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      Texas jury clears ‘Trump Train’ for surrounding 2020 Biden-Harris bus

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      A federal jury in Texas on Monday cleared a group of Donald Trump’s supporters and found one driver liable in a civil trial over a so-called “Trump Train” that surrounded a Biden-Harris campaign bus on a busy highway days before the 2020 election.The two-week trial in a federal courthouse in Austin centered on whether the actions of the “Trump Train” participants amounted to political intimidation. Among those onboard the bus was Wendy Davis, the former Democratic lawmaker, who testified she feared for her life while a convoy of Trump supporters boxed in the bus along Interstate 35.The jury awarded $10,000 to the bus driver.Plaintiffs in the lawsuit had alleged they were terrorised and intimidated for more than 90 minutes on 20 October 2020, as they took a bus tour canvassing for the Democratic ticket in the final days of the election in Texas as they travelled from San Antonio to Austin.About 40 vehicles flying Make America Great Again flags encircled the bus, trying to run it off the road and playing what the suit claims was a “madcap game of highway ‘chicken’”.No criminal charges were filed against the six Trump supporters who were sued by Davis and two others onboard the bus. Civil rights advocates hoped a guilty verdict would send a clear message about what constitutes political violence and intimidation.Video that Davis recorded from the bus shows pickup trucks with large Trump flags slowing down to box in the bus as it tried to move away from the group of Trump supporters. One of the defendants hit a campaign volunteer’s car while the trucks occupied all lanes of traffic, forcing the bus and everyone around it to a 15mph crawl.The event was canceled after Davis and others on the bus – a campaign staffer and the driver – made repeated calls to 911 asking for a police escort through San Marcos and no help arrived.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDavis, who is best known for the 11-hour speech she made in the Texas senate in 2013 to filibuster an anti-abortion bill, said she suffered “substantial emotional distress” form the experience.Associated press contributed to this report More

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      Labelling Trump’s lies as ‘disputed’ on X makes supporters believe them more, study finds

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      Labelling tweets featuring false claims about election fraud as “disputed” does little to nothing to change Trump voters’ pre-existing beliefs, and it may make them more likely to believe the lies, according to a new study.The study, authored by John Blanchard, an assistant professor from the University of Minnesota, Duluth, and Catherine Norris, an associate professor from Swarthmore College, looked at data from a sampling of 1,072 Americans surveyed in December of 2020. The researchers published a peer-reviewed paper on their findings this month in the Harvard Kennedy School’s Misinformation Review.“These ‘disputed’ tags are meant to alert a reader to false/misinformation, so it’s shocking to find that they may have the opposite effect,” Norris said.Participants were shown four tweets from Donald Trump that made false claims about election fraud and told to rank them from one to seven based on their truthfulness. A control group saw the tweets without “disputed” tags; the experimental group viewed them with the label. Before and after seeing the tweets, the subjects were also asked to rank their views on election fraud overall.The study found that Trump voters who were initially skeptical about claims of widespread fraud were more likely to rate lies as true when a “disputed” label appeared next to Trump’s tweets. The findings meanwhile showed Biden voters’ beliefs were largely unaffected by the “disputed” tags. Third-party voters or non-voters were slightly less likely to believe the false claims after reading the four tweets with the tags.Blanchard and Norris had expected in their study that the disputed tags would produce little change in Trump voters with high levels of political knowledge, given that previous research had shown politically engaged people can dismiss corrective efforts in favor of their own counterarguments. The researchers did not predict the opposite possibility: corrective as confirmation. The knowledgeable Trump voters surveyed were so resistant to corrections that the fact-checking labels actually reinforced their belief in misinformation.“Surprisingly, those Trump voters with higher political knowledge actually strengthened their belief in election misinformation when exposed to disputed tags, compared to a control condition without tags,” Blanchard said. “Instead of having no impact, the tags seemed counterproductive, reinforcing misinformation among this group.”Previous studies and research from disinformation experts have argued that directly challenging conspiracy theorists’ beliefs can be counterproductive, leading them to withdraw or double down on their convictions. While Blanchard and Norris state in the study that their findings don’t necessarily prove this backfire effect is universal – since the sample size of Trump voters in the study was relatively low – they’re more confident that disputed tags are less effective the more politically knowledgeable Trump voters become.Social media platforms have tried for years to create various kinds of labeling systems that signal to users when content contains false, misleading or unverified claims. Twitter/X formerly labeled some tweets with false information as “disputed”, a practice it has in recent years replaced with its “community notes” peer review feature and a more lax attitude toward content moderation overall.A larger question that misinformation researchers have sought to answer is whether labels and fact-checks attempting to debunk falsehoods are actually effective, in some studies finding the potential for these warnings to actually backfire. The field of research has implications for social media platforms, news outlets and initiatives aimed at preventing misinformation, especially at a time when political polarization is high and false claims of election fraud are pervasive.The authors assessed political knowledge by asking participants 10 questions to test general understanding of US politics, such as: “What political office is now held by John Roberts?”One limitation of the study is the unique time frame when it was conducted – the height of the 2020 election, when conservatives had more antagonistic views toward Twitter. Since the study was conducted, Twitter has not only gotten rid of the “disputed” tags but undergone a broader change in ownership, content moderation policy and user attitudes. After Tesla CEO Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44bn in 2022 and renamed it X, the platform has brought far-right voices back onto the platform, including Trump himself, and taken a rightward turn that has led conservatives to see it in more positive terms.“We can’t pinpoint why disputed tags backfired among Trump voters, but distrust of the platform may have played a role,” Blanchard said. “Given the conservative distrust of Twitter at the time, it’s possible Trump supporters saw the tags as a clear attempt to restrict their autonomy, prompting them to double down on misinformation.” More

