US justice system

Subterms

    More stories

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Progressives denounce FBI attacks by right wing but push for agency reforms

      by

      Christopher Wray appeared stupefied. As the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation testified on Wednesday before the House judiciary committee, Republicans on the panel painted him as a liberal stooge abusing his power to punish Joe Biden’s political enemies.The accusations stunned Wray, a registered Republican who was appointed by Donald Trump and previously served in George W Bush’s administration.“The idea that I’m biased against conservatives seems somewhat insane to me, given my own personal background,” Wray told the committee.Some progressives share Wray’s disbelief. The two indictments of Donald Trump, as well as Hunter Biden’s plea deal with federal prosecutors and conspiracy theories about the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, have fueled Republicans’ accusations that the FBI and the justice department are unjustly targeting rightwing groups.Those allegations have somewhat complicated progressives’ longstanding criticism of the FBI over the bureau’s documented surveillance of liberal activists. Even as progressives denounce rightwing conspiracy theories about the FBI, they continue to push for an overhaul of the bureau’s surveillance and data collection methods.“If Republicans really care about FBI overreach of civil liberties, then they will get serious about the real reforms,” Representative Cori Bush, a Democrat from Missouri, said. “But that’s not really what they’re pushing right now. Instead, they’re still amplifying those conspiracy theories and trying to distract the public, to gaslight the country and distract us from Trump’s criminality.”Progressives’ skepticism of the FBI long predates Trump’s presidency. In 1956, the FBI launched its domestic counterintelligence program (Cointelpro) to infiltrate and discredit political organizations that the bureau considered suspicious. The program, which shuttered in 1971, resulted in the surveillance of many leaders in the anti-Vietnam war and civil rights movements, including Dr Martin Luther King Jr.Progressive activists’ concerns about FBI surveillance stretch into the present day. According to a 2022 memo declassified by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in May, the FBI violated its own guidelines in running so-called “batch queries” related to 133 people “arrested in connection with civil unrest and protests” after the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. The memo found that the FBI conducted similarly inappropriate inquiries of more than a dozen people suspected of participating in the January 6 Capitol attack.“The FBI for many decades – almost a century – has been sort of the chief secret police entity against the left and progressives,” said Vince Warren, executive director of the progressive Center for Constitutional Rights. “During that time, the right wing and Republicans have been the biggest cheerleaders of this illegal activity when aimed at communists, civil rights advocates, anti-war advocates, all the way up to [Black Lives Matter] protesters. That seemed to change in 2016, when they backed a lawless president who didn’t like that his illegal activities were being investigated.”Republicans’ sentiments toward the FBI have indeed shifted as Trump has come under increasing legal scrutiny, marking a notable sea change for a party that long claimed the mantle of law and order. When Trump was indicted on 37 federal charges last month for his alleged mishandling of classified documents, the former president’s congressional allies jumped to his defense, accusing the FBI and the justice department of exploiting its powers to target Republicans.Opening the hearing with Wray on Wednesday, Representative Jim Jordan, the Republican chair of the judiciary committee, bemoaned the “weaponization of the government against the American people” and “this double standard that exists now in our justice system”.Jordan repeatedly suggested that Republicans and Democrats could work together on reforming the FBI’s data collection methods, specifically in the form of overhauling the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa). That law, which is currently set to expire at the end of the year, has long been a source of outrage on the left. One particularly controversial provision of Fisa, section 702, allows the FBI to carry out warrantless surveillance of targeted foreigners overseas, and the personal data of many Americans – including Black Lives Matter protesters – have been swept up in the expansive searches made possible by the law.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWhen Representative Pramila Jayapal, the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, questioned Wray on Wednesday, she focused her queries on the FBI’s data collection methods and warned that Fisa would face “a very difficult reauthorization process”.During a press call on Wednesday, Jayapal expressed dissatisfaction with “the vagueness of the director’s answers” and suggested Democrats and Republicans could indeed work together to ensure a significant overhaul of Fisa.“I think that this is actually a bipartisan area of concern,” Jayapal said. “We have an opportunity here to ensure that any [Fisa] reauthorization that we pass contains some significant reforms that protect the privacy and the personal information of people across the country.”On the possibility of bipartisan Fisa reform efforts, Bush said she was “open to working with anyone who cares about real people and bringing about real change”, although she remained skeptical of Republicans’ commitment to the cause.“If that’s what they actually want to see, then yes, I’m open to working with them,” she said.Warren was even more dubious about bipartisan efforts to overhaul the FBI’s surveillance methods. Given Republicans’ decades-long history of endorsing the FBI despite its controversial tactics, he considered it unlikely that the party’s leaders would now embrace reform.“While the right and left may both see a problem with the FBI, I don’t see them agreeing on a reform solution,” Warren said. “The foundational challenge with federal law enforcement is that it broadly criminalizes communities of color and activists, and I think that, so long as those activists are environmental or [Black Lives Matter] ones, the right wing will be perfectly happy with the way things are going.” More

