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  • 21 Donald Trump election lies listed in his new indictment | CNN Politics

    21 Donald Trump election lies listed in his new indictment | CNN Politics


    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Special counsel Jack Smith said Tuesday that the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol was “fueled by lies” told by former President Donald Trump. The indictment of Trump on four new federal criminal charges, all related to the former president’s effort to overturn his defeat in the 2020 election, lays out some of those lies one by one.

    Even in listing 21 lies, the 45-page indictment does not come close to capturing the entirety of Trump’s massive catalogue of false claims about the election. But the list is illustrative nonetheless – highlighting the breadth of election-related topics Trump was dishonest about, the large number of states his election dishonesty spanned, and, critically, his willingness to persist in privately and publicly making dishonest assertions even after they had been debunked to him directly.

    Here is the list of 21.

    1. The lie that fraud changed the outcome of the 2020 election, that Trump “had actually won,” and that the election was “stolen.” (Pages 1 and 40-41 of the indictment)

    Trump’s claim of a stolen election whose winner was determined by massive fraud was (and continues to be) his overarching lie about the election. The indictment asserts that Trump knew as early as 2020 that his narrative was false – and had been told as such by numerous senior officials in his administration and allies outside the federal government – but persisted in deploying it anyway, including on January 6 itself.

    2. The lie that fake pro-Trump Electoral College electors in seven states were legitimate electors. (Pages 5 and 26)

    The indictment alleges that Trump and his alleged co-conspirators “organized” the phony slates of electors and then “caused” the slates to be transmitted to Vice President Mike Pence and other government officials to try to get them counted on January 6, the day Congress met to count the electoral votes.

    3. The lie that the Justice Department had identified significant concerns that may have affected the outcome of the election. (Pages 6 and 27)

    Attorney General William Barr and other top Justice Department officials had told Trump that his claims of major fraud had proved to be untrue. But the indictment alleges that Trump still sought to have the Justice Department “make knowingly false claims of election fraud to officials in the targeted states through a formal letter under the Acting Attorney General’s signature, thus giving the Defendant’s lies the backing of the federal government and attempting to improperly influence the targeted states to replace legitimate Biden electors with the Defendant’s.”

    4. The lie that Pence had the power to reject Biden’s electoral votes. (Pages 6, 32-38)

    Pence had repeatedly and correctly told Trump that he did not have the constitutional or legal right to send electoral votes back to the states as Trump wanted. The indictment notes that Trump nonetheless repeatedly declared that Pence could do so – first in private conversations and White House meetings, then in tweets on January 5 and January 6, then in Trump’s January 6 speech in Washington at a rally before the riot – in which Trump, angry at Pence, allegedly inserted the false claim into his prepared text even after advisors had managed to temporarily get it removed.

    5. The lie that “the Vice President and I are in total agreement that the Vice President has the power to act.” (Page 36)

    The indictment alleges that the day before the riot, Trump “approved and caused” his campaign to issue a false statement saying Pence agreed with him about having the power to reject electoral votes – even though Trump knew, from a one-on-one meeting with Pence hours prior, that Pence continued to firmly disagree.

    6. The lie that Georgia had thousands of ballots cast in the names of dead people. (Pages 8 and 16)

    The indictment notes that Georgia’s top elections official – Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger – a republican – explained to Trump in a phone call on January 2, 2021 that this claim was false, but that Trump repeated it in his January 6 rally speech anyway. Raffensperger said in the phone call and then in a January 6 letter to Congress that just two potential dead-voter cases had been discovered in the state; Raffensperger said in late 2021 that the total had been updated and stood at four.

    7. The lie that Pennsylvania had 205,000 more votes than voters. (Pages 8 and 20)

    The indictment notes that Trump’s acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen and acting deputy attorney general Richard Donoghue had both told him that this claim was false, but he kept making it anyway – including in the January 6 rally speech.

    8. The lie that there had been a suspicious “dump” of votes in Detroit, Michigan. (Pages 9 and 17)

    The indictment notes that Barr, the attorney general, told Trump on December 1, 2020 that this was false – as CNN and others had noted, supposedly nefarious “dumps” Trump kept talking about were merely ballots being counted and added to the public totals as normal – but that Trump still repeated the false claim in public remarks the next day. And Barr wasn’t the only one to try to dissuade Trump from this claim. The indictment also notes that Michigan’s Republican Senate majority leader, Mike Shirkey, had told Trump in an Oval Office meeting on November 20, 2020 that Trump had lost the state “not because of fraud” but because Trump had “underperformed with certain voter populations.”

    9. The lie that Nevada had tens of thousands of double votes and other fraud. (Page 9)

    The indictment notes that Nevada’s top elections official – Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske, also a Republican – had publicly posted a “Facts vs. Myths” document explaining that Nevada judges had rejected such claims.

    10. The lie that more than 30,000 non-citizens had voted in Arizona. (Pages 9 and 11)

    The indictment notes that Trump put the number at “over 36,000” in his January 6 speech – even though, the indictment says, his own campaign manager “had explained to him that such claims were false” and Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers, a Republican who had supported Trump in the election, “had issued a public statement that there was no evidence of substantial fraud in Arizona.”

    11. The lie that voting machines in swing states had switched votes from Trump to Biden. (Page 9)

    This is a reference to false conspiracy theories about Dominion Voting Systems machines, which Trump kept repeating long after it was thoroughly debunked by his own administration’s election cybersecurity security arm and many others. The indictment says, “The Defendant’s Attorney General, Acting Attorney General, and Acting Deputy Attorney General all had explained to him that this was false, and numerous recounts and audits had confirmed the accuracy of voting machines.”

    12. The lie that Dominion machines had been involved in “massive election fraud.” (Page 12)

    The indictment notes that Trump, on Twitter, promoted a lawsuit filed by an alleged co-conspirator, whom CNN has identified as lawyer Sidney Powell, that alleged “massive election fraud” involving Dominion – even though, the indictment says, Trump privately acknowledged to advisors that the claims were “unsupported” and told them Powell sounded “crazy.”

    13. The lie that “a substantial number of non-citizens, non-residents, and dead people had voted fraudulently in Arizona.” (Page 10)

    The indictment alleges that Trump and an alleged co-conspirator, whom CNN has identified as former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, made these baseless claims on a November 22, 2020 phone call with Bowers; the indictment says Giuliani never provided evidence and eventually said, at a December 1, 2020 meeting with Bowers, “words to the effect of, ‘We don’t have the evidence, but we have lots of theories.”

    14. The lie that Fulton County, Georgia elections workers had engaged in “ballot stuffing.” (Pages 13 and 14)

    This is the long-debunked lie – which Trump has continued to repeat in 2023 – that a video had caught two elections workers in Atlanta breaking the law. The workers were simply doing their jobs, and, as the indictment notes, they were cleared of wrongdoing by state officials in 2020 – but Trump continued to make the claims even after Raffensperger and Justice Department officials directly and repeatedly told him they were unfounded.

    15. The lie that thousands of out-of-state voters cast ballots in Georgia. (Page 16)

    The indictment notes that Trump made this claim on his infamous January 2, 2021 call with Raffensperger, whose staff responded that the claim was inaccurate. An official in Raffensberger’s office explained to Trump that the voters in question had authentically moved back to Georgia and legitimately cast ballots.

    16. The lie that Raffensperger “was unwilling, or unable,” to address Trump’s claims about a “‘ballots under table’ scam, ballot destruction, out of state ‘voters’, dead voters, and more.” (Page 16)

    In fact, contrary to this Trump tweet the day after the call, Raffensperger and his staff had addressed and debunked all of these false Trump claims.

    17. The lie that there was substantial fraud in Wisconsin and that the state had tens of thousands of unlawful votes. (Page 21)

    False and false. But the indictment notes that Trump made the vague fraud claim in a tweet on December 21, 2020, after the state Supreme Court upheld Biden’s win, and repeated the more specific claim about tens of thousands of unlawful votes in the January 6 speech.

    18. The lie that Wisconsin had more votes counted than it had actual voters. (Page 21)

    This, like Trump’s similar claim about Pennsylvania, is not true. But the indictment alleges that Trump raised the claim in a December 27, 2020 conversation with acting attorney general Rosen and acting deputy attorney general Donoghue, who informed him that it was false.

    19. The lie that the election was “corrupt.” (Page 28)

    The indictment alleges that when acting attorney general Rosen told Trump on the December 27, 2020 call that the Justice Department couldn’t and wouldn’t change the outcome of the election, Trump responded, “Just say that the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen.” (Deputy attorney general Donoghue memorialized the reported Trump remark in his handwritten notes, which CNN reported on in 2021 and which were subsequently published by the House committee that investigated the Capitol riot.)

    20. The lie that Trump won every state by hundreds of thousands of votes. (Page 34)

    The indictment says that, at a January 4, 2021 meeting intended to convince Pence to unlawfully reject Biden’s electoral votes and send them back to swing-state legislatures, Pence took notes describing Trump as saying, “Bottom line-won every state by 100,000s of votes.” This was, obviously, false even if Trump was specifically talking about swing states won by Biden rather than every state in the nation.

    21. The lie that Pennsylvania “want[s] to recertify.” (Page 38)

    Trump made this false claim in his January 6 speech. In reality, some Republican state legislators in Pennsylvania had expressed a desire to at least delay the congressional affirmation of Biden’s victory – but the state’s Democratic governor and top elections official, who actually had election certification power in the state, had no desire to recertify Biden’s legitimate win.

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  • Who are the Trump co-conspirators in the 2020 election interference indictment? | CNN Politics

    Who are the Trump co-conspirators in the 2020 election interference indictment? | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    The historic indictment against Donald Trump in the special counsel’s probe into January 6, 2021, and efforts to overturn the 2020 election says that he “enlisted co-conspirators to assist him in his criminal efforts.”

    The charging documents repeatedly reference six of these co-conspirators, but as is common practice, their identities are withheld because they have not been charged with any crimes.

    CNN, however, can identify five of the six co-conspirators based on quotes in the indictment and other context.

    They include:

    Among other things, the indictment quotes from a voicemail that Co-Conspirator 1 left “for a United States Senator” on January 6, 2021. The quotes in the indictment match quotes from Giuliani’s call intended for GOP Sen. Tommy Tuberville, as reported by CNN and other outlets.

    Ted Goodman, a political adviser to Giuliani, said in a statement that “every fact Mayor Rudy Giuliani possesses about this case establishes the good faith basis President Donald Trump had for the actions he took during the two-month period charged in the indictment,” adding that the indictment “eviscerates the First Amendment.”

    Among other things, the indictment says Co-Conspirator 2 “circulated a two-page memorandum” with a plan for Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the 2020 election while presiding over the Electoral College certification on January 6, 2021. The indictment quotes from the memo, and those quotes match a two-page memo that Eastman wrote, as reported and published by CNN.

    Charles Burnham, an attorney for Eastman, said the indictment “relies on a misleading presentation of the record,” and that his client would decline a plea deal if offered one.

    “The fact is, if Dr. Eastman is indicted, he will go to trial. If convicted, he will appeal. The Eastman legal team is confident of its legal position in this matter,” Burnham said in a statement.

    The indictment says Co-Conspirator 3 “filed a lawsuit against the Governor of Georgia” on November 25, 2020, alleging “massive election fraud” and that the lawsuit was “dismissed” on December 7, 2020. These dates and quotations match the federal lawsuit that Powell filed against Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp.

    An attorney for Powell declined to comment.

    The indictment identifies Co-Conspirator 4 as “a Justice Department official.” The indictment also quotes an email that a top Justice Department official sent to Clark, rebutting Clark’s attempts to use the department to overturn the election. The quotes in that email directly match quotes in an email sent to Clark, according to a Senate report about how Trump tried to weaponize the Justice Department in 2020.

    CNN has reached out to an attorney for Clark.

    Among other things, the indictment references an “email memorandum” that Co-Conspirator 5 “sent” to Giuliani on December 13, 2020, about the fake electors plot. The email sender, recipient, date, and content are a direct match for an email that Chesebro sent to Giuliani, according to a copy of the email made public by the House select committee that investigated January 6.

    CNN has reached out to an attorney for Chesebro.

    The indictment says they are “a political consultant who helped implement a plan to submit fraudulent slates of presidential electors to obstruct the certification proceeding.” The indictment also further ties this person to the fake elector slate in Pennsylvania.

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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



    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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  • Trump’s turn against Israel offers stark reminder of what his diplomacy looks like | CNN Politics

    Trump’s turn against Israel offers stark reminder of what his diplomacy looks like | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    Donald Trump’s inflammatory and artless comments about Hamas’ horror in Israel emphasize the defining characteristic of his attitude toward foreign policy and his entire political world view: It’s all about him.

    Trump criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, lauded Hezbollah militants as “very smart” and sought political gain from the attacks that killed 1,200 people by claiming that if the last election was not “rigged,” he’d be the American president and they’d never have happened.

    The ex-president openly admitted a grievance against Netanyahu, complaining he had pulled out at the last minute from joining the US air attack that assassinated Iranian intelligence chief Qasem Soleimani in Iraq in 2020. Trump had previously fumed over the Israeli leader’s perceived disloyalty in recognizing he lost the election.

    Trump is now a private citizen, and it’s possible he wouldn’t have addressed the situation in the same way if he were president – although there were multiple examples of his tone deafness and indiscretion when he was in the White House. But he’s also the 2024 Republican front-runner for president and his statements are therefore scrutinized for clues over how he would behave in office. His latest comments add to plentiful evidence that a second Trump term would be even more riotous at home and globally disruptive than his first four years in power.

