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      Donald Trump: threatening social media post flagged by prosecutors in court filing

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      US prosecutors have used a court filing to flag a social media post from Donald Trump, arguing that it suggests he might intimidate witnesses by improperly disclosing confidential evidence received from the government.The justice department on Friday asked a federal judge overseeing the criminal case against the former president to step in after he released a post online that appeared to promise revenge on anyone who goes after him.On his Truth Social site, the former president wrote, “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!” on Friday afternoon, a day after he pleaded not guilty to charges that he orchestrated a criminal conspiracy to try to reverse his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.In the filing in the Washington federal court, the office of special counsel Jack Smith said Trump’s post raised concerns that he might publicly reveal secret material, such as grand jury transcripts, obtained from prosecutors.Under the process known as discovery, prosecutors are required to provide defendants with the evidence against them so they can prepare their defense.“It could have a harmful chilling effect on witnesses or adversely affect the fair administration of justice in this case,” prosecutors wrote, noting that Trump has a history of attacking judges, attorneys and witnesses in other cases against him.The prosecutors’ filing asked US district judge Tanya Chutkan to issue a protective order prohibiting Trump and his lawyers from sharing any discovery materials with unauthorized people.Protective orders are routine in cases involving confidential documents, but prosecutors said it was particularly important to restrict public dissemination, given Trump’s social media statements.At his arraignment on Thursday, Trump swore not to intimidate witnesses or communicate with them without legal counsel present.A Trump spokesperson issued a statement defending the former president’s social media post.“The Truth post cited is the definition of political speech, and was in response to the Rino, China-loving, dishonest special interest groups and Super Pac’s,” the statement said.Trump has also pleaded not guilty in two other criminal cases. He faces federal charges in Miami for allegedly retaining classified documents after leaving office and obstructing justice, and state charges in Manhattan for allegedly falsifying business records to hide hush money payments to a porn star.He faces a possible fourth indictment in Georgia, where Atlanta prosecutors have been investigating his efforts to overturn the election results there.Trump has portrayed all of the investigations as part of a political witch-hunt intended to stymie his 2024 campaign.Reuters and Associated Press contributed to this report More

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      Crowds gather under stormy skies for glimpse of Trump in court – again

