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      The Breach review: ex-January 6 staffer on how Republicans lurched into madness

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      The Breach review: ex-January 6 staffer on how Republicans lurched into madness Denver Riggleman offers an inside track on the Capitol attack, the House committee and Donald Trump’s great GOP hijackDenver Riggleman is a US air force veteran who became a one-term Republican congressman from Virginia. In the House from 2019, he was a member of the hardline Freedom Caucus and voted with Donald Trump more than 90% of the time. Yet according to his new book, Riggleman “began to understand that some of my colleagues had fully bought into even the more unhinged conspiracy theories” he had witnessed while campaigning.Confidence Man review: Maggie Haberman takes down TrumpRead moreIn 2020, Riggleman lost his Republican nomination – after he officiated a same-sex wedding. In retaliation, someone tampered with the wheels of his truck, endangering the life of his daughter. “If I ever find the individual responsible, God help that person,” the former congressman writes now.Out of office, Riggleman became a senior staffer to the House January 6 committee. Last spring, he resigned. The Breach is an account of what he learned, his decision to publish reportedly angering some on the panel.The book is also a memoir, in which Riggleman describes growing up in a tumultuous home and his bouts with religion and his parents as well as the metamorphosis of the GOP into the party of Trump, and the events and people of January 6.“The rift between Trump’s wing of the Republican party and objective reality didn’t begin with the election,” Riggleman writes.He omits specific mention of birtherism, the Trump-fueled false contention that Barack Obama was not born a US citizen. He does acknowledge the “explosion of conspiracy theories during the Trump years”.As a former intelligence officer and contractor, Riggleman places the blame on social media, algorithms and the religious divide. Together, such factors took a toll on the nation, democracy and the lives of the Republican base.Hostility to Covid vaccines exacted an explosion in excess deaths among Republicans, 76% higher than for Democrats. In Florida, the Covid death rate eventually surpassed that of New York, to rank among the highest in the US. Owning the libs can kill you – literally. Tens of thousands died on Trump’s altar of Maga. For what?Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor, actively encouraged vaccine skepticism. He refused to say whether he received the vaccine, and attempted to stop young children getting the shots. He is in the hunt for the Republican presidential nomination in two years’ time, second only to Trump.The divine injunction against bearing false witness? It has elasticity.Bob Good, a self-described “biblical conservative” who successfully challenged Riggleman for his Virginia seat, said Covid was a hoax. Jerry Falwell Jr, Good’s boss at Liberty University, left that fundamentalist powerhouse in August 2020, amid a scandal ensnaring him, his wife and a pool boy.Falwell was also one of Trump’s most prominent supporters. Riggleman laments: “It was stunning to see true born-again holy rollers lining up behind Trump, a man who shunned church and had already been caught on camera bragging about grabbing women” by the crotch.Likewise, he voices disgust for what has become of the party of Lincoln: “As a kid the people I knew respected a line between church and state. Trump’s party was veering more and more into Christian nationalism, where they demonized Democrats for having an unholy agenda.”Riggleman is also horrified by the involvement of ex-servicemen in the Capitol attack. “There’s no denying it,” he writes. “The political challenge to the election was, at least on some level, linked to a military operation.”He reserves some of his harshest criticism for those closest to Trump. Mark Meadows, his last chief of staff; Mike Flynn, his first national security adviser; Roger Stone, his longtime political aide. Each played a major role in the insurrection.As Riggleman recounts, Meadows defied the committee and refused to appear for deposition. But he did turn over 2,319 texts and messages, avoiding prosecution for contempt of Congress. Some of those texts came from 39 House Republicans and five senators.