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  • Special counsel probe into Biden’s handling of classified documents appears to be nearing end | CNN Politics

    Special counsel probe into Biden’s handling of classified documents appears to be nearing end | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Special counsel Robert Hur’s interview of President Joe Biden is a sign that the classified documents investigation is nearing conclusion after casting a wide net that included dozens of witnesses during the ten-month long probe, multiple sources told CNN.

    The White House announced this week that Biden was questioned by Hur and his team over two days in a voluntary interview that CNN has reported was scheduled weeks earlier. While the White House has declined to discuss details of the questioning, including whether Biden invoked executive privilege, the interview is the first public development in months.

    One source told CNN that investigators have indicated they hope to wrap by the end of the year. As of now, it’s unclear if the probe will result in charges being filed, but sources familiar with the investigators’ line of questioning said they got the impression that’s unlikely, and there has been no discernible grand jury activity.

    The Justice Department has said that Hur will produce a final report explaining his findings from the investigation, a standard part of a special counsel’s work.

    “The breadth and depth of Hur’s work suggests that he is going to compile a detailed report to explain exactly how he conducted this investigation,” one source familiar with the investigation told CNN.

    Hur was appointed in January to investigate after classified documents were found at Biden’s former office at the Penn Biden Center in Washington, DC, and at his Wilmington, Delaware, home.

    Compared to special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into classified materials found at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence, including the indictment handed down in June, Hur’s probe into Biden has continued to operate quietly behind the scenes.

    Still, the protracted length and exhaustive nature of the investigation has frustrated top Biden aides who expected it to wrap up months ago given the relatively small number of classified documents involved, according to a person familiar with the White House’s thinking.

    That person said some Biden aides believe Attorney General Merrick Garland was overly cautious in selecting Hur, an appointee to two top Justice Department roles during the Trump administration, to ensure the investigation was politically unassailable.

    Investigators working for Hur have interviewed a broad spectrum of witnesses — from longtime advisor and current counselor Steve Ricchetti, to former White House legal and communications aides, to a former low-level aide who helped pack up the vice president’s residence at the end of the Obama administration, sources familiar with the matter tell CNN.

    Hur’s team also has reached out to people who worked in the Senate during the time Biden served in that chamber, sources said. That’s because some of the documents with classified markings date back to Biden’s time in the Senate, according to a statement from Biden’s personal attorney.

    As part of the investigation, Hur has sought to examine the handling of classified documents during Biden’s time in the Senate, a period before many of the strict procedures now used for handling classified documents, according to sources.

    That has caused Hur to confront the delicate issues of the Senate’s constitutional speech or debate protections, which limit the Justice Department’s ability to interview Senate staff without coordination with Senate lawyers, people briefed on the matter said.

    It’s unclear whether and how the Senate and Justice Department’s discussions over Senate-related interviews have been resolved. A special counsel spokesman declined to comment on the idea of no charges or on any discussions with the Senate.

    One person familiar with the investigation described members of Hur’s team as being professional but tedious in the level of detail they have sought in witness interviews. Investigators have asked about where staffers sat in the office, where they stored briefing books, and how they operated an office safe.

    Another person described a lengthy interview with FBI agents and lawyers focused on understanding everything surrounding specific documents. Investigators appeared to be following a process that identified meetings connected to specific classified documents or notes recovered from Biden properties, the person familiar with the interview said. Everyone who attended a meeting or briefing connected the document is being interviewed, the person said.

    Investigators appear to be trying to establish a chain of custody for the documents and the circumstances surrounding them to discern how the classified documents ended up in Biden’s office and home.

    Another source said: “The central question in this case is: Did the vice president of the United States intentionally take classified documents for personal use?”

    The challenge for investigators is how they assess culpability and the circumstances surrounding how the documents got to the Penn Biden Center and the president’s house in Delaware, the source said.

    A lawyer for one witness also described Hur’s process as being slow and methodical. Investigators interviewed this lawyer’s client earlier this year, but recently came back and asked his witness for additional documents.

    “They are certainly being sufficiently thorough, and there is a temptation to think they are doing some things twice,” the lawyer said.

    White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre declined to say Tuesday if the president answered all questions posed to him or invoked executive privilege during the interview with Hur. Jean-Pierre also wouldn’t say if the Biden administration requested that the interview be postponed following Hamas’ attack on Israel over the weekend.

    “He’s been very much focused on the issues of the – you know – horrific events that we have seen in Israel,” she said. “As president, he has to do multiple things at once, and that’s what you saw him do this weekend.”

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  • John Kerry Fast Facts | CNN Politics

    John Kerry Fast Facts | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Here’s a look at the life of former Secretary of State John Kerry.

    Birth date: December 11, 1943

    Birth place: Aurora, Colorado

    Birth name: John Forbes Kerry

    Father: Richard Kerry, a Foreign Service officer

    Mother: Rosemary (Forbes) Kerry

    Marriages: Teresa Heinz (1995-present); Julia Thorne (1970-1988, divorced)

    Children: with Julia Thorne: Vanessa, 1976 and Alexandra, 1973

    Education: Yale University, B.A., 1966; Boston College, J.D., 1976

    Military Service: US Navy, 1966-1970, Lieutenant

    Religion: Roman Catholic

    Grew up overseas, having lived in Berlin before going to a Swiss boarding school at age 11.

    After his return from Vietnam, he became a leader of the group Vietnam Veterans Against the War.

    Kerry holds the record for the most miles of travel by a US secretary of state, having traveled more than 1.4 million miles when he left office in January 2017.

    Appeared in a cameo role on NBC’s “Cheers.” His last name is spelled incorrectly on the 1992 episode’s end credits, as “John Kerrey.”

    1966-1969 – Serves in the Navy in Vietnam as a gunboat officer on the Mekong Delta. Kerry is awarded the Silver Star, the Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts.

    1971 – Speaks to members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and makes headlines at a Washington, DC protest by disposing of his medals on the Capitol lawn. Later admits the medals belonged to someone else.

    1972 – Runs unsuccessfully for Congress, Massachusetts’ 5th District.

    1976 – Is admitted to the Massachusetts State Bar.

    1976-1979 – District attorney of Middlesex County, Massachusetts.

    1979-1982 – Partner in the law firm Kerry & Sragow in Boston.

    1982-1984 – Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts under Michael Dukakis.

    1984 – Is elected as a Democrat to the US Senate for Massachusetts.

    1990 – Wins a second term in the US Senate.

    1996 – Reelected to the Senate.

    November 5, 2002 – Is reelected to a fourth Senate term. He runs unopposed and is the first Massachusetts senator in 80 years with no major party opposition.

    February 12, 2003 – Has surgery to remove a cancerous tumor on his prostate gland. Kerry’s doctors announce the cancer had not spread and he will not have to have radiation treatments. He is released February 15.

    September 2, 2003 – Formally announces his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for president. In Kerry’s announcement speech, he says President George W. Bush is taking America “in the wrong direction.”

    March 11, 2004 – CNN reports Kerry has received the exact number of Democratic delegates to assure his nomination as the candidate for president.

    July 6, 2004 – Kerry names Senator John Edwards (D-NC) as his vice presidential running mate.

    November 2, 2004 – Bush is reelected with 62,040,606 votes to Kerry’s 59,028,109. Kerry receives 252 Electoral College votes, and Bush gets 292.

    November 3, 2004 – Calls Bush to concede the White House race.

    November 1, 2006 – Apologizes after saying college students need to study hard or else they will “get stuck in Iraq.”

    January 24, 2007 – Announces he will not be running for president in the 2008 election and will run for a fifth Senate term instead.

    January 10, 2008 – Endorses Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential race, not former running mate Edwards.

    November 4, 2008 – Wins a fifth term in the US Senate.

    2009-2013 – Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

    June 4, 2009 – The IRS files a $820,000 lien against Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign over payroll taxes.

    August 2009 – Has hip surgery to address chronic pain.

    August 2011 – Kerry is selected as one of 12 members of the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, created to work out $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction after an initial round of more than $900 billion in spending cuts.

    December 21, 2012 – Is nominated to be secretary of state by President Obama.

    January 29, 2013 – Kerry is confirmed as the next secretary of state by the US Senate; the vote is 94-3.

    February 1, 2013 – Is sworn in as the 68th secretary of state.

    May 31, 2015 – Breaks his femur while riding his bike in Scionzier, France. Kerry is flown to a nearby hospital in Geneva, Switzerland, for examination.

    June 2, 2015 – After returning to the United States early for treatment of his leg injury, Kerry participates via phone in talks with European and Middle Eastern allies about ISIS. During the summit, Kerry declares the terrorist network is “no more a state than I am a helicopter.”

    June 12, 2015 – Kerry is discharged from the hospital after undergoing surgery. Leaning on crutches, he greets the media and ensures reporters that nuclear talks with Iran will proceed as scheduled.

    July 14, 2015 – The nuclear deal with Iran is finalized after numerous deadline extensions. Discussing the deal in Vienna, where the peace talks took place, Kerry says the agreement was long in the works because the United States and its allies made tough demands. “Believe me, had we been willing to settle for a lesser deal, we would have finished this negotiation a long time ago,” Kerry tells the media at a news conference.

    July 18, 2015 – During an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, Kerry declares that he has no interest in launching a 2016 presidential campaign. “Zero. Absolutely none whatsoever,” Kerry says.

    August 14, 2015 – Kerry visits Havana, Cuba, to raise the flag above the US embassy as it reopens for the first time in 54 years.

    April 11, 2016 – Kerry becomes the first sitting US secretary of state to visit the Hiroshima memorial in Japan. Hiroshima was devastated when the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city in August 1945.

    December 10, 2016 – French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault presents Kerry with the insignia of Grand Officer of the Legion of Honor at a ceremony in Paris.

    January 20, 2017 – Leaves office.

    March 1, 2017 – The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace announces that Kerry will be joining them as a visiting distinguished statesman.

    August 2017 – Serves as co-leader of the Carter Center’s mission of observers in Kenyan elections.

    October 4, 2017 – Is named chairman of the Bank of America Global Advisory Council.

    September 4, 2018 – His memoir, “Every Day Is Extra,” is published.

    December 1, 2019 – Launches World War Zero, a bipartisan initiative of world leaders and celebrities to combat the climate crisis.

    December 5, 2019 – Kerry endorses Joe Biden for president in the 2020 race, saying the former vice president has the character and leadership skills to beat President Donald Trump.

    November 23, 2020 – President-elect Biden appoints Kerry as his special presidential envoy for climate. Kerry will be a Cabinet-level official and will sit on the National Security Council (NSC), marking “the first time that the NSC will include an official dedicated to climate change,” according the Biden transition team.

    November 9, 2022 – Kerry announces a new, controversial plan to raise cash for climate action in the developing world. The plan has already attracted criticism due to the way it will be financed, with money raised in sales of carbon credits, which allow companies to pay for someone else to cut their planet-warming emissions, instead of cutting their own.

    November 18, 2022 – The State Department says Kerry has tested positive for Covid-19 at the United Nations’ COP27 climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, but is “working with his negotiations team and foreign counterparts by phone to ensure a successful outcome of COP27.”

