ReportWire

Tag: us elections

  • Trump heads to South Carolina after a week filled with his legal drama | CNN Politics

    Trump heads to South Carolina after a week filled with his legal drama | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    Former President Donald Trump is set to visit South Carolina on Saturday, wrapping up a week that has been defined by his historic third indictment.

    Trump’s Saturday trip to the early-primary state – he’ll visit Columbia, South Carolina, for the state GOP’s Silver Elephant Dinner – follows a Friday night stop in Alabama. The two were his first campaign events after his arraignment Thursday in Washington,DC, in special prosecutor Jack Smith’s investigation into his efforts to remain in the White House despite losing the 2020 election to President Joe Biden.

    In Montgomery on Friday night, Trump conflated his actions in seeking to overturn the 2020 election with those of Democrats, including Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Stacey Abrams after the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial election, in the wake of their losses. He said he faces “bogus charges.”

    He also said if he is elected in 2024, he would appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Biden’s family.

    “When they indicted their political opponent and they did that, I said, well, now the gloves are off,” Trump said of Biden. “The Republicans better get tough, and they better get smart, because most of them look like a bunch of weak jerks right now. … You have to fight fire with fire. You can’t allow this to go on.”

    Trump’s campaign on Friday went on the attack against the prosecutors who have brought cases against or are investigating the former president. It released a video attacking those prosecutors one day after Trump was arrested and arraigned for a third time.

    The video attacks Smith, New York Attorney General Letitia James, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis, dubbing the group the “Fraud Squad.”

    “Meet the cast of unscrupulous accomplices he’s assembled to get Trump,” the narrator says in the video of Biden.

    The video also uses footage of Biden falling off his bike and tripping up the stairs to Air Force One.

    Lashing out over the costs of defending himself and his allies in myriad legal battles, Trump also called for the Supreme Court to “intercede.”

    “CRAZY! My political opponent has hit me with a barrage of weak lawsuits, including D.A., A.G., and others, which require massive amounts of my time & money to adjudicate,” Trump complained on Truth Social. “Resources that would have gone into Ads and Rallies, will now have to be spent fighting these Radical Left Thugs in numerous courts throughout the Country. I am leading in all Polls, including against Crooked Joe, but this is not a level playing field. It is Election Interference, & the Supreme Court must intercede.”

    His campaign has used the legal proceedings as a fundraising tool, hauling in small-dollar donations.

    “Trump is in THE AIR!” his campaign said in an email to supporters Thursday. “Before he arrives at the courthouse for his hearing, can 10,000 pro-Trump patriots sign on to defend him & end the witch hunt?”

    A handful of GOP presidential candidates, including former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, former Texas Rep. Will Hurd and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, have criticized Trump’s actions.

    Hurd, on Fox News on Thursday, said that Trump’s court appearance was the “third time in four months in courts. It’s unacceptable, we didn’t have to be here.”

    Former Vice President Mike Pence’s campaign is selling T-shirts and hats branded with the phrase “Too Honest,” referencing a phrase Trump allegedly uttered to Pence when he refused to go along with the then-president’s request to reject electoral votes and change the outcome of the 2020 election.

    According to the federal indictment, in one conversation on January 1, 2021, Trump told Pence he was “too honest” when the then-vice president said that he lacked the authority to change the results.

    After Trump was indicted earlier this week, Pence said that “anyone who puts themselves over the Constitution should never be president” and added that Trump “was surrounded by a group of crackpot lawyers who kept telling him what his itching ears wanted to hear.”

    However, much of the Republican field has so far refused to take aim at Trump over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, which are at the heart of the federal charges he faces in Washington.

    Trump’s top-polling rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, on Friday said he would pardon Trump if he is elected in 2024. He also defended the former president, arguing that the laws federal prosecutors say Trump broke were “never intended to apply to this type of situation.”

    The Florida governor, who was campaigning in Iowa, told reporters his candidacy for president would be focused on the future and starting to heal “divisions in this country.”

    DeSantis indicated that he would pardon Trump if he were convicted, echoing comments he recently made on “Outkick” with Clay Travis.

    “I’ve said for many weeks now, I don’t think it’s in the best interest of the country to have a former president – that’s almost 80 years old – go to prison. Just like Nixon or Ford pardoned Nixon, you know, sometimes you got to put this stuff behind you,” he said.

    DeSantis’ comments underscored the reality that most of Trump’s 2024 GOP rivals see little to gain by angering a base that is still largely supportive of the former president.

    South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott on Friday criticized the Justice Department for the “weaponization of their power” in his first on-camera reaction to the third indictment and arraignment of Trump.

    Scott told reporters following an immigration roundtable event in Yuma, Arizona, he believes DOJ spends “a lot of time hunting Republicans” while protecting Democrats, specifically referencing the president’s son Hunter Biden.

    “My perspective is that the DOJ continues to weaponize their power against political opponents. It seems like they spend a lot of time protecting Hunter Biden and Democrats and a lot of time hunting Republicans,” Scott said.

    The most recent polls show that Trump remains the clear front-runner in the 2024 GOP primary. A poll of likely Republican caucusgoers in Iowa from The New York Times/Siena College released Friday showed Trump with 44% support, compared to DeSantis’ 20% and Scott’s 9%, with no other candidate topping 5%.

    His lead is even wider nationally. Trump holds the support of 54% of likely GOP primary voters, a New York Times/Siena College poll released earlier this week found, while DeSantis has 17% support and no other candidate exceeds 3%.

    Just 17% of likely Republican primary voters think that Trump has “committed any serious federal crimes,” and only 10% more say that although they don’t think he committed a serious crime, he “did something wrong in his handling of classified documents.” Three-quarters (75%) say that after the 2020 elections, Trump “was just exercising his right to contest the election,” while only 19% believe he “went so far that he threatened American democracy.” And 71% say that regarding the investigations Trump is facing, Republicans “need to stand behind Trump.”

    The Republican base could be at odds with the broader electorate: Two-thirds of Americans (65%) say that the charges Trump faces over efforts to overturn the 2020 elections are serious, according to a new poll from ABC News and Ipsos conducted after Trump’s latest indictment.

    There are broad partisan gaps in views of the seriousness of the new charges, with 91% of Democrats calling them serious along with 67% of independents, though just 38% of Republicans agree. The gap between Democrats and Republicans widens to 65 points when looking at those who call the charges “very serious” (84% of Democrats feel that way vs. 19% of Republicans; 53% of independents say the same).