“Meadows gave us the keys to the kingdom,” Riggleman writes, also describing the Meadows texts as the committee’s “crown jewels”.As for Stone, the Republican dirty trickster was an apparent link between the brains and brawn of the Capitol attack.On 7 November 2020, hours after the networks called the election for Joe Biden, Stuart Rhodes, the founder of Oath Keepers militia, messaged: “What’s the plan … We need to roll.” Stone was part of the chat group. Rhodes now sits before a federal jury, charged with seditious conspiracy.The final chapter of The Breach is devoted to Ginni Thomas, the wife of the supreme court justice Clarence Thomas. Its title: “The Better Half”. Riggleman raises Thomas’s past membership in Lifespring, a personal development program and purported cult. He says he “found Thomas in Mark Meadows’ text messages after a hot tip and a case of mistaken identity”. She wrote of “watermarked ballots” and a “military whitehat sting operation”. She mentioned “TRUMP STING w CIA director Steve Pieczenik” [actually a former state department official and conspiracy theorist]. She condemned “the Biden crime family and ballot fraud conspirators”.Liz Cheney, the House committee vice-chair, asked Riggleman to pull back. The Wyoming Republican worried about exposing the Thomases as election deniers, QAnon followers, or both.We Are Proud Boys review: chilling exposé illuminates Republicans’ fascist turnRead more“I think we need to remove that briefing,” Cheney said, according to Riggleman’s telling. “It’s going to be a political sideshow.”Months later, Cheney and the committee reversed course. On 29 September 2022, Thomas testified for more than four hours behind closed doors. She continued to claim the election was stolen.In The Breach, Riggleman looks to the future.“We have a new enemy in this country,” he writes, “a domestic extremist movement that is growing online at fiber-optic speed. Is there a road back? To be honest, I’m not quite sure.”
      The Breach: The Untold Story of the Investigation Into January 6th is published in the US by Macmillan
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      Trump ally Lindsey Graham told ex-cop Capitol rioters should be shot in head

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      Trump ally Lindsey Graham told ex-cop Capitol rioters should be shot in headMichael Fanone recounts meeting with South Carolina Republican senator in book to be published next week02:36Republican senator and Trump ally Lindsey Graham told a police officer badly beaten during the Capitol attack that law enforcement should have shot rioting Trump supporters in the head, according to a new book.Capitol attack officer Fanone hits out at ‘weasel’ McCarthy in startling interviewRead more“You guys should have shot them all in the head,” the now ex-cop, Michael Fanone, says the South Carolina Republican told him at a meeting in May 2021, four months after the deadly attack on Congress.“We gave you guys guns, and you should have used them. I don’t understand why that didn’t happen.”On January 6, Fanone was a Metropolitan police officer who came to the aid of Capitol police as Trump supporters attacked. He was severely beaten, suffering a heart attack and a traumatic brain injury.He has since resigned from the police, testified to the House January 6 committee and become a CNN analyst. His book, Hold the Line, will be published next week.Politico reported the remarks Fanone says were made by Graham. The site also said Fanone secretly recorded other prominent Republicans, among them Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader and possibly the next speaker, who has also stayed close to Trump.Politico said Fanone told McCarthy efforts to minimize the Capitol insurrection were “not just shocking but disgraceful”. McCarthy reportedly offered no response.Last week, Rolling Stone published an extraordinarily frank interview in which Fanone, a self-described lifelong Republican, called McCarthy a “fucking weasel bitch”. McCarthy did not comment.According to Politico, Fanone told Graham he “appreciated the enthusiasm” the senator showed for shooting rioters “but noted the officers had rules governing the use of deadly force”.Fanone says the meeting with Graham was also attended by Harry Dunn, a Capitol police officer who has also testified in Congress, and Gladys Sicknick and Sandra Garza, the mother and partner of Brian Sicknick, an officer who died after the riot.Fanone says Graham snapped at Gladys Sicknick, telling the bereaved mother he would “end the meeting right now” if she said more negative things about Trump.Nine deaths, including officer suicides, have been linked to the Capitol attack. The riot erupted after Trump told supporters to “fight like hell” to overturn his defeat by Joe Biden, which he maintains without evidence was the result of electoral fraud. Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s attorney, urged Trump’s supporters to stage “trial by combat”.Testimony to the House January 6 committee has shown Trump knew elements of the crowd were armed but told them to march on the Capitol and tried to go with them.Representatives for Graham did not comment to Politico. The senator was previously reported to have advocated the use of force against Capitol rioters on the day itself.The Divider review: riveting narrative of Trump’s plot against AmericaRead moreThat same day, Graham seemed to abandon his closeness to Trump. In a Senate speech hours after the Capitol was cleared, he said: “Count me out.” Days later, he said he had “never been so humiliated and embarrassed for the country”.But like most Republicans, McCarthy literally so, Graham returned to Trump’s side. Like all but seven Republican senators, Graham voted to acquit in Trump’s second impeachment trial, for inciting the Capitol attack.He recently predicted “riots in the streets” if Trump is indicted for retaining classified documents after leaving the White House.In their recent book, The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021, Peter Baker of the New York Times and Susan Glasser of the New Yorker quote Graham as calling Trump “a lying motherfucker” … but “a lot of fun to hang out with”.TopicsBooksUS Capitol attackUS politicsRepublicansUS SenateUS CongressUS policingnewsReuse this content More

