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US politicsCalifornia recall vote show Trump’s big lie is now Republican playbook Pre-emptively branding as rigged an election you are likely to lose risks turning off GOP voters and undermining democracyDavid Smith in Washington@ More
BooksMelania Trump like Marie Antoinette, says former aide in hotly awaited bookStephanie Grisham says former first lady refused to condemn Capitol attackers and believed husband’s lie about election fraud Martin Pengelly in New York@ More
US Capitol attackRepublicans in crosshairs of 6 January panel begin campaign of intimidationHouse leader Kevin McCarthy threatened retaliation against tech companies that share records with the committee Hugo Lowellin WashingtonMon 6 Sep 2021 02.00 EDTTop Republicans under scrutiny for their role in the events of 6 January have embarked on a campaign of threats and intimidation to thwart a Democratic-controlled congressional panel that is scrutinizing the Capitol attack and opening an expanded investigation into Donald Trump.The chairman of the House select committee into the violent assault on the Capitol, Bennie Thompson, in recent days demanded an array of Trump executive branch records related to the insurrection, as members and counsel prepared to examine what Trump knew of efforts to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election win.House select committee investigators then asked a slew of technology companies to preserve the social media records of hundreds of people connected to the Capitol attack, including far-right House Republicans who sought to overturn the results of the 2020 election.The select committee said that its investigators were merely “gathering facts, not alleging wrongdoing by any individual” as they pursued the records in what amounted to the most aggressive moves taken by the panel since it launched proceedings in July.But the twin actions, which threatened to open a full accounting of Trump’s moves in the days and weeks before the joint session of Congress on 6 January, has unnerved top House Republicans, according to a source familiar with the matter.The House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, decried the select committee’s investigation as a partisan exercise and threatened to retaliate against any telecommunications company that complied with the records requests.“A Republican majority will not forget,” he warned, in remarks that seemed to imply some future threat against the sector.The warning from the top Republican in the House amounted to a serious escalation as he seeks to undermine a forensic examination of the attack perpetrated by Trump supporters and domestic violent extremists that left five dead and nearly 140 injured.But his remarks – which members on the select committee privately consider to be at best, harassment, and at worst, obstruction of justice – reflects McCarthy’s realization that he could himself be in the crosshairs of the committee, the source said.Most of McCarthy’s efforts to undercut the inquiry to date, such as sinking the prospects of a 9/11-style commission to scrutinize the Capitol attack, have been aimed at shielding Trump and his party from what the select committee might uncover.But deeply alarmed at the efforts by House select committee investigators to secure his personal communications records for the fraught moments leading up to and during the Capitol attack, McCarthy went on the offensive to pre-emptively protect himself, the source said.McCarthy was among several House Republicans who desperately begged Trump to call off the rioters as they stormed the Capitol in his name, only to be rebuffed by Trump, who questioned why McCarthy wasn’t doing more to overturn the election.Thompson previously told the Guardian in an interview that such conversations with Trump would be investigated by the select committee, raising the prospect that McCarthy could be forced to testify about what Trump appeared to be thinking and doing on 6 January.The statement from McCarthy asserted, without citing any law, that it would be illegal for the technology companies to comply with the records requests – even though congressional investigators have obtained phone and communications records in the past.The threat is unlikely to be viewed as a violation of federal witness tampering law, which, as part of a broader obstruction of justice statute, makes it a felony under some circumstances to try to dissuade or hinder cooperation with an official proceeding.Congressman Jamie Raskin, a member of the select committee and the former lead impeachment manager in Trump’s second trial, said that he was appalled by McCarthy’s remarks, which he described as tantamount to obstruction of justice.