    July 2023 – Kerry travels to Beijing for climate talks with his Chinese counterparts. In the meeting with China’s Premier Li Qiang, Kerry stresses the “need for China to decarbonize the power sector, cut methane emissions, and reduce deforestation,” a spokesperson for the US State Department says in a statement.

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  • Campaign fundraiser for George Santos is indicted for impersonating top aide to House Speaker McCarthy | CNN Politics

    Campaign fundraiser for George Santos is indicted for impersonating top aide to House Speaker McCarthy | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    A campaign fundraiser for indicted US Rep. George Santos has been charged for allegedly impersonating a high-ranking congressional aide to solicit contributions for the New York Republican’s campaign in 2021, according to court documents.

    A federal grand jury in Brooklyn indicted Samuel Miele, who worked for the Santos campaign during the 2020 and 2022 election cycles, on four counts of wire fraud and one count of aggravated identity theft in the alleged scheme to defraud prospective donors, according to the indictment unsealed Wednesday.

    Miele allegedly impersonated a top aide to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, according to a source familiar with the case.

    He allegedly solicited contributions from more than a dozen potential contributors using the aide’s identity in phone and email communications, the indictment says.

    Miele created an email account purporting to belong to the McCarthy staffer and sent fundraising solicitations signing the aide’s full name and title, prosecutors allege.

    Santos’ fundraiser received a 15% commission on the campaign contributions he raised, the filing says.

    According to the indictment, Miele wrote to Santos in a September 2022 letter, “Faking my identity to a big donor.”

    “High risk, high reward in everything I do,” Miele also wrote.

    An attorney for Miele, Kevin H. Marino, said in a statement to CNN that his client “is not guilty of these charges.”

    “He looks forward to complete vindication at trial as soon as possible,” Marino said.

    The latest indictment does not specifically identify Santos, McCarthy or his aide by name in the filing.

    Additional court documents clarify that the unnamed candidate in the indictment is Santos.

    Miele surrendered Wednesday morning and pleaded not guilty at an arraignment in Brooklyn federal court later in the day.

    He was released on a $150,000 bond.

    A status conference has been scheduled for August 22 in the Eastern District of New York.

    Santos himself was indicted in May on 13 counts of federal fraud and money laundering charges. He pleaded not guilty. He announced in April that he is running for reelection to his Long Island-based congressional seat.

    Representatives for McCarthy did not immediately respond for comment on the matter.

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • When John Roberts wants things done, he acts. What that means for ethics rules | CNN Politics

    When John Roberts wants things done, he acts. What that means for ethics rules | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Soon after he became chief justice of the United States, John Roberts faced what he believed was a “crisis” involving the judiciary: Federal judges were underpaid.

    What Roberts did next to address the situation stands in stark contrast to the way he has tiptoed through the current controversy over the Supreme Court’s integrity.

    As he pushed for a pay raise, he arranged a meeting at the White House to win support from then-President George W. Bush. He encouraged emissaries to talk to members of Congress. And he devoted an entire year-end report to the situation.

    “I am going to discuss only one issue – in an effort to increase even more the chances that people will take notice,” Roberts wrote on January 1, 2007. “That is important because the issue has been ignored far too long and has now reached the level of a constitutional crisis that threatens to undermine the strength and independence of the federal judiciary.”

    His concern: “I am talking about the failure to raise judicial pay.”

    Today, Roberts is at the center of the controversy over the court’s lack of transparency and absence of a formal code of ethics. The justices have been inconsistent in reporting travel and gifts bestowed on them by wealthy benefactors who may be trying to influence the court.

    The 68-year-old chief justice, who will be starting his 19th term in October, has moved with little apparent urgency.

    On Thursday, the issue was again in the spotlight as Justice Clarence Thomas filed a long-awaited annual financial disclosure form that pointed up his relationship with Texas real estate billionaire Harlan Crow. Thomas acknowledged that he had traveled on private jets at Crow’s expense for Dallas events and taken a separate vacation excursion to Crow’s opulent estate in the Adirondacks.

    Thomas also reported that Crow had in 2014 bought property in Savannah, Georgia, from Thomas and his family. Thomas’ lawyer said any delays or other filing errors were “inadvertent” and described public criticism of Thomas as “political blood sport.”

    Justice Roberts wrote ‘condescending’ letter to Senate when asked to testify about ethics

    The backdrop to Thursday’s filing by Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito, both of whom had sought extensions from a May deadline, is the rising attention to the Supreme Court’s inability to monitor itself on this front. The justices’ extracurricular activities and lack of any process for resolving complaints has become as much a topic of public scrutiny as their rulings pushing the law in America to the right.

    For years, individual justices have said the court was considering its own code of conduct, as now covers lower court judges. But that consideration has never produced any public result.

    Members of Congress, advocacy groups and even some justices have looked to Roberts for leadership, to no avail.

    Roberts told an audience of lawyers in Washington, DC, in May: “I want to assure people that I am committed to making certain that we as a court adhere to the highest standards of conduct. We are continuing to look at things we can do to give practical effect to that commitment.”

    Yet when the justices left town for their summer recess in June, they were at a stalemate on whether a formal code was even necessary.

    In separate public appearances this summer, Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Elena Kagan, when asked about a possible ethics code, said they didn’t want to get out ahead of Roberts on the issue.

    While Roberts has sent muted signals, he has made his resistance to congressional involvement clear.

    Roberts in April declined an invitation to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee about judicial ethics, referring to “separation of powers concerns and the importance of preserving judicial independence.”

    The Democratic-run Senate committee in July advanced legislation that would require a Supreme Court ethics code and a set of procedures for resolving complaints regarding their behavior. Given the tight partisan divide in the Senate and Republicans’ control of the House, the bill is unlikely to become law.

    So, much depends on the justices themselves.

    Roberts is known for formidable powers of persuasion. Before he became a US appeals court judge in 2003 and a Supreme Court justice in 2005, he was a star appellate advocate at the high court. But there are limits to his authority as chief, and the regard he engenders among individual colleagues varies.

    There may also be limits to the personal capital Roberts wants to put toward a dilemma that lies beyond the consideration of cases.

    The chief justice had made the judiciary’s pay raise a singular concern, and eventually judges and justices obtained full cost-of-living increases and higher pay.

    Unlike with judicial pay, which naturally generated support among black-robed colleagues, the ethics issue has defied consensus in Roberts’ ranks.

    Alito said in a Wall Street Journal interview published in July that he “voluntarily follows” the rules that apply to lower court judges, and he denigrated congressional efforts in this area: “I know this is a controversial view, but I’m going to say it. No provision in the Constitution gives them the authority to regulate the Supreme Court – period.”

    Last month in Portland, Oregon, Kagan also referred to internal differences.

    “It’s not a secret for me to say that we have been discussing it,” she said, referring to a formal set of ethics rules. And it won’t be a surprise to know that the nine of us have a variety of views about this, as about most things. We’re nine free-thinking individuals.”

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  • Trump’s indictments — and mug shot — are deepening his supporters’ anger and revving up their support | CNN Politics

    Trump’s indictments — and mug shot — are deepening his supporters’ anger and revving up their support | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Phil Jensen wore a bright red T-shirt with Donald Trump’s mug shot and “NEVER SURRENDER!” printed on it to the former president’s rally in Rapid City, South Dakota, last week. The longtime state legislator loved the shirt so much, he planned on giving half a dozen to his friends and family.

    “He looks defiant,” Jensen said of the photo taken at an Atlanta jail after Trump was indicted over his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss in the state.

    “And I love it because he has every right to be,” the South Dakota Republican said. “He was railroaded.”

    In more than 40 interviews with CNN in Iowa, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Alabama, South Dakota and Texas, Trump supporters said the 91 criminal charges in four separate cases against him have only deepened their support of the former president. They repeated Trump’s unfounded claims that he was the subject of a politically motivated “witch hunt” and said they believed the charges showed the system was rigged against him – and, by extension, them.

    A majority of Americans think that the charges against Trump are valid and that he should be prosecuted, recent polls show, but Trump maintains a tight grip on the Republican Party and his front-runner status in the 2024 GOP presidential primary is undisputed.

    “What they’re doing to him is persecution,” said Corey Bonner of Texas. “They’re going after an old American president, they’ve been going after him since the beginning, they haven’t stopped, and they’re not going to stop. And this is where we have to stand up and fight.”

    At a summer gathering for Alabama Republicans, 81-year-old retired schoolteacher Carolyn McNeese echoed Trump’s attacks on the prosecutors who have charged him and said she thought they were “evil.”

    “They want him out because they’re scared of him,” McNeese said.

    Those interviewed said they believed that President Joe Biden’s son Hunter was the one who needed to be charged and that Republicans faced a different standard under the justice system. And some said that perhaps Trump did commit crimes, but it didn’t change their opinion of him because, as Texas resident Bobby Wilson put it, “We all have sinned; we all have some things that we’ve done.”

    “He’s probably guilty, but it doesn’t matter,” said Jace Kirschenman, an 18-year-old in South Dakota who works in construction.

    He said nothing could deter him from voting for Trump next year.

    “You show me a perfect person in this world, and I’ll show you a blue pig with wings,” said Corey Shawgo, a 34-year-old truck driver in Pennsylvania who attended Trump’s rally in Erie. “Everyone makes mistakes.”

    Like many other Trump supporters interviewed, Scott Akers of Alabama immediately pointed to Hunter Biden when asked about Trump’s mounting legal peril.

    “We have something finally start to come out about the connection between Hunter Biden’s shady dealings and his father and then, like two days later, there’s a federal indictment,” Akers said. “The timing of it is very ironic.”

    The president’s son has been the subject of investigations by House Republicans and the federal Justice Department. The House GOP probe has so far failed to surface any evidence showing Joe Biden profited from his son’s business dealings, but it has found that the younger Biden used his father’s names to help advance deals. Separately, Hunter Biden was indicted on Thursday by special counsel David Weiss in connection to a gun he purchased in 2018.

    Intertwined with their outrage over the indictments, some Trump supporters are raising the specter of heightened political violence if Trump were to be convicted.

    “This country’s a powder keg. You know, we’ve ‘bout had it,” said Frank Yurisic, 76, who attended Trump’s Pennsylvania rally.

    “I think there could very well possibly be violence,” Yurisic said. “If they march on Washington, I’ll be one of the ones there. I don’t think they realize how upset the people are in this country about what’s going on.”

    The predictions of possible violence made by some Trump supporters in interviews with CNN echo Trump’s warnings of what could happen were he to be convicted.

    Before Trump’s first indictment in March, he had warned about “potential death and destruction” if a Manhattan grand jury were to indict him on charges related to a hush money payment to an adult film star. When asked in an Iowa radio interview in July how he thought his supporters would react if he did ultimately end up behind bars, Trump said, “I think it’s a very dangerous thing to even talk about because we do have a tremendously passionate group of voters.”

    “There’ll be backlash, and it’ll probably be severe,” said Jim Vanoy, an 80-year-old Trump supporter who lives in Alabama. He said he thought there would be a “good degree of violence” if Trump is convicted.

    Rachel Kleinfeld, a senior fellow in the democracy, conflict and governance program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the US has seen “vastly increased” political violence since Trump took office in 2017.

    “He unleashed some of the worst parts of the American id in normalizing violence as a way to solve political differences. And so we’re seeing neighbors killing neighbors, people killing business owners over political disputes all over the country,” she said.

