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      How Bernie Sanders and conservatives united against US semiconductor bill

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      How Bernie Sanders and conservatives united against US semiconductor billVermont senator opposed ‘corporate welfare’ to firms paying huge salaries to executives – but Chips and Science Act passed Congress When it comes to alliances in Washington, few are as unlikely as the common ground the democratic socialist senator Bernie Sanders briefly found with the Heritage Foundation and Americans for Prosperity, two architects of conservative policies across the United States.Yet that is what happened this week when Sanders, a Vermont independent who caucuses with the Democrats, made a lonely and unsuccessful stand against a $280bn bill funding scientific research and, controversially, giving computer chip manufacturers financial incentives to build more production in the United States – one that rightwing groups also encouraged lawmakers to make.Pro-Israel group pours millions into primary to defeat Jewish candidateRead more“The question we should be asking is this: should American taxpayers provide the microchip industry with a blank check of over $76bn at a time when semiconductor companies are making tens of billions of dollars in profits and paying their executives exorbitant compensation packages? I think the answer to that question should be a resounding no,” Sanders said during a Monday speech on the Senate floor.The senator’s objections ultimately amounted to naught. The bill passed Congress on Thursday, and Joe Biden is expected to soon sign it.But the episode underscores the tensions that arise when Washington moves to help an industry facing tough times. In this case, the stricken businesses were semiconductor makers who are struggling to keep up with demand and fearful of the threat from ascendant Chinese industry.“The left in this country has generally sort of failed to recognize the importance of capital investment. At the same time, they’re sort of complaining about companies not investing in America, they haven’t actually supported the companies that do invest in America,” said Michael Mandel, chief economist and vice-president of the Progressive Policy Institute thinktank.“My personal view is that capital investment is absolutely essential, and anything we can do to get more investment in this country is a plus for workers and a plus for consumers.”Dubbed the Chips and Science Act, the measure represents Washington’s response to the shortage of semiconductors that began during the pandemic and has snarled the assembly lines of US industries while helping drive up inflation. The bill would offer computer chip manufacturers $52.7bn in incentives to build factories in the United States, as well as $24.3bn in tax breaks.The proposal has taken a tortuous path to passage, with the Senate first approving a version of it last year, before the idea was caught up in the legislative logjam that struck Biden’s agenda in the closing months of 2021.But, unlike some of what the Democratic president hoped to get out of Congress, many Republicans supported the concept of helping the semiconductor industry, particularly because it was seen as an effort to counter China, which has heavily invested in its own microchip industry.And while the US ally Taiwan is one of the biggest manufacturers of computer chips globally, another motivation for Chips is concern about what would happen to its supply if Beijing moves against the island. In July, the commerce secretary, Gina Raimondo, and defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, wrote a letter to the Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress, saying that the measure was “critical for our national security”.Mike Pompeo, a former secretary of state under the Republican president Donald Trump, made an unlikely contribution to calls for its passage. “Congress must pass the Chips Act for both our national and economic security. We have to become less dependent on China for critical technologies – and this is how we do it,” he tweeted as the House of Representatives was considering it.But some of the most influential conservative groups in Washington didn’t buy in.“The answer to the [Chinese Communist party’s] malevolent ambitions is not spending billions of dollars to help Fortune 500 companies, with no guarantee those dollars won’t end up supporting these companies’ business operations in China,” the Heritage Foundation president, Kevin Roberts, said in a statement.