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      in US Politics

      Donald Trump raped me, writer E Jean Carroll testifies in New York court

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      The advice columnist E Jean Carroll told a New York jury on Wednesday that Donald Trump raped her, leaving her unable to have a romantic relationship, and then “shattered my reputation” by denying the attack occurred.Carroll testified in her civil lawsuit seeking damages for battery – after Trump allegedly sexually assaulted her in a New York department store changing room in 1996 – and for defamation, after he accused her of lying and perpetrating a hoax when she went public with her accusations in a book.“I’m here because Donald Trump raped me, and when I wrote about it, he said it didn’t happen. He lied and shattered my reputation. I’m here to try and get my life back,” she told the jury.Trump denies the accusations.Before Carroll testified, Judge Lewis Kaplan warned Trump may have crossed the line into jury-tampering after the former president posted an attack on his social media site, Truth Social, calling Carroll’s accusations a “made-up SCAM” and a “witch-hunt”.Kaplan called Trump’s post “entirely inappropriate” and warned they could become “a potential source of liability” for him.After she took the stand, Carroll described running into Trump as she was leaving the Bergdorf Goodman luxury department store.“He said, ‘I need to buy a gift, come help me,’” she said. “I was delighted.”Carroll said she suggested a handbag and then a hat for the woman Trump said he was buying for but he wasn’t interested.“He picked up a fur hat and he was petting it like a cat or a dog. Then he said, ‘I know, lingerie,’” she said. “He led the way to the escalator.”Carroll described Trump as very talkative, and herself as “absolutely enchanted”.“I was delighted to go to lingerie with him. He was very funny,” she said.Carroll said Trump “snatched up” a grey-blue bodysuit in the lingerie department and demanded she try it on. “I had no intention of putting it on. I said, ‘You put it on, it’s your colour,’” she told the court.Carroll said Trump suggested they both try it on, and motioned toward the dressing room. She said she did not take it seriously.“Donald Trump was being very light. It was very joshing and very funny,” she said. “I was flirting the whole time, probably.”But, she said, the mood changed rapidly after they stepped into the dressing room.“He immediately shut the door and shoved me up against the wall. He shoved me so hard my head banged. I was extremely confused,” she said. “I pushed back and he thrust me back against the wall again, banging my head again.”Carroll told the jury the situation “turned absolutely dark”.“He leaned down and pulled down my tights,” she said. “I was pushing him back. It was quite clear I didn’t want anything else to happen.”Carroll described the former president’s attempts to kiss her as “a shocking thing”.“My whole reason for being alive at that moment was to get out of the room,” she said.But Carroll said she could not escape Trump’s grip. Speaking quietly and slowly, she said he raped her.Carroll said she escaped after she was able to lift her knee and push him off. She fled the store.Carroll said she will always regret going into the dressing room with Trump, describing it as “very stupid”.“It left me unable to ever have a romantic life again,” she said.Later, Carroll shed tears as she explained that she found it impossible to even smile at a man she was attracted to after the alleged rape, and that she had not had sex since.Carroll said she continued to put on a public face of the “invincible old lady” but that the “private E Jean is not that cheerleader”. She acknowledged that in her book she had claimed not to have suffered mental anguish as a result of the alleged assault, but said that was her “public person” speaking while her private self suffered.Carroll also admitted there was a contradiction between her role as an advice columnist telling readers to seek therapy or go to the police, and her own failure to do either.Carroll said she considers Trump “evil” and thought he was a “terrible” president, but denied bringing the lawsuit against him because of her political views.“I’m not settling a political score. I’m settling a personal score,” she said.Carroll said she had been subject to considerable abuse by Trump and his supporters for going public about the alleged attack, including the then president’s dismissal of her as a liar. Carroll said she had expected him to say they had a consensual encounter, not deny it altogether.“It hit me and it laid me low because I lost my reputation. Nobody looked at me the same. It was gone. Even people who knew me looked at me with pity in their eyes, and the people who had no opinion now thought I was a liar and hated me,” she said. “The force of hatred coming at me was staggering.”Carroll said she was also fired from her advice column at Elle magazine after 26 years.Asked if she regretted accusing Trump given the consequences, Carroll’s voice broke.“I regretted this about 100 times but, in the end, being able to get my day in court finally is everything,” she said, through tears.The trial continues.
      Information and support for anyone affected by rape or sexual abuse issues is available from the following organisations. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support on 0808 500 2222. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html More

