Shown below is a list of recent news stories reporting on probes of President Trump, his administration and businesses. The reports are listed in reverse chronological order, and are drawn primarily from news stories relating to investigations and the U.S. Congress of major claims of wrongdoing.
Note: Excerpts below are from the authors' words except for subheads and "Editor's notes" such as this. This segment of our near-daily summary of Trump Watch News and Commentary encompasses news stories that began in 2021. For material in 2020, kindly visit a link for it that will be posted soon here.
-- Andrew Kreig / Justice Integrity Project editor
2021-23
A crowd of Trump supporters surrounded a newly erected set of wooden gallows outside the Capitol Building on Jan. 6. "Hang Mike Pence!" members of the crowd shouted at times about the Republican Vice President who had announced that he could not comply with the president's call to block election certification that day. The wooden gallows near the Capitol Reflecting Pool was just one example of the racist and anti-Semitic imagery on display at the riot. The noose is a racist symbol of the lynching of Black Americans. (Photo by Shay Horse via NurPhoto / Getty).
March
March 25
New York Times, Trump Puts His Legal Peril at Center of First Big Rally for 2024, Michael C. Bender and Shane Goldmacher, March 25, 2023. Facing a 
potential indictment, the former president devoted much of his speech in Waco, Texas, to criticizing the justice system.
Former President Donald J. Trump spent much of his first major political rally of the 2024 campaign portraying his expected indictment by a New York grand jury as a result of what he claimed was a Democratic conspiracy to persecute him, arguing wildly that the United States was turning into a “banana republic.”
As a crowd in Waco, Texas, waved red-and-white signs with the words “Witch Hunt” behind him, Mr. Trump devoted long stretches of his speech to his own legal jeopardy rather than his vision for a second term, casting himself as a victim of “weaponization” of the justice system.
“The abuses of power that we’re currently witnessing at all levels of government will go down as among the most shameful, corrupt and depraved chapters in all of American history,” he said.
The speech underscored how Mr. Trump tends to frame the nation’s broader political stakes heavily around whatever issues personally affect him the most. Last year, he sought to make his lies about fraud in his 2020 election defeat the most pressing issue of the midterms. On Saturday, he called the “weaponization of our justice system” the “central issue of our time.”
Lamenting all the investigations he has faced in the last eight years that have — to date — not resulted in charges, Mr. Trump claimed that his legal predicament “probably makes me the most innocent man in the history of our country.”
Former President Trump faces varied legal and political threats, including an escalating New York criminal investigation into purported campaign finance crimes involving payments in 2016 to hide his alleged affair with porn star Stormy Daniels, shown above left on the cover of her memoir "Full Disclosure."
New York Times, Donald Trump and the Sordid Tradition of Suppressing October Surprises, Jonathan Weisman, March 25, 2023. The payoff to Stormy Daniels that has a Manhattan grand jury weighing criminal charges can trace its lineage to political skulduggery in 1968 and 1980.
Secretive talks in the waning days of a campaign. Furtive phone calls. Ardent public denials.
American history is full of October surprises — late revelations, sometimes engineered by an opponent, that shock the trajectory of a presidential election and that candidates dread. In 1880, a forged letter ostensibly written by James A. Garfield claimed he wanted more immigration from China, a position so unpopular it nearly cost him the election. Weeks before the 1940 election, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s press secretary kneed a Black police officer in the groin, just as the president was trying to woo skeptical Black voters. (Roosevelt’s response made history: He appointed the first Black general and created the Tuskegee Airmen.)
But the scandal that has ensnared Donald J. Trump, the paying of hush money to a pornographic film star in 2016, is in a rare class: an attempt not to bring to light an election-altering event, but to suppress one.
The payoff to Stormy Daniels that has a Manhattan grand jury weighing criminal charges against Mr. Trump can trace its lineage to at least two other episodes foiling an October surprise. The first was in 1968, when aides to Richard M. Nixon pressed the South Vietnamese government to thwart peace talks in the closing days of that election. The second was in 1980. Fresh revelations have emerged that allies of Ronald Reagan may well have labored to delay the release of American hostages from Iran until after the defeat of Jimmy Carter.
The tortured debate over precisely which election law might have been violated in 2016 is missing the broader point — all three events might have changed the course of history.
“There have been three cases at a minimum,” said Gary Sick, a former national security aide to President Carter who for more than two decades has been pursuing his case that the Reagan campaign in 1980 delayed the release of the hostages from Iran. “And if you had the stomach for it, you’d have to say it worked.”
The potential criminal charges against Mr. Trump for his role in the passing of hush money to Ms. Daniels — falsifying business records to cover up the payment and a possible election law violation — may seem trivial when compared to the prior efforts to fend off a history-altering October surprise.
This month, a former lieutenant governor of Texas came forward to say that he accompanied a Reagan ally to the Middle East to try to delay the release of American hostages from Iran until after the 1980 election. And notes discovered in 2016 appeared to confirm that senior aides to Mr. Nixon worked through back channels in 1968 to hinder the commencement of peace talks to end the war in Vietnam — and secure Mr. Nixon’s victory over Hubert H. Humphrey.
New York Times, A Trump Rally Comes to Waco, 30 Years After Its Darkest Hour, Charles Homans, March 25, 2023 (print ed.). For some, it’s no accident that former President Trump will speak in a city where a fiery raid symbolizes government overreach to the far right. Thirty years ago, a fiery federal raid on a doomsday sect turned the city into a symbol of government overreach. Donald Trump will speak there on Saturday, and some supporters — and critics — say it’s no accident.
In the chapel at Mount Carmel, the longtime home of the Branch Davidian sect outside Waco, Tex., the pastor preaches about the coming apocalypse, as the sect’s doomed charismatic leader David Koresh did three decades ago.
But the prophecies offered by the pastor, Charles Pace, are different from Mr. Koresh’s. For one thing, they involve Donald J. Trump.
“Donald Trump is the anointed of God,” Mr. Pace said in an interview. “He is the battering ram that God is using to bring down the Deep State of Babylon.”
Mr. Trump, embattled by multiple investigations and publicly predicting an imminent indictment in one, announced last week that he would hold the first rally of his 2024 presidential campaign on Saturday at the regional airport in Waco.
The date falls in the middle of the 30th anniversary of the weekslong standoff involving federal agents and followers of Mr. Koresh that left 82 Branch Davidians and four agents dead at Mount Carmel, the group’s compound east of the city.
Mr. Trump has not linked the rally to the anniversary, and his campaign did not respond to requests for comment on whether the rally — his first ever in the city of 140,000 — was an intentional nod to the most infamous episode in Waco’s history. And there are other reasons for the former president to open his campaign in Texas, a state rich in electoral votes where he trailed Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida by double digits in a state Republican Party poll late last year.
But the historical resonance has not been lost on some of Mr. Trump’s most ardent followers. “Waco was an overreach of the government, and today the New York district attorney is practicing an overreach of the government again,” said Sharon Anderson, a retiree from Etowah, Tenn., who is traveling to Waco for Saturday’s event, her 33rd Trump rally.
Mr. Pace said he believed it was “a statement — that he was sieged by the F.B.I. at Mar-a-Lago and that they were accusing him of different things that aren’t really true, just like David Koresh was accused by the F.B.I. when they sieged him.”
The Warning with Steve Schmidt, Commentary: How Donald Trump is using the January 6 playbook to incite violence, Steve Schmidt (former Republican and now independent national political strategist, shown above in a screenshot), March 24, 2023 (10:21 min. video). Steve Schmidt breaks down Donald's Trump's latest Truth social post where the former President infers that charging him will lead to "potential death and destruction." Steve describes how Trump uses a similar playbook inciting the riots on January 6th, and condemns the Republican Party for not standing up to Trump.
Washington Post, Trump warns of ‘potential death & destruction’ if he is charged in hush-money case, John Wagner, March 25, 2023 (print ed.). Former president Donald Trump warned early Friday of “potential death & destruction” if he is charged in Manhattan in a criminal case related to alleged hush-money payments to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels to conceal an affair.
The posting after midnight on Truth Social, Trump’s social media platform, was his latest — and most explicit — allusion to violence that could follow an indictment stemming from an investigation led by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D), whom Trump called a “degenerate psychopath.”
Trump wrote: “What kind of person can charge another person, in this case a former President of the United States, who got more votes than any sitting President in history, and leading candidate (by far!) for the Republican Party nomination, with a Crime, when it is known by all that NO Crime has been committed, & also known that potential death & destruction in such a false charge could be catastrophic for our Country?”
In a post on Thursday, Trump criticized those who have called for his supporters to remain peaceful. Over the weekend, Trump urged a “PROTEST” over his potential arrest in the case, which he wrongly predicted would happen Tuesday.
The messages have all had echoes of the days leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by a violent pro-Trump mob. Trump had urged his followers to assemble in Washington that day, saying “Be there, will be wild!” as he pushed to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s win.
Five people died in the attack or in its aftermath, and 140 police officers were injured. The House impeached Trump on a charge of inciting an insurrection; the Senate acquitted him.
Trump has been commenting frequently on the hush-money case as a Manhattan grand jury weighs evidence against him. The panel is not scheduled to meet again until at least Monday, according to people familiar with the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss proceedings that are secret.
Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Commentary: Recognizing symbols of hate and right-wing rebellion in the United States, Wayne Madsen, left, March 22-23, 2023. Nazi and other far-
right symbology (samples shown above) spreading across America.
The transformation of the Republican Party into a Donald Trump cult and platform advocating fascism has resulted in the mushrooming of symbols of 
hate across the United States. In some cases, flags and banners proclaim loyalty to Trump even though they deface the U.S. flag, thus violating the U.S. Flag Code. Other banners, such as the "Don't Tread on Me" or Gadsden Flag misuse and misrepresent historical flags in being adopted as hate symbols. Nazi swastikas and symbols of the Confederacy have also been resurrected by the Trumpist cult.
Absent a domestic terrorism law, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies are hard-pressed to conduct systematic and uniform surveillance of far-right insurrectionists, but many far-right groups make no effort to hide themselves. In fact, actual and potential seditionists like the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and Boogaloo Bois shamefully fly from their vehicles and on their front lawns their symbols of rebellion and hate.
Spotting symbols of insurrection and hate should be a top priority for every American who abides by the rule of law and the Constitution. The black "No Quarter Given" flag is an extremely dangerous symbol. Those who fly it are sovereign citizens who are giving warning that they will shoot to kill anyone on their property.
New York Times, Former Trump Officials Must Testify in 2020 Election Inquiry, Judge Says, Maggie Haberman and Alan Feuer, March 25, 2023 (print ed.). The ruling paves the way for testimony from Mark Meadows and others. Separately, a Trump lawyer appeared before a grand jury for the Mar-a-Lago documents case.
A federal judge has ruled that a number of former officials from President Donald J. Trump’s administration — including his former chief of staff, Mark Meadows — cannot invoke executive privilege to avoid testifying to a grand jury investigating Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
The recent ruling by Judge Beryl A. Howell, left, paves the way for the former White House officials to answer questions from federal prosecutors, according to two people briefed on the matter.
Judge Howell ruled on the matter in a closed-door proceeding in her role as chief judge of the Federal District Court in Washington, a job in which she oversaw the grand juries taking testimony in the Justice Department’s investigations into Mr. Trump. Judge Howell’s term as chief judge ended last week.
The existence of the sealed ruling was first reported by ABC News.
Mr. Trump’s lawyers had tried to rebuff the grand jury subpoenas issued to more than a half-dozen former administration officials in connection with the former president’s efforts to remain in office after his defeat at the polls. The lawyers argued that Mr. Trump’s interactions with the officials would be covered by executive privilege.
Prosecutors are likely to be especially eager to hear from Mr. Meadows, who refused to be interviewed by the House select committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Mr. Meadows was a central player in various efforts to help Mr. Trump reverse the election outcome in a number of contested states.
March 24
New York Times, Court Action Underscores Peril for Trump in Documents Investigation, Maggie Haberman, Alan Feuer, Ben Protess and William K. Rashbaum, March 24, 2023 (print ed.). Prosecutors are building a case that former President Trump obstructed efforts to reclaim classified files and that he may have misled his lawyer.
The behind-the-scenes legal fight over obtaining evidence from a lawyer who represented former President Donald J. Trump in the investigation into his handling of classified documents has brought into sharper view where the Justice Department might be headed with the case.
According to the wisps of information that have seeped out of sealed court filings and closed-door hearings, prosecutors believe they have compelling evidence that Mr. Trump obstructed the government’s efforts to reclaim the sensitive records and may have even misled his own lawyers.
This theory of the case has not changed much since federal agents obtained a search warrant in August based on three possible crimes, obstruction being one of them. The search turned up hundreds of sensitive government records being kept at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s heavily trafficked compound in Florida, after his lawyers had earlier assured the Justice Department that all such documents had been returned.
Still, the more recent developments stemming from efforts to force testimony and other evidence from the lawyer, M. Evan Corcoran, in Federal District Court in Washington, indicate that prosecutors have continued to build a case and that the inquiry remains a serious threat to Mr. Trump.
New York Times, A Trump Rally Comes to Waco, 30 Years After Its Darkest Hour, Charles Homans, March 24, 2023. For some, it’s no accident that former President Trump will speak in a city where a fiery raid symbolizes government overreach to the far right. Thirty years ago, a fiery federal raid on a doomsday sect turned the city into a symbol of government overreach. Donald Trump will speak there on Saturday, and some supporters — and critics — say it’s no accident.
In the chapel at Mount Carmel, the longtime home of the Branch Davidian sect outside Waco, Tex., the pastor preaches about the coming apocalypse, as the sect’s doomed charismatic leader David Koresh did three decades ago.
But the prophecies offered by the pastor, Charles Pace, are different from Mr. Koresh’s. For one thing, they involve Donald J. Trump.
“Donald Trump is the anointed of God,” Mr. Pace said in an interview. “He is the battering ram that God is using to bring down the Deep State of Babylon.”
Mr. Trump, embattled by multiple investigations and publicly predicting an imminent indictment in one, announced last week that he would hold the first rally of his 2024 presidential campaign on Saturday at the regional airport in Waco.
The date falls in the middle of the 30th anniversary of the weekslong standoff involving federal agents and followers of Mr. Koresh that left 82 Branch Davidians and four agents dead at Mount Carmel, the group’s compound east of the city.
Mr. Trump has not linked the rally to the anniversary, and his campaign did not respond to requests for comment on whether the rally — his first ever in the city of 140,000 — was an intentional nod to the most infamous episode in Waco’s history. And there are other reasons for the former president to open his campaign in Texas, a state rich in electoral votes where he trailed Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida by double digits in a state Republican Party poll late last year.
But the historical resonance has not been lost on some of Mr. Trump’s most ardent followers. “Waco was an overreach of the government, and today the New York district attorney is practicing an overreach of the government again,” said Sharon Anderson, a retiree from Etowah, Tenn., who is traveling to Waco for Saturday’s event, her 33rd Trump rally.
Mr. Pace said he believed it was “a statement — that he was sieged by the F.B.I. at Mar-a-Lago and that they were accusing him of different things that aren’t really true, just like David Koresh was accused by the F.B.I. when they sieged him.”
New York Times, That Missing Trump Portrait? Found, Next to Some Old Yoga Mats, Maria Abi-Habib and Ana Maria Hanssen, March 24, 2023 (print ed.). After a tip, The Times found a painting of former President Trump that Democrats were looking for. It was propped up in an obscure spot in a Trump hotel.
In the bowels of the Trump National Doral hotel in Miami, in a small space leading to electrical rooms, an enormous portrait of the 45th president of the United States rests on a piece of deteriorating purple-colored foam.
Stored next to a stack of old yoga mats, the former president’s portrait sits underneath a halogen light and the metal sheen of air ducts, propped between two doors with placards that read “ELECTRICAL ROOM No Storage.”
The tiny room is overwhelmed by the grandiose portrait, standing about eight feet tall and featuring a grinning Donald J. Trump.
While the portrait has apparently sat there ignored for months, back in Washington, it is at the center of a debate over the laws and ethics covering presidential gifts.
March 22
Justice Department Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, left, and former President Donald Trump, shown in a collage via CNN.
New York Times, Appeals Court Orders Trump Lawyer to Hand Over Records in Documents Inquiry, Alan Feuer, March 22, 2023. The ruling compelling the lawyer, M. Evan Corcoran, to turn over documents came after a lightning round of appeals court filings overnight.
A federal appeals court ruled on Wednesday that a lawyer representing former President Donald J. Trump in an inquiry into his handling of classified materials had to give prosecutors what are likely to be dozens of documents related to his legal work for Mr. Trump.
The ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia came after a lightning round of filings that began on Tuesday evening when Mr. Trump sought 
an order to stop the lawyer, M. Evan Corcoran, right, from handing over documents to investigators.
The pitched behind-the-scenes legal fight continued overnight and into early Wednesday morning, with prosecutors responding to Mr. Trump’s request for a stay in the case with papers submitted before dawn. It played out as a separate legal proceeding involving Mr. Trump — the Manhattan district attorney’s consideration of whether to seek an indictment of the former president on charges related to a hush-money payment to a porn actress — remained unresolved.
The fight in Washington over Mr. Corcoran’s level of compliance in the documents case suggests that the prosecutors are working to assemble evidence that Mr. Trump could have committed a crime in defying the government’s efforts to reclaim the classified materials he took with him after leaving the White House.
As a legal matter, the litigation — all of which has taken place behind closed doors or under seal — involves a balancing act between attorney-client privilege, which generally protects lawyers from divulging private communications with their clients to the government, and a special provision of the law known as the crime-fraud exception. That exception allows prosecutors to work around attorney-client privilege when they have reason to believe that legal advice or legal services have been used in furthering a crime.
The spat began last month when the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, sought to pierce assertions of attorney-client privilege that Mr. Corcoran and Mr. Trump had made in the documents inquiry. In an initial appearance before a grand jury investigating the case, Mr. Corcoran had asserted the privilege as a way to limit the scope of the questions he would have to answer as well as the number of legal records he would have to turn over.
Understand the Trump Documents Inquiry: The Justice Department is conducting a criminal investigation into Donald Trump’s handling of classified files after he left office.
- Special Counsel: Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Jack Smith, a longtime prosecutor, to take over the inquiry. Here is what Smith’s role entails.
- Trump Lawyer: The special counsel’s investigation into Trump has prompted a pitched legal battle over whether prosecutors have sufficient evidence to force one of his lawyers to testify to a grand jury and provide documents related to his work for the former president.
- Passing the Gavel: James Boasberg will take over from Beryl Howell as the chief judge of the Federal District Court in Washington, a post that plays a key role in the federal special counsel investigations into Trump’s handling of the documents and the events surrounding Jan. 6.
- Comparison With Biden Case: The discovery of classified documents from President Biden’s time as vice president prompted comparisons to Trump’s hoarding of records. But there are key differences.
Washington Post, N.Y. grand jury weighing possible Trump indictment not expected to meet today, John Wagner and Mariana Alfaro, March 22, 2023. Today, a grand jury in New York hearing evidence in a case involving alleged hush-money payments to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels (shown in above in a satirical graphic) is not meeting as expected, leaving open the question of whether former president Donald Trump will be indicted.
Trump, who had previously predicted incorrectly he would be arrested Tuesday, shared on social media a news report suggesting that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg could take a pass on prosecuting him — while he continued to attack Bragg.
In Washington, it’s a busy hearing day on Capitol Hill. Among those testifying: Norfolk Southern chief executive Alan Shaw and several senior Biden administration officials, including Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen.
Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Commentary: Recognizing symbols of hate and right-wing rebellion in the United States, Wayne Madsen, left, March 22, 2023. Nazi and other far-right symbology spreading across America.
The transformation of the Republican Party into a Donald Trump cult and platform advocating fascism has resulted in the mushrooming of symbols of hate across the United States. In some cases, flags and banners proclaim loyalty to Trump even though they deface the U.S. flag, thus violating the U.S. Flag Code. Other banners, such as the "Don't Tread on Me" or Gadsden Flag misuse and misrepresent historical flags in being adopted as hate symbols. Nazi swastikas and symbols of the Confederacy have also been resurrected by the Trumpist cult.
Absent a domestic terrorism law, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies are hard-pressed to conduct systematic and uniform surveillance of far-right insurrectionists, but many far-right groups make no effort to hide themselves. In fact, actual and potential seditionists like the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and Boogaloo Bois shamefully fly from their vehicles and on their front lawns their symbols of rebellion and hate.
Spotting symbols of insurrection and hate should be a top priority for every American who abides by the rule of law and the Constitution. The black "No Quarter Given" flag is an extremely dangerous symbol. Those who fly it are sovereign citizens who are giving warning that they will shoot to kill anyone on their property.
New York Times, Former President Trump is facing several investigations. See where they stand, Ben Protess, Alan Feuer and Danny Hakim, March 22, 2023. The Manhattan district attorney’s office appears to be nearing a potential indictment of the former president, as federal and state prosecutors bear down on Mr. Trump in a number of inquiries.
After avoiding indictment for years, former President Donald J. Trump now appears closer than ever to facing criminal charges in Manhattan.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office recently signaled to Mr. Trump’s lawyers that he could face criminal charges for his role in a hush-money payment to a porn star, the strongest indication yet that prosecutors are nearing an indictment of the former president, according to four people with knowledge of the matter.
The district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, impaneled a grand jury in January to hear evidence in the longest-running criminal inquiry facing the former president. Since then, his prosecutors have questioned at least nine witnesses before the panel, though it is unclear whether they have completed their presentation of evidence.
Any case would mark the first indictment of a former American president. Yet Mr. Bragg might not be the last prosecutor to seek charges against Mr. Trump. Several federal and state prosecutors are scrutinizing him as well.
Here is where the notable inquiries involving the former president stand.
March 21
New York Times, Trump’s Call for Protests of Pending Arrest Splits G.O.P., Shane Goldmacher and Alan Feuer, March 21, 2023 (print ed.). After Donald Trump urged supporters to protest his looming indictment, some Republicans have heeded the call, while many others have lobbied against it.
His call to protest his expected indictment has divided his allies on the right, as some fear mass gatherings could devolve into violence and lead to the prosecution of his supporters just as the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol did two years ago.
While some Republicans have echoed Mr. Trump’s call to take to the streets, other prominent voices on the right are urging caution and for people to stay away, particularly from New York, where they note that any potential unrest would invite prosecution from the same official who is expected to charge Mr. Trump — the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg.
“Better to stay home,” advised Jeffrey Clark, the former Justice Department official who was nearly named acting attorney general by Mr. Trump in late 2020 as the president sought to overturn his election loss. “Think, rethink, and triple think before you physically go to protest anywhere in the Big Apple.”
The Republican speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, who owes his post in part to Mr. Trump’s support, was among those urging Trump supporters to stay away on Sunday. “I don’t think people should protest this, no,” he said during a news conference in Florida, adding, “And I think President Trump, if you talk to him, he doesn’t believe that, either.”
Mr. Trump, though, has long measured the strength of his standing by the blunt metric of the size of the crowds that show up for him, in good times and in bad ones.
When the “Access Hollywood” video first broke in 2016, Mr. Trump found comfort in the small band of supporters who stood in solidarity with Trump signs outside Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue, visiting them briefly with a fist pump. And, once he became president, the first mini-drama of his White House tenure was related to his insistent exaggerations about the crowd size at his inauguration.
Index: Recent Headlines On Probes of Trump, Allies (As of March 21, 2023, Excerpted Below)
- New York Times, DeSantis, Breaking Silence on Trump, Criticizes Manhattan Prosecutor
- New York Times, Robert Costello, once an adviser to Michael Cohen, appeared before the grand jury to assail the former fixer’s credibility
- Washington Post, Trump calls for protests of what he claims is his imminent arrest, Josh Dawsey, Shayna Jacobs, Carol D. Leonnig and Justine McDaniel
- New York Times, Four Convicted of Obstruction on Jan. 6 in Final Oath Keepers Trial
- New York Times, Analysis: Out of Power, Donald Trump Still Exerts It as the Law Closes In, Maggie Haberman
- New York Times, Inside the Payoff to a Porn Star That Could Lead to Trump’s Indictment, Michael Rothfeld
- New York Times, Trump Says His Arrest Is Imminent and Calls for Protests, Echoing Jan. 6
- Washington Post, The Jan. 6 investigation is the biggest in U.S. history. It’s only half done, Spencer S. Hsu, Devlin Barrett and Tom Jackman
- Washington Post, Opinion: Kevin McCarthy’s desperate plea to MAGA reveals a glaring GOP failure, Greg Sargent
- Washington Post, Opinion:Judge Howell delivers another blow to Trump and his lawyer, Jennifer Rubin
- Washington Post, Witness proposed by Trump defense to go before Manhattan grand jury Monday
- Washington Post, Trump returns to YouTube and Facebook for the first time since 2021
- Washington Post, New chief judge oversees Trump grand juries as courts face partisan tests
- Emptywheel, Analysis: Beryl Howell's Biggest Secret: Whether Bill Barr Killed the Egyptian Bank Investigation, Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler)
- New York Times, Donald Trump’s lawyers are seeking to quash a special grand jury report in Georgia into 2020 election interference
- Palmer Report, Opinion: “NOTHING except Eat, Sleep, and S..t!” – Donald Trump completely loses it over his indictment and arrest, Bill Palmer
- Palmer Report, Opinion: Donald Trump goes off the deep end, gives something away about surprise grand jury witness in Manhattan, Bill Palmer
- New York Times, Judge Rules Trump Lawyer Must Testify in Documents Inquiry
New York Times, Trump’s Call for Protests of Pending Arrest Splits G.O.P., Shane Goldmacher and Alan Feuer, March 21, 2023 (print ed.). After Donald Trump urged supporters to protest his looming indictment, some Republicans have heeded the call, while many others have lobbied against it.
His call to protest his expected indictment has divided his allies on the right, as some fear mass gatherings could devolve into violence and lead to the prosecution of his supporters just as the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol did two years ago.
While some Republicans have echoed Mr. Trump’s call to take to the streets, other prominent voices on the right are urging caution and for people to stay away, particularly from New York, where they note that any potential unrest would invite prosecution from the same official who is expected to charge Mr. Trump — the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg.
“Better to stay home,” advised Jeffrey Clark, the former Justice Department official who was nearly named acting attorney general by Mr. Trump in late 2020 as the president sought to overturn his election loss. “Think, rethink, and triple think before you physically go to protest anywhere in the Big Apple.”
The Republican speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, who owes his post in part to Mr. Trump’s support, was among those urging Trump supporters to stay away on Sunday. “I don’t think people should protest this, no,” he said during a news conference in Florida, adding, “And I think President Trump, if you talk to him, he doesn’t believe that, either.”
Mr. Trump, though, has long measured the strength of his standing by the blunt metric of the size of the crowds that show up for him, in good times and in bad ones.
When the “Access Hollywood” video first broke in 2016, Mr. Trump found comfort in the small band of supporters who stood in solidarity with Trump signs outside Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue, visiting them briefly with a fist pump. And, once he became president, the first mini-drama of his White House tenure was related to his insistent exaggerations about the crowd size at his inauguration.
New York Times, DeSantis, Breaking Silence on Trump, Criticizes Manhattan Prosecutor, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, March 21, 2023 (print ed.). However, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida also pointedly noted the personal conduct over which former President Trump is being investigated.
Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida on Monday broke his silence about the potential indictment of his state’s most famous resident, former President Donald J. Trump, attacking the Manhattan district attorney pursuing the case but also pointedly noting the personal conduct over which Mr. Trump is being investigated.
Mr. DeSantis spoke in response to a reporter’s question at an event in Panama City, Fla., after two days of pressure from Mr. Trump’s team and his influential allies demanding that the governor speak out against an indictment that is likely to be brought by Alvin L. Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney.
After a reporter asked for Mr. DeSantis’s thoughts about the potential indictment and whether he might have a role in extraditing Mr. Trump to New York, the governor demurred, saying he did not know what was going to happen.
“But I do know this: The Manhattan district attorney is a Soros-funded prosecutor,” he said of Mr. Bragg, referring to indirect financial support the district attorney received in his 2021 campaign from George Soros, the liberal billionaire philanthropist. Those donations have been the subject of attacks from Mr. Trump and other Republicans.
“And so he, like other Soros-funded prosecutors, they weaponize their office to impose a political agenda on society at the expense of the rule of law and public safety,” Mr. DeSantis said.
Then he twisted the knife regarding the actions over which Mr. Trump is likely to be indicted: hush-money payments made in late 2016 by Michael D. Cohen, then his lawyer and fixer, to a porn star who said she had an affair with Mr. Trump.
“I don’t know what goes into paying hush money to a porn star to secure silence over some type of alleged affair,” Mr. DeSantis said to chuckles from the crowd at the event.
“I just, I can’t speak to that,” he said. “But what I can speak to is that if you have a prosecutor who is ignoring crimes happening every single day in his jurisdiction, and he chooses to go back many, many years ago, to try to use something about porn star hush-money payments, you know, that’s an example of pursuing a political agenda and weaponizing the office.”
New York Times, Robert Costello, once an adviser to Michael Cohen, appeared before the grand jury to assail the former fixer’s credibility, Ben Protess, Sean Piccoli and Kate Christobek, March 21, 2023 (print ed.). Robert J. Costello, a former legal adviser to Michael Cohen, said after testifying, “I told the grand jury that this guy couldn’t tell the truth if you put a gun to his head.”
In a last-ditch effort to stave off the indictment of Donald J. Trump, a witness on Monday appeared before a Manhattan grand jury at the request of the former president’s lawyers, providing testimony aimed at attacking the credibility of the prosecution’s star witness.
The man who testified, Robert J. Costello, who was once a legal adviser to Michael D. Cohen, the crucial witness for the Manhattan district attorney’s office in its investigation of Mr. Trump. Mr. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former fixer, has already spent hours testifying before the grand jury.
Mr. Costello and Mr. Cohen had a falling out a few years ago, and Mr. Trump’s lawyers hoped that Mr. Costello’s grand jury appearance on Monday would undercut Mr. Cohen’s testimony.
Under New York law, a person who prosecutors expect to indict can request that a witness appear on his or her behalf. The final decision to hear the witness rests with the grand jury.
In an interview after his appearance, Mr. Costello attacked the prosecutors, saying they had withheld evidence from the grand jury.
“They seemed clearly one-sided and not after the truth,” Mr. Costello said, adding that the prosecutors had “cherry-picked” information from a packet of more than 300 emails he provided them.
Mr. Costello said he at one point waved around the packet in front of the jurors, remarking, “This is what you’re missing.”
The testimony lasted more than two hours, he said, and was at times hostile. Addressing Mr. Cohen’s credibility, he said, “I told the grand jury that this guy couldn't tell the truth if you put a gun to his head.”
Prosecutors had summoned Mr. Cohen to the courthouse where the grand jury meets, thinking he might be useful in rebutting Mr. Costello’s testimony. They did not call him into the grand jury on Monday, however, and it is unclear if Mr. Cohen could be called back later in the week.
“Mr. Cohen was available for over two hours today, but we are pleased to report Mr. Cohen was not needed,” his lawyer, Lanny J. Davis, said in a text message. He added: “Once again we repeat — the facts and documents speak for themselves. Facts do matter.”
The grand jury, which could indict Mr. Trump as soon as this week, has for weeks been hearing evidence about the former president’s involvement in a hush-money payment to a porn star.
Mr. Cohen paid $130,000 to buy the silence of the porn star, Stormy Daniels, who had said she had previously had a sexual encounter with Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump authorized the payment, according to Mr. Cohen, who pleaded guilty to federal charges involving the hush money in 2018. The federal prosecutors in that case substantiated Mr. Cohen’s claim that Mr. Trump had directed that the payoff be made.
New York Times, Four Convicted of Obstruction on Jan. 6 in Final Oath Keepers Trial, Alan Feuer and Zach Montague, March 21, 2023 (print ed.). The verdicts came after trials in which other members of the far-right militia were convicted of seditious conspiracy for their roles in the Capitol attack.
Four people who marched with the Oath Keepers militia into the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, were convicted on Monday of conspiracy to obstruct the work of Congress, bringing an end to the third and final trial examining the role that members of the far-right group played in the attack.
The four defendants — Sandra Parker, Laura Steele, Connie Meggs and William Isaacs — were also found guilty of an array of other charges, including destruction of government property and conspiracy to prevent members of Congress from discharging their duties by certifying the results of the 2020 election.
Two other people charged in the case — Ms. Parker’s husband, Bennie Parker, and Michael Greene, a close associate of Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the Oath Keepers — avoided conviction on conspiracy charges, but were both found guilty of illegally entering and remaining on the Capitol grounds.
The verdicts, handed up after more than a week of deliberations in Federal District Court in Washington, followed the convictions at two separate trials of Mr. Rhodes and five other members of his group on charges of seditious conspiracy, the most significant count to have been brought so far against any of the 1,000 people arrested in connection with the Capitol attack.
Mr. Rhodes and one of his top lieutenants, Kelly Meggs, the husband of Connie Meggs, were both found guilty of sedition at a trial that ended in November. In January, in another trial, four other Oath Keepers — Roberto Minuta, Joseph Hackett, David Moerschel and Edward Vallejo — were also convicted of sedition.
The defendants in the latest Oath Keepers trial never faced sedition charges and mostly played less significant roles in the Capitol attack than those in the two earlier trials. Mr. and Mrs. Parker, a retired couple from Ohio, were in their 60s and 70s, for example, and Mr. Isaacs, as his lawyer repeatedly argued, suffered from a severe form of autism.
Still, the jury apparently believed the prosecution’s claims that they had broken the law by either entering the Capitol or by breaching barricades outside and going into a restricted area.
“They seized and claimed a building that cannot belong to them alone,” Alexandra Hughes, a prosecutor, said of the defendants during her closing statement this month. “They imposed their will on the democratic process. They violated a principle that we all must abide.”
The three Oath Keepers trials have now led to felony convictions against 15 members of the group, all but crippling an organization that at its height had tens of thousands of adherents and conducted self-appointed vigilante missions for more than a decade in cities across the country.
The plight of the Oath Keepers stands in stark contrast to that of the Proud Boys, another far-right group whose leaders and members have faced charges in connection with Jan. 6. Even though five Proud Boys — including the group’s former chairman, Enrique Tarrio — are now on trial in the same federal courthouse facing sedition charges, the organization has remained involved in far-right events and operations.
In the latest Oath Keepers trial, Mr. Parker and Mr. Greene, a former soldier appointed by Mr. Rhodes to serve as his handpicked “ground commander” on Jan. 6, fared better with the jury than the rest of the defendants. Neither man went inside the Capitol that day, and the jurors acquitted each of some of the charges they faced while failing to return a verdict on others.
Much like the other two trials, statements made by Mr. Rhodes played a central role in this one. Prosecutors showed the jury reams of encrypted messages that Mr. Rhodes had sent to his compatriots in the run-up to the Capitol attack, many of them calling for civil war.
“On the 6th, they are going to put the final nail in the coffin of this republic, unless we fight our way out with Trump preferably or without him,” one of the messages read. “We have no choice.”
New York Times, Analysis: Out of Power, Donald Trump Still Exerts It as the Law Closes In, Maggie Haberman, March 21, 2023 (print ed.). A social media post amounted to a starter’s gun for G.O.P. officials: Many raced to his side, denouncing a Democratic prosecutor investigating him.
Since he left office, Democrats and a smaller number of Republicans have vowed to ensure that former President Donald J. Trump never recaptures the White House, where he would regain enormous power over the nation and around the globe.
Yet, in his insistence on forging ahead with a campaign while facing multiple criminal investigations, his dismissiveness toward supporting Ukraine against Russian aggression and his continued provocations on social media and in campaign speeches, Mr. Trump has shown that he does not need control over the levers of government to have an effect on the country — and, in the minds of many, to do damage.
To those who believed that the secret to banishing Mr. Trump was to deprive him of attention — that ignoring him would make him go away — he has shown that to be wishful thinking.
To fully understand that, one need look no further than the events of Saturday. The day began with a 7:26 a.m. post by Mr. Trump on his social media site, Truth Social, declaring that he would be arrested on Tuesday, even though the timing remains uncertain, and calling on people to “protest” and “take our nation back.”
The effect was like that of a starter’s gun: It prompted Republican leaders to rush to Mr. Trump’s side and to attack the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, a Democrat, who has indicated he is likely to bring charges against Mr. Trump in connection with 2016 hush money payments to a porn star who said she’d had an affair with him.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a Trump ally, wrote on Twitter that Mr. Bragg’s investigation was an “abuse of power” and that he would direct congressional committees to investigate whether any federal money was involved — a thinly veiled threat at a key moment before Mr. Bragg makes his plans clear.
A crush of other Republicans denounced the expected charges as politically motivated. They included one declared presidential candidate, Vivek Ramaswamy, and one potential candidate who has not yet formally entered the primary field, former Vice President Mike Pence.
Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio, who has endorsed Mr. Trump in the 2024 campaign, tweeted that a “politically motivated prosecution makes the argument for Trump stronger.” And both he and Representative Elise Stefanik, a staunch Trump backer from New York, accused Mr. Bragg and his fellow Democrats of trying to turn America into a “third-world country.”
The rallying around Mr. Trump evoked the days after the Nov. 3, 2020, election, when his two eldest sons pressured many leading Republicans — who had been waiting for the president to concede defeat — to instead fight on his behalf.
New York Times, Donald Trump’s lawyers are seeking to quash a special grand jury report in Georgia into 2020 election interference, Richard Fausset, March 21, 2023 (print ed.). Lawyers for former President Donald J. Trump filed a motion in a Georgia court on Monday seeking to quash the final report of a special grand jury that investigated whether Mr. Trump and some of his allies interfered in the 2020 election results in Georgia. The motion also seeks to “preclude the use of any evidence derived” from the report, and asks that the office of Fani T. Willis, the Fulton County district attorney, be recused from the case.
The move comes as Mr. Trump has started pushing back more broadly against several criminal investigations into his conduct. Over the weekend, Mr. Trump said in a social media post that he would be arrested on Tuesday as part of an investigation by the Manhattan district attorney into a hush money payment he made to to a porn actress, and called on his supporters to protest.
In Georgia, Mr. Trump is seen as having two main areas of legal jeopardy: the calls he made in the weeks after the 2020 election to pressure state officials to overturn the results there, and his direct involvement in efforts to assemble an alternate slate of electors, even after three vote counts affirmed President Biden’s victory in the state. Experts have said that Ms. Willis appears to be building a case that could target multiple defendants with charges of conspiracy to commit election fraud or charges related to racketeering.
Notice of the filing appeared in the official court docket on Monday morning, but the filing itself was not yet public, so the lawyers’ reasoning was not yet clear. Mr. Findling acknowledged that he had filed it on Mr. Trump’s behalf, along with Ms. Little and another lawyer from Mr. Findling’s firm, Marissa Goldberg.
March 20
Porn star Stormy Daniels and former President Donald J. Trump, who allegedly hid hush payments to her via The National Enquirer newspaper during the 2016 presidential campaign to hide their affair from election finance officials and the public.
Washington Post, Opinion: Kevin McCarthy’s desperate plea to MAGA reveals a glaring GOP failure, Greg Sargent, right, March 20, 2023. Donald Trump has long 
possessed a singular talent for humiliating “my Kevin,” as Trump calls House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, and now he has done it again. Late Sunday, McCarthy told reporters that Trump supporters should not “protest” if Trump is indicted, as expected. The California Republican added: “I think President Trump, if you talk to him, he doesn’t believe that, either.”
Someone should tell that to “President Trump.” A few hours after McCarthy, left, issued his plea, Trump unleashed a tirade on Truth Social that effectively cast any indictment as a war on MAGA nation waged by the “RADICAL LEFT” and the “COMMUNISTS, MARXISTS, RINOS AND LOSERS.” This functionally reiterated his previous call for civil unrest.
This moment vindicates those who long insisted the GOP must hold Trump accountable for the insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, if only to send a signal to GOP voters. Republicans instead squandered years of opportunities to categorically side with law enforcement — and for the proposition that violence and lawlessness have no place in our politics — because those stances might put them crosswise of MAGA.
Now, with Trump possibly facing indictment in Manhattan over hush-money payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels during the 2016 campaign, his advisers are publicly demanding that leading Republicans stand behind him. Trumpworld reportedly believes this will be problematic for presumed 2024 rivals such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who are trying to win support among MAGA Republicans while also appealing to party elites who want to move past Trump.
Beryl A. Howell and James E. Boasberg pose for a portrait and talk at E. Barrett Prettyman Federal Courthouse in Washington, D.C. Boasberg is taking over from Howell as the court's chief judge (Washington Post photo by Carolyn Van Houten).
Washington Post, Opinion:Judge Howell delivers another blow to Trump and his lawyer, Jennifer Rubin, right, March 20, 2023. Media and political attention has been 
focused on an allegedly impending indictment of former president Donald Trump in New York for allegedly mischaracterizing on campaign financial reports hush money paid to Stormy Daniels. However, a federal district court judge issued a far more consequential ruling concerning classified documents he allegedly purloined and then resisted returning.
U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell ruled in a sealed opinion that Trump’s attorney Evan Corcoran must not only answer questions regarding his client’s alleged retention of documents and obstruction of investigators but also turn over his notes. The reason for piercing the normally inviolate attorney-client privilege: the crime-fraud exception.
At issue, it seems, is the statement Corcoran prepared attesting that Trump’s legal team had made a “diligent search” of boxes of documents. (A subsequent search conducted pursuant to a warrant turned up hundreds of classified documents Trump had not returned.) Howell held that because there was sufficient evidence that Trump and Corcoran participated in a crime (e.g., violation of the Espionage Act, obstruction of justice), Trump lost the benefit of attorney-client privilege. Put differently, if he and Corcoran, for example, were working to deceive investigators or willfully retain highly sensitive documents, their conversations and any documents in furtherance of such crimes must be disclosed to the grand jury.
Trump’s attorneys squawked that this was a violation of due process. Trump has denied breaking any laws, claiming at one point that he had declassified the documents (although his attorneys have never made that claim in a legal document).
Legal scholars and former prosecutors describe Howell as “a careful and fair-minded jurist,” as constitutional scholar Laurence H. Tribe put it. Before directing him to waive privileges, the judge, in all likelihood, provided Corcoran with an opportunity to appeal, Tribe and several former prosecutors tell me.
Legal scholar Joshua Matz tells me, “Courts do not lightly pierce attorney-client privilege on the basis of the crime-fraud exception, and doing so here signals a judicial understanding that some of the relevant communications likely involved ongoing or future crimes.”
Washington Post, Witness proposed by Trump defense to go before Manhattan grand jury Monday, Shayna Jacobs, Rosalind S. Helderman and Josh Dawsey, March 20, 2023 (print ed.). The development appears aimed at discrediting Trump’s former fixer, Michael Cohen, who is a key prosecution witness.
Michael Cohen’s onetime legal adviser is expected to testify Monday before a grand jury weighing whether President Donald Trump committed any crimes when indirectly paying off adult-film star Stormy Daniels — a development that appears aimed at discrediting a key prosecution witness.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, right, has been examining a $130,000 payment that Cohen, Trump’s former fixer, said he made before the 2016 election that he said was to ensure Daniels’ silence about her alleged sexual encounter with Trump. Trump has denied the affair but has admitted he reimbursed Cohen for the payment to Daniels, which Trump said was made “to stop the false and extortionist accusations made by her.”
Cohen’s former adviser, Robert Costello, said he was asked by Bragg’s team to appear in front of the grand jury panel in Lower Manhattan on Monday afternoon — but Costello noted the request originally came from Trump’s legal team. Under New York law, those expecting to be indicted can ask for witnesses to appear before grand juries on their behalf.
Washington Post, Trump returns to YouTube and Facebook for the first time since 2021, Gerrit De Vynck, Erica Werner and Jacob Bogage, March 20, 2023 (print ed.). Donald Trump posted on Facebook and YouTube on Friday for the first time since the platforms had suspended him following the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol — and just hours after YouTube lifted the suspension.
“I’M BACK!” the former president announced on both platforms, accompanied by a video clip from CNN from when he was elected president.
Meta, which owns Facebook, had announced in January it was lifting the ban on Trump.
After the Google-owned video site YouTube lifted the suspension on his account Friday, a stream of commenters congratulated the former president on his return. A handful of them mentioned well-known slogans from QAnon, a sprawling set of false claims that have coalesced into an extremist ideology that has radicalized its followers. YouTube prohibits people from promoting QAnon material on its platform.
YouTube said in a tweet it had “carefully evaluated the continued risk of real-world violence while balancing the chance for voters to hear equally from major national candidates in the run up to an election.”
Trump is the Republican front-runner, according to polling data, in the 2024 presidential election.
Trump now has full access to his Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube accounts, potentially giving him the social media reach that helped him win the 2016 presidential election. But he has yet to begin taking full advantage of the internet megaphones, preferring to post on Truth Social — his own platform — and speak at rallies. The former president has told people he can’t leave Truth Social because his presence there is keeping it going, and he doesn’t want a venture so closely linked to his name to fail, The Washington Post reported in November.
The policy change is a big shift for YouTube, which had always said that it doesn’t take the political or news relevance of an account into consideration when making a decision about whether to take it down, unlike Facebook, which in past years had made explicit exceptions to its rules for well-known politicians. The decision comes a month after longtime YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki said she would step down to focus on her health.
Unlike Twitter and Facebook, where the president posted his musings, policy changes and attacks on rivals directly, he used YouTube more as an online library for videos of his rallies. His account there has 2.65 million subscribers, compared to the 87.4 million followers he has on Twitter.
YouTube was also the last of the major social media platforms to suspend Trump after the attack on the Capitol, making its move several days after Twitter and then Facebook banned him. The video site said it suspended Trump out of concern for “the ongoing potential for violence” soon after he uploaded a video where he said his comments to supporters just before the Capitol attack were “totally appropriate.”
Washington Post, Trump calls for protests of what he claims is his imminent arrest, Josh Dawsey, Shayna Jacobs, Carol D. Leonnig and Justine McDaniel, March 19, 2023 (print ed.). But advisers to the former president said they have no specific knowledge of the timing of an indictment in the Manhattan case.
Former president Donald Trump called for protests Saturday in response to what he claimed would be his imminent arrest in a Manhattan criminal investigation, even as his advisers said Trump’s team does not have specific knowledge about the timing of an indictment.
Writing from his Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida, Trump surprised his advisers by posting an all-caps message on his Truth Social platform Saturday morning that declared he “WILL BE ARRESTED ON TUESDAY OF NEXT WEEK. PROTEST, TAKE OUR NATION BACK!” His language, along with a fundraising pitch sent out by his 2024 presidential campaign, echoed rhetoric that Trump used in advance of the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, by his supporters.
Trump advisers and lawyers have expected for days that he will be indicted in the New York case, which hinges on a $130,000 payment to an adult-film star.
New York Times, Inside the Payoff to a Porn Star That Could Lead to Trump’s Indictment, Michael Rothfeld, March 20, 2023 (print ed.). Manhattan prosecutors investigating a payout to Stormy Daniels might be poised to make Donald Trump the first former president to be criminally indicted.
At the time, it all was more tawdry than momentous. A reality star invited a porn actress half his age to a hotel room after a round in a celebrity golf tournament. She arrived in a spangly gold dress and strappy heels. He promised to put her on television and then, she says, they slept together.
Yet the chain of events flowing from the 2006 encounter that the adult film star, Stormy Daniels, has said she had with the television personality, Donald J. Trump, has led to the brink of a historic development: the first criminal indictment of a former American president.
The Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, has signaled he is preparing to seek felony charges against Mr. Trump; Mr. Bragg is expected to accuse him of concealing a $130,000 hush-money payment that Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s lawyer and fixer, made to Ms. Daniels on the eve of the 2016 presidential election.
A conviction would be likely to hinge on prosecutors’ proving that Mr. Trump reimbursed Mr. Cohen and falsified business records when he did so, possibly to hide an election law violation.
Michael Rothfeld, an investigative reporter on the Metro desk, was the co-author of “The Fixers,” a book about the people who took care of problems for Donald J. Trump. He was formerly a reporter at The Wall Street Journal, where he was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize for revealing hush-money deals made for the former president.
March 19
New York Times, Trump Says His Arrest Is Imminent and Calls for Protests, Echoing Jan. 6, Maggie Haberman, Jonah E. Bromwich, Ben Protess, Alan Feuer and William K. Rashbaum, March 19, 2023 (print ed.). Former President Trump claimed that he would be arrested on Tuesday. His indictment by a Manhattan grand jury is expected, but its timing is unclear.
With former President Donald J. Trump facing indictment by a Manhattan grand jury but the timing of the charges uncertain, he declared on his social media site on Saturday that he would be arrested on Tuesday and demanded that his supporters protest on his behalf.
Mr. Trump made the declaration on his site, Truth Social, at 7:26. a.m., in a post that ended with, “THE FAR & AWAY LEADING REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE AND FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, WILL BE ARRESTED ON TUESDAY OF NEXT WEEK. PROTEST, TAKE OUR NATION BACK!”
Two hours later, a spokesman issued a statement clarifying that Mr. Trump had not written his post with direct knowledge of the timing of any arrest.
“President Trump is rightfully highlighting his innocence and the weaponization of our injustice system,” the statement said.
Although prosecutors working for the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, right, have signaled that an indictment of Mr. Trump could be imminent, they have not told Mr. Trump’s lawyers when charges would be sought or when an arrest would be made, people with knowledge of the matter said. At least one more witness is expected to testify in front of the grand jury, which could slightly delay any indictment, the people said.
And one of the people said that even if the grand jury were to vote to indict the former president on Monday, a Tuesday surrender was unlikely given the need to arrange timing, travel and other logistics.
The statement from Mr. Trump’s spokesman did not explain how he landed on Tuesday as the arrest date, but one of the people with knowledge of the matter said that his advisers’ best guess was that it could happen around then, and that someone may have relayed that to the former president.
Mr. Trump, who faced his first criminal investigation in the late 1970s, has been deeply anxious about the prospect of arrest, which is expected to include being fingerprinted, one of the people said. When the Trump Organization’s former chief financial officer, Allen H. Weisselberg, was arrested in 2021, Mr. Trump watched in horror as television news showed Mr. Weisselberg flanked by officers in the courthouse and said he couldn’t believe what was being done to him.
Mr. Trump’s post urging his supporters to “PROTEST, TAKE OUR NATION BACK!” carried unmistakable echoes of the incendiary messages he posted online in the weeks before the attack on the U.S. Capitol. In the most notorious of those messages, he announced on Twitter that he would hold a rally in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. “Be there,” he told his millions of followers. “Will be wild.”
Trump-supporting former law school dean John Eastman, left, helps Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani inflame pro-Trump protesters in front the White House before the insurrection riot at the U.S. Capitol to prevent the presidential election certification of Joe Biden's presidency on Jan. 6, 2021 (Los Angeles Times
In a now-deleted Facebook post, New Mexico county official Couy Griffin, above, predicted of Inauguration Day at the Capitol, “blood will run out of the building.”
Washington Post, The Jan. 6 investigation is the biggest in U.S. history. It’s only half done, Spencer S. Hsu, Devlin Barrett and Tom Jackman, March 19, 2023 (print ed.). To date, roughly 1,000 people have been charged for their alleged roles in the events of that day. The total could grow above 2,000, and a federal courthouse strains to handle what may be years more of trials.
The city’s federal court system is bracing for many years more of trials stemming from the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, with new charges possible against as many as 1,000 more people.
In recent months, law enforcement and judicial authorities have engaged in discussions to manage the huge volume of Jan. 6 cases without overwhelming the courthouse where pleas and trials are held, people familiar with the matter said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal operations.
“It’s an enormous, enormous case and, by almost any measure, the largest case the Justice Department has ever had,” said Randall Eliason, a former federal prosecutor who now teaches law at George Washington University. “Big criminal investigations that are far less complicated than this often take several years.”
Eliason said that while the riot cases may be about halfway over, there are indications some of the other branches of the investigation — like the false electors scheme or efforts to use Justice Department officials to undo the election results — appear to be further along, because the witnesses now being subpoenaed include some of the most thorny legal matters and the people closest to former president Donald Trump. Those are generally indicators that an investigation is nearing the end of the fact-gathering phase, he said.
“There are a lot of court fights over privilege, and those take time, and you can’t just plow past them and not try to get critical evidence,” Eliason said.
The Attack: The Washington Post's investigation of the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol and its aftermath
Prosecutors are hopeful many will be incentivized to plead to help manage the crush of cases, which already have strained the court in the nation’s capital. A Washington Post analysis of the cases so far shows defendants who seek a trial rather than plead guilty end up getting about a year of prison time added to their sentences.
Washington Post, Trump returns to YouTube and Facebook for the first time since 2021, Gerrit De Vynck, Erica Werner and Jacob Bogage, March 19, 2023. Donald Trump posted on Facebook and YouTube on Friday for the first time since the platforms had suspended him following the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol — and just hours after YouTube lifted the suspension.
“I’M BACK!” the former president announced on both platforms, accompanied by a video clip from CNN from when he was elected president.
Meta, which owns Facebook, had announced in January it was lifting the ban on Trump.
After the Google-owned video site YouTube lifted the suspension on his account Friday, a stream of commenters congratulated the former president on his return. A handful of them mentioned well-known slogans from QAnon, a sprawling set of false claims that have coalesced into an extremist ideology that has radicalized its followers. YouTube prohibits people from promoting QAnon material on its platform.
YouTube said in a tweet it had “carefully evaluated the continued risk of real-world violence while balancing the chance for voters to hear equally from major national candidates in the run up to an election.”
Trump is the Republican front-runner, according to polling data, in the 2024 presidential election.
Trump now has full access to his Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube accounts, potentially giving him the social media reach that helped him win the 2016 presidential election. But he has yet to begin taking full advantage of the internet megaphones, preferring to post on Truth Social — his own platform — and speak at rallies. The former president has told people he can’t leave Truth Social because his presence there is keeping it going, and he doesn’t want a venture so closely linked to his name to fail, The Washington Post reported in November.
The policy change is a big shift for YouTube, which had always said that it doesn’t take the political or news relevance of an account into consideration when making a decision about whether to take it down, unlike Facebook, which in past years had made explicit exceptions to its rules for well-known politicians. The decision comes a month after longtime YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki said she would step down to focus on her health.
Unlike Twitter and Facebook, where the president posted his musings, policy changes and attacks on rivals directly, he used YouTube more as an online library for videos of his rallies. His account there has 2.65 million subscribers, compared to the 87.4 million followers he has on Twitter.
YouTube was also the last of the major social media platforms to suspend Trump after the attack on the Capitol, making its move several days after Twitter and then Facebook banned him. The video site said it suspended Trump out of concern for “the ongoing potential for violence” soon after he uploaded a video where he said his comments to supporters just before the Capitol attack were “totally appropriate.”
March 18
Porn star Stormy Daniels and former President Donald J. Trump, who allegedly hid hush payments to her via The National Enquirer newspaper during the 2016 presidential campaign to hide their affair from election finance officials and the public.
New York Times, Trump Says His Arrest Is Imminent and Calls for Protests, Echoing Jan. 6, Maggie Haberman, Jonah E. Bromwich, Ben Protess, Alan Feuer and William K. Rashbaum, March 18, 2023. Former President Trump claimed that he would be arrested on Tuesday. His indictment by a Manhattan grand jury is expected, but its timing is unclear.
With former President Donald J. Trump facing indictment by a Manhattan grand jury but the timing of the charges uncertain, he declared on his social media site on Saturday that he would be arrested on Tuesday and demanded that his supporters protest on his behalf.
Mr. Trump made the declaration on his site, Truth Social, at 7:26. a.m., in a post that ended with, “THE FAR & AWAY LEADING REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE AND FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, WILL BE ARRESTED ON TUESDAY OF NEXT WEEK. PROTEST, TAKE OUR NATION BACK!”
Two hours later, a spokesman issued a statement clarifying that Mr. Trump had not written his post with direct knowledge of the timing of any arrest.
“President Trump is rightfully highlighting his innocence and the weaponization of our injustice system,” the statement said.
Although prosecutors working for the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, right, have signaled that an indictment of Mr. Trump could be imminent, they have not told Mr. Trump’s lawyers when charges would be sought or when an arrest would be made, people with knowledge of the matter said. At least one more witness is expected to testify in front of the grand jury, which could slightly delay any indictment, the people said.
And one of the people said that even if the grand jury were to vote to indict the former president on Monday, a Tuesday surrender was unlikely given the need to arrange timing, travel and other logistics.
The statement from Mr. Trump’s spokesman did not explain how he landed on Tuesday as the arrest date, but one of the people with knowledge of the matter said that his advisers’ best guess was that it could happen around then, and that someone may have relayed that to the former president.
Mr. Trump, who faced his first criminal investigation in the late 1970s, has been deeply anxious about the prospect of arrest, which is expected to include being fingerprinted, one of the people said. When the Trump Organization’s former chief financial officer, Allen H. Weisselberg, was arrested in 2021, Mr. Trump watched in horror as television news showed Mr. Weisselberg flanked by officers in the courthouse and said he couldn’t believe what was being done to him.
Mr. Trump’s post urging his supporters to “PROTEST, TAKE OUR NATION BACK!” carried unmistakable echoes of the incendiary messages he posted online in the weeks before the attack on the U.S. Capitol. In the most notorious of those messages, he announced on Twitter that he would hold a rally in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. “Be there,” he told his millions of followers. “Will be wild.”
Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: Donald Trump Announces Date of His ARREST, Ben Meiselas, March 18, 2023.Donald Trump posted on his social media platform the date he believes he will be arrested next week in connection with the Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s criminal case relating to Trump’s hush money payments to Stormy Daniels. MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports.
March 16
Washington Post, At center of Fox News lawsuit, Sidney Powell and a ‘wackadoodle’ email, Sarah Ellison and Amy Gardner, March 16, 2023. Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, above right with fellow Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, took bogus claims of widespread fraud mainstream. Fox News's decision to keep booking her prompted Dominion's defamation case.
A day after major news organizations declared Joe Biden the winner of the 2020 presidential race, a Sunday-morning guest on Fox News was holding forth on exotic and baseless claims of election fraud — allegedly deceased voters, ballots supposedly lacking an option to vote for Donald Trump, an “affidavit” from a postal worker claiming to have postdated mail-in ballots — when host Maria Bartiromo pressed for more details.
“Sidney, we talked about the Dominion software,” Bartiromo said on the Nov. 8, 2020, broadcast. “I know that there were voting irregularities. Tell me about that.”
The guest was Sidney Powell, a Texas-based lawyer who would soon be ambiguously connected to the Trump legal team mustered to challenge the election results. She stared stiffly into the lights of a satellite TV studio but answered without hesitation.
“That’s putting it mildly,” Powell replied. “The computer glitches could not and should not have happened at all. That’s where the fraud took place, where they were flipping votes in the computer system or adding votes that did not exist.”
It was the first of a dozen appearances Powell would make on Fox programs over the next month in which she helped inject far-fetched and debunked claims of widespread fraud into the mainstream — and which are now at the heart of Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox, court documents show.
These appearances helped elevate a once-obscure lawyer to a marquee player in Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election — and helped keep her claims of fraud on the forefront for millions of loyal Fox viewers, including Trump himself. Powell would continue to appear on Fox for weeks after Dominion protested that it had been unfairly smeared, and as Fox News executives privately agonized that these on-air falsehoods created a problem for the network, according to newly released internal communications and testimony.
She would even appear on Fox programs after a Fox Corp. senior vice president said he had privately begged the White House to disavow Powell.
“We encouraged several sources within the administration to tell reporters that Powell offered no evidence for her claims and didn’t speak for the president,” executive Raj Shah wrote to his bosses on Nov. 23 — a day after Trump lawyers issued statements saying that Powell was not a member of their team.
- Washington Post, Analysis: Maria Bartiromo isn’t done with misinformation just yet, Philip Bump, March 16, 2023.
The Guardian, Federal investigators examined Trump Media for possible money laundering, sources say, Hugo Lowell, March 16, 2023 (print ed.). Federal prosecutors in New York involved in the criminal investigation into Donald Trump’s social media company last year started examining whether it violated money laundering statutes in connection with the acceptance of $8m with suspected Russian ties, according to sources familiar with the matter.
The company – Trump Media, which owns Trump’s Truth Social platform – initially came under criminal investigation over its preparations for a potential merger with a blank check company called Digital World (DWAC) that was also the subject of an earlier investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Towards the end of last year, federal prosecutors started examining two loans totaling $8m wired to Trump Media, through the Caribbean, from two obscure entities that both appear to be controlled in part by the relation of an ally of Russian president Vladimir Putin, the sources said.
The expanded nature of the criminal investigation, which has not been previously reported, threatens to delay the completion of the merger between Trump Media and DWAC, which would provide the company and Truth Social with up to $1.3bn in capital, in addition to a stock market listing.