“Additionally, the act’s $250bn price tag will contribute to record inflation and increase the already historic cost of living for working- and middle-class Americans.”Americans for Prosperity, which was funded by the conservative industrialists Charles Koch and his late brother David, who are well known for their work promoting climate change denialism, sees the bill as “corporate welfare”.“The United States didn’t become the strongest and most prosperous society in the history of mankind by emulating the Chinese government’s central planning, and we shouldn’t start now,” the group’s vice-president of government affairs, Akash Chougule, said. “If we want to see more American investment, the US government needs to stay out of the way.”The effort ultimately failed, with 24 Republicans voting for Chips in the House and 17 Republicans in the Senate, along with almost all Democrats. While Sanders voted against it, none of his usual allies in that chamber or the House joined him in opposition.It wasn’t just the Biden administration that lawmakers were hearing from. Semiconductor firms invested heavily in lobbying to make the bill become law, with Bloomberg reporting major manufacturers spent $19.6m in just the first half of this year, after $15.8m in the same period of 2021.Particularly vocal was Intel, which has announced a $20bn investment in two new semiconductor factories in Ohio. But amid the Chips Act delay in June, the company announced those plans could be pushed back or curtailed without the funding.“My message to our congressional leaders is: hey, if I’m not done with the job, I don’t get to go home. Neither should you. Do not go home for August recess until you have passed the Chips Act, because I and others in the industries will make investment decisions. Do you want those investments in the US?” Intel’s chief executive, Ryan Scott, said in an interview on CNBC. “Get the job done.”Ro Khanna, a California Democrat who sponsored a bill that was a precursor to Chips, denied that the legislation was corporate welfare, saying there were guardrails in its text to stop corporations from using the funds for their own enrichment. Instead, he likened it to a return of 1940s-era industrial policy, in which the government makes investments in industries deemed strategically important.“I think there’s understandable concern about corporate welfare, but corporate welfare is different than the FDR model of mobilizing for production,” he said, referring to the Democratic president Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who led the country through most of the second world war.He envisioned Chips as a template for future efforts that could boost green technologies such as electric vehicles, and solar and wind energy.“I think it’s a first step for how we continue to industrialize America, how we bring our production back, how we reduce our trade deficits. I absolutely think this should be a model,” Khanna said. “And the commerce department should enforce this so none of the money is going to stock buybacks, that it is going to building factories.”TopicsBernie SandersDemocratsUS politicsRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

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      The Big Lie review: Jonathan Lemire laments what Trump hath wrought

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      The Big Lie review: Jonathan Lemire laments what Trump hath wrought The Politico reporter and MSNBC host’s book is an indictment of the former president but also his Republican partyJoe Biden sits in the Oval Office but Donald Trump occupies prime space in America’s psyche. Mike Pence’s most senior aides have testified before a federal grand jury. An investigation by prosecutors in Georgia proceeds apace. In a high-stakes game of chicken, the message from the Department of Justice grows more ominous. Trump’s actions are reportedly under the microscope at the DoJ. He teases a re-election bid. Season two of the January 6 committee hearings beckons.Thank You For Your Servitude review – disappointing tale of Trump’s townRead moreInto this cauldron of distrust and loathing leaps Jonathan Lemire, with The Big Lie. He is Politico’s White House bureau chief and the 5am warm-up to MSNBC’s Morning Joe. He has done his homework. He lays out facts. His book is a mixture of narrative and lament.Lemire contends that Trump birthed the “big lie” in his 2016 campaign, as an excuse in the event of defeat by either Senator Ted Cruz in the primary or Hillary Clinton in the general election. Trump held both opponents in contempt.In the primary, Trump lost Iowa – then falsely claimed Cruz stole it.