“He is leveling threats against people cooperating with a congressional investigation,” Raskin said. “Why would the minority leader of the House of Representatives not be interested in our ability to get all of the facts in relation to the January 6th attack?”Meanwhile, other members on the select committee have also seized on McCarthy’s threat as a reminder that Republicans could not be trusted to engage in the inquiry in good faith, according to a source connected to the 6 January investigation.It also underscored to them, the source said, the nervousness among top Republicans as the select committee ramps up its work, even though the inquiry is still in its early days and has yet to sift through thousands of pages of expected evidence.Emboldened by McCarthy’s combative stance, Trump denounced the select committee as a “partisan sham”, while Republicans under scrutiny by the panel such as Marjorie Taylor Greene threatened any companies that complied with the records requests would be “shut down”.The chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, Andy Biggs, is now also asking McCarthy to remove from the Republican conference Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger – the two vocal critics of Trump appointed to the select committee – whom he called “spies” for Democrats.Biggs on Thursday suggested in a letter, first reported by CNN, that Cheney and Kinzinger should be ejected because they are involved in investigating Republicans over 6 January and the party should be able to strategize without having the pair present at conference meetings.Still, McCarthy remains unable to shape an investigation likely to prove politically damaging to Trump and to Republicans at the ballot box at the midterms next year, a reality that has come largely as a result of his own strategic miscalculations.The proposed 9/11-style commission into the Capitol attack had envisioned a panel with equal power between Democrats and Republicans, and McCarthy’s decision to boycott the select committee in a flash of anger inadvertently left Trump without any defenders.TopicsUS Capitol attackUS elections 2020US politicsRepublicansHouse of RepresentativesnewsReuse this content More
OpinionDonald TrumpTrump’s coup attempt has not stopped – and Democrats must wake upRobert ReichHe still refuses to concede and riles up supporters with his bogus claim that the 2020 election was stolen. Tens of millions of Americans believe him Sun 5 Sep 2021 01.00 EDTLast modified on Sun 5 Sep 2021 01.02 EDTThe former president’s attempted coup is not stopping. He still refuses to concede and continues to rile up supporters with his bogus claim that the 2020 election was stolen. Tens of millions of Americans believe him.Trump reportedly nears DC hotel rights sale as ally says ‘I think he’s gonna run’Read moreLast Sunday, at a Republican event in Franklin, North Carolina, Congressman Madison Cawthorn, repeating Trump’s big lie, called the rioters who stormed the Capitol on 6 January “political hostages”.Cawthorn also advised the crowd to begin stockpiling ammunition for what he said was likely to be American-versus-American “bloodshed” over unfavorable election results.“Much as I am willing to defend our liberty at all costs,” he said, “there’s nothing I would dread doing more than having to pick up arms against a fellow American.”On Tuesday, Texas Republicans passed a strict voter law based on Trump’s big lie – imposing new ID requirements on people seeking to vote by mail and criminal penalties on election officials who send unsolicited mail-in ballot applications, empowering partisan poll watchers, and banning drive-through and 24-hour voting.This year, at least 18 other states have enacted 30 laws that will make it harder for Americans to vote, based on Trump’s lie.On Thursday, at Trump’s instigation, Pennsylvania Republicans launched an investigation soliciting sworn testimony on election “irregularities”, scheduling the first hearing for next week.Arizona’s Republican “audit” will report its results any day. There’s little question what they’ll show. The chief executive of Cyber Ninjas, the company hired to conduct it, has publicly questioned the election results. The audit team consists of Trump supporters and is funded by a group led by Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn.The Republican chair of the Wisconsin state assembly campaigns and elections committee has begun “a full, cyber-forensic audit”, akin to Arizona’s. Trump’s first White House chief of staff, Reince Priebus, says Wisconsin Republicans are prepared to spend $680,000.These so-called audits won’t alter the outcome of the 2020 election. Their point is to cast further doubt on its legitimacy and justify additional state measures to suppress votes and alter future elections.It’s a vicious cycle. As Trump continues to stoke his base with his big lie that the election was stolen, Republican lawmakers – out to advance their careers and entrench the GOP – are adding fuel to the fire, pushing more Americans into Trump’s paranoid nightmare.The three top candidates to succeed Richard Burr in North Carolina all denounced the senator’s vote to convict Trump in his second impeachment trial. The four leading candidates to succeed Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania all embraced Trump’s call for an “audit” of