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Tag: 2020 United States presidential election

  • A ‘Trump Train’ convoy surrounded a Biden-Harris bus. Was it political violence?

    A ‘Trump Train’ convoy surrounded a Biden-Harris bus. Was it political violence?

    AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A Texas jury will soon decide whether a convoy of supporters of then-President Donald Trump violently intimidated former Democratic lawmaker Wendy Davis and two others on a Biden-Harris campaign bus when a so-called “Trump Train” boxed them in for more than an hour on a Texas highway days before the 2020 election.

    The trial, which began on Sept. 9, resumes Monday and is expected to last another week.

    Attorneys for the plaintiffs argued that six of the Trump Train drivers violated state and federal law. Lawyers for the defendants said they did not conspire against the Democrats on the bus and that their actions are protected speech.

    Here’s what else to know:

    What happened on Oct. 30, 2020?

    Dozens of cars and trucks organized by a local Trump Train group swarmed the bus on its way from San Antonio to Austin. It was the last day of early voting in Texas for the 2020 general election, and the bus was scheduled to make a stop in San Marcos for an event at Texas State University.

    Video recorded by Davis shows pickup trucks with large Trump flags aggressively slowing down and boxing in the bus as it tried to move away from the Trump Train. One defendant hit a campaign volunteer’s car while the trucks occupied all lanes of traffic, slowing the bus and everyone around it to a 15 mph crawl.

    Those on the bus — including Davis, a campaign staffer and the driver — repeatedly called 911 asking for help and a police escort through San Marcos, but when no law enforcement arrived, the campaign canceled the event and pushed forward to Austin.

    San Marcos settled a separate lawsuit filed by the same three Democrats against the police, agreeing to pay $175,000 and mandate political violence training for law enforcement.

    Davis testified that she felt she was being “taken hostage” and has sought treatment for anxiety.

    In the days leading up to the event, Democrats were also intimidated, harassed and received death threats, the lawsuit said.

    “I feel like they were enjoying making us afraid,” Davis testified. “It’s traumatic for all of us to revisit that day.”

    What’s the plaintiffs’ argument?

    In opening statements, an attorney for the plaintiffs said convoy organizers targeted the bus in a calculated attack to intimidate the Democrats in violation of the “Ku Klux Klan Act,” an 1871 federal law that bans political violence and intimidation.

    “We’re here because of actions that put people’s lives in danger,” said Samuel Hall, an attorney with the law firm Willkie Farr & Gallagher. The plaintiffs, he said, were “literally driven out of town by a swarm of trucks.”

    The six Trump Train drivers succeeded in making the campaign cancel its remaining events in Texas in a war they believed was “between good and evil,” Hall said.

    Two nonprofit advocacy groups, Texas Civil Rights Project and Protect Democracy, also are representing the three plaintiffs.

    What’s the defense’s argument?

    Attorneys for the defendants, who are accused of driving and organizing the convoy, said they did not conspire to swarm the Democrats on the bus, which could have exited the highway at any point.

    “This was a political rally. This was not some conspiracy to intimidate people,” said attorney Jason Greaves, who is representing two of the drivers.

    The defense also argued that their clients’ actions were protected speech and that the trial is a concerted effort to “drain conservatives of their money,” according to Francisco Canseco, a lawyer for three of the defendants.

    “It was a rah-rah group that sought to support and advocate for a candidate of their choice in a very loud way,” Canseco said during opening statements.

    The defense lost a bid last month to have the case ruled in their favor without a trial. The judge wrote that “assaulting, intimidating, or imminently threatening others with force is not protected expression.”

    ___

    Lathan is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

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  • After millions lose access to internet subsidy, FCC moves to fill connectivity gaps

    After millions lose access to internet subsidy, FCC moves to fill connectivity gaps

    LOS ANGELES (AP) — The Biden administration is moving to blunt the loss of an expired broadband subsidy program that helped more than 23 million families afford internet access by using money from an existing program that helps libraries and schools provide WiFi hotspots to students and patrons.

    Jessica Rosenworcel, chairwoman of the Federal Communications Commission, told The Associated Press last week that the agency had voted in July to “modernize” a federal program known as E-Rate to fill at least some of the gaps left by the Affordable Connectivity Program, which gave families with limited income a monthly subsidy to pay for high-speed internet.

    “A lot of those households are at risk of disconnection,” Rosenworcel said after a visit to a Los Angeles elementary school. “We should be clear that it’s not always an on-off switch. It’s about sustainability.”

    The Affordable Connectivity Program, part of a broader effort pushed by the administration to bring affordable internet to every home and business in the country, was not renewed by Congress and ran out of funding earlier this year.

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    Mothers of students at Union Avenue Elementary School, which has a 93% Latino student population, told Rosenworcel that their need for the internet has never been greater. They said the cost of rent and food makes it hard to prioritize maintaining a continuous connection.

    After listening to the mothers describe using WiFi in a McDonald’s parking lot so they can take part in remote doctor’s appointments, pay bills, and provide their kids with an internet connection for their online homework, an emotional Rosenworcel called their stories “chilling.”

    “That family and that child are going to have a harder time thriving in the modern world without that connection at home,” she said.

    The E-Rate program, established in the 1990s, has provided more than $7 billion in discounts for eligible schools and libraries since 2022 to afford broadband products and services. According to a data analysis by the AP, it offered benefits to more than 12,500 libraries, nearly half of them in rural areas, and 106,000 schools.

    For the most recent round of funding, the E-Rate program was expanded to include WiFi on school buses. Starting next year, Rosenworcel said, the list of eligible products will expand to WiFi hotspots.

    The Affordable Connectivity Program was helping one in six families in the U.S. afford internet access. Rosenworcel said the decision to include WiFi hotspots in E-Rate was partly a response to the failure to extend the subsidies.

    “Every child needs internet access at home to really thrive,” Rosenworcel said.

    Alex Houff, who manages digital equity programs for the Baltimore County Public Library in Maryland, said the library began a WiFi hotspot lending program right before the COVID-19 lockdown began in 2020 with around 50 devices. She said the program has grown to include 1,000 devices, which still falls short of meeting demand. There are more than 160 people waiting to use a hotspot, Houff said.

    “Most of the time we were hearing from branches that their communities were borrowing these hotspots because it was their only source of connectivity,” Houff said.

    Affordability, Houff said, is the biggest barrier to connection. She said the library system would apply for E-Rate funding to double the number of hotspots it offers to patrons.

    The expansion of the program has not pleased everyone. The two Republicans sitting on the commission argued that E-Rate was meant to bolster and support internet access within the classroom, not at home or other places where students “might want to learn.”

    “The last I checked, schools, which have classrooms, and libraries, are physical locations with addresses; not philosophical, conceptual ideas of instruction or education,” Republican commissioner Nathan Simington said in a statement after the vote.

    Rosenworcel, who took over as chair of the FCC after President Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in the 2020 election, said the Republican members’ characterization of where the program ought to be applied was too restrictive.

    After the FCC voted to expand WiFi hotspots to school buses, a group of Republican senators endorsed a lawsuit challenging the agency’s decision. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who led the group of senators, said in a news release that the commission’s new rule was an overreach that would “harm children by enabling their unsupervised access to the internet.”

    Disagreements between political parties aren’t the only threat to E-Rate. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals — the same one where Sen. Cruz filed an amicus brief about WiFi on school buses — ruled at the end of July that the funding mechanism that supports E-Rate and other FCC-administered internet access programs, known as the Universal Service Fund, is unlawful.

    “There is a big cloud of uncertainty over the future of the Universal Service Fund right now because of this Fifth Circuit decision,” John Windhausen, the executive director of the Schools, Health and Libraries Broadband Coalition. “It’s a horrible decision, and it’s totally out of line with past Supreme Court precedent and totally out of line with other appeals courts that have ruled in just the opposite way.”

    Further litigation is expected. The case could be taken up by the Supreme Court, Windhausen said.

    Chairwoman Rosenworcel said she’s confident in the integrity of the Universal Service Fund, saying the Fifth Circuit’s decision is “misguided and wrong.”

    “It’s done a lot of good for the United States to make sure, no matter who you are or where you live, you get access to modern communications,” Rosenworcel said.

    Rosenworcel said the FCC could mobilize quickly if Congress would simply renew the Affordable Connectivity Program, which might be the easiest way to address the need.

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  • Rudy Giuliani did nothing illegal in Arizona’s fake elector case, his lawyer says

    Rudy Giuliani did nothing illegal in Arizona’s fake elector case, his lawyer says

    PHOENIX (AP) — A lawyer for Rudy Giuliani said Monday that the charges against his client in Arizona’s fake elector case should be thrown out because Giuliani did nothing criminal in contesting Joe Biden’s narrow 2020 victory in the state over Donald Trump.

    An indictment said Giuliani spread false claims of election fraud in Arizona after the 2020 election and presided over a downtown Phoenix gathering where he claimed officials made no effort to determine the accuracy of presidential election results.

    Attorney Mark Williams said Giuliani was exercising his rights to free speech and petition the government. “How is Mr. Giuliani to know that, oh my gosh, he presided over a meeting in downtown Phoenix,” Williams asked sarcastically. “How is he to know that that’s a crime?”

    Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Bruce Cohen is hearing arguments over whether to dismiss charges against Republicans who signed a document falsely claiming Trump won Arizona and others who are accused of scheming to overturn the presidential race’s outcome.

    Cohen hasn’t yet issued decisions on the dismissal requests. Arguments over whether to throw out the case will continue Tuesday.

    While not a fake elector in Arizona, the indictment alleged Giuliani pressured Maricopa County officials and state legislators to change the outcome of Arizona’s results and encouraged Republican electors in the state to vote for Trump in mid-December 2020.

    At least a dozen defendants are seeking a dismissal under an Arizona law that bars using baseless legal actions in a bid to silence critics. The law had long offered protections in civil cases but was amended in 2022 by the Republican-led Legislature to cover people facing most criminal charges.

    The defendants argue Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes tried to use the charges to silence them for their constitutionally protected speech about the 2020 election and actions taken in response to the race’s outcome. They say Mayes campaigned on investigating the fake elector case and had shown a bias against Trump and his supporters.

    Prosecutors say the defendants don’t have evidence to back up their retaliation claim and they crossed the line from protected speech to fraud. Mayes’ office also has said the grand jury that brought the indictment wanted to consider charging the former president, but prosecutors urged them not to.

    Dennis Wilenchik, an attorney for defendant James Lamon, who had signed a statement claiming Trump had won Arizona, argued his client signed the document only as a contingency in case a lawsuit would eventually turn the outcome of the presidential race in Trump’s favor in Arizona.

    “My client, Jim Lamon, never did anything to overthrow the government,” Wilenchik said.

    Prosecutor Nicholas Klingerman said the defendants’ actions don’t back up their claims that they signed the document as a contingency.

    One defendant, attorney Christina Bobb, was working with Giuliani to get Congress to accept the fake electors, while another defendant, Anthony Kern, gave a media interview in which he said then-Vice President Mike Pence would decide which of the two slates of electors to choose from, Klingerman said.

    “That doesn’t sound like a contingency,” Klingerman said. “That sounds like a plan to cause turmoil to change the outcome of the election.”