“Based on the fraud committed by Senator Ted Cruz during the Iowa Caucus, either a new election should take place or Cruz results nullified,” Trump tweeted.In the general, a half-year later, he dropped another bomb.“I’m afraid the election is going to be rigged. I have to be honest.”In the final presidential debate he upped the ante, refusing to say he would accept the electorate’s verdict.“I will look at it at the time,” Trump said. “I will keep you in suspense.”He definitely warned us. Lemire’s first book is aptly subtitled: “Election Chaos, Political Opportunism, and the State of American Politics After 2020.”Then and now, Trump posited that only fraud could derail him. After he beat Clinton in the electoral college, he claimed he actually won the popular vote too. In Trump’s mind, he was the victim of ballots cast by illegal aliens.“In addition to winning the electoral college in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally,” Trump tweeted.To those within earshot, he said people who didn’t “look like they should be allowed to vote”, did.To soothe his ego, he appointed a commission headed by Kris Kobach, a nativist Kansas secretary of state, to vindicate his claims. It found nothing.In a blend of fiction and wish-fulfillment, Sean Spicer, Trump’s first White House press secretary, and Kellyanne Conway, a senior adviser, embarked on flights of fantasy. Spicer declared that Trump’s inaugural crowd was larger than that for Barack Obama. Conway introduced us to alternative facts.Lemire’s indictment goes way beyond that offered by Clinton, who called Trump voters deplorable. He casts the issue as systemic – and punches up. He is angered but does not condescend. The Big Lie is also about elite conservative lawyers, Ivy League-educated senators, Republican House leadership and Mike Lindell, the My Pillow guy.Like Gollum in Tolkien’s Rings trilogy, the House Republican leader, Kevin McCarthy, wants to get his hands on the speaker’s gavel that badly. Peter Navarro, Trump’s trade adviser and author of the ill-fated “Green Bay Sweep” plan to overturn the election, faces charges of criminal contempt. Such acolytes know exactly what they do.Extremists in Congress like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert are vocal totems, empowered by an enraged ex-president and a vengeance-filled base. In such a world it seems no surprise cries of “hang Mike Pence”, makeshift gallows and Confederate battle flags in the halls of the Capitol came to supplant “fuck your feelings”, the mantra of Trump 2016.As expected, Steve Bannon appears in The Big Lie. He loves dishing to the press. It is in his DNA. The former Trump campaign guru and White House aide, now convicted of contempt of Congress, trashes his former boss as a reflexive liar.According to Lemire, Bannon said: “Trump would say anything, he would lie about anything.” On cue, a Bannon spokesperson disputed Lemire’s sources, telling the Guardian they were inaccurate.In Jeremy Peters’ book, Insurgency, Bannon mused that Trump would “end up going down in history as one of the two or three worst presidents ever”. In Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury, he described the Trump Tower meeting between Don Jr and a group of Russians amid the 2016 election campaign as “treasonous” and “unpatriotic”.And yet Bannon’s role in Trump’s bid to stay in power remains of central interest to the January 6 committee. On 5 January 2021, Bannon announced on-air that “all hell is going to break loose tomorrow”. He spoke to Trump that morning.Despite his thoroughness, Lemire does omit the role of one group of Republicans in giving the big lie added heft. In May 2021, the Washington Post reported on the efforts of Texas Republicans led by Russell Ramsland, a businessman with a Harvard MBA.After the 2018 midterms, Ramsland and colleagues pressed convoluted theories concerning “voting-machine audit logs – lines of codes and time stamps that document the machines’ activities”. Pete Sessions, a defeated congressman, didn’t buy what Ramsland was selling. Trump did.For Trump’s minions, this remains a war over lost place and status.“Republicans need to prove to the American people that we are the party of … Christian nationalism,” says Greene, a first-term congresswoman from Georgia.Like a toxic weed, the big lie has taken root.“It is now part of the Republican party’s core belief,” Lemire writes. Violence and insurrection have become legitimate. “The Big Lie was who they were.”Our cold civil war grows hotter.
