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    ‘We will not be bullied’: House Democrats involved in video to troops confirm FBI is seeking to question them – live

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    Four Democratic members of the US House, who appeared in a video telling service members to “refuse illegal orders”, confirmed that the FBI has requested interviews with them. All of the lawmakers in the video are former members of the military or intelligence community.Today, the representatives issued statements, saying that Donald Trump is using the FBI “as a tool to intimidate and harass” them.“We swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. That oath lasts a lifetime, and we intend to keep it. We will not be bullied. We will never give up the ship,” representatives Maggie Goodlander, Jason Crow, Chrissy Houlahan, and Chris Deluzio wrote.In a lengthy social media post, Donald Trump wrote on Thuesday that his attempt to hold on to the House through gerrymandering ahead of the 2026 midterms is not yet done.“It looks like the Indiana Senate Republicans will be coming back in two weeks to take up Redistricting,” Trump reported.He went on to threaten any state lawmakers who fail not support the effort to tilt the electoral map in Indiana more in favor of Republicans with primary challenges.“I am glad to hear the Indiana House is stepping up to do the right thing, and I hope the Senate finds the Votes. If they do, I will make sure that all of those people supporting me win their Primaries, and go on to Greatness but, if they don’t, I will partner with the incredibly powerful MAGA Grassroots Republicans to elect STRONG Republicans,” the president wrote on his social media platform.Interior secretary Doug Burgum announced today the new cost of an annual national parks pass for international tourists.For US residents, the cost of a yearly pass (which grants access to 63 of America’s national parks) will stay at $80. But for those visiting, they’ll have to fork out $250.When visiting any of the 11 most visited parks, non-residents will also pay a new $100 per person fee (in addition to the usual entry fee). There will also be five extra “fee free days” for US residents.Washington DC’s mayor, Muriel Bowser, said today she would not seek re-election. Instead, she will finish out the remainder of her third term and leave office in January 2027.Bowser, once a vocal critic of Donald Trump, found herself complying when he returned to the White House in January, launched a federal takeover of the Metropolitan Police Department, and deployed national guard troops to the district earlier this year. While critics blamed Bowser for acquiescing to the administration, supporters felt she exercised tactical soft-power given the legal limitations of leading the nation’s capital.In a video posted to social media, Bowser noted that her administration “brought our city back from the ravages of a global pandemic, and summoned our collective strength to stand tall against police who threaten our very autonomy while preserving home rule that is our North Star.”Bowser added that she’s “cherished the opportunity” to serve her hometown for 10 years, and has “happily given all my passion and energy to the job that I love”. Notably, she did not say which candidate she would endorse to succeed her.In September, I reported on how Bowser had to navigate her political summer stand-off with Trump.Donald Trump may have inadvertently pardoned any citizen who committed voter fraud in 2020 when he granted a pardon to Rudy Giuliani and other allies for their efforts to overturn the election, legal experts say.The pardons of Giuliani and others who participated in the fake elector scheme earlier this month were largely symbolic since the federal government dismissed its criminal cases once Trump was elected. Many of those pardoned have faced criminal charges at the state level.But, the federal pardon could wind up having a big effect on people like Matthew Alan Laiss, who is accused of voting in both Pennsylvania and Florida in the 2020 election. According to a federal indictment handed down in September, Laiss moved from Pennsylvania to Florida in August of 2020 and voted first with a mail-in ballot in Pennsylvania and then in person in Florida on election day. Both votes were for Trump, Laiss’ lawyers wrote in court documents. He has pleaded not guilty.The case is still in its early stages. Last week, Laiss’ lawyers, public defenders Katrina Young and Elizabeth Toplin, argued that the charges should be thrown out because Trump had pardoned him.They argued that Trump’s 7 November pardon was sweeping. It applies to any US citizen for conduct relating to the advice, creation, organization, execution, submission, support, voting, activities, participation in, or advocacy for or of any slate or proposed slate of presidential electors, whether or not recognized by any state or state official, in connection with the 2020 presidential election.” And while it lists a number of people the pardon specifically applies to, it also says the pardon is not limited to those named.That language is so broad, lawyers for Laiss wrote, it also applies to their client.Elissa Slotkin, one of the two Democratic senators in the video to troops, said today she was aware that the FBI’s counterterrorism division “appeared to open an inquiry” into her.She wrote:
    The President directing the FBI to target us is exactly why we made this video in the first place. He believes in weaponizing the federal government against his perceived enemies and does not believe laws apply to him or his Cabinet. He uses legal harassment as an intimidation tactic to scare people out of speaking up.
    A reminder that after the video was published online, Donald Trump accused the lawmakers of “seditious behavior, punishable by death” in a post on Truth Social. He also re-shared several comments from other users calling for the arrest, trial and execution of the Democratic members of Congress.For her part, Slotkin remained resolute today. “This isn’t just about a video,” she said in her statement. “This is not the America I know, and I’m not going to let this next step from the FBI stop me from speaking up for my country and our Constitution.”Four Democratic members of the US House, who appeared in a video telling service members to “refuse illegal orders”, confirmed that the FBI has requested interviews with them. All of the lawmakers in the video are former members of the military or intelligence community.Today, the representatives issued statements, saying that Donald Trump is using the FBI “as a tool to intimidate and harass” them.“We swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. That oath lasts a lifetime, and we intend to keep it. We will not be bullied. We will never give up the ship,” representatives Maggie Goodlander, Jason Crow, Chrissy Houlahan, and Chris Deluzio wrote.Mitch McConnell, the Republican senator from Kentucky and former majority leader, has critiqued a possible US co-authored peace plan to end the war in Ukraine, which might require land concessions.“The most basic reality on the ground is that the price of peace matters. A deal that rewards aggression wouldn’t be worth the paper it’s written on,” he lawmaker wrote in a post on X. “America isn’t a neutral arbiter, and we shouldn’t act like one.”Last week, McConnell said that Vladimir Putin has “spent the entire year trying to play President Trump for a fool”. He added that the president “ought to find new advisors” if administration officials are “more concerned with appeasing Putin than securing real peace”. In response, vice-president JD Vance said that every criticism of the peace deal “either misunderstands the framework or misstates some critical reality on the ground”.It’s almost 1:30pm in Washington, and here’s were things stand today.