    The former president’s remarks also offered an opening to his GOP rivals, who accused him of behavior unsuitable for a potential commander in chief after an ally came under attack amid horrendous scenes of carnage in which some Americans were also killed. Some bemoaned his apparent admiration for Hezbollah, a Lebanese militia group that is hostile toward Israel.

    “He’s a fool. Only a fool would make those kinds of comments,” former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who has rooted his campaign in criticizing Trump’s suitability for office, told CNN.

    “Only a fool would give comments that could give aid and comfort to Israel’s adversary in this situation,” Christie continued. “This is someone who cares, not about the American people, not about the people of Israel, but he cares about one person and one person only, the person he sees in the mirror when he wakes up in the morning.”

    The former president tried to defuse the growing controversy on Thursday evening, releasing a statement in which he insisted that “there was no better friend or ally of Israel” than him. He accused President Joe Biden of weakness and incompetence. “With President Trump back in office, Israel, and everyone else, will be safe again!” he said. The former president was continuing the clean-up on Friday on his Truth Social platform, praising what he said was the “skill and determination” of the Israel Defense Forces and later posting “#IStandWithBibi.”

    Trump’s original grievance-based analysis reflects a transactional, unorthodox approach to foreign policy that often prioritizes his own personal goals over a standard understanding of the national interest. It also highlighted a contrast with his potential 2024 election opponent. Biden reacted to the attack by using all of the tools of traditional statesmanship, including rhetoric, personal behind-the-scenes contacts with key foreign leaders and by mobilizing allies. Like Trump, Biden has had a personal and political beef with Netanyahu – but shelved his differences with him weeks before the attack and has been in constant contact with the prime minister since it occurred.

    Biden is seeking to strike a balance. He has shown the most ardent support for Israel of any recent US president and acknowledged its desire to retaliate and reestablish its sense of security after the most shocking penetration of its borders and national psyche in 50 years. But Biden is also sending private and public signals to Netanyahu that Israel’s response should not infringe the laws of war and that he should consider the humanitarian consequences of an invasion of Gaza, as he seeks to prevent the war escalating into a dangerous regional conflict that could draw in the US.

    Biden’s opponents have every right to critique his foreign policies and to ask whether a hands-off approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict meant his administration dismissed the threat from Hamas. Critics also argue his attempts to open dialogue with Iran, a key sponsor of the militant group, emboldened the Islamic Republic and threatened Israel’s security. But Biden is also forging a contrast of temperament and approach with Trump that will be at the center of his campaign’s narrative if the 2024 election is a rematch of 2020 and will boil down to this question to voters: Is Trump fit for the Oval Office?

    Trump said on Fox News on Wednesday that Netanyahu had been “hurt very badly” by the attacks. “He was not prepared, and Israel was not prepared,” the former president said. His comments were not necessarily wrong and the intelligence and political failures in Israel will be investigated after the war. But the timing and tone of criticism is questionable given that Israel, one of America’s closest allies, is suffering after a horrendous attack on civilians and is in need of support not political points scoring and second guessing. His willingness to trash Netanyahu, despite the Israeli leader’s considerable efforts to align himself politically with the ex-president, also shows how loyalty is usually a one-way street for Trump and those who he believes have crossed him are liable to get a public dressing down.

    Trump’s comments were not the first time he has appeared to seek a political benefit from his foreign policy and his positions on Israel especially. Last October, he complained that American Jews were not sufficiently grateful to him for actions like moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem when he was in the White House.

    “No President has done more for Israel than I have,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social network, adding that it was somewhat surprising that “our wonderful Evangelicals are far more appreciative of this than the people of the Jewish faith, especially those living in the U.S.” He was accused of using antisemitic tropes demanding the loyalty of American Jews. The White House said he insulted Jews and Israelis.

    Trump’s remarks Wednesday on Hezbollah, which has the capacity to rain even more carnage on Israel, also appeared inappropriate in the circumstances. “They’re vicious, and they’re smart. And, boy, are they vicious, because nobody’s ever seen the kind of sight that we’ve seen,” Trump said during a political event in Florida. His statement was in keeping with his habit of praising foreign adversaries he sees as tough even if they rule with an iron fist, infringe basic humanitarian values and are US adversaries. He’s rarely concealed his admiration of Chinese President Xi Jinping and North Korean tyrant Kim Jong Un, for instance. And he added to his long record of praising Vladimir Putin – an accused war criminal because of atrocities committed during the war in Ukraine – when he recently described the Russian leader as “a genius.”

    Trump often appeared to be willing to cede national interests to his political benefit while in office. For instance, at a summit with Putin in Helsinki he sided with Putin who dismissed findings by US intelligence agencies that Russia interfered in the 2016 election in attempt to help him.

    The former president is advocating a return to his “America First” nationalist foreign policy, prizes tough talk and ruthlessness on the global stage, and remains disdainful of allies and the international security architecture that has been the foundation of American power since the end of World War II. While these are positions that would represent a sharp transformation of US foreign policy, it is quite legitimate for him to present them to voters and try to win support for his vision.

    Yet his recent comments will only reinforce the impression often left by his actions as president that his own aspirations are most important. They also show Trump’s quintessential contempt for the rules of politics, foreign policy and even basic human decency, which explain why he horrifies many Americans and foreign governments. But this behavior is key to his authenticity for grass roots Republicans who abhor the codes of what they see as establishment elites.

    Trump during the Florida event criticized Israel for not taking part in the raid that killed Soleimani. “I’ll never forget that Bibi Netanyahu let us down. That was a very terrible thing, I will say that,” he said. It was not immediately clear whether Israel had considered an operational role in the strike or whether Trump had broken a confidence with an ally or even revealed classified information.

    The ex-president has a record however of loose talk on government secrets. He has been indicted over the alleged mishandling of national security material among classified documents he hoarded at his Mar-a-Lago resort after leaving office. Last week, ABC News reported that Trump allegedly shared US secrets about the submarine service and nuclear weapons with an Australian billionaire. Trump denies all wrongdoing.

    The ex-president’s GOP rivals, who have struggled to exploit his political vulnerabilities without alienating his super loyal supporters pounced on his criticism of Netanyahu.

    Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis accused Trump of throwing “verbal grenades” at Israel. “Now’s not the time to be doing, like, what Donald Trump did by attacking Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, attacking Israel’s defense minister, saying somehow that Hezbollah were ‘very smart,’” DeSantis said in New Hampshire. “Now’s not the time to air personal grievances about an Israeli prime minister.” Former Vice President Mike Pence hammered Trump’s foreign policy – even though he was part of the former president’s administration that repeatedly challenged American values. Pence also claimed that Trump had somehow changed in his years out of office, a debatable proposition that looks self-serving since it appears intended to create plausible distance from Trump’s excesses while in office.

    “He’s simply not expressing, and his imitators in his primary, are not expressing the same muscular American foreign policy that we lived out every day,” Pence said on a local New Hampshire radio.

    What Trump is expressing is his idiosyncratic, convention-busting brand of foreign policy rooted in his personal prejudices, grievances and search for political advantage that will once again rock the world if he wins the 2024 election.

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  • Republican voters think Trump is electable. They may be right | CNN Politics

    Republican voters think Trump is electable. They may be right | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    A plurality of Americans and independents think Donald Trump should have been charged with a crime in each of his four indictments, according to ABC News/Ipsos polling. A majority of Americans said in a new AP-NORC survey that they definitely won’t vote for the former president in the 2024 general election.

    Yet, Trump continues to hold a mammoth lead for the Republican presidential nomination and is polling within the margin of error of President Joe Biden in a hypothetical general election matchup.

    While paragraphs one and two seem contradictory, they’re really not. Americans don’t like Trump, but Republicans do. And general elections aren’t referendums on one candidate but a choice between two or more – and Americans, as a whole, dislike both Trump and Biden.

    If anything, Trump’s position within his party has become stronger since the beginning of the year. A majority (54%) of Republicans have a strongly favorable opinion of him in Fox News polling released this week, which is up 11 points from the end of last year. No other Republican candidate for president reaches even half of Trump’s current percentage.

    If you’re going to win a primary over Trump – who is expected to skip next week’s first GOP presidential debate in Milwaukee – there needs to be some outside force that makes Republicans deviate from the candidate they love.

    You could make the argument that four indictments just might do that.

    The problem is Republican voters have been consistent in what they think about the different Trump indictments. Despite the charges against the former president, ranging from his efforts to overturn the 2020 election to allegations that he mishandled classified documents, Republicans see them all the same way. Between 14% and 16% of Republicans believe Trump should have been charged, according to recent ABC News/Ipsos surveys. The vast majority don’t.

    Republicans justify their stance by saying that the charges are politically motivated. Over 80% of Republicans agree in the new polling from ABC News/Ipsos and the AP that both the Fulton County district attorney in Georgia and the Department of Justice are playing partisan politics.

    This has caused Republicans to not only stick to Trump but also double down on him. His primary polling advantage has swelled from the single digits at its lowest point to nearly 40 points today over his nearest competitor, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

    You might also expect Republicans to abandon Trump if they think he can’t beat Biden in a general election – even if they like the former president and believe he is getting a raw deal. After all, he has been indicted four times, and a majority of Americans say they definitely won’t vote for him in November 2024.

    That reasoning hasn’t worked, either. Republicans by and large still say Trump is more electable than DeSantis.

    Indeed, I’m not sure they’re wrong. Trump is running neck and neck with Biden in general election surveys. Fox News and Quinnipiac University have the matchup within the margin of error nationally, and Trump has been ahead of Biden in more polls this year than during the entirety of the 2020 campaign.

    If we see Trump overperform in the swing states relative to his performance nationally this cycle – like he did in 2016 and 2020 – you could make the argument that he should be favored over Biden if the election were held today.

    Moreover, Trump is polling no worse against Biden nationally than his Republican rivals. If anything, he’s been doing slightly better, on average, this summer.

    The reason is simple: Biden’s polling is awful for an incumbent. He has one of the highest disapproval ratings on record for an incumbent at this point in his presidency: in the mid-50s, on average. Biden’s favorable rating generally runs a point or two better than Trump’s, though that isn’t saying much with the former president’s favorable rating in the high 30s, on average.

    After all, the AP-NORC poll found that a majority of Americans probably or definitely would not vote for Biden in 2024 – just as was true for Trump in the same survey.

    A situation in which a lot of voters don’t like either major-party nominee is one all too familiar to political analysts.

    Just seven years ago, both Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton had unfavorable ratings north of 50%. It wasn’t the same majorities that disliked both candidates. Most voters liked at least one of them.

    But a sizable bloc of the electorate (18%) disliked both candidates, according to the 2016 exit polls. Today, a slightly higher percentage of the electorate, on average, likes neither Biden nor Trump.

    You might think the edge for 2024 should go to the man who has a slightly higher average favorable rating (Biden). But that math didn’t work in 2016. More voters who disliked both Trump and Clinton went with Trump, and it won him the election.

    A lot of Republicans may be betting on that math again, and who is to say they’re incorrect? After all, history and the current polling tells us not to dismiss Trump’s chances.

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  • House Republicans are making a gamble with a possible Jim Jordan speakership | CNN Politics

    House Republicans are making a gamble with a possible Jim Jordan speakership | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    If House Republicans elect hard-charging Jim Jordan as speaker on Tuesday, they will be picking an election denier who is known for working to shut down the government rather than running it.

    The party would be ending its two-week speakership debacle, but it’d be elevating a ringleader in former President Donald Trump’s attempt to overthrow the 2020 election into a position that is second in the line of succession behind President Joe Biden.

    A Jordan speakership would represent a huge victory for Trump, given the Judiciary chairman’s record of using his power to target Democratic presidential candidates, including Biden and 2016 nominee Hillary Clinton. Before the midterm elections last year, for instance, Jordan said at the Conservative Political Action Conference that he’d use probes into the Biden administration to “frame up the 2024 race” for Trump.

    He has been as good as his word, working to highlight the ex-president’s claims that the federal government has been “weaponized” against him in an effort to distract from the four criminal trials the GOP front-runner is now facing. And Jordan has been a prominent player in the impeachment investigation opened against Biden, despite the failure of the GOP to provide evidence that the president personally profited from the business ventures of his son in places like China and Ukraine.

    Jordan’s hopes of becoming speaker increased dramatically over the weekend as he began to turn holdouts amid an intense lobbying campaign. Some key moderates who had previously said they wouldn’t back the Ohio Republican had changed course by Monday. But given the tiny House GOP majority, Jordan can only lose a small number of Republicans and still win the job in a vote in the full House, which is expected at noon on Tuesday. Florida Rep. Gus Bilirakis will be away from the Capitol on Tuesday, further complicating the vote math for Jordan, making it so that he can only lose three Republicans.

    But this is a temporary drop until the Florida congressman returns to Washington on Tuesday evening.

    Several high-profile dissidents still insist they will only vote for former Speaker Kevin McCarthy or are firmly against Jordan, who co-founded the conservative Freedom Caucus that was instrumental in the demise of the last three Republican speakers. Jordan’s opponents have cited his role in the run-up to the January 6, 2021, insurrection – when he discussed plans to object to the results – and have concerns that his hardline positions could alienate crucial swing voters next year.

    If Jordan wins the speakership, his reputation for resistance to compromise is likely to immediately fuel fresh fears of a government shutdown caused by Republican demands for massive spending cuts. Facing a right-wing revolt, McCarthy was forced to use Democratic votes to pass a stopgap funding measure. And he paid for his effort to stave off a national crisis, which could have hurt millions of Americans, with his job. Jordan has been among the right-wing Republicans who want to use their power to bulldoze through their agenda despite the fact that Democrats control the Senate and the White House.

