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      in US Politics

      Hush-money trial live: Trump appears to repeat call for lifting of gag order after Pecker testimony ends – as it happened

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      In a post written, unusually, in the third person on Donald Trump’s Truth Social account, the former president has once again demanded Judge Juan Merchan lift a gag order in his trial on charges of falsifying business documents:
      45th President Donald J. Trump is again the Republican Nominee for President of the United States, and is currently dominating in the Polls. However, he is being inundated by the Media with questions because of this Rigged Biden Trial, which President Trump is not allowed to comment on, or answer, because of Judge Juan Merchan’s UNPRECEDENTED AND UNCONSTITUTIONAL Gag Order.
      …
      We request that Judge Merchan immediately LIFT THE GAG ORDER, so that President Trump is able to freely state his views, feelings, and policies. He is asking for his Constitutional Right to Free Speech. If it is not granted, this again becomes a Rigged Election!
      Prosecutors, meanwhile, have alleged that Trump has violated Merchan’s order prohibiting him from speaking publicly about witnesses, prosecutors, jurors, court staff and their relatives 14 times. They’ve asked the judge to hold Trump in contempt, but he has yet to rule on the request.Here is a wrap-up of the day’s key events:
      David Pecker, the former National Enquirer publisher and Trump ally, took to the stand in the Manhattan courtroom for a fourth day of testimony.
      Trump’s lawyers continued their cross-examination of Pecker, presenting a granular look into a hush-money scheme that prosecutors allege was meant to sway the 2016 election in Trump’s favor.
      Trump attorney Emil Bove’s questions prompted Pecker to effectively say that coverage beneficial to Trump had been business as usual, as the defense team tried to chip away at the prosecution’s claim that there had been an illicit conspiracy to sway the 2016 election.
      Pecker testified that the Enquirer had run negative stories about the Clintons as part of the effort to help the Trump campaign, agreed to in a meeting in August 2015, as the defense attempted to show that Pecker helped run positive stories about Trump and negative stories about other politicians even before the alleged catch-and-kill scheme.
      Trump’s legal team also appeared to try driving wedges into the notion that Trump’s 2006 affair with Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model, had been any real threat to Trump’s reputation. Pecker admitted Trump had not paid him any money directly related to McDougal.
      Rhona Graff, Trump’s longtime executive assistant, was called to the stand on Friday afternoon as the prosecution’s second witness.
      Pecker testified earlier in the week that Graff had often been the conduit for his communications with Trump, routing his calls and summoning him to a January 2017 meeting at Trump Tower in which he and Trump discussed some of the hush-money arrangements at issue in the case.
      Graff testified that contact information for Daniels and McDougal had been in Trump’s contacts. She said Daniels had once been at Trump’s offices in Trump Tower, and that she had assumed Daniels was there to discuss potentially being a contestant on The Apprentice.
      Gary Farro was called as the prosecution’s third witness. Farro works at Flagstar Bank as a private client adviser and was previously at First Republic, which was used by Cohen.
      Prosecutors accused Trump of violating a court-imposed gag order – which bars him from speaking publicly about witnesses, prosecutors, jurors, court staff and their relatives – four more times over the course of the week, bringing the total violations to 14, prosecutors allege.
      Prosecutors said judge Juan Merchan should hold Trump in contempt of court and fine him $1,000 for each violation. Merchan has yet to rule on the alleged violations.
      Nevertheless, in a post written, unusually, in the third person on his Truth Social account, the former president has once again demanded Judge Juan Merchan lift a gag order in his trial on charges of falsifying business documents. “We request that Judge Merchan immediately LIFT THE GAG ORDER, so that President Trump is able to freely state his views, feelings, and policies,” the post said.
      That’s it as we wrap up the blog for today. Thank you for following along.With court ending for today, here’s a look at how David Pecker says he ran negative stories on Hillary Clinton to boost Donald Trump.The Guardian’s Lauren Aratani and Victoria Bekiempis report:The testimony of former tabloid publisher David Pecker in Donald Trump’s criminal trial on Friday presented a granular look into a hush-money scheme that prosecutors allege was meant to sway the 2016 election in the real estate mogul’s favor.On cross-examination, defense attorney Emil Bove’s questions prompted Pecker to in effect say that coverage beneficial to Trump had been business as usual, as the ex-president’s legal team tries to chip away at the prosecution’s claim that there had been an illicit conspiracy to sway the 2016 race.Pecker was instrumental in coordinating three hush-money payments that were made during the 2016 election campaign to quash negative stories about Trump.In cross-examination on his fourth day of testimony, Pecker was grilled by Bove about whether he benefited from running positive stories about Trump and negative stories about other politicians even before the alleged catch-and-kill scheme.Pecker testified that the Enquirer had run negative stories about the Clintons as part of the effort to help the Trump campaign, agreed to in a meeting on August 2015.For the full story, click here:Farro’s testimony is done for the day, and the jurors have left.As Trump left the courtroom for the weekend, he seemed to flatten his lips, as if in recognition of an observer.Farro just discussed Cohen’s interest in opening up an account for Essential Consultants LLC, which he claimed was for a real estate consulting business.While testimony about bank records is most often very dry, observers have had a brief reprieve due to Farro’s sense of humor. “When Mr Cohen called me, I was on the golf course,” Farro said, offering a wry smile. “Very cliche for a banker, I know.”Farro is now talking about Michael Cohen’s establishment of a business bank account for Resolution Consultants LLC.Farro explained that it hadn’t officially been opened because Cohen hadn’t deposited money in the account.In a post written, unusually, in the third person on Donald Trump’s Truth Social account, the former president has once again demanded Judge Juan Merchan lift a gag order in his trial on charges of falsifying business documents:
