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Tag: civil disobedience

  • House January 6 committee handing over investigative materials to DOJ | CNN Politics

    House January 6 committee handing over investigative materials to DOJ | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The House select committee investigating January 6, 2021, has started handing over evidence and transcripts from its probe to the Department of Justice, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

    Special counsel Jack Smith, who was appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland to oversee parts of the DOJ’s investigation into the insurrection, sent a letter to the committee earlier this month requesting all of the information from the panel’s investigation, one of the sources told CNN.

    Smith’s investigators will ultimately have all of the evidence the House committee has obtained, the source said.

    The handover comes during a key week for the committee. The panel on Monday held its final public meeting, during which committee members voted to refer former President Donald Trump to the DOJ on at least four criminal charges. The panel is slated to release its full final report on Wednesday.

    A spokesperson for the committee declined to comment. A spokesperson for the special counsel did not immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment.

    The committee has been sending documents and transcripts over the course of the last week, the second source added, with the production focusing specifically on former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Trump’s former election lawyer John Eastman.

    The panel has also started to share transcripts of witness interviews pertaining to the false slates of electors and the pressure campaign by Trump and his allies on certain states to overturn the 2020 election results.

    The department has also received Meadows’ text messages from the committee.

    Punchbowl News was first to report some of these details.

    California Democratic Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a member of the committee, said on CNN on Monday, “We’ve actually given some transcripts to the Department of Justice during the last month,” adding that the committee would begin making transcripts public on Wednesday.

    The DOJ investigation being led by Smith is examining Trump in its extensive probe into January 6, and it appears that federal investigators are already looking at much of the conduct that the select committee has highlighted.

    During its Monday meeting, the committee laid out the case for both the public and the Justice Department that there’s evidence to pursue criminal charges against Trump on multiple criminal statutes, including obstructing an official proceeding, defrauding the United States, making false statements and assisting or aiding an insurrection.

    But whether the department brings charges will depend on whether the facts and the evidence support a prosecution, Garland, who will make the ultimate call on charging decisions, has said.

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  • Here’s what’s in the $1.7 trillion federal spending bill | CNN Politics

    Here’s what’s in the $1.7 trillion federal spending bill | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Senate leaders unveiled a $1.7 trillion year-long federal government funding bill early Tuesday morning.

    The legislation includes $772.5 billion for non-defense discretionary programs and $858 billion in defense funding, according to a bill summary from Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy, chair of the Senate Committee on Appropriations.

    The sweeping package includes roughly $45 billion in emergency assistance to Ukraine and NATO allies, boosts in spending for disaster aid, college access, child care, mental health and food assistance, more support for the military and veterans and additional funds for the US Capitol Police, according to Leahy’s summary and one from Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, the top Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee.

    However, the bill, which runs more than 4,000 pages, left out several measures that some lawmakers had fought to include. An expansion of the child tax credit, as well as multiple other corporate and individual tax breaks, did not make it into the final bill. Neither did legislation to allow cannabis companies to bank their cash reserves – known as the Safe Banking Act. Also, there was also no final resolution on where the new FBI headquarters will be located.

    The spending bill is the product of lengthy negotiations between top congressional Democrats and Republicans. Lawmakers reached a “bipartisan, bicameral framework” last week following a dispute between the two parties over how much money should be spent on non-defense domestic priorities. They worked through the weekend to craft the legislation.

    The Senate is expected to vote first to approve the deal this week and then send it to the House for approval before government funding runs out on December 23. The bill would keep the government operating through September, the end of the fiscal year.

    Congress originally passed a continuing resolution on September 30 to temporarily fund the government in fiscal year 2023, which began October 1.

    More aid for Ukraine: The spending bill would provide roughly $45 billion to help support Ukraine’s efforts to defend itself against Russia’s attack.

    About $9 billion of the funding would go to Ukraine’s military to pay for a variety of things including training, weapons, logistics support and salaries. Nearly $12 billion would be used to replenish US stocks of equipment sent to Ukraine through presidential drawdown authority.

    Also, it would provide $13 billion for economic support to the Ukrainian government.

    Other funds would address humanitarian and infrastructure needs, as well as support European Command operations.

    Emergency disaster assistance: The bill would appropriate more than $38 billion in emergency funding to help Americans in the west and southeast affected by recent natural disasters, including tornadoes, hurricanes, flooding and wildfires. It would aid farmers, provide economic development assistance for communities, repair and reconstruct federal facilities and direct money to the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Disaster Relief Fund, among other initiatives.

    Overhaul of the electoral vote counting law: A provision in the legislation aims at making it harder to overturn a certified presidential election, in a direct response to the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.

    The changes would overhaul the 1887 Electoral Count Act, which then-President Donald Trump tried to use to overturn the 2020 election.

    The legislation would clarify the vice president’s role while overseeing the certification of the electoral result to be completely ceremonial. It also would create a set of stipulations designed to make it harder for there to be any confusion over the accurate slate of electors from each state.

    Higher maximum Pell grant awards: The bill would increase the maximum Pell grant award by $500 to $7,395 for the coming school year. This would be the largest boost since the 2009-2010 school year. About 7 million students, many from lower-income families, receive Pell grants every year to help them afford college.

    Increased support for the military and veterans: The package would fund a 4.6% pay raise for troops and a 22.4% increase in support for Veteran Administration medical care, which provides health services for 7.3 million veterans.

    It would include nearly $53 billion to address higher inflation and $2.7 billion – a 25% increase – to support critical services and housing assistance for veterans and their families.

    The bill also would allocate $5 billion for the Cost of War Toxic Exposures Fund, which provides additional funding to implement the landmark PACT Act that expands eligibility for health care services and benefits to veterans with conditions related to toxic exposure during their service.

    Beefing up nutrition assistance: The legislation would establish a permanent nationwide Summer EBT program, starting in the summer of 2024, according to Share Our Strength, an anti-hunger advocacy group. It would provide families whose children are eligible for free or reduced-price school meal with a $40 grocery benefit per child per month, indexed to inflation.

    It would also change the rules governing summer meals programs in rural areas. Children would be able to take home or receive delivery of up to 10 days worth of meals, rather than have to consume the food at a specific site and time.

    The bill would also help families who have had their food stamp benefits stolen since October 1 through what’s known as “SNAP skimming.” It would provide them with retroactive federal reimbursement of the funds, which criminals steal by attaching devices to point-of-sale machines or PIN pads to get card numbers and other information from electronic benefits transfer cards.

    More money for child care: The legislation would provide $8 billion for the Child Care and Development Block Grant, a 30% increase in funding. The grant gives financial assistance to low-income families to afford child care.

    Also, Head Start would receive nearly $12 billion, an 8.6% boost. The program helps young children from low-income families prepare for school.

    Help to pay utility bills: The bill would provide $5 billion for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program. Combined with the $1 billion contained in the earlier continuing resolution, this would be the largest regular appropriation for the program, according to the National Energy Assistance Directors Association. Home heating and cooling costs – and the applications for federal aid in paying the bills – have soared this year.

    Enhance retirement savings: The bill contains new retirement rules that could make it easier for Americans to accumulate retirement savings – and less costly to withdraw them. Among other things, the provisions would allow penalty-free withdrawals for some emergency expenses, let employers offer matching retirement contributions for a worker’s student loan payments and increase how much older workers may save in employer retirement plans.

    More support for the environment: The package would provide an additional $576 million for the Environmental Protection Agency, bringing its funding up to $10.1 billion. It would increase support for enforcement and compliance, as well as clean air, water and toxic chemical programs, after years of flat funding.

    It also would boost funding for the National Park Service by 6.4%, restoring 500 of the 3,000 staff positions lost over the past decade. This would be intended to help the agency handle substantial increases in visitation.

    Plus, the legislation would provide an additional 14% in funding for wildland firefighting.

    Additional funding for the US Capitol Police: The bill would provide an additional $132 million for the Capitol Police for a total of nearly $735 million. It would allow the department to hire up to 137 sworn officers and 123 support and civilian personnel, bringing the force to a projected level of 2,126 sworn officers and 567 civilians.

    It would also give $2 million to provide off-campus security for lawmakers in response to evolving and growing threats.

    Investments in homelessness prevention and affordable housing: The legislation would provide $3.6 billion for homeless assistance grants, a 13% increase. It would serve more than 1 million people experiencing homelessness.

    The package also would funnel nearly $6.4 billion to the Community Development Block Grant formula program and related local economic and community development projects that benefit low- and moderate income areas and people, an increase of almost $1.6 billion.

    Plus, it would provide $1.5 billion for the HOME Investment Partnerships Program, which would lead to the construction of nearly 10,000 new rental and homebuyer units and maintain the record investment from the last fiscal year.

    Increased health care funding: The package would provide more money for National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response. The funds are intended to speed the development of new therapies, diagnostics and preventive measures, beef up public health activities and strengthen the nation’s biosecurity by accelerating development of medical countermeasures for pandemic threats and fortifying stockpiles and supply chains for drugs, masks and other supplies.

    More resources for children’s mental health and for substance abuse: The bill would provide more funds to increase access to mental health services for children and schools. It also would invest more money to address the opioid epidemic and substance use disorder.

    Tiktok ban from federal devices: The legislation would ban TikTok, the Chinese-owned short-form video app, from federal government devices.

    Some lawmakers have raised bipartisan concerns that China’s national security laws could force TikTok – or its parent, ByteDance – to hand over the personal data of its US users. Recently, a wave of states led by Republican governors have introduced state-level restrictions on the use of TikTok on government-owned devices.

    Enhanced child tax credit: A coalition of Democratic lawmakers and consumer advocates pushed hard to extend at least one provision of the enhanced child tax credit, which was in effect last year thanks to the Democrats’ $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan. Their priority was to make the credit more refundable so more of the lowest-income families can qualify. Nearly 19 million kids won’t receive the full $2,000 benefit this year because their parents earn too little, according to a Tax Policy Center estimate.

    New cannabis banking rules: Lawmakers considered including a provision in the spending bill that would make it easier for licensed cannabis businesses to accept credit cards – but it was left out of the legislation. Known as the Safe Banking Act, which previously passed the House, the provision would prohibit federal regulators from taking punitive measures against banks for providing services to legitimate cannabis businesses.

    Even though 47 states have legalized some form of marijuana, cannabis remains illegal on the federal level. That means financial institutions providing banking services to cannabis businesses are subject to criminal prosecution – leaving many legal growers and sellers locked out of the banking system.

    FBI headquarters: There was also no final resolution on where the new FBI headquarters will be located, a major point of contention as lawmakers from Maryland – namely House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer – pushed to bring the law enforcement agency into their state. In a deal worked through by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, the General Services Administration would be required to conduct “separate and detailed consultations” with Maryland and Virginia representatives about potential sites in each of the states, according to a Senate Democratic aide.