    As he prepared to pardon two lucky turkeys, Waddle and Gobble, the president said he thought a peace deal on Russia’s war in Ukraine was getting very close but gave no other details. “We’re going to get there,” Donald Trump said. Earlier, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that “tremendous progress” had been made towards a deal. In a post on X, she added that “a few delicate, but not insurmountable” details remain and “will require further talks between Ukraine, Russia, and the United States”.

    The FBI has requested interviews with the six Democratic members of Congress who took part in a video where they told members of the military to “refuse illegal orders”, according to Reuters. Citing an unnamed justice department official, Reuters reports that the FBI is asking for interviews with senators Mark Kelly and Elissa Slotkin, as well as House representatives Maggie Goodlander, Jason Crow, Chrissy Houlahan, and Chris Deluzio. The FBI declined to comment when the Guardian reached out about the latest report.

    For his part, senator Kelly called the Pentagon’s announcement that it is investigating the him for possible breaches of military law for taking part in the video as an act of “intimidation”. In an interview with Rachel Maddow on MS NOW, Kelly added: “I don’t think there’s anything more patriotic than standing up for the constitution. And right here, right now, this week, the president clearly is not doing that.”
    In his remarks before the pardoning just then, Trump also said he thought a deal on Russia’s war in Ukraine was getting “very close” but gave no other details. “We’re going to get there,” he said.“I think we’re getting very close to a deal, we’ll find out … I think we’re making progress,” he added.My colleagues over on the Europe blog report that a short while ago Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Kyiv was ready to move forward with a US-backed peace deal, and that he was prepared to discuss its sensitive points with Trump in talks he said should include European allies.In a speech to the ‘coalition of the willing’, a copy of which was seen by Reuters, the Ukrainian president urged European leaders to hash out a framework for deploying a “reassurance force” to Ukraine and to continue supporting Kyiv for as long as Moscow shows no willingness to end its war.Gobble is officially pardoned. Along with Waddle, he’ll live out the rest of his days in North Carolina. More

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      The Comey and James dismissals are a reminder of Trump’s lawlessness | Austin Sarat