      45th President Donald J. Trump is again the Republican Nominee for President of the United States, and is currently dominating in the Polls. However, he is being inundated by the Media with questions because of this Rigged Biden Trial, which President Trump is not allowed to comment on, or answer, because of Judge Juan Merchan’s UNPRECEDENTED AND UNCONSTITUTIONAL Gag Order.
      …
      We request that Judge Merchan immediately LIFT THE GAG ORDER, so that President Trump is able to freely state his views, feelings, and policies. He is asking for his Constitutional Right to Free Speech. If it is not granted, this again becomes a Rigged Election!
      Prosecutors, meanwhile, have alleged that Trump has violated Merchan’s order prohibiting him from speaking publicly about witnesses, prosecutors, jurors, court staff and their relatives 14 times. They’ve asked the judge to hold Trump in contempt, but he has yet to rule on the request.The next witness called to the stand is Gary Farro, who works at Flagstar Bank.Let’s hear what he has to say.After Rhona Graff’s testimony, Donald Trump left the courtroom without speaking to reporters gathered in the hallway outside.Someone from the press shouted a question about why Stormy Daniels had been at Trump Tower, but Trump did not respond.In her cross-examination of Graff, Susan Necheles appeared to try to set the stage for the defense that Trump might have been distracted while he was signing checks.Was he multi-tasking when signing checks? Was he on the phone? she asked. “I believe it happened. It wasn’t unusual,” Graff said.Donald Trump’s former executive assistant Rhona Graff has departed the witness stand after testimony in which she elaborated on how her former boss may have come to know adult film actor Stormy Daniels.As Graff was walking out of the courtroom, she passed Trump, who stood to greet her. It was unclear what he said to her, but one had the impression that he thanked her. This all happened in front of the jury.Necheles worked hard to downplay Daniels’ presence at Trump Tower.She asked about the evolution of The Apprentice. “He wanted people who were sort of controversial sometimes, right?” Necheles asked. Did Graff ever get the sense that Daniels was trying out for a slot?“I vaguely recall hearing … that she was one of the people that may be an interesting contestant on the show,” Graff said.“And the prosecutor just referred to her as an adult film actress, correct?” Necheles asked.“Uh, yes,” Graff replied.Necheles then asked: ”You understood that to mean, colloquially speaking, a porn star?”“I’d say that’s a good synonym,” Graff replied.Asked if she’d heard Trump say that Daniels was potentially being considered, Graff replied: “I can’t recall a specific instance where I heard it, it was part of the office chatter.”“You understood that she was there to discuss being cast for The Apprentice, correct?” Necheles inquired.“I assumed that,” Graff said.Susan Necheles, an attorney for Trump, is handling the cross-examination of Graff.“Was he a good boss?” Necheles asked early on.“I think that he was fair,” said Graff, who worked for Trump for 34 years. “He was fair and a respectful boss to me … all that time.”Hoffinger also asked Graff about Trump’s email contacts.Graff said that Karen McDougal’s information was in Trump’s contacts; there was also someone named “Stormy”.Hoffinger asked whether, on one occasion, she saw Stormy Daniels at Trump Tower.“I have a vague recollection of seeing her in the reception area on the 26th floor,” she said, adding that to the best of her recollection, this was before the 2016 election.“When you saw her at Trump Tower, did you know she was an adult film actress?” Hoffinger asked.”Yes, I did,” Graff replied.An attorney for Trump then rose to cross-examine Graff.Graff, who was Trump’s longtime executive assistant, said that she is testifying pursuant to a subpoena.Prosecutor Susan Hoffinger asked whether she had lawyers with her today. Graff said yes. Who was paying for the attorneys, Hoffinger pressed” “The Trump Organization,” Graff said.And who did she understand to be the current owner of the Trump Organization? “Mr Trump,” Graff replied.David Pecker is now off the witness stand after Donald Trump’s attorneys briefly cross-examined him a second time.The prosecution has now called its second witness: Rhona Graff, Trump’s longtime executive assistant.She isn’t in the spotlight much, but New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, did subpoena Graff for testimony two years ago as part of her civil investigation into his business dealings. That case ultimately resulted in a judge issuing a $454m judgment against the former president earlier this year. Here’s more on Graff’s testimony:We’re again discussing David Pecker’s unwillingness to deal with the Stormy Daniel story – and why he nonetheless urged Michael Cohen to snap up her account.On the stand, Pecker recalled discussing money for payoffs with Cohen. “I said to Michael Cohen, after paying for the doorman and the Karen McDougal story, I wasn’t going to pay anything further and I wasn’t a bank,” Pecker told jurors. He also described, again, his discussions with Dylan Howard when the Stormy Daniels story came to light.“When he first reach out to you about the story, what did you tell Dylan Howard?” Steinglass asked.“I told Dylan Howard that there is no possible way would I buy this story for $120,000 and I didn’t want to have anything to do with a porn star.”Why did he contact Cohen about Daniels?“Based on our original agreement,” Pecker recalled, “any stories … that would be very embarrassing, I want to communicate that to Michael Cohen right away. If he heard it from somebody else, [Cohen] would go ballistic.”“But you were still going to fulfil your obligation … so that the campaign could squash it?” Steinglass pressed.Pecker said yes. More