    But Kleinfeld pointed to the lengthy prison sentences meted out to some participants in the deadly January 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol as a potential deterrent to political violence. Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the far-right militia group Oath Keepers, was sentenced to 18 years in prison and Enrique Tarrio, the former head of the far-right Proud Boys, was sentenced to 22 years. Kleinfeld also noted the two-and-a-half-year prison sentence handed down to an Iowa man for threatening Arizona’s attorney general and a Phoenix-area election official.

    “What we’re seeing now is a summer of a lot of accountability, where people are starting to be held to account for violence, and that is the best possible thing for reducing future violence,” she said.

    Trump supporter Amanda Hamak-Leon and her boyfriend are seen at his Rapid City, South Dakota, rally on September 8, 2023.

    Trump continues to defend his supporters who were part of the January 6 mob and said in a recent interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson that there was “love and unity” among those who had gathered in Washington that day.

    His lies about the 2020 election, which fueled the riot at the Capitol, were repeated on the campaign trail by his supporters in interviews with CNN. Many said they felt confident in Trump’s chances in a rematch with Biden in 2024.

    “Unless they convict him of something, I don’t care,” said Mark Roling, 63, of Pennsylvania. “In fact, I kind of like it. Every time they indict him, he gets stronger.”

    Trump has widened his polling lead over the rest of the GOP field since his first criminal charges were announced this spring, and his campaign has reported fundraising boosts in the wake of his indictments. That has vexed many Democrats, independents and more moderate Republican voters, who question how his supporters aren’t turned off by the serious and numerous criminal charges against Trump and believe the indictments should disqualify him from a second term as president.

    “He’s making a psychic connection between his troubles with government and people’s troubles with government. And it’s working,” said Craig Shirley, who has written four books on former President Ronald Reagan and has been a Republican strategist for decades.

    “So many Americans have had bad experiences with government over the years,” Shirley said. “They’ve had bad experiences with the IRS. They’ve had bad experiences with police forces. They’ve had bad experiences with school boards. They’ve had bad experiences with any manifestation of some form of government, and that has made them more and more anti-establishment.”

    Trump has been intentional on the campaign trail about making his supporters feel like his indictments are personal to them. “I’m being indicted for you,” he says at every rally. “They’re not coming after me, they’re coming after you, and I’m just standing in their way.”

    “It’s very much like a family protecting one of their own,” Whit Ayres, a veteran GOP pollster, said of how Trump’s supporters have rallied around the former president.

    “He came down the escalator in 2015, saying, ‘I am doing this for you. I am your protector. I am the only one looking out for you. And an attack on me is an attack on you.’ And he has been beating that drum now for eight years, and it’s accepted as true by millions of his supporters,” Ayres said.

    The day after Trump was booked at the Fulton County jail in Atlanta, his campaign said it had the highest-grossing fundraising day of the entire campaign to date, raising $4.18 million. A few days later, the campaign said it had raked in nearly $3 million off mug shot merchandise alone.

    A vendor sells T-shirts featuring Trump's mug shot outside his Rapid City, South Dakota, rally on September 8, 2023.

    But the market for mug shot merchandise extends well beyond the official campaign store as private vendors see their sales skyrocket.

    “This is the new ‘Let’s Go Brandon,’” said Sam Smith, a private vendor at Trump’s Rapid City rally, referring to the right-wing slogan used to insult Joe Biden. Smith, who travels around the country to sell merchandise outside the former president’s events, said he made solid money for two years off “Let’s Go Brandon” products.

    Longtime Trump supporter Amanda Hamak-Leon bought matching mug shot T-shirts on Amazon that said “WANTED FOR PRESIDENT” for her and her boyfriend to wear to Trump’s rally in Rapid City.

    “It really ticked me off,” Hamak-Leon said of Trump’s indictments. “I just feel like now for six-plus years they’ve been going after him with anything that they can, taking shots in the dark. It just makes me like him more that he just keeps going and is not letting this stop him.”

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  • What could happen if the government shuts down | CNN Politics

    What could happen if the government shuts down | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The prospect of a US government shutdown grows more likely with each passing day as lawmakers have yet to reach a deal to extend funding past a critical deadline at the end of the month.

    Congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle are hoping to pass a short-term funding extension to keep the lights on and avert a shutdown. But it’s not at all clear that plan will succeed amid deep divisions over spending between the two parties and policy disagreements over issues such as aid to Ukraine.

    Here’s what to know if the government shuts down and what’s driving the current state of play:

    Government funding expires at the end of the day on Saturday, September 30 when the clock strikes midnight and it becomes October 1, which marks the start of the new fiscal year. (As shorthand, the deadline is commonly described as September 30 at midnight.)

    If Congress fails to pass legislation to renew funding by that deadline, then the federal government will shut down at midnight. Since that would take place over the weekend, the full effects of a shutdown wouldn’t be seen until the start of the work week on Monday.

    In the event of a shutdown, many government operations would come to a halt, but some services deemed “essential” would continue.

    Federal agencies have contingency plans that serve as a roadmap for what will continue and what will stop. For now, agencies still have time to review and update plans and it’s not possible to predict exactly how government operations would be impacted if a shutdown were to take place at the end of the month.

    Government operations and services that continue during a shutdown are activities deemed necessary to protect public safety and national security or considered critical for other reasons. Examples of services that have continued during past shutdowns include border protection, federal law enforcement and air traffic control.

    Federal employees whose work is deemed “non-essential” would be put on furlough, which means that they would not work and would not receive pay during the shutdown. Employees whose jobs are deemed “essential” would continue to work, but they too would not be paid during the shutdown.

    Once a shutdown is over, federal employees who were required to work and those who were furloughed will receive backpay.

    In the past, backpay for furloughed employees was not guaranteed, though Congress could and did act to ensure those workers were compensated for lost wages once a shutdown ended. Now, however, backpay for furloughed workers is automatically guaranteed as a result of legislation led by Sen. Ben Cardin, a Maryland Democrat, that was enacted in 2019. Employees deemed “essential” and required to work were already guaranteed backpay after a shutdown prior to the passage of that legislation.

    And federal employees aren’t the only ones who can feel the effects of a shutdown.

    During past shutdowns, national parks have become a major focal point of attention. Although National Park Service sites across the country have been closed during previous government shutdowns, many remained open but severely understaffed under the Trump administration during a shutdown in 2019. Some park sites operated for weeks without park service-provided visitor services such as restrooms, trash collection, facilities or road maintenance.

    “If you’re a government worker, it’s highly disruptive – whether you’re not going to work or whether you are,” said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization. “If you’re somebody who wants to use one of the services that you can’t get access to … it’s highly disruptive. But for many people … all the things that they are expecting and used to seeing of government are still happening and the inconveniences and the kind of wasted time and wasted resources aren’t things that they see and feel directly.”

    There is a deep divide between the House and Senate right now over the effort to reach consensus on and pass full-year spending legislation as House conservative hardliners push for deep spending cuts and controversial policy add-ons that Democrats as well as some Republicans have rejected as too extreme.

    With the funding deadline looming, top lawmakers from both parties hope to pass a short-term funding extension known on Capitol Hill as a continuing resolution or CR for short. These short-term measures are frequently used as a stopgap solution to avert a shutdown and buy more time to try to reach a broader full-year funding deal.

    It’s not clear, however, whether there will be enough consensus to pass even a short-term funding bill out of both chambers before the end of the month as House conservatives rail against the possibility of a stopgap bill and have threatened to vote against one while demanding major policy concessions that have no chance of passing the Senate.

    A fight over aid to Ukraine could also take center stage and further complicate efforts to pass a short-term bill.

    Senate Democrats and Republicans strongly support additional aid to Ukraine, which could be included as part of a stopgap bill, but many House Republicans are reluctant to continue sending aid and do not want to see that attached to a short-term funding bill.

    The White House issued a stark warning this week that a shutdown could threaten crucial federal programs.

    In its warning, the White House estimated 10,000 children would lose access to Head Start programs across the country as the Department of Health and Human Services is prevented from awarding grants during a shutdown, while air traffic controllers and TSA officers would have to work without pay, threatening travel delays across the country. A shutdown would also delay food safety inspections under the Food and Drug Administration.

    “These consequences are real and avoidable – but only if House Republicans stop playing political games with peoples’ lives and catering to the ideological demands of their most extreme, far-right members,” the White House said.

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  • Former IRS contractor accused of stealing Trump’s tax returns pleads guilty | CNN Politics

    Former IRS contractor accused of stealing Trump’s tax returns pleads guilty | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The former IRS contractor accused of leaking former President Donald Trump’s tax returns and stealing tax information on thousands of the wealthiest people in the US pleaded guilty in federal court on Thursday.

    Prosecutors say Charles Littlejohn of Washington, DC, sent Trump’s tax returns and other data to two media outlets that “published numerous articles describing the tax information they obtained from the Defendant.”

    Littlejohn pleaded guilty to the one count of disclosing tax information, which he was charged with in late September.

    The contractor’s crime affected so many individuals that prosecutors plan to create a public website to notify the victims of any developments in the case.

    During the plea hearing, an attorney for Trump gave a victim impact statement, calling the crime “an egregious breach.”

    Trump’s attorney, Alina Habba, said that Trump’s returns were “kept in a vault at the IRS” and suggested that the leak may have cost Trump votes in the 2020 election.

    Habba said Trump was opposed to the plea deal and called for the maximum sentence of five years in prison for Littlejohn.

    Judge Ana Reyes, the federal judge overseeing the case, said she agreed “completely that anyone taking the law into their own hands is unacceptable.”

    “I cannot overstate how troubled I am by what occurred,” Reyes said. “Make no mistake, this was not acceptable.”

    A sentencing hearing has been scheduled for January 29.

    This story has been updated with additional developments.

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  • Bob Graham Fast Facts | CNN Politics

    Bob Graham Fast Facts | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Here’s a look at the life of Bob Graham, former United States senator and Democratic governor of Florida.

    Birth date: November 9, 1936

    Birth place: Coral Gables, Florida

    Birth name: Daniel Robert Graham

    Father: Ernest “Cap” Graham, Florida state senator, dairy farmer and cattle rancher

    Mother: Hilda (Simmons) Graham, teacher

    Marriage: Adele (Khoury) Graham (1959-present)

    Children: Kendall, Suzanne, Cissy and Gwen

    Education: University of Florida, B.A., 1959; Harvard Law School, LL.B., 1962

    Graham’s family operates dairy, beef cattle and pecan farms in Florida and Georgia.

    Was a primary author of portions of the Patriot Act that dealt with improving and sharing intelligence between US and foreign agencies.

    Co-chaired the congressional investigation into the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

    Voted against going to war with Iraq in 2003.

    Graham’s daughter, Gwen, represented Florida’s 2nd Congressional District (Tallahassee), 2015-2017.

    1966-1970 – Member of the Florida House of Representatives.

    1970-1978 – Member of the Florida Senate.

    1979-1987 – Governor of Florida.

    January 3, 1987-January 3, 2005 – US Senator representing Florida.

    2001-2003 – Chairman of the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

    January 31, 2003 – Undergoes heart surgery to repair a valve.

    February 27, 2003 – Files papers to form a presidential campaign committee.