    As speaker, Jordan would be in control of half of one of the three branches of the US government – a role that confers duties to the Constitution and the national interest far greater than those that weigh on individual members. By definition, he’d be an insider after years as an insurgent, a switch that could be a challenge. Fellow Ohioan and former Republican House Speaker John Boehner told CBS News in a 2021 interview referring to Jordan: “I just never saw a guy who spent more time tearing things apart – never building anything, never putting anything together.”

    A Jordan victory would mark one of the most significant milestones in Washington Republicans’ embrace of an extreme right-wing populist, nationalist ideology that is more dedicated to tearing political institutions down than using them to forge change. And it would reward the eight Republicans who voted with Democrats to topple McCarthy. More broadly, it would remove power from the party’s traditional Washington, DC, political establishment, which many of the party’s grassroots voters despise, and place the Freedom Caucus at the pinnacle of power in the House.

    The shift toward Jordan over the weekend, however, may also reflect a realization by lawmakers that the optics of continued chaos in the House are disastrous for the party and sends a message of American weakness amid a raging crisis in the Middle East.

    New York Rep. Marc Molinaro, who represents a district Biden would have won in 2020 under redrawn lines, announced Monday evening that he’s backing Jordan. “What I care deeply about is getting back to governing. And having been home over the weekend, I can tell you that most people I talk to just want us to fight inflation, just want us to secure the border, just want us to govern on their behalf. And truly they just want this House to function,” he told CNN.

    And if there is anyone who could keep far-right flamethrowers in line, it is Jordan. After all, he’s one of them. If wins the speakership, he’d potentially face a choice whether to at least seek a modicum of governance to show voters that the GOP can get results ahead of the 2024 election. Just as President Richard Nixon had the political cover as a hardline anti-Communist to forge an opening to Maoist China, Jordan might have more leeway than other potential Republican leaders to make painful concessions and keep his hardliners in line.

    But choosing Jordan to end the impasse would also represent a huge risk for the GOP. His close alliance with Trump, who has endorsed the Ohio Republican for the top job, could alienate moderate voters in districts that paved the way to the party’s narrow majority in last year’s midterms. His record of full bore confrontation could exacerbate a showdown with the Democratic Senate and the White House over spending that could shut down the government by the middle of November and cause a backlash against Republicans.

    And the qualities that his supporters see in Jordan – the fearsome use of power to drum up investigations against political opponents and a pugilistic refusal to find middle ground – are not those traditionally associated with successful speakers. Jordan has no history of bringing disparate factions of his party together – quite the opposite. His brand of politics is built around his history as a champion wrestler in college. “I look at it like a wrestling match,” Jordan told the New York Times earlier this year, referring to his staccato interrogations of witnesses in hearings that made him a hero on conservative media and a Trump favorite.

    Another knock on Jordan is that he’s not known as a prolific fundraiser – one of the most important jobs of a party leader in the House. McCarthy was known for his lucrative hauls that he used to boost candidates and foster loyalty from his supporters. In fact, Jordan has actively worked against some fellow members in the past, with the political arm of the Freedom Caucus backing primary challengers to 10 GOP incumbents over the last few cycles.

    The job of the House has traditionally been to pass laws. And by that measure, Jordan is one of the least effective legislators of his generation, according to the Center For Effective Lawmaking, a joint project of the University of Virginia and Vanderbilt University.

    Still, Jordan’s supporters worked to mitigate his liabilities heading into a floor vote that would force opponents to publicly renounce him at the risk of drawing primary challenges. House Armed Services Chairman Mike Rogers of Alabama, who had been vehemently anti-Jordan, flipped after what he described as “two cordial, thoughtful and productive” conversations with the prospective speaker and securing his support for a strong defense bill. Sources familiar with Jordan’s pitch to the GOP conference told CNN’s Annie Grayer and Melanie Zanona Monday that the Ohio congressman had promised to fundraise hard for Republicans across the country and that he would also do what he could to protect moderates – potentially by ensuring that they don’t face primary challenges next year from hardline pro-Trump candidates.

    However, Zanona and Grayer also reported that some big GOP donors had vowed not to invest in the House majority under Jordan and would instead concentrate their resources on flipping the Senate next year. That GOP coolness highlights how a 2024 Republican slate featuring Trump, the front-runner for the presidential nomination, and Jordan as the most powerful Republican in Washington could delight Democrats campaigning in the battleground districts that could decide the election.

    Rep. Don Bacon, who represents a swing district in Nebraska, emerged from a meeting of Republican lawmakers on Monday evening resolved not to support Jordan, after expressing concerns that handing him the speaker’s gavel would represent a victory for the hardliners who ended McCarthy’s tenure. Bacon said he was inclined to vote for McCarthy even though the former speaker is not standing, at least in a first ballot. “I’m going to vote tomorrow and we’ll take it after that one at a time,” Bacon said.

    Another anti-McCarthy holdout is Rep. Ken Buck of Colorado, who has said “part of” the reason he is opposed to Jordan is his behavior after the 2020 election. According to the House select committee that investigated the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, Jordan was a “significant player” in Trump’s efforts to overturn the election and to block the certification of Biden’s victory in Congress, including in multiple conversations with Trump and senior White House officials.

    But some key lawmakers appear to have made their peace with Jordan’s potential speakership, partly because of the damage being done to the GOP and their potential reelection prospects by self-indulgent internal battles. New York Rep. Mike Lawler, a freshman who is one of the most endangered Republicans next year and has been a strong supporter of McCarthy, called on the House to get back to work. “At the end of the day, we need to get back to the work of the American people,” Lawler told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Monday. He said he told Jordan on Friday that he was not a “hell no” and that he’d only back him if he had the votes to become speaker.

    He shrugged off attacks that are already coming from Democrats over his possible vote for Jordan.

    “They are going to attack me no matter what I do. That’s their job, that’s their objective. They want to get back into the majority,” Lawler told Tapper.

    “My constituents know who I am, they know where I stand on these issues,” Lawler said, noting how he had fought to raise the government’s borrowing limit earlier this year, averting a debt default, and to keep the government open.

    Lawler might be right. But the potential chaos and discord Jordan could sow may give voters fresh reasons to vote against Lawler by November of next year.

    This story has been updated with additional reporting.

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  • The identities behind the 30 unindicted co-conspirators in Trump’s Georgia case | CNN Politics

    The identities behind the 30 unindicted co-conspirators in Trump’s Georgia case | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    Fulton County’s sweeping indictment against former President Donald Trump and 18 additional co-defendants also includes details involving 30 “unindicted co-conspirators” – people who Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis alleges took part in the criminal conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election.

    Some of the co-conspirators are key Trump advisers, like Boris Epshteyn, while several others are likely Georgia officials who were the state’s fake electors for Donald Trump.

    One of the unindicted co-conspirators who appears multiple times in the indictment is Georgia’s Republican Lt. Gov. Burt Jones. Willis was barred by a state judge from investigating Jones after she hosted a fundraiser last year for Jones’ Democratic opponent when he was a state senator running for lieutenant governor.

    The 98-page document alleges the 30 unindicted co-conspirators, who are not named, “constituted a criminal organization whose members and associates engaged in various related criminal activities” across the 41 charges laid out in the indictment.

    “Prosecutors use the ‘co-conspirator’ label for people who are not charged in the indictment but nonetheless were participants in the crime,” said Elie Honig, a CNN senior legal analyst and former federal and state prosecutor. “We do this to protect the identity and reputation of uncharged people – though they often are readily identifiable – and, at times, to turn up the pressure and try to flip them before a potential indictment drops.”

    CNN was able to identify some of the co-conspirators by piecing together details included in the indictment. Documents reviewed from previous reporting also provide clues, especially the reams of emails and testimony from the House January 6 Committee’s report released late last year.

    CNN has been able to identify or narrow down nearly all of the unindicted co-conspirators:

    The indictment refers to Trump’s speech on November 4, 2020, “falsely declaring victory in the 2020 presidential election” and that Individual 1 discussed a draft of that speech approximately four days earlier, on October 31, 2020.

    The January 6 committee obtained an email from Fitton sent on October 31 to Trump’s assistant Molly Michael and his communications adviser Dan Scavino, which says, “Please see below a draft statement as you requested.”

    The statement Fitton wrote also says in part, “We had an election today – and I won.”

    The indictment states that co-conspirator 3 appeared at the infamous November 19, 2020, press conference at the Republican National Committee headquarters in Washington, with Rudy Giuliani, one of the defendants in the case. Epshteyn was there.

    A November 19, 2020 photo shows Trump campaign advisor Boris Epshteyn at the Republican National Committee headquarters in Washington, DC.

    The indictment also includes two emails between co-conspirator 3, John Eastman and Kenneth Chesebro, two lawyers who pushed the strategy of then-Vice President Mike Pence trying to overturn the election on January 6, 2021, including one with a draft memo for options of how to proceed on January 6.

    According to emails released by the January 6 committee, Epshteyn was the third person on those emails.

    Individual 4 received an email from co-defendant David Shafer, who was then Georgia’s Republican Party chair, on November 20, 2020, that said Scott Graham Hall, a Georgia bail bondsman, “has been looking into the election on behalf of the President at the request of David Bossie,” according to the indictment.

    CNN obtained court documents that show Shafer sent this email to Sinners in November 2020: “Scott Hall has been looking into the election on behalf of the President at the request of David Bossie. I know him.” Hall is one of the 19 defendants charged in the indictment.

    The indictment notes an additional email from December 12, 2020, from Shafer to Individual 4 advising them to “touch base” with each of the Trump presidential elector nominees in Georgia in advance of the December 14, 2020, meeting to confirm their attendance.

    CNN reporting from June 2022 reveals an email exchange between Sinners and David Shafer on December 13, 2020, 18 hours before the group of alternate electors gathered at the Georgia State Capitol.

    “I must ask for your complete discretion in this process,” Sinners wrote. “Your duties are imperative to ensure the end result – a win in Georgia for President Trump – but will be hampered unless we have complete secrecy and discretion.”

    Kerik’s attorney, Tim Parlatore, confirmed to CNN that his client is the unnamed individual listed in the indictment as co-conspirator 5. The indictment refers to co-conspirator 5 taking part in several meetings with lawmakers in Pennsylvania and Arizona, states Trump was contesting after the 2020 election.

    That included the meeting Kerik attended at the White House on November 25, 2020, with a group of Pennsylvania legislators, along with Trump, then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, Giuliani, Jenna Ellis and individual 6.

    Former New York Police Department Commissioner Bernie Kerik at Trump National Golf Club on June 13.

    Parlatore took issue with Willis’ definition of co-conspirator in the case of Kerik, saying that the indictment only refers to him in the context of receiving emails and attending meetings.

    The indictment says on November 25, 2020, Trump, Meadows, Giuliani, Ellis, Individuals 5 and 6 met at the White House with a group of Pennsylvania legislators.

    According to the January 6 committee report, Waldron was among the visitors who were at the White House that day, along with Kerik and attorney Katherine Freiss. Cassidy Hutchinson, former aide to Meadows, explained that their conversation with the president touched on holding a special session of the Pennsylvania state legislature to appoint Trump electors.

    The indictment also says on December 21, 2020, Sidney Powell, a defendant in the case, sent an email to Individuals 6, 21 and 22 that they were to immediately “receive a copy of all data” from Dominion’s voting systems in Michigan.

    The Washington Post reported last August that the email stated Waldron was among the three people to receive the data, along with Conan Hayes and Todd Sanders.

    Waldron at a hearing in front of Michigan lawmakers in December 2020.

    Waldron is the only person who was involved in both the White House meeting and received the Powell email.

    The indictment says Giuliani re-tweeted a post from co-conspirator 8 on December 7, 2020, calling upon Georgia voters to contact their local representatives and ask them to sign a petition for a special session to ensure “every legal vote is counted.” The date and content of the tweet match a tweet posted by Jones, who was at the time a state senator.

    Burt Jones, Georgia's Republican Lieutenant Governor

    Jones, who was elected lieutenant governor in November, appears more than a dozen times throughout the indictment as co-conspirator 8, including as a fake elector.

    After the 2020 election, Jones was calling for a special session of the Georgia legislature, something Gov. Brian Kemp and former Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan refused to do.

    On Thursday, Pete Skandalakis, the executive director of the Prosecuting Attorneys Council of Georgia, told CNN that he will appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Jones’ role in the state’s 2020 election interference case, after a judge blocked Willis from investigating him last year.

    The indictment lists several emails sent to co-conspirator 9 related to preparations for the fake electors who met on December 14, 2020, including an email from Chesebro “to help coordinate with the other 5 contested States, to help with logistics of the electors in other States hopefully joining in casting their votes on Monday.”

    According to emails obtained by the January 6 committee, that email was sent to an account belong to the Georgia GOP treasurer, which at the time was Brannan.

    Co-conspirator 9 is also included in the indictment as one of the 13 unindicted co-conspirators who served as fake electors.

    Co-conspirators 10 and 11 are Georgia GOP officials Carolyn Fisher and Vikki Consiglio

    The indictment says on December 10, 2020, Ken Chesebro sent an email to Georgia state Republican Chair David Shafer and Individuals 9, 10 and 11, with documents that were to be used by Trump electors to create fake certificates.

    The January 6 committee obtained as part of its evidence an email from Chesebro sent on December 10 sent to Shafer and three other email addresses. One is for Carolyn Fisher, the former Georgia GOP first vice chair, one is for the Georgia Republican Party treasurer and one is for the Georgia GOP assistant treasurer, the role Consiglio was serving in 2020.

    The email contains attachments of memos and certificates that could be used to help swap out the Biden electors with a slate of electors for Trump.