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      in US Politics

      Ruby Bridges: civil rights pioneer rejects claim book makes white children uncomfortable

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      Increasingly, the US civil rights icon Ruby Bridges – the first Black child to integrate a school in Louisiana – has seen some adults seek to prevent grade-school students from accessing the books and films that chronicle her story, saying the tale makes white children feel bad about themselves.But that justification is “ridiculous” because “my biggest fans are kids all around the world”, Bridges told NBC’s Meet the Press moderator Kristen Welker in an interview airing on Sunday morning’s episode of the show.“All of the letters, all of the mail, I have little girls from all walks of life, different nationalities that dress up like Ruby Bridges,” the now 69-year-old activist said in an excerpt of the interview that NBC shared in advance with the Guardian.“I found through … traveling that they resonate with the loneliness, probably the pain that I felt. There’s all sorts of reasons that they are drawn to my story. So I would have to disagree [that it makes certain children feel guilty].”Delivered in a recurring segment known as Meet the Moment, which aims to spotlight people who influence political issues outside Washington, Bridges’ remarks to Welker come a little more than a year after one parent’s complaint prompted a school in Florida to stop showing its students a 1988 made-for-TV movie about her.The parent in question complained that the movie – which some schools usually show to students during Black History Month in February – might teach children that “white people hate Black people”.Separately, Bridges’ autobiographical picture book I Am Ruby Bridges was included in a collection of 64 “diverse” titles from Scholastic Books – the US’s largest children’s book publisher – that librarians are allowed to opt out of for popular book fairs that Scholastic helps stage at campuses nationwide.Scholastic defended itself by saying it had been forced into that position to shield teachers and librarians in largely conservative regions which may have enacted prohibitions against children’s books addressing race, gender and sexuality.Other works by Bridges have also been targeted by book bans schemed up by groups such as Moms for Liberty.In her conversation with Welker, Bridges dismissed the idea that her experience could unduly make white children uncomfortable.“That’s just an excuse not to share the truth, to cover up history,” Bridges said. “But I believe that history is sacred – that none of us should have the right to change or alter history in any way.”Bridges was six years old in November 1960 when US deputy marshals escorted her past jeering crowds into New Orleans’ William Frantz elementary school.With her white sweater, matching hair bow, black patent leather shoes and a small satchel in her right hand that day, she became the first Black child to desegregate an all-white elementary school in New Orleans – a scene immortalized in the 1963 Norman Rockwell painting named The Problem We All Live With.Bridges grew up to start an eponymous foundation dedicated to promoting tolerance and change through academic education. Meanwhile, the Akili Academy now occupying the school which Bridges integrated has a majority Black student population and is a stop on Louisiana’s Civil Rights Trail. More

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      in US Politics

      How much did #MeToo change for women? Let’s ask Harvey Weinstein today – or Donald Trump | Marina Hyde