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      The broken US economy breeds inequality and insecurity. Here’s how to fix it | James K Galbraith

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      The broken US economy breeds inequality and insecurity. Here’s how to fix itJames K GalbraithOn one side, oceans of wealth and power. On the other, precarity and powerlessness. But we have the tools for reform Rising interest rates, a falling stock market, a seesaw in the price of gas, a high dollar and chaos in world finance – we see in all this, once again, the folly of trying to run the world’s largest economy through a central bank. It’s time to rethink the basics: what has happened in America? And what should be done?Adam Smith wrote: “Wealth, as Mr Hobbes says, is power.” Today in the United States we find islands of wealth and power on one side and an ocean of precarity and powerlessness, alongside poverty, on the other. This is a structural development over 50 years, the effect of politics and policies, but also of industrial change, globalization and new technologies, with intense regional, social, demographic and political implications.US mortgage rates climb to 6.7%, highest for 15 yearsRead moreFrom the 1930s to the 1970s America had a middle-class economy centered in the heartland, feeding and supplying the world with machinery and goods while drawing labor from the impoverished south to the thriving midwest – an economy of powerful trade unions and world-dominant corporations. This has become a bicoastal economy dominated by globalized finance, insurance and high-end services on one coast, and by information technology, aerospace and entertainment on the other.Finance and technology do not create many jobs, and the conduct of business in those sectors is rapacious and predatory, shading often into fraud. Some years ago we calculated the rise of income inequality measured between counties during the 1990s boom years, and found that half the increase was due to income gains in just five counties: Manhattan, Silicon Valley, Seattle. There have been other big gainers since, but the fact remains: the largest income and wealth gains in America have become highly concentrated in a few very specific places, sectors – and people.Yet practically all new jobs created in the past 30 years have been in services, and most of those in “stagnant services” – the profusion of restaurants, retail shops, hospitals and clinics, offices and entertainment venues, fueled by household incomes (and borrowings) exceeding requirements for material goods. Pay in these jobs is mediocre and employment is unstable. Families compensated by having two or more earners, each sometimes holding two or more jobs, where 50 years ago the norm was one earner with a steady job paying a living wage. Then Covid blasted the sector.For better or worse, we can’t go back: globalization and the digital revolution are irreversible facts of life. The June 2021 White House Review on the supply chain made this very clear, using semiconductors, rare earths, batteries and pharmaceuticals as examples. Our advanced sectors need world markets – including the Chinese market – as much as they need access to the world’s resources. US consumers benefit from imported goods and from the efficiencies of the information age.The question is: what do we do now? We can adjust, and build a fair and secure middle-class society, free of poverty and of oligarchy alike, with tools that are broadly familiar. These tools include:Expand social insuranceSocial security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment insurance and Snap already greatly reduce poverty, insecurity and hunger in America. They can be broadened and strengthened. If we can’t get Medicare for All, then drop the age of eligibility to 55 – that would cover a large part of the most vulnerable population and reduce in a stroke the burden of private health insurance on employers.Raise the minimum wageA federal minimum wage at $15 per hour would provide a raise to at least 20% of all working Americans. It would solve in a stroke the supposed problem of “labor shortage” – without hurting any employer relative to any other. Nor would it encourage immigration, since US workers would step up to