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      ‘His ego will not accept defeat’: the story behind Trump’s attempt to steal an election

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      By now, 6 January 2021 has so thoroughly saturated the American political consciousness – a single date conjuring up images of the once unthinkable, mentioned every day in news about criminal court cases, the future of democracy and Donald Trump’s ongoing presidential campaign – that you could argue we are used to it. Election denialism has become a feature, not a bug, of a major political party for nearly four years. The fact that Trump, when given the opportunity by ABC moderators to distance himself from efforts to discredit the 2020 election during this month’s presidential debate, still refused to acknowledge Joe Biden’s legitimate victory is no longer surprising, though we are also inured to shock.But a new HBO documentary argues, through forensic chronological detail and, perhaps ironically, the testimony of Republican election officials and former members of Trump’s administration, for remembering just how beyond the pale attempts to subvert the 2020 election were. As recounted in Stopping the Steal, a new film from the Leaving Neverland director, Dan Reed, the period between election night 2020 and 6 January 2021 was a series of genuinely shocking, potentially devastating opportunities for democratic disaster that often came down to clashes between obscure, local Republican officials and the president of the United States. January 6, in fact, “isn’t the scary bit”, Reed said. “The really scary bit is all the machinations that happened before. Because had they succeeded, the knock-on effect would have been to just gum up the system.“Step by step, you can see that enough uncertainty was being injected into the system, and enough small gains were being made, to result in potentially a cataclysmic outcome.”Though Trump may deny any responsibility for January 6, his efforts to undermine the American electoral process and discredit the result in 2020 began the night of the election, before any network had even called it for Biden. At 2.30am, after news networks projected a Biden win in the crucial swing state of Arizona, Trump held an impromptu press conference in which he falsely claimed: “Frankly, we did win this election.” What happened next is a matter of real-time journalistic record, playing out over several weeks and relived in Stopping the Steal by the people who were there: administration pressure on election officials in Arizona and Georgia to support evidence-free claims of fraud or, in one infamous Trump phone call, to find him “11,780 votes”; activation of misinformation channels and true believers, who latched on to claims of fraud, harassed election officials and showed up outside county offices armed with AR-15s; a media campaign by Trump’s lawyers Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, Jenna Ellis and others bringing fringe legal “theories” into the mainstream; and finally the legitimization of crackpot legal theories to hijack the arcane electoral college, culminating in Trump’s January 6 rally.Stopping the Steal synthesizes these many episodes, through the perspectives of the officials – the then attorney general, Bill Barr; the Maricopa county supervisor, Clint Hickman; the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger; the Georgia election operations manager, Gabriel Sterling – who worked to prevent the steal by simply doing their jobs. The framing offers “a story told by people who love Trump, but who love democracy more, who love the institution more”, said Reed – mostly, Republicans who “held the line and who came under extraordinary pressure”.By their own admission in Stopping the Steal, these officials would have entertained evidence of voter fraud, even celebrated it, had there been