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      in US Politics

      Trump lawyers say Mar-a-Lago boxes contained foreign leader briefings

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      Donald Trump’s lawyers in the Mar-a-Lago documents investigation found the 15 boxes the former president returned to the National Archives a year after the end of his presidency mostly contained briefings for calls with foreign leaders, according to a new letter they sent to Congress.The majority of the letter – seen by the Guardian and earlier reported by CNN – served to characterize Trump’s retention of classified-marked documents as inadvertent, and due to White House staffers sweeping all documents into boxes during a chaotic departure at the end of the administration.But the 10-page letter that was sent to the House and Senate intelligence committees also revealed the order in which the documents were placed, as well as their contents, inside 15 boxes the National Archives struggled to retrieve for months and precipitated the criminal investigation.The investigation into Trump’s potential retention of national defense information and obstruction of justice led by special counsel Jack Smith is ongoing, though it may be near its end given prosecutors have subpoenaed almost everyone who conceivably could have knowledge of the matter.Trump’s two main lawyers involved in the documents investigation – Tim Parlatore and Jim Trusty – in late December last year formally asked the National Archives for access to the 15 boxes that Trump had returned through the relevant provision in the Presidential Records Act.The request was granted several weeks later, and Parlatore and Trusty went to one of the top floors in the main National Archives building overlooking the National Mall and started going through the boxes, which they found preserved just as when Trump had sent them up from his Mar-a-Lago resort.The boxes, according to the letter, contained a mixture of documents from the White House that were grouped by date and included newspapers, magazines, notes, letters and daily presidential schedules.Where there had been classified documents – which was what prompted the National Archives to first alert the justice department to start an investigation last year – officials had inserted placeholder pages that described the document that had been removed, the letter said.“That allowed Parlatore and Trusty to discern what the documents were, as well as what other materials in the boxes were in proximity … The vast majority of placeholder inserts refer to briefings for phone calls with foreign leaders that were located near the schedule for those calls.”The letter then described the ensuing criminal investigation as “misguided” because, in their eyes, the way the boxes were packed was indicative of White House staff pulling all documents into the boxes during a chaotic “pack-out” process at the end of the Trump administration.Left unsaid was that the criminal investigation has evolved since the initial referral.The obstruction part of the investigation is centered on Trump’s incomplete compliance with a subpoena last May that demanded the return of any classified-marked documents in his possession. That was after documents he returned earlier to the National Archives included 200 that were classified.Last June, Corcoran searched Mar-a-Lago and produced about 30 documents with classified markings to the justice department, and had another Trump lawyer, Christina Bobb, sign a certification that attested to compliance with the subpoena “based on the information provided to me”.But the justice department developed evidence that more documents that were marked as classified remained at the resort, according to court filings, and when the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago in August they found 101 documents marked as classified in a storage room and in Trump’s office.Last month, Corcoran was ordered by a senior US judge to testify and hand over his notes to the grand jury hearing evidence in the case, piercing his attorney-client privilege protections through the crime-fraud exception because Trump might have used his advice in furtherance of a crime.The special counsel is also investigating whether Trump violated the Espionage Act, and prosecutors have recently asked witnesses whether Trump ever showed a map to donors or a book author, a person familiar with the matter said. More

    • 163 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘It doesn’t register with me’: Biden disregards concerns about his age – video

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      The US president has dismissed concerns about his age after a recent poll by NBC News which found that 70% of adults said he should not run again. Addressing a press conference with the South Korean president, Yoon Suk Yeol, Joe Biden, 80, said: ‘With regard to age … I can’t even say the number. It doesn’t register with me.’