    While many of Trump’s rivals are carefully avoiding direct confrontation with the former president, Trump is taking direct aim at DeSantis.

    Top Trump advisers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita sent an open memo on Thursday attacking DeSantis’ efforts to reboot his campaign.

    “DeSantis’s campaign is marred by idiocy,” the memo reads, as it touts Trump’s lead in polls over his GOP rivals.

    The memo compared DeSantis’ campaign to Sen. John McCain’s 2008 bid and argued both campaigns overspent and didn’t fundraise enough. The late McCain and Trump had a bitter feud for years.

    “John McCain did not spend the opening week of his reboot explaining why his staff produced a video with Nazi imagery, and defending his comments that slavery provided ‘some benefit’ to enslaved Americans – while attacking black Republicans publicly in the process,” the memo reads, referencing several recent missteps DeSantis and his campaign have made.

    Developments on Capitol Hill also underscored that most of the GOP has not abandoned Trump.

    North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis, a member of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s Republican leadership team, on Thursday called on Congress to scrutinize the federal investigation into Trump’s actions.

    Tillis said in a statement that the new indictment carries “a heavy burden” to show that “criminal conduct actually occurred.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Takeaways from the arraignment of Donald Trump in the special counsel’s election subversion case | CNN Politics

    Takeaways from the arraignment of Donald Trump in the special counsel’s election subversion case | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    Former President Donald Trump pleaded not guilty in a Washington, DC, federal courthouse Thursday to federal criminal charges stemming from his plots to overturn the 2020 election, in a 27-minute proceeding where the first flashes of the defense’s tactics emerged.

    It was the third occasion that Trump was arraigned on criminal charges this year, and the hearing marked the public debut of the team of lawyers in special counsel Jack Smith’s office who will be leading the prosecution.

    Here are takeaways from the hearing:

    In the classified documents case that Smith has also brought against the former president in June, the Trump team has sought to slow-walk the schedule for the proceedings. There were hints of a similar strategy in the first hearing in the election subversion case.

    Much of Thursday’s hearing was staid and to-script. But the tone sharpened when the judge said the prosecutors should file recommendations for the trial date and length in seven days, and that the Trump team should respond within seven days after that.

    Trump attorney John Lauro told the judge that they would need to look at the amount of evidence they’ll be receiving from the government – which he said could be “massive” — before they could address that question.

    “There is no question in our mind, your honor, that Mr. Trump is entitled to a fair and just trial,” Lauro said, nodding both to Trump’s right to a speedy trial as well as his right to due process.

    Prosecutor Thomas Windom previewed that the special counsel would propose this case unfolding under a normal timeline under the Speedy Trial Act, which sets a time limit – unless certain exemptions are sought – for criminal cases to go to trial.

    Judge Tanya Chutkan intends to schedule a trial date at an August 28 hearing, a magistrate judge said Thursday. Before the trial, Chutkan may need to preside over disputes over whether the case should be dismissed to do legal flaws, when the trial should start and what evidence can be presented to a jury.

    Trump may argue that a trial should wait until after the 2024 election, an argument his legal team made unsuccessfully in the classified documents case, and his lawyers have also previewed efforts to seek a change of venue for the case, with claims that the DC jury pool is politically biased against the former president and 2024 Republican front-runner.

    There’s likely to be more added to the pile of legal problems on the former president’s plate.

    In Georgia, in the coming weeks, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is expected to bring charges in her election subversion probe and it’s possible that Trump will be indicted in that.

    And then there’s the other case from Smith alleging Trump mishandled classified documents from his White House and then obstructed the probe into the materials. That case is currently scheduled to go trial next May, and there will be regular pre-trial proceedings (at which, Trump is not required to appear) before that. There’s also the criminal case that Manhattan prosecutors brought against Trump for a 2016 campaign hush money scheme, currently slated for trial in March.

    Additionally there’s number of civil lawsuits he faces, including a second defamation case brought by E. Jean Carroll, well as the New York attorney general’s civil fraud case against his family and businesses.

    This court calendar is overlaid against his 2024 campaign schedule as well. The first Republican presidential debate, for instance, is on August 23.

    Though Trump will not be required to appear in court for hearings on pre-trial matters, he may seek to do so, if he embraces a strategy of making a spectacle out of the election subversion case. Speaking on the airport tarmac, Trump made brief remarks that the prosecution was political after Thursday’s hearing, and he routinely fundraises off of every new development putting him in deeper legal trouble.

    Thursday marked the public debut of the Smith team that will handle the election subversion prosecution. (Some of the special counsel lawyers who are leading the classified documents case were previously involved in the public proceedings stemming from the lawsuit Trump filed last year challenging the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago).

    Smith himself attended the hearing, as he did for Trump’s first appearance in the classified documents case in Florida earlier this year. As the courtroom waited for the hearing to start, Smith and Trump occasionally looked over at one another – Smith looking towards Trump more often than Trump looked over to him.

    Windom – who moved from the US attorney’s office in Maryland to play a central role in the federal election subversion investigation, spoke on behalf of the government Thursday. Also at the prosecutors’ table was Molly Gaston, an alum of the DC US attorney’s public integrity section, which handles some of the most politically sensitive cases for the Justice Department.

    Gaston was a lead prosecutor on last year’s contempt of Congress case against ex-Trump adviser Steve Bannon, and also worked on the prosecutions of Rick Gates – a former Trump campaign aide – and Paul Manafort, Trump’s 2016 campaign chairman. Gaston was also present in the courtroom Tuesday when the foreperson of the grand jury for the 2020 election probe returned the indictment against Trump.

    Trump was represented by Lauro and Todd Blanche at Thursday’s hearing. Lauro is a relatively recent addition to the Trump legal team and is handling the 2020-election related matters.

    Blanche, meanwhile, has been across several Trump cases. He is representing Trump in Smith’s classified documents prosecution as well is in the 2016 campaign hush money case brought by Manhattan’s district attorney.

    Evan Corcoran, who has not formally entered an appearance in the case, attended the hearing, sitting on the row in the courtroom well behind the defense table.

    Lauro did the talking for the defense at Thursday’s hearing. He’s also made himself a prominent defender of the former president in the public arena, with multiple appearance in recent days on CNN and other networks.

    While the defense lawyers were mostly there Thursday to walk Trump through the steps of a first appearance and arraignment, Lauro had the opportunity to show the vigor with which he’ll argue on behalf of his client. He didn’t get into the substantive defense arguments that he has previewed in TV hits, but his insistence that the Trump team may need more time before nailing down a trial schedule was emphatic.