    In all, 18 Republicans were charged with forgery, fraud and conspiracy. The defendants consist of 11 Republicans who submitted a document falsely claiming Trump won Arizona, two former Trump aides and five lawyers connected to the former president, including Rudy Giuliani.

    So far, two defendants have resolved their cases.

    Former Trump campaign attorney Jenna Ellis, who worked closely with Giuliani, signed a cooperation agreement with prosecutors that led to the dismissal of her charges. Republican activist Loraine Pellegrino also became the first person to be convicted in the Arizona case when she pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge and was sentenced to probation.

    The remaining defendants have pleaded not guilty to the charges. Their trial is scheduled to start Jan. 5, 2026.

    Former Trump presidential chief of staff Mark Meadows is trying to move his charges to federal court, where his lawyers say they will seek a dismissal of the charges.

    Trump was not charged in Arizona, but the indictment refers to him as an unindicted coconspirator.

    In a filing, Mayes’ office said as grand jurors were considering possible charges, a prosecutor asked them not to indict Trump, citing a U.S. Justice Department policy that limits the prosecution of someone for the same crime twice. The prosecutor also didn’t know whether authorities had all the evidence they would need to charge Trump at that time.

    It also accused him of pressuring Maricopa County officials and state legislators to change the outcome of Arizona’s results and encouraging Republican electors in the state to vote for Trump in mid-December 2020.

    Eleven people who had been nominated to be Arizona’s Republican electors met in Phoenix on Dec. 14, 2020, to sign a certificate saying they were “duly elected and qualified” electors and claimed Trump had carried the state in the 2020 election.

    President Joe Biden won Arizona by 10,457 votes. A one-minute video of the signing ceremony was posted on social media by the Arizona Republican Party at the time. The document later was sent to Congress and the National Archives, where it was ignored.

    Prosecutors in Michigan, Nevada, Georgia and Wisconsin have also filed criminal charges related to the fake electors scheme. Arizona authorities unveiled the felony charges in late April.

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  • Biden returns to a deteriorating Wisconsin bridge for an election-year pitch on policy achievements

    Biden returns to a deteriorating Wisconsin bridge for an election-year pitch on policy achievements

    SUPERIOR, Wis. — President Joe Biden returned to the deteriorating John A. Blatnik Memorial Bridge on Thursday to make the case that his administration is following through on its pledge to fix the critical link between the port cities of Superior, Wisconsin and Duluth, Minnesota.

    Biden, who visited the bridge at the tip of Lake Superior two years ago when he promoted his $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill, used his election-year stop to announce nearly $5 billion in federal money for the bridge and dozens of infrastructure projects nationwide.

    With Biden trying to persuade voters to reward him for his first-term achievements, the Democrat’s latest pitch came in a critical swing state that is part of the “blue wall” of states — Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania — where he defeated Republican President Donald Trump in 2020.

    “For decades, people talked about replacing this bridge, but it never got done. Until today.” Biden said at Superior’s Earth Rider Brewery after visiting with iron workers and local officials at the bridge. “This bridge is important, but the story we’re writing is much bigger than that,” Biden said.

    More than 33,000 vehicles travel on the Blatnik Bridge every day, but heavy trucks are barred because of its decaying condition and that has caused lengthy detours. Without additional federal dollars, the bridge would have had to shut down by 2030, according to the White House. It is getting $1 billion for upgrades and repairs.

    Though his visit was not officially a campaign event, his sharpened focus on Wisconsin with the election less than 10 months away highlights its place as one of a shrinking handful of genuine battleground states.

    Four of the past six presidential elections have been decided by less than a percentage point in Wisconsin, with Trump winning narrowly in 2016 against Democrat Hillary Clinton before losing to Biden by a similar margin in 2020.

    All signs point to Wisconsin remaining nearly evenly divided, even as Democrats have made gains in recent elections. A Marquette Law School poll released in November showed the 2024 presidential race to be a toss-up with the election a year away.

    Biden made the case that Wisconsin and Minnesota have fared better under his watch than under Trump’s because of his administration’s focus on helping the middle class through measures such as the infrastructure bill. Wisconsin’s unemployment rate stands at 3.3% and Minnesota’s is at 2.9%.

    “My predecessor though he chose a different course — trickle down economics, cut taxes for the very wealthy, big corporations, increasing the deficit significantly,” said Biden, who later made a stop at the Superior Fire Department Local 74 to thank first responders and drop off coffee and baked goods.

    Democratic leaders in Wisconsin have stressed the importance of Biden visiting the state. Clinton’s defeat in 2016 was blamed in part on the fact that she never campaigned in Wisconsin after winning the Democratic nomination.

    “He needs to be here, simple as that,” Democratic Gov. Tony Evers told The Associated Press in an interview this month.

    Democratic U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan said he has told Biden that he must visit Wisconsin to highlight his investments in roads, bridges and broadband internet expansion and his efforts to bring down inflation and fight climate change.

    “He wants to do that,” Pocan said. “He certainly understands the importance of Wisconsin.”

    Before Biden’s visit, the White House and its allies called out Rep. Peter Stauber, R-Minn., who has cited the bridge repair as a win for his district and has taken credit for advocating for the project’s funding. Stauber, however, voted against the infrastructure bill.

    “This is too brazen to ignore. Mr. Stauber voted against every screw, steel beam, and concrete pire in this bridge,” Gov. Tim Walz, D-Minn., posted on X formerly Twitter. He said that Biden “worked with Stauber’s colleagues and got it done without him.”

    Stauber defended his role, saying in a statement that the Biden administration did not select Minnesota’s first application for bridge money, “which is why my advocacy was necessary.”

    While in Superior, Biden noted that some Republicans had voted for the infrastructure legislation but that the “vast majority voted against it.”

    “But you know what? That’s OK,” Biden said. “Because we’re building projects everywhere, no matter whether they voted for it or not.”

    It was Biden’s eighth trip to Wisconsin as president and his second to Superior, a city of 27,000 people along the shores of Lake Superior just across the border from Minnesota.

    Democrats in Wisconsin have been on a winning streak. They have won 14 of the past 17 statewide elections, including Biden in 2020.

    Democrats have been able to chip into the once-reliably conservative Milwaukee suburbs that saw GOP support drop in the Trump era. Democrats also capitalized on population gains in Dane County, home to the liberal capital city of Madison and the University of Wisconsin.

    The Democratic moves have been able to help offset Republican gains made in rural areas during the Trump era.

    Republicans chose Milwaukee for their national convention in July, with Democrats gathering just across the border the following month in Chicago.

    ___

    Bauer reported from Madison, Wisconsin. Associated Press writer Steve Karnowski in Minneapolis contributed to this report.

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  • With the Supreme Court on sideline for now, Trump's lawyers press immunity claims before lower court

    With the Supreme Court on sideline for now, Trump's lawyers press immunity claims before lower court

    WASHINGTON — WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump was acting within his role as president when he pressed claims about “alleged fraud and irregularity” in the 2020 election, his lawyers told a federal appeals court in arguing that he is immune from prosecution.

    The attorneys also asserted in a filing late Saturday night that the “historical fallout is tremendous” from the four-count indictment charging Trump with plotting to overturn the election he lost to Democrat Joe Biden.

    No other former president has ever been indicted; Trump has been indicted four times, in both state and federal court, as he campaigns to reclaim the White House.

    “The indictment of President Trump threatens to launch cycles of recrimination and politically motivated prosecution that will plague our Nation for many decades to come and stands likely to shatter the very bedrock of our Republic — the confidence of American citizens in an independent judicial system,” the attorneys wrote in a brief filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

    At issue before the court, which has set arguments for Jan. 9, is whether Trump is immune from prosecution for what defense lawyers say are official acts that fell within the outer perimeter of a president’s duties and responsibilities.

    U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan earlier this month rejected that argument, siding with prosecutors from special counsel Jack Smith’s team and declaring that the office of the presidency “does not confer a lifelong ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ pass.”

    The appeals court’s role in the dispute is center stage after the Supreme Court on Friday rejected a request from Smith to fast-track a decision on the immunity question. After Trump appealed Chutkan’s order, Smith urged swift intervention from the high court in an effort to get a speedy decision that could keep the case on track for a trial scheduled to start on March 4.

    But with that request denied, the two sides are advancing their arguments before the appeals court, where a three-judge panel will decide as early as next month whether to affirm or overrule Chutkan’s decision.

    In their latest filing, Trump’s lawyers say that all of the acts Trump is accused of — including urging the Justice Department to investigate claims of voter fraud and telling state election officials that he believed the contests had been tainted by irregularities — are “quintessential” presidential acts that protect him from prosecution.

    “They all reflect President Trump’s efforts and duties, squarely as Chief Executive of the United States, to advocate for and defend the integrity of the federal election, in accord with his view that it was tainted by fraud and irregularity,” they said.

    They also contend that, under the Constitution, he cannot be criminally prosecuted for conduct for which he was already impeached, but then acquitted, by Congress.

    Federal prosecutors, by contrast, say Trump broke the law after the election by scheming to disrupt the Jan. 6, 2021, counting of electoral votes, including by pressing then-Vice President Mike Pence to not certify the results and by participating in a plot to organize slates of fake electors in battleground states won by Biden who would falsely attest that Trump had actually won those states.

    Though Trump’s lawyers have suggested that he had a good faith basis to be concerned that fraud had affected the election, courts around the country and Trump’s own attorney general and other government officials have found no evidence that that was the case.

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  • In Milwaukee, Biden looks to highlight progress for Black-owned small businesses

    In Milwaukee, Biden looks to highlight progress for Black-owned small businesses

    WASHINGTON — WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is aiming to use a visit to the battleground state of Wisconsin on Wednesday to spotlight a surge in federal government support for Black-owned small businesses during his White House tenure and to highlight his administration’s efforts to ramp up investment in distressed communities.

    The Small Business Administration in the last fiscal year backed 4,700 loans valued at $1.5 billion to Black-owned businesses. Under Biden, the SBA says it has more than doubled the number and total dollar amount of loans to Black-owned small businesses.

    Since 2020, the share of the SBA’s loans going to minority-owned businesses has increased from 23% to over 32%.

    Joelle Gamble, deputy director of the White House National Economic Council, said the president’s visit to the Wisconsin Black Chamber of Commerce will give Biden a chance to show “how Bidenomics is driving a Black small business boom.”

    Wisconsin was among the most competitive states in Biden’s 2020 election win over former President Donald Trump and will likely be key to his reelection hopes in 2024. Trump is the leading contender vying for the GOP 2024 presidential nomination.

    In Wisconsin and beyond, Biden is trying to pep up American voters at a time when polls show people are largely dour about his handling of the economy. The president is struggling with poor approval ratings on the economy even as the unemployment rate hovers near historic lows and as inflation has plummeted in little over a year from 9.1% to 3.2%.

    The White House said Biden also planned to highlight his administration’s push to replace the nation’s lead water service lines within 10 years, to ensure communities across the country, including Milwaukee, have safe drinking water.

    Biden holds out his lead-pipe project as a generation-changing opportunity to reduce brain-damaging exposure to lead in schools, child care centers and more than 9 million U.S. homes that draw water from lead pipes. It’s also an effort that the administration says can help create plenty of good-paying union jobs around the country.