election results.A leading contender for the Senate seat being vacated by Richard Shelby in Alabama is Representative Mo Brooks, best known for urging the crowd at Trump’s rally preceding the Capitol riot to “start taking down names and kicking ass”. Brooks has been endorsed by Trump.Yet even as Trump’s attempted coup gains traction, most of the rest of America continues to sleep. We’ve become so outrage-fatigued by his antics, and so preoccupied with the more immediate threats of the Delta variant and climate-fueled wildfires and hurricanes, that we prefer not to know.A month ago it was reported that during his last weeks in office Trump tried to strong-arm the justice department to falsely declare the 2020 presidential election fraudulent, even threatening to fire the acting attorney general if he didn’t: “Just say that the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the [Republican] congressmen.”The news barely registered on America’s collective mind. The Olympics and negotiations over the infrastructure bill got more coverage.A top Trump adviser now says Trump is “definitely running” for president in 2024, even though the 14th amendment to the constitution bars anyone from holding office who has “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against” the nation.Federal legislation that would pre-empt state voter suppression laws is bogged down in the Senate. Biden hasn’t made it a top priority. A House select committee to investigate the Capitol riot and Trump’s role is barely off the ground. The justice department has made no move to indict the former president for anything.But unless Trump and his co-conspirators are held accountable for the damage they have inflicted and continue to inflict on American democracy, and unless Senate Democrats and Biden soon enact national voting rights legislation, Trump’s attempted coup could eventually succeed.It is imperative that America wake up.
Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist
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MichiganMichigan judge sanctions pro-Trump lawyers who sought to overturn state’s 2020 electionsAttorneys who alleged widespread election fraud presented unsubstantiated claims and abused the justice system, judge rules Maya Yang in New YorkThu 26 Aug 2021 12.23 EDTLast modified on Thu 26 Aug 2021 13.16 EDTA federal judge in Michigan has sanctioned a team of nine pro-Trump lawyers, including Sidney Powell and Lin Wood, who sought to overturn the state’s 2020 elections as part of a sweeping effort across the nation to challenge Joe Biden’s presidential victory via court action.In a 110-page ruling released on Wednesday, judge Linda Parker of the federal district court in Detroit ruled that the attorneys who alleged widespread election fraud in Michigan presented unsubstantiated claims and abused the justice system.“This lawsuit represents a historic and profound abuse of the judicial process,” Parker wrote. “This case was never about fraud – it was about undermining the People’s faith in our democracy and debasing the judicial process to do so,” she added.Parker ordered the lawyers to pay legal fees to the city of Detroit and state of Michigan, and will require them to attend legal education classes on pleading standards and election law within six months.She also referred the lawyers to the Michigan attorney grievance commission and other appropriate disciplinary authorities, where they could face further investigation and potential suspension or disbarment in the state.In a frenzied effort in the swing state of Michigan, then president Donald Trump last November met with Republican leaders from the state at the White House in an increasingly desperate attempt to subvert democracy after a series of courtroom defeats over his and his campaign’s allegations of voter fraud.This was all despite officials at the local and federal level declaring it the most secure election in American history.The Michigan lawsuit, which was filed in late November, was one of a series of lawsuits known as the “Kraken” cases that Powell filed across the country, alleging that Dominion Voting System’s voting machines were deliberately tampered with.The lawsuit argued that Biden’s win was fraudulent and asked Parker to declare Trump the winner of the state’s 16 electoral college votes.Parker rejected the request in December, writing: “If granted, the relief would disenfranchise the votes of the more than 5.5 million Michigan citizens who, with dignity, hope, and a promise of a voice, participated in the 2020 general Election.”Wednesday’s ruling marked the latest development in a series of legal woes mounting against pro-Trump attorneys who promoted election conspiracies.In January, Dominion Voting Systems sued Powell and Trump’s former personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, in a $1.3bn defamation lawsuit. A month later, Smartmatic USA, a rival election-technology company, sued the two lawyers for $2.7bn.Meanwhile, Lin Wood was facing his own legal headaches in Georgia, where