any. “I had every motivation,” says Rusty Bowers, Arizona’s former speaker of the house, in the film. But there wasn’t – and Trump knew it. “He knows he lost,” says Stephanie Grisham, a Trump campaign and White House official for six years. “But he’s a narcissist and his ego will not accept defeat. And when you have people who will so willingly come around you and tell you you didn’t lose and the things you want to hear … that enables him to double down and triple down.”So he tripled down, with the help of (seemingly) true believers, some of whom also appear in the film – Jacob Chansley, also known as the QAnon Shaman, and Marko Trickovic, who spread numerous conspiracy theories about votes being stolen or discounted. “The guys on the grassroots level, I think they really believe,” said Reed. “I don’t think they have any doubt that the election was stolen, because they inhabit a universe in which that is a given.”Reed, who also recently performed a similar forensic analysis on January 6 called Four Hours at the Capitol, maintains that including the perspective of the so-called “Stop the Steal” movement does not platform its beliefs; if anything, it puts the alternate universe of the “stolen” 2020 election in starker relief to the facts. “Whether you think they’re sincere or insincere, they’re protagonists in this drama,” he said. “It’s always good and fair to hear from them, and give them a chance to express what they have to say in a coherent way.View image in fullscreen“I presume my audience is intelligent,” he added. “I presume that they’re smart enough to know the difference between someone who’s indulging wish fulfillment or embracing a fantasy, and other people who are doing it for more cynical reasons.”Stopping the Steal ends with January 6, and makes no presumptions about what will happen in November if Trump wins or, perhaps just as distressingly, if he refuses to lose again, which some Republicans are already preparing for. “I’m not a political pundit,” said Reed. “I made the film because I want it to be a timeless film, because it marks a turning point in the way that we do elections. Now we have an option of: the Republicans won, the Democrats won, or someone stole it. We never had that option. That narrative didn’t exist before.“The blueprint is there, the playbook is there – why would it be different this time, if Kamala Harris wins?”The day-by-day recounting of how the votes in 2020 were counted, and then protected – in nondescript county buildings, secretary of state offices, board meetings and eventually the US Congress – only underscores that a democracy is only as strong as its most obscure, smallest offices, whose character can make the difference between business as usual and a steal. “The functioning of democracy depends on people who buy into the idea that it should be fair,” said Reed. “If the system isn’t populated with people who embrace the basic idea of it, that it should be fair and everyone gets their fair shot, then the system no longer works.”Stopping the Steal, in revisiting the timeline largely through Republicans’ first-person narratives – it was not Democratic officials that Trump personally called – acts as a “non-partisan” review of the facts, “the look back that we can all share”, said Reed. The election in November will come down to how many people vote, where they vote, and for whom. But it will also be determined by “the remote gearboxes and the little bits of democracy you can’t see”, he said. “And that’s what we need to look out for. That’s what we need to shine a light on this time.”

      Stopping the Steal is now available on Max in the US. In the UK, Trump’s Heist: The President Who Wouldn’t Lose is on Channel 4 on 17 September and 18 September at 9pm. More

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      Judge dismisses two criminal counts against Trump in Georgia election case