    The president’s $1 trillion infrastructure legislation, passed in 2021, includes $15 billion for replacing lead pipes. Officials said the president during the visit would appear with the owner of Hero Plumbing, a Black-owned business that is replacing lead pipes in Milwaukee and benefitting from the infrastructure law.

    Biden is also slated to announce that the Grow Milwaukee Coalition is one of 22 finalists for the Commerce Department’s “Recompete” pilot program, according to the White House. The program is funded by Biden’s CHIPS and Science Act, and is focused on investing $190 million in federal funding in job creation and small business growth in hard-hit U.S. communities.

    The Grow Milwaukee Coalition proposal is centered on revitalizing Milwaukee’s 30th Street Industrial Corridor.

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  • Appeals court says Mark Meadows can’t move Georgia election case charges to federal court

    Appeals court says Mark Meadows can’t move Georgia election case charges to federal court

    ATLANTA — A federal appeals court on Monday ruled that former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows cannot move charges related to efforts to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia to federal court.

    Meadows was indicted in August along with former President Donald Trump and 17 others on charges that they illegally conspired to keep the Republican incumbent in power despite him losing the election to Democrat Joe Biden.

    A three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Meadows’ request, affirming a lower court opinion from September. The ruling is a win for Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who brought the case and is seeking to try the remaining defendants in a single trial in a Georgia state court.

    Lawyers for Meadows did not immediately respond Monday to a request for comment on the ruling. A spokesperson for Willis declined to comment.

    Meadows’ attorneys had asserted during oral arguments before the panel on Friday that he should be allowed to move the case to federal court because the actions outlined in the indictment were directly related to his duties as a federal official. Prosecutors argued that Meadows failed to show any connection between the actions and his official duties and that the law allowing federal officials to move a case to federal court doesn’t apply to former officials.

    Circuit Chief Judge William Pryor, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, wrote in Monday’s 35-page ruling that the law “does not apply to former federal officers, and even if it did, the events giving rise to this criminal action were not related to Meadows’s official duties.”

    Circuit Judge Robin Rosenbaum, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, wrote a 12-page concurring opinion that was joined by Circuit Judge Nancy Abudu, a Biden appointee.

    The U.S. Supreme Court has said that the purpose of allowing federal officers to move cases against them to federal court is to protect the federal government from operational interference that could occur if federal officials were arrested and tried in state court for actions that fall within the scope of their duties, Pryor wrote.

    “Shielding officers performing current duties effects the statute’s purpose of protecting the operations of federal government,” he wrote. “But limiting protections to current officers also respects the balance between state and federal interests” by preventing federal interference with state criminal proceedings.

    Pryor also rejected Meadows’ argument that moving his case to federal court would allow him to assert federal immunity defenses that may apply to former officers, writing that he “cites no authority suggesting that state courts are unequipped to evaluate federal immunities.”

    The conspiracy to overturn the election alleged in the indictment and the acts of “superintending state election procedures or electioneering on behalf of the Trump campaign” were not related to Meadows’ duties as chief of staff, Pryor wrote.

    “Simply put, whatever the precise contours of Meadows’s official authority, that authority did not extend to an alleged conspiracy to overturn valid election results,” Pryor wrote.

    In her concurring opinion, Rosenbaum expressed some concerns about the removal statute as it currently stands.

    She raised a hypothetical scenario that she had also mentioned during oral arguments on Friday. She suggested that states, where a president’s actions aren’t popular, could indict him and his cabinet members the day they leave office “simply for carrying out their constitutionally authorized duties.” She said it’s possible a state court would “fairly, correctly, and promptly” resolve the dispute, but it’s also possible it might not.

    “In short, foreclosing removal when states prosecute former federal officers simply for performing their official duties can allow a rogue state’s weaponization of the prosecution power to go unchecked and fester,” Rosenbaum wrote.

    She said this “nightmare scenario keeps me up at night.” But she said her role as a judge doesn’t allow her to rewrite laws, only to interpret them, which is why she joined the majority opinion in this case. She urged Congress to amend the law to allow former federal officers prosecuted for actions related to their official duties to move their cases to federal court.

    Rosenbaum also clarified in a footnote that the hypothetical situation she described doesn’t apply to Meadows’ situation since he had not established that he was charged for activities related to his official duties.

    That could have serious consequences, including discouraging federal officers from faithfully performing their duties or discouraging talented people from pursuing public service, she wrote.

    Meadows was one of five defendants seeking to move his case to federal court. The other four were also rejected by the lower court and have appeals pending before the 11th Circuit.

    Moving Meadows’ charges to federal court would have meant drawing from a jury pool that includes a broader area than just overwhelmingly Democratic Fulton County. It would have also meant an unphotographed and televised trail, as cameras are not allowed inside. But it would not have opened the door for Trump, if he’s reelected in 2024, or another president to pardon anyone because any convictions would still happen under state law.

    Four people have already pleaded guilty in the Georgia election case after reaching deals with prosecutors. The remaining 15, including Trump, Meadows and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, have pleaded not guilty.

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  • Trump's lawyers tell an appeals court that federal prosecutors are trying to rush his election case

    Trump's lawyers tell an appeals court that federal prosecutors are trying to rush his election case

    WASHINGTON — Lawyers for Donald Trump told a federal appeals court on Wednesday that it should not speed up its consideration of whether the former president is immune from prosecution, accusing federal prosecutors of trying to rush his 2020 election subversion case through before next year’s presidential election.

    “The prosecution has one goal in this case: To unlawfully attempt to try, convict, and sentence President Trump before an election in which he is likely to defeat President Biden,” defense lawyers wrote Wednesday. “This represents a blatant attempt to interfere with the 2024 presidential election and to disenfranchise the tens of millions of voters who support President Trump’s candidacy.”

    The issue is of paramount significance to both sides given the potential for a protracted appeal to delay a trial beyond its currently scheduled start date of March 4. Trump faces charges he plotted to overturn the 2020 election after he lost to Democrat Joe Biden, and he has denied doing anything wrong.

    Special counsel Jack Smith, whose team has brought two federal cases against Trump in Washington and in Florida, has sought to keep both on track while Trump has attempted to delay the proceedings — at one point even asking for the Washington prosecution to be pushed back until 2026. A postponement until after the election would clearly benefit Trump, especially since, if elected president, he would have the authority to try and order the Justice Department to dismiss federal cases.

    In telling the Washington-based federal appeals court that there was no reason for it to fast-track the immunity question, Trump’s lawyers wrote that the “date of March 4, 2024, has no talismanic significance.

    “Aside from the prosecution’s unlawful partisan motives, there is no compelling reason that date must be maintained, especially at the expense of President Trump and the public’s overriding interest in ensuring these matters of extraordinary constitutional significance are decided appropriately, with full and thoughtful consideration to all relevant authorities and arguments,” they wrote.

    At issue is an appeal by the Trump team, filed last week, of a trial judge’s rejection of arguments that he was protected from prosecution for actions he took as president. Smith sought to short-circuit that process by asking the Supreme Court on Monday to take up the issue during its current term, a request he acknowledged was “extraordinary” but one he said he was essential to keep the case moving forward.

    Smith’s team simultaneously asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to expedite its consideration of Trump’s appeal, writing: “The public has a strong interest in this case proceeding to trial in a timely manner. The trial cannot proceed, however, before resolution of the defendant’s interlocutory appeal.”

    The Trump team made clear its opposition to that request, saying the case presents “novel, complex, and sensitive questions of profound importance.”

    “Whether a President of the United States may be criminally prosecuted for his official acts as President goes to the core of our system of separated powers and will stand among the most consequential questions ever decided by this Court,” they wrote. “The manifest public interest lies in the Court’s careful and deliberate consideration of these momentous issues with the utmost care and diligence.”

    In addition, the attorneys wrote, keeping the current schedule intact would require attorneys and support staff to work round-the-clock through the holidays, inevitably disrupting family and travel plans.

    “It is as if the Special Counsel growled, with his Grinch fingers nervously drumming, ‘I must find some way to keep Christmas from coming. … But how?’” the lawyers wrote, referring to the fictional character created by the children’s author Dr. Seuss.

    The Supreme Court has indicated that it would decide quickly whether to hear the case, ordering Trump’s lawyers to respond by Dec. 20. The court’s brief order did not signal what it ultimately would do.

    A Supreme Court case usually lasts several months, from the time the justices agree to hear it until a final decision. Smith is asking the court to move with unusual, but not unprecedented, speed.

    Nearly 50 years ago, the justices acted within two months of being asked to force President Richard Nixon to turn over Oval Office recordings in the Watergate scandal. The tapes were then used later in 1974 in the corruption prosecutions of Nixon’s former aides.

    It took the high court just a few days to effectively decide the 2000 presidential election for Republican George W. Bush over Democrat Al Gore.

    If the justices decline to step in at this point, Trump’s appeal would continue at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Smith said even a rapid appellate decision might not get to the Supreme Court in time for review and final word before the court’s traditional summer break.

    Trump faces four criminal prosecutions in four different cities. He is charged in Florida with illegally retaining classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate and faces a state prosecution in Georgia that accuse him of trying to subvert that state’s 2020 presidential election and a New York case that accuses him of falsifying business records in connection with a hush money payment to a porn actress.

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  • Texas judge rules against GOP lawsuit seeking to toss 2022 election result in Houston area

    Texas judge rules against GOP lawsuit seeking to toss 2022 election result in Houston area

    HOUSTON — A Texas judge has denied a Republican effort to overturn election results in the nation’s third-most populous county, a Democratic stronghold that’s been beset by GOP efforts to dictate how ballots are cast.

    A losing GOP candidate in a November judicial race had filed a lawsuit calling for a new election in her contest in Harris County, where Houston is located. Republican Erin Lunceford blamed her defeat on ballot shortages and allegations that illegal votes were cast.

    But visiting Judge David Peeples ruled Thursday against the lawsuit’s request for a new election. His decision came months after a two-week trial in August in which no GOP voters came forward to testify they were unable to vote because of the problems.

    The ruling is a blow to efforts by GOP leaders in Harris County to overturn November 2022 election results in 17 other local contests. It follows similar court challenges that have become more common around the country following baseless conspiracy theories spread by former President Donald Trump and his supporters alleging the 2020 presidential election was stolen by President Joe Biden’s backers.

    Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee, a Democrat, said in a statement that the county and voters have moved on from the 2022 election.

    “I’m glad the judge confirmed what we’ve all known for a year now. These Republican candidates lost the 2022 election,” Menefee said. “I hope the Harris County Republican Party will move on too.”

    Elections have been scrutinized for several years now in Harris County — which has nearly 5 million residents, most of whom are Latino or Black.

    Problems have included long lines, poll worker shortages and ballots that weren’t counted the day of the election.

    In the race at the center of the lawsuit, Lunceford was running to become a local judge and lost by more than 2,700 votes out of over 1 million cast. The lawsuit was the first filed over Harris County’s November 2022 election results that went to trial.

    During the trial, Lunceford’s lawyers alleged paper ballot shortages targeted Republican voting locations. They also alleged other mistakes — including delayed poll openings at some locations, improper ballot scanning and inadequate reviews of forms voters fill out if there are questions about their residency in the county — prevented people from voting or let illegal votes be cast.