    “All that we would ask, your honor, is the time to fairly defend our client. And to do that we need a little time,” he said.

    While Trump’s hearing Thursday largely followed the script of the arraignments he’s had in the classified documents and the 2016 hush money criminal cases against him. But it was happening in a courthouse that has had to constantly had to process and re-process the violence of January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol that his election lies helped provoke.

    For the last two-and-a-half years since the attack, the former president has been a stalking horse in the DC courthouse, which has hosted the proceedings for more than 1,000 Trump supporters who have been have been charged for the riot.

    Judges have obliquely acknowledged the role the former president played in egging on the mob, while recounting the direct view they had to the violence that day. Defense attorneys and prosecutors have argued over how much of the blame should be placed on him. Metropolitan and Capitol police officers are frequently seen in the courthouse to testify about the physical and psychological trauma they suffered from the riot. And defendants and their families, in their pleas for mercy, have invoked Trump as well.

    In the election subversion case, Trump’s attorneys have previewed arguments that the case should be moved elsewhere, given the city’s political bent. But the DC federal courthouse is where hundreds of his supporters have received fair trials, with some securing acquittals, in the Capitol mob cases.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

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

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

    [ad_1]


    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.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • 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

    [ad_1]



    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.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Iowa governor says voters won’t give Trump a pass for skipping state fair events | CNN Politics

    Iowa governor says voters won’t give Trump a pass for skipping state fair events | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]


    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds said Sunday that she does not believe voters will give GOP front-runner and former President Donald Trump a pass for skipping the Iowa State Fair events that candidates usually entertain.

    Reynolds told “Fox News Sunday” that voters in her state “expect him to be here, they want to interact,” after Trump skipped events like her “fair-side chats” and the Des Moines Register soapbox.

    Reynolds said she may endorse a presidential candidate before the Iowa caucuses next year. While she has no immediate plans to make an endorsement, her popularity among Republicans in Iowa makes her a potential asset. A late endorsement from Reynolds could sway voters, adding a wrinkle of unpredictability ahead of the state’s first-in-the-nation caucuses.

    “I’m remaining neutral, but I don’t want to rule it out down the road. I think it is really important right now to, as I’ve said, encourage all of the candidates to come to Iowa,” Reynolds said on Sunday. “I don’t want to rule out” an endorsement, she added.

    The GOP presidential field currently has 12 candidates and all of the major candidates competing in Iowa accepted Reynolds’ invitation to her fair-side chats – except Trump.

    The former president visited the Iowa State Fair last week but skipped the chats and soapbox opportunities. He still drew a massive crowd.

    Last month, Trump lashed out at Reynolds for remaining neutral and for even appearing alongside other candidates who have invited her to events across Iowa. In a social media post, Trump claimed credit for Reynolds’ ascent to the governorship and chastised her for not supporting him. Reynolds, as the state’s lieutenant governor, succeeded Gov. Terry Branstad in 2017 after Branstad became Trump’s ambassador to China. She was elected to a first full term the following year.

    Reynolds took umbrage with the former president taking credit for her election, noting that the 2018 midterms saw Republicans suffer substantial losses in Congress and in statehouses across the country.

    “It’s actually Iowans who made the decision to elect me in a really tough year,” Reynolds said. “2018 was not a good year for Republicans.”

    The Iowa governor said on Sunday that Republican voters “want the candidate that they think can win” the general election.

    “I think we have a great field of candidates right now and I think we don’t need more candidates in the field, we probably need less,” Reynolds said about potential late entrants into the GOP contest. “These candidates have put in a lot of time, we have a great field of candidates and we probably don’t need more.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • 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

    [ad_1]



    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.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • John Kerry Fast Facts | CNN Politics

    John Kerry Fast Facts | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

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

    Birth date: December 11, 1943

    Birth place: Aurora, Colorado

    Birth name: John Forbes Kerry

    Father: Richard Kerry, a Foreign Service officer

    Mother: Rosemary (Forbes) Kerry

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

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

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

    Military Service: US Navy, 1966-1970, Lieutenant

    Religion: Roman Catholic

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    1976 – Is admitted to the Massachusetts State Bar.

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

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

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

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

    1990 – Wins a second term in the US Senate.

    1996 – Reelected to the Senate.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    August 2009 – Has hip surgery to address chronic pain.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    January 20, 2017 – Leaves office.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • 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

    [ad_1]



    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.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • 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

    [ad_1]



    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.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Nikki Haley’s gender is rarely mentioned on the campaign trail but always present | CNN Politics

    Nikki Haley’s gender is rarely mentioned on the campaign trail but always present | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    When Nikki Haley took the Republican presidential debate stage alongside her seven male rivals last month, she shone a spotlight on her gender only once – evoking a former British prime minister.

    “This is exactly why Margaret Thatcher said, ‘If you want something said, ask a man; if you want something done, ask a woman,’” the former South Carolina governor interjected as Chris Christie and Vivek Ramaswamy sparred during the Milwaukee debate.

    Haley, the only female competitor in the GOP race, has not made her gender central to her campaign pitch. Instead, she has zeroed in on the need for a new generation of leadership.

    Republican voters who are considering supporting Haley told CNN they welcome the fact that she doesn’t lead with her gender as she campaigns, but many said her experience as a mother and a military spouse were part of her appeal.

    “It’s not necessary to point out that a female would bring a fresh perspective,” said Melinda Tourangeau, a Republican voter from New Hampshire. “She has one, she’s nailing it and I think that stands on its own merits.”

    GOP strategists say that by simply showing up as who she is, and weaving elements of her gender into her pitch, Haley is likely to boost her support among suburban female voters – a constituency that helped fuel President Joe Biden’s victory in 2020.

    “There’s no need for her to light her hair on fire and [stress] the fact that she’s a woman because she uses her ability and experience as a way to connect with voters,” said GOP strategist Alice Stewart, a CNN political commentator who advised former Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann on her 2012 presidential bid. “What suburban women want is a candidate that’s going to speak the truth, and Nikki Haley is out there being truthful about Donald Trump’s record. She’s being truthful about what we can actually accomplish in the future on abortion.”

    When Haley, a former US ambassador to the United Nations under Trump, speaks on the campaign trail about personal experiences that have informed her policy positions, she underscores her identity as a mother, wife and female politician.

    “I am pro-life because my husband was adopted, and I live with that blessing every day. I am pro-life because we had trouble having both of our children,” Haley has said in explaining her stance on abortion.