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      Donald Trump had two counts tossed from his criminal case in Georgia over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, after the presiding judge decided on Thursday they fell under the supremacy clause in the US constitution that bars state prosecutors from charging federal crimes.“The Supremacy Clause declares that state law must yield to federal law when the two conflict,” the Fulton county superior court judge Scott McAfee wrote in his order.The judge decided that two charges against Trump and an additional count against several Trump allies, who were charged as co-defendants, should be struck. But he decided the remainder of the indictment – including the Rico racketeering charge – could remain.Trump now faces eight charges, down from 13 charges. Trump pleaded not guilty to the sprawling 2020 election interference case in Fulton county last year along with 18 other co-defendants. Four have since taken plea deals and agreed to testify against the other defendants.The charges that were dismissed against Trump – the filing of false documents and conspiring to file false documents – related to the Trump campaign’s gambit to submit fake elector certificates declaring Trump as the winner even though he had lost.The fake elector certificates were then sent to the National Archives ahead of the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s election win on 6 January 2021, which the Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis charged as criminal forgery counts.“President Trump and his legal team in Georgia have prevailed once again. The trial court has decided that counts 15 and 27 in the indictment must be quashed/dismissed,” Trump’s lead lawyer, Steve Sadow, said in a statement.The 22-page order issued by McAfee comes as the fate of the case hangs in the balance ahead of the Georgia appeals court deciding whether Willis can continue with the case, following her alleged relationship with her deputy, Nathan Wade.McAfee declined to remove Willis from the case as long as Wade resigned to resolve the conflict of interest allegation, a decision that Trump’s lawyers have appealed.Trump’s attorneys continue to argue that Willis has a conflict of interest, but also argued that she should have been disqualified for comments she made about the case at a speech at Big Bethel AME church in downtown Atlanta. In the wake of revelations about her relationship with Wade, Willis attributed the legal attack to racist motivations.Separately on Thursday, McAfee rejected a motion from the former Trump lawyer John Eastman and Trump fake elector Shawn Still to toss the entire indictment on grounds that it relied on an overly broad interpretation of the Georgia state racketeering statute. More

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      Georgia governor Brian Kemp weighs options on state election board problem