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  • Lawmakers to push through first legislative response to January 6 Capitol attack by week’s end | CNN Politics

    Lawmakers to push through first legislative response to January 6 Capitol attack by week’s end | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Lawmakers reached an agreement to include in must-pass legislation a measure aimed at making it harder to overturn a certified presidential election, marking the first legislative response to the US Capitol insurrection and then-President Donald Trump’s relentless pressure campaign to stay in power despite his 2020 loss.

    Several congressional sources told CNN that the legislation – to overhaul the 1887 Electoral Count Act – will be added to a bill to fund the federal government before Friday’s deadline to avoid a shutdown. If it becomes law, as is expected, the vice president’s role would be clarified to be completely ceremonial while overseeing the certification of the electoral result. It also would raise the threshold in Congress to make it harder for lawmakers to force votes attempting to overturn a state’s certified result and prevent efforts to pass along fake electors to Congress. The House select committee investigating the US Capitol attack on January 6, 2021, called for the bill’s passage in a summary of its report released Monday.

    The bill is a result of intense bipartisan negotiations over several months that won over the support of top Republicans, including Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, but has drawn pushback from House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy. With Republicans set to take control of the House within days, lawmakers pressed to send the bill to President Joe Biden’s desk knowing its fate is likely doomed in the next Congress.

    One part of the legislation is focused on modernizing and overhauling the Electoral Count Act, an 1887 law that Trump had sought to exploit and create confusion over how Congress counts Electoral College votes from each state. As part of that proposal, senators are attempting to clarify that the vice president only has a ceremonial role in overseeing the certification of the electoral results.

    The bill includes a number of changes aimed at making sure that Congress can clearly “identify a single, conclusive slate of electors from each state,” the fact sheet says.

    This comes as revelations surfaced about an effort by Trump allies to subvert the Electoral College process and install fake GOP electors in seven key states.

    The legislation creates a set of stipulations designed to make it harder for there to be any confusion over the accurate electors. For example, it states that each state’s governor would be responsible for submission of a certificate that identifies electors. Congress would not be able to accept a slate of electors submitted by any other official. “This reform would address the potential for multiple state officials to send Congress competing slates,” the fact sheet states.

    While constitutional experts say the vice president currently can’t disregard a state-certified electoral result, Trump pushed then-Vice President Mike Pence to obstruct the Electoral College certification in Congress as part of his pressure campaign. But Pence refused to do so and, as a result, became a target of the former President and his mob of supporters who stormed the Capitol on January 6.

    The proposal “raises the threshold to lodge an objection to electors to at least one-fifth of the duly chosen and sworn members of both the House of Representatives and the Senate.” Currently, only one member of each body is required to make an objection.

    Final legislative text of the sweeping government funding bill has not yet been formally unveiled but is expected to be released imminently as lawmakers race the clock to avert a shutdown at the end of the week.

    The expectation on Capitol Hill is that Congress will be able to avoid a shutdown, but pressure is on for lawmakers as congressional leaders have little room for error given the tight timeline they are facing. Government funding is currently set to expire on Friday at midnight.

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  • 5 things to know for December 19: Jan. 6, Twitter, World Cup, Immigration, Turbulence | CNN

    5 things to know for December 19: Jan. 6, Twitter, World Cup, Immigration, Turbulence | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    When you make a purchase at a coffee shop or casual eatery, an employee usually spins around a touch screen to show you suggested tip amounts – typically between 10% and 25%. Then, there’s an awkward moment as the worker (directly across from you) waits to see how much you tip while customers behind you peer over your shoulder. You then choose the highest option, reluctantly. It’s a familiar scenario that many people grapple with nowadays, and more shoppers are saying they feel stressed that a generous tip has become an etiquette norm instead of a low-pressure decision. Here’s what else you need to know to Get Up to Speed and On with Your Day.

    (You can get “5 Things You Need to Know Today” delivered to your inbox daily. Sign up here.)

    The January 6 committee investigating the 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol is set to make announcements today about criminal referrals to the Justice Department. The panel has weighed criminal referrals for former President Donald Trump and several members of his inner circle. A referral is a recommendation that the Justice Department investigate whether to charge the people in question, but the move is largely symbolic because it doesn’t obligate federal prosecutors to bring such a case. Whether the Justice Department brings charges will depend on whether the facts and the evidence support a prosecution, Attorney General Merrick Garland has said. Garland will make the ultimate call on any charging decisions.

    Elon Musk says he will step down as Twitter’s CEO if he’s voted out by a poll he tweeted Sunday. According to the poll, the option “yes” won by a margin of 57% to 43% – and Musk has said he would abide by the results. In several follow-up tweets, Musk suggested he was serious about leaving and made a vague threat about Twitter’s future if he is voted out. “As the saying goes, be careful what you wish, as you might get it,” Musk tweeted. Since buying Twitter for $44 billion and taking over as CEO in late October, Musk has been embroiled in numerous controversies for causing abrupt changes to platform and its workforce. The most recent change came over the weekend when Twitter banned links to certain other social media platforms, including Facebook and Instagram. The controversial policy was removed less than 24 hours after its initial introduction.

    Hear how Musk responded to journalists before he hung up mid-question

    Argentina won the 2022 World Cup on Sunday, beating France via a penalty shootout in one of the most thrilling finals in tournament history. Argentine soccer legend Lionel Messi dazzled in his last World Cup match, scoring twice, making tournament history and finally hoisting the trophy. The streets of Buenos Aires were awash with blue and white as people poured out to celebrate. While the match in Qatar ended in glory for Messi as a fitting culmination of his extraordinary career, it was a sad outcome for France’s superstar Kylian Mbappé. France made a stunning comeback to force the final to extra time, but was unable to secure the win, falling short of becoming the first team to win back-to-back World Cup titles in 60 years. Now the countdown begins to the next men’s World Cup in 2026. It will be held in the US, Mexico and Canada.

    stefano pozzebon argentina world cup

    Fans in Argentina douse reporter while celebrating World Cup win

    As border authorities try to prepare for the scheduled lifting of Title 42 on Wednesday, officials in the Rio Grande Valley say they have encountered between 900 and 1,200 migrants daily during the past two weeks. These numbers are reminiscent of the 2019 surge, when agents at the border encountered at least 1,000 migrants a day, according to a federal law enforcement source. The termination of the Title 42 policy is expected to lead to an increase in border crossings since authorities will no longer be able to quickly expel migrants as has been done since March 2020. Meanwhile, two buses carrying migrants arrived in New York City on Sunday and up to 15 more are expected in the next few days. The city’s shelter system is already at capacity and should expect more than 1,000 additional asylum-seekers to arrive every week, Mayor Eric Adams said. Denver, Colorado, is also struggling to provide shelter for a growing number of migrants.

    At least 36 people on a Hawaiian Airlines flight were injured after their plane encountered “severe turbulence” on a flight from Phoenix to Honolulu on Sunday, authorities said. The turbulence occurred 15 to 30 minutes before the plane landed in Honolulu, carrying 278 passengers and 10 crew. Twenty passengers were taken to emergency rooms, and 11 patients were in serious condition, Honolulu Emergency Medical Services said in a statement Sunday. Among those transported to the hospital was a 14-month-old child. The patients’ injuries included a serious head injury, lacerations, bruising and loss of consciousness, Honolulu EMS said. One passenger, a college student on her way home for winter break, told CNN the turbulence escalated suddenly and “felt like free-falling.”

    Thai warship sinks in severe weather, leaving 31 crew missing

    A Royal Thai Navy warship sank in severe weather early today, leaving 31 of its crew of 106 sailors missing in stormy seas in the Gulf of Thailand, Thai authorities said. Search and rescue operations are underway for the missing crew. The 252-foot long vessel was built in the US and commissioned into the Thai Royal Navy in 1987. A retired US Navy captain said the Thai crew faced a difficult situation on such an old ship.

    ‘Avatar: Way of Water’ has earned $435 million at the global box office

    The highly anticipated “Avatar” sequel is packing theaters – but needs to make another $2 billion to break even with its expensive production cost.

    Rihanna shares first images of baby boy

    The wait is over. The musician and entrepreneur posted this cute video of her son “hacking” her phone.

    Why we can’t get enough of the ‘Wednesday’ dance

    Hello, my dear storm clouds. Glad to know I’m not the only one still dying over Wednesday Addams and this iconic scene from the Netflix series.

    Cecily Strong bids farewell to ‘Saturday Night Live’

    The actress’ departure is another gut-punch to the show’s lineup. Watch some of the emotional moments from her farewell here.

    Pope Francis orders Vatican to return Parthenon sculptures to Greece

    These 2,500-year-old sculptures have been held in the Vatican for more than a century. The pope is now giving them to the Greek Orthodox Church.

    1,500

    That’s how many exotic fish spilled into a Berlin hotel lobby after a giant aquarium burst into shards, injuring at least two people. None of the fish survived, officials said, adding that the cause of the incident is being investigated. The aquarium was 46 feet high and on display in the foyer of a Radisson Collection Hotel. 

    “Together, we must stand up against the disturbing rise in antisemitism. And together, we must stand up against bigotry in any of its forms. Our democracy depends on it.”

    – US Attorney General Merrick Garland, speaking out against antisemitism at the National Menorah lighting Sunday night in New York City. The world’s largest menorah was lit to mark the start of Hanukkah, the Jewish festival of lights. Jewish families around the world will light a candle in a menorah every night for eight nights to commemorate the victory of the Maccabees over the Syrians and the re-dedication of the Second Temple of Jerusalem around 165 BC.

    rain and snow

    Severe storm and tornado threat continues for South as North sees more snow


    03:07

    – Source:
    CNN

    Check your local forecast here>>>

    The reason why your doughnut box is pink

    What do you prefer in the morning: bagels or doughnuts? Even if you’re firmly “Team Bagel,” you may make a switch after learning about the sweet history of pink doughnut boxes. (Click here to view) 

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  • January 6 committee considering how to handle uncooperative GOP lawmakers, Schiff says | CNN Politics

    January 6 committee considering how to handle uncooperative GOP lawmakers, Schiff says | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Rep. Adam Schiff, a member of the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, said Sunday the panel is considering how to hold accountable the GOP lawmakers who defied their subpoenas.

    “We will also be considering what’s the appropriate remedy for members of Congress who ignore a congressional subpoena, as well as the evidence that was so pertinent to our investigation and why we wanted to bring them in,” the California Democrat told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.”

    “That will be something we will be considering tomorrow,” Schiff added, noting that the panel has weighed whether it is better to criminally refer members of Congress to other parts of the federal government or if Congress should “police its own.” Such congressional mechanisms could include censure and referrals to the House Ethics Committee.

    Five House Republicans have been subpoenaed by the January 6 panel: GOP leader Kevin McCarthy and Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio, Mo Brooks of Alabama, Andy Biggs of Arizona and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania.

    The select committee is set to hold its final public hearing on Monday and release its full report on Wednesday.

    The panel is expected to announce it will refer at least three criminal charges against former President Donald Trump to the Justice Department, including insurrection, obstruction of an official proceeding and conspiracy to defraud the federal government, according to a source familiar with the matter.