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      Can Biden solve his supreme court problem? – podcast

      by

      In recent weeks the US supreme court ended affirmative action, ruled in favour of a web designer who does not want to serve gay clients and blocked Joe Biden’s student debt forgiveness plan.
      Michael Safi speaks with Sam Levine, a voting rights reporter with Guardian US, to learn the stories behind these decisions, and what president Biden can do about them

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know More

    • 213 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      The right believes the FBI is obsessed with jailing Trump. The opposite is true | Andrew Gawthorpe

      by

      Donald Trump’s indictment earlier this month on 37 counts related to mishandling classified information set off a firestorm on the political right. Conservatives accused Joe Biden of using the justice system to prosecute his main political rival and attempting to “steal” the 2024 election. Kevin McCarthy, the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, promised to “hold this brazen weaponization of power accountable”. In short, the right wants us to believe that Biden and his administration will stop at nothing to put Trump in jail as quickly as possible.In fact, the exact opposite is true. Worried about just this type of accusation, the justice department under Merrick Garland and the FBI have approached their investigations of Trump much too cautiously. Far from being persecuted because of who he is, Trump’s status as a former president and as the unofficial leader of the Republican party have led to him being handled with vastly more deference than anyone else would be. The result has been a series of delays and missteps which may allow Trump to escape accountability once again.It is now nearly 18 months since the government first recovered classified material from Mar-a-Lago in early 2022. Although the justice department concluded shortly afterwards that Trump likely possessed further sensitive material, it took seven months for Mar-a-Lago to be searched, in part because the FBI feared that the move would open the agency to accusations of partisanship. Trump was then only indicted nearly a year later. After his initial arraignment he remains a free man, released without having to post bail – despite credible concerns he may still have additional classified material in his possession.Compare that timeline to the events surrounding the arrest of intelligence contractor Reality Winner, who in 2017 received a five-year prison sentence for leaking one document to the news website the Intercept. The document Winner leaked was written on 5 May 2017 and she was arrested on 3 June, days before the Intercept even had a chance to publish its article about her leak. She was indicted on 8 June and jailed pending her trial. Winner later pleaded guilty to violating the Espionage Act – precisely the law that it seemed clear Trump had flouted for over a year before he was indicted.Trump has likewise been slow to face consequences in the federal investigation into his actions leading up to the insurrection at the US Capitol. According to a new report by the Washington Post, the justice department and FBI delayed launching a probe into Trump’s push to overturn the 2020 election for 15 months, again because of fears that they would be criticized for partisanship. The agencies instead pursued cases against rank-and-file insurrectionists, ignoring the existence of evidence implicating Trump and his inner circle until media and political pressure forced them to begin taking it seriously.These delays matter because they make it possible – even likely – that Trump will never truly face accountability for his actions. Trump’s trial in the documents case is unlikely to be held before the 2024 presidential election and the same is true for any possible charges in the January 6 case. If Trump wins the election and becomes president again – as current polls suggest he will – then he will have multiple tools at his disposal to derail the trials or even pardon himself. Justice delayed will be justice denied.Efforts by the justice department and other agencies to appear non-partisan have been well-intended but outdated. The modern conservative movement will give the Biden administration and the law enforcement agencies little credit for proceeding so slowly and deliberately. Instead, the justice system’s extreme deference to conservative complaints will only encourage the Maga movement to double down. If federal law enforcement can be so easily scared away from enforcing the law without fear or favor, we can expect more hysteria and finger-pointing – even threats of violence – to follow in the future.These events also set a catastrophic precedent. The sitting president’s immunity from prosecution and the political barriers to impeachment leave criminal proceedings after a president leaves office as the last available means of imposing accountability. If law enforcement agencies are too scared to investigate prominent politicians promptly and effectively, even that opportunity will vanish and presidents will be left with virtually no checks on their behavior.But worst of all is the fact that if Trump gets off the hook and re-enters office, the independence and integrity of the justice department and FBI are likely to be destroyed anyway. He has made it clear that he would seek to weaponize law enforcement agencies against his political opponents, including by forcing the justice department to follow his personal and political vendettas.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump himself represents a unique threat to the rule of law and the independence of American law enforcement, one which must be confronted with appropriate but aggressive tools. Sadly, thanks to years of misplaced appeasement, it might already be too late.
      Andrew Gawthorpe is a historian of the United States at Leiden University. He hosts a podcast called America Explained and writes a newsletter of the same name More