    She expanded on that position at the Milwaukee debate last month in calling for a “respectful” approach to the divisive topic.

    “Can’t we all agree that we should ban late-term abortions?” Haley said. “And can’t we all agree that we are not going to put a woman in jail or give her the death penalty if she gets an abortion?”

    Haley also spoke of the difficulty of enacting a federal abortion ban, pointing to the difficulty in overcoming the Senate’s 60-vote threshold to break a filibuster.

    It was a nuanced perspective for a GOP candidate, and one that caught voters’ attention.

    “When she talked about abortion, I liked that because although she is totally pro-life, she is willing to make some concessions because she said it’s not about her. It’s about what the country thinks,” a female GOP voter from South Carolina told CNN after the debate. “She’s trying to meet people where they are or at least do away with late-term abortions and things like that.”

    Hear Nikki Haley answer questions about abortion

    Haley’s campaign said it raised more than $1 million in less than 72 hours following that first primary debate. The campaign also said it raised more online in the 24 hours after the debate than it had on any other day since Haley launched her presidential bid in February.

    GOP strategists believe that Haley’s approach to the abortion issue was a key factor in that surged interest.

    “I think there are two key issues that she addressed on the debate stage that are helping in fueling their fundraising drive, and the nuanced position on abortion is one and her strong support for Israel,” Stewart said.

    In her stump speeches, Haley also draws from personal experiences – highlighting her role as mother – to speak against the participation of transgender girls in girls’ sports.

    “The idea that we have biological boys playing in girls’ sports, it is the women’s issue of our time,” she said during a CNN town hall in June. “My daughter ran track in high school. I don’t even know how I would have that conversation with her.”

    Similarly, when Haley speaks about standing up for veterans’ families, she speaks about her husband, Michael Haley, a major in the South Carolina National Guard whose brigade deployed to Africa earlier this year in support of the United States Africa Command. He previously served in Afghanistan in 2013 when his wife was serving as governor, which meant she was a working mom alone at home with two children.

    “The first three months when he deployed to Afghanistan, one of them was crying every night,” Haley said at the Iowa State Fair this summer. “I feel for every military family out there because it is survival mode.”

    When asked about her gender, Haley’s campaign noted that it is a part of who she is but not her only defining trait.

    “Nikki is proud to be a woman, a military spouse, a mom, a governor, an ambassador, and an accountant. All these experiences make her the tough and honest leader she is. She brought this toughness to the establishment as South Carolina governor. She brought it to the UN when she took on the world’s dictators. And she will bring it to the White House,” campaign spokesperson Olivia Perez-Cubas said in a statement.

    Haley is the fifth prominent Republican woman to run for president, following Margaret Chase Smith in 1964; Elizabeth Dole, who dropped out before the 2000 primaries; Bachmann in 2012; and Carly Fiorina in 2016.

    In comparison to Haley, Fiorina spoke more often and more directly about her gender. That move was dictated, at least in part, by Trump attacking her looks and the leading opposition candidate also being a woman.

    “[Whether] or not you’re ready to … support me, in your heart of hearts, every single one of you know you would love to see me debate Hillary Clinton,” Fiorina told voters on the stump.

    Haley’s competition this cycle is different, and so is her tact.

    “She is a woman, but she leads with her merit and experience,” said Iowa state Sen. Chris Cournoyer, a Haley supporter who touted the fact that the former governor does not play the “woman card.”

    At an August event in New Hampshire for female Republican voters, Haley’s identity as a woman was celebrated.

    “Nikki Haley is an empowered woman, who empowers women, and she really gets it as a former state representative,” Elizabeth Girard, the president of the New Hampshire Federation of Republican Women, said as she introduced Haley, who served three terms in the South Carolina House prior to her election as governor.

    SE CUpp unfiltered 0216

    SE Cupp: Nikki Haley promises youth, but will her policies reflect that?

    But when Haley took the stage – facing a gaggle of female voters – she didn’t tailor her message to the audience. She ticked through her regular stump speech, closing out with her signature call for a new generational leader and a candidate who can win the general election.

    Many of the potential female voters in the room that day appreciated Haley’s approach.

    “I think that’s a good thing,” Kim Rice, 50, told CNN after the event when asked about Haley not making her gender a focus of her pitch. “I don’t think that should be the reason people vote for her. I think her policy points are her strongest points. That’s what should draw people to her.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • 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

    [ad_1]



    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.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Fox executives encourage Trump to participate in first GOP presidential primary debate | CNN Politics

    Fox executives encourage Trump to participate in first GOP presidential primary debate | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday dined with top Fox executives at his Bedminster golf club, during which Fox News president Jay Wallace and the network’s chief executive, Suzanne Scott, encouraged him to participate in the first presidential debate the network is hosting later this month, two sources with knowledge told CNN.

    Trump, who earlier in the evening had been indicted for a third time, did not commit to participating in the debate, which will take place in Milwaukee.

    Fox News did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The New York Times first reported on the dinner.

    Trump has privately and publicly floated skipping either one or both of the first two Republican presidential primary debates, and pointed to his commanding lead in the polls as one reason he is hesitant to share the stage with his GOP challengers.

    “Why would we debate? That would be stupid to go out there with that kind of lead,” one Trump adviser previously told CNN. However, not all of Trump’s allies feel this way. Some worry that an absent Trump would give an opportunity for a lower tier candidate to have a breakout moment.

    Trump’s dinner comes after RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel and David Bossie, who is in charge of the debate committee, visited Trump at Bedminster in recent weeks to encourage him to participate, according to a Trump adviser. Trump was also noncommittal on his plans during this meeting.

    Over the last year, Trump has trashed Fox News and Rupert Murdoch, the Fox Corporation chairman and controlling shareholder of the company, for not being sufficiently supportive of him.

    Murdoch, who privately holds disdain for Trump, attempted early on in the 2024 campaign to shine a bright light on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis while casting the former president on the sidelines. The hope appeared to be to seduce the Fox News audience into falling for another Republican candidate.

    But the DeSantis campaign has struggled since it officially got off the ground this year. Last month, Murdoch debuted a new Fox News lineup comprised of pro-Trump propagandists, a move that seemed to acknowledge Trump’s likely selection as the Republican Party’s presidential nominee.

    Trump has also sharply criticized the way in which Murdoch has approached his legal problems, blasting the right-wing media mogul for not doubling down on his lies while in court.

    Trump tried to call into Fox News after his supporters attacked the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, but the network refused to put him on air, according to court filings from Dominion Voting Systems in its defamation case against the company.