    The impact House referrals could have remains unclear because the Department of Justice special counsel investigation is already examining Trump in its extensive probe into January 6.

    But in addition to criminal referrals, January 6 committee Chairman Bennie Thompson told reporters that the panel could issue five to six other categories of referrals, such as ethics referrals to the House Ethics Committee, bar discipline referrals and campaign finance referrals.

    “Censure was something that we have considered. Ethics referrals is something we have considered,” Schiff said Sunday, noting that the committee will disclose its decision Monday.

    CNN previously reported that the panel has also weighed criminal referrals for a number of Trump’s closest allies, including former Trump attorney John Eastman, former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, former DOJ official Jeffrey Clark and former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, according to multiple sources.

    Schiff reiterated Sunday that he believes there is evidence that Trump committed criminal offenses related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

    “Viewing it as a former prosecutor, I think there’s sufficient evidence to charge the president,” he said. “The evidence seems pretty plain to me.”

    “This is someone who, in multiple ways, tried to pressure state officials to find votes that didn’t exist. This is someone who tried to interfere with a joint session, even inciting a mob to attack the Capitol. If that’s not criminal, then I don’t know what is,” he added.

    Schiff declined to comment on the specific charges the committee is planning to refer to the Justice Department as it relates to the former president, but he made clear he thinks Trump violated multiple criminal statutes, including one for insurrection.

    “If you look at Donald Trump’s acts and you match them up against the statute, it’s a pretty good match,” Schiff told Tapper when asked specifically about a charge of insurrection.

    “I think the president has violated multiple criminal laws. And I think you have to be treated like any other American who breaks the law, and that is, you have to be prosecuted,” he said.

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  • Trump calls on his supporters to stand down on McCarthy opposition | CNN Politics

    Trump calls on his supporters to stand down on McCarthy opposition | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Donald Trump has weighed in on the contentious battle confronting GOP leader Kevin McCarthy in his bid to be the chamber’s next speaker, with the former president calling on his supporters in Congress to halt their opposition tactics against McCarthy and stop “playing a very dangerous game.”

    “Look, I think this: Kevin has worked very hard. I think he deserves the shot,” Trump said Friday in an interview with Breitbart News. “Hopefully he’s going to be very strong and going to be very good and he’s going to do what everybody wants.”

    The former president cited the scenario from 2015, when then-House Speaker John Boehner resigned after clashes with conservative GOP hard-liners and was then replaced by Paul Ryan.

    “It’s a very dangerous game. Some bad things could happen. Look, we had Boehner and he was a strange person but we ended up with Paul Ryan who was ten times worse,” Trump told Breitbart. “Paul Ryan was an incompetent speaker. I think he goes down as the worst speaker in history.”

    McCarthy is in a fight for the speakership with five hardline Republicans opposing him. With House Republicans holding 222 seats in the next Congress, such opposition would deny him the 218 votes he’d need to be elected speaker.

    McCarthy has negotiated behind closed doors over chamber rules that his detractors want to weaken the speakership, including allowing an individual member to call for a vote to oust the speaker. That’s something the California Republican has resisted so far.

    McCarthy and Trump had a brief falling out following the January 6, 2021, insurrection, with McCarthy even suggesting on a private phone call that was recorded that Trump should resign. But the two quickly made amends with McCarthy traveling to meet Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida just a few weeks later.

    In his interview with Breitbart, Trump didn’t name those lawmakers who oppose McCarthy’s speakership bid but said he is “friendly” with many of them and they are supporters of his.

    “I’m friendly with a lot of those people who are against Kevin. I think almost every one of them are very much inclined toward Trump, and me toward them. But I have to tell them, and I have told them, you’re playing a very dangerous game,” Trump said. “You could end up with some very bad situations. I use the Boehner to Paul Ryan example. You understand what I’m saying? It could be a doomsday scenario.”

    McCarthy said Friday that the five conservative holdouts – Reps. Matt Gaetz of Florida, Andy Biggs of Arizona, Ralph Norman of South Carolina, Bob Good of Virginia and Matt Rosendale of Montana – have not budged in their opposition to him and offered dire warnings that House Republicans’ hard-fought narrow majority could be derailed if they don’t bend.

    “We’re still continuing to talk, but they have not moved,” McCarthy told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, taking to the airwaves to argue that the detractors threaten to put the entire House Republican agenda in peril and that basic decisions on legislating and investigating will be “all in jeopardy.”

    McCarthy’s comments represent a sharp escalation in his public pressure campaign against critics, including Biggs, who last week announced his own bid for the speaker’s gavel.

    And Trump isn’t the only one signaling to House Republicans to get in order. The conservative-leaning editorial board of The Wall Street Journal wrote Saturday that those looking to take down McCarthy “don’t seem to have any constructive reason to oppose Mr. McCarthy beyond a desire to grab the media spotlight or blow everything up.”

    Delving into “GOP dysfunction since Election Day,” the editorial board said, “Republicans are the gang that couldn’t shoot straight – except at one another.”

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  • Georgia grand jury investigating Trump election interference is winding down and has begun writing final report | CNN Politics

    Georgia grand jury investigating Trump election interference is winding down and has begun writing final report | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    A special grand jury investigating efforts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia is winding down its work, according to sources familiar with the matter.

    The Atlanta-area special grand jury has largely finished hearing witness testimony and has already begun writing its final report, the sources said, an indication that prosecutors will soon be deciding whether to seek criminal charges and against whom.

    In Georgia, special grand juries are not authorized to issue indictments. The final report serves as a mechanism for the panel to recommend whether Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis should pursue indictments in her election interference investigation. Willis could then go to a regularly empaneled grand jury to seek indictments.

    “It’s a significant step, it’s the culmination of work by prosecutors and the special grand jury. But it shouldn’t be taken as any kind of guarantee of a conviction down the road,” said Michael J. Moore, former US attorney for the Middle District of Georgia. “It’s just the beginning.”

    Prosecutors had hoped to move ahead with indictments as early as December, sources previously told CNN. But court fights for testimony from high-profile witnesses, such as South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn and former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows – all of whom were ordered to testify before the special grand jury – have likely shifted indictments to 2023, according to a person familiar with the situation.

    Willis has already informed Rudy Giuliani and 16 Republicans who served as pro-Trump fake electors in the state that they are targets of her investigation. She has also been scrutinizing Trump and other top lieutenants, including Meadows.

    The next phase in the Georgia investigation comes at a politically and legally perilous time for Trump. His nascent 2024 presidential campaign is off to a sputtering start, and he is under Justice Department scrutiny both for his handling of classified government documents after leaving the White House and for his activities surrounding the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol and efforts to upend the 2020 election results. Federal investigators are also scrutinizing several Trump associates who were involved in the unsuccessful effort to overturn the presidential election.

    Some outside legal experts have cautioned, though, that any case against Trump would be far from a slam dunk.

    When there’s a public case, “the games begin. It will be fought in the court of law and the court of public opinion,” Moore said.

    If prosecutors hope to bring a successful case against Trump or his allies, they will have to prove that their activities extended well beyond the usual efforts to win an election and veered into criminal territory.

    “I just think when you’re taking on a political figure like this, it’s a tougher case,” Moore said. “Every candidate wants to win, every candidate does everything they can to win, and they explore every option.”

    Willis has already spent more than a year digging into Trump and his associates, kicking off her investigation in early 2021, soon after a January call became public in which Trump pressured Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” the votes necessary for Trump to win the Peach State in the presidential election.

    Trump lost to Joe Biden in Georgia by nearly 12,000 votes in 2020. The former president has insisted that there was nothing problematic about his activities contesting the 2020 election in Georgia and has referred to his call with Raffensperger as a “perfect” phone call.

    Willis’ investigation has long since expanded beyond the call to encompass false election fraud claims made to state lawmakers; the fake elector scheme; efforts by unauthorized individuals to access voting machines in one Georgia county; and threats and harassment against election workers.

    The special grand jury – made up of 23 jurors and three alternates – was seated in May 2022, with the power to subpoena witnesses and documents and otherwise investigate the effort to subvert Georgia’s presidential election results. The panel is authorized to continue its work until May 2023, but Willis has signaled for months that she hoped to conclude the grand jury’s investigative work well before then.

    A spokesman for the district attorney’s office declined to comment. A Trump spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.

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  • The real revelation from the ‘Twitter Files’: Content moderation is messy | CNN Business

    The real revelation from the ‘Twitter Files’: Content moderation is messy | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Before then-President Donald Trump was banned from Twitter after the Capitol riot last January, there was a debate among some employees about what to do with the company’s most prominent and controversial user.

    Some employees questioned whether Trump’s final tweets on the platform actually violated the company’s policies, according to internal documents. Others asked if the tweets could be considered veiled (or “coded”) efforts to dodge Twitter’s rules and requested research to better understand how users might interpret them.

    The high-stakes debate among several employees, including several top execs, was revealed earlier this week in the latest edition of the “Twitter Files,” a tranche of internal company documents provided to and tweeted out by several journalists unaffiliated with major news organizations. The releases so far have focused on some of the social media company’s most high-profile, and controversial, content moderation decisions.

    The Twitter Files reports appear aimed at calling into question the integrity of Twitter’s former leadership and riling up the right-leaning user base that new owner Elon Musk has increasingly courted. The latest release, for example, appeared to imply that Twitter executives had sidestepped the platform’s rules when deciding to ban Trump and instead sought a justification to support a partisan decision they’d already made. That interpretation, while not fully supported by the documents, was echoed by Musk, who has cheered and seemingly sanctioned the release of the documents. But outside of Musk’s core base, reaction to the Twitter Files, which provide little new insight into the company’s policy and decision-making, has been largely muted.

    Strip away the spectacle and partisan discord and what the Twitter Files show is something that is arguably both far less explosive but nonetheless should give all users pause, regardless of where they sit on the political spectrum. In the absence of meaningful coordination or government oversight, a select few powerful tech platforms are left to make incredibly impactful and difficult decisions around content moderation — and, even when well intentioned, the people at these companies often struggle with how messy that process can be.

    In moments of crisis, platforms are generally on their own to determine how to weigh sometimes competing priorities — protecting speech versus protecting users — and often under immense public scrutiny and with pressure to act quickly. These companies have created extensive platform guidelines, set up content moderation councils, partnered with fact-checkers and invested heavily in artificial intelligence, but at the end of the day, it can still just be a group of employees trying to sort through unprecedented decisions such as whether or not to ban a sitting US president.

    “There’s no decision that’s cost free,” said Matt Perault, tech policy consultant and professor at University of North Carolina’s School of Information and Library Science. “The challenge is that any decision [social media companies] make, including the decision not to act, will have consequences and they need to figure out which consequences they’re comfortable with … I do think it is much harder than most people seem to think it would be.”

    The process doesn’t necessarily always yield the right result. Former Twitter head of trust and safety Yoel Roth has acknowledged the company may not have made the right call in how to handle the 2020 New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop. And Twitter founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey reiterated in an online post Tuesday that he believes the company acted wrongly in removing Trump’s account.