he is challenging a state bar request that he take a confidential mental competency exam after it conducted an extensive review of his alleged legal misconduct over election challenges.In July, a US appeals court suspended Giuliani from practicing law in Washington DC, a month after he was suspended from practicing law in New York after a court ruled that he made “demonstrably false and misleading statements to courts, lawmakers and the public in trying to overturn the election results”.One of the sanctioned lawyers from the Michigan lawsuit, Scott Hagerstrom, responded to Wednesday’s ruling, saying: “This is all political. This is all about sticking it to Donald Trump and the Republicans.”The other eight lawyers involved have yet to comment on the ruling.TopicsMichiganUS politicsRepublicansDonald TrumpUS elections 2020Reuse this content More
Fight to voteUS newsThe data proves it: 2020 US election was a remarkable successDespite pandemic, election ‘report card’ shows record high turnout, embrace of mail and early voting and relatively few ballot rejections Sam Levine in New YorkThu 19 Aug 2021 10.00 EDTLast modified on Thu 19 Aug 2021 10.23 EDTSign up for the Guardian’s Fight to Vote newsletterHappy Thursday,A few months after every federal election, a little-known federal agency called the US Election Assistance Commission (EAC) releases a trove of data it collects from all 50 states on what happened in the election. The survey offers one of the clearest pictures of the nuts and bolts of the election: things like how people voted and registered, the demographics of poll workers, and provisional and mail-in ballot rejection rates. It’s a report card of sorts, and for the people who study how elections are run, it’s a bible of useful data.The survey for the 2020 election came out on Monday, and it provides unambiguous evidence of what a remarkable success the presidential election was, against all odds. Nearly every state recorded an increase in voter turnout. Overall, more than 67% of America’s citizen voting age population voted in the election – a record high. Despite fears that the surge in mail-in balloting would lead to an increase in ballot rejections, the overall rejection rate remained the same.“It is basically an indicator of the success of the election,” said Barry Burden, the director of the elections research center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Election administrators managed to pull it off and support a record number of voters.”Now Burden and other experts are poring over the data to see which trends might stick in future elections and which might have been a quirk of the pandemic and other unusual circumstances of voting in 2020.The survey shows, for example, that Americans dramatically shifted the way they voted. Only about a third of voters cast their ballots on election day, choosing instead to cast their vote either by mail (43.1%) or early in person (30.6%). That’s a sharp change from previous years, when the majority of voters cast their ballots on election day.“I don’t know if that’s going to be the way future elections are defined,” Burden said. “Some surveys of voters have indicated that quite a few of them who voted by mail want to go back to voting in person. But lots who voted by mail for the first time became fond of it, became aware of it, frankly.”“We’re likely to have this multi-modal system in place for years to come,” he added.An election system in which there are significant numbers of people voting three different ways (in person, early, and by mail) has significant political and administrative consequences. Election administrators will have to figure out how to run essentially three different elections for voters.It also makes running campaigns more complicated, Burden noted. Traditionally, campaigns run a heavy persuasion effort right until voting begins, and then invest in get-out-the-vote efforts. But more voting by mail means that people are casting their ballots earlier.“Now they need to be running both of those efforts kind of simultaneously from about mid-September, when the first absentee ballots go out, 90 days in advance to military and domestic absentees. That’s just complex, and I think some research has showed it’s more expensive to run campaigns in this way.”Charles Stewart, an election administration expert at MIT, said he plans to dig deeper into ballot rejection rates. Among rejected ballots, about a third went uncounted because of signature matching problems. Around 12% were rejected because the voter missed the deadline to return the ballot.“There was great concern about new people not following instructions and having a lot of rejections,” he said. But despite the fact that there were double the number of absentee ballots this year, “the percentage of absentee ballots rejected was about what it was in the past”.