounts of protocols that were followed and signed off by volunteers – Democrats, Republicans, independents. Yes, Republicans for crying out loud! And they did it by the book.”On 22 November 2020, two weeks after Biden had been declared the next president of the United States, Bowers received a call from the White House. Trump and Giuliani were on the line.After exchanging niceties, they got down to business. Giuliani said they had found 200,000 illegal immigrants and 6,000 dead people who had voted in Arizona. “We need to fix that,” Giuliani told him, cajoling him to call a special committee of the Arizona legislature to look into the supposed fraud.Bowers remembers vividly how Trump and Giuliani played good cop and bad cop on that call. “Trump, you know, he wasn’t angry. He wasn’t threatening. He never said to me, ‘I’m going to get you if you don’t do this.’ Giuliani, he was the bulldog.”In return, Bowers was polite but firm. He told the duo that they had to provide hard evidence. “I said, ‘I’m not doing anything like this until you bring me something. Let’s see it. I’m not going to have circus time at the house of representatives.’”That’s when Trump and Giuliani unveiled their second, even more incendiary, proposal. They had heard that there was an “arcane Arizona law” that would allow the Republican-controlled legislature under Bowers to throw out Biden’s electors and send Trump alternatives to Congress in their place.It took a moment for the penny to drop. Bowers was being asked to overturn the election through diktat.“I’m not a professor of constitutional law, but I get the idea. They want me to throw out the vote of my own people,” he recalls thinking. “I said, ‘Oh, wait a minute. Wait, wait, wait. So now, you’re asking me to overthrow the vote of the people of Arizona?”Bowers’s response to the good cop, bad cop routine was categoric. He told them: “I took an oath to the American constitution, the state constitution and its laws. Which one of those am I supposed to break?”It didn’t stop there. Bowers was pounded by wave after wave of demands that he subvert the election, some coming from the White House, some from “America First” politicians closer to home.The speaker continued to be lobbied right up to the eve of January 6 when John Eastman, the conservative law professor advising Trump on his attempted electoral coup, rang him and exhorted him to “decertify” the electors. “Just do it and let the courts figure it all out,” Eastman said.Bowers was direct on that occasion too. “No,” he said.As January 6 approached, and the cries of stolen election reached fever pitch, the attacks on Bowers became personal. A “Trump train” of angry fanatics blaring their horns in pickup trucks festooned with Maga flags turned up at his home in Mesa, some bearing digital boards proclaiming him to be a pedophile.To protect his family, he would step outside the house and confront the protesters. One man had three bars on his chest, signalling he was a member of the far-right militia group the Three Percenters. The man was screaming obscenities and carrying a pistol. “I had to get as close to him as I could to defend myself if he went for the gun.”The worst of it was that during several of these menacing protests, his daughter Kacey was inside the house mortally ill in bed with liver failure. “She would say, ‘What are they doing out there?’ She was emotional. She told me, ‘I’m going to die.’ I said, ‘Honey, you’re not going to die.’ So she had feelings, we were trying to keep her positive.”Kacey Bowers did die, on 28 January, three weeks after the insurrection at the US Capitol.I asked Bowers whether, through all this, he had ever doubted his strength to stand up to the onslaught. Were his values tested?“I never had the thought of giving up,” he said. “No way. I don’t like bullies. That’s one constant in my life: I. Do. Not. Like. Bullies.”Primary defeatIn July, the executive committee of the Arizona Republican party censured Bowers. Its chairwoman, Kelli Ward, a Trump devotee, said that he was “no longer a Republican in good standing”.Then on 28 July, Bowers was effectively turfed out of the Arizona legislature when he was defeated in the primary by the Satan-evoking Farnsworth. That same night, the slate of election deniers standing for statewide positions won a clean sweep.Republican nominations for governor, a US Senate seat, state attorney general and secretary of state all went to enthusiastic backers of Trump and his 2020 attempted coup. They included Mark Finchem, who was present at the attack on the US Capitol on January 6 and who continues to try to decertify Biden’s presidency to this day.Finchem is now the Republican candidate for secretary of state. Should he win in November, he would be in charge of Arizona’s election administration through the 2024 presidential contest, in which Trump has indicated he is likely to be competing.The ascent of election deniers across the board marks the final transformation of the Republican party in the state. Trump’s grip is now complete; the strain of constitutional conservatism epitomized by Bowers is in the wilderness.“I think it’s a shame,” was his rueful reflection on that transition. “The suite of candidates that we now have representing what used to be a principled party is just like, wow … It’s like being the first colonizer on Jupiter.”In February, a mega “election integrity” bill was introduced into the Arizona legislature that was the culmination of the anti-democratic drift of the party. House bill 2596 would have given the Republican-controlled legislature the power to reject any election result that the majority group didn’t like.Bowers resoundingly killed off that bill by sending it to languish not in just one house committee, but in all 12 of them. “I was trying to send a definitive message: this is hogwash. Taking away the fundamental right to vote, the idea that the legislature could nullify your election, that’s not conservative. That’s fascist. And I’m not a fascist.”Bowers said he remains optimistic that the party will one day find its way back on to the rails. He draws succor from the many people who have come up to him since his defeat telling him – quietly, so that nobody can hear – that they admire him and back him.“It’s not like I’m alone in the wilderness. There’s a lot of people from all over the United States thanking me.”But for now, he accepts that things are likely to get much worse before they get better. I ask him, at this moment, is the Republican party in Arizona lost?“Yeah,” he said. “They’ve invented a new way. It’s a party that doesn’t have any thought. It’s all emotional, it’s all revenge. It’s all anger. That’s all it is.”He held the thumb and digit finger of his right hand so close together that they were almost touching. “The veneer of civilization is this thin,” he said. “It still exists – I haven’t been hanged yet. But holy moly, this is just crazy. The place has lost its mind.”TopicsUS politicsRepublicansArizonaUS elections 2020Donald TrumpinterviewsReuse this content More