      Biden recently announced his intention to run again for the presidency with a campaign video asking Americans to give him another four years to ‘finish what he started’ More

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      in US Politics

      Joe Biden formally announces 2024 White House run

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      Joe Biden has formally announced his campaign for re-election in 2024, asking Americans for four years to “finish this job”, possibly setting up an extraordinary rematch with Donald Trump.In a three-minute video opening with images of the US Capitol attack, Biden warned that the US remains under threat from the anti-democratic forces unleashed by his predecessor, who he beat in 2020.Biden said: “When I ran for president four years ago, I said we were in a battle for the soul of America – and we still are.”The president launched his re-election campaign on the fourth anniversary of his return to politics in 2019, when he declared his third presidential run. Since then, the political landscape has changed.The US is still grappling with the scars of a pandemic that killed more than 1.1 million and with inflation that has eased from historic highs but remains painful. Americans remain deeply divided, convulsed by the loss of federal abortion rights, near-weekly mass shootings and worsening climate disasters.Already the oldest president, Biden would be 86 before the end of a second term, nearly a decade older than Ronald Reagan was when he left the White House in 1989. Trump is 76.In his video, Biden warned that “Maga extremists” – Trump’s slogan is “Make America Great Again” – were working to strip away “bedrock freedoms”.“Cutting social security that you’ve paid for your entire life while cutting taxes for the very wealthy,” Biden said. “Dictating what healthcare decisions women can make, banning books and telling people who they can love. All while making it more difficult for you to be able to vote.”The president and his wife, Jill Biden, had made his intentions known. But Biden felt little need to rush after a better-than-expected Democratic performance in the midterm elections tamped down calls for a serious primary challenge.Ultimately, the president chose to wait until after his tour of Ireland, a three-day trip he said restored his “sense of optimism”. Returning home, he told reporters he planned to “run again”.The vice-president, Kamala Harris, the highest-ranking woman and person of color in US politics, will be Biden’s running mate again.Biden is dogged by low approval ratings and concerns about his age. Only a quarter of Americans want him to run, according to the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Among Democrats, that figure is 50%. Should Biden win the nomination, as expected, most Democrats will support him.On Tuesday, Biden was due to welcome the president of South Korea. Next month, he will travel to the G7 summit in Japan. His team will begin to formalize a campaign expected to be headquartered in Wilmington, Delaware.Julie Chávez Rodríguez, a senior White House adviser and granddaughter of the celebrated labor leader César Chávez, will be campaign manager. Her principal deputy will be Quentin Fulks, a strategist who ran Raphael Warnock’s Senate re-election campaign in Georgia, a battleground state Biden won in 2020. The announcement begins a fundraising sprint. Donors have been summoned to Washington.Hours after making his candidacy official, during remarks to union workers at a conference in Washington, Biden was greeted by chants of “four more years”.“Our economic plan is working,” he said in a speech rife with references to his working-class upbringing in Scranton, Pennsylvania.