“Although, the way I think about these things is that since we doubled the number of absentee ballots, that means there was double the number of people whose votes didn’t get counted because of something wrong. But nonetheless, from this other perspective, it wasn’t all that bad,” he added.Even so, Stewart and Burden both want to investigate why a handful of states had rejection rates that appeared to far exceed the national rejection rate of 0.8%. Those states include Arkansas (6.4%), New Mexico (5.0%), New York (3.6%) and Mississippi (2.3%). Burden cautioned against drawing quick conclusions from the data:“I do have a concern that the data are still a little hinky. Not all of the states reported what share of absentee ballots were rejected, and a couple of them reported data that was not complete,” he said.Stewart also said he also wanted to better understand why Washington, Oregon and Colorado – states that long have had universal vote by mail – continued to have rejection rates around the national average, despite their expertise and experience in the area.“1% is a pretty high rejection rate,” he noted.Overall, Burden said, the survey should be used as hard evidence to help build trust in American elections.“I think what the average American hears about in the press is partisan disagreements over whether there was fraud or whether there’s going to be another audit in some state,” he said. “One way to rebuild the confidence of some voters is to remind them of how wonderful the election was.”Also worth watching…
House Democrats introduced a fresh bill that would update the Voting Rights Act. It would put states back under federal supervision if they repeatedly discriminate against voters and strengthens Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, overriding a recent supreme court decision that made it more difficult to challenge discriminatory voting laws. Democrats plan a quick vote on the bill in the US House next week, but it still faces the obstacle of the filibuster in the Senate.
The Republican-controlled state election board in Georgia voted to authorize a review of the board of elections in Fulton county, home to Atlanta and the most populous in the state. The review could lead to the state board taking over the county elections board under a controversial provision in Georgia’s new voting law.
The FBI is now helping investigate whether a local clerk in Colorado illegally divulged election information to conspiracy theorists. The state’s top election official this week said that Tina Peters, the clerk in Mesa county, accessed a secure room in late May and copied election management software.
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Analyst David Shor and Jonathan Freedland look at the data and the polls and discuss why the Democrats should be worried – and what they need to do to improve their chances of winning the next presidential election
How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know
When Joe Biden became the 46th US president in 2020 many Democrats were celebrating, but one – the data analyst David Shor – was nervous. After crunching the numbers and looking at the extensive data, David believes that if the Democrats continue as they are, the party is going to lose the next presidential election. The 30-year-old prodigy is one of the most in demand data analysts in the US – to such an extent that Politico has written an article about him entitled “The cult of Shor”. So what data has he seen to cause him such alarm? And what should the Democrats be doing to get back on track? David Shor talks problem and remedy with Jonathan Freedland. Archive: Freedom News TV Send us your questions and feedback to podcasts@theguardian.com Help support the Guardian by going to gu.com/supportpodcasts More
OpinionDonald TrumpRepublicans will defend their Caesar but new revelations show Trump’s true threatLloyd GreenThe DoJ has dealt two blows and the 6 January committee is winding up for more. They know democracy is in danger
Sidney Blumenthal: What did Jim Jordan know and when?
Sun 1 Aug 2021 01.00 EDTOn Friday, Donald Trump received two more unwelcome reminders he is no longer president. Much as he and his minions chant “Lock her up” about Hillary Clinton and other enemies, it is he who remains in legal jeopardy and political limbo.IRS must turn over Trump tax returns to Congress, DoJ saysRead moreTrump’s allies on Capitol Hill will again be forced to defend the indefensible. That won’t be a bother: QAnon is their creed, Trump is their Caesar and Gladiator remains the movie for our time.But in other ways, the world has changed. The justice department is no longer an extension of Trump’s West Wing. The levers of government are no longer at his disposal.Next year, much as Trump helped deliver both Georgia Senate seats to the Democrats in January, on the eve of the insurrection, his antics may cost Republicans their chance to retake the Senate.Documents that would probably not have seen the light of day had Trump succeeded in overturning the election are now open to scrutiny, be they contemporaneous accounts of his conversations about that dishonest aim or his tax returns.Those who claim that the events of 6 January were something