    “We did the right thing for the public company business at the time, but the wrong thing for the internet and society,” Dorsey wrote, although he added, “I continue to believe there was no ill intent or hidden agendas, and everyone acted according to the best information we had at the time. Of course mistakes were made.”

    Monday’s Twitter Files released from journalist Bari Weiss appeared to present screenshots showing Twitter employees debating how to handle Trump’s tweets in the wake of the January 6, 2021, Capitol attack as proof that the company’s leadership wanted to sidestep its rules to ban Trump. But the screenshots could also be interpreted as showing a group of employees challenging each other to find the best possible way to apply the company’s rules during a critical moment that no one could have perfectly prepared for.

    The process of involving multiple staffers and teams and relying on research for high-profile decisions does not appear out of line with how Twitter and other social platforms make content moderation decisions, especially in crisis situations.

    “This is how the whole process went … this is not really out of the ordinary,” one former Twitter executive told CNN, noting that the various teams involved in content decisions would push each other to consider context and information they might not have thought of as they worked through how to handle difficult issues. “I think these conversations look like people were trying to be really thoughtful and careful,” the former executive said.

    It’s not just Twitter that wrestles with tough decisions, including around Trump. Meta also had a monthslong back-and-forth with its internal team and its external oversight board about its own decision to suspend Trump on Facebook and Instagram.

    The Files also point to several instances in which Twitter leaders changed, or considered changing, the company’s policies as evidence that they had ulterior motives. For example, there was a screenshot of a Slack message from an unnamed employee the day after Trump’s ban discussing a desire to address medical misinformation and “getting to a place of improved maturity in how our policies are actualized.” But examining emergent concerns and considering whether they might require new or updated policies seems to be precisely the job of social media trust and safety teams.

    The “Twitter Files” threads appear to have been written “with a very clear agenda,” the former executive said. “What they seem to have missed … is just how much power and influence was sitting on the shoulders of a very small number of people.”

    Even Dorsey in his Tuesday night post called for a radical overhaul of how social media works that would involve taking away the power of big social media platforms, including the one he co-founded. “I generally think companies have become far too powerful,” Dorsey said. He added that he is pushing for the growth of decentralized social media that is not controlled by any one corporation or individual, and where users can choose their own forms of content moderation.

    Still, the Twitter Files reports show just how many of the company’s employees and teams were involved in the deliberations over difficult content decisions. According to the former Twitter executive, that was by design. “Twitter’s process was designed to make sure that the decision doesn’t come down to just one person,” they said. “The alternative is that you wait until Jack Dorsey decides he doesn’t like somebody and you take it down.”

    And despite the often-charged rhetoric about the people making content decisions at social media companies, “the people who do this work are thoughtful, are skilled,” Perault said. “They’re deeply connected to the technology, to the products, to the social implications of their products.”

    The process under Musk now appears to be much different — the new Twitter owner has fired many of the employees that had been responsible for safety on the platform, he’s used easily-manipulated Twitter polls to justify major content rulings, he’s done away with Twitter’s council of outside trust and safety experts and he’s based at least one decision on who to allow on the platform on his personal feelings.

    It’s hard to argue that process isn’t messy, too.

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  • January 6 defendant arrested for allegedly planning to kill FBI agents who had investigated him | CNN Politics

    January 6 defendant arrested for allegedly planning to kill FBI agents who had investigated him | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    A Tennessee man already facing charges in connection with the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol was arrested for allegedly planning to kill FBI agents, including those who had been investigating him, the Justice Department announced Friday.

    Edward Kelley, who was previously charged with assaulting an officer during the Capitol riot, and Austin Carter, also from Tennessee, have been charged with conspiracy, retaliating against a federal official, interstate threats and solicitation to commit a crime of violence.

    According to an affidavit, Kelley and Carter had a list of names of 37 law enforcement members to assassinate.

    The list noted which officers were involved in Kelley’s arrest in May in Knoxville, Tennessee, on the January 6-related charges or present during the search of his home, and it included some of their phone numbers, according to the affidavit.

    An “acquaintance” of Kelley and Carter gave the list to police and began cooperating with investigators, according to the affidavit.

    CNN has reached out to Kelley’s attorney. Carter’s attorney, Joshua Hedrick, told CNN in a statement, “Our investigation is only just beginning, but we are looking forward to providing a zealous defense of Mr. Carter, who has asserted his innocence.”

    In a news release Friday, the Justice Department said Kelley not only discussed attacking law enforcement agents with Carter and their unnamed acquaintance, but also planned to attack the FBI’s Knoxville, Tennessee Field Office.

    “If I’m extradited to DC or you don’t hear about my status within 24 or 48 hours..if they are coming to arrest me again, start it,” Kelley told the acquaintance during a recorded call Wednesday, according to the affidavit. “You guys are taking them out at their office. What you and [Carter] need to do is recruit as many as you can…and you’re going to attack their office.”

    When the acquaintance asked if Carter was in support of part of Kelley’s plans, Carter told the individual that “this is the time, add up or put up” and “to definitely make sure you got everything racked, locked up and loaded.”

    Kelley and Carter will remain detained pending further hearings.

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  • How the Arab world’s most populous country became addicted to debt | CNN Business

    How the Arab world’s most populous country became addicted to debt | CNN Business

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    Editor’s Note: A version of this story appears in today’s Meanwhile in the Middle East newsletter, CNN’s three-times-a-week look inside the region’s biggest stories. Sign up here.



    CNN
     — 

    Egypt has dug itself a massive hole of debt. On Friday, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) will extend a $3 billion loan to the country, a fourth aid package in six years, as its financial tailspin continues.

    The loan, along with billions of dollars in cash inflows from Abu Dhabi and Riyadh, are Band-Aids, experts say, designed to keep the Arab world’s most populous country afloat. Without proper reforms, however, Egypt may never be able to shake off its chronic financial woes and break its growing debt addiction.

    In recent months, the Egyptian pound has plummeted, losing 14.5% of its value against the US dollar in October. The prices of vegetables, dairy products and bread skyrocketed. Some families are restricting their diets as their purchasing power shrinks, while others struggle to find imported products once available at their local stores.

    In a country with a long history of political tension and a fast-growing population – currently 104 million people – the repercussions of economic pain can be far-reaching. When millions of Egyptian protesters toppled former President Hosni Mubarak during the 2011 Arab Spring, “Bread, freedom and social justice” was among the most popular chants.

    Egypt’s main Gulf Arab backers recognize what’s at stake here. Billions of dollars from Abu Dhabi and Riyadh have poured into the Egyptian economy in recent years. Both the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia saw giant windfalls on the back of this year’s high oil prices. They’ve used some of that money to bolster the economies of their allies in the Middle East.

    In August, Abu Dhabi Developmental Holding Company (ADQ), one of the emirate’s wealth funds, announced a number of investments in publicly listed companies in Egypt, “building on its long-term commitment to investing in the country’s economic growth through its $20 billion joint strategic investment platform,” it said in a statement.

    Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) also launched the Saudi Egyptian Investment Company (SEIC) in August, a company dedicated to investments in several vital sectors of the Egyptian economy. SEIC has bought $1.3 billion dollars’ worth of shares in four Egyptian businesses.

    Still, the Egyptian economy has struggled to shake off its economic woes. Inflation is at a five-year high, making food and other basic goods unaffordable to tens of millions of vulnerable Egyptians.

    The North African state now owes more than $52 billion to multilateral institutions, at least 44.7% of which is owed to the IMF alone.

    Its foreign debt “has more than tripled between June 2013 and March 2022, raising the external debt-to-GDP ratio from 15% to approximately more than 35%,” writes Stephan Roll, head of the Africa and Middle East Division at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) in Berlin.

    “And there is no end in sight,” he adds.

    But how did Egypt get here? The problem, analysts say, lies in Egypt’s apparent inability to change the way its economy works, including easing the tight control exerted by the military and its many enterprises. This is a problem, the experts say, that stunts private sector competition and drives away investment.

    Egypt has been on the path to debt-addiction for several years. In 2016, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi sealed a deal with the IMF granting a $12 billion loan. The bailout was granted on condition of Egypt’s currency floating freely, which ultimately slashed its value by half in a matter of weeks and pushed up inflation. Harsh austerity measures – including cuts to subsidies on fuel and electricity – were enforced to try to restore government finances.

    Despite the bailout, Egypt struggled to fully pick itself back up, with analysts attributing the repeated failures to revitalize the economy to loose agreements and the mismanagement of loans.

    “Not only are they [loans] temporary Band-Aids, they’re not conditioned in a manner that would actually push for the reforms necessary to ever allow the Egyptian economy to recover,” said Timothy Kaldas, a policy fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy.

    “Recently they [the multilateral lenders] seem to have started to finally notice that, and seem to want to see some of those reforms, but they haven’t successfully gotten the Egyptians to agree to them,” he added.

    The cash-strapped country also spends much of its funds on luxury megaprojects that critics call “unnecessary” when other sectors seem to be in dire need of support, including education and health care. Data pertaining to state spending on these projects is not available to the public.

    “Loans were not primarily used to improve the economic framework conditions but to protect the revenues and assets of the armed forces, to finance major projects in which the military could earn significant money, and to pursue an expansive military build-up,” Roll told CNN.

    Authorities have repeatedly defended the state megaprojects, arguing that they improved infrastructure, transportation and telecommunications.

    “These are projects that cannot be put to the side, as they are projects needed by the Egyptian citizen,” said Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly in a May press conference. He blamed the Covid-19 pandemic and the effects of the Ukraine war for exacerbating Egypt’s financial problems.

    Close to 30% of Egypt’s population is below the poverty line, authorities say. The World Bank in 2019 estimated that “some 60% of Egypt’s population is either poor or vulnerable,” highlighting a growing disparity between the rich and poor.

    Authorities insist they are making progress. Sisi has repeatedly called on military-owned companies to be listed on the stock exchange, but few concrete steps have been taken to liberalize those enterprises.

    In September 2019, brief and rare demonstrations broke out across Egypt, despite a strict ban on protests. They were driven primarily by economic grievances. Protesters also decried the military’s alleged influence over finances. Security forces quickly quelled the demonstrations and more than 4,000 people were arrested.

    Irish soldier killed in south Lebanon by ‘hostile mob’

    An Irish soldier on a peacekeeping mission in Lebanon was shot and killed on Wednesday when his UN convoy was attacked by a “hostile mob,” according to Irish Defense Minister Simon Coveney. Seán Rooney, 23, was shot and killed in the incident, and another Irish soldier was seriously injured.

    • Background: The convoy was conducting a “standard administrative run” between southern Lebanon and Beirut, Coveney said. The group then came under small arms fire, social media footage showed. Lebanon’s Prime Minister-designate Najib Mikati has vowed to hold the culprits accountable. According to multiple official statements, the injured troops were taken to Raee Hospital, near the city of Sidon. Rooney was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital.
    • Why it matters: The United Nations has maintained a multinational peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon since 1978, to bolster security in the tense border area between Lebanon and Israel. Irish peacekeepers have been in the country since the start of the mandate. According to Coveney, Rooney’s death was the first Irish fatality in the country in two decades. There are long-simmering tensions between the peacekeeping mission, known as UNIFIL, and locals in the region where Iran-backed Hezbollah dominates.