take decently paid jobs.Implement a job guaranteeA federal job guarantee is well-prepared proposal that would eliminate involuntary unemployment, set a basic wage standard, and provide willing workers with continuous employment on useful projects, giving private employers a labor pool from which they can easily recruit the workers that they need.Stabilize energy prices and suppliesThe TVA and other agencies provide stable power under long-term contracts. Why should oil and gas be run by private equity on a boom-and-bust basis? Stabilize energy prices and supplies – with regulation, quotas, price controls (as in Germany right now), long-term contracts and public utilities – and many other problems would become much easier to solve.Build public services, infrastructure, and fight climate changeAnd do this while cutting military commitments and spending. The main job of infrastructure is to improve the quality of life, with clean water and air, good transport and communications, and – urgently – to change the resource mix so as to mitigate, so far as possible, global warming. We cannot meet these needs and at the same time devote our talents and resources to wars – the limits to that are clear after Afghanistan and Iraq. It is past time to end the illusion that the United States can or should run the world.Shift taxation toward land rentA great principle of classical economics was that taxes should encourage labor and enterprise while discouraging waste in both the public and private spheres. In the 1980s, taxes were shifted away from personal and corporate incomes and capital gains and toward payrolls and sales – and the unsurprising result was the rise of an oligarchy of hyper-wealthy persons. The remedy now is to tax these accumulations and the associated rents – land values, mineral rights, technology “quasi-rents” – so as to bring the new plutocrats back to earth. A stronger estate-and-gift tax can spur the transfer of great fortunes to foundations and non-profits, such as hospitals, universities and churches, while working to prevent the emergence of dynasties, financial and political.Reform banking before it’s too lateThe Glass-Steagall Act protected the middle class – the ordinary depositor at a commercial bank – from the speculative whims of the elites. Today big money is back in charge, despite the great financial crisis – and much of the American public as well as the larger world is sick of it. Perhaps the toughest, most necessary reform is to reduce debts including student debts, to shrink the banks, to restore effective regulation, to prosecute frauds, and to discipline finance to serve the public good. This will take the glamour out of being a banker – and the intoxicating power out of running the Federal Reserve.Is this program realistic? Perhaps not. But consider the path we’re on. What I propose is an alternative – to pitchforks, anarchy and civil war.
      James K Galbraith holds the Lloyd M Bentsen Jr chair in government/business relations at the Lyndon B Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. In the 1970s, he drafted the monetary policy oversight provisions of the original version of the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment and Balanced Growth Act
      TopicsUS economyOpinionUS politicsEconomicscommentReuse this content More

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      Crisis Looms as Islamists Make Gains in Kuwait

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      The Fair Observer website uses digital cookies so it can collect statistics on how many visitors come to the site, what content is viewed and for how long, and the general location of the computer network of the visitor. These statistics are collected and processed using the Google Analytics service. Fair Observer uses these aggregate statistics from website visits to help improve the content of the website and to provide regular reports to our current and future donors and funding organizations. The type of digital cookie information collected during your visit and any derived data cannot be used or combined with other information to personally identify you. Fair Observer does not use personal data collected from its website for advertising purposes or to market to you.As a convenience to you, Fair Observer provides buttons that link to popular social media sites, called social sharing buttons, to help you share Fair Observer content and your comments and opinions about it on these social media sites. These social sharing buttons are provided by and are part of these social media sites. They may collect and use personal data as described in their respective policies. Fair Observer does not receive personal data from your use of these social sharing buttons. It is not necessary that you use these buttons to read Fair Observer content or to share on social media. More

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      Capitol attack: Proud Boys leader pleads guilty to seditious conspiracy