    May 6, 2003 – Formally launches his presidential campaign.

    October 6, 2003 – Announces he is dropping out of the presidential race.

    November 3, 2003 – Announces that he will not seek reelection to the Senate in 2004.

    September 2004 – Graham’s book “Intelligence Matters: The CIA, the FBI, Saudi Arabia, and the Failure of America’s War on Terror,” written with Jeff Nussbaum, is published.

    2005-2006 – Senior Research Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University.

    2006 – The Bob Graham Center for Public Service at the University of Florida is established.

    May 16, 2008 – Congressional leaders appoint Graham to chair the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism. In December 2008, the commission issues a report, saying it is likely a WMD attack will occur somewhere in the world by 2013 if nothing is done to enhance security.

    2009 – Graham’s book “America, The Owner’s Manual: Making Government Work for You,” written with Chris Hand, is published.

    May 2010 – President Barack Obama establishes a commission led by Graham and former Environmental Protection Agency Commissioner William Reilly on the BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill and offshore drilling. The commission ends its work in January 2011.

    June 2011 – Graham’s first novel, “Keys to the Kingdom,” is published.

    September 2012 – Graham calls for the investigation into the September 11 terrorist attacks be reopened. He asserts that Saudi Arabia’s involvement in the attacks has been covered up.

    January 2014 – Graham visits Cuba as part of a group sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations in order to investigate Cuban plans to drill for oil offshore.

    September 9, 2016 – Graham has an op-ed in The New York Times calling for the release of more documents related to the September 11 terrorist attacks.

    November 24, 2020 – Graham’s children’s book, “Rhoda the Alligator,” is published.

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  • Tom Daschle Fast Facts | CNN Politics

    Tom Daschle Fast Facts | CNN Politics

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    Here’s a look into the life of former Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota.

    Birth date: December 9, 1947

    Birth place: Aberdeen, South Dakota

    Birth name: Thomas Andrew Daschle

    Father: Sebastian Daschle

    Mother: Betty Daschle

    Marriages: Linda (Hall) Daschle (1984-present); Laurie (Fulton) Daschle (divorced in 1983)

    Children: with Laurie Daschle: Kelly, Nathan and Lindsay

    Education: South Dakota State University, B.A. in Political Science, 1969

    Military: US Air Force, 1969-1972

    Serves on a number of boards, including the Center for American Progress, the National Democratic Institute, the Edward M. Kennedy Institute, the LBJ Foundation and the World Food Program USA.

    1969-1972 – Serves in the Air Force as an intelligence officer in the Strategic Air Command.

    1973-1977 – Aide to South Dakota Sen. James Abourezk.

    1978 – Elected to the US House of Representatives in a hotly contested race. After numerous recounts, Daschle is declared the winner over Leo K. Thorsness by 105 votes.

    1982 – Is reelected to House with 51.6% of the vote.

    1984 – Is reelected to House with 57.4% of the vote.

    1986 – Is elected to the US Senate with 51.6% of the vote, the exact same result as 1982.

    1989-1999 – Serves as co-chair of the Senate Democratic Policy Committee with George Mitchell of Maine (1989-1995) and Harry Reid of Nevada (1995-1999).

    1992 – Reelected to the Senate with 64.9% of the vote.

    1995 – Along with his wife, FAA official Linda Daschle, is involved in a scandal concerning the Federal Aviation Administration and B&L Aviation, a small airline which had trouble passing safety inspections and whose owner was a family friend. Daschle is accused of improperly asserting influence to reduce the amount of inspections B&L received. The incident is later cleared by the Transportation Department and the Senate Ethics Committee.

    1995-2001 – Serves as Senate minority leader, succeeding Mitchell.

    1995-2005 – Serves as chairman of the Senate Democratic Conference.

    1996 – Co-chairs the Democratic National Convention with Richard Gephardt, the Democratic House minority leader.

    1998 – Reelected to a third term in the Senate with 62.1% of the vote.

    June 6, 2001 – Becomes Senate majority leader by one vote after Jim Jeffords quits the Republican Party.

    October 2001 – A Daschle aide opens a letter containing anthrax. The Hart Senate Building staff are evacuated, tested for anthrax, and given a 60-day supply of antibiotics.

    January 2003-2005 – Serves as Senate minority leader.

    January 7, 2003 – Daschle announces that he will not be running for president in 2004 and will remain in the Senate.

    November 2, 2004 – Loses his Senate seat to Republican John Thune.

    March 5, 2005-2009 – Serves as special public policy adviser at the Washington branch of law firm Alston & Bird.

    December 2, 2006 – Announces that he will not be running for president in 2008.

    2007 – Co-founds the Bipartisan Policy Center with George Mitchell, Bob Dole and Howard Baker.

    December 11, 2008 – US President-elect Barack Obama nominates Daschle to be secretary of Health and Human Services and director of the White House Office of Health Reform.

    January 8, 2009 – Confirmation hearings for Daschle begin in the Senate.

    February 2, 2009 – In a letter to the Senate Finance Committee, Daschle admits to errors on his tax returns. The issue involves Daschle’s use of a car and driver he didn’t disclose on his income taxes, and nonpayment of taxes on more than $80,000 he earned in consulting fees after leaving the Senate. He paid $146,000 in back taxes and interest to correct the errors.

    February 3, 2009 – Announces that he is withdrawing his name from consideration as secretary of Health and Human Services.

    November 18, 2009-October 2014 – Senior policy adviser for business law firm DLA Piper.

    2013 – His book “The US Senate: Fundamentals of American Government” is published.

    October 2014 – Daschle leaves DLA Piper and forms The Daschle Group, a public policy advisory of the Baker Donelson law firm.

    January 2016 – “Crisis Point,” co-authored with former Sen. Trent Lott, is published.

    November 2, 2017 – Daschle and his son Nathan Daschle are named two of Capitol Hill’s top lobbyists in 2017.

    May 20, 2019 – Northern Swan Holdings, a cannabis investment firm, announces that Daschle has joined its advisory board.

    October 23, 2019 – Co-authors an Op-Ed in The Washington Post, along with Lott, titled “The Senate can hold a fair impeachment trial. We did it in 1999.”

    May 20, 2021 – Is named a special adviser to Field Trip Health Ltd, a provider of psychedelic-assisted therapy.

    November 3, 2023 – Japan’s government announces that Daschle will receive the Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun.

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  • Biden’s student loan policies continue to face legal challenges | CNN Politics

    Biden’s student loan policies continue to face legal challenges | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Legal challenges are continuing to target some of President Joe Biden’s student loan policies.

    While the president’s major student loan forgiveness program was blocked by the Supreme Court in late June, the Biden administration is also facing lawsuits over some of its other policy changes aimed at making it easier for borrowers to pay back their loans.

    On Monday, the US 5th Circuit Court of Appeals temporarily blocked new provisions that were meant to be implemented in July, which would make it easier for borrowers to get their debts erased when they’re misled or defrauded by their college under a rule known as borrower defense to repayment.

    The rule has been in place for decades. But the lawsuit targets new provisions – including one allowing for automatic debt discharges a year after a college’s closure date and another that bans colleges from requiring borrowers to agree to mandatory arbitration – which are now blocked.

    The emergency injunction request was made by Career Colleges and Schools of Texas, a group of for-profit universities. The appeals court order did not explain the reasoning for the decision but said that the case will be heard on November 6.

    Student loan borrowers may still submit applications for debt relief under the borrower defense rule during this time, but the Department of Education “will not adjudicate or process affected applications under the new regulations while the court’s order is in place,” according to the agency’s website.

    Aaron Ament, president of the nonprofit National Student Legal Defense Network, warned that “countless students are at risk of being taken advantage of by higher ed profiteers” until the protections are restored.

    Meanwhile, in a separate lawsuit filed last week, two conservative groups sued to stop the Biden administration from carrying out a one-time adjustment to some borrowers’ accounts, which was aimed at more accurately counting certain payments made previously under an income-driven repayment plan.

    These plans calculate payments based on a borrower’s income and family size – regardless of the person’s total outstanding debt. Generally, they lower monthly payments to help borrowers avoid defaulting on their loans and wipe away remaining balances after qualifying payments are made for 20 to 25 years.

    What the administration has referred to as “fixes” are expected to result in the cancellation of $39 billion worth of federal student loan debt for 804,000 borrowers, according to the Department of Education.

    The lawsuit, which was filed by the New Civil Liberties Alliance on behalf of the conservative groups Cato Institute and the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, argues that one-time adjustment “is substantively and procedurally unlawful” – similar, it says, to the broader student loan forgiveness program struck down by the Supreme Court.

    The Department of Education announced in July – weeks after the other forgiveness program was blocked – that it would begin to notify the 804,000 borrowers of their forthcoming debt cancellation.

    But the one-time adjustment had been planned for more than a year. First announced in April 2022, the move was meant to help borrowers whose payments were miscounted and were already eligible for debt relief under an income-driven repayment plan.

    The changes followed a Government Accountability Office report that found that the Department of Education had trouble tracking borrowers’ payments and hadn’t done enough to ensure that all eligible borrowers receive the forgiveness to which they are entitled. In fact, 7,700 loans in repayment, or about 11% of loans analyzed, could have potentially already been eligible for forgiveness.

    In a statement sent to CNN, the Department of Education said the lawsuit “is nothing but a desperate attempt from right wing special interests to keep hundreds of thousands of borrowers in debt, even though these borrowers have earned the forgiveness that is promised through income-driven repayment plans.”

    This latest legal challenge does not appear to immediately impact the Biden administration’s new income-driven repayment plan known as SAVE (Saving on a Valuable Education), which launched last week.

    Once the SAVE plan is fully phased in, which is expected to happen next year, some borrowers could see their monthly bills cut in half and remaining debt canceled after making at least 10 years of payments.

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  • FBI working with sheriff’s office after threats to Fulton County officials | CNN Politics

    FBI working with sheriff’s office after threats to Fulton County officials | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The FBI is aware that some Fulton County officials have received threats of violence, the bureau’s Atlanta office said in a statement Thursday.

    The threats come days after a local grand jury voted to indict former President Donald Trump and others stemming from their efforts to overturn his 2020 electoral defeat in Georgia.

    The agency did not identify any specific targets, but said, “It is our policy not to discuss details of ongoing investigations. However, each and every potential threat brought to our attention is taken seriously. Individuals found responsible for making threats in violation of state and/or federal laws will be prosecuted.”

    According to the statement, the FBI Atlanta field office is working with the Fulton County sheriff’s office on the investigation.

    The statement comes amid concerns over the safety of the officials and jury members connected to Monday’s indictment and reports that the names, photographs, social media profiles and even the home addresses purportedly belonging to members of the grand jury were circulating on social media. CNN could not independently verify if the photographs, social media accounts and the homes addresses being posted actually belonged to the grand jurors.

    The Fulton County sheriff’s office said in a statement Thursday afternoon that it was “aware that personal information of members of the Fulton County Grand Jury is being shared on various platforms” and that investigators are trying to “track down the origin of threats” against the grand jurors.

    “We take this matter very seriously and are coordinating with our law enforcement partners to respond quickly to any credible threat and to ensure the safety of those individuals who carried out their civic duty,” the statement said.

    As CNN has reported, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis was recently assigned additional security protection near her Georgia residence, according to a source with direct knowledge of Atlanta law enforcement movements.