“Let’s finish the job,” he said.Biden has made clear he plans to run on accomplishments in the first half of his presidency, when Democrats had majorities in Congress.Biden signed the American Rescue Plan, delivering financial assistance to those hit hard by Covid. He also approved a $1tn infrastructure bill; signed the first major federal gun safety bill in nearly 30 years; pursued initiatives to both treat veterans exposed to toxic burn pits and boost the semiconductor industry; and made Ketanji Brown Jackson the first Black woman on the supreme court.Perhaps his most significant legislative achievement to date is the Inflation Reduction Act, the most significant US response to the climate crisis.But while Biden’s policies are broadly popular, he has struggled to earn credit. He has spent the last few months attempting to sell his economic policies and rally Americans before a showdown with Republicans over the federal debt limit.On the world stage, Biden has rallied a global coalition behind Ukraine in response to Russia’s invasion while seeking to strengthen US defenses against China. The chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, however, was among the lowest points of Biden’s presidency, even as he fulfilled a promise to end America’s longest war.Republicans greeted Biden’s announcement by assailing his handling of immigration and the economy.“Biden is so out-of-touch that after creating crisis after crisis, he thinks he deserves another four years,” said Ronna McDaniel, chair of the Republican National Committee. “If voters let Biden ‘finish the job’, inflation will continue to skyrocket, crime rates will rise, more fentanyl will cross our open borders, children will continue to be left behind, and American families will be worse off.”Biden must negotiate with a divided Congress, Republicans holding the House. Biden plans to use a showdown over raising the federal borrowing limit to draw a contrast with Republican economic priorities, which he argues are aligned with big business and special interests.In his campaign video, Biden warned that individual freedoms are under attack by far-right Republicans who have trampled reproductive, voting and LGBTQ+ rights.“This is not a time to be complacent,” he said. “I know America. I know we’re good and decent people.”After nearly a half-century in public life including 36 years as a senator from Delaware and eight years as the vice-president to Barack Obama, Biden called himself a “bridge” to the next generation of Democrats. But only two fringe candidates have challenged him for the nomination: the self-help author Marianne Williamson and anti-vaccine activist Robert F Kennedy Jr.The Republican field is growing. Nikki Haley, a former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador, has entered the race. The South Carolina senator Tim Scott has taken steps to run. The Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, is widely expected to announce. Mike Pence, Trump’s vice-president, is also weighing a run.Trump announced his candidacy after the midterms in November. He and Biden both face federal investigations over their handling of classified information. In Biden’s case, documents were discovered at his office and home. His lawyers have stressed they are cooperating.Trump resisted efforts to retrieve materials he took to his Florida estate. But that is just one of many legal challenges he faces. Earlier this month, Trump pleaded not guilty to 34 criminal charges related to hush money payments to a porn star. He also faces investigations into his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, trial over a rape accusation, and a civil suit over his business affairs.Ahead of Biden’s announcement, Trump lashed out, saying the “five worst presidents in American history” combined had not inflicted the “damage Joe Biden has done”.In his video, Biden said: “Every generation of Americans has faced a moment when they’ve had to defend democracy. Stand up for our personal freedoms. Stand up for the right to vote and our civil rights.”
      Joan E Greve contributed reporting. More