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      Capitol attack: Proud Boys leader pleads guilty to seditious conspiracyJeremy Bertino, 43, enters guilty plea for his role in plot to stop transfer of presidential power from Trump to Biden on January 6 A North Carolina man pleaded guilty on Thursday to plotting with other members of the far-right Proud Boys to violently stop the transfer of presidential power after the 2020 election, making him the first member of the extremist group to plead guilty to a seditious conspiracy charge.Jeremy Bertino, 43, has agreed to cooperate with the justice department’s investigation of the role that Proud Boys leaders played in the mob’s attack on the Capitol on 6 January 2021, a federal prosecutor said. Judge Timothy Kelly agreed to release Bertino pending a sentencing hearing that was not immediately scheduled.Bertino also pleaded guilty to a charge of unlawfully possessing firearms in March in Belmont, North Carolina. Kelly accepted his guilty plea to both charges during a brief hearing after the case against Bertino was filed on Thursday.Prosecutor Erik Kenerson said estimated sentencing guidelines for Bertino’s case recommend a prison sentence ranging from four years and three months to five years and three months. The civil war-era seditious conspiracy charge carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.Former Proud Boys national chairman Henry “Enrique” Tarrio and four other group members also have been charged with seditious conspiracy for what prosecutors say was a coordinated attack on the Capitol to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral victory.A trial for Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs, Zachary Rehl and Dominic Pezzola is scheduled to start in December.A trial started this week in Washington for the seditious conspiracy case against the founder of the Oath Keepers and other members of the anti-government militia group for their participation in the attack.More than three dozen people charged in the Capitol siege have been identified by federal authorities as leaders, members or associates of the Proud Boys.Two of them Matthew Greene and Charles Donohoe pleaded guilty to conspiring to obstruct an official proceeding, the January 6 joint session of Congress for certifying the electoral college vote.TopicsUS Capitol attackUS politicsThe far rightnewsReuse this content More

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      Wes Moore bids to become Maryland governor: ‘I’m running against an insurrectionist’

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      InterviewWes Moore bids to become Maryland governor: ‘I’m running against an insurrectionist’Martin PengellyThe 43-year-old military veteran is confident he can defeat Trumpist Dan Cox and become the state’s first black governor Wes Moore will in all likelihood be the next governor of Maryland. A month before election day, one poll gave him a 32-point lead over his Republican opponent, Dan Cox.If successful, Moore will be the state’s first Black governor – and only the third Black governor of any state. He stresses the need for bipartisan support in a time of divide.He says: “The only way you’re going to see polling results like that is if you’re showing a measure of support not just among Democrats, but amongst independents and amongst Republicans.Senate rival accuses Dr Oz of killing over 300 dogs as medical researcherRead more“I think you’re seeing how the state … is rallying behind that idea that we can go further together, that people are tired and exhausted, frankly, of being at each other’s throats, that we are going to build a new type of coalition inside the state that incorporates people from a variety of political parties.”At 43, Moore’s résumé includes a Rhodes scholarship, a tour of Afghanistan, a Bush White House job and corporate and non-profit experience. He is part of a diverse crop of new leaders in a Democratic party headed by a 79-year-old president, Joe Biden, and congressional leaders among whom Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, is a spring chicken at 71.He insists: “We’re taking nothing for granted. We are running every day like we’re 10 points behind. I believe that’s how we were able to win the primary. And I believe that’s how we’re going to be able to win the general as well.”Moore emerged from a bruising, nine-strong primary field. In the general election it’s him versus Cox, and here’s the crux: the Republican, a state representative, attended Donald Trump’s rally near the White House on January 6, before the Capitol riot. The Maga hardcore will back him, but it is unlikely many others will.“There are issues on the ballot,” Moore says. “You have very clear distinctions about where we are when it comes to reproductive health, when we talk about things like economic growth, when we talk about how to support education.