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      According to his representatives, former Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein is still digesting the overturning of his rape conviction by a New York court, but they did come out to say he was “cautiously excited”. Cautiously excited? I’m not sure these are the words I’d alight on to paint a word-picture of a rapist. You might as well say “tentatively aroused”. Then again, as we’re about to discuss, quite a lot of guys don’t particularly have to worry about what they say or do, or how they say or do it. It’s only natural that Harvey should very much want to be one of them again.Speaking of word-pictures, though, how’s this for a vignette of our times? When they heard the news that Weinstein’s conviction had been overturned on Thursday, a whole host of reporters happened to be looking at the exact spot in the exact New York courtroom that he’d sat in when that original judgment had been handed down. This was because they were waiting for Donald Trump to sit in it for Thursday’s proceedings in his hush money trial. Mr Trump, you might recall, is in such a lot of trouble that he is the presumptive Republican nominee and current bookies’ favourite to win the US presidency again, though admittedly he lags behind Weinstein on the sexual assault and misconduct front, given that only 26 women have accused him of it. Ultimately, though, I guess the question is: if #MeToo “went too far”, what would “going just far enough” have looked like?In seeking to answer that question, I’m somehow picturing the Best Picture climax of this year’s Oscars, with lifetime dictator Donald J Trump opening the envelope and calling it for Oppenheimer, before cackling: “I’m kidding with you, Nolan – the award goes to The Passion of the Harvey. Come on up here, all the guys from the Weinstein Company. And, Louis, you did a beautiful job with the role. You can add this one to your latest Grammy.”Or hang on – maybe #MeToo going just far enough would just look like a supreme court justice who is credibly accused of sexual assault deliberating with his colleagues/fellow placemen on whether the president can commit crimes absolutely without consequences, and then them deciding that it’s honestly too hard to decide on for now, thus delaying the guy’s trial for trying to overturn the results of a democratic election. Because that one really happened, also on Thursday.View image in fullscreenNot to flit too giddily between courtrooms, but we should note that despite Thursday’s news, Weinstein’s rape conviction in a Californian court still stands. As for what went wrong with his New York trial, it includes the legal error of the trial judge’s decision to allow testimony from four women who were not directly part of the case in hand. Long story short: unfortunately, simply too many women told the court that Weinstein had sexually assaulted them, which has now rendered his sexual assault trial null and void. The whole thing will have to be run anew, forcing an approved selection of those women to have to testify all over again. And yes – we might all have a number of strong views about those who benefit from the vagaries of the US legal system, but quite often you can’t print those views over this side of the Atlantic because of the vagaries of the UK legal system. Maybe we all get the legal systems we deserve. Except lawyers. You can’t help feeling those guys are the one set of people reaping unjust deserts from the legal system.Anyhow, back to even more of Thursday’s court news coming out of New York, where another judge was also ruling against Trump’s appeal of the $83m defamation verdict in the case brought against him by the writer E Jean Carroll, who alleged he raped her in a department store changing room. Given Trump was in the aforementioned courtroom across town, it’s quite something to be able to say that the day nevertheless still turned out to be a net good one for him, what with the supreme court’s decision not to yet make a decision on whether he can stand trial on charges of conspiring to overthrow the election. Certainly it was news about which he could be cautiously excited.But perhaps not about which he could be completely surprised, given his supreme efforts to bend the court to his will. Only the day before, the court had been hearing the state of Idaho argue for a ban on abortion even in cases where it is required for health-saving care. Trump’s campaign trail rallies see him frequently and repeatedly boast of being the puppet master of the judgment that overthrew Roe v Wade, the 1973 supreme court judgment that protected federal abortion rights. And he’s arguably right about that, what with having appointed three justices to the court and upset a balance the rest of the world is supposed to regard as fabled. Obviously, Trump’s pride in the achievement means so much more coming from a man who I’d love to joke has probably paid for more abortions than there are compromised supreme court justices, even if legal discussions over retaining that statement in this column are likely to run to more time than it took to write the column.On balance, you couldn’t accuse Thursday of being a great day for Lady Justice – or indeed for lady justice. As it turns out, all the so-called reckonings of the past few years can be unreckoned with far more easily than they were won. The only thing that’s gone “too far” is the pretence that anything went far enough.
      Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist
      Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

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      in Elections

      The pro-Trump Arizona fake electors scheme: what’s in the charging document?