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      in Elections

      Prosecutor in Trump-Georgia case says charging decisions to come in summer

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      The prosecutor in Atlanta investigating whether Donald Trump and his allies illegally meddled in the 2020 presidential election in Georgia said on Monday she expects to announce charging decisions in the case this summer and urged “heightened security”.Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis wrote in a letter to local sheriff Pat Labat that she expects to announce the decisions some time between 11 July and 1 September. She said she wanted to give Labat time to coordinate with local, state and federal agencies “to ensure that our law enforcement community is ready to protect the public”.“Open-source intelligence has indicated the announcement of decisions in this case may provoke a significant public reaction,” Willis wrote in the letter, adding that some could involve “acts of violence that will endanger the safety of our community”.As leaders, they need to be prepared, she wrote, adding that her team would be in touch to talk about arrangements.The letter was first reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which added that letters were also sent to the city’s police chief and the head of the emergency management agency serving the municipality and county.The Atlanta police department confirmed receipt of a letter from Willis and said it would “continue to monitor the potential for unrest throughout our city”.“We stand ready to respond to demonstrations to ensure the safety of those in our communities and those exercising their first amendment right [to peacefully assemble], or to address illegal activity, should the need arise,” a department statement said.Willis has been investigating whether Trump and his allies broke any laws as they tried to overturn his narrow election loss to his Democratic rival Joe Biden in Georgia as Biden cruised to a more comfortable victory in the electoral college.She opened the investigation in early 2021, shortly after a recording of a phone call between Trump and Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, was made public. In that call, Trump suggested the state’s top elections official could help “find” the votes needed to overturn his loss in the state.It has become clear since then that the scope of Willis’s investigation has expanded far beyond that call.Trump, who last fall announced a 2024 bid campaign for the White House, already faces criminal charges in New York. A Manhattan grand jury in March indicted the former president on 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up hush-money payments to a porn actor during the 2016 election that he won.New York police had said ahead of his arraignment there that they were ready for large protests by Trump’s supporters, who believe any charges against him are politically motivated. And while hundreds of onlookers, protesters, journalists and some politicians did show up, fears that unruly crowds would cause chaos ultimately proved unfounded.Meanwhile in Washington, federal grand juries are investigating efforts by Trump and his allies to undo the results of the 2020 presidential election and the potential mishandling of classified documents by Trump at his Florida estate. Federal prosecutors have questioned numerous Trump administration officials before the grand jury. It’s not clear when those investigations, both overseen by a special counsel appointed last fall, might conclude or who, if anyone, might be charged.Trump’s legal team in Georgia – Drew Findling, Jennifer Little and Marissa Goldberg – said in a statement that Willis’s announcement to law enforcement “does nothing more than set forth a potential timetable” for decisions Willis had already said were coming.“On behalf of President Trump, we filed a substantive legal challenge for which [Willis’s] office has yet to respond,” the statement said. “We look forward to litigating that comprehensive motion which challenges the deeply flawed legal process and the ability of the conflicted [prosecutor’s] office to make any charging decisions at all.”Trump’s legal team last month filed a motion seeking to toss out a report drafted by a special grand jury that was impaneled to aid Willis’s investigation. They also asked the court to prohibit Willis from continuing to investigate or prosecute Trump. A judge gave Willis until 1 May to respond. More

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      in US Politics

      Don Lemon says he has been fired by CNN: ‘I am stunned’

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      The TV news anchor Don Lemon said on Monday he had been fired from CNN – the news breaking shortly after word of another major US media departure, that of Tucker Carlson from Fox News.“I was informed this morning by my agent that I have been terminated by CNN,” Lemon, 57, wrote on Twitter not long after appearing on CNN This Morning, the revamped show he co-hosted with Poppy Harlow and Kaitlan Collins.“I am stunned. After 17 years at CNN I would have thought that someone in management would have had the decency to tell me directly.“At no time was I ever given any indication that I would not be able to continue to do the work I have loved at the network.”CNN did not say why Lemon had left but it did dispute his version of events.It said: “Don Lemon’s statement about this morning’s events is inaccurate. He was offered an opportunity to meet with management but instead released a statement on Twitter.”In a separate statement, the chairman of CNN, Chris Licht, said: “CNN and Don have parted ways. Don will forever be a part of the CNN family, and we thank him for his contributions over the past 17 years. We wish him well and will be cheering him on in his future endeavors.”Licht also said CNN This Morning, which has struggled for ratings, “has been on air for nearly six months and we are committed to its success”.In February, Lemon was rebuked by Licht and briefly taken off-air over televised remarks about Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor now running for the Republican presidential nomination.Speaking to Harlow and Collins about Haley’s call for mental competency tests for ageing politicians, Lemon said Haley “isn’t in her prime, sorry”, adding: “A woman is considered to be in her prime in her 20s and 30s and maybe 40s.”Haley is 51.In a recording obtained by the New York Times, Licht told staffers that Lemon’s remarks were “upsetting, unacceptable and unfair to his co-hosts, and ultimately a huge distraction to the great work of this organisation”.Lemon apologised, saying, according to CNN: “I’m sorry that I said it. And I certainly see why people found it completely misguided.”He added: “The people I’m closest to in this organization are women.”Haley told Fox News: “I have always made the liberals’ heads explode. They can’t stand the fact that a minority, conservative, female would not be on the Democratic side.“He made that comment. I wasn’t sitting there saying sexist middle-aged CNN anchors need to have mental competency tests, although he may have just proven that point.”Announcing his firing on Monday, Lemon said: “It is clear that there are some larger issues at play.“With that said, I want to thank my colleagues and the many teams I have worked with for an incredible run. They are the most talented journalists in the business and I wish them all the best.” More