    Both co-conspirators 10 and 11 also served as fake electors in Georgia.

    Co-conspirators 2 and 8-19 are the fake electors

    Of the 30 unindicted co-conspirators, 13 are listed as the fake electors for Donald Trump, who signed papers “unlawfully falsely holding themselves out as the duly elected and qualified presidential electors from the State of Georgia,” according to the indictment.

    Three of the 16 Georgia fake electors were charged in the indictment: David Shafer, Shawn Still and Cathleen Alston Latham.

    The other 13 fake electors, according to the fake electors certificate published by the National Archives, are Jones (co-conspirator 8), Joseph Brannan (co-conspirator 9), James “Ken” Carroll, Gloria Godwin, David Hanna, Mark Hennessy, Mark Amick, John Downey, Daryl Moody, Brad Carver, CB Yadav and two others who appear to be Individuals 10 and 11.

    Several of the fake electors who were not charged are only listed in the indictment for their role signing on as electors for Trump, while others, like Jones, appear in other parts of the indictment as being more actively involved with the alleged conspiracy.

    The indictment says Individual 20 was part of a meeting at the White House on December 18, 2020, with Trump, Giuliani and Powell, known to have discussed the possibility of seizing voting machines.

    The December 18 meeting featured prominently during some of the hearings from the January 6 committee. All but two of the outside advisers who attended have been named as co-defendants in the indictment already: former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn and former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne.

    The meeting featured fiery exchanges between Trump’s White House lawyers and his team of outside advisers, including on whether to appoint Sidney Powell as special counsel to investigate voter fraud, according to the indictment and previous details that have been disclosed about the meeting.

    The outside advisers famously got into a screaming match with Trump’s White House lawyers – Pat Cipollone and Eric Herschmann – at the Oval Office meeting. Cipollone and Herschmann, along with Meadows, pushed back intensely on the proposals, Cipollone and Herschmann testified to the January 6 committee.

    Co-conspirators 21 and 22 are Conan Hayes and Todd Sanders

    Co-conspirators 21 and 22 are Conan Hayes and Todd Sanders – who are both affiliated with Byrne’s America Project, a conservative advocacy group that contributed funding to Arizona’s Republican ballot audit. Hayes was a former surfer from Hawaii and Sanders has a cybersecurity background in the private sector.

    The indictment says on Dec. 21, 2020, Sidney Powell sent an email to the chief operations officer of SullivanStrickler, saying that individual 6, who CNN identified as Waldron, along with individuals 21 and 22, were to immediately “receive a copy of all data” from Dominion’s voting systems in Michigan.

    According to the Washington Post, Conan and Todd were the other two people listed on the email to receive the data.

    The final eight co-conspirators listed in the indictment are connected to the effort to access voting machines in Georgia’s Coffee County.

    Co-conspirator 25 and 29 are a Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan and analyst Jeffrey Lenberg

    The indictment says that Misty Hampton allowed co-conspirators 25 and 29 to access non-public areas of the Coffee County elections office on January 18, 2021. Logan and Lenberg were the two outsiders granted access to the elections office that day by Hampton, according to surveillance video previously obtained by CNN. No one else was given access to the office that day, according to a CNN review of the footage.

    The indictment also notes that co-conspirator 25 downloaded Coffee County election data that SullivanStrickler then had uploaded to a separate server. Documents previously obtained by CNN show five accounts that downloaded the data – one account belongs to Logan and none of them belong to Lenberg. Still, CNN could not definitively determine who exactly downloaded the data.

    Logan and his company conducted the so-called Republican audit of the 2020 ballots cast in Arizona’s Maricopa County.

    The indictment says that co-conspirator 28 “sent an e-mail to the Chief Operations Officer of SullivanStrickler LLC” directing him to transmit data copied from Coffee County to co-conspirator 30 and Powell. CNN has previously reported on emails Penrose and Powell arranged upfront payment to a cyber forensics firm that sent a team to Coffee County.

    This story has been updated with additional developments.

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  • What happened this week and what’s next in Trump legal world | CNN Politics

    What happened this week and what’s next in Trump legal world | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    Donald Trump’s legal schedule is getting fuller by the day as the political season heats up, with the former president facing multiple criminal charges with more possibly on the way.

    This week, Trump was indicted on charges of leading a conspiracy to overturn his 2020 presidential election defeat and had to travel to Washington, DC, to plead not guilty in federal court.

    Now comes a flurry of legal filings and the possibility of yet another indictment, this time in Georgia, where a grand jury is looking at efforts to flip his defeat in the Peach State.

    READ: Tracking the criminal indictments in one place

    Here’s what happened this week and what’s next:

    Special counsel Jack Smith dropped the hammer against Trump on Tuesday, charging the former president with conspiracy and attempting to obstruct Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s electoral victory. That effort ultimately led to the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.

    “(F)or more than two months following election day on November 3, 2020, the defendant spread lies that there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the election and that he had actually won,” the indictment states.

    “These claims were false, and the Defendant knew they were false,” it adds, referring to Trump. “But the defendant disseminated them anyway – to make his knowingly false claims appear legitimate, create an intense atmosphere of mistrust and anger, and erode public faith in the administration of the election.”

    READ: CNN’s annotation of the indictment

    Trump took the short trip from his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club to appear in federal court on Thursday to enter a not guilty plea to all charges.

    The arraignment was at a courthouse that’s been central to the efforts to hold people accountable for the January 6 riot. Over 1,000 people charged in Capitol riot cases have made a similar appearance as Trump’s – the building is located within sight of the Capitol and judges there have overseen trials or sentencing of the rioters.

    One of the next major issues in the Trump case will be when to set a trial date. Judge Tanya Chutkan – who has sentenced multiple rioters – appears to be moving quickly on that front.

    The Trump team signaled Thursday that it doesn’t think this case can be sent to trial in the normal timeline as dictated under a federal law known the Speedy Trial Act that allows for exemptions in certain circumstance. The special counsel’s office disagrees.

    Trump has until Tuesday to file a motion that would pause the clock under the Speedy Trial Act, which would help to slow the pace down, and prosecutors have until August 13 to issue any objection to the request.

    Another critical filing will be next Thursday, when the special counsel must propose a trial date and say how long it will likely take them to put on their case before the jury. Trump must respond by August 17.

    The next hearing – the first before Chutkan – will be August 28. Trump does not have to appear in person.

    Meanwhile, the first Republican primary debate is August 23, though it’s unclear if Trump will participate.

    Meanwhile, Smith’s indictment cites six unnamed co-conspirators who allegedly worked with Trump to support his efforts. CNN can identify five of the six.

    “Co-Conspirator 1” is former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani. “2” is former Trump lawyer John Eastman, who masterminded the plan to appoint false electors and is now facing disbarment proceedings in California. “3” is former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, who worked with Giuliani in court. “4” is former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark, who Trump at one point hoped to install as acting attorney general to help him overturn the election. “5” is pro-Trump lawyer Kenneth Chesebro, who sent an email to Giuliani about the fake electors plot.

    The identity of “6” is unclear. The indictment says this person is a political consultant who is tied to the fake elector slate in Pennsylvania.

    The next moment in the criminal case against Trump is Thursday, August 10, when a magistrate judge in Florida will hear the plea of Mar-a-Lago maintenance worker Carlos De Oliveira, who allegedly attempted to delete security camera footage at the former president’s resort after the Justice Department issued a subpoena for it.

    Trump, via court filing Friday, pleaded not guilty to the charges recently added to the case and indicated to the court that he would not be physically present for the arraignment.

    Lawyers for co-defendant Walt Nauta will be present to enter their client’s plea to the new counts.

    READ: Mar-a-lago indictment annotated

    A grand jury hearing evidence in Smith’s investigation returned the superseding indictment in late July against Trump, who had already faced 37 criminal charges, charging the former president with one additional count of willful retention of national defense information and two additional obstruction counts.

    Also next week, Trump’s lawyers will have a chance to respond to claims by prosecutors that he is unwilling to travel to a secured facility to access classified documents being turned over to the defense for the case. By August 10, Trump will have to respond to Smith’s proposal for a protective order restricting access to classified discovery in the case, and in the filings with the proposal, prosecutors have said that Trump has requested to view the documents in Mar-a-Lago or Bedminster – a request Smith’s team opposes.

    Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is expected to ask a grand jury to file charges by September 1 in her probe into efforts by Trump and allies to overturn Georgia’s 2020 presidential election result.

    “The work is accomplished,” Willis told CNN affiliate WXIA at a back-to-school event. “We’ve been working for two and half years. We’re ready to go.”

    Security at the Fulton County courthouse has notably increased in anticipation of Willis’ actions.

    READ: Timeline of Trump’s efforts in Georgia to overturn the election

    A federal judge last week dismissed a $475 million defamation lawsuit Trump brought against CNN that accused the network of defaming him by using the phrase “the big lie” and allegedly comparing him to Adolf Hitler.

    District Judge Raag Singhal, a 2019 appointee of Trump’s, said that use of the phrase or similar statements are opinion that don’t meet the standard for defamation.

    “CNN’s use of the phrase ‘the Big Lie’ in connection with Trump’s election challenges does not give rise to a plausible inference that Trump advocates the persecution and genocide of Jews or any other group of people. No reasonable viewer could (or should) plausibly make that reference,” Singhal wrote.

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  • House Judiciary Committee expected to launch inquiry into Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis | CNN Politics

    House Judiciary Committee expected to launch inquiry into Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    The Republican-led House Judiciary Committee is expected to open a congressional investigation into Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis as soon as Thursday, a source tells CNN – the same day former President Donald Trump is slated to surrender at the county jail after being charged for participating in schemes to meddle with Georgia’s 2020 election results.

    The committee is expected to ask Willis whether she was coordinating with the Justice Department, which has indicted Trump twice in two separate cases, or used federal dollars to complete her investigation that culminated in the fourth indictment of Trump, the source added. The anticipated questions from Republicans about whether Willis used federal funding in her state-level investigation mirrors the same line of inquiry that Republicans used to probe Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who indicted Trump in New York for falsifying business records to cover up an alleged hush money scheme.

    Meanwhile, Georgia Republicans could launch their own state-level investigation into Willis’ probe, according to GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who has spoken to top officials in the state about a potential probe. She has also been pushing for a congressional-led inquiry into Willis, who has previously dismissed GOP accusations accusing her of being partisan and consistently defended her investigation.

    “I’m going to be talking to (House Judiciary Chair) Jim Jordan, (House Oversight Chair) Jamie Comer, and I’d like to also ask (Speaker) Kevin McCarthy his thoughts on looking at doing an investigation if there is a collaboration or conspiracy of any kind between the Department of Justice and Jack Smith’s special counsel’s office with the state DA’s,” Greene told CNN. “So, I think that could be a place of oversight.”

    It all amounts to a familiar playbook for House Republicans, who have been quick to try to use their congressional majority – which includes the ability to launch investigations, issue subpoenas and restrict funding – to defend the former president and offer up some counter programming amid his mounting legal battles. But they’ve also run into some resistance in their extraordinary efforts to intervene in ongoing criminal matters, while there are questions about what jurisdiction they have over state-level investigations.

    As their target list on behalf of Trump grows, House Republicans are also cranking up the heat on their own investigations into the Biden family.

    Just this week, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy vowed to move ahead with an impeachment inquiry of President Joe Biden after the House returns from August recess if the Biden administration does not turn over more documents and information related to the Republican led investigations related to Hunter Biden – the strongest sign yet that House Republicans are poised to launch an impeachment inquiry of the president.

    A McCarthy spokesperson did not respond to CNN’s request for comment to elaborate on the speaker’s remark that opening an impeachment inquiry hinged on whether committees received the “bank statements, the credit card statements and other” documents they were asking for.

    House Oversight chair James Comer has subpoenaed six banks for information regarding specific Biden family business associates, received testimony from Hunter Biden’s associates and reviewed hundreds of suspicious activity reports related to the Biden family at the Treasury Department. The Kentucky Republican has not yet subpoenaed bank records from Biden family members themselves. He boasted in June on Fox Business that “every subpoena that I have signed as chairman of the House Oversight Committee over the last five months, we’ve gotten 100% of what we’ve requested, whether it’s with the FBI, or with banks, or with Treasury.”

    The House Judiciary chair, GOP Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, just subpoenaed four individuals involved in the Hunter Biden criminal probe and has requested a number of documents and interviews pertaining to special counsel David Weiss’ ongoing criminal investigation.

    There is still some skepticism among more moderate Republicans, however, about whether they should be trying to intervene in ongoing investigations and whether an impeachment inquiry is warranted.

    Behind the scenes, members of the House Judiciary panel, who would help oversee an impeachment inquiry, have recently been discussing how all signs are pointing towards the House launching one in short order.

    “We had even some of our more moderate members saying that the oversight wasn’t serious if the next step wasn’t an impeachment inquiry,” Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, a top Trump surrogate and Judiciary panel member, told CNN about a recent committee call. “There was great interest among my Judiciary colleagues to really include and involve everyone in the conference. There’s a real desire to get everyone on board and go through the evidence with those who might remain skeptical.”

    Trump’s allies have called for Congress to expunge Trump’s two previous impeachments, a move that has sparked pushback by many even among House Republicans.

    Greene, who spoke with McCarthy on Tuesday, said she doesn’t think the votes are there yet for expunging Trump’s previous two impeachments, even as the former president continues to promote the idea on Truth Social. But she said, “I think the impeachment inquiry looks very, very good.”

    “He is spending the recess talking about it constantly,” Greene added of McCarthy. “I really feel strongly that that’s something that’s going to happen.”