    Willis, who is investigating Trump and his associates for interfering with Georgia’s 2020 election results, has recently urged local officials to stay vigilant about possible security threats. In an email less last month to county officials, the district attorney shared a racist and sexualized message she received and said similar obscene messages had been left via voicemail.

    Trump once again attacked Willis earlier this month at a New Hampshire campaign event, calling the Black district attorney a “racist,” while defending his actions in Georgia around the 2020 election.

    Willis has previously said security concerns have been escalated by Trump’s rhetoric.

    In early 2022, she asked the FBI for help in providing security for buildings and staff one day after Trump called prosecutors investigating him “racists.” The former president asked his supporters to hold “the biggest protests we have ever had” in cities like Atlanta if the prosecutors “do anything wrong or illegal.”

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  • Two Proud Boys sentenced for roles in Capitol attack on January 6 | CNN Politics

    Two Proud Boys sentenced for roles in Capitol attack on January 6 | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    A federal judge handed down hefty sentences against two members of the Proud Boys for their role in attacking the Capitol on January 6, 2021, one who broke open a window to the building and another who took over the leadership role of the group that day.

    Their sentences, both among the longest yet of the over 1,000 people charged as part of the riot, are emblematic of how judges are working to separate key figures who furthered the violence that day from those who were swept up in the crowd.

    “If we don’t have the peaceful transfer of power, I don’t know what we have,” District Judge Timothy Kelly said during one of the hearings Friday. “Because that is the reflection of when we go to the ballot box, when we exercise the right to vote. That is the manifestation of that. And so, if we don’t have that, we don’t have anything.”

    Kelly continued, “that didn’t honor the founders, it was the kind of thing they wrote the constitution to prevent.”

    The first man to be sentenced Friday, Dominic Pezzola, was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Pezzola smashed through a window to the US Capitol with a police riot shield on January 6, allowing the first wave of rioters to storm the building as members of Congress were being evacuated. Pezzola quickly became a symbol of the violence that day.

    Ethan Nordean, a Proud Boy from Washington State who took over leading the group after longtime Proud Boys chairman Enrique Tarrio was arrested on his way to Washington, DC, days before the January 6 riot, was sentenced to 18 years in prison.

    Nordean’s 18-year prison sentence is tied for the longest handed down in connection with the January 6 insurrection. Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes was also sentenced to 18 years in prison for seditious conspiracy.

    Images of Pezzola, nicknamed “Spazzolini,” using the police riot shield to first breach the Capitol building quickly became a symbol of the violence that day.

    “The reality is you were the one who did it,” Kelly said during his sentencing hearing Friday. “You were the one who smashed that window in and let people begin to stream into the Capitol building and threaten the lives of our lawmakers. It is not something I would have ever dreamed I’d see in our country.”

    “You were really, in some ways, the tip of the spear,” the judge said.

    Before leaving the courtroom, Pezzola, with a raised fist, shouted, “Trump won!” just minutes after Kelly – who had already left the courtroom – said he hoped Pezzola had turned a corner.

    Pezzola was the only one of the five Proud Boys defendants not convicted of seditious conspiracy. Pezzola joined the Proud Boys shortly before January 6, according to evidence shown at trial, and was praised by the organization’s leadership for his violent actions at a separate rally weeks before the Capitol riot.

    The New York native was convicted of multiple other charges including assaulting or resisting a police officer, robbery of a police shield, destruction of government property and obstructing an official proceeding.

    In the at times rambunctious trial, which spanned several months, prosecutors argued that Pezzola’s co-defendants, leaders of the Proud Boys, pushed lower-level members like Pezzola to be on the front lines of the violence at the Capitol.

    In a written statement read aloud by prosecutors earlier this week, former Capitol police officer Mark Ode, who was assaulted by Pezzola, recounted being attacked by the mob and feeling like his life was leaving his body.

    Ode wrote that he was haunted by the memory of being “pinned down by multiple assailants, being pinned down by all of their weight, while simultaneously being choked by the chinstrap of my helmet.”

    “[I] felt my life fleeing my body,” Ode wrote, adding that he had “the most vivid visual of my own funeral.”

    During Friday’s sentencing hearing, prosecutor Erik Kenerson said that “many Americans will approach the ballot box in 2024 with trepidation” and “will go to bed on January 5, 2025 afraid of what might happen the next day. Mark Ode certainly will.”

    Pezzola, dressed in an orange jumpsuit, addressed the court during Friday’s hearing, while his wife, mother, daughter and a friend who served with him in the military sat in the courtroom.

    “I need to extend my sincere apology to Officer Ode,” Pezzola said, “and if he were here, I would look him in the eyes and apologize for all the grief I caused him.” Pezzola also apologized to his wife and children and the country, adding that “the events of J6 have crumbled the reputation of the nation I served in the Marine corps.”

    His wife, Lisa, told Kelly how her daughters have suffered through depression and been bullied at school since their father was arrested, saying that it “is very hard as a mother – to not be able to protect them from the outside world.”

    “In no way am I making excuses for Dominic’s actions that day. As I said on the stand, he was a f**king idiot,” she said through tears.

    Pezzola’s youngest daughter, Angelina, also spoke to the judge, saying that she was “everything good that my father has done” and that it’s because of him she’s a successful college student.

    “I hope you give him some mercy so he can see me graduate college, so he can see me get my first home, my first job,” she said as her father sobbed at the defense table.

    “All I crave is a hug from my father.”

    Nordean – who goes by the moniker “Rufio Panman” after a member of Peter Pan’s Lost Boys – rose to prominence within the organization in 2017 after a video of him knocking out an anti-fascist protester with one punch went viral online.

    On the morning of January 6, Nordean and his co-defendant Joseph Biggs, led a group of approximately 100 Proud Boys towards the Capitol, donning walkie-talkie style radios and leading chants over a bullhorn.

    Standing before the judge late Friday afternoon, Nordean apologized for his actions during the riot and said that “for a long time I thought of myself merely as an individual, comparing my actions that day to others… but I had to face the sobering truth: I didn’t come to January 6 as an individual, I came as a leader.”

    “The truth is I did help lead a group of men back to the Capitol,” Nordean said. “I had ample opportunity to deescalate… and I did nothing.’

    Defense attorney Nicholas Smith noted repeatedly Friday that Nordean “consumed at least six alcoholic beverages” on his way to the Capitol on January 6 and that his pockets were filled with empty containers. His wife and sister also addressed the judge, pleading for Nordean to be allowed to return home to his daughter.

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  • A moment of reckoning for gerrymandering | CNN Politics

    A moment of reckoning for gerrymandering | CNN Politics

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



    CNN
     — 

    Americans’ reckoning with their own democracy extends beyond the looming presidential election to a much more local level.

    There are new details about how the conservative-dominated US Supreme Court issued its most unexpected decision of the past year and threw out Alabama’s congressional map, part of a secret negotiation between Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Read that incredible behind-the-scenes reporting from CNN’s Joan Biskupic.

    Meanwhile, in Wisconsin, the inverse is occurring – lawmakers who enjoy a majority thanks to gerrymandered state-level districts are keen on throwing out a liberal state Supreme Court justice even though she took the bench last month after being elected to a 10-year term.

    State and federal courts are hearing challenges to maps across the country, which could have a major impact on the coming election and help determine who controls Congress.

    Also this week:

    • A federal court has also thrown into question the congressional map drawn by Republicans that helped them gain seats in Florida.
    • There’s a trial over congressional maps underway in Georgia.

    The selective drawing of legislative district maps during periods of redistricting after the US census every 10 years – colloquially known as gerrymandering – is a practice that has been the subject of political and court fights for most of the country’s history. The Supreme Court has said partisan gerrymandering done for political reasons is not its concern, but this year it reaffirmed that racial gerrymandering that keeps minorities shut out of the power structure is not allowed.

    An endless series of adjustments has sought to address the issue of gerrymandering. These have ranged from major legislation like the Voting Rights Act in the 1960s to the adoption of nonpartisan or independent redistricting commissions in recent decades. The Congressional Research Service has a list of which states, many on the West Coast, have tried to de-politicize the process.

    But lawmakers in multiple states continue to work hard to protect their party control, a battle that is being fought on multiple fronts.

    Republicans in Alabama, for instance, unhappy with the Supreme Court’s decision this summer, essentially ignored the court by drawing a map that did not include an additional majority-Black district as the justices demanded. A federal court sent the state back to the drawing board again this week with the rebuke that it was “disturbed” by Alabama’s actions.

    Alabama argued that creating a second majority-Black district would be a sort of “affirmative action.”

    But the three-judge panel that threw out the map rejected that idea.

    “The Voting Rights Act does not provide a leg up for Black voters – it merely prevents them from being kept down with regard to what is arguably the most ‘fundamental political right,’ in that it is ‘preservative of all rights’ – the right to vote.” Read more from CNN’s Fredreka Schouten and Ethan Cohen.

    Alabama plans to appeal to the US Supreme Court again with an eye to changing Kavanaugh’s mind.

    Gerrymandered lawmakers target anti-gerrymander judge

    In Wisconsin, a Marquette University Law School review of data tells the story of how partisan gerrymandering – the kind the Supreme Court doesn’t concern itself with – makes it virtually impossible for Democrats to win the state’s assembly. When Gov. Tony Evers narrowly won statewide in 2018, he got 49.6%, or about half of the vote. But because of how the state’s legislative maps were drawn, the Republican then-Gov. Scott Walker got a majority in 63 of the state’s 99 assembly districts, just two fewer than in 2014, when Walker won a majority of votes in 2014.

    It is lawmakers elected from Republican-friendly maps who now want to remove the liberal state Supreme Court justice, Janet Protasiewicz, from office in part for her opposition to the maps. Read more from CNN’s Eric Bradner.

    North Carolina’s new Supreme Court overturns gerrymandering ruling

    North Carolina Republicans tried to cut the state courts out of the federal redistricting and elections process altogether by pushing a fringe legal theory known as the “independent state legislature theory.” The US Supreme Court rejected that argument, which could have upended how federal elections are contested in a consequential decision earlier this year.

    But North Carolina Republicans seem likely to ultimately get the map they want. Republicans gained a majority on the state’s Supreme Court this year, and the court has ruled it has no authority to oversee partisan gerrymandering.

    There are many more legal fights over congressional maps underway. The US Supreme Court in June also allowed for the Louisiana congressional map to be redrawn to allow for another majority-Black district.

    From CNN’s report on the Louisiana decision by Tierney Sneed: “Louisiana state officials were sued last year for a congressional map – passed by the Republican legislature over Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards’ veto – that made only one of its six districts majority Black, despite the 2020 census showing that the state’s population is 33% Black.”

    Congressional maps are in question in many states, including Georgia, where there is a trial underway in Atlanta.

    Kentucky’s Supreme Court is set to hear arguments later this month about whether gerrymandered maps violate the state’s constitution.

    On the flip side, Democrats are trying to get more friendly maps in New York, where a court-drawn map led them to lose congressional seats in 2022.

    One way to view these court decisions is that the US Supreme Court allowing or insisting that maps in Alabama or Louisiana be redrawn could have a real impact on who controls Congress after the 2024 election. Republicans hold a tiny five-seat majority.