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      As Georgia’s Governor Brian Kemp wrestles with what to do with a seemingly wayward state board of elections that is drawing national criticism for last-hour changes to the state’s election practices born of stop-the-steal election activism, the state attorney general declined to make his job any easier.Kemp asked Republican attorney general, Chris Carr, to render a legal opinion about the governor’s legal obligation to hold a hearing and potentially remove board members, in light of two ethics complaints filed against the board since a raucous hearing in July raised questions about the legality of the board’s actions. Three board members – Rick Jeffares, Janice Johnston and Janelle King – have attempted to reopen investigation into the 2020 election, citing a finding of error in Fulton county and the continuation of lawsuits by election denialists.Repeated audits and investigations have found no error in tabulation large enough to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. Nonetheless, the three board members have approved new rules giving local elections officials wider authority to make a “reasonable inquiry” into elections discrepancies. By leaving the term “reasonable” undefined, the change is setting off alarm bells among critics, who believe local elections officials with partisan intentions will cast doubt on the results if their candidate loses.Carr’s office earlier this year swatted back the board’s demand to reinvestigate the 2020 election in Fulton county. But it also declined last week to advise Kemp to convene a hearing under the state’s ethics law, because no “formal charges” had been filed for allegedly holding an illegal meeting in August to adopt new election rules.If the law required Kemp to remove board members, he could do so while claiming to Donald Trump-aligned partisans that his hands were tied. That’s no longer an option. If he does so now, voices on the hard right will rise to say that Kemp is, once again, facilitating victory for Democrats at their expense.In a state controlled by Republicans, Georgia’s elections board has become a contentious friction point between conventional conservatives like Kemp and Trump allies who continue to press claims of a stolen 2020 election.Trump praised the board members by name at a rally in Atlanta in August, while trashing Kemp for refraining to stop the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, from pursuing the election interference case against him.The board’s behavior puts Kemp in a political pickle. Trump and Kemp have made overtures in the past few weeks to mend the rift. Kemp endorsed Trump in a conversation with the Fox News host Sean Hannity last month, which Trump accepted graciously in a Truth Social posting. But Trump partisans remain deeply resentful of Kemp’s apparent inaction on Trump’s behalf.For Republicans, the conflict between Trump and Kemp is particularly toxic in an election year. But the board’s actions convey a plain impression of partisan interest, which is also toxic in an election year, as Democrats use the publicity around the election board’s plays to drive turnout.Even though a majority of Georgians are confident that the 2024 election will be held fairly, the partisan split is enormous. Only 9% of Republicans have confidence in a fair election, according to a poll administered by the University of Georgia in June.That has primary election implications for Kemp, who is widely expected to run for the US Senate against the Democrat Jon Ossoff in 2026. Kemp is the most popular Republican in the state – more so than Trump – but would face withering criticism for taking unilateral action against a Trump-oriented board.In the wake of the 2020 election, state lawmakers stripped the secretary of state and his office of some of their power over the state board of elections. The appointment of King, a conservative radio talkshow host, to the swing seat on the board earlier this year has given Trump partisans a 3-2 majority of the board.At its August meeting, the three members outside of Kemp’s orbit – King, Johnston and Jeffares – voted to demand that the state attorney general reinvestigate claims of irregularities in Fulton county’s election tabulation of 2020, threatening to hire outside counsel to investigate instead.Carr’s office responded, denying their demand and notifying them that the only lawyers the state board of elections has, by law, are at the attorney general’s office.Critics such as the Democratic party, who are filing complaints about the board’s actions, suggest that board’s goal is to delay certification in the event of an apparent Trump loss in order to bolster future claims of another stolen election.The complaint filed by the Democratic party of Georgia and Cathy Woolard, a former chairperson of the local Fulton county board of registration and elections, argues that the board “knowingly and willfully violated state law” by holding the August meeting without proper notice, “and have repeatedly disregarded the advice of the attorney general’s office, turning instead to outside parties for both legal counsel and the substance of proposed rules”.By doing so, the board had created an appearance of impropriety, the complaint alleges, noting how board members had received a standing ovation at a Trump rally and how Jeffares, had reportedly discussed a position in the Trump administration in public.The complaint invokes Georgia’s ethics law, which states that the governor is compelled to remove board members who violate the ethics code.The word “shall” limits the governor’s discretion. But Kemp wanted to know if the letter of complaint constituted “formal charges”.Staff attorneys from Carr’s office responded on Friday, telling Kemp that it did not.“‘Upon formal charges being filed’ does not mean that a citizen can simply submit information to the Governor and trigger the hearing process contemplated by the Code Section,” the legal memo says. “Had the General Assembly intended to create an informal process in O.C.G.A. § 45-10-4 that could be initiated by any member of the public, it would have done so as it has in other areas of the law discussed herein. Instead, it provided for a structured process that is only commenced ‘upon formal charges being filed’.” More

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      Trial begins in alleged ‘Trump Train’ ambush of Biden-Harris bus in 2020

