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      in US Politics

      For Trump, V is for victory – while his lawyers flick a V-sign our way | Richard Wolffe

      by

      You may have thought the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump was somehow connected to the fascist mob that staged an insurrection on Capitol Hill last month.According to Trump’s lawyers, you are clearly an idiot.In actual fact, the former president was impeached for using the word “fight” – a crime committed by everyone in Congress and a good number of other people you might know.Madonna, for instance. Johnny Depp too. Seriously, America. If it’s OK for Madonna to talk about fighting, or voguing, or being a material girl, what’s the big deal?If the star of Pirates of the Caribbean can talk about walking the gangplank or shivering his timbers, then who is to deny our beloved former president the right to also don an eyepatch and wave a cutlass in our general direction?There was lots of video on the day of the greatest Trump lawyering of all. Mostly the same video, played over and over again, sometimes two or three times in quick succession like a Max Headroom compilation of politicians saying the word “fight”.There was President Biden, and Vice-President Harris. There were a bunch of former Democratic presidential candidates. Also some House impeachment managers.The only challenge for Trump’s lawyers is that none of them led an insurrection. None of them urged a mob to storm Congress. None of them timed their fight song for the precise moment when elected officials were carrying out their constitutional duty to certify an election’s results.[embedded content]But we digress. Back to the best lawyering in the land, a veritable elite strike force of jurists not seen since the last one outside that landscaping business next to the sex shop in a particularly lovely corner of Philadelphia.The strike force featured a new striker. Not the bumbling, rambling Bruce Castor, or the endlessly pedantic David Schoen. No, this time Trump bestowed upon his historic impeachment trial a personal injury lawyer from – yes, you guessed it – Philadelphia. An ambulance chaser, best known in Philly for his radio ads, asking if you’ve tripped while walking down the street.“If the walkway isn’t clear, and you fall and get hurt due to snow and ice, call 215-546-1000 for Van der Veen, O’Neill, Hartshorn and Levin,” the ads say, according to the Washington Post. “The V is for Victory.”Last year Mr V was actually suing Trump for his unfounded claims about mail-in voter fraud. This year, he is not so much chasing the ambulance as driving it.First, Mr V claimed that Trump was encouraging his supporters to respect the electoral college count, not to “stop the steal” as the entire mob was screaming in front of him. Then he claimed that the first of the mob to be arrested was a lefty antifa stooge, not a Trumpy fascist thug.But mostly he claimed that he – and his client – were defending the constitution at the precise moment when they were burning it to crispy charcoal husk.OK, so the Trump mob unleashed violence to stop the constitutional counting of the electoral college votes. But the idea that Congress might stop Trump’s free-speech rights to whip up that mob is an outrageous, unconstitutional human rights abuse that threatens to silence all politicians everywhere.OK, so the Trump mob might have silenced Mike Pence permanently by hanging him on the gallows they built on the steps of Congress. But if Congress tries to stop a president from using a mob to intimidate Congress, where will it end?Pretty soon, Mr V argued, we won’t even have access to lawyers. The hallowed right to counsel, if not ambulance chasers, might be threatened. “Who would be next,” he asked, indignantly. “It could be anyone. One of you! Or one of you! It’s anti-American and sets a dangerous precedent forever.”To his great, sighing chagrin, Mr V lamented the state of political discourse. “Inflammatory rhetoric from our elected officials – from both sides of the aisle – has been alarming frankly,” he said, in sorrow, as if his client were just a hapless symptom of a bigger sickness: a pandemic of mean words from Democrats.“This is not whataboutism,” he declared, after rolling his whataboutist video for the second or third or fourth time. “I’m showing you this to show that all political speech must be protected.”The key to the defense was about incitement to violence and the legal test of Brandenburg v Ohio. Appropriately enough, the Brandenburg in question was a leader of the Ku Klux Klan and the test – as Trump’s lawyers helpfully explained – was about whether the free speech in question “explicitly or implicitly encouraged the use of violence or lawless action”.“Mr Trump did the opposite of advocating for lawless action,” said Mr V. “The opposite!”The worst news of all was that Bruce Castor was at the microphone, pretending to be a half-decent lawyerThis is only true if it’s opposite day, when opposite means the opposite of opposite. As it happens, it was indeed just that day at the impeachment trial of our great defender of the constitution, free speech and peaceful politics.Which is why Mr V’s partner, the now legendary Bruce Castor, concluded the defense case. Castor explained that because he was the lead attorney in this legal shenanigan, he was going to take “the most substantive part” of the case for himself. That wasn’t to say, he added hastily, that his learned friends had done a bad job, oh no. The good news, he said, was that the case was almost over. The bad news was that it would take another hour for it to be over.The worst news of all was that Castor was at the microphone, pretending to be a half-decent lawyer.“Did the 45th president engage in incitement – they say insurrection,” began Castor. “Clearly there was no insurrection,” he continued, defining the word as “taking the TV stations over and having some idea of what you’re going to do when you take power”.As a description of the Trump presidency, that sounded pretty accurate. Unlike the part Castor read from his notes about Trump’s attitudes towards mobs in general.“By any measure,” the lawyer said in his most Trumpy way, “President Trump is the most pro-police, anti-mob president this country has ever seen.”From that point on, the defense case smooshed together some condemnation of the Black Lives Matter protests, some justification of Trump’s campaign to overturn the election results in Georgia, and some accusation of a supposed effort to disenfranchise Trump voters – who lost the election.Like so much else connected to the scrambled neural networks inside one Florida resident’s cranium, it made no sense. It was a radio echo bouncing around the cosmos from a distant star that collapsed into a black hole of disinformation and delusion long ago.“Spare us the hypocrisy and false indignation,” said Mr V, as he wrapped up another hypocritical and falsely indignant response to the same old video of Democrats saying fiery things.Now all we have left is the hypocrisy and false indignation of Republican senators who value their own careers above their own lives or the democracy that elected them. The V is for venal. More