    Another way to view these court decisions is that when the US Supreme Court allowed the GOP-drawn maps to be used in these states in the 2022 election, it helped Republicans gain that slim majority.

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  • Schumer in talks with McConnell as shutdown fears grow: ‘We may now have to go first’ | CNN Politics

    Schumer in talks with McConnell as shutdown fears grow: ‘We may now have to go first’ | CNN Politics

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    Watch CNN Chief Congressional Correspondent Manu Raju’s interview with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer this Sunday at 11 a.m. ET/8 a.m. PT on CNN’s “Inside Politics”.



    CNN
     — 

    Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told CNN that his chamber might have to take matters in its own hands and push through a must-pass bill to fund the government amid deep divisions in the House and a looming shutdown by next weekend.

    For weeks, Democratic and Republican senators have been watching the House with growing alarm as Speaker Kevin McCarthy has struggled to cobble together the votes to pass a short-term spending bill along party lines – all as he has resisted calls to cut a deal with Democrats to keep the government open until a longer-term deal can be reached. The initial plan: Let McCarthy get the votes to pass a bill first before the Senate changes it and sends it back to the House for a final round of votes and negotiations.

    Now with House GOP leaders still struggling to get the votes ahead of the September 30 deadline, Schumer said he would try to cut a deal with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and send it to the House on the eve of a potential shutdown – all as he signaled he was pushing to include aid to Ukraine as part of the package.

    “We may now have to go first … given the House,” Schumer told CNN in an interview in his office, moments before he took procedural steps to allow the Senate to take up a continuing resolution, or CR, as soon as next week. “Leader McConnell and I are talking and we have a great deal of agreement on many parts of this. It’s never easy to get a big bill, a CR bill done, but I am very, very optimistic that McConnell and I can find a way and get a large number of votes both Democratic and Republican in the Senate.”

    If Schumer’s assessment is correct, that would leave McCarthy with a choice: Either ignore the Senate’s bill altogether or continue to try to pass his own bill in the narrowly divided House where he can only afford to lose four GOP members on any party-line vote.

    But McCarthy could also be jammed by a bipartisan group of members who are openly threatening to sign a petition forcing a vote in the House – if they get 218 supporters – and circumvent the speaker altogether. At the moment, McCarthy is scrambling to resurrect his spending plans to try to move 11 year-long funding bills through his chamber – even though it typically takes months to hash out differences between the two chambers on spending legislation.

    There’s now talk in House GOP circles about focusing solely on those long-term bills and abandoning a stop-gap resolution altogether, as hardliners threaten to tank it, and as GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida has vowed to seek McCarthy’s ouster as speaker if he pushes for such a Band-aid solution. But McCarthy indicated he’s still open to passing a Republican stop-gap bill, and he was non-committal on Friday on how he would handle a plan sent to him by the Senate.

    It remains to be seen what will ultimately be included in the Senate’s plan. Schumer said in the interview “I hope so” when asked if he expected Ukraine funding to be included as the White House has pushed for $24 billion to aid the country in its war against Russia.

    “Leader McConnell and I are both strongly for aid for Ukraine, and I believe the majority of the members of both parties in the Senate agree with that,” Schumer said.

    But pushing such a plan quickly through the Senate will be difficult. Any one senator can slow down action in the Senate – and Sen. Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican – has vowed to battle a bill that provides money for Ukraine.

    “I’ll object to sending any more money to Ukraine,” Paul told CNN on Thursday. “We don’t have any more money.”

    Yet with the GOP divisions over how to proceed, frustration is growing in the ranks.

    Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, a member of Senate GOP leadership, raised concerns about her party’s handling of the spending talks.

    “I feel like we have control of the House – I don’t envy my good friend Kevin McCarthy’s position here – but I think we’re just showing that we don’t have any solutions,” Capito told CNN. “Stalemates and government shutdowns are not good solutions.”

    Asked if she were concerned about the fallout of a shutdown, Capito said: “I do worry about that, the political backlash.”

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  • Fact check: Republicans make false, misleading claims at first Biden impeachment inquiry hearing | CNN Politics

    Fact check: Republicans make false, misleading claims at first Biden impeachment inquiry hearing | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The Republican-led House Oversight Committee is holding its first hearing Thursday in the impeachment inquiry of President Joe Biden – and Republicans on the committee have made a series of false and misleading claims, as well as some other claims that have left out critical context.

    Below is a CNN fact check. This article will be updated as additional fact checks are completed.

    Republican Rep. James Comer, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said in his opening remarks at the hearing on Thursday that the committee has uncovered how “the Bidens and their associates created over 20 shell companies” and “raked in over $20 million between 2014 and 2019.”

    Facts First: The $20 million figure is roughly accurate for Joe Biden’s family and associates, according to the bank records subpoenaed by the committee, but the phrase “the Bidens and their associates” obscures the fact that there is no public evidence to date that President Joe Biden himself received any of this money. And it’s worth noting that a large chunk of the money went to the “associates” – Hunter Biden’s business partners – not even Biden’s family itself.

    So far, none of the bank records obtained by the committee have shown any payments to Joe Biden. And a Washington Post analysis in August found that, of about $23 million in payments the committee had identified from foreign sources, nearly $7.5 million went to members of the Biden family – almost all of it to Hunter Biden – and the rest to people Hunter Biden did business with. (The Post also questioned the use of the vague phrase “shell companies,” noting that “virtually all of the companies” that had been listed by the committee at the time had “legitimate business interests” or “clearly identified business investments.”)

    A Republican aide for the House Oversight Committee disputed the Post’s analysis on Thursday, saying that bank records obtained by the panel actually show that, of $24 million in payments between 2014 and 2019, $15 million went to members of the Biden family and $9 million went to associates. CNN has reached out to the Post for comment; the committee has not publicly released the underlying bank records that would definitively show the breakdown in payments.

    The records obtained by the committee have shown that during and after Joe Biden’s tenure as vice president, Hunter Biden made millions of dollars through complex financial arrangements from private equity deals, legal fees and corporate consulting in Ukraine, China, Romania and elsewhere. Again, Republicans have not produced evidence that Joe Biden got paid in any of these arrangements.

    Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio repeated a false claim about Hunter Biden that CNN debunked when Jordan made the same claim last week.

    Jordan claimed that Hunter Biden himself said he was unqualified to sit on the board of directors of a Ukrainian energy company, Burisma Holdings.

    “Hunter Biden’s not qualified, fact number two, to sit on the board. Not my words, his words. He said he got on the board because of the brand, because of the name,” Jordan said Thursday.

    Facts First: It’s not true that Hunter Biden himself said he wasn’t qualified to sit on the Burisma board. In fact, Hunter Biden said in a 2019 interview with ABC News that “I was completely qualified to be on the board” and defended his qualifications in detail. He did acknowledge, as Jordan said, that he would “probably not” have been asked to be on the board if he was not a Biden – but he nonetheless explicitly rejected claims that he wasn’t qualified, calling them “misinformation.”

    When the ABC interviewer asked what his qualifications for the role were, he said: “Well, I was vice chairman on the board of Amtrak for five years. I was the chairman of the board of the UN World Food Programme. I was a lawyer for Boies Schiller Flexner, one of the most prestigious law firms in the world. Bottom line is that I know that I was completely qualified to be on the board to head up the corporate governance and transparency committee on the board. And that’s all that I focused on. Basically, turning a Eastern European independent natural gas company into Western standards of corporate governance.”

    When the ABC interviewer said, “You didn’t have any extensive knowledge about natural gas or Ukraine itself, though,” Biden responded, “No, but I think I had as much knowledge as anybody else that was on the board – if not more.”

    Asked if he would have been asked to be on the board if his last name wasn’t Biden, Biden said, “I don’t know. I don’t know. Probably not.” He added “there’s a lot of things” in his life that wouldn’t have happened if he had a different last name.

    A side note: Biden had served as the board chair for World Food Program USA, a nonprofit that supports the UN World Food Programme, not the UN program itself as he claimed in the interview.

    Jordan cited new documents obtained from IRS whistleblowers, made public by House Republicans on Wednesday, to argue that the Justice Department improperly blocked investigators from asking about Joe Biden in a 2020 search warrant related to Hunter Biden’s overseas dealings.

    “We learned yesterday, in the search warrant…examining Hunter Biden electronic communications, they weren’t allowed to ask about Political Figure 1,” Jordan said. “Political Figure number 1 is the big guy, is Joe Biden.”

    Facts First: This is highly misleading. The Justice Department official who gave this instruction said Joe Biden’s name shouldn’t be mentioned in the search warrant because there wasn’t any legal basis to do so. Furthermore, this occurred during Trump’s presidency, so it doesn’t prove pro-Biden meddling by the Biden-era Justice Department.

    The August 2020 email from a deputy to now-special counsel David Weiss, the Trump-appointed federal prosecutor who is leading the Hunter Biden probe, said the warrant was for “BS,” an apparent reference to Blue Star Strategies, a lobbying firm that represented Burisma Holdings, the Ukrainian energy company where Hunter Biden was on the board.

    The Weiss deputy said in the email that “other than the attribution, location and identity stuff at the end, none if it is appropriate and within the scope of this warrant” and that “there should be nothing about Political Figure 1 in here,” according to emails released by House Republicans. Another document released by the GOP confirm that Joe Biden is “Political Figure 1.”

    Before obtaining a search warrant, investigators need to establish probable cause and secure approval from a judge. If federal prosecutors believed the references to Joe Biden weren’t within the legal scope of what the warrant was looking for, it wouldn’t have been appropriate or lawful to include them.

    Comer said in his opening remarks that the committee recently uncovered “two additional wires sent to Hunter Biden that originated in Beijing from Chinese nationals; this happened when Joe Biden was running for president of the United States – and Joe Biden’s home is listed on the beneficiary address.”

    Facts First: This lacks important context. Comer was correct that the committee has found evidence of two wire transfers sent to Hunter Biden from Chinese nationals in the second half of 2019, during Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, but he did not explain that Joe Biden’s home being listed as the beneficiary address doesn’t demonstrate that Joe Biden received any of the money. Nor did he explain that there may well be benign reasons for the inclusion of the address. Hunter Biden has lived at his father’s Wilmington, Delaware, home at times and listed that address on his driver’s license; Hunter Biden’s lawyer Abbe Lowell said in a statement to CNN this week that the address was listed on these transfers simply because it was the address Hunter Biden used on the bank account the money was going to, which Lowell said Hunter Biden did “because it was his only permanent address at the time.”

    “This was a documented loan (not a distribution or pay-out) that was wired from a private individual to his new bank account which listed the address on his driver’s license, his parents’ address, because it was his only permanent address at the time,” Lowell said in the statement. “We expect more occasions where the Republican chairs twist the truth to mislead people to promote their fantasy political agenda.”

    White House spokesman Ian Sams wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Wednesday: “Imagine them arguing that, if someone stayed at their parents’ house during the pandemic, listed it as their permanent address for work, and got a paycheck, the parents somehow also worked for the employer…It’s bananas…Yet this is what extreme House Republicans have sunken to.”

    Comer told CNN this week his panel is trying to put together a timeline on where Hunter Biden was living around the time of the transfers, which occurred in July 2019 and August 2019. Joe Biden was a candidate in the Democratic presidential primary at the time.