    Even before Trump’s indictment in Fulton County his congressional allies were laying the groundwork to take aim at Willis and broader election laws.

    GOP Rep. Russell Fry of South Carolina introduced a longshot bill earlier this year to give current and former presidents and vice presidents the ability to move their civil or criminal cases from a state court to a federal court as the investigation in Fulton County was ongoing. Fry introduced the bill shortly after Trump was indicted by Bragg on more than 30 counts related to business fraud.

    The Judiciary Committee, which has jurisdiction over Fry’s bill, is examining ways to move this bill forward and schedule a markup, two sources familiar with the process told CNN.

    Fry, who tweeted shortly after the Fulton County indictment that the outcome underscores the need for his bill, said in a statement to CNN, “these rogue prosecutors shouldn’t be able to wield unwarranted power and target our nation’s top leaders for their political agendas.”

    Separately, the House Committee on Administration has been working on a conservative election integrity package that Republicans are calling “transformative,” but Democrats frame as “designed to appease extremist election deniers.”

    Republicans argue the bill gives states the tools to strengthen voter integrity, implement selection reforms in Washington, DC, and protects conservatives’ political speech. Democrats, meanwhile, contest the legislation attacks the freedom to vote, burdens election workers and creates less transparency in elections.

    One of the nine hearings that Republicans held on the bill, which recently passed out of committee and is ready for a floor vote in the House, was held last month in Atlanta.

    The top Democrat on the panel, Rep. Joe Morelle of New York, accused Republicans of playing defense for Trump through the field hearing, which Republicans have said was not the case.

    “One might ask, why are we here in Georgia? The answer is simple. We’re here because in 2020, Joe Biden won and Donald Trump lost. There was no widespread voter fraud in Georgia, there were no suitcases full of fake ballots, no voting machines changed any votes. In fact, we know of only one possible crime that took place, because it was recorded on tape,” Morelle said.

    Democrats on the House Oversight Committee have also accused their Republican counterparts of coinciding the release of key interview transcripts with days consumed by Trump’s legal woes, according to a recent memo released by Democratic committee staff.

    An Oversight Committee spokesperson said in a statement to CNN, “to be clear, there was absolutely no connection between the transcript releases and anything else covered in the news.”

    The types of moves Republicans made on behalf of Trump in the wake of the Fulton County indictment are not necessarily new. After Trump was indicted by the Department of Justice in two separate cases, Greene called for Congress to defund Smith’s office, who is overseeing the two federal indictment cases, and House Freedom Caucus members issued a statement Monday that they would not support even a short-term government spending bill that does not address what they see as the weaponization of the Department of Justice.

    Gaetz recently introduced a resolution to censure and condemn the judge presiding over Trump’s federal indictment in the 2020 election subversion case.

    Despite the partisan back and forth, Trump’s Capitol Hill allies remain unfazed. But, not all Republicans have bought into the Trump defensive strategy.

    “Nobody is paying attention other than the people who are obsessed with Trump,” a senior Republican lawmaker told CNN.

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  • Two more Trump co-defendants plead guilty. What next? | CNN Politics

    Two more Trump co-defendants plead guilty. What next? | CNN Politics

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



    CNN
     — 

    With the frightening Israel-Hamas war and a major spoke of the US government – the House of Representatives – unsolvably speakerless and in a state of paralysis, a pair of guilty pleas in a Georgia courtroom almost feels like Page 2 news.

    But these particular guilty pleas this week come from two of former President Donald Trump’s co-defendants, the second and third such admissions of guilt in the criminal case brought against him for trying to overturn Georgia’s 2020 presidential election result.

    • Sidney Powell, a public face of Trump’s attempts to challenge the election results in 2020 and 2021, pleaded guilty Thursday. The former Trump attorney will avoid jail time but agreed to testify as a witness and pleaded guilty to six misdemeanors for conspiracy to commit intentional interference, downgraded from felony charges she had faced.
    • Kenneth Chesebro, a less public face of the effort, was an attorney who helped engineer the fake electors plot. He pleaded guilty Friday to a single felony, conspiracy to commit filing false documents. He’s also likely to avoid jail time.
    • Scott Hall, a bail bondsman, pleaded guilty last month after being accused of conspiring to unlawfully access voter data and ballot-counting machines at the Coffee County election office on January 7, 2021.

    That leaves Trump and 15 other co-defendants awaiting trial in the case. Trial dates have not been set, and Trump has pleaded not guilty.

    Along with the three other upcoming criminal trials in New York, Washington, DC, and Florida and the ongoing civil trial in New York, the Georgia proceedings are part of a complicated web of legal problems percolating beneath the 2024 election.

    Chesebro admitted to entering into a conspiracy specifically with Trump to create a slate of fake electors in Georgia, along with two other attorneys, Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman.

    CNN legal analyst and former federal prosecutor Elliot Williams noted that the Georgia case, brought by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, has had its detractors, because it included 18 co-defendants along with Trump, which could make it seem politically motivated.

    But guilty pleas, Williams said, are now evidence that crimes were committed as Trump tried to make Joe Biden’s 2020 victory disappear.

    “This ought to pour cold water on the notion that this was just a partisan witch hunt to target the president and his allies,” Williams told Jim Sciutto on CNN Max.

    CNN’s report on his guilty plea notes that “Chesebro acknowledged in the plea that he ‘created and distributed false Electoral College documents’ to Trump operatives in Georgia and other states, and that he worked ‘in coordination with’ the Trump campaign.”

    All but one charge against Chesebro was dropped, and he has agreed to testify at trial.

    Just because Powell’s plea agreement did not mention Trump does not mean she might not be asked about him under oath, as CNN’s Marshall Cohen notes:

    Most notably, Powell attended a White House meeting on December 18, 2020, where some of Trump’s most extreme supporters encouraged him to name her as a special counsel to investigate supposed voter fraud, to consider declaring martial law and to sign executive orders that would direct the military to seize voting machines.

    Cohen adds that whatever Powell tells Georgia prosecutors could be used in the federal election subversion case brought by special counsel Jack Smith.

    One gag order was issued by Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is overseeing the federal 2020 election subversion case in Washington, DC. Trump is appealing, arguing she “took away my right to speak,” and on Friday Chutkan put a temporary freeze on the order.

    Chutkan has been insistent that the federal case get underway on schedule, in March, at the pinnacle of primary season.

    Trump made those comments about his freedom of speech as he entered a courtroom in New York, where he faces a civil fraud trial brought by the state attorney general. He is also under a gag order in that case, and that judge, Arthur Engoron, fined Trump $5,000 on Friday for violating the gag order after a social media post targeting a court employee was left up on Trump’s campaign website.

    Engoron said future violations could even ultimately lead him to imprison Trump.

    The court developments are an important reminder that as Trump cruises toward the Republican presidential nomination, at least according to public opinion polls, he is also in very real legal peril – something Trump acknowledged, before the gag-order-related threat from Engoron in New York, when the former president talked about the prospect of prison during an event in Clive, Iowa.

    “What they don’t understand is that I am willing to go to jail if that’s what it takes for our country to win and become a democracy again,” Trump said at the rally.

    There is some bizarre irony in the comments since he’s charged in connection with trying to subvert an election, one of the fundamental pillars of democracy.

    Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who is among those challenging Trump for the Republican presidential nomination, said on CNN that he doesn’t believe Trump is willing to go to jail.

    “The last place he wants to spend five minutes is in jail,” Christie said. He complained that Trump has failed to appear at Republican presidential debates.

    “Donald Trump doesn’t want any legitimate debate or discussion about his conduct,” Christie said.

    Republicans like Christie are running out of time and opportunity to challenge Trump. Another debate is scheduled for November 8 in Miami, but Christie has not yet qualified. NBC is sponsoring the debate, along with the right-wing outlets Salem Radio Network and Rumble.

    Oliver Darcy, CNN’s senior media reporter, argues the arrangement creates strange bedfellows.

    “It’s no surprise that the GOP, which veered sharply to the right during Donald Trump’s presidency, would select Salem and Rumble as partners,” Darcy writes, “but it is striking that NBC News would agree to link arms with such organizations.”

    Anti-Trump Republicans want some of the candidates challenging him to drop out of the race so that the opposition can coalesce around an individual alternative. The debate stage November 8 is expected to be much smaller, perhaps with only a few people.

    But don’t expect the former president to show. Trump is planning a rally nearby to draw attention away from his rivals.

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  • 2 Trump co-defendants ask judge to break apart Georgia election interference case and hold separate trials | CNN Politics

    2 Trump co-defendants ask judge to break apart Georgia election interference case and hold separate trials | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    Two Trump co-defendants in Georgia who requested speedy trials asked a judge Wednesday to formally separate their cases from the sprawling overall indictment, a move that would undercut Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ attempt to hold one massive trial for all 19 defendants in the election interference case.

    Former Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell and pro-Trump lawyer Kenneth Chesebro separately asked the judge overseeing the case to “sever” their trials from the other defendants. If granted, this would break apart the case and allow their cases to go to trial as soon as October.

    These are the first attempts in court by former President Donald Trump’s co-defendants to break apart the case. The motions filed Wednesday are part of the increasingly convoluted pretrial wrangling among Trump, his 18 co-defendants and Willis, who wants a trial for all 19 defendants to occur in October.

    Powell and Chesebro, who both deny wrongdoing in the case, already invoked their right to a speedy trial, which would need to begin before early November, per Georgia law. Fulton County Judge Scott McAfee ordered Chesebro’s trial to begin October 23. Powell’s request is pending. Trump wants to slow things down and opposes that timeline.

    Trump’s lawyers have also said they want to sever his case from the other defendants but haven’t yet filed a motion in court.

    Raskin: Trump could learn from early Georgia trials

    In the filing, Powell’s attorneys also argued that she “did not represent President Trump or the Trump campaign” related to the 2020 election because she never had an “engagement agreement” with either.

    “She appears on no pleadings for Trump or the Campaign,” Powell’s attorneys wrote. “She appeared in no courtrooms or hearings for Trump or the Campaign. She had no contact with most of her purported conspirators and rarely agreed with those she knew or spoke with.”

    Despite these assertions, Trump publicly announced in mid-November 2020 that he “added” Powell to his “truly great team” of lawyers working on the election. One week later – after she promoted wild conspiracy theories that millions of votes were flipped as part of an international anti-Trump scheme – the Trump campaign dropped her from the legal team and said she was “practicing law on her own.”

    In an effort to distance Powell from the other Trump lawyers charged in the Georgia case, her attorneys pointed out that she “went her own way” after the 2020 presidential election and that “many of her purported coconspirators publicly shunned and disparaged Ms. Powell beginning in November 2020.”

    In the filing, Powell’s attorneys also lauded her legal career and her commitment to “integrity” and “the rule of law.” They also amplified the debunked right-wing claim that her former client, retired Gen. Michael Flynn, was the victim of “charges completely concocted against him by a politicized FBI.”

    Kenneth Chesebro Jan 6

    CNN reveals where accused Trump co-conspirator was on Jan. 6

    Additionally on Wednesday, Chesebro’s attorneys asked the judge to force Willis to “disclose” the identities of the 30 unindicted co-conspirators named in the indictment. Chesebro, who was the architect of the Trump campaign’s fake electors plot, said he needs these names to help his defense.

    Earlier this month, after the indictment was filed, CNN published a report identifying many of the unindicted co-conspirators based on public information that matches what was in the indictment.

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  • Trump and team seek to destroy credibility of his election subversion trial before a date is even set | CNN Politics

    Trump and team seek to destroy credibility of his election subversion trial before a date is even set | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    Donald Trump and his legal team are escalating efforts to discredit and delay a trial over his alleged attempt to overturn the 2020 election, as his fight to avert criminal convictions becomes ever more indistinguishable from his presidential campaign.

    The former president’s attorney Sunday vowed to petition to relocate the trial from Washington, DC, claiming that a local jury won’t reflect the “characteristics” of the American people. And as prosecutors seek a speedy trial, he warned that his team will seek to run out the process for years in an apparent attempt to move it past the 2024 election.

    Trump demanded the judge set to hear the case recuse herself in a flurry of assaults on the process that may fail legally, but will play into his campaign narrative that he is a victim of political persecution by the Biden administration designed to thwart a White House comeback.

    Trump pleaded not guilty when he was arraigned in Washington last week – his third such plea in a criminal case in the past four months. But his new efforts to tarnish an eventual trial in this case mirror his long-term strategy of seeking to delegitimize any institution – including the courts, the Justice Department, US intelligence agencies and the press – that contradicts his narrative or challenges his power.

    They unfolded as the precarious nature of his position after his third indictment began to sink in and the ramifications for the 2024 election widened.

    Mike Pence, speaking on CNN this weekend, did not rule out providing testimony in a Trump trial if compelled, which would be a staggering potential scenario for a vice president to provide evidence against his ex-running mate.

    Trump’s former Attorney General William Barr, meanwhile, dismissed one of the arguments the ex-president and his allies have turned to – that he was simply exercising his right to freedom of speech in seeking to reverse the election result in 2020. Barr, who told Trump there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud during his final weeks in office, also said Sunday that “of course” he would appear as a witness at the trial if asked.

    Trump’s status as the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination has left his rivals with a painful political tightrope walk as they seek to take advantage of his plight while avoiding alienating GOP primary voters. But several candidates stiffened their criticism of the former president over the issue this weekend as campaigning heated up.

    Pence said on CNN’s “State of the Union” that in the tense days ahead of Congress’ certification of President Joe Biden’s election, Trump asked him to put loyalty to him above his oath to the Constitution and halt the process. “I’m running for president in part because I think anyone who puts themselves over the Constitution should never be president of the United States,” Pence told Dana Bash.