    Iran expelled from UN women’s rights body

    In an unprecedented move, UN member states on Wednesday voted to remove Iran from a UN women’s rights body for violating the rights of women and girls amid ongoing protests across the country.

    • Background: Twenty-nine members of the UN’s Economic and Social Council voted in favor of the resolution to remove Iran from the Commission on the Status of Women, which was proposed by the United States. Eight member states voted against the resolution with 16 abstentions. Iran condemned the move, calling it an “illegal request” that weakens the rule of law in the UN.
    • Why it matters: Iran had just started a four-year term on the 45-member Commission on the Status of Women, which aims to promote gender equality worldwide. Women in Iran have played a vital role in nationwide demonstrations that erupted in September, but have also allegedly been a target of state violence. Last month, CNN revealed covert testimonies by protesters documenting sexual assault and rape in Iranian detention centers.

    Istanbul’s mayor sentenced to jail and faces possible political ban

    Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu – the most popular rival of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan – was sentenced to nearly three years in jail on Wednesday for insulting public officials. He could face a political ban if the conviction is upheld by an appeals court.

    • Background: After the court convicted Imamoglu to two years, 7 months and 15 days in prison, his first response to the ruling was defiant. “A handful of people cannot take away the authority given by the will of the people,” the mayor said. “With God’s will, our struggle begins even stronger.” Imamoglu won a rerun election for Istanbul mayor in June 2019 after the first election was canceled due to irregularities.
    • Why it matters: The decision could bar him from running in the 2023 presidential elections, where he would compete with Turkey’s long-time president. Thousands protested the ruling on Thursday, chanting slogans against Erdogan and his AK party, Reuters reported.

    Defending champion France ended Morocco’s 2022 World Cup dream on Wednesday after a 2-0 victory at the Al Bayt Stadium.

    Theo Hernández scored on five minutes with an acrobatic finish, with substitute Randal Kolo Muani tapping home late on as France reached its fourth World Cup final just four years after winning in Russia.

    But Morocco, the first African team to reach the semifinal stage of the World Cup, can go home with its head held high after running France close before Kolo Muani’s decisive strike.

    Having captured the hearts and minds of the footballing world, it was a sad end to Morocco’s aspirations. But it gave reigning champion France a run for its money. Morocco leaves the competition knowing it has achieved more than just success on the pitch.

    Read more:

    • A Kenyan security guard who reportedly fell while on duty at Qatar’s Lusail Stadium has died in hospital, his family and officials have confirmed to CNN. His employer had notified the migrant worker’s family on Saturday that 24-year-old John Njau Kibue had fallen from the 8th floor of the stadium while on duty. His sister Ann Wanjiru told CNN: “We don’t have the money to get justice for him, but we want to know what happened.”
    People sit together with drinks outside a venue at a Christmas market in the Christian quarter of Jerusalem's old city on Thursday.

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  • As House January 6 committee winds down, it is abandoning efforts to subpoena phone records | CNN Politics

    As House January 6 committee winds down, it is abandoning efforts to subpoena phone records | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The House select committee investigating the Capitol riot is dropping several of its pursuits for January 6-related phone records, according to court filings this week, as the panel winds down before it expires at the end of this year.

    The committee sent out dozens of subpoenas seeking call logs, including to major phone companies, as part of its investigation into Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election result. But several Trump allies sued, contesting the committee’s authority, and Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile agreed not to turn over any data to the House while those lawsuits were litigated in court. Few of the cases have been resolved.

    That means the House select committee will not be able to incorporate in its final report without some of the information it long sought about the communications of top witnesses around Donald Trump and the White House in late 2020 and January 2021. The panel plans to release the report next week.

    This week, the committee withdrew its phone-records subpoenas related to Trump adviser Sebastian Gorka, White House aide Stephen Miller, elections attorney Cleta Mitchell, conservative political activist Roger Stone, some January 6 Capitol riot defendants and Amy Harris, a photojournalist who spent time with top members of the Proud Boys around January 6, 2021, according to filings in seven House subpoena challenges that were pending in the DC District Court.

    “On December 12, 2022, Plaintiffs were informed by counsel for the Select Committee that the Select Committee will be withdrawing the subject subpoena issued by the Committee,” one court filing, from lawyers representing members of the Oath Keepers extremist group, wrote in one recent request to drop a lawsuit.

    Some of the subpoenas were issued a year ago.

    The committee declined to comment.

    While these witnesses and some others successfully blocked the committee from obtaining their phone records, the panel was able to access unprecedented amounts of information in their investigation, including through other phone records subpoenas, other document requests and witness interviews. Some of that information was on display in a series of public hearings over the summer.

    Even after the public hearings, the committee tried to collect more data as it wrapped up its work this year. For example, the committee won access to Arizona GOP Chairwoman Kelli Ward’s phone data after she lost a challenge in court and the Supreme Court declined to get involved.

    But they never got all of the phone records they sought from former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, who over the past year became one of the committee’s top pursuits.

    After turning over some 2,000 text messages to the committee, Meadows lost a court case challenging committee subpoenas for his phone records and for his testimony. Yet Meadows is still trying to challenge those subpoenas in court, leaving the House with little ability to force him to testify before the end of the Congress.

    Another subpoena target, Stop the Steal organizer Ali Alexander, said in a statement the committee had informed his lawyer it is withdrawing a subpoena for his phone records. He has been challenging the subpoena to Verizon for his phone logs since last December. Alexander noted that he did testify for hours before the committee and later before a federal grand jury investigating January 6 and efforts to overturn the election.

    “I did nothing wrong except to exercise my First Amendment rights to protest the fraud that occurred in the 2020 election,” Alexander said in the statement.

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  • Congress has so much to do before Christmas | CNN Politics

    Congress has so much to do before Christmas | CNN Politics

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    A version of this story appears in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.



    CNN
     — 

    It is the most productive time of year on Capitol Hill – after the election and before Republicans take over the House of Representatives – when the current Congress tries to cram some of its most vital work into a few short weeks.

    The US government is up against some hard deadlines, a narrow timeline and a whole lot of unfinished business.

    Lawmakers need to avert a government shutdown, authorize Pentagon policy, decide what to do with former President Donald Trump’s tax returns and wrap up the work of the House January 6, 2021, committee.

    If they can find the time, lawmakers could also raise the debt ceiling and safeguard future elections.

    Here’s what to watch for in the twilight of 2022:

    First, the government runs out of authority to spend money on Friday, December 16. The House and Senate will have to act before then to avert a government shutdown.

    Second, the newly elected Congress will be sworn in on January 3. Republicans will then be in charge of the House, and Democrats will have a narrow 51-49 majority in the Senate. Everything resets in the new Congress, and lawmakers will have to start from scratch on anything they don’t finish up this month.

    Rather than pass a dozen funding bills in turn, lawmakers are poised to roll all the spending bills for the massive federal government into one bill that could approach or exceed $1.5 trillion.

    The problem is that they’re still negotiating, and Republicans and Democrats in the Senate have not reached an agreement on how much the government can spend, much less the specifics. They’re still $26 billion apart, according to Republican Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama. The most likely current scenario is the House and Senate each pass short-term, one-week funding bills to keep the lights on while they continue to hash out the larger funding bill.

    While officials have emphasized a government shutdown is unlikely, federal agencies have been warned to prepare for one per standard procedure.

    One major looming question is whether Senate Republicans and Democrats can agree on a bill to fund the government for a full year or whether they have to punt to the next Congress. Democrats will want to avoid that fate since the GOP-controlled House will likely insist on spending cuts as soon as it can. Read more in CNN’s full report that includes reporting from Capitol Hill and the White House.

    It’s not yet clear who will lead Republicans in the House next year, much less how they would react to an immediate funding fight if only a short-term spending bill can get through by January.

    The current GOP leader, Kevin McCarthy, does not yet have the votes of many of the most conservative Freedom Caucus Republicans, and he’s being encouraged to take more concrete stands against spending. Finding a funding agreement that can pass through the House and the Senate and get President Joe Biden’s signature gets much more difficult starting January 3.

    In addition to writing checks, Congress authorizes government activity through policy bills, including the must-pass National Defense Authorization Act, which authorizes $858 billion in annual defense spending.

    It’s a sprawling endeavor, and this year’s version passed by the House gives members of the military a 4.6% pay raise, gives new support to Ukraine and NATO, and retools US air power and land defense efforts. It also rescinds a Covid-19 vaccine requirement for service members, a move that Biden has opposed.

    Senators are expected to take up the bill this week. It should get bipartisan support, but will also eat up valuable time on the Senate floor, where Democrats also want to push through judicial nominees. Read more about the defense bill.

    One thing Democrats would like to do – but probably, at this point, cannot – is raise the debt ceiling.

    Republicans, particularly in the House, plan to use the nation’s borrowing limit as a bargaining chip to force spending cuts next year. The current debt ceiling of $31.4 trillion will likely be reached in the coming weeks, which means raising it will be a major fight early in 2023.

    How much more does the government spend than it takes in? This is from a CNN Business report Monday: “For fiscal year 2023, which started in October, the government is running a deficit of $336 billion, which is $20 billion narrower than the comparable year-ago period.”

    Republicans will shut down the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, insurrection when they take control in January. GOP lawmakers plan to flip the script and investigate the committee’s activity.

    But first, the committee, which features Democrats and two anti-Trump Republicans, will issue its much-anticipated report on December 21. Also look for the committee to recommend the Department of Justice prosecute Trump or members of his inner circle.

    Meanwhile, Jack Smith, the newly appointed special counsel, has been busy ramping up a pair of criminal probes involving the former president, all of which could explode into public view if charges are ultimately brought. Read the latest on Smith’s work.

    Now that the House Ways and Means Committee has six years of Trump’s tax returns, it must figure out what to do with them in just a few weeks.

    There’s probably no time for a thorough review, and Republicans will have little appetite for a Trump tax investigation when they take control of the House.

    Democrats could move to make some of Trump’s tax information public – on top of what was already published by The New York Times in 2020. But there could be a political cost to simply releasing the returns since Democrats obtained them in order to scrutinize IRS audit policy. Read more about Trump’s taxes.

    It’s a bipartisan idea to make some major clarifications to election law and cut down on the possibility of another January 6, 2021. Read here about what’s in the bill, which is specifically designed to guard against Insurrection 2.0.

    But there may be no time to pass the proposal – there are similar but competing versions in the House and Senate. The Senate version, in particular, has bipartisan support. Republicans in the House may not be interested in the legislation once they take control in January.

    If the Electoral Count Act can pass, it could be slipped into that massive spending bill. It hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves, but this could be a good example of lawmakers working together.