    Republican Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina claimed at the Thursday hearing, “We already know the president took bribes from Burisma,” a Ukrainian energy company where Hunter Biden sat on the board of directors.

    Facts First: Mace’s claim is false; we do not “already know” that Joe Biden took any bribe. The claim about a bribe from Burisma is a completely unproven allegation. The FBI informant who relayed the claim to the FBI in 2020 was merely reporting something he said he had been told by Burisma’s chief executive. Later in the hearing, a witness called by the committee Republicans, George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, called “the bribery allegation” the most concerning piece of evidence he had heard today – but he immediately cautioned that “you have to only take that so far” given that it is “a secondhand account.”

    According to an internal FBI document made public by Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa earlier this year over the strong objections of the FBI, the informant said in 2020 – when Donald Trump was president – that the CEO of Burisma, Mykola Zlochevsky, had claimed in 2016 that he made a $5 million payment to “one Biden” and another $5 million payment to “another Biden.” But the FBI document did not contain any proof for the claim, and the document said the informant was “not able to provide any further opinion as to the veracity” of the claim.

    Republicans have tried to boost the credibility the allegation by saying it was in an FBI document and that the FBI had viewed the informant as highly credible. But the document merely memorialized the information provided by the informant; it does not demonstrate that the information is true. And Hunter Biden’s former business associate Devon Archer testified to the House Oversight Committee earlier this year that he had not been aware of any such payments to the Bidens; Archer characterized Zlochevsky’s reported claim as an example of the Ukrainian businessman embellishing his influence.

    Rep. Tim Burchett, a Tennessee Republican, falsely claimed that Hunter Biden never paid taxes on his foreign income.

    He said Hunter Biden “failed to pay any taxes” on the millions of dollars he got from Ukrainian companies, and that this shows how “the Biden family doesn’t have to” pay taxes.

    “Who’s going to write the check for the money Hunter Biden didn’t pay?” Burchett asked, adding that “hardworking Americans” would end up footing the bill.

    Facts First: This is false. Hunter Biden repeatedly missed IRS deadlines, and his conduct was so egregious that federal investigators believe it was criminal, but he eventually belatedly paid all of his back taxes, plus interest and penalties, to the tune of about $2 million.

    Documents from Hunter Biden’s criminal cases indicate that he repeatedly missed tax deadlines, even though he had the funds and was repeatedly warned by his accountant and business partners. He was prepared to plead guilty to two misdemeanors in July, for failing to pay taxes on time in 2017 and 2018, before the plea deal collapsed.

    But there’s a difference between failing to pay taxes on time and failing to pay taxes at all. In 2021, while the criminal investigation was still underway and before any charges were filed, Hunter Biden paid roughly $2 million to the IRS to cover all the back taxes, plus penalties and interest.

    Hunter Biden was able to make the massive payment thanks to a roughly $2 million loan from a friend and attorney who has been supporting him during his legal troubles, according to court filings.

    Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York accused a Republican member of the committee, Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida, of cutting out “critical context” from an image of a purported text message that Donalds displayed earlier in the Thursday hearing. Ocasio-Cortez also said that Donalds had displayed a “fabricated image.”

    The dispute was over an image Donalds showed of a purported 2018 text message from the president’s brother James Biden to the president’s son Hunter Biden – provided by IRS whistleblowers and released by House Republicans on Wednesday – in which James Biden purportedly wrote, “This can work, you need a safe harbor. I can work with you father [sic] alone !! We as usual just need several months of his help for this to work.”

    After showing the image, Donalds asked a witness at the committee, “If you saw a text message like this between the president’s brother and the president’s son, wouldn’t you be concerned about them trying to give plausible deniability for the president of the United States to not have any knowledge of said business dealings?”

    Facts First: Donalds didn’t invent the James Biden text message, but Ocasio-Cortez was correct that Donalds left out critical context – specifically, context that showed there was no sign that the purported text exchange between James Biden and Hunter Biden was about business dealings. The information released by House Republicans this week appeared to show that James Biden’s purported text about getting “help” from Joe Biden came in direct response to a purported Hunter Biden text saying he could not afford alimony, school tuition for his children, food and gas “w/o [without] Dad.” Donalds did not display this purported Hunter Biden text at the Thursday hearing.

    In other words, when James Biden purportedly mentioned the possibility of several months of help from Joe Biden, he gave no indication he was referring to some sort of business transaction, much less the foreign transactions that House Republicans have been focused on in their investigations into the president. But Donalds didn’t make that clear.

    With that said, Ocasio-Cortez herself could have been clearer about what she meant when she claimed the image Donalds showed was “fabricated.”

    The contents of the purported James Biden text Donalds displayed were not made up, according to the IRS whistleblowers. What appeared to be novel was the graphic Donalds used; he showed the text in a form that made it look like a screenshot from an iPhone text conversation, with white words over a blue background bubble. The House Republican spreadsheet that the words were taken from did not include any such graphics, and, again, it did include the preceding purported Hunter Biden message that Donalds didn’t show.

    Republican Rep. Pat Fallon of Texas said at the Thursday hearing, “In an interview back in 2019 with The New Yorker, even Hunter admitted that he talked to his dad about business, specifically Burisma.”

    Facts First: This needs context. The 2019 New Yorker article in question reported that Hunter Biden said he recalled Joe Biden discussing Burisma with him “just once” in a brief exchange that consisted of this: “Dad said, ‘I hope you know what you are doing,’ and I said, ‘I do.’”

    It’s fair for Fallon to say that this counts as Joe Biden discussing business with his son, but Fallon did not mention how brief and limited Hunter Biden said the purported discussion was.

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • New Hampshire man pleads guilty to threatening Rep. Matt Gaetz after scrolling TikTok | CNN Politics

    New Hampshire man pleads guilty to threatening Rep. Matt Gaetz after scrolling TikTok | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    A New Hampshire college student on Thursday pleaded guilty to federal charges of threatening to kill a member of Congress after he became angry while drunkenly scrolling on TikTok.

    While authorities didn’t name the member of Congress, Rep. Matt Gaetz confirmed he was the target when he played the threatening voicemail at the heart of the case on his podcast earlier this year. CNN has reached out to the Florida Republican’s office for comment.

    The defendant, 24-year-old Allan Poller, faces up to five years in prison when he is sentenced in January.

    According to court documents, Poller, who is a student at Keene State College in New Hampshire, placed a call to the Washington, DC, office of an unnamed member of Congress just after midnight on March 29.

    No one in the office answered, prosecutors said, so Poller left a voicemail warning the member to stop “coming for the gays” and threatened to kill the member should they continue.

    “If you keep on coming for the gays, we’re gonna strike back and I guarantee you, you do not want to f**k with us,” Poller said, according to court documents. “We will kill you if that’s what it takes. I will take a bullet to your f**king head if you f**k with my rights anymore.”

    Poller later admitted to leaving the message in an interview with law enforcement, according to court documents, telling investigators that he had been drinking and become angry while watching videos on TikTok.

    Poller’s attorney Jesse Friedman said in a statement that his client “recognizes that hate in any form is wrong and hurtful. He accepts responsibility for his actions and did not intend for his acts to cause harm or a threat to anybody.”

    As part of his plea deal, Poller agreed that while he may not have intended to carry out the threat, he knew his voicemail would be viewed as such.

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  • DC grand jury that handed up 2020 election indictment against Trump meets again | CNN Politics

    DC grand jury that handed up 2020 election indictment against Trump meets again | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    A federal grand jury reconvened on Tuesday for the first time since handing up an indictment last week against former President Donald Trump related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

    CNN spotted grand jury members at the federal courthouse in Washington, an indication that the investigation into election interference is not over.

    The grand jury has been hearing evidence in special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the aftermath of the election leading up to the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol for nearly a year. In the Trump indictment, prosecutors refer to six unnamed co-conspirators, raising questions about whether they also could face charges in the case.

    One of the co-conspirators identified by CNN is ex-Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani. On Monday, Bernie Kerik, a longtime Giuliani associate who coordinated with him after the 2020 election, met with investigators at the special counsel’s office. Kerik spoke with investigators about Giuliani’s efforts to try to uncover election fraud in 2020, according to his attorney Tim Parlatore.

    Prosecutors allege in the indictment that the co-conspirator identified as Giuliani “was willing to spread knowingly false claims” about supposed election fraud.

    A political adviser to Giuliani, Ted Goodman, previously told CNN that they were acting in good faith and that the indictment “eviscerates” the First Amendment.

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  • Hunter Biden is a sensitive topic that advisers rarely broach with the president | CNN Politics

    Hunter Biden is a sensitive topic that advisers rarely broach with the president | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Long among the most sensitive subjects inside the West Wing, Hunter Biden’s legal saga now appears destined to play out amid his father’s bid for reelection, frustrating the president but so far causing little real concern among his advisers.

    The probe into Hunter Biden is now one of two special counsel investigations – the other being an inquiry into his father’s handling of classified documents after leaving the Senate and the vice president’s office – that both appear poised to extend for months to come.

    Even some of Biden’s allies acknowledge they threaten to complicate or erode the moral high ground the president asserts as he seeks reelection. Hunter Biden, of course, is not himself running for president and the White House has taken pains to avoid interference in the case – all points of contrast with the president’s most likely Republican rival.

    The cases and consequences are entirely separate for both investigations. Although President Biden is so far not a part of special counsel David Weiss’s investigation into his son, his aides expect that he may be interviewed as part of special counsel Robert Hur’s documents probe.

    Still, both investigations take away the fundamental element of control for a White House heading into an election cycle. As multiple Biden advisers conceded privately this week, special counsels have a history of uncovering information they hadn’t set out initially to discover. The fact that it’s also a delicate family matter, people close to Biden say, is creating a level of personal angst unlike any other challenge for the president.

    David Weiss, left, and Hunter Biden

    ‘This is just a debacle’: Ex-federal prosecutor on length of Hunter Biden investigation

    How and whether those factors play into Biden’s reelection chances remains to be determined. Next to a likely rival who has now been indicted four times, Biden’s predicament is vastly different. Democratic strategists believe swing voters see Hunter Biden as a private citizen and are more concerned about the economy.

    Given the facts currently known, strategists say, these voters don’t believe President Biden has been implicated in any wrongdoing. Yet Biden’s advisers also concede the topic is mostly verboten with the president, raising the prospect of a critical blind spot heading into a bruising campaign where nothing will be off limits with their Republican rivals.

    “Hunter Biden is not a topic of discussion in campaign meetings,” a senior aide said, speaking on condition of anonymity, given the sensitivity of the subject. “It’s just not addressed.”

    It was a surprise to the West Wing last week when Attorney General Merrick Garland announced he was giving special counsel status to Weiss – originally a Trump appointee – a fact that further underscores the separation between the White House and the Justice Department on the case. The decision was met with a range of responses by Biden’s allies last week, from resignation to frustration.

    Attorney General Merrick Garland speaks at the Department of Justice, Friday, Aug. 11, 2023, in Washington. Garland announced Friday he is appointing a special counsel in the Hunter Biden probe, deepening the investigation of the president's son ahead of the 2024 election. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)

    Garland appoints special counsel to Hunter Biden case

    For the president himself, the decision to name a special counsel amounted to another page in a chapter he would like to close. Even as the president and first lady try to move on from a dark period surrounding their son’s addiction, Republicans and now the Justice Department are extending the scrutiny into an indeterminable future.