    And Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis went a tiny bit further in his criticism of Trump, while still arguing that the Biden administration is weaponizing justice against the former president. On a campaign swing through Iowa on Friday, DeSantis – who is battling to preserve his tottering status as the No. 2 Republican in primary polls – said Trump’s false claims about election fraud were “unsubstantiated.”

    In a subsequent interview with NBC, DeSantis added: “Whoever puts their hand on the Bible on January 20 every four years is the winner.”

    “Of course, he lost,” DeSantis said. “Joe Biden’s the president.” The Florida governor also, however, chastised people in the media and elsewhere for acting like “this was the perfect election.”

    The fast-moving developments since Trump’s indictment last week are offering a preview of one of the most monumental criminal trials in American political history. They also suggest this case, and two others in which Trump has pleaded not guilty – to mishandling of classified documents and to charges arising out of a hush money payment to an adult film actress – are certain to deepen a corrosive national political estrangement.

    Defense teams have the right to use every courtroom mechanism within legal bounds to their client’s best advantage. Attempts to delay trials with pre-trial litigation are not unusual and prosecutors and defense lawyers often differ over matters of procedure and evidence. But Trump’s case is unique, given the visibility of the accused, the fact that he’s a former president running for another White House term, and that he is using his power and fame to mount a vitriolic campaign outside the courtroom to drain public confidence in the justice system. It is becoming increasingly clear that there is no distinction between his legal strategy and his political one in an election that is now consumed by his criminal exposure and the possibility of convictions.

    In posts on his Truth Social network that highlighted a furious state of mind, Trump on Sunday demanded the recusal of Judge Tanya Chutkan, an Obama appointee who is presiding over the case, and a venue change out of the capital. He blasted special counsel Jack Smith as “deranged” and claimed that the US was being “destroyed.” On Saturday night, in a speech in South Carolina, Trump demanded that Senate Republicans do more to protect him.

    His threatening rhetoric is already having a direct impact on pre-trial preparations as both parties shadow box ahead of a decision by the judge on a trial date.

    Smith’s prosecutors asked the court late Friday to impose strict limits on how Trump can publicize evidence that will be handed over as part of the discovery process. Trump’s team sought an extension of a Monday afternoon deadline to file on the matter, but Chutkan refused their request. Prosecutors want the judge to impose a protective order limiting how Trump could use such evidence because of his previous public statements about witnesses, judges, attorneys and others. In their filing, they included a screenshot of a Truth Social post in which Trump warned: “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!”

    Trump’s lawyer John Lauro argued on “State of the Union” Sunday that the special counsel was seeking to withhold evidence about the case from the press and the American people that “may speak to the innocence of President Trump.”

    Trump is seeking to delay and prolong the trial so that the country won’t have a final answer on his alleged culpability until after the election. If Trump wins the White House in November 2024, he will again gain access to executive powers and status that could freeze federal prosecutions against him or mitigate any guilty verdicts.

    Lauro said on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday that he had not known any similar case go to trial within two or three years of an indictment. He also said on other talk show appearances that he planned to relitigate the 2020 election, which he said had never been drawn out in court, as a way of challenging Smith’s charges. Trump, however, made multiple attempts to have the 2020 result overturned in court, and judges repeatedly threw out his claims of voter fraud as having no merit.

    Lauro also further revealed his hand on defense strategy by arguing that despite being told multiple times by officials and campaign advisers that he lost the election, Trump’s actions were not criminal since he was convinced he won.

    “The defense is quite simple. Donald Trump … believed in his heart of hearts that he had won that election,” he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. “And as any American citizen, he had a right to speak out under the First Amendment. He had a right to petition governments around the country, state governments, based on his grievances that election irregularities had occurred.”

    But Barr, a conservative Republican who had been a staunch Trump defender until the very end of his administration, said that while Smith’s case was certainly “challenging,” he didn’t think it “runs afoul of the First Amendment.”

    Trump’s prospective defense raises the possibility that any future politician could create an alternative reality that bears no relation to the facts of an election outcome, and then take actions designed to retain power.

    Barr sought to clear up what he said was confusion about the case. “This involved a situation where the states had already made the official and authoritative determination as to who won in those states, and they sent the votes and certified them to Congress,” Barr said on “Face the Nation.”

    “The allegation, essentially, by the government is that, at that point, the president conspired, entered into a plan, a scheme that involved a lot of deceit, the object of which was to erase those votes, to nullify those lawful votes.”

    Another claim by Trump’s team being amplified on conservative media is that the former president cannot get a fair trial in Washington, where he won only 5% of the vote in the 2020 election. Lauro instead suggested one of the most pro-Trump states in the union, where the ex-president racked up nearly 70% of votes cast in the last election. “I think West Virginia would be an excellent venue to try this case,” he said on CBS.

    Most legal experts think a change of venue is unlikely. Such a step would implicitly strike at the heart of the legal system since it would suggest that verdicts and juries in one jurisdiction are more valid than those elsewhere and could set a precedent that politicians could choose juries in politically advantageous regions.

    Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, one of the handful of Republicans running for the 2024 nomination on an explicitly anti-Trump platform, insisted that Trump could get a fair trial in the nation’s capital.

    “I believe jurors can be fair. I believe in the American people,” Christie said on “State of the Union.”

    Christie: I believe DC jurors can be fair to Trump

    Christie, a former federal prosecutor in a blue state, also rejected the argument that Trump’s post-election conduct is protected by the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech. He argued that proof of Trump’s culpability lies in his failure to immediately seek to stop the ransacking of the US Capitol by his supporters during the certification of Biden’s victory on January 6, 2021.

    “He didn’t do that. He sat, ate his overdone hamburger in the White House Dining Room he has off the Oval Office and enjoyed watching what was going on,” Christie said.

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  • Arizona GOP’s rebuff of one-day, in-person, primary highlights party’s rift over election security | CNN Politics

    Arizona GOP’s rebuff of one-day, in-person, primary highlights party’s rift over election security | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    Arizona state Republican chairman Jeff DeWit this week rejected a Maricopa County GOP proposal to hold a one-day state-run presidential primary in 2024, highlighting a continued fracture in the Republican Party in the wake of persistent election denialism stemming from the 2020 presidential election.

    DeWit explained why he had not called for a vote on the proposal in a Thursday email to members of the party’s executive committee. He said the GOP doesn’t have the money to conduct its own contest — or the time to implement a plan and clear potential legal hurdles.

    The decision by DeWit, who worked on former President Donald Trump’s 2016 and 2020 campaigns, is likely to trigger backlash from conservatives in the state. The Arizona Republican Party has been driven rightward by Trump-aligned conservatives who distrust its elections and refuse to accept the losses of Trump in 2020 and a statewide slate that included gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake, another prominent election denier, in 2022.

    The Washington Post reported on the development earlier Saturday.

    Arizona has emerged in recent years as one of the nation’s most important swing states – a former Republican bastion that has shifted leftward in recent years, with Democratic victories in 2018, 2020 and 2022 Senate races and President Joe Biden defeating Trump by less than 11,000 votes out of more than 3.3 million cast in the 2020 presidential election.

    Most Arizona voters cast their ballots by mail — an option that has soared in popularity since the state legislature approved no-excuse mail-in voting in 1991 and in 2007 green-lit the creation of a permanent early voting list, allowing residents to sign up to have their ballots mailed to them each election cycle.

    Those voting norms, once championed by Republicans who controlled the state’s government, are now being targeted by conservatives who have parroted Trump’s false conspiracy theories about widespread election fraud.

    The Maricopa County GOP passed a resolution on August 26 asking the state party to back out of the state-run presidential primary and hold its own one-day affair.

    “The actions taken by the MCRC are in solidarity with President Donald J. Trump, who has been persecuted, arrested and indicted for taking the very same positions,” Maricopa County Republican Party Chairman Craig Berlin said in a video posted this week on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.

    DeWit’s rejection of that proposal came just before Friday’s deadline for parties to withdraw from the government-run election. Paul Smith-Leonard, communications director for the Arizona secretary of state’s office, confirmed that no party had opted out of the presidential primary.

    DeWit said in his email that the party has “no well-articulated plan” to replace the presidential primary and “no money with which to communicate this change to Arizona Republican voters.”

    “As a result, the Party would almost certainly be forced back into the (presidential primary) by court order. There is simply not enough time or resources to make that shift in this presidential election cycle while upholding the requirement of the Bylaws that the Party act fairly to all primary candidates,” he said.

    DeWit also cited the state party’s lawyer, saying that the state GOP is “very nearly certain” the state would face federal and state lawsuits alleging that such a shift would amount to “massive voter disenfranchisement.”

    Instead, he proposed allowing the Maricopa County GOP to run a parallel primary election — one that would take place solely in Maricopa County, and be funded by the county party.

    The rift is the latest evidence that, despite narrow losses in 2018, 2020 and 2022, many Republicans in the state reject a return to the tactics at which the party once excelled — including following up with conservative voters to make sure their mail-in ballots are returned.

    There has been no broad reckoning for the party after those losses. Following her 2022 defeat, Lake launched a series of legal challenges seeking to reverse Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs’ victory.

    Following Trump’s loss in 2020, the conservative-led Arizona state Senate hired Cyber Ninjas, an inexperienced Florida-based firm, to conduct a partisan review of the over 2 million votes cast in Maricopa County.

    The sham “audit” pointed to inconsistencies that largely resulted from the inexperienced reviewers’ lack of understanding of how elections operate in Arizona. Elections experts debunked virtually all of the claims Cyber Ninjas and its subcontractors made about ballots they characterized as questionable and Maricopa County’s handling of cybersecurity.

    Its final report, released by the state Senate, was issued in September 2021, and showed that the results of reviewers’ hand recount were nearly identical to the county’s tally. Still, the report has turned into fodder for Trump-aligned conservatives, including Lake, to sow distrust in Arizona’s election process.

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  • Trump rages as former acolytes turn against him under legal heat | CNN Politics

    Trump rages as former acolytes turn against him under legal heat | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    Donald Trump’s wealth, power and fame acted like a magnet for new associates keen to enter his orbit. But now, key figures who sought a share of his reflected glory are turning against him to save themselves.

    The ex-president absorbed a trio of blows Tuesday that worsened his legal peril and underscored how the 2024 election – in which he is the front-runner for the GOP nomination – will play out in the courts rather than traditional voting battlegrounds.

    In the most significant development, ABC News reported that Trump’s former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, had met federal prosecutors multiple times and had categorically undermined the ex-president’s narrative about a stolen election. Meadows was the gatekeeper to the Oval Office in the critical days when Trump was allegedly plotting to steal the 2020 election after voters rejected his bid for a second term. CNN has reached out to Meadows’ attorney for comment.

    In another damaging twist, former Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis, who blanketed television networks after President Joe Biden’s victory to falsely claim he was elected because of fraud, reached a plea deal with Georgia prosecutors. Ellis on Tuesday tearfully confessed to the felony of aiding and abetting false statements that she and other lawyers told Peach State lawmakers. She was the third former Trump acolyte to agree to testify against the ex-president and others this week. The election subversion prosecution brought by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is now following the classic playbook of a racketeering case wherein smaller fish are peeled away for reduced sentences to secure their testimony against the alleged kingpin.

    “If I knew then what I knew now, I would have declined to represent Donald Trump in these post-election challenges. I look back on this experience with deep remorse,” Ellis said.

    Ellis was a comparatively junior figure in Trump’s schemes to overthrow the election, although there is reason to believe she was in critical meetings of interest to prosecutors. Her guilty plea also looks like terrible news for former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who also served as a Trump lawyer after the election and with whom Ellis worked closely.

    Her repudiation of her own behavior marks an ominous omen for Trump because it shows that while falsehoods about election fraud are still a potent political force in the GOP and conservative media, it’s the truth that matters in court. Under the legal system, the former president could face a level of accountability that the US political system, which is still buckling under his influence, can’t match.

    One of Trump’s former associates was feeling no remorse when he arrived in court in New York on Tuesday seeking to undermine another Trump legal defense. The former president’s longtime fixer, Michael Cohen, came face to face with his ex-boss for the first time in five years when he took the stand in a civil trial in which prosecutors are seeking to end Trump’s ability to do business in the state. Cohen has already gone to jail for tax fraud, making false statements to Congress and campaign finance violations – some of which were linked to his work for Trump before he launched his political career. Cohen once vowed to take a bullet for his former boss but has left no doubt that he’s been itching to testify against him for many months. While his own conviction raises credibility issues about his testimony, Cohen implicated Trump on Tuesday, saying his former boss directed him to inflate his net worth on financial statements.

    “Heck of a reunion,” Cohen told reporters after testifying under Trump’s gaze.

    Each of Tuesday’s legal dramas threatened to undermine Trump’s position in separate cases, to which he has pleaded not guilty, and emphasized how the Republican front-runner’s bid to recapture the White House will be shadowed by his criminal liability.

    And for someone who has the exaggerated sense of loyalty harbored by Trump – albeit one that mostly goes one way – the spectacle of three former associates turning against him will be especially irksome.

    While the crush of legal cases bearing down on him hasn’t diminished his dominance in the GOP presidential race, there are increasing signs that the courtroom pressure is beginning to grate on a former president who, in a lifetime of business, personal and political scrapes, has made an art form of dodging accountability.

    In a rage-filled stream of consciousness on his Truth Social network on Tuesday night, Trump lashed out at the ABC report about Meadows.

    “I don’t think Mark Meadows would lie about the Rigged and Stollen 2020 Presidential Election merely for getting IMMUNITY against Prosecution (PERSECUTION!),” the former president wrote.