    • 188 Shares179 Views

      in US Politics

      Media organizations push for release of sealed records of US priest accused of abusing children

      by

      Two national US media organizations and Louisiana state prosecutors have joined efforts to secure the public release of sealed information that would provide a more complete account of a retired Roman Catholic priest in New Orleans who has been previously accused of molesting several children.In papers filed late Wednesday at New Orleans’s federal courthouse, the Guardian and the Associated Press contend that there is a legitimate public interest in the contents of the documents dealing with Lawrence Hecker despite archdiocesan claims that the information could be disparaging to the organization.The Guardian and AP argue that the records were improperly labeled as confidential after the church filed its pending, three-year-old bankruptcy case and are seeking to remove that designation, supporting arguments first advanced by Aaron Hebert, who in 2019 filed a lawsuit accusing Hecker of molesting him decades earlier, when the plaintiff was a child.The archdiocese is the only entity which has opposed efforts by Hebert and his lawyers to unseal the Hecker-related records. Church attorneys have argued that neither the Guardian nor the AP have a right to become involved because the archdiocese’s 2020 bankruptcy filing for the most part indefinitely halted litigation against it.“The archdiocese has consistently hid behind its bankruptcy case to keep the public from learning facts about abuse perpetrated at the hands of its priests,” said attorney Lori Mince, who is representing the Guardian and the AP. “We do not believe the law allows this.”Wednesday’s filings by Mince and her associates note how similar arguments by the archdiocese failed last year when the church argued that an audit detailing possible financial crimes by a priest accused of abuse in a separate lawsuit should be shielded from public view.The abuse lawsuit against the priest named in the audit was later voluntarily dismissed, as was a defamation case that the cleric had filed.The church’s opposition to unsealing records related to Hecker comes even as New Orleans’s district attorney, Jason Williams, filed a legal brief Tuesday which urged federal judge Jane Triche Milazzo to publicly release the documents in question.Hebert, who on Wednesday agreed to reveal his identity for the first time, and his lawyers have long maintained that the retired cleric committed crimes for which he can still be punished because they were severe enough that there is no deadline by which he needs to be charged. Williams’s brief said unsealing documents involving Hecker would allow “the appropriate authorities to investigate any criminal activity”.“The continued sealing of the documents in this case serves as a major impediment to a proper investigation,” said Williams’s brief, which was filed within hours of the Guardian asking a DA’s spokesperson whether his office intended to take a position on the Hecker records-related dispute.Williams separately provided the Guardian with a statement on Wednesday which mentioned how the records being sought included a sworn civil deposition Hecker made while facing questioning “concerning the commission of a crime”.That, Williams said, “should not be withheld from a prosecutorial authority merely because reputations may be harmed”.As New Orleans television station WWL reported, Williams’s filing was the first move from local law enforcement aimed at exposing records that the archdiocese has long fought to keep hidden, though some facts about the accusations against Hecker and the church’s reactions to them have been previously publicized by the media and archdiocesan officials themselves.The lawsuit at the heart of the battle over access to Hecker’s records not only accuses him of abuse. But it also accuses his supervisors of not immediately reporting him to law enforcement despite knowing he was an abuser.Hebert’s legal team asserts Hecker was treated in a similar manner to how Boston’s Catholic archdiocese handled its abusive clerics before a 2002 scandal engulfed it and prompted the worldwide church to implement transparency policies, among other reforms.Court filings from Hecker have denied Hebert’s claims. Yet an attorney for New Orleans’s archdiocese at one point disclosed in open court that church officials had known as far back as the 1980s that Hecker was accused of child molestation, and they have paid out multiple civil financial settlements in cases involving claims against him.Despite that history, the church allowed Hecker to work in the archdiocese until he retired in 2002. And despite transparency reforms that the church implemented the year he retired, it wasn’t until 2018 that the archdiocese publicly acknowledged that it believed Hecker to be a child molester.The archdiocese provided Hecker with retirement benefits until after it filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy in May 2020, when it was faced with a mound of clerical abuse lawsuits. The bankruptcy indefinitely paused lawsuits against Hecker and other accused clergy abusers, though attorneys for the 2019 plaintiff gained permission to depose Hecker.Motions from Hebert, Williams, the Guardian and the AP now in front of Milazzo seek the release of the contents of that potentially explosive deposition – taken in late December 2020 – along with documents referenced during it to provide a fuller understanding of the case.Milazzo is scheduled to hear arguments on 15 June at a courthouse where several other judges have recused themselves from handling litigation involving abuse and the archdiocese because of links shared by the region’s legal establishment and the Catholic church.Hecker acknowledged last year that FBI agents had met with him amid a broader investigation into alleged sex abuse by Catholic church personnel in New Orleans. But he hasn’t been charged.Hebert on Wednesday said the public deserves to know everything Hecker, who is in his 90s, has done. “I want justice to be done,” Hebert said. “When everything comes out, it will be a better day for all of us.” More