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      A jury trial opening in Austin, Texas, on Monday will seek to hold Trump supporters accountable for allegedly ambushing a Joe Biden-Kamala Harris campaign bus on the state’s main highway in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election.Plaintiffs in the lawsuit allege they were terrorised and intimidated for more than 90 minutes as they took a bus tour canvassing for the Democratic ticket in the final days of the election.At least 40 vehicles flying Make America great again flags formed themselves into a so-called “Trump Train” and encircled the bus, trying to run it off the road and playing what the suit claims was a “madcap game of highway ‘chicken’”.The plaintiffs, who include the bus driver, a Biden campaign staffer and Wendy Davis, the former Texas senator and Democratic gubernatorial candidate, say they were forced to cancel campaign events for fear that the intimidation would be repeated. They are pursuing punitive damages under both Texas law and the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, a federal statute from the Reconstruction period designed to end political violence and voter intimidation.Lawyers for the plaintiffs say the trial is a test of modern democratic safeguards.“The violence and intimidation that our plaintiffs endured on the highway for simply supporting the candidate of their choice is an affront to the democratic values we hold dear as Americans,” said co-counsel John Paredes, a litigator for Protect Democracy, one of the groups bringing the case.Monday’s case, Cervini v Cisneros, is one of the most substantial legal battles arising from acts of alleged political intimidation by Trump supporters in the 2020 election besides the 6 January 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol. Hundreds of criminal prosecutions have been brought around the events of January 6; by contrast, the Texas trial is a civil lawsuit brought in pursuit of damages by the plaintiffs.But it is extensive in scale, with five named defendants and an unknown number of additional unidentified John and Jane Does alleged to have been involved in a conspiracy to terrorise the Biden-Harris campaigners.The suit accuses the defendants of using force to intimidate a political opponent, claims they engaged in civil assault as well as civil conspiracy designed to stifle the political voice of the Biden-Harris campaign, and calls for punitive damages and compensation.Trouble began almost immediately after the Biden-Harris campaign announced it was staging a three-day “soul of the nation” bus tour through Texas on 27 October 2020. The tour was to take Biden surrogates to a number of featured rallies and gatherings.By 28 October, chatter had begun on social media platforms among Trump supporters calling for the formation of “Trump trains” – gatherings of trucks and other vehicles to demonstrate support for the re-election of the then Republican president. One Trump train member in Alamo posted that day that they should “flood the hell out of them”, in a reference to the Biden-Harris bus.That afternoon the then president’s son, Don Trump Jr, posted on Twitter (now X) an invitation to Trump supporters to assemble. He wrote: “It would be great if you guys would all get together and head down to McAllen and give Kamala Harris a nice Trump Train welcome. Get out there. Have some fun. Enjoy it.”Flag-waving trucks driven by Trump supporters began to follow the Biden-Harris bus on 28 and 29 October. One of the vehicles was decked out as a “Trump hearse”, and said on its bodywork that it was “collecting Democratic votes one dead stiff at a time”.Larger numbers of cars convened on Friday 30 October, with some Trump supporters attracted to the melee because they thought, wrongly, that Kamala Harris would be onboard the Democratic bus that day (she was in fact campaigning in McAllen and Fort Worth). The suit claims a group of Trump supporters conspired to ambush the bus on a stretch of Interstate 35 between San Antonio and Austin.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe vehicles in the Trump train swarmed around the tour bus, coming within inches of it and forcing the driver to slow to a crawl. Several of the participants livestreamed their actions on social media, bragging about their aggressive driving, the plaintiffs allege.One of the defendants, Eliazar Cisneros, is accused of side-swiping an SUV being driven by a Biden-Harris campaign staffer behind the bus. The complaint says that Cisneros later boasted about “slamming that fucker”.The occupants of the bus pleaded with police to provide an escort but none appeared. A separate case, Cervini v Stapp, was settled in October with local law enforcement admitting that they had fallen short of their standards and agreeing to pay compensation to those whose safety they failed to protect.The suit claims that the plaintiffs have suffered “ongoing psychological and emotional injury”. The bus driver, Timothy Holloway, was so traumatised that he gave up his tour bus business and has stopped driving buses.Wendy Davis, who is best known for the 11-hour speech she made in the Texas senate in 2013 to filibuster an anti-abortion bill, said she suffered “substantial emotional distress”. She feared speaking publicly about her experiences in the bus as it might put her at risk of physical harm from Trump supporters.At the trial, lawyers for the plaintiffs will make the case that while free speech is protected under the first amendment of the US constitution, intimidation and threats against people with different political beliefs is not. “Where groups are permitted to terrorize those with whom they disagree into forgoing their constitutional rights, the functioning of our democracy demands accountability,” the lawsuit says. More

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      Trump pleads not guilty to revised 2020 election interference charges