Even if Trump Media and its officers face no criminal exposure for the transactions, the optics of borrowing money from potentially unsavory sources through opaque conduits could cloud Trump’s image as he seeks to recapture the White House in 2024.
The extent of the exposure for Trump Media and its officers for money laundering remains unclear. The statutes broadly require prosecutors to show that defendants knew the money was the proceeds of some form of unlawful activity and the transaction was designed to conceal its source.
But money laundering prosecutions are typically based on circumstantial evidence and can be based on materials that show that the money in question was unlikely to have legitimate origins, legal experts said.
The first $2m payment to Trump Media came in December 2021 when the company was on the brink of collapse after the planned merger with DWAC – that would have unlocked millions for the company – was delayed when the SEC opened an inquiry into whether the arrangement broke regulatory rules.
Trump Media needed a bridge loan to keep the company afloat. But it struggled to get financing until DWAC’s chief executive Patrick Orlando sourced a $2m loan wired from Paxum Bank registered in Dominica, according to the wire transfer receipt reviewed by the Guardian.e
The wire transfer identified Paxum Bank as the beneficial owner, although the promissory note identified an entity called ES Family Trust as the lender. Two months later, an unexpected second $6m payment arrived in Trump Media’s account from ES Family Trust, the transfer receipt showed.
In both instances, Orlando declined to provide details about the true identity of the lenders or the origin of the money to Trump Media executives, Trump Media’s since-ousted co-founder turned whistleblower Will Wilkerson recounted in an interview.
Though the two payments to Trump Media ostensibly came from two separate entities – first Paxum Bank and second ES Family Trust – the trustee of ES Family Trust, a person called Angel Pacheco, appears to have simultaneously been a director of Paxum Bank.
The Russian connection, as being examined by prosecutors in the US attorney’s office for the southern district of New York, centers on a part-owner of Paxum Bank – an individual named Anton Postolnikov, who appears to be a relation of Putin ally Aleksandr Smirnov.
Smirnov, who heads the Russia-controlled maritime company Rosmorport, worked in the Central Office of the Russian government until 2017. Before that, Smirnov was the first deputy minister of justice of Russia until 2014, and for most of Putin’s first two terms as president, Smirnov served in the executive office of the president.
The obscure origins of the $8m loans caused alarm at Trump Media and, in the spring of 2022, Trump Media’s then chief financial officer Phillip Juhan weighed returning the money, according to Wilkerson.
But the money was never returned, Wilkerson said, in part because losing $8m out of the roughly $12m cash that Trump Media had in its accounts at that time would have placed significant stress on its financial situation.
Prosecutors appear to have also taken a special interest in the payments because the off-shore Paxum Bank has a history of providing banking services for the pornography and sex worker industries, which makes it higher risk of engaging in money laundering and other illicit financing.
There appears to have been some awareness at Trump Media that the first $2m was to come through because Trump’s eldest son Don Jr, who joined the board with Trump ally Kash Patel and former Republican turned Trump Media chief executive Devin Nunes, had confirmed to the company’s lawyers to proceed with the transaction.
Washington Post, Grand jury heard audio of another Trump call seeking to overturn election, Holly Bailey, March 16, 2023. An Atlanta-area special grand jury that investigated efforts by President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia heard audio of another phone call in which Trump pressed a top state official to help overturn Joe Biden’s victory in the state, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Five members of the special purpose grand jury told the Atlanta newspaper that they listened to a recording of a 2020 phone call between Trump and Georgia’s House speaker at the time, David Ralston (R), in which Ralston resisted Trump’s requests to convene a special session of the legislature to overturn Biden’s narrow election win.
The speaker “basically cut the president off. He said, ‘I will do everything in my power that I think is appropriate.’ … He just basically took the wind out of the sails,” one juror, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told the Atlanta paper. “‘Well, thank you,’ you know, is all the president could say.”
The legislature did not hold a special session. Ralston, a powerful Republican who spent more than a decade as House speaker before his death in November, had previously acknowledged phone calls from Trump and Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor and close Trump ally who was working as the president’s personal lawyer at the time. But the existence of a recording of that phone call had not been previously reported.
Ralston appeared in July before the special purpose grand jury but declined to comment on what he testified about.
That previously unknown audio is one of at least three recorded phone calls Trump made to Georgia officials as he sought to overturn the state’s election results. Those recordings are now in the hands of Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis (D) as she considers whether Trump and his allies broke the law.
Former Trump advisor Steve Bannon, left, with his patron, Guo Wengui, a purported wealthy man arrested this week.
New York Times, Exiled Chinese Billionaire Charged in New York With Financial Conspiracy, Benjamin Weiser and Michael Forsythe, March 16, 2023 (print ed.). Guo Wengui, a fugitive financier and associate of Steve Bannon, is accused by federal prosecutors of engaging in a complex scheme to bilk thousands of online followers.
Guo Wengui, a fugitive Chinese billionaire, was arrested on Wednesday morning in New York on charges that he orchestrated a complex conspiracy to defraud thousands of his online followers out of at least $1 billion, the authorities said.
A federal indictment unsealed in Manhattan charged that Mr. Guo and a co-defendant took advantage of Mr. Guo’s “prolific online presence” to solicit investments in various entities and programs “by promising outsized financial returns and other benefits.”
Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement that Mr. Guo was “charged with lining his pockets with the money he stole, including buying himself, and his close relatives, a 50,000-square-foot mansion, a $3.5 million Ferrari and even two $36,000 mattresses.” The money was also used to finance a $37 million luxury yacht, Mr. Williams said.
Mr. Guo, who is also known as Miles Kwok, is a business associate of Stephen K. Bannon, a onetime top adviser to former President Donald J. Trump. It was on a yacht belonging to Mr. Guo that Mr. Bannon was arrested in a fraud case in August 2020; Mr. Trump later pardoned Mr. Bannon, who had pleaded not guilty to those charges.
A lawyer for Mr. Guo had no immediate comment. Mr. Guo was taken to a brief court appearance on Wednesday wearing a pullover, black cargo pants and black sneakers. He smiled and waved to several spectators, and entered a not guilty plea through an attorney. He was ordered detained pending further proceedings.
For six years, Mr. Guo has been seen as a vocal critic of the Chinese Communist Party, endearing himself to some conservatives in the United States and many members of the Chinese diaspora.
In 2017, Mr. Guo applied for asylum on grounds that his attacks on top officials had made him “a political opponent of the Chinese regime,” one of his lawyers said at the time.
At the same time, Mr. Guo was trying to ingratiate himself with the Trump administration. In early 2017, Mr. Guo posted pictures of himself at Mr. Trump’s Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, where Mr. Guo was then a member. Several months later, he told his many followers on social media that he had booked meetings at the Trump International Hotel in Washington.
According to the indictment, Mr. Guo, a co-defendant and other co-conspirators in 2018 began using fraudulent and fictitious business and investment opportunities to solicit, launder and misappropriate money from their victims.
In one case, the indictment says, they posted a video on social media to announce a stock offering for a purported news-focused social media platform based in New York called GTV Media Group. It was promoted as the “first ever platform which will combine the power of citizen journalism and social news with state-of-the-art technology, big data, artificial intelligence, blockchain technology and real-time interactive communication.”
Over six weeks in 2020, the indictment says, about $452 million worth of GTV common stock was sold to more than 5,500 investors in the United States and abroad. But prosecutors said much of that money did not go to developing and expanding the business. For example, prosecutors said, $100 million was invested in a high-risk hedge fund for the benefit of GTV’s parent company and its owner, a close relative of Mr. Guo.
In another scheme included in the indictment, Mr. Guo and others were accused of inducing people to invest more than $250 million in something called G|Clubs, which claimed on its website to be “an exclusive, high-end membership program offering a full spectrum of services.” To join, prospective members paid a one-time fee, ranging from $10,000 to $50,000.
In reality, the indictment said, G|Clubs “provided nothing close to ‘a full spectrum of services’ and ‘experiences’ to its members.”
Rather, Mr. Guo and his co-defendant, Kin Ming Je, misappropriated much of the money, the indictment charged. The indictment says $26.5 million in G|Clubs funds went toward the purchase of Mr. Guo’s mansion in New Jersey; more went to pay for extravagant renovations there, and for furniture and decorative items, including Chinese and Persian rugs worth close to $1 million, a $62,000 television and a $53,000 log cradle for a fireplace.
The Securities and Exchange Commission, in a parallel civil action, sued Mr. Guo.
“Guo was a serial fraudster,” Gurbir S. Grewal, the S.E.C.’s director of enforcement, said in a statement. “Guo took advantage of the hype and allure surrounding crypto and other investments to victimize thousands and fund his and his family’s lavish lifestyle.”
Mr. Guo’s legal woes span the Pacific. The U.S. charges against Mr. Guo echo those that the Chinese government made against him in 2017, when he was accused of bribery and embezzlement. Until he left China in 2014, Mr. Guo oversaw a property empire whose centerpiece was a hotel, residential and office complex in Beijing overlooking the venue for the 2008 Summer Olympics.
In his native China, he also forged political and financial ties with influential officials, including a senior intelligence officer, Ma Jian, who in 2017 made a videotaped confession admitting to taking more than $8.7 million in gifts from Mr. Guo in exchange for favors.
Mr. Guo was ruthless with those who got in his way. A Beijing vice mayor who stood between him and the property rights for the Olympics venue was felled when Mr. Guo obtained a video of the official having sex with a mistress.
Former President Trump faces varied legal and political threats, including an escalating New York criminal investigation into purported campaign finance crimes involving payments in 2016 to hide his alleged affair with porn star Stormy Daniels, shown above left on the cover of her memoir "Full Disclosure."
New York Times, Stormy Daniels Meets With Prosecutors as Trump Inquiry Nears End, Jonah E. Bromwich, William K. Rashbaum, Nate Schweber and Kate Christobek, March 16, 2023 (print ed.). Manhattan prosecutors on Wednesday met with Stormy Daniels, the porn star who was paid $130,000 to keep quiet about her affair with Donald J. Trump, according to a lawyer for Ms. Daniels.
The lawyer, Clark Brewster, tweeted that at the request of the Manhattan district attorney’s office, he and Ms. Daniels had met with prosecutors. Ms. Daniels responded to questions, he said, “and has agreed to make herself available as a witness, or for further inquiry if needed.”
Ms. Daniels thanked her lawyer for “helping me in our continuing fight for truth and justice” in her own tweet.
Ms. Daniels’s meeting with the prosecutors comes as the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, nears an indictment of Mr. Trump for his involvement in the hush-money payment.
Her lawyer’s statement seemed to suggest that Ms. Daniels had not testified in front of the grand jury, and she was not seen outside the building where the grand jury sits. Her meeting with prosecutors may have been virtual.
A spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office declined to comment. Mr. Brewster did not respond to a request for comment.
Michael D. Cohen, a former fixer for Mr. Trump who paid Ms. Daniels and was later reimbursed by the president, testified before the grand jury on Wednesday, his second day answering questions before the panel. Mr. Cohen said before the appearance that he expected it to be “my last time, at least for the grand jury.”
Sign up for the New York Today Newsletter Each morning, get the latest on New York businesses, arts, sports, dining, style and more. Get it sent to your inbox.
Upon emerging from the courthouse, Mr. Cohen told reporters that he had testified for about two hours and had been questioned directly by a number of grand jurors. He said that his role in the investigation was over for the time being.
“My position is that, at the end of the day, Donald Trump needs to be held accountable for his dirty deeds, if in fact that’s the way that the facts play out,” Mr. Cohen said.
Upon emerging from the courthouse, Mr. Cohen told reporters that he had testified for about two hours and had been questioned directly by a number of grand jurors. He said that his role in the investigation was over for the time being.
“My position is that, at the end of the day, Donald Trump needs to be held accountable for his dirty deeds, if in fact that’s the way that the facts play out,” Mr. Cohen said.
March 12
Former President Trump faces varied legal and political threats, including an escalating New York criminal investigation into purported campaign finance crimes involving payments in 2016 to hide his alleged affair with porn star Stormy Daniels, shown above left on the cover of her memoir "Full Disclosure."
Washington Post, Trump in growing legal and political peril ahead of 2024, Ashley Parker, Josh Dawsey and Holly Bailey, March 12, 2023 (print ed.). The Manhattan district attorney has invited former president Donald Trump to testify next week before a grand jury, potentially signaling a significant development in the ongoing investigation into Trump’s business affairs.
An Atlanta-area district attorney investigating whether Trump and his allies broke the law when they sought to overturn Trump’s 2020 election loss in Georgia could announce in coming weeks whether charges will be filed in that case.
And some former allies of Trump, as well as some Trump voters, have expressed a desire for a different 2024 Republican standard-bearer — most specifically, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has privately indicated he plans to seek the White House.
Trump — who stoked an insurrection trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election and is running again in 2024 — finds himself in growing peril, both legal and political. Multiple investigations into him and his actions are entering advanced stages, all while many in the Republican Party — in private conversations and public declarations — are increasingly trying to find an alternative to him.
On Friday, former congressman Lou Barletta (R-Pa.), one of Trump’s earliest backers in 2016, took to Twitter to say that he and Tom Marino, another former Republican representative from Pennsylvania, were urging DeSantis to formally enter the presidential fray.
“More than ever our country needs strong leadership, someone that gets things done & isn’t afraid to stand up for what’s right,” Barletta wrote. “So Tom Marino & I are calling on our former colleague @RonDeSantisFL to run for president in 2024. Come on Ron, your country needs you! #NeverBackDown.”
On Thursday, a new pro-DeSantis super PAC, Never Back Down, also disclosed that it will be led by Ken Cuccinelli, a former Trump administration official. In a statement, Cuccinelli touted DeSantis as “a fighter with a winning conservative track record” with the ability to marshal “an unmatched grassroots political army.”
Politico, Pence goes where no 2024 contender has gone before, Rachael Bade, Eugene Daniels and Ryan Lizza, March 12, 2023. Former VP Mike Pence, shown above left in a collage of file photos, seized the spotlight at the Gridiron yesterday evening — but not for the reason speakers at the annual high-brow journalism dinner typically do.
Sure, Pence had the crowd roaring with self-deprecating dad jokes about his reputation as a deeply religious man, musing at one point that “I always wanted to be the bad boy, the rebel type, the hell-raiser. You know, someone like MITT ROMNEY” — and that he was late because he had to drop “a few more boxes off at the National Archives.”
But the big headline of the evening was Pence slamming former President DONALD TRUMP in what amounts to his strongest criticism to date of his former running mate.
“History will hold Donald Trump accountable for Jan. 6,” Pence said. “Make no mistake about it: What happened that day was a disgrace, and it mocks decency to portray it in any other way. President Trump was wrong. His reckless words endangered my family and everyone at the Capitol that day.”
The rebuke comes just days after Fox News host TUCKER CARLSON toed the Trump line, suggesting that the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol was a peaceful protest by “sightseers” — not “insurrectionists.”
Last night, Pence pushed back hard on that narrative. “Tourists don’t injure 140 police officers by simply sightseeing,” he said. “Tourists don’t break down doors to get to the Speaker of the House. Tourists don’t threaten public officials.”
The former veep did something else that caught the room by surprise: He praised the press — which Trump has routinely lambasted as the “enemy of the people” and “fake news” — and specifically applauded coverage of Jan. 6. “We were able to stay at our post in part because you stayed at your post,” he said of reporters who covered the attack in real time. “The American people know what happened that day because you never stopped reporting.”
He added: “I don’t deny that you infuriate me … and I’m sure I infuriate you … but I genuinely value what you do to keep us a democracy.”
THE REACTION — In the room, the serious turn of Pence’s remarks took attendees by surprise — attendees of the white-tie affair generally have come to expect light-hearted comedy, not serious statements about issues of national importance. And many found it refreshing.
Pence has long had a reputation for fawning over Trump and acting as his “yes” man. He even made a knowing crack about this last night, joking that at their weekly lunches together, the former president liked when Pence would sing him “Wind Beneath My Wings” — specifically the phrase, “Did you ever know that you’re my hero?”
But last night, Pence signaled something important about his possible 2024 bid: a willingness to challenge Trump in a way that no other Republican presidential hopeful has.
Palmer Report, Analysis: Donald Trump is facing arrest, arraignment, bail hearings and more in Manhattan criminal case, Bill Palmer, right, March 12, 2023. With 
Michael Cohen (shown above at right with Trump in file photos) now reportedly set to testify to the Manhattan grand jury tomorrow, Donald Trump’s criminal indictment could happen as soon as the middle of this coming week.
But what’s that really going to look like? How will he be taken into custody? What happens then? Based on how the law works and how these kinds of things are typically handled procedurally, here’s my best educated guess as to how it’ll go down:
When the Manhattan DA announces Trump’s indictment, he’ll likely just instruct Trump to surrender. Trump will likely comply, because playing games would just reduce his odds of getting bail. Even after voluntarily surrendering himself, heading into arraignment, Trump will be considered “under arrest” whether he’s in handcuffs or not.
You won’t want to hear this, but Trump will likely get bail. Nonviolent charges. No criminal record. And in spite of Twitter conspiracy theories, not really a flight risk. There will be cries of “special treatment” and “anybody else in Trump’s position…” but that’s not in line with reality. Anyone else in Trump’s position would likely get bail as well.
The only thing that may work against Trump in his bail hearing is the fact that he’s also under criminal investigation in multiple jurisdictions across the country. But that comes down to the judge’s discretion. And it seems more likely to be a factor the second or third time Trump is indicted, not the first time Trump is indicted.
March 11
New York Times, What We Know About the Potential Indictment of Donald Trump, Ben Protess, Jonah E. Bromwich and William K. Rashbaum, March 11, 2023 (print ed.). A case against the former president — who is also a current presidential candidate — would pose challenges for prosecutors. Here’s why.
The revelation that the Manhattan district attorney’s office has indicated to Donald J. Trump’s lawyers that he could soon face criminal charges marked a major development in an inquiry that has loomed over the former president for nearly five years.
It also raised a number of questions about the contours of the potential case against Mr. Trump, who could become the first former American president to be indicted.
Alvin L. Bragg, right, the district attorney, is focused on Mr. Trump’s involvement in the payment of hush money to a porn star who said she had an affair with him. Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s fixer at the time, made the payment during the final days of the 2016 presidential campaign.
While the facts are dramatic, the case against Mr. Trump would likely hinge on a complex interplay of laws. And a conviction is far from assured.
How did this all begin?
In October 2016, during the final weeks of the presidential campaign, the porn star Stormy Daniels was trying to sell her story of an affair with Mr. Trump.
At first, Ms. Daniels’s representatives contacted the National Enquirer to offer exclusive rights to her story. David Pecker, the tabloid’s publisher and a longtime ally of Mr. Trump, had agreed to look out for potentially damaging stories about him during the 2016 campaign, and at one point even agreed to buy the story of another woman’s affair with Mr. Trump and never publish it, a practice known as “catch and kill.”
But Mr. Pecker didn’t purchase Ms. Daniels’s story. Instead, he and the tabloid’s top editor, Dylan Howard, helped broker a separate deal between Mr. Cohen and Ms. Daniels’s lawyer.
Mr. Cohen paid $130,000, and Mr. Trump later reimbursed him from the White House.
World Crisis Radio, Strategic Commentary: Trump invited to testify before Manhattan grand jury as indictment in Stormy payoff case looms! Webster G. Tarpley, right, author, historian, activist, 
March 11, 2023 (120 mins.). Pillars of MAGA-GOP power splintering: not just over four probes of Don, but also crises of CPAC and fundraising, Fox News, NRA, Southern Baptists, Twitter, Congressional feuding, factions, and more;
Even as he starts role as official despot, Xi is dogged by his catalogue of failures: GDP way below fake official 5% claim, with youth unemployment elevated; population shrinking and aging, raising fears of post-takeoff Thermidor against Communists; Bungling covid policy a hecatomb followed by landmark mass protests;
Loss of beachheads in Europe due to Xi’s foolish embrace of Kremlin; Gulf antics are cold comfort! Result is Xi’s demagogic rocket-rattling vs US;
Fall of Putin is key to ouster of many demagogues across world who have endorsed him;
Alt-lefts increasingly act as scribes and stenographers for predatory oligarchs, from Xi & Putin to Don: they ignore Trump White House’s attempt to silence Chrissy Teigen over choice comments vs Don because it’s not a Musk-approved theme!
Media hit new nadir as cynics and trimmers!
March 10
New disclosures in the E. Jean Carroll rape lawsuit echo Trump's words in "Hollywood Access" videotape, reported upon above, that arose during the 2016 presidential campaign. Shown Then: The front page of a 2016 New York Daily News edition contrasts with President Trump's claimed innocence in the Carroll case.
Politico, Judge okays use of Access Hollywood tape in Trump defamation trial, Erica Orden, March 10, 2023. The Manhattan judge also rejected Trump’s effort to block the columnist, E. Jean Carroll, right, from using the testimony of two other women who previously accused him of sexual assault.
The longtime magazine columnist who accused former President Donald Trump of raping her in the 1990s can use the ‘Access Hollywood’ tape as 
evidence at trial in her defamation case, a federal judge ruled Friday.
The Manhattan judge also rejected Trump’s effort to block the columnist, E. Jean Carroll, from using the testimony of two other women who previously accused him of sexual assault.
U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan wrote that “a jury reasonably could find, even from the ‘Access Hollywood’ tape alone, that Mr. Trump admitted in the ‘Access Hollywood’ tape that he in fact has had contact with women’s genitalia in the past without their consent, or that he has attempted to do so.”
In the tape, a recording from 2005 that was widely scrutinized during the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump boasts, “When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything,” adding: “Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.”
Though Carroll’s 2019 lawsuit alleges only defamation, not sexual assault itself, Judge Kaplan found that “in order to prevail on her libel claim, Ms. Carroll must prove that Mr. Trump sexually assaulted her.”
Without proving the underlying claim of sexual assault, the judge wrote, “she cannot establish that Mr. Trump’s charge that her story was a lie and a hoax was false.”
In November, Carroll, left, also filed a second lawsuit in New York alleging defamation and battery under a new state law. The 2019 lawsuit is set to go to trial in April. A judge hasn’t ruled whether the two cases will be combined.
Trump has denied defaming or assaulting Carroll. “We maintain the utmost confidence that our client will be vindicated at the upcoming trial,” a lawyer for Trump, Alina Habba, said in a statement Friday.
The judge’s ruling Friday will also permit Carroll to use the testimony of Jessica Leeds and Natasha Stoynoff, two women who alleged Trump assaulted them in the years before he ran for office. Leeds alleged Trump groped her while they flew on an airplane together. Stoynoff alleged he sexually assaulted her while she was reporting a story for People Magazine.
Trump has denied both of their accounts.
Donald Trump, actress Arianne Zucker and actor Billy Bush shown together after Trump exchanged his views with Bush about assaulting women, as shown on the notorius Access Hollywood outtake disclosed during the 2016 presidential campaign.
- Washington Post, Trump falsely claimed in deposition that Carroll spoke about enjoying rape, Shayna Jacobs and Isaac Arnsdorfo, Jan. 13, 2023. In sworn questioning, Donald Trump denied raping E. Jean Carroll but also falsely claimed she said she enjoyed sexual assault. At least 17 women have come forward with allegations that Trump physically touched them inappropriately, many of them supported by people they told at the time. Trump has repeatedly denied the allegations.
March 9
New York Times, Prosecutors Signal Criminal Charges for Trump Are Likely, William K. Rashbaum, Ben Protess and Jonah E. Bromwich, March 9, 2023. Former President Trump’s lawyers learned that he could face charges for his role in the payment of hush money to a porn star during his 2016 campaign. Mr. Trump was told that he could appear before a Manhattan grand jury next week if he wants to testify, a sign that an indictment could follow.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office recently signaled to Donald J. Trump’s lawyers that he could face criminal charges for his role in the payment of hush money to a porn star, the strongest indication yet that prosecutors are nearing an indictment of the former president, according to four people with knowledge of the matter.
The prosecutors offered Mr. Trump the chance to testify next week before the grand jury that has been hearing evidence in the potential case, the people said. Such offers almost always indicate an indictment is close; it would be unusual for the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, right, to notify a potential defendant without ultimately seeking charges against him.
In New York, potential defendants have the right to answer questions in the grand jury before they are indicted, but they rarely testify, and Mr. Trump is likely to decline the offer. His lawyers could also meet privately with the prosecutors in hopes of fending off criminal charges.
Any case would mark the first indictment of a former American president, and could upend the 2024 presidential race in which Mr. Trump remains a leading contender. It would also elevate Mr. Bragg to the national stage, though not without risk, and a conviction in the complex case is far from assured.
New York Times, A Trump lawyer admitted she had misrepresented facts in her public claims about voter fraud in the 2020 election, Alan Feuer, March 9, 2023. Jenna Ellis, shown above with fellow Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani and below with Sidney Powell, acknowledged that she knowingly misrepresented the facts about election fraud in a disciplinary procedure by Colorado state bar officials.
Jenna Ellis, a lawyer who represented President Donald J. Trump after his loss in the 2020 election, admitted in a sworn statement released on Wednesday that she had knowingly misrepresented the facts in several of her public claims that widespread voting fraud led to Mr. Trump’s defeat.
The admissions by Ms. Ellis were part of an agreement to accept public censure and settle disciplinary measures brought against her by state bar officials in Colorado, her home state. Last year, the officials opened an investigation of Ms. Ellis after a complaint from the 65 Project, a bipartisan legal watchdog group.
The group accused her of professional misconduct in her efforts to help Mr. Trump promote his claims of voting fraud and undertake “a concerted effort to overturn the legitimate 2020 presidential election results.” An earlier complaint about Ms. Ellis had been filed by a lawyer, Benjamin Woods.
According to the sworn statement on Wednesday, some of Ms. Ellis’s lies about election fraud were made during appearances on Fox News, several of whose top hosts and executives were recently shown to have disparaged Mr. Trump’s fraud claims in private even though they supported them in public. The revelations about these discrepancies have emerged in a series of court filings by Dominion Voting Systems, a voting-machine company that filed a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox for promoting a conspiracy theory about its role in the election results.
Ms. Ellis, part of the so-called elite strike force of lawyers that took to the air and traveled across the country in support of Mr. Trump’s false claims of fraud, is also embroiled in the Justice Department’s investigation of the former president’s sprawling efforts to reverse his loss to Joseph R. Biden Jr. As part of the investigation — which was taken over in November by a special counsel, Jack Smith — dozens of grand jury subpoenas have been issued, many of which have requested information about Ms. Ellis.
In a message posted on Twitter Thursday morning, Ms. Ellis sought to split hairs concerning her agreement with officials in Colorado, saying that she never admitted to lying about election fraud, which she asserted “requires INTENTIONALLY making a false statement.”
But in her stipulation with bar officials, she agreed that censure was merited when lawyers “knowingly engage” in any “conduct that involves dishonesty, fraud, deceit, or misrepresentation.”
“It appears that Ms. Ellis is continuing in her pattern of knowing misrepresentations and falsehoods,” Michael Teter, the managing director of the 65 Project, said on Thursday. “If she continues down this path, it will not be long before she is subject to further disciplinary action.”
When she joined Mr. Trump’s legal team, Ms. Ellis liked to describe herself as a “constitutional law attorney,” although a review of her professional history by The New York Times, as well as interviews with more than a half-dozen lawyers who worked with her, showed that she was not the seasoned constitutional law expert she claimed.
As part of her public censure, Ms. Ellis agreed that her legal work for Mr. Trump “caused actual harm by undermining the American public’s confidence in the presidential election.” Bar officials noted in the statement that “a selfish motive” and “a pattern of misconduct” were aggravating factors in the case.
Ms. Ellis admitted to 10 misrepresentations of the facts during her work for Mr. Trump, beginning within weeks of the election’s being called for Mr. Biden.
- MeidasTouch Network, Opinion: Top Trump Lawyer Throws him UNDER THE BUS to Judge, Ben Meiselas, March 9, 2023 (13:34 min.). Donald Trump’s Senior Election Lawyer Jenna Ellis has signed a formal court document with a Colorado judge admitting to lying about 2020 election fraud. MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports.
March 8
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, left, based in Atlanta, GA, and former President Donald J. Trump.
Proof, Investigative Commentary: The Prosecution of Donald Trump in Georgia May Be Over Before It Even Begins, Seth Abramson, left, best-selling author, 
attorney and founder of the Proof investigative site, March 7, 2023. The lengths Republicans are willing to go to in order to protect their presumptive 2024 POTUS nominee are shocking—including acts that would, in many states, be criminal if committed by an individual.
The sad pattern of potential prosecutions of Donald Trump was long ago established: (1) evidence is readily available for state (and in some cases federal) investigators and prosecutors to move toward a criminal indictment of Trump; (2) the investigators and prosecutors inexplicably 
drag their heels in collecting and synthesizing such evidence; (3) as they’re dragging their heels, the evidence needed to secure a conviction degrades or disappears or is tampered with or is superseded by some odd political or legislative development that is transparently intended to protect would-be-defendant Trump; (4) throughout it all, independent journalists with legal expertise, like the author of Proof, are demanding that investigators and prosecutors move against Trump with the same alacrity they’d display in prosecuting a poor Black man—rather than treating a career-criminal multi-billionaire with kid gloves.
We saw former DOJ special counsel Robert Mueller reveal, on pg. 10 of Volume 1 of his famous report on the Trump-Russia scandal, that he couldn’t get—due to various apparent acts of criminal obstruction and witness tampering—even a fraction of the evidence that he wanted and needed for his investigation of Trump. For that matter, nowhere in the Mueller Report is there any indication that DOJ received cooperation from the U.S. intelligence community in gathering potentially inculpatory evidence against Trump. (I could add, too, that Mueller voluntarily left investigating Trump's international business deals out of his investigative plan, in part because the federal courts and Congress had by then been complicit in dragging their heels on getting Trump’s tax returns).
We watched as Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg inexplicably shut down a recommended indictment of Trump over his mid-2010s “hush money” payments to Stormy Daniels, even after Trump’s accomplice (rather, minion) in that crime, Michael Cohen, had not only agreed to testify against Trump but been convicted and sentenced to prison.
America saw two impeachments against Donald Trump full of slam-dunk evidence of criminal conduct which nevertheless failed to produce a conviction in the U.S. Senate, let alone any meaningful independent action by DOJ—despite countless referrals to DOJ from Congress emanating from the Trump-Russia scandal and January 6 scandal in particular.
And here we go again.
MSNBC is reporting that the GOP-led state legislature in the State of Georgia has now passed two versions of a bill—a bill with a single (and singular) intent—in its House and Senate, which divergent versions will shortly be reconciled and signed into law by the state’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp.
So what does this new bill, which is expected to be inked into law before the end of 2023, accomplish with respect to the now-decades-long effort of state and federal law enforcement agencies to give Trump a permanent pass for his habitual criminal conduct?
Quite simply, it allows Georgia’s Republican governor, Republican lieutenant governor, and Republican state legislative leaders to handpick fellow Georgia Republicans for an “oversight commission” with the power to instantly discipline and remove any prosecutor engaged in professional activities these partisans believe are to the political detriment of the Republican Party.
In other words, by taking so long to investigate and indict Donald Trump for a phone call he made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger well over two years ago, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has all but ensured that she will be removed from her office sometime during the pendency of her slam-dunk criminal case against Donald Trump—a case which, it is believed, will be ready for launch sometime this spring.
What’s so stunning about these developments in Georgia is not only that Georgia Republicans have crafted a law purely to benefit a single perspective criminal defendant—it probably goes without saying that the Georgia Republican Party has exhibited no interest in protecting the rights of criminal defendants up until now, likely because most of the criminal defendants in Georgia are poor, non-famous Black and White citizens—but that a prosecution of Trump in Georgia connected to the coup plot Trump orchestrated was anticipated by many of us in political and legal journalism to be a good candidate for Trial of the Century, when in fact it will now be (barring some unforeseen intervention) little more than a clown show that’s permitted to unfold for just a few months before it’s summarily shut down by political partisans.
Proof has long argued that the Republican Party is at this point merely a front for insurrection and insurrectionist crime—a fact that was only underscored when Trump bizarrely lent his voice to a choral arrangement published by a group of incarcerated January 6 defendants calling themselves the January 6 Choir. So what is happening right now down in Georgia is merely additional evidence of what many independent journalists have been saying for a long time. That doesn’t make it any less dispiriting and unsettling.
Seth Abramson, shown above and at right, is founder of Proof and is a former criminal defense attorney and criminal investigator who teaches digital journalism, 
legal advocacy, and cultural theory at the University of New Hampshire. A regular political and legal analyst on CNN and the BBC during the Trump presidency, he is a best-selling author who has published eight books and edited five anthologies.
Abramson is a graduate of Dartmouth College, Harvard Law School, the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and the Ph.D. program in English at University of Wisconsin-Madison. His books include a Trump trilogy: Proof of Corruption: Bribery, Impeachment, and Pandemic in the Age of Trump (2020); Proof of Conspiracy: How Trump's International Collusion Is Threatening American Democracy (2019); and Proof of Collusion: How Trump Betrayed America (2018).
March 7
Associated Press, Tucker Carlson amplifies Jan. 6 lies with GOP-provided video, Farnoush Amiri, Lisa Mascaro, Mary Clare Jalonick, March 7, 2023. Handed some 41,000 hours of Jan. 6 security footage, Fox News’ Tucker Carlson has launched an impassioned new effort to explain away the deadly Capitol attack, linking the Republican Party ever more closely to pro-Trump conspiracy theories about the 2021 riot.
The conservative commentator aired a first installment to millions of viewers on his prime-time show, working to bend perceptions of the violent, grueling siege that played out for the world to see into a narrative favorable to Donald Trump.
He promised more Tuesday night.
The undertaking by Fox News comes as Trump is again running for president, and executives at the highest levels of the cable news giant have admitted in unrelated court proceedings that it spread the former president’s false claims about the 2020 election despite dismissing Trump’s assertions privately.
The effort dovetails with the work of Republicans on Capitol Hill, led by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy who turned over the security footage to Fox. The Republicans are trying to claw back the findings of the House Jan. 6 investigation, which painstakingly documented, with testimony and video evidence, how Trump rallied his supporters to head to the Capitol and “fight like hell” as Congress was certifying his loss to Democrat Joe Biden.
Trump on Tuesday contended that Carlson’s presentation was “irrefutable” evidence that rioters have been wrongly accused of crimes and he thanked the host and the speaker for their work. Carlson praised McCarthy, right, as having “rectified” the official record.
Trump called anew for the release from custody of people who have been convicted or have pleaded guilty to charges from the attack.
At the same time, criticism poured in from Democrats — and some top Republicans, too — over the GOP’s attempt to amplify falsehoods about the attack that was seen around the world as Trump supporters laid siege to the seat of U.S. democracy.
Rep. Bennie G. Thompson, left, the Democrat who chaired the House Jan. 6 Committee investigating the riot, called McCarthy’s decision to selectively release the security footage “a dereliction of duty.”
“The speaker decided it was more important to give in to a Fox host who spews lies and propaganda than to protect the Capitol,” Thompson said in a statement. He called Jan. 6 “one of the darkest days in the history of our democracy.”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called the Monday night Fox News episode from Carlson “one of the most shameful hours we have ever seen on television.”
The show’s portrayal was “an insult to every single police officer,” Schumer said, especially the family of Brian Sicknick, who died later after fighting the mob. “Nonviolent? Ask his family.”
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, above, said it was a mistake for Fox News to depict the footage as it did — at odds with what he and others witnessed first hand at the Capitol on Jan. 6.
In the roughly 30-minute segment, Fox distilled the thousands of hours of footage of the gruesome scenes at the Capitol that day and did show some of the hand-to-hand combat as rioters laid siege to the building, broke windows and kicked down doors to gain entry.
March 6
Palmer Report, Analysis: Manhattan DA drags Hope Hicks into Donald Trump’s criminal indictment, Bill Palmer, right, March 6, 2023. Hope Hicks was reportedly with the Manhattan DA today. The New York Times says it doesn’t know whether Hicks testified to the grand jury today, or whether she was merely interviewed by the DA’s office ahead of such testimony. But either way, it’s an important milestone.
The DA had Kellyanne Conway testify to the grand jury the other day, and now Hicks has either testified today or was prepped today to testify. These are the kinds of witnesses closest to Trump, who testify last
Hicks and Conway were each working right alongside Trump during his 2016 campaign when he committed the campaign finance fraud he’s being indicted for. They have first hand testimony to provide about his guilt. And while they may still feel some personal loyalty to him, they’re unlikely to be willing to go to prison for perjury just to protect him.
Also, having them testify now isn’t just about securing the indictment. Trump is going to be indicted with or without the help of people like Hicks or Conway. What matters is that the DA is locking in the testimony of Trump’s allies now, under penalty of perjury. This means that when Trump is put on trial, and they have to take the stand in front of the trial jury, they can’t just suddenly decide that they never witnessed anything. At that point they’d be nailed for obstruction.
Remember, all these steps taken during the indictment process are about ensuring that the indictment results in a conviction and not an acquittal. Assembling an indictment that can land a conviction is not just some instant flick of a switch.
But these endgame witnesses make clear just how close to the end of the indictment process the Manhattan DA is. These are the kinds of witnesses you have testify to the grand jury last. And then it’s over, and the grand jury indicts.
March 5
Donald Trump at CPAC on Feb. 28 in Orlando, Florida. Photo: Courtesy of C-SPAN.
New York Times, No Longer the G.O.P.’s Only Favorite, Trump Gears for a Long Primary Fight, Shane Goldmacher, Michael C. Bender and Maggie Haberman, March 5, 2023 (print ed.). Former President Trump basked in affection from activists at CPAC. But his campaign is preparing for a protracted primary fight for the nomination.
Inside the MAGA-clad corridors of this week’s Conservative Political Action Conference, the politics of the Republican Party seemed almost unchanged from the pinnacle of Donald J. Trump’s presidency. Sequin-wearing superfans jostled for selfies with whichever member of the Trump family happened to be nearby. Chants of “We love Trump!” rang out in the halls.
But outside the confines of the friendly gathering, Mr. Trump and his campaign have begun adjusting to the new reality of 2024: The former president may be the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, but he is no longer the singular leader of his party.
After a fitful start, the Trump operation is now actively preparing for the possibility of a drawn-out 2024 primary. That means laying the groundwork to compete in a potential fight over delegates that could extend deep into next year. And it means shadowboxing with his ascendant but not-yet-official challenger, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida (shown below), over donors and endorsements from inside their shared home state and beyond.
This is grunt work Mr. Trump was slow to undertake in his celebrity-powered, but scattershot, campaign in 2016. In 2020, he used his incumbency to scare off any serious challenges.
On the third time around, the Trump campaign’s focus on the traditional nuts and bolts is an acknowledgment of the race’s expected competitiveness, despite his unmatched standing as a former president and an early edge in the polls. But the threat of indictment hanging over the former president is just one reason that 2024 could unfold in the most untraditional of ways.
MeidasTouch Network, Opinion: Trump gives WORST SPEECH ever at CPAC to tiny crowd, Ben Meiselas, March 5, 2023 (20: 49 min. video). Donald Trump just delivered the worst and weirdest speech in history at CPAC. MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports.
New York Times, Larry Hogan, Former Maryland Governor, Says He Won’t Run for President, Maggie Astor, March 5, 2023. Mr. Hogan, the former Maryland governor and longtime Trump critic, said he saw little room to gain support and did not want a large candidate field that could help Mr. Trump win the 2024 Republican primary.
Mr. Hogan, a moderate Republican who has been a frequent critic of former President Donald J. Trump, said in a New York Times opinion essay and in an interview with CBS News’s Robert Costa that he had seriously considered a campaign but concluded that running would not be productive.
In 2016, Mr. Trump won the Republican nomination over a mass of primary competitors who splintered the support of voters who opposed him. No candidate was able to consolidate anti-Trump voters, and Mr. Hogan said he did not want to contribute to a similar situation in 2024.
For now, the primary field remains small. Mr. Trump and Nikki Haley, a former South Carolina governor who served under him as United Nations ambassador, are the only two candidates with experience in state or federal elected office. But the field is likely to grow in the coming months, with Mr. DeSantis and several other nationally known Republicans considering campaigns.
New York Times, Larry Hogan: I’m Not Seeking the Republican Nomination for President, Larry Hogan (former governor of Maryland and a former chair of the National Governors Association), March 5, 2023. I truly appreciate all those around the nation who have for many years encouraged me to run for president. After eight years of pouring my heart and soul into serving the people of Maryland, I have no desire to put my family through another grueling campaign just for the experience.
I would never run for president to sell books or position myself for a cabinet role. I have long said that I care more about ensuring a future for the Republican Party than securing my own future in the Republican Party. And that is why I will not be seeking the Republican nomination for president.
Since Donald Trump won the nomination in 2016, I have fought to make clear that our party cannot be successful if we put personality before principle, if our elected officials are afraid to say publicly what they freely admit behind closed doors, and if we can’t learn from our mistakes because of the political cost of admitting facts to be true. In 2020, the party didn’t even bother passing a campaign platform. For too long, Republican voters have been denied a real debate about what our party stands for beyond loyalty to Mr. Trump. A cult of personality is no substitute for a party of principle.
I believe the tides are finally turning. Republican voters are growing tired of the drama and are open to new leadership. And while I’m optimistic about the future of the Republican Party, I am deeply concerned about this next election. We cannot afford to have Mr. Trump as our nominee and suffer defeat for the fourth consecutive election cycle. To once again be a successful governing party, we must move on from Mr. Trump. There are several competent Republican leaders who have the potential to step up and lead. But the stakes are too high for me to risk being part of another multicar pileup that could potentially help Mr. Trump recapture the nomination.
New York Times, Inside the Panic at Fox News After the 2020 Election, Peter Baker, March 5, 2023 (print ed.). “If we hadn’t called Arizona,” said the network’s chief executive in a recording reviewed by The Times, “our ratings would have been bigger.”
A little more than a week after television networks called the 2020 presidential election for Joseph R. Biden Jr., top executives and anchors at Fox News held an after-action meeting to figure out how they had messed up.
Not because they had gotten the key call wrong — but because they had gotten it right. And they had gotten it right before anyone else.
Typically, it is a point of pride for a news network to be the first to project election winners. But Fox is no typical news network, and in the days following the 2020 vote, it was besieged with angry protests not only from President Donald J. Trump’s camp but from its own 
viewers because it had called the battleground state of Arizona for Mr. Biden. Never mind that the call was correct; Fox executives worried that they would lose viewers to hard-right competitors like Newsmax.
And so, on Monday, Nov. 16, 2020, Suzanne Scott, the chief executive of Fox News Media, and Jay Wallace, the network’s president, convened a Zoom meeting for an extraordinary discussion with an unusual goal, according to a recording of the call reviewed by The New York Times: How to keep from angering the network’s conservative audience again by calling an election for a Democrat before the competition.
Maybe, the Fox executives mused, they should abandon the sophisticated new election-projecting system in which Fox had invested millions of dollars and revert to the slower, less accurate model. Or maybe they should base calls not solely on numbers but on how viewers might react. Or maybe they should delay calls, even if they were right, to keep the audience in suspense and boost viewership.
“Listen, it’s one of the sad realities: If we hadn’t called Arizona, those three or four days following Election Day, our ratings would have been bigger,” Ms. Scott said. “The mystery would have been still hanging out there.”
Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, the two main anchors, suggested it was not enough to call a state based on numerical calculations, the standard by which networks have made such determinations for generations, but that viewer reaction should be considered. “In a Trump environment,” Ms. MacCallum said, “the game is just very, very different.”
The conversation captured the sense of crisis enveloping Fox after the election and underscored its unique role in the conservative political ecosystem. The network’s conduct in this period has come under intense scrutiny in a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems.
March 4
Justice Department Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, left, and former President Donald Trump, shown in a collage via CNN.
Washington Post, As 2024 race begins, special counsel advances with focus on Trump lawyers, Jacqueline Alemany, Josh Dawsey, Spencer S. Hsu and Devlin Barrett, March 4, 2023 (print ed.). Prosecutors have sought information from multiple attorneys and senior aides to the former president, triggering new legal battles.
Federal prosecutors investigating efforts to overturn the 2020 election have asked witnesses extensive questions about the actions of Rudy Giuliani, a lawyer for former president Donald Trump — including where he got his information about alleged fraud, what he did in the days around Jan. 6, 2021, and what he knew about the actions coming that day, people who have appeared in front of the grand jury say.
Investigators looking into classified documents taken to Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Florida home and private club, have sought to force testimony from another Trump lawyer, Evan Corcoran, by saying there is evidence that the former president used the attorney’s legal services in furtherance of a crime.
And prosecutors have repeatedly sought information on the actions of yet another Trump lawyer, Boris Epshteyn, in connection with both classified documents and Trump’s false electors scheme, three people said. They have quizzed multiple Trump attorneys involved with the documents case, including Christina Bobb, Alina Habba and Jesse Binnall, according to the people familiar with the investigation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss it.
The investigative activity highlights one of the ways in which the Trump probes are unusual and complex — turning some of his many current or former attorneys into witnesses or potential investigative targets. A Trump spokesman said the legal strategy was a sign of weakness in the case against the former president.
The probes are led by special counsel Jack Smith, who was appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland to insulate the work from political influence. Smith’s pace appears to be quickening as the 2024 presidential election starts to take shape, with Trump once again a candidate and President Biden — Garland’s boss — poised to seek a second term. Trump so far has two declared Republican opponents. Legal experts say that if Smith brings criminal charges against Trump, those charges would likely be pending when the GOP primary debates begin in August.
March 3
Politico, Judge denies Jan. 6 defendant’s bid for time to review McCarthy’s Capitol security footage, Kyle Cheney, March 3, 2023. The judge said he worried that widely permitting Jan. 6 defendants to slow down their criminal proceedings in order to review this footage could derail dozens of trials.
A federal judge on Friday denied a Jan. 6 defendant’s request to delay her imminent trial in order to review thousands of hours of security footage recently made available by Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg said he understood why Sara Carpenter — who is facing two felony charges for her actions at the Capitol — would like time to review the material. But he said she had failed to explain why any additional footage of her movements inside the building would be exculpatory, particularly when prosecutors had already turned over footage of the vast majority of Carpenter’s 34 minutes inside the building.
Boasberg worried that widely permitting Jan. 6 defendants to slow down their criminal proceedings in order to review this footage could “derail dozens of trials that are set in the next few months.” Boasberg — who is set to become Washington D.C.’s chief district court judge later this month — suggested that to support a delay, he would need defense attorneys to proffer what the newly disclosed videos might show that would be helpful to their clients’ cases.
Boasberg’s ruling is the latest ripple caused by McCarthy’s decision to widen access to 44,000 hours of Capitol security footage from Jan. 6. The Capitol Police had previously turned over about 14,000 hours of the day’s footage that leaders said encompassed crucial time periods of the riot, as well as the relevant camera angles.
It’s unclear whether the additional footage includes evidence that will influence any of the 950-plus Jan. 6 criminal cases. But several defendants have said they intend to access the materials, which House Republicans have agreed to facilitate. The Justice Department has yet to indicate whether it, too, will attempt to obtain and review the footage.
At Friday’s hearing, prosecutors opposed Carpenter’s request, saying they had pieced together the “overwhelming” amount of her movements using CCTV footage, leaving only “a matter of seconds” unaccounted for. Carpenter already has access to a “massive” trove of CCTV footage, they noted, and defendants have the ability to request specific camera angles they would like to focus on if they believe they need additional material.
Prosecutors also suggested that they remain largely in the dark about what the cache of footage newly unearthed by McCarthy might include.
“We don’t have what the speaker has,” said assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher Cook, adding, “In any case, there’s always the possibility some information may be out there.”
Prosecutors are required to disclose to defendants any potentially exculpatory evidence they possess — a particularly thorny challenge in Jan. 6 cases as a result of the massive amounts of video evidence captured by Capitol security cameras, policy bodycams, journalists and rioters themselves, who recorded hundreds of hours worth of footage.
February
Feb. 26
Washington Post, Trump works state-by-state to improve chances at Republican convention, Michael Scherer, Josh Dawsey and Maeve Reston, Feb. 26, 2023 (print ed.). The former president’s team is looking to use experience and early start to find advantages.
Donald Trump’s team has launched a nationwide campaign to buttress his chances of getting sympathetic delegates at next year’s nominating convention and identify opportunities to shape party rules that could help his campaign, according to people familiar with the plans.
The behind-the-scenes effort comes at a time when most Trump rivals have not even launched campaigns and focuses on the most esoteric part of the Republican nominating process — the state rules and party leaders that actually select presidential nominating delegates.
His team has invited state party officials to Mar-a-Lago, arranged private meet-and-greets between state leaders and Trump as he travels, endorsed state officials they believe will be supportive of him and met with senior Republican Party officials in Washington to discuss how the delegate selection process will unfold, according to the people directly familiar with the efforts, who like many for this story spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.
Trump advisers say the outreach is less about demanding changes now and more about cultivating relationships for the upcoming months — when they could call for some rule changes in states and try to shape who the delegates are for the convention. It also shows that while they are projecting political strength, there is a realization that they will likely face a long and difficult nomination fight and potentially a messy convention, some Trump advisers say.
“The Trump campaign has a political operation that is second to none, and will leverage its considerable experience to ensure complete and total victory in 2024,” Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said Friday.
Trump, the onetime outsider who patched together his successful 2016 campaign on the fly, has now built a team more adept at playing the inside game. Strategists for multiple rival political operations, who have not yet formally declared their candidacies, say they are concerned that Trump’s early blocking and tackling could pay major dividends next year and leave them racing to catch up.
Feb. 23
New York Times, Former Proud Boy Says Group Prepared for ‘All-Out Revolution’ on Jan. 6, Zach Montague and Alan Feuer, Updated Feb. 23, 2023. The testimony of a former Proud Boys leader shed new light on the group’s growing desperation before the riot As a gang of Proud Boys stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Jeremy Bertino, above at center, one of the leaders of the far-right group, was at home in North Carolina, watching livestreams of the riot and offering advice to his compatriots on the ground.
Recovering from stab wounds he sustained during an earlier pro-Trump rally, Mr. Bertino was trying his best to aid his fellow Proud Boys in what he believed was another American Revolution. In a barrage of messages, he told his friends to “form a spear,” encouraging them to move en masse toward the Capitol.
“I was excited,” he testified Wednesday. “I thought I was watching history and watching the guys about to go into the building.”
Appearing for a second day of testimony at the seditious conspiracy trial of five members of the Proud Boys in Federal District Court in Washington, Mr. Bertino gave the proceeding a sudden burst of drama by taking the stand against his former associates. After nearly six weeks of arcane arguments about evidence and often lackluster testimony, Mr. Bertino offered jurors an insider’s glimpse of the growing sense of desperation within both the Proud Boys’ leadership and rank and file in the weeks leading up to the Capitol attack.
Since opening statements on Jan. 12, prosecutors have been seeking to convince the jury that Enrique Tarrio, the group’s leader at the time of the riot, and the other four defendants in the case — Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs, Zachary Rehl and Dominic Pezzola — conspired to use force to stop the transfer of presidential power from Donald J. Trump to Joseph R. Biden Jr.
Mr. Bertino recalled frenetically swapping texts with Mr. Tarrio while the mob — with the Proud Boys in the lead — overran the Capitol. Mr. Bertino expressed pride and amazement to Mr. Tarrio, openly hoping that the rioters would track down Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
“Brother, You know we made this happen,” Mr. Bertino wrote. “I’m so proud of my country today.”
“I know,” Mr. Tarrio responded.
The defense sought to cast doubt on Mr. Bertino’s account on Wednesday, noting that he had told federal investigators in several previous statements that the group never explicitly planned to stop the certification of the election.
Under questioning by Nicholas Smith, Mr. Nordean’s lawyer, Mr. Bertino seemed argumentative at times as he replied that some of his prior statements were false but added that the group was acting on an unspoken understanding, rather than a telegraphed plan to topple the government.
The two-day testimony of Jeremy Bertino, a former leader of the far-right group, shed new light on the Proud Boys’ growing desperation in the weeks before the riot. .As anxiety spread throughout the group after the Supreme Court declined to overturn Mr. Biden’s victory in Pennsylvania in December 2020, Mr. Bertino said that he and the group’s top leaders came to believe that “time was running out to save the country.” The Proud Boys, he went on, would have to take the lead in galvanizing other Trump supporters who came to Washington into realizing an “all-out revolution.”
But as he witnessed that effort break down in real time on Jan. 6, Mr. Bertino said he became outraged that other rioters had failed to follow the group’s leadership and commit fully to halting the certification of the vote.
“Going halfway into the Capitol and then relinquishing it did nothing but cause a lot of problems for people in the country and people that went in there,” he added. “It didn’t accomplish anything,”
Over more than 12 hours on the stand, Mr. Bertino described his personal trajectory from a new Proud Boys recruit to the only member of the group to have pleaded guilty to charges of seditious conspiracy. He also talked about the respect and status he gained for his often frontline role in clashing with the group’s political adversaries.
On Tuesday, Mr. Bertino recalled a rally in Washington on Nov. 14, 2020, when at least 100 Proud Boys went in search of counterprotesters and chased them away after “a big street brawl.”
Something similar took place when the group returned on Dec. 12, 2020, picking a fight after dark with leftist activists. During that melee, Mr. Bertino was stabbed and hospitalized with a broken rib and a punctured lung.
At times on Wednesday, he spoke fondly of the “brotherhood” he formed with other leaders and the shared ideals he would discuss with the men he is now testifying against.
“Most of us would have taken a bullet for each other,” he said. “We all shared some sort of trauma within the club.”
But at other times, Mr. Bertino betrayed a sense of frustration about simmering disorganization and “drama” within the group, and a feeling that Mr. Tarrio sometimes concealed his intentions from junior members and failed to keep the group as a whole focused on its political goals.
Mr. Bertino’s testimony also helped reinforce a key pillar of the government’s case: that the group became increasingly hostile toward the police in the wake of violence that erupted after the pro-Trump rallies in Washington.
The knife attack he suffered turned him and other Proud Boys against their perceived allies in the police, who they believed had protected the assailant, Mr. Bertino testified. He said it fueled a paranoid perception that the group was standing alone against a broad coalition of political opponents that included law enforcement, liberal-leaning mayors and the incoming Biden administration.
Washington Post, Trump’s grip on the Republican base is slipping — even among his fans, Isaac Arnsdorf, Josh Dawsey, Hannah Knowles, Yvonne Wingett Sanchez, Patrick Marley and Ashley Parker, Feb. 23, 2023. More than 150 interviews in pivotal electoral states show Donald Trump maintains a bond with his GOP voters, but faces rising interest in a new standard-bearer.
The MAGA vs. RINO dichotomy that defined the GOP for much of the last eight years is increasingly obsolete. In its place, a new dynamic emerged from interviews with more than 150 Trump supporters across five pivotal electoral states. In between Republicans who remain firmly committed or opposed to the former president, there’s now a broad range of Trump supporters who, however much they still like him, aren’t sure they want him as the party’s next nominee.
Washington Post, Trump may be questioned in lawsuits by ex-FBI employees, Spencer S. Hsu, Feb. 23, 2023. Two former senior FBI employees who allege they were targeted for retribution after FBI’s Trump-Russia probe may narrowly probe Trump, FBI Director Christopher Wray.
A federal judge on Thursday ordered that former president Donald Trump and FBI Director Christopher Wray, right, can be questioned under oath by attorneys for two former senior FBI employees who allege in separate lawsuits that they were illegally targeted for retribution after the FBI investigated Russia’s interference in the 2020 presidential election.
The decision by U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson of Washington came in consolidated lawsuits against the FBI and Justice Department by former senior FBI agent Peter Strzok and former FBI lawyer Lisa Page.
Strzok seeks reinstatement and back pay over what he alleges was his unfair termination for criticizing then-president Trump. Page alleges officials unlawfully released a trove of politically charged text messages she exchanged with Strzok, with whom she was having an affair.
New York Times, Special Counsel Seeks to Force Pence to Testify Before Jan. 6 Grand Jury, Alan Feuer and Maggie Haberman, Feb. 23, 2023. Prosecutors have asked a federal judge to set aside any claims of executive privilege that former Vice President Mike Pence might raise to avoid questioning.
The Justice Department has asked a federal judge to force former Vice President Mike Pence to testify fully in front of a grand jury investigating former President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, seeking to cut short any attempt by Mr. Trump to use executive privilege to shield Mr. Pence from answering questions, two people familiar with the matter said on Thursday.
The request — amounting to a pre-emptive motion to compel Mr. Pence’s testimony — came before the former vice president had even appeared in front of the grand jury, and before any privilege claims had actually been raised in court.
The sealed motion, filed in recent days in Federal District Court in Washington, is the latest step in a long-running behind-the-scenes struggle, first by the Justice Department and now by the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, to cut through the various assertions of privilege that witnesses close to Mr. Trump have repeatedly raised in an effort to avoid answering questions.
The privilege disputes have been handled by Judge Beryl A. Howell, the chief federal judge in Washington, who oversees all of the district’s grand jury matters, which as a rule are conducted in secret. Judge Howell is expected to step down from her position next month and be replaced by another chief judge.
Washington Post, Georgia juror unsettles Trump investigation with revealing interviews, Amy Gardner and Matthew Brown, Feb. 23, 2023. Emily Kohrs may have added to the challenge for Fulton County D.A. Fani Willis, above left, whose investigation has come under scrutiny for what some have described as legal and ethical missteps.
The foreman of a special grand jury in Georgia may have complicated an investigation into efforts by President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 election by speaking bluntly about its findings in interviews this week, several legal experts said.
Emily Kohrs, the 30-year-old Atlanta-area resident who served for eight months as foreman of the special grand jury, said in media interviews this week that the panel recommended multiple indictments in its report, the details of which a Fulton County judge had ordered sealed.
Kohrs said that the list of recommended indictments “is not short,” that there would be no “plot twist” when the public finally gets to see the contents of the report and that regarding “the big name that everyone keeps asking me about” — presumably Trump himself — “I don’t think you will be shocked.”
Several legal experts said they were surprised and concerned by Kohrs’s unusually candid commentary, which included evaluation of witnesses, tidbits about jurors socializing with prosecutors and a stated hope that the investigation yields charges because of how much time she and others invested in the case.
The remarks could cause additional challenges for Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, whose investigation has come under scrutiny for what some have described as legal and ethical missteps. Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney effectively barred Willis from investigating Lt. Gov. Burt Jones (R), who served as one of Trump’s false electors in Georgia, after Willis hosted a fundraiser for his opponent.
Trump and his allies have repeatedly criticized Willis for her outspoken characterization of the investigation and frequent media appearances. She told The Washington Post in September that her team had heard credible allegations that serious crimes had been committed and that she believed some would see jail time.
\If Willis does indict Trump — becoming the first prosecutor to bring charges against a former president — Trump could use Kohrs’s remarks to advance the argument he’s made all along: that Willis’s probe has amounted to a political prosecution and not a serious investigative inquiry.
Trump weighed in on Kohrs’s comments on Wednesday, calling the case “ridiculous” and criticizing her for “going around and doing a Media Tour revealing, incredibly, the Grand Jury’s inner workings & thoughts. This is not JUSTICE, this is an illegal Kangaroo Court.”
Willis’s office declined to comment on Kohrs’s interviews.
Kohrs told CNN that former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows and other witnesses refused to answer questions by invoking their Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination. She also described an ice cream social she attended hosted by Willis’s office.
New York Times, Lawyers for former President Trump said an inquiry into election interference in Georgia had been “poisoned,” Richard Fausset and Danny Hakim, Feb. 23, 2023. Lawyers for former President Donald J. Trump said late Wednesday that details divulged this week by the forewoman of a special grand jury investigating election interference by Mr. Trump and his allies had “poisoned” the Georgia inquiry.
As of Thursday morning, however, the two lawyers had not filed any motions in court challenging the inquiry. Nor would they discuss what form such a challenge might take, saying only that they were weighing their options. “We’re just considering everything,” one of the lawyers, Drew Findling, said.
Earlier this week, the forewoman, Emily Kohrs, spoke in interviews with a number of news outlets after The Associated Press identified her through a public records request. She said that the 23-person special grand jury, which can only make recommendations on whether prosecutors should indict, had made such recommendations for more than a dozen people in the case. Fani T. Willis, the Fulton County district attorney, who is handling the case, will ultimately make charging decisions and bring them to a regular grand jury.
Ms. Kohrs declined to name names or say which laws the jurors believed had been broken. But asked if Mr. Trump was among those recommended for indictment, she told The New York Times: “You’re not going to be shocked. It’s not rocket science.”
Proof, Investigative Commentary: What Should We Make of the Breaking News That One of Donald Trump’s Leading Attorneys May Be Indicted By the Department of Justice? Seth Abramson, Feb. 20. 2023. A recent report suggesting that a member of the former president’s legal team may be nearing criminal charges—and that Trump has been warned to have no further contact with him—raises some red flags.