    Still, Fox has amplified Trump’s lies about the validity of the 2020 election, even though Murdoch has said he did not believe Trump’s false statements, according to damning private messages revealed in the Dominion case. Murdoch floated the idea of having his influential hosts appear together in prime time to declare Joe Biden as the rightful winner of the election. Such an act, Murdoch said, “Would go a long way to stop the Trump myth that the election stolen.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • 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

    [ad_1]



    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.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Trump already taped Tucker Carlson interview that is expected to air on GOP debate night, sources say | CNN Politics

    Trump already taped Tucker Carlson interview that is expected to air on GOP debate night, sources say | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    Former President Donald Trump has already taped an interview with Tucker Carlson that is expected to be used as counterprogramming for the first GOP primary debate Wednesday, two sources familiar with the matter told CNN.

    Trump confirmed Sunday he will not participate in the debate in Milwaukee. Stating that the public already “knows who I am,” Trump wrote on his social media platform: “I will therefore not be doing the debates!”

    It is unclear what platform the interview with Carlson will be published on. The sources said that it would be released around the time of the debate Wednesday night.

    For weeks, the former president had privately and publicly floated skipping Wednesday’s debate, given his lead in the polls. He is expected to spend Wednesday evening at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey.

    CNN previously reported that Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel and David Bossie, who heads the RNC debate committee, visited Trump at his Bedminster home in recent weeks to encourage him to participate, according to a Trump adviser. The former president was noncommittal on his plans during this meeting.

    Fox News President Jay Wallace and the network’s chief executive, Suzanne Scott, had also encouraged Trump to participate in the debate. Trump has feuded with Fox News, as has former prime-time host Carlson, who was ousted from the network in April.

    Fox News informed the Trump campaign on Monday that they will no longer provide credentials to some surrogates of the former president to attend the spin room at the debate given Trump is not planning on participating, three sources with direct knowledge of the matter told CNN.

    Fox News is in charge of credentials for the spin room. However, the RNC manages credentials for the actual debate, and sources said those tickets are still expected be honored.

    Several of Trump’s advisers and top surrogates had been planning to attend both the debate and represent the former president in the spin room despite his absence, CNN previously reported. Some of Trump’s surrogates are credentialed through outside media groups and will not be impacted. Former Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, Reps. Byron Donalds and Matt Gaetz of Florida and other Republicans are slated to attend the debate.

    Members of Trump’s campaign, including senior advisers Jason Miller, Steven Cheung and Chris LaCivita, were also planning on being in the spin room.

    Members of Trump’s teams and his surrogates, however, are still planning on traveling to Milwaukee and are working on a resolution with the network as well as the RNC, two Trump advisers told CNN. The former president’s aides also believe they will be able to find new credentials, one of the advisers said, and are confident they will be in the spin room on Wednesday.

    Fox News did not immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment.

    Trump’s absence leaves former Vice President Mike Pence, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie on the debate stage.

    To qualify for the debate, candidates must have at least 40,000 unique donors, with at least 200 unique donors per state, and must reach at least 1% in three national polls meeting the RNC’s requirements or at least 1% in two national polls and two polls from separate early voting states.

    Candidates are also expected to sign a loyalty pledge expressing their commitment to unite and back the eventual Republican nominee, regardless of who that is.

    The GOP field has used Trump’s expected absence to throw shots at the former president, with DeSantis on Monday saying Trump “owes it to people” to debate, arguing voters – even ones who appreciate the former president’s record – won’t “look kindly” at him sitting this one out.

    In a recent interview, Haley said it would be “hard to earn” voters’ support “if you’re absent.”

    And Christie told Newsmax earlier this month that if Trump “didn’t show up, it would be much more trouble for him, adding: “I doubt that I’ll miss an opportunity to bring his name up, especially if he decides to chicken out and not show up.”

    Ramaswamy, a frequent defender of Trump, struck a different tone than his opponents Monday night. “I have no issue with him skipping the first couple of debates,” the entrepreneur told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on “The Source,” noting that he thought the former president should debate at some point this year.

    “The truth is, many people in this country didn’t know who I was six months ago, so, this is a good opportunity for me to introduce myself to the country,” he said.

    CORRECTION: This story has been updated to reflect that some Trump surrogates can still attend the debate itself but not appear in the spin room, which would require credentials from Fox.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • 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

    [ad_1]



    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.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Donald Trump is testing the resilience of Iowa’s evangelical voters | CNN Politics

    Donald Trump is testing the resilience of Iowa’s evangelical voters | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]


    Des Moines, Iowa
    CNN
     — 

    Donald Trump is testing the resilience of his evangelical support in Iowa, a key constituency that could solidify – or slow – his march to the Republican presidential nomination.

    The former president’s latest comments on abortion, in which he called Florida’s six-week ban a “terrible mistake” and declined to offer a clear view on a federal ban, are being closely scrutinized by his rivals and Christian conservatives, a crucial GOP voting bloc in Iowa.

    “For evangelicals, there are probably four issues that matter. Life is usually right at the top,” said Mike Demastus, pastor of the Fort Des Moines Church of Christ. “Most people, the way they evaluate presidential elections, is what the gas price is. But for an evangelical? No.”

    Less than four months before the Iowa caucuses open the Republican nominating contest, nuances on abortion policy will be at the center of conversation here among faith leaders like Demastus, who has met with most of the GOP candidates.

    He expressed concern over Trump’s remarks on abortion since the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. But he also acknowledged that Trump’s key role in the decision – appointing three of the six justices who voted with the majority – helps the former president keep evangelical voters in his corner, at least for now.

    “The fact that Trump is leading in polls – he is – but you can’t take it for granted. There’s so many unknowns with Trump right now,” Demastus said in an interview. “There’s a loyalty with Trump, and people that follow him. You can’t just peel that away from some, but I think many people in the evangelical community right now are willing to hear from other people.”

    Whether Iowa Republicans are willing to hear from – or actually vote for – one of Trump’s many challengers is an open question. The answer could rest inside Iowa churches, where candidates are going to great lengths to win over evangelicals, who in 2016 comprised nearly two-thirds of all GOP caucus attendees.

    “They are very appreciative of the former president, but they are exhausted as well,” said Bob Vander Plaats, president of influential Christian group The Family Leader. “Iowa is tailor-made to upend Trump. If he loses Iowa, there’s a competitive nomination process. If he wins Iowa, I think it’s over.”

    The Iowa caucuses, in effect, have become a furious race for second place.