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      in US Politics

      Fight, fight, fight: Trump lawyers subject senators to repetitive strain | David Smith's sketch

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      Fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight. The first rule of Fight Club is just keep bashing your audience with the same word ad nauseam.A video in which Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and other Democratic politicians uttered the word “fight” 238 times, according to a count by the MSNBC TV network, was the most bizarre turn yet at Donald Trump’s impeachment trial.The montage was played by Trump lawyer David Schoen on Friday in an attempt to demonstrate that such language is common in today’s political discourse, and protected by the first amendment to the constitution, so Trump’s call for his supporters to “fight like hell” should not be blamed for the insurrection at the US Capitol.“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Schoen told senators, many of whom had seen themselves on TV screens inside the chamber. “It’s a word people use, but please stop the hypocrisy.”He was not wrong that it’s a word people use. Hillary Clinton, who was seen in the video, made Fight Song the theme of her ill-starred 2016 campaign against Trump. The world champion “fighter” is surely Senator Elizabeth Warren, who sprinkles the word in interviews liberally and wrote a book called This Fight is Our Fight.But what Schoen was also doing was displaying whataboutism in its purest form – a wonder to behold, like a flawless diamond or pristine snow.Whataboutism is a dodge often seen in rightwing media. If allegations are made against Trump’s connections in Russia, respond: what about Clinton’s emails? If Trump’s family are accused of exploiting their position, respond: what about Joe Biden’s son Hunter? If white supremacists are running riot, respond: what about antifa? It doesn’t matter if the equivalence is false because it’s all about attacking the opponent in order to muddy the waters.The Trump legal team’s relentless “fight” video was a case in point. Some of the Democrats were quoted out of context due to selective editing. We heard Biden, for example, say “never, never, never give up this fight” but did not hear the full quotation: “I looked into the eyes of people who survived school shootings, and I made each of them a promise: I will never, never, never give up this fight.”(Speaking of hypocrisy, Schoen accused the impeachment managers of “manipulating video” during his presentation.)Still, the Trump defence cleared the very low bar set by their Laurel-and-Hardy opening on TuesdayIn addition, these Democrats were urging supporters to fight for a political cause. Trump was urging supporters to fight against democracy: his cause was based on the mendacious claim of a stolen election. And as the impeachment managers laid out on Thursday, he had spent years deploying incendiary rhetoric and demonising opponents.Still, the Trump defence cleared the very low bar set by their opening Laurel-and-Hardy gambit on Tuesday. On Friday they provided talking points for rightwing media, straws for Republican consciences to clutch at and a boost for Trump’s spirits after some very grim days.It was not hard to imagine the ex-president at Mar-a-Lago, his luxury estate in Florida, nodding in approval as lawyer Michael van der Veen kicked off in Trumpian style: “The article of impeachment now before the Senate is an unjust and blatantly unconstitutional act of political vengeance. This appalling abuse of the constitution only further divides our nation when we should be trying to come together.”Van der Veen even described it as a “politically motivated witch-hunt”, a phrase the former president has used even more often than Warren has uttered “fight”.In a first salvo of whataboutism, Van der Veen played video clips of Jamie Raskin, the lead impeachment manager, and other Democrats objecting to Trump’s victory in the electoral college in 2016. “To litigate questions of election integrity within the system is not incitement to insurrection,” he argued. “It is the democratic system working as founders and lawmakers have designed.”The lawyer then falsely asserted that one of the first people arrested after the insurrection was a leader of antifa, when that individual denies any such affiliation and indeed antifa is a broad spectrum of far-left, anti-fascist groups, and not an organisation with a leader.He claimed that Democrats had encouraged “mob violence” during the Trump presidency and played clips accompanied by ominous music.The impeachment is “about Democrats trying to disqualify their political opposition”, he said, accuse them of indulging “constitutional cancel culture” – another phrase sure to play well on Fox News, Newsmax and the One America News Network.Later, lawyer Bruce Castor argued that the attack on the Capitol was pre-planned – pipe bombs were planted a day earlier, for example – and so Trump’s fiery speech on 6 January could not have been the cause. However, the president had tweeted in December that the rally “will be wild”, and the prosecutors have shown Trump spent months laying the groundwork.Castor also misnamed the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, referring instead to the NFL star Ben Roethlisberger, and quibbled over the definition of “insurrection” . After two and a half hours, the defence case rested. They had put up a fight, of sorts, but it was unlikely to be remembered alongside Winston Churchill’s “fight them on the beaches”.Michael Beschloss, a presidential historian, tweeted drily: “Of all impeachment defense speeches in American history, Castor’s was the most recent.” More