      The Big Lie: Election Chaos, Political Opportunism, and the State of American Politics After 2020 is published in the US by Macmillan
      TopicsBooksPolitics booksUS politicsDonald TrumpTrump administrationUS elections 2020US midterm elections 2022reviewsReuse this content More

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      Jared Kushner: I stopped Trump attacking Murdoch in 2015

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      Jared Kushner: I stopped Trump attacking Murdoch in 2015In forthcoming memoir, obtained by the Guardian, former adviser claims to have made hugely consequential intervention In a forthcoming memoir, Jared Kushner says he personally intervened to stop Donald Trump attacking Rupert Murdoch in response to the media mogul’s criticism, at the outset of Trump’s move into politics in 2015.Trump said sorry to Cruz for 2016 insults, Paul Manafort says in new bookRead moreIn the book, Breaking History, Kushner writes: “Trump called me. He’d clearly had enough. ‘This guy’s no good. And I’m going to tweet it.’“‘Please, you’re in a Republican primary,’ I said, hoping he wasn’t about to post a negative tweet aimed at the most powerful man in conservative media. ‘You don’t need to get on the wrong side of Rupert. Give me a couple of hours to fix it.’”Kushner says he fixed it. If his claim is true, he could be seen to have made a hugely consequential intervention in modern US history.Murdoch’s support, chiefly through Fox News, did much to boost Trump to victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016. Despite persistent reports of friction between the two men, Murdoch supported Trump through four tumultuous years in power which culminated in Trump’s refusal to admit defeat and the deadly attack on Congress.The Guardian obtained a copy of Kushner’s book, which will be published next month.The book lands at a time when Murdoch’s newspapers and to some extent Fox News are widely seen to be pulling away from Trump, amid congressional hearings into his election subversion and the January 6 attack, speculation about criminal charges and as he prepares another White House run.In his book, Trump’s son-in-law, who became a senior White House adviser, describes a friendship with Murdoch built on time on Murdoch’s yacht and at Bono’s house in France, watching the U2 frontman sing with Bob Geldof and Billy Joel. Kushner also describes how Wendi Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch’s third wife, helped get him back with Ivanka Trump after a breakup.Kushner claims to have convinced Murdoch to support Trump in 2015.Trump and Murdoch were not close before Trump entered politics. But in July 2015, after Trump launched his explosive campaign for the Republican presidential nomination with a racist rant about Mexicans, the Fox News owner tweeted: “When is Donald Trump going to stop embarrassing the whole country?”A week later, the New York Times described Murdoch disparaging Trump. Trump was furious and threatened to tweet. Kushner was not then an official adviser to his father-in-law but he writes: “I called Rupert and told him I had to see him.“‘Rupert, I think he could win,’ I said, as we sat in his office. ‘You guys agree on a lot of the issues. You want smaller government. You want lower taxes. You want stronger borders.’“Rupert listened quizzically, like he couldn’t imagine that Trump was actually serious about running. The next day, he called me and said, ‘I’ve looked at this and maybe I was misjudging it. He actually does have a real following. It does seem like he’s very popular, like he can really be a kingmaker in the Republican primary with the way he is playing it. What does Donald want?’“‘He wants to be president,’ I responded.“‘No, what does he really want?’ he asked again.“‘Look, he doesn’t need a nicer plane,’ I said. ‘He’s got a beautiful plane. He doesn’t need a nicer house. He doesn’t need anything. He’s tired of watching politicians screw up the country, and he thinks he could do a better job.’“‘Interesting,’ Rupert said.“We had a truce, for the time being.”Kushner also writes about Trump’s clashes with Fox News during the 2016 campaign, including a clash with the anchor Megyn Kelly. Kushner says he agreed a deal with Roger Ailes, then in charge of Fox News, for a donation of $5m to a veterans’ organisation of Trump’s choice, in return for Trump choosing not to skip a debate.Murdoch rejected the deal, Kushner writes, saying if he took it he would have to “pay everyone to show up to debates”.Kushner also describes how Murdoch helped shape his view of why the US needed Trump. At a rally in Springfield, Illinois in November 2015, Kushner was reminded “of a book that Rupert Murdoch had given me months earlier: Charles Murray’s Coming Apart, which makes a case that over the last 50 years America has divided into upper