    While Vander Plaats has been a leading Trump critic, his assessment of the Iowa caucuses is shared by allies of the former president, who plans to step up his Iowa appearances for the rest of the year. Starting with a visit to Dubuque on Wednesday, the Trump campaign is intensifying its focus here in hopes of “squeezing off the oxygen” for other rivals, a Trump adviser told CNN.

    The pursuit of evangelical voters is a top priority for most candidates, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who bowed his head as he stood at the center of a prayer circle during a weekend stop at the Fort Des Moines Church of Christ.

    “Our rights are endowed by God,” DeSantis told those assembled in the sanctuary. “They do not come from the government.”

    The Florida governor leaned into the abortion debate Monday, seizing on Trump’s comments and offering a warning to voters during an interview with Radio Iowa: “I think all pro-lifers should know that he’s preparing to sell you out.”

    South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott called out his rivals by name Monday night at a town hall in Mason City, Iowa, telling voters which GOP contenders did not support a federal abortion ban. “I will use my entire presidency fighting for a 15-week limit,” he said.

    Scott also has long been highlighting his faith, often weaving in Bible verses on the campaign trail and in his television ads. Former Vice President Mike Pence frequently talks about his religious awakening and his support for a federal abortion ban after 15 weeks of pregnancy, as a minimum.

    Trump was the only major presidential candidate to bypass the annual Faith and Freedom Coalition’s fall banquet this past weekend in Des Moines, but Rebekah Gerling proudly wore a Trump sticker as she walked through the convention center. She said she supports the former president as strongly as she ever has.

    “I love everything that he stands for,” Gerling said. “He’s willing to stand up for other people who do love God and believe.”

    When Gerling was asked whether she was troubled by the criminal indictments the former president is facing, her friend, Theresa Gibson, also wearing a Trump sticker, jumped in before she could answer, calling the charges “false accusations.”

    “They’re just going after him because he’s the front-runner,” Gibson said, “and he’s very highly supported.”

    Sally Hofmann, a Republican voter who said faith drives many of her decisions, credits Trump for his appointments to the Supreme Court. But she said she is open to supporting another candidate when she walks into her neighborhood caucus in January.

    “I like a lot of what Trump has done in office, but his personality concerns me a little bit,” Hofmann said. “I like what Nikki Haley is doing. I like DeSantis too. I’m in that range.”

    She said some of her friends and her daughter are concerned about Trump’s rhetoric and conduct. She said it bothers her too, but she’s willing to look beyond it if necessary.

    “Like I told my daughter, if I go to a doctor, and that doctor is such a good doctor to evaluate and treat my issue but doesn’t have the personality that I’m most comfortable with, I’ll still go to that doctor,” Hofmann said. “So that’s the way I look at Trump.”

    Inside the Fort Des Moines Church of Christ, where Demastus has preached for more than two decades, he explained how he came around to Trump in the first place. He supported Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas in 2016 and was suspicious of Trump’s intentions before he took office.

    “He started to do what he said he would do,” Demastus said. “I said some pretty harsh things about him at the time, but let me be clear: He won me over. He won me over because he was consistent.”

    For now, Demastus echoes the sentiment of many other faith leaders, saying he is undecided, waiting and watching as the Republican presidential primary unfolds. He believes the indictments against Trump are politically motivated but worries they could weaken his chances in the general election.

    “With all the litigation that’s going on, what’s going to happen? Is he going to receive a felony conviction or not?” Demastus said, ticking through a list of uncertainties hanging over the race. “I think that’s why a lot of these candidates are still in it.”

    This story has been updated with additional reaction.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Fox Business to host second GOP primary debate | CNN Politics

    Fox Business to host second GOP primary debate | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    The second Republican presidential debate, which will be held at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library on September 27 in California, will air on Fox Business, according to news release from the Republican National Committee. Univision and Rumble will also partner with Fox Business on the debate.

    Fox will air the first two Republican presidential primary debates. The first debate will air on Fox News on August 23 in Milwaukee.

    On Wednesday, CNN obtained a copy of the RNC’s candidate pledge that the party is requiring to participate in its debates. It prohibits participation in unsanctioned debates, requires candidates to support the Republican nominee in the general election and bars them from running as an independent or on another party’s line.

    “I agree to appear in only Primary and General Election debates that have been sanctioned by the Republican National Committee, pursuant to Rule 10(a)(11) of The Rules of the Republican Party,” the pledge reads. “I acknowledge and accept that if I fail to sign this pledge or if I participate in any debate that has not been sanctioned by the Republican National Committee, I will not be eligible to participate in any further Republican National Committee sanctioned debates.”

    Vivek Ramaswamy and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis have signed RNC loyalty pledges, a Republican source told CNN. Others have not yet signed, according to the source, but they are expected to this week.

    Front-runner for the Republican nomination and former President Donald Trump told Newsmax Wednesday that he does not plan to sign the loyalty pledge and said that he will announce next week whether he plans to attend the first primary debate.

    Former Texas Rep. Will Hurd, who has yet to reach the donor and polling thresholds to make the debate stage, told Laura Coates on “CNN Primetime” Wednesday that he would not sign the pledge.

    This story has been updated with additional information.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Abortion divides Iowa GOP voters ahead of crucial first primary debate | CNN Politics

    Abortion divides Iowa GOP voters ahead of crucial first primary debate | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]


    Sioux City, Iowa
    CNN
     — 

    Ask Lisa McGaffey if she has ever voted for a Democrat and there is no pause.

    “Oh, heavens, no,” she says quickly and emphatically. “Oh, no. There’s no – abortion. … They have to have a chance to grow up. They have to have the chance. You never know who that’s going to be.”

    McGaffey is a loyal Donald Trump supporter and is grateful for his three appointments to the conservative Supreme Court majority that erased Roe v. Wade last year and returned the question of abortion rights to the states.

    Two-hundred miles away, in the fast growing Des Moines suburbs, Betsy Sarcone takes a different view.

    Iowa, like Florida, in recent months enacted a law outlawing most abortions at six weeks. Sarcone – a single mother and a Catholic and Republican who told us, “I don’t believe in abortion” – thinks that is too restrictive.

    “I agree with a time limit,” Sarcone said in a recent interview in her West Des Moines home. “I’ve had three babies grow inside me. I agree when you feel them kicking and you feel them moving – that’s in my heart, is a time when that (a cutoff to abortion access) would be. Which is around say, like 18 weeks, something like that typically. So in my heart, that’s what I feel. I again, I just I don’t know that much further than that it’s somebody’s place to judge.”