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      in US Politics

      Trump impeachment: defense wraps up, claiming free speech is at stake – live

      by

      Key events

      Show

      3.27pm EST15:27
      Trump’s legal team has wrapped up its defense

      2.02pm EST14:02
      Afternoon summary

      12.00pm EST12:00
      Trump’s defense team expected to push for swift conclusion of trial

      8.37am EST08:37
      US fast food workers hold Black History Month strike to demand $15 an hour

      8.07am EST08:07
      Trump advisor: legal team expected to use just four hours today in Senate for defense

      7.45am EST07:45
      Trump’s laywers expected to concede violence was traumatic and unacceptable, but argue Trump had nothing to do with it

      7.09am EST07:09
      Georgia officials investigate groups that mobilized Black voters in state crucial to election outcome

      Live feed

      Show

      4.36pm EST16:36

      Democratic senator Ed Markey asks when Trump learned of the breach at the Capitol, and what he did about it. (It’s the same question Collins and Murkowski asked earlier.)
      Stacey Plaskett, a House delegate from the Virgin Islands and an impeachment manager, says we do not know. “The reason this question keeps coming up is because the answer is nothing.”
      Mitt Romney, Republican senator and Trump foe, asks if Trump knew whether Mike Pence had been removed from the Senate when the president criticized him in a 2.24pm tweet.
      Defense lawyer Van der Veen says “the answer is no, at no point was the president informed that the vice president was in any danger”. Van der Veen then criticizes the House impeachment managers for rushing the trial.
      I don’t see the connection.

      Eli Stokols
      (@EliStokols)
      van der Veen responds: “At no point was the president informed the vice president was in any danger.”Says the q is irrelevant: “This is an article of impeachment for incitement.”

      February 12, 2021

      David Frum
      (@davidfrum)
      Which is untrue of course. And then van der Veen went on to argue that even if Trump did recklessly endanger the life of VP Pence, it’s nobody’s business. https://t.co/cdC4kN81cy

      February 12, 2021

      Updated
      at 4.37pm EST

      4.24pm EST16:24

      Republican senator Tim Scott has a question: “Isn’t this simply a political show trial that is designed to discredit President Trump […] and shame the 74m Americans who voted for him?”
      Bruce Castor, for the defense: “Thats precisely what the 45th president believes this is about.”
      Castor says the purpose of the trial – which is actually related to an insurrection that left five people dead – is to “embarrass” Trump.

      4.14pm EST16:14

      A question for the defense team, from GOP senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski:
      “Exactly when did President Trump learn of the breach of the Capitol” and what actions did he take to bring the riot to an end?
      Van der Veen, for the defense, doesn’t give a proper answer.

      Neal Katyal
      (@neal_katyal)
      Woah. Trump lawyer can’t answer it. At all. He just rants about the lack of due process. Seems to me this would be the first thing I would ask if I were Trump’s lawyer while getting ready. Devastating silence.

      February 12, 2021

      Collins and Murkowski are believed to be swing voters on whether to convict Trump.

      4.06pm EST16:06

      Senator Lindsey Graham has a question for the defense. The question is on behalf of Graham, Senator Ted Cruz, and others – all ardent Trump defenders.
      “Does a politician raising bail for rioters encourage more rioting?” the defense is asked.
      One of the defense lawyers – I think it’s Castor says: “Yes.”
      This is part of the Republican strategy to compare the Capitol rioters to Black Lives Matter protesters.

      Joy WE VOTED!! WEAR A MASK!! Reid 😷)
      (@JoyAnnReid)
      Of course @LindseyGrahamSC uses his question to throw a bomb at Black Lives Matter who are who he means when he says “rioters.” (Narrator: BLM protesters were not “rioters,” and insurrectionist Lindsey Graham would fit in perfectly in the Confederacy.)

      February 12, 2021

      Updated
      at 4.09pm EST

      4.03pm EST16:03

      “Isn’t it the case that the attack [on January 6] would not have happened if not for Donald Trump?” was the first, strangely worded question. It’s posed by Democratic senators to the House impeachment managers (essentially, the prosecution.)
      Rep Joaquin Castro, one of the impeachment managers, answered. Castro said – essentially – yes.
      He said Trump, as far back as mid-December, directed his supporters to travel to the Capitol on January 6. Once there, Trump told his supporters to “fight like hell”, and told them “they could play by different rules”, Castro said.