and lower classes that live apart from each other, geographically and culturally”.Trump, Kushner writes, appealed to the “forgotten and disenfranchised”. For his son-in-law rally in Illinois “was a wake-up call”.Is Murdoch tiring of Trump? Mogul’s print titles dump the ex-presidentRead moreKushner’s version of another call with Murdoch, on election night 2020, has been widely reported. He says Murdoch told him Fox News’s call of Trump’s defeat by Joe Biden in Arizona, a decision which infuriated the president and his advisers, was “ironclad – not even close”.Arizona played a central role in Trump’s attempt to overturn the election through lies about voter fraud. Fox News is now the subject of a $1.6bn defamation suit from a maker of voting machines, over conspiracy theories pushed by Trump and his allies and repeated on the network.Fox News has said it is “confident we will prevail as freedom of the press is foundational to our democracy and must be protected, in addition to the damages claims being outrageous, unsupported and not rooted in sound financial analysis, serving as nothing more than a flagrant attempt to deter our journalists from doing their jobs”.TopicsBooksJared KushnerDonald TrumpRupert MurdochRepublicansUS politicsPolitics booksnewsReuse this content More

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      Trump said sorry to Cruz for 2016 insults, Paul Manafort says in new book

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      Trump said sorry to Cruz for 2016 insults, Paul Manafort says in new bookIn a memoir obtained by the Guardian, former campaign manager risks embarrassing powerful rivals with description of apology Donald Trump made an uncharacteristic apology to Ted Cruz after insulting his wife and father during the 2016 campaign – only for the Texas senator still to refuse to endorse Trump at the Republican convention.Paul Manafort admits indirectly advising Trump in 2020 but keeping it secret in wait for pardon Read moreIn a new memoir, Trump’s then campaign manager, Paul Manafort, writes: “On his own initiative, Trump did apologise for saying some of the things he said about Cruz, which was unusual for Trump.”The telling vignette – possibly an embarrassing one for two powerful Republicans who have since formed an alliance of convenience – is contained in Political Prisoner: Persecuted, Prosecuted, but Not Silenced, which will be published in the US next month. The Guardian obtained a copy.Manafort was Trump’s campaign manager between May and August 2016.Imprisoned on tax charges in a case arising from the investigation of Russian election interference and links between Trump and Moscow, Manafort did not turn on Trump and received a pardon just before the end of Trump’s time in power.In his memoir, he denies collusion with Russia, bemoans his experiences at the hands of the US justice system, admits indirectly advising Trump in 2020 while in home confinement, and expresses strong support for another Trump campaign in 2024.In 2016, in a brutal primary, Trump insinuated Cruz’s wife was ugly and linked his father to the assassination of John F Kennedy. He also questioned whether Cruz, born in Canada, was qualified to be US president and coined a lasting nickname, Lyin’ Ted.Manafort’s description of a Trump apology for such slurs may come as a surprise to both men.Trump is famous for never apologising, whether in his business career or in his seven-year careen across the US political scene.And when Cruz eventually came onside with Trump, in September 2016, he said: “Neither he nor his campaign has ever taken back a word they said about my wife and my family.”Now Manafort says Trump did apologise – and to Cruz’s face at that.Describing a meeting meant to get Cruz’s support before the convention in Cleveland in July, Manafort writes that the senator said he would work with the man who beat him into second in the primary but would not formally endorse him, “because his supporters didn’t want him to”.Manafort writes: “It was a forced justification for someone who is normally very logical. Trump didn’t buy it.”Trump nonetheless apologised, Manafort writes, then “told Cruz he considered him an ally, not an enemy, and that he believed they could work together when Trump was president.”At least initially, Trump’s effort was in vain. In his speech at the convention, Cruz did not endorse Trump and was booed by the crowd. The senator’s wife, Heidi Cruz, was escorted out of the arena, out of concern for her safety. Manafort accuses Cruz’s aides of “double dealing” and describes Trump declaring “This is bullshit” as the senator spoke, then walking to the back of the convention hall, “effectively pulling the attention away from Cruz and undercutting his speech.“Cruz then got the message that there was a technical issue – a legitimate glitch – and the volume went out on his speech.”Footage of the speech does not clearly show such a technical glitch.Cruz, Manafort writes, was “very upset. It took months to bring that relationship back. But eventually Cruz came around to supporting Trump, and Trump harboured no ill will.”Whether Cruz and Trump will harbour any ill will for Manafort, for undercutting Cruz’s claim never to have received an apology and for saying Trump delivered a rare one, remains of course to be seen.TopicsBooksDonald TrumpTed CruzRepublicansUS elections 2016US politicsPolitics booksnewsReuse this content More