“But I do think one of the things on the ballot in this election is this idea of patriotism, where we have not just very different views, but very different histories when it comes to what it means to defend the values of your country and fight for a better future.“I have an opponent who talks about backing the blue, but was supportive of a group of people who stormed the Capitol and were risking the lives of police officers. Someone who says they believe in freedom, yet at the same time would criminalise abortions, for both patients and providers, even in cases of incest and rape.“You have someone who’s talking about patriotism but their definition of patriotism is putting on a baseball cap and calling the vice-president a traitor, while a mob asks for him to be hung.“I think this bastardisation of the idea of patriotism will not be tolerated … I am running against someone who is an insurrectionist. I won’t be lectured by him, nor anyone else in this wing of the Republican party who wants to define patriotism as people who are willing to fight for the overturning of the government.“That’s not patriotism. My definition of patriotism was serving as a member of the 82nd Airborne Division in Afghanistan and leading paratroopers in combat.”Moore is “confident” he will get Republican votes, in part because “we’re campaigning all over the state, in Democratic areas, independent areas, Republican areas … I’m going to the areas where there’s not a lot of Democrats but I tell people, ‘Listen, there’s a lot of Marylanders. And I plan on being their governor too.’“In the military, we learned a basic mantra: leave no one behind. And I live by it. I never once asked my soldiers ‘What’s your political party?’ Because it didn’t matter. My goal was to unify everyone around a single mission. And that’s exactly what I plan on doing as governor.”Maryland is currently governed by a Republican, Larry Hogan, a lonely moderate in a party in Trump’s grip. In 2020, rather than vote for Trump or Biden, Hogan wrote in Ronald Reagan. In 2022, he has spoken forcefully against Cox but has not said he will vote for Moore or endorse him.Given Moore’s focus on patriotism, a concept generally easier for Republicans to wield in elections, is he disappointed Hogan has not told Republicans to cross the divide?“Well, I think Governor Hogan has been very clear on the fact that he’s not going to support his party’s nominee. Governor Hogan has said that not only does he think that my opponent is mentally unstable – he’s called him a ‘QAnon whack job’ – he has said, ‘I wouldn’t even give him a tour of the governor’s office.’“So the governor has been full-throated in his displeasure with where the party went. I’d love the governor’s vote, I hope that he would vote for me in the general election. But I also know that there’s been no nuance in the governor’s displeasure on who the Republican nominee is.”A spokesman for Hogan did not respond to a query about any endorsement of Moore.Moore hopes to work to instill “progressive patriotism” via a programme to encourage voluntary service after high school, “essentially democratising the gap-year process that only certain students can take advantage of” without government support.Such a programme, he says, is “absolutely achievable and absolutely fundable because we’re going to use … state and federal resources in addition to public-private partnerships”.The need for partnerships extends to Moore’s own party, where at least for now he is holding progressives and moderates together.“I haven’t been a politician,” he says. “I didn’t come up in this political world where people are placed in boxes and get their talking points from the box that they live in. I came up from a perspective where I built alliances and allegiances across the board and across sectors, and across political parties, because my whole focus throughout my entire career has been get big things done.“We’ve been able to build a very interesting coalition of people, from leaders in the business community to labor leaders, from Progressive Maryland to the Fraternal Order of Police. I’m offering them all the same thing: a chance to be involved in the policymaking conversation.”The last Democratic governor of Maryland, Martin O’Malley, agrees. In an email, he said Moore “has the ability, because of his victory, his candidacy, and his message, to unite all the various factions of the Democratic party”.After two terms in Annapolis, O’Malley ran for the Democratic presidential nomination. Some expect Moore to take a similar path. He is focused on the task at hand.He says: “I understand, as chief executive, I’ve got to make decisions. And I will make decisions every single day and wake up the next morning and make some more. But the thing I am offering everybody as part of our coalition is that you are going to have a seat at the table as we push forward for the same collective goal.”TopicsUS midterm elections 2022MarylandDemocratsUS politicsinterviewsReuse this content More

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      James Brown’s cape and Rudy gone wild: key takeaways from Haberman’s Trump book