      3.56pm EST15:56

      The impeachment trial has restarted shortly. In the next phase, Senators will have four hours to ask the defense and the prosecution questions.
      It’s not clear how late they’ll run tonight. There’s a dinner break scheduled for 5pm, but the questioning could resume after. The Senate will reconvene at 10am ET Saturday, and a final vote could take place later that day, at 3pm.

      3.27pm EST15:27

      Trump’s legal team has wrapped up its defense

      That was a bit of an anti-climax. Castor finished by pivoting back to the free speech argument Trump’s lawyers made earlier – that Trump’s speech to his supporters on January 6 was protected under the first amendment.
      “This trial is about far more than President Trump,” Castor said. He said the trial is instead about canceling speech that “the majority does not agree with”.
      “Are we going to allow canceling and silencing to be sanctioned in this body?” Castor asked.
      Trump’s defense argument seems to hinge both on a) Trump’s speech on January 6 did not incite the riot (although the defense team did not address Trump’s previous statements) and b) in any case, what Trump said is protected by free speech laws.

      Updated
      at 3.28pm EST

      3.15pm EST15:15

      Castor suggested that Trump’s speech on January 6 did not incite the riot
      The lawyer hasn’t addressed the broader issue of whether Trump’s months-long tirade against the election result had anything to do with it.
      “The January 6 speech did not cause the riots,” Castor said.
      Castor then moved onto the January phone call between Trump and Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger. During that call Trump pressured Raffensperger, a Republican, to “find” votes so that Trump could be announced the winner in Georgia.
      Georgia prosecutors have opened a criminal inquiry into Trump’s call.
      Castor read from a transcript of the call and said Trump was expressing legitimate concern over the election result.
      For some context, here is some of what Trump said in that Georgia phone call:
      “So look. All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state.”

      Updated
      at 3.28pm EST

      3.03pm EST15:03

      Bruce Castor continues. He says the House impeachment managers “manipulated” Trump’s words when they presented their case.
      Castor then speaks Latin for a little bit and suggests House impeachment managers are “trying to fool you”.
      “President Trump was immediate in his calls for calm,” Castor says. (Trump wasn’t.)
      “President Trump’s words couldn’t have incited the events at the capitol,” Castor said, because people were already gathering at the Capitol before Trump gave his speech at the Ellipse, which a 15 minute walk away.

      Trip Gabriel
      (@tripgabriel)
      Castor — the lawyer who’s rambling, unfocused opening statement on Tuesday enraged Trump — begins by going over ground argued earlier, and showing the same clips.

      February 12, 2021

      Andrew Desiderio
      (@AndrewDesiderio)
      DOJ has specifically referred to the events of Jan. 6 as an insurrection. https://t.co/msWzru3fXd

      February 12, 2021

      Eliza Collins
      (@elizacollins1)
      Trump’s lawyers are arguing that he is not guilty because 1. The trial is unconstitutional 2. The trial is politically motivated 3. Trump’s use of word “fight” and other language was ordinary political talk 4. Trump loves law and order. Our full coverage: https://t.co/RMwlZdYR56

      February 12, 2021

      Updated
      at 3.08pm EST

      2.48pm EST14:48

      Castor began his defense by showing a video, most of which is cribbed from the video Trump’s legal team played earlier.
      It contrasts Democrats defending Black Lives Matter protesters, spliced in with selected clips of violence at some of the BLM demonstrations, with Trump talking about “law and order”. Law and order is frequently used as a racist dog whistle.
      “January 6 was a terrible day for our country,” Castor conceded, but he continued: “President Trump did not incite or cause the horrific violence.”
      This tactic from the defense – that Trump’s supporters storming the Capitol was bad, but it wasn’t Trump’s fault – is something we expected.
      Castor added: “Political hatred has no place in the American justice system, and certainly no place in the congress of the United States.”

      2.42pm EST14:42

      Donald Trump’s legal team has resumed their defense. Bruce Castor, who reportedly left Trump furious after a lackluster performance earlier this week, will handle the next section.
      During the break, Democratic senators lined up to pan the defense.
      “Donald Trump was told that if he didn’t stop lying about the election people would be killed,” Senator Tim Kaine told reporters, according to the Washington Post. “He wouldn’t stop, and the Capitol was attacked and seven people are dead who would be alive today.”
      Senator Richard J. Blumenthal said the Trump defense team is “trying to draw a false, dangerous and distorted equivalence”, the Post reported.
      “And I think it is plainly a distraction from Donald Trump’s inviting the mob to Washington, knowing it was armed; changing the route and the timing so as to incite them to march on the Capitol; and then reveling, without remorse, without doing anything to protect his own vice president and all of us,” Blumenthal said.
      “I think that the case is even more powerful after this very distorted and false argument.” More