When the news first came down that one of Donald Trump’s many attorneys appears to be on the doorstep of a federal indictment, on some level it was no surprise. The former president has always sought to use his legal counsel as co-conspirators, and pretty openly, in fact: it’s why he’s often said he wants a personal lawyer like the late disbarred criminal Roy Cohn.
It’s also why we’ve seen the names of nearly every Trump attorney appear on the witness list of the major Trump scandals: Americans now know people like Michael Cohen, Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, Joe diGenova, Victoria Toensing, Christina Bobb, and John Eastman not as litigators or legal experts but men and women who stood beside Trump.
Proof, Investigative Commentary: With the Breaking News in Georgia That Trump Is Almost Certain to Be Indicted, What Are We to Make of How Major Media Seems to Be Already Trying to Discredit the Indictment? Seth Abramson, left, Feb 23, 2023.
A recent interview by former Fulton County grand juror Emily Kohrs is being used by certain figures in major media to cast doubt on a Trump indictment before it happens—for no good reason whatsoever.
Emily Kohrs is a Georgia woman who will have no direct role whatsoever in indicting Donald Trump or anyone else for Election Fraud in any of the very high-profile cases now being investigated by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.
So the fact that American media has thus far been unable to discuss her acting unwisely following the end of her public service as a Georgia grand juror without also darkly intimating that her entirely legal conduct in granting a post-service interview could imperil a future Trump indictment in Georgia is a bad sign for American rule of law.
So let’s summarize what we know, following the recent Emily Kohrs interview: Legal experts agree that while Kohrs may have endangered herself physically and created “bad optics” by granting one interview following her grand jury service, she did not violate any court order or any Georgia statute or regulation regarding grand jury service in doing so.
Nor did she say anything that exhibited a preexisting bias against any of the 75 prospective Fulton County defendants, Trump included. There’s also no evidence that Kohrs plans on giving any further interviews, despite catty commentary suggesting that she is on a “media tour.”
What’s coming is an indictment the likes of which we have never seen before, in part because it’s that oddest of combinations, to wit, a slam-dunk case with a high-profile defendant who can rightly make only a single claim—that the prosecution of him is unprecedented.
It will be journalists’ job not to confuse the fact of an indictment of Trump being historic with there somehow being something wrong or bad or biased or sinister about any prosecution of him, and it will be the job of Trump to take every “first-ever” occurrence in his case as a sign of a vast left-wing conspiracy and use that false frame to try to stir up a Second Civil War in a desperate bid to save himself.
New York Times, Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump Are Subpoenaed in Jan. 6 Investigation, Maggie Haberman and Michael S. Schmidt, Feb. 23, 2023 (print ed.). Former President Donald J. Trump’s daughter Ivanka and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, have been subpoenaed by the special counsel to testify before a federal grand jury about Mr. Trump’s efforts to stay in power after he lost the 2020 election and his role in a pro-Trump mob’s attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, according to two people briefed on the matter.
The decision by the special counsel, Jack Smith, to subpoena Ms. Trump and Mr. Kushner underscores how deeply into Mr. Trump’s inner circle Mr. Smith is reaching, and is the latest sign that no potential high-level witness is off limits.
The disclosure about the subpoena comes two weeks after it was revealed that Mr. Smith had subpoenaed former Vice President Mike Pence to testify before the grand jury. Mr. Pence plans to fight the subpoena, invoking his role as the president of the Senate to argue that it violates the “speech or debate” clause of the Constitution.
It is unclear whether Mr. Trump will seek to block Ms. Trump and Mr. Kushner from testifying on the grounds of executive privilege, as he has tried with some other witnesses. Both of them served as White House officials in the Trump administration. Mr. Trump declined to try to stop them from testifying before the House special committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack and what led to it.
Palmer Report, Opinion: The real reason Jack Smith is going at Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, Bill Palmer, right, Feb. 22, 2023. When the news broke two weeks ago that DOJ Special Counsel Jack Smith had subpoenaed Mike Pence to testify to a federal grand jury against Donald Trump, it generated a lot of confusion and false narratives. People wanted to know why the DOJ had waited this long to go at Pence. And of course we had to sit through the media’s usual false narratives about how Pence will simply “run out the clock” and Trump will magically get away with it all.
But back in the real world, that’s not at all how a federal criminal investigation works. You always start with the people at the bottom, who are usually eager to give up everything they know just so they don’t get in legal trouble themselves. Then you use that information as a basis for figuring out how to corner reluctant higher level witnesses. You keep moving upward until you have the highest level witnesses cornered. Then you force them to tell the real truth to a grand jury, and they know they can’t get away with lying to protect anyone, because you already know the truth.
So when the news broke that Pence was subpoenaed, it was a big clue that the DOJ is close to the end of the investigative and indictment phase of its Trump probe. For one thing, even though the news didn’t break until two weeks ago, it was reported that Pence had actually been subpoenaed the month before. And for all of Pence’s public bluster about how he’s supposedly going to fight the subpoena, the reality is that the courts tend to handle disputes over grand jury subpoenas rather swiftly (see Fulton County). In nearly all cases, any witness who challenges a grand jury subpoena still ends up having to swiftly testify; the court rulings merely define the scope of which questions have to be answered. Given how long ago Pence was subpoenaed, it’s probable that any legal challenges over his testimony are already over or mostly over.
More to the point, the witnesses closest to the situation (and the target) are subpoenaed last. So when the news broke that Jack Smith had subpoenaed Pence, we pointed out that there weren’t many more witnesses left who were closer to the situation than Pence – which means we were nearly at the end. But now the news has broken today that Jack Smith has also subpoenaed Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner to testify against Donald Trump to the grand jury.
This is not in any way surprising. Even when it came to the January 6th Committee probe, an arena in which subpoenas can be dragged out for years, Ivanka and Jared ultimately decided to testify against Trump rather than face potential legal consequences. So in the grand jury arena, where you either promptly comply with a subpoena or you promptly face legal consequences, it’s not surprising that Smith is pushing Ivanka and Jared to testify. If they’ve already quasi-volunteered useful testimony against Donald Trump to Congress, they’ll surely do the same in response to a grand jury subpoena.
The kicker is that Ivanka and Jared are, arguably, the only witnesses who are even closer to the situation (and closer to Donald Trump) than Mike Pence is. At this point it would be difficult to come up with any more names that Jack Smith could subpoena, at least in this 1/6 probe. Of course we’re about to hear a bunch of pundit nonsense about how Ivanka and Jared will somehow magically “run out the clock” on these subpoenas, even though that’s not how grand jury subpoenas work. But the reality is that they’ll have to swiftly testify – as will Pence – and we’re obviously very close to the end of the process.
Keep in mind that this “process” is the federal criminal indictment of Donald Trump. This isn’t for show. This isn’t for some mere report. This is the process of the DOJ hitting Trump with criminal charges. And it’s becoming clear that there will be charges against Trump on multiple fronts.
Even as Jack Smith plays out the endgame in his Trump 1/6 probe by putting Pence and the Trump family in front of the grand jury, Smith has also reportedly put three of Trump’s own attorneys in front of the grand jury in the classified documents probe. It’s becoming more obvious that the DOJ is gearing up to criminally indict Donald Trump on multiple fronts, and that these indictments will include witnesses who were the closest to his crimes.
Feb. 20
Emptywheel, Analysis: James Comer's Twitter Hearing Confirmed Donald Trump's Censorship Attempt and Matt Taibbi's "Censorship" about It, 
Emptywheel (Dr. Marcy Wheeler, right), Feb. 20, 2023. James Comer's hearing on Twitter proved two things: The single instance of government censorship proven at the hearing involved Trump's attempt to censor a tweet calling him "pussy ass bitch," and Matt Taibbi had obscured -- according to his own false terms, "censored" -- that incident.
Palmer Report, Analysis: Donald Trump’s lawyers try to pick a scapegoat, give away that they expect the DOJ to take Trump down, Bill Palmer, right, Feb. 20, 2023. Over the past week various major media outlets have collectively reported that DOJ Special Counsel Jack Smith had three of Donald Trump’s own attorneys testify against him to a federal grand jury in early January.
It’s never been clear who leaked this information or why. But it did give away that the DOJ has been working on precisely what we said from the start it would do: it’s looking to turn Trump’s own attorneys into cooperating witnesses against him, in order to ensure a conviction at trial. It’s how the DOJ always takes down crime bosses. Now there’s a new twist.
Someone is now leaking to Rolling Stone that Donald Trump’s legal team has told him that the DOJ will “very likely” indict his attorney Evan Corcoran for obstruction. Moreover, Trump’s legal team is telling him that Corcoran will be the only one indicted, and that Trump will somehow magically go free in the process. This leak is strange, on so many levels.
First, there’s no scenario – none – absolutely none whatsoever – where Evan bleeping Corcoran gets indicted for this instead of Donald Trump. That notion is laugh out loud delusional. If the DOJ does indict Corcoran, it’ll obviously be to force him to cut a deal against Trump. That’s how the DOJ operates in these kinds of cases, and everyone knows it.
Second, Corcoran is one of the three Trump attorneys who have reportedly been testifying against Trump to the DOJ grand jury. When prosecutors put someone in front of the grand jury, it’s usually a sign that they’re not looking to indict that person. Instead they’re giving that person the chance to help take someone more important down.
Yet now, even as the available clues point to the DOJ being in the process of getting Corcoran to help take Trump down, Trump’s other legal people are (incorrectly) telling Trump that the DOJ is going to indict Corcoran instead of indicting Trump. Why feed Trump this line of crap? Do they actually have the sense that Corcoran is indeed about to be indicted, and they’re trying to keep Trump calm by tricking him into believing that Corcoran’s indictment will be the end of Trump’s troubles?
Or is this such a desperate short term gambit on the part of Trump’s lawyers, they don’t even care about how foolish they’ll look in Trump’s eyes when Corcoran cuts a deal instead of getting indicted? That doesn’t even make sense. But when things get as desperate at they are in Trump land, with three of his attorneys having already testified against him to a grand jury, everyone in Trump land is likely in full panic mode and just throwing things at the wall in the hope any of it might buy them a day or two.
We’ll see where this goes. But regardless of what anyone’s motivations might be, we now know that Donald Trump’s own attorneys are preparing him for indictments to start dropping. And if they really are telling Trump that a Corcoran indictment means Trump somehow won’t be indicted (it would mean the precise opposite), then they really are just trying to keep Trump calm and remain employed while the DOJ finishes taking Trump down.
Proof, Investigative Commentary: What Should We Make of the Breaking News That One of Donald Trump’s Leading Attorneys May Be Indicted By the Department of Justice? Seth Abramson, Feb. 20. 2023. A recent report suggesting that a member of the former president’s legal team may be nearing criminal charges—and that Trump has been warned to have no further contact with him—raises some red flags.
When the news first came down that one of Donald Trump’s many attorneys appears to be on the doorstep of a federal indictment, on some level it was no surprise. The former president has always sought to use his legal counsel as co-conspirators, and pretty openly, in fact: it’s why he’s often said he wants a personal lawyer like the late disbarred criminal Roy Cohn.
It’s also why we’ve seen the names of nearly every Trump attorney appear on the witness list of the major Trump scandals: Americans now know people like Michael Cohen, Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, Joe diGenova, Victoria Toensing, Christina Bobb, and John Eastman not as litigators or legal experts but men and women who stood beside Trump as he engaged in his typically egregious, often borderline (and sometimes over-the-borderline) criminal conduct, from the Trump-Russia scandal to the Trump-Ukraine scandal to the Trump-Saudi Arabia scandal to the January 6 insurrection and now the Mar-a-Lago documents scandal (plus many others I am leaving out here for the sake of brevity).
And it’s with respect to this last scandal that we’ve now learned, from Rolling Stone, that the near-universal opinion even among the unabashed partisans of Trump’s legal team is that his attorney Evan Corcoran—the lawyer who made now evidently false representations to the FBI during its year-long effort to recover scores of boxes of stolen material from Corcoran’s client, Trump—is likely to be indicted by DOJ, most probably for Obstruction of Justice.
Corcoran has already testified before a grand jury, during which he sought to hide key evidence from a group of average Americans investigating Trump’s post-election handling of classified documents by claiming that his testimony was protected by attorney-client privilege. DOJ is now seeking to compel his testimony under the crime-fraud exception to the general rule that attorney-client communications are protected by compelled government disclosure, an indication that the official position of the Department is that crimes were indeed committed in the Mar-a-Lago documents scandal.
Rolling Stone also reports—in a journalistic maneuver that makes what should be a terrible story for Donald Trump somehow seem less egregious—that Trump’s inner circle is now seeking to have him distance himself from Corcoran on the premise that Corcoran was a rogue actor on whom much of the misconduct that occurred during the Mar-a-Lago documents scandal can be blamed. To its credit, while giving Trump partisans (all of whom have for some reason been provided anonymity) an opportunity to spin a possible Corcoran indictment as almost good for Trump because
Don’t fall for the Trumpworld spin that Corcoran was a rogue actor, or that if he is indicted it will only advance Trump’s narrative about having received bad advice from his legal team (and, weirdly, Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton) at the tail end of his presidency on the subject of classified documents. As a lawyer, a former criminal investigator, a Trump biographer, and an independent journalist who has written a book on every major Trump scandal thus far, my advice to readers of this new Rolling Stone report is to as an initial matter presume every Donald Trump attorney to be an accomplice rather than an adviser and respond to any indictment of such an attorney accordingly.
Seth Abramson, shown above and at right, is founder of Proof and is a former criminal defense attorney and criminal investigator who teaches digital journalism, legal advocacy, and cultural theory at the University of New Hampshire. A regular political and legal analyst on CNN and the BBC during the Trump presidency, he is a best-selling author who has published eight books and edited five anthologies.
Feb. 18
Fox News hosts Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson, shown left to right, each expressed contempt for the voting fraud allegations they were broadcasting to Fox audiences, according to newly released internal documents obtained as evidence in a forthcoming defamation trial against the network, its owners and personnel.
Feb. 17
New York Times, Fox Stars Privately Expressed Disbelief About Election Fraud Claims. ‘Crazy Stuff,’ Jeremy W. Peters and Katie Robertson, Feb. 17, 2023 (print ed.). The comments, by Tucker Carlson (above), Sean Hannity and others, were released as part of a 
defamation suit against Fox News by Dominion Voter Systems.
Newly disclosed messages and testimony from some of the biggest stars and most senior executives at Fox News revealed that they privately expressed disbelief about President Donald J. Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him, even though the network continued to promote many of those lies on the air.
The hosts Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, as well as others at the company, repeatedly insulted and mocked Trump advisers, including Sidney Powell, right, and Rudolph W. Giuliani, in text messages with each other in the weeks after the election, according to a legal filing on Thursday by Dominion Voting Systems. Dominion 
is suing Fox for defamation in a case that poses considerable financial and reputational risk for the country’s most-watched cable news network.
“Sidney Powell is lying by the way. I caught her. It’s insane,” Mr. Carlson wrote to Ms. Ingraham on Nov. 18, 2020.
Ms. Ingraham responded: “Sidney is a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy.”
Mr. Carlson continued, “Our viewers are good people and they believe it,” he added, making clear that he did not.
The messages also show that such doubts extended to the highest levels of the Fox Corporation, with Rupert Murdoch, left, its chairman, calling Mr. Trump’s voter fraud claims “really crazy stuff.”
On one occasion, as Mr. Murdoch watched Mr. Giuliani and Ms. Powell on television, he told Suzanne Scott, chief executive of Fox News Media, “Terrible stuff damaging everybody, I fear.”
Dominion’s brief depicts Ms. Scott, whom colleagues have described as sharply attuned to the sensibilities of the Fox audience, as being well aware that Mr. Trump’s claims were baseless. And when another Murdoch-owned property, The New York Post, published an editorial urging Mr. Trump to stop complaining that he had been cheated, Ms. Scott distributed it widely among her staff. Mr. Murdoch then thanked her for doing so, the brief says.
The filing, in state court in Delaware, contains the most vivid and detailed picture yet of what went on behind the scenes at Fox News and its corporate parent in the days and weeks after the 2020 election, when the conservative cable network’s coverage took an abrupt turn.
Fox News stunned the Trump campaign on election night by becoming the first news outlet to declare Joseph R. Biden Jr. the winner of Arizona — effectively projecting that he would become the next president. Then, as Fox’s ratings fell sharply after the election and the president refused to concede, many of the network’s most popular hosts and shows began promoting outlandish claims of a far-reaching voter fraud conspiracy involving Dominion machines to deny Mr. Trump a second term.
New York Times, Guest Essay: It’s Time to Prepare for a Possible Trump Indictment, Norman L. Eisen, E. Danya Perry and Amy 
Lee Copeland, Feb. 17, 2023. Mr. Eisen, right, is a co-author of “Fulton County, Georgia’s Trump Investigation,” a Brookings Institution report on the Fulton County district attorney’s investigation. Ms. Perry is an author of “Trump on Trial,” a Brookings Institution report on the Jan. 6 committee. Ms. Copeland is a criminal defense and appellate attorney in Savannah, Ga.
“We find by unanimous vote that no widespread fraud took place in the Georgia 2020 presidential election that could result in overturning that election.” With those words, a Fulton County special grand jury’s report, part of which was released Thursday, repudiated Donald Trump’s assault on our democracy.
The excerpts from the report did not explicitly offer new detail on a potential indictment of Mr. Trump or any other individual. But they suggest that, combined with everything else we know, Mr. Trump may very well be headed for charges in Georgia.
We need to prepare for a first in our 246-year history as a nation: The possible criminal prosecution of a former president.
If Mr. Trump is charged, it will be difficult and at times even perilous for American democracy — but it is necessary to deter him and others from future attempted coups.
Fani Willis, left, the Fulton County district attorney, may present the case as a simple and streamlined one or in a more sweeping fashion. Success is more likely assured in the simpler approach, but the fact that the redacted report has eight sections suggests a broader approach is conceivable. In either event, we must all prepare ourselves for what could be years of drama, with the pretrial, trial and appeal likely dominating the coming election season.
Ms. Willis opened her investigation shortly after Mr. Trump’s Jan. 2, 2021, demand that the Georgia secretary of state, Brad 
Raffensperger, “find 11,780 votes.” The second impeachment of Mr. Trump and the Jan. 6 committee hearings developed additional evidence about that request for fake votes and Mr. Trump and allies pushing fake electors in Georgia and nationally. There is now abundant evidence suggesting he violated Georgia statutes, like those criminalizing the solicitation of election fraud.
The parts of the special grand jury’s report revealed on Thursday only reinforce Mr. Trump’s risk of prosecution. The statement that the grand jurors found “no widespread fraud” in the presidential election eliminates Mr. Trump’s assertion that voter fraud justified his pushing state election officials. We also know that the grand jurors voted defendant by defendant and juror by juror, and set forth their recommendations on indictments and relevant statutes over seven (currently redacted) sections. The likelihood that they did that and cleared everyone is very low. And the fact that the grand jurors felt so strongly about the issues that they insisted on writing the recommendations themselves, as they emphasize, further suggests a grave purpose.
Also notable is the grand jury’s recommendation of indictments, “where the evidence is compelling,” for perjury that may have been committed by one or more witnesses. It seems unlikely that Ms. Willis will let that pass.
She will now decide the next steps of the case. Her statement that charging decisions were imminent came more than three weeks ago. If she does indict Mr. Trump, the two likely paths that she might take focus on the fake electoral slates and Mr. Trump’s call to Mr. Raffensperger. One is a narrower case that would likely take weeks to try; the other is a broader case that would likely take months.
Narrow charges could include the Georgia felonies of solicitation of election fraud in the first degree and related general crimes like conspiracy to commit election fraud, specifically focusing on events and people who have a strong nexus with Georgia. In addition to Mr. Trump, that might include others who had direct contacts with Georgia, like his former chief of staff Mark Meadows and his attorneys John C. Eastman and Rudolph W. Giuliani (who already received a “target” notification from Ms. Willis warning him that he may be charged). Such a case would focus on activities around the execution of the fake electoral slates on Dec. 14, 2020, followed by the conversation with Mr. Raffensperger on Jan. 2, rooting it in Georgia and avoiding events nationally except to the extent absolutely necessary.
Or Ms. Willis could charge the case more broadly, adding sweeping state Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations, or RICO, charges that could still include the impact of the conduct in Georgia but bring in more of a nationwide conspiracy. This would look more like the Jan. 6 investigation, albeit with a strong Georgia flavor. It could additionally include those who appeared to have lesser contact with Georgia but were part of national efforts including the state, like the Trump campaign attorney Kenneth Chesebro and the Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark.
A more narrow case might make slightly more sense: Given the extraordinary circumstances around it, Ms. Willis will surely have her hands full. And it will feature a likely lead defendant who has demonstrated his propensity for legal circuses — coming in the midst of a heated political season no less.
That said, Ms. Willis has a proven propensity for bringing and winning RICO cases. And as we have learned in our criminal trial work, sometimes juries are more responsive to grander narratives that command their attention — and outrage.
Whether it’s simple or broad, if a case is opened, one thing is nearly certain: It’s going to take a while, probably the better part of the next two years, and perhaps longer. We would surely see a flurry of legal filings from Mr. Trump, which while often meritless nevertheless take time. Here the battle would likely be waged around pretrial motions and appeals by Mr. Trump arguing, as he has done in other cases, that he was acting in his official presidential capacity and so is immune.
That challenge, though not persuasive at all in our view, will almost certainly delay a trial by months. Other likely sallies are that the case should be removed to federal court (it shouldn’t); that he relied on the advice of counsel in good faith (he didn’t); or that his action was protected by the First Amendment (it wasn’t).
Even if the courts work at the relatively rapid pace of other high-profile presidential cases, we would still be talking about months of delay. In both U.S. v. Nixon and Thompson v. Trump, about three months were consumed from the first filing of the cases to the final rejection of presidential arguments by the U.S. Supreme Court. In this case, there would be more issues, which would be likely to require additional time. At the earliest, Ms. Willis would be looking at a trial toward the end of 2023. Even on that aggressive schedule, appeals would not be concluded until the end of 2024 or beyond.
Needless to say, this would have a profound impact on the election season. It would feature a national conversation about what it means for a former president to be prosecuted, and it would no doubt have unexpected consequences.
Still, the debate is worth having, and the risks are worth taking. The core American idea is that no one is above the law. If there is serious evidence of crimes, then a former president should face the same consequences as anyone else. If we do not hold accountable those who engage in this kind of misconduct, it will recur.
It would be the trial of the 21st century, no doubt a long and bumpy ride — but a necessary one for American democracy.
Norman Eisen was special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee during the first impeachment of Donald Trump. E. Danya Perry is a former federal prosecutor and New York State corruption investigator. Amy Lee Copeland, a former federal prosecutor, is a criminal defense and appellate attorney in Savannah, Ga.
Disgraced InfoWars host Alex Jones, in a dark shirt second from the right, stands next to "Stop the Steal" pro-Trump insurrectionist Ali Alexander at a rally.
Washington Post, Alex Jones is ‘holding firearms’ for Jan. 6 rioters, bankruptcy docs show, Timothy Bella, Feb. 17, 2023 (print ed.). As Infowars founder Alex Jones is facing bankruptcy for damages he owes to the families of victims of the mass killing at Sandy Hook Elementary School, a new filing shows the right-wing conspiracy theorist has been “holding firearms” for those who participated in the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Jones, who owes nearly $1.5 billion to the families after years of saying the 2012 massacre in Newtown, Conn., in which 20 children and six adults were killed, was a hoax, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the Southern District of Texas last December. Jones’s personal financial disclosures were shared in a bankruptcy filing on Tuesday that was obtained by The Washington Post.
In the section of the bankruptcy statement that asks Jones to identify property he owns or controls for somebody else, the right-wing conspiracy theorist described the items he has in limited detail.
“Holding firearms for certain January 6th participants to be provided,” the entry says.
The filing does not state why Jones, who participated in the Stop the Steal rally that preceded the attack on the Capitol, is holding the weapons for the rioters or where they are located.
Alex Jones bankruptcy filing
In addition to the firearms, Jones, 49, lists boats and lifetime helicopter access as part of his personal financial disclosures, records show. Jones reported his gross income in 2021, the most recent year that data is available, as $617,143.02, according to the filing. He reported a gross income of nearly $639,000 in 2020, the filing shows.
The filing says that Jones has reported assets worth an estimated $10 million — significantly less than the $1.4 billion in a Connecticut case and $45.2 million in a Texas case that he owes to the Sandy Hook families in damages. Jones and his legal team have said they would appeal.
Feb. 16
New York Times, Opinion: Under Trump, Bill Barr and John Durham Made a Mockery of the Rules I Wrote, Neal K. Katyal, Feb. 16, 2023 (print ed.). 
Mr. Katyal is a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, and a co-author of “Impeach: The Case Against Donald Trump.” He was an acting solicitor general in the Obama administration.
The recent revelations about Special Counsel John H. Durham’s investigation of the origins of Robert Mueller’s Russia inquiry paint a bleak picture — one that’s thoroughly at odds with governing law. Those rules, called the Special Counsel Regulations, contemplate someone independent of the attorney general who can reassure the public that justice is being done.
I drafted those guidelines as a young Justice Department official, and there is zero chance that anyone involved in the process, as it was reported on by The New York Times, would think that former Attorney General William Barr or Mr. Durham acted appropriately.
According to the report, Mr. Barr granted Mr. Durham special counsel status to dig into a theory that the Russia investigation likely emerged from a conspiracy by intelligence or law enforcement agencies. That investigation took almost four years (longer than Mr. Mueller’s inquiry) and appears to be ending soon without any hint of a deep state plot against Mr. Trump.
Furthermore, the reporting suggests that the Durham inquiry suffered from internal dissent and ethical disputes as it lurched from one unsuccessful path to another, even as Americans heard a misleading narrative of its progress.
But now Merrick Garland, not Mr. Barr, is the attorney general, and the regulations give him the power to require Mr. Durham to explain himself — and to discipline and fire Mr. Durham if the explanation is not adequate. Right now, there are a plethora of investigations in Washington — in addition to Mr. Durham’s, two special counsels are looking into presidential handling of classified documents, the new Republican House of Representatives has created a “weaponization” of government committee and the new House Oversight Committee is ramping up as well.
At this moment, it is critical for Mr. Garland to use the supervisory powers under the Special Counsel Regulations that govern Mr. Durham to remind Americans of what actual justice, and independent investigations and decision making, look like.
The special counsel regulations say that a special counsel must have “a reputation for integrity and impartial decisionmaking” and that, once appointed, the counsel “shall not be subject to the day-to-day supervision” of the attorney general or any other Justice Department official.
The point of the regulations was to create a strong degree of independence, especially in highly fraught political investigations where the attorney general’s status as a presidential appointee might cause the public to question the appearance of partiality. The appointment of Robert Hur, a former Trump-appointed U.S. attorney, to examine President Biden’s handling of classified documents is a perfect illustration. The special counsel is supposed to be someone who cannot be reasonably accused of laundering an attorney general’s dirty work.
In light of the new reporting, it is hard to view Mr. Durham as anything else. Indeed, no one involved in developing these regulations thought that a prosecutor who has regular scotch-sipping sessions with the attorney general would ever be remotely fit for the job. Yet that was the relationship reportedly developed by Mr. Durham and Mr. Barr, who jetted off to Italy as a team, where they learned of a lead about President Trump and potential criminal acts. Mr. Barr gave that investigation, too, to Mr. Durham, where it appears to have died.
Feb. 13
Then-President Donald Trump meets Saudi King Salman in 2017 on Trump's first trip abroad as president (Associated Press photo by Evan Vucci). Salman, as he grew more feeble, would empower as Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Washington Post, Investigation: After helping prince’s rise, Trump and Kushner benefit from Saudi funds, Michael Kranish, Feb. 12, 2023 (print ed.). An Investment fund overseen by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, right, backs ventures that benefit the former president and his senior adviser, raising questions of conflict.
In early 2021, as Donald Trump exited the White House, he and his son-in-law Jared Kushner faced unprecedented business challenges. Revenue at Trump’s properties had plummeted during his presidency, and the attack on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters made his brand even more polarizing. Kushner, whose last major business foray had left his family firm needing a $1.2 billion bailout, faced his own political fallout as a senior Trump aide.
But one ally moved quickly to the rescue.
The day after leaving the White House, Kushner created a company that he transformed months later into a private equity firm with $2 billion from a sovereign wealth fund chaired by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Kushner’s firm structured those funds in such a way that it did not have to disclose the source, according to previously unreported details of Securities and Exchange Commission forms reviewed by The Washington Post. His business used a commonly employed strategy that allows many equity firms to avoid transparency about funding sources, experts said.
A year after his presidency, Trump’s golf courses began hosting tournaments for the Saudi fund-backed LIV Golf. Separately, the former president’s family company, the Trump Organization, secured an agreement with a Saudi real estate company that plans to build a Trump hotel as part of a $4 billion golf resort in Oman.
The substantial investments by the Saudis in enterprises that benefited both men came after they cultivated close ties with Mohammed while Trump was in office — helping the crown prince’s standing by scheduling Trump’s first presidential trip to Saudi Arabia, backing him amid numerous international crises and meeting with him repeatedly in D.C. and the kingdom, including on a final trip Kushner took to Saudi Arabia on the eve of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack.
Then-President Trump hosts at the White House Saudi then-Deputy Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, with Trump's son-in-law and senior advisor Jared Kushner at bottom right looking on (Washington Post photo by Jabin Botsford).
New details about their relationship have emerged in recently published memoirs, as well as accounts in congressional testimony and interviews by The Post with former senior White House officials. Those revelations include Kushner’s written account of persuading Trump to prioritize Saudi Arabia over the objections of top advisers and a former secretary of state’s assertion in a book that Trump believed the prince “owed” him.
They also underscore the crucial nature of Trump’s admission that he “saved” Mohammed in the wake of the CIA’s finding that the crown prince ordered the killing or capture of Post contributing opinion columnist Jamal Khashoggi.
Now, with Trump running for president again, some national security experts and two former White House officials say they have concerns that Trump and Kushner used their offices to set themselves up to profit from their relationship with the Saudis after the administration ended.
“I think it was an obvious opportunity for them to build their Rolodexes,” John Bolton, who was Trump’s national security adviser, said in an interview. “And I think they were probably hard at work at it, particularly Jared.”
Justice Department Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, left, and former President Donald Trump, shown in a collage via CNN.
New York Times, Jack Smith, Special Counsel for Trump Inquiries, Steps Up the Pace, Maggie Haberman, Glenn Thrush and Alan Feuer, Feb. 13, 2023 (print ed.). He was named less than three months ago to oversee investigations into Donald Trump’s efforts to hold onto power and his handling of classified documents.
Did former President Donald J. Trump consume detailed information about foreign countries while in office? How extensively did he seek information about whether voting machines had been tampered with? Did he indicate he knew he was leaving when his term ended?
Those are among the questions that Justice Department investigators have been directing at witnesses as the special counsel, Jack Smith, takes control of the federal investigations into Mr. Trump’s efforts to reverse his 2020 election loss and his handling of classified documents found in his possession after he left office.
Through witness interviews, subpoenas and other steps, Mr. Smith has been moving aggressively since being named to take over the inquiries nearly three months ago, seeking to make good on his goal of resolving as quickly as possible whether Mr. Trump, still a leading contender for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, should face charges.
Last week, he issued a subpoena to former Vice President Mike Pence, a potentially vital witness to Mr. Trump’s actions and state of mind in the days before the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob.
His prosecutors have brought a member of Mr. Trump’s legal team, M. Evan Corcoran, before a federal grand jury investigating why Mr. Trump did not return classified information kept at his Mar-a-Lago residence and private club in Florida. Justice Department officials have interviewed at least one other Trump lawyer in connection with the documents case.
Since returning to Washington from The Hague, where he had been a war crimes prosecutor, Mr. Smith has set up shop across town from the Justice Department’s headquarters, and has built out a team. His operation’s structure seems to closely resemble the organization he oversaw when he ran the Justice Department’s public integrity unit from 2010 to 2015.
Three of his first hires — J.P. Cooney, Raymond Hulser and David Harbach — were trusted colleagues during Mr. Smith’s earlier stints in the department. Thomas P. Windom, a former federal prosecutor in Maryland who had been tapped in late 2021 by Attorney General Merrick B. Garland’s aides to oversee major elements of the Jan. 6 inquiry, remains part of the leadership team, according to several people familiar with the situation.
In addition to the documents and Jan. 6 investigations, Mr. Smith appears to be pursuing an offshoot of the Jan. 6 case, examining Save America, a pro-Trump political action committee, through which Mr. Trump raised millions of dollars with his false claims of election fraud. That investigation includes looking into how and why the committee’s vendors were paid.
Former U.S. President Trump leaves Trump Tower in Manhattan for his scheduled testimony on Wednesday, Aug. 10, 2022 (Associate Press photo by Julia Nikhinson). He answered only one question during four hours of them in an interview with the New York State attorney general, his lawyer said.
Palmer Report, Opinion: Jack Smith is in the endgame against Donald Trump, Bill Palmer, right, Feb. 13, 2023. It’s becoming more clear that when Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Special Counsel Jack Smith, it was because multiple DOJ criminal cases against Donald Trump were coming up for indictment, and a “closer” was needed to pull it all together. That’s becoming more clear now, thanks to some interesting new reporting.
For instance, CNN reported last September that a DOJ prosecutor named JP Cooney had long been running a federal criminal investigation into Donald Trump’s finances. Now the New York Times is confirming that when Jack Smith was appointed Special Counsel, he immediately added Cooney to his team. This suggests that Smith decided early on that Cooney had a viable criminal case against Trump over his finances, and added Cooney to his team so that those charges can be brought as part of Smith’s overall indictment strategy against Trump.
This is in addition to the DOJ criminal investigation into Donald Trump’s theft of classified documents, which has reportedly reached the stage where Trump’s own attorney testified against him to the grand jury last month. There is also the DOJ criminal investigation into Donald Trump’s January 6th plot, which has reportedly reached the stage where Mike Pence – the highest level and therefore presumably final witness – has been subpoenaed.
It’s starting to look like these DOJ criminal cases against Donald Trump are quite far along – and that there are not just the two highest profile cases, but in fact several of them. At this point the question isn’t whether the DOJ will criminally indict Trump; that’s essentially a given. The only questions are just how many kinds of felony charges the DOJ hits Trump with, and in what order they arrive.
Washington Post, Analysis: Biden, Trump and classified documents: An explainer, Glenn Kessler, right, Feb. 13, 2023 (print ed.). This article has 
been updated with new developments
The announcement that classified documents were found at President Biden’s office at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement — and then more material at his Wilmington, Del., residence — raised instant comparisons with the Justice Department’s investigation of former president Donald Trump’s retaining of hundreds of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida.
Attorney General Merrick Garland on Jan. 12 named Robert K. Hur, a former U.S. attorney in Maryland, as special counsel, after U.S. Attorney John R. Lausch Jr. of Chicago conducted an initial review. The first batch was discovered in early November, a White House statement said, shortly before Garland named a special counsel to oversee the criminal investigation of Trump’s actions.
Here’s a brief explainer to help readers evaluate the significance of the discovery. This article will be updated further as more information becomes available.
What was found?
A White House statement first said that “a small number of documents with classified markings” — said to be about 10 — were discovered on Nov. 2 by the president’s personal attorneys while vacating office space used by Biden from mid-2017, shortly after his vice presidency ended, to early 2020. They were found in files in a locked closet. The statement said the White House counsel’s office notified the National Archives that same day. The Archives took possession of the documents the following morning.
Then Biden’s lawyers conducted a search of Biden’s Delaware residences in Wilmington and Rehoboth Beach. The White House said on Jan. 12 that a “small number” of additional documents with classified markings were found in the garage of the Wilmington residence; one page was found “among stored materials in an adjace
Former President Donald Trump is shown in a photo collage with columnist E. Jean Carroll, who accused him of raping her three decades ago, with her civil suit scheduled for trial this spring in New York City.
New York Times, Trump Is Willing to Provide DNA in Case Filed by Writer, His Lawyer Says, Hurubie Meko, Feb. 10, 2023. Lawyers for E. Jean Carroll, who accuses the former president of raping her at a department store decades ago, say they have genetic evidence connected to the episode.
A lawyer for Donald J. Trump said on Friday that the former president was willing to provide a DNA sample as part of a lawsuit filed against him by the writer E. Jean Carroll, who has accused Mr. Trump of raping her in a Manhattan department store dressing room in the mid-1990s.
In a motion filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan, Joseph Tacopina, Mr. Trump’s lawyer, wrote that the former president would submit the evidence in exchange for the production of what he said were missing pages from a report that Ms. Carroll commissioned about genetic material gathered from a dress she says she was wearing when the incident occurred.
The sample, Mr. Tacopina wrote, would be for the “sole purpose of comparing it to the DNA found on the dress at issue.” He added that the filing was “not seeking to delay the trial date.”
In a response several hours later, Ms. Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta A. Kaplan, disagreed, saying the motion filed by Mr. Tacopina was a “bad-faith effort to taint the potential jury pool, upend this Court’s discovery orders, and delay these proceedings.”
Ms. Kaplan added that Mr. Trump had spent years “categorically refusing” to provide such evidence and had known about the DNA report for more than three years.
In her filing, Ms. Kaplan also accused Mr. Trump’s defense team of leaking information to The Daily Beast and The Independent in an effort to taint the potential jury pool for a trial in the case, which is set to begin in April.
The dueling filings on Friday were the latest developments in a three-year legal battle between Mr. Trump and Ms. Carroll, an author and former longtime Elle magazine columnist who accused him in a memoir of sexually assaulting her nearly 30 years ago in a dressing room at a Bergdorf Goodman department store.
E. Jean Carroll’s lawyers say she still has the dress she was wearing at the time of the alleged attack.Credit...Jefferson Siegel for The New York Times
A woman in a red suit and face mask with a man in a dark suit and red tie.
Mr. Trump has repeatedly denied Ms. Carroll’s accusation, saying when she first made it that he had “never met this person in my life,” and calling her a liar intent on selling a book. In fall 2019, Ms. Carroll sued Mr. Trump, saying his statements had damaged her reputation and her career.
Related Recent Headlines
- New York Times, Trump Lawyer in Mar-a-Lago Search Appeared Before Grand Jury
- HuffPost, Firm Hired By Trump To Prove Election Fraud Came Up Empty: Report
- Washington Post, Man carrying Confederate flag in Capitol on Jan. 6 sentenced to 3 years
Washington Post, Opinion: Trump prosecutor Mark Pomerantz was wrong to litigate-and-tell, Ruth Marcus- Washington Post, Book World: The tricks used by the powerful, including Trump, to avoid justice, Scott Turow
- Palmer Report, Opinion: Donald Trump goes berserk as it all slips away from him, Bill Palmer
Feb. 12
Justice Department Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, left, and former President Donald Trump, shown in a collage via CNN.
World Crisis Radio, Historical Commentary: World history now depends on defeating the imminent Russian spring offensive against Ukraine, and on charges being brought against Trump, Webster G. Tarpley, Ph.D., right, author, historian and activist, (87:34 mins.), Feb. 11, 2023. Putin’s desperate bid to hold on in Ukraine may resemble Ludendorf’s last-ditch offensive of mid-1918, a prelude to collapse.
In the current Time of Troubles, camouflaged pretenders infest the Kremlin as hapless draftees are fed into the meatgrinder of Prigozhin’s human wave assaults; US and NATO must be audacious in deliveries of weaponry after Zelelensky’s visits to London and Brussels;
Trump’s special counsel Jack Smith obtains subpoenas for Pence and ex-NSC Director Robert O’Brien in regard to January 6 coup attempt; FBI finds more classified material at Pence’s Indiana home, but no special counsel so far named by Garland;
Manhattan prosecutor Pomeranz, left, courageously sums up choices for NY DA Alvin Bragg, below right, who must charge Trump no matter what the chances of conviction or else utterly repudiate the rule of law in the United States; Establishment voices still demand fairness for fascists;
Biden SOTU [State of the Union] bears comparison with the best of FDR in 1936; Dramatic achievements of Dems in stark contrast to grotesque escapades of MAGA fascist buffoons; Feckless orchestration of hearings on Twitter/New York Post and weaponization exposes McCarthy clique as bungling amateurs; MAGA money supply line grievously damaged by defection of Koch and Club for Growth as GOP bigwigs and donors plot to stop Trump; Dems launch effort to expel mythomaniac Santos!
Feb. 11
Justice Department Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, left, and former President Donald Trump, shown in a collage via CNN.
World Crisis Radio, Historical Commentary: World history now depends on defeating the imminent Russian spring offensive against Ukraine, and on charges being brought against Trump, Webster G. Tarpley, Ph.D., right, author, historian and activist, (87:34 mins.), Feb. 11, 2023. Putin’s desperate bid to hold on in Ukraine may resemble Ludendorf’s last-ditch offensive of mid-1918, a prelude to collapse.
In the current Time of Troubles, camouflaged pretenders infest the Kremlin as hapless draftees are fed into the meatgrinder of Prigozhin’s human wave assaults; US and NATO must be audacious in deliveries of weaponry after Zelensky’s visits to London and Brussels;
Trump’s special counsel Jack Smith obtains subpoenas for Pence and ex-NSC Director Robert O’Brien in regard to January 6 coup attempt; FBI finds more classified material at Pence’s Indiana home, but no special counsel so far named by Garland;
Manhattan prosecutor Pomeranz, left, courageously sums up choices for NY DA Alvin Bragg, below right, who must charge Trump no matter what the chances of conviction or else utterly repudiate the rule of law in the United States; Establishment voices still demand fairness for fascists;
Biden SOTU [State of the Union] bears comparison with the best of FDR in 1936; Dramatic achievements of Dems in stark contrast to grotesque escapades of MAGA fascist buffoons; Feckless orchestration of hearings on Twitter/New York Post and weaponization exposes McCarthy clique as bungling amateurs; MAGA money supply line grievously damaged by defection of Koch and Club for Growth as GOP bigwigs and donors plot to stop Trump; Dems launch effort to expel mythomaniac Santos!
Feb. 9
Washington Post, Opinion: Trump prosecutor Mark Pomerantz was wrong to litigate-and-tell, Ruth Marcus, right,Feb. 9, 2023. Even Donald Trump deserves fair treatment and due process. As delighted as I would be to see the former president criminally charged and convicted, a new book by his would-be prosecutor violates that basic rule.
Mark Pomerantz, below left, a veteran prosecutor and defense lawyer, joined the Manhattan district attorney’s office in 2021 to help oversee the criminal investigation into Trump’s personal finances and business dealings. He quit a year later, asserting in a resignation letter, which somehow leaked to the New York Times, that Trump “is guilty of numerous felony violations” and that the seeming decision by the newly elected Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, not to pursue charges against Trump was “a grave failure of justice.”
Now comes Pomerantz with a book-length, well, indictment of both Bragg and Trump, even as Bragg, right, appears to be pursuing part of the case, involving Trump’s role in hush-money payments to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels. “People vs. Donald Trump: An Inside Account” is a remarkable piece of no-holds-barred score-settling and behind-the-scenes revelations about the strengths — and weaknesses — of the case against Trump.
This is not how prosecutors are supposed to behave. It is an axiom of legal ethics that prosecutors do their speaking in court. Opining on someone’s supposed guilt — even if that someone is Trump — when you have had special access to investigative information is flat-out wrong.
As the District Attorneys Association of the State of New York put it in a statement, “A former prosecutor speaking out during an ongoing criminal investigation, that he was a part of, is unfortunate and unprecedented. … By writing and releasing a book in the midst of an ongoing case, the author is upending the norms and ethics of prosecutorial conduct.”
Granted, Pomerantz isn’t the first prosecutor to litigate-and-tell. Any number of former Watergate prosecutors wrote books about that case. Fresh from his stint as a young lawyer in the Iran-contra investigation, Jeffrey Toobin offered a look inside the office, much to the chagrin of independent counsel Lawrence Walsh, who tried to block publication. More recently, Andrew Weissmann, who worked for special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, faulted the inquiry for pulling its punches in investigating Trump.
Toobin and Weissmann came in for criticism, but their behavior was nothing compared with that of Pomerantz. They submitted their manuscripts to the government for pre-publication review to insure that they did not improperly disclose grand jury materials or classified information. By contrast, Pomerantz did not reveal that he was writing a book until less than a month before publication; the district attorney’s office didn’t actually see the book until its Tuesday release. (The DA’s office says Pomerantz violated a nondisclosure agreement; Pomerantz maintains that agreement only covered his service while he was informally advising the DA’s office, not after he signed on full-time.)
Feb. 8
Palmer Report, Donald Trump accuses Ron DeSantis of heinous crimes as he attempts to take DeSantis down with him, Bill Palmer, Feb. 8, 2023. Even as Donald Trump finds himself on the verge of criminal indictment in three jurisdictions, he’s still trying to convince everyone (or at least convince himself) that he’s somehow going to be a presidential contender in 2024.
To that end, he keeps periodically sniping at his fellow 2024 Republican hopeful Ron DeSantis. Now Trump is taking that to a shocking new level.
Trump shared another user’s post on his own failed social network which allegedly shows DeSantis, right, getting drunk with underage students back when he was a school teacher. The post also accused DeSantis of looking “ephebophiliaesque” – which essentially another word for pedophilia.
In other words, Trump is now doing what so many right wing loons do these days to anyone they don’t like: Trump is accusing DeSantis of being a pedophile. Trump is offering nothing to back up his accusation, and he’s going to have to provide some actual evidence if he wants this to be considered credible. But the point is that large chunks of Trump’s base will presume this accusation to be true, just as they automatically believe every word that comes out of Trump’s mouth.
Donald Trump is (knowingly) setting up a situation where, if Ron DeSantis is the 2024 Republican nominee for President, a number of Republican voters are going to spend the whole time calling him a pedophile instead of supporting him. In other words, Trump is trying to take DeSantis down with him. If Trump can’t be the 2024 Republican nominee – and he won’t be – he wants to screw it up for anyone else the Republican Party might pick instead.
Feb. 6
Palmer Report, Opinion: Donald Trump goes berserk as it all slips away from him, Bill Palmer, right, Feb. 6, 2023. There’s a reason we’re now seeing unpopular figures ranging from Mike Pence to Nikki Haley to Mike Pompeo float the idea of running for President in 2024.
They know they can’t win. But they also know that if it’s a wide open Republican field with no real frontrunner, they can muddle along in last place all the way to the Iowa caucus, and then use their high profile interviews during caucus season to promote their latest books, which means millions of dollars for them. This gives away that these former Trump sidekicks don’t expect Trump to even make it to 2024.
Yet another unpopular former Trump sidekick, Chris Christie, now has a lucrative on-air political commentary deal with ABC News. Christie – ever the opportunist – is firmly moving beyond Trump, because he knows that Trump is finished. Suffice it to say that Donald Trump, who is now facing criminal indictment in three jurisdictions and is likely to spend the rest of his life in prison, isn’t taking any of it well.
Trump has posted a berserk new tirade on his own failed social network, calling Chris Christie “sloppy” and angrily insisting that Trump “never wanted” Christie. Oddly, Trump didn’t bother to specify what he never wanted Christie for, but that’s not surprising, given the increasingly incoherent nature of Trump’s frenzied ramblings in the days since the news broke that Trump’s indictment in Georgia is “imminent” – even as DOJ Special Counsel Jack Smith ramps up his indictment process, and the Manhattan DA is now finally moving to indict Trump as well.
At this rate the first criminal indictment against Donald Trump could drop any day now, or any minute now. Trump knows it, which is why he’s melting down like this. And Trump’s former sidekicks know it too, which is why they’re selfishly moving forward with their own agendas at his expense. And as always, Trump is blaming those closest to him for his own endless string of failures.
Feb. 5
Washington Post, Book World: The tricks used by the powerful, including Trump, to avoid justice, Scott Turow, Feb. 5, 2023 (print ed.). In Untouchable, Elie Honig explains how prominent figures can leverage money and status to protect themselves.
This engaging book demonstrates how those who can exert substantial power of some kind — through public office, great wealth, control of a crime family — have consistently been able to avoid paying a price for serious wrongdoing.
Elie Honig, a former prosecutor and current legal analyst at CNN, recognizes that the theme of Untouchable: How Powerful People Get Away With It is far from revelatory. His emphasis is on the nitty-gritty, the how and why this happens.
He is a fluid writer and careful researcher, and even as someone who has taken a professional interest in criminal justice for decades, I was surprised to learn a lot of fascinating tidbits. I had no idea, for example, that, as Honig tells it, in 2012 front-line prosecutors in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office favored indicting Ivanka Trump and her brother Donald Trump Jr. on criminal fraud charges. According to Honig, the charges were dropped by the district attorney himself, Cyrus Vance Jr., after a visit from Donald Sr.’s lawyer, Marc Kasowitz, who made a $50,000 donation to Vance’s reelection campaign a few weeks later.
If you are a fan of Donald Trump’s, this is probably not the book for you. Although Honig reviews the wrongdoing of many people, including mobsters, Jeffrey Epstein, Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby, his recurring focus is on Trump and his frequent brushes with the law, many in plain sight during the course of his presidency.
Honig recounts his experience as a federal prosecutor in Manhattan, bringing down the hit-men, capos and top bosses of the Gambino crime family. Then he pivots to episodes in which Trump used the same tactics the mobsters did to avoid criminal punishment. Honig repeatedly says Trump’s behavior resembles that of a crime boss. “Daniel Marino — the Gambino family powerhouse,” he writes, “has a few things in common with Donald Trump. . . . Both understood and leveraged money, status, and fear to protect their own interests and to silence or destroy anyone who posed a threat.” Honig doesn’t shy away from the inflammatory assertion that a man who was president acts just like a mob kingpin, and he lays out the similarities.
Marino ordered the murder of his own nephew, Honig writes, telling a confederate, “Do what you have to do.” According to Honig, “Trump showed a similar ability to convey his criminal instructions without quite saying the words out loud” (but of course never to order a murder). Trump, Honig notes, “famously did not email or text.” Even the closest confederate to turn on Trump, his lawyer-fixer Michael Cohen, described the elliptical ways Trump directed him, in private conversations, to engage in illicit conduct. Honig quotes Cohen explaining how he knew that Trump wanted him to lie to Congress about Trump’s plans to build a hotel in Moscow, a project that continued long after Trump publicly claimed it had ended: “I lied about it too because Mr. Trump had made clear to me, through his personal statements to me that we both knew to be false and through his lies to the country, that he wanted me to lie.” Similarly, Honig writes, “Cohen has claimed publicly that it was generally understood in the Trump Organization that it was fine — encouraged, even — to cook the books, and that Trump himself had created and stoked this culture.” So far, Trump has managed to evade responsibility, but his onetime chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, wasn’t so lucky. In January, Weisselberg was sentenced to serve five months in jail and five years on probation after pleading guilty in August to 15 counts, including tax fraud, conspiracy and grand larceny.
Honig describes how Trump has attempted to silence those who might turn against him — even before they do. Trump, Honig notes, has adopted a practice, used by mobsters and large corporations, of attempting to control the choice of lawyers by potential witnesses in investigations of his actions. He does this by paying for the witnesses’ counsel, which potentially keeps the client and the attorney obedient and beholden to Trump. Consider Cassidy Hutchinson. The former White House aide testified before the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol only after she dropped the lawyer the Trump team had provided for her.
Washington Post, N.Y. prosecutors group says former Trump investigator violated ethics with book, Shayna Jacobs, Feb. 4, 2023 (print ed.). An association of New York state prosecutors said Friday that a former member of the Manhattan district attorney’s office who investigated Donald Trump violated ethical standards by writing a book about the case during an ongoing criminal investigation.
Former investigator Mark Pomerantz, left, whose book People vs. Donald Trump: An Inside Account is scheduled for release Tuesday, violated professional standards important to justice matters, according to the statement by J. Anthony Jordan, the president of the District Attorneys Association of the State of New York.
“By writing and releasing a book in the midst of an ongoing case, the author is upending the norms and ethics of prosecutorial conduct and is potentially in violation of New York criminal law,” Jordan said in the statement.
The office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has previously said Pomerantz may have broken a law barring prosecutors from disclosing grand jury material by writing the book.
“I am confident that the publication of my book is legal, ethical, and in the public interest,” Pomerantz said in response to the association’s statement.
Trump ‘totally’ disagrees with McCarthy on death of Jan. 6 rioter Babbitt
Bragg’s office has an open grand jury presentation in the Trump case focusing on alleged hush money given to adult film actress Stormy Daniels during Trump’s 2016 campaign, an area of the overall investigation that a team under Cyrus R. Vance Jr., Bragg’s predecessor, had previously abandoned. The probe started under Vance in 2019. Trump denies having a sexual encounter with Daniels and has denied ordering the payment, which was orchestrated by his former confidant Michael Cohen.
Cohen pleaded guilty to related federal charges and was sentenced to three years in prison. Much of it was served on home confinement.
Pomerantz, in the book and in public comments made since his February 2022 resignation, has accused Bragg of ending the probe, which Bragg’s office rejects. Instead, Bragg concluded that the case needed more work and said the inquiry should continue, according to people familiar with the matter who recently spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a confidential process.
A panel of outside litigators saw a presentation of the issues in December 2021 and expressed skepticism about the viability of a case against the former president focused on his alleged practice of manipulating asset valuations, the case Pomerantz lobbied for before resigning in protest of Bragg’s position, the people familiar with the matter said.
Feb. 4
Julia (Julie) Jenkins Fancelli, Publix heiress and Donald Trump mega-donor.
Proof, Exclusive Invedstigative Commentary: The Donald Trump “Mega-Donor” From Florida Who Funded January 6 Has Just Given America the Most Detailed Timeline Ever of When and Where Trump’s Coup Plot Formed, Seth Abramson, Feb. 3, 2023. Seth Abramson, left, is a a former criminal investigator and criminal defense attorney whose January 6 research Congress often cites unpacks January 6 evidence many missed.
Part of a Series: The “January 6 Files” Series (2023-)
- Charlie Kirk
- Ginni Thomas, Part I
- Julie Jenkins Fancelli (current entry)
1. Introduction
You’ve probably seen the “How It Started vs. How It’s Going” meme, which tracks the relative sanguinity of the beginning of a given process and how it thereafter descends into chaos. In the case of the 132-page federal testimony of Julie Jenkins Fancelli—the Donald Trump mega-donor who almost single-handedly bankrolled the January 6 White House Ellipse rally and march on the U.S. Capitol—it begins like this (the speaker is a House January 6 Committee investigator tasked with examining Fancelli under oath):
And it does not get better from there.
Fancelli’s reticence in providing even the barest degree of cooperation with the House January 6 Committee is to some degree understandable. After all, even far-right media reports indicate that the Special Counsel recently appointed by Joe Biden’s Attorney General Merrick Garland on behalf of the Department of Justice, Jack Smith, is focusing his investigation on the “money trail” linked to the January 6 coup attempt.
Justice Department Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, left, and former President Donald Trump, shown in a collage via CNN.
And on the very short list of radical Trumpists who funded events on January 6, the Trumpworld figure who appears atop the list—by sheer dollar value—is Ms. Fancelli.
And so it is that we see Fancelli invoking four different federal constitutional amendments to avoid even revealing whether she knows Caroline Wren, an agent of future Trump daughter-in-law and current top Trump adviser Kimberly Guilfoyle, right (who will be marrying Trump’s eldest son Donald Trump Jr.) and someone whose long relationship with Fancelli has already been documented fifty different ways and is a settled fact.
But as was the case with (again) Trump Jr. and Guilfoyle associate—you may be seeing a trend here—Charlie Kirk, who also pleaded the Fifth Amendment, Fancelli revealed much more than she might have intended simply by showing up to be questioned by Congress. Why? Because the many, many questions asked of her by lawyers from the now-disbanded House January 6 Committee comprise a stunning compendium of evidence compiled by the Committee before its investigation ended in December 2022.
This third entry of the new “January 6 Files” series at Proof will reveal, through a long analysis and contextualization of these questions—and perhaps more surprisingly, some sudden abandonments of her constitutional invocations by Ms. Fancelli—how this recently released federal witness transcript must change forever how we think about the following:
- The timeline of the January 6 coup plot;
- the level of involvement the Trump family had in this coup plotting, and its after-the-fact attempts to deny that involvement;
- the consistent pattern of federal Witness Tampering that has marked Trump family attempts to deny its involvement in any coup plotting or fundraising;
- the extent to which the Trump family benefited financially from this plotting and to which Trump himself was aware of the fundraising and logistics work that the plotting entailed; and
- the degree to which this plotting may have helped fund Stop the Steal activities now associated with domestic terrorism.
Seth Abramson, shown above and at right, is founder of Proof and is a former criminal defense attorney and criminal investigator who later taught digital journalism, legal advocacy, and cultural theory at the University of New Hampshire. A regular political and legal analyst on CNN and the BBC during the Trump presidency, he is a best-selling author who has published eight books and edited five anthologies.
Abramson is a graduate of Dartmouth College, Harvard Law School, the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and the Ph.D. program in English at University of Wisconsin-Madison. His books include a Trump trilogy: Proof of Corruption: Bribery, Impeachment, and Pandemic in the Age of Trump (2020); Proof of Conspiracy: How Trump's International Collusion Is Threatening American Democracy (2019); and Proof of Collusion: How Trump Betrayed America (2018).
Katrina vanden Heuvel, the longtime publisher, editor and owner of The Nation magazine and also wife of Russian studies scholar Stephen Cohen, is shown joining a CSPAN Washington Journal cablecast in 2009.
ByLine Times, Media Criticism: Russia & the US PressThe Article the CJR Didn’t Publish, Duncan Campbell, Feb. 4, 2023. Duncan Campbell, below at right, is an 
investigative journalist who has covered security, surveillance and politics since the 1970s.
Introduction: Two and a half years ago, the Columbia Journalism Review refused to publish Duncan Campbell’s investigation into The Nation magazine and its apparent support for Vladimir Putin. It is published here in full.
In 2018, Duncan Campbell was commissioned by the “voice of journalism” and “watchdog of the press,” Columbia 
Journalism Review, to write an investigation into the venerable New York magazine The Nation, and its apparent support for Russia’s territorial ambitions. In 2020, after a full fact check, legal review and edit, the article was cancelled two days before the scheduled publication. In 2022, months after Putin’s full invasion of Ukraine, the CJR again refused to publish the article. Byline Times is publishing the final agreed copy here, and Duncan Campbell will explain what happened in a follow-up article.
The Nation’s Russia Problem
By Duncan Campbell, 15 July 2020
One afternoon, five weeks before Election Day in 2016, on the 21st floor of a tower overlooking Manhattan’s Eighth Avenue, members of The Nation’s editorial advisory board gathered for a twice-annual meeting. Katrina vanden Heuvel—the magazine’s editor, publisher, and owner—invited attendees to hear from a special guest, who had come to warn them that criticizing Donald Trump’s involvements with Russia, or his 
relationship with Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, could trigger global nuclear annihilation. Vanden Heuvel, who was 56, gestured to her husband, Stephen F. Cohen, then 77, a retired professor of Russian studies. Russia and the United States “were closer to war than at any time since the Cuban missile crisis,” he told the board. He also derided Democrats and American media organizations for “demonization of Russian President Putin.”
Philip Green, a political theorist who had been on the board for forty years, listened with skepticism. Cohen’s theory, “presented with deadly and urgent seriousness,” he thought, appeared to be channeling the paranoia of the far-right. Others felt the same way. But afterward, Green says, “It became the party line.”
Cohen (who died in 2020 and who is shown above) would go on to make the same argument in at least 160 Nation articles; more than a hundred talk radio show appearances; and on Russia’s state-owned international channel, Russia Today (RT). In many cases, his articles were “essentially transcribed radio programs that were unedited and did not go through other editorial filters,” according to Robert Dreyfuss, a Nation contributing editor and investigative journalist. Accusing the Russian government of committing an act of war by hacking the Democratic National Committee, Cohen warned, might mean “the necessity of actual war, conceivably nuclear war, against Russia.” He wrote that “villainizing the Kremlin—without much evidence—is increasing the possibility of a US-Russian war.” Once Trump took office, Cohen branded media investigations of Russia’s involvement with the Trump campaign as “neo-McCarthyism” and “Kremlin-baiting.”
For these critiques, Cohen won praise from outlets such as Fox News and Breitbart, anathema to The Nation readership; soon, he began making periodic appearances on Tucker Carlson Tonight. “Today, in my scholarly, long-term judgment, relations between the United States and Russia are more dangerous than they have ever—let me repeat, ever—been, including the Cuban missile crisis,” Cohen told Carlson in 2018.