    “Some people would make that deal, but they are weaklings and cowards, and so bad for the future our Failing Nation. I don’t think that Mark Meadows is one of them, but who really knows? MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!”

    This came only a day after Trump absurdly compared himself to Nelson Mandela, who spent 27 years in prison – much of it in a tiny cell on Robben Island – enduring forced labor in a quarry for opposing the racist apartheid system in South Africa. After his release, the Nobel Peace Prize winner remade his divided nation as president and became a symbol of unity, humility, racial healing and forgiveness – qualities rarely shown by Trump.

    “I don’t mind being Nelson Mandela, because I’m doing it for a reason,” the ex-president told supporters in New Hampshire.

    Trump’s persecution complex is revealing, however. The former president is portraying himself as a bulwark against a government that he claims is weaponized against him and his supporters. The idea that he is a political martyr who is being unfairly targeted by the Biden administration – despite 91 charges across his four criminal indictments – may be his only credible campaign tactic. After all, he may be a convicted felon by Election Day in less than 13 months. While that prospect doesn’t seem to faze Republican primary voters, it may be a serious vulnerability among a broader electorate.

    Legal watchers in Washington have speculated for months about the activity of Meadows, a former North Carolina congressman who became the last chief of staff of Trump’s turbulent White House term.

    During his testimony before a federal grand jury, Meadows was also asked about efforts to overturn the election as well as Trump’s handling of classified documents, CNN previously reported.

    But if, as ABC News has reported, he has been granted immunity by special counsel Jack Smith and met federal prosecutors multiple times, that qualifies for the over-used term of “bombshell.”

    Haberman on why latest news on Mark Meadows feels ‘different’

    Meadows is also a key figure in the Fulton County, Georgia, probe, where he made a failed effort to have his case elevated to federal court after unsuccessfully arguing his actions at the behest of Trump’s election thwarting effort fell under his official duties.

    Meadows, who met Smith’s team at least three times this year, told investigators he did not believe the election was stolen and that Trump was being “dishonest” in claiming victory shortly after polls closed in 2020, according to ABC.

    The agreement is the first publicly known in the special counsel’s investigation into the events around January 6, 2021. The exact terms of Meadows’ deal with prosecutors are not clear, but often such agreements allow a person with valuable information about an investigation immunity from prosecution in exchange for fully cooperating.

    The reported details of Meadows’ testimony could be hugely damaging for Trump because a fundamental plank of the ex-president’s defense relies on the notion that he sincerely believed that the election was stolen and that his actions were not therefore criminal because they were an exercise of his right to free speech.

    It has long been the case that while those around Trump in business and politics often find themselves slipping deep into legal trouble, he skips free. The apparent decisions of Meadows, Ellis and Cohen – together with the mass of legal threats now facing the former president – suggest that charmed life is about to meet its biggest challenge yet.

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  • Former Georgia lieutenant governor subpoenaed to testify before Fulton County grand jury in 2020 election probe | CNN Politics

    Former Georgia lieutenant governor subpoenaed to testify before Fulton County grand jury in 2020 election probe | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    Former Georgia Republican Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan received subpoenas to testify before a Fulton County grand jury this month, a source with direct knowledge of the 2020 election interference investigation in the state told CNN.

    Duncan has been a sharp critic of Donald Trump’s efforts to upend Georgia’s election results. He recently told CNN that he was “embarrassed” when Rudy Giuliani, a former attorney for Trump, and other allies of the former president appeared before Georgia state lawmakers. While Duncan was president of the Georgia state Senate at the time, he told CNN he did not “sanction” those meetings, and that they were not “official hearings.”

    In an interview Monday with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on “The Situation Room,” Duncan committed to testifying in front of the grand jury, saying he’ll “be there to answer the facts as I know them and to continue this process of trying to discover what actually happened during that post-election period of time.”

    “We can never repeat that in this country. Certainly I never want to see that happen in my home state of Georgia, a lot of good peoples’ lives were uprooted, a lot of peoples’ reputations have been soiled,” Duncan, a CNN political contributor and Republican, said.

    Duncan said that he would be “willing to testify and tell the truth in as many settings as I possibly can,” in response to a question about whether he’d be willing to testify in any other related trials.

    A spokesperson for the Fulton County district attorney’s office declined to comment.

    The former lieutenant governor is the third witness publicly known to receive a subpoena for grand jury testimony. CNN previously reported independent journalist George Chidi and former Georgia Democratic state Sen. Jen Jordan have also been subpoenaed.

    On December 3, 2020, while Duncan was president of the state Senate, Giuliani spread conspiracy theories about widespread irregularities and fraud in the state during a Georgia Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing about election integrity. Jordan was in attendance.

    At the hearing, Trump’s team presented a video of what they claimed was evidence of fraud from election night ballot tabulating in Fulton County, allegations that were investigated by the FBI, Department of Justice and state election officials – and proven to be erroneous.

    The recent subpoenas are the clearest indication Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis intends to seek indictments in her long-running criminal probe into efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.

    Willis told CNN affiliate WXIA at an event late last month that “the work is accomplished,” adding later, “We’ve been working for two and half years. We’re ready to go.”

    Sources expect Willis’ team to spend roughly two days presenting its case before one of the two grand juries meeting regularly in Fulton County with the power to issue indictments. Willis has said she will make her charging announcements before September 1.

    The subpoenas for grand jury testimony call on the witnesses to appear before the grand jury during the month of August and state that witnesses will get a 48-hour notice when they are required to appear. Multiple people who were subpoenaed told CNN they have not yet been notified of an appearance date.

    Duncan on Monday would not comment on the timing of his expected appearance in front of the grand jury: “I don’t want to infringe on any details of the investigation, so I’ll leave that offline and off of this commentary here. But I’m committed to telling the truth – I know a number of people are around this process.”

    Duncan, Jordan and Chidi were all part of the group of 75 witnesses who previously testified before the special grand jury Willis used last year to gather evidence in her investigation.

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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



    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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  • Fact check: Trump falsely claims polls show his Black support has quadrupled or quintupled since his mug shot | CNN Politics

    Fact check: Trump falsely claims polls show his Black support has quadrupled or quintupled since his mug shot | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    Former President Donald Trump falsely claimed Wednesday that polls show his support among Black Americans has quadrupled or quintupled since his mug shot was released.

    The booking photo was taken on August 24, when Trump was arrested in Fulton County, Georgia, on charges connected to his efforts to overturn his defeat in the state in the 2020 election.

    On Wednesday, Trump claimed in a falsehood-filled interview with conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt that “many Democrats” will be voting for him in the 2024 election because they agree with him that the criminal charges against him in four cases are unfair. He then made this assertion: “The Black community is so different for me in the last – since that mug shot was taken, I don’t know if you’ve seen the polls; my polls with the Black community have gone up four and five times.”

    Facts First: National public polls do not show anything close to an increase of “four and five times” in Black support for Trump since his mug shot was taken, either in a race against President Joe Biden or in his own favorability rating; Trump’s campaign did not respond to CNN’s request to identify any poll that corroborates Trump’s claim. Most polls conducted after the release of the mug shot did find a higher level of Black support for Trump than he had in previous polls – but the increases were within the polls’ margins of error, not massive spikes, so it’s not clear whether there was a genuine improvement or the bump was just statistical noise. In addition, one poll found a decline in Trump’s strength with Black voters in a race against Biden, while another found a decline in his favorability with Black respondents even as he improved in a race against Biden.

    Because Black adults make up a relatively small share of the overall population, they tend to have small sample sizes in national public polls. That means the margins of error for this group are big and the results tend to bounce around from poll to poll. And even if Trump’s recent polling improvement captures a real change in voter sentiment, there is no evidence that change has anything to do with his mug shot, which no poll asked about; it could just as well have to do with, say, the summer increase in the price of gas or any of numerous other factors affecting perceptions of Biden.

    Regardless, Trump greatly exaggerated the size of the recent uptick seen in some polls. Here’s a look at what polls actually show about his recent standing with the Black population, plus a fact check of three of Trump’s many other false claims from the Hewitt interview.

    CNN identified five national public polls that: 1) included data on Black respondents in particular; 2) were conducted after Trump’s mug shot was released on August 24; 3) were conducted by pollsters who had also released polls in the recent past.

    Four of the polls showed gains for Trump among Black respondents, though much smaller gains than the quadrupling or quintupling he claimed to Hewitt.

    Trump gained 3 percentage points with Black respondents in polling by The Economist and YouGov, though within the margin of error – going from 17% against Biden in mid-August to 20% in late August. (The earlier poll asked the Trump-versus-Biden question of Black adults regardless of whether they are registered to vote, while the later poll asked the question to Black registered voters, so the results might not be directly comparable.) At the same time, Trump’s favorability with Black respondents was down 9 percentage points to 18%.

    Trump gained 3 percentage points with Black registered voters between a Messenger/Harris X poll in early July and a survey by the same pollster in late August, edging up from 22% against Biden to 25%. Trump gained 6 percentage points among Black adults in polling by the firm Premise, going from 12% against Biden in an Aug. 17-21 poll to 18% in an Aug. 30-Sept. 5 poll. He gained 8 percentage points among Black registered voters in polling by Republican firm Echelon Insights, going from 14% against Biden in late July to 22% in late August. Based on the sample sizes reported for Black respondents in each poll, all of those changes are within the margin of error.

    One of the five polls, by Emerson College, showed Trump’s standing with Black registered voters worsening after the mug shot was released, though this change was also within the margin of error. In Emerson’s mid-August poll, Trump had about 27% Black support in a race against Biden; in its late-August poll, he had about 19% support.

    In addition to looking at those five polls, we contacted The Wall Street Journal about an Aug. 24-30 poll, conducted jointly by Republican and Democratic pollsters, for which the newspaper has not yet released detailed demographic-by-demographic results. Aaron Zitner, a Journal reporter and editor who works on the poll, told us that Trump’s level of support with Black voters “didn’t change at all” between the paper’s April poll and this new poll, though Biden’s standing declined slightly within the margin of error.

    Exit polls estimated that Trump received 12% of the Black vote in the 2020 election. A post-election Pew Research Center analysis found that he received 8%.

    Mike Pence’s standing in 2016

    Trump made another false polling-related claim to Hewitt.

    This one was about how Mike Pence, Trump’s former vice president and his current opponent for the Republican nomination, had performed in polls during his 2016 campaign for reelection as governor of Indiana. Pence ceased his Indiana campaign when Trump selected him as his running mate in July 2016.

    Trump said Wednesday: “I’m disappointed in Mike Pence, because I took Mike from the garbage heap. He was going to lose. You know, he was running for governor, reelection. He was running for governor again, to continue his term, and he was absolutely, you know – he was down by 10 or 15 points.”

    Facts First: Trump’s claim that Pence was trailing by “10 or 15 points” in his 2016 race is false. It’s true that Pence had faced a tough battle for reelection as governor before he ended the campaign to run nationally with Trump, but no public poll had shown him down big.

    A May 2016 poll (commissioned by a Republican group that was founded by an opponent of Pence’s right-wing stance on gay rights and other issues) had showed Pence with 40% support and his Democratic opponent, John Gregg, with 36% support; the Indianapolis Star called this a “virtual dead heat” because of the poll’s margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points, but nonetheless, Pence certainly wasn’t “down by 10 or 15 points” like Trump said. An April 2016 poll had showed Pence with 49% support to Gregg’s 45%, again within the margin of error but not with Pence trailing.

    “There would not be any poll that would show Pence down 10-15 points to John Gregg at that time or frankly at any point even if Pence had stayed for the reelection campaign,” Christine Matthews, the president of Bellwether Research & Consulting and a Republican pollster who conducted surveys during that 2016 race in Indiana, including the May 2016 poll mentioned above, told CNN on Wednesday. Matthews said Pence could possibly have lost the race if he had remained in it, “but no poll would have shown him down by 10-15 points in that process.”

    Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina in 2020

    Trump repeated his usual lies about the 2020 election – saying, among other things, that “it was rigged and stolen.” In support of those lies, he said: “One of the top people in Alabama said you don’t win Alabama by 45 points or whatever it is I won, and then win South Carolina in a record, nobody’s ever gotten that many votes, and then you lose Georgia by just a couple of votes. It doesn’t work that way.”

    Facts First: Trump hedged his claim that he won Alabama by “45 points,” adding the “whatever it is I won,” but the “45 points” claim is not even close to correct no matter what “one of the top people” told him; he won Alabama by about 25.5 percentage points in 2020. He lost Georgia by far more than “just a couple of votes”; it was 11,779 votes. And while he did earn a record number of votes in South Carolina, he did not win the state with anything close to a “record” margin of victory; his roughly 11.7-point margin in 2020 was about 2.6 points smaller than his own margin in 2016 and also smaller than the margins earned by numerous previous winners.

    In addition, Trump’s claim that “it doesn’t work that way” – winning some states big while losing a nearby state – is also baseless. Even neighboring states are not the same. Georgia, which Trump lost fair and square, has key demographic and social differences from South Carolina and Alabama, as we explained in a previous fact check.

    Polls and election results weren’t the only things Trump exaggerated about in the interview.

    He invoked the price of bacon while criticizing the Biden administration for speaking positively about the state of inflation, which has declined sharply over the last year but remains elevated. “They try and say, ‘Oh, inflation’s wonderful.’ What about for the last three years, where bacon is five times higher than it was just a few years ago?”

    Facts First: Trump’s claim that the price of bacon has quintupled over the last few years is grossly inaccurate. The average price of bacon is higher than it was three years ago, but it is nowhere near “five times higher.” The average price for a pound of sliced bacon was $6.236 per pound in July 2023, up from $5.776 in July 2020, according to federal data – an increase of about 8%, nowhere near the 400% increase Trump claimed.