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      in US Politics

      Mike Pence's 'nuclear football' was potentially at risk during Capitol riot

      by

      The dramatic footage of the 6 January insurrection shows the mob was within 30 metres of Mike Pence, when he made his escape. But there was a chilling detail that even the House prosecutors missed. With the then vice-president on that terrifying day, was an air force officer carrying the “football”, a large black briefcase carrying nuclear launch codes.The codes in the vice-president’s football are not activated unless the president is dead or incapacitated. But the implications of it falling into the hands of rioters are still chilling.“If the mob had seized Pence’s nuclear football, they may not have been able to order an actual launch but the public may not have known that,” Tom Collina, director of policy at the Ploughshares Fund disarmament advocacy group, said. “Parading the nuclear button around would have caused widespread panic and chaos as authorities scrambled to respond.”The secret service bodyguards around Pence would most likely have defended the suitcase with deadly force, but if the pro-Trump mob had managed to seize it, they would have come away, not just with the codes used to identify the vice-president and authenticate his orders, but also the encrypted communications equipment used to make the call to the National Military Command Center in the Pentagon.Most damaging of all, they would have all the nuclear attack options instantly available around the clock to the US commander-in-chief. That list of options used to be in a weighty handbook, but according to Fred Kaplan, author of The Bomb: Presidents, Generals, and the Secret History of Nuclear War, it has been condensed over the decades into a series of laminated cards, “like a menu at Wendy’s”, as one officer put it to Kaplan.Not only would disclosure of that menu represent one of the worst security breaches imaginable, the encrypted communication equipment would tell an adversary a lot of how the US would respond to a major attack.“They could glean all sorts of information about its structure and technology so it’s very significant,” said Hans Kristensen, director of the nuclear information project at the Federation of American Scientists.Nuclear experts have questioned whether this cold war relic that provides such an obvious target for adversaries and terrorists, is still necessary. But the Trump era has also shone a bright light on the question of whether one individual should continue to have sole authority to launch the US nuclear arsenal.Collina, co-author of The Button, a book on the presidency and nuclear weapons, said: “Of course the even bigger danger was that Trump had his own football that could have been used to end civilization as we know it.”In other words, perhaps the only thing scarier than the football being surrounded by a mob is the thought of Trump being alone with it. More

    • 113 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      US government appeals UK ruling against Julian Assange's extradition

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      The US government has appealed a UK judge’s ruling against the extradition of the WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange, according to a justice department official.The appeal made clear that Joe Biden intends to have Assange stand trial on espionage- and hacking-related charges over WikiLeaks’ publication of hundreds of thousands of US military and diplomatic documents.The justice department had until Friday to file an appeal against the ruling on 4 January that Assange suffered mental health problems that would raise the risk of suicide were he extradited to the US for trial.“Yes, we filed an appeal and we are continuing to pursue extradition,” a justice department spokesperson, Marc Raimondi, told AFP.Human rights groups had called on Biden to drop the case, which raises sensitive transparency and media freedom issues.After WikiLeaks began publishing US secrets in 2009, the Obama administration – in which Biden was vice-president – declined to pursue the case. Assange said WikiLeaks was no different than other media outlets constitutionally protected to publish such materials.Prosecuting him could mean also prosecuting powerful US news organisations for publishing similar material – legal fights the government would probably lose.But under Donald Trump, whose 2016 election was helped by WikiLeaks publishing Russian-stolen materials damaging to his opponent, Hillary Clinton, the justice department built a national security case against Assange.In 2019, Assange, an Australian national, was charged under the US Espionage Act and computer crimes laws on multiple counts of conspiring with and directing others, from 2009 to 2019, to illegally obtain and release US secrets.In doing so he aided and abetted hacking, illegally exposed confidential US sources to danger and used the information to damage the US, according to the charges. If convicted on all counts, the 49-year-old faces a prison sentence of up to 175 years.John Demers, an assistant attorney general, said at the time: “Julian Assange is no journalist.”Assange has remained under detention by UK authorities pending the appeal.This week 24 organisations, including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International USA and Reporters Without Borders, urged Biden to drop the case.“Journalists at major news publications regularly speak with sources, ask for clarification or more documentation, and receive and publish documents the government considers secret,” they said in an open letter. “In our view, such a precedent in this case could effectively criminalise these common journalistic practices.” More

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      Lincoln Project enveloped in scandal over harassment allegations