    Lawyers for Tamika Craft, who won the election to be the judge of the 189th district court, argued the lawsuit is part of the Harris County Republican Party’s “master plan” to challenge election results, even before the election was held. They said the lawsuit is less about election integrity and more of a partisan push to disenfranchise thousands of voters.

    Craft’s lawyers argued the GOP was trying to have ballots thrown out over simple mistakes on documents filled out by voters, including missing zip codes or addresses written in the wrong location.

    During questioning by Craft’s lawyers, one of Lunceford’s experts admitted he had done “sloppy” work and had been wrong in claiming that some voters had cast illegal ballots.

    After the November 2022 election, 21 GOP candidates filed lawsuits challenging their losses. Three of them have since dropped their cases. A GOP candidate who lost his race to be a state legislator from the Houston area had a separate election challenge dismissed in January by the Texas House speaker.

    Harris County in recent years has become a recurring target of new Texas voting rules and restrictions passed by GOP lawmakers.

    In 2021, the Republican-controlled Legislature passed laws banning drive-thru and 24-hour voting. Both initiatives were championed by Harris County and credited with increasing voter turnout.

    Earlier this year, the Legislature passed two election-related laws that only impact Harris County. One allows the state to take over elections in the county if problems recur and the other eliminated the county’s top election office.

    Harris County, like much of the rest of Texas, previously voted Republican. But in the last decade or so, demographic changes in the county have been trending toward residents who are younger and minorities, groups who tend to vote Democratic, said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston. The state’s other large urban areas, like Dallas, El Paso and San Antonio, also vote Democratic.

    ___

    Follow Juan A. Lozano on Twitter: https://twitter.com/juanlozano70

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  • Inside the meeting of Republican electors who sought to thwart Biden’s election win in Georgia

    Inside the meeting of Republican electors who sought to thwart Biden’s election win in Georgia

    ATLANTA — It was a bad place to keep a secret.

    When Republicans gathered on Dec. 14, 2020, claiming to be legitimate electors casting the state’s 16 electoral votes for Donald Trump, they met at the Georgia Capitol in a room just upstairs from the building’s public entrance. A Trump campaign official asked for the electors’ “complete discretion,” telling them to say only that they were meeting with two state senators who were there.

    “Your duties are imperative to ensure the end result — a win in Georgia for President Trump — but will be hampered unless we have complete secrecy and discretion,” Robert Sinners wrote in an email uncovered by investigators.

    But reporters for The Associated Press and other news organizations noticed the Republicans entering the building and were eventually admitted into the room, where they photographed and recorded video of the proceeding. In the chaotic weeks after the 2020 election, the gathering’s significance wasn’t immediately clear. But it has emerged as a critical element to the prosecution of Trump and 18 others who were indicted by a Georgia grand jury in August for efforts to overturn Democrat Joe Biden’s narrow win in the state.

    The meeting was cited as a central element in court proceedings Friday as part of a last-minute deal with attorney Kenneth Chesebro, who pleaded guilty to one felony charge of conspiracy to commit filing false documents.

    Chesebro, who prosecutors have said helped originate the plan for Republican electors to meet in states where Biden was certified as the winner, is now one of three people who have pleaded guilty in the case. Attorney Sidney Powell pleaded guilty Thursday to six misdemeanors accusing her of intentionally interfering with the performance of election duties as part of a broader conspiracy prosecutors say violated Georgia’s anti-racketeering law.

    While Democrats met in the ornate state Senate chamber to cast electoral votes for Biden, the Republicans sat around three worn and nicked wooden conference tables to consider options for keeping Trump in the White House. In the words of the case laid out by prosecutors, these were “fake” or “false” or “fraudulent” electors. At least eight Georgia Republican electors present that day have agreed to testify in exchange for immunity from state charges.

    The meeting was led by David Shafer, then chairman of the Georgia Republican Party. Lending it the air of an official proceeding, a court reporter was present, something Shafer denied during questioning by Fulton County prosecutors in April 2022. That denial contributed to a charge of false statements and writings against Shafer.

    More improvised elements of the meeting became clear as the group considered its officers. Shawn Still, who is now a state senator, wasn’t initially elected as secretary, for instance. But halfway through the meeting, Shafer noted that Still’s name was printed as the secretary on documents.

    “I would like to avoid reprinting the documents,” Shafer said, asking the electors to replace another Republican with Still.

    One of only three people the grand jury indicted for participating in the vote, Still may have been dragged into legal jeopardy when he was elected secretary. The third indicted elector, Cathy Latham, was also charged for helping outsiders access state voting equipment in south Georgia’s Coffee County.

    As the meeting unfolded, the Republicans sought to replace four electors who were previously lined up to support Trump. One had registered to vote in Alabama and was no longer eligible. State Sen. Burt Jones, later elected lieutenant governor with Trump’s backing, took his spot.

    Three other electors didn’t show up, including John Isakson Jr., son of late Republican U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson. Isakson told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 2022 that he stayed away because the meeting seemed like “political gamesmanship.”

    Prosecutors allege Shafer and Still committed yet more felonies by creating a document claiming to fill those vacancies. State law says that action needed Gov. Brian Kemp’s consent. The Republican governor had days earlier certified Biden as Georgia’s winner for a second time after a recount.

    Sinners, the Trump official, printed new elector certificates on a noisy portable printer. The racket of the machine gave the meeting a mundane, bureaucratic feel in an unadorned space usually set aside for state lawmakers to host constituents.

    One by one, the 16 Republicans were called. Each rose and walked to the table, signing certificates pronouncing Trump and then-Vice President Mike Pence as the preferred choice of Georgia voters. That’s the moment, grand jurors allege, when they committed the felonies for which they’ve been charged: impersonating a public officer, first degree forgery and making false statements in writing.

    “They were fake electors; they were impersonating electors. They were no electors,” Fulton County prosecutor Anna Cross told a federal judge in September, adding there was no evidence that Shafer, Still, Latham or other Republicans believed Trump had actually won.

    Their defenders call them “alternate” or “contingent” electors, saying they were just trying to keep Trump’s legal options open as a lawsuit challenged Georgia’s election results. Some Republicans argue Trump never got a fair shake in Georgia because that lawsuit was never tried, despite a state law calling for election challenges to be heard within 20 days. A Georgia Republican Party website raising money to defend electors calls them “patriots who served.”

    “If we did not hold this meeting, then our election contest would effectively be abandoned,” Shafer said during the December meeting, talking to attorney Ray Smith, who was there advising the electors and was also indicted. “And so the only way for us to have any judge consider the merits of our complaint, the thousands of people who we allege voted unlawfully, is for us to have this meeting.”

    Shafer defended his actions then and now by citing an episode that played out in Hawaii in 1960. Democrats met that year after Republican Richard Nixon was certified as the state’s winner and sent three electoral votes to the U.S. Senate backing John F. Kennedy.

    Todd Zywicki, a law professor at George Mason University in Virginia, signed a July 11 declaration concluding actions by Shafer and other Georgia Republican electors were “lawful, reasonable, proper and necessary” considering the election contest and the Hawaii precedent.

    Lawyers for the indicted electors argue it was up to Congress to determine which slates should be counted.

    But Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ office, in a court filing, disputed Shafer’s claim that the actions of Georgia Republicans in 2020 bore any similarity to those of Hawaii Democrats in 1960. Her staff cites a major distinction — Democrats eventually won a recount in Hawaii that a court affirmed and the governor certified, sending official documents to the Senate.

    “The factual situations are so readily distinguishable as to make the comparison meaningless,” Willis’ team wrote, arguing against Shafer’s attempt to remove his case to federal court. Willis’ office wrote that the Republican meeting “was used to further a clumsy but relentless pressure campaign on the vice president and state legislatures, and as a means to publicly undermine the legitimate results of the presidential election.”

    Sinners, the Trump campaign staffer who helped arrange the meeting, now rejects its purpose. He denies the notion that Trump won Georgia and now works for Brad Raffensperger, the Republican secretary of state who came to national attention for rebuffing pressure from the then-president to “find” enough votes to ensure his win. Sinners cooperated with the U.S. House committee that investigated the violent insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021. He hasn’t said whether he’s cooperating with Willis.

    In an interview, he made his regrets clear about what unfolded in the Georgia Capitol during one of the most turbulent periods in American politics.

    “This was an ill-advised attempt by the former president’s campaign to create a false reality — a victory,” Sinners said.

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  • Texas city settles lawsuit over police response to Trump supporters surrounding Biden bus in 2020

    Texas city settles lawsuit over police response to Trump supporters surrounding Biden bus in 2020

    A Texas city has agreed to a $175,000 settlement in a lawsuit brought by four passengers on one of President Joe Biden’s campaign buses in 2020 that was surrounded by a caravan of Donald Trump supporters

    ByACACIA CORONADO Associated Press

    October 18, 2023, 5:11 PM

    FILE – Then-Texas Democratic gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis waves to supporters after making her concession speech, Nov. 4, 2014, in Fort Worth, Texas. In a settlement revealed Wednesday, Oct. 18, 2023, city of San Marcos, Texas, officials agreed to pay $175,000 to former Texas state Sen. Davis and three others who were harassed by supporters of former president Donald Trump while campaigning for President Joe Biden in 2020, according to a legal settlement. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez, File)

    The Associated Press

    AUSTIN, Texas — A Texas city on Wednesday agreed to a $175,000 settlement with passengers on one of President Joe Biden’s campaign buses in 2020, including Democrat Wendy Davis, who accused police of ignoring their calls for help after a caravan of Donald Trump supporters surrounded them on a highway.

    The episode took place days before the November election as the bus approached Austin. Video that circulated widely on social media at the time showed trucks with large Trump flags driving close to the bus, which had campaign surrogates and staffers on board but not the candidates.

    A lawsuit filed by Davis, a former state senator who ran for Texas governor in 2014, and the other passengers accused San Marcos police of ignoring “acts of violent political intimidation” and abdicating their responsibility by not sending an escort despite multiple 911 calls made from the bus. Under the settlement, the City of San Marcos also agreed to give officers additional training that includes principles of giving “individuals a voice” and being neutral in decision-making.

    “The intimidation we experienced on the highway that day and the threat to our safety, simply for engaging in the political process and supporting the candidate of our choosing, should never happen in this country,” Davis said in a statement.

    San Marcos City Manager Stephanie Reyes said the city continues to deny many of the allegations in the lawsuit. However, she said the response by police that day did not reflect the department’s standards “for conduct and attention to duty.”

    “Citizens and visitors to the City of San Marcos should have confidence in the San Marcos Police Department, and a review of this event has better positioned the Department to more fully meet the community’s needs and expectations,” she said.

    Filings in the lawsuit included text messages and transcripts of 911 calls. The lawsuit alleged that city officials and police violated an 1871 federal law often called the “Ku Klux Klan Act,” originally designed to stop political violence against Black people. The law has also been cited in lawsuits following the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

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  • Prosecutors appealing length of prison sentences for Proud Boys leaders convicted of Jan. 6 plot

    Prosecutors appealing length of prison sentences for Proud Boys leaders convicted of Jan. 6 plot

    WASHINGTON — The Justice Department is appealing the length of prison sentences for four Proud Boys leaders convicted of seditious conspiracy in the U.S. Capitol attack, challenging punishments that were significantly shorter than what prosecutors had recommended, according to court filings on Monday.