    Abortion is among the fault lines in the 2024 Republican campaign, and a likely debate topic in Wednesday’s first primary season showdown between Republican candidates – all of whom support abortion restrictions. It’s also an issue that splits GOP voters, even those who share an opposition to the procedure. Sarcone and McGaffey, for example, are among a group of Iowa Republicans we are tracking as part of a CNN project designed to view the 2024 campaign through the eyes of voters – to see firsthand if their views change over the course of the cycle, and if so, why.

    Among that group is also Chris Mudd, a businessman in Cedar Falls and a Trump supporter, who signals a potential warning for GOP hopefuls on abortion.

    “I’m a pro-life guy,” Mudd told us. “But I think it is a losing issue for Republicans.” Of the six-week bans enacted in Florida and later in his home state of Iowa, Mudd said: “I think that was a mistake.”

    Among Republican candidates there’s some disagreement over whether a national ban should be a priority, or whether the issue is best left to the states.

    Trump, for example, has called the six-week ban signed by DeSantis in Florida “too harsh.” The GOP front-runner is choosing to skip the Milwaukee debate.

    Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina favors a federal law banning most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. Mike Pence, the former vice president and Indiana governor, supports a six-week federal ban.

    GOP rivals Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum describe themselves as staunchly “pro life” but argue the principled conservative position is that each state should make its own law. Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley has said she would sign a 15-week national ban, but also frequently notes the votes aren’t there in the current congressional balance of power and that the federal conversation is best put aside unless and until there is more consensus.

    Democrats see opportunity in almost any Republican conversation about abortion, citing how the issue has consistently helped galvanize voters in elections – from ballot initiatives to last year’s midterms – since the Dobbs decision.

    The last public poll on the issue in Iowa was in March, for the Des Moines Register.

    A clear majority, 61% of Iowans, said abortion should be legal in all or most cases. But the first competition here is the Republican caucuses, and the poll found that 59% of Republicans and 64% of evangelicals believed abortion should be illegal in most or all cases.

    Sarcone, a suburban Des Moines real estate agent, made a point worth remembering as the candidates debate for the first time this week.

    “I don’t know that I will have any candidate that I agree with on everything,” she said. “So the character, the leadership, the military is very important to me.”

    To that end, she listed DeSantis as her early favorite, despite her opposition to a six-week ban, but said she would consider Haley, Scott and perhaps others, too.

    Our first visit with this voter group, before the first debate, was to get a sense of how they rate the candidates and the issues early on.

    McGaffey, an administrator at the Jolly Time Pop Corn company, was the only member of the group who brought up the abortion issue in our conversations.

    Mudd, the pro-Trump businessman who’s wary of the GOP leaning too heavily into abortion, listed the economy as his lead issue.

    Similarly, attorney Priscilla Forsyth from Sioux City said abortion was not an issue on her debate priority list.

    “Issues like abortion are not my issue,” she said. “A lot of the social issues are not. It’s all the economy, really.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Sen. Tim Kaine says ‘powerful argument’ 14th Amendment could disqualify Trump | CNN Politics

    Sen. Tim Kaine says ‘powerful argument’ 14th Amendment could disqualify Trump | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    Virginia Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine said Sunday “there’s a powerful argument to be made” for barring Donald Trump from the presidential ballot based on the 14th Amendment’s ban on insurrectionists holding public office.

    “My sense is it’s probably going to get resolved in the courts,” Kaine said on “ABC This Week,” adding that Democrats’ focus should be on winning in 2024.

    Legal experts have pointed to the 14th Amendment as a potential long-shot avenue to keep Trump from becoming president. The amendment includes a post-Civil War “disqualification clause” that bars anyone from holding public office if they “have engaged in insurrection or rebellion.” The Constitution does not, however, spell out how to enforce this ban and it has only been applied twice since the late 1800s, when it was used extensively against former Confederates.

    Election officials in battleground states, including attorneys general in Michigan and New Hampshire, have said they’re anticipating outside groups to file lawsuits on the matter, and are studying the legality of the provision and how it may disqualify Trump from appearing on ballots in their states.

    Liberal activists have championed the 14th Amendment’s disqualification clause and have already vowed to file suits to disqualify the former president, a tactic they have used against other elected officials to little success – though some prominent conservative legal scholars have recently endorsed the idea.

    Does the 14th Amendment make Trump ineligible? Hear what law professor thinks

    Kaine voiced support for the idea, saying, “The language (of the amendment) is specific: If you give aid and comfort to those who engage in an insurrection against the Constitution of the United States — it doesn’t say against the United States, it says against the Constitution. In my view, the attack on the Capitol that day was designed for a particular purpose … and that was to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power as is laid out in the Constitution.”

    Kaine also said that he had discussed using the provision with fellow senators during Trump’s second impeachment in 2021, remarking that he thought it would “have been a more productive way to go to do a declaration under that section of the 14th Amendment.”

    He floated the idea of a censure vote in Congress under the 14th Amendment as an alternative way of holding Trump accountable and keeping him from holding public office again after the Senate acquitted the former president in a failed impeachment vote. Seven GOP senators joined the chamber’s 50 Democratic and Independent members in finding Trump guilty of inciting a riot on January 6.

    Kaine noted that Virginia will host its own races later this year to decide the makeup of its split legislature in an election that will act as a window into the state of politics in the battleground state ahead of next year’s presidential race.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Harris allies and key Democrats rally around vice president amid party handwringing | CNN Politics

    Harris allies and key Democrats rally around vice president amid party handwringing | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]


    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Allies of Vice President Kamala Harris and other prominent Democrats are sending a clear message to their fellow party members who speculate that she should be replaced as President Joe Biden’s running mate in 2024: It’s time to stop it.

    “It’s not only a distraction, it’s offensive,” Maryland Gov. Wes Moore told CNN in an interview.

    The vice president has faced renewed calls from some pundits and columnists to be dropped from the ticket amid heightened concerns about the president’s age and doubts over her ability to lead if Biden were no longer able.

    It’s at least the second major go-around of questioning whether Harris’ rightful place is by Biden’s side for the 2024 contentious race, leaving her office tired of the fraught conversation, according to a person familiar with the dynamic.

    “Everybody’s sort of over it,” the person said.

    The feeling is shared across most of the Democratic spectrum, who hope the party turns their sights on former President Donald Trump or whomever the Republican presidential nominee will be, instead of handwringing about themselves.