other than a failed coup attempt would do well to come up with a better line. Or a different alternate reality.Ashli Babbitt is no martyr. Trump will not be restored to the presidency, no matter what the MyPillow guy says. Trump’s machinations and protestations convey the desperation that comes with hovering over the abyss. He knows what he has said and done.First, on Friday morning, news broke that the justice department had provided Congress with copies of notes of a damning 27 December 2020 conversation between Trump, Jeffrey Rosen, then acting attorney general, and Richard Donoghue, Rosen’s deputy.As first reported by the New York Times, the powers at Main Justice told Trump there was no evidence of widescale electoral fraud in his clear defeat by Joe Biden.He replied: “Just say that the election was corrupt [and] leave the rest to me.”That goes beyond simply looking to bend the truth. As George Conway, a well-connected, prominent anti-Trump Republican, tweeted: “It’s difficult to overstate how much this reeks of criminal intent on the part of the former guy.”One White House veteran who served under the presidents Bush told the Guardian: “‘Leave the rest to me’ sure sounds like foreknowledge.”Just “connect the dots and the dates”, the former aide said.The insurrection came 10 days later. As the former Trump campaign chair and White House strategist Steve Bannon framed it on 5 January: “All hell is going to break loose.”Truer words were never spoken.Unfortunately for Trump, Friday’s news cycle didn’t end with the events of 27 December. A few hours later, the DoJ’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), its policy-setting arm, once led by Bill Barr, Trump’s second attorney general, opined that Trump’s tax returns could no longer be kept from the House ways and means committee.Ever since Watergate, presidents and presidential candidates have released their tax returns as a matter of standard operating procedure. Trump’s refusal to do so was one more shattered norm – and a harbinger of what followed.The OLC concluded that the committee’s demand for those records comported with the pertinent statute. Beyond that, it observed that the request would further the panel’s “principal stated objective of assessing the IRS’s presidential audit program – a plainly legitimate area for congressional inquiry”.Here, the DoJ was doing nothing short of echoing the supreme court. A little over a year ago, the court rejected Trump’s contention that the Manhattan district attorney could not scrutinize his tax returns and, in a separate case, held that Congress could also examine his taxes.In the latter case, in a 7-2 decision, the court eviscerated the president’s argument that Congress had no right to review his tax returns and financial records. Writing for the majority, John Roberts, the chief justice, observed: “When Congress seeks information ‘needed for intelligent legislative action’, it ‘unquestionably’ remains ‘the duty of all citizens to cooperate’.”At that point, Trump had made two appointments to the high court. Both joined in the outcome. So much for feeling beholden.Prospective witnesses before the House select committee on the events of 6 January ought to start worrying. House minority leader Kevin McCarthy, Congressman Jim Jordan: this means you. By your own admissions, you spoke with Trump that day.It was one thing for Merrick Garland’s justice department to continue the government defense of Trump in E Jean Carroll’s defamation lawsuit. It’s a whole other thing to expect Biden’s attorney general to play blocking back for Trump. It is highly unlikely here.The justice department does not appear ready to come to the aid of those who sought to overturn the election. Already, it has refused to defend Mo Brooks, the Alabama congressman who wore a Kevlar vest to a 6 January pre-riot rally.‘Just say the election was corrupt,’ Trump urged DoJ after loss to BidenRead moreOn top of that, the Democrats control Congress and Liz Cheney, dissident Republican of Wyoming and member of the 6 January committee, hates Jordan. It is personal.“That fucking guy Jim Jordan. That son of a bitch,” Cheney told the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Gen Mark Milley, about Jordan, according to Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker of the Washington Post.Adam Kinzinger, an Illinois Republican who like Cheney voted to impeach Trump over 6 January and has joined the select committee, may also be in the mood to deliver a lesson. Congressional Democrats may want to see Jordan and McCarthy sweat. The House GOP got the committee it asked for when it withdrew co-operation. It faces unwelcome consequences.As for Trump, he may well continue to harbour presidential aspirations and dreams of revenge. But as Ringo Starr sang, “It don’t come easy.” Indeed, after Friday’s twin blows, things likely became much more difficult.TopicsDonald TrumpOpinionTrump administrationUS politicsUS CongressHouse of RepresentativesUS taxationUS domestic policycommentReuse this content More