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      The indictment against the slate of fake electors in Arizona and the Trump allies who advanced the scheme there includes a host of public statements and private exchanges that show how the group intended to overturn the state’s electoral votes for Joe Biden in 2020.Arizona’s Democratic attorney general, Kris Mayes, announced on Wednesday that a state grand jury charged the 11 false electors and seven others with nine felony counts of fraud, forgery and conspiracy. The indictment from Mayes’s office is sure to be a talking point in this year’s elections, nearly four years after the acts themselves occurred.The case’s net spans more broadly than the slate of fake electors itself, entangling Trump associates who perpetrated the theory that this “alternative” slate could be used by Congress and then vice-president Mike Pence instead of the state’s rightful electors who signed off that Biden won the state.The documents detail the steps taken behind the scenes to push the concept of using electors for Trump to pressure Pence on 6 January 2021. Trump allies, both those charged in Arizona and those who weren’t, were exchanging messages, pressuring elected officials and arranging court cases to benefit the fake electors idea, the indictment shows.And several of the fake electors themselves, by their public statements, intended for their act of signing falsely that they were the state’s true electors to be used by the Trump campaign to disrupt the electoral count and subvert the state’s Biden win.Trump himself is not charged in the Arizona case, though he is listed throughout the indictment as “unindicted co-conspirator 1”, a “former president of the United States who spread false claims of election fraud following the 2020 election”.There were also attempts to add caveats to the language in the documents signed by the fake electors in Arizona to note that they were intended only as a backup plan should judges rule in Trump’s favor, but that did not happen, the indictment alleges.The false electors included two sitting state senators, Jake Hoffman and Anthony Kern. It’s not clear how or if the state senate will respond to these charges or if it will affect their legislative actions. The senate Republicans’ spokeswoman told the Guardian she checked with a rules attorney in the chamber, who “verified there is no protocol on such a matter, as people are presumed innocent until proven guilty”.The former Arizona Republican party chair Kelli Ward was charged, as was her husband, Michael. Tyler Bowyer, a Republican national committeeman and Turning Point Action executive, was also charged, as were the other fake electors Jim Lamon, Nancy Cottle, Robert Montgomery, Samuel Moorhead, Lorraine Pellegrino and Gregory Safsten.The Trumpworld figures charged include high-profile allies such as the former New York City mayor and Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, the former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows, the lawyer John Eastman, the adviser Boris Epshteyn, the attorney Jenna Ellis, the current election integrity counsel for the Republican National Committee, Christina Bobb, and the former Trump campaign operative Mike Roman.In initial documents, the names of Trump allies are redacted, making it somewhat difficult to track who allegedly said what to whom. They are identifiable by their descriptions or other details.Mayes, who won her race by less than 300 votes in 2022, is already in the Republican-led legislature’s crosshairs for this investigation and a host of other issues where she, a Democrat, is at odds with GOP lawmakers. The state house opened a committee to investigate her and her use of the office. The charges are sure to further inflame Republican lawmakers.Hoffman issued a statement saying he was innocent and intended to “vigorously” defend himself against the charges, and that Mayes had weaponized the attorney general’s office for political reasons. “I look forward to the day when I am vindicated of this disgusting political persecution by the judicial process,” he wrote.Kern responded with an “LOL!!” and changed the subject to abortion when a commenter on X said he should resign immediately. The Arizona Republican party put out a statement calling the timing of the indictments “suspiciously convenient and politically motivated” and an example of election interference, a favorite claim of Trump himself in the face of a host of charges.Charlie Kirk, the founder of the rightwing youth organization Turning Point, said he and the organization stand by Bowyer and the others charged.“The Arizona Trump electors were doing what they thought was a legally necessary step as part of a wider political and electoral dispute,” Kirk wrote on X. “They acted in the belief that Donald Trump was the true winner of Arizona in the 2020 election. They engaged in no fraud and no deception. In fact, they literally published a press release explaining what they were doing!”Didn’t hedge language despite a warningOf the seven states that saw a similar fake electors scheme, those in Pennsylvania and New Mexico used language that indicated the electors who signed for Trump were contingent on the signers later being certified as the “duly elected and qualified electors” because of court interventions that were outstanding at the time.Arizona’s documents include no such hedge, instead saying the people who signed on claimed to be the “duly elected and qualified electors” for Trump in the state.The indictment claims a Pennsylvania attorney raised concerns about that language on 12 December 2020 and requested adding in the contingency language. After that, “unindicted co-conspirator 4”, who appears to be the scheme’s architect, the attorney Kenneth Chesebro, texted a Trump campaign official to point out the issue.View image in fullscreen“Mike, I think the language at start of certificate should be changed in all states. Let’s look at the language carefully,” Chesebro wrote to a Trump ally, presumably Mike Roman.Chesebro said the hedged language could help prevent the false electors from “possibly facing legal exposure (at the hands of a partisan AG) if they seem to certify that they are currently the valid electors”.“I don’t,” the person responded. After Chesebro offered to help draft the language, the Trump operative responded: “Fuck these guys,” according to the indictment.The pressure campaignTo build the narrative of the case, the indictment walks through Trump and his allies’ intense pressure campaign on the Maricopa county board of supervisors, the state legislature and the governor, all of whom played some role in election oversight.The details here are now publicly well-known – they include calls from the White House and Trump allies to people such as the former House speaker Rusty Bowers and the county supervisor Clint Hickman, as well as a call from the White House to the former governor Doug Ducey on the day he signed off on the certification of votes.Also mentioned is the backlash and ensuing harassment that some of these officials faced from members of their own party for refusing to take part in the efforts to overturn the results.The indictment walks through the various lawsuits the Trump campaign and other state Republicans filed to try to get their claims of election fraud affirmed in court or disrupt the results in some way, none of which succeeded.Ward worked to organize the Trump electors along with others. She expressed concerns that, if there weren’t an appeal filed in one of the election cases contesting results, it “could appear treasonous” to sign on as an alternate slate without any pending court cases. An appeal in one case, Ward v Jackson, was filed in time for the slate to vote on 14 December 2020.One appeal, the indictment notes, was filed quickly as a way to “give legal ‘cover’ for the electors in AZ to ‘vote’” to create their slate, a person labeled as “unindicted co-conspirator 5”, believed to be the Arizona attorney Jack Wilenchik, wrote in an email at the time.As proof of the intent to throw the election to Trump, the indictment mentions meetings between Pence, his staff and someone who appears to be Eastman from contextual clues, where the Trump ally lays out to Pence how he could reject electoral votes from certain states, delay the court and ask state legislatures to instead step in and declare a winner. During a meeting with Pence’s chief counsel, a charged Trump associate “admitted that his plan would lose if it went before the US supreme court”, the indictment says.The indictment also notes a memo written on 23 December 2020 that envisions Pence refusing to count the Biden electors from Arizona and other states with fake slates because there were multiple slates from those places, thus giving Trump a majority of the remaining electoral votes. This memo, other reporting from the Washington Post confirms, was written by Eastman.Pence did not follow through, to the dismay of Trump and his allies.Using their own wordsThe attorney general uses the fake electors’ own words, often displayed publicly on social media platforms, to show their intent was not simply to offer an alternate slate in the face of a potential court order, but to pressure the vice-president and others to use the Trump electors instead.On 14 December 2020, at the state Republican party headquarters, the electors signed on for Trump. The party posted a picture and video of it to X. Ward wrote, “Oh yes we did! We are the electors who represent the legal voters of Arizona! #Trump2020 #MAGA.” The party released a statement on the action that was similar to a template created by Chesebro, the indictment says.The next day, Bowyer, of Turning Point, described the move as giving “potential ground to not accept electors from states with competing electors”, the indictment says.Later that month, the 11 fake electors signed on to a lawsuit against Pence from the Texas congressman Louie Gohmert seeking to have the court declare Pence had the authority to decide which electoral votes to use in states that had multiple slates, according to the indictment.After the Gohmert case was filed, Bowyer wrote on X that the vice-president had the “awesome power” of selecting which slate to use when there were two competing ones, or to select neither.Kern gave an interview to the conspiracy website Epoch Times where he said the dual slates gave Pence the choice to pick one or the other and that would then likely lead to a “contested electoral process” on 6 January.“It’s going to be just a nice constitutional lesson for all of America to see,” Kern said, according to the indictment. A couple days later, Kern called on state leaders to bring an emergency legislative session to “decertify” the Biden electors, then convene a grand jury to investigate election fraud claims. He also was at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021.The day before the insurrection, Hoffman wrote to Pence and asked him to delay certification and get clarity from the legislature over which slate was “proper and accurate”.Based on their statements and machinations behind the scenes, the indictment concludes that the defendants “deceived the public with false claims of election fraud in order to prevent the lawful transfer of the presidency, to keep Unindicted Coconspirator 1 in office against the will of Arizona’s voters, and deprive Arizona voters of their right to vote and have their votes counted”. More