    But that’s a very open question, since that massive spending bill has not yet been put together.

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  • The mass unbanning of suspended Twitter users is underway | CNN Business

    The mass unbanning of suspended Twitter users is underway | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN Business
     — 

    Thousands of previously banned Twitter users, including members of the far-right and users sharing blatant misinformation, have begun to have their accounts restored to the platform, according to an independent analysis.

    The mass restoration of accounts comes after new owner Elon Musk said late last month that he would offer “general amnesty” to many who had been removed from the platform. In following through on that commitment, however, Musk risks further alienating other users and advertisers, and exacerbating concerns among watchdog groups about the rise of hate speech on the platform under his ownership (a fact Musk has attempted to refute).

    Among those recently unbanned are a range of large and small accounts, including users promoting NFTs and cryptocurrencies, users tweeting about sports, many users tweeting in languages other than English, as well as both users that appear to be left-leaning and pro-Trump, according to observations by CNN.

    But the restored accounts also include far-right figures such as Andrew Anglin, a self-professed white supremacist who founded the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer, and Patrick Casey, who is associated with the far-right group “America First” and was subpoenaed by the House January 6 committee for his involvement in the Capitol riot.

    A number of accounts restored in recent days, including many with thousands of followers, used their first tweets in years to thank Musk for allowing them back on the platform, according to a review of their posts by CNN. Some also quickly began sharing conspiracy theories about issues such as Covid-19 and the 2020 US Presidential election.

    A data set of many of the unbanned accounts compiled by researcher and software developer Travis Brown, who worked for Twitter for a year in 2014 and last year began a project tracking hate speech on the platform, shows dozens of users who have had their bans reversed are using QAnon-related phrases or hashtags in their account bios. The dataset was built using Twitter’s API and a tool Brown had originally built to observe and track high-profile Twitter suspensions.

    The accounts that have been restored includes “a really strange mix of accounts” that includes apparent far-right extremists and QAnon adherents, but also, for example, a Miley Cyrus fan account that has been repeatedly suspended and appears aimed mostly at growing a large following, Brown said.

    But Brown added that other accounts he has observed as part of his hate speech tracking project have yet to be reinstated, raising questions about the criteria Twitter is using to restore previously banned accounts, although it’s possible Musk’s reinstatement process will take time. Many users on Twitter have also raised questions about Musk’s move last week to again suspend Kanye West, who has made numerous antisemitic comments, while restoring the accounts of other white supremacists and Neo-Nazis. In another instance, Musk tweeted that he would not restore Alex Jones’s account because of a personal preference.

    “I’ve found it really hard … to generalize about how and why certain accounts are allowed back,” Brown said.

    Twitter, which has made substantial cuts to its public relations team, did not immediately respond to a request for comment and questions on the number of previously banned accounts restored or its process for doing so.

    Musk said last month that he would begin restoring most previously banned accounts to the platform, after having polled his Twitter followers about whether to offer “general amnesty to suspended accounts, provided that they have not broken the law or engaged in egregious spam.” The poll, which garnered more than three million votes, finished with more than 72% voting in favor of the proposition. It is not clear how Musk and Twitter’s remaining staff are sorting out which accounts were banned for spam or illegal activity.

    The new Twitter owner had already begun to restore the accounts of some prominent, controversial users that had previously been banned or suspended from the platform, most notably former President Donald Trump, as well as conservative Canadian podcaster and all-beef diet promoter Jordan Peterson and the right-leaning satire website Babylon Bee.

    Some of the accounts restored in the latest wave have already raised concerns from civil rights groups. The Anti-Defamation League on Monday described as “deeply disturbing” Twitter’s decision to allow Anglin back on the platform.

    “The return of extremists to the platform has the potential to supercharge the spread of extremist content and disinformation, and this in turn could lead to the increased harassment of users,” Yael Eisenstat, vice president of ADL’s Center for Technology and Society said in a statement to CNN. “Musk’s actions to date show that he is not committed to a transparent process that incorporates the best practices we have learned from civil society groups.”

    Before taking over Twitter, Musk said he disagreed with the platform’s policy of permanent bans, which were typically doled out only after a user had received a number of “strikes” for repeatedly violating Twitter’s policies, including those against Covid-19 or civic integrity misinformation.

    Shortly after acquiring the company, Musk said he would create a “content moderation council” prior to making major changes, but there is no evidence such a group was ever formed or involved in the decisions to bring back violative accounts. Instead, Musk has appeared to make the decisions himself.

    Musk and Twitter have repeatedly stressed that the platform’s rules have not changed, despite restoring accounts that had repeatedly violated its rules and ceasing enforcement of the company’s policy prohibiting Covid-19 misinformation. In a blog post last month, Twitter said that its trust and safety team “remains strong and well-resourced, and automated detection plays an increasingly important role in eliminating abuse.” Content that violates Twitter’s rules, it added, will be demoted on the platform.

    Yoel Roth, Twitter’s former head of trust and safety who left the company following Musk’s takeover, criticized the billionaire Twitter owner’s top-down approach to content decisions in an interview with journalist Kara Swisher last month, suggesting that the platform had started to be run by “dictatorial edict rather than by a policy.” He also raised concerns about layoffs that hit Twitter’s safety teams.

    Restoring additional, previously banned accounts could exacerbate several big issues Twitter is currently facing. It could further alienate Twitter’s advertisers, many of whom have fled the platform in the wake of the chaos since Musk took over and out of fear that their ads could end up running alongside objectionable content. Musk has said the departure of key Twitter advertisers in recent weeks has led to a “massive drop in revenue” for the company.

    Ads for major brands, including Kia, Amazon, Snap and Uber, have already begun to appear alongside tweets from reinstated accounts such as Anglin’s, according to reporting from the Washington Post and observations by CNN. (Kia told CNN it “continues to monitor the evolving Twitter environment and work closely with their teams on advertisement placement and usage.” The other brands did not immediately respond to CNN’s requests for comment.)

    It could also draw more attention from Apple, which Musk previously tweeted had threatened to remove Twitter from its app store. Musk later said that the concern had been resolved following a meeting with Tim Cook, but Apple has previously shown a willingness to remove social media platforms from its app store over concerns about their ability to moderate hate speech and other potentially harmful content. Getting booted from Apple’s app store would be detrimental to Twitter’s business by making it harder for the iPhone maker’s more than one billion global customers to access the app, and difficult if not impossible for iPhone users to receive app updates.

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  • Second known protest-related execution carried out in Iran | CNN

    Second known protest-related execution carried out in Iran | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Iran has executed a second man allegedly involved in the nationwide anti-government protest movement after he was convicted of fatally stabbing two security officials last month, Mizan Online, a news agency affiliated with Iran’s judiciary, and the semi-official Tasmin news agency reported on Monday.

    Mizan Online named the man as Majidreza Rahnavard. He was convicted of “waging war against God” for reportedly killing two members of the Basij paramilitary force, and injuring four others on November 17, the outlet said. The charge of “waging war against God” carries the death penalty under the theocracy of the Islamic Republic since 1979.

    Rahnavard was hanged in a public execution in the northeastern city of Mashhad early Monday morning, it said.

    He is the second known person to be executed in connection to the 2022 protests. His death comes less than a week after Mohsen Shekari – the first known protester to be executed – who was hanged last Thursday.

    Several more Iranians have been sentenced to death by execution during the nationwide protests, which were sparked by the case of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who died after being apprehended by the state’s morality police for allegedly not wearing her hijab properly.

    Public anger over Amini’s death has combined with a range of grievances against the Islamic Republic’s oppressive regime to fuel the demonstrations even in the face of harsh punishments, and possibly the death sentence.

    CNN cannot independently verify the number of people facing executions in Iran, or the latest arrest figures or death tolls related to the protests – precise numbers are impossible for anyone outside the Iranian government to confirm.

    Last week, Amnesty International said it had identified at least 17 others, in addition to Rahnavard and Shekari, who are at risk of execution in connection to the recent protests.

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  • January 6 committee ends meeting on criminal referrals | CNN Politics

    January 6 committee ends meeting on criminal referrals | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    The House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, insurrection concluded its meeting on Sunday where members discussed criminal referrals, multiple sources told CNN.

    The subcommittee tasked with investigating criminal referrals presented its recommendations to the full panel at a 1 p.m. ET virtual meeting, but it is unclear if those recommendations were officially adopted. A source described the meeting as “successful” but did not elaborate.

    “We are as a subcommittee, several of us that were charged with making the recommendations about referrals, going to be making that recommendation to the full committee today,” panel member Rep. Adam Schiff said prior to the meeting on CBS “Face the Nation.” Members on the committee would then need to approve the recommendations.

    The panel is weighing criminal referrals for former President Donald Trump and a number of other individuals, sources say, including former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, right wing lawyer John Eastman, former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark and Trump’s former lawyer Rudy Giuliani, as CNN previously reported.

    While the referrals would largely be symbolic in nature – as the Justice Department has already undertaken a sprawling investigation into the US Capitol attack and efforts to overturn the 2020 election – committee members have stressed that the move serves as a way to document their views for the record.

    The decision has loomed large over the committee. Members of the panel have been in wide agreement that Trump and some of his closest allies have committed a crime when he pushed a conspiracy to prevent the peaceful transfer of power, as they’ve laid out in their hearings. But they have long been split over what exactly to do about it.

    “We are in common agreement about what our approach should be. I’m not ready or authorized at this point to tell you what that is,” Schiff, a California Democrat, said. “I think we are all certainly in agreement that there is evidence of criminality here. And we want to make sure that the Justice Department is aware of that.

    Committee Chair Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, told reporters Friday he expected to reach a decision on criminal referrals at Sunday’s virtual meeting. But Schiff reiterated on Sunday that the committee will wait to announce its decision until December 21, when it plans to present the rest of its report.

    Schiff stressed his view on Sunday that criminal referrals from the committee make “an important statement, not a political one, but a statement about the evidence of an attack on the institutions for our democracy and the peaceful transfer of power that Congress – examining an attack on itself – is willing to report criminality.”

    “So I think it’s an important decision in its own right if we go forward with it,” he said. “And one that the Department ought to give due consideration to.”

    This story has been updated with additional developments.

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  • At least 20 injured as protesters and police clash in Peru days after president’s ouster | CNN

    At least 20 injured as protesters and police clash in Peru days after president’s ouster | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    At least 20 people, including four police officers, were injured on Saturday in clashes between protesters and police in the southern Peruvian city of Andahuaylas in the Andes.

    The Ombudsman’s Office said on Twitter it was working with health personnel to verify if the injured had received “adequate medical care in the city hospital” but did not give details of the injuries.

    It said a number of people had been detained but did not say say how many.

    Meanwhile, the National Police reported that two police officers who were taken captive by the protesters had now been released and were being evaluated by medical personnel.

    The reason for Saturday’s protest is not yet clear, but Andahuaylas is one of several towns in the country where residents took to the streets this Friday in support of former President Pedro Castillo who was ousted earlier this week, according to information provided to the media by the Ministry of Interior.