    You can come up with a larger percentage increase if you start the clock at a different point in 2020; for example, the July 2023 average price is a 13.4% increase from the February 2020 average price. But even that larger increase is way smaller than Trump claimed.

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  • Fulton County district attorney is likely to present her case against Trump to grand jury next week | CNN Politics

    Fulton County district attorney is likely to present her case against Trump to grand jury next week | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    The Atlanta-area district attorney investigating former President Donald Trump and his allies has been lining up witnesses to appear before a grand jury in order to craft a narrative around how Trump and his supporters tried to reverse the results of the 2020 presidential election in the Peach State, according to people familiar with the matter.

    Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is expected to spend two days presenting her case before a grand jury next week.

    Willis could seek several indictments as she eyes a sweeping racketeering case that could cast Trump and several of his associates as operating as a criminal enterprise in their endeavors to upend Georgia’s election results.

    If Willis proceeds with racketeering charges, “I think she is going to tell a story,” said Georgia State law professor Clark D. Cunningham. “The story of how one person at the top – the former president – really marshaled an army of people to accomplish his goal which was to stay in power through any means.”

    The witnesses Willis has subpoenaed include former Republican Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, former Georgia Democratic state Sen. Jen Jordan and independent journalist George Chidi. All of them previously testified before a special purpose grand jury that was tasked with investigating the Trump case and heard from more than 75 witnesses.

    But Georgia law is unusual in that special purpose grand juries – which have broad investigative powers – are not permitted to issue indictments. When the subpoenaed witnesses appear before the regular grand jury, those grand jurors will hear the witnesses’ testimony for the first time with a narrower purpose at hand: to approve or reject indictments.

    The witnesses that have been summoned to testify speak to various prongs of Willis’ investigation, from conspiracy-laden presentations that Trump’s associates – including former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani – made before Georgia lawmakers in 2020, to the convening of fake electors to try to thwart President Joe Biden’s victory in the state. She can also rely on her internal investigators to present evidence that was previously collected by the special purpose grand jury.

    In a case of this magnitude, “probably the indictment has been drafted and reviewed for months,” Michael J. Moore, former US attorney for the Middle District of Georgia, told CNN.

    If there’s anything left to be done, Moore said it was likely final tweaks and finishing touches.

    “The indictment, word-for-word, is going to be flyspecked. You’re making sure there are no errors in it,” Moore said. “And you’re making sure you have enough pieces to prove each count.”

    Willis’ office declined to comment.

    Willis launched her investigation into Trump in early 2021, soon after he called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and pressured the Republican to “find” the votes necessary for Trump to win the state of Georgia. At a campaign event Tuesday, Trump continued to insist it was a “perfect phone call.”

    Her investigation has steadily expanded, and Willis has been weighing racketeering charges in the Trump case. RICO – the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act – is a statute the district attorney has spoken fondly of and used in unorthodox ways to bring charges against teachers as well as musicians in the Atlanta area.

    In 2015, Willis was thrust into the national spotlight as a Fulton County prosecutor when she used Georgia’s racketeering statute to charge teachers, principals and other education officials in an Atlanta Public School cheating scandal.

    After a 7-month trial, Willis secured convictions for 11 of the 12 defendants charged with racketeering and other crimes related to cheating that was believed to date to early 2001, when scores on statewide skills tests began to rise in the 50,000-student school district.

    “The reason that I am a fan of RICO is, I think jurors are very, very intelligent,” Willis told reporters in 2022 at a press conference about a gang-related indictment. “They want to know what happened. They want to make an accurate decision about someone’s life. And so, RICO is a tool that allows a prosecutor’s office and law enforcement to tell the whole story.”

    Soon after Willis embarked on her Trump investigation, she retained attorney John Floyd – known for his depth of knowledge in racketeering cases – to assist her office.

    In addition to allowing prosecutors to weave a narrative, Georgia’s racketeering statute allows investigators to pull a broader array of conduct into their indictments, including activities that took place outside of the state of Georgia but may have been part of a broader conspiracy.

    Those convicted of racketeering charges also face steeper penalties, a point of leverage for prosecutors if they are hoping to flip potential co-conspirators or encourage defendants to take plea deals.

    Willis’ team has forged ahead with plans to make charging announcements in the coming weeks, even as special counsel Jack Smith charged Trump with four federal counts related to his efforts to stay in power after losing the 2020 presidential election.

    A hefty chunk of the conduct in the indictment was related to efforts to flip the election results in Georgia. Trump has pleaded not guilty in that case.

    The former president’s legal team believes he is likely to face his fourth indictment in the coming days, people familiar with the matter told CNN.

    At a campaign stop in New Hampshire on Tuesday, Trump complained about the cases stacking up against him, adding, “I probably have another one.”

    He also railed against the Fulton County district attorney’s case.

    “I challenge the election in Georgia – which I have every right to do, which I was right about frankly – and they want to indict me because I challenge the election,” Trump told the crowd, even though his efforts to challenge the election results in court failed and no evidence of widespread voter fraud has ever emerged.

    Still, the biggest risk Willis runs at the moment may be in public perception if she moves ahead with a Trump indictment, said Moore, the former US attorney.

    “It starts to look like she’s just piling on because the same things that are in her indictment are also in the federal indictment,” Moore predicted, though he has not been privy to drafts of Willis’ potential indictments. “I’m not sure she’s got anything new to talk about.”

    At an event last week at Atlanta Technical College, Willis told reporters she had reviewed the special counsel’s federal indictment against Trump for election interference but said it would not affect her plans in Georgia.

    Asked what she would say to critics who question the purpose of her case in the wake of the federal indictment, Willis said, “That I took an oath. And that oath requires that I follow the law. And if someone broke the law in Fulton County, Georgia, that I have a duty to prosecute and that’s exactly what I plan to do.”

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  • House Oversight GOP claims they don’t need to find direct payments to Joe Biden to prove corruption in Hunter Biden business dealings memo | CNN Politics

    House Oversight GOP claims they don’t need to find direct payments to Joe Biden to prove corruption in Hunter Biden business dealings memo | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    House Oversight Republicans laid out their intention to accuse President Joe Biden of corruption even without direct evidence that he financially benefited from Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings, a clear shift in their strategy that they said was launched to investigate the president.

    The new strategy is highlighted in a memo released by the committee on Wednesday.

    “President Biden’s defenders purport a weak defense by asserting the Committee must show payments directly to the President to show corruption,” the House Oversight Republicans wrote.

    “This is a hollow claim no other American would be afforded if their family members accepted foreign payments or bribes. Indeed, the law recognizes payments to family members to corruptly influence others can constitute a bribe,” the memo says. The panel points to a resource guide of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act that states “companies also may violate the FCPA if they give payments or gifts to third parties, such as an official’s family members, as an indirect way of corruptly influencing a foreign official.” Hunter Biden has not been charged or convicted of accepting bribes at this point.

    The memo follows the increasing drumbeat from many House Republicans – and certainly the GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump – to pursue impeachment of the sitting president even without a clear establishment of facts.

    But, so far, it appears the committee has not found any direct evidence that President Biden personally benefited from any of his son’s business dealings. Republicans are now insisting they don’t have to.

    “No one in the Biden Administration or in the Minority has explained what services, if any, the Bidens and their associates provided in exchange for the over $20 million in foreign payments,” reads the memo.

    The White House has long maintained that Comer’s investigation is designed for political purposes as it has yet to find any evidence that Joe Biden directly profited from his son’s foreign business dealings or if Hunter Biden’s entanglements influenced his decision-making while vice president.

    President Biden has denied being involved in any of his son’s business dealings.

    In a statement following the release of the memo, White House spokesperson Ian Sams said, “Today House Republicans on the Oversight Committee released another memo full of years-old ‘news,’ innuendo, and misdirection – but notably missing, yet again, is any connection to President Biden.”

    The top Democrat on the Oversight panel, Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, added, “Republicans have repeatedly twisted and mischaracterized the evidence in a transparent and increasingly embarrassing attempt to justify their baseless calls for an impeachment inquiry and distract from former President Trump’s dozens of outstanding felony criminal charges in three different cases.”

    The memo argues that Hunter Biden selling his father’s “brand” around the world to enrich the Biden family is enough to prove that there was corruption and bribery connected to Joe Biden.

    “During Joe Biden’s vice presidency, Hunter Biden sold him as ‘the brand’ to reap millions from oligarchs in Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine,” said Committee Chairman James Comer, a Republican from Kentucky, in a statement. “It appears no real services were provided other than access to the Biden network, including Joe Biden himself. And Hunter Biden seems to have delivered.”

    But Hunter Biden’s business associate Devon Archer, testified to the Oversight Committee last week that Hunter gave the false impression to executives of Burisma, the Ukrainian energy company, that he had influence over US policy.

    Archer said that Hunter Biden sold the illusion of access to his father, and Archer told the panel he was “not aware of any” wrongdoing by Joe Biden and that “nothing” of importance was discussed the 20 times he recalled then-Vice President Joe Biden being placed on speaker phone during meetings with business partners.

    The only evidence Oversight Republicans mention that indirectly connects Joe Biden to his son’s business dealings are a 2014 and 2015 dinner that he attended with Hunter Biden and some of his foreign business associates at Café Milano and that he visited Ukraine as vice president shortly after his son started receiving $1 million a year from Burisma, for joining their board of directors.

    Wednesday’s memo comes as CNN previously reported that House Republicans are gearing up to launch an impeachment inquiry into the president as soon as next month.

    The memo focuses on a previously known $3.5 million payment from Russian oligarch Yelena Baturina that Archer testified Hunter Biden was “not involved” in the meeting.

    Even though Hunter Biden was not directly involved, House Oversight Republicans are attempting to show how a portion of the $3.5 million was transferred into multiple accounts until it entered an account connected to Hunter Biden. Committee Republicans then suggest, without evidence, that the payment was connected to a dinner with Baturina including Hunter and Joe Biden at Café Milano in the spring of 2014 shortly after the initial payment was made. Without presenting evidence that would provide a connection, Republicans suggested that this payment could have something to do with why Baturina is not on the public sanctions list following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

    Hunter Biden’s business associate involved in this payment, Devon Archer, who testified to the Oversight panel last week described the Café Milano dinner as “like a birthday dinner.”

    “He came to dinner, and we ate and kind of talked about the world, I guess, and the weather, and then everybody – everybody left,” Archer, who was also at the dinner, said of Joe Biden.

    In a 2020 Senate report, Republicans revealed the existence of the payment from Baturina to a company tied to Hunter Biden’s business associates. But Wednesday’s memo does not detail how much of the $3.5 million Hunter Biden received specifically.

    Hunter Biden’s lawyers said in 2020 that the claim that he was paid $3.5 million “is false” and the key financial transactions that Comer flagged – between Hunter Biden and billionaires from Russia and Kazakhstan – are not referenced in any of the plea documents in Hunter Biden’s criminal case and were not mentioned at his court hearing last month.

    The memo focuses on deals and transactions Hunter Biden made with foreign oligarchs and leaders in Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan. The panel subpoenaed six banks for information regarding specific Biden family business associates, but has not yet subpoenaed bank records from Biden family members themselves.

    This story has been updated with additional developments.

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  • Trump says it was ‘my decision’ to try to overturn 2020 election results | CNN Politics

    Trump says it was ‘my decision’ to try to overturn 2020 election results | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    Former President Donald Trump said that he received counsel from numerous people shortly after the 2020 election but that it was his decision to push the false claim he won the presidency and try to overturn the results.

    “It was my decision, but I listened to some people,” Trump told NBC’s “Meet the Press” in an interview that aired Sunday.

    Trump has been indicted over his efforts to subvert the 2020 election results. He has pleaded not guilty in all cases and denied any wrongdoing.

    A central premise of special counsel Jack Smith’s case, according to his indictment of the former president, is that Trump knew the election claims he was making were false after being told by close aides that he had lost but disseminated them anyway to make them appear legitimate – all in service of an alleged criminal conspiracy.

    “I was listening to different people, and when I added it all up, the election was rigged,” Trump told Kristen Welker in the interview, again pushing the false claim as he seeks the 2024 Republican nomination for president.

    “You know who I listen to? Myself. I saw what happened,” Trump said.

    The former president said he didn’t listen to his attorneys who told him he lost the election because he didn’t respect them.

    “You hire them, you’ve never met these people, you get a recommendation, they turn out to be RINOs (Republicans in name only), or they turn out to be not so good. In many cases, I didn’t respect them,” Trump said. “But I did respect others. I respected many others that said the election was rigged.”

    Following his election loss, Trump tried multiple avenues to overturn the election results. He pressured Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and another official to “recalculate” the numbers and “find” enough votes to let him win.

    Trump’s campaign also tried to install fake GOP electors in seven swing states.

    The House select committee that investigated Trump’s actions in the lead-up to the January 6, 2021, insurrection argued that the evidence shows he actively worked to “transmit false Electoral College ballots to Congress and the National Archives” despite concerns among his lawyers that doing so could be unlawful.

    “That evidence has led to an overriding and straightforward conclusion: the central cause of January 6th was one man, former President Donald Trump, whom many others followed. None of the events of January 6th would have happened without him,” the committee’s final report states.

    Smith’s federal election interference investigation is one of four criminal cases against the former president. Trump is facing four charges in Smith’s case, including obstruction of an official proceeding and conspiracy to defraud the United States.

    Trump was also charged in a sweeping Georgia indictment accusing him of being the head of a “criminal enterprise” to overturn the 2020 election.

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