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      Monday brought good news for two of Donald Trump’s most hated enemies: the former FBI director James Comey, and the New York state attorney general, Letitia James. A federal judge dismissed the sham indictments the administration had obtained against them.Judge Cameron McGowan Currie reminded the president and his attorney general of the great lessons of a society governed by the rule of law: how things are done matters as much as what is done. Without fair procedures, no one can be safe from the arbitrary exercise of government power.This is never more apparent than when leaders target their political opponents and seek revenge against those who do not fall in line. The US is learning this lesson in real time as the Trump administration politicizes prosecution.Recall the president’s infamous 20 September direction to Pam Bondi, the US attorney general.“Pam,” Trump posted to Truth Social, “I have reviewed over 30 statements and posts saying that, essentially, ‘same old story as the last time, all talk, no action. Nothing is being done. What about Comey, Adam ‘Shifty’ Schiff, Leticia??? They’re all guilty as hell, but nothing is going to be done.’“Then,” he continued, “we almost put in a Democrat supported U.S. Attorney, in Virginia, with a really bad Republican past … I fired him, and there is a GREAT CASE, and many lawyers, and legal pundits, say so. Lindsey Halligan is a really good lawyer, and likes you, a lot.”The president ended by making it clear what he wanted and why he wanted it. “We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility. They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!”Two days later, Bondi installed Halligan as interim US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia with an apparent mandate to go after Comey, James and others. Several days after that, Comey was indicted in federal court, accused of lying to Congress; the next month, James was indicted in a mortgage case. Both denied wrongdoing and said the cases were intended to punish them for past clashes with him.On Monday, Currie delivered a decisive rebuke to Trump and Bondi when she threw out the Comey and James indictments. She found that Halligan’s appointment violated the clear language of the statute governing such appointments and of the constitution itself.As a result, all of the actions flowing from her appointment, including the indictments of Comey and James, were “unlawful exercises of executive power”. While Currie left the door open for the administration to refile indictments against Comey and James, in Comey’s case, the time allowed under the applicable statute of limitations has run out.As the Washington Post notes, Currie’s decision is just the latest in a series of judicial rulings “disqualifying Trump’s interim U.S. attorney picks in New Jersey, Nevada, and Los Angeles”. Like her colleagues, Currie made clear that Trump’s Department of Justice had again distinguished itself by its dangerous combination of lawlessness and incompetence.Her opinion is good news for defenders of the rule of law. It should also strengthen the hand of other judges who want to push back against the administration’s vindictive prosecutions.Judges, like Currie, are never eager to dismiss an indictment issued by a grand jury. They are inclined to trust the grand jury process and are reluctant to cast aside the investment of time and resources that a good prosecutor makes in securing an indictment.In 1988, the supreme court held that, in most cases, dismissal of an indictment is appropriate only if errors in the handling of the grand jury process prejudiced a defendant by “substantially” influencing the decision to indict or raising “grave doubt” about whether the decision was free from such influence.As the attorney James M Burnham has written, this high bar “plays a central role in the ever-expanding, vague nature of federal criminal law because it largely eliminates the possibility of purely legal judicial opinions construing criminal statutes”. Burnham wants judges to be more active in policing indictments and making sure they are legally justified.Currie did just that. She found that Halligan lacked the authority to seek indictments of Comey or James because the justice department had not followed the applicable law governing the appointment of interim US attorneys. That law is, in her words, “unambiguous”.It allows the attorney general to appoint an interim US attorney, who can serve for a period of 120 days. It falls to a federal district court, not the administration, to choose a successor or extend the term of the current interim appointee – as happened with Halligan’s predecessor.The purpose of the law, Currie noted, was to prevent the president from circumventing the constitutional requirement that US attorneys go through a Senate confirmation process by making a series of interim appointments back-to-back.But Senate confirmation takes time. Alas, how inconvenient when the president demands that his enemies must be brought to justice now.Bondi may have known what the law required when she appointed Halligan to do the president’s bidding. But she seems to interpret her role as serving Trump and pushing the outer boundaries of the law until a judge has the temerity to tell her she can’t.Like federal judges in other cases, that is what Currie did. Along the way, the judge noted that Halligan was a “White House aide with no prior prosecutorial experience”, who appeared alone before the grand jury after career prosecutors in her office concluded that neither had committed any crime.In the end, the judge, having pointed out the lawlessness and incompetence that accompanied Halligan’s appointment and the Comey and James indictments, reminded Bondi and the president that the legal requirements governing appointments, as the supreme court once said, are “more than a matter of etiquette or protocol”. No matter how much the president insists or how many all-caps messages he posts to Truth Social, those requirements cannot be discarded, she concluded, to suit the president, since they are “among the significant structural safeguards of the constitutional scheme”.

      Austin Sarat, William Nelson Cromwell professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College, is the author or editor of more than 100 books, including Gruesome Spectacles: Botched Executions and America’s Death Penalty More

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      in US Politics

      US judge throws out criminal cases against James Comey and Letitia James

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      A federal judge threw out the criminal cases against James Comey and Letitia James on Monday, concluding that the prosecutor handling the cases was unlawfully appointed.Lindsey Halligan, who Trump named the interim US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia in September, had “no lawful authority to present the indictment” against the former FBI director and New York attorney general, Judge Cameron McGowan Currie, wrote in her opinion.“I conclude that the attorney general’s attempt to install Ms Halligan as Interim US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia was invalid and that Ms Halligan has been unlawfully serving in that role since September 22, 2025,” Currie, who was appointed to the bench by Bill Clinton, wrote in her opinion. She added that “all actions flowing from Ms Halligan’s defective appointment” were “unlawful exercises of executive power and must be set aside”.The decision is a major win for Comey, who was charged with lying to Congress five years ago, and James, who was charged with mortgage fraud. Both unequivocally denied wrongdoing and said the cases were a thinly veiled effort by the Trump administration to punish them for opposing Trump.“I am heartened by today’s victory and grateful for the prayers and support I have received from around the country,” James said in a statement. “I remain fearless in the face of these baseless charges as I continue fighting for New Yorkers every single day.”Comey also praised the decision.“I’m grateful that the court ended the case against me which was a prosecution based on malevolence and incompetence,” he said in a recorded video. “This case mattered to me personally, obviously, but it matters most because a message has to be sent that the president of the United States cannot use the Department of Justice to target his political enemies.“I know that Donald Trump will probably come after me again and my attitude is gonna be the same. I’m innocent, I am not afraid, and I believe in an independent federal judiciary,” he added.US attorneys must be confirmed by the Senate. Federal law allows the attorney general to appoint someone to serve on an acting basis for 120 days while a nomination is pending. Once that 120 day period is up, the law allows the judges on the district court where the prosecutor handles cases to appoint a top prosecutor.Halligan’s predecessor, Erik Siebert, began serving in the role on an interim basis in January. In May, at the end of the 120-day period, the judges in the eastern district of Virginia chose to extend his appointment. In September, Siebert was forced out of his role as it reportedly determined there was insufficient evidence to charge James with a crime. Trump installed Halligan, a White House aide with no prosecutorial experience in the role and Comey was indicted on charges of lying to Congress days later. Halligan then indicted James on allegations of mortgage fraud shortly after that.The Trump administration argued that the attorney general could simply revisit someone new every 120 days, but Currie said that would simply allow the attorney general to indefinitely appoint someone on an interim basis. The “text, structure, and history” of the law do not support the government’s argument she wrote.Currie dismissed both cases “without prejudice”, which means the government could theoretically try to bring the charges again under a properly appointed US attorney. But it is unclear if they could even do that in Comey’s case because the statute of limitations for the crime he is charged with passed on 30 September 2025.“The decision further indicates that because the indictment is void, the statute of limitations has run and there can be no further indictment,” said Patrick Fitzgerald, a lawyer for Comey. “The day when Mr Comey was indicted was a sad day for our government. Honest prosecutors were fired to clear the path for an unlawful prosecution. But today an independent judiciary vindicated our system of laws not just for Mr Comey but for all American citizens.”Halligan personally presented both cases to the grand jury and has been under intense scrutiny since taking her position. Last week, a judge overseeing the case questioned whether she had properly followed routine procedure in obtaining an indictment in Comey’s case. Prosecutors handling the case say they followed appropriate procedure.“The court’s order acknowledges what’s been clear about this case from the beginning. The president went to extreme measures to substitute one of his allies to bring these baseless charges after career prosecutors refused,” Abbe Lowell, a lawyer for James, said in a statement. “This case was not about justice or the law; it was about targeting Attorney General James for what she stood for and who she challenged. We will continue to challenge any further politically motivated charges through every lawful means available.” More

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      in US Politics

      Court rules Trump can’t expand fast-track deportation process

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      A federal appeals court on Saturday declined to clear the way for Donald Trump’s administration to expand a fast-track deportation process to allow for the expedited removal of immigrants who are living far away from the border.A 2-1 panel of the US court of appeals for the District of Columbia circuit declined to put on hold the central part of a ruling by a lower-court judge who had found that the administration’s policies violated the due process rights of immigrants who could be apprehended anywhere in the US.The US district judge Jia Cobb in an 29 August ruling sided with an immigrant rights group and blocked the US Department of Homeland Security from enforcing policies that exposed immigrants to the risk of rapid expulsion if the administration believed they had been in the country for less than two years.The administration asked the DC circuit to stay that ruling while it appealed.But the US circuit judges Patricia Millett and J Michelle Childs said the administration was unlikely to succeed in showing that its systems and procedures adequately protected immigrants’ due process rights under the US constitution’s fifth amendment.The judges, both appointees of Democratic presidents, cited “serious risks of erroneous summary removal” posed by the administration’s effort to expand the fast-track deportation process away from the borders to cover the entire US.While the court largely left Cobb’s order in place, it stayed part of it to the extent it required changes to how immigration authorities determine whether someone has a credible fear of being sent back to their country of origin.US circuit judge Neomi Rao, a Trump appointee, dissented and called Cobb’s ruling “impermissible judicial interference”.The department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The administration’s appeal on the merits is scheduled to be heard on 9 December.For nearly three decades, the expedited removal process has been used to quickly return immigrants apprehended at the border. In January, the administration expanded its scope to cover non-citizens apprehended anywhere in the US who could not show they had been in the country for two years.The policy mirrored one the Trump administration adopted in 2019 that Joe Biden’s administration later rescinded. The Trump policy also was challenged by the immigrant rights’ advocacy group Make the Road New York. More

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      Full grand jury didn’t see final Comey indictment, prosecutors admit

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      Federal prosecutors on Wednesday said they had never presented the final version of the indictment filed against James Comey to a full federal grand jury, a concession that adds to mounting challenges in their effort to prosecute the former FBI director.Prosecutors acknowledged the omission during a Wednesday hearing in which Comey’s lawyers argued the case against him should be dismissed because it was a selective and vindictive prosecution.Comey was indicted on 26 September on one count of making a false statement to Congress and one count of obstructing a congressional proceeding in connection with testimony he gave in 2020 in which he said he had not “authorized someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports” regarding Hillary Clinton.Court documents from September show that Lindsey Halligan, a Trump ally installed as a top prosecutor in the case, had sought an additional false statement charge against Comey, but that grand jurors had rejected it.Once the grand jury rejected the charge, Halligan could have had the full grand jury vote again on a copy of the indictment that only included the two charges they voted to indict on, or presented the judge with a three-count indictment crossing out the count on which the grand jury had chosen not to indict on. But, pressed on Wednesday by Michael Nachmanoff, the US district judge overseeing the case, Halligan confirmed that only the foreperson and another grand juror had seen the revised indictment that had only the two charges the grand jury had voted to indict on, CNN and Lawfare reported on Wednesday.Comey’s team therefore views the indictment as null. “There is no indictment Mr Comey is facing,” Michael Dreeben, one of Comey’s lawyers said in court on Wednesday. N Tyler Lemons, an assistant US attorney handling the case, argued that there wasn’t a problem because the final version of the indictment merely removed a charge rejected by the grand jury. “The new indictment wasn’t a new indictment,” he said, according to the Washington Post.Andrew Tessman, a former federal prosecutor in West Virginia and Washington DC, said he saw the issue as “highly problematic” and a “fatal flaw”. “This is just not how grand jury operates,” he said.Halligan is a former insurance lawyer who presented the case to the grand jury herself despite never having previously handled a criminal case.A transcript of the hearing in which the indictment was returned in Comey’s case obtained by CBS News shows some confusion over the indictment. The magistrate judge overseeing it said she had been given two versions of the indictment.“The reason we want to cross all of our T’s and dot all of our I’s in these situations is because the court is also going to take it very seriously for the same reasons. And if you screw up one step in this process, then you’re risking the whole case going away in an embarrassing fashion,” Tessman said. “The US attorney’s office is going to take this whole process very seriously, but the court is going to take it even more seriously. And if they see one thing wrong with how the case was presented to the grand jury, they’re going to err on the side of protecting people’s constitutional rights.”“It’s understandable. You pulled a random insurance lawyer off the street and you put her into the grand jury with no training and no other experienced attorney there,” he added. “It’s not surprising at all that some big mistake was made.”Nachmanoff gave the justice department until 5pm on Wednesday to further explain what happened.Before Trump installed Halligan, it was widely reported that career prosecutors believed there was not sufficient evidence to charge Comey with a crime. On Wednesday, Lemons said the deputy attorney general’s office had instructed him not to disclose whether a memo outlining the reasons for not prosecuting the case existed.Wednesday’s hearing came days after a magistrate judge handling the case said there may have been “government misconduct” and that Halligan made at least two “fundamental and highly prejudicial” misstatements of law to the grand jury. The magistrate judge ordered the prosecutors to take the highly unusual step of turning over grand jury materials to Comey’s team. That order is on hold while an appeal is pending. More

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      in Elections

      Trump pardons Giuliani, Meadows and others over plot to steal 2020 election

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      Rudy Giuliani and Mark Meadows, both close former political allies of Donald Trump, are among scores of people pardoned by the president over the weekend for their roles in a plot to steal the 2020 election.The maneuver is in effect symbolic, given it only applies in the federal justice system and not in state courts where Giuliani, Meadows and the others continue facing legal peril. The acts of clemency were announced in a post late on Sunday to X by US pardon attorney Ed Martin, covers 77 people said to have been the architects and agents of the scheme to install fake Republican electors in several battleground states, which would have falsely declared Trump their winner instead of the actual victor: Joe Biden.Those pardoned include Giuliani and Sidney Powell, former lawyers to Trump, and Meadows, who acted as White House chief of staff during his first term of office. Other prominent names include Jenna Ellis and John Eastman, attorneys who advised Trump during and immediately after the election that Biden won to interrupt Trump’s two terms.“Let their healing begin,” Martin said in the post, in which he thanked Trump, the attorney general, Pam Bondi, and her deputy, Todd Blanche, for “allowing me … to achieve your intent”.Martin is a staunchly conservative ally of the president said to be behind the “weaponization” of the justice department and a push to “bully, prosecute, punish and silence” Trump’s political foes and critics, including the recent indictments of the former FBI director James Comey, New York attorney general, Leticia James, and former national security adviser John Bolton.The pardons extend Trump’s efforts to rewrite the aftermath of the 2020 election and failed efforts to deny Biden the White House. On his first day back in office in January, Trump issued “full, complete and unconditional” presidential pardons for more than 1,500 people involved in the 6 January 2021 attack on Congress, in which five people died and many others, including law enforcement officers, were injured during a desperate attempt by his supporters to keep him in office.Many of those listed in Martin’s pardon document, which it specifically states “does not apply to the president of the United States”, were involved in legal cases and investigations in numerous states that Biden won, including Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Michigan, Wisconsin and Nevada.The pardons, like those for the 6 January rioters, are “full, complete and unconditional” – and apply only in federal court, making them “largely symbolic”, according to the New York Times.Proceedings against some of the individuals are still active at state level, including in Georgia, where an election interference case against an initial 19 defendants, including Trump, has stalled due to the disqualification of the Fulton county prosecutor, Fani Willis.Ellis joined Powell and another Trump lawyer, Kenneth Chesebro, in taking a plea deal in the Georgia case in 2023. Addressing the court in tears, she admitted a felony count of aiding and abetting false statements and writings.Chesebro was disbarred in New York earlier this year for his involvement, Ellis’s Colorado law license was suspended for three years, and efforts to disbar Powell failed because a panel in Texas ruled her misdemeanor convictions in Georgia were neither serious nor intentional.Giuliani also received severe consequences as leader of the plot to keep Trump in office. He was banned from practicing law in New York and Washington DC. He was ordered to pay almost $150m to two Georgia election workers he defamed. And the former New York City mayor was also caught up in defamation trials involving two voting machine manufacturers, Dominion and Smartmatic.Meadows, meanwhile, failed to persuade the supreme court to move the Georgia election case to federal court and pleaded not guilty last year to criminal charges in Arizona, where he was among 18 indicted defendants.Trump’s proclamation, dated 7 November, described efforts to prosecute those accused of aiding his efforts to cling to power as “a grave national injustice perpetrated on the American people” and said the pardons were designed to continue “the process of national reconciliation”,The White House did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment on Monday.The Associated Press contributed to this report More

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      How Trump is weaponizing the DoJ to ‘bully, prosecute, punish and silence’ his foes

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      Donald Trump’s intense pressure on the US Department of Justice (DoJ) to charge key foes with crimes based on dubious evidence and his ongoing investigations of other political enemies is hurting the rule of law in the US and violating departmental policies, which scholars and ex-prosecutors say may help scuttle some charges.They also voice dismay about charges filed against ex-FBI director James Comey and Letitia James, the New York attorney general, by Lindsey Halligan, the ex-White House lawyer and novice prosecutor, who Trump installed in a key US attorney post after forcing out a veteran prosecutor who deemed the cases weak.Comey, charged with lying to Congress about an FBI leak and obstruction of Congress, and James, charged with bank fraud and false statements to a financial unit, have pleaded not guilty and are garnering hefty support from ex-DoJ officials and legal experts challenging the paltry evidence against them.Over 100 ex-DoJ officials filed an amicus brief on 27 October mirroring part of Comey’s legal defense that his prosecution was a “vindictive” one, and should be dropped given longstanding departmental policies barring such legal tactics. Trump’s animus against Comey stems from the FBI’s inquiry of Russia’s role in helping Trump’s campaign in 2016 when Comey led the FBI.James Pearce, an ex-DoJ lawyer and a senior counsel at the Washington Litigation Group who helped organize the amicus, said: “It explains that the justice department’s policies seek to ensure fair and impartial prosecutions – which the constitution’s due process clause requires. Unfortunately, the public record suggests that the Comey prosecution neither adheres to those policies nor comports with the constitutional obligations underpinning them.”Other amicus briefs supporting Comey were filed in late October by groups including the Protect Democracy Project and Democracy Defenders Fund.View image in fullscreenFurther contesting the Comey and James charges, Democracy Defenders Fund sent a letter to the DoJ inspector general signed by ethics advisors to presidents Bill Clinton, George W Bush and Barack Obama blasting Trump’s move to make Halligan an interim US attorney and file charges against them, and seeking an investigation of the prosecutions.“After Watergate, no precept was more central to the re-professionalization of the justice department than distancing the White House from decision making about individual prosecutions,” said Peter Shane, who teaches constitutional law at New York University“Trump’s conspicuous public involvement in triggering prosecutions against his enemies along with the seemingly paltry ‘evidence’ against Comey and James, in particular, is likely to mean that at least some of these cases will be dismissed before trial. There is also a serious legal question whether Halligan has been legitimately appointed to the USA position in Virginia.”Other legal experts say the justice department has been “weaponized” to further Trump’s revenge drive against Comey, James and other current and former officials who Trump blames for his legal problems including two impeachments and federal charges that he tried to subvert his 2020 election loss.“The overt and explicit ‘weaponization’ of the justice department, in defiance of the professional judgment of career prosecutors that the criminal prosecutions are unwarranted, is the worst type of corruption of the rule of law,” said Philip Lacovara, who was counsel to the Watergate special prosecutor.View image in fullscreen“The department’s principles of federal prosecution explicitly prohibit federal prosecutors from considering partisan and political factors in deciding whether to pursue criminal charges. But Trump has made these considerations a primary motive for bringing down the weight of the federal law enforcement apparatus on the heads of his political enemies.”Lacovara’s points were underscored by how the DoJ has seemed to move in lockstep with Trump’s suggestions that foes he’s publicly attacked on Truth Social and in other public and private ways should be prosecuted or investigated.Notably, Trump implored Pam Bondi, the attorney general, in late September on Truth Social to bring charges against Comey, James and Adam Schiff, a Democratic senator, not long before the DoJ indicted the first two.Just a day after Trump had forced out the Virginia prosecutor who declined to indict key Trump foes, Trump upped the pressure on Bondi“What about Comey, Adam ‘Shifty’ Schiff, Leticia???” Trump wrote. “They’re all guilty as hell, but nothing is going to be done,” stressing that “we can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility.”In his missive addressed to “Pam”, Trump hyped the stakes for him: “They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!A person familiar with the inquiry of Schiff, and reports suggest that pressures from some DoJ leaders have increased on the US attorney in Maryland who has been exploring charging Schiff with mortgage fraud, but has lacked sufficient evidence to do so. Schiff and his attorney have attacked the investigation as vindictive and politically driven.The weekend before Comey’s indictment, Schiff hit back at Trump’s Truth Social posts targeting him. “There’s no hiding the political retaliation and weaponization. It’s all out in the open.”Trump’s ire at Schiff stems from when Schiff was a member of the House and served as manager during Trump’s first impeachment.Similarly, Trump’s hatred of James, who the DoJ charged soon after Comey, was fueled by a successful civil fraud case that her office brought against Trump’s real estate empire in 2024 that initially had a hefty $500m penalty.The penalty was overturned last month, but Trump and his two eldest sons remain barred for a few years from holding leadership posts with the family real-estate behemoth.Another Trump foe, John Bolton, ex-national security adviser, who has been a vocal Trump critic, was charged last month by Maryland’s US attorney with mishandling classified information. Legal experts note the investigation of Bolton began during the Biden administration and may be stronger than the cases against other Trump enemies.Bolton has pleaded not guilty.View image in fullscreenWithin the DoJ, a key figure in pushing hard for charges against some of Trump’s avowed enemies has been Ed Martin, a combative lawyer with strong Maga credentials including promoting bogus claims of election fraud in 2020 and legal work he did for some of the January 6 rioters.Martin displayed his Maga bona fides the day before the Capitol attack, when he told a rally of fervent Trump backers: “Thank you for standing for our president. But remember, what they’re stealing is not just an election. It’s our future.”Martin was originally tapped by Trump to be US attorney for DC, but after serving in that role on an interim basis, Trump withdrew his nomination for Senate approval after a key Republican senator indicated he wouldn’t support him.Soon after moving to the DoJ in May, Martin was put in charge of a “weaponization working group”, to go after alleged weaponization by DoJ under Democratic presidents.Martin’s radical views about prosecuting or publicly shaming Trump foes were palpable when he told reporters while exiting the US attorney’s post that if people “can’t be charged, we will name them … and in a culture that respects shame, they should be people that are ashamed”.Bondi tapped Martin over the summer to investigate the Schiff allegations, and to that end he met with Bill Pulte, the federal housing finance agency director, who had sent a criminal referral in May for Schiff to the DoJ, according to NBC.Boosting his stature at the DoJ, Martin has also been given the titles special attorney for mortgage fraud, associate deputy attorney general and pardon attorney.Former prosecutors raise strong concerns about Martin’s various DoJ roles including spurring some indictments of Trump’s foes.“His chief value to the administration is to go after people Trump has identified as enemies by any means or tactics he can find, whether legally sound or not,” said Mike Gordon, a senior DoJ prosecutor on January 6 cases and one of about 20 prosecutors ousted by Trump’s DoJ.Other ex-prosecutors see Martin’s modus operandi as dangerous.“Ed Martin’s role as both the pardon attorney and head of the weaponization working group is concerning in light of a long list of public comments he has made,” said Barbara McQuade, a former US attorney for eastern Michigan who now teaches law at the University of Michigan.“His letter writing campaign while he was serving as interim US attorney, demanding answers to questions from Democratic politicians, members of the media, and university leaders also suggests a political agenda that is antithetical to the independence of the justice department.”More broadly, Lacovara calls DoJ’s compliance with Trump’s demands to charge his enemies “a truly Orwellian shift in generations-long justice department tradition: Trump has managed to condemn investigations into his personal conduct by non-political professional prosecutors, while simultaneously and expressly commanding his political appointees in the justice department to prosecute his perceived political enemies.”Democrats in Congress too are irate over Trump’s use of DoJ for revenge against foes.“When Richard Nixon conducted retaliation against his political enemies, he did it in secret and tried to cover his tracks,” said Jamie Raskin, a Democratic representative of Maryland.“But Trump’s campaign of political persecution to bully, prosecute, punish and silence his political foes is taking place in broad daylight and on TV … I have faith, however, that judges and juries at the district level, unlike Bondi and Halligan, will uphold the rule of law.”Looking ahead, Michael Bromwich, ex-DoJ inspector general, said: “The flimsy cases being brought against people who Trump considers his enemies will fail, but the damage to the system of criminal justice and the Department of Justice will endure. That will be the legacy of the people who currently run the DoJ as a subagency of the White House.” More

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      Forget diplomatic niceties: it’s beyond time Europe denounced Trump’s trashing of democracy in the US | Paul Taylor

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      What do you do when you discover your best friend is abusive to their partner at home? That question, or something similar, should be addressed to European leaders – and indeed to all of us in the European public space, who are watching, often speechless, as Donald Trump takes a cudgel to the institutions of American democracy.For the last nine months, European leaders have bitten their tongues, looked the other way and engaged in flattery, appeasement and wild promises to keep the US president sweet and engaged in European security. The overwhelming imperative for Trump to stand with Europe against Russia over its war on Ukraine – or at least not against us and alongside Vladimir Putin – has led them to swallow unrealistic defence spending targets and unbalanced trade terms. For what gain?No European leader has publicly contradicted Trump’s inflated claims to have ended eight wars in eight months, nor criticised his demolition of the multilateral rules-based free trade order, his assault on the United Nations, or his selective use of tariffs to pursue political vendettas around the world.The only time European leaders briefly found their voices was when JD Vance used the stage of the Munich security conference to launch a fierce attack on European democracy. Vance accused US allies of suppressing free speech and said he was more worried by “the threat from within … the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values” than by any threat from Russia or China to the continent’s freedom. To underline his support for freedom of anti-immigrant hate speech, he chose to meet the leader of the far-right German AfD Alice Weidel in Munich in the midst of an election campaign, and to snub Berlin’s then-chancellor, Olaf Scholz of the Social Democrats.With millions of Americans now taking to the streets to protest against Trump’s authoritarian drift at home, isn’t it time for European leaders to speak up and assert their moral autonomy by signalling Europe’s support for democracy in the US, and for those who are trying to defend it?This is not to suggest that an expression of European dismay would have any practical effect on the dismantling of checks and balances in the US political system, the abolition of the USAID foreign aid agency, the crackdowns on universities, law firms and science, the abuse of the justice system against political enemies, or the purging of the armed forces and, most alarmingly, the deployment of the military in American cities to combat the “enemy from within”.While the US can protect security in Europe and deserves our undying gratitude for having done so for the last 80 years, Europeans cannot protect democracy in the US. They can and must, however, protect liberal democracy in Europe, which risks becoming a collateral victim of Trump’s domestic and foreign policy agenda.What happens in America doesn’t stay in America. It is often a precursor for trends in Europe. Just as the #MeToo and “woke” movements spilled over from Hollywood studios and US campuses to European film sets and universities, so the tide of illiberalism and repression rising in Washington is already washing up on European shores in countries such as Hungary and Serbia. By speaking up about Trump’s assaults on the independence of the US civil service, judiciary, legal profession, media and armed forces, and his moves to criminalise dissent, European leaders would be asserting the values of the rule of law, the separation of powers and liberal democracy that they have a duty to preserve at home.If Elon Musk can use his social media platform and the world’s biggest fortune to intervene in German elections in favour of Weidel’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) – or in British politics in support of convicted anti-Islam extremist Tommy Robinson – then surely we, too, can make our voices heard in US politics. We can offer support and practical cooperation to states, cities and courts that share our values, and moral support to US freedom campaigners. Our governments and regions can build partnerships on climate action, civil rights and development assistance with like-minded US states and local authorities. We can offer jobs, visas and scholarships to US scientists and academics hit by Trump’s cuts to research funding. Europe stands only to gain from a self-inflicted American brain drain.The massive No Kings protests in towns and cities across the US were fortunately peaceful, despite Trump’s deployment of armed forces in Washington DC, Los Angeles, Memphis, Portland and other cities, and the attempted mobilisation of the National Guard across 19 states. But having branded his leftwing opponents “domestic terrorists”, the risk is growing that Trump will make good on his threat to invokethe 1807 Insurrection Act and claim sweeping powers to use the military against American protesters.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe last time the US military was used for domestic policing against demonstrations was under Richard Nixon in 1970, when the National Guard shot dead four students protesting, at Kent State University in Ohio, against the draft and the US military intervention in Cambodia. An earlier precedent for the deadly use of force against peaceful protesters was in Selma, Alabama in 1965, when state and local police violently broke up civil rights marches by black Americans demanding the unhindered right to vote. On both those historic occasions, European media criticised the use of force against peaceful demonstrators, but governments on this side of the Atlantic kept their mouths shut, motivated by the principle of non-interference in the affairs of an allied state.With the administration and its billionaire buddies intervening at will in support of hate speech and its proponents in Europe and against EU digital regulation, there is no longer any justification for staying silent. On the contrary, the defence of European liberal democracy starts by recognising when it is under threat in our closest ally.

      Paul Taylor is a senior visiting fellow at the European Policy Centre More