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      US House votes to ban assault weapons as Republicans criticize ‘gun grab’

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      US House votes to ban assault weapons as Republicans criticize ‘gun grab’Restrictions that expired 10 years after 1994 vote revived as bill passes 217-213, but effort likely to fail in US Senate The House has passed legislation to revive a ban on semi-automatic guns, the first vote of its kind in years and a direct response to the firearms often used in the crush of mass shootings ripping through communities nationwide.Once banned in the US, the high-powered firearms are now widely blamed as the weapon of choice among young men responsible for many of the most devastating mass shootings. But Congress allowed the restrictions first put in place in 1994 on the manufacture and sales of the weapons to expire a decade later, unable to muster the political support to counter the powerful gun lobby and reinstate the weapons ban.Speaker Nancy Pelosi pushed the vote toward passage in the Democratic-run House, saying the earlier ban had “saved lives”.California governor signs gun control law modeled after Texas anti-abortion measureRead moreThe House legislation is shunned by Republicans, who dismissed it as an election-year strategy by Democrats. Almost all Republicans voted against the bill, which passed 217-213. It will probably stall in the 50-50 Senate.The bill comes at a time of intensifying concerns about gun violence and shootings – the supermarket shooting in Buffalo, New York; massacre of school children in Uvalde, Texas; and the Fourth of July shooting of revelers in Highland Park, Illinois.Voters seem to be taking such election-year votes seriously as Congress splits along party lines and lawmakers are forced to go on the record with their views. A recent vote to protect same-sex marriages from potential supreme court legal challenges won a surprising amount of bipartisan support.Joe Biden, who was instrumental in helping secure the first semi-automatic weapons ban as a senator in 1994, encouraged passage, promising to sign the bill if it reached his desk. In a statement before the vote, his administration said: “We know an assault weapons and large-capacity magazine ban will save lives.”02:03The Biden administration said for 10 years while the ban was in place, mass shootings declined. “When the ban expired in 2004, mass shootings tripled,” the statement said.Republicans stood firmly against limits on ownership of the high-powered firearms during an at times emotional debate ahead of voting.“It’s a gun-grab, pure and simple,” said Guy Reschenthaler of Pennsylvania.Said Andrew Clyde of Georgia: “An armed America is a safe and free America.”Democrats argued that the ban on the weapons makes sense, portraying Republicans as extreme and out of step with Americans.Jim McGovern of Massachusetts said the weapons ban was not about taking away Americans’ second amendment rights but ensuring that children also had the right “to not get shot in school”.National gun violence prevention organizations are describing the House’s actions as a promising step toward getting future restrictions passed at the federal level.“Just a few years ago this would have been unthinkable,” said Trevon Bosley, a board member of March for Our Lives. The organization was born after a young gunman shot and killed 17 students and staff of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. “This bill won’t save lives yet, but it does send a powerful message to the millions of young people who are growing up fighting for our lives: change is possible.”The bill would make it unlawful to import, sell or manufacture a long list of semi-automatic weapons. Jerry Nadler, chair of the judiciary committee, said it exempts those already in possession.Since the previous ban expired nearly two decades ago, Democrats had been reluctant to revisit the issue and confront the gun lobby. But voter opinions appear to be shifting and Democrats dared to act before the fall election. The outcome will also make candidates’ stance on gun legislation clear ahead of the midterm elections.Congress passed a modest gun violence prevention package just last month in the aftermath of