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      After the publication on Thursday of further revelations about a founder member who sexually harassed gay men, the anti-Trump conservative Lincoln Project acknowledged what it called a “central truth”: that John Weaver’s conduct was “appalling” and that he “abused” some who sought work with the group.But it also continued to deny mishandling the allegations. Responding to reports by the Associated Press, New York magazine, the New York Times and other outlets, the group said: “Recently published stories about the Lincoln Project are filled with inaccuracies, incorrect information, and reliant exclusively on anonymous sources.”The group also said it had retained “a best-in-class outside professional to review Mr Weaver’s tenure with the organisation and to establish both accountability and best practices going forward”, and would not comment further.On Thursday night, however, the group published on its Twitter feed private messages between a journalist and a founding member, the New Hampshire Republican Jennifer Horn.The Lincoln Project’s message said: “Earlier this evening, we became aware that Amanda Becker of The 19th news was preparing to publish a smear job on the Lincoln Project with the help of [Horn]. You hear a lot of talk about hit jobs in journalism, but rarely do you get to see their origin story. Enjoy.”Messages between Becker and Horn were attached. The messages were soon deleted. Horn, who denies the Lincoln Project’s contention that she left over a financial dispute, said she did not consent to have her messages published and alerted Twitter.Responding to the Lincoln Project’s complaint about the sourcing of reports about Weaver, Becker tweeted: “Sources discussing the inner workings of an organisation tend to be anonymous when interns to senior management sign NDAs at an organisation’s behest.”In its statement, the Lincoln Project said “any person who believes they are unable to talk about John Weaver publicly because they are bound by an NDA should contact the Lincoln Project for a release”. In an open letter provided to the New York Times, four former members of the group did so.Like other Lincoln Project founders including Rick Wilson, George Conway and Steve Schmidt, Weaver, 61, is a veteran of Republican politics, in his case having worked with John McCain and John Kasich among other prominent figures.He did not comment about the new reports about his behaviour towards young men. Earlier this year, he said in a statement: “The truth is that I’m gay. And that I have a wife and two kids who I love. My inability to reconcile those two truths has led to this agonising place.“To the men I made uncomfortable through my messages that I viewed as consensual mutual conversations at the time: I am truly sorry. They were inappropriate and it was because of my failings that this discomfort was brought on you.”He also said he would not return to the Project from medical leave.What the Lincoln Project knew of Weaver’s behaviour, and when it knew it, remains in dispute. The AP reported that founding member Ron Steslow was informed of allegations against Weaver last June, told the group’s legal counsel and advocated Weaver be removed. The Washington Blade, an LGBTQ+ news outlet, has reported other communications from last summer. Weaver went on leave in August.Weaver’s harassment of young men was first reported in January by the American Conservative; Scott Stedman, an independent reporter, and data analyst Garrett Herrin, who said they were harassed by Weaver; and Axios. At the end of the month, the New York Times published a detailed report.The Lincoln Project denied having known of the allegations for months. This week, Schmidt told the AP no “employee, intern, or contractors ever made an allegation of inappropriate communication about John Weaver that would have triggered an investigation by HR or by an outside employment counsel.“In other words, no human being ever made an allegation about any inappropriate sexualized communications about John Weaver ever.”Speaking to New York magazine, Schmidt said he had called Weaver and “said, ‘You need to know that this is out there. Is there anything that we need to know?’ He said, ‘No, it’s bullshit. It’s not true.’”Alex Johnson, a former intern who alleges harassment by Weaver, said: “I really wanted to believe everyone that they didn’t know the extent of it. They made it seem like this was out of the blue and there wasn’t even a baseline knowledge at all. This just seems like they were lying; it seems like they were not being truthful to me.”The AP report and others also contained details of Lincoln Project fundraising and fees paid to consulting firms owned by founding members. From the political right, the National Review, a longtime antagonist, responded with a stark headline: “Yes, the Lincoln Project Is an Ugly Grift.”Schmidt said: “We fully comply with the law. The Lincoln Project will be delighted to open its books for audit immediately after the Trump campaign and all affiliated Super Pacs do so.”Contacted by the Guardian on Friday, the 212th anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln, Wilson said no further comment would be issued while the review continued.Horn tweeted a picture of the 16th president, with a famous quote from his speech in 1860 at Cooper Union in New York – the venue where the Lincoln Project held its formal launch in February 2020.“[Let us] have faith that right makes might; and in that faith let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.” More

    • 75 Shares169 Views

      in World Politics

      The Fringe Feeds a Familiar Narrative

      by

      Finally, it has come to pass in the land of the free and the home of the brave that the cancerous core of America’s Republican Party is in full metastasis, spreading its poisonous tentacles far into the body politic. There is so little substantive pushback from Republican Party “leadership” that the spread of the disease threatens not only the party but the institutional integrity of the nation as a whole. The only good news is that unchecked cancers usually destroy the host.

      In this case, it might just be the best outcome. The fringe has morphed into the identity of the Republican Party so completely that somewhat hinged used-to-be Republicans don’t stand a chance of turning this around. But they don’t deserve another chance, having previously sold their souls to Ronald Reagan’s vision of undermined governance and unchecked capitalism as a means to a better end. Many Americans are just now beginning to figure out how poorly that has actually worked out for them.

      How Tough Is Biden Prepared to Look?