    U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly sentenced former Proud Boys national leader Enrique Tarrio and three lieutenants to prison terms ranging from 15 to 22 years after a jury convicted them in May of plotting to stop the peaceful transfer of presidential power from Donald Trump to Joe Biden after the 2020 presidential election.

    Tarrio’s 22-year sentence is the longest so far among hundreds of criminal cases stemming from the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol, but prosecutors had sought 33 years behind bars for the Miami man.

    Prosecutors also had recommended sentences of 33 years for former Proud Boys organizer Joseph Biggs, of Ormond Beach, Florida; 30 years for Proud Boys chapter leader Zachary Rehl, of Philadelphia; and 27 years in prison for chapter leader Ethan Nordean, of Auburn, Washington.

    Kelly sentenced Nordean to 18 years, Biggs to 17 years and Rehl to 15 years.

    Defense attorney Norm Pattis, who represents Biggs and Rehl, said in a text message that the government’s appeals are “ridiculous.”

    “Merrick Garland needs a new hobby horse,” Pattis said of the attorney general, whose Justice Department secured the convictions.

    Nicholas Smith, Nordean’s attorney, sarcastically said in an email that his client “is encouraged by the government’s agreement that errors led to the judgment and sentence in his case.”

    Prosecutors also are appealing the 10-year sentence for Dominic Pezzola, a Proud Boys member from Rochester, New York. Prosecutors sought 20 years in prison for Pezzola, who was tried alongside the four group leaders. Jurors acquitted Pezzola of seditious conspiracy but convicted him of other serious charges.

    The Justice Department already is appealing the 18-year prison sentence for Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, who was convicted of seditious conspiracy in a separate Jan. 6 case, as well as the sentences of other members of his anti-government militia group.

    Prosecutors had requested 25 years in prison for Rhodes. U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta sentenced him to 18 years.

    Also on Monday, a Proud Boys member who joined others from the far-right group in attacking the Capitol pleaded guilty to obstructing the Jan. 6 joint session of Congress for certifying Biden’s victory. William Chrestman, 49, of Olathe, Kansas, also pleaded guilty to threatening to assault a federal officer during the riot at the Capitol.

    Kelly is scheduled to sentence Chrestman for his two felony convictions on Jan. 12. Estimated sentencing guidelines for his case recommended a prison term ranging from four years and three months to five years and three months.

    Chrestman brought an axe handle, gas mask, helmet and other tactical gear when he traveled to Washington, D.C., with other Proud Boys members from the Kansas City, Kansas, area, On Jan. 6, he marched to the Capitol grounds with dozens of other Proud Boys leaders, members and associates.

    Chrestman and other Proud Boys moved past a toppled metal barricade and joined other rioters in front of another police barrier. He shouted a threat at officers and yelled at others in the crowd to stop police from arresting another rioter, according to prosecutors.

    Facing the crowd, Chrestman shouted, “Whose house is this?”

    “Our house!” the crowd replied.

    “Do you want your house back?” Chrestman asked.

    “Yes!” they responded.

    “Take it!” Chrestman yelled.

    Chrestman also pointed his finger at a line of Capitol police officers, gestured at them with his axe handle and threatened to assault them if they fired “pepper ball” rounds at the crowd of rioters, according to a court filing accompanying his guilty plea.

    Chrestman, a U.S. Army veteran, has been jailed since his arrest in February 2021.

    More than 1,100 people have been charged with Capitol riot-related federal crimes. Approximately 60 of them have been identified as Proud Boys leaders, members or associates.

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  • Biden making defending democracy a touchstone in his reelection campaign — and a rejoinder to Trump

    Biden making defending democracy a touchstone in his reelection campaign — and a rejoinder to Trump

    PHOENIX — On the anniversary of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, President Joe Biden stood in early 2022 at the literal epicenter of the insurrection and accused Donald Trump of continuing to hold a “dagger” at democracy’s throat. Biden closed out the summer that same year in the shadow of Philadelphia’s Independence Hall, decrying Trumpism as a menace to democratic institutions.

    And that November, as voters were casting ballots in the midterm elections, Biden again sounded a clarion call to protect democratic institutions, warning that their underpinnings remained under threat.

    Biden on Thursday will make his fourth in a series of presidential addresses about the state of democracy, a cause that is a key motivator and a touchstone for him as he tries to remain in office even in the face of low approval ratings and widespread concern from voters about his age.

    The location for this speech, as was the case for the others, was deliberately chosen: It will be near Arizona State University, which houses the McCain Institute, named after the late Arizona Sen. John McCain — a friend of Biden and the 2008 Republican presidential nominee who spent his public life denouncing autocrats around the globe.

    Now, as Biden slowly ramps up his reelection campaign, his core focus on democracy is increasingly intertwined with the political dynamics that are confronting him. His likeliest 2024 opponent, former President Donald Trump, continues to spread falsehoods about the results from the 2020 election and is battling unprecedented criminal charges stemming in part from those lies.

    Those challenging Trump for the GOP presidential nomination have largely avoided challenging his election falsehoods and his allies on Capitol Hill are only becoming more emboldened as Trump eggs them on, including toward a looming government shutdown that appears all but inevitable.

    In closed-door fundraisers, Biden has opined at length about his case for reelection, imploring supporters to join his effort to “literally save American democracy,” as he described it to a gaggle of wealthy donors earlier this month in New York.

    “I’m running because we made progress — that’s good — but because our democracy, I think, is still at risk. And I mean it,” Biden said. “I don’t think it’s hyperbole to suggest that. Because our most important freedoms — the freedom to choose, the freedom to vote, the freedom to be — the right to be who you are, to love who you love — is being attacked and shredded today, right now.”

    Advisers see Biden’s continued focus on democracy as not only good policy, but also good politics. Campaign officials have pored over the election results from last November, when candidates who denied the 2020 election results did not fare well in competitive races, and point to polling that showed democracy was a highly motivating issue for voters in 2022.

    Candidates who backed Trump’s election lies and were running for statewide offices with some influence over elections — governor, secretary of state, attorney general — lost their races in every presidential battleground state.

    A senior White House official, granted anonymity to preview Biden’s Thursday remarks, said his Arizona address will highlight the “importance of America’s institutions in preserving our democracy and the need for constant loyalty to the U.S. Constitution.” His appearance at the center that honors McCain will also tie into the theme, with Biden set to urge Americans to “never walk away from the sacrifices generations of Americans have made to defend our democracy.”

    In few states does Biden’s message of democracy resonate more than in Arizona, which became politically competitive during Trump’s presidency after seven decades of GOP dominance and later became a hotbed of efforts to overturn or cast doubt on Biden’s victory there.

    Republican state lawmakers used their subpoena power to get ahold of all the 2020 ballots and vote-counting machines from Maricopa County, then hired Trump supporters to conduct an unprecedented partisan review of the election. The widely mocked spectacleconfirmed Biden’s victory but fueled unfounded conspiracy theories about the election.

    Later, the GOP-controlled board of supervisors in one rural county refused to certify the midterm election results, forcing a judge to intervene. The state has seen an exodus of election workers.

    And last November, voters up and down the ballot rejected Republican candidates who repeatedly denied the results of the 2020 election. Kari Lake, the GOP gubernatorial candidate, has never conceded her loss to now-Gov. Katie Hobbs and is preparing a bid for the U.S. Senate next year. Republican Senate candidate Blake Masters and Mark Finchem, who ran for secretary of state, also repeated fraudulent election claims in their respective campaigns.

    Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., who defeated Masters, appeared at a campaign rally in November alongside former President Barack Obama, who in his remarks framed the race in Arizona as a battle to protect democracy. That message, Kelly now says, not only resonated with members of his own party but independents and moderate GOP voters.

    “I met so many Republicans that were sick and tired of the lies about an election that was two years old,” Kelly said. “They were just done with it, and they did not appreciate folks who were running for high offices just lying about it.”

    Indeed, Republicans privately concede that the election-denialism rhetoric that dominated their candidates’ message — as well as the looming specter of Trump — damaged their efforts to retain the governor’s mansion and flip a hotly contested Senate seat, according to three Republican officials who worked in statewide races last cycle.

    The issue of democracy resonated more in Arizona than in other competitive states, and to have candidates deny basic facts on elections helped reinforce claims from Democrats about GOP extremism on other, completely separate issues, said the Republican officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to candidly describe the party’s shortcomings last year. Though Trump-animated forces in the party dominated public attention, many Republican voters were concerned about other issues such as the economy and the border and did not want to focus on a past election result.

    Arizona Rep. Ruben Gallego, who is seeking the Democratic nomination in next year’s Senate race, said a democracy-focused message also is particularly important to two critical blocs of voters in the state: Latinos and veterans, both of whom Gallego said are uniquely affected by election denialism and the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection.

    “You know, we come from countries and experiences where democracy is very corrupt, and many of us are only one generation removed from that, but we’re close enough to see how bad it can be,” Gallego said. “And so Jan. 6 actually was particularly jarring, I think, to Latinos.”

    On Thursday, Biden is set to speak at a performing arts center on the shore of Tempe Town Lake, a once-dry riverbed that has become an oasis for outdoor recreation in the desert. The lake is the centerpiece of the Rio Salado Project, a riverbed revitalization plan that McCain advocated for until his death.

    ___

    Cooper reported from Phoenix.

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  • Judge will hold hearing on ex-DOJ official’s request to move Georgia election case to federal court

    Judge will hold hearing on ex-DOJ official’s request to move Georgia election case to federal court

    ATLANTA — A federal judge who rejected efforts by former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to move his charges in the Georgia election subversion case to federal court is set to hear arguments Monday from former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark on the same issue.

    Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has accused Clark and Meadows, along with former President Donald Trump and 16 others, of participating in a wide-ranging scheme to overturn Democrat Joe Biden’s presidential election victory and keep the Republican Trump in power. The 41-count indictment includes charges under the state’s anti-racketeering law. All 19 defendants have pleaded not guilty.

    Clark is one of five defendants seeking to move his case to federal court. U.S. District Judge Steve Jones, who will preside over Monday’s hearing, rejected Meadows’ attempt for removal earlier this month, saying the actions outlined in the indictment were taken on behalf of the Trump campaign and were not part of his official duties. While the ruling could signal an uphill battle for Clark and the others, Jones made clear he would assess each case individually.

    The practical effects of moving to federal court would be a jury pool that includes a broader area than just overwhelmingly Democratic Fulton County and a trial that would not be photographed or televised, as cameras are not allowed inside federal courtrooms. But it would not open the door for Trump, if he’s reelected in 2024, or another president to issue pardons because any conviction would still happen under state law.

    The indictment says Clark wrote a letter after the November 2020 election that said the Justice Department had “identified significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election in multiple States, including the State of Georgia” and asked top department officials to sign it and send it to Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and state legislative leaders. Clark knew at the time that that statement was false, the indictment alleges.

    In a court filing seeking to move the charges against him to federal court from Fulton County Superior Court, lawyers for Clark argued that the actions outlined in the indictment “relate directly to his work at the Justice Department as well as with the former President of the United States.” Clark was the assistant attorney general overseeing the environment and natural resources division and was the acting assistant attorney general over the civil division at the time.