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      After hearing that Donald Trump would appear at a federal courthouse in downtown Washington to answer charges filed against him for attempting to overturn the 2020 election, Joan Batista made plans to be outside, celebrating what she viewed as the former president’s long overdue comeuppance.But when she arrived at the E Barrett Prettyman US courthouse, what she saw bothered her. City trucks equipped with snow plows blocked roads, hundreds of police monitored the building’s entrances and reporters from all around the world ringed its perimeter, hoping for a glimpse of the former president.“It’s a little embarrassing,” Batista, a veteran of many demonstrations in and around the Capitol, told the Guardian. Even though Trump was finally having to answer for his attempts to prevent Joe Biden from taking office, the fact that it had come to this bothered her. So, too, did the fact that despite facing the most serious criminal charges against a former American president in history, Trump appears to remain the most popular man in the Republican party.“It’s not a regular celebration,” Batista conceded, seated in a plaza outside the courthouse where demonstrators boogied to Enur’s reggae fusion hit Calabria 2008. “It shouldn’t have taken this long, and the special treatment is a little troublesome, because he should be held today.”The former president’s appearance Thursday under stormy skies and just steps from the Capitol his supporters attacked on January 6 satisfied few of those who turned up to witness it. Road closures and a huge police presence meant his motorcade was mostly out of the crowd’s sight when it arrived, and only a few members of the public made it into the courtroom where Trump entered not guilty pleas to the four charges brought against him by special prosecutor Jack Smith.There was no sign the former president saw the handful of supporters waving flags reading “TRUMP WON”, nor the demonstrators in prison stripes or the man wearing an inflatable Trump costume with the words “LOSER” written across the front.“It was also very sad driving through Washington and seeing the filth and the decay, and all of the broken buildings and walls and the graffiti,” Trump told reporters in brief remarks on the tarmac of the Virginia airport he departed from after his court appearance. “This is not the place that I left.”It is a place, however, that Trump is strenuously working to return to. He has vowed to press on with his presidential campaign despite his mounting legal troubles, and polls indicate most Republicans are ready to help him get back into the White House.“It is totally unfair, and that’s why [Smith] indicted him several times and this is another one. It’s just bringing him more and more strength and more popularity,” said Daniel Demoura, as he carried a pole from which several Trump flags flew.Standing on a traffic island surrounded by a mix of reporters, police and curious tourists, the 32-year-old said it felt like “a circus, because I see a lot of people being crazy, making some weird jokes that doesn’t make sense and people dancing around like if it was a party. But we’re here in a serious way to defend Trump.”He may have been thinking of Lucas Elek, a law student living in Colorado who happened to be in Washington and headed down to the courthouse for Trump’s appearance wearing a Jar Jar Binks mask and carrying a cardboard sign reading “DONNY DONONO!” Elek said he chose the Star War character in reference to his role in fueling the rise of dictatorship in the films’ universe, and also to keep his face hidden after receiving online abuse from rightwing commenters.“This is, in some ways, a celebration of our democracy. And you’ve got all of your strait-laced politicos in their seats over there, but I think … they’d be lying if they said it wasn’t a historic moment. And so I think we need to celebrate it,” Elek said in a brief moment when he wasn’t dancing.Criminal defendants are usually present for their trials, and if that’s the case for Trump, it will mean more business for Stan Sinberg and his Roving Anti-Trump Bandwagon, where pins bearing Smith’s face and slogans like “I am the resistance” could be bought for $4 a piece. Conceived in the wake of Trump’s victory in the Republican primaries in 2016, Sinberg travels to rallies against the now former president, always expecting that the time would arrive when his business would dry up. It hasn’t.“It was supposed to end on election night 2016. Then he won, then people still wanted them. And then it was supposed to end again, when he lost the election in 2020, and I even put up a sign: ‘happily going out of business sale.’ But he didn’t go away. So I’m still at it,” Sinberg said.“People say to me … if he wasn’t president, you wouldn’t have a job. It’s ironic, it’s true. But, even so … every morning I would wake up and wish for a headline ‘Trump dead’. And then I’d be out of business but, alright, it’s worth it.” More

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      Trump’s Court Day: An Encounter With Jack Smith and a Different Swearing In

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      Former President Donald J. Trump returned to Washington on Thursday, rose to full height, lifted his right hand and swore an oath. This time it was not to assume power, but to promise that he would abide by a bond agreement that would allow him to leave the federal courthouse without paying bail or agreeing to any travel restrictions.Mr. Trump’s second federal arraignment seemed on the face of it to be more routine than the first one: last month in Miami after he was indicted on charges of mishandling classified national security documents and obstructing the government’s efforts to reclaim them.He seemed a bit more at ease. And so did the man who has led the investigation that resulted in his indictments, Jack Smith, the normally stony-faced special counsel, who allowed himself a few smiles as he shook hands with F.B.I. agents when the half-hour hearing ended.But if his second federal arraignment was less novel in a been-there-done-that way, the gravity of the four charges the government has leveled against him gave the proceedings a sense of historical weight not present in the Florida case.As if to underscore that point, at least three of the district court judges who have presided over trials of the Trump supporters charged for their roles in the assault on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, filed into the back row of the visitors gallery to observe. One of them was Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who called out Mr. Trump’s “irresponsible and knowingly false claims that the election was stolen” in imposing a harsh sentence on a rioter who bludgeoned a Capitol Police officer into unconsciousness.But all eyes in the courtroom were, once again, on the second face-to-face encounter between the former president and Mr. Smith, who has filed charges that could put the 77-year-old Mr. Trump in a federal prison for the rest of his life. This time, unlike in Miami, the two men were positioned in a way that they could be visible to each other.Mr. Smith entered the courtroom — normally used by the district’s chief judge, James E. Boasberg — about 15 minutes before the scheduled 4 p.m. start, with his lead prosecutor in the case, Thomas P. Windom, and positioned himself in a chair behind his team, with his back against the rail dividing participants from the gallery.Mr. Trump walked in very slowly — in his signature long red tie and long blue suit coat — surveying the room and mouthing a greeting to no one in particular. His in-court retinue included M. Evan Corcoran, a lawyer for Mr. Trump who is a witness in the documents case, and one non-lawyer, his spokesman, Steven Cheung. Mr. Trump glanced briefly in Mr. Smith’s direction, but he did not seem to make eye contact.That was a strikingly different approach than he has taken outside the courtroom, where he has called Mr. Smith “deranged” and promised to fire him if he is re-elected.Mr. Trump spoke in respectful tones when questioned by Moxila A. Upadhyaya, the magistrate judge who presided over the proceeding.Yet if he seemed chastened and ill-at-ease in Florida, he was more animated in his return to Washington, with flashes of his usual, freewheeling conversational style.When she asked his name, he replied, “Donald J. Trump” — then added “John!”When she asked his age, he raised his voice a notch and intoned, “seven-seven!”At the end of the proceeding, Judge Upadhyaya thanked Mr. Trump, who said, “Thank you, your honor.” On the “all rise” command, he stood up. One of his lawyers put his arm on Mr. Trump’s back and guided him away from the table and out the courtroom door. More

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      Will Trump Have His Mug Shot Taken?

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      Former President Donald J. Trump’s second federal arraignment this year is expected to follow a rhythm similar to his first: He will be fingerprinted but not have his mug shot taken.As happened before his arraignment in Miami on charges of mishandling government documents, the U.S. Marshals Service, which is responsible for security inside federal courthouses, will escort him to a booking area.Like last time, they will not take his picture, according to a law enforcement official involved in the planning. But federal rules dictate that an accused person be reprocessed in each jurisdiction in which he or she faces charges, so Mr. Trump will have to be fingerprinted for a second time using an electronic scanning device. He is also expected to answer a series of intake questions that include personal details, such as his age.Mr. Trump also did not have a mug shot taken when he was arraigned earlier this year in New York on state charges in connection with a hush-money payment to a pornographic actress before the 2016 election. But his campaign did immediately start selling shirts with a pretend booking photo.A genuine booking photo could still be in Mr. Trump’s future. The sheriff in Fulton County, Ga., where another potential indictment connected to Mr. Trump’s efforts to undermine the 2020 election looms, has suggested that if Mr. Trump is charged, he will be processed like anybody else, mug shot and all. More

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      in US Politics

      Trump will appear in court to respond to charges of election subversion efforts

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      Donald Trump was scheduled to surrender to federal authorities in Washington on Thursday afternoon and enter a not guilty plea to charges that he conspired to defraud the United States among other crimes in seeking to subvert the results of the 2020 presidential election.The twice-impeached former president, who has now been indicted three times since leaving the White House, was expected to be booked and fingerprinted in the federal district court before being escorted to his arraignment, which has been set for 4pm.Trump was expected to make his first appearance in the case in person, according to people briefed on the matter, and to travel for the arraignment from his Bedminster club in New Jersey to Washington with his lawyers and several top campaign staffers.The initial appearance from Trump to enter a plea formally starts the months-long pre-trial process that will run into the timetable for his other criminal trials next year and the 2024 presidential race, where Trump is the frontrunner for the Republican nomination.The charges in Washington came in the second indictment brought by the special counsel Jack Smith, who previously charged Trump in June with retaining national security documents at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida and obstructing the government’s efforts to retrieve them.Trump has also been indicted in an unrelated case by the Manhattan district attorney, who charged him over hush-money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election. He is expected to be indicted a fourth time over 2020 election-related charges in Georgia.Thursday’s arraignment follows the release of a 45-page indictment alleging fundamentally that Trump convened fake slates of electors and sought “sham election investigations” from the justice department in order to obstruct the certification of the election result in an attempt to remain president.The indictment also listed six co-conspirators who were not charged in the indictment. While they were unnamed, the descriptions of five of the six matched those of the Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, John Eastman, Ken Chesebro as well as the former US justice department official Jeff Clark.Thursday’s hearing in the courthouse – just blocks from the Capitol building, where Trump’s efforts to reverse his election defeat to Joe Biden culminated in the January 6 riot – was expected to be overseen by US magistrate judge Moxila Upadhyaya.Magistrate judges typically handle the more routine or procedural aspects of court cases, such as arraignments, but the case itself has been assigned to US district court judge Tanya Chutkan, a former assistant public defender who was nominated to the bench by Barack Obama.In 2021, Chutkan was the judge who rejected Trump’s attempt to block the House January 6 select committee investigating the Capitol riot from gaining access to presidential records. “Presidents are not kings, and plaintiff is not president,” she wrote at the time. More

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      Donald Trump’s January 6 indictment: six key takeaways

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      Donald Trump has been charged with several crimes in connection with his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, in a historic indictment that is deepening the former president’s legal peril.The charges, filed by the special counsel Jack Smith in federal district court in Washington DC on Tuesday, accuse Trump of conspiracies that targeted a “bedrock function of the United States federal government: the nation’s process of collecting, counting and certifying the results of the presidential election”.Here are some key takeaways from the latest indictment:Trump faces four chargesThe former president is accused of conspiring to defraud the United States government, conspiring to obstruct an official proceeding, conspiring against rights, and obstruction and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding.In the 45-page indictment, prosecutors laid out their case in stark detail, alleging Trump knowingly spread false allegations about fraud, convened false slates of electors and attempted to block the certification of the election on January 6.The former president was “determined to remain in power”Federal prosecutors said Trump was “determined to remain in power”. Prosecutors said that for two months after his election loss, Trump spread lies to create an “intense national atmosphere of mistrust and anger” and “erode public faith in the administration of the election”. They cited an example in Georgia, where Trump claimed more than 10,000 dead people voted in four days even after the state’s top elections official told him that was not true.There are six un-indicted co-conspiratorsThe indictment included six un-indicted co-conspirators as part of Smith’s inquiry, including four unnamed attorneys who allegedly aided Trump in his effort to subvert the 2020 election results, as well as an unnamed justice department official and an unnamed political consultant.While unnamed in the document, the details in the indictment indicate that those people include Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman and Jeff Clark, a former Department of Justice employee.The special counsel wants a speedy trialIt’s unclear yet when the case will go to trial, but Jack Smith said his office will seek speedy proceedings.“I must emphasize that the indictment is only an allegation and that the defendant must be presumed innocent until proven guilty, beyond a reasonable doubt, in a court of law,” Smith said in a press conference on Tuesday.Trump is looking at a complicated calendar for 2024. The former president’s trial in New York on criminal charges over hush money payments to the porn star Stormy Daniels will begin in March 2024. His criminal trial in Florida for retaining national security documents at his Mar-a-Lago property and obstructing the justice department’s efforts to retrieve them will take place in May 2024. The Iowa caucuses, the opening salvo in the Republican race for the 2024 presidential nomination, are scheduled to take place in January.Indictments won’t disqualify Trump from officeTrump’s indictments will not bar him from seeking the presidency again, nor will any conviction.However, it would be highly unusual for a thrice-indicted candidate to win the Republican presidential nomination. The only other presidential nominee to run under indictment in recent history is former Texas governor Rick Perry, who sought the 2016 Republican nomination after he was indicted for abuse of power. Another candidate, socialist party candidate Eugene Debs ran while imprisoned.Trump has three indictments so far. Smith, who indicted him in the January 6 case, has also charged him with the illegal retention of classified documents. Trump was also criminally charged in New York over hush money payments and faces a civil trial over business practices. In Georgia, the Fulton county district attorney has been investigating Trump and his allies’ alleged attempts to overturn the 2020 results – and is expected to announce charging decisions this month.The indictment follows a path laid by the House January 6 committeeThe congressional panel, which was created to investigate the insurrection, concluded last December recommending criminal charges. Over the course of the investigation, the committee conducted more than 1,000 interviews, collected more than a million documents and interviewed key witnesses. In public hearings, some held at prime time, investigators aired dramatic and damning footage, making the case that Trump “was directly responsible for summoning what became a violent mob” despite understanding that he’d lost the election.The justice department received what the committee had uncovered, but conducted its own interviews and used its authority to gain key evidence that wasn’t easily accessible to Congress.The final charges against Trump include ones that the committee had recommended, including conspiracy to defraud the United States. More

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      After Indictment, DeSantis Suggests Trump Can’t Get a Fair Trial in D.C.

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      Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida raced to respond to news that former President Donald J. Trump had been indicted a third time not by opining one way or the other on the new federal charges, but by leveling an unusual attack at residents of the District of Columbia, where the case is being prosecuted.Suggesting that Mr. Trump could not get a fair trial if the jurors were residents of the nation’s capital, an overwhelmingly Democratic city, Mr. DeSantis called for enacting reforms to let Americans have the right to remove cases from Washington, D.C. to their home districts.“Washington, D.C. is a ‘swamp’ and it is unfair to have to stand trial before a jury that is reflective of the swamp mentality,” Mr. DeSantis wrote on Twitter. “One of the reasons our country is in decline is the politicization of the rule of law. No more excuses — I will end the weaponization of the federal government.”The judge assigned to Mr. Trump, who was indicted on charges related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, is Tanya S. Chutkan, a D.C. District Court judge who has routinely issued harsh penalties in Jan. 6-related cases against people who stormed the Capitol.The Republican candidates, who have sought to overtake the former president’s substantial lead in early polls with little success, have campaigned amid a backdrop of Mr. Trump’s legal battles that have sucked up valuable airtime and dominated media coverage. Here’s what the others said on Tuesday: Former Vice President Mike Pence, who was present at the Capitol during the Jan. 6 attack and was the target of some rioters — and whom the indictment describes as a key target of Mr. Trump’s pressure campaign to overturn the 2020 election — said that the indictment “serves as an important reminder: Anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be President of the United States.”Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, in a statement to The Times, echoed a common refrain among Republicans: that the Justice Department, under the Biden administration, had been weaponized against Mr. Biden’s political opponents. He referenced the case against Hunter Biden, Mr. Biden’s son, and said, “We’re watching Biden’s D.O.J. continue to hunt Republicans while protecting Democrats.”Vivek Ramaswamy, a tech entrepreneur and one of Mr. Trump’s most vocal defenders in the 2024 field, called the indictment “un-American.” He sought to absolve Mr. Trump of any responsibility for the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and reiterated his previous promise that, if elected, he would pardon Mr. Trump. “The corrupt federal police just won’t stop until they’ve achieved their mission: eliminate Trump,” he said, and added: “Trump isn’t responsible for what happened on Jan 6. The real cause was systematic and pervasive censorship of citizens in the year leading up to it.”Former Representative Will Hurd of Texas, who has refused to pledge his support to Mr. Trump if he is the eventual nominee, was the first candidate to respond to the new indictment. “Let me be crystal clear: Trump’s presidential bid is driven by an attempt to stay out of prison and scam his supporters into footing his legal bills,” Mr. Hurd wrote. “His denial of the 2020 election results and actions on Jan. 6 show he’s unfit for office.”Former Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, who is running an explicitly anti-Trump campaign, reiterated his earlier calls for Mr. Trump to quit his campaign, calling him “morally responsible for the attack on our democracy.” Mr. Hutchinson said that if Mr. Trump does not drop out of the race, “voters must choose a different path.” More

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      Donald Trump charged over efforts to overturn 2020 presidential election

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      Federal prosecutors have charged Donald Trump over his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, the latest criminal case before the former president that comes just weeks after he was charged with retaining national defense information.The latest charges compound the mounting legal peril for Trump, the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican nomination, after he was indicted earlier this year in Miami for illegally retaining classified documents, and in New York for paying hush money to an adult film star before the 2016 election.Trump is also expected to face state charges in Georgia over Trump’s efforts there to reverse his defeat to Joe Biden in the 2020 election. The Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, has signalled her intent to file multiple indictments around the first two weeks of August.More details soon … More