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      in US Politics

      Trump VP contender Kristi Noem writes of killing dog – and goat – in new book

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      In 1952, as a Republican candidate for vice-president, Richard Nixon famously stirred criticism by admitting receiving a dog, Checkers, as a political gift.In 2012, as the Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney was pilloried for tying a dog, Seamus, to the roof of the family car for a cross-country trip.But in 2024 Kristi Noem, a strong contender to be named running mate to Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, has managed to go one further – by admitting killing a dog of her own.“Cricket was a wirehair pointer, about 14 months old,” the South Dakota governor writes in a new book, adding that the dog, a female, had an “aggressive personality” and needed to be trained to be used for hunting pheasant.What unfolds over the next few pages shows how that effort went very wrong indeed – and, remarkably, how Cricket was not the only domestic animal Noem chose to kill one day in hunting season.Noem’s book – No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward – will be published in the US next month. The Guardian obtained a copy.Like other aspirants to be Trump’s second vice-president who have ventured into print, Noem offers readers a mixture of autobiography, policy prescriptions and political invective aimed at Democrats and other enemies, all of it raw material for speeches on the campaign stump.She includes her story about the ill-fated Cricket, she says, to illustrate her willingness, in politics as well as in South Dakota life, to do anything “difficult, messy and ugly” if it simply needs to be done.By taking Cricket on a pheasant hunt with older dogs, Noem says, she hoped to calm the young dog down and begin to teach her how to behave. Unfortunately, Cricket ruined the hunt, going “out of her mind with excitement, chasing all those birds and having the time of her life”.Noem describes calling Cricket, then using an electronic collar to attempt to bring her under control. Nothing worked. Then, on the way home after the hunt, as Noem stopped to talk to a local family, Cricket escaped Noem’s truck and attacked the family’s chickens, “grabb[ing] one chicken at a time, crunching it to death with one bite, then dropping it to attack another”.Cricket the untrainable dog, Noem writes, behaved like “a trained assassin”.When Noem finally grabbed Cricket, she says, the dog “whipped around to bite me”. Then, as the chickens’ owner wept, Noem repeatedly apologised, wrote the shocked family a check “for the price they asked, and helped them dispose of the carcasses littering the scene of the crime”.Through it all, Noem says, Cricket was “the picture of pure joy”.“I hated that dog,” Noem writes, adding that Cricket had proved herself “untrainable”, “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with” and “less than worthless … as a hunting dog”.“At that moment,” Noem says, “I realised I had to put her down.”Noem, who also represented her state in Congress for eight years, got her gun, then led Cricket to a gravel pit.“It was not a pleasant job,” she writes, “but it had to be done. And after it was over, I realised another unpleasant job needed to be done.”Incredibly, Noem’s tale of slaughter is not finished.Her family, she writes, also owned a male goat that was “nasty and mean”, because it had not been castrated. Furthermore, the goat smelled “disgusting, musky, rancid” and “loved to chase” Noem’s children, knocking them down and ruining their clothes.Noem decided to kill the unnamed goat the same way she had just killed Cricket the dog. But though she “dragged him to a gravel pit”, the goat jumped as she shot and therefore survived the wound. Noem says she went back to her truck, retrieved another shell, then “hurried back to the gravel pit and put him down”.At that point, Noem writes, she realised a construction crew had watched her kill both animals. The startled workers swiftly got back to work, she writes, only for a school bus to arrive and drop off Noem’s children.“Kennedy looked around confused,” Noem writes of her daughter, who asked: “Hey, where’s Cricket?”In what may prove a contender for the greatest understatement of election year, Noem adds: “I guess if I were a better politician I wouldn’t tell the story here.” More