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      in US Politics

      Trump committed treason and will try again. He must be barred from running | Robert Reich

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      The most obvious question in American politics today should be: why is the guy who committed treason just over two years ago allowed to run for president?Answer: he shouldn’t be.Remember? Donald Trump lost re-election but refused to concede and instead claimed without basis that the election was stolen from him, then pushed state officials to change their tallies, hatched a plot to name fake electors, tried to persuade the vice-president to refuse to certify electoral college votes, sought access to voting-machine data and software, got his allies in Congress to agree to question the electoral votes and thereby shift the decision to the House of Representatives, and summoned his supporters to Washington on the day electoral votes were to be counted and urged them to march on the US Capitol, where they rioted.This, my friends, is treason.But Trump is running for re-election, despite the explicit language of section three of the 14th amendment to the constitution, which prohibits anyone who has held public office and who has engaged in insurrection against the United States from ever again serving in public office.The reason for the disqualification clause is that someone who has engaged in an insurrection against the United States cannot be trusted to use constitutional methods to regain office. (Notably, all three branches of the federal government have described the January 6 attack on the US Capitol as an “insurrection”.)Can any of us who saw (or have learned through the painstaking work of the January 6 committee) what Trump tried to do to overturn the results of the 2020 election have any doubt he will once again try to do whatever necessary to regain power, even if illegal and unconstitutional?Sure, the newly enacted Electoral Count Reform Act (amending the Electoral Count Act of 1887) filled some of the legal holes, creating a new threshold for members to object to a slate of electors (one-fifth of the members of both the House and the Senate), clarifying that the role of the vice-president is “solely ministerial” and requiring that Congress defer to slates of electors as determined by the states.But what if Trump gets secretaries of state and governors who are loyal to him to alter the election machinery to ensure he wins? What if he gets them to prevent people likely to vote for Joe Biden from voting at all?What if he gets them to appoint electors who will vote for him regardless of the outcome of the popular vote?What if, despite all of this, Biden still wins the election but Trump gets more than 20% of Republican senators and House members to object to slates of electors pledged to Biden, and pushes the election into the House where Trump has a majority of votes?Does anyone doubt the possibility – no, the probability – of any or all of this happening?Trump tried these tactics once. The likelihood of him trying again is greater now because his loyalists are now in much stronger positions throughout state and federal government.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionYes, they were held back in the 2020 midterms. But in state after state, and in Congress, Republicans who stood up to Trump have now been purged from the party. And lawmakers in what remains of the Republican party have made it clear that they will bend or disregard any rule that gets in their way.In many cases, the groundwork has been laid. As recently reported in the New York Times, for example, the Trump allies who traveled to Coffee county, Georgia, on 7 January 2021 gained access to sensitive election data. They copied election software used across Georgia and uploaded it on the internet – an open invitation to election manipulation by Trump allies in 2024.If anything, Trump is less constrained than he was in 2020.“In 2016, I declared I am your voice,” Trump said last month at the Conservative Political Action Conference, a line he repeated at his first 2024 campaign rally, in Waco, Texas, a few weeks later. “Today, I add: I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.”Filing deadlines for 2024 presidential candidates will come in the next six months, in most states.Secretaries of state – who in most cases are in charge of deciding who gets on the ballot – must refuse to place Donald Trump’s name on the 2024 ballot, based on the clear meaning of section three of the 14th amendment to the US constitution. More