    • 138 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump hush money trial set for March 2024 during Republican primaries

      by

      Donald Trump’s trial in New York on criminal charges over hush money payments to the porn star Stormy Daniels will begin on 25 March 2024, amid the Republican presidential primary and less than than eight months before the general election the former president hopes to contest.The trial date was announced in a hearing in a Manhattan courtroom on Tuesday, Trump attending by video link from his Florida home.The judge, Juan Merchan, advised the former president to cancel all other obligations for the duration of the trial, which could last for several weeks.Trump was muted for most of the hearing, which lasted around 15 minutes. The video feed showed the former president sitting and conferring with his lawyer, Todd Blanche, in front of a backdrop of American flags.No other former president has been criminally indicted. Spokespeople for Trump did not immediately comment on news of his trial date.Trump used his Truth Social platform to lash out, claiming his “first amendment rights, ‘freedom of speech’” had been “violated” by the scheduling of the trial “right in the middle of primary season”.“This is exactly what the Radical Left Democrats wanted,” Trump wrote, also claiming “election interference”, a loaded term given widespread agreement that Russia interfered to boost his candidacy in the election he won in 2016.In April, Trump pleaded not guilty to 34 charges of falsification of business records, arising from his $130,000 payment to the porn star Stormy Daniels, during the 2016 election, to keep quiet about an alleged sexual encounter.The Tuesday hearing was also held to explain an order forbidding the disclosing of material presented by prosecutors not already publicly known.Merchan’s order bars Trump and his lawyers from disseminating evidence to third parties or posting it to social media, and requires that some sensitive material be kept only by Trump’s lawyers.Prosecutors sought the order soon after Trump was arrested, citing his history of “harassing, embarrassing, and threatening statements” about people with whom he has entered legal disputes.Trump claims to be the victim of political witch-hunts meant to silence him as he runs for the Republican nomination to face Joe Biden next year.Judge Merchan has stressed he is not seeking to gag Trump, but “bending over backwards and straining to ensure that he is given every opportunity possible to advance his candidacy”.Trump’s court appearance came after news that E Jean Carroll, the writer who accused him of rape and won $5m in a civil suit earlier this month, is seeking additional damages over his comments in a controversial CNN town hall.Just a day after he was found liable for sexual abuse and defamation, Trump called Carroll a “wack job” who “made-up” her story. He also claimed the trial was “rigged”.In a new filing in New York on Monday, lawyers for Carroll said such conduct “supports a very substantial punitive damages award in Carroll’s favor”.Carroll, a magazine columnist, says Trump raped her at a New York department store in the mid-1990s. Her new damages claim comes in a defamation suit filed in federal court in 2019, over Trump’s initial responses to her allegation and separate from the New York case, which was brought under a state law allowing victims of historic sexual crimes to sue their alleged attackers.The federal case had been on hold over the issue of whether Trump was protected because he made the comments in question while president. He does not enjoy that protection relating to comments during the CNN event.According to the New York Times, the new filing says Trump’s statements “show the depth of his malice toward Carroll, since it is hard to imagine defamatory conduct that could possibly be more motivated by hatred, ill will or spite”.Trump renewed his abuse of Carroll on social media on Monday. As he did so, George Conway, a conservative lawyer and Trump critic, told MSNBC: “The complaint that she’s been amending this time was actually the original complaint from the first lawsuit that she brought in 2019, when … Trump … from the bully pulpit of the Oval Office … basically accused her of being a liar.“And she got $3m for the second libel, in 2022, when he was dumb enough to repeat the first libel. And that time, he wasn’t president, so he didn’t have this legal argument. That’s why the first case went off on a wild goose chase in the appellate court, and now it’s come back.”The 2019 case, Conway said, “already had more damage potential [for Trump] than the case that [Carroll] already won … because he was president at the time.“It was the very, very first libel that he made on E Jean Carroll. And now the fact that he has repeated the libel after being found to have sexually abused her is really, really outrageous. And it is supportive of punitive damages.“This verdict could be greater than the $5m that she got in the first place. Frankly, I hope it is, because I think, at some point he’s got to stop lying about this and stop lying about her. How many times [are we] gonna have to go through this?”Trump’s legal problems extend beyond New York, where he also faces a multimillion-dollar civil suit over his business affairs, lodged by the state attorney general.In Georgia, indictments arising from Trump’s attempt to overturn his 2020 election defeat are expected this summer.In Washington DC, the US justice department continues to investigate Trump’s election subversion, including his incitement of the January 6 attack on Congress.Jack Smith, a special counsel appointed by attorney general Merrick Garland, is also investigating Trump’s retention of classified documents.Nonetheless, Trump enjoys huge leads over all other Republican presidential candidates. More