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      Trump the elephant in the room as supreme court hearing strays into the surreal

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      It took two hours and 24 minutes for the elephant in the room to be mentioned at Thursday’s US supreme court hearing. “The special counsel has expressed some concern for speed, and wanting to move forward,” said Justice Amy Coney Barrett.That was shorthand for the gargantuan stakes at play in Trump v United States. The court was being asked to consider one of the most consequential prosecutions in US history – the four federal charges brought against former president Donald Trump accusing him of attempting to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election – and whether the case can conceivably go to trial.The supreme court has already moved at such a snail’s pace that the chances of the case coming to trial before November’s presidential election – in which the accused is once again standing for the most powerful job on Earth – are growing slim. The charges were filed by special counsel Jack Smith on 1 August, almost nine months ago.With the clock ticking down, the most conservative of the nine supreme court justices appeared determined to talk about anything but the case at hand. “I’m not concerned about this case, so much as future ones,” said Neil Gorsuch, one of the three justices appointed to the supreme court by Trump.“I’m not focused on the here and now in this case,” parroted another Trump appointee, Brett Kavanaugh. “I’m very concerned about the future.”Samuel Alito repeated the mantra. “I’m going to talk about this in the abstract because what we decide is going to apply to all future presidents,” he said.What the justices appeared to be overlooking in the rush towards abstraction was that the actual substance of the case – the here and now – is of monumental significance. Trump is charged with having orchestrated a conspiracy to subvert the bedrock of democracy – the outcome of a freely held election – as the first president in US history to resist the peaceful handover of power.As Michael Dreeben, who spoke for the government, put it, Trump’s novel legal theory that he enjoys absolute immunity from criminal liability would immunize any president who commits bribery, treason, sedition and murder. Or in Trump’s case, “conspiring to use fraud to overturn the results of an election and perpetuate himself in power”.At times the epic debate, which lasted two hours and 40 minutes, strayed into the surreal. Trump’s lawyer, John Sauer, argued that a president who ordered the assassination of a political rival or who instigated a military coup could only be prosecuted if he had been impeached and convicted first by Congress.The first question from the bench came from Clarence Thomas, the justice who stubbornly refused to recuse himself despite the inconvenient truth that his wife, Ginni, was profoundly mired in Trump’s conspiracy leading up to the insurrection at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021.The award for the most jaw-dropping display of jurisprudential sleight of hand goes to Alito. He invoked the goal of preserving a “stable democratic society” in support of Trump’s claim that he should be immune from prosecution for having attempted to destroy a stable democratic society.“If an incumbent who loses a very close hotly contested election knows that it is a real possibility after leaving office that he may be criminally prosecuted by a bitter political opponent, will that not lead us into a cycle that destabilizes the functioning of our country?” Alito asked.“I think it’s exactly the opposite, Justice Alito,” Dreeben replied, with admirable restraint.It was all clearly too much for Ketanji Brown Jackson. Of the three liberal justices she put up the most impassioned counter-argument for the prosecution to go ahead.“If there’s no threat of criminal prosecution, what prevents the president from just doing whatever he wants,” she said. The justice left it implicit that this particular former president is potentially less than seven months away from returning to the Oval Office.How the court will rule is less than clear. It is a fair bet that four of the conservatives – Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Thomas – will vote for an outcome that in some form spares Trump from facing a jury in DC before he faces the American electorate on 5 November.Barrett was harder to read. She appeared to be open to allowing the prosecution to proceed, albeit through a tighter lens to distinguish between Trump’s actions that were motivated by personal gain from those conducted in his official capacity.The final word may well fall – once again – to John Roberts, the chief justice. The thrust of his questioning (he alluded to one-legged stools and got stuck on the word “tautology”) suggested that he might be tempted to remand the case back to a lower court for further time-consuming deliberation.Which would play exactly into Trump’s hands. From day one, Trump’s strategy has been delay, delay, delay – with the endgame of kicking the prosecutorial can so far down the road that he can win re-election and appoint a manipulable attorney general who will scrap all charges, or even pardon himself.Which is why the elephant in the courtroom cut such a striking presence. Though with the exception of Barrett’s lone comment, it went entirely un-noted. More

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      Prosecutor to appeal against Texas woman’s acquittal over voting error