the tragic shooting of 19 school children and two teachers in Uvalde. That bipartisan bill was the first of its kind after years of failed efforts to confront the gun lobby, including after a similar 2012 mass tragedy at Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut.That law provides for expanded background checks on young adults buying firearms, allowing authorities to access certain juvenile records. It also closes the so-called “boyfriend loophole” by denying gun purchases for those convicted of domestic abuse outside of marriages.The new law also frees up federal funding to the states, including for “red flag” laws that enable authorities to remove guns from those who would harm themselves or others.But even that modest effort at halting gun violence came at time of grave uncertainty in the US over restrictions on firearms as the more conservative supreme court is tackling gun rights and other issues.Biden signed the measure two days after the supreme court’s ruling striking down a New York law that restricted people’s ability to carry concealed weapons.Abené Clayton contributed reportingTopicsUS gun controlHouse of RepresentativesUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Parents of Georgia woman who fell from patrol car and died demand answers

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      Parents of Georgia woman who fell from patrol car and died demand answersBrianna Grier, 28, suffered significant injuries during fall from moving police vehicle and died six days later in Atlanta hospital The parents of a Georgia woman who died after she fell from a moving patrol car following her arrest fought back tears on Friday as they demanded answers in their daughter’s death.Brianna Grier, 28, suffered significant injuries on 15 July and died six days later at an Atlanta hospital. The Georgia bureau of investigation said this week that the deputies who put Grier in the back of a patrol car to take her to the Hancock county sheriff’s office failed to close the rear passenger-side door before driving away.“We’re trying to get answers of what really happened … We ain’t trying to start no problem,” a tearful Marvin Grier, Brianna’s father, said during a news conference, his voice catching several times. He was joined by Brianna’s mother and sister, Mary and Lottie Grier.Russian man spent years as puppeteer behind US political groups, officials sayRead moreGrier was arrested after Hancock county sheriff’s deputies were called to a home in Sparta, the GBI has said. The deputies put Grier in the back of a patrol car, but she was not wearing a seatbelt, her hands were cuffed in front of her and the rear passenger-side door was never closed, according to GBI investigators.The GBI has not said why deputies were called to the home or why Grier was arrested. The prominent civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who is representing her family, said Grier was taken into custody after a mental health crisis.“Yet again we have another African American citizen killed in just an unbelievable way while in the custody of the police,” Crump said at the Friday news conference in downtown Decatur, a suburb of Atlanta.He addressed Grier’s parents: “We won’t let them sweep your baby daughter’s death under the rug.”Crump said his team would investigate what failures caused Grier to fall out of the car while it was moving and suffer a brain injury that put her in a coma until she died on 21 July.The president of the Georgia State Conference of the NAACP, Gerald Griggs, called on state and county officials for answers.“To the Hancock county sheriff, it’s time to be transparent,” Griggs said. “It’s time to be accountable. To the GBI, it’s time for y’all to meet with this family. To the governor, it’s time for you to recognize, again, that Georgia has a police accountability problem.”The GBI has said agents have done interviews, reviewed multiple body camera videos and done mechanical tests on the patrol car as part of the ongoing investigation into Grier’s death.TopicsUS newsGeorgiaUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      President Joe Biden, Crown Prince MBS and Realpolitik

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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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      Paul Manafort admits indirectly advising Trump in 2020 but keeping it secret in wait for pardon