    Castillo was removed from power on Wednesday after he attempted to dissolve Peru’s Congress and call for new elections. He was arrested for the alleged crime of rebellion and impeached by lawmakers in a single day.

    Peruvian lawmakers described the move as a coup, and a majority of the 130-person Congress voted to impeach Castillo on the same day, which ended with the swearing in of Dina Boluarte to the top position.

    Peru’s new President ruled out early elections on Thursday on her first day in office following the dramatic ousting and arrest of her predecessor.

    Castillo is also currently under a seven-day preliminary arrest ordered by the Supreme Court on Thursday after considering him as a flight risk.

    Castillo has faced a cascade of investigations on whether he used his position to benefit himself, his family and closest allies by peddling influence to gain favor or preferential treatment, among other claims.

    He has repeatedly denied all allegations and reiterated his willingness to cooperate with any investigation. He argues the allegations are a result of a witch-hunt against him and his family from groups that failed to accept his election victory.

    The Ombudsman Office reiterated its “call to the population not to resort to violent means during their protests” and asked the National Police that “any action to restore public order must be carried out within the framework of the law of use of force.”

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  • Tens of thousands protest in Bangladesh to demand resignation of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina | CNN

    Tens of thousands protest in Bangladesh to demand resignation of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina | CNN

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    New Delhi
    CNN
     — 

    Tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets of Dhaka on Saturday calling for the dissolution of parliament to make way for new elections, and demand the resignation of Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

    The mass protest in the capital was organized by the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), which accuses Hasina of failing to address rising fuel prices and the cost of living.

    Saturday’s protest comes amid a flurry of demonstrations in Bangladesh calling on Hasina to step down and demanding new elections.

    Hasina has responded by calling the opposition leaders “arson terrorists” and warned people against allowing the BNP – the largest opposition party – back into power.

    Several arrests were made in the lead up to Saturday’s protest.

    Police arrested two top BNP leaders, including party secretary general Mirza Alamgir on Friday. Authorities said Alamgir was facing charges, without giving more information.

    At least one man died during clashes between protesters and police on Wednesday when security forces fired tear gas to disperse people gathered in front of the BNP’s office in the capital.

    Hasan Mahmud, Bangladesh’s Information and Broadcasting Minister, said authorities believe the man died after being injured by [Molotov] cocktails made by the activists and blamed the BNP for “creating chaos,” according to a report in state media outlet BSS.

    The Bangladesh Election Commission has not announced a date for the next general election, which is due by the end of 2023.

    The Bangladesh Awami League, led by 75-year-old Hasina, has been in power since 2009.

    Hasina won a third consecutive term as Prime Minister in 2018 in a national election that was marred by deadly violence and allegations of rigged ballots.

    Supporters of Bangladesh's opposition party protest against the government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on December 10, 2022.

    Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director at Human Rights Watch, criticized the government’s response to the protests.

    “Concerned governments should publicly call on the prime minister to allow Bangladeshis to freely engage in peaceful political activities,” she said.

    “Sheikh Hasina should accept the challenge of democratic rule, not authoritarian abuse.”

    US Ambassador to Bangladesh Peter D. Haas said in a statement Thursday that the embassy is concerned about reports of intimidation and political violence and urged authorities to investigate and protect freedoms of expression and peaceful assembly.

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  • Julius’ Bar, the site of an essential 1960s LGBT protest, is officially a historic landmark | CNN

    Julius’ Bar, the site of an essential 1960s LGBT protest, is officially a historic landmark | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Julius’ Bar, one of New York City’s oldest LGBT bars and the location of a crucial 1960s protest, has been officially recognized as a city landmark.

    The bar was officially recognized by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission on December 6th, according to a news release from the New York City government.

    The city called the bar “one of the city’s most significant sites of LGBTQ+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer) history” in the news release.

    Julius’ was the site of the 1966 “Sip-in,” a protest against homophobic discrimination – although at the time, the bar wasn’t an explicitly LGBT space. Four men named Dick Leitsch, Craig Rodwell, John Timmons, and Randy Wicker staged the event to protest the persecution of gay men for drinking in public, according to the National Park Service. Bars and restaurants could be raided for “disorderly” conduct, which included men flirting and kissing, says the service. So bars often refused to serve clients who they knew were gay.

    At Julius’, the men announced they were gay – and the bartender refused to serve them, saying it was illegal. The men successfully brought a court case challenging that interpretation of the law. And in 1967, “the courts ruled that indecent behavior had to be more than same-sex ‘cruising’” kissing or touching,” says the National Park Service. “Gays could legally drink in a bar.”

    Julius’, located in New York City’s West Village, is a crucial piece of the city’s history: The bar has been open since the 1860s, according to the National Park Service. And today, it openly describes itself as a gay bar on its social media.

    “The ‘Sip-In’ at Julius’ was a pivotal moment in our city and our nation’s LGBTQ+ history, and this designation today marks not only that moment but also Julius’ half-century as a home for New York City’s LGBTQ+ community,” said New York City Mayor Eric Adams in the city news release. “Honoring a location where New Yorkers were once denied service solely on account of their sexuality reinforces something that should already be clear: LGBTQ+ New Yorkers are welcome anywhere in our city.”

    Council member Erik Botcher thanked the activists who pushed for the landmark designation in the release.

    “As a gay man who enjoys countless freedoms that were unimaginable in their time, I owe enormous debt to the activists who made Julius’ Bar the site of their protest.” Bottcher said in the release. “Landmarks should tell the history of all New Yorkers, including those from marginalized communities.”

    And the landmark status will help ensure the historical site is preserved for decades.

    “The Commission’s designation of the Julius’ Bar Building today recognizes and protects the site of the 1966 ‘Sip-In,’ an important early protest against the persecution of LGBTQ+ people that drew vital attention to unjust laws and practices and paved the way for future milestones in the fight for LGBTQ+ rights,” said Sarah Carroll, the landmarks preservation commission chair, in the release.

    “This building represents that history and has remained an important place to commemorate it,” she went on.

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  • The latest on Donald Trump’s many legal clouds | CNN Politics

    The latest on Donald Trump’s many legal clouds | CNN Politics

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    A version of this story appears in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.



    CNN
     — 

    Former President Donald Trump has been campaigning in between his many different court appearances for much of the year.

    But his decision to attend the first day of his $250 million civil fraud trial in New York created another opportunity to appear on camera from inside a courtroom when the judge allowed photographers to document the moment before proceedings got underway.

    Keeping track of the dizzying array of civil and criminal cases is a full-time job.

    He is charged with crimes related to conduct:

    • Before his presidency – a hush money scheme that may have helped him win the White House in 2016.
    • During his presidency – his effort to stay in the White House by overturning the 2020 election.
    • After his presidency – his treatment of classified material and alleged attempts to hide it from the National Archives.

    Trump denies any wrongdoing and has pleaded not guilty in all of the criminal cases. He alleges a “witch hunt” against him. But each trial has its own distinct storyline to follow.

    Here’s an updated list of developments in Trump’s very complicated set of court cases, beginning with the one playing out in Manhattan this week.

    The civil fraud trial, unlike Trump’s multiple criminal indictments, does not carry the danger of a felony conviction and jail time, but it could very well cost him some of his most prized possessions, including Trump Tower.

    New York Attorney General Letitia James brought the $250 million lawsuit in September 2022, alleging that Trump and his co-defendants committed repeated fraud in inflating assets on financial statements to get better terms on commercial real estate loans and insurance policies.

    Judge Arthur Engoron has already ruled that Trump and his adult sons are liable for fraud for inflating the value of his golf courses, hotels and homes on financial statements to secure loans.

    The trial portion of the case, playing out in court in Manhattan, will assess what damages will be levied against Trump and how Engoron’s decision to strip Trump of his New York business licenses will play out.

    In May, a federal jury in Manhattan found Trump sexually abused former advice columnist E. Jean Carroll in a luxury department store dressing room in the mid-1990s and awarded her about $5 million.

    A separate civil defamation lawsuit will only need to decide how much money Trump has to pay her. That case for January 15 – the same day Iowa Republicans will hold their caucuses, the first date on the presidential primary calendar.

    In August, Trump was indicted by a federal grand jury in special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the aftermath of the 2020 election. The former president was arraigned in a Washington, DC, courtroom, where he pleaded not guilty.

    The case is based in part on a scheme to create slates of fake electors in key states won by President Joe Biden.

    In late September, Judge Tanya Chutkan rejected Trump’s request that she recuse herself from the case. Chutkan, a Barack Obama appointee, has overseen civil and criminal cases related to the January 6, 2021, insurrection and has repeatedly exceeded what prosecutors have requested for convicted rioters’ prison sentences.

    Chutkan set the trial’s start date for March 4, 2024, the day before Super Tuesday, when the largest batch of presidential primaries will occur. The trial marks the first of Trump’s criminal cases expected to proceed.

    Trump has been charged in Manhattan criminal court with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to his role in a hush money payment scheme involving adult film actress Stormy Daniels late in the 2016 presidential campaign.

    The former president pleaded not guilty at his April arraignment in Manhattan.

    Prosecutors, led by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, accuse Trump of falsifying business records with the intent to conceal $130,000 in payments to Daniels made by former Trump attorney and fixer Michael Cohen to guarantee her silence about an alleged affair.

    Trump has denied having an affair with Daniels.

    The trial was originally scheduled to begin in late March 2024, but Judge Juan Merchan has suggested the date could move. The next court date is scheduled for February.

    Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is using racketeering violations to charge a broad criminal conspiracy against Trump and 18 others in their efforts to overturn Biden’s victory in Georgia.

    The probe was launched in 2021 following Trump’s call that January with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, in which the president pushed the Republican official to “find” votes to overturn the election results.

    The August indictment also includes how Trump’s team allegedly misled state officials in Georgia; organized fake electors; harassed an election worker; and breached election equipment in rural Coffee County, Georgia.

    One co-defendant, bail bondsman Scott Hall, has pleaded guilty to five counts in the case.

    Fulton County prosecutors have signaled they could offer plea deals to other co-defendants.

    Willis this week issued a subpoena to former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, a Trump ally, who in turn demanded an immunity deal in exchange for testimony.

    Trial for two co-defendants is expected to begin this month and could last three to five months. A trial date has not been set for Trump, who has pleaded not guilty.

    Federal criminal court in Florida: Mishandling classified material

    Trump has pleaded not guilty to 37 federal charges brought by Smith over his alleged mishandling of classified documents. Smith added three additional counts in a superseding indictment.

    The investigation centers on sensitive documents that Trump brought to his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida after his White House term ended in January 2021.

    The National Archives, charged with collecting and sorting presidential material, has previously said that at least 15 boxes of White House records were recovered from Mar-a-Lago, including some classified records.

    Trump was also caught on tape in a 2021 meeting in Bedminster, New Jersey, where the former president discussed holding secret documents he did not declassify.

    Smith’s additional charges allege that Trump and his employees attempted to delete Mar-a-Lago security footage sought by the grand jury investigating the mishandling of the records.