    • 175 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      E Jean Carroll says she sued for rape on advice of Trump adviser’s husband

      by

      The advice columnist E Jean Carroll sued Donald Trump for rape after she was encouraged to take legal action by George Conway, the husband of a top aide to the then president.On her third day on the witness stand, Carroll told the jury hearing her lawsuit for battery and defamation over the alleged sexual assault in a New York department store changing room in 1996 that she did not intend to sue Trump until he called her a liar when she went public with her accusations more than two decades later.Shortly afterwards she met Conway, a lawyer who was at the time married to Kellyanne Conway, one of the Trump White House’s most visible officials. George Conway was a vocal critic of the then president, to the embarrassment of his wife.Carroll said that they spoke at a party where Conway laid out the difference between criminal case and civil cases.“George said: you should seriously think about this,” she told the jury of six men and three women.Two days later, Carroll filed her first lawsuit against Trump, for defamation, after he called her a liar in denying the alleged rape at the luxury Bergdorf Goodman store.Trump’s lawyer, Joe Tacopina, sought to characterise the lawsuit as politically motivated, in part through the association with Conway who went on to recommend a lawyer to Carroll.Tacopina contrasted that move – and a second more recent civil lawsuit for rape after a change in the law allowed for it – with Carroll’s decision not to take legal action against the former head of CBS, Les Moonves, who she also accused of sexual assault in an elevator.Carroll said that Moonves had not called her a liar.“He simply denied it,” she said. “He didn’t call me names. He didn’t grind my face into the mud like Donald Trump did.”Carroll said Moonves was accused of sexual abuse by a dozen women and that his denial of her allegation was one among many.Under cross-examination, Carroll defended her decision not to call the police after the alleged rape, as the typical response of women of her generation who are “ashamed” to have been sexually assaulted.She acknowledged that she frequently advised people to go to the police in her Elle column, Ask E Jean.“I was born in 1943. I’m a member of the silent generation. Women like me were taught to keep our chins up and to not complain,” she said. “I would never call the police about something I am ashamed of.”Carroll acknowledged she did call the police on one occasion, when she saw “loutish behaviour by some kids”.Tacopina responded: “So your testimony is you’ll call the police if a mailbox is attacked but not if you are attacked?”Carroll said it was.“I will never, ever go to the police,” she said.Asked why, then, more than two decades after the alleged rape she decided to go public, Carroll said that times had changed.“I reached a point in my life at 76 where I was no longer going to stay silent,” she testified.Tacopina pressed Carroll about her continued shopping trips to Bergdorf Goodman where she spent thousands of dollars in the following years.“Bergdorf’s is not a place I’m afraid to enter,” she responded.Tacopina also highlighted Carroll’s complimentary comments about Trump’s television show The Apprentice. Carroll said she was praising the construct of the programme as “witty”.On Monday afternoon, in re-cross-examination, Tacopina asked Carroll if she was happy now and she responded that she was “with undertones of unhappiness”.Then after three days of intense testimony, Carroll’s stint on the witness stand ended.Later this week, Carroll’s legal team is expected to call her friend, Lisa Birnbach and another woman, Carol Martin, to testify that Carroll told them about the alleged assault shortly after it occurred. Both have since corroborated the account.Carroll testified that Birnbach told her the alleged attack was rape and to call the police. But Martin advised her to keep quiet because Trump was a powerful businessman who would “bury” her.Carroll kept her silence for more than two decades but changed her mind as other women came forward to recount their experiences of sexual assault and harassment as the #MeToo movement swept the US. She wrote a book, What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal, detailing abuse of one kind or other by a number of men, including Trump. Excerpts were published in New York magazine in 2019.Trump called Carroll’s allegations “a complete con job” and said her book “should be sold in the fiction section”.“She completely made up a story that I met her at the doors of this crowded New York City department store and, within minutes, ‘swooned’ her. It is a hoax and a lie,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.Carroll’s legal team is also expected to call two other women. Natasha Stoynoff, a writer for People magazine, is expected to testify that in 2005 Trump led her into an empty room and forcibly kissed her until he was interrupted. Jessica Leeds accuses Trump of assaulting her on a plane in 1979 by grabbing her breasts and trying to put his hand up her skirt. More