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      The spectacle of the Republican Party dancing around their new poster child, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, is a bit like watching some moron taking a selfie at the edge of a cliff only to realize as she falls that the rope around your waist is tethered to her waist. Republicans should have known that they would be in trouble when their old Uncle Mitch warned them that that rope was a bad idea.

      Since Greene is no ordinary moron teetering at the edge of a cliff, she has been empowered to drive the Trump narrative as a creed for both the party and the nation. Then there is the newly crowned “conscience” of the Republican House leadership, Representative Liz Cheney. She covered herself in “glory” by voting to impeach Trump for sedition and inciting an insurrection, and then a few scant weeks later covered herself in dung by failing to take the minimal step of removing Greene from her committee assignments. I can only guess, but maybe she used up her family allotment of “conscience” on that first vote.

      If you are wondering about the top guns in the Republican congressional orbit, you would be wondering about Mitch McConnell, now Senate minority leader, and the wannabe speaker of the House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy. These two supported the whole Trump national trauma for four years and then, faced with armed insurrection inside the Capitol, still can’t say never again. And they still can’t clearly and unequivocally hold Trump responsible for his incitement of the mob.

      Republican Frauds

      Let me be clear about one thing: Even though there are those trying to proclaim themselves newly-crowned “heroes” of the Republican Party, they are all frauds of one kind or another. This includes the Lincoln Project crowd and the host of “former” Republicans trying desperately to resurrect their right-wing version of their right-wing party. Today’s self-proclaimed Republican heroes did everything they could to torch the Affordable Care Act, have for decades pushed scandalous tax relief for the wealthy, and have promoted some version of unregulated capitalism through which their personal greed could thrive amid the economic distress of so many others.

      And that doesn’t even reach the infamy of a political party and its adherents who have for those same decades fueled racial animus and anti-immigrant sentiment in the country for political and personal gain. Before trying to find virtue amid the wreck of the Republican Party, remember that the party and its minions are now, and have for those decades, promoted the delusional “American exceptionalism” so comforting to their white base and so destructive of a meaningful confrontation with the nation’s past that is rooted in the truth.

      Embed from Getty Images

      As with the racists in their midst that Trump legitimized and encouraged, any welcome unmasking of these new Republican “heroes” is long overdue. Some of them served a useful purpose in giving voice to the national disaster that was the Trump presidency. But none of them has given us any reason to believe that the recent past has engendered a new and truly inclusive vision for a policy partnership with Democrats that could begin to legislate a better future for those who have watched and waited for so long.

      The coronavirus pandemic has done more than even a close reading of history and outraged truth telling could have done to lay bare the moral and institutional bankruptcy that is America today. Systemic racism is finally on the lips of a US president because it has to be. Huge health care, housing, educational and economic deficits are everywhere to be seen, and now so obvious that ignoring them again would be yet another epic betrayal.

      To understand the depth of that betrayal and the Republican Party’s role in it requires a clear understanding that the kind old Republican “hero,” Ronald Reagan, cravenly gave white America a clear path away from the promise of the civil rights movement. That same national “hero” told the nation that government was the problem, not the solution and then set about to prove it on the backs of those most dependent on good government to realize a share of America’s bounty. Other Republican Party “heroes” willingly followed in those soiled footsteps.

      This is not to say that there is a purity of vision or spirit in the Democratic Party. Rather it is to say that America’s way forward cannot depend on either the cooperation or the acquiescence of Republicans. If you doubt this, the spectacle of the Trump impeachment trial in progress will again demonstrate the depths to which the Republican Party has sunk in its drive to regain power at all cost. A disgraced former president with the blood of hundreds of thousands of citizens already on his hands who delivered insurrection to the Capitol will continue to command Republican loyalty and get it.

      A Message for Biden

      So, President Joe Biden, don’t waste a minute on them. Don’t repeat the mistakes you and Barack Obama made from 2008 forward. Go all in this time. With those same Republicans already at work legislating new voter suppression measures where they can, your time to act may be short. In doing so, remember every day that closing the human value gap in America is essential to any attempt to reach for a better nation.

      And whatever else you do, President Biden, remember every day that systemic racism is the original sin that begat today’s deeply flawed America. Telling the truth about that is America’s irreplaceable first step forward.