    “Indeed, the State has no authority whatsoever to criminalize advice given to the President by a senior Justice Department official concerning U.S. Department of Justice law enforcement policy based on a County District Attorney’s disagreement with the substance or development of that advice,” Clark’s lawyers wrote.

    They accused Willis, a Democrat, of persecuting political rivals: “It is not a good-faith prosecution; it is a political ‘hit job’ stretched out across 98 pages to convey the false impression that it has heft and gravity.”

    Prosecutors argued that Clark’s two roles gave him no authority over elections or criminal investigations.

    He was told by top department officials that the central claim in his letter was false, that he didn’t have authority to make that claim and that it was outside the department’s role, prosecutors wrote in their response. Richard Donoghue, the acting deputy attorney general, told him the letter “amounted to ‘nothing less than the Department meddling in the outcome of a presidential election.’”

    The law allowing federal officers to move a case to federal court “is designed to protect legitimate federal authority from state and local interference, not to afford a federal forum to individuals who blatantly sought to misuse the weight of federal authority to interfere with matters of state control,” prosecutors wrote.

    Meadows, who is appealing Jones’ ruling, took the stand and testified for nearly four hours last month, answering questions from his own lawyer, a prosecutor and the judge. He talked about his duties as Trump’s last chief of staff and sometimes struggled to recall the details of the two months following the election.

    It’s unclear whether Clark will also choose to testify. His lawyers on Thursday filed a 10-page sworn statement from Clark outlining his service in the Justice Department, perhaps as a substitute for having him testify and subject himself to questioning by prosecutors.

    Clark was also identified as one of six unnamed co-conspirators in an indictment filed by special counsel Jack Smith charging Trump with seeking to illegally overturn the results of the 2020 election and block the peaceful transfer of power to Biden. He has not been charged in that case.

    Federal agents searched Clark’s Virginia home in the summer of 2022, and video emerged of him standing in his driveway, handcuffed and wearing no pants.

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  • Trump’s drumbeat of lies about the 2020 election keeps getting louder. Here are the facts

    Trump’s drumbeat of lies about the 2020 election keeps getting louder. Here are the facts

    WASHINGTON — With Donald Trump facing felony charges over his attempts to overturn the 2020 election, the former president is flooding the airwaves and his social media platform with distortions, misinformation and unfounded conspiracy theories about his defeat.

    It’s part of a multiyear effort to undermine public confidence in the American electoral process as he seeks to chart a return to the White House in 2024. There is evidence that his lies are resonating: New polling from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows that 57% of Republicans believe Democrat Joe Biden was not legitimately elected as president.

    Here are the facts about Trump’s loss in the last presidential election:

    REVIEWS AND RECOUNTS CONFIRM BIDEN’S VICTORY

    Biden’s victory over Trump in 2020 was not particularly close. He won the Electoral College with 306 votes to Trump’s 232, and the popular vote by more than 7 million ballots.

    Because the Electoral College ultimately determines the presidency, the race was decided by a few battleground states. Many of those states conducted recounts or thorough reviews of the results, all of which confirmed Biden’s victory.

    In Arizona, a six-month review of ballots in the state’s largest county, Maricopa, that was commissioned by Republican state legislators not only affirmed Biden’s victory but determined that he should have won by 306 more votes than the officially certified statewide margin of 10,457.

    In Georgia, where Trump was recently indicted for his efforts to overturn the 2020 result there, state officials led by both a Republican governor and secretary of state recertified Biden’s win after conducting three statewide counts. The final official recount narrowed Biden’s victory in the state from just shy of 13,000 votes to just shy of 12,000 votes.

    In Michigan, a committee led by Republican state senators concluded there was no widespread or systematic fraud in the state in 2020 after conducting a monthslong investigation. Michigan, where Biden defeated Trump by almost 155,000 votes, or 2.8 percentage points, was less competitive compared with other battleground states, although the result in Wayne County, home of Detroit, was targeted by Trump and his supporters with unfounded voter fraud claims, as were key urban jurisdictions across the country.

    In Nevada, the then-secretary of state, Republican Barbara Cegavske, and her office reviewed tens of thousands of allegations of possible voter fraud identified by the Nevada Republican Party but found that almost all were based on incomplete information and a lack of understanding of the state’s voting and registration procedures. For example, Cegavske’s investigation found that of 1,506 alleged instances of ballots being cast in the name of deceased individuals, only 10 warranted further investigation by law enforcement. Similarly, 10 out of 1,778 allegations of double-voting called for further investigation. Biden won Nevada by 33,596 votes, or 2.4 percentage points.

    In Pennsylvania, the final certified results had Biden with an 80,555-vote margin over Trump, or 1.2 percentage points. Efforts to overturn Pennsylvania’s election failed in state and federal courts, while no prosecutor, judge or election official in Pennsylvania has raised a concern about widespread fraud. State Republicans continue to attempt their own review of the 2020 results, but that effort has been tied up in the courts and Democrats have called it a “partisan fishing expedition.”

    In Wisconsin, a recount slightly improved Biden’s victory over Trump by 87 votes, increasing Biden’s statewide lead to 20,682, or 0.6 percentage points. A nonpartisan audit that concluded a year after the election made recommendations on how to improve future elections in Wisconsin but did not uncover evidence of widespread voter fraud in the state, leading the Republican co-chair of the audit committee to declare that “ the election was largely safe and secure. ” The state’s Assembly speaker, a Republican, ordered a separate review, which a state judge said found “ absolutely no evidence of election fraud.”

    AP INVESTIGATION FINDS MINIMAL VOTER FRAUD IN SWING STATES

    An exhaustive AP investigation in 2021 found fewer than 475 instances of confirmed voter fraud across six battleground states — nowhere near the magnitude required to sway the outcome of the presidential election.

    The review of ballots and records from more than 300 local elections offices found that almost every instance of voter fraud was committed by individuals acting alone and not the result of a massive, coordinated conspiracy to rig the election. The cases involved both registered Democrats and Republicans, and the culprits were almost always caught before the fraudulent ballot was counted.

    Some of the cases appeared to be intentional attempts to commit fraud, while others seemed to involve either administrative error or voter confusion, including the case of one Wisconsin man who cast a ballot for Trump but said he was unaware that he was ineligible to vote because he was on parole for a felony conviction.

    The AP review also produced no evidence to support Trump’s claims that states tabulated more votes than there are registered voters.

    Biden won Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and their 79 Electoral College votes by a combined 311,257 votes out of 25.5 million ballots cast. The disputed ballots represent just 0.15% of his victory margin in those states.

    TRUMP’S OWN ADMINISTRATION FOUND NO WIDESPREAD FRAUD

    Trump was repeatedly advised by members of his own administration that there was no evidence of widespread fraud.

    Nine days after the 2020 election, the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency issued a statement saying, “ The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history.” The statement was co-written by the groups representing the top elections officials in every state.

    Less than three weeks later, then-Attorney General William Barr declared that a Justice Department investigation had not uncovered evidence of the widespread voter fraud that Trump had claimed was at the center of a massive conspiracy to steal the election. Barr, who had directed U.S. attorneys and FBI agents across the country to pursue “substantial allegations” of voting irregularities, said, “To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.”

    The Jan. 6 House committee report details additional instances where administration officials and White House staff refuted Trump’s various allegations of voter fraud.

    COURTS HEARD TRUMP’S LEGAL CHALLENGES AND REJECTED THEM

    The Trump campaign and its backers pursued numerous legal challenges to the election in court and alleged a variety of voter fraud and misconduct. The cases were heard and roundly rejected by dozens of courts at both state and federal levels, including by judges whom Trump appointed.

    One of them, U.S. Circuit Judge Stephanos Bibas, was on a federal panel that declined a request to stop Pennsylvania from certifying its results, saying, “Voters, not lawyers, choose the president. Ballots, not briefs, decide elections.”

    The U.S. Supreme Court also rejected several efforts in the weeks after Election Day to overturn the election results in various battleground states that Biden won.

    CONSPIRACY THEORIES ABOUT VOTING MACHINES WERE UNFOUNDED

    Many of the claims Trump and his team advanced about a stolen election dealt with the equipment voters used to cast their ballots.

    At various times, Trump and his legal team falsely alleged that voting machines were built in Venezuela at the direction of President Hugo Chavez, who died in 2013; that machines were designed to delete or flip votes cast for Trump; and that the U.S. Army had seized a computer server in Germany that held secrets to U.S. voting irregularities.

    None of those claims was ever substantiated or corroborated. CISA’s joint statement released after the election said, “There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes or was in any way compromised.”

    Nonetheless, many of these and other unfounded claims were repeated on Fox News, both by members of the Trump team as well as by some of the network’s on-air personalities. Dominion Voting Systems sued the network for $1.6 billion, claiming the outlet’s airing of these allegations amounted to defamation.

    Records of internal communications at Fox News unearthed in the case showed that the network aired the claims even though its biggest stars, including Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson, as well as the company’s chairman, Rupert Murdoch, did not believe they were true.

    Dominion and Fox News settled out of court for $787.5 million.

    CLAIMS INVOLVING SUITCASES AND BALLOT MULES ARE DEBUNKED

    Trump and his supporters also have claimed that a number of other factors contributed to a broader effort to steal the presidential election.

    One theory advanced by both Trump and one of his lawyers, Rudy Giuliani, is that “suitcases” full of fraudulent ballots in Georgia cost Trump the election there.

    Then-Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen told the Jan. 6 House committee that he personally reviewed the video purported to show the fraud allegation in question. He recounted telling Trump: “It wasn’t a suitcase. It was a bin. That’s what they use when they’re counting ballots. It’s benign.”

    State and county officials also had confirmed the containers were regular ballot containers on wheels, which are used in normal ballot processing.

    But a week later, Trump publicly repeated the suitcase theory, saying, “There is even security camera footage from Georgia that shows officials telling poll watchers to leave the room before pulling suitcases of ballots out from under the tables and continuing to count for hours.”

    Richard Donoghue, the former acting deputy attorney general, told the Jan. 6 committee that, days later, he told Trump that “these allegations about ballots being smuggled in in a suitcase and run through the machine several times, it was not true. … We looked at the video, we interviewed the witnesses.” But Trump continued to repeat the false claim.

    Another debunked claim spinning a tale of 2,000 so-called ballot mules was featured in a film that ran in hundreds of theaters last spring. The film alleges that Democrat-aligned individuals were paid to illegally collect and drop ballots in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. But the AP determined that the allegations were based on flawed analysis of cellphone location data and drop box surveillance footage.

    ___

    Associated Press writers Scott Bauer and Todd Richmond in Madison, Wisconsin; Christina A. Cassidy in Atlanta; Marc Levy in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; and Ali Swenson in New York contributed to this report.

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  • Trump is set to surrender at a Georgia jail on charges he sought to overturn his 2020 election loss

    Trump is set to surrender at a Georgia jail on charges he sought to overturn his 2020 election loss

    ATLANTA — ATLANTA (AP) — Donald Trump is set to surrender Thursday to authorities in Georgia on charges that he schemed to overturn the 2020 election in that state, a booking process expected to yield a historic first: a mug shot of a former American president.