    A source close to the Biden campaign told CNN: “People need to get on board and recognize every time they undermine the vice president, they undermine the campaign. We cannot afford to lose to these Republicans. So, get on board.”

    There have both been private and public efforts to deliver this message.

    Privately, according to a person familiar with campaign operations, the Biden campaign contacted both former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat, after neither directly answer repeated questions from CNN about whether Harris was the best running mate for Biden on the 2024 ticket. The campaign asked Pelosi and Raskin to clarify their comments and both lawmakers later cleaned up their remarks to offer direct messages of support.

    Raskin told CNN in a follow-up statement Friday that “Vice President Harris has excelled in perhaps the most ambiguous and challenging job in our constitutional system and she is unquestionably the best running mate for President Biden in 2024.”

    Pelosi’s office offered no additional statement but pointed CNN to the praise Pelosi heaped on Harris in her interview, saying she’s “very politically astute, I don’t think people give her enough credit.”

    Discussions on how best to shepherd the party along are also happening among groups like the Congressional Black Caucus, who are actively talking about how to combat the replacement chatter and other attacks against the vice president, according to a source familiar with the effort.

    “Some of us need to say that they are acting in many ways like agents for the MAGA crowd,” Rev. Al Sharpton told CNN. He plans to call on Democrats to stop during CBC weekend in Washington, DC. “I can only think that they are either politically stupid or working for the opposition.”

    And according to conversations with more than a dozen Democratic strategists, elected officials and people close to the vice president, many will join Sharpton in urging Democrats to stop their groaning over the Biden-Harris ticket and end the chatter of potentially replacing the vice president.

    Publicly, key Democrats have come out to support Harris, casting the lingering doubt as harmful to Biden and his 2024 chances.

    California Gov. Gavin Newsom said “of course” Harris should be the Democratic 2024 vice presidential nominee. Newsom and Harris are old friends – and sometimes frenemies.

    “I mean, by definition, if I think this administration last two, two-and-a-half years, has been one of the most outstanding administrations the last few decades. And she’s a member of that administration, she gets to lay and claim credit to a lot of that success. The answer is absolutely,” he said in an interview to CNN earlier this week.

    Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat and a former rival who was once iced out by the vice president for her lukewarm support, said Thursday she was proud to support Harris’ campaign with Biden.

    “Vice President Harris is a passionate, clear, unyielding advocate for Americans’ freedoms, leading the administration’s efforts to protect reproductive freedom and strengthen voting rights,” Warren said in a statement. “I am proud to support her campaign with President Biden and I’m confident that the Administration’s record of delivering for American families will lead them to victory in 2024.”

    Many who CNN spoke to believe the origins of the doubt come from a place of misogyny, racism or jealousy from other Democrats who wish they were in the vice president’s spot. Harris is the first woman and first Black and South Asian person in her role.

    “There’s a lot of people in Washington who would love that job,” said Jim Messina, a Democratic operative who ran Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign. “I think that a lot of the criticism at the at the vice president is borderline misogynistic and there’s a lot of people who judge her harder than they would judge a male politician (in) that role.”

    Moore, the only Black governor in the US, said, “The attacks on her, they hit different – they hit our ears differently. And I think people should remember that.”

    But others cite Harris’ low poll numbers and history of gaffes as reasons to take a second look at her position. Three prominent political columnists collectively suggested politicians like Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, Rep. Lauren Underwood of Illinois, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia as possibilities to replace Harris.

    Contacted by CNN, each Democrat rejected the notion.

    “I absolutely do not think Vice President Harris should be dropped,” Raimondo told CNN directly. “I fully support Vice President Harris on the ticket. I think she is doing an incredible job as vice president and is a strong leader for our country.”

    “Gov. Whitmer supports President Biden and Vice President Harris,” a spokesperson for the Michigan governor responded.

    “‘I’ve seen the vice president up close and in action in my state, and you couldn’t contain the excitement in the room. I’m hard-pressed to imagine a better partner for President Biden,” Warnock told CNN.

    “Kamala Harris is a tremendous leader. I was proud to introduce the Momnibus with her and am pleased we can continue to work together to end disparities in maternal health. I am on team Biden-Harris and enthusiastically support their re-election in 2024,” Underwood said in a statement.

    “Any assertion that there is anyone better qualified to run on the Democratic ticket other than President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris is absolutely ludicrous. I am excited to do my part to ensure that they are both re-elected so that we can continue delivering for the people of this country,” Bass said in a statement.

    It’s unclear whether the latest round of coalescing behind the vice president will be enough to stop all the handwringing.

    Harris and the Biden administration have spent the last several months trying to build up her public profile, bolstering her public schedule to include stops focused on the hot 2024 issue of abortion as well as being the first-in-line responder to GOP attacks on freedom. On Thursday, the White House announced she would serve as the head a newly launched, first-of-its kind White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, the latest step in the Biden administration’s efforts to enact meaningful gun control against the backdrop of a deadlocked Congress.

    Harris has also beefed up her fundraising efforts, a key signal of her expanded role in the campaign.

    Biden aides see their path to victory next year embedded firmly in their ability to secure Black voters, women, young people and other groups that tend to respond warmly to Harris.

    But this most recent round of speculation comes as Republicans have frequently made Harris a central figure in their campaign trail attacks, with some – such as former US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley – insinuating that this upcoming election is really about the vice president due to Biden’s age.

    Asked earlier this month about her reaction to constant critiques, Harris said in an interview that it was “not new.”

    “They feel the need to attack because they’re scared that we will win based on the merit of the work that Joe Biden and I, and our administration, has done,” she added.

    More recently, during a conversation at a Pennsylvania community college on voting rights, Harris did not directly reference the rumbles over her place on the ticket. But in a thinly veiled moment, Harris called those who once doubted her and then-candidate Biden’s 2020 bid, “haters.”

    “So, when people turned out in 2020 – even though they were the doubters. I would say, some of the haters. Let’s keep it real,” Harris said, with some laughter.

    There was “record turnout, and it’s because you voted that Joe Biden’s president of the United States and I’m vice president of the United States,” she added to a crowd of younger voters.

    It was reflective of what appears to be her office’s larger “say nothing” stance, at least publicly.

    “They’ve been in the mode of, they’re ignoring it,” one source familiar with Harris’ office told CNN.

    And those close to Harris say, though she’s generally “very aware of what people are saying,” it’s unlikely she’ll proactively address the calls for her to leave the ticket. Instead, she’ll work through it.

    “I think she keeps her head down and keep working,” Sharpton told CNN.

    [ad_2]

    Source link