Nation employees became uneasy about Cohen’s assertions and who was airing his ideas. “The people who work there, especially the younger staff, are disgruntled about the Russia coverage,” Adam Shatz, a former Nation writer and literary editor, says. A joke began circulating around the office: “We tried to fact check Steve’s pieces but we couldn’t find any facts to check.” (Vanden Heuvel denies that her husband’s work was not checked by normal standards, saying that whether or not something is checked “depends on the complexity of the piece.”)
Some left The Nation or stopped writing for it. Anne Nelson, a former war correspondent now teaching at Columbia University, came to feel that the magazine’s stance on Russia “is destroying a valuable institution on the left.” Subscribers and donors, too, expressed displeasure with The Nation’s Russia pieces. One reader tweeted: “Sounds like the Nation has a pee tape out there somewhere.”
Duncan Campbell is former crime correspondent of the Guardian, former chairman of the Crime Reporters Association and winner of the Bar Council’s newspaper journalist of the year. He has written for the Observer, New Statesman, LRB, Oldie, Esquire and British Journalism Review. He has presented Crime Desk on BBC Radio 5 Live and the Radio 4 documentary "Bandits of the Blitz," has appeared on the Today programme, LBC radio and numerous TV documentaries, and has lectured widely on crime reporting. He is the author of six books including the bestselling "The Underworld" (1994) and an acclaimed crime novel, "If it Bleeds" (2010).
Feb. 3
New York Times, Former Trump Executive, Already Jailed, Could Face More Fraud Charges, Ben Protess, William K. Rashbaum and Jonah E. Bromwich, Feb. 3, 2023 (print ed.). Manhattan prosecutors warned that they might charge Allen Weisselberg with insurance fraud to pressure him to cooperate in an investigation of Donald Trump.
Manhattan prosecutors this week warned that they might file new fraud charges against Allen H. Weisselberg, right, a longtime top executive at Donald J. Trump’s real estate business — increasing pressure on Mr. Weisselberg to cooperate in a broader investigation into the former president, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
Mr. Weisselberg, the Trump Organization’s former chief financial officer, is already serving a five-month sentence in the Rikers Island jail complex after pleading guilty to unrelated tax fraud charges. While he testified against the company at its trial on the same charges last year, he has for years refused to turn on Mr. Trump directly.
But as the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, jump-starts his office’s effort to indict Mr. Trump, his prosecutors are using the prospect of additional charges to exert leverage over Mr. Weisselberg, the people with knowledge of the matter said. The potential charges, which prosecutors conveyed to the former executive’s legal team this week, center on insurance fraud and could lead to a significant prison sentence for Mr. Weisselberg, who is 75.
He is facing the new round of pressure as the prosecutors begin to present evidence to a grand jury about Mr. Trump’s involvement in paying hush money to a porn star during the 2016 presidential campaign. On Monday, the prosecutors began questioning witnesses in the grand jury about the hush money paid to Stormy Daniels, the porn star who said she had an affair with Mr. Trump.
The potential new charges against Mr. Weisselberg are unrelated to the hush money, but he has long been the missing piece in any criminal case against the former president. In August, when he pleaded guilty in the tax case, Mr. Weisselberg accepted that he would serve time on Rikers Island and said he had no incriminating evidence to offer about Mr. Trump. And before that, Mr. Weisselberg was charged in the tax case only after resisting a pressure campaign from prosecutors seeking his testimony against Mr. Trump.
But the threat of prison time could change the equation for Mr. Weisselberg, who would face a stark choice: serving significant time behind bars late in life or turning on the former president, whose finances he handled for decades. If he cooperated now, after stymieing the investigation into Mr. Trump time after time, Mr. Weisselberg would be likely to avoid prison altogether.
Prosecutors have already secured the cooperation of Michael D. Cohen, the longtime fixer for Mr. Trump who turned on him after pleading guilty to federal charges involving the hush money. Last month, the district attorney’s office interviewed Mr. Cohen, who paid $130,000 to Ms. Daniels, and was later reimbursed by Mr. Trump.
The acceleration of the long-running investigation in Manhattan comes as Mr. Trump is facing intense legal pressure from several other corners. Federal prosecutors in Washington, D.C., are scrutinizing his removal of sensitive documents from the White House and his conduct during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, and a district attorney in Georgia may seek to indict the former president for his attempts to reverse his 2020 election loss in the state.
Mr. Trump has denied all wrongdoing and accused investigators of carrying out a politically motivated witch hunt against him. And when The New York Times reported this week that Mr. Bragg, a Democrat, had impaneled the grand jury, Mr. Trump’s company issued a statement arguing that reviving the hush-money inquiry under what it called a “dubious legal theory” was “simply reprehensible and vindictive.”
New York Times, Analysis: Is Donald Trump Way Up or Way Down? Nate Cohn, Feb. 3, 2023. The polls are surprisingly divided, Nate Cohn writes, but higher-quality surveys point to an answer. Is Donald J. Trump the clear favorite and front-runner to win the Republican nomination? Or is he badly weakened and even an underdog against Ron DeSantis?
Whether Mr. Trump is at 25 percent or 55 percent is no small matter. Believe it or not, early polling is fairly predictive of the eventual outcome in presidential primaries. It also has real-world consequences. It affects the decision-making of potential candidates, operatives and activists, many of whom have adopted a wait-and-see approach in part because there are so many conflicting signs of Mr. Trump’s strength.
And the existence of such a wide split betrays that the survey research industry may be in far worse shape than one might have otherwise guessed. While the exact reason for the vast spread in survey results is hard to ascertain, the likeliest explanation is that many well-known pollsters are collecting profoundly unrepresentative data.
Vicky Ward Investigates, Jared Kushner's Little Brother is Richer than Both Him And Trump. How? Vicky Ward, Feb. 3, 2023. The Tale of the Talented Josh Kushner.
So, last week it was reported that Jared Kushner’s younger brother, Josh, 37, sold a stake in his venture firm, Thrive Capital, to a group of big-name investors, who paid $175 million; the deal valued Thrive at $5.3 billion - which makes Josh’s personal wealth worth $3.7 billion. It makes him richer than Donald Trump, whose net worth is estimated at $2.6 billion and also richer than his brother, Jared whose fund, Affinity is much smaller even after the Saudis, controversially, invested $2 billion in it.
Unlike Jared, Josh is known for hard work and “keeping his nose clean” and staying out of the press. Except in one regard: he’s married to the supermodel, Karlie Kloss. But, as supermodels go, Kloss is exceptional. She’s a highly successful entrepreneur, reportedly an extremely decent person, and the only gossipy thing known about her is that, perhaps, she does not see eye to eye politically with her sister-in-law, Ivanka Trump.
I phoned around Wall Street this week to ask about what people thought of the deal and valuation and the universal view was that Josh Kushner has hung onto good people and deserved his success. Although, It’s important to remember that a valuation of $5.3 billion, is only a paper valuation. “Instacart was at 40 billion a year ago and now it’s at nine. Nobody got out at 40,” said one senior investment. “Josh Kushner is so young, there’s plenty he’s never seen.”
Still, a few years ago I met Josh Kushner and I did find him thoughtful, ambitious and quietly impressive. He seemed authentic. I needed to look up my own 2019 book to remember the exact details of what I’d reported on him. Turns out his upward trajectory was long predicted.
January
Jan. 31
New York Times, Trump’s Well-Worn Legal Playbook Starts to Look Frayed, Maggie Haberman, Jan. 31, 2023. Former President Trump’s familiar tactics of defiance and delays appear less successful than ever amid a swirl of investigations and court proceedings.
The expanding legal threats facing former President Donald J. Trump are testing as never before his decades-old playbook for fending off prosecutors, regulators and other accusers and foes, with his trademark mix of defiance, counterattacks, bluffs and delays encountering a series of setbacks.
In other legal maneuvering and in seeking to shape public opinion about cases involving him, Mr. Trump has experienced regular reversals in court in recent months even as he begins his campaign for another term in the White House.
“Mr. Trump is a prolific and sophisticated litigant who is repeatedly using the courts to seek revenge on political adversaries,” Judge Donald M. Middlebrooks of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida wrote this month in fining the former president and one of his lawyers nearly $1 million for filing a frivolous civil suit against Hillary Clinton and F.B.I. officials. “He is the mastermind of strategic abuse of the judicial process, and he cannot be seen as a litigant blindly following the advice of a lawyer.”
That fine appeared to lead Mr. Trump to quickly drop a similar suit he had filed against Letitia James, the attorney general of New York, who is pressing ahead with a $250 million suit claiming widespread financial fraud by the former president, his oldest children and his company.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office began presenting evidence on Monday to a grand jury about his role in paying hush money to a porn star during his 2016 presidential campaign — the latest in a series of investigations and legal proceedings that are grinding on despite Mr. Trump’s efforts to block or undercut them.
The Justice Department is investigating his handling of classified documents and his role in the efforts to reverse the outcome of the 2020 election, and he is facing a potential indictment from the prosecutor in Fulton County, Ga., in connection with his efforts to remain in power after his election loss.
Two suits against Mr. Trump brought by E. Jean Carroll, a New York-based writer who has accused him of raping her in the 1990s in a department store dressing room, are moving ahead despite his threats to sue her.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office on Monday will begin presenting evidence to a grand jury about Donald J. Trump’s role in paying hush money to a porn star during his 2016 presidential campaign, laying the groundwork for potential criminal charges against the former president in the coming months, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
The grand jury was recently impaneled, and witness testimony will soon begin, a clear signal that the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, is nearing a decision about whether to charge Mr. Trump.
New York Times, N.Y. attorney general seeks sanctions against Trump and his legal team, Shayna Jacobs, Jan. 31, 2023. Attorneys working under New York Attorney General Letitia James on Tuesday asked a judge overseeing the office’s $250 million fraud lawsuit to place sanctions on Trump parties and their attorneys for “falsely” denying facts in recent court filings and rehashing “frivolous” arguments.
James’s team filed a major civil enforcement action against former president Donald Trump, three of his adult children, the family business and other executives there in September, alleging a deliberate fraud aimed at deceiving lenders and insurance brokers, giving the impression that Trump’s wealth was worth more than it really was. The Trump parties also allegedly undervalued his assets to reduce tax liabilities.
In a letter to New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron, right, on Tuesday, Kevin Wallace, senior enforcement counsel at the attorney general’s office, said the Trump parties repeatedly denied reality in their set of official court filings last week and did not learn from past admonishments made by Engoron over the repeated use of “frivolous” arguments.
“A cursory review of the [filings] reveals that a number of the denials are demonstrably false and actually contradict sworn statements by the Defendants in other proceedings,” Wallace wrote.
Lawyers for the attorney general’s office pointed to sworn testimony in other recent proceedings, including a deposition in another lawsuit from Trump himself, that contradicts some of what the Trump attorneys claimed in their written formal responses to the lawsuit. Trump lawyers, according to the letter, quibbled over the attorney general’s references to the “structure of the Trump Organization,” which is an improper argument, the office said.
Trump attorneys also rejected that he was president of the company during a stretch of time that included his U.S. presidency, which Trump’s own testimony in an unrelated civil case contradicted, the letter said. The attorney general’s request also noted that Eric Trump, who along with his siblings Donald Jr. and Ivanka served as an executive at the company, denied through the filing that Seven Springs, a Westchester, N.Y., family property, was purchased in 1995 for $7.5 million even though he acknowledged it previously.
Engoron scheduled a hearing Wednesday morning to address the attorney general’s requests. The judge recently admonished the Trump side for other uses of meritless arguments and considered sanctions but did not impose any. “It does not appear that this point was taken, 
however, and [the attorney general’s office] would ask the Court to renew the issue,” Wallace’s letter said.
Alina Habba, left, one of Trump’s attorneys, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the letter.
Attorneys for Trump were hit with sanctions recently in another matter. A federal judge in Florida imposed sanctions on Trump’s legal representatives, hitting them with a $1 million fine for a presentation of frivolous and baseless claims in a lawsuit against Hillary Clinton.
After the sanctions, Trump lawyers withdrew lawsuits against James in Florida and New York.
Judge Luttig: No Historical Precedent to Support VP Pence Counting Alternative Slates of Electors: Former Appeals Court Judge J. Michael Luttig tells the January 6 Committee that John Eastman's memo arguing that Vice President Pence had the authority to count alternative slates of electors from seven states was incorrect. "There was no historical precedent, from the beginning of the founding...that would support the possibility," the judge says on June 16, 2022, with C-SPAN video here.
Washington Post, He never ascended to the Supreme Court, but some think he has played a far more consequential role, Manuel Roig-Franzia, Jan. 31, 2023. Michael Luttig, the retired judge who advised Mike Pence on Jan. 4, 2021, and testified before the Jan. 6 committee, envisions "the beginning of the end of Donald Trump."
Late one night in the spring of 1994, a 40-year-old federal judge, shown at right in a 2005 photo, was startled awake by loud pounding at the front door of his home in 
Vienna, Va.
The sound was so jarring, so insistent, so out of character for his quiet Washington suburb that it unnerved J. Michael Luttig, a product of Northeast Texas who had put down deep roots in Beltway power circles.
Luttig told his wife, Elizabeth, to call the police. “Keep the line open,” he added.
Baffled, anxious, annoyed, Luttig opened the door just a crack. There stood a stocky man with thick black eyebrows.
Antonin Scalia. Associate justice of the United States Supreme Court.
Scalia, left, had driven through the night at the request of Luttig’s mother, who wanted him to be the one to break the news: Luttig’s 63-year-old father, John, had been killed in a carjacking outside his Tyler, Tex., home barely an hour earlier. And so the judicial legend showed up to sit with his former clerk as he placed one grim phone call after another, Luttig recalled in a recent interview, sharing the story publicly for the first time.
It had to be Scalia on this most awful night of their lives. Bobbie Luttig, who was seriously injured in the attack, knew how her son looked up to him. For a generation of conservative law students, Scalia was a paragon of a judicial philosophy centered on reverence for the original text of the Constitution. Luttig had clerked for him at the federal district court in Washington and later held one of the posts Scalia had occupied on his own path to the bench, in the Office of Legal Counsel, an obscure but influential cadre of brainy attorneys who provide legal guidance to the president.
Theirs had evolved into something more than a mentor-mentee relationship, more than a friendship. They were integral parts of a movement, the keepers of the conservative banner in Washington’s clubby legal circles, where bright, young aspirants could be tapped by their elders and set on a path toward the most important legal jobs in the nation. Reared in the Ford and Reagan administrations, ascendant in George H.W. Bush’s, Luttig became the protege and eulogist of one chief justice, Warren Burger; a groomsman for another, John Roberts. (In a recent interview, Luttig repeatedly turned to phrases like “one of my best friends in life” to describe some of the most prominent judges, lawyers, business leaders and journalists in America.)
By the time Scalia stood in his doorway, the young law students were looking up to Luttig, too. His obsessively precise written opinions for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in Richmond had marked Luttig as one of the leading conservative intellectuals in the legal system — the most conservative judge on the most conservative court in America.
More than a quarter-century later, it was Luttig (pronounced LEW-tig) who would get a late-night call to come the aid of his tribe: Mike Pence, in his final days as vice president, would seek out Luttig’s legal advice on the night of Jan. 4, 2021, as Donald Trump pressured him to help overturn the results of the 2020 election. But Pence and his allies would need more from Luttig than his private counsel.
They needed his imprimatur.
What began as a late-night phone call has turned into the quest of a lifetime for Luttig, the pinnacle of a long and storied career, highlighted last summer by his stirring appearance before the congressional panel investigating the Jan. 6 uprising at the U.S. Capitol and by the committee’s final report released in late December, which mentions his name more than 25 times.
Retired conservative Judge J. Michael Luttig testified on June 16 that President Trump and his allies pose a “clear and present danger” to American democracy.
But Luttig wasn’t just condemning Trump and Trumpism. He was trying to bring a nation to its senses.
“We Americans no longer agree on what is right or wrong, what is to be valued and what is not, what is acceptable behavior and not, and what is and is not tolerable discourse in civilized society,” he said. “America is adrift.”
Months removed from that star turn, Luttig’s worries have begun to ebb ever so slightly. He now envisions a nation one day disentangled from Trump’s influence, even as the former president launches a new campaign. It’s a future Luttig is trying to shape in court cases, in legislative chambers where he’s helped craft election law changes and in professorial public appearances where he explains in painstaking detail how American democracy, though imperiled, can still be preserved.
Luttig can think of only one reason he would have been wrested out of quiet semiretirement for this mission. It was, he’s concluded, nothing less than “divine intervention.”
Related Recent Headlines
- Palmer Report, Analysis: Donald Trump is now in the process of being criminally indicted by grand juries in three different jurisdictions, Bill Palmer
U.S. Justice Failures, Scandals
New York Times, Opinion: Bill Barr’s Image Rehab Is Kaput, David Firestone, Jan. 31, 2023 (print ed.). Mr. Firestone is a member of the editorial board. Former Attorney General William Barr has spent the last year in a desperate salvage operation for what’s left of his legal and ethical reputation.
During his 22 months in office, he allowed his Justice Department to become a personal protection racket for his boss, Donald Trump, and left prosecutors, the F.B.I. and other law enforcement officials subject to the worst impulses of the president. But then, in his 2022 memoir, Mr. Barr did an about-face, bashing Mr. Trump for lacking a presidential temperament and singling out his “self-indulgence and lack of self-control.”
In the book, he urged Republicans not to renominate Mr. Trump in 2024, accusing the former president of going “off the rails” with his stolen-election claims by preferring the counsel of “sycophants” and “whack jobs” to that of his real advisers. Clearly concerned that history was paying attention, he was even stronger in his videotaped testimony to the Jan. 6 committee, loosing a variety of barnyard epithets and bitter insults to describe Mr. Trump’s legal strategy. He said the president had become “detached from reality” and was doing a disservice to the nation.
The hollow and self-serving nature of this turnabout was always apparent. Mr. Barr never made these concerns public at a time when his dissent would have made a difference. Instead, he left office in 2020 showering compliments on his boss, praising Mr. Trump’s “unprecedented achievements” and promising that Justice would continue to pursue claims of voter fraud that he must have known were baseless.
But if Mr. Barr harbored any fantasy that he might yet be credited with a wisp of personal integrity for standing up for democracy, that hope was thoroughly demolished on Thursday when The Times published the details of what really happened when Mr. Barr launched a counter-investigation into the origins of Robert Mueller’s report on the 2016 Trump campaign’s ties to Russia. The reporting demonstrated a staggering abuse of the special counsel system and the attorney general’s office, all in a failed attempt by Mr. Barr to rewrite the sour truths of Mr. Trump’s history.
It was bad enough when, in March 2019, Mr. Barr tried to mislead the public into thinking the forthcoming Mueller report exonerated Mr. Trump, when in fact the report later showed just how strong the links were between the campaign and the Russian government, 
which worked to help defeat Hillary Clinton. A few months later Mr. Barr assigned John Durham, right, a federal prosecutor in Connecticut, as a special counsel to investigate Mr. Mueller’s investigation, hoping to prove Mr. Trump’s wild public allegations that the federal intelligence officials had helped instigate the claims of Russian interference to damage him.
Attorneys general are not supposed to interfere in a special counsel’s investigation. The whole point of the system is to isolate the prosecution of sensitive cases from the appearance of political meddling. But the new Times reporting shows that Mr. Barr did the opposite, regularly meeting with Mr. Durham to discuss his progress and advocating on his behalf with intelligence officials when they were unable to come up with the nonexistent proof Mr. Barr wanted to see. (Aides told Times reporters that Mr. Barr was certain from the beginning that U.S. spy agencies were behind the allegations of collusion.)
When the Justice Department’s own inspector general prepared to issue a report saying that, while the F.B.I. made some ethical mistakes, the investigation was legitimate and not politically motivated, Mr. Durham lobbied him to drop the finding. When that effort was unsuccessful, Mr. Barr reverted to his usual pattern of trying to spin the report before it was issued, disagreeing with its finding before it was even out. Mr. Durham then followed up with a similar statement, shattering the clear department principle of staying silent about a current investigation.
The two men even traveled to Britain and Italy together, pressuring government agencies there to disclose what they told U.S. spy agencies about the Trump-Russia connections. That infuriated officials of those governments, who said they had done nothing of the kind, and no evidence was ever found that they had. But on one of those trips, The Times reported, Italian officials gave the men a tip which, people familiar with the matter said, linked Mr. Trump to possible serious financial crimes. (It is not clear what those crimes were, and more reporting will be necessary to reveal the details.) Did Mr. Barr follow protocol and turn the tip over to regular prosecutors in his department for investigation? No. Instead, he gave it to his traveling companion, Mr. Durham, who opened a criminal investigation but never made it public and never filed charges, and when word began to trickle out that a suspected crime had been discovered, he falsely let the world think it had something to do with his original goal.
The Durham investigation, of course, has never presented any evidence that the F.B.I. or intelligence agencies committed any misconduct in the course of the Russia investigation, bitterly disappointing Mr. Barr and especially his patron, Mr. Trump, who had assured his supporters for months that it would produce something big. Desperate for some kind of success, Mr. Durham indicted Michael Sussmann, a lawyer who had worked for Democrats in their dealings with the F.B.I., over the objections of two prosecutors on the special counsel team who said the case was far too thin and who later left the staff.
Mr. Sussmann was acquitted last May of lying to the bureau, and the jury forewoman told reporters that bringing the case had been unwise. Mr. Barr later tried to justify the trial by saying it served another purpose in exposing the Clinton campaign’s starting the Russia narrative as a “dirty trick.” The trial did nothing of the kind, but it did expose Mr. Barr’s willingness to abuse the gratuitous prosecution of an individual to score political points against one of Mr. Trump’s most prominent enemies.
One of the other casualties of this deceitful crusade was the deliberate damage it did to the reputations of the F.B.I., the intelligence agencies and officials in Mr. Barr’s own department. All of these agencies have had many problematic episodes in their pasts, but there is no evidence in this case that they willfully tried to smear Mr. Trump and his campaign with false allegations of collusion. They were trying to do their jobs, on which the nation’s security depends, but because they got in Mr. Trump’s way, Mr. Barr aided in degrading their image through a deep-state conspiracy theory before an entire generation of Trump supporters. Republicans in the House are launching a new snipe hunt for proof that these same government offices were “weaponized” against conservatives, an expedition that is likely to be no more effective than Mr. Durham’s and Mr. Barr’s.
But weakening the country’s institutions and safeguards for political benefit is how Mr. Barr did business in the nearly two years he served as the nation’s top law enforcement official under Mr. Trump. He has a long history of making the Justice Department an instrument of his ideology and politics; when he was attorney general in 1992 during the Bush administration, the Times columnist William Safire accused him of leading a “Criminal Cover-up Division” in refusing to appoint an independent counsel to investigate whether the Bush administration had knowingly provided aid to Saddam Hussein that was used to finance the military before Iraq invaded Kuwait. Under Mr. Trump, Mr. Barr did the opposite, demanding that an unnecessary special counsel do the bidding of the White House and trying to steer the investigation to Mr. Trump’s advantage. His efforts came to naught, and so will his campaign to be remembered as a defender of the Constitution.
David Firestone is a member of the editorial board. Mr. Firestone was a reporter and editor at The Times from 1993 to 2014, including serving as a congressional correspondent and New York City Hall bureau chief, and was executive editor for digital at NBC News until 2022.
New York Times, Opinion: The Durham Fiasco Is a Warning of What’s to Come, Michelle Goldberg,right, Jan. 31, 2023 (print ed.). Thank goodness 
Speaker Kevin McCarthy has created a House subcommittee on the weaponization of the federal government!
Last week, The New York Times reported on an outrageous example of such weaponization, the flagrant use of federal law enforcement powers to target an administration’s political enemies. I’m talking, of course, about the John Durham special counsel investigation, which was meant to root out the ostensibly corrupt origins of Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, and quickly came to embody the sins that Donald Trump and his allies projected onto the F.B.I.
Trump’s circle insisted, falsely, that the Mueller inquiry was a hit job that employed Russian disinformation — via the Steele dossier — to frame Trump, all part of a plot cooked up by the Hillary Clinton campaign. Durham seems to have bought into this Trumpist conspiracy theory, and to help prove it, he tried to employ what appears to be Russian disinformation to go after the Clinton camp. More specifically, he used dubious Russian intelligence memos, which analysts believed were seeded with falsehoods, to try to convince a court to give him access to the emails of a former aide to George Soros, which he believed would show Clinton-related wrongdoing.
Astonishingly, The Times found that while Trump’s attorney general Bill Barr and Durham, right, were in Europe looking for evidence to discredit the Russia investigation, Italian officials gave them a “potentially explosive tip” linking Trump to “certain suspected financial crimes.” Rather than assign a new prosecutor to look into those suspected crimes, Barr folded the matter into Durham’s inquiry, giving Durham criminal prosecution powers for the first time.
Then the attorney general sat back while the media inferred that the criminal investigation must mean Durham had found evidence of malfeasance connected to Russiagate. Barr, usually shameless in his public spinning of the news, quietly let an investigation into Trump be used to cast aspersions on Trump’s perceived enemies. (The fate of that inquiry remains a mystery.)
This squalid episode is a note-perfect example of how Republican scandal-mongering operates. The right ascribes to its adversaries, whether in the Democratic Party or the putative deep state, monstrous corruption and elaborate conspiracies. Then, in the name of fighting back, it mimics the tactics it has accused its foes of using.
Look, for example, at the behavior that gave rise to Trump’s first impeachment. Trump falsely claimed that Joe Biden, as vice president, used the threat of withholding American loan guarantees to blackmail the Ukrainian government into doing his personal bidding. Hoping to get Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to substantiate his lies, Trump tried to use the threat of withholding American aid to … blackmail the Ukrainian government into doing his personal bidding. The symmetry between accusations and counter-accusations, in turn, fosters a widespread cynicism about ever finding the truth.
It’s important to keep this in mind because we’re about to see a lot more of it. Now that they control the House, Republicans have prioritized investigating their political opponents. McCarthy has stacked the Oversight Committee, central to the House’s investigative apparatus, with flame-throwing fantasists, including Marjorie Taylor Greene, Paul Gosar and Lauren Boebert. Further, as Politico reported in a “field guide” to the coming Republican inquiries, McCarthy has urged Republicans to treat every committee like the Oversight Committee, meaning all investigations, all the time.
There are going to be investigations into Hunter Biden, and investigations into the origins of the pandemic. There will likely be scrutiny of the F.B.I.’s search of Mar-a-Lago and Biden’s handling of classified documents. And, as my colleague David Firestone on the editorial board put it over the weekend, “Republicans in the House are launching a new snipe hunt” for proof that the F.B.I. and other intelligence agencies were “weaponized” against conservatives.
These all promise to be congressional equivalents of the Durham inquiry. Certainly, most if not all congressional investigations are politically motivated, but there is nevertheless a difference between inquiries predicated on something real, and those, like the many investigations in the Benghazi attack, meant to troll for dirt and reify Fox News phantasms. House Democrats examined Trump’s interference with the C.D.C. during the acute stage of the pandemic. House Republicans plan to look into what the Republican congressman Jim Banks termed the military’s “dangerous” Covid vaccine mandates. There might be an equivalence in the form of these two undertakings, but not in their empirical basis.
It remains to be seen whether our political media is up for the task of making these distinctions. The coverage of Trump and Biden’s respective retention of classified documents offers little cause for optimism. Again and again, journalists and pundits have noted that, while the two cases are very different, there are seeming similarities, and those similarities are good for Trump. This is something of a self-fulfilling prophecy, since by speculating about political narratives, you help create them.
“John Durham has already won,” said the headline of a Politico article from last year, noting his success in perpetuating the right’s fevered counter-history of Russiagate. Of course he didn’t win; he would go on to lose both cases arising from his investigation as well as the honorable reputation he had before he started it. What he did manage to do, however, was spread a lot of confusion and waste a lot of time. Now the Republican House picks up where he left off.
Vicky Ward Investigates, Inside An FBI Sting on Russian Oligarch Oleg Deripaska, Vicky Ward, Jan 31, 2023. Yesterday, I reminded you that, yes, I once danced with the sanctioned Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, who has found himself, once more, in the headlines because a retired FBI agent, Charles McConigal, has been charged with taking money from him. A spokesperson for Deripaska told the New York Times that Deripaska did not hire McConigal for any purpose.
Over the weekend I phoned around to try to find out a little more about Deripaska’s VERY complicated see-saw relationship with law enforcement in the US.
Briefly, it’s emerged the FBI tried to hire him as informant in 2014-2016. They wanted inside information on Russian organized crime and Russia’s involvement with the Trump campaign (he said there was none).
And, before all this, back in 2009, the FBI had a working relationship with him–of sorts. He spent $25 million in helping the FBI try to find an American spy who was kidnapped by the Iranians, and has not been seen in years.
So when I started hitting the phones on this, I knew I’d find something because I know people who know Deripaska. But I didn’t think I knew someone who wore a wire for the FBI in a sting operation of which Deripaska was the target. But, that’s why you should always cast a wide net when phoning sources…
So…...
Jan. 30
New York Times, Manhattan Prosecutors Will Begin Presenting Trump Case to Grand Jury, William K. Rashbaum, Ben Protess and Jonah E. Bromwich, Jan. 30, 2023. The decision potentially sets the case, tied to Donald Trump’s role in paying hush money to a porn star in 2016, on a path toward criminal charges.
On Monday, one of the witnesses was seen with his lawyer entering the building in Lower Manhattan where the grand jury is sitting. The witness, David Pecker, left, is the former publisher of The National Enquirer, the tabloid that helped broker the deal with the porn star, Stormy Daniels, right.
As prosecutors prepare to reconstruct the events surrounding the payment for grand jurors, they have sought to interview several witnesses, including the tabloid’s former editor, Dylan Howard, and two employees at Mr. Trump’s company, the people said. Mr. Howard and the Trump Organization employees, Jeffrey McConney and Deborah Tarasoff, have not yet testified before the grand jury.
The prosecutors have also begun contacting officials from Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign, one of the people said. And in a sign that they want to corroborate these witness accounts, the prosecutors recently subpoenaed phone records and other documents that might shed light on the episode.
A conviction is not a sure thing, in part because a case could hinge on showing that Mr. Trump and his company falsified records to hide the payout from voters days before the 2016 election, a low-level felony charge that would be based on a largely untested legal theory. The case would also rely on the testimony of Michael D. Cohen, left, Mr. Trump’s former fixer who made the payment and who himself pleaded guilty to federal charges related to the hush money in 2018.
Still, the developments compound Mr. Trump’s mounting legal woes as he faces an array of law enforcement investigations: A district attorney in Georgia could seek to indict him for his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss in the state, and he faces a special counsel investigation into his removal of sensitive documents from the White House.
Mr. Bragg’s decision to impanel a grand jury focused on the hush money — supercharging the longest-running criminal investigation into Mr. Trump — represents a dramatic escalation in an inquiry that once appeared to have reached a dead end.
Under Mr. Bragg’s predecessor, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the district attorney’s office had begun presenting evidence to an earlier grand jury about a case focused not just on the hush money but on Mr. Trump’s broader business practices, including whether he fraudulently inflated the value of his real estate to secure favorable loans and other financial benefits. Yet in the early weeks of his tenure last year, Mr. Bragg, right, developed concerns about the strength of that case and decided to abandon the grand jury presentation, prompting the resignations of the two senior prosecutors leading the investigation.
One of them, Mark F. Pomerantz, was highly critical of Mr. Bragg’s decision and has written a book that is scheduled to be published next week, “People vs. Donald Trump,” detailing his account of the inquiry. Mr. Bragg’s office recently wrote to Mr. Pomerantz’s publisher, Simon & Schuster, expressing concern that the book might disclose grand jury information or interfere with the investigation.
For his part, Mr. Trump has denied all wrongdoing and chalked up the scrutiny — as he has many times before — to a partisan witch hunt against him. If he were ultimately convicted, Mr. Trump would face a maximum sentence of four years, though prison time would not be mandatory.
A spokeswoman for Mr. Bragg’s office declined to comment. Mr. Pecker’s lawyer, Elkan Abramowitz did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A lawyer for Mr. Trump, Ronald P. Fischetti, declined to comment, as did a lawyer for Mr. McConney and Ms. Tarasoff.
The panel hearing evidence about the hush money is likely what’s known as a special grand jury. Like regular grand juries, it is made up of 23 Manhattan residents chosen at random. But its members are sworn in to serve for six months to hear complex cases, rather than the routine 30-day panels that review evidence and vote on whether to bring charges in cases of burglary, assault, robbery, murder and other crimes.
Justice Department Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, left, and former President Donald Trump, shown in a collage via CNN.
Palmer Report, Analysis: Donald Trump is now in the process of being criminally indicted by grand juries in three different jurisdictions, Bill Palmer, right, Jan. 30, 2023. When Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg decided last year not to criminally indict Donald Trump for his Trump Organization financial fraud, it seemed obvious that Bragg was simply trying to avoid being the first to indict Trump, and that he’d eventually indict him on something. After all, Bragg would have zero chance of reelection in Manhattan if he doesn’t end up indicting Trump.
Last week Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis told the court that indictment decisions in her criminal probe against Donald Trump were “imminent.” Now that Willis is seemingly just days away from indicting Trump, it’s perhaps not a surprise that Alvin Bragg is now also in the process of indicting Trump.
Bragg is presenting evidence of Donald Trump’s campaign finance fraud to a grand jury, per the New York Times. Specifically, Trump is being criminally targeted for illegally using campaign money as part of his payoff scheme to keep Stormy Daniels quiet. This is the same Trump criminal plot which previously sent Michael Cohen to prison. So all that Bragg really has to do is show that Cohen was acting upon Trump’s instruction.
Michael Cohen responded to today’s news by retweeting a reminder that he met with the Manhattan DA’s office just two weeks ago. Cohen also retweeted a reporter who stated that campaign finance charges could be the “most dangerous criminal case” against Trump, in terms of landing a conviction.
The public will understandably be wary of Alvin Bragg until he actually indicts Trump, given how badly Bragg has dragged his feet up to this 
point. But there would be no reason for Bragg to go to the effort of presenting a criminal case against Trump to a grand jury, and leaking to the media that he’s doing so, unless he’s already decided to go through with indicting Trump. Bragg was seemingly just waiting until word came down that the Fulton County DA is now just days away from indicting Trump, meaning Bragg will get to indict Trump second (or third) instead of first.
This all comes after Bloomberg reported roughly two weeks ago that DOJ Special Counsel Jack Smith was just weeks away from critical indictment decisions in his own criminal case against Donald Trump. This means Trump is now on track to be indicted by three different sets of prosecutors, each of which will put him on criminal trial. It’s been tricky to predict the timing, but this was always coming. And now we’re here.
Washington Post, Opinion: The real ‘weaponization’ of the Justice Department: Barr and Durham, Jennifer Rubin, right, Jan. 30, 2023. House Republicans are right that politicization of the Justice Department has been a jaw-dropping abuse of power. They’ve got the wrong culprit, however.
As a blockbuster New York Times article made clear, then-Attorney General William P. Barr, above, and special counsel John H. Durham engaged in unethical, abusive manipulation of the Justice Department in pursing the baseless conspiracy theory that the intelligence community had conducted a witch hunt of then-President Donald Trump in connection with Russian manipulation of the 2016 election.
The Times reported that “the main thrust of the Durham inquiry was marked by some of the very same flaws — including a strained justification for opening it and its role in fueling partisan conspiracy theories that would never be charged in court — that Trump allies claim characterized the Russia investigation.” Durham brought two baseless cases, both resulting in acquittal. When Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s thorough investigation debunked their entire theory, Barr tried to pressure him to keep it under wraps. Then, as he did with the Robert S. Mueller III report, Barr publicly mischaracterized and trashed the report.
Durham also used a grand jury to pry into the record of major Democratic donor George Soros. Moreover, while supposedly operating independently, he met frequently with his pal Barr, in violation of the basic precept that a special counsel must operate with a high degree of independence. (From the Times article: “Mr. Durham visited Mr. Barr in his office for at times weekly updates and consultations about his day-to-day work. They also sometimes dined and sipped Scotch together.”)
Worst of all:
Mr. Barr and Mr. Durham never disclosed that their inquiry expanded in the fall of 2019, based on a tip from Italian officials, to include a criminal investigation into suspicious financial dealings related to Mr. Trump. The specifics of the tip and how they handled the investigation remain unclear, but Mr. Durham brought no charges over it.
Their conduct was so egregious that several career prosecutors quit rather than participate in (to borrow a phrase) the witch hunt. In the end, Barr conceded there was no there there — but only after the 2020 election.
Former prosecutors reacting to the Times report were outraged. Andrew Weissmann tweeted, “This is all about the Trump weaponization of the DOJ — but we know that the House Rs won’t give a damn about it.” Joyce White Vance concurred:
Three responses are warranted, although sadly none is likely to hold Barr accountable.
- First and foremost, Attorney General Merrick Garland should have the spine to remove Durham for gross misconduct. Moreover, any report issued should remove the names of those exonerated in court or who were never charged. They are victims of a political smear, which Garland should not enable by allowing baseless allegations to circulate publicly. Don’t hold your breath, however. Garland has shown little willingness to revisit the department’s conduct in the prior administration. (As an alternative, the inspector general could investigate Barr and Durham.)
- Frankly, Garland erred in never conducting a top-to-bottom review of politicization during the Trump era (including Barr’s politicization of sentencing recommendations and the department’s misrepresentations in the U.S. Census case). Instead of prioritizing the department’s outside reputation over the need to remove the stench of corruption, Garland should have gotten to the bottom of the Barr/Durham debacle long ago. (At the very least, it would have preempted the false MAGA narrative that Democrats have been the ones engaged in misconduct).
- Second, Barr and Durham, right, should face disciplinary action just as coup architect John Eastman (coincidentally on Thursday) was charged with 11 counts by the California state bar for “violating a variety of attorney ethics rules in multiple episodes, court cases and other conduct,” as CNN put it. Unless and until attorneys such as Barr and Durham face accountability, the threat of professional disgrace and the loss of their law license, other lawyers will be tempted to engage in such shenanigans.
- However, Eastman, Jeffrey Clark (facing bar proceedings) and Rudy Giuliani (suspended from practice in New York) have sadly been the exception to the rule of sloth and passivity from state bars. Scores of attorneys who signed onto frivolous lawsuits after the 2020 and 2022 elections (including challenging Kari Lake’s defeat in Arizona) have yet to face any penalty.
- The list of attorneys who participated in the effort to overturn the 2020 election but as yet have faced no consequences (Kenneth Chesebro, Cleta Mitchell) is far too long. (And none of the members of Congress who signed onto the utterly baseless Supreme Court brief seeking to disenfranchise millions of Americans has been taken to task.) State bars need to do their job to restore integrity to the legal profession.
- Finally, Congress should be investigating Barr and Durham’s gross misconduct. You can be sure, however, that MAGA Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee and the “weaponization of government” select subcommittee won’t be interested
In sum, just as Garland seeks to hold accountable political leaders who threatened our democracy, he must hold his own department lawyers’ responsible for misconduct. If not, an inspector general, state bars and congressional Democrats should do the job.
- CNN, Book reveals why Trump wasn't charged for Stormy Daniels hush money payments, Jim Acosta
New York Times, Opinion: Bill Barr’s Image Rehab Is Kaput, David Firestone, Jan. 30, 2023. Mr. Firestone is a member of the editorial board.
Former Attorney General William Barr has spent the last year in a desperate salvage operation for what’s left of his legal and ethical reputation.
During his 22 months in office, he allowed his Justice Department to become a personal protection racket for his boss, Donald Trump, and left prosecutors, the F.B.I. and other law enforcement officials subject to the worst impulses of the president. But then, in his 2022 memoir, Mr. Barr did an about-face, bashing Mr. Trump for lacking a presidential temperament and singling out his “self-indulgence and lack of self-control.”
In the book, he urged Republicans not to renominate Mr. Trump in 2024, accusing the former president of going “off the rails” with his stolen-election claims by preferring the counsel of “sycophants” and “whack jobs” to that of his real advisers. Clearly concerned that history was paying attention, he was even stronger in his videotaped testimony to the Jan. 6 committee, loosing a variety of barnyard epithets and bitter insults to describe Mr. Trump’s legal strategy. He said the president had become “detached from reality” and was doing a disservice to the nation.
The hollow and self-serving nature of this turnabout was always apparent. Mr. Barr never made these concerns public at a time when his dissent would have made a difference. Instead, he left office in 2020 showering compliments on his boss, praising Mr. Trump’s “unprecedented achievements” and promising that Justice would continue to pursue claims of voter fraud that he must have known were baseless.
But if Mr. Barr harbored any fantasy that he might yet be credited with a wisp of personal integrity for standing up for democracy, that hope was thoroughly demolished on Thursday when The Times published the details of what really happened when Mr. Barr launched a counter-investigation into the origins of Robert Mueller’s report on the 2016 Trump campaign’s ties to Russia. The reporting demonstrated a staggering abuse of the special counsel system and the attorney general’s office, all in a failed attempt by Mr. Barr to rewrite the sour truths of Mr. Trump’s history.
It was bad enough when, in March 2019, Mr. Barr tried to mislead the public into thinking the forthcoming Mueller report exonerated Mr. Trump, when in fact the report later showed just how strong the links were between the campaign and the Russian government, which worked to help defeat Hillary Clinton. A few months later Mr. Barr assigned John Durham, right, a federal prosecutor in Connecticut, as a special counsel to investigate Mr. Mueller’s investigation, hoping to prove Mr. Trump’s wild public allegations that the federal intelligence officials had helped instigate the claims of Russian interference to damage him.
Attorneys general are not supposed to interfere in a special counsel’s investigation. The whole point of the system is to isolate the prosecution of sensitive cases from the appearance of political meddling. But the new Times reporting shows that Mr. Barr did the opposite, regularly meeting with Mr. Durham to discuss his progress and advocating on his behalf with intelligence officials when they were unable to come up with the nonexistent proof Mr. Barr wanted to see. (Aides told Times reporters that Mr. Barr was certain from the beginning that U.S. spy agencies were behind the allegations of collusion.)
When the Justice Department’s own inspector general prepared to issue a report saying that, while the F.B.I. made some ethical mistakes, the investigation was legitimate and not politically motivated, Mr. Durham lobbied him to drop the finding. When that effort was unsuccessful, Mr. Barr reverted to his usual pattern of trying to spin the report before it was issued, disagreeing with its finding before it was even out. Mr. Durham then followed up with a similar statement, shattering the clear department principle of staying silent about a current investigation.
The two men even traveled to Britain and Italy together, pressuring government agencies there to disclose what they told U.S. spy agencies about the Trump-Russia connections. That infuriated officials of those governments, who said they had done nothing of the kind, and no evidence was ever found that they had. But on one of those trips, The Times reported, Italian officials gave the men a tip which, people familiar with the matter said, linked Mr. Trump to possible serious financial crimes. (It is not clear what those crimes were, and more reporting will be necessary to reveal the details.) Did Mr. Barr follow protocol and turn the tip over to regular prosecutors in his department for investigation? No. Instead, he gave it to his traveling companion, Mr. Durham, who opened a criminal investigation but never made it public and never filed charges, and when word began to trickle out that a suspected crime had been discovered, he falsely let the world think it had something to do with his original goal.
The Durham investigation, of course, has never presented any evidence that the F.B.I. or intelligence agencies committed any misconduct in the course of the Russia investigation, bitterly disappointing Mr. Barr and especially his patron, Mr. Trump, who had assured his supporters for months that it would produce something big. Desperate for some kind of success, Mr. Durham indicted Michael Sussmann, a lawyer who had worked for Democrats in their dealings with the F.B.I., over the objections of two prosecutors on the special counsel team who said the case was far too thin and who later left the staff.
Mr. Sussmann was acquitted last May of lying to the bureau, and the jury forewoman told reporters that bringing the case had been unwise. Mr. Barr later tried to justify the trial by saying it served another purpose in exposing the Clinton campaign’s starting the Russia narrative as a “dirty trick.” The trial did nothing of the kind, but it did expose Mr. Barr’s willingness to abuse the gratuitous prosecution of an individual to score political points against one of Mr. Trump’s most prominent enemies.
One of the other casualties of this deceitful crusade was the deliberate damage it did to the reputations of the F.B.I., the intelligence agencies and officials in Mr. Barr’s own department. All of these agencies have had many problematic episodes in their pasts, but there is no evidence in this case that they willfully tried to smear Mr. Trump and his campaign with false allegations of collusion. They were trying to do their jobs, on which the nation’s security depends, but because they got in Mr. Trump’s way, Mr. Barr aided in degrading their image through a deep-state conspiracy theory before an entire generation of Trump supporters. Republicans in the House are launching a new snipe hunt for proof that these same government offices were “weaponized” against conservatives, an expedition that is likely to be no more effective than Mr. Durham’s and Mr. Barr’s.
But weakening the country’s institutions and safeguards for political benefit is how Mr. Barr did business in the nearly two years he served as the nation’s top law enforcement official under Mr. Trump. He has a long history of making the Justice Department an instrument of his ideology and politics; when he was attorney general in 1992 during the Bush administration, the Times columnist William Safire accused him of leading a “Criminal Cover-up Division” in refusing to appoint an independent counsel to investigate whether the Bush administration had knowingly provided aid to Saddam Hussein that was used to finance the military before Iraq invaded Kuwait. Under Mr. Trump, Mr. Barr did the opposite, demanding that an unnecessary special counsel do the bidding of the White House and trying to steer the investigation to Mr. Trump’s advantage. His efforts came to naught, and so will his campaign to be remembered as a defender of the Constitution.
David Firestone is a member of the editorial board. Mr. Firestone was a reporter and editor at The Times from 1993 to 2014, including serving as a congressional correspondent and New York City Hall bureau chief, and was executive editor for digital at NBC News until 2022.
New York Times, Opinion: The Durham Fiasco Is a Warning of What’s to Come, Michelle Goldberg,right, Jan. 30, 2023. Thank goodness Speaker Kevin McCarthy has created a House subcommittee on the weaponization of the federal government!
Last week, The New York Times reported on an outrageous example of such weaponization, the flagrant use of federal law enforcement powers to target an administration’s political enemies. I’m talking, of course, about the John Durham special counsel investigation, which was meant to root out the ostensibly corrupt origins of Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, and quickly came to embody the sins that Donald Trump and his allies projected onto the F.B.I.
Trump’s circle insisted, falsely, that the Mueller inquiry was a hit job that employed Russian disinformation — via the Steele dossier — to frame Trump, all part of a plot cooked up by the Hillary Clinton campaign. Durham seems to have bought into this Trumpist conspiracy theory, and to help prove it, he tried to employ what appears to be Russian disinformation to go after the Clinton camp. More specifically, he used dubious Russian intelligence memos, which analysts believed were seeded with falsehoods, to try to convince a court to give him access to the emails of a former aide to George Soros, which he believed would show Clinton-related wrongdoing.
Astonishingly, The Times found that while Trump’s attorney general Bill Barr and Durham, right, were in Europe looking for evidence to discredit the Russia investigation, Italian officials gave them a “potentially explosive tip” linking Trump to “certain suspected financial crimes.” Rather than assign a new prosecutor to look into those suspected crimes, Barr folded the matter into Durham’s inquiry, giving Durham criminal prosecution powers for the first time.
Then the attorney general sat back while the media inferred that the criminal investigation must mean Durham had found evidence of malfeasance connected to Russiagate. Barr, usually shameless in his public spinning of the news, quietly let an investigation into Trump be used to cast aspersions on Trump’s perceived enemies. (The fate of that inquiry remains a mystery.)
This squalid episode is a note-perfect example of how Republican scandal-mongering operates. The right ascribes to its adversaries, whether in the Democratic Party or the putative deep state, monstrous corruption and elaborate conspiracies. Then, in the name of fighting back, it mimics the tactics it has accused its foes of using.
Look, for example, at the behavior that gave rise to Trump’s first impeachment. Trump falsely claimed that Joe Biden, as vice president, used the threat of withholding American loan guarantees to blackmail the Ukrainian government into doing his personal bidding. Hoping to get Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to substantiate his lies, Trump tried to use the threat of withholding American aid to … blackmail the Ukrainian government into doing his personal bidding. The symmetry between accusations and counter-accusations, in turn, fosters a widespread cynicism about ever finding the truth.
It’s important to keep this in mind because we’re about to see a lot more of it. Now that they control the House, Republicans have prioritized investigating their political opponents. McCarthy has stacked the Oversight Committee, central to the House’s investigative apparatus, with flame-throwing fantasists, including Marjorie Taylor Greene, Paul Gosar and Lauren Boebert. Further, as Politico reported in a “field guide” to the coming Republican inquiries, McCarthy has urged Republicans to treat every committee like the Oversight Committee, meaning all investigations, all the time.
There are going to be investigations into Hunter Biden, and investigations into the origins of the pandemic. There will likely be scrutiny of the F.B.I.’s search of Mar-a-Lago and Biden’s handling of classified documents. And, as my colleague David Firestone on the editorial board put it over the weekend, “Republicans in the House are launching a new snipe hunt” for proof that the F.B.I. and other intelligence agencies were “weaponized” against conservatives.
These all promise to be congressional equivalents of the Durham inquiry. Certainly, most if not all congressional investigations are politically motivated, but there is nevertheless a difference between inquiries predicated on something real, and those, like the many investigations in the Benghazi attack, meant to troll for dirt and reify Fox News phantasms. House Democrats examined Trump’s interference with the C.D.C. during the acute stage of the pandemic. House Republicans plan to look into what the Republican congressman Jim Banks termed the military’s “dangerous” Covid vaccine mandates. There might be an equivalence in the form of these two undertakings, but not in their empirical basis.
It remains to be seen whether our political media is up for the task of making these distinctions. The coverage of Trump and Biden’s respective retention of classified documents offers little cause for optimism. Again and again, journalists and pundits have noted that, while the two cases are very different, there are seeming similarities, and those similarities are good for Trump. This is something of a self-fulfilling prophecy, since by speculating about political narratives, you help create them.
“John Durham has already won,” said the headline of a Politico article from last year, noting his success in perpetuating the right’s fevered counter-history of Russiagate. Of course he didn’t win; he would go on to lose both cases arising from his investigation as well as the honorable reputation he had before he started it. What he did manage to do, however, was spread a lot of confusion and waste a lot of time. Now the Republican House picks up where he left off.
Washington Post, As Trump hits the trail in two states, some vulnerabilities come into focus, Hannah Knowles and Camila DeChalus, Jan. 30, 2023. Trump campaigned in New Hampshire and then headed to South Carolina on Saturday, amid growing Republican interest in elevating other standard-bearers.
Minutes into a campaign speech here Saturday, Donald Trump raised his false claims the 2020 election was stolen from him — returning to an issue that many Republicans worry has cost their party crucial support.
Hours earlier in New Hampshire, Trump delivered meandering remarks at a meeting of the state GOP, where some party delegates said that although they liked how he governed, they would prefer a new face in 2024. Outside the high school auditorium, a booth promoted a rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, with “draft DeSantis 2024″ fliers and T-shirts.
“It’s time for a younger person or someone new to have their time,” said Karen Umberger, one of the delegates, in an interview.
As he hit the trail for the first time since launching a third bid for the White House in November, signs of Trump’s newfound vulnerabilities came into focus. The trip effectively ushered in the start of the 2024 Republican presidential primary campaign season, with Trump fighting to keep his place at the top of a potentially crowded field.
Politico, Trump hits DeSantis: He's a Covid skeptic phony, Meridith McGraw, Josh Kraushaar, Jan. 30, 2023 (print ed.). The former president slams the Florida governor — and potential 2024 rival — as he hits the campaign trail in New Hampshire and South Carolina.
Since announcing in November, Donald Trump had an unconventional start to his third presidential campaign: He did not campaign at all.
That’s now changing, and part of the reason the former president is holding his first formal campaign events of 2024 in New Hampshire and South Carolina this weekend is that others may be forcing his hand.
In recent days, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley called Trump and suggested she would be announcing her decision to enter the presidential race soon, a conversation that a person familiar with it described as cordial.
“She called me and said she’d like to consider it. And I said you should do it,” Trump told reporters, noting that Haley once said she would not get in the race if Trump runs again.
But Haley may be only a modest challenge for Trump going forward. He also is on a collision course with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is widely expected to jump into the race.
On Saturday, Trump took his sharpest swings at DeSantis to date, accusing the governor of “trying to rewrite history” over his response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Trump said DeSantis, who has been openly skeptical about government efforts to vaccinate people against the virus, “promoted the vaccine as much as anyone.” He praised governors who did not close down their states, noting that DeSantis ordered the closure of beaches and business in some parts of the state.
“When I hear that he might [run] I think it’s very disloyal,” Trump said.
As for the polls showing DeSantis beating him in key nominating states, Trump was dismissive.
“He won’t be leading, I got him elected,” he said. “I’m the one that chose him.”
For months Trump has been tucked away at his resort in Palm Beach, where he has hosted parties, sent out missives on his social media site Truth Social, played golf, and plotted out his next steps.
When he re-emerged on Saturday, flying to New Hampshire on his rehabbed Trump-branded 757 plane, he was determined to showcase himself as a candidate who still has the star power that catapulted him to the White House in 2016, and could once again elbow out a full field of Republican challengers.
“They said ‘he’s not doing rallies, he is not campaigning. Maybe he’s lost his step,’” Trump said at a meeting of the New Hampshire Republican Party. “I’m more angry now, and I’m more committed now than I ever was.”
Unlike 2020, when he ran unopposed as president, Trump is expected to have a field of Republican challengers to deal with this time around, beyond Haley. In anticipation of a crowded field, Trump’s campaign has compiled research on different potential candidates, according to an adviser. But Trump himself brushed off concerns that he is in danger of not securing the nomination. “I don’t think we have competition this time either, to be honest,” he said.
At the New Hampshire GOP meeting, Trump announced outgoing New Hampshire GOP Chair Stephen Stepanek would help oversee his campaign in the first-in-the-nation primary state.
And later in the day, at an appearance at the South Carolina statehouse, Trump announced endorsements from close ally and occasional golf buddy Sen. Lindsey Graham, and Republican Gov. Henry McMaster — a notable display of political muscle in Haley’s home state.
“The good news for the Republican Party is there are many, many talented people for years to come, but there is only one Donald Trump,” Graham said. “How many times have you heard we like Trump’s policies but we want somebody new. There are no Trump policies without Donald Trump.”
But Republican activists in New Hampshire are plainly divided. As Stepanek rejoins the Trump campaign, outgoing Vice Chair Pamela Tucker was recruiting volunteers for Ron to the Rescue, a super PAC formed after the midterms to boost DeSantis if he runs for president.
“We’re not never-Trumpers. We’re people who supported Trump. We love Trump. But we also know, more importantly, that we need to win. And Ron DeSantis has proven it time and time again now he can win elections,” Tucker said in an interview.
Matt Mayberry, a former congressional candidate and past New Hampshire GOP vice chair who supported Trump and has appeared at rallies with him in the state, said he isn’t taking sides yet in the still-forming primary.
- Politico, Trump makes his first big move in New Hampshire, Jan. 30, 2023 (print ed.).
New York Times, Trump Courses Will Host Three Tournaments for Saudi-Backed LIV Golf, Alan Blinder, Jan. 30, 2023. As the league announced more details of a 14-stop second season, former President Donald J. Trump’s courses remained central to the schedule, deepening his ties to Riyadh.
Former President Donald J. Trump’s golf courses will host three tournaments this year for the breakaway league that Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund is underwriting, deepening the financial ties between a candidate for the White House and top officials in Riyadh.
LIV Golf, which in the past year has cast men’s professional golf into turmoil as it lured players away from the PGA Tour, said on Monday that it would travel to Trump courses in Florida, New Jersey and Virginia during this year’s 14-stop season. Neither the league nor the Trump Organization announced the terms of their arrangement, but the schedule shows the Saudi-backed start-up will remain allied with, and beneficial to, one of its foremost defenders and political patrons as he seeks a return to power.
Part of LIV’s scheduling approach, executives say, hinges on the relative scarcity of elite courses that can challenge players such as Phil Mickelson and Cameron Smith — and the abundance of them in a Trump portfolio that is more accessible than many others to the new circuit. In a court filing last week, LIV Golf complained anew that the PGA Tour had warned “golfers, other tours, vendors, broadcasters, sponsors and virtually any other third parties” against doing business with the rebel league.
But Trump, whose courses hosted two LIV Golf events in 2022, has expressed no public misgivings about his company’s ties to the league, which has drawn attention to Saudi Arabia’s human rights abuses and prompted accusations that the country was turning to sports to repair its reputation. A confidential McKinsey & Company analysis presented to Saudi officials in 2021 suggested there were significant obstacles to success and underscored the limited financial potential for one of the world’s largest wealth funds.
Jan. 29
Axios Sneak Peek, 1 Big thing: Trump's sleepy start to 2024, Josh Kraushaar, Jan. 29-30, 2023. Former President Trump's first campaign swing of the 2024 campaign generated little of the excitement that has long defined his glitzy political rallies.
Why it matters: From party officials to state legislators, there wasn't a visible show of support for Trump's 2024 bid among rank-and-file New Hampshire Republicans in attendance.
In contrast to the large rallies that propelled him in 2016 and 2020, the New Hampshire event — timed to the state party annual meeting — was held in a compact high school auditorium, with about 400 people in attendance.
The most organized show of Trump support was about a dozen fans standing outside the parking lot, who weren't credentialed for the event.
Driving the news: In a long-winded, hourlong address, Trump recalled what he says are his greatest successes as president — from cracking down on illegal immigration to stunting the spread of ISIS and launching the Space Force.
About one-third of the crowd loudly applauded as outgoing state party chairman Stephen Stepanek introduced Trump by endorsing his campaign. (He will be serving as Trump's top New Hampshire adviser.) But the speech overall drew a lukewarm reaction from the attendees.
Trump's biggest applause came 45 minutes into his speech, when he introduced a new proposal to crack down on critical race theory in public school classrooms. He also drew an enthusiastic response when he proposed a constitutional amendment for congressional term limits.
Noting that pundits have panned the former president's low-key schedule since announcing his 2024 presidential campaign, Trump responded: "I have two years. I’m more angry now and I’m more committed than ever.”
What they're saying: "Trump has not been mortally wounded but was damaged by the results in the midterm election," said former Republican state party chairman Wayne MacDonald, a state lawmaker. "Trump lost the 2020 election, and the number of people who still hold onto the belief that he didn't are a dwindling minority."
Between the lines: Signs of enthusiasm for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis were notable throughout the event. The pro-DeSantis efforts were led by the super PAC Ron To the Rescue, which set up shop inside the GOP meeting. A second DeSantis supporter was selling T-shirts at a stand.
A life-sized cutout of DeSantis stood just outside the auditorium. Only a smattering of visible signs of Trump enthusiasm — red MAGA hats from his most devoted supporters — were present in the high school's hallways.
Reality check: Trump's base of support has always been with ordinary Republican voters who don't participate in grassroots political events. Last year, Republican primary voters rejected candidates backed by popular GOP Gov. Chris Sununu in favor of MAGA-oriented candidates.
The bottom line: Polls indicate Trump's support is soft in New Hampshire. The widespread sentiment among Republicans there is that Trump served the country well, but he's unelectable in 2024.
- 2. California's battle lines, Rep. Adam Schiff's (D-Calif.) prospects in the hotly contested California Senate race are directly related to how relevant Trump remains in 2024, a California-based Democratic strategist tells Axios.
3. Poll of the week: Cracks in the Granite (state), New Hampshire Democratic voters overwhelmingly don't want President Biden to run for re-election and would seriously consider voting for an alternative, according to a University of New Hampshire poll.
Jan. 27
New York Times, Investigation: How Barr’s Quest to Find Flaws in the Russia Inquiry Unraveled, Charlie Savage, Adam Goldman and Katie Benner, Jan. 26, 2023. The review by John Durham, right, at one point veered into a criminal investigation related to Donald Trump himself, even as it failed to find wrongdoing in the origins of the Russia inquiry.
It became a regular litany of grievances from President Donald J. Trump and his supporters: The investigation into his 2016 campaign’s ties to Russia was a witch hunt, they maintained, that had been opened without any solid basis, went on too long and found no proof of collusion.
Egged on by Mr. Trump, Attorney General William P. Barr set out in 2019 to dig into their shared theory that the Russia investigation likely stemmed from a conspiracy by intelligence or law enforcement agencies. To lead the inquiry, Mr. Barr turned to a hard-nosed prosecutor named John H. Durham, and later granted him special counsel status to carry on after Mr. Trump left office.
But after almost four years — far longer than the Russia investigation itself — Mr. Durham’s work is coming to an end without uncovering anything like the deep state plot alleged by Mr. Trump and suspected by Mr. Barr.
Moreover, a monthslong review by The New York Times found that the main thrust of the Durham inquiry was marked by some of the very same flaws — including a strained justification for opening it and its role in fueling partisan conspiracy theories that would never be charged in court — that Trump allies claim characterized the Russia investigation.
Interviews by The Times with more than a dozen current and former officials have revealed an array of previously unreported episodes that show how the Durham inquiry became roiled by internal dissent and ethical disputes as it went unsuccessfully down one path after another even as Mr. Trump and Mr. Barr promoted a misleading narrative of its progress.
Mr. Barr and Mr. Durham never disclosed that their inquiry expanded in the fall of 2019, based on a tip from Italian officials, to include a criminal investigation into suspicious financial dealings related to Mr. Trump. The specifics of the tip and how they handled the investigation remain unclear, but Mr. Durham brought no charges over it.
Mr. Durham used Russian intelligence memos — suspected by other U.S. officials of containing disinformation — to gain access to emails of an aide to George Soros, the financier and philanthropist who is a favorite target of the American right and Russian state media. Mr. Durham used grand jury powers to keep pursuing the emails even after a judge twice rejected his request for access to them. The emails yielded no evidence that Mr. Durham has cited in any case he pursued.
There were deeper internal fractures on the Durham team than previously known. The publicly unexplained resignation in 2020 of his No. 2 and longtime aide, Nora R. Dannehy, was the culmination of a series of disputes between them over prosecutorial ethics. A year later, two more prosecutors strongly objected to plans to indict a lawyer with ties to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign based on evidence they warned was too flimsy, and one left the team in protest of Mr. Durham’s decision to proceed anyway. (A jury swiftly acquitted the lawyer.)
Now, as Mr. Durham works on a final report, the interviews by The Times provide new details of how he and Mr. Barr sought to recast the scrutiny of the 2016 Trump campaign’s myriad if murky links to Russia as unjustified and itself a crime.
Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Commentary: What did the Italians tell Barr and Durham about Donald Trump's criminal activity? Wayne Madsen, left, author of 22 books and former Navy intelligence officer and NSA analyst, Jan. 27, 2023. In the fall of 2019, Attorney General William Barr and John Durham, the Special Counsel assigned by Barr to investigate the FBI for wrongly investigating Donald Trump and his 2016 presidential campaign for ties to Russia, flew to Italy to pressure law enforcement there to fess up that they were involved with the FBI in what was falsely called by Trump the "Russia hoax."
Instead of getting the goods on the FBI -- whose top counterintelligence agent in New York at the time was in bed with Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska --Italian law enforcement provided Barr and Durham with information that Trump was involved in a major criminal matter, including suspicious financial dealings. Barr assigned Durham, a pro-Trump shill, to investigate the matter, granting him, for the first time, criminal prosecution authority. Not only did Durham not find any evidence of a "Russia hoax" involving the Democratic Party, 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, or George Soros -- all of whom Durham had under investigation -- but the criminal matter conveyed by the Italians was never acted upon.
WMR had reported on a serious criminal matter involving the car bombing assassination of Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, right, on October 16, 2017 and its possible ties to Trump. Italian intelligence and law enforcement have kept a close eye on Malta 
ever since the 1970s, when the island country developed close ties with the Soviet Union and Libya. Although Malta is now a member of the European Union, the Carabinieri and Guardia di Finanza (Financial Guard), as well as the Agenzia Informazioni e Sicurezza Esterna (AISE) foreign intelligence service maintain a close eye on Malta, which has become a haven for offshore banking, corporate brass plates, and Russian and other foreign residents who have purchased Maltese passports and established residency in the twin island nation.
Caruana Galizia was assassinated after she had implicated Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, his wife, and top aides in a scandal partly exposed by the release of the Panama Papers. The scandal led directly from Malta to Azerbaijan and, ultimately, to the Trump Organization in New York.
Caruana Galizia was well-aware of Trump's connections to international wealth and political and financial power brokers. During the 2016 presidential campaign, she wrote on her website, "You can't get more establishment than billionaire Donald Trump, scion of an extremely wealthy WASP family. So the real problem is stupidity and malice. But then it always was."
And, as she found out a year later, you can't get more corrupt and murderous than Donald Trump. Whatever the Italians passed on to Barr and Durham about Trump, America's "Mr. Magoo" Attorney General, Merrick Garland, has a duty and an obligation to the American people to make that information public without delay.
Jan. 26
Politico, The private angst over Donald Trump’s racist attacks on Elaine Chao goes public, Meridith McGraw, Jan. 26, 2023 (print ed.). His rhetoric “says a whole lot more about him than it will ever say about Asian Americans.”
Over the past several months, the leading Republican presidential candidate has launched a series of racist attacks on the wife of the Republican Party’s Senate leader, a woman who once served in his Cabinet.
But while former President Donald Trump’s taunts at Elaine Chao — demeaning her as “Coco Chow” or a variation of Mitch McConnell’s “China-loving wife” — have been mostly met with silence from fellow GOP officials, the main target of them is now speaking out.
“When I was young, some people deliberately misspelled or mispronounced my name. Asian Americans have worked hard to change that experience for the next generation,” Chao said in a statement to POLITICO. “He doesn’t seem to understand that, which says a whole lot more about him than it will ever say about Asian Americans.”
Chao’s statement is an extremely rare case of the former Transportation Secretary wading into the political thicket that her former boss has laid around her since the end of his administration. It suggests that discomfort with Trump’s anti-Asian rhetoric has reached a new level amid several high-profile shootings targeting Asian Americans.
On at least a half a dozen occasions, Trump has taken to his social media platform, Truth Social, to criticize McConnell’s leadership, and to suggest, among other things, that he is conflicted because of his wife’s connection to China. Last fall, in a message widely viewed by Republicans and Democrats as a threat, he said that McConnell “has a DEATH WISH.”
But the personal attacks on Chao have stood out above the others, both for their overt racism and the relatively little pushback they’ve received. McConnell and his team have not responded. And on the rare occasion where she has been asked about them, Chao has pleaded for reporters to not amplify the remarks. Other Republicans have dismissed the attacks as Trump just being Trump. The former president “likes to give people nicknames,” Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) said in October on CNN.
Charles McGonigal, left, former FBI counterintelligence chief in New York, and his alleged ally, Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, are shown in a photo collage.
Byline Times, Investigation: The Steele Dossier, the Indicted FBI Officer & The ‘Most Consequential Investigations in US History,’ Peter Jukes and Caroline Orr, Jan. 26, 2023. Christopher Steele is concerned his dossier on Donald Trump’s Russian connections was held up at the FBI Office whose head of Counter Intelligence has been indicted for working with one of Putin’s most powerful oligarchs.
News that a senior FBI official Charles McGonigal has been indicted for taking payments from sanctioned Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, and then trying to conceal those payments, raises deeply disturbing questions about the investigations he oversaw as head of counterintelligence at the FBI’s New York Field Office during the tumultuous 2016 presidential election,
The case, which is still unfolding, has particularly concerned the former British intelligence officer and Russia expert, Christopher Steele, author of the ‘Steele Dossier’ on Donald Trump and his Kremlin connections which was passed on to the FBI’s New York in the summer of 2016.
Steele told Byline Times that McGonigal had the opportunity to influence both “Trump-Russia and the (re-opened) Hillary Clinton email investigations in 2016, arguably two of the most politically consequential ones in US history.”
McGonigal, who has denied charges of money laundering and violating economic sanctions against Russia, was also a key figure in the FBI’s Cyber-Counterintelligence Coordination Section prior to being tapped to lead the counterintelligence division at the FBI’s New York Field Office a few weeks before the end of the presidential campaign.
Within weeks of McGonigal’s promotion to the new position in early October, the New York Field Office took centre stage as part of a scandal involving alleged leaks that ultimately forced then-FBI Director James Comey to go public with information about the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails barely over a week before Election Day — a decision that radically altered the course of the 2016 campaign and may have swung the election in Trump’s favour.
Although we don’t yet know whether or to what extent McGonigal may have been aware of or involved in these events, the allegation that one of the FBI’s most senior counterintelligence officials — who was tasked with overseeing some of the agency’s most sensitive and top-secret investigations — may have been secretly taking money from the Russian oligarchs he was supposed to have been investigating raises serious questions about his role in a series of events that, more than six years later, remains among the most pressing national security issues facing the United States.
Having worked as section chief for the Cyber-Counterintelligence Co-ordination Section at FBI headquarters during the height of Russian hacking around the looming election, McGonigal was named by the FBI’s then director, James Comey, as special agent in charge of the Counterintelligence division for the New York Field Office on 4 October 2016.
A few weeks later, close Trump ally and former Mayor of New York, Rudy Giuliani, started dropping hints on Fox News about information coming from the FBI field office. On 26 October, Rudy Giuliani told Fox News’s Martha MacCallum that Trump had “a surprise or two that you’re going to hear about in the next two days.”
“I’m talking about some pretty big surprise,” he added.
Giuliani went on to boast of his close friendships with retired FBI agents, and though he denied having a role in Comey’s Oct. 28 announcement and the events leading up to it, he also acknowledged that he had “heard about it” from contacts at the FBI.
“I did nothing to get it out, I had no role in it,” Giuliani said in a Fox & Friends interview on 4 November. “Did I hear about it? You’re darn right I heard about it…”
In addition to Giuliani, FBI agents from the NY Field Office also reportedly leaked information to GOP Rep. Devin Nunes. According to Nunes’ own telling, in late September 2016, “good FBI agents” revealed to him — and possibly other congressional Republicans — that they had discovered more of Clinton’s emails on Weiner’s laptop.
Three weeks after the appointment of McGonigal, and in the closing days of the 2016 presidential election, James Comey made the unprecedented decision of announcing that the FBI was reviewing new emails possibly related to Hillary Clinton’s use of a private server due to information from the New York field office. Comey made the announcement in a letter to Congress on October 28, 2016, saying that agents working on “an unrelated case” had turned up new emails and were investigating whether or not the material was significant.
A Republican congressman, Jason Chaffetz, leaked news of the letter and misrepresented its content, tweeting that the investigation into Clinton had been reopened. The unrelated case, it was later revealed, was the FBI’s investigation into disgraced former Congressman Anthony Weiner. While examining Weiner’s laptop, investigators discovered that his wife Huma Abedin — a top aide to Clinton — had also used the laptop, which contained emails between Abedin and Clinton.
Politico, Meta to reinstate Donald Trump’s Facebook account, Rebecca Kern, Jan. 26, 2023 (print ed.). Trump's campaign team had petitioned the company to reinstate his account in mid-January, saying that a continued ban would amount to Meta silencing "Mr. Trump's political voice."
Meta will lift the ban on Donald Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts in the coming weeks after a suspension that lasted more than two years.
The decision restores the former president’s access to a platform that he used to powerful effect as a campaigner, and could potentially boost his faltering 2024 fundraising. But a Trump return could also lead to more election misinformation on the platform, Democrats warn, since Facebook has a policy of not fact-checking political candidates — and Trump has continued to push the false narrative that he was the true winner of the 2020 election. Trump had been banned by Facebook after violating rules against incitement of violence after the Jan. 6 insurrection.
“The public should be able to hear what their politicians are saying — the good, the bad and the ugly — so that they can make informed choices at the ballot box,” Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs and the U.K.’s former deputy prime minister, said in a blog post announcing the decision.
“But that does not mean there are no limits to what people can say on our platform. When there is a clear risk of real world harm — a deliberately high bar for Meta to intervene in public discourse — we act,” he said.
Trump’s campaign team had petitioned the company to reinstate his account in mid-January, saying that a continued ban would amount to Meta silencing “Mr. Trump’s political voice.”
However, it’s unclear how quickly Trump will rejoin. He has not resumed posting on Twitter since Elon Musk reinstated him in November, and his campaign did not return a request for comment. Trump’s team did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Even if Trump chooses to rejoin, many political observers think it’s unlikely he’ll regain his previous level of influence.
In making its decision to restore Trump’s account, Meta evaluated several factors, including violent incidents and indicators of civil unrest. The company had initially suspended the president after his role in the Jan. 6 issurection, then extended the ban indefinitely.
Meta, Twitter and Google’s YouTube all banned Trump for posts inciting violence that were tied to the Jan. 6 insurrection. It wasn’t until he launched his own social media company — Truth Social — in February 2022 that he was able to more widely reach his audiences again, although its reach is far smaller, with just 4.7 million followers compared to 34 million on Facebook and 23 million on Instagram.
New York Times, Trump Has Refused to Text. Until Now, Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman, Jan. 26, 2023 (print ed.). Former President Trump, averse to leaving records of his communications, had long avoided text and email.
One of former President Donald J. Trump’s most consistent personal traits — one that his advisers say has helped keep him out of even worse legal jeopardy — has been his refusal to communicate by text or email.
Until now.
Mr. Trump, 76, who is heading into his third presidential campaign and is still under scrutiny by investigators on multiple fronts, has at last become a texter, according to three people with knowledge of his new habit. His messages have recently shown up in the phones of surprised recipients, they said.
Jan. 25
Proof, Investigative Commentary: Has Twitter Had a Far-Right Bent for Years? Are #TheTwitterFiles a Fraud? Seth Abramson, left, Jan. 24-25, 2023 (Long column excerpted below). The Debate Leads to Strange Words About Me By “Dilbert” Creator Scott Adams (above) and Even Elon Musk Himself.
If you work on controversial topics, you draw attention from polarizing people. But my debunking of a major #TwitterFiles meme led to odder interactions than I expected—and some explosive revelations.
The New York Daily News and others have reported on Adams’ “many controversies and inflammatory comments”, which have led to the cancellation of Dilbert in newspapers across the United States. Dilbert is a comic strip about the banalities of office life in America.
I won’t detail here all of the stupid things that Scott Adams has said to become such a controversial figure—as they’re numberless, and after all, we all say stupid things at times, though few of us things as spectacularly tone-deaf and preposterous as Adams has said—but I will at least offer the summary from the Daily News referenced above: In 2020, reflecting on the cancellation of the TV adaptation of Dilbert decades earlier, he tweeted, “I lost my TV show for being white.” Adams claimed that wasn’t the first time he 
suspects being white worked against him professionally. He has also joked on Twitter that he was going to “self-identify as a Black woman” so that he’d be considered for the Supreme Court.
Always the entrepreneur, the creator of the Dilbert comic strip has lately positioned himself as the defender and interpreter of all things Trump. So far it’s been a winning bet. Adams’s book Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don’t Matter has achieved bestseller status and his blog has racked up a whole lot of eyeballs.
In any case, while I seem to recall that I might have tilted with Adams once or twice online in the past—frankly, many have—I certainly didn’t think he’d devote a segment of his popular video blog-cum-podcast to me. But recently he did so, and it opened up a new narrative about #TheTwitterFiles and the Trump-Russia scandal I never would have expected.
The Adams Podcast Takes Me On—But Also, Elon Musk.
Like many journalists, I used to admire [Matt] Taibbi before he decided to leave journalism and enter the much darker but more lucrative world of far-right propaganda with other opportunists like Glenn Greenwald and Bari Weiss.
Taibbi, left, has followed me on Twitter for many, many years—I do not and have never followed him—and has at times seemed obsessed with me, repeatedly commenting on my writing and research despite the fact that there’s little point in doing so: Taibbi, who lived in Russia for many years and allegedly engaged in all sorts of grotesque misconduct while there, believes the Trump-Russia scandal was a “hoax”, whereas I have spent years of my professional life as a journalist substantiating that the scandal was nothing of the sort. That effort has involved thousands and thousands of major-media citations compiled into three bestselling hardcover books, an ebook, a podcast, a substack, a popular Twitter feed, and a fast-growing Post News feed.
I have nothing really to say to Taibbi anymore, and vice versa, because he is for some eldritch reason (or it could just be mountains of cash) committed to running cover for Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump without any compelling evidence in support of his tawdry crusade. I call my transient spat with Taibbi a “wrinkle” in the Scott Adams-oriented narrative I’m unfolding here because, as Forbes noted, Adams has a well-documented penchant for hitching his wagon to the star of the nearest would-be authoritarian celebrity-cum-tyrant and seeing how far that sycophancy will take him.
For years that man has been Donald Trump, but with Trump’s star now fading a bit—if not so much among his MAGA base as certain MAGA influencers—one might expect Adams to be looking for a new ideological patron.
And right now the clearest pick in that direction would be Elon Musk. Elon Musk suddenly interjected himself into my spat with Taibbi a few days ago.
Elon Musk released what he called the “Twitter Files” in December, delving into the company's decision to block the Hunter Biden laptop story and limit other controversial messaging that Musk wants distributed. In this 2019 photo, Musk speaks during a gaming convention (Photo by Mike Blake for Reuters).
Musk has invested Taibbi with primary authority to selectively report out carefully curated pieces of Twitter’s internal communications, all of which are designed to discredit Musk’s predecessors at the company—a leadership cadre he detests, likely for having run the company as competently as it did for so many years before Musk bought it and ran it directly into the ground at speed. Given that Musk has already lost one of the stenographers he chose to disseminate his revenge-porn-like pseudo-journalism—the aforementioned far-right columnist Bari Weiss, who publicly abandoned Musk over his hypocritical illiberalism on free speech—he can ill afford to reveal any daylight between himself and another of his minions. Thus, his reflexive defense of Matt Taibbi at—at least what appears to be—all costs.
So Here’s Where Things Start to Get Weird…
If Taibbi and Musk didn’t react well to me showing them a now-famous Guardian article confirming that the Trump-Russia investigation was actually informally launched in 2015 on the basis of reliable intelligence from seven allied intelligence agencies, Adams reacted even worse to me citing another now-famous Guardian report that says Twitter has had a systemic right-wing bias ensconced inside its algorithm for many, many years now. Adams leads up to his fury over the Guardian report by first addressing what he sees as the preposterousness of the Politico article that undermines Taibbi’s claims about the #ReleaseTheMemo imbroglio.
The analysis published the Guardian, and the confession by Twitter, renders the main thrust of the #TwitterFiles project farcical.
Why It All Matters. As I put the finishing touches on this massive Proof report over the last few days, the world learned three astonishingly significant things that are relevant to the subject of this narrative:
- Donald Trump is returning to Twitter—despite denials from Truth Social chief Devin Nunes—as multiple sources have confirmed that Trump is looking to end his exclusivity agreement with his own social media platform when that contract ends in June.
- FBI counterintelligence may have been compromised during the Trump-Russia scandal, inasmuch as there may have been secret ties between the Russian oligarch who led Trump-Russia collusion on the Russian side—Paul Manafort’s longtime boss, Oleg Deripaska—and one of the top FBI counterintelligence officials at the time, Charles McGonigal, who was in fact the lead in the Trump-Russia investigation.
- Elon Musk responded to the news of Trump returning to Twitter by suggesting that he believes the Biden administration will try to “weaponize federal agencies against Twitter” in response.
If you put all these new items together, you get the following interconnected narrative:
1. The most lucrative tweeter in American history is about to return to Elon Musk’s near-bankrupt Twitter, which could single-handedly save Musk’s demonstrably bad $44 billion investment in the platform;
2. Musk must justify his reinstatement of Trump—the event that has opened the door to Trump’s lucrative, potentially Twitter-saving return to the platform—by falsely contending that Twitter long systematically disfavored (rather than issued spectacular hidden advantages to) dangerous far-right elected officials like Trump;
3. As more and more evidence emerges establishing the truth of what I was the first to report on (at HuffPost) six years ago—the New York City field office of the FBI, run by Charles McGonigal (shown at right, clean-shaven in a collage with Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska) , was a nest of pro-Trump sentiment before and during the Trump-Russia scandal—the attempt by the new House GOP majority that Elon Musk openly stumped for on Twitter to frame the FBI as pro-Biden is now more likely than ever to fail, which will force the House GOP to engage in precisely the same sort of disinformation campaign about systemic biases in a massive institution that Musk and Taibbi and Adams have been waging on behalf of Twitter;
and 4. A pretty good sign that Musk is ready and willing to aid Congress in committing this new fraud on the American people (putting aside all the allegations of fraud Musk has faced over the years) is that his first response to the news that Trump is returning to Twitter was to spread a baseless conspiracy theory about pro-Biden deep-state actors inside the federal executive branch—where the FBI also resides. There’s not a jagged line between these four elements, but a straight one.
And indeed, Proof will add one more data-point to this group: that Mr. Trump is rejoining Twitter because he needs to do so to successfully run for President of the United States in 2024, which means that Elon Musk’s willingness to aid and abet false Trumpist and congressional narratives about the Biden administration—which false narratives he is trying to ensure dovetail with his own false narratives about pro-Democratic bias inside Twitter—can only have the effect of propping up a flailing Donald Trump presidential campaign whose success in 2024 could well mean the end of American democracy.
Seth Abramson, shown above and at right, is founder of Proof and is a former criminal defense attorney and criminal investigator who teaches digital journalism, legal advocacy, and cultural theory at the University of New Hampshire. A regular political and legal analyst on CNN and the BBC during the Trump presidency, he is a best-selling author who has published eight books and edited five anthologies.
Abramson is a graduate of Dartmouth College, Harvard Law School, the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and the Ph.D. program in English at University of Wisconsin-Madison. His books include a Trump trilogy: Proof of Corruption: Bribery, Impeachment, and Pandemic in the Age of Trump (2020); Proof of Conspiracy: How Trump's International Collusion Is Threatening American Democracy (2019); and Proof of Collusion: How Trump Betrayed America (2018).
Relevant Recent Headlines
- Washington Post, Former senior FBI official accused of working for Russian he investigated
- Palmer Report, Analysis: FBI official indicted for taking dirty Russian money – and it may finally blow the lid off
the Trump Russia scandal, Bill Palmer
Jan. 23
Charles McGonigal, left, former FBI counterintelligence chief in New York, and his alleged ally, Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, are shown in a photo collage.
Washington Post, Former senior FBI official accused of working for Russian he investigated, Shayna Jacobs, Spencer S. Hsu and Devlin Barrett, Jan. 24, 2023 (print ed.). Charles McGonigal, a former counterintelligence chief, is charged with money laundering and other counts connected to oligarch Oleg Deripaska.
The former head of FBI counterintelligence in New York has been charged in two separate indictments that accuse him of taking secret cash payments of more than $225,000 while overseeing highly sensitive cases, and allegedly breaking the law by trying to get Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska, left, removed from a U.S. sanctions list, officials said Monday.
Charles McGonigal, 54, who retired from the FBI in September 2018, was indicted in federal court in Manhattan on money laundering, violating U.S. sanctions and other charges in connection to his alleged ties to Deripaska, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. In his role at the FBI, McGonigal had been tasked with investigating Deripaska, whose own indictment on sanctions-violation charges was unsealed in September.
Separately, McGonigal was accused in a nine-count indictment in federal court in Washington of hiding his receipt of $225,000 from a former Albanian intelligence agent living in New Jersey. McGonigal was also accused of hiding foreign travel and contacts with senior leaders in countries including Albania, Kosovo and Bosnia where the former Albanian agent had business interests.
McGonigal’s alleged involvement with Deripaska may impact a significant push by the Justice Department to hit wealthy Russians with economic sanctions for conducting business in the United States, an effort that accelerated last year with Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
The twin indictments are also a black eye for the FBI, alleging that one of its most senior and trusted intelligence officials was taking secret cash payments and undermining the bureau’s overall intelligence-gathering mission.
Through his lawyer, McGonigal pleaded not guilty at a brief court appearance Monday. The lawyer, Seth DuCharme, told journalists that his client "served the United States for decades in positions of public trust and leadership, so this is a distressing day for him, but we’re going to litigate the case in the courtroom.”
Prosecutors alleged that from at least August 2017 and beyond his retirement from the FBI, McGonigal failed to disclose to the FBI his relationship with the former Albanian security official, described as “Person A” in charging papers. He also allegedly failed to disclose that he had an “ongoing relationship with the Prime Minister of Albania,” the indictment said. Since 2013, Edi Rama has served as the prime minister of that country.
In late 2017, authorities charge, McGonigal received packages of cash totaling $225,000 from Person A — the first time, in a parked car outside a New York City restaurant, the next two times at the person’s New Jersey home. According to the indictment, McGonigal “indicated to Person A that the money would be paid back.”
Months later, at McGonigal’s urging, the FBI opened an investigation into an American lobbyist for an Albanian political party that is a rival of Prime Minister Rama, an investigation that used Person A as a source of information, authorities said.
Current and former U.S. officials who know and have worked with McGonigal said they were shocked by the indictments. As a senior FBI counterintelligence official, McGonigal had access to an extraordinary amount of sensitive information, potentially including investigations of foreign spies or U.S. citizens suspected of working on behalf of foreign governments, these people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the work McGonigal did. One former official said that McGonigal had worked with the CIA on counterintelligence matters.
Palmer Report, Analysis: FBI official indicted for taking dirty Russian money – and it may finally blow the lid off the Trump Russia scandal, Bill Palmer, right, Jan. 23, 2023. When the DOJ criminally indicted former FBI official Charles McGonigal on Monday, it took me a minute to find the right words to write about it, because of just how monumental this story is. McGonigal has been indicted for taking dirty money from Putin-aligned Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, which is shocking when you consider that McGonigal was one of the FBI officials in charge of investigating the connections between Donald Trump and Russia. But that may just be the start of how big this is.
For one thing, it raises questions about just how long McGonigal was working for the Russians. Did he try to sabotage the Trump-Russia investigation from within? Is that part of why the Trump-Russia probe, which started strong with so many indictments, ended up falling apart before reaching any of the bigger fish? But there’s more.
McGonigal worked in the FBI’s New York field office. This is the same field office that is widely believed to have forced James Comey to go public with the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails, for fear that field office would leak it. This is the same field office that Rudy Giuliani publicly bragged he’d been illegally getting inside information from. Were these leaks also McGonigal’s handiwork? Is that why they were always so well-timed in Trump’s favor? And was McGonigal behind the now-infamous New York Times article published during the 2016 election cycle, which falsely claimed that the FBI had found no connection between Trump and Russia?
Come to think of it, I’ve spent the past half a year pointing out someone within the DOJ seemed to be feeding one suspicious pro-Republican leak to the media after another. There was the leak about Matt Gaetz supposedly being off the hook, which was apparently fictional, given that the FBI never did issue a declination letter. There was the leak about there supposedly being enough evidence to charge Hunter Biden, which was also apparently fictional, given that he never was charged.
These leaks, all aimed at making Republicans look good or making Democrats look bad, and none of them ever substantiated by any subsequent reporting, have long stood out as suspicious. And now the DOJ has criminally indicted a top FBI official, whose field office has a history of similarly suspicious pro-Republican leaks, for having been on a Russian oligarch’s payroll.
It’s not difficult to see just how big this could end up being. It gets even more mind boggling when you consider that McGonigal, by virtue of having worked for the Feds, knows full well that he’s extremely unlikely to win at trial. So even if he’s afraid to flip on Deripaska, there’s a good chance he’ll decide to flip on other DOJ/FBI personnel who were involved, and anyone in Trump world he was conspiring with. This indictment just blew the lid off something major – and we’re about to start finding out what it is.
Washington Post, Four Oath Keepers found guilty of Jan. 6 seditious conspiracy, Rachel Weiner, Jan. 23, 2023. The verdict is the the second of three seditious conspiracy cases charged in the U.S. Capitol breach.
Four members of the far-right Oath Keepers group were convicted of seditious conspiracy Monday, joining founder Stewart Rhodes in being found guilty by a jury of plotting to keep President Donald Trump in power by force.
Seditious conspiracy charges are rarely used and even more rarely successful, making the verdict a significant victory for the Justice Department. Of the nearly 1,000 people charged with committing crimes at the Capitol on Jan. 6, only 14 were charged with seditious conspiracy, identified by the Justice Department as not just participants in a violent mob but leaders using brutality to further a political plot. In November, the same prosecution team failed to convict three associates of the Oath Keepers of the crime.
At Rhodes’s trial only he and Florida Oath Keepers leader Kelly Meggs were found guilty of conspiring to commit sedition, while three associates were convicted of less politically loaded felonies that did not require plans to use force. The Oath Keepers verdict — which came after the jury deliberated for about 13 hours — comes as five members of the Proud Boys face trial down the hall on seditious conspiracy charges.
Joseph Hackett, 52; Roberto Minuta, 38; David Moerschel, 45 and Edward Vallejo, 64, were all also convicted Monday of obstructing lawmakers and Congress generally and conspiring to do the same. Hackett was convicted of destroying evidence by deleting it from his devices, while Minuta and Moerschel were acquitted on that charge. Hackett and Moerschel were acquitted of responsibility for damaging the Capitol’s historic Columbus doors.
The Oath Keepers were described by federal prosecutors as armed and dangerous traitors, and by their attorneys as hapless has-beens who stumbled into chaos.
“They claimed to wrap themselves in the Constitution, but they trampled it,” prosecutor Jeffrey Nestler said in closing arguments. “They ignored the will of the people,” he said, but “had the audacity to claim to be oath-keepers.”
U.S. District Judge Amit P. Mehta allowed all four men to await sentencing on 24-hour house arrest, noting that none of them had prior criminal history or issues on pretrial release.
Richard Barnett sits inside the office of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Jan. 6, 2021 (AFP Photo by Saul Loeb via Getty Images).
Washington Post, Man photographed in Pelosi’s office on Jan. 6 convicted of 8 counts, Paul Duggan, Jan. 23, 2023. An Arkansas man who entered the U.S. Capitol with rioters on Jan. 6, 2021, and was photographed lounging at a desk in then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office suite was convicted Monday of eight federal crimes related to the incursion.
Richard “Bigo” Barnett, who acknowledged leaving a vulgar written message for Pelosi before departing the suite with a purloined envelope bearing the California Democrat’s digital signature, sat impassively as a jury in U.S. District Court in Washington delivered its verdicts.
After eight days of testimony and legal arguments in Barnett’s trial, the panel began deliberating Monday morning and reached guilty findings on all eight counts against him, including four felonies, in less than two hours.
As for potential prison time, the most serious charge in the case, obstructing an official proceeding, carries a maximum penalty of 20 years behind bars. Based on previous prosecutions of Jan. 6 defendants, however, advisory sentencing guidelines used by the court are likely to recommend a much shorter term for Barnett.
He kicked back in Pelosi’s office on Jan. 6. Now he has ‘regrets.’
Although a prosecutor argued Monday that Barnett, who lives in Gravette, Ark., in the Ozarks, should be jailed pending his May 3 sentencing, Judge Christopher R. Cooper allowed him to remain on home detention.
Barnett, a construction company employee in 2020 and an ardent supporter of then-President Donald Trump, was carrying a walking stick equipped with a 950,000-volt stun device when he entered the Capitol with a riotous mob. Congress was meeting that day to confirm Joe Biden’s victory in the presidential election despite Trump’s false claim that he had been denied a second term because of voter fraud.
In addition to obstructing an official proceeding, Barnett was convicted of two felonies related to carrying a dangerous weapon during the attack on the Capitol and a felony charge of civil disorder. The four misdemeanors he was convicted of included theft of government property, meaning the empty envelope.
Authorities said the stun device on his retractable walking stick was capable of rendering a person unconscious if held against the skin for 10 seconds.
Legally speaking, it did not matter to prosecutors whether Barnett sat or stood in the House speaker’s deserted office suite. His alleged criminal presence in the Capitol was the key issue in his trial.
But what brought him to viral notoriety was his decision to recline nonchalantly in a staff member’s swivel chair and plunk his left work boot atop the desk.
Like Jacob Chansley, the shirtless so-called QAnon shaman, who roamed the Capitol in face paint and horned headgear during the riot, and another accused trespasser, often referred to as the “zip tie guy,” who scaled the Senate gallery wearing military fatigues and carrying a fistful of plastic handcuffs, Barnett became an avatar of the Jan. 6 mayhem in widely viewed images captured by photojournalists.
Chansley was sentenced to 41 months in prison. The accused “zip tie guy,” identified by the FBI as Eric Munchel, is awaiting trial in U.S. District Court.
Jan. 22
Washington Post, Trump team struggles to muster support ahead of S.C. event, Michael Scherer and Josh Dawsey, Jan. 22, 2023. Two prominent South Carolinians are considering a run, complicating the picture for the former president.
Advisers to Donald Trump have blanketed South Carolina Republican officials with pleading phone calls in recent weeks in an effort to drum up endorsements and attendees for the former president’s first campaign swing of the 2024 cycle next week.
But the appeals have run headlong into a complicated new reality: Many of the state’s lawmakers and political operatives, and even some of his previous supporters, are not ready to pick a presidential candidate.
They find themselves divided between their support for Trump, their desire for a competitive nomination fight in the state and their allegiance to two South Carolina natives, former governor Nikki Haley and Sen. Tim Scott, who have taken steps to challenge Trump for the nomination. Both are said by people close to them to be seriously considering a bid, and Haley is expected to announce in the coming weeks, South Carolina operatives said.
The result foretells a Trump launch event in the early primary state — with an expected endorsement by Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and a reaffirmation of support from Gov. Henry McMaster (R) — that positions the former president as a serious contender but stops short of demonstrating the dominance that he once enjoyed.
“Nikki Haley is probably our first South Carolinian since we voted for George Washington that has really had a chance of being president of the United States,” said former South Carolina GOP chair Katon Dawson, a supporter of the former governor, explaining the challenge. “And I think the Trump folks are going to run into that history.”
State party chairman Drew McKissick will not be attending the Jan. 28 Trump event, because of the RNC meeting next week in California, and Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), a close ally of both Trump and Haley, has a prior commitment on Jan. 28 that he may not be able to break to attend the rally, according to their advisers. Hope Walker, executive director of the state party, recently turned down a job offer from the Trump campaign because she has decided to stay in her role for the cycle.
Republican consultants in South Carolina agree that Trump starts in a strong position, especially if many candidates remain in the race after the Iowa and New Hampshire contests.
“A two-way race is competitive for Trump. And in a crowded race, Trump has a significant advantage,” said one Republican who had reviewed recent data from the state. “There is just a segment of Trump voters that Trump gets no matter what.”
Washington Post, Trump withdraws lawsuit against N.Y. attorney general, John Wagner, Jan. 20, 2023. Former president Donald Trump withdrew a lawsuit Friday against New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) that had sought to shield his revocable trust from James, who is pursuing a $250 million civil suit against Trump over a decade’s worth of allegedly fraudulent business practices.
“Plaintiff, PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP, by and through his undersigned counsel and pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 41(a)(1)(A)(i), hereby voluntarily dismisses his claims in this action against Defendant, LETITIA JAMES, without prejudice,” said the one-page document filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.
The action came a day after news broke that U.S. District Judge Donald M. Middlebrooks had fined Trump and his lawyer, Alina Habba, almost $1 million for what was ruled a frivolous lawsuit brought against his 2016 presidential rival Hillary Clinton and others.
In his 46-page judgment, Middlebrooks, left, shown in a photo by J. Albert Diaz, cited the lawsuit against James as among those that demonstrated “a pattern of abuse of the courts” by Trump.
Earlier this month, a judge ruled that James’s $250 million lawsuit against Trump will go forward, calling arguments by Trump’s team “frivolous.”
At issue is a lawsuit that James filed in September against Trump; three of his adult children who have been company executives; his longtime chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg; and the company after a multiyear investigation. New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron has set an October trial date for the major civil case to be heard.
The lawsuit, which could effectively cripple the Trump Organization’s ability to do business in New York, accuses the family-run real estate, golf resort and hospitality business of purposely deceiving lenders, insurance brokers and tax agencies to get preferable loan rates and reduce its tax liability by using bogus asset valuation figures from 2011 to 2021.
The Trump lawsuit that was withdrawn in Florida had charged that James has “repeatedly abused her position as Attorney General for the State of New York to pursue a vendetta against President Trump.”
Trump had made similar claims against James in state and federal court in New York.
Last May, a federal judge in Syracuse, N.Y., dismissed Trump’s lawsuit against James — which claimed that her long-term civil investigation into his business practices was an abuse of authority that needed to be stopped.
The former president’s attempt to halt James’s probe into the Trump Organization and its dealings with lenders and tax authorities was rejected in a 43-page decision by U.S. District Judge Brenda K. Sannes.
In a statement, James said her office would “continue this investigation undeterred,” suggesting that Trump has made efforts to “choose how the law” applies to him.
Jan. 20
New York Times, Judge Orders Trump and Lawyer to Pay Nearly $1 Million for Bogus Suit, Michael S. Schmidt and Maggie Haberman, Jan. 20, 2023 (print ed.). In a scathing ruling, a federal judge in Florida on Thursday ordered Donald J. Trump and one of his lawyers together to pay nearly a million dollars in sanctions for filing a frivolous lawsuit against nearly three dozen of Mr. Trump’s perceived 
political enemies, including Hillary Clinton, shown at left, and the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey.
The ruling was a significant rebuke of Mr. Trump, who has rarely faced such consequences in his long history of using the courts as a weapon against business rivals and partners, as well as former employees and reporters.
And it was the latest setback for Mr. Trump as he faces a broad range of legal problems and criminal investigations. His lawyers are increasingly under scrutiny themselves for their actions in those cases, as well as divided in the advice they are offering him.
“This case should never have been brought,” U.S. District Judge Donald M. Middlebrooks wrote in a 46-page ruling. “Its inadequacy as a legal claim was evident from the start. No reasonable lawyer would have filed it. Intended for a political purpose, none of the counts of the amended complaint stated a cognizable legal claim.”
While Mr. Trump has often blamed his lawyers for his problems, the judge, in his ruling on Thursday, addressed Mr. Trump’s history of using the courts as a cudgel, going back decades in his business career.
“Mr. Trump is a prolific and sophisticated litigant who is repeatedly using the courts to seek revenge on political adversaries,” Judge Middlebrooks wrote. “He is the mastermind of strategic abuse of the judicial process, and he cannot be seen as a litigant blindly following the advice of a lawyer. He knew full well the impact of his actions.”
Judge Middlebrooks said Mr. Trump’s suit had been “brought in bad faith for an improper purpose” and had “needlessly harmed” the 31 individuals and organizations, including the Democratic National Committee, he had sued “in order to dishonestly advance a political narrative.” The judge added that Mr. Trump’s use of the courts had helped to undermine the public’s confidence in them.
“A continuing pattern of misuse of the courts by Mr. Trump and his lawyers undermines the rule of law, portrays judges as partisans and diverts resources from those who have suffered actual legal harm,” he wrote.
The judge said Mr. Trump and the lawyer who filed the case for him, Alina Habba, right, and her firm, Habba Madaio & Associates, were to pay $937,989.39.
Washington Post, Trump withdraws lawsuit against N.Y. attorney general, John Wagner, Jan. 20, 2023. Former president Donald Trump withdrew a lawsuit Friday against New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) that had sought to shield his revocable trust from James, who is pursuing a $250 million civil suit against Trump over a decade’s worth of allegedly fraudulent business practices.
“Plaintiff, PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP, by and through his undersigned counsel and pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 41(a)(1)(A)(i), hereby voluntarily dismisses his claims in this action against Defendant, LETITIA JAMES, without prejudice,” said the one-page document filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.
The action came a day after news broke that U.S. District Judge Donald M. Middlebrooks had fined Trump and his lawyer, Alina Habba, almost $1 million for what was ruled a frivolous lawsuit brought against his 2016 presidential rival Hillary Clinton and others.
In his 46-page judgment, Middlebrooks, left, shown in a photo by J. Albert Diaz, cited the lawsuit against James as among those that demonstrated “a pattern of abuse of the courts” by Trump.
Earlier this month, a judge ruled that James’s $250 million lawsuit against Trump will go forward, calling arguments by Trump’s team “frivolous.”
At issue is a lawsuit that James filed in September against Trump; three of his adult children who have been company executives; his longtime chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg; and the company after a multiyear investigation. New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron has set an October trial date for the major civil case to be heard.
The lawsuit, which could effectively cripple the Trump Organization’s ability to do business in New York, accuses the family-run real estate, golf resort and hospitality business of purposely deceiving lenders, insurance brokers and tax agencies to get preferable loan rates and reduce its tax liability by using bogus asset valuation figures from 2011 to 2021.
The Trump lawsuit that was withdrawn in Florida had charged that James has “repeatedly abused her position as Attorney General for the State of New York to pursue a vendetta against President Trump.”
Trump had made similar claims against James in state and federal court in New York.
Last May, a federal judge in Syracuse, N.Y., dismissed Trump’s lawsuit against James — which claimed that her long-term civil investigation into his business practices was an abuse of authority that needed to be stopped.
The former president’s attempt to halt James’s probe into the Trump Organization and its dealings with lenders and tax authorities was rejected in a 43-page decision by U.S. District Judge Brenda K. Sannes.
In a statement, James said her office would “continue this investigation undeterred,” suggesting that Trump has made efforts to “choose how the law” applies to him.
Politico, Judge denies Navarro effort to dismiss contempt case for defying Jan. 6 committee, Kyle Cheney, Jan. 20, 2023 (print ed.). The ruling said Navarro, shown when in office above, had failed to prove that former President Donald Trump wanted him to assert executive privilege over his potential testimony.
A federal judge on Thursday rejected a last-ditch effort by Peter Navarro, a former adviser to former President Donald Trump, to dismiss the contempt of Congress charges he faces for defying a subpoena from the Jan. 6 select committee, keeping his late January trial on track to begin.
U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta said Navarro had failed to prove that the former president wanted him to assert executive privilege over his potential testimony — a key claim that Navarro has long maintained justified his decision to simply blow off the select committee’s subpoena.
But Navarro provided no evidence of his claim, asserting only that Trump privately asked him to invoke executive privilege. Without at least a shred of proof that Trump made a “formal” assertion of executive privilege, Mehta said, he could not grant Navarro’s motion.
“Defendant has failed to come forward with any evidence to support the claimed assertion of privilege. And, because the claimed assertion of executive privilege is unproven, Defendant cannot avoid prosecution for contempt,” Mehta wrote in the 39-page ruling.
It’s a significant decision in an area with little precedent: what current and former presidents must do to assert executive privilege. Mehta acknowledged that there’s not much to guide how courts should determine when a proper assertion has been made. But he said limited court rulings on the subject suggest there must be at least some formal evidence it occurred.
Mehta noted that two other Trump aides whom the House sought to hold in contempt — Mark Meadows and Dan Scavino — produced letters from Trump ordering them to assert executive privilege on his behalf. The Justice Department declined to prosecute the men, and Mehta indicated that the absence of a similar letter from Trump to Navarro led to a reasonable conclusion that Trump had not asserted executive privilege over his testimony.
Mehta’s ruling means that Navarro’s trial on two charges of contempt of Congress is likely to commence later this month. He faces a maximum sentence of a year in prison on each charge — one for refusing to testify and the other for refusing to provide documents — if convicted.
The select committee had hoped to interview Navarro about his coordination with former Trump adviser Bannon and efforts to strategize with members of Congress seeking to challenge the 2020 election results on Jan. 6, 2021, during the counting of Electoral College ballots. The committee recommended that Navarro be held in contempt in April 2022, and the full House quickly followed suit. The Justice Department charged him in June.
Mehta’s ruling also gutted a series of defenses Navarro had hoped to raise at his trial, including that he had a “good-faith belief” that he was immune from the committee’s subpoena. Mehta also agreed to prohibit Navarro from arguing that the select committee’s subpoena was invalid because the panel didn’t have a full complement of 13 members or a ranking Republican member appointed by GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy.
New York Times, Support for Trump Is Wavering Among Nation’s Evangelical Leaders, Maggie Haberman and Michael C. Bender, Jan. 20, 2023 (print ed.). Former President Trump, who relied on evangelical voters in 2016, has accused Christian leaders of “disloyalty.” Can he count on them in 2024?
On Sunday, the Rev. Robert Jeffress, a longtime supporter of Donald J. Trump who has yet to endorse his 2024 White House bid, shared the stage at his Dallas megachurch with one of the former president’s potential rivals next year: former Vice President Mike Pence.
The next day, Mr. Trump lashed out at Pastor Jeffress and other evangelical leaders he spent years courting, accusing them of “disloyalty” and blaming them for the party’s disappointing performance in the 2022 midterm elections.
While Pastor Jeffress shrugged off the criticism, others weren’t as eager to let it slide, instead suggesting that it was time for Mr. Trump to move out of the way for a new generation of Republican candidates.
The clash highlighted one of the central tensions inside the Republican Party as it lurches toward an uncertain 2024 presidential primary: wavering support for Mr. Trump among the nation’s evangelical leaders, whose congregants have for decades been a key constituency for conservatives and who provided crucial backing to Mr. Trump in his ascent to the White House.
If these leaders break with Mr. Trump — and if evangelical voters follow, which is by no means a certainty — the result will be a tectonic shift in Republican politics.
“When I saw his statement, I thought, ‘You’re not going to gain any traction by throwing the most loyal base under the bus and shifting blame,’” said Bob Vander Plaats, an influential evangelical activist in Iowa and the chief executive of the Family Leader organization.
Mr. Vander Plaats said that while evangelicals were grateful to Mr. Trump for his federal judicial appointments and for moving the United States Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, many thought that his time as leader of the party has passed given how hardened many Americans’ views of him are. Asked whether Mr. Trump would command support among evangelical leaders as he did in the past, Mr. Vander Plaats, who has criticized Mr. Trump in the past, said, “No way.”
Indeed, recent polls point to some Trump fatigue among Republican voters. But it is an open question whether evangelical voters will abandon him if prominent Christian ministers support other candidates. And Mr. Trump has previously had an ability to cleave various types of conservative voters from their longtime leaders, as he did during his unexpected Republican primary victory in 2016.
Solomon Peña, shown above in an AP photo at center under arrest, who is accused of organizing attacks on the homes of four Democratic officials.
New York Times, Despite Red Flags, G.O.P. Backed Candidate Now Charged in Shootings, Simon Romero and Maggie Astor, Jan. 20, 2023. “We could have picked apart this guy,” one Republican leader in New Mexico said of Solomon Peña, shown above at center under arrest, who is accused of organizing attacks on the homes of four Democratic officials.
The former Republican candidate accused of targeting the homes of Democrats in drive-by shootings had routinely called for locking up 2020 election officials in Guantánamo Bay. He promoted conspiracy theories about solar power, feminism and “the demonic theories of the Globalist Elites.” He had been demoted twice by the U.S. Navy and served nearly seven years in prison for burglary.
Yet powerful party leaders in New Mexico not only gave the first-time candidate, Solomon Peña, 39, full-throated endorsements, they also opened their checkbooks to fund his race for a state legislative seat in central Albuquerque long held by Democrats. Some knew about his prison record but said they felt that he had turned his life around. Local and state authorities now say they are investigating whether drug money helped fund his campaign.
“He came across to me as a very respectful, thoughtful young man,” said Harvey Yates, an oilman and former chairman of the New Mexico Republican Party, who donated $5,000 to Mr. Peña’s election effort. Now, Mr. Yates acknowledges that he may have made a mistake. He said that he felt “very bad, very sad” for Mr. Peña, “who I think really had possibilities.”
The police say that after losing his race by a landslide in November — he received 26 percent of the vote — and refusing to concede, Mr. Peña organized shootings at the homes of prominent Democrats, including two who certified the election results. The attacks came at a time of growing fears across the country about a trend of political violence, mostly from the right wing, including the attack on the husband of then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a conspiracy to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and the mob attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Accused former Marines Micah Coomer, left, Joshua Abate, center, and Dodge Dale Hellonen.
Washington Post, Three active-duty Marines with intelligence jobs charged in Jan. 6 breach of U.S. Capitol, Spencer S. Hsu and Alex Horton, Jan. 20, 2023. Rare arrests of active U.S. military members highlight challenge of policing extremist ideologies in the ranks.
Three active duty members of the Marine Corps assigned to intelligence-related jobs, including one at the National Security Agency headquarters in Maryland, have been charged with participating in the Jan. 6, 2021, breach of the U.S. Capitol, according to court filings unsealed Thursday and military service records.
Cpl. Micah Coomer, Sgt. Joshua Abate and Sgt. Dodge Dale Hellonen were arrested Tuesday and Wednesday near Camp Pendleton, Calif., Fort Meade, Md., and Camp Lejeune, N.C., respectively, and appeared in local federal courts.
The FBI said Abate admitted to entering the Capitol “with two ‘buddies’” during a June 2022 interview that was part of his security clearance process while assigned to the Marine Corps’s Cryptologic Support Battalion, which is partnered and headquartered with the NSA at Fort Meade. According to charging papers, Abate said they “walked around and tried not to get hit with tear gas,” and “admitted he heard how the event was being portrayed negatively and decided that he should not tell anybody about going into the U.S. Capitol Building.”
Each faces counts including trespassing, disorderly conduct and illegal parading or picketing in a restricted Capitol building or grounds, in connection with the riots that injured scores of police officers, left offices ransacked and forced lawmakers to evacuate the premises amid Congress’s meeting to confirm the results of the 2020 presidential election.
The sergeants’ occupations as special communications signals analysts and the corporal’s job as an intelligence surveillance reconnaissance system engineer were first reported by Military.com and were confirmed in their service records.
A Marine Corps spokesperson said, “We are aware of an investigation and the allegations. The Marine Corps is fully cooperating with appropriate authorities in support of the investigation.”
Abate’s attorney David Dischley declined to comment. Federal defenders for the other two men did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The men are the first active-duty military members to be charged in the Capitol attack since Maj. Christopher Warnagiris of the Marine Corps was arrested in May 2021. He is awaiting trial on felony counts including assaulting or impeding police and obstructing an official proceeding. About 120 of the roughly 940 people arrested in the Capitol breach served in the military, reserves or National Guard.
Politico, Judge denies Navarro effort to dismiss contempt case for defying Jan. 6 committee, Kyle Cheney, Jan. 20, 2023 (print ed.). The ruling said Navarro, shown when in office above, had failed to prove that former President Donald Trump wanted him to assert executive privilege over his potential testimony.
A federal judge on Thursday rejected a last-ditch effort by Peter Navarro, a former adviser to former President Donald Trump, to dismiss the contempt of Congress charges he faces for defying a subpoena from the Jan. 6 select committee, keeping his late January trial on track to begin.
U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta said Navarro had failed to prove that the former president wanted him to assert executive privilege over his potential testimony — a key claim that Navarro has long maintained justified his decision to simply blow off the select committee’s subpoena.
But Navarro provided no evidence of his claim, asserting only that Trump privately asked him to invoke executive privilege. Without at least a shred of proof that Trump made a “formal” assertion of executive privilege, Mehta said, he could not grant Navarro’s motion.
“Defendant has failed to come forward with any evidence to support the claimed assertion of privilege. And, because the claimed assertion of executive privilege is unproven, Defendant cannot avoid prosecution for contempt,” Mehta wrote in the 39-page ruling.
It’s a significant decision in an area with little precedent: what current and former presidents must do to assert executive privilege. Mehta acknowledged that there’s not much to guide how courts should determine when a proper assertion has been made. But he said limited court rulings on the subject suggest there must be at least some formal evidence it occurred.
Mehta noted that two other Trump aides whom the House sought to hold in contempt — Mark Meadows and Dan Scavino — produced letters from Trump ordering them to assert executive privilege on his behalf. The Justice Department declined to prosecute the men, and Mehta indicated that the absence of a similar letter from Trump to Navarro led to a reasonable conclusion that Trump had not asserted executive privilege over his testimony.
Mehta’s ruling means that Navarro’s trial on two charges of contempt of Congress is likely to commence later this month. He faces a maximum sentence of a year in prison on each charge — one for refusing to testify and the other for refusing to provide documents — if convicted.
The select committee had hoped to interview Navarro about his coordination with former Trump adviser Bannon and efforts to strategize with members of Congress seeking to challenge the 2020 election results on Jan. 6, 2021, during the counting of Electoral College ballots. The committee recommended that Navarro be held in contempt in April 2022, and the full House quickly followed suit. The Justice Department charged him in June.
Mehta’s ruling also gutted a series of defenses Navarro had hoped to raise at his trial, including that he had a “good-faith belief” that he was immune from the committee’s subpoena. Mehta also agreed to prohibit Navarro from arguing that the select committee’s subpoena was invalid because the panel didn’t have a full complement of 13 members or a ranking Republican member appointed by GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy.
Jan. 19
Longtime advice columnist E. Jean Carroll, plaintiff in civil suits accusing Donald Trump of rape three decades again and defamation more recently, is show at left in a recent file photo along with Trump.
Washington Post, Trump thought photo of accuser was of ex-wife during deposition, Shayna Jacobs, Jan. 19, 2023 (print ed.). Donald Trump mistook his sexual assault accuser E. Jean Carroll for his ex-wife Marla Maples when shown a photograph from the 1990s in a deposition at Mar-a-Lago last year, potentially undermining one of the common defenses he has used to deny an attack.
Trump, who is being sued by Carroll, an author and advice columnist, for defamation and sexual assault stemming from the same alleged encounter, has repeatedly said Carroll is not his “type,” suggesting an assault could not have occurred because he would not have pursued her romantically.
“That’s Marla, yeah. That’s my wife,” Trump said under examination from Carroll’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan, in a new selection of excerpts from the deposition that was unsealed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.
Trump’s blunder in a sworn deposition was quickly corrected by his attorney Alina Habba, who told him it was Carroll, not Maples, an actress and singer who was married to Trump from 1993 to 1999.
The top 10 Republican presidential candidates for 2024, ranked
Maples was Trump’s second of three wives and is the mother of Trump’s youngest daughter, Tiffany.
Trump’s lawyer did not immediately have a comment.
The black-and-white photo at issue has been circulating since Carroll made allegations against then-president Trump in 2019, detailing an account in her memoir of a forced sexual act during an encounter with Trump at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan in the mid-1990s.
Trump has denied having ever known Carroll, and in response to the photo’s existence, he has said in the past that he was often introduced to people at events that he didn’t know. In the deposition, he said the photo appeared to show him on a “receiving line,” possibly at a charity event, where he met and greeted guests.
New York Times, Support for Trump Is Wavering Among Nation’s Evangelical Leaders, Maggie Haberman and Michael C. Bender, Jan. 19, 2023. Former President Trump, who relied on evangelical voters in 2016, has accused Christian leaders of “disloyalty.” Can he count on them in 2024?
On Sunday, the Rev. Robert Jeffress, a longtime supporter of Donald J. Trump who has yet to endorse his 2024 White House bid, shared the stage at his Dallas megachurch with one of the former president’s potential rivals next year: former Vice President Mike Pence.
The next day, Mr. Trump lashed out at Pastor Jeffress and other evangelical leaders he spent years courting, accusing them of “disloyalty” and blaming them for the party’s disappointing performance in the 2022 midterm elections.
While Pastor Jeffress shrugged off the criticism, others weren’t as eager to let it slide, instead suggesting that it was time for Mr. Trump to move out of the way for a new generation of Republican candidates.
The clash highlighted one of the central tensions inside the Republican Party as it lurches toward an uncertain 2024 presidential primary: wavering support for Mr. Trump among the nation’s evangelical leaders, whose congregants have for decades been a key constituency for conservatives and who provided crucial backing to Mr. Trump in his ascent to the White House.
If these leaders break with Mr. Trump — and if evangelical voters follow, which is by no means a certainty — the result will be a tectonic shift in Republican politics.
“When I saw his statement, I thought, ‘You’re not going to gain any traction by throwing the most loyal base under the bus and shifting blame,’” said Bob Vander Plaats, an influential evangelical activist in Iowa and the chief executive of the Family Leader organization.
Mr. Vander Plaats said that while evangelicals were grateful to Mr. Trump for his federal judicial appointments and for moving the United States Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, many thought that his time as leader of the party has passed given how hardened many Americans’ views of him are. Asked whether Mr. Trump would command support among evangelical leaders as he did in the past, Mr. Vander Plaats, who has criticized Mr. Trump in the past, said, “No way.”
Indeed, recent polls point to some Trump fatigue among Republican voters. But it is an open question whether evangelical voters will abandon him if prominent Christian ministers support other candidates. And Mr. Trump has previously had an ability to cleave various types of conservative voters from their longtime leaders, as he did during his unexpected Republican primary victory in 2016.
Trump advisors John Eastman, left, and Rudy Giuliani speaking on Jan. 6, 2021 at a rally led by then-President Donald Trump outside the White House whereby speakers repeatedly urged the crowd to oppose the presidential vote certification process then pending before the U.S. Congress (File Photo).
New York Times, John Eastman Is Unbowed as Investigations Proliferate, Danny Hakim and Michael S. Schmidt, Jan. 19, 2023. A legal reckoning awaits a chief architect of Donald Trump’s effort to reverse his election loss. But in Mr. Eastman’s telling, he was far from a criminal.
John C. Eastman, a legal architect of Donald J. Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss, invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 100 times under questioning by the House Jan. 6 committee.
But in recently released testimony from the committee’s investigation, other witnesses had plenty to say about him.
Many White House lawyers expressed contempt for Mr. Eastman, portraying him as an academic with little grasp of the real world. Greg Jacob, the legal counsel to former Vice President Mike Pence, characterized Mr. Eastman’s legal advice as “gravely, gravely irresponsible,” calling him the “serpent in the ear” of Mr. Trump. Eric Herschmann, a Trump White House lawyer, recounted “chewing out” Mr. Eastman. Pat A. Cipollone, the chief White House counsel, is described calling Mr. Eastman’s ideas “nutty.”
In the coming months, Mr. Eastman will be facing a legal reckoning. He has been drawn into the criminal investigation into election interference in Atlanta, which is nearing a decision on potential indictments. The F.B.I. seized his iPhone. And the Jan. 6 committee, in one of its last acts, asked the Justice Department to investigate Mr. Eastman on a range of criminal charges, including obstructing a congressional proceeding. For good measure, he faces a disciplinary bar proceeding in California.
Attorney General Merrick Garland, right, announces last week his appointment of a special counsel to investigate the Biden government documents case. Alongside him is John R. Lausch, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois. (Al Drago/Bloomberg News).
Washington Post, How the White House strategy on classified documents backfired, Matt Viser, Tyler Pager, Carol D. Leonnig and Yasmeen Abutaleb, Jan. 19, 2023. When sensitive documents began to emerge, Biden aides are said to have tried to defer to the Justice Department, lie low and avoid Trump-like behavior. They got a political firestorm — and then a special counsel.
One of President Biden’s personal attorneys entered the luxurious 10-story office building, so near the U.S. Capitol that its promoters billed it as “the front seat to power,” on a Wednesday last November to begin what seemed a mundane task: clearing out a rarely used office that Biden occupied after leaving the vice presidency.
The attorney, Pat Moore, went through a large closet and found nothing out of the ordinary, a person familiar with the matter said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation. Then he tackled a smaller closet, finding it stuffed with folders, boxes and other political memorabilia, including documents related to Beau Biden’s funeral, drafts of political speeches and boxes of personal books, the person said.
But next, Moore made a surprising discovery: a folder with a cover sheet saying it contained secret government documents. Moore immediately called another attorney and notified the White House Counsel’s Office, which in turn contacted the National Archives, according to two people familiar with the matter.
But if the way they found the classified documents was out of the ordinary, Biden’s lawyers were determined to be sticklers for the rules once it happened, said people familiar with their work.
Those first decisions inside the airy office complex at the Penn Biden Center at 101 Constitution Ave. NW launched a 71-day push by Biden’s team, federal archivists and the Justice Department to make sense of the startling discovery. It culminated in Attorney General Merrick Garland’s decision, to the deep consternation of many in the White House, to appoint a special counsel.
Interviews with people directly involved in the discovery and the subsequent fallout provided new details on the effort to handle the crisis created at the intersection of politics, intelligence and the law. Republicans and other critics say the White House was, at a minimum, slow to seek the truth and level with the public; Biden’s aides say they were simply proceeding cautiously in a sensitive probe and taking their lead from federal investigators.
Jan. 14
United States Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas (l) with his wife of thirty-five years, Virginia (Ginni) Thomas (r).
Proof, Investigative Commentary: Ginni Thomas Gave the Strangest January 6 Testimony By Far—and in Doing So Revealed Far More Than She Intended, Seth Abramson, left, Jan. 14, 2023. In “The January 6 Files #2: Ginni Thomas, Part I,” an ex-federal criminal investigator and criminal defense lawyer whose January 6 research Congress has cited unpacks January 6 evidence others missed. (Note: This report builds upon Proof’s many prior reports on Ginni Thomas: I, II, III, IV, V.)
Introduction: Before the January 6 testimony of Ginni Thomas can be discussed as to its specifics, several broader points about her September 29, 2022 appearance before the House January 6 Committee must be established that confirm it as perhaps the strangest—and most suspicious—testimony ever received by the Committee.
These points include the following:
(1) Ginni Thomas lied about her testimony before it began. Thomas initially insisted that she “couldn’t wait” to talk to the House January 6 Committee, as she had nothing to hide. This itself was, apparently, a lie. Within a matter of weeks, Thomas’s attorney Mark Paoletta was attacking the Committee on several fronts, insisting that Thomas would never testify before it and falsely contending that Thomas had no knowledge of any events related to January 6 despite the fact that (by then) it’d been well established by major media that she was in contact with several of the major January 6 coup plotters in the latter half of 2020 as they were in the midst of their illicit plotting.
