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      Biden pardons Ohio woman, 80, who killed abusive husband decades ago

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      Biden pardons Ohio woman, 80, who killed abusive husband decades agoPresident issues six full pardons, mostly for minor drug offenses but including one for Beverly Ann Ibn-Tamas over 1977 death Joe Biden on Friday announced six full pardons, most for minor drug offenses but including a pardon for an 80-year-old woman from Columbus, Ohio, who killed her abusive husband when she was 33.In a statement, a White House official said the president was granting pardons to “individuals who have served their sentences and have demonstrated a commitment to improving their communities and the lives of those around them.“These include individuals who honorably served in the US military, volunteer in their communities, and survived domestic abuse.”As described by the White House, Beverly Ann Ibn-Tamas, now 80, was convicted in 1977 “of murder in the second degree while armed for killing her husband.“Ms Ibn-Tamas, 33 at the time of the incident, was pregnant and testified that before and during her pregnancy her husband beat her, verbally abused her and threatened her. According to her testimony, her husband had physically assaulted her and threatened her in the moments before she shot him.“During her trial, the court refused to allow expert testimony regarding battered woman syndrome, a psychological condition and pattern of behavior that develops in victims of domestic violence.”Ibn-Tamas was sentenced to one to five years in jail. Her appeal, the White House said, “marked one of the first significant steps toward judicial recognition of battered woman syndrome, and her case has been the subject of numerous academic studies”.Ibn-Tamas became director of nursing for an Ohio-based healthcare business, the White House said, and continues to work there as a case manager. The White House noted that as a single mother, Ibn-Tamas raised two children, one of whom, her daughter, is now an attorney.The other recipients of full pardons included Gary Parks Davis, 66 and from Yuma, Arizona, who was jailed over a cocaine deal when he was 22 then became a pillar of his local community, and Edward Lincoln De Coito III, from Dublin, California, now 50, a pilot and army veteran convicted of marijuana trafficking at 23.Vicente Ray Flores of Winters, California, now 37, was convicted at 19 for using ecstasy and alcohol while in the army. Charles Byrnes Jackson, 77 and from Swansea, South Carolina, was convicted when 18 of possession and sale of distilled spirits without tax stamps. John Dix Nock III, from St Augustine, Florida, now 72, pleaded guilty 20 years ago to renting out a place where marijuana was grown.The White House official said the pardons followed “the categorical pardon of thousands of individuals convicted of simple marijuana possession … announced earlier this year, as well as the pardons of three individuals in April”.Biden pardons thousands with federal convictions of simple marijuana possessionRead moreThe April pardons concerned two people convicted of drugs offences and a former Secret Service agent who was convicted of attempting to sell government information, a charge he denied.Advocacy groups welcomed the thousands of pardons announced in October, for marijuana possession. Kassandra Frederique, the executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, told the Guardian then her organisation was “thrilled”, though the move was “incredibly long overdue”.On Friday, the White House official said Biden “believes America is a nation of second chances, and that offering meaningful opportunities for redemption and rehabilitation empowers those who have been incarcerated to become productive, law-abiding members of society.“The president remains committed to providing second chances to individuals who have demonstrated their rehabilitation – something that elected officials on both sides of the aisle, faith leaders, civil rights advocates and law enforcement leaders agree our criminal justice system should offer.”TopicsUS newsUS politicsUS justice systemJoe BidennewsReuse this content More

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      The Guardian view on the January 6 committee: Trump’s terrible, no-good year | Editorial

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      The Guardian view on the January 6 committee: Trump’s terrible, no-good yearEditorialThe referral of the former president to the justice department on four criminal charges is largely symbolic, but increases his woes In its closing months, 2022 is looking like an annus horribilis for Donald Trump – or to put it in the former president’s terms, a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad year. The January 6 committee’s recommendation on Monday that criminal charges be brought against him over his attempt to subvert the 2020 election results and the deadly storming of the Capitol was unprecedented – the first time that Congress has referred a former president to the Department of Justice. Though largely symbolic, it has set down a marker. And it is the latest in a string of recent setbacks.His candidates triumphed in Republican primaries, but then tanked in the midterms. His announcement on his 2024 bid was lacklustre and bathetic. A New York jury found his business guilty of tax fraud. On Tuesday, a House committee was set to vote on whether to release six years of his tax returns to the public. And, of course, the list of civil actions and criminal investigations targeting him is growing.The congressional committee’s referral does not change the legal position, though some of the evidence it turned over to the justice department theoretically could. In its impact on public opinion, however, it may have an indirect effect on whether charges are brought. The evidence the committee amassed and its presentation of the facts are compelling. In televised hearings and presentations, in the executive summary published on Monday, and presumably in the full report to follow this week, it has shone an unflinching light on the brutality of that day and Mr Trump’s culpability.His own aides have testified that he was repeatedly told he had lost, and that they urged him to tell the crowd to be peaceful. Instead, he pressed Republican officials to overturn the results, then his vice-president to block Congress from approving Joe Biden’s victory. When those attempts failed, he summoned a crowd to Washington, urged it to the Capitol and for hours failed to call off supporters as they rampaged and hunted down elected politicians. Unlike Mr Trump himself, at least some participants have since admitted their responsibility. One described his involvement as “part of an attack on the rule of law”; another conceded that “I guess I was [acting] like a traitor”.The referral will, if anything, spur on Mr Trump’s fight for the Republican candidacy, further convincing him that power is the best form of protection. Charges, if laid, may reinforce rather than shift the minds of his diehard supporters. More than two-thirds of Republicans still believe that Mr Biden’s victory was illegitimate. Nonetheless, they are turning away from the former president in the polls. A large majority of Republican voters or independents who lean towards the party think someone else should be its candidate in 2024. Mr Trump wanted to clear the field, to run unchallenged. But those who trade on a strongman image cannot afford to look weak. Support for Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor, has surged. Mr Trump’s media cheerleaders, every bit as cynical as the ex-president, have turned on him. Ivanka Trump wants nothing to do with her father’s 2024 bid.It would be immensely foolish to write off the 45th president. For years he has defied the laws of political gravity, surviving scandals and offences that individually would have sunk any other candidate or office-holder. The Republican elite remain notably silent or mealy-mouthed about him. Even if he cannot recover, others are already using his playbook. Yet the prospect that he will rebound, or another like him take his place, is all the more reason to establish the full record of his actions – whether or not they ultimately lead to legal consequences.TopicsDonald TrumpOpinionJanuary 6 hearingsUS Capitol attackRon DeSantisJoe BidenUS elections 2024US justice systemeditorialsReuse this content More

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      House January 6 panel recommends criminal charges against Donald Trump

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      House January 6 panel recommends criminal charges against Donald TrumpThe referral marks the first time in US history that Congress has taken such action against a former president01:51The January 6 committee has referred Donald Trump to the justice department to face criminal charges, accusing the former president of fomenting an insurrection and conspiring against the government over his attempt to subvert the outcome of the 2020 election, and the bloody attack on the US Capitol.The committee’s referrals approved by its members on Monday are the first time in American history that Congress has recommended charges against a former president. They come after more than a year of investigation by the bipartisan House of Representatives panel tasked with understanding Trump’s plot to stop Joe Biden from taking office.“The committee believes that more than sufficient evidence exists for a criminal referral of former President Trump for assisting or aiding and comforting those at the Capitol who engaged in a violent attack on the United States,” Congressman Jamie Raskin said as the lawmakers held their final public meeting.“The committee has developed significant evidence that President Trump intended to disrupt the peaceful transition of power under our Constitution. The president has an affirmative and primary constitutional duty to act to take care that the laws be faithfully executed. Nothing could be a greater betrayal of this duty than to assist in insurrection against the constitutional order.”January 6 report expected to focus on Trump’s role and potential culpabilityRead moreThe committee accused Trump of breaching four federal criminal statutes, including those relating to obstructing an official proceeding of Congress, assisting an insurrection and conspiring to defraud the United States. It also alleged Trump committed seditious conspiracy – the same charge which a jury found two members of the rightwing Oath Keepers militia group guilty of last month.In his opening remarks, the committee’s Democratic chair, Bennie Thompson, said Trump broke voters’ trust by mounting a campaign to stay in office, despite overwhelming evidence that he had lost.“To cast a vote in the United States is an act of faith and hope. When we drop that ballot in the ballot box, we expect the people named on the ballot are going to uphold that end of the deal,” he said. “Donald Trump broke that faith. He lost the 2020 election and knew it. But he chose to try to stay in office through a multiparty scheme to overturn the results and blocked the transfer of power.”A major architect of that scheme was John Eastman, a lawyer for the president who the committee said laid much of the groundwork for the strategy to overturn Biden’s election win. According to their evidence, Eastman helped Trump pressure Vice-President Mike Pence to disrupt the certification of electoral votes, even though the lawyer knew doing so would be illegal. The lawmaker referred Eastman on conspiracy charges.The lawmakers also referred four Republican House representatives to the chamber’s ethics committee. The group includes Kevin McCarthy, the GOP leader who is expected to run for speaker of the House when the party takes control of the chamber next year, as well as Jim Jordan, a staunch ally of the former president.His spokesman Russell Dye called the referral “just another partisan and political stunt”.Finally, the committee urged the justice department to investigate efforts to obstruct its investigation, including by “certain counsel … who may have advised clients to provide false or misleading testimony to the Committee”.The referrals are largely a recommendation, but will arrive at a justice department already busy investigating the former president for crimes he may have committed during and after his time in office.The attorney general, Merrick Garland, last month appointed the veteran prosecutor Jack Smith to determine whether to charge Trump over the insurrection and his efforts to disrupt the peaceful transition of power. Smith is also handling the inquiry into whether Trump unlawfully retained government secrets after leaving the White House in January 2021. His decisions in those cases will have huge ramifications for the future of the former president, who has announced he will run for the White House again in 2024.On Wednesday, the panel is expected to release a lengthy report into the attack that left five people dead and spawned nearly 1,000 criminal cases. That may be the final word from the committee, which many Americans hoped would follow in the mold of the bipartisan group that investigated the 9/11 attacks, but quickly ran up against opposition from Trump and his allies.Created by an almost party-line vote in the Democratic-led House, the nine-member panel has two Republican lawmakers, Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, both of whom were censured by their party for participating and won’t return to Congress next year.While Kinzinger opted not to run again, Cheney lost her primary to a Trump-backed candidate. In her final remarks as the panel’s vice-chair, Cheney recounted how Trump failed to act for hours as a mob of his supporters assaulted the Capitol.“No man who would behave that way, at that moment in time, can ever serve in any position of authority in our nation again,” Cheney said. “He is unfit for any office.”Their nine public hearings held this year featured in-person testimony from witnesses and recorded interviews that shed light on how the attack happened, but the lawmakers also resorted to issuing subpoenas to a host of uncooperative former Trump officials and allies, some of whom are facing jail time for refusing to comply.In its second-to-last hearing held in October, the committee publicly voted to subpoena documents and testimony from Trump. The former president went to court to stop the summons, and time appears to be on his side. The committee’s mandate runs out at the end of the year, and in 2023, the Republican House majority is almost certain not to continue its work.TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsDonald TrumpUS Capitol attackHouse of RepresentativesUS CongressUS justice systemUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Ohio’s partisan supreme court election could decide abortion’s future in state

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      AnalysisOhio’s partisan supreme court election could decide abortion’s future in statePoppy NoorThe midterms include key elections to the state’s highest court as the judicial system becomes increasingly politicized In Ohio, a highly partisan fight over three state supreme court seats could determine the political direction of the court on a slew of important issues – particularly abortion.With the US supreme court increasingly handing issues such as voting rights, abortion, gun rights and gerrymandering back to the states, state supreme court races are becoming more important than ever.Abortion on the ballot: here are the US states voting on a woman’s right to chooseRead moreFew states illustrate how political these courts are becoming better than Ohio, where justices’ party affiliation will be listed on the ballot for the first time in the 8 November election, and where the justices on that court will soon determine the fate of the state’s six-week abortion ban that has been blocked and unblocked by lower courts since Roe v Wade was overturned early in the summer. Abortion is currently legal in the state up to 22 weeks, as the ban is being litigated.As a result of the stakes, more cash is also pouring into state supreme court races around the country from political action committees associated with the national parties. Fair Courts America, a Pac associated with the Republican party, has pledged $22.5m for state supreme court races this election cycle, to support conservative judicial candidates in Kentucky, Illinois, Louisiana, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas.In Kentucky, that same Pac has donated $1.6m to three conservative judges vying for election. One of those judges, Joe Fischer, is a former Republican congressman who was the key sponsor of the state’s trigger ban on abortion that went into effect when Roe was overturned, as well as an anti-abortion referendum that’s being put to Kentucky voters next week.“People used to spend all their time looking at the federal constitution for protections, particularly when it came to individual rights. But now the US supreme court is basically saying these matters are better left resolved in the state courts and their state constitutions,” explains Bill Weisenberg, a former assistant executive director of the Ohio State Bar Association.In Ohio, after Roe fell, ending the federal constitutional right to abortion, the state implemented a ban on abortion after six weeks of pregnancy. That ban is currently being blocked by a lower state court, but ultimately, it will land with the state supreme court. And the election of certain justices will be pivotal in determining the future of the ban.The seven-justice Ohio supreme court currently has four Republican justices and three Democratic justices. The current chief justice, Maureen O’Connor, a Republican, is not seeking re-election this year because of age limits, so two other sitting justices, Republican Sharon Kennedy and Democrat Jennifer Brunner, will battle it out to replace her in the top spot. Two incumbent Republican justices, Pat DeWine and Pat Fischer will face Democratic challengers Marilyn Zayas and Terri Jamison, for seats on the court.O’Connor, the chief justice who is standing down, was a Republican-affiliated judge who was happy to break with the party line on issues such as gerrymandering. She has never openly indicated where she stands on abortion.But all three Republican justices up for election on Tuesday have stated on candidate surveys that they believe there is no constitutional right to abortion, according to local news, meaning their elections could strike a fatal blow to abortion rights in Ohio.They also came under fire in September for attending a Trump rally where the former president repeated baseless claims about the 2020 election being stolen, and for subsequently refusing to confirm that the results of the 2020 election were valid. One of those justices – Pat DeWine – is also under scrutiny for having liked a tweet promoting a conspiracy theory about the violent attack on the husband of the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, asking “what are they hiding?” He has since said he clicked “like” inadvertently.Meanwhile, Zayas, Jamison and Brunner have publicly stated that they believe the Ohio constitution protects the right to abortion.Weisenberg cautions that neither political affiliation, nor what a justice indicates of their views before their election, are watertight indicators for how they will rule once they are on the supreme court. “People are surprised sometimes when they read the opinion and it’s not in keeping with where they thought the justice would lean, or what they had said on a prior occasion,” he said.Indeed, the US supreme court justices Brett Kavanaugh and Samuel Alito indicated they believed the constitutional right to abortion was settled precedent before being confirmed to the court.TopicsOhioAbortionReproductive rightsRoe v WadeUS justice systemUS midterm elections 2022US politicsanalysisReuse this content More

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      Federal judge supports seizure of John Eastman’s cell phone for January 6 inquiry

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      Federal judge supports seizure of John Eastman’s cell phone for January 6 inquiryThe US Justice Department seized the phone of Donald Trump’s former lawyer in June; Eastman filed a motion to get it back The US Justice Department was justified when it seized the cell phone of John Eastman, a former lawyer for Donald Trump, a federal judge in New Mexico ruled on Friday.In its investigation into a scheme by the ex-president and his lawyers to overturn the 2020 election using “fake electors”, the justice department took Eastman’s phone on 22 June as he was leaving a restaurant in New Mexico. Eastman, in turn, filed a court motion in an attempt to get his phone back, arguing that the justice department violated his constitutional rights.January 6 panel examines whether erased Secret Service texts can be revivedRead moreFederal district court judge Robert Brack said in a court document Friday that the department had a right to seize his cell phone, noting the government had a substantial “interest in investigating the January 6 attacks on the Capitol”, which Trump’s supporters staged on the day congress certified his defeat at the hands of the Joe Biden. He noted that the justice department has said it will not go through Eastman’s phone until they get a second warrant to do so.“The court is relying to a considerable extent on the assertion in the warrant that the investigative team will not examine the contents of the phone until it seeks a second warrant,” the ruling said. Brack gave the justice department until 27 July to update the court on whether it has applied for a second warrant.The justice department’s investigation into the plot to overturn the election has – with help from witness testimony in the recent January 6 committee hearings on the insurrection – zeroed in on Eastman as a key figure in Trump’s 11th-hour plan to keep himself in the Oval Office.Eastman told Trump that Mike Pence, in his role as vice-president, could single-handedly interfere with the largely symbolic certification of the electoral college that showed Biden as winner of the presidential election. Eastman and Trump tried to convince the vice-president then to hold up the proceedings, but Pence denied that he had the legal right to do so and refused to cooperate.Pence’s legal advisers told the January 6 committee that he had to fend off mounting pressure from Eastman to go along with the plan.“There was no basis in the constitution or laws of the United States, at all, for the theory espoused by Mr Eastman. At all. None,” Michael Luttig, a retired federal judge who served as an adviser to Pence in the weeks after the election, told the January 6 committee last month.In a civil case involving Eastman, a federal judge said in March that it appears both Eastman and Trump committed multiple felonies as they “dishonestly conspired to obstruct the joint session of Congress on January 6 2021”.TopicsUS justice systemDonald TrumpJanuary 6 hearingsUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Joe Biden scraps plan to nominate anti-abortion lawyer to Kentucky judgeship

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      Joe Biden scraps plan to nominate anti-abortion lawyer to Kentucky judgeshipSenator Rand Paul announced Friday he would not consent to Chad Meredith’s nomination, vetoing the president’s effort After weeks of criticism from fellow Democrats and abortion advocacy groups, Joe Biden has deserted plans to nominate an anti-abortion lawyer to be a federal judge in Kentucky.The White House said on Friday that Republican Kentucky senator Rand Paul would not be consenting to the nomination of Chad Meredith, effectively vetoing Biden’s move to put him on the bench.Biden planned to nominate anti-abortion lawyer to federal judgeship, emails showRead more“In considering potential district court nominees, the White House learned that Senator Rand Paul will not return a blue slip on Chad Meredith,” said White House spokesperson Andrew Bates on Friday, referring to the “blue slip” tradition that allows senators to veto judicial nominations from their home states. “Therefore, the White House will not nominate Mr Meredith.”Had Biden nominated Meredith, the attorney’s promotion to the court would have been unusual in the lineup of Biden’s judicial picks. The president has made it a point to nominate people from underrepresented backgrounds, public defenders and those with experience in civil rights law to the court instead of the usual slate of corporate lawyers and prosecutors.Meredith served as chief deputy general counsel to former Republican Kentucky governor Matt Bevin, who was in office from 2015 to 2019. In this role, Meredith helped the state defend a 2017 law that required doctors to perform ultrasounds and show images of the fetus to patients before performing an abortion. The law was ultimately upheld by a federal appeals court.Working under Bevin, Meredith also helped put together the former governor’s slate of controversial pardons, which included people convicted of murder and rape, according to the Louisville Courier-Journal.After Bevin left office, Meredith began working for a private law firm in Cincinnati, Ohio.News of his nomination was first reported by the Courier-Journal on 29 June. Democrats started hounding the White House for an explanation behind its intention to nominate the anti-abortion lawyer on the heels of the 24 June US supreme court decision overturning the nationwide right to terminate pregnancies embedded in Roe v Wade.In a group statement, a coalition of national abortion advocacy groups denounced news of the potential nomination.“We are in this moment because anti-abortion judges were intentionally nominated at every level to take away our fundamental right to abortion – and given his record, we know Chad Meredith would be no exception,” the statement read.When White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was questioned about the potential nomination, she said, “We make it a point here to not comment on any vacancy, whether it is on the executive branch or the judicial branch, especially those where the nomination has not been made yet.”While the White House has been quiet behind its reasoning for considering Meredith, Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell said that Biden was close to taking up his judicial pick “as a personal friendship gesture”, the Kentucky senator told the New York Times. McConnell said that no specific deal between himself and Biden was made, and it simply represented the “collegiality” that exists between them.Paul, who ultimately shut the nomination down, has not commented on his veto of Meredith’s nomination. McConnell suggested to the Times that Paul may believe it is his turn to pick a judicial nominee, though he has not made such an agreement on judicial nominees with Paul.TopicsKentuckyUS politicsJoe BidenAbortionDemocratsRand PaulUS justice systemnewsReuse this content More

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      High-stakes California races will decide LA mayor and San Francisco recall

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      High-stakes California races will decide LA mayor and San Francisco recall Analysts watch to see if voters in America’s more liberal cities will address police reform, homelessness and mass incarceration High-stakes primary races taking place on Tuesday in California are expected to have major consequences for police reform, incarceration and the state’s growing homelessness crisis.The most closely watched race is the mayor’s contest in Los Angeles, where voters are deciding between a tough-on-crime real estate developer, Rick Caruso, who has already poured nearly $40m of his own fortune into his primary campaign, and the former community organizer and Democratic congresswoman Karen Bass.Street activist, congresswoman – mayor? Karen Bass reaches for LA’s top jobRead moreIn San Francisco, the city’s progressive prosecutor, Chesa Boudin, is facing a recall election that could have a major impact on movements for criminal justice reform across the US.Midway through a tense midterm elections year, the races are likely to serve as a litmus test for Democrats and progressives. Analysts are watching to see if the majority of voters in some of America’s most ostensibly liberal cities decide to reject attempts to reduce mass incarceration and address the stark racial disparities in the criminal justice system.But one of the starkest takeaways so far is that voters simply are not very engaged in California’s primary election, despite multiple measures designed to make it easier for them to participate. Early turnout so far has been abysmal, even though every registered voter in California was mailed a ballot.“Even if you make it extremely easy to vote, like in California, but the political culture, candidates and issues aren’t there, you aren’t going to increase the turnout,” political scientist Fernando Guerra said. “We have extreme generational issues, with homelessness and crime and the cost of housing, and I think we have the candidates. There’s a lack of political culture.”Lower turnout is likely to be a particular challenge for “a lot of the young progressive candidates”, who might end up losing to an incumbent by a small margin of votes, Guerra said.Voters in California and nationwide are concerned about gas prices and the cost of living. A recent poll found that only a third of Los Angeles voters approved of the city’s police department, a lower approval rating than in 1991, after the police beating of Rodney King, but that nearly half of voters surveyed wanted to increase the size of the force.The role of the police in public safety is one of the key issues up and down the ballot, with younger progressive candidates who support defunding the police challenging older centrist Democrats in several Los Angeles city council races.Bass, the former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, supports police reform and a modest increase in Los Angeles police department staffing; Caruso has pledged to put an additional 1,500 officers on the street.Both Bass and Caruso have promised to put an end to people sleeping on the street in Los Angeles. Caruso has expressed willingness to arrest unhoused people who refuse to move to a city-provided shelter bed, and has also praised an army camp for undocumented children at the Texas border as a good model for how to deal with the city’s homelessness crisis.For some Los Angeles progressives, Bass’s more centrist positions on policing and homelessness have been a disappointment. Two years after George Floyd’s murder by police sparked worldwide protests, some activists see Bass’s endorsement of putting more police on the street as a step backwards.“She’s losing the enthusiasm of folks on the left, and I think that is a miscalculation,” said Melina Abdullah, a co-founder of Black Lives Matter, Los Angeles, who endorsed Gina Viola, a local activist running to Bass’s left, for mayor.Progressive groups in LA have also organized to oust the incumbent LA county sheriff, Alex Villanueva, who has been at the center of multiple scandals related to abuse and misconduct cases within the department. His critics, however, have not rallied behind one opponent among his eight challengers.The role of massive personal fortunes in public elections has also become a central issue in California’s primary campaigns. The attempt to recall Boudin, a central figure in the movement to elect prosecutors who want to make the legal system less punitive and racist, is reportedly being funded by ultra-wealthy donors, many of them in the tech industry, including: Ron Conway, an early DoorDash investor; Garry Tan, an Instacart investor; and David Sacks, a former PayPal executive.The result of the attempt to recall Boudin in San Francisco will “affect whether prosecutors elsewhere feel emboldened to take new approaches or whether they will perceive that as a political risk”, said Sandra Mayson, a University of Pennsylvania law professor.Political spending on the Los Angeles mayoral primary has already topped $50m, with Caruso’s campaign spending more than $40m of that. Bass’s campaign has spent $3m, in contrast, and a local police union has spent a similar amount on advertisement opposing her candidacy.On Friday, Elon Musk, one of the richest men in the world, tweeted his public endorsement of Caruso, who himself is ranked No 261 on Forbes’ list of richest Americans. “He’s awesome,” Musk wrote. “Executive competence is super-underrated in politics – we should care about that a lot more!”Caruso, a real estate developer with an estimated net worth of $4bn, has used at least $38m of his own money to move to the front of a crowded non-partisan primary field, a number that has already broken every previous record for mayor’s races in Los Angeles, local experts said. The billionaire’s personal fortune has funded a barrage of attractive television ads and mailers touting his candidacy, even as Caruso has skipped some mayoral debates, and largely avoided engaging with the press or holding open public events.Bass and then Caruso took an early lead in mayoral polls, leading other mayoral primary contenders to drop out of the race, though some, such as Kevin de Leon, a current city council member, fight on.Heading into Tuesday, polls showed Bass and Caruso closely matched in terms of voter support, setting up the possibility that neither would surpass the 50% vote threshold needed to win outright. In that case, the top two candidates will advance to a runoff election in November, a result that is expected to generate millions more in political spending from Caruso and from Bass’s progressive backers in Hollywood.TopicsCaliforniaUS politicsLos AngelesSan FranciscoUS policingUS justice systemnewsReuse this content More

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      US Justice Department could be zeroing in on Trump lawyers, experts say

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      US Justice Department could be zeroing in on Trump lawyers, experts saySubpoenas for information on Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman’s roles in the fake electors scheme were issued in April Legal experts believe the US Justice Department has made headway with a key criminal inquiry and could be homing in on top Trump lawyers who plotted to overturn Joe Biden’s election, after the department wrote to the House panel probing the January 6 Capitol attack seeking transcripts of witness depositions and interviews.Trump calls Capitol attack an ‘insurrection hoax’ as public hearings set to beginRead moreWhile it’s unclear exactly what information the DoJ asked for, former prosecutors note that the 20 April request occurred at about the same time a Washington DC grand jury issued subpoenas seeking information about several Trump lawyers including Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman, plus other Trump advisers, who reportedly played roles in a fake electors scheme.Giuliani, Trump’s former personal lawyer, worked with other lawyers and some campaign officials to spearhead a scheme to replace Biden electors with alternative Trump ones in seven states that Biden won, with an eye to blocking Congress’ certification of Biden on January 6 when a mob of Trump loyalists attacked the Capitol.Deputy attorney general Lisa Monaco announced early this year that the justice department had begun investigating fake elector certificates at the behest of some state attorneys general including Michigan’s.The House committee’s sprawling investigation, which has interviewed over 1,000 people, has included a strong focus on top Trump loyalists including Eastman and Giuliani. Last month, Giuliani testified virtually for over seven hours but reportedly asserted privilege and dodged many questions about his contacts with Trump House allies.Ex-prosecutors also caution that while the justice department may want to obtain more evidence from the House select committee about the fake electors scheme and lawyers including Giuliani, there are other top Trump allies who sought to overturn Biden’s win, plus key figures in the Capitol attack who have drawn scrutiny from both the panel and justice, who prosecutors may now have in their sights.A grand jury in Washington DC, for instance, also began issuing subpoenas a few months ago seeking information about Trump allies involved in the planning and financing of the large Trump rally that preceded the Capitol attack, as the Washington Post first reported.Further, other recent grand jury activity in Washington indicates a widening justice inquiry into top Trump allies including a subpoena last month to Peter Navarro, Trump’s former top trade advisor, for testimony and some of his written communications with Trump. Navarro has responded with a lawsuit to block the subpoena.In addition, several months ago the House sent the justice department a criminal contempt of Congress referral about Mark Meadows, Trump’s former chief of staff, who played key roles in efforts to overturn Biden’s win, and was not fully cooperative with the panel’s requests for documents and testimonyIn replying to justice department’s letter, the January 6 panel chair Bennie Thompson stressed that the committee’s inquiry is ongoing and that “we told them that as a committee, the product was ours, and we’re not giving anyone access to the work product … we can’t give them unilateral access.” and called the DoJ request “premature.”But Thompson also told reporters last month the committee may allow some materials requested to be reviewed in the panel’s officesFormer prosecutors say Thompson’s response, albeit mixed, seems to augur well for more cooperation in the future and pointed to several ways that the overture to the House panel could substantially benefit current inquiries.“The DoJ request for the fruits of the House committee investigation was inevitable but is still very important,” former justice inspector general Michael Bromwich said.“It will substantially advance the DoJ investigation into the role played by higher-level architects of the insurrection,” Bromwich added. “ It will save DoJ time and resources in pushing the investigation forward. It’s very much like having a large second investigative staff that has been working in parallel rather than at cross-purposes with the criminal investigators. Because the House committee has not immunized any witnesses, the legal obstacles for using that testimony don’t exist.”Despite Thompson’s initial guarded response, Bromwich said he expects “they will comply promptly”, adding that the panel “is probably irritated that the request didn’t come earlier, rather than at a time its members are swamped with prep for public hearings and is well into drafting its report”.Likewise, Barbara McQuade, a former US attorney for the eastern district of Michigan, told the Guardian that outreach to obtain key transcripts from the House panel could prove a boon to prosecutors.“Obtaining the transcripts directly from the committee is a way to maximize efficiency,” said McQuade, now a professor of practice at the University of Michigan Law School. “Investigators can see what witnesses have said before and decide whether they need to be interviewed again. They can use the transcripts to eliminate witnesses who don’t have much light to shed on the matters under investigation.”McQuade noted that months ago, “Monaco confirmed that DoJ had received evidence from state AGs about alternate slates of electors and was investigating. It appears that DoJ is now issuing subpoenas regarding this episode. They will likely ask questions about why and how this plan was carried out and who was involved. The answers to those questions will guide the investigation. One could imagine each link leading to the next and possibly all the way to Donald Trump.”As of late May, the justice department had charged over 830 people for crimes related to their roles in the January 6 Capitol attack which followed a Trump rally where he urged a large crowd to “fight like hell.” The federal charges range from illegal entry to seditious conspiracy involving Proud Boys and Oath Keepers members, some of whom have pleaded guilty.On another front, a CNN report in late May revealed that FBI agents had recently conducted interviews in Georgia and Michigan with individuals who initially signed up to be Trump electors but then bowed out, asking specific questions about their contacts with Trump campaign officials and others.As DoJ has ramped up its inquiry into Trump’s fake electors, ex-prosecutors see more benefits that DoJ’s request to the House committee could produce.“One expects that the main purpose is to check the consistency of critical accounts – which is valuable and does signal that DoJ is moving forward amid signs that it is increasingly examining the conduct of Giuliani and Eastman,” ex-prosecutor Paul Rosenzweig saidIn another investigative twist, Paul Pelletier, the former acting chief of the fraud section at DoJ said: “DoJ’s public acknowledgment of their interest in the January 6 transcripts may well be only the tip of the iceberg.“While Chairman Thompson has deferred a formal response to the government’s inquiry, they likely have been informally sharing evidence for some time as is common in these investigations.”Looking forward, other ex-prosecutors sound bullish the House panel will extend cooperation to DoJ.“The panel is sure to cooperate because they are patriots,” former federal prosecutor Dennis Aftergut told me. “They know the importance of January 6 criminal accountability. That is the DoJ’s department, not theirs,” but predicted that the committee “will cooperate on their schedule”.Aftergut stressed that the committee has done a “bang up job” with its wide ranging investigation, but likely wants to keep the public’s attention focused on their upcoming hearings which Democratic Representative Jamie Raskin has predicted will “blow the roof off the House”.Still, he added, “Chairman Thompson calling cooperation now “premature” signals that it’s coming.”TopicsDonald TrumpUS justice systemRudy GiulianiUS Capitol attackUS politicsnewsReuse this content More