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      A Texas prosecutor will appeal against a court ruling tossing out a five-year prison sentence for a woman who unintentionally tried to vote while ineligible in the 2016 election, an unexpected move that continues one of the most closely watched voting prosecutions in the US.Last month, the second court of appeals, which is based in Fort Worth, threw out the 2018 conviction of Crystal Mason, a Black woman who submitted a provisional ballot in 2016 that ultimately went uncounted. Mason was on supervised release for a federal felony at the time she voted and has said she had no idea she was ineligible. The panel said prosecutors had failed to prove Mason actually knew she was ineligible.But the Tarrant county district attorney, Phil Sorrells, a Republican, announced on Thursday he was appealing to the Texas court of criminal appeals, the highest criminal court in Texas.“The trial court’s guilty verdict should be affirmed. Voting is a cornerstone of our democracy. This office will protect the ballot box from fraudsters who think our laws don’t apply to them,” Sorrells said in a statement. “The second court of appeals’ publication of its opinion creates the very real risk that future sufficiency cases will likewise be wrongly analyzed and decided.”When election workers were unable to find Mason’s name on the voter rolls on election day in 2016, they offered her the chance to cast a provisional ballot. The key piece of evidence used to convict her was testimony from election workers saying they believed she had read an affidavit warning that someone cannot vote until they complete “any term of incarceration, parole, supervision, parole or probation”.Mason says she did not read the affidavit and that no one ever told her she could not vote. It is undisputed that she was never told she could not vote.“It is disappointing that the State has chosen to request further review of Ms Mason’s case, but we are confident that justice will ultimately prevail. The court of appeals’ decision was well reasoned and correct. It is time to give Ms Mason peace with her family,” Thomas Buser-Clancy, an attorney with the Texas chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said in an email.Mason has already had to serve an additional 10 months in federal prison while she appeals the state conviction. She remains free on an appeal bond and is living in Fort Worth.“I’m truly saddened at this moment that the state in this upcoming election is still sending a message,” Mason said in a text message. “I just don’t understand. My heart is very very heavy right now.” More

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      Senior Democrat calls for arrests of ‘leftwing fascists’ urging Gaza ceasefire

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      Protesters calling for Israel to cease fire in its war with Hamas who have disrupted US public events and infrastructure are practicing “leftwing fascism” or “leftwing totalitarianism”, a senior US House Democrat said, adding that such protesters are “challenging representative democracy” and should be arrested.“Intimidation is the tactic,” said Adam Smith of Washington state, the ranking Democrat on the House armed services committee. “Intimidation and an effort to silence opposition … I don’t know if there’s such a thing as leftwing fascism. If you want to just call it leftwing totalitarianism, then that’s what it is. It is a direct challenge to representative democracy now.”Smith was speaking – before the outbreak this week of mass protests on US college campuses, many producing arrests – to the One Decision Podcast and its guest host Christina Ruffini, a CBS News reporter.Ruffini asked Smith about protests in his district, including vandalism at his home and a town hall meeting disrupted by protesters demanding an end to the Israeli bombardment of Gaza prompted by attacks by Hamas on 7 October.Disruptive, aggressive protests are “illegal … completely wrong … and enormously dangerous”, Smith said, adding: “I really want people to understand – and I put out a statement after they shut down a town hall meeting that I was trying to have [in March] – what’s going on here.“And everyone’s like, ‘Well, you understand their passion and all that. And I do understand that, I do. This is a life-or-death situation. It is certainly not the only life-or-death situation that I and all policymakers deal with. But it is one that is important. But that’s not what [the protesters are] doing.“What they are trying to do is they are trying to silence opposition and intimidate decision-makers. I’ve been doing town hall meetings for 34 years now, in some pretty hotly contested environments … [but] I have never had a town hall that I couldn’t keep under control enough so that people had the chance to say their piece.“But [the protesters’] goal and their objective was not to get their point across. It was to silence anyone who dared to disagree with them, to make sure that only one voice was heard. And their other goal was to intimidate. That’s why they’re showing up at member’s houses.”More than 1,100 people were killed on 7 October when Hamas attacked Israel, also taking hostages. Since then, more than 34,000 people have been killed in Israeli strikes on Gaza, where the population also faces displacement and starvation.Protesters, Smith said, “would say, ‘Children are dying. This is a huge humanitarian crisis.’ And they’re right about that … and by the way, I do have some sympathy with these people. If there are members of Congress who won’t meet with them, I meet with them. All the time. So they have an opportunity to be heard. They’re not trying to be heard. They’re trying to silence people who disagree with them.”Asked what kind of protest might be appropriate, Smith cited a recent instance in an armed services hearing in which “people came in and they didn’t say anything, they just held up bloody hands. And the chairman noticed that and said, ‘You can’t do that, you’re out, and they got up and left.”But he said: “You go back to the civil rights movement, they expected to be arrested, they knew they were violating the law. And also … you have to enforce the law. You have to make clear … that this is about more than just the issue. You know, they can be heard, but then other people get to be heard.“You come to our town hall meeting, it’s one thing to try to get attention. They got their attention. But literally, they wouldn’t stop screaming insults at me. They wouldn’t … even let me answer the very questions they were raising.“I got two words into it and they started screaming at me again. So this is a different thing than your standard protest. In my view, the solution to it is if they are committing a crime – which by the way, shutting down a freeway, shutting down an airport, intimidating people, there’s a crime – [they] ought to be arrested.”Protesting at public figures’ homes should also be subject to arrest, Smith said.“The point of it is intimidation. And I think it is harassment. It’s a crime, and I think [they should] be arrested for it.“… But you know, when you are shutting down freeways, shutting down airports, frankly putting people’s lives at risk – If you’re an ambulance trying to get through to hospital – then that’s going beyond getting your point across, and you’re trying to intimidate and silence people in a way that I think is troubling.” More