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      James Brown’s cape and Rudy gone wild: key takeaways from Haberman’s Trump bookThe former president really doesn’t like Mitch McConnell – and other notable things we’ve learned from Confidence Man Maggie Haberman’s new book, Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America, was published in the US on Tuesday. As is now customary for books about the 45th president, its revelations have been widely reported.‘She say anything about me?’ Trump raised Ghislaine Maxwell link with aidesRead moreBut thanks to the New York Times reporter’s dominance of the Trump beat – before his time in power, through it and after – the intensity of interest has perhaps outweighed that for any other such book.Here are the key takeaways.Trump’s Waterloo?Trump was long said to be in the habit of ripping up notes from White House meetings and throwing them in the toilet. Haberman published photos. Trump is also in all sorts of legal trouble for taking classified material to Mar-a-Lago, prompting an FBI search. He admitted such to Haberman – perhaps as a result of his comfort talking to a reporter he called “my psychiatrist”. She also shows him being cavalier with national security concerns regarding Iran and Russia.Jared who?Haberman shows Trump relentlessly mocking Jared Kushner, his son-in-law and adviser, for his voice and manner; wishing Ivanka had married the NFL star Tom Brady instead; deciding to fire both of them then chickening out; ranting about Kushner’s Jewish religious observance; and predicting that Kushner would be attacked, even raped, were he ever to choose to go camping. Kushner, meanwhile, is shown as a White House turf warrior who gloried in having “cut [Steve] Bannon’s balls off” – as the Guardian’s Lloyd Green pointed out, they grew back – and tried to inflate poll numbers so as not to anger his father-in-law.Ghislaine Maxwell was a worryTrump fell out with the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and denies wrongdoing associated with him – but nonetheless worried aloud that Epstein’s former girlfriend might talk about him after her own arrest. Trump, who denies allegations of sexual misconduct or assault from more than 20 accusers, also predicted that “the women” would be the source of most trouble once he entered politics. Melania Trump seems to have agreed – Haberman says she renegotiated her prenuptial agreement.Trump was racist and transphobicHaberman’s reporting here is not particularly surprising but it is routinely horrific. Trump thought Black political staffers were waiters. He said he couldn’t afford to alienate white supremacists, because they tended to vote. He persisted in asking if a notional transgender debate questioner was “cocked or de-cocked”.He was also dangerously ignorantWrong-footed by a health official’s uniform, Trump thought the confused apparatchik could organise bombing raids on drug labs in Mexico. “The response from White House aides,” Haberman writes, “was not to try to change Trump’s view, but to consider asking [Adm Brett] Giroir not to wear his uniform to the Oval Office anymore.”Taxes dodge was made up on the flyTrump pulled his “I can’t, I’m being audited” excuse for not releasing his tax returns out of thin air on his campaign plane – and rolled it out to reporters apparently without legal advice. Those who knew Trump in New York pre-politics suspected his returns would show he wasn’t as rich as he said. Haberman also reports alleged dodgy practices including a parking garage lease payment made with a box of gold bars.Trump was no diplomatAmong multiple diplomatic faux pas, Haberman shows Trump asking Theresa May why her mortal rival Boris Johnson wasn’t prime minister instead and speaking crudely about abortion, and calling the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, “that bitch”. Trump’s apparent affinity with or interest in Nazi Germany – widely reported but now at issue in a lawsuit against CNN – contributed to one chief of staff, John Kelly, deciding the president was a fascist years before Joe Biden said the same. In terms of delicate domestic situations, Haberman shows Trump sarcastically praying for the health of Ruth Bader Ginsberg, the liberal supreme court justice who died in late 2020.Trump hates MitchTrump’s disdain for the Senate minority leader is no secret, but he gave it pungent expression in interviews with Haberman. McConnell said Trump was “practically and morally responsible” for the Capitol attack, though he voted to acquit at Trump’s second impeachment trial. Trump told Haberman: “The Old Crow’s a piece of shit.”Foiled Covid Superman stunt was inspired by James BrownThis bit is as weird as the subhead suggests. Haberman recounts familiar aspects of Trump’s mishandling of the pandemic but also thickens out the tale of how Trump wanted to present his own recovery. She writes: “He came up with a plan he told associates was inspired by the singer