(2) Ginni Thomas chose as her attorney the former boss of a leading coup plotter. There’s a basically endless stock of high-end lawyers in America who are willing to jump onto a high-profile case, and that includes scores of well-respected conservative lawyers who primarily work in Washington, D.C. So it is truly inexplicable that Ginni Thomas, in the midst of claiming to have no connection to the Trumpist coup plots that encircled D.C. in January 2021, hired as her lead attorney for the most important legal imbroglio of her life Mark Paoletta, a longtime close professional associate of Ken Klukowski—not just one of the leading co-conspirators of John Eastman and Jeffrey Clark in the Trumpist plot to stage a historic anti-democratic coup inside the Department of Justice, but a man who Thomas specifically stood accused of having helped infiltrate the DOJ. Thomas’s choice of attorney alone would have marked her as running in insurrectionist circles, but in fact during her 136 pages of congressional testimony things got even worse—as she admitted to herself being a close associate of Klukowski.
Given that Thomas, right, knew this line of questioning was coming, her voluntary selection of Paoletta to represent her raises an understandable concern that she wanted a trusted and privileged conduit to Klukowski (Paoletta) to ensure that her testimony synched with his. Certainly, as we know from public hearings held by the House January 6 Committee this is a strategy many of the January 6 coup plotters have used: hiring lawyers intimately connected to Trump, his family, his inner circle, and his leading PACs, with formal joint defense agreements or informal information-sharing agreements (sometimes conducted against the will of the witnesses involved in them, such as Trumpworld lawyer Stefan Passantino’s apparent dismissal of his client Cassidy Hutchinson’s demand that he not share attorney-client privileged data with other Trumpworld figures) being used to pass information between conspirators.
Thomas could have avoided this appearance of complicity with leading Trumpist coup plotters, but she decided to indulge it, instead. And that’s not all, unfortunately: her own testimony before the House January 6 Committee, as we will soon see, offers compelling evidence that she herself sought—multiple times, even—to inappropriately make contact with other January 6 witnesses either directly or through her attorney (especially witnesses whose testimony could, based on all the evidence we have thus far, be problematic for her) which would seem to increase the odds that her selection of Klukowski’s friend Paoletta as her lead counsel was indeed a strategic decision.
(3) Ginni Thomas refused to testify under oath. To be clear, a refusal to testify under oath certainly does not equate to an intent to lie, but keep in mind that Thomas and her lawyer had loudly opined that not only did Thomas have nothing to hide from the House January 6 Committee but also that there was nothing of importance she could offer to it. Just so, her status as the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has, as she has at times conceded, opened social and professional doors for her and lent additional attention and weight to her words, so surely the flip side of that must be that if one’s spouse is one of just nine people in the United States who sit atop the nation’s jurisprudential superstructure, one must also (in addition to the myriad perks that come with that status) have some obligation—quite apart from the one Thomas already has from the mere fact that she herself is a lawyer—to respect government investigations enough to want to assist them to the best of your ability.
It is strange that media pundits so often note that Thomas is a partisan without simultaneously noting that she is also a lawyer, a judge’s spouse, a devout Christian, and someone who has worked for years in public service—all identities that would militate in favor of a person who says they have nothing to hide being willing to testify under oath in a duly constituted public inquiry (which the House January 6 Committee surely was).
Ginni Thomas refusing to testify under oath is so complex a legal, political, moral, ethical, and logistical question that it could easily give birth to its own report at Proof. Suffice to say that there is nothing normative, non-controversial, or simple about the decision, especially (again) since it was a decision made on the advice of a man extremely close to a man alleged to be a leading coup plotter.
Seth Abramson, shown above and at right, is founder of Proof and is a former criminal defense attorney and criminal investigator who teaches digital journalism, legal advocacy, and cultural theory at the University of New Hampshire. A regular political and legal analyst on CNN and the BBC during the Trump presidency, he is a best-selling author who has published eight books and edited five anthologies.
Abramson is a graduate of Dartmouth College, Harvard Law School, the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and the Ph.D. program in English at University of Wisconsin-Madison. His books include a Trump trilogy: Proof of Corruption: Bribery, Impeachment, and Pandemic in the Age of Trump (2020); Proof of Conspiracy: How Trump's International Collusion Is Threatening American Democracy (2019); and Proof of Collusion: How Trump Betrayed America (2018).
Jan. 13
New disclosures in the E. Jean Carroll rape lawsuit echo Trump's words in "Hollywood Access" videotape, reported upon above, that arose during the 2016 presidential campaign. Shown Then: The front page of a 2016 New York Daily News edition contrasts with President Trump's claimed innocence in the Carroll case.
Washington Post, Trump falsely claimed in deposition that Carroll spoke about enjoying rape, Shayna Jacobs and Isaac Arnsdorfo, Jan. 13, 2023. In sworn questioning, Donald Trump denied raping E. Jean Carroll but also falsely claimed she said she enjoyed sexual assault.
Donald Trump used a sworn deposition in a case brought by his sexual assault accuser E. Jean Carroll to continue calling her a liar and to claim she is 
mentally ill — denying that he sexually assaulted her even as he falsely claimed Carroll, left, said in a CNN interview that she enjoyed being raped.
In rambling and combative testimony at an October session at Mar-a-Lago, Trump reiterated past claims he didn’t know Carroll, shown at left right and below through the years, except as an adversary in what he termed “hoax” litigation, and said she was a “nut job" who was fabricating the story altogether.
“I know nothing about her,” he said in response to questions from Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan, according to court documents unsealed Friday. “I think she’s sick. Mentally sick.”
The former president twisted Carroll’s comments from a June 2019 interview with CNN anchor Anderson Cooper, in which she said she shied away from calling her alleged encounter with Trump a “rape” because the word “has so many sexual connotations” and is a “fantasy” for many.
“I think most people think of rape as being sexy,” she told Cooper, according to a transcript of the interview, explaining that she instead thinks of her alleged attack as a “fight.”
Trump cited the interview in telling Kaplan that Carroll “loved” sexual assault.
“She actually indicated that she loved it. Okay?” Trump said in the deposition. “In fact, I think she said it was sexy, didn’t she? She said it was very sexy to be raped.”
Kaplan then asked: “So, sir, I just want to confirm: It’s your testimony that E. Jean Carroll said that she loved being sexually assaulted by you?”
And Trump answered: “Well, based on her interview with Anderson Cooper, I believe that’s what took place.”
Carroll, an author and advice columnist, publicly accused Trump in 2019 of raping her in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman in the mid-1990s. She has a pair of pending lawsuits against him in federal court in Manhattan, the first for defamation over comments by Trump in 2019 trashing her and her account, and the latter over the alleged sexual assault itself.
Trump has denied knowing Carroll at all, even though he was photographed with her and her then-husband at an event decades ago.
On Friday, U.S. District Court Judge Lewis A. Kaplan rejected a bid by Trump’s attorneys to dismiss Carroll’s sexual assault lawsuit, which was filed under a New York law that lets sexual assault victims sue years later.
Trump lawyer Alina Habba said she would appeal the judge’s decision not to toss out the newer case. A spokesman for Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign declined further comment.
The D.C. Court of Appeals is considering whether the Justice Department can represent Trump as a federal employee, a long-running legal dispute that has been heard by various courts and could effectively put an end to the defamation claims.
Kaplan has scheduled an April trial date for both lawsuits.
Some portions of Carroll’s deposition in the defamation lawsuit were already part of the public docket. Portions of Trump’s deposition were ordered released in a separate decision Friday by Judge Kaplan, who is not related to Carroll’s attorney. That decision followed a bid by Trump’s attorneys to keep the previously 
redacted section sealed.
The deposition depicts a full display of Trump’s trademark bluster. He complained to Roberta Kaplan, the attorney, about having to “waste a whole day doing these ridiculous questions with you” and said he would sue both Carroll and her attorney “after this is over.”
He also insisted incorrectly that Truth Social, the social media website he launched in response to his disciplinary removal from Twitter, was more successful than mainstream sites like Twitter, TikTok and Instagram. Truth Social, whose audience has reportedly grown since its rocky launch, still has nowhere near the reach as the others apps on the market.
Kaplan asked Trump during the deposition to list times he’s labeled an event a “hoax,” which he has said about Carroll’s allegation. “The Russia Russia Russia hoax ... Ukraine Ukraine Ukraine hoax,” Trump replied, apparent references to federal probes into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and Trump’s alleged meddling in the disbursement of Ukraine military funding during his term. He listed several others and said of the legal proceedings initiated by Carroll: “This is a hoax too.”
When directly asked if he’d ever sexually assaulted or touched a woman’s intimate parts without consent, his lawyer objected and Trump responded.
“Well, I will tell you no, but you may have some people like your client that lie,” Trump said.
At least 17 women have come forward with allegations that Trump physically touched them inappropriately, many of them supported by people they told at the time. Trump has repeatedly denied the allegations.
Donald Trump, as portrayed in a fictionalized portrayal of his leadership of the Trump Organization on the former top-rated TV show The Apprentice.
Washington Post, Trump Organization ordered to pay $1.6 million penalty in tax fraud case, Shayna Jacobs, Jan. 13, 2023. The Trump Organization was sentenced to pay $1.6 million in fines to the state on Friday — the maximum allowed by law — following its December conviction on tax crimes carried out by two of its longtime executives.
The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office argued for the top possible financial punishment for the former president’s private company, describing egregious and deliberate long-term conduct that both benefited former president Donald Trump’s namesake company and the executives involved in the cheating.
“The sheer magnitude of this fraud merits the largest financial sanction authorized by law,” Assistant District Attorney Joshua Steinglass said at the company’s sentencing.
Steinglass said the company “cultivated a pervasive culture of fraud, underreported executive compensation, falsified business records and otherwise helping their senior management evade taxes to keep their own costs as low as possible.”
Longtime Trump Organization finance chief Allen Weisselberg, right, was the key witness against the company. He pleaded guilty in August to 15 felonies and agreed to testify in exchange for a significantly reduced sentence of five months in jail and five years of probation, which was imposed in court on Tuesday. He also paid the state more than $2 million in back taxes, fines and interest. He faced up to 15 years in jail.
Trump Organization spokeswoman Kimberly Benza said in a statement Friday that the verdict would be appealed.
In brief remarks after the company’s sentencing, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said the company’s punishment was “not enough” and said state laws for corporate tax fraud should carry harsher penalties.
Jan. 11
Proof, Investigative Commentary: The Biggest Hole in the House January 6 Committee Final Report Has Been Found—and It Could Hold the Key to All Future Investigations of Donald Trump’s Insurrection, Seth Abramson, left, Jan. 11, 2023. In “The January 6 Files #1: Charlie Kirk,” a former federal criminal investigator and criminal defense attorney whose January 6 research Congress often cites unpacks January 6 evidence others missed.
In “The January 6 Files #1: Charlie Kirk,” a former federal criminal investigator and criminal defense attorney whose January 6 research Congress often cites, unpacks January 6 evidence others missed.
Introduction
The evidence is quickly mounting—after the public release of over a hundred January 6 witness transcripts by the House January 6 Committee in the final hours of 2022—that the plot to storm the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 had its origin in the Turning Point USA “Student Action Summit” (SAS) that was held just four miles from Mar-a-Lago between December 19 and December 22 of 2020.
Hours before that raucous far-right conference began, then-President of the United States Donald Trump—at the time just 72 hours from flying to Mar-a-Lago himself—infamously announced his endorsement of a “big” and “wild” event (which he termed a “protest”) that was slated to occur a nine-minute walk from the Capitol on January 6.
Documentary evidence now confirms that this December 2020 Mar-a-Lago-adjacent summit, which featured Trump himself as well as Trump family members and leading congressional allies, was used to shape the planning, funding, and logistics of a rally and subsequent march in January 2021—a rally and march that in turn helped set off an armed insurrection of a sort not seen in the United States since the American Civil War.
The summit, which brought together far-right radicals from all across the country and even threatened to turn violent—with “angry” and “tense” confrontations between attendees and local officials—was set up by Turning Point USA (TPUSA) founder Charlie Kirk, right.
Speakers at the summit included Donald Trump (by phone), Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, Lara Trump, Donald Trump Jr.’s soon-to-be-fiancée Kimberly Guilfoyle, Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, Trump domestic policy adviser Sebastian Gorka, and Trump foreign policy adviser Tucker Carlson. United States senators Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Mike Lee (R-UT), who would play critical roles as Trump allies during the horrifying events of January 6, also attended and spoke. Many less well-known far-right firebrands, like convicted felon Dinesh D’Souza and author/podcaster David J. Harris Jr.—the latter of whom was in D.C. on January 6, 2021—were also speakers at the summit.
Promotional materials for the several-day event, which was attended by thousands, promised that it would offer “first-class activism training” to all attendees while in turn “organizing” them for future political action. It promised to put these angry, tense, newly organized far-right activists in direct contact with many conservative “political leaders and top-tier activist organizations.”
Seth Abramson, shown above and at right, is founder of Proof and is a former criminal defense attorney and criminal investigator who teaches digital journalism, legal advocacy, and cultural theory at the University of New Hampshire. A regular political and legal analyst on CNN and the BBC during the Trump presidency, he is a best-selling author who has published eight books and edited five anthologies.
Abramson is a graduate of Dartmouth College, Harvard Law School, the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and the Ph.D. program in English at University of Wisconsin-Madison. His books include a Trump trilogy: Proof of Corruption: Bribery, Impeachment, and Pandemic in the Age of Trump (2020); Proof of Conspiracy: How Trump's International Collusion Is Threatening American Democracy (2019); and Proof of Collusion: How Trump Betrayed America (2018).
Jan. 10
Trump Organization’s former Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg arrives to court, Tuesday, Jan. 10, 2023, in New York (AP Photo by John Minchillo).
Law&Crime, Ex-Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg Gets Five Months Behind Bars, as Judge Bemoans Sentence Couldn't Have Been 'Much Greater,'
Jerry Lambe, Jan. 10, 2023. "Were it not because I made that promise, I would not be imposing five-month sentence, I would be imposing a much greater sentence," Judge Merchan said in court.
Allen Weisselberg, right, the former chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, will be trading his office in the glitzy Trump Tower for a cell in one of the most scandal-beset prisons in the country after pleading guilty to a series of financial crimes in connection with his work for the former president’s real estate empire.
New York Judge Juan Manuel Merchan on Tuesday sentenced the 75-year-old Weisselberg to five months in prison to be served at Rikers Island immediately. He appeared to dress for that outcome, skipping his usual business suit in favor of a North Face fleece and navy sweatpants.
The judge said that Weisselberg’s testimony at the Trump Organization criminal trial, over which he also presided, gave him pause about the lenient prison sentence he had agreed to hand down in the current case.
“Were it not because I made that promise, I would not be imposing a five-month sentence. I would be imposing a much greater sentence,” Merchan said in court. “Most significantly was the $6,000 payroll payment to Mr. Weisselberg’s wife and the reason I find that so offensive is that it was driven purely by greed.”
Merchan explained how Weisselberg was “earning upwards of seven figures” and clearly “did not need that money.” However, he still “found a way” to make sure that his wife received sufficient payroll income so she could “one day benefit from social security payments she was not entitled to.”
The sentence was previously agreed to by Weisselberg and prosecutors in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office in exchange for the longtime Trump executive pleading guilty to 15 separate criminal charges and testifying against the Trump Organization and Trump Payroll Corp, which were convicted last month on more than a dozen felony charges.
In addition to the time in prison, Judge Merchan also sentenced Weisselberg to five years of post-release probation and ordered him to make full repayment of taxes, penalties, and interest due to New York City and New York State tax authorities totaling $1,994,321.
With good behavior, Weisselberg may be eligible for release from detention in just over three months.
Prior to the Judge Merchan passing the sentence, Weisselberg’s attorney, Nicholas Gravante Jr., asked the court to further reduce his client’s time behind bars, requesting that Weisselberg be permitted to serve the second half of his prison term under house arrest.
“Aside from fact that he’s 75 years old, Mr. Weisselberg has no criminal history. He does have history of military service and has fully accepted responsibility for actions in this case, poses no danger to community, and has already been punished severely,” Gravante said, adding that what his client has had to endured was “unique for this particular case.”
“The publicity in this case has exponentially increased the severity of punishment that he has had to suffer,” Weisselberg’s attorney told the court.
He then spoke about how Weisselberg’s grandchildren “saw their grandfather being led into court” earlier that morning, and said the shame his crimes brought upon his family “causes him more pain than anything else that’s been imposed on him.”
The only individual currently charged in the Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s investigation into the company’s roughly 13-year tax fraud scheme, Weisselberg in August pleaded guilty to one count of second-degree grand larceny, three counts of third-degree criminal tax fraud, one count of first-degree scheme to defraud, one count of fourth-degree conspiracy, one count of fourth-degree criminal tax fraud, four counts of first-degree offering a false instrument for filing, and four counts of first-degree falsifying business records.
Brazilian Coup Attempt, U.S. Ties
Brazilian, Other Fascist Attacks on U.S., Western Legislatures (Graphic via The Wayne Madsen Report).
Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Commentary: We are in a global war on fascism: When will the Biden administration face that fact? Wayne Madsen, Jan. 9-10, 2023. As Ian Fleming famously wrote in "Goldfinger" -- "Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action."
The attack on the Brazilian National Congress, Supreme Court, and the Planalto presidential palace in Brasilia by supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro, dubbed the "Tropical Trump" is beyond coincidence. The attack on Brazil's government institutions is the fourth such major attack by fascist cadres representing a collection of anti-democratic cadres which include neo-Nazi thugs, anti-vaccine conspiracists, fundamentalist Christian extremists, and anti-social malcontents. In August 2020, such a group attacked and almost occupied the German Reichstag building in Berlin.
That was followed by the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol to prevent the certification of electors in the 2020 presidential election. Shortly after the January 6 attack, convoys of Canadian truckers attempted to lay siege to Parliament Hill in Ottawa, forcing the suspension of the regular order of business by the House of Commons and Senate. And on January 8, almost two years to the date since the January 6th attack, Brazilian fascists, aided and abetted by some of the same individuals who were behind the coordination of the attacks in Berlin, Washington, and Ottawa, stormed the government buildings in the Brazilian capital.
If fascist attacks on legislative bodies over the past few years includes assaults or other threatening actions targeting U.S. statehouses and governors' mansions, the insurrection in Brazil would count as the fifteenth such attack by fascists. The far right has also targeted the Legislative Assemblies of Alberta and Ontario and the parliament of the state of Victoria in Australia and New Zealand.
Four major attacks on the national legislatures of Germany, the United States, Canada, and Brazil in two years is enemy action. The enemy, the greatest global fascist threat since the Axis pact of World War II, represents a far-right coalition that includes Donald Trump and his chief political acolytes, including Steve Bannon, Jason Miller, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Tucker Carlson, Elon Musk, and others.
President Biden could take advantage of his current "Three Amigos" Summit in Mexico City with President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to announce a global anti-fascist coalition dedicated to eliminate safe havens for fascist seditionists, Florida as but one example, and quick deportations, extraditions, and arrests of those who conspire to overthrow democratically-elected governments. That should happen today, not tomorrow, next week, or next month.
- Update: Bolsonaro coup backer Rep. Mark Green (R-TN) has just been made chairman of the Homeland Security Committee.
Then-U.S. President Trump is shown meeting, from left, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, Vice President Mike Pence and Bolsonaro Press Secretary Fabio Wajngarte (March 7, 2020 photo at Mar-a-Lago via Instagram).
Washington Post, Brazil’s riot puts spotlight on close ties between Bolsonaro and Trump, Michael Kranish and Isaac Stanley-Becker, Jan. 10, 2023 (print ed.). In August 2021, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s son traveled to Sioux Falls, S.D., to meet with some of the most prominent purveyors of former president Donald Trump’s false claims of mass election fraud.
Eduardo Bolsonaro had a dire warning for the group, which included Stephen K. Bannon, Trump’s former top adviser: Brazil’s electronic voting system was “ridiculous” and vulnerable to mass fraud, he said according to a recording of the event.
How Bolsonaro’s rhetoric — then his silence — stoked Brazil assault
The gathering was part of the prologue to events that unfolded in Brazil on Sunday, when Bolsonaro’s supporters stormed government buildings — smashing windows and assaulting police — in a striking echo of the pro-Trump riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Like Trump, Bolsonaro had spent months predicting mass fraud and then refused to concede defeat after losing his October election.
While no evidence has emerged that Bolsonaro or his son had a direct role in the rioting in Brazil’s capital, it is clear that the family fomented anger against democratic institutions — part of a playbook that reflected their deep ties to Trump and those who fueled his own push to cast doubt on American election results.
As Trump endorsed Jair Bolsonaro, right, for reelection, prominent U.S. election deniers made inroads with Bolsonaro’s movement and family, according to interviews and public documents. Eduardo Bolsonaro discussed election fraud with Bannon and lunched with former Trump adviser Jason Miller, while Donald Trump Jr. spoke remotely to a gathering in Brazil last year to push claims that outside forces were seeking to undermine Bolsonaro’s campaign.
In more recent months, Bannon has used his “War Room” podcast to stoke claims of fraud in Bolsonaro’s loss and insist that proof of systematic cheating was at hand. When rioters breached Brazilian government buildings on Sunday, Bannon took to the social media site Gettr to call the pro-Bolsonaro crowds “Brazilian freedom fighters.”
Bolsonaro’s new life as a Florida man: Fast food runs and selfies
The parallels between Trump and Bolsonaro show how an anti-democratic ideology embraced by Trump has been exported abroad and enlisted by foreign leaders and their allies. In addition to Brazil, Trump supporters have forged ties with far-right leaders in Hungary and other parts of Europe. While both Bolsonaro and Trump were ultimately cast out of office, with democratic institutions ratifying the will of voters, the recent turmoil has illuminated how deeply the Trump network has been enmeshed in Bolsonaro’s political world.
Washington Post, U.S. would ‘treat seriously’ requests to revoke Bolsonaro’s visa, Miriam Berger, Emmanuel Felton and Karen DeYoung, Jan. 10, 2023 (print ed.). Former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro arrived in Florida on Dec. 30, 2022 — two days before the inauguration of his opponent, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and nine days before a large group of his supporters stormed Brazil’s capital and tried to overturn the country’s democratic elections.
But his tenure in the Sunshine State, where some analysts believe he’s hoping to stay clear of possible legal trouble back home, could be limited. If he entered the United States on a diplomatic visa, he would have to depart by the end of the month or apply for a different status, the State Department said Monday, amid calls by some lawmakers to extradite the far-right leader.
The United States requires all visitors from Brazil to acquire a visa. But Bolsonaro’s legal status remains murky. Both the White House and the State Department have refused to comment on his visa status, citing the need to protect individual confidentiality.
Bolsonaro was still Brazil’s president when he touched down in Florida, and could have entered on an A-1 visa reserved for diplomats and heads of state. In an apparent tacit recognition that Bolsonaro could be using a diplomatic visa, State Department spokesman Ned Price said Monday that A-1 visa holders had 30 days to either leave or apply for a different visa at the conclusion of their term in office.
“If an A visa holder is no longer engaged in official business on behalf of that government, it is incumbent on that visa holder to depart the U.S., or to request a change to another immigration status within 30 days,” Price told reporters. “If an individual has no basis on which to be in the United States, an individual is subject to removal by the Department of Homeland Security.”
“It’s the responsibility of the individual to take care of it,” he said.
Several Democratic lawmakers have questioned why Bolsonaro has been allowed to remain after his supporters tried to overthrow Brazil’s democratically elected government.
The White House said that while it had not yet received any requests from Brazil regarding Bolsonaro’s “visa status,” it would “treat seriously” any inquiries to review or revoke it.
Politico, Biden to host Brazilian President Lula in February following storming of government buildings, Nahal Toosi and Myah Ward, Jan.10, 2023 (print ed.). The announcement came hours after Biden and his Mexican and Canadian counterparts released a joint statement pledging to support the recently elected leader of the country.
President Joe Biden will host Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, right, widely known as Lula, in Washington in February, the White House announced on Monday.
Biden extended the invitation during a call with Lula following the weekend storming of Brazil’s government institutions, according to the White House. During the call, Biden condemned the rioters’ violence and “conveyed the unwavering support of the United States for Brazil’s democracy and for the free will of the Brazilian people as expressed in Brazil’s recent presidential election, which President Lula won,” the White House said in a statement.
The announcement came hours after Biden and his Mexican and Canadian counterparts released a joint statement pledging to support the recently elected leader of the country, whose predecessor has fueled doubts about his legitimacy.
The statement of condemnation from the three North American leaders came as they attended a summit and as some Democrats called for that predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, to be kicked out of the United States. Bolsonaro is reported to have been staying in Florida after he skipped Lula’s recent inauguration.
Biden administration officials declined to say whether they were looking at kicking out Bolsonaro, but noted that the Brazilian government had not requested it. A Brazilian news organization, meanwhile, reported that Bolsonaro had been admitted to a Florida hospital because of abdominal pains, though that report could not immediately be confirmed. Agence France-Presse later tweeted the same information about the former president’s health and hospitalization, citing his wife.
Unwilling to accept his defeat, Bolsonaro supporters on Sunday stormed Brazil’s presidential, congressional and supreme court buildings. The events echoed the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol by supporters of then-President Donald Trump, a vocal backer of Bolsonaro. Like Trump, Bolsonaro has a strongman style and sought to sow doubts about the election he lost.
Monday’s statement from Biden, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador was terse, but it put the countries’ full support behind Lula.
Jan. 7
Washington Post, Biden warns of dangers posed by ‘big lie,’ rewards heroes of Jan. 6, Cleve R. Wootson Jr. and Yasmeen Abutaleb, Jan. 7, 2023 (print ed.).
Biden honored more than a dozen people (shown above) who helped protect and uphold American democracy leading up to and on the day of the insurrection.
President Biden marked the two-year anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol on Friday by warning of continued dangers posed by “the ‘big lie’” and honoring more than a dozen people who helped protect and uphold American democracy leading up to and on the day of the insurrection.
“Two years ago on Jan. 6, our democracy was attacked. There’s no other way of saying it,” Biden said. “All of it was fueled by the lies about the 2020 election. But on this day two years ago, our democracy held because we the people … did not flinch. We the people endured.”
Biden’s comments came against the backdrop of a chaotic four days in the House of Representatives, where Republican lawmaker Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) has failed to garner enough votes to become speaker over 13 ballots, a public display of disarray that Biden called “an embarrassment” on Wednesday. McCarthy won a significant number of Republican holdouts on Friday but still does not have enough votes to become speaker.
Some Democrats have argued that the chaos in the House was a relic of Jan. 6, as the nation has clearly failed to overcome bitter political divisions. Many of the holdouts continue to baselessly claim the 2020 election was stolen and have remained loyal to former president Donald Trump.
The ceremony Friday marked the day a violent mob of Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol to try to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election. The attack resulted in the deaths of one police officer and four others. Brian D. Sicknick, a Capitol Police officer who died a day after sustaining injuries defending the Capitol, was honored posthumously on Friday. Four other police officers with the Capitol Police and D.C. police died by suicide in the days and months after the attack.
“He lost his life protecting the citadel of democracy,” Biden said of Sicknick. Then, speaking directly to Sicknick’s family, Biden added: “I know you’re proud of the honor being bestowed on Brian. But I also know this difficult moment brings back everything as if it happened this very day.”
More than half of the honorees receiving the Presidential Citizens Medal in the East Room of the White House were law enforcement officers who defended the Capitol against an angry mob spurred on by Trump’s unfounded claims of a stolen election. Other awardees were elected officials and poll workers who sought to fairly count ballots and uphold election results amid an intense pressure campaign from Trump and his supporters to overturn them.
The awardees include Eugene Goodman, a Capitol Police officer who diverted an angry mob away from the Senate floor as legislators were still evacuating. Biden also honored Howard Liebengood, a Capitol Police officer who died by suicide four days after the insurrection.
Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, a mother-and-daughter duo who both served as election workers in Fulton County, Ga., also received the medal. The two endured threats and harassment after the election.
“Both of them were just doing their jobs until they were targeted and threatened by the same predators and peddlers of lies that would fuel the insurrection. They were literally forced from their homes, facing despicable racist taunts,” Biden said of Freeman and Moss.
- Ashli Babbitt’s mother arrested by police on Capitol riot anniversary
- Social Security numbers of Trump officials, allies posted in Jan. 6 files
Washington Post, Supporters raise millions to rebrand Jan. 6 rioters as ‘patriots,’ Annie Gowen, Jan. 7, 2023 (print ed.). Right-wing supporters of the “Jan. Sixers” cast them as valiant political prisoners — and brush aside powerful evidence to the contrary.
For nearly two hours, about two dozen people on a group Telegram live stream cried, read Scripture, listened to hymns — and prayed fervently for defendants in jail facing trial for their roles in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
“We pray for unity in those cells,” said one of the group’s leaders, a woman named Aida. “Get close to them, Father God, to protect our brothers.”
This nightly prayer call featured one of many support groups that have formed in the two years since the violent mob — encouraged by former president Donald Trump — stormed the U.S. Capitol building and threatened the country’s peaceful transition of power after Joe Biden’s victory.
Right-wing supporters of the “Jan. Sixers” have formed prayer chains, instigated letter writing campaigns, organized vigils and raised millions for their legal defense — all with the aim of supporting the 932 federally charged defendants they see as valiant patriots, prisoners of conscience persecuted for engaging in their First Amendment rights.
They have persevered despite powerful evidence to the contrary — including judges uniformly excoriating defendants, ongoing guilty pleas and investigations, as well as a recent congressional report showing the extremity of the violence, the detail of the planning and the failure of Trump and other White House officials to quell the riot.
Since 2021, Jan. 6 defendants have raised more than $3.7 million on the Christian crowdfunding website GiveSendGo, according to a Washington Post review of accounts that remain public, and millions more have been raised by umbrella groups in the name of the “patriots” — a flood of money that has raised concerns about fairness and oversight.
“It’s amazing that this movement is really growing by leaps and bounds,” said Ned Lang, a former town councilman from Tusten, N.Y., whose son, Edward “Jake” Lang, pleaded not guilty to charges of beating police officers with a baseball bat during a lengthy assault. The Lang family has raised more than $335,000 through two GiveSendGo accounts, and Jake has his own personal assistant to manage his interview requests and podcast schedule — from jail.
The portrayal of the Jan. 6 defendants as political prisoners is anathema to many outside the far right who haven’t forgotten the five who died in the event, the Capitol Hill police officers slipping on blood as they fought for their lives and the hangman’s gallows rioters constructed before chanting that then-vice president Mike Pence should be hanged for certifying an election they wrongly believed was fraudulent.
“It’s almost like Jan. 6 is baked into the electorate on the far right. When they see Jan. 6, they automatically think peaceful patriots being persecuted as political prisoners,” said Denver Riggleman, a former Republican congressman and senior technical adviser for the House Select Committee that investigated the attack. “It normalizes violence as an acceptable method for political disagreement. In effect, it endorses domestic terrorism. Not to mention that January 6th is a case study in radicalization and actions based completely on fantasy.”
Jan. 6
Trump-supporting former law school dean John Eastman, left, helps Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani inflame pro-Trump protesters in front the White House before the insurrection riot at the U.S. Capitol to prevent the presidential election certification of Joe Biden's presidency on Jan. 6, 2021 (Los Angeles Times photo).
Washington Post, Several documentary filmmakers have made Jan. 6 projects. Getting them released is proving difficult, Elahe Izadi, Jan. 6, 2023 (print ed.). Documentary filmmakers found reluctant subjects, wary distributors, polarization fears — and a long shadow from the hearings into the attack on the Capitol.
Nick Quested watched along with millions of other viewers as the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol doled out revelation after revelation in a series of live televised hearings last year. But for him, some of the findings were less than revelatory.
“Scooped!” he found himself thinking on more than one occasion. “Scooped! … Scooped again!”
A British documentary filmmaker, Quested spent several months following the Proud Boys, which positioned him for an intimate view of the far-right extremist group’s actions during the siege on the Capitol two years ago. His unreleased film is one of more than a dozen recent or in-the-works projects related to the Capitol riot — the kind of world-shaking event, fraught with unanswered questions, tangled narratives, stark human tragedy and startling visuals, that could be documentary fodder for generations to come.
But launching a Jan. 6 documentary right now is proving complicated for many filmmakers and producers. Some of the subjects are still too traumatized to talk about it easily. Some platforms and distributors may hesitate to take on such a project, concerned that the topic has become too polarizing or that it has already inspired too many films.
And then there was the Jan. 6 committee itself, which revealed so many compelling details about the attack through a rich narrative approach worthy of a hit prime-time serial — and, unlike filmmakers, had subpoena power to get certain subjects to talk.
The subtle stagecraft behind the Jan. 6 hearings
One of those, ironically, was Quested, who testified as a witness in the first of the much-watched hearings this past summer and shared some of his film footage in response to a subpoena. Now, as he continues to labor on his project, he prefers not to mull whether the Jan. 6 hearings stole his thunder.
“This is too important to be selfish about your film at this point,” he said. “This is our collective future that we’re discussing here.”
Jan. 5
Trump-supporting former law school dean John Eastman, left, helps Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani inflame pro-Trump protesters in front the White House before the insurrection riot at the U.S. Capitol to prevent the presidential election certification of Joe Biden's presidency on Jan. 6, 2021 (Los Angeles Times photo).
Washington Post, Opinion: The awful corruption of Trump’s ‘coup lawyers’ demands accountability, Greg Sargent, Jan. 5, 2023. You are probably familiar with the term “mob lawyer.” It might now be time to inaugurate another, similar term: “coup lawyer.”
John Eastman and Rudy Giuliani were instrumental to the plotting and execution of President Donald Trump’s attempt to overthrow his reelection loss, and they corruptly abused their knowledge of the law to that end. Will they ever face real accountability?
Eastman and Giuliani are facing disciplinary proceedings and might even get disbarred. But if they are disciplined on overly narrow grounds — say, for making false statements — it would be a highly insufficient outcome. They should also face professional discipline that declares in some way that their efforts to undermine our constitutional order were central features of their unscrupulous professional misconduct.
Yet good-government advocates are beginning to fear that opportunity will be squandered.
Right now, the state bar in California — where Eastman is licensed — is investigating whether he violated ethics rules governing attorneys. And the bars in New York and D.C. — where Giuliani is licensed — are currently weighing the former New York City mayor’s fate.
In Giuliani’s case, a New York court temporarily suspended him from practicing law for making false statements in court — his lies about the 2020 election — and the D.C. bar appears focused on that charge as well. In Eastman’s case, it is unclear what misconduct the California bar is weighing.
But the option exists for disbarment on a broader basis, according to advocates urging this course of action. In California, New York and D.C., ethics rules provide for sanctions on the grounds of fundamental unfitness for the legal profession and deep contempt for the rule of law. Disbarment decisions should cite both lawyers’ efforts to help Trump subvert democracy as the basis for those violations.
Washington Post, Several documentary filmmakers have made Jan. 6 projects. Getting them released is proving difficult, Elahe Izadi, Jan. 5, 2023. Documentary filmmakers found reluctant subjects, wary distributors, polarization fears — and a long shadow from the hearings into the attack on the Capitol.
Nick Quested watched along with millions of other viewers as the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol doled out revelation after revelation in a series of live televised hearings last year. But for him, some of the findings were less than revelatory.
“Scooped!” he found himself thinking on more than one occasion. “Scooped! … Scooped again!”
A British documentary filmmaker, Quested spent several months following the Proud Boys, which positioned him for an intimate view of the far-right extremist group’s actions during the siege on the Capitol two years ago. His unreleased film is one of more than a dozen recent or in-the-works projects related to the Capitol riot — the kind of world-shaking event, fraught with unanswered questions, tangled narratives, stark human tragedy and startling visuals, that could be documentary fodder for generations to come.
But launching a Jan. 6 documentary right now is proving complicated for many filmmakers and producers. Some of the subjects are still too traumatized to talk about it easily. Some platforms and distributors may hesitate to take on such a project, concerned that the topic has become too polarizing or that it has already inspired too many films.
And then there was the Jan. 6 committee itself, which revealed so many compelling details about the attack through a rich narrative approach worthy of a hit prime-time serial — and, unlike filmmakers, had subpoena power to get certain subjects to talk.
The subtle stagecraft behind the Jan. 6 hearings
One of those, ironically, was Quested, who testified as a witness in the first of the much-watched hearings this past summer and shared some of his film footage in response to a subpoena. Now, as he continues to labor on his project, he prefers not to mull whether the Jan. 6 hearings stole his thunder.
“This is too important to be selfish about your film at this point,” he said. “This is our collective future that we’re discussing here.”
Jan. 4
Washington Post, Jan. 6 papers detail infighting, ‘chaos’ among extremist organizers, Hannah Allam, Jan. 4, 2023 (print ed.). Newly released documents zoom in on the role of far-right militants and conspiracy theorists.
How do we know that the architects of a pro-Trump rally that spiraled into insurrection were right-wing extremists? They said so themselves, according to newly released witness interviews from the House select committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
But it doesn’t mean they were all on the same page.
Thousands of pages of documents made public in recent weeks portray promoters of the Stop the Steal movement as backstabbing rivals who viewed one another as “crazies,” “extremists,” “nutty,” and “white supremacist.” The documents include a text exchange in which former senior Trump adviser Hope Hicks, while watching the Capitol rioting unfold, lamented, “We all look like domestic terrorists now.”
The behind-the-scenes chaos detailed in the report underlines how the risk of violence that day was known in advance, causing alarm even among some organizers who said they had qualms about working with fellow pro-MAGA factions such as the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, extremist groups whose members later were charged in the attack.
“I don’t think that we should be out there inciting people,” Amy Kremer of Women for America First told the committee of another organizer’s public chant of “victory or death.”
The documents offer glimpses into other aspects of national right-wing organizing: leaders’ proximity to power, a tolerance for violent rhetoric, fierce infighting, and the role of “grifters” who make their living by stoking conservative outrage. The committee traces this mobilization to Trump, going back to a 2015 campaign-trail interview with conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to show how Trump “normalized” the extremist factions that later rallied supporters to march on the Capitol.
Here are five examples of how the latest documents shed light on the militant, conspiratorial movements that have gained a toehold in mainstream Republican politics:
Washington Post, Fact Checker Analysis: Jan. 6 committee yet again debunks Trump claim of 10,000 troops, Glenn Kessler, Jan. 4, 2023.
“The highly partisan Unselect Committee Report purposely fails to mention the failure of Pelosi to heed my recommendation for troops to be used in D.C.”
— former president Donald Trump, in a post on Truth Social, Dec. 22
Trump and his defenders have repeatedly claimed that the violence at the Capitol two years ago would have been prevented if only his order for 10,000 troops had been heeded. We have explored this claim twice before and debunked it, each time awarding Four Pinocchios.
But now the Jan. 6 committee has released its report and dozens of transcribed interviews that provide new details on the meetings in which Trump claims he requested troops at the Capitol.
Trump, in his post, says he made a “recommendation for troops” and that then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) failed to act on it. But the evidence shows Trump did not issue any formal request — so there was nothing for Pelosi to heed. The committee report says it found “no evidence” to support the claim that he ordered 10,000 troops.
Moreover, the committee said that when he referenced so many troops, it was not because he wanted to protect the Capitol. He “floated the idea of having 10,000 National Guardsmen deployed to protect him and his supporters from any supposed threats by left-wing counterprotesters,” the report said.
The report says that Trump brought up the issue on at least three occasions but in such vague and obtuse ways that no senior official regarded his words as an order. Here’s what we know now about his statements at the time:
Justice Department Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, left, and former President Donald Trump, shown in a collage via CNN.
Washington Post, Jack Smith returns to U.S. weeks after becoming Trump special counsel, Perry Stein and Devlin Barrett, Jan. 4, 2023 (print ed.). Tasked with two Trump-related investigations, the former war crimes prosecutor has returned from Europe, people familiar with the situation said
Washington Post, Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Jan. 6 panel he’s become a political ‘lightning rod,’ Dan Lamothe, Jan. 4, 2023 (print ed.). The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff spoke with congressional investigators about a ‘deliberate attempt’ to smear the military’s general officer corps.
The Pentagon’s top general told congressional investigators scrutinizing the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol that he has become a “lightning rod for the politicization of the military,” decrying critics who have sought to “smear” him and the Defense Department’s other senior leaders.
Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, offered the assessment during a remarkable portion of his discussion with the House select committee in November of that year. The panel in recent days released Milley’s interview transcript along with dozens of other documents as its work drew to a close.
He cited as one example the backlash he faced upon telling lawmakers in separate testimony months earlier that he wanted to “understand White rage,” a statement prompted by Republicans who had criticized leaders at the U.S. Military Academy for allowing cadets to learn about critical race theory. The academic framework centers on the concept that racism is systemic and not just exhibited by prejudiced people.
Milley told the Jan. 6 committee that he is “constantly strung out” along with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and other top officials at the Pentagon. The military, he said, must avoid such fights.
“I think it’s fundamental to the health of the republic that we have an apolitical military,” Milley said in his testimony. “And apolitical means nonpartisan, neither Democrat nor Republican, and we execute the lawful orders of the civilian leadership that’s appointed over us. The key is ‘lawful’ orders, and therein lie some judgment calls.”
Milley addressed a range of issues during the Nov. 17, 2021, interview, including the Pentagon’s response to the Capitol riot, how senior defense officials navigated President Donald Trump’s tumultuous final year in office, and what Milley did to reassure U.S. allies and adversaries after Trump’s refusal to accept the election results culminated in an eruption of violence.
Jan. 3
New York Times, As Jan. 6 Panel Closes, More Evidence Trump Planned to Join Protesters, Luke Broadwater, Maggie Haberman, Alan Feuer and Emily Cochrane, Jan. 3, 2023 (print ed.). One top aide wrote in a note on Jan. 6 that former President Trump had wanted to walk alongside the crowd as it descended on Congress; Since Friday, the panel has released a whirlwind of files, including an adviser’s testimony that Mr. Trump seemed to acknowledge his election loss.
The nation’s top military officer saw the Jan. 6 attack as similar to the “Reichstag moment” that led to Nazi dictatorship. Aides for former President Donald J. Trump saw their future job opportunities slipping away, and predicted being “perpetually unemployed.” Mr. Trump himself saw the push to overturn the 2020 election as a financial opportunity, moving to trademark the phrase “Rigged Election.”
These were among the latest revelations from the House Jan. 6 committee, which released a whirlwind of documents in its final days and wrapped up its work on Monday. Since Friday night, the panel has released several troves of evidence, including about 120 previously unseen transcripts along with emails and text messages obtained during its 18-month inquiry, totaling tens of thousands of pages.
The evidence touched on nearly every aspect of Mr. Trump’s push to overturn the 2020 election. It provided new details about how some of his top allies lobbied for aggressive plans to keep him in power, while others lamented how the dark day of Jan. 6, 2021, had negatively affected their employment prospects.
The panel said it has now turned over an “enormous volume of material” to the Justice Department as Jack Smith, the special counsel, conducts a parallel investigation into the events of Jan. 6.
“Accountability is now critical to thwart any other future scheme to overturn an election,” the committee’s leaders, Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi, and Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, said in a statement.
In the end, the committee released about 280 transcripts of interviews. Though the panel interviewed more than 1,000 witnesses, only a few hundred sessions took the form of formal depositions or transcribed interviews. Lawmakers said they withheld certain transcripts that contained sensitive information.
Here are some takeaways from the recently released evidence.
Shown above are then-U.S. Reps. Liz Cheney, R-WY, and Adam Kinzinger, R-IL. The photo was accompanied by another showing the incoming and disgraced U.S. Rep. George santos, R-NY, and his campaign supporter U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-NY, who replaced Cheney in Republican House leadership because Cheney was willing to investigate Trump's role as part of her committee work. The photo array was labeled: "A tale of two Republican parties. An honorable one, for now in the wilderness. A dishonorable one, for now in power. Proud to stand with the first, and against the second." (Reported via Twitter by Bill Kristol, Bulwork co-founder and former chief of staff to then-Vice President Dan Quayle, a Republican from Indiana).
Politico, Inside the Jan. 6 committee’s massive new evidence trove, Kyle Cheney, Jan. 3, 2023 (print ed.). The panel's evidence provides the clearest glimpse yet at the well-coordinated effort by some Trump allies to help Trump seize a second term he didn’t win.
The Jan. 6 select committee has unloaded a vast database of its underlying evidence — emails between Trump attorneys, text messages among horrified White House aides and outside advisers, internal communications among security and intelligence officials — all coming to grips with Donald Trump’s last-ditch effort to subvert the 2020 election and its disastrous consequences.
The panel posted thousands of pages of evidence late Sunday in a public database that provide the clearest glimpse yet at the well-coordinated effort by some Trump allies to help Trump seize a second term he didn’t win. Much of the evidence has never been seen before and, in some cases, adds extraordinary new elements to the case the select committee presented in public — from voluminous phone records to contemporaneous text messages and emails.
Trump lawyers strategized which federal courts would be likeliest to uphold their fringe constitutional theories; Trump White House aides battled to keep unhinged theories from reaching the president’s ears; as the Jan. 6 attack unfolded, West Wing aides sent horrified messages about Trump’s incendiary tweets and inaction; and after the attack, some Trump allies discussed continued efforts to derail the incoming Biden administration.
Here’s a look at some of the most extraordinary and important evidence in the select committee’s files.
Proof, Investigative Commentary: Proof Launches Stage 2 of Its January 6 Coverage, Seth Abramson, left, Jan. 3, 2023. Proof’s January 6 reporting—which has provoked lawsuit threats from and texts between key January 6 actors, and often appeared in the U.S. House record—is moving from investigation to evidence review.
Introduction: The first two years of Proof have been a wild ride. This media outlet evolved into a sprawling, 14-section center for curatorial journalism that accrued a readership of 75,000 and became one of the Top 15 political substacks in the world.
It was cited in the successful House January 6 Committee referral of Steve Bannon for criminal prosecution by the Department of Justice. Its reports were entered into the Congressional record during the second impeachment trial of Donald J. Trump. It was the subject of private texts between two of the key event-planners behind January 6, Trump adviser Katrina Pierson and Women for America First capo Amy Kremer.
In 2022, the House January 6 Committee even reached out directly to Proof for aid.
Shortly thereafter, Proof published the fourth book in the New York Times-bestselling Proof series: Proof of Coup: How the Pentagon Shaped An Insurrection. The book tells the story of events so critical to national security, politically sensitive, and (not to put too fine a point on it) historically contingent—because they remain under active federal investigation—that they don’t even appear in the sprawling final report of the House January 6 Committee.
Proof has been the subject of lawsuit threats from key January 6 figures Roger Stone and Michael Flynn, as well as the co-founder of the Proud Boys, Gavin McInnes.
And Proof is currently being sued for $25 million by an attorney linked to the Flynn family, Kash Patel, Truth Social head (and former GOP congressman) Devin Nunes, and the First Amendment Praetorians (bodyguards for Flynn, Ali Alexander, Patrick Byrne, Sidney Powell and other Trumpist leaders in the post-election period in 2020).
January 6 reporting at Proof has been cited by major-media news outlets around the world, and even helped launched a Brazilian congressional inquiry into the actions of neo-fascist Eduardo Bolsonaro, the son of Trump ally and former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro. (You can read much more about the odd, frenetic history of Proof here.)
And now, in these opening hours of 2023, Proof is about to enter a striking new phase in its celebrated January 6 investigation.
The Three Stages of An Investigation
From its founding in January 2021—just a week after the events of January 6—Proof has followed (a) the curatorial journalism methods I taught as a journalism professor at University of New Hampshire, and (b) the investigative methods that I employed as a federal criminal investigator in D.C. in the 1990s. My journalistic and investigative practices are informed by years of criminal defense work in multiple jurisdictions as an attorney, up to and including coordination and execution of investigative and trial-advocacy strategies in First-Degree Murder cases.
Every investigation worth its salt has at least three discrete stages.
(1) Building a theory of the case and collecting supporting evidence. Since every criminal case begins, on the defense side at least, with certain documents already prepared by the government—most notably police reports, but in some cases also photographs, timelines, witness interviews, maps, and other such investigative work product—an investigator is often in a position to develop an initial theory of the case (that is, a narrative of what most likely happened in a given situation and why) with the aid of these seminal documents.
January 6 is no exception. The work of law enforcement agents, corporate journalists, and independent researchers gave Proof a mountain of data with which to work in building a theory of the case for the coup plot behind January 6, as well as potential plans of action for collecting additional evidence that might confirm or deny such a theory. Those who don’t actually read Proof, and only casually consume social media content that discusses Proof, often mistake my work as a curatorial journalist (a type of investigative journalist) who has a background in criminal investigation and trial advocacy as the advancement of hard-and-fast notions about how a given criminal conspiracy unfolded. In fact, what Proof offers is the routine work of an investigator and a curatorial journalist—revealing what existing reliable evidence tells us, with an eye toward encouraging future investigations based on a well-sourced theory of the case.
To the extent Proof often ends its reports with explicit proposals for additional federal investigation(s), this project is clear to anyone who reads Proof and has a background in any of law, criminal investigation, or curatorial (investigative) journalism. It is also clear to anyone who simply approaches the work of this media outlet in good faith. All too often, however, what critics of Proof there are either never read Proof or do so with no background in (or even interest in) the professional pursuits that animate this site.
So much of the work that readers of Proof have found here over the last two years has been the basic work of a simultaneously journalistic and legalistic investigation in its earliest stages: synthesizing seminal evidence to create an investigative plan firmly rooted in a theory of the case, a theory that self-consciously remains unproven but is undergirded by what evidence presently exists. And since, in the law, proof is evidence that tends to support a given theory of a case (only those with no knowledge of the law equate the word proof to the phrase proof beyond a reasonable doubt), this publication has—from the day of its birth—been denominated Proof. If the aim of every report on this site had been to offer “proof beyond a reasonable doubt” for some ironclad and presumptively immovable theorem rather than “proof” advancing a mutable theory of the case, it would’ve instead been called Proof Beyond a Reasonable Doubt.
So how do we know that Proof was successful in Stage 1 of its January 6 investigation?
For the reasons stated above: its work spooked key January 6 figures to the point that they obsessively discussed it backchannel, and in some instances even tried to shut it down; it was cited as part of the permanent Congressional record a number of times, including during both an impeachment trial and a successful federal investigation and prosecution of white-supremacist Trump adviser Steve Bannon; and it was deemed so essential to the journalism surrounding January 6 that not only was it repeatedly cited by major media, but led to the House January 6 Committee reaching out to its author.
Katrina Pierson, the trusted Donald Trump presidential adviser who was in charge of the precipitating event on January 6—Trump’s incitement-to-insurrection rally at the White House Ellipse, now the subject of a sprawling federal criminal investigation by the FBI—opined in 2021, as we now know from the House January 6 Committee’s final publication of data, that this author was “like a dog with a bone” when it comes to January 6: in other words, per the definition of that phrase, “stubborn, tenacious, persistent, relentless, and dogged.” While there can’t be a much better endorsement of the work done by Proof since mid-January 2021 than this, the fact that some media columnists—non-reporters whose job, more or less, is to capriciously separate U.S. journalists into the cool and the uncool—have written hit-pieces about Proof shot through with barely disguised envy underscores that few media outlets have been as successful at tearing down the layers of misinformation, disinformation, rumor and innuendo surrounding the events of January 6 as this one.
Which is why there was always going to be a Stage 2 to Proof’s January 6 reporting.
(2) Evidence review. Once any available initial (seminal) evidence has been reviewed, and a theory or dueling theories of the case developed, and evidence supporting that theory or theories pursued, a time inevitably comes for the most critical determination of all: has one theory of the case won out, in view of all the evidence now compiled?
Determining this takes an encompassing and sometimes lengthy evidentiary review—a process not nearly as dry as it sounds, as it operates upon not just seminal evidence and early supporting evidence but the entire universe of available evidence that the case investigators have been able to compile, collate, and curate over a protracted period of time (in the case of January 6, approximately two years).
It’s at this stage that a final determination is made about “what really happened.”
While invariably some evidence once desired will be finally found to be unavailable—will even have been destroyed or degraded, perhaps intentionally—it is in this second stage that decisions can and must be made, with the evidence present, about whether the evidence is sufficient to warrant a criminal prosecution (if the investigators are government investigators) or what defense will be offered if or when a prosecution commences (if the investigators are defense investigators).
What differentiates these two different perspectives are their ambitions. What conjoins them is that each must make a good-faith effort to determine “what really happened.”
Just as a prosecutor, aided by his or her investigators, can’t proceed with a prosecution unless he or she believes the case they will offer to a jury is a fully realized, evidence-undergirded narrative roughly answering to the description “what really happened”, a successful defense to criminal allegations always starts with—but may or may not end with—a similarly fully realized, evidence-undergirded narrative. Simply put, a defense attorney and defense investigator can’t do their jobs properly if they don’t have a fully formed record (whether memorialized or simply memorized) of what happened in a given criminal incident. They need this to determine how to use that record (or just some of it) to force government agents to meet their constitutional burden of proof.
Needless to say, if the defense’s theory of a case ends up not bearing any meaningful relation to “what really happened,” the theory is doomed to be reified in court as a losing defense strategy. While the defense theory of the case need not be a totalizing narrative, it also cannot be contradicted in significant ways by the evidentiary record if it hopes to have any chance of success.
So how does this translate to Stage 2 of the January 6 investigation at Proof, which is about to be launched?
Now that the House January 6 Committee has published not just an 845-page final report but the entirety of the “non-sensitive” portion of its evidentiary record—which includes over a hundred notable witness transcripts—the seminal evidence related to January 6 (much of it already synthesized by DOJ in its prosecutions of January 6 foot-soldiers and by some independent researchers via the online #SeditionHunters effort) can be conjoined to this new evidence, and to existing theories of the case, to form the most complete picture of the events of January 6 we have ever had. Books like Proof of Coup—which cover information that was left out of the House January 6 Committee report for national security and political-sensitivity reasons (e.g., fear of destabilizing institutions that defend the nation’s soil and the President of the United States)—can also become a critical part of this encompassing evidentiary record.
You may now be asking, “Yes, but doesn’t the House January 6 Committee’s final report constitute the conclusive synthesis and summation of the January 6 record?”
And the answer—perhaps surprisingly—is no.
The reason the House January 6 Committee not only released a final report but all the evidence upon which it relied is because its work was curtailed far more dramatically than many realize. Had the Democrats not lost the House of the Representatives in the 2022 midterm elections, we could expect the House January 6 Committee to have continued its work for at least two more years. We would have had more hearings, more witness interviews, a longer final report, and—above all—much, much more federal litigation in an effort to force certain subpoenaed witnesses to honor their subpoenas. Moreover, because DOJ likely needs to make its charging decisions with respect to the January 6 coup plotters (as opposed to merely its foot-soldiers) in 2023, we would expect that a House January 6 Committee not prematurely shuttered by Republican gains in the House in November 2022 would have gleaned an enormous amount of additional data from anything DOJ already has or will soon find that will be made public via its hotly anticipated prosecutions of the masterminds of January 6.
The Committee is aware, in other words, that legions of corporate and independent journalists have been waiting to assist the Committee in its investigative work. All that these people and entities (which include this author and this media outlet) have been waiting for is the release of the evidence Congress has developed as it chased down various theories of the case of January 6 which—to be candid—Proof helped develop both directly and indirectly.
Now that this evidence has been made public, Stage 2 of the January 6 investigation—which is also Stage 2 of the January 6 investigation at Proof—can begin. It is likely to last almost the entirety of 2023.
But what about Stage 3? When will that stage begin, and what form will it take?
(3) Prosecution. In cases with only one defendant, calling the “prosecution” stage an “investigative” stage would make no sense. Indeed, one of the only things Law & Order gets right about the criminal justice system is the native divide between police and prosecutors (though, remarkably, the show and its numberless offspring get wrong precisely who these entities represent; in the criminal justice system, the “people” are represented only by juries, while judges represent the impartial face of the law and both police and prosecutors represent, in the most literal sense imaginable, the government).
In a situation, like the one emanating from the events of January 6, in which 1,000+ foot-soldiers and as many as fifty coup plotters may ultimately be charged—though we should have much more confidence that the former will happen than the latter—the prosecution stage is also an investigative stage because certain coup plotters may cut cooperation deals with the federal government to save their own skins. Such deals require these wrong-doers to divulge to investigators everything they know about the January 6–related crimes others may have committed.
In this way, new prosecutions can become part and parcel of existing investigations.
In the case of January 6, Stage 3 is almost certain to overlap somewhat with Stage 2 because (a) Stage 2 may take as long as a year, (b) DOJ appears to be operating on a political calendar that presumes that all politically sensitive prosecutions relating to January 6 must be launched by mid-2023 (in an effort to conclude them all by the end of Summer 2024, with an eye toward minimal overlap with the 2024 general election), and (c) it is a sure bet—if past is precedent—that DOJ will let certain coup plotters off the hook who it should in fact have prosecuted, which will only complicate (while also stoking new interest in) Stage 2.
For journalists, Stage 3 is of course not about prosecutions but about reporting on prosecutions, which usually involves little more than detailing what happens in court (and perhaps on occasion opining on how events could have or should have developed differently). Proof will likely conduct some journalism of this sort in late 2023 and 2024—after all, its author has a law degree and practiced criminal law for many years—but it is not likely to be as bracing or complex a process of discovery as Stage 2 will be.
Conclusion
It is the ambition of this author to have the Stage 2 investigation of January 6 at Proof be the most comprehensive—and essential—such journalistic coverage in the United States.
If that sounds like a preposterously lofty goal, perhaps it is: certainly, January 6 is already as reported on and analyzed an event as America has ever seen.
But as we have already seen, coverage of the House January 6 Committee Final Report is, at least in major corporate media, fairly shallow. Only a handful of newly released January 6 witness transcripts have been given any attention at all, and this attention has generally been (a) not from lawyers, (b) focused only on one or two very obvious takeaways, (c) so transient that the assumption of major media appears to be that Americans can’t focus on any discrete piece of evidence for more than a day or two, and (d) disconnected from the best research on January 6 (which frankly has come from obsessive independent researchers with an eye for detail, rather than major-network TV producers with an eye toward producing satisfying one-off “A” blocks).
What is needed now are researchers, historians, and investigative journalists who will, with academic precision, take discrete pieces of evidence and plug them meaningfully into the vast network of data the historic January 6 investigation has become. If major-media coverage of January 6 has devolved into briskness, redundancy and shallowness, it must now be durable, incisive and profound. It’s with this in mind that Proof says the following: that it aims for its readers to be the best-informed students of January 6 anywhere in the world.
This goal isn’t a small one—not when January 6, 2021 has turned out to be merely the launch of an ongoing far-right insurrection inside America, one that aims to replace our democracy with an authoritarian, Christofascist tyranny. January 6 doesn’t matter because of what it was in American history, but because of what it is right now.
In view of all this, the idea of Proof starting 2023 by launching Stage 2 of its January 6 investigation is at once exhilarating and terrifying. Proof has already uncovered, via its soon-to-be-launched “January 6 Files” series—which decodes, contextualizes, and networks the most important January 6 witness transcripts in exhaustive detail—acts of perfidy and possible sedition that couldn’t even have been contemplated, let alone reported on, prior to the release of witness transcripts (in the scores and more) by the U.S. House of Representatives over just the last two weeks.
What Proof asks of its readers, in advance, is a certain degree of patience. There are so many documents newly available for review by January 6 historians, researchers, and January 6 beat reporters that it is tempting to think they can be adequately unpacked in quick-hit major-media “listicles” addressing just a handful of the most high-profile witness transcripts. In fact, Stage 2 will be a painstaking process that may take, as was noted above, almost the entirety of 2023.
I intend this introductory essay to serve as a personal invitation for you to take a year-long journey with me right here at Proof, a place where the journalism is indeed—and very proudly so—“like a dog with a bone”: stubborn, tenacious, persistent, relentless, and dogged.
Seth Abramson, shown above and at right, is founder of Proof and is a former criminal defense attorney and criminal investigator who later taught digital journalism, legal advocacy, and cultural theory at the University of New Hampshire. A regular political and legal analyst on CNN and the BBC during the Trump presidency, he is a best-selling author who has published eight books and edited five anthologies.
Abramson is a graduate of Dartmouth College, Harvard Law School, the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and the Ph.D. program in English at University of Wisconsin-Madison. His books include a Trump trilogy: Proof of Corruption: Bribery, Impeachment, and Pandemic in the Age of Trump (2020); Proof of Conspiracy: How Trump's International Collusion Is Threatening American Democracy (2019); and Proof of Collusion: How Trump Betrayed America (2018).