    Just two weeks ago, the couple had hoped Hunter Biden’s expected plea deal would be a moment to admit mistakes and move on, one person familiar with the president’s thinking had said.

    But that plea deal fell apart and the special counsel appointment moves the legal issues into a new phase, including potentially a trial.

    From the beginning, the Bidens have tried to approach Hunter Biden’s issues through a personal lens, expressing their love and support for their son but otherwise declining to comment on the investigation. They have kept him close amid the legal proceedings with Hunter Biden appearing at family events and White House functions including a lavish state dinner days after his initial plea agreement was announced.

    President Joe Biden hugs his son Hunter Biden upon returning from a trip to Ireland, at Dover Air Force Base, in Delaware, on April 14.

    For some close to the president, however, there are now questions over how the matter has continued to persist, despite work toward a plea deal on tax and gun related charges, the resolution of a child support battle and no evidence yet that President Biden himself was implicated in any wrongdoing.

    They pin the blame mainly on Republicans, whom the White House blasted this week for waging years-long investigations into the president that haven’t produced evidence showing President Biden engaged in wrongdoing.

    “If you think about what Republicans in Congress have tried to do for years, they have been making claims and allegations about the president on this front over and over again. And month after month, year after year, they have been investigating every single angle of this and looking for any evidence to back their allegations,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said this week. “And what’s been the result of that, if you ask yourself what we have seen from that? They keep turning up documents and witnesses showing that the president wasn’t involved.”

    Beneath the surface, however, private questions are now brewing among some Democrats about the abilities of Hunter Biden’s legal team and the wisdom of his visible presence around his father.

    On Tuesday, Hunter Biden’s lead criminal defense attorney asked a federal judge on Tuesday for permission to withdraw from the case because he could now be called as a witness in future proceedings. To some Biden advisers, the surprise collapse of a plea deal only exacerbated existing concerns about Hunter’s legal team.

    “I’m sure this didn’t land all that well over in the White House because I think they’d love this Hunter Biden case to be behind them. The Republicans are sort of pointing to it for purposes of what-about-ism,” said David Axelrod, a senior adviser in the Obama White House and CNN senior political commentator, who said Republicans were eager to make false comparisons – essentially saying, “what about” Hunter’s legal issues?

    “They need to have a countervailing argument and their countervailing argument is, ‘Oh two standards of justice, they’re not indicting Hunter Biden,’” he said. “And they’re beating that horse to death, even though they’ve failed to make the connection between Hunter Biden and Joe Biden in the way that they allege. So I think that anything that extends the Hunter Biden case into the election year is not welcome news for Joe Biden.”

    Hunter Biden walks to a waiting SUV after arriving with US President Joe Biden on Marine One at Fort McNair in Washington, DC, on July 4, as they return to Washington after spending the weekend at Camp David.

    CNN reporter details why Hunter Biden’s top lawyer asked to withdraw from case

    Indeed, the actions of Hunter Biden are now becoming a central discussion point for Republicans in Congress and presidential candidates, who frequently point to the president’s son in their argument of a false equivalency in the Justice Department.

    Republicans have criticized the now defunct plea agreement between Hunter Biden and federal prosecutors as a “sweetheart deal,” and they scoffed when Weiss was appointed as special counsel, despite many previously supporting the appointment of a special counsel.

    Some of the president’s potential Republican rivals also blasted the special counsel decision. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis argued Hunter Biden would receive “soft glove treatment.” A spokesperson for former President Donald Trump argued the Biden family has “been protected by the Justice Department for decades” – even though Trump appointed Weiss to his position and Biden kept him in the post upon taking office.

    Hunter Biden at a ceremony at the White House in Washington, July 7, 2022.

    The matter is likely to arise at the first Republican presidential debate next week in Milwaukee. The Democratic National Committee is not preparing specific responses to any criticism leveled against Hunter Biden at the Republican presidential debate but will be ready to respond as needed, a party official says.

    In 2020, plans were similarly laid ahead of general election debates with Trump, who seized on Hunter Biden as an attack line. Biden’s defense of his son and his pride in his sobriety proved one of the most memorable moments of that year’s debate circuit.

    First lady Dr. Jill Biden had previously told CNN that the investigations into their son Hunter did not impact the president’s decision to seek reelection this year.

    Some Democrats view the development as an opportunity to demonstrate the party’s view of a fair judicial system – a contrast to many Republicans who have cried foul at the multiple indictments of Trump.

    “If Hunter has done something beyond the tax issue and beyond the gun issue that deserves to be investigated, then that should happen. No one is above the law,” said Rep. Jared Moskowitz, a Florida Democrat. “That’s why you’re not hearing Democrats say that, you know, this is the weaponization of the Justice Department. No. We’re being consistent. When we say no one’s above the law when it comes to Donald Trump, we mean it even if it’s one of our own.”

    This story has been updated to clarify that the DNC may respond to criticism leveled against Hunter Biden but has not prepared any specific responses.

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  • Republican congressman says Tuberville’s hold on military nominations is ‘paralyzing’ and a ‘national security problem’ | CNN Politics

    Republican congressman says Tuberville’s hold on military nominations is ‘paralyzing’ and a ‘national security problem’ | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    House Foreign Affairs Chairman Mike McCaul, a Republican, told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday that GOP Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s hold on military nominations is “paralyzing” and a “national security problem.”

    “The idea that one man in the Senate can hold this up for months … is paralyzing the Department of Defense,” McCaul said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

    “I think that is a national security problem and a national security issue,” the Texas congressman said.

    Tuberville, of Alabama, has delayed the confirmations of more than 300 top military nominees over his opposition to the Pentagon’s policy of reimbursing service members and their families who have to travel to receive abortion care. Tuberville says the Pentagon’s reproductive health policies violate the law, but Pentagon officials have pointed to a Justice Department memo that says the policies are lawful.

    A spokesperson for Tuberville said McCaul’s view “just isn’t accurate.”

    “No one can stop (Senate Majority Leader) Chuck Schumer from holding votes on these nominations. He just doesn’t want to,” spokesperson Steven Stafford wrote in an email to CNN. “It’s also inaccurate because acting officials are in all of these roles. In some cases these acting officials are the nominees for permanent roles. No jobs are open or going undone right now.”

    One senator can hold up nominations or legislation in the chamber, and Tuberville’s stance has left three military services to operate without a Senate-confirmed leader for the first time in history.

    It’s possible to confirm each nominee one by one, but Senate Democrats have argued that would take up valuable floor time – despite a five-week recess in August.

    McCaul said on Sunday that he wishes Tuberville would reconsider his stance and that the Republican Party is working on the abortion travel policy issue through the National Defense Authorization Act.

    “But to hold up the top brass from being promoted … I think is paralyzing our Department of Defense,” he said.

    The hold on promotions, which began in March, has been a growing source of public scrutiny. The three US military service secretaries told CNN last week that Tuberville’s blockage is aiding communist and autocratic regimes, and is being used against the US by adversaries such as China.

    In July, active-duty military spouses hand-delivered a petition to Schumer, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Tuberville signed by hundreds of military family members who were “deeply concerned and personally impacted by Senator Tuberville blocking confirmation of senior military leaders.”

    Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley told CNN’s Tapper on Sunday that if elected president, she would put an end to the reimbursement policy for travel for abortion care. Haley, whose husband is in the South Carolina Army National Guard, said military families should not be used as political pawns.

    “I’m not saying that Sen. Tuberville is right in doing this, because I don’t want to use them as pawns. But if you love our military and are so adamant about it, then go and make Congress, Republicans and Democrats, have to go through person by person,” the former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador said.

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  • Latest wave of migrants at US-Mexico border puts Biden under renewed pressure | CNN Politics

    Latest wave of migrants at US-Mexico border puts Biden under renewed pressure | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    A new surge of migrants at the US-Mexico border has placed immense pressure on federal resources and tested President Joe Biden’s border policies only months after going into place, prompting fresh criticism from Republicans and concern within the administration over a politically delicate issue.

    Biden has been plagued by issues on the border since his first months in office when the US faced a surge of unaccompanied migrant children that caught officials flatfooted. Over the last two years, his administration has continued to face fierce pushback from Republicans – and at times, Democrats – over his immigration policies.

    That complicated political landscape was put into sharp focus this week when administration officials were forced to contend with images of migrants crossing into the US in large groups, while also heralding a major move that will make hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans already in the US eligible to work, addressing a major sticking point with allies in New York.

    But the new wave of newcomers – many of whom are from Venezuela – paints a grim outlook for the fall as Biden ramps up his reelection campaign and Republicans continue to hammer the administration over its handling of the border.

    On Thursday, Biden blasted Republicans in Congress during remarks at the 46th Annual Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute’s Gala in Washington, DC, saying they “continue to undermine our border security” by blocking bipartisan efforts to pass immigration reform.

    “We need our colleagues to act – for decades, immigration reform has been bipartisan in this country,” he said.

    “Unfortunately, MAGA Republicans in Congress spent four years gutting the immigration system under my predecessor,” he added.

    In the absence of immigration reform, the administration has put in place a patchwork of policies to try to stem the flow of migrants journeying to the US southern border amid unprecedented mass migration in the western hemisphere.

    Earlier this year, the administration rolled out new and additional avenues for migrants to enter the US legally, like a mobile app, to keep people from crossing unlawfully. They have also stood up centers in the hemisphere to allow migrants to apply to come to the US.

    But desperation and disinformation from smugglers have prompted migrants to cross anyway. Homeland Security officials are monitoring the situation and while they gave no clear explanation for what prompted the latest surge, they cited poor economies, authoritarian regimes and the climate crisis as forces driving migration.

    This week, US Border Patrol apprehended more than 8,000 migrants daily, according to two Homeland Security officials. That’s up from around 3,500 daily border arrests after the Covid-era border restriction known as Title 42 expired in May and triggered more severe consequences for people who crossed the border illegally.

    The Department of Homeland Security has ramped up capacity in border facilities to accommodate the growing number of migrants, as well as continued to conduct deportation flights of migrants deemed ineligible to stay in the United States. US officials are also coordinating with Mexico to try to drive down crossings.

    Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is set to travel to the border on Saturday, going to McAllen, Texas, for a meeting with President Xiomara Castro of Honduras.

    The Department of Defense, for its part, is sending 800 new active-duty personnel to the US-Mexico border, in addition to the 2,500 National Guard members already in place, to provide support to federal authorities.

    The arrival of migrants at the US southern border also affects inner cities, where asylum seekers usually reside as they go through their immigration proceedings, expanding the scope of the issue for the Biden administration.

    The administration addressed a major concern among Democrats this week by making more than 472,000 Venezuelans already in the US eligible for Temporary Protected Status, which provides deportation protections and allows them to work in the US. Democratic allies had urged the White House to speed up the ability for Venezuelans to obtain work authorization so they wouldn’t have to rely on social services.

    “As a result of this decision, immigrants will be temporarily allowed to work, fill needed jobs and support their families while awaiting an asylum determination. The decision will also substantially reduce the cost to New York taxpayers with respect to the sheltering of asylum-seekers,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, both of whom are New York Democrats, in a statement.

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