    Trump’s arrival follows a presidential debate featuring his leading rivals for the 2024 Republican nomination, a contest in which he remains the leading candidate despite accelerating legal troubles. His presence in the state, though likely brief, is expected to swipe the spotlight at least temporarily from his opponents in the aftermath of a debate in which other candidates sought to seize on his absence to elevate their own presidential prospects.

    The Fulton County prosecution is the fourth criminal case against Trump since March, when he became the first former president in U.S. history to be indicted. Since then, he’s faced federal charges in Florida and Washington, and this month he was indicted in Atlanta with 18 others — including his ex-chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani — under a racketeering statute normally associated with gang members and organized crime. Giuliani, Trump’s lawyer and confidant, turned himself in on Wednesday and had a booking photo taken.

    The criminal cases have spurred a succession of bookings and arraignments, with Trump making brief court appearances before returning to the campaign trail. He’s turned the appearances into campaign events amid a far lighter schedule than his rivals, with staff delighting in wall-to-wall media coverage that has included news helicopters tracking his every move.

    The campaign has also used the appearances to solicit fundraising contributions from his supporters as aides paint the charges as part of a politically motivated effort to damage his reelection chances.

    His Atlanta appearance will be different from others, though, requiring him to surrender at a problem-plagued jail — but without an accompanying court appearance for now. Unlike in other cities that did not require him to pose for a mug shot, Fulton County officials have said they expect to take a booking photo like they would for any other defendant.

    “Unless somebody tells me differently, we are following our normal practices, and so it doesn’t matter your status, we’ll have a mug shot ready for you,” Fulton County Sheriff Patrick Labat said at a news conference earlier this month.

    District Attorney Fani Willis has given all of the defendants until Friday afternoon to surrender at the main Fulton County jail.

    Trump has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing. He said in a social media post this week that he was being prosecuted for what he described in capital letters as a “perfect phone call” in which he asked the Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to help him “find 11,780 votes” for him to overturn his loss in the state to Democrat Joe Biden.

    Trump is expected to turn himself in at the Fulton County jail, which has long been a troubled facility. The Justice Department last month opened a civil rights investigation into conditions, citing filthy cells, violence and the death last year of a man whose body was found covered in insects in the main jail’s psychiatric wing. Three people have died in Fulton County custody in the past month.

    But Trump is not expected to spend much time there.

    His attorneys and prosecutors have already agreed to a bond of $200,000, along with conditions that include barring the former president from intimidating co-defendants, witnesses or victims in the case, including on social media.

    When defendants arrive at the jail, they typically pass through a security checkpoint before checking in for formal booking in the lobby. During the booking process, defendants are typically photographed and fingerprinted and asked to provide certain personal information. Since Trump’s bond has already been set, he will be released from custody once the booking process is complete.

    Unlike in other jurisdictions, in Fulton County, arraignments — in which a defendant appears in court for the first time — generally happen after a defendant surrenders at the jail and completes the booking process, not on the same day. That means Trump could have to make two trips to Georgia in the coming weeks though the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office has said some arraignments in the case may happen virtually if the judge allows, or he could waive Trump’s arraignment.

    When Trump eventually appears in court, the public is also likely to see much more of the proceedings firsthand. Georgia courts typically allow photographs and video of the proceeding, unlike in federal court and in New York, where press access is tightly controlled.

    Only in Manhattan were still photographers allowed to capture images of Trump briefly while he sat at the witness stand. Federal courts generally prohibit photography, recordings and electronics of any kind.

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  • Trump set to surrender at Georgia jail on charges that he sought to overturn 2020 election

    Trump set to surrender at Georgia jail on charges that he sought to overturn 2020 election

    ATLANTA — ATLANTA (AP) — Donald Trump is set to surrender Thursday to authorities in Georgia on charges that he schemed to overturn the 2020 election in that state, a booking process expected to yield a historic first: a mug shot of a former American president.

    Trump’s arrival follows a presidential debate featuring his leading rivals for the 2024 Republican nomination, a contest in which he remains the leading candidate despite accelerating legal troubles. His presence in the state, though likely brief, is expected to swipe the spotlight at least temporarily from his opponents in the aftermath of a debate in which other candidates sought to seize on Trump’s absence to elevate their own presidential prospects.

    The Fulton County prosecution is the fourth criminal case against Trump since March, when he became the first former president in U.S. history to be indicted. Since then, he’s faced federal charges in Florida and Washington and, this month, was indicted in Atlanta with 18 others — including his ex-chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani — under a racketeering statute normally associated with gang members and organized crime.

    The criminal cases have spurred a succession of bookings and arraignments, with Trump making brief court appearances before returning to the campaign trail. He’s turned the appearances into campaign events amid a far lighter schedule than his rivals, with staff delighting in wall-the-wall media coverage that has included news helicopters tracking his every move.

    The campaign has also used the appearances to solicit fundraising contributions from his supporters as aides paint the charges as part of a politically motivated effort to damage his reelection chances.

    His Atlanta appearance will be different than others, though, requiring him to surrender at a problem-plagued jail — but without an accompanying court appearance for now. Unlike in other cities that did not require him to pose for a mug shot, Fulton County officials have said they expect to take a booking photo like they would for any other defendant.

    “Unless somebody tells me differently, we are following our normal practices, and so it doesn’t matter your status, we’ll have a mugshot ready for you,” Fulton County Sheriff Patrick Labat said at a news conference earlier this month.

    District Attorney Fani Willis has given all of the defendants until Friday afternoon to surrender at the main Fulton County jail.

    Trump has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing. He said in a social media post this week that he was being prosecuted for what he described in capital letters as a “perfect phone call” in which he asked the Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to help him “find” enough votes for him to overturn his loss in the state to Democrat Joe Biden.

    Trump is expected to turn himself in at the Fulton County jail, which has long been a troubled facility. The Justice Department last month opened a civil rights investigation into conditions, citing filthy cells, violence and the death last year of a man whose body was found covered in insects in the main jail’s psychiatric wing. Three people have died in Fulton County custody in the past month.

    But he is not expected to spend much time there.

    His attorneys and prosecutors have already agreed to a bond of $200,000, along with conditions that include barring the former president from intimidating co-defendants, witnesses or victims in the case — including on social media.

    When defendants arrive at the jail, they typically pass through a security checkpoint before checking in for formal booking in the lobby. During the booking process, defendants are typically photographed and fingerprinted and asked to provide certain personal information. Since Trump’s bond has already been set, he will be released from custody once the booking process is complete.

    Unlike in other jurisdictions, in Fulton County, arraignments — where a defendant appears in court for the first time — generally happen after a defendant surrenders at the jail and completes the booking process, not on the same day. That means Trump could have to make two trips to Georgia in the coming weeks though the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office has said some arraignments in the case may happen virtually if the judge allows, or he could waive Trump’s arraignment.

    When he eventually appears in court, the public is also likely to see much more of the proceedings firsthand. Georgia courts typically allow photographs and video of the proceeding, unlike in federal court and in New York, where press access is tightly controlled.

    Only in Manhattan were still photographers allowed to capture images of Trump briefly while he sat at the witness stand. Federal courts generally prohibit photography, recordings and electronics of any kind.

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  • Attorney John Eastman surrenders to authorities on charges in Georgia 2020 election subversion case

    Attorney John Eastman surrenders to authorities on charges in Georgia 2020 election subversion case

    ATLANTA — John Eastman, the conservative attorney who pushed a plan to keep Donald Trump in power, turned himself in to authorities Tuesday on charges in the Georgia case alleging an illegal plot to overturn the former president’s 2020 election loss.

    Eastman was booked at the Fulton County jail and is expected to have an arraignment set in the coming weeks in the sprawling racketeering case.

    He was indicted last week alongside Trump and 17 others, who are accused by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis of scheming to subvert the will of Georgia voters in a desperate bid to keep Joe Biden out of the White House. It was the fourth criminal case brought against the Republican former president.

    Trump, whose bond was set Monday at $200,000, has said he will surrender to authorities in Fulton County on Thursday. His bond conditions prohibit him from intimidating co-defendants, witnesses or victims in the case, including on social media. He has a history of attacking the prosecutors leading the cases against him, including Willis, often using racist language and stereotypes.

    Eastman said in a statement provided by his lawyers that he was surrendering Tuesday “to an indictment that should never have been brought.” He lambasted the indictment for targeting “attorneys for their zealous advocacy on behalf of their clients” and said each of the 19 defendants was entitled to rely on the advice of lawyers and past legal precedent to challenge the results of the election.

    A former dean of Chapman University law school in Southern California, Eastman was a close adviser to Trump in the run-up to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by the president’s supporters intent on halting the certification of Biden’s electoral victory. He wrote a memo laying out steps Vice President Mike Pence could take to interfere in the counting of electoral votes while presiding over Congress’ joint session on Jan. 6 in order to keep Trump in office.

    The indictment alleges that Eastman and others pushed to put in place a slate of “alternate” electors falsely certifying that Trump won and tried to pressure Pence into rejecting or delaying the counting of legitimate electoral votes for Biden, a Democrat.

    Bail bondsman Scott Hall, who was accused of participating in a breach of election equipment in rural Coffee County, also turned himself in to the Fulton County Jail on Tuesday morning.

    Two other defendants, former Justice Department lawyer Jeffrey Clark and former Georgia Republican Party chair David Shafer, have filed paperwork to transfer the case to federal court. Willis has filed paperwork in Fulton County Superior Court, where the indictment was filed, seeking a March 4 trial date. Legal maneuvering, such as the attempts to move the case to federal court, could make it difficult to start a trial that soon.

    Lawyers for Clark argued in a court filing Monday that he was a high-ranking Justice Department official and the actions described in the indictment “relate directly to his work at the Justice Department as well as with the former President of the United States.” Shafer’s attorneys argued that his conduct “stems directly from his service as a Presidential Elector nominee,” actions they say were “at the direction of the President and other federal officers.”

    Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows last week made similar arguments in a federal court filing, saying his actions were taken in service to his White House role.

    Clark was a staunch supporter of Trump’s false claims of election fraud and in December 2020 presented colleagues with a draft letter pushing Georgia officials to convene a special legislative session on the election results, according to testimony before the U.S. House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. Clark wanted the letter sent, but Justice Department superiors refused.

    Shafer was one of 16 Georgia Republicans who signed a certificate declaring falsely that Trump had won the 2020 presidential election and declaring themselves the state’s “duly elected and qualified” electors even though Biden had won the state and a slate of Democratic electors was certified.

    Lawyers for Shafer and the district attorney’s office on Tuesday agreed to a bond of $75,000. Also Tuesday, a court filing showed that bond has been set at $10,000 for Shawn Still, another of the fake electors who was elected to the Georgia state Senate in November 2022 and represents a district in Atlanta’s suburbs.

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  • Trump stiffed his alleged co-conspirators, whose false claims brought in $250 million

    Trump stiffed his alleged co-conspirators, whose false claims brought in $250 million

    Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump arrive to speak to police gathered at a Fraternal Order of Police lodge during a campaign event in Statesville, North Carolina, Aug. 18, 2016.

    Carlo Allegri | Reuters

    Several of the attorneys who spearheaded President Donald Trump‘s frenzied effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election tried, and failed, to collect payment for the work they did for Trump’s political operation, according to testimony to congressional investigators and Federal Election Commission records. This is despite the fact that their lawsuits and false claims of election interference helped the Trump campaign and allied committees raise $250 million in the weeks following the November vote, the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot said in its final report.