    • 163 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘A truly incredible amount of money’: millions ride on one US judicial election

      by

      More than $37m has already been spent in an election that will this month determine control of Wisconsin’s supreme court, easily making it the most expensive judicial contest in US history.Spending in the race easily shatters the $10m spent in the 2020 Wisconsin supreme court race, the previous record in the state. It also easily surpasses the previous national record, $15m spent on an Illinois supreme court race in 2004. The race has national implications – it will probably ultimately determine the legality of abortion in the state as well as play a key role in setting voting rules for the 2024 election in one of America’s most competitive states.“It’s just a truly incredible amount of money,” said Douglas Keith, a lawyer at the Brennan Center for Justice who closely follows state courts. “It’s a sign of what we should expect to see in the future in other state supreme court elections in other states provided that for some reason a particular seat is seen as important.”A once-in-a-generation set of circumstances have come together to make the state supreme court race between liberal Janet Protasiewicz and conservative Daniel Kelly – typically a little-noticed contest outside Wisconsin’s borders – the most important election this year.First, the ideological balance of the seven-member court is up for grabs. Second, the outcome of the race will probably directly determine whether abortion is legal in Wisconsin, as the court is expected to weigh in soon on the state’s 1849 abortion ban. Third, the court could strike down Wisconsin’s gerrymandered legislative maps, ending Republicans’ unshakable majority in the state. Lastly, the court is expected to weigh in on a range of disputes over election rules ahead of the 2024 presidential election in Wisconsin, a key battleground state.Protasiewicz and Kelly have taken different approaches to how that money has been raised. Protasiewicz’s campaign has raised $14.5m in total, a vast haul that dwarfs the $2.7m Kelly has raised. But Kelly has benefited from an influx of outside spending from third-party groups, most notably Fair Courts America, a Super Pac backed by the GOP mega-donors Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein, which has spent nearly $4.5m on advertising so far. Women Speak Out Pac, which is connected to the anti-abortion group Susan B Anthony Pro-Life America, has also pledged to spend $2m in support of Kelly and has spent nearly $1.3m on advertising so far.The Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC) – which focuses on state-level elections – has also spent about $200,000 in support of Kelly through its Judicial Fairness Initiative, according to an analysis by the Center for Political Accountability, a watchdog group. Some of the RSLC’s donors since the supreme court’s decision overturning Roe v Wade have been companies like Google, Comcast and Amazon that have pledged to support their employees if they want an abortion, according to the Center for Political Accountability.“You have so many major household name companies come out in support of their employees’ access to abortion rights. Offering to cover travel expenses, offering to cover medical expenses, that sort of thing,” said Jeanne Hanna, the Center for Political Accountability’s research director, “but then continuing to fund these groups that elect openly anti-abortion judges in battleground states where one judicial seat could make the difference of whether people in this state can access abortion care at all. They’re saying one thing and doing another with their political spending.”Kelly has openly touted his support from outside groups, telling supporters earlier this month not to worry because a “cavalry” of outside money was coming to support him.“What has been most surprising is that Dan Kelly has basically raised no money as a candidate … So all of his backing has been from outside groups,” said Barry Burden, the director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “It’s hard to understand. Legally, they’re not allowed to coordinate. So he’s essentially handed over messaging to groups that he cannot control.”Protasiewicz’s fundraising has been prolific. She has spent more than $10.5m on television advertisements alone, compared with Kelly’s $580,000, according to a Brennan Center tracker. And while she has benefited from considerable spending from liberal outside groups – A Better Wisconsin Together, the American Civil Liberties Union, and Everytown for Gun Safety among them – the bulk of the money she’s raised has come from the state Democratic party.The party’s $8.8m contribution to her campaign was made possible by a 2015 Republican rewrite of the state’s campaign finance rules. Those changes removed a cap on the amount of money candidates could receive from state parties. They also allowed individual donors to make unlimited contributions to the political parties.“When the Republicans rewrote the laws in 2015 … they did it with the expectation that it would advantage them. They felt that the sources of money they could rely on, both outside groups and big contributors, would mean they would always have financial advantages in races like this. Just the opposite has happened,” said Jay Heck, the executive director of the Wisconsin chapter of Common Cause, a watchdog group. “That is the reason why [Wisconsin Democratic party chair] Ben Wikler and the Democrats have been able to be such a powerhouse.”Protasiewicz has said she would recuse herself from cases involving the Wisconsin Democratic party. Kelly has declined to make a similar recusal pledge for cases involving his major donors.“Judges should not be able to hear cases involving major donors or supporters,” said Keith, the Brennan Center expert. “One of the issues that comes with all this money being as opaque as it is is that the public doesn’t actually know who the judge’s major supporters are often. And if the judges do know, then that’s even more troubling that the judge has information that the public doesn’t about what cases they may have a conflict in.” More