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      Paul Manafort admits indirectly advising Trump in 2020 but keeping it secret in wait for pardon In new book, obtained by Guardian, 2016 campaign manager convicted of tax fraud says he was ‘very careful’ to hide advice Paul Manafort indirectly advised Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign while in home confinement as part of a seven-year sentence for offenses including tax fraud – advice he kept secret as he hoped for a presidential pardon.Murdoch told Kushner on election night that Arizona result was ‘not even close’Read more“I didn’t want anything to get in the way of the president’s re-election or, importantly, a potential pardon,” Trump’s 2016 campaign manager writes in his new book.In May 2020, as Covid-19 ravaged the prison system, Manafort was released to home confinement. He stayed in an apartment in northern Virginia. From there, he re-established contact with Trumpworld.“There was no contact with anyone in the Trump orbit when I was in prison,” he writes. “And I didn’t want any, especially if it could be exploited by the MSM [Mainstream Media, a derogatory term in rightwing circles].“But when the re-election campaign started kicking off, I was interacting, unofficially, with friends of mine who were very involved. It was killing me not to be there, but I was advising indirectly from my condo.”The startling admission is spelled out in Political Prisoner: Persecuted, Prosecuted, but Not Silenced, a memoir that will be published in the US next month. The Guardian obtained a copy.Throughout the book, Manafort, 73, strenuously denies collusion with Russia and ridicules investigations by the special counsel, Robert Mueller, Congress and the US intelligence community.But in Virginia in August 2018, in a case arising from Mueller’s investigation of Russian election interference and links between Trump and Moscow, Manafort was found guilty on eight counts: five of tax fraud, two of bank fraud and one of failure to report a foreign bank account.In March 2019, he was sentenced to 43 months in prison. Later that month, in Washington DC, Manafort was sentenced to an additional three-and-a-half-year term, having pleaded guilty to conspiracy including money laundering and unregistered lobbying and a count related to witness tampering.Manafort was also found to have violated an agreement with Mueller, by lying.In his memoir, Manafort describes his travels through the US prison system – including a stay in a Manhattan facility alongside the financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and the Mexican drug baron Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.In another startling passage, Manafort writes that during one transfer between facilities, at a private airfield “somewhere in Ohio”, the sight of “prisoners … being herded in long lines and then separated into other buses and on to … transport planes … reminded me of movies about the Holocaust”.Manafort ran Trump’s campaign between May and August 2016, when he resigned shortly after the arrival of Steve Bannon as campaign chairman and amid a scandal over alleged evidence of payments connected with consulting work in Ukraine.In his book, Manafort denies wrongdoing in connection with the so-called “black ledger” but writes: “My resignation only deflected attention from the Russian collusion story for a short period of time.”Describing his informal advice to the Trump campaign in 2020, after four years of scandal, trial and imprisonment, he writes: “I didn’t have any prohibition against it, but I didn’t want it to become an issue.”He continues: “I still had no promise of a pardon, but I had an expectation. My fear was that if I got in the way of the campaign and Trump lost, he might blame me, and I did not want that to happen.”Trump lost to Joe Biden – an outcome Manafort, whose career in politics began as an adviser to President Gerald Ford, puts down to Biden’s campaign understanding Trump’s limitations better than Hillary Clinton.But he also flirts with Trump’s lie about electoral fraud being the cause of his defeat, writing: “I believed there were patterns that were irregular. The results in battleground states were close enough that the fraud could be the difference between winning and losing.”Trump chief of staff ‘shoved’ Ivanka at White House, Kushner book saysRead moreAfter Trump lost, Manafort writes, he held off “making phone calls the day after to start working for a pardon” and instead waited on Trump.Manafort says the news he would be pardoned came via an intermediary, “a very good doctor friend, Ron, who is also close to Donald and Melania” and “was always one of the judges” at Miss Universe pageants when Trump ran them.The friend spoke to Kellyanne Conway, a senior Trump adviser, who relayed the good news. Manafort was pardoned on 23 December 2020 – two weeks before the culmination of Trump’s attempt to overturn the election, the deadly US Capitol attack, an event Manafort does not address.“It was like a switch was pressed,” Manafort writes, of telling his wife, Kathy, that he had been pardoned.“We hugged and cried. I was free.”TopicsBooksPaul ManafortDonald TrumpUS elections 2020US elections 2016US politicsRepublicansnewsReuse this content More