      *[This article was co-published on the author’s blog, Hard Left Turn.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in US Politics

      Acquitting Trump would spell grave danger for US democracy | Jonathan Freedland

      by

      Rare is the trial that takes place at the scene of the crime. Rarer still is the trial where the jurors are also witnesses to, if not victims of, that crime. Which means that the case of Donald Trump should be open and shut, a slam-dunk. Because those sitting in judgment saw the consequences of what Trump did on 6 January. They heard it. And, as security footage played during this week’s proceedings showed, they ran for their lives because of it.
      And yet, most watching the second trial of Trump – only the fourth impeachment in US history – presume that it will end in his acquittal. They expect that fewer than 17 Republican senators will find the former president guilty of inciting an insurrection and so, lacking the required two-thirds majority, the verdict will be not guilty. Barring a late spasm of conscience by the senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, Trump will pronounce himself vindicated, the case against him a hoax and he will be free to run again in 2024 – and to loom over his party as its dominant presence at least until then.
      That fact alone should quash the temptation to regard the current proceedings, which could conclude this weekend, as a footnote to the Trump era, one to be safely tucked away in the history books. The reverse is true. The likely acquittal suggests the danger of Trump has far from passed: the threat he embodied remains live and active – and is now embedded deep inside the US body politic.
      The Democratic members of the House of Representatives acting as prosecutors have laid out an unanswerable case. Vividly and with extensive use of video, they have reminded senators – and the watching public – of the vehemence and violence of the mob that stormed the Capitol last month, how Trump supporters attacked police officers, even using poles carrying the American flag to bludgeon those in uniform. They’ve shown how close the rioters came to finding elected officials, how they hunted them down marbled corridors and stone staircases, looking for “fucking traitors”. They had a gallows and noose ready.
      Naturally, Republicans have bitten their lip and said how awful it all was – but have insisted none of it can be blamed on Trump. So the prosecution reminded them of Trump’s words on the day, telling the crowd within striking distance of Congress to head over there, “to show strength” and to “fight like hell”. Oh, but only “idiots” could take such language literally, say Trump’s defenders. Except those who sacked the Capitol took it very literally, filmed as they told the besieged police that they had been “invited” there by the president, that they were “fighting for Trump” at his urging. They believed they were following his explicit instructions.
      The incitement was not confined to that speech, but began long before – and continued after – the rioting started. Trump whipped up the Washington crowd that bitter January day, but he’d been whipping up his supporters for nearly a year, telling them the 2020 election would be stolen, that the only way he could possibly lose would be if the contest was rigged. The big lie that drove the crowd to break down the doors and run riot was that Trump had won and Joe Biden had lost the election – that a contest that was, in fact, free and fair was instead fraudulent, despite 59 out of 60 claims of voter fraud being thrown out of courts across the US through lack of evidence. Their aim was to stop the formal certification ceremony, to “stop the steal” – as Trump had demanded they must for several months.
      So much for incitement before the riot. Among the most shocking facts laid bare this week was that Trump’s incitement persisted even after the violence was under way. One of the former president’s most ardent supporters, Alabama senator Tommy Tuberville, let slip that he had told Trump by phone that vice-president Mike Pence had had to be removed from the chamber for his own safety. And yet, minutes after that call, Trump tweeted an attack on Pence for failing to have “the courage” to thwart Biden’s victory, all but painting a target on the VP’s back.
      Couple that with Trump’s failure to do anything to stop the violence once it had begun – the two-hour delay before sending backup for the police – and the picture is complete: a president who urged a murderous mob to overturn a democratic election by force, who watched them attempt it, who did nothing to stop it and even directed their anger towards specific, named targets. Put it this way, what more would a president have to do to be found guilty of inciting an insurrection?
      Republicans have sought refuge in the first amendment, saying Trump’s words were protected by his right to free speech, or else that it’s improper to convict a president once he’s left office. Most legal scholars wave aside those arguments, but let’s not pretend Republicans’ objections are on legal grounds. They are not acting as sincere jurors, weighing the evidence in good faith. If they were, then three of them would not have met Trump’s legal team to discuss strategy on Thursday, in what is surely a rather novel reading of jury service.
      No, the law is not driving these people to say Trump should be given a free pass for his crime. It is fear. They felt fear on 6 January, when some of them went on camera to beg Trump to call off his mob, but they feel a greater fear now. They fear the threat Trump made in his speech that day, when he told the crowd “we have to primary the hell out of the ones that don’t fight”. Republican senators fear internal party challenges from Trumpists in their states, and they fear a base that is now the obedient creature of Donald Trump. Their only way out, they think, is to acquit a man they surely know – must know – is guilty as charged.
      The consequences are perilous. Most directly, Trump will be able to run again, and will be free to try the same trick anew – unleashing his shock troops to ensure his will is done. If Trump loses, say, the New Hampshire primary in 2024, what’s to prevent him urging his devotees to “stop the steal” once more? Even after Trump is gone, a grim precedent will exist. House Democrat Jamie Raskin was right to warn Republicans that acquittal would “set a new terrible standard for presidential misconduct”. When a future president doesn’t get their way, they can simply incite violence against the system they are pledged to defend.
      Still, the greatest danger is not in the future. It is clear and present. It is that one of the US’s two governing parties is poised to approve the notion that democracy can be overturned by force. By acquitting Trump, the Republicans will declare themselves no longer bound by the constitution or the rule of law or even reality, refusing to break from the lie that their party won an election that it lost. This poison is not confined to the extremities of the US body politic. It is now in its blood and in its heart.
      Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist More