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      William Barr steps down as Trump's attorney general

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      The US attorney general, William Barr, one of Donald Trump’s staunchest allies, has resigned just weeks after he contradicted the president by saying the justice department had uncovered no evidence of widespread voter fraud that could change the outcome of the 2020 election.Barr’s departure ends a tenure marked by brazen displays of fealty to a president whose political agenda he willingly advanced. Critics said Barr had turned the Department of Justice (DoJ) into an obedient servant of the White House, eroding its commitment to independence and the rule of law.Trump sought to play down tensions as he announced Barr’s resignation in a tweet on Monday, moments after members of the electoral college officially pushed Joe Biden over the 270-vote threshold to win the White House on Monday. The procedural step effectively ends Trump’s unprecedented bid to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election based on false claims of widespread voter fraud that Barr concluded were meritless.“Just had a very nice meeting with attorney general Bill Barr at the White House,” the president said. “Our relationship has been a very good one, he has done an outstanding job! As per letter, Bill will be leaving just before Christmas to spend the holidays with his family…”In his resignation letter, released by Trump on Twitter, Barr was characteristically effusive of the president. He praised Trump’s resilience in the face of what the attorney general described as a “partisan onslaught” that aimed to undermine a duly elected president.“No tactic, no matter how abusive and deceitful, was out of bounds,” Barr wrote.“Your record is all the more historic because you accomplished it in the face of relentless, implacable resistance,” he continued, adding: “Few could have weathered these attacks, much less forge ahead with a positive program for the country.”Jeff Rosen, the deputy attorney general, who Trump called “an outstanding person”, will take over the role of acting attorney general and “highly respected” Richard Donoghue, an official in Rosen’s office, would become the deputy attorney general.Barr surprised many observers by telling the Associated Press in an interview published on 1 December that he disputed the idea, promulgated by the president and his re-election campaign, that there had been widespread fraud in the 2020 election.Trump has attempted to undermine Biden’s victory by pointing to routine, small-scale issues in an election – questions about signatures, envelopes and postal marks – as evidence of widespread fraud across the nation that cost him the election.Trump and some of his allies have also endorsed more bizarre sources of supposed fraud, such as tying Biden’s win to election software created in Venezuela “at the direction of Hugo Chávez” – the former Venezuelan president who died in 2013.“There’s been one assertion that would be systemic fraud and that would be the claim that machines were programmed essentially to skew the election results. And the DHS and DoJ have looked into that, and so far, we haven’t seen anything to substantiate that,” Barr said in the interview with the AP.Barr said some people were confusing the role of the federal criminal justice system and asking it to step in on allegations that should be made in civil lawsuits and reviewed by state or local officials, not the justice department.Barr added: “There’s a growing tendency to use the criminal justice system as sort of a default fix-all, and, people don’t like something – they want the Department of Justice to come in and ‘investigate’.”Those comments infuriated Trump and his supporters as they have tried – and failed – to find any meaningful way, via the courts, requested recounts, or pressure on officials, of overturning his defeat by Biden.Speculation about Barr’s future was rife from the moment his AP interview was published, as the most high-profile member of the administration flatly to contradict the president’s continuing arguments that he is the rightful winner.For months, Barr also kept a justice department investigation into Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, from becoming public, despite calls from Republicans and the White House to launch an inquiry into the younger Biden’s business dealings, according to the Wall Street Journal. Hunter Biden, long a target of the president and his political allies, announced last week that his tax affairs were under investigation.In the weeks before the 2020 election, Trump publicly berated his attorney general for not prosecuting the president’s political enemies, among them his Democratic opponent and his predecessor, Barack Obama. In an October interview, Trump said Barr would be remembered as a “very sad, sad situation” if he did not indict Biden or Obama. Barr’s refusal to act, Trump warned then, could cost him the election.Trump announced in December 2018 that he was nominating Barr to become his next attorney general, replacing Jeff Sessions, a loyalist who angered the president when he stepped aside and allowed his deputy to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Russia’s election interference.Barr, 70, had previously served as attorney general in the George Bush administration and was initially viewed by political veterans in Washington as a much-needed stabilizing force who would insulate the department from political attacks. Yet, assuming the post the post as the Russia investigation into allegations of collusion between the Trump 2016 election campaign and Russian operatives neared its denouement in early 2019, Barr quickly upended expectations by ferociously attacking the special counsel investigation that examined the ties between Russia and the Trump campaign.In his resignation letter, the attorney general said it was the “nadir” of what he believed was a partisan crusade against the president “was the effort to cripple, if not oust, your administration with frenzied and baseless accusations of collusion with Russia”.Critics have often accused Barr of showing more loyalty to the president than to the nation. In one such instance, Barr called a press conference last April and offered a misleading preview of Mueller’s report. He omitted the report’s detailed description of potential obstruction of justice by Trump and falsely claimed the White House had cooperated fully.This set the tone for Trump’s inaccurate trumpeting when the report itself came out, in restricted form, that he and his team had enjoyed “total exoneration” by Mueller – a blatant misinterpretation.And Barr’s protocol-smashing, partisan path continued from there, as he intervened in criminal cases brought against prominent individuals in Trump’s circle, such as Roger Stone and Michael Flynn.He also initiated an investigation of the origins of the Russia investigation itself, seen as a fundamental undermining of the work of Mueller and his team, an effort that continues. More

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      Electoral college: key states confirm Joe Biden's victory in presidential election

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      [embedded content]
      Joe Biden took another step closer to the White House as key states in the electoral college system formally confirmed his election victory on Monday, effectively ending Donald Trump’s long-shot attempt to overturn the results.
      The state-by-state votes, traditionally an afterthought, have taken on outsized significance because of Trump’s unsubstantiated claims of widespread fraud.
      Election results from November show Biden won 306 electoral college votes, exceeding the 270 needed to win, after four tumultuous years under Trump. The president-elect and running mate Kamala Harris are due to take office on 20 January.
      There is next to no chance Monday’s voting will negate Biden’s victory and with Trump’s legal campaign floundering, the president’s hopes rest with a special meeting of Congress on 6 January, where the odds against him are as good as insurmountable.
      At 78 the oldest person to become US president, Biden was due to make a speech at 8pm on Monday about the electoral college “and the strength and resilience of our democracy”, his transition team said.
      Electoral college members in Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin voted for Biden on Monday, confirming his victories in battleground states Trump challenged in court. Electors in Arizona, which Trump lost after winning in 2016, cast the state’s votes for Biden.
      “While there will be those who are upset their candidate didn’t win, it is patently un-American and unacceptable that today’s event should be anything less than an honored tradition held with pride and in celebration,” the Arizona secretary of state, Katie Hobbs, said.
      The Democrat said Trump’s claims of voter fraud had “led to threats of violence against me, my office and those in this room today”, echoing similar reports of threats and intimidation in other states.
      A group of Trump supporters called on Facebook for protests all day outside the state capitol in Lansing, Michigan. But by early afternoon only a handful had gathered.
      Under a complicated system dating back to the 1780s, a candidate becomes US president not by winning a majority of the popular vote but through the electoral college, which allots votes to the 50 states and the District of Columbia largely based on population.
      Electors are typically party loyalists who represent the winning candidate in their state, with the exception of Maine and Nebraska, which give some of their electoral college votes to the candidate who won in the state’s congressional districts.
      While there are sometimes “rogue” electors who vote for someone other than the winner of their state’s popular vote, the vast majority rubber-stamp the results, and officials did not expect anything different on Monday.
      Trump said late last month he would leave the White House if the electoral college voted for Biden, but has since pressed on with his unprecedented campaign to overturn his defeat, filing numerous lawsuits challenging state vote counts. On Monday, he repeated a series of unsupported claims of electoral fraud.
      He has also called on Republican legislators to appoint their own electors, essentially ignoring the will of the voters. State lawmakers have largely dismissed the idea.
      “I fought hard for President Trump. Nobody wanted him to win more than me,” Lee Chatfield, the Republican speaker of the Michigan house of representatives, said in a statement. “But I love our republic, too. I can’t fathom risking our norms, traditions and institutions to pass a resolution retroactively changing the electors for Trump.”
      Once the electoral college vote is complete, Trump’s sole remaining gambit would be to persuade Congress not to certify the count on 6 January. Any attempt to block a state’s results must pass both chambers of Congress that day. Democrats control the House of Representatives and several Republican senators have acknowledged Biden’s victory.
      In 2016, Trump won the electoral college despite losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by nearly 3m votes. The formal vote saw some Democrats call for electors to “go rogue” against Trump. In the end, seven broke ranks, an unusually high number but still far too few to sway the outcome. More

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      Everything you need to know about the electoral college vote

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      I thought Biden had won the election – why is there another vote?Yes, Joe Biden has won and all US states have certified their election results. But the constitution demands that the electoral college formally cast its vote for president. The constitution requires “electors” to cast those votes – 538 such electors make up the electoral college.The vote happens on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December, a wait after the election in early November designed to give states enough time to clarify and certify results.What is the electoral college?It is not a place – the term refers to the group of people who formally elect the president. Electors are chosen by political parties in each state ahead of the election. The party which wins a state has its electors formally vote for its candidate. Donald Trump tried to remove electors in some states ahead of today’s vote but the US supreme court rejected that attempt last week.Where does the electoral college vote happen?The electors gather in their own states and cast ballots on paper, usually in the state capitol or the office of the governor or the secretary of state.Do we know who these electors are?They are usually though not always significant figures in their state’s party establishment. Stacey Abrams is one of Georgia’s electors while Hillary Clinton is an elector in New York.Howe long will this take?Indiana, New Hampshire, Tennessee and Vermont were the first states to vote at 10am ET. Hawaii will be the last to vote, at 7pm. Some states at the heart of Trump’s baseless lawsuits – his campaign has lost 59 cases and won one, which affected a tiny number of votes – vote a little later, Wisconsin at 1pm and Michigan at 2pm.What happens next?The electoral college sends its votes to Washington, where they are counted in a joint session of Congress on 6 January. The president of the Senate – the vice-president, Mike Pence – then formally announces the winner.Can Trump do anything to frustrate that process?Republicans can object to the counting of the votes on 6 January. If objections are raised in the House and Senate, Congress has to adjourn to consider them. However, a successful objection would have to be upheld by both houses of Congress. As Democrats control the House, this will not happen.Will Trump finally accept the result at that point?Unlikely. The Latin motto on Trump’s Scottish coat of arms, which he gained after a lawsuit, can be translated as “Never Concede”. He has not shown any sign that he will. More

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      Electoral college vote may be knockout blow to Trump's ploy to subvert election

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      Donald Trump on Monday could suffer a withering blow to his increasingly hopeless effort to overturn the results of the US presidential election when 538 members of the electoral college will cast their ballots and formally send Joe Biden to the White House.Under the arcane formula which America has followed since the first election in 1789, Monday’s electoral college vote will mark the official moment when Biden becomes the 46th president-in-waiting. Electors, including political celebrities such as both Bill and Hillary Clinton, will gather in state capitols across the country to cement the outcome of this momentous race.Normally, the process is figurative and barely noted. This year, given Trump’s volatile display of tilting at windmills in an attempt to negate the will of the American people, it will carry real political significance.Trump continued those quixotic efforts over the weekend, sparking political unrest in several cities including the nation’s capital. On Sunday morning he tweeted in all caps that this was the “most corrupt election in US history!”.In an interview with Fox & Friends that aired on Sunday, he insisted that his anti-democratic mission was not over. “We keep going and we’re going to continue to go forward,” he said, before repeating a slew of lies about the election having been rigged.Trump’s barefaced untruths about having won key states including Pennsylvania and Georgia went entirely unchallenged by the Fox News interviewer, Brian Kilmeade.Any faltering hopes Trump might still harbor of hanging on to power were shattered on Friday when the US supreme court unanimously and bluntly dismissed a lawsuit led by Texas to block Biden’s victory in four other states. In a different case, a Wisconsin supreme court judge decried Trump’s lawsuit aiming to nullify the votes of 200,000 Americans, saying it “smacked of racism”.Despite the categoric rebuff that Trump has suffered in dozens of cases, including before the nation’s highest court, his unprecedented ploy to tear up democratic norms continues to inflict untold damage on the country with potential long-term consequences. The Texas-led push to overturn the election result was backed by 126 Republicans in the House of Representatives – almost two-thirds of the party’s conference – as well as Republican state attorneys general from 18 states.Among the wider electorate, a recent Quinnipiac University poll found that 77% of Republicans believe – mistakenly – that there was widespread voter fraud in the 3 November election.Another manifestation of the harm that is being done was the violence that erupted on Saturday night across several cities. In Washington DC, four people were stabbed and required hospital treatment, and 23 were arrested, when far-right groups clashed with counter-protesters following a so-called “Stop the Steal” march enthusiastically endorsed by Trump.Far-right militia groups mingled among the Trump supporters and engaged in the violence, including the white nationalist Proud Boys who call themselves “western chauvinists”. Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser who Trump pardoned for lying to the FBI, addressed a crowd, exclaiming: “We decide the election. We’re waging a battle across America.”Violence also broke out in Olympia, the state capital of Washington state. One person was shot in clashes between heavily armed factions, with Trump supporters and Proud Boys facing off against counter-protesters, and three people were arrested.Video footage appeared to show that the shot was fired by a member of the Proud Boy and that the victim was a counter-protester, although details remained sketchy.In Georgia, a separate militia group, Georgia Security Force III%, were in attendance at a far-right rally at the statehouse on Saturday. The armed group has helped to organise recent caravans that have intimidated local election officials at their homes claiming falsely that Biden’s victory in Georgia was fraudulent.Biden’s transition team has watched with growing alarm the spate of violent incidents that has cropped up around Trump’s spurious claims of a rigged election. Cedric Richmond, a Democratic representative from Louisiana who Biden has tapped as the incoming director of the White House Office of Public Engagement, said they were anxious about what lay ahead in the holiday season.“We are concerned about violence,” he told Face the Nation on CBS News. “Where there’s violence it is not protest, that is breaking the law, so we are worried about it.”Asked about the majority of House Republicans who backed Trump’s frivolous lawsuit to block election results being certified, Richmond implied their resistance was more theatrical than real. “They recognize Joe Biden’s victory. This is just a small proportion of the Republican conference that is appeasing the president on his way out because they are scared of his Twitter” feed.The outlier nature of Trump’s stubborn refusal to concede was underlined on Sunday by Al Gore in an interview with CNN’s State of the Union. Exactly 20 years ago to the day, he conceded the bitterly-fought 2000 presidential race to George W Bush, saying: “This is America, we put country before party – we will stand together behind our new president.”Gore told CNN that he hoped Monday’s electoral college vote would be the beginning of healing. He called the lawsuit dismissed by the supreme court “ridiculous and unintelligible”, and castigated those Republicans who continued to stick with Trump in his “lost cause”.“With the electoral college votes tomorrow in all 50 states, I hope that will be the point at which some of those who have hung on will give up the ghost,” Gore said. “There are things more important than bowing to the fear of a demagogue.” More

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      'I won't vote next time': could Georgia Republicans' doubts cost them the runoffs?

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      As the sun dipped on a crisp autumnal evening in southern Georgia, Lauren Voyle stood in line for a front-row seat on the makeshift risers at the Valdosta regional airport. Donald Trump was due to arrive on the tarmac in a few hours’ time.It was the first time the president would hold a rally since losing the election in November and Voyle, who wore a blue Trump 2020 cap with the slogan “Keep Liberals Crying” on the rim, had driven four and a half hours from Cuming, a small city in the northern part of the state, to witness what she described as a historic moment.The president had ostensibly travelled to Georgia to canvass for the two Republican senate candidates, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, before a critical runoff election in January. But he spent the vast majority of an incoherent, 90-minute monologue spreading baseless disinformation about a rigged election, continuing to claim victory after losing by more than 7 million votes. Georgia election officials, meanwhile, have done three separate counts of the presidential vote, each time confirming Biden’s victory in the state.Some national Republicans fear that Trump’s continued denial of the results could have major consequences for the party in January, when this Senate election will determine control of the upper chamber. With over 70% of Republicans, according to recent polling, now believing that November’s presidential election was not “free and fair”, there are concerns that a collapse in trust in electoral processes could cost conservatives dearly at the ballot box.With the Senate election likely to be decided by a thin margin – both Democratic candidates, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, are slightly ahead, according to recent polls – even a small drop in turnout on either side could have significant consequences. In many ways, Voyle was the embodiment of their worst nightmare: a staunch Republican who would not turn up to vote again.“We really believe this election was crooked,” said the 57-year-old, who voted in the November election. “I won’t [vote] next time unless they give us a clean election with paper ballots, IDs and fingerprints. I’m not doing Dominion machines.”Although Trump urged supporters during his speech to turn out for Loeffler and Perdue, he also regurgitated many of the conspiracy theories about Dominion voting software and identification issues that Voyle described.Of the dozen people interviewed by the Guardian at Trump’s rally, all said they had mostly stopped watching Fox News, which faced the fury of Trump after accurately calling the election for Joe Biden, shifting their attention to Newsmax and the One America News Network, two fringe channels propagating baseless election fraud claims recently championed by the president.Even among some of those who did plan to vote, there remained a distinct lack of enthusiasm for the two Republican Senate candidates without Trump on the top of the ticket.“I’m not feeling it for either of them, but I’ll vote,” said Tammy Bailey, who had driven three hours south to attend in person. She added: “I feel like they’re both part of the deep state,” suggesting neither candidate had shown enough support for Trump’s efforts to subvert the election results.Loeffler and Perdue have walked a rhetorical tightrope during their second election season, on the one hand declining to articulate the full-throated, baseless claims of widespread fraud that Trump has propagated while on the otherdeclining to recognize Biden as the president-elect and offering their backing for desperate legal bids to overturn the result.On Sunday, during a televised debate, Loeffler, a multimillionaire businesswoman, declined three times to acknowledge the result, instead arguing that Trump had “every right to every legal recourse”.Democrats in the state are quietly confident that this confusing messaging will play into their hands. “While they’re scrambling to make clear sense to their base, our message is clear and unified,” said one source close to the Ossoff campaign.In his effort to undermine Georgia’s election results, Trump has also attacked two of the top Republicans in the state, Governor Brian Kemp and Brad Raffensperger, the secretary of state. Despite Trump’s howling, both men have refused to acquiesce to his request and Raffensperger has loudly dismissed allegations the election was rigged against Trump. Raffensperger has said that Trump’s own criticism of voting by mail cost him the election in Georgia.Asked whether the president’s attacks were hurting Republicans’ chances of winning the runoff, Raffensperger told the Guardian it would be “helpful” to separate the general election and the coming vote.“The most helpful thing for the senators is obviously to have everyone focused on them getting re-elected in the runoff election,” Raffensperger said. “It’s very tough, I understand, to really bifurcate the issue of the presidential race from the senatorial runoffs, but the better that the state party and the candidates do that, the better it really is.”“I would never tell anyone not to turn out to vote. I don’t know why someone would do that. All the true blue, or I guess true red Republicans, we’ll be all out there, making sure that we vote for our senators,” he added.Raffensperger, who certified Georgia’s election results for Biden last month, has received threats against him and his family for doing so, and urged leaders from both sides “to condemn violence and threats of violence”.The attacks have also made it harder for local election officials to prepare for the runoff. Janine Eveler, the director of elections and registration in Cobb county, which encompasses the Atlanta suburbs, said she had been getting about 50 calls and emails a day from people concerned about the election.“It has taken away time that we could be working on the election to field all of their questions,” she said, adding that it was extremely difficult to convince the callers there had not been fraud. “They are unwilling to listen to any rebuttal of that. It’s fruitless. You can’t really explain anything to anybody because they’re not willing to listen.”Eveler said the attacks had taken a toll on election workers. She said her office had lost about 15 workers for the runoffs, which she attributed to a combination of concerns about Covid, burnout, and the attacks.“The public scrutiny over things, the accusations of wrongdoing that we’ve endured is very discouraging to people,” she said. “They don’t make a lot of money. And they’re working really hard. And to be accused of fraudulent activity, it’s hard for people. Their pictures are in the newspaper all the time, counting ballots.”The lack of staffing has also meant Cobb county has had to cut by half the number of early voting sites for the runoff, a move that drew strong objections from civil rights groups who said the few sites that were available were not adequately accessible for minority voters. Cobb county is one of the largest in Georgia, home to more than 537,000 registered voters, and flipped to Biden in November – the first time the county had chosen a Democratic candidate in 40 years.Eveler acknowledged the accessibility was a problem and said the county was moving one site and working on a plan to ramp up staffing and open two additional locations during the final week of early voting.Republicans in the Georgia state legislature have already signaled they intend to use the uncertainty Trump created around the election to implement new restrictions on voting by mail. State Republicans said this month they planned to move legislation that would require photo ID with a mail-in ballot, eliminate ballot drop boxes and require an excuse to vote by mail – a rule that exists in just a handful of states.“I can’t understand why all of a sudden now we have to have these barriers to vote by mail,” said Helen Butler, executive director of the Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda, a civil rights group that helps expand access to the polls. “When the other side used it – and I’m just gonna be honest, more white people used vote by mail than people of color, because they didn’t trust the process – now that we’ve got them trusting the process, now they want to go in and change the rules.”National Democrats, too, see Trump’s efforts to undermine the process as a long-term danger to democracy across the country, which could extend well beyond the election in Georgia.At an Ossoff campaign rally in the city of Lilburn, just outside Atlanta, Julián Castro, the former presidential candidate and US housing secretary, paused in the cold to reflect on the post-election circus.“The attacks that Donald Trump is launching against the basic foundations of our democracy are dangerous. They are the types of things that can weaken the common agreement we all have of participating in democracy, believing in it, supporting it and abiding by it,” he told the Guardian.“All because this man acts like a child and can’t put the needs of the country above his own selfish needs.” More

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      Trump supporters rally against election outcome as Proud Boys and Antifa face off

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      Conservative groups protesting against US president-elect Joe Biden’s election victory gathered for protests across the country on Saturday, including in Washington where far-right groups clashed with counter-protesters despite a heavy police presence.Organizers of Stop The Steal, who allege without evidence that the 3 November election win was tainted by fraud, and church groups urged supporters to participate in “Jericho Marches” and prayer rallies.But in downtown Washington, tensions rose after dark as scores of pro-Trump “Proud Boys” protesters and “Antifa” counterprotesters faced off, separated by police in riot gear and on bicycles.Around 200 members of the Proud Boys, a violent far-right group, had joined the marches earlier on Saturday near the Trump hotel in the capital. Many wore combat fatigues and ballistic vests, carried helmets and flashed hand signals used by white nationalists.The two groups shouted insults at each other across a street near McPherson Square and some set off fireworks, but police kept them apart.Police pepper-sprayed at least two counter-protesters before the Proud Boys left the area and regrouped several blocks away.Protests were also planned in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada and Arizona, where Trump’s campaign has sought to overturn vote counts.More than 50 federal and state court rulings have upheld Biden’s victory. The US supreme court on Friday rejected a long-shot lawsuit filed by Texas and backed by Trump seeking to throw out voting results in four states.“Whatever the ruling was yesterday … everybody take a deep, deep breath,” retired army general Mike Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, told protesters in front of the supreme court, referring to the court’s refusal to hear the Texas case.Flynn who twice pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about contacts with the former Russian ambassador, spoke in his first public address since Trump pardoned him in November.“My charge to you is to go back to where you are from” and make demands, Flynn told the crowd, without being more specific. The US constitution is “not about collective liberty it is about individual liberties, and they designed it that way”, he said.Trump has refused to concede defeat, alleging without evidence that he was denied victory by massive fraud. On his way to Andrews air force base and then to the annual Army-Navy football game in New York, Trump made three passes in the Marine One helicopter over the cheering protesters.Trump’s supporters carrying flags and signs made their way in small knots toward Congress and the supreme court through downtown Washington, which was closed to traffic by police vehicles and dump trucks.Few of the marchers wore masks, despite soaring Covid-19 deaths and cases, defying a mayoral directive for them to be worn outside. Several thousand people rallied in Washington, fewer than during a similar protest last month.As some in the crowd echoed far right conspiracy theories about the election, a truck-pulled trailer flew Trump 2020 flags and a sign reading “Trump Unity” while blaring the country song “God Bless the USA”.“It’s clear the election has been stolen,” said Mark Paul Jones of Delaware Water Gap, Pennsylvania, who sported a tricorner revolutionary war-era hat as he walked toward the supreme court with his wife.Some protesters referenced the Biblical miracle of the battle of Jericho, in which the walls of the city crumbled after soldiers and priests blowing horns marched around it.In his speech, Flynn told the protesters they were all standing inside Jericho after breaching its walls.Ron Hazard of Morristown, New Jersey, was one of five people who stopped at the justice department to blow shofars – a ram’s horn used in Jewish religious ceremonies – to bring down “the spiritual walls of corruption”.“We believe what is going on in this county is an important thing. It’s a balance between biblical values and anti-biblical values,” Hazard said. More

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      Trump loses another case challenging election results in latest legal rebuke

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      [embedded content]
      Donald Trump lost a federal court challenge on Saturday in Wisconsin while judges said yet another case being fought there “smacks of racism”.
      The slap-downs came less than 24 hours after the abrupt dismissal by the US supreme court of the most audacious Republican attempt yet to overturn Joe Biden’s victory in the election almost six weeks ago.
      But despite the latest stinging legal defeats and rebukes, Trump took to the skies in the Marine One presidential helicopter on Saturday on his way to an engagement in New York and flew above a protest of several hundred diehard supporters in Washington DC, who persist in bolstering his false claims that the election was “stolen” from him by fraud and conspiracy.
      This as the US electoral college will vote on Monday to confirm Biden’s resounding victory, alongside his Democratic vice president-elect, Kamala Harris.
      And a trickle of Republicans joined leading Democrats in speaking up about the increasing futility but also the insidiousness of the lame duck president’s aggressive clinging to power.
      After the supreme court decision, Christine Todd Whitman, the former Republican governor of New Jersey, said of the Trump campaign challenges to the election result: “It is now truly over. Trump and his acolytes need to stop all efforts to deny millions of votes.”
      More than 120 Republican members of the House of Representatives wrote an amicus brief to the supreme court last week in support of the lawsuit brought by Texas, which had been joined by Trump and aimed to overturn Biden’s victory in four key swing states, which the court on Friday night abruptly refused to consider.
      Michael Steele, the former chair of the Republican National Committee, called the effort “an affront to the country”.
      “It’s an offense to the constitution and it leaves an indelible stain that will be hard for these 126 members to wipe off their political skin,” he told the New York Times.
      In Wisconsin on Saturday, the US district judge Brett Ludwig dismissed one of Trump’s latest lawsuits there that asked the court to order the state’s Republican-controlled legislature to name him as the winner, whereas in fact Biden won Wisconsin on his way to winning the White House.
      Even as Ludwig said Trump’s arguments “fail as a matter of law and fact” an attorney for the president, Jim Troupis, was busy arguing in another case, before a skeptical Wisconsin state supreme court, a lawsuit that, if successful, would disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of voters in Wisconsin’s most diverse counties, Dane and Milwaukee, where Biden won.
      Trump is not challenging any votes in Wisconsin counties that he won.
      “This lawsuit, Mr Troupis, smacks of racism,“ the justice Jill Karofsky said to Trump’s attorney early in his arguments.
      “I do not know how you can come before this court and possibly ask for a remedy that is unheard of in US history … It is not normal,” she added.
      One of Karofsky’s fellow judges in that case, where a decision is now awaited, pointed out that Trump also did not make such challenges when he won Wisconsin on his way to the White House in 2016. More