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      Donald Trump pleaded not guilty on Thursday, via his legal team, to the revised charges in his federal criminal election interference investigation, in the first hearing in the Washington DC case since the US supreme court gave its immunity ruling.The former US president and current Republican nominee for the White House in this November’s election was not present in federal court in the capital.The US district judge, Tanya Chutkan, said she would not set a schedule in the case at this status conference for the prosecution and defense teams, but hopes to do so later on Thursday.The case relates to Trump’s conduct surrounding events after he lost his re-election bid in November 2020 to his Democratic rival Joe Biden, culminating in the insurrection at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, by thousands of extreme Trump supporters intent on overturning the election result.Chutkan is hearing arguments about the potential next steps in the election subversion prosecution of Trump for the first time since the supreme court narrowed the case by ruling that former presidents are entitled to broad immunity from criminal charges.As the hearing opened, the judge noted that it has been almost a year since she had seen the lawyers in her courtroom. The case has been frozen since last December as Trump pursued his appeal.The defense lawyer John Lauro joked to the judge: “Life was almost meaningless without seeing you.”Chutkan replied: “Enjoy it while it lasts.”A not guilty plea was entered on Trump’s behalf for a revised indictment that the special counsel Jack Smith’s team filed last week to strip out certain allegations and comply with the supreme court’s ruling in July. Prosecutors have said they can be ready at any time to file a legal brief laying out its position on how to apply the justices’ immunity opinion to the case.Defense lawyers are challenging the legitimacy of the case and said they intend to file multiple motions to dismiss the case, including one that piggybacks off a Florida judge’s ruling that Smith’s appointment was unconstitutional.Neither side envisions a trial happening before the November election. The case is one of two federal prosecutions against Trump, in a host of legal cases. The other, charging him with illegally hoarding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, was dismissed in July by the US district judge Aileen Cannon, who said Smith’s appointment as special counsel was unlawful.Smith’s team has appealed that ruling. Trump’s lawyers say they intend to ask Chutkan to dismiss the election case on the same grounds.Reuters and the Associated Press contributed reporting. More

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      Georgia election workers ask court for control of Giuliani’s assets over $148m judgment

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      Two Georgia election workers asked a federal judge on Friday to give them control over Rudy Giuliani’s assets as they sought to enforce a $148m defamation judgment the former New York City mayor owes them.According to a court filing on Friday, lawyers for Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss want a court to give them control over Giuliani’s New York City apartment, estimated to be worth more than $5m, as well as his condominium in Palm Beach. They also want him to turn over personal property, including a 1980 Mercedes-Benz SL500, jewelry, luxury watches and sports memorabilia, including Yankees World Series rings and jerseys signed by Joe DiMaggio and Reggie Jackson.They are also seeking the right to $2m in legal fees Giuliani says he is owed by Donald Trump’s campaign and the Republican National Committee.They also want a separate order from the court allowing them to take control over assets Giuliani does not turn over.The move comes after Giuliani has spent months trying to avoid paying the $148m judgment he owes Freeman and Moss. He is appealing the defamation judgment and tried to declare bankruptcy, but the case was dismissed after a judge said Giuliani had not been transparent about his finances. While Giuliani has insisted he does not have much money, his continued high spending has raised eyebrows.“At every step, Mr. Giuliani has chosen evasion, obstruction, and outright disobedience. That strategy reaches the end of the line here,” lawyers for Freeman and Moss wrote in the filing.“The appeal of the objectively unreasonable $148 million verdict hasn’t even been heard, yet opposing counsel continues to take steps designed to harass and intimidate Mayor Rudy Giuliani,” Ted Goodman, a Giuliani spokesperson said in a text message. “This lawsuit has always been designed to censor and bully the mayor, and to deter others from exercising their right to speak up and to speak out.”Freeman and Moss were both election workers at State Farm Arena in Atlanta during the 2020 election. Giuliani repeatedly spread false information about them as part of his effort to overturn the election on behalf of Trump, circulating a misleading and debunked video of them counting ballots. Both women have been cleared of wrongdoing.Giuliani refused to turn over documents in the defamation case, so a federal judge in Washington DC entered a default judgment against him last year. During a trial on the damages portion of the case, Freeman and Moss both testified extensively about the viscous harassment they continue to face and their fear of appearing in public.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe lawsuit is one of several cases testing whether libel law can be an effective tool for curbing disinformation in the United States. Being able to enforce the judgment against Giuliani is seen as an essential part of ensuring accountability for his lies about the 2020 election.Giuliani faces other defamation suits as well as criminal charges in Georgia and Arizona over his efforts to try and overturn the 2020 election. More