Jan. 2
Newly disclosed message from former Trump White House and campaign aide Hope Hicks (shown above in a file photo) about the Jan 6 insurrection stated: “All of us who didn’t have jobs lined up will be perpetually unemployed....I’m so mad and upset. We all look like domestic terrorists now....This made us unemployable, untouchable. God, I’m so fucking mad.” (Reported via Twitter by Mike Sington, former senior executive at NBCUniversal.)
Washington Post, Ex-Capitol police chief: FBI, DHS and Pentagon failed on Jan. 6, Carol D. Leonnig, Jan. 2, 2023 (print ed.). In a new firsthand account of the frantic efforts of Capitol Police officers to protect Congress and themselves from an armed mob on Jan. 6, 2021, the department’s former chief blames cascading government failures for allowing the brutal melee.
The federal government’s multibillion-dollar security network, built after 9/11 to gather intelligence that could warn of a looming attack, provided no such shield 
on Jan. 6, former Capitol Police chief Steven A. Sund, left, writes in a new book.
The FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and even 
his own agency’s intelligence unit had been alerted weeks earlier to reams of chilling chatter about right-wing extremists arming for an attack on the Capitol that day, Sund says, but didn’t take the basic steps to assess those plots or sound an alarm. Senior military leaders, citing political or tactical worries, delayed sending help.
And, Sund warns in Courage Under Fire, it could easily happen again. Many of the factors that left the Capitol vulnerable remain unfixed, he said.
The Washington Post obtained an advance copy of the book, which will be published Jan. 3.
In his account, Sund describes his shock at the battle that unfolded as an estimated 10,000 protesters inflamed by President Donald Trump’s rally earlier in the day broke through police lines and punched, stabbed and pepper-sprayed officers, outnumbering them “58 to 1.”
Sund said his shock shifted to agony as he unsuccessfully begged military generals for National Guard reinforcements. Though they delayed sending help until it was too late for Sund’s overrun corps, he says that he later discovered that the Pentagon had rushed to send security teams to protect military officials’ homes in Washington, none of which were under attack.
Sund reserves his greatest outrage for those Pentagon leaders, recounting a conference call he had with two generals about 2:35 p.m., 20 minutes after rioters had broken into the Capitol and as Vice President Mike Pence and other lawmakers scurried to hiding places.
Sund writes that Lt. Gen. Walter Piatt told him he didn’t like the optics of sending uniformed Guard troops to the Capitol, but could allow them to replace police officers at roadside checkpoints. Listening incredulously and trying to explain that he needed help to save officers’ lives, Sund said, he felt both “nauseated” and “mad as hell.”
“It’s a response I will never forget for the rest of my life,” Sund writes. While on the call, Sund recalls hearing the frantic voice of an officer being broadcast into the command center: “Shots fired in the Capitol, shots fired in the Capitol.”
Sund’s anger boiled over and he shouted the report of gunfire into the conference call: “Is that urgent enough for you now?” Then Sund hung up to deal with this new crisis.
December
Dec. 31
Washington Post, House panel releases Trump tax returns in another setback for former president, Marianna Sotomayor, Jonathan O'Connell and Michael Kranish, Dec. 31, 2022 (print ed.). The Democratic-led panel released the financial documents for six years, capping a protracted legal and political battle that could have been prevented had former president Donald Trump followed presidential precedent and released his returns voluntarily.
The House Ways and Means Committee on Friday released Donald Trump’s tax returns, dealing yet another setback to the former president and 2024 White House candidate as he faces multiple federal and state investigations.
The Democratic-led panel released the financial documents for six years, capping a protracted legal and political battle that could have been prevented had Trump followed presidential precedent and released his returns voluntarily.
Democrats have pushed for more than three years to make Trump’s tax returns public, and the documents were finally made available to the Ways and Means Committee late last month after the Supreme Court denied a last attempt by Trump to withhold the records.
The release marks another blow to Trump, who is struggling to mount a campaign for president as numerous investigations and controversies continue to swirl around him. His most recent actions, from dining with avowed white supremacists to suggesting terminating the Constitution, have left many in the Republican Party reconsidering whether he remains the most viable candidate to lead the GOP after midterm voters largely rejected candidates backed by the former president.
New York Times, Trump’s Tax Returns Were Released to the Public. Here’s What They Reveal, Jim Tankersley, Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner, Dec. 31, 2022 (print ed.). Donald Trump, who fought for years to keep his tax returns private, made no charitable donations in 2020, and his own tax law may have cost him.
Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee have followed through with their vow to make public six years of former President Donald J. Trump’s tax returns, giving the American public new insight into his business dealings and drawing threats of retaliation from congressional Republicans.
The release on Friday morning contained thousands of pages of tax documents, including individual returns for Mr. Trump and his wife, Melania, as well as business returns for several of the hundreds of companies that make up the real estate mogul’s sprawling business organization.
The committee had this month released top-line details from the returns, which showed that Mr. Trump paid $1.1 million in federal income taxes during the first three years of his presidency, including just $750 in federal income tax in 2017, his first year in office. He paid no tax in 2020 as his income dwindled and his business losses mounted.
The documents contain new details not revealed in those earlier releases. New York Times reporters are combing the pages for key takeaways. Here is a running list.
Dec. 30
Politico, Trump taxes show foreign income from more than a dozen countries, Bernie Becker and Benjamin Guggenheim, Dec. 30, 2022. While Trump surrendered day-to-day control of his business empire, he kept ownership.
Donald Trump’s tax returns show the former president received income from more than a dozen countries during his time in office, highlighting a string of potential conflicts of interest.
Trump’s returns, which were made public by House Democrats on Friday after a lengthy legal fight, disclosed income from 2015 to 2020 from a wide range of foreign countries, including Canada, Panama, the Caribbean island of Saint Martin, the Philippines, the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom, among others.
While the documents did not provide details on the money flows, Trump owns golf courses in Scotland and Ireland, and his name has adorned luxury hotels from Panama to Canada.
The former president was known for fusing his business interests with America’s highest public office, drawing allegations of using his role to promote his private resorts, direct federal money to his hotels and encourage foreign governments to spend money that would directly benefit the Trump family interests.
His far-flung concerns, foreign and domestic, are nested in more than 400 separate business entities. A 2019 report by the watchdog group OpenSecrets said he had more than $130 million in assets in more than 30 countries.
The six years of tax returns disclosed Friday show that Trump received extensive income from Canada, Ireland and the United Kingdom — including gross business income of at least $35.3 million from Canada in 2017, the year he entered office.
That year, Trump also brought in $6.5 million from China, $5.8 million from Indonesia and $5.7 million from India.
By 2020, his last full year in office, Trump reported $8.8 million in income from the U.K. and another $3.9 million in Ireland.
It’s not a surprise that Trump continued to receive money from foreign interests while he was president, since he kept ownership of the company.
Dec. 27
Former Donald Trump “body man” (personal assistant) Nicholas Luna, shown above
Proof, Source: Nick Luna Not Involved with Trump NFT Company CIC Digital or Trump NFT Scam, Seth Abramson, left, Dec. 27, 2022. Journalists at both the New York Times and Washington Post linked CIC Digital and a similarly named company, CIC Ventures—but that presumption appears to have been wrong, per a Proof source.
Proof readers will be well aware that Proof has reported both here and elsewhere—for instance, in the New York Times-bestselling Proof Trilogy—that former president Donald Trump has a history of directly or indirectly promising money, jobs, and/or favors to those federal witnesses who testify before Congress or speak to the DOJ or FBI in a fashion consistent with his own interests, leading to some understandable concern that if any such individual were to have been involved in Trump’s get-richer-quick NFT scam it could position that scam as part of a larger January 6 cover-up.
As the subhed of this new Proof report indicates, and as the last Proof report on Mr. Trump’s NFT venture disclosed, both the Washington Post and New York Times saw leading journalists on their payrolls draw conclusions about two Trump-launched companies—CIC Ventures and CIC Digital—that treated the two as one and the same, and therefore possibly at the head of a January 6 Witness Tampering scheme.
But Proof can now report, on the basis of contact with a person confirmed to have knowledge of the situation—and to whom Proof has granted anonymity to allow them to speak freely—that while former Trump “body man” Nicholas Luna was indeed involved with CIC Ventures for the purposes of signing contracts for Mr. Trump’s post-presidential speaking engagements, he had no involvement, formal or otherwise, with CIC Digital, a distinct venture that ultimately contracted with a dodgy entity named NFT INT LLC to mint Trump’s chintzy, much-mocked NFTs. Indeed, per this Proof source, CIC Digital was founded after Luna left Trump’s employ in October 2021.
This source believes CIC Digital to have been run, instead, by individuals associated with (or even formally part of) the Trump Organization. This source further states that there were no contacts between Luna and the listed co-director for CIC Ventures, Trump lawyer John Marion.
These revelations keep active the following key questions: (1) why a Trump lawyer (Marion) was made the co-director of an entity exclusively associated with Trump’s speaking engagements; (2) whether Marion was also involved with CIC Digital; and (3) whether Marion was given his business role(s) in the labyrinthine world of Trump single-purpose (sometimes shell) corporations as a means to avoid paying him for legal services rendered—whether through corporate perks or write-offs or by allowing Marion to do side business under Trump’s aegis and/or brand, as appears to have been the case in Ukraine with fellow Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani—or to generate a zone of attorney-client privilege in the context of a Witness Tampering (or other criminal) scheme.
Hopefully the Times and Post will update their coverage of Donald Trump’s NFT scam consistent with this new reporting by Proof.
Seth Abramson, shown above and at right, is founder of Proof and is a former criminal defense attorney and criminal investigator who later taught digital journalism, legal advocacy, and cultural theory at the University of New Hampshire. A regular political and legal analyst on CNN and the BBC during the Trump presidency, he is a best-selling author who has published eight books and edited five anthologies.
Abramson is a graduate of Dartmouth College, Harvard Law School, the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and the Ph.D. program in English at University of Wisconsin-Madison. His books include a Trump trilogy: Proof of Corruption: Bribery, Impeachment, and Pandemic in the Age of Trump (2020); Proof of Conspiracy: How Trump's International Collusion Is Threatening American Democracy (2019); and Proof of Collusion: How Trump Betrayed America (2018).
Dec. 26
Former Trump National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, a leading proponent of the Jan. 6 pro-Trump "Stop the Steal" that led to the Capitol insurrection, is shown in a collage with then-President Donald Trump (File photos).
Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Commentary: The missing piece in the January 6th Committee Report, Wayne Madsen, left, author of 22 books (including The Rise of The Fourth Reich, below, and former synidcated columnist, Navy intellitence officer and NSA analyst, Dec. 25-26, 2022.
The House Select Committee on the January 6 attack on the Congress did an admirable job of cutting through the obstruction of justice, obfuscation, and plain old lying from Donald Trump and his administration’s and presidential campaign’s hopeless sycophants.
However, the committee failed to answer the mail on the military’s involvement in pre- and post-coup plans for a Trump military-civilian junta to rule the United States. Far too many Department of Defense political appointees were not criticized in the committee’s report, particularly those who failed to order the early deployment of National Guard troops to safeguard the Capitol complex for the ceremonial counting of the electoral votes to proclaim Joe Biden and Kamala Harris the president- and vice president-
elect of the United States.
It is quite clear that Trump had installed a coterie of military and civilian officials at the Pentagon whose main task it was to fail to respond to pleas for assistance from congressional and Washington, DC authorities as insurrectionists stormed the Capitol.
The presence of then-Major General Charles Flynn, right, within the U.S. Army’s Pentagon staff should have raised the suspicions of the committee. Flynn’s brother, 
Trump’s former national security adviser Mike Flynn, had been one of the chief proponents of advancing Trump’s “Stop the Steal” campaign to the point where he called for the military to not only seize voting machines but Trump to declare martial law and hold an unconstitutional “do-over” of the November 3rd election.
Other active duty officers who stymied the dispatch of National Guard troops to the Capitol included Lieutenant General Walter Piatt, Charles Flynn’s immediate superior, who remains the Director of the Army Staff at the Pentagon, and then-Brigadier General Christopher LaNeve, the Director of Operations and Mobilization, who worked under Piatt and Flynn, and has since been promoted to Major General and is currently the Commander of the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
It is very clear that a group of far-right retired flag rank military officers stood ready to fill important government positions in a Trump junta after a successful January 6 coup. During the 2020 campaign 317 of these officers, representing “Flag Officers 4 America,” signed an open letter full of vitriolic pro-Trump rhetoric, including the charge that the “Democrat Party” was “welcoming Socialists and Marxists” and that “our historic way of life is at stake.”
WMR has compiled a spreadsheet listing the names of the “Flag Officers 4 America” and other lower-ranked military retirees and active members of the military and reserves who provided aid and comfort to Trump and his coup plotters. While this is not a complete list of officer-level traitors in the U.S. military community, it can be appended with additional names.
Just Security, January 6 Clearinghouse Congressional Hearings, Government Documents, Court Cases, Academic Research, Ryan Goodman and Justin Hendrix, Dec. 26, 2022. Deposition Transcripts of House Select Committee (sorted by affiliation, alphabetical, date of deposition) Welcome to this all-source repository of information for analysts, researchers, investigators, journalists, educators, and the public at large.
Check out our new addition below: A curated repository of deposition transcripts from the House Select Committee. Readers may also be interested in Major Highlights of the January 6th Report.
If you think the January 6 Clearinghouse is missing something, please send recommendations for additional content by email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
The authors are grateful for the assistance of Joshua Asabor, Matthew Bailey, Sarah Butterfield, Brianne Cuffe, and Nicholas Tonckens in the creation of the Clearinghouse.
Dec. 24
Alex Jones, the founder of right-wing media group Infowars, addresses a crowd of pro-Trump protesters after they storm the grounds of the Capitol Building on January 6, 2021 in Washington, DC (Photo by Jon Cherry via Getty Images).
New York Times, With Evidence and Calls for Accountability, Jan. 6 Panel Seeks a Legacy, Luke Broadwater, Dec. 24, 2022 (print ed.). The committee’s report provided new details on former President Trump’s actions and a record for history. But Republicans will try to discredit it.
The House Jan. 6 committee’s 845-page final report is chock-full of new details about former President Donald J. Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election.
It documents how Mr. Trump and his allies tried at least 200 times to convince state or local officials to throw out President Biden’s victory. It reveals that Mr. Trump did, in fact, push for the National Guard to be present on the Capitol grounds on Jan. 6, 2021 — but to protect his supporters as they marched on Congress, not lawmakers.
And it has new testimony from Trump aides like Hope Hicks, who became overwhelmed with disgust at the president’s behavior and the mob riot they were witnessing. “We all look like domestic terrorists now,” she wrote in a text.
But even as the committee continues to reveal damning evidence about the attack on the Capitol and what led to it, it has reached the end of its run. The publication of the report, the result of an exhaustive monthslong effort, has created a permanent record intended at a minimum to hold Mr. Trump accountable in history. Criminal referrals have been issued. Much of the panel’s staff has moved on, accepting other jobs.
Dec. 23
Washington Post, Opinion: The Jan. 6 report’s most important finding: Trump enabled extremist groups, Jennifer Rubin, right, Dec. 23, 2022. It will take weeks to absorb the massive, 845-page report from the House Jan. 6 select committee. No doubt, certain sections will receive more attention than others, such as Chapter 1, about Donald Trump’s role in constructing election lies, and Chapter 7, about the near-total absence of White House records during the four-hour siege of the U.S. Capitol. (Was any evidence destroyed?)
But from a historical, legal and national security perspective, the most alarming information comes in Chapters 6 and 8 and Appendix 1. Those sections cover the right-wing extremists who jointly planned and executed the violent uprising — and the degree to which Trump enabled their attack.
First and foremost, the report busts a myth promoted by right-wing apologists that because some insurrectionists began the assault on the Capitol before Trump concluded his “Stop the Steal” speech, he was not the inspiration for the attack. Wrong.
Proof, Investigative Commentary: Stunning New Ali Alexander Text Message Released By House January 6 Committee Could Be the Smoking Gun for Link Between Trump and Capitol Attackers, Seth Abramson, left,Dec. 23, 2022. The House January 6 Committee has just released dozens of transcripts of January 6 witness testimony—and the one transcript that only Proof would be obsessed with is the one everyone needs to read.
For two years, Proof spilled more words reporting on Ali Alexander and Alex Jones and their role in the events of January 6, 2021 than any media outlet in the United States. All told, more than a hundred Proof reports detailed how these two men in particular—along with their fellow Stop the Steal co-organizer Roger Stone—directly coordinated with the Trump White House, and even Donald Trump himself, to move an armed mob from the White House Ellipse onto the Capitol grounds on January 6.
Then the House January 6 Committee hearings came, and Alexander and Jones were hardly mentioned at all. Instead, the Committee focused almost exclusively on Trump, and in only attenuated ways on Trump advisers who had been close to him for many years, like Stone. Alexander was interviewed but not mentioned, Jones was mentioned once or twice but had successfully fought revealing any testimonial evidence to the Committee by over and over and over again pleading his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination under live questioning by the Committee.
This led some to fear that Proof had been off-base in focusing so much on the Stop the Steal group alongside other topics that ultimately did make up a significant part of the Committee’s more than a dozen televised presentations to America: for instance, the Trump-, John Eastman-, and Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA)–led coup inside the DOJ or the pressure campaign the first two men waged against then-vice president Mike Pence.
So when, just 24 hours ago, the Committee began releasing dozens of transcripts of its interviews with January 6 witnesses, relatively few gravitated toward the Alex Jones transcript—not only because it was by then widely known that Jones had pleaded the Fifth Amendment in response to every question asked of him (despite having often insisted in the past that he had done nothing wrong with respect to the events of January 6), but because Jones hadn’t been a focus of the Committee’s many televised evidentiary hearings, so how significant could his testimony or transcript possibly be?
In fact, it may be a smoking gun.
As Proof has reported across scores of investigative reports on his activities on and before January 6, Ali Alexander has always claimed that he’s met face-to-face with Donald Trump several times (to the point that Trump had developed a nickname for him prior to January 6, “Sammy,” for his likeness to the late entertainer Sammy Davis Jr.), has spoken with him on other occasions as well, was in touch with Donald Trump Jr.’s wife-to-be Kimberly Guilfoyle on (at a bare minimum) Insurrection Eve, and was in constant communication with the 2020 Trump presidential campaign on January 6 itself. He’s also intimated that he was in touch with top officials at the White House throughout December of 2020—a period of time in which he began making what many would consider terroristic threats against the United States related to January 6.
More recently, over at Post News, Proof detailed how the just-published Executive Summary of the House January 6 Committee Report makes clear that Trump and Eastman developed their plot to use January 6 to overturn the 2020 election results in the first week of December 2020, approximately two weeks before Ali Alexander made public his plan to create a mob scene on Capitol Hill on that date (that is, on federal grounds that it would be illegal to enter upon or occupy on that day in January 2021).
Seth Abramson, shown above and at right, is founder of Proof and is a former criminal defense attorney and criminal investigator who later taught digital journalism, legal advocacy, and cultural theory at the University of New Hampshire. A regular political and legal analyst on CNN and the BBC during the Trump presidency, he is a best-selling author who has published eight books and edited five anthologies.
Abramson is a graduate of Dartmouth College, Harvard Law School, the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and the Ph.D. program in English at University of Wisconsin-Madison. His books include a Trump trilogy: Proof of Corruption: Bribery, Impeachment, and Pandemic in the Age of Trump (2020); Proof of Conspiracy: How Trump's International Collusion Is Threatening American Democracy (2019); and Proof of Collusion: How Trump Betrayed America (2018).
Dec. 21
New York Times, Tax Live Updates: Despite Mandate, I.R.S. Delayed Auditing Trump in Office, House Panel Finds, Charlie Savage, Emily Cochrane, Stephanie Lai and Alan Rappeport, Dec. 21, 2022. The committee voted to release six years of former President Trump’s tax returns, ending a nearly four-year process to make his financial information public. Members of the committee revealed that the I.R.S. failed to audit Mr. Trump during his first two years in office despite a program that makes it mandatory.
The Internal Revenue Service failed to audit former President Donald J. Trump during his first two years in office despite a program that makes the auditing of sitting presidents mandatory, a House committee revealed on Tuesday after an extraordinary vote to make public six years of his tax returns.
Mr. Trump filed returns in 2017 for the two previous tax years, but the I.R.S. began auditing those filings only in 2019 — the first on the same day in April the Ways and Means Committee requested access to his taxes and any associated audits, a report by the panel said. The I.R.S. has yet to complete those audits, it said, and the agency started auditing his filings covering his income while president only after he left office.
The revelation could transform the political context of the committee’s nearly four-year fight to obtain information about Mr. Trump’s taxes and any related audits. Its chairman, Representative Richard E. Neal of Massachusetts, had said the panel needed the data to assess the I.R.S.’s mandatory presidential audit program, but Mr. Trump’s lawyers and Republicans called that a pretext for a politically motivated fishing expedition.
The suggestion of dysfunction in the auditing program was an early takeaway in what could be a series of disclosures related to the release of Mr. Trump’s returns. Democrats said it might be several days before thousands of pages of tax filings from Mr. Trump and several associated businesses from 2015 to 2020 became public as they redacted sensitive details, like street addresses and bank account numbers.
But a Joint Committee on Taxation staff report released Tuesday night included some details from his tax filings.
When combined with tax records previously obtained by The New York Times, the records show that in 2018, Mr. Trump had positive taxable income for the first time in more than a decade. That change occurred largely because he had sold properties or investments at a gain of $22 million, and he appears to have exhausted the business losses he had been rolling over year after year. As a result, he paid $999,466 in federal income taxes for 2018. But his long-term pattern of reporting negative income returned by 2020, and he paid no federal income taxes for that year.
The party-line vote to release the materials came during the last weeks of Democratic control of the House after Republican gains in the midterm election. The committee invoked a century-old statute that allows it to lawfully make public otherwise confidential tax information involving Mr. Trump, who had defied tradition by refusing to disclose his financial information as a presidential candidate and sitting president.
The committee debated behind closed doors for more than four hours before voting to make public Mr. Trump’s returns. The move brought to an end a prolonged battle by the House to obtain Mr. Trump’s returns.
After the vote, Mr. Neal, who as the committee’s chairman requested Mr. Trump’s tax returns from the Treasury Department, praised the panel’s handling of the documents.
“This was not about being punitive,” he said. “This was not about being malicious. And there were no leaks from the committee. We adhered carefully to the law.”
But Republicans on the committee portrayed the decision as unjustified, setting a dangerous precedent and eroding a norm against exposing private taxpayer information that risked paving the way for lawmakers to routinely expose political adversaries’ private finances.
New York Times, These are the key numbers from Donald Trump’s tax returns, Charlie Smart, Dec. 21, 2022. New figures in a report by the House Ways and Means Committee showed that Donald J. Trump paid $1.1 million in federal income taxes in his first three years as president, and that he paid no taxes in 2020 as his income began to dwindle.
Mr. Trump’s fortunes changed during his presidency, according to the figures in the report, which include details on the former president’s tax returns from 2015 to 2020. In the two years before he became president, Mr. Trump suffered heavy business losses, the records showed. In his first three years as president, he had an adjusted gross income of $15.8 million.
Mr. Trump’s tax bills, after deductions, were based on his income when it was above zero, as well as the alternative minimum tax in four of the six years. The A.M.T. limits deductions that would have otherwise helped to erase his tax burden. He reduced his resulting tax bills with a mix of tax credits that included incentives and givebacks to business owners.
Background:
New York Times, Investigation: From 2020: We obtained years of Donald Trump’s tax information. It showed tax avoidance and chronic losses, Russ Buettner, Susanne Craig and Mike McIntire, Sept. 27, 2020. The Times obtained Donald Trump’s tax information extending over more than two decades, revealing struggling properties, vast write-offs, an audit battle and hundreds of millions in debt coming due.
Donald J. Trump paid $750 in federal income taxes the year he won the presidency. In his first year in the White House, he paid another $750.
He had paid no income taxes at all in 10 of the previous 15 years — largely because he reported losing much more money than he made.
As the president wages a re-election campaign that polls say he is in danger of losing, his finances are under stress, beset by losses and hundreds of millions of dollars in debt coming due that he has personally guaranteed. Also hanging over him is a decade-long audit battle with the Internal Revenue Service over the legitimacy of a $72.9 million tax refund that he claimed, and received, after declaring huge losses. An adverse ruling could cost him more than $100 million.
The tax returns that Mr. Trump has long fought to keep private tell a story fundamentally different from the one he has sold to the American public. His reports to the I.R.S. portray a businessman who takes in hundreds of millions of dollars a year yet racks up chronic losses that he aggressively employs to avoid paying taxes. Now, with his financial challenges mounting, the records show that he depends more and more on making money from businesses that put him in potential and often direct conflict of interest with his job as president.
The New York Times has obtained tax-return data extending over more than two decades for Mr. Trump and the hundreds of companies that make up his business organization, including detailed information from his first two years in office. It does not include his personal returns for 2018 or 2019. This article offers an overview of The Times’s findings; additional articles will be published in the coming weeks.
The returns are some of the most sought-after, and speculated-about, records in recent memory. In Mr. Trump’s nearly four years in office — and across his endlessly hyped decades in the public eye — journalists, prosecutors, opposition politicians and conspiracists have, with limited success, sought to excavate the enigmas of his finances. By their very nature, the filings will leave many questions unanswered, many questioners unfulfilled. They comprise information that Mr. Trump has disclosed to the I.R.S., not the findings of an independent financial examination. They report that Mr. Trump owns hundreds of millions of dollars in valuable assets, but they do not reveal his true wealth. Nor do they reveal any previously unreported connections to Russia.
New York Times, Mr. Trump paid $1.1 million in taxes during his presidency, but $0 in 2020, data released by the House panel showed, Mike McIntire, Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig, Dec. 21, 2022. The former president reported a burst of income after entering the Oval Office, but by the end of his term, his tax filings had reverted to large losses, according to data released by a House panel.
Washington Post, House committee votes to make public Trump’s tax returns, Amy B Wang and Michael Kranish, Dec. 21, 2022 (print ed.). The House Ways and Means Committee on Tuesday voted 24-16 to release former president Donald Trump’s tax returns to the public, capping a protracted legal and political battle that began when Trump was in the Oval Office.
Democrats have for more than three years pushed to make Trump’s tax returns public, and the documents were finally made available to the Ways and Means Committee late last month after the Supreme Court denied a last attempt by Trump to withhold the records.
The committee meeting got underway just after 3 p.m. Tuesday and was immediately moved to a closed session to discuss Trump’s tax returns because of the confidential nature of the subject matter. For the sake of transparency, committee members voted by unanimous consent to make public a transcript of the closed session afterward.
Rep. Richard E. Neal (D-Mass.), right, the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, first sought to obtain six years’ worth of Trump’s tax returns in 2019, after Democrats retook the House majority. They argued that Congress needed to do so to evaluate the effectiveness of annual presidential audits and for the sake of oversight.
Trump — who broke with a decades-long tradition of presidential candidates and presidents by refusing to make his tax returns public — has for years falsely claimed that he could not release them while under “routine audit” by the Internal Revenue Service.
The New York Times in 2020 reported that Trump paid $750 in federal income taxes in 2016, when he won the presidency, and another $750 in 2017. The Times, which obtained tax data covering more than two decades, also reported that he paid no income tax in 10 of the 15 years before he ran for president.
At the time, a Trump spokesman disputed the accuracy of the Times report and said Trump had paid tens of millions of dollars in “personal taxes” to the federal government, a vague phrase that left unclear what taxes were paid. The records obtained by the Times showed that Trump had reduced his taxes by aggressively using losses to offset income, among other methods.
Those revelations followed reporting by The Washington Post and other organizations that showed Trump had paid little or no federal income taxes in the earlier years of his career. The Post wrote in its biography, “Trump Revealed,” that Trump paid no income taxes in 1978 and 1979, using tax deductions such as real estate depreciation that enabled him to claim a negative income of $3.8 million.
When 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton noted in a debate that Trump did not pay federal income taxes for those two years, Trump responded, “That makes me smart.” Then when Clinton speculated that Trump might not have paid “any federal income tax for a lot of years” — which turned out to be the case — Trump said the government would have “squandered” the money.
Here's why Congress can obtain Donald Trump's tax returns
During his campaign for president, in which he frequently boasted that he was an extraordinarily wealthy and successful tycoon, Trump said that he would release his “beautiful” tax returns to back up his claims. But he said he would not make them public while he was being audited.
The legal battle between Trump and the Ways and Means Committee played out in the courts for years, continuing even after Trump left office. But last month, the Supreme Court cleared the way for the House committee to examine Trump’s tax returns, without stating a reason for denying Trump’s request to withhold the records.
“We knew the strength of our case, we stayed the course, followed the advice of counsel, and finally, our case has been affirmed by the highest court in the land,” Neal said in a statement then. “Since the Magna Carta, the principle of oversight has been upheld, and today is no different. This rises above politics, and the Committee will now conduct the oversight that we’ve sought for the last three and a half years.”
Trump and his Republican allies have criticized the effort to obtain his tax returns as a partisan attack, and warned that Congress making the former president’s returns public after he has left office would violate separation of powers.
“Let me be clear: Our concern is not whether the president should have made his tax returns public, as is traditional, nor about the accuracy of his tax returns,” Brady said Tuesday shortly before the Ways and Means Committee meeting began. “Our concern is that, if taken, this committee action will set a terrible precedent that unleashes a dangerous new political weapon that reaches far beyond the former president.”
Still, federal judges have consistently ruled that lawmakers established the “valid legislative purpose” required for disclosure. The Supreme Court’s decision late last month came after Trump announced he would run for president again in 2024.
In arguing against the release of the tax records, Trump’s legal team said the committee’s premise for seeking the information “has nothing to do with funding or staffing issues at the IRS and everything to do with releasing the President’s tax information to the public.”
New York Times, Release of Trump Tax Returns Could Herald New Era for Taxpayer Privacy, Alan Rappeport, Dec. 21, 2022 (print ed.). With Republicans set to retake control of the House of Representatives, a potential release of former President Trump’s tax returns risks reprisals.
As a presidential candidate in 2016, Donald J. Trump teased that the release of his tax returns was imminent, pointing to the scale and complexity of his wealth as a reason that he had so far bucked tradition by failing to release his financial information.
“I have very big returns, as you know, and I have everything all approved and very beautiful and we’ll be working that over in the next period of time,” Mr. Trump said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” at the time, adding, “This is not, like, a normal tax return.”
The tax returns never materialized. Over the next seven years, Mr. Trump first blamed an invasive Internal Revenue Service audit for his refusal to make his returns public and then, as president, waged an extended legal battle against House Democrats who sought to force their release.
Several years of tax return data obtained by The New York Times showed that Mr. Trump paid scant income taxes over the years and detailed the financial struggles of his properties, yet the full scope of his tax history remained shrouded in secrecy.
That could change this week. On Tuesday, the House Ways and Means Committee will hold a vote to decide whether to make public six years of the former president’s tax records. That action comes after the Supreme Court last month declined to block the Treasury Department, which oversees the I.R.S., from releasing the returns to Congress. The decision paved the way for the returns to be transferred from the I.R.S. to the Ways and Means Committee.
Now, in the days before they hand control of the House to Republicans, Democrats must decide exactly what to do with the documents.
The formal release of Mr. Trump’s tax records would represent both a significant act of transparency and what some fear is the end of an era of taxpayer privacy. It would also raise questions about whether, in this case, Democrats on the House committee created a pretext for using their power as a political weapon against an opponent.
“If they get revealed, it seems to me they ought to have a pretty good reason for why that’s in the public interest,” said John Koskinen, who served as I.R.S. commissioner in the Obama and Trump administrations. “It’s a dangerous precedent.”
Presidents are not required by law to release their tax returns, but for decades they have done so voluntarily to demonstrate to the American public that they have nothing to hide.
For years, Democrats have been angling for access to Mr. Trump’s returns, using various justifications for why lawmakers should be allowed to see private financial data. In 2017, when House Democrats were in the minority, Representative Bill Pascrell Jr., a New Jersey Democrat, asked his Republican colleagues to seek their release so the American public could better understand Mr. Trump’s financial ties to foreign governments and potential conflicts of interest. Republican lawmakers refused to comply.
When the Democrats took control of the House of Representatives in 2019, they made getting access to Mr. Trump’s returns a priority. They relied on a century-old provision in the tax code that gives congressional tax-writing committees the power to review private returns.
To demonstrate that there was a “legitimate legislative purpose” for the request, House Democrats sought the returns as part of an oversight inquiry into the effectiveness of a rule that requires the I.R.S. to audit all presidential tax returns. Mr. Trump’s Treasury secretary, Steven T. Mnuchin, refused to turn the tax returns over and warned that the request from Democrats could come back to haunt them if Republicans decided someday to weaponize the I.R.S.
House Republicans are expected to make that argument on Tuesday when they attempt to persuade Democrats not to release Mr. Trump’s records.
“Ways and Means Democrats are unleashing a dangerous new political weapon that reaches far beyond President Trump and jeopardizes the privacy of every American,” Representative Kevin Brady of Texas, the top Republican on the Ways and Means Committee, said in a statement. “Going forward, partisans in Congress have nearly unlimited power to target political enemies by obtaining and making public their private tax returns to embarrass and destroy them.”
He added: “This is not limited to public officials, but can target private citizens, business and labor leaders and Supreme Court justices.”
Washington Post, Opinion: How the Jan. 6 committee’s report boosts the Georgia probe into Trump, Jennifer Rubin, right, Dec. 21, 2022. While the House Jan. 6 select committee’s report provides a road map for potential federal charges against former president Donald Trump, perhaps more immediately important is how it will inform prosecutors investigating him in Georgia.
It is quite likely the district attorney overseeing that case, Fani Willis, will file her case against Trump much sooner than federal prosecutors. And the committee’s findings make a compelling case for indictment under Georgia law.
Consider the facts set forth in the committee’s executive summary:
- Trump was repeatedly informed that his claims of fraud in Georgia were thoroughly investigated and debunked. At one point, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger offered to send Trump a link to the state’s audit. “I don’t care about a link. I don’t need it,” Trump told him. He might as well have said, “the facts be damned.”
- The committee also reiterated facts about Trump’s call with Raffensperger on Jan. 2, 2021, in which Trump pressured the election official to “find 11,780 votes” to flip the state’s results. Trump “asserted conspiracy theories about the election that Department of Justice officials had already debunked. Trump also made a thinly veiled threat to Raffensperger and his attorney about his failure to respond to Trump’s demands.”
- Despite the absence of evidence of fraud and warnings that claims of fraud were endangering election officials, Trump and his sidekick Rudy Giuliani vilified Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Wandrea “Shaye” Moss in meetings with state legislators and during public rallies. Trump’s depraved conduct set the election workers up for death threats and harassment.
- The committee reports that on Dec. 28, 2020, then-Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark “worked with a Department employee named Kenneth Klukowski — a political appointee who had earlier worked with [Trump lawyer] John Eastman — to produce a draft letter from the Justice Department to the State legislature of Georgia.” The letter falsely stated the administration had uncovered “significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election in multiple States, including the State of Georgia.” That was a lie, as former Justice Department official Richard Donoghue confirmed in an email. And both Clark and Trump knew it.
Politico, Trump lawyers target Adult Survivors Act in attempt to invalidate rape lawsuit, Erin Durkin, Dec. 21, 2022. Lawyers for the accuser are pushing to release the deposition Trump gave in the case, which is currently sealed. E. Jean Caroll brought a new suit against former President Donald Trump after New York passed the Adult Survivors Act.
A lawyer for Donald Trump said Wednesday he will try to dismiss a lawsuit by a woman alleging the former president raped her in the 1990s by arguing New York’s Adult Survivors Act is unconstitutional, but a judge suggested he is not inclined to throw out the case.
Lawyers appeared in federal court in Manhattan in a lawsuit brought by E. Jean Carroll, a writer who says that Trump raped her in a Manhattan department store decades ago. She brought a new suit against Trump after New York passed the Adult Survivors Act, which gives victims of sexual assault two years to sue over past assaults that would previously have been barred by the statute of limitations.
“There’s a serious question here as to whether the Adult Survivors Act is constitutional,” said Trump’s lawyer, Michael T. Madaio.
When the defense attorney mentioned a motion to get the case dismissed, Judge Lewis Kaplan responded, “I wouldn’t count on that.”
Before the new legislation passed, Carroll was suing Trump for defamation over statements he made in 2019 denying the alleged attack. She filed the new suit over the alleged incident on Thanksgiving, when the Adult Survivors Act took effect. She also added a new defamation claim, over statements Trump made this October about her claims.
The judge asked the Trump attorney why the Adult Survivors Act would be unconstitutional when the Child Victims Act, a previous law allowing victims who were kids at the time to sue years later, held up in court. Madaio said that legislation was different because it dealt with a specific subset of vulnerable people.
Attorneys for Carroll want to bring the case to trial in April, when the original defamation suit was scheduled to be tried. Trump’s lawyers want to push it back to later in the year. Kaplan said he would decide on a schedule later Wednesday.
Dec. 20
Washington Post, House committee votes to make public Trump’s tax returns, Amy B Wang and Michael Kranish, Dec. 20, 2022. The House Ways and Means Committee on Tuesday voted 24-16 to release former president Donald Trump’s tax returns to the public, capping a protracted legal and political battle that began when Trump was in the Oval Office.
Democrats have for more than three years pushed to make Trump’s tax returns public, and the documents were finally made available to the Ways and Means Committee late last month after the Supreme Court denied a last attempt by Trump to withhold the records.
The committee meeting got underway just after 3 p.m. Tuesday and was immediately moved to a closed session to discuss Trump’s tax returns because of the confidential nature of the subject matter. For the sake of transparency, committee members voted by unanimous consent to make public a transcript of the closed session afterward.
Rep. Richard E. Neal (D-Mass.), right, the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, first sought to obtain six years’ worth of Trump’s tax returns in 2019, after Democrats retook the House majority. They argued that Congress needed to do so to evaluate the effectiveness of annual presidential audits and for the sake of oversight.
Trump — who broke with a decades-long tradition of presidential candidates and presidents by refusing to make his tax returns public — has for years falsely claimed that he could not release them while under “routine audit” by the Internal Revenue Service.
The New York Times in 2020 reported that Trump paid $750 in federal income taxes in 2016, when he won the presidency, and another $750 in 2017. The Times, which obtained tax data covering more than two decades, also reported that he paid no income tax in 10 of the 15 years before he ran for president.
At the time, a Trump spokesman disputed the accuracy of the Times report and said Trump had paid tens of millions of dollars in “personal taxes” to the federal government, a vague phrase that left unclear what taxes were paid. The records obtained by the Times showed that Trump had reduced his taxes by aggressively using losses to offset income, among other methods.
Those revelations followed reporting by The Washington Post and other organizations that showed Trump had paid little or no federal income taxes in the earlier years of his career. The Post wrote in its biography, “Trump Revealed,” that Trump paid no income taxes in 1978 and 1979, using tax deductions such as real estate depreciation that enabled him to claim a negative income of $3.8 million.
When 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton noted in a debate that Trump did not pay federal income taxes for those two years, Trump responded, “That makes me smart.” Then when Clinton speculated that Trump might not have paid “any federal income tax for a lot of years” — which turned out to be the case — Trump said the government would have “squandered” the money.
Here's why Congress can obtain Donald Trump's tax returns
During his campaign for president, in which he frequently boasted that he was an extraordinarily wealthy and successful tycoon, Trump said that he would release his “beautiful” tax returns to back up his claims. But he said he would not make them public while he was being audited.
The legal battle between Trump and the Ways and Means Committee played out in the courts for years, continuing even after Trump left office. But last month, the Supreme Court cleared the way for the House committee to examine Trump’s tax returns, without stating a reason for denying Trump’s request to withhold the records.
“We knew the strength of our case, we stayed the course, followed the advice of counsel, and finally, our case has been affirmed by the highest court in the land,” Neal said in a statement then. “Since the Magna Carta, the principle of oversight has been upheld, and today is no different. This rises above politics, and the Committee will now conduct the oversight that we’ve sought for the last three and a half years.”
Trump and his Republican allies have criticized the effort to obtain his tax returns as a partisan attack, and warned that Congress making the former president’s returns public after he has left office would violate separation of powers.
“Let me be clear: Our concern is not whether the president should have made his tax returns public, as is traditional, nor about the accuracy of his tax returns,” Brady said Tuesday shortly before the Ways and Means Committee meeting began. “Our concern is that, if taken, this committee action will set a terrible precedent that unleashes a dangerous new political weapon that reaches far beyond the former president.”
Still, federal judges have consistently ruled that lawmakers established the “valid legislative purpose” required for disclosure. The Supreme Court’s decision late last month came after Trump announced he would run for president again in 2024.
In arguing against the release of the tax records, Trump’s legal team said the committee’s premise for seeking the information “has nothing to do with funding or staffing issues at the IRS and everything to do with releasing the President’s tax information to the public.”
U.S. House Jan. 6 insurrection investigating committee members Liz Cheney (R-WY), Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) and Jamie Raskie (D-MD) are shown, left to right, in a file photo.
Washington Post, Live: Jan. 6 committee refers Trump to Justice Department for prosecution, John Wagner, Eugene Scott, Amy B Wang, Mariana Alfaro and Azi Paybarah, Dec. 20, 2022 (print ed.). The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol voted Monday to send to Justice Department prosecutors a recommendation that the former president be charged with four crimes: inciting or assisting an insurrection, obstruction of an official proceeding of Congress, conspiracy to defraud the United States and conspiracy to make a false statement.
The move has no legal weight, but marks the first time Congress has made such a referral for a former president.
Here’s what to know
- Tte committee is referring four Republican House members — Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) and Reps. Jim Jordan (Ohio), Scott Perry (Pa.), and Andy Biggs (Ariz.) — to the Ethics Commmittee for ignoring the panel’s subpoenas.
- Committee members have agreed to make all evidence and transcripts of depositions publicly available. Chairman Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.) said most “non-sensitive” materials would be released by the end of the year.
- Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), the panel’s vice chairwoman, accused Trump of an “utter moral failure and a clear dereliction of duty” and said he is “unfit for any office.”
- Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), a panel member, said that Trump used prolific fundraising based on his false claims of voter fraud in “concerning” ways. Some of the money was used to “provide or offer employment to witnesses,” Lofgren said.
Washington Post, Editorial: Why the Jan. 6 committee mattered, Editorial Board, Dec. 20, 2022 (print ed.). The House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack approached the end of its work Monday with a dramatic recommendation that the Justice Department charge former president Donald Trump with four crimes, including inciting or assisting an insurrection.
This criminal referral is symbolic; the Justice Department is responsible for making a tough call on whether such charges would stick — and whether it would be prudent to indict a former president and current presidential candidate.
The committee has secured its legacy in different ways, providing a searing picture of what occurred on Jan. 6, 2021, and exhibiting the cowardice of those who, out of fear of Mr. Trump, refused to help it reckon with that dark day.
The public now knows much more about Mr. Trump’s culpability. New details, including videotaped testimony from former Trump aides, showed Mr. Trump had been told he’d lost the election but nevertheless leaned on state officials, the Justice Department, his vice president and others to keep him in power — a campaign that resulted in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot.
Monday’s hearing featured new revelations about longtime Trump adviser Hope Hicks. While the Capitol was being swarmed on Jan. 6, she texted a White House spokesman that she had urged Mr. Trump on both Jan. 4 and Jan. 5 to tweet something about how protests that day should be nonviolent, but he’d refused. Ms. Hicks recalled Mr. Trump telling her: “The only thing that matters is winning.”
Ms. Hicks is just one of the Republicans who testified about Mr. Trump. The list also includes Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers and former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson. Ms. Hutchinson was a star witness despite having much to lose professionally — and even as her former boss, ex-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, refused to testify.
The two House Republicans who served on the committee, Liz Cheney (Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (Ill.), also deserve credit. Sadly, neither will return to Congress next year. But the work they did helped create a vital historical record. The committee plans to release the bulk of its non-sensitive records, including transcripts of deposition. The report they’ll put out this week will include a series of legislative recommendations for preventing a future Jan. 6.
U.S. House Jan. 6 insurrection investigating committee members Liz Cheney (R-WY), Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) and Jamie Raskie (D-MD) are shown, left to right, in a file photo.
Washington Post, Live: Jan. 6 committee refers Trump to Justice Department for prosecution, John Wagner, Eugene Scott, Amy B Wang, Mariana Alfaro and Azi Paybarah, Dec. 20, 2022 (print ed.). The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol voted Monday to send to Justice Department prosecutors a recommendation that the former president be charged with four crimes: inciting or assisting an insurrection, obstruction of an official proceeding of Congress, conspiracy to defraud the United States and conspiracy to make a false statement.
The move has no legal weight, but marks the first time Congress has made such a referral for a former president.
Here’s what to know
- Tte committee is referring four Republican House members — Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) and Reps. Jim Jordan (Ohio), Scott Perry (Pa.), and Andy Biggs (Ariz.) — to the Ethics Commmittee for ignoring the panel’s subpoenas.
- Committee members have agreed to make all evidence and transcripts of depositions publicly available. Chairman Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.) said most “non-sensitive” materials would be released by the end of the year.
- Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), the panel’s vice chairwoman, accused Trump of an “utter moral failure and a clear dereliction of duty” and said he is “unfit for any office.”
- Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), a panel member, said that Trump used prolific fundraising based on his false claims of voter fraud in “concerning” ways. Some of the money was used to “provide or offer employment to witnesses,” Lofgren said.
A photo made available by the Ukrainian Presidential Press Service shows President Volodymyr Zelensky in Bakhmut, Ukraine, on Dec. 20, 2022.
New York Times, Zelensky visits the battleground city of Bakhmut, aiming to show Ukraine’s resolve, Marc Santora and Anton Troianovski, Dec. 20, 2022. In perhaps his most daring visit to the front lines since Russia invaded Ukraine 300 days ago, President Volodymyr Zelensky traveled to the ravaged city of Bakhmut on Tuesday morning to rally the soldiers there and demonstrate his defiance of Russia’s invasion. Despite months of Russian bombardments and waves of assaults, the city has remained in Ukrainian control.
His unannounced visit came only hours after President Vladimir V. Putin acknowledged that his war may not be going according to plan, saying the situation in Russian-held parts of Ukraine was “extremely difficult.”
The battle for Bakhmut, in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, has turned into one of the bloodiest campaigns of the war. As losses for both sides have mounted, Ukraine’s hold on the ravaged city has taken on a symbolism that outstrips its military significance. There are bumper stickers, artwork and T-shirts in shops across Ukraine with the slogan: “Bakhmut Holds.”
Despite months of Russian bombardments and waves of assault by formations from the Wagner Group, an infamous paramilitary organization that has helped lead the Kremlin’s war effort in parts of Ukraine, the city has remained in Ukrainian control.
In Bakhmut, Mr. Zelensky saluted the courage of the soldiers fighting in grueling conditions.
“It seems to me that the Bakhmut heroes should get the same that every person gets,” Mr. Zelensky said, according to Freedom TV, a Ukrainian network that covered the trip. “I wish their children, families — that everything is fine with them, that they have warmth, that they have health.”
Mr. Zelensky has repeatedly spoken about that the “very difficult” situation in parts of Donbas, with the fighting around Bakhmut particularly vicious. He said in a recent address that Russian forces had “destroyed” Bakhmut, turning the city, once home to 70,000 people, into “burned ruins.”
On previous trips to the front, Mr. Zelensky went to raise Ukraine’s blue-and-gold flag after Russian occupation forces were driven out of cities including Izium in the northeast and Kherson in the southwest. Mr. Zelensky’s visit to Bakhmut came as Ukrainian troops say they have pushed Russians out of some positions on the edge of the city, although the situation there is far from stable.
The Ukrainian forces holding Bakhmut are from a mix of units, including the 93rd Mechanized Brigade and the 58th Motorized Infantry Brigade, that have been worn down by the nonstop Russian assaults. Other units relocated from southern Ukraine have arrived in recent weeks to bolster the defense of the city.
While Russian forces are digging in and establishing more fortified defensive positions across much of the 600-mile front, they have continued to assault Bakhmut from multiple directions. They have suffered heavy losses and there have been widespread reports of low morale and disorder in the Russian ranks, with convicts recruited to fight clashing with other units.
The British military defense intelligence agency said on Monday that Russian recruits in eastern Ukraine are “likely being threatened with summary execution” if they fail to heed orders to assault Ukrainian positions.
New York Times, Lawmakers Unveil Sprawling Spending Bill to Avoid Shutdown, Emily Cochrane, Dec. 20, 2022. The legislation, which would fund the U.S. government through September, would significantly increase federal spending. The 4,155-page package includes more aid for Ukraine, changes to the Electoral Count Act and a ban on TikTok on government devices.
Top lawmakers on Tuesday unveiled a sprawling government spending package that would keep the government open through next fall after reaching a compromise on billions of dollars in federal spending, including another round of emergency aid to help Ukraine defend itself against Russia’s invasion.
The legislation would increase federal spending from the last fiscal year, providing $858 billion in military spending and more than $772 billion for domestic programs for the remainder of the fiscal year that ends in September, according to a summary released by Senate Democrats.
With Republican support needed for the measure to pass the Senate, Democrats bowed to conservative opposition to approving a larger increase that would have kept funding levels equal for the health, education and other domestic programs that President Biden and his party have prioritized.
The release of the legislation came around 1:30 a.m. Tuesday, just days ahead of a midnight Friday deadline to fund the government or face a shutdown, after lawmakers passed a one-week stopgap funding bill last week to give themselves more time to discuss the bigger spending package.
The package is the last opportunity for Democrats to shape the federal budget while their party controls both chambers of Congress and for several retiring lawmakers to push a final round of pet projects into law. With Republicans set to take control of the House — and vowing to force deep spending cuts — lawmakers in both parties were eager to finish the compromise and remove one possible threat of political brinkmanship.
Trump, Insurrectionists, Allies
New York Times, Release of Trump Tax Returns Could Herald New Era for Taxpayer Privacy, Alan Rappeport, Dec. 20, 2022. With Republicans set to retake control of the House of Representatives, a potential release of former President Trump’s tax returns risks reprisals.
As a presidential candidate in 2016, Donald J. Trump teased that the release of his tax returns was imminent, pointing to the scale and complexity of his wealth as a reason that he had so far bucked tradition by failing to release his financial information.
“I have very big returns, as you know, and I have everything all approved and very beautiful and we’ll be working that over in the next period of time,” Mr. Trump said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” at the time, adding, “This is not, like, a normal tax return.”
The tax returns never materialized. Over the next seven years, Mr. Trump first blamed an invasive Internal Revenue Service audit for his refusal to make his returns public and then, as president, waged an extended legal battle against House Democrats who sought to force their release.
Several years of tax return data obtained by The New York Times showed that Mr. Trump paid scant income taxes over the years and detailed the financial struggles of his properties, yet the full scope of his tax history remained shrouded in secrecy.
That could change this week. On Tuesday, the House Ways and Means Committee will hold a vote to decide whether to make public six years of the former president’s tax records. That action comes after the Supreme Court last month declined to block the Treasury Department, which oversees the I.R.S., from releasing the returns to Congress. The decision paved the way for the returns to be transferred from the I.R.S. to the Ways and Means Committee.
Now, in the days before they hand control of the House to Republicans, Democrats must decide exactly what to do with the documents.
The formal release of Mr. Trump’s tax records would represent both a significant act of transparency and what some fear is the end of an era of taxpayer privacy. It would also raise questions about whether, in this case, Democrats on the House committee created a pretext for using their power as a political weapon against an opponent.
“If they get revealed, it seems to me they ought to have a pretty good reason for why that’s in the public interest,” said John Koskinen, who served as I.R.S. commissioner in the Obama and Trump administrations. “It’s a dangerous precedent.”
Presidents are not required by law to release their tax returns, but for decades they have done so voluntarily to demonstrate to the American public that they have nothing to hide.
For years, Democrats have been angling for access to Mr. Trump’s returns, using various justifications for why lawmakers should be allowed to see private financial data. In 2017, when House Democrats were in the minority, Representative Bill Pascrell Jr., a New Jersey Democrat, asked his Republican colleagues to seek their release so the American public could better understand Mr. Trump’s financial ties to foreign governments and potential conflicts of interest. Republican lawmakers refused to comply.
When the Democrats took control of the House of Representatives in 2019, they made getting access to Mr. Trump’s returns a priority. They relied on a century-old provision in the tax code that gives congressional tax-writing committees the power to review private returns.
To demonstrate that there was a “legitimate legislative purpose” for the request, House Democrats sought the returns as part of an oversight inquiry into the effectiveness of a rule that requires the I.R.S. to audit all presidential tax returns. Mr. Trump’s Treasury secretary, Steven T. Mnuchin, refused to turn the tax returns over and warned that the request from Democrats could come back to haunt them if Republicans decided someday to weaponize the I.R.S.
House Republicans are expected to make that argument on Tuesday when they attempt to persuade Democrats not to release Mr. Trump’s records.
“Ways and Means Democrats are unleashing a dangerous new political weapon that reaches far beyond President Trump and jeopardizes the privacy of every American,” Representative Kevin Brady of Texas, the top Republican on the Ways and Means Committee, said in a statement. “Going forward, partisans in Congress have nearly unlimited power to target political enemies by obtaining and making public their private tax returns to embarrass and destroy them.”
He added: “This is not limited to public officials, but can target private citizens, business and labor leaders and Supreme Court justices.”
New York Times, Analysis: A Diminished Trump Meets a Damning Narrative, Maggie Haberman, Dec. 20, 2022 (print ed.). Donald Trump’s current woes extend beyond the committee’s report, but the case the panel laid out further complicates his future.
As the summer and the House Jan. 6 committee’s hearings began, former President Donald J. Trump was still a towering figure in Republican politics, able to pick winners in primary contests and force candidates to submit to a litmus test of denialism about his loss in the 2020 election.
Six months later, Mr. Trump is significantly diminished, a shrunken presence on the political landscape. His fade is partly a function of his own missteps and miscalculations in recent months. But it is also a product of the voluminous evidence assembled by the House committee and its ability to tell the story of his efforts to overturn the election in a compelling and accessible way.
In ways both raw and easily digested, and with an eye for vivid detail, the committee spooled out the episodic narrative of a president who was told repeatedly he had lost and that his claims of fraud were fanciful. But Mr. Trump continued pushing them anyway, plotted to reverse the outcome, stoked the fury of his supporters, summoned them to Washington and then stood by as the violence played out.
It was a turnabout in roles for a president who rose first to prominence and then to the White House on the basis of his feel for how to project himself on television.
New York Times, Here are six takeaways from the final Jan. 6 hearing, Michael D. Shear, Dec. 20, 2022 (print ed.). At their final meeting, the bipartisan committee of nine House lawmakers released a 160-page summary of their findings, bringing to an end the most comprehensive examination of the violence aimed at stopping the certification of Joseph R. Biden Jr. as the 46th president.
The panel voted 9 to 0 to accept the final report and to urge the Justice Department to consider criminal charges against Mr. Trump and his allies in four separate areas of the law.
Here are some takeaways:
1) The committee kept its focus on Trump. The committee’s hourlong presentation focused almost exclusively on Mr. Trump, essentially ignoring findings about intelligence and security failures at the Capitol before and during the attack. The committee also did not dwell on the information it collected about the rise of domestic extremism.
New York Times, Opinion: The Jan. 6 Committee Just Made History. Here’s What That Means for Prosecutors, Norman Eisen, E. Danya Perry and Fred Wertheimer, Dec. 20, 2022. Mr. Eisen and Ms. Perry are among the authors of “Trump on Trial,” a Brookings Institution report on the Jan. 6 committee. Mr. Wertheimer is president of Democracy 21, a nonpartisan nonprofit that works to strengthen American democracy.
In voting on Monday to issue a sweeping final report, the Jan. 6 committee has honored its duty and the Constitution. When the full report is released this week, there will be much to review and process for our country, our government and American history. But given the facts that have been revealed, these hearings had to end with criminal referrals against Donald Trump and his minions.
The House committee articulated a powerful legal case encompassing the many schemes of Mr. Trump, John Eastman and others, including the audacious promotion of false electoral slates. The committee also recommended prosecution of Mr. Trump on charges of inciting insurrection and giving aid or comfort to insurrectionists — a charge unseen since the Civil War. The referrals make clear to prosecutors and to Americans just how dangerous the attempted coup was, and how vulnerable our system was (and is) to such assaults.
The committee demonstrated its seriousness of purpose by refusing to put forth a laundry list of defendants. The committee members have all along thought as legislators and public educators, but also have put themselves in the minds of prosecutors. That led them to rightly focus on a short list of prospective defendants against whom the evidence is most damning, providing critical context to the prosecutors. Focusing on the very best cases avoids diluting the effect of the referrals with more tenuous theories against a large number of actors, and emphasizes the cases the prosecutors can actually win.
There is a logic to suggesting the consideration of charges against Mr. Eastman, who was the outside coup counsel, together with his client Mr. Trump and others such as Jeffrey Clark, who was instrumental in advocating the coup from within as a government lawyer. The committee wrote that Mr. Clark “stands out as a participant in the conspiracy.” A focus on the client and his counsel is not only powerfully symbolic — this was, after all, an attempted coup that was advanced by attorneys, not soldiers — it’s also driven by the evidence that the committee has accumulated. It indicates that a strong case can be advanced against Mr. Trump, Mr. Eastman and others for their scheme to fraudulently declare Mr. Trump president by pushing a staggering variety of falsehoods culminating in proposed fake electoral slates.
Then-President Trump with elections strategist John Eastman show in a White House file photo.
Associated Press, Jan. 6 panel urges Trump prosecution with criminal referral, Mary Clare Jalonick, Eric Tucker And Farnoush Amiri, Dec. 20, 2022 (print ed.). The House Jan. 6 committee urged the Justice Department on Monday to bring criminal charges against Donald Trump for the violent 2021 Capitol insurrection, calling for accountability for the former president and “a time of reflection and reckoning.”
After one of the most exhaustive and aggressive congressional probes in memory, the panel’s seven Democrats and two Republicans are recommending criminal charges against Trump and associates who helped him launch a wide-ranging pressure campaign to try to overturn his 2020 election loss. The panel also released a lengthy summary of its final report, with findings that Trump engaged in a “multi-part conspiracy” to thwart the will of voters.
At a final meeting Monday, the committee alleged violations of four criminal statutes by Trump, in both the run-up to the riot and during the insurrection itself, as it recommended the former president for prosecution to the Justice Department. Among the charges they recommend for prosecution is aiding an insurrection — an effort to hold him directly accountable for his supporters who stormed the Capitol that day.
The committee also voted to refer conservative lawyer John Eastman, who devised dubious legal maneuvers aimed at keeping Trump in power, for prosecution on two of the same statutes as Trump: conspiracy to defraud the United States and obstructing an official proceeding.
While a criminal referral is mostly symbolic, with the Justice Department ultimately deciding whether to prosecute Trump or others, it is a decisive end to a probe that had an almost singular focus from the start.
Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said Trump “broke the faith” that people have when they cast ballots in a democracy and that the criminal referrals could provide a “roadmap to justice” by using the committee’s work.
“I believe nearly two years later, this is still a time of reflection and reckoning,” Thompson said. “If we are to survive as a nation of laws and democracy, this can never happen again.”
Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, the panel’s Republican vice chairwoman, said in her opening remarks that every president in American history has defended the orderly transfer of power, “except one.”
The committee also voted 9-0 to approve its final report, which will include findings, interview transcripts and legislative recommendations. The full report is expected to be released on Wednesday.
The report’s 154-page summary, made public as the hearing ended, found that Trump engaged in a “multi-part conspiracy” to overturn the election. While the majority of the report’s main findings are not new, it altogether represents one of the most damning portraits of an American president in recent history, laying out in great detail Trump’s broad effort to overturn his own defeat and what the lawmakers say is his direct responsibility for the insurrection of his supporters.
The panel, which will dissolve on Jan. 3 with the new Republican-led House, has conducted more than 1,000 interviews, held 10 well-watched public hearings and collected more than a million documents since it launched in July 2021. As it has gathered the massive trove of evidence, the members have become emboldened in declaring that Trump, a Republican, is to blame for the violent attack on the Capitol by his supporters almost two years ago.
After beating their way past police, injuring many of them, the Jan. 6 rioters stormed the Capitol and interrupted the certification of Biden’s presidential election win, echoing Trump’s lies about widespread election fraud and sending lawmakers and others running for their lives.
The attack came after weeks of Trump’s efforts to overturn his defeat — a campaign that was extensively detailed by the committee in its multiple public hearings, and laid out again by lawmakers on the panel at Monday’s meeting. Many of Trump’s former aides testified about his unprecedented pressure on states, on federal officials and Pence to object to Biden’s win. The committee has also described in great detail how Trump riled up the crowd at a rally that morning and then did little to stop his supporters for several hours as he watched the violence unfold on television.