    Trial is not expected until May, after most presidential primaries have concluded.

    There are other cases to note:

    Trump’s namesake business, the Trump Organization, was convicted in December by a New York jury of tax fraud, grand larceny and falsifying business records in what prosecutors say was a 15-year scheme to defraud tax authorities by failing to report and pay taxes on compensation provided to employees.

    Manhattan prosecutors told a jury the case was about “greed and cheating,” laying out a scheme within the Trump Organization to pay high-level executives in perks such as luxury cars and apartments without paying taxes on them.

    Former Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg pleaded guilty to his role in the tax scheme. He was released after serving four months in jail at Rikers Island.

    Several members of the US Capitol Police and Washington, DC, Metropolitan Police are suing Trump, saying his words and actions incited the 2021 riot.

    The various cases accuse Trump of directing assault and battery; aiding and abetting assault and battery; and violating Washington laws that prohibit the incitement of riots and disorderly conduct.

    In August, Trump requested to put on hold the lawsuit related to the death of Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, citing his various criminal trials. The estate of Sicknick, who died after responding to the attack on the Capitol, is suing two rioters involved in the attack and Trump for his alleged role in egging it on.

    Other lawsuits have been put on hold while a federal appeals court considers whether Trump had absolute immunity as the sitting president.

    Former top FBI counterintelligence official Peter Strzok, who was fired in 2018 after the revelation that he criticized Trump in text messages, sued the Justice Department, alleging he was terminated improperly.

    In summer 2017, former special counsel Robert Mueller removed Strzok from his team investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election after an internal investigation revealed texts with former FBI lawyer Lisa Page that could be read as exhibiting political bias.

    Strzok and Page were constant targets of verbal attacks by Trump and his allies, part of the larger ire the then-president expressed toward the FBI during the Russia investigation. Trump repeatedly and publicly called for Strzok’s ouster until he was fired in August 2018.

    Trump is set to be deposed this month as part of the case, according to Politico.

    A federal judge dismissed Trump’s lawsuit against Hillary Clinton, the Democratic National Committee, several ex-FBI officials and more than two dozen other people and entities that he claims conspired to undermine his 2016 campaign with fabricated information tying him to Russia.

    “What (Trump’s lawsuit) lacks in substance and legal support it seeks to substitute with length, hyperbole, and the settling of scores and grievances,” US District Judge Donald Middlebrooks wrote.

    Trump appealed the decision, but Middlebrooks also ruled that the former president and his attorneys are liable for nearly $1 million in sanctions for bringing the case.

    Trump launched a Hail Mary bid in July to revive the sprawling lawsuit, relying on a recent report from special counsel John Durham that criticized the FBI’s Trump-Russia probe.

    Trump’s former lawyer Cohen sued Trump, former Attorney General William Barr and others, alleging they put him back in jail to prevent him from promoting his upcoming book while under home confinement.

    Cohen was serving the remainder of his sentence for lying to Congress and campaign violations at home, due to Covid-19 concerns, when he started an anti-Trump social media campaign in summer 2020. Cohen said that he was sent back to prison in retaliation and that he spent 16 days in solitary confinement.

    A federal judge threw out the lawsuit in November. District Judge Lewis Liman said he was empathetic to Cohen’s position but that Supreme Court precedent bars him from allowing the case to move forward.

    Trump sued journalist Bob Woodward in January for alleged copyright violations, claiming Woodward released audio from their interviews without Trump’s consent.

    Woodward and publisher Simon & Schuster said Trump’s case is without merit and moved for its dismissal.

    Woodward conducted several interviews with Trump for his book “Rage,” published in September 2020. Woodward later released “The Trump Tapes,” an audiobook featuring eight hours of raw interviews with Trump interspersed with the author’s commentary.

    Trump-filed lawsuits: The New York Times, Mary Trump and CNN

    The former president is suing his niece and The New York Times in New York state court over the disclosure of his tax information.

    A New York judge dismissed The New York Times from Trump’s lawsuit regarding disclosure of his tax returns and ordered Trump to pay the newspaper’s legal fees. Trump is still suing his niece Mary Trump for disclosure of the tax documents. She had tried to sue him for defrauding her out of millions after the death of his father, but the suit was dismissed.

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  • Trump’s call to terminate the Constitution is a fantasy, but it’s still dangerous | CNN Politics

    Trump’s call to terminate the Constitution is a fantasy, but it’s still dangerous | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Donald Trump’s call for the termination of the Constitution is his most extreme anti-democratic statement yet and seems oblivious to the sentiments of voters who rejected election deniers in the midterm elections.

    It may also reflect desperation on the part of the former president to whip up controversy and fury among his core supporters in order to inject some energy into a so-far lackluster 2024 White House bid.

    Trump’s comments on his Truth Social network – which should be easy for anyone to condemn – are exposing the familiar moral timidity of top Republicans who won’t disown the former president. But his latest tirade also plays into the arguments of some Republicans now saying that it’s time to move on from Trump’s fixation with the 2020 election.

    And while it is far too early to write off his chances in the 2024 GOP nominating contest, Trump’s behavior since announcing his third presidential bid also suggests his never-ending quest to shock and to fire up his base now means going so far right he ends up on the extremist fringe and almost in self-parody. In the short time he’s been a candidate, he’s expressed support for rioters who stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, and dined with a White nationalist Holocaust denier.

    Gabriel Sterling, the chief operating officer for Georgia’s Secretary of State Office, chuckled at the incredulity of Trump’s claim about the Constitution when it was described by CNN’s Pam Brown on Saturday.

    “It’s ridiculous, it’s insane, to suspend the Constitution. Come on man, seriously?” said Sterling, a Republican who helped oversee Georgia’s election in 2020, when President Joe Biden carried the state. “I think more and more Republicans, Americans are saying, ‘Ok I am good, I am done with this now, I’m going to move on to the next thing.’”

    The most immediate question raised by Trump’s latest controversy is what it says about a presidential campaign that has been swallowed up by one far-right authoritarian sideshow after another.

    Far from barnstorming the nation, making a case on the economy, health care and immigration or outlining a program for the future, Trump has given comfort to zealots and insurrectionists.

    He hosted Kanye West at Mar-a-Lago last month, at a time when the rapper now known as Ye is in the middle of a vile streak of antisemitism and praising Adolf Hitler. The far-right Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes was at also at that dinner. Trump claimed he didn’t know who Fuentes was but the former president still hasn’t criticized his ideology. Last week, Trump, in a fundraising video, praised the mob that invaded the Capitol in the worst attack on US democracy in modern times, again promoting violence as an acceptable response to political grievances.

    His social media assault on the Constitution appears to be proving the point of the House select committee probing January 6, which has portrayed him as a clear and present danger to American democracy and met on Friday to consider criminal referrals to the Justice Department.

    Wyoming GOP Rep. Liz Cheney, vice chair of the committee, tweeted on Sunday: “No honest person can now deny that Trump is an enemy of the Constitution.” Trump’s latest wild social media post could even deepen his legal exposure as the Justice Department seeks evidence of his mindset as it investigates his conduct before the attack on the Capitol.

    Trump’s doubling down on authoritarianism also follows a moment when much of the country, at least in crucial swing states, rejected his 2020 election denialism and anti-democratic chaos candidates he picked for the midterms – with a final test on Tuesday in Georgia’s Senate runoff. It appears to make it even more unlikely that the ex-president, even if he wins the Republican nomination, will be the kind of candidate who could win among the broader national electorate. After all, his message failed in two consecutive elections in 2020 and 2022. And even in the wilder reaches of the GOP, which Trump has dominated since 2015, a call to simply trash the Constitution might seem a stretch – and reflect the former president’s increasing distance from reality.

    One could argue that the most prudent response to Trump’s latest radical rhetoric might be to ignore it and his bid for publicity.

    But even if his idea of crushing the Constitution looks far-fetched, his behavior needs to be taken seriously because of its possible future consequences.

    That’s because Trump remains an extraordinarily influential force in the Republican Party. His acolytes hold outsized power in the new House majority set to take over in January, which they plan to use as a political weapon to promote his restoration in the White House. GOP leader Kevin McCarthy is appeasing this group in an increasingly troubled campaign for speaker. The California Republican also last week shielded Trump over criticism of the Fuentes dinner, saying that while such a person had no place in the party, Trump had condemned him four times – a false claim.

    Furthermore, in an electoral sense, the theory that Republican voters may be willing to move on from Trump – and to find a candidate who may reflect “America First” populism but not dine with antisemites – has not yet been tested. Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was stolen are still broadly accepted among GOP voters – only 24% of whom believe that Biden legitimately won in 2020, according to midterm election exit polls.

    And a GOP primary that includes multiple candidates competing with Trump for the presidential nomination could yet again splinter the vote against the former president and allow him to emerge at the top of a mostly winner-take-all delegate race, a vote that would put a prospective authoritarian who has already tried to dismantle the US system of democracy one step from a return to power.

    Ignoring or downplaying public evidence of extremism and incitement only allows it to become normalized. There is already proof that the ex-president’s rhetoric can cause violence – after he told his supporters to “fight like hell” to save their country on January 6. And the rhetoric of people like West and Fuentes, with whom Trump has associated, risks normalizing odious forces in society that will grow if they are not challenged. Fuentes, after all, has appeared with Republican lawmakers like Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene – an increasingly influential voice in the House GOP conference.

    Years of norm crushing and acceptance of extremists by the twice-impeached former president never convinced the party to purge him or his views. Were it not for principled, conservative Republicans like Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and former Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers, Trump’s election-stealing effort might have worked in 2020.

    As they work through an intense lame-duck session of Congress, Republican lawmakers are, for the umpteenth time, going to be asked this week about the tyrannical attitudes of the front-runner for their party’s presidential nod.

    One newly elected Republican, Michael Lawler – who picked up a Democratic-held House seat critical to the slim GOP majority – stood up for the Constitution on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday.

    “The Constitution is set for a reason, to protect the rights of every American. And so I certainly don’t endorse that language or that sentiment,” Lawler told Jake Tapper. “I think the former president would be well-advised to focus on the future, if he is going to run for president again.”

    Republican Rep. Mike Turner of Ohio, who serves on the House Intelligence Committee, said he “vehemently” disagreed with Trump’s statement and said his dinner with West and Fuentes was “atrocious” and that voters would take both incidents into consideration.

    But a fellow Ohio Republican, Rep. David Joyce, demonstrated the characteristic reluctance of members of his party to confront an ex-president who remains hugely popular among its grassroots. Regarding the threat to the Constitution, Joyce said on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday, “You know he says a lot of things but that doesn’t mean that it’s ever going to happen,” adding that it was important to separate “fact from fantasy.”

    Joyce didn’t directly condemn Trump’s rhetoric and said he would support whomever the Republican Party nominates in 2024. The fact that Republicans are open to a potential president – who would be called upon to swear to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution but who has already called for its termination – speaks volumes about how much the GOP is still in Trump’s shadow.

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