James Brown, whom he loved watching toss off his cape while onstage, but it was in line with his love of professional wrestling as well. [Trump] would be wheeled out of Walter Reed in a chair … dramatically stand up, then open his button-down dress shirt to reveal [a] Superman logo beneath it. (Trump was so serious about it that he … instruct[ed] an aide, Max Miller, to procure the Superman shirts; Miller was sent to a Virginia big-box store.)”Capitol attack officer Fanone hits out at ‘weasel’ McCarthy in startling interviewRead moreTrump wanted to refuse to leaveTrump denied to Haberman that he spent most of 6 January watching the Capitol attack on TV and refusing to stop it, as congressional witnesses have described. Slightly more surprisingly, Haberman reports that Trump told aides – including the guy who brought the Diet Cokes – he simply wouldn’t cede power. In his quasi-legalistic efforts to overturn the 2020 election, he also told his personal attorney: “OK, Rudy, you’re in charge. Go wild, do anything you want. I don’t care.” Giuliani proceeded to go wild.Some aides tried to rein Trump inHaberman says William Barr, Trump’s second attorney general, told his president: “People are tired of the fucking drama.” But it seems the publishing industry is not – Haberman has followed Baker and Glasser, Woodward and Costa, Rucker and Leonnig and many, many other authors to the top of the bestseller charts.TopicsBooksDonald TrumpTrump administrationUS politicsRepublicansPolitics booksNew York TimesfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Trump asks supreme court to intervene in Mar-a-Lago special master dispute

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      Trump asks supreme court to intervene in Mar-a-Lago special master disputeAppellate court ruling prevented special master also examining 100 files seized from Mar-a-Lago with classification markings Donald Trump on Tuesday asked the US supreme court to partially reverse an appellate court decision that prevented the special master, reviewing for privilege protections materials seized by the FBI from his Mar-a-Lago resort in August, also examining 100 documents with classification markings.US supreme court hears case that could gut voting rights for minority groupsRead moreThe motion to vacate the ruling by the US appeals court for the 11th circuit represents the former president’s final chance to temporarily bar federal prosecutors from using the materials in their inquiry into whether he illegally retained national defense information.In the emergency request, lawyers for Trump argued that the appellate court lacked jurisdiction to intervene in the lower district court decision that appointed a special master to review all seized documents – including those marked classified – for privilege protections.The technical motion argued among other things that because the appointment of a special master was a procedural order and not an injunction, the decision by the trial judge in Florida was supposedly not subject to “interlocutory review” by the appellate court at that time.“That appointment order is simply not appealable on an interlocutory basis,” the filing said. “Nevertheless, the 11th circuit granted a stay of the special master order, effectively compromising the integrity of the well-established policy against piecemeal appellate review.”In the petition submitted to the supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, who receives 11th circuit appeals, Trump asked that the special master be allowed to review 100 documents marked classified in addition to 11,000 other documents about to be subject to the independent filter process.The former president does not appear to be seeking to stop the DoJ using the 100 documents in its criminal investigation, since Trump’s argument hinges on the Presidential Records Act, which does not account for whether documents are classified or declassified.The former president will face significant challenges even if the supreme court hears the case, and even though the bench is dominated by six conservative justices – three of whom he appointed – who have previously shown deference to executive-branch powers.The argument appears flawed, legal experts said, since it would suggest that higher courts would have no ability to review an order from any federal judge to stop criminal and national security investigations.Lawyers for Trump also contended that the seized materials could be marked classified for national security purposes and simultaneously be personal documents – a position the DoJ has previously said is impossible, with which the 11th circuit indicated it agreed.The Trump motion was silent on whether Trump actually declassified any of the documents, as he has claimed publicly. It instead suggested the supreme court consider the case on the basis that he had the power to do so, and might have done so, without providing evidence.TopicsDonald TrumpUS supreme courtUS politicsLaw (US)newsReuse this content More