    Among them was Trump’s closest ally, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Trump and Giuliani had a handshake agreement that Giuliani and his team would get paid by the Trump political operation for their post-election work, according to Timothy Parlatore, an attorney for longtime Giuliani ally Bernard Kerik.

    But the Trump campaign and its affiliated committees ultimately did not honor that pledge, according to campaign finance records. The records show that Giuliani’s companies were only reimbursed for travel and not the $20,000 a day he requested to be paid.

    Parlatore also told CNBC that the Giuliani operation was never compensated for its work. According to Parlatore, the failure to pay Giuliani and his team came up last week in a private interview between prosecutors on special counsel Jack Smith’s team and Kerik, a member of Giuliani’s team in late 2020.

    “Lawyers and law firms that didn’t do s— were paid lots of money and the people that worked their ass off, got nothing,” Kerik complained in a 2021 tweet.

    Bob Costello, Giuliani’s attorney, declined to comment further about the agreement, citing privileged conversations between his client and then-President Trump.

    Trump has a long history of not paying his bills. But the revelation that he likely stiffed Giuliani, a longtime friend, is all the more striking given that much of the work Giuliani did for the Trump operation is detailed in a sprawling RICO indictment in Georgia released Monday, in which Giuliani is a co-defendant alongside Trump and 17 other people.

    The indictment details trips Giuliani made, phone calls he placed and meetings he attended, all in service of what prosecutors say was a criminal conspiracy to overturn the election.

    Criminal or not, what is indisputable is that Giuliani and his team did a lot of legal and PR work for Trump. Over more than two months, Giuliani served as the public face of Trump’s election challenges, which ultimately failed.

    Nonetheless, these challenges helped Trump and his allies raise an unprecedented $250 million from small-dollar donors in the weeks following the November election, according to the final congressional report by the House select committee on the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. The money came in response to countless fundraising appeals that claimed it was needed to fund Trump’s election challenges in court.

    Yet instead of paying the lawyers who tried unsuccessfully to overturn his loss, the money went into Trump’s leadership PAC, Save America.

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    According to the final report by the House select committee, “After raising $250 million dollars on false voter fraud claims, mostly from small-dollar donors, President Trump did not spend it on fighting an election he knew he lost.” Trump’s entire political network, including his joint fundraising committees, spent over $47 million combined from the start of 2020 through the end of 2021 on legal fees, according to a report by OpenSecrets.

    Today, that money raised by Trump’s political operation is instead helping Trump pay his own legal bills in the criminal cases against him. Trump’s Save America PAC spent over $20 million in the first half of the year alone on legal fees as the president faced the first two of his four indictments.

    The PAC began the second half of the year with only about $3 million in cash on hand.

    Sidney Powell, an attorney later disavowed by the Trump campaign, participates in a news conference with President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani at the Republican National Committee headquarters in Washington, D.C., Nov. 19, 2020.

    Jonathan Ernst | Reuters

    Giuliani is not the only unindicted co-conspirator in the special counsel’s election case who got stiffed by the Trump operation.

    Federal Election Commission records and testimony from the House Jan. 6 select committee hearings reveal that none of the private-sector lawyers identified — but not indicted — in that case got paid for their post-election work: Not Sidney Powell, Kenneth Chesebro or John Eastman.

    Giuliani and Eastman wanted a mix of reimbursements and payments, but records show they received virtually none of that money. Powell had to turn to her own law firm to pay her volunteers. All the while, the Trump team raised hundreds of millions of dollars off the false claims of election fraud that Powell and Giuliani promoted on TV and in court.

    Chesebro, for his part, told the House committee that the work he did for the Trump team was pro bono.

    On Monday, all four lawyers entered a new phase in their legal relationship with Trump, when they were charged alongside him in the Georgia RICO case.

    Giuliani, Chesebro, Powell and Eastman were among the more than a dozen other co-defendants in the indictment brought against Trump in Georgia on charges of trying to illegally overturn the 2020 election results in the state and elsewhere.

    Giuliani wanted $20,000 a day

    Matthew Morgan, an election lawyer for the Trump campaign, recalled to the House select committee in 2022 that Giuliani requested $20,000 a day from the Trump political operation to fight the election results. Working five days a week for two months, November and December 2020, this would have amounted to around $800,000 in legal fees.

    But Giuliani never got it. According to federal records, two companies linked to the former New York City mayor got about $100,000 in travel fees and reimbursements from the Trump operation. Kerik’s company saw about $85,000 for travel-related expenses, according to the records. But not a penny more from team Trump for their services.

    Eastman wanted refunds and payment

    Longtime conservative attorney John Eastman had an alleged role in trying to stall the certification of the 2020 election results.

    Attorney John Eastman speaks next to President Donald Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, as Trump supporters gather ahead of the president’s speech to contest the certification by Congress of the results of the 2020 U.S. presidential election on the Ellipse in Washington, D.C., Jan. 6, 2021.

    Jim Bourg | Reuters

    Morgan told the House select committee that when Eastman first officially came on board in December, he did so on a voluntary basis, but he requested that his expenses be reimbursed by Trump’s team.

    Federal Election Commission records show that Eastman didn’t directly receive a single reimbursement from Trump’s campaign, despite that agreement.

    Shortly after Jan. 6, 2021, Eastman requested payment “for services rendered,” according to Morgan’s testimony to the select committee. Though Morgan did not recall how much Eastman asked for, he said his understanding was that “the services requested was for the totality of all the work he’d done for the campaign.”

    Morgan told the committee that he sent the request to another Trump campaign legal advisor, Justin Clark.

    FEC records show that no payments were ever made by any of Trump’s committees to Eastman.

    Eastman’s attorneys declined to comment.

    The fact that neither Giuliani nor Eastman got paid also reflected a deep rift that emerged after the election between top staffers on Trump’s formal campaign and the small band of lawyers pushing fringe theories of how Trump could overturn his loss.

    A group of Trump campaign leaders and legal minds, occasionally referred to as “Team Normal,” pushed back against the conspiracy theories being peddled by the outside attorneys.

    Ultimately, it was members of “Team Normal” that had a say in the campaign’s purse strings.

    Clark later recounted an email he received on Christmas Eve 2020 from Giuliani associates, seeking payment.

    “What I make of it is that I think these guys were reporting directly to Mr. Giuliani, and when it came time to get paid, they were looking to me to get money, and I was never in the position to be prepared to just write checks to people ….we’re not just going to set money on fire to do stuff,” Clark told the House committee.

    An attorney for Clark declined to comment.

    Powell paid staff through her own firm

    Sidney Powell is the likely third unnamed co-conspirator in Smith’s federal indictment, according to NBC News. She’s also one of the co-defendants in the Georgia case brought against Trump and his allies.

    Powell was one of the leading voices on Fox News shortly after the election, peddling the false claim that voting machine companies Smartmatic and Dominion Voting Systems were each involved in conspiracies to stop Trump from becoming president.

    Both companies have denied the claims and taken Fox to court. This year, Fox settled the Dominion lawsuit, agreeing to pay the voting machine company an unprecedented $787.5 million. The defamation suit levied against Fox by Smartmatic is still open.

    Powell later told the House select committee that her firm, Sidney Powell P.C., not the Trump campaign, paid assistants who helped her pursue those claims about the election.

    “When money was donated, I wanted to make sure they got paid,” she said in her interview with the House panel. “That’s all I remember about that part. And I paid them.”

    FEC records indicate that no payments from Trump and his allies ever went to Powell’s law firm.

    But her nonprofit group Defending The Republic raised over $16 million since the November 2020 election, according to the group’s 990 tax forms. The group does not reveal its donors, however, and it’s unclear how much of that money ended up in Powell’s personal coffers.

    Powell did not respond to a request for comment.

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  • Biden heads to battleground Wisconsin to talk about the economy a week before GOP debate

    Biden heads to battleground Wisconsin to talk about the economy a week before GOP debate

    WASHINGTON — In a show of preemptive counter-programming, President Joe Biden on Tuesday travels to Wisconsin to highlight his economic policies in a state critical to his reelection fortunes, just a week before Republicans descend on Milwaukee for the party’s first presidential debate.

    His trip comes on the eve of the anniversary of the Inflation Reduction Act, major economic legislation that he signed into law with great ceremony but polls show that most people know little about it or what it does.

    Wisconsin is among the handful of critical states where Biden needs to persuade voters that his policies are having a positive impact on their lives, and he is expected to visit frequently to make his case.

    Biden plans to tour Ingeteam, a clean energy manufacturer of onshore wind turbine generators in Milwaukee, to talk up provisions of the law that spends hundreds of millions of dollars to boost domestic manufacturing and clean energy, lower health care costs and crack down on wealthy tax cheats. Ingeteam plans to hire 100 workers using Bipartisan Infrastructure Law money to start producing EV charging stations domestically, according to the White House.

    Also timed to Biden’s trip, multinational tech firm Siemens is set to announce that it will start manufacturing solar inverters in Kenosha County, a move prompted by increased demand brought by the tax incentives from the IRA law.

    Administration officials say the trip is aimed at recognizing the effects of the law, which passed Congress on party-line votes.

    “The president and his team are excited to bring that message to the American people throughout the week,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Monday.

    Critics of the legislation say provisions of the law could end up increasing inflation. Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers said during a virtual Peterson Institute for International Economics event in July that while he supported the IRA, the Biden administration’s overall economic agenda is “increasingly dangerous.”

    “I am profoundly concerned by the doctrine of manufacturing-centered economic nationalism that is increasingly being put forth as a general principle to guide policy,” Summers said.

    Vice President Kamala Harris and top Cabinet officials will be fanning out across the country this week to talk about the Inflation Reduction Act and its provisions. Biden has scheduled an anniversary event at the White House on Wednesday.

    The president’s stop in Wisconsin comes shortly before Republicans hold their first presidential primary debate in Milwaukee on Aug. 23. Former President Donald Trump — the leading Republican candidate in polls — has yet to say whether he will boycott or hold a competing event.

    Charles Franklin, director of Marquette Law School Poll, said the trip could help Biden win support from independents, who make up about 10% of voters in the state.

    “What he really needs to do is get independents in the state to like him a bit better,” Franklin said. “Coming and talking about his achievements, about factories that are working with American jobs — all of that is a good reason to come to speak to those folks in the state who are not partisans.”

    “Because Democrats are already behind him,” Franklin said, and “Republicans are almost certainly not going to cross over.”

    Democratic gains helped decide a critical state Supreme Court race this spring that moved Wisconsin’s highest court under liberal control for the first time in 15 years.

    Republicans, though, will compete aggressively in the state, selecting Milwaukee as the site of its 2024 national nominating convention.

    The 2020 Democratic convention was supposed to be held in Milwaukee too, but it largely unfolded virtually because of the coronavirus pandemic.

    Biden is one of a string of administration officials making stops across the country this week to promote the legislation’s anniversary.

    Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Monday spoke in Las Vegas at an International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers union hall about “the early results of bold federal action through the IRA” and the administration’s climate agenda.

    “The IRA is driving economic growth, expanding economic opportunity and bolstering our resilience,” she said.

    ___

    Associated Press writer Will Weissert contributed to this report.

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