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump not entitled to immunity from civil suits over Capitol attack, says DoJ

      by

      Trump not entitled to immunity from civil suits over Capitol attack, says DoJJustice department said ex-president could be held liable for physical and psychological harm suffered during January 6 Donald Trump does not have absolute immunity from civil suits seeking damages over his alleged incitement of the January 6 Capitol attack, the US justice department said in a court filing that could have profound implications for complaints against the former president.In an amicus brief in a case brought by two US Capitol police officers and joined by 11 House Democrats, the justice department said Trump could be held liable for physical and psychological harm suffered during the attack despite his attempts to seek blanket protections.Pence declines to support Trump if he’s 2024 nominee: ‘I’m confident we’ll have better choices’Read more“Speaking to the public on matters of public concern is a traditional function of the presidency,” read the 32-page brief to the US court of appeals for the DC circuit. “But that traditional function is one of public communication. It does not include incitement of imminent private violence.”The justice department stressed that it was not weighing in on whether the lawsuit had made a plausible argument that Trump’s speech immediately before the January 6 attack incited thousands of his supporters to storm the Capitol in an effort to stop certification of Joe Biden’s election win.But the department said that because actual incitement of imminent private violence – the key legal standard – would not be protected by presidential immunity, the appeals court should reject his contention that he had absolute immunity from civil litigation.“No part of a president’s official responsibilities includes the incitement of imminent private violence,” the brief said. “By definition, such conduct plainly falls outside the president’s constitutional and statutory duties.”The justice department opinion comes after the appeals court asked the government to offer its position while it considered whether Trump was acting within the confines of the office of the presidency when he urged his supporters to “fight like hell” and march on the Capitol.The sensitivity of the case – the potential impact on other civil suits against Trump that could have implications for presidential immunity – meant the department took several months and made two requests for a month’s extension before finalising its response.In siding against Trump’s position that he enjoyed “categorical immunity”, the justice department said it agreed with a lower-court ruling that the first amendment to the constitution did not allow Trump to evade liability in the January 6 suit.The lawsuit was filed under a statute, enacted after the civil war in response to Ku Klux Klan insurrections across the south to stop Black people voting, which allows for damages when force or intimidation are used to prevent government officials carrying out their duties.The amicus brief comes as the justice department controversially continues to defend Trump’s claim of absolute immunity in a defamation case brought by the writer E Jean Carroll, who accuses Trump of raping her in New York in the mid-1990s. Trump has said “it never happened” and said Carroll is not his “type”.Responding to that case, the department argued that while Trump’s comments were not appropriate, they came when he was president. Responding to a reporter’s question about the allegation, the department said part of a president’s responsibility was “to be responsive to the media and public”.TopicsUS newsDonald TrumpUS justice systemLaw (US)US Capitol attackUS politicsnewsReuse this content More