Politico, Insurrection Fallout: Jan. 6 panel refers McCarthy, 3 other Republicans for ethics violations, Nicholas Wu and Kyle Cheney, Dec. 20, 2022 (print ed.). The Jan. 6 select committee said on Monday that four House Republicans, including Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, violated congressional ethics rules by defying subpoenas for testimony and documents.
The panel referred the lawmakers for a review by the bipartisan House Ethics Committee, which is seen as unlikely to take action against the members. The ethics panel declined to comment.
In addition to McCarthy, right, three other lawmakers were referred for defying subpoenas: Reps. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.).
Another GOP member who ignored the summons, Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama, left, is leaving Congress after this year and will be out of the ethics panel’s reach. He has issued public statements about his contact with former President Donald Trump, including about Trump’s 
floating of an idea to rescind the results of the 2020 election and reinstall him as president.
The select panel subpoenaed the five lawmakers in May. None of them complied with the summonses, generally citing concerns about the committee’s composition and legitimacy.
The ethics panel, which is evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans, has the power to impose fines or recommend discipline by the full House. Individual lawmakers can file complaints with the ethics panel for its consideration in the next Congress, but its investigations move slowly.
Jordan spokesperson Russell Dye denounced the referral as a “partisan and political stunt” by the select panel. Biggs, in a tweet, also denounced the referral and called it “inappropriate” to use the ethics panel “to help reach the J6 Committee’s pre-determined conclusions.” Spokespeople for McCarthy and Perry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Select panel members recognize the long-shot nature of the transmission but view the defiance of the subpoenas as an undermining of congressional subpoena power that could harm future investigations.
“I don’t know what the Ethics Committee will do. I don’t even know who it’s composed of at this point,” panel member Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) acknowledged.
“I certainly hope the Ethics Committee will not regard this as a partisan matter,” he added. “It raises a profound problem that we have to solve for the 117th Congress, the 118th Congress and for all future Congresses.”
New York Times, Jan. 6 Panel Accuses Trump of Insurrection and Refers Him to Justice Dept., Luke Broadwater, Dec. 20, 2022 (print ed.). The committee also accused the former president of three other federal crimes, including conspiracy to defraud the United States. Five Trump allies were referred as well.
The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol accused former President Donald J. Trump on Monday of inciting insurrection, conspiracy to defraud the United States, obstruction of an act of Congress and one other federal crime as it referred him to the Justice Department for potential prosecution.
The action, the first time in American history that Congress has referred a former president for criminal prosecution, is the coda to the committee’s 18-month investigation into Mr. Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election that culminated in a violent mob of the former president’s supporters laying siege to the Capitol.
The criminal referrals were a major escalation for a congressional investigation that is the most significant in a generation. The panel named five other Trump allies — Mark Meadows, his final chief of staff, and the lawyers Rudolph W. Giuliani, John Eastman, Jeffrey Clark and Kenneth Chesebro — as potential co-conspirators with Mr. Trump in actions the committee said warranted Justice Department investigation. The charges, including a fourth for Mr. Trump of conspiracy to make a false statement, would carry prison sentences, some of them lengthy, if federal prosecutors chose to pursue them.
The committee’s referrals do not carry legal weight or compel any action by the Justice Department, which is conducting its own investigation into Jan. 6 and the actions of Mr. Trump and his allies leading up to the attack. But the referrals sent a powerful signal that a bipartisan committee of Congress believes the former president committed crimes.
Donald Trump (left) and his “body man” Nick Luna (right).
Proof, EXCLUSIVE: Donald Trump’s NFT Scam May Have Been Part of a January 6 Cover-Up, Seth Abramson, left, Dec. 19-20, 2022. As bizarre as it sounds, the backstory to how Trump made $4.5 million on $99 NFTs in just twelve hours suggests it’s not only the NFTs that are scams, but even the purpose of the whole enterprise.
In April 2021 in southern Florida, Donald Trump was hunkered down at (variously) his Florida home, Mar-a-Lago, and his nearby golf club in West Palm Beach. He was awaiting the inevitable: the formation of a congressional January 6 investigation.
One of the members of Trump’s ever-narrowing inner circle spending time with him down in Florida following the January 6 coup attempt Trump helped orchestrate was apparently Trump’s longtime body man, Nick Luna. Luna had been Trump’s chief personal assistant on January 6, 2021, so if there was one thing Trump could have been certain of in April 2021 it was that Luna would be one of the first January 6 witnesses called by the United States Congress.
And if there was a second thing Donald Trump knew in April 2021, it was that Nick Luna could testify to a very, very great deal of what he—Trump—had said and done (or, as the case might be, not done and not said, though he should have) both on January 6 and in the critical hours and days leading up to the January 6 insurrection.
In fact, one can rather easily see that Luna—due to his minute-to-minute proximity to Trump while Trump was orchestrating what was arguably a Seditious Conspiracy, and because of the fact that Luna isn’t a politician who owes his political career to Trump (or has partial protection from subpoena, as do members of Congress, under the Speech and Debate Clause)—was in April 2021 one of the most enticing witnesses a DOJ or FBI or congressional investigator could possibly have imagined, indeed perhaps the most enticing of all potential January 6 witnesses.
So Trump, ensconced at Mar-a-Lago and at his nearby golf club, did what any man facing potential Seditious Conspiracy charges would do: he used his golf club address to make Luna, a young man in his early 30s, the head of a corporation that would, in time, use Trump’s name, image, and likeness to make Luna a very, very rich young man.
Seth Abramson, shown above and at right, is founder of Proof and is a former criminal defense attorney and criminal investigator who later taught digital journalism, legal advocacy, and cultural theory at the University of New Hampshire. A regular political and legal analyst on CNN and the BBC during the Trump presidency, he is a best-selling author who has published eight books and edited five anthologies.
Abramson is a graduate of Dartmouth College, Harvard Law School, the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and the Ph.D. program in English at University of Wisconsin-Madison. His books include a Trump trilogy: Proof of Corruption: Bribery, Impeachment, and Pandemic in the Age of Trump (2020); Proof of Conspiracy: How Trump's International Collusion Is Threatening American Democracy (2019); and Proof of Collusion: How Trump Betrayed America (2018).
Capitol Hill Police Officer Caroline Edwards during congressional testimony about the Jan. 6 riot, with a screenshot of rioters via ABC News and Getty Images.
New York Times, Guest Essay: I Was Caught in the Capitol Riot, and I Still Feel the Pain of That Day, Caroline Edwards, Dec. 19, 2022 (print ed.). Many Americans think that the saga of the Capitol riot will soon be at its end. For two years, this country has endured an impeachment, lawsuits, criminal investigations, congressional hearings, televised theater. And this week, Congress will release its final report.
But there is nothing final about this moment. A funeral doesn’t put an end to your grief. The trauma cannot be bookended by paperwork. These scars cannot be masked with fine print, debated in committee.
For me, this story cannot end overnight, because the riot itself was an attack not just on an essential American institution but also on the people who live and serve to protect it.
I was at the Capitol during the riot. I stood shoulder to shoulder with my colleagues, fighting for our lives, to protect the Capitol and the people who work there. Even now, I can barely talk about it.
In fact, very few Capitol Police officers can.
Sometimes we hold it to our chests, letting it weigh us down. Sometimes we forget for one moment that it happened, and we feel like ourselves again.
Until someone brings it up.
And then it physically hurts to talk about it.
That day, we held our fellow officers’ hands as they got medical treatment and held vigil beside their hospital beds. We performed CPR on strangers and friends. We went home and washed blood, chemicals and bodily fluids off ourselves. We told our loved ones that we were all right.
For the most part, we were. In an outstanding show of resiliency, officers got a few hours of sleep and then showed up, battered and bruised, to work the next day. Not only that, they showed up to the very places they had just been traumatized. They stood post in the crime scenes where, just hours before, they were battling for their lives. Day after day, officers came to work with the knowledge that not all of us had made it out alive.
But months later, I was still struggling to process what had happened. Many of us were.
On June 9, I was in the waiting room off the main hearing chamber, about to testify before the committee investigating the attack. There was a TV playing the hearing; I remember the noise leaking out from the chamber and then hearing it again, two seconds later, from the TV, as if the sound had been echoing through the halls. If I just focused on the echo, I rationalized, I wouldn’t have to hear what was being said. The truth is, I didn’t want to hear it. I couldn’t wait for the ordeal to be over.
And then I heard the noise that haunts me to this day: the roar of the crowd at the riot. It instantly transported me back to Jan. 6. I started shaking and sweating. “I’m not there. I’m not there,” I chanted to myself. “It’s over. I’m not there.” But nothing was working. I could feel sweat trickling down my back. I tried to take deep breaths. From my training with the Capitol Police’s peer support program, I knew I was in real danger. I took off my shoes to feel the carpet underneath my feet, and I put my hands on a wooden desk — anything to tell my body that it wasn’t back on the West Front of the Capitol that January. I must have looked insane.
Slowly, my consciousness came back to the waiting room, and my heart slowed. I took a sip of water. They called for a brief recess. I was next. I went to a bathroom, still shaking, and looked in a mirror. Could I do this? Could I actually stand in front of these people and tell them my story? What if I broke down as I just did? I started praying. I didn’t know what else to do. I asked God to let people see me and hear me and know that my words were true. I knew that as long as I told the truth, I didn’t have anything to worry about.
A sense of calm came over me. I was ready. I was ready for everyone to finally hear what I had lived with for a year and a half, ready to show people the face of someone who had been to hell and back again. And if that person happened to have shaking hands and sweat on her face, that’s what people were going to see. They needed to look at me, hear me and understand me. I needed to let America in. I took a deep breath and left the bathroom a different person.
Recently I gave a speech in which I talked about the strength beyond measure I see in the small moments and everyday deeds of my fellow Capitol Police officers. I see it in the way they put flowers on the memorials of their fallen comrades. I see it in the way they continue to show up for one another, day in and day out. I see it in their laughter in the hallways and during roll call, in the way they train the next generation of their peers how to do the job and teach them the lessons we had to learn the hard way on Jan. 6. I see strength in the way officers are carrying on. I get my strength from them. Any time I’m tempted to worry about the future, I remind myself that these people made sure I went home alive that day. If they had to, they would do it again.
But the trauma kicked off by the Capitol riot is still with us. Only by talking to one another and seeking out help and support from our fellow officers will we find peace — and that could take years. But I sincerely hope that any law enforcement officer knows that in a crisis, my phone is always on. You are never alone as long as you know me.
Axios Sneak Peek, 1 big thing: Jan. 6 committee's unanswered questions, Alayna Treene, Hans Nichols and Zachary Basu, Dec. 19-20, 2022. Even after 18 months of investigation and over 1,200 witness interviews, the House Jan. 6 committee released the executive summary of its final report today with several major questions lingering, Axios' Andrew Solender reports.
Why it matters: The committee's work has been historic, culminating in an unprecedented criminal referral against former President Trump on four charges. But gaps remain — largely as a result of roadblocks that special counsel Jack Smith must now overcome in his own criminal investigation of Trump and his allies.
1. Witness tampering: Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) said today that the committee had "obtained evidence of efforts to provide or offer employment to witnesses."
One witness was "offered potential employment that would make her 'financially very comfortable' as the date of her testimony approached by entities apparently linked to Donald Trump and his associates," according to the report.
"The Select Committee is aware of multiple efforts by President Trump to contact Select Committee witnesses. The Department of Justice is aware of at least one of those circumstances," the report adds.
Asked why witness tampering wasn't included in the criminal referrals, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) told Axios: "We wanted to proceed where we feel the evidence is overwhelming ... and not throw out dozens of charges. We're very focused on what we actually know."
Dec. 19
U.S. House Jan. 6 insurrection investigating committee members Liz Cheney (R-WY), Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) and Jamie Raskie (D-MD) are shown, left to right, in a file photo.
New York Times, Jan. 6 Panel to Cap 18-Month Inquiry With Final Public Session Today, Luke Broadwater, Dec. 19, 2022. The committee is expected to approve its final report and vote on issuing criminal and civil referrals against Donald Trump at a 1 p.m. hearing.
The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol will hold its last public meeting on Monday afternoon, ending an 18-month investigation with the approval of its final report and a vote on issuing criminal and ethics referrals against former President Donald J. Trump and his top allies.
During a business meeting at 1 p.m., the committee is expected to discuss some of the findings in its final report and recommendations for legislative changes.
The panel is also expected to vote on referring Mr. Trump to the Justice Department on charges of insurrection, obstruction of an official proceeding of Congress and conspiracy to defraud the United States, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Referrals against Mr. Trump would not carry any legal weight or compel the Justice Department to take any action, but they would send a powerful signal that a congressional committee believes the former president committed certain crimes.
Donald Trump (left) and his “body man” Nick Luna (right).
Proof, EXCLUSIVE: Donald Trump’s NFT Scam May Have Been Part of a January 6 Cover-Up, Seth Abramson, left, Dec. 19, 2022. As bizarre as it sounds, the backstory to how Trump made $4.5 million on $99 NFTs in just twelve hours suggests it’s not only the NFTs that are scams, but even the purpose of the whole enterprise.
In April 2021 in southern Florida, Donald Trump was hunkered down at (variously) his Florida home, Mar-a-Lago, and his nearby golf club in West Palm Beach. He was awaiting the inevitable: the formation of a congressional January 6 investigation.
One of the members of Trump’s ever-narrowing inner circle spending time with him down in Florida following the January 6 coup attempt Trump helped orchestrate was apparently Trump’s longtime body man, Nick Luna. Luna had been Trump’s chief personal assistant on January 6, 2021, so if there was one thing Trump could have been certain of in April 2021 it was that Luna would be one of the first January 6 witnesses called by the United States Congress.
And if there was a second thing Donald Trump knew in April 2021, it was that Nick Luna could testify to a very, very great deal of what he—Trump—had said and done (or, as the case might be, not done and not said, though he should have) both on January 6 and in the critical hours and days leading up to the January 6 insurrection.
In fact, one can rather easily see that Luna—due to his minute-to-minute proximity to Trump while Trump was orchestrating what was arguably a Seditious Conspiracy, and because of the fact that Luna isn’t a politician who owes his political career to Trump (or has partial protection from subpoena, as do members of Congress, under the Speech and Debate Clause)—was in April 2021 one of the most enticing witnesses a DOJ or FBI or congressional investigator could possibly have imagined, indeed perhaps the most enticing of all potential January 6 witnesses.
So Trump, ensconced at Mar-a-Lago and at his nearby golf club, did what any man facing potential Seditious Conspiracy charges would do: he used his golf club address to make Luna, a young man in his early 30s, the head of a corporation that would, in time, use Trump’s name, image, and likeness to make Luna a very, very rich young man.
Seth Abramson, shown above and at right, is founder of Proof and is a former criminal defense attorney and criminal investigator who later taught digital journalism, legal advocacy, and cultural theory at the University of New Hampshire. A regular political and legal analyst on CNN and the BBC during the Trump presidency, he is a best-selling author who has published eight books and edited five anthologies.
Abramson is a graduate of Dartmouth College, Harvard Law School, the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and the Ph.D. program in English at University of Wisconsin-Madison. His books include a Trump trilogy: Proof of Corruption: Bribery, Impeachment, and Pandemic in the Age of Trump (2020); Proof of Conspiracy: How Trump's International Collusion Is Threatening American Democracy (2019); and Proof of Collusion: How Trump Betrayed America (2018).
New York Times, Trump Faces a Week of Headaches on Jan. 6 and His Taxes, Maggie Haberman, Dec. 19, 2022 (print ed.). After five years of dramatic headlines about controversies surrounding Donald Trump, the coming week will be consequential.
After more than five years of dramatic headlines about controversies, scandals and potential crimes surrounding former President Donald J. Trump, the coming week will be among the most consequential.
On Monday, the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol by Mr. Trump’s supporters will hold what is almost certainly its final public meeting before it is disbanded when Republicans take over the majority in the new year.
The committee’s members are expected to debate criminal referrals to the Justice Department in connection with the riot and Mr. Trump’s efforts to cling to power, which culminated on Jan. 6 as the pro-Trump mob tried to thwart the certification of his successor’s 2020 electoral victory. The biggest topic is whether to recommend that Mr. Trump face criminal charges.
On Tuesday, the House Ways and Means Committee will meet privately to discuss what to do with the six years of Mr. Trump’s tax returns that it finally obtained after nearly four years of legal efforts by Mr. Trump to block their release.
The committee could release them publicly, which would most likely be done in the final days of Democratic control of Congress.
And on Wednesday, the Jan. 6 committee is expected to release its report on the attack, along with some transcripts of interviews with witnesses.
Taken together, this week will point a spotlight on both Mr. Trump’s refusal to cede power and the issue that he has most acutely guarded for decades, the actual size of his personal wealth and his sources of income.
Donald Trump rouses supporters in a speech outside the White House just prior to the mob's assault on the U.S. Capitol, which contained elected members of Congress giving final certification of November election results on Jan. 6, 2021 in advance of President-elect Joe Biden's planned Inauguration.
New York Times, Proud Boys Trial Is Set to Open, Focusing on Role in Jan. 6 ViolenceNew York Times, Proud Boys Trial Is Set to Open, Focusing on Role in Jan. 6 Violence, Alan Feuer, Dec. 18, 2022. The trial is opening less than a month after Stewart Rhodes, the leader of another far-right group, the Oath Keepers, was convicted of seditious conspiracy.
The Proud Boys defendants are also charged with seditious conspiracy, but they are accused of playing a central role in the Capitol riot.
Much as in Mr. Rhodes’s trial, the government’s presentation in the Proud Boys trial will seek to bolster its sedition charges with thousands of internal text messages seized by the government and insider testimony from cooperating witnesses. But the differences between the two proceedings may be more instructive than their similarities.
For one thing, prosecutors never accused Mr. Rhodes and his four co-defendants of personally committing serious acts of violence at the Capitol. Instead, they proved that the Oath Keepers plotted to use force against the government by pointing out that the group persistently said a civil war might be needed to fight the administration of Joseph R. Biden Jr. and that on Jan. 6 it stashed an arsenal of high-powered weapons in hotel rooms in Virginia.
But in trying the Proud Boys, prosecutors plan to take a different tack: They will offer the jury a detailed account of how the five defendants — including Enrique Tarrio, above, the group’s former chairman — led their own troops and other “tools” in the mob into battle at the Capitol and played a central role in breaches of the building and in hand-to-hand fights with the police.
Founded in 2016 during Mr. Trump’s first run for office, the Proud Boys have long described themselves as “Western chauvinists” out to protect American politics from the supposedly corrosive effects of modern liberal culture.
But something else has always simmered beneath that public guise: a toxic stew of male grievance, misogyny, Islamophobia and anti-gay hatred, as well as a veneration of violence that has often boiled over into brawling in the streets.
The government plans to tell some of that history at the trial and to demonstrate how the Proud Boys, under Mr. Tarrio’s leadership, became involved in pro-Trump rallies in Washington after the election. At one of those events, on Dec. 12, 2020, Mr. Tarrio burned a Black Lives Matter banner that had been hanging at a local Black church; other members of the group clashed with leftist counterprotesters, resulting in a Proud Boys leader, Jeremy Bertino, getting stabbed.
A lingering effect of that incident, prosecutors plan to argue, is that it turned the Proud Boys against the police after years of having troublingly close relationships with officers across the country. The government wants to show the jury how the group became disillusioned with law enforcement to explain the events of Jan. 6, when members of the Proud Boys took the lead in assaulting the police.
One week after the December rally, Mr. Trump posted a message on Twitter that announced another protest — which he said would be “wild” — in Washington on Jan. 6. Prosecutors will try to show that the Proud Boys heard the message as a clarion call and sprang into action.
Working with a group of his top lieutenants, prosecutors say, Mr. Tarrio put together a handpicked crew of “rally boys” who would take the lead in the Proud Boys’ efforts on Jan. 6. The rank-and-file members of the group, Mr. Tarrio later said, would work in 10-man teams that day with medics and communications experts.
Mr. Tarrio was not at the Capitol on Jan. 6, having been kicked out of Washington by a local judge after he returned to the city two days earlier and was arrested over the banner-burning incident and for carrying two high-capacity firearm magazines.
But prosecutors plan to argue to the jury that three of his co-defendants — Joseph Biggs of Ormond Beach, Fla.; Ethan Nordean of Auburn, Wash.; and Zachary Rehl of Philadelphia — took the lead on the ground that day. A fourth co-defendant — Dominic Pezzola of Rochester, N.Y. — is best known for having broken one of the first windows at the Capitol with a stolen police riot shield.
As part of the government’s case, jurors are also likely to hear from several former Proud Boys who have since pleaded guilty, including two from North Carolina: Mr. Bertino and Charles Donohoe. The government may also seek to introduce evidence about a document called “1776 Returns” that was given to Mr. Tarrio by one of his girlfriends and detailed a plan to surveil and storm several government buildings around the Capitol on Jan. 6.
Recent court filings suggest that the lawyers for the Proud Boys intend to mount a robust defense. Echoing the lawyers in the Oath Keepers case, their central argument will be to claim that while the defendants breached the Capitol building, they did not plan the attack in any way that rose to the level of seditious conspiracy.
Dec. 17
World Crisis Radio, Historical Commentary and Strategy, To help defend Constitutional government, January 6 Committee must issue criminal referrals against Trump and his co-conspirators! 
Webster G. Tarpley, right, Dec. 17, 2022 (124:01 mins.). Trump’s day of reckoning approaches: Fateful events next week include Monday decisions on criminal and civil referrals, followed by Tuesday’s announcements of further action from House Ways and Means after initial probe of Don’s tax returns, and Wednesday’s publication of the January 6 Committee’s final report with interview transcripts: democracy hangs in the balance!
Public focus is also on Eastman, Giuliani, and Meadows of Don’s circle; TPM publishes trove of Meadows messages exchanged with 34 GOP tyrants;War of all against all rages among House Republicans as McCarthy appears to fall short of 218 votes need to be Speaker, meaning no decision on first ballot of January 3; Coalition Speaker is only means of avoiding prolonged chaos; Struggle for power in RNC mirrors pervasive power struggles throughout GOP;
Special Counsel subpoenas witnesses in seven battleground states: AZ-MI-WI-GA-NV-NM-PA;
Erratic Putin punks out of yearly press conference, but redoubles rocket rattling; Gen. McCaffrey welcomes promise of Patriot battery for Ukraine, wants ATACMs and other offensive weaponry added as well; Ukrainian command expects Russian winter offensive, most likely against Kyiv;
Berserker Musk launches vendetta vs. his Twitter critics, provoking warnings from European Union and United Nations; DeSantis forming anti-vax council of mountebanks and charlatans to help recruit anti-science mob;
Twilight of globalization as finance oligarchs, anti-union practices, foreign supply chains, just in time inventory, and prevalence of speculation over hard-commodity manufacturing are transformed;
Breaking: Press reports January 6 committee is preparing criminal referrals against Trump for conspiracy to defraud US, insurrection, and obstruction of an official proceeding; Conviction for insurrection would entail lifetime ban from federal office!
Dec. 16
Politico, Exclusive: Jan. 6 panel to vote on urging DOJ to prosecute Trump on at least three criminal charges, Kyle Cheney and Nicholas Wu, Dec. 16, 2022. The report that the select panel (with two of its leaders shown at right above) is expected to consider on Monday afternoon reflects some recommendations from a subcommittee that evaluated potential referrals.
The Jan. 6 select committee is preparing to vote on urging the Justice Department to pursue at least three criminal charges against former President Donald Trump, including insurrection.
The report that the select panel is expected to consider on Monday afternoon, described to POLITICO by two people familiar with its contents, reflects some recommendations from a subcommittee that evaluated potential criminal referrals. Among the charges that subcommittee proposes for Trump: 18 U.S.C. 2383, insurrection; 18 U.S.C. 1512(c), obstruction of an official proceeding; and 18 U.S.C. 371, conspiracy to defraud the United States government.
It’s unclear whether the select committee’s final report will recommend additional charges for Trump beyond the three described to POLITICO, or whether it will urge other criminal charges for other players in Trump’s bid to subvert his 2020 loss. The document, according to the people familiar, includes an extensive justification for the recommended charges.
To justify incitement of insurrection, the report references U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta’s February ruling saying Trump’s language plausibly incited violence on Jan. 6, 2021, when a mob of his supporters besieged the Capitol in a bid to disrupt congressional certification of his loss to Joe Biden. The report also cites the Senate’s 57 votes in last year’s impeachment trial, Trump’s second, to convict him on an “incitement of insurrection” charge passed by the House.
The select panel’s report also notes that, in order to violate the insurrection statute, Trump did not need an express agreement with rioters — but rather, simply needed to provide “aid or comfort” to them.
A select committee spokesperson declined to comment.
A Trump spokesperson denounced the committee’s plans.
“The January 6th un-Select Committee held show trials by Never Trump partisans who are a stain on this country’s history,” said Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung in a statement. “This Kangaroo court has been nothing more than a Hollywood executive’s vanity documentary project that insults Americans’ intelligence and makes a mockery of our democracy.”
DOJ, which is already pursuing a criminal probe of Trump’s Jan. 6-related actions, is not required to consider referrals from Congress, which have no legal weight. However, the select committee plans to act in the hopes that lawmakers’ input can influence prosecutorial decision-making. Panel chair Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) has also raised the possibility of referrals to outside entities like bar associations for the constellation of lawyers involved in election subversion efforts.
- Highlights: Jan. 6 panel ends with unanimous subpoena for Trump testimony
The panel’s lawmakers have debated the value of referrals at length through the end of their investigation. But in recent days, they’ve made the referrals into a play for history and have stressed their symbolic nature, regardless of what DOJ or other entities might do.
Politico, House Dems poised to release Trump’s tax secrets, Brian Faler, Dec. 16, 2022. The move could pile on to the controversies surrounding the former president.
House Democrats will likely unmask new details about former President Donald Trump’s long-hidden taxes following a key meeting now set for next week.
That would be a highly unusual move sure to ignite another post-presidential controversy surrounding Trump, who is running again for the White House.
Ways and Means Committee Chair Richard Neal won access to Trump’s filings in November, after a long court fight, but they remain closely held, with only a handful of lawmakers and aides allowed to examine them. They’re still protected by strict privacy laws that make it a felony for anyone to divulge even basic details about Trump’s taxes.
But there is a way around those rules: Neal’s committee could vote privately to make them public, and that’s what the Massachusetts Democrat wants his colleagues to consider in a closed-door meeting now set for Tuesday at 3 p.m.
Democrats intend to release specifics from the returns, though what exactly will be unveiled is unclear. They could release Trump’s entire returns or perhaps something more limited, such as a summary.
Most of Neal’s colleagues have yet to see the filings, though he has granted access to the panel’s ranking Republican, Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas).
It would be extremely rare for lawmakers to forcibly release someone’s tax information, especially a former president’s, and Trump was not legally required to disclose any of his tax information while he was running for president or after he was elected.
But he defied a decades-old tradition of presidents voluntarily releasing their returns, incensing Democrats, who waged a three-and-a-half year court fight for the documents. A century-old law allows the heads of Congress’ tax committees to see anyone’s returns.
Many Democrats say the public has a right to know where the president’s earnings come from, and how much he pays in taxes. They also want to know how vigorously the IRS has been implementing a long-standing policy of automatically auditing every president.
“Nearly four years ago, the Ways and Means Committee set out to fulfill our legislative and oversight responsibilities, and evaluate the Internal Revenue Service’s mandatory audit program,” said Neal, in a statement.
“As affirmed by the Supreme Court, the law was on our side, and on Tuesday, I will update the members of the committee.”
Democrats believe the law granting Neal access to the filings only applies to the chairs of the tax panels, not their ranking members, so they’re racing to act before Republicans take over the House on Jan. 3.
Neal demanded Trump’s personal returns and filings for eight business entities from 2015 to 2020.
That overlaps with some of the records previously reported by the New York Times but also includes ones from additional years.
Trump’s real estate business was convicted earlier this month of tax fraud. He is promising an appeal.
Republicans say Democrats want to embarrass Trump, and that releasing the returns would create a bad precedent that may be used against others.
Republicans, though, released protected tax information about conservative groups during the Obama administration, as part of their investigation into whether the IRS had discriminated against groups seeking tax-exempt status.
Before that, amid a controversy over former President Richard Nixon’s taxes, experts say Congress released some of his private information alongside filings that Nixon had voluntarily disclosed.
New York Times, Inside Mar-a-Lago, Where Thousands Partied Near Secret Files, Anjali Singhvi, Mika Gröndahl, Maggie Haberman, Weiyi Cai and Blacki Migliozzi, Dec. 15, 2022 (3-D interactive multimedia). A Times investigation shows how Donald J. Trump stored classified documents in high-traffic areas at Mar-a-Lago, above, where guests may have been within feet of the materials.
Mar-a-Lago is the primary home of former President Donald J. Trump. It is also a private club reserved for 500 members and a venue for parties and fund-raisers that are frequently attended by hundreds of people at a time.
With the exception of the Trump family suite, members and their guests have access to much of the 20-acre property.
Since January, the federal government has retrieved three batches of classified documents from Mar-a-Lago. In a search in August, the F.B.I. seized the third batch — more than 13,000 items, including 103 classified documents — from a storage area and Mr. Trump’s office.
Classified documents are supposed to be turned over to the National Archives at the end of a presidential term. But after the end of his term in 2021, Mr. Trump stored the materials at Mar-a-Lago.
Politico, Judge unseals new details of contacts among Rep. Perry, Trump-connected attorneys, Kyle Cheney, Nicholas Wu and Josh Gerstein, Dec. 16, 2022. The document addressed communications among the Pennsylvania Republican, former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark, his aide Ken Klukowski and conservative lawyer John Eastman.
A federal judge revealed Friday that earlier this year she granted Justice Department investigators access to emails between three Trump-connected attorneys and Rep. Scott Perry as part of the federal investigation into election subversion efforts by the former president and others.
At the request of DOJ, U.S. District Court Chief Judge Beryl Howell, right, unsealed a June opinion in which she determined that 37 emails sent among Trump-era Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark, his aide Ken Klukowski and conservative attorney John Eastman and Perry (R-Pa.) — another top Donald Trump ally who chairs the House Freedom Caucus — were not protected by attorney-client privilege.
Notably, Howell indicated in her opinion that investigators had prioritized accessing any emails sent to or from Perry’s account.
Howell also unsealed a second opinion, issued in September, in which she determined that 331 documents from Clark — whom Trump nearly installed as acting attorney general as part of his bid to seize a second term — were similarly not protected by attorney-client privilege.
The documents were largely versions of a potential autobiography Clark had outlined in mid-October 2021, writing that recounted a bizarre effort to have Trump install him as acting attorney general in order to get more traction to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 victory. The outline included a description of a pivotal Jan. 3, 2021, meeting between Trump and senior DOJ officials where almost the entire top echelon of the department threatened to resign if the then-president put Clark in charge.
Clark’s legal team waded into the fight over the apparent book outline. But Howell seemed to disapprove of aspects of the approach Clark’s lawyers took to the document dispute, describing their strategy at one point as “throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks.”
The information revealed in the opinions is the most significant insight yet into what prosecutors are doing with evidence they have obtained in their review of figures associated with Trump’s quest to remain in power despite losing reelection.
FBI agents seized Eastman’s phone in June, the same week they searched Clark’s home. Perry’s phone was also seized by FBI agents in August. Eastman lost a legal bid to reclaim his phone, and Perry, who mounted a similar effort, quickly dropped it.
The judge’s June order appears to have been issued without the involvement of Clark, Klukowski, Eastman or Perry and was based on filings from a “filter team” that DOJ set up to handle the potentially sensitive information.
Washington Post, Trump downplayed drumbeat of intelligence warnings on covid, report finds, Shane Harris, Dec. 16, 2022 (print ed.). The intelligence community repeatedly warned the president in early 2020 about the impending pandemic, a Democrat-led House committee report notes.
Beginning in late January 2020, U.S. intelligence agencies reported to senior Trump administration officials that the coronavirus spreading in China threatened to become a pandemic and spark a global health crisis.
But then-President Trump’s public statements over the next two months “did not reflect the increasingly stark warnings coursing through intelligence channels,” including the president’s daily brief, available to Trump and senior members of his administration, according to a report issued Thursday by the House Intelligence Committee.
By February, the intelligence community “had amply warned the White House in time for it to act to protect the country,” committee investigators concluded. Trump claimed in a May 2020 tweet that the intelligence community “only spoke of the Virus in a very non-threatening, or matter of fact, manner,” a statement that “simply does not match the record of intelligence analysis published in late January and February,” the committee found.
U.S. intelligence reports from January and February warned about a likely pandemic
Committee staff spent two years examining the intelligence community’s response to the covid-19 pandemic. Their report, which was staffed by bipartisan aides but written by the Democrats, who hold the majority on the committee, broadly praises the work of intelligence analysts for providing early warning about the virus for policymakers.
Dec. 15
Wayne Madsen Report via Twitter, Here folks! Here’s a free digital Trump trading card. And it doesn’t cost $99! Merry Christmas, Wayne Madsen, Dec. 15, 2022.
New York Times, Trump Sells a New Image as the Hero of $99 Trading Cards, Michael C. Bender and Maggie Haberman, Dec. 15, 2022. Money from sales of the digital trading cards, which depict the former president as characters like a superhero and a “Top Gun”-style fighter pilot, will go directly to him instead of his 2024 campaign.
Donald J. Trump’s political opponents have long criticized him as something of a cartoon character. On Thursday, the former president made himself into one — but with the aim of turning a profit.
In his first significant public move since opening his 2024 presidential campaign last month, Mr. Trump announced an online store to sell $99 digital trading cards of himself as a superhero, an astronaut, an Old West sheriff and a series of other fantastical figures. He made his pitch in a brief, direct-to-camera video in which he audaciously declared that his four years in the White House were “better than Lincoln, better than Washington.”
The sale of the trading cards, which Mr. Trump had promoted a day earlier as a “major announcement” on his social media website, Truth Social, perplexed some of his advisers and drew criticism from some fellow conservatives.
“Whoever told Trump to do this should be fired,” Keith and Kevin Hodge, two Trump supporters and stand-up comedians, posted on Twitter.
“Man, when all Patriots are looking for is hope for the future of our country and Trump hypes everybody up with a ‘BIG ANNOUNCEMENT’ then drops a low-quality NFT collection video as the ‘announcement,’ it just pushes people away,” they said in another post.
MeidasTouch Podcast, Live: Trump’s Humiliating NFT Announcement & Jack Smith Gets Closer to INDICTMENT, Ben, Brett and Jordy Meiselas, Dec. 15, 2022 (18:22 min. video). On today’s episode of the MeidasTouch Podcast, the brothers dissect and analyze the most consequential news of the week.
The brothers discuss Trump’s humiliating ‘MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT,’ President Biden’s signing of the historic Respect For Marriage Act and the deranged right-wing reaction that ensued, the frivolous lawsuits filed by loser MAGA Republicans in Arizona, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s bizarre anti-vax and anti-truth push. See
.
Dec. 13
House Jan. 6 Select Investigating Committee Chair Bennie Thompson (D-MS.) (Photo via NBC News).
ABC News, Jan. 6 select committee announces final public meeting Monday, Katherine Faulders, Dec. 13, 2022. Chairman Bennie Thompson said the panel's final report will come next Wednesday.
House Jan. 6 committee Chairman Bennie Thompson told reporters on Tuesday that the panel plans to hold its final public meeting on Monday, Dec. 19 at 1 p.m. ET -- two days earlier than expected.
Thompson said the committee will vote on criminal referrals and on report approval next Monday and that its final report will come two days later, on Wednesday, Dec. 21.
Thompson said the report will be posted online. It's not clear whether that will be accompanied by a press conference or if it will just be posted at a certain time.
Dec. 12
Donald Trump rouses supporters in a speech outside the White House just prior to the mob's assault on the U.S. Capitol, which contained elected members of Congress giving final certification of November election results on Jan. 6, 2021 in advance of President-elect Joe Biden's planned Inauguration.
Talking Points Memo, Exclusive Series: The Meadows Texts: A Plot To Overturn An American Election, Hunter Walker, Dec. 12, 2022. TPM Has Obtained Explosive Evidence Uncovered By The January 6 Select Committee; The messages you are about to read are the definitive, real-time record of a plot to overturn an American election; Mark Meadows Exchanged Texts With 34 Members Of Congress About Plans To Overturn The 2020 Election.
TPM has obtained the 2,319 text messages that Mark Meadows, who was President Trump’s last White House chief of staff, turned over to the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack. Today, we are publishing The Meadows Texts, a series based on an in-depth analysis of these extraordinary — and disturbing — communications.
The vast majority of Meadows’ texts described in this series are being made public for the very first time. They show the senior-most official in the Trump White House communicating with members of Congress, state-level politicians, and far-right activists as they work feverishly to overturn Trump’s loss in the 2020 election. The Meadows texts illustrate in moment-to-moment detail an authoritarian effort to undermine the will of the people and upend the American democratic system as we know it.
The text messages, obtained from multiple sources, offer new insights into how the assault on the election was rooted in deranged internet paranoia and undemocratic ideology. They show Meadows and other high-level Trump allies reveling in wild conspiracy theories, violent rhetoric, and crackpot legal strategies for refusing to certify Joe Biden’s victory. They expose the previously unknown roles of some members of Congress, local politicians, activists and others in the plot to overturn the election. Now, for the first time, many of those figures will be named and their roles will be described — in their own words.
Meadows turned over the text messages during a brief period of cooperation with the committee before he filed a December 2021 lawsuit arguing that its subpoenas seeking testimony and his phone records were “overly broad” and violations of executive privilege. The committee did not respond to a request for comment on this story. Since then, Meadows has faced losses in his efforts to challenge the subpoena in court. However, that legal battle is ongoing and is unlikely to conclude before next month, when the incoming Republican House majority is widely expected to shutter the committee’s investigation. Earlier this year, Meadows reportedly turned over the same material he gave the select committee to the Justice Department in response to another subpoena. These messages are key evidence in the two major investigations into the Jan. 6 attack. With this series, the American people will be able to evaluate the most important texts for themselves.
Meadows has not, thus far, responded to multiple requests for comment. The texts Meadows provided to the select committee encompass the period from election night in 2020 through President Joe Biden’s inauguration on Jan. 20, 2021. It is not clear which, if any, texts Meadows withheld from the committee, but the text message log offers multiple hints it is only a partial record of his conversations. There are discussions that clearly lack prior context and messages where participants indicate there is further communication taking place on encrypted channels.
But despite the seeming gaps, Meadows’ text record is still incredibly revealing. Some of the contents of the log were published in “The Breach,” a book about the Jan. 6 attack that I co-wrote with Denver Riggleman, a former Republican congressman and senior technical adviser to the committee. In our book, Riggleman described how he and his fellow committee investigators dubbed Meadows’ text log “the crown jewels” because they served as the “road map to an insurrection.” Along with the text messages that appeared in “The Breach,” some of Meadows’ messages have also been revealed by media outlets. The Washington Post published his exchanges with Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Some of Meadows’ conversations with Fox News personalities and other members of the media were disclosed by the select committee. CNN and I have published Meadows’ conversations with some Republican members of Congress including; Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX), Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY), Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA), and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA). Additionally, CNN has published Meadows’ texts with Fox News personality Sean Hannity and his messages from the period directly surrounding the Jan. 6 attack. However, there’s more. So much more.
TPM is kicking off this series with an exclusive story showing that the log includes more than 450 messages with 34 Republican members of Congress. Those texts show varying degrees of involvement by members of Congress, from largely benign expressions of support for Trump to the leading roles played by Reps. Jim Jordan (R-OH), Jody Hice (R-GA), Mo Brooks (R-AL), and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) in the plot to reverse Trump’s defeat. We reached out to all these legislators, and will be detailing their roles and responses to our questions in the first installment of the series, which is coming later today.
In a now-deleted Facebook post, New Mexico county official Couy Griffin, above, predicted of Inauguration Day at the Capitol, “blood will run out of the building.”
New York Times, Obstruction Charge Takes Center Stage at Jan. 6 Court Hearing, Alan Feuer, Dec. 12, 2022. A federal appeals court ruling could affect the cases of hundreds of people charged in connection with the attack on the Capitol.
Prosecutors and defense lawyers squared off on Monday at a federal appeals court hearing in Washington over the use of a criminal charge whose viability could affect the cases of hundreds of people indicted in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol — and could help decide what, if any, charges could ultimately be brought against former President Donald J. Trump.
The charge at the center of the arguments before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia was the obstruction of an official proceeding before Congress.
The Justice Department has used the count in scores of Capitol riot cases to describe how a pro-Trump mob disrupted the central event on Jan. 6: the certification of the 2020 election that took place during a joint session of Congress.
Defense lawyers want the appeals court to rule that the count has been applied incorrectly by the Justice Department and dismiss it from all the Jan. 6 cases in which it has been charged.
The arguments presented at the 90-minute hearing, while highly technical, hit on a critical issue that has shaped the contours of the government’s vast investigation of Jan. 6. That issue was how prosecutors in hundreds of cases have decided between charging people with petty offenses like trespassing or disorderly conduct, which carry a maximum of six months in jail, or the much more serious obstruction count, which carries a maximum of 20 years in prison.
During the hearing, a prosecutor, James Pearce, argued in favor of the obstruction charge, saying that it had been properly applied in nearly 300 Jan. 6 criminal cases. The law requires proving that any interference with a congressional proceeding be done “corruptly,” and Mr. Pearce argued that in cases where the charge has been used, defendants committed other “corrupt” acts like destroying government property or assaulting police officers.
A defense lawyer, Nicholas D. Smith, countered that the obstruction charge had been wrongly applied and that its use in all of the Capitol riot cases should be struck down — even in those in which defendants have already pleaded guilty or been sentenced.
Miami Herald, Trump’s lawsuit in classified documents case is ‘closed,’ Jay Weaver, Dec. 12, 2022. Florida judge officially dumps Trump lawsuit over Mar-a-Lago document seizure.
Former president Donald Trump’s legal effort to thwart a Justice Department investigation into classified documents seized from his palatial Palm Beach estate (shown above) was officially tossed out Monday.
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, right, after being rebuked by a federal appellate court for allowing Trump’s lawsuit to move forward, brought his controversial lawsuit to a halt after the court had ordered her to end it.
“This case is dismissed for lack of jurisdiction,” Cannon wrote in a one-page order released Monday. “The Clerk of Court shall close this case.”
At the beginning of the month, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta ruled that Cannon had no authority to grant Trump’s request for an independent expert to evaluate thousands of documents that FBI agents took from his Mar-a-Lago residence on Aug. 8 to determine if any were off limits to the feds because of potential attorney- or executive-privilege protections.
The special master, a federal judge in New York, was supposed to report back to Cannon soon with his assessment of the documents as the Justice Department continued its probe of the classified documents that Trump took from the White House to his Palm Beach estate after losing the presidency in 2020. Trump is under investigation by a federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., which is considering allegations of mishandling classified government documents, violating national security laws and obstructing justice.
But a three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court threw out her Sept. 5 order allowing the special master to review the seized documents for potential privilege issues. The panel found that Cannon, who was nominated by Trump to the federal bench, had no authority to appoint the independent expert or even get involved in the former president’s suit after a West Palm Beach magistrate judge had properly approved a lawful warrant for the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago.
The Dec. 1 ruling overturning Cannon’s decision was blistering and came from three judges who were also Republican-appointed, two of them also by Trump.
In a 21-page opinion, the judges — Chief Judge William H. Pryor, Britt Grant and Andrew L. Brasher — described the Trump legal team’s arguments as a “sideshow,” highlighting that his lawyers never made the fundamental point that FBI agents showed a “callous disregard” for the former president’s constitutional rights. The appellate panel found that the “callous disregard standard has not been met here, and no one argues otherwise” — including the presiding judge, Cannon.
"There is no record evidence that the government exceeded the scope of the warrant — which, it bears repeating, was authorized by a magistrate judge’s finding of probable cause [of a crime],” the panel wrote. “And yet again, [Trump’s] argument would apply universally; presumably any subject of a search warrant would like all of his property back before the government has a chance to use it.”
In her Sept. 5 order, Cannon noted that she agreed with Justice Department lawyers that FBI agents carrying a search warrant for Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate had not shown a “callous disregard for [his] constitutional rights,” concluding that “this factor cuts against the exercise of equitable jurisdiction.”
But rather than follow her own analysis, Cannon extended Trump protections not provided to ordinary citizens by appointing the special master to review the FBI’s evidence, citing the “unprecedented circumstances” of the U.S. government raiding a former president’s home.
Cannon assumed jurisdiction in the Justice Department’s investigation by appointing New York federal judge Raymond Dearie to view about 100 classified records and thousands of other personal and presidential records taken from Trump’s home and private club to determine if any contained privileged correspondence with lawyers. Cannon refused to let a Justice Department “filter team” of agents and prosecutors do the job.
Jon Sale, a prominent white-collar defense lawyer in Miami who had been asked by Trump to represent him in the Mar-a-Lago documents case, said the appellate court’s message was unambiguous.
“The court’s ruling makes it clear that no person who is the subject of a search warrant, including a former president, is above the law,” said Sale, who served as a Watergate federal prosecutor during the Nixon administration scandal.
But he added: “At the same time, under our Constitution, all people who are the subjects of search warrants, including former presidents, are presumed innocent during the course of the investigation.”
Dec. 11
Donald Trump rouses supporters in a speech outside the White House just prior to the mob's assault on the U.S. Capitol, which contained elected members of Congress giving final certification of November election results on Jan. 6, 2021 in advance of President-elect Joe Biden's planned Inaugution.
Palmer Report, Analysis: Another Trump hotel falls under a cloud of controversy, Ron Leshnower, Dec. 11, 2022. In an opinion piece published in the Chicago Tribune on June 19, 2014, Donald Trump vehemently defended the use of a huge sign bearing his name on the Trump International Hotel & Tower in Chicago. He argued against critics who believed such a sign was architecturally and aesthetically offensive, claiming “my name is known and respected worldwide” and “brings a prominence to Chicago by mere fact of recognition.”
There is no question that Trump’s name is known worldwide, but Trump excels in offering new reasons for his name to become even less respected with each passing day. It has reached a point where now, eight years later, the Chicago Tribune’s editorial board is demanding that it’s time “to take a jackhammer” to the vain eyesore that persists as a monument to hate, fascism, and corruption.
The Tribune’s new editorial on Thursday offers a quick history lesson of how Trump’s sign came to be, which is a tale replete with strategic political contributions and shady dealings. The Tribune then acknowledges its own recent support for Trump’s sign. Just last year, the newspaper came out against a proposed ordinance that would ban anyone “convicted of treason, sedition or subversive actions from doing business with the city, including having a sign permit.”
In doing so, the Tribune (whose former headquarters is shown at left) declared in 2021: “It’s Trump’s building, and he should have the prerogative of stamping his name on it.” Concerned about “anti-Trump fever” that could lead the city to attract a lawsuit alleging violations of private property rights, the Tribune insisted at the time that city officials “would be wise to swallow their distaste and leave the sign alone.”
However, two very recent developments have changed the equation, prompting the Tribune to pen a new editorial proposing that the toxic sign be demolished. The first is Trump calling for the “termination” of the Constitution on account of a “massive fraud” that stole the 2020 election from him, as the man-child claimed. The second is a jury finding that the Trump Organization “was corrupt at the core” and an obvious “criminal enterprise.”
The Tribune now calls for Chicago to figure out a way to jackhammer that sign to the ground–whether it’s new negotiations, another ordinance, or a public relations campaign. Not only does the Tribune support such an effort this time, but it suspects “most everyone who lives there” would as well. Indeed, it’s high time for this oversized sign promoting an equally overinflated ego to go.
Dec. 10
Washington Post, U.S. judge won’t hold Trump’s office in contempt, people familiar say, Spencer S. Hsu, Jacqueline Alemany and Josh Dawsey, Dec. 10, 2022. Justice Department sought contempt order from chief judge over whether all classified documents have been recovered.
A federal judge on Friday declined to hold former president Donald Trump’s office in contempt for not fully complying with a May subpoena to return all classified documents in his possession, according to people familiar with the proceedings.
U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell, right, told Justice Department lawyers and Trump’s legal team to come to an agreement themselves over what actions or assurances by Trump’s office would satisfy the government, according to these people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sealed court proceedings.
“The President and his counsel will continue to be transparent and cooperative,” Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung said in a statement to The Washington Post.
The hearing punctuated months of mounting Justice Department frustration with Trump’s legal team after attorneys provided assurances that a diligent search had been conducted for classified documents at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago residence and private club.
They made that claim when handing over 38 documents to the Justice Department in response to the grand jury subpoena. But the FBI later amassed evidence suggesting that more classified material remained at Mar-a-Lago.
The Justice Department secured a warrant, and FBI agents searched Mar-a-Lago on Aug. 8, retrieving some 13,000 additional documents, about 100 of them classified. The department is investigating the potential mishandling of classified material, destruction of government property or obstruction of the investigation.
Items with classified markings found at Trump storage unit in Florida
One of the central areas of disagreement between the two sides has centered on the Trump legal team’s repeated refusal to designate a custodian of records to sign a document attesting that all classified materials have been returned to the federal government, The Post first reported earlier this week.
Dec. 9
Justice Department Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, left, and former President Donald Trump, shown in a collage via CNN.
The warrant authorizing the search of former president Donald Trump’s home said agents were seeking documents possessed in violation of the Espionage Act.
New York Times, Judge to Hear Justice Dept. Contempt Request in Trump Documents Case, Alan Feuer and Maggie Haberman, Dec. 9, 2022. The department wants a representative of Donald Trump to swear under oath that there are no more classified documents at any of his properties.
A federal judge in Washington was set to hear arguments at a closed-door hearing on Friday about whether to force a representative of Donald J. Trump’s presidential office to swear under oath that there are no more classified documents at any of Mr. Trump’s properties, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The judge, Beryl A. Howell, right, is also being asked to decide whether to impose financial penalties or issue a contempt finding if no one from Mr. Trump’s office agrees to formally vow that, to the best of their knowledge, all of the classified materials he took from the White House when he left office last year have been returned to the government.
The hearing, in Federal District Court in Washington, is being held at the request of federal prosecutors who asked Judge Howell in recent days to declare Mr. Trump in contempt of court for failing to obey a grand jury subpoena that was issued in May seeking the return of all of the classified records in his office’s possession.
The request by the government, first reported on Thursday by the Washington Post, came after months of frustration with the former president and his lawyers, who have repeatedly made assurances to prosecutors that the sensitive materials had all been returned — only to find out there were more.
No matter what Judge Howell decides, the fact that she has been asked to mull a contempt finding suggests that the Justice Department has taken a newly aggressive stance toward Mr. Trump’s long-delayed response to the government’s efforts to retrieve a trove sensitive records that he took from the White House to Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence in Florida.
Dec. 8
Washington Post, Trump’s lawyers found items marked classified at his Fla. storage unit, Jacqueline Alemany, Josh Dawsey, Spencer S. Hsu, Devlin Barrett and Rosalind S. Helderman, Dec. 8, 2022 (print ed.). The former president’s lawyers have told federal authorities no classified material was found in additional searches of Trump Tower in New York and his golf club in Bedminster, N.J.
Lawyers for Donald Trump found at least two items marked classified after an outside team hired by Trump searched a storage unit in West Palm Beach, Fla., used by the former president, according to people familiar with the matter.
Those items were immediately turned over to the FBI, according to those people, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.
The search was one of at least three searches for classified materials conducted by an outside team at Trump properties in recent weeks, after Trump’s legal team was pressed by a federal judge to attest that it had fully complied with a May grand jury subpoena to turn over all materials bearing classified markings, according to people familiar with the matter.
There has been a lengthy and fierce battle between Trump’s attorneys and the Justice Department in a Washington federal court in recent weeks, according to people familiar with the matter. Much of the legal wrangling remains under seal by a federal judge, but people familiar with the matter say the Justice Department has raised concerns about what prosecutors view as a long-standing failure to fully comply with the May subpoena by Trump’s team.
Emails released by the General Services Administration, which assists former presidents during their transition to private life, show that the government agency helped rent the storage unit at a private facility in West Palm Beach on July 21, 2021. The unit was needed to store items that had been held at an office in Northern Virginia used by Trump staffers in the months just after he left office.
The emails show that the GSA and Trump staffers worked together to arrange to ship several pallets of boxes and other items weighing more than 3,000 pounds from Northern Virginia to the Florida storage unit in September 2021.
A person familiar with the matter said the storage unit had a mix of boxes, gifts, suits and clothes, among other things. “It was suits and swords and wrestling belts and all sorts of things,” this person said. “To my knowledge, he has never even been to that storage unit. I don’t think anyone in Trump World could tell you what’s in that storage unit.”
Editorial cartoon showing former Trump White House Senior Advisor Jared Kushner (Mike Lukovich for The Atlanta Journal Constitution).
Washington Post, Democrats ramp up investigation of Kushner family business dealings, Michael Kranish, Dec. 8, 2022 (print ed.). Democrats on a pair of congressional committees have launched an aggressive new effort to obtain information about whether Jared Kushner’s actions on U.S. policy in the Persian Gulf region as a senior White House adviser were influenced by the bailout of a property owned by his family business.
Citing previously undisclosed emails and other documents related to former president Donald Trump’s son-in-law, the committees on Monday night sent letters to the State and Defense departments requesting material that they say could shed new light on whether “Kushner’s financial conflict of interest may have led him to improperly influence U.S. tax, trade and national security policies for his own financial gain.”
The letters, obtained by The Washington Post, focus on efforts by Kushner and his father, Charles Kushner, to bail out a troubled 41-story Fifth Avenue office building in New York City. The Kushner company in 2018 made a deal with a Canadian company, Brookfield Asset Management, which invested $1.2 billion for a 99-year lease. As a result, the Kushner family company avoided defaulting on a loan that was due the following year.
Democrats have long raised questions about the deal because the Qatar Investment Authority, a sovereign wealth fund, had a stake in one of Brookfield’s investment arms.
Brookfield said when it was negotiating its deal in 2018 that “no Qatar-linked entity has any involvement in or even knowledge of this potential transaction.” But Democrats have continued probing whether any Qatari money went into the project.
Now, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.), in their roles as chairs of the Senate Finance Committee and House Oversight Committee, have broadened that inquiry, co-authoring letters to the State and Defense departments. They wrote that they are seeking an array of documents addressing their concerns that Jared Kushner’s role in Middle East policy could have played a role in the bailout.
Neither Jared Kushner, who now runs a private-equity company, nor Charles Kushner, who serves as chairman of the Kushner real estate company, responded to requests for comment.
The saga of the Fifth Avenue property has long been one of the darkest chapters in Jared Kushner’s career.
After his father went to prison for federal tax evasion and other charges after being convicted in 2005, Kushner — who is married to Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump — remade the family real estate business. He sold many of the company’s New Jersey apartments and paid $1.8 billion for the Fifth Avenue property, the most ever paid in the United States for an office building at that time. While Kushner called it a “great acquisition,” the purchase came just before the 2007 real estate crash, undercutting the value of the property and putting the family business at risk.
As Kushner recounted in “Breaking History,” his recent memoir: “There was no way I was going to let the investment fail. I had very little leverage, so I was willing to talk to anybody.” He called it the biggest challenge of his career.
New York Times, Trump Is Bedeviled by Company’s Conviction and Senate Candidate’s Defeat, Maggie Haberman, Dec. 8, 2022 (print ed.). The Trump Organization was branded a felon and Herschel Walker was defeated, in one of Donald Trump’s worst days since announcing his presidential candidacy.
Tuesday’s conviction of the Trump Organization on charges of financial impropriety, coupled with the loss by former President Donald J. Trump’s candidate in the Georgia Senate runoff, marked one of the worst days for Mr. Trump since he announced his presidential candidacy roughly three weeks ago.
First came the events in the city where he was born and raised.
In New York, the jury that heard the case brought by the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, deliberated over two days before returning guilty verdicts on all 17 counts related to a tax-fraud scheme, a sweeping condemnation of the company that bears Mr. Trump’s name.
A lawyer for the company said officials will appeal the verdict, which was due in part to testimony from its longtime chief financial officer, Allen H. Weisselberg, who pleaded guilty to failing to pay taxes on company perks.
Mr. Trump said that he was “disappointed” with the verdict and pointed the finger at Mr. Weisselberg, suggesting he was a lone wolf. But in a morning post on his social media website, Truth Social, Mr. Trump had criticized the district attorney and accused him of running a “Witch Hunt for D.C. against ‘Trump’ over Fringe Benefits, something that in the history of our Country, has never been so tried in Court before.”
Donald Trump, as portrayed in a fictionalized portrayal of his leadership of the Trump Organization on the former top-rated TV show The Apprentice.
New York Times, Conviction Won’t Be a Financial Death Sentence for the Trump Organization, Ben Protess and Jonah E. Bromwich, Dec. 8, 2022 (print ed.). Former President Trump’s family business will be forever tarred, but the maximum penalty it faces is relatively mild.
The conviction of Donald J. Trump’s family business on Tuesday represented a devastating blow to the former president, exposing what prosecutors called a “culture of fraud and deception” at his company and providing his political rivals with ammunition as he embarks on a third presidential campaign.
The Trump Organization itself, however, faces a much milder threat.
The maximum penalty the company could pay is $1.62 million, a drop in the bucket for the Trump Organization, which often raked in hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue per year during his presidency. The company has spent more money paying its lawyers to fight the case.
The size of the potential punishment underscores that while the tax fraud conviction has forever tarred the Trump Organization’s name — and branded it a felonious enterprise — the company is facing far less than a financial death sentence. And it helps explains why the company was unwilling to plead guilty.
The Trump Organization resisted a deal even after its long-serving chief financial officer, Allen H. Weisselberg, agreed to plead guilty and testify at the company’s trial, which was focused on off-the-books luxury perks that the company doled out to some of its executives.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office did not accuse Mr. Trump, or anyone in his family, of taking part in the scheme, though prosecutors named the former president and his adult children liberally at trial. In their closing arguments, they used a single exhibit to try to convince jurors that Mr. Trump had approved of the scheme.
Although the Trump Organization has maintained its innocence — and Mr. Trump has chalked up the case to a politically motivated witch hunt by the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg — the company might have been more willing to strike a deal if it had been facing a harsher punishment.
It is unclear what changes Mr. Trump might make to the company in the wake of the verdict. The Trump Organization is a collection of more than 500 corporate entities, only two of which were on trial.
It is possible that he could shutter those corporations — the Trump Corporation and the Trump Payroll Corp. — without much effort.
A company, of course, cannot be imprisoned, and the two convicted Trump corporations are not publicly traded. As such, there are no financial regulators to punish them or public investors to flee from them.
The Trump Corporation and the Trump Payroll Corp. are also not central to Mr. Trump’s moneymaking enterprise. They largely perform back-office functions, employing and paying top executives, so they do not hold any loans, liquor licenses or other privileges that might slip away in the wake of the conviction.
That’s not to say that the reputational harm from the conviction won’t inflict some damage. It could scare off potential lenders and business partners, or enable them to impose stricter terms on Mr. Trump. Local governments that do business with Mr. Trump — he operates public golf courses in Los Angeles and the Bronx — might use the verdict as leverage to wiggle out of their contracts, and it could discourage other government agencies from doing deals with him.
Palmer Report, Analysis: Looks like the Manhattan DA is gearing up to make a run at Donald Trump after all, Bill Palmer, right, Dec. 8, 2022. Now that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has secured multiple felony convictions against Donald Trump’s company, he’s hiring a former DOJ prosecutor and appears to be gearing up for indicting Trump himself. This isn’t a surprise.
I told you all along that the Manhattan DA would end up indicting Trump long before 2024. More of you are starting to see it now. It’s never a matter of “optimism” or “keeping the faith” or any of that nonsense. There’s just a way things work in politics.
Bragg should have indicted Trump eight months ago. He clearly wanted to play it safe by waiting for the Trump Organization to be convicted first, and perhaps waiting for the DOJ to indict Trump first. But Bragg was always going to make a move of his own, because he has to.
Bragg is up for reelection in 2024 in Trump-hating Manhattan, and knows he’ll have no shot at all unless he indicts and convicts Trump for something. Therefore it’s going to happen. It’s that simple. That whole “he’s being bribed, he’s being blackmailed” narrative was just painfully naive.
Whatever you think of Bragg – and if you have a low opinion of him it’s totally justified – he was always going to end up indicting Trump. He knows he doesn’t have a choice. Most of politics is complicated. But this one really is that simple.
Even the very worst of politicians are always going to selfishly do whatever they think is best for themselves. They are literally never going to intentionally ruin themselves just so they can twist their mustache and say “ha ha, I really made a mess for the rest of you!” As cartoonishly as some political villains try to portray themselves, at the end of the day they’re all just making calculations.
Washington Post, Jan. 6 special counsel subpoenas Ariz., Wis. and Mich. officials for Trump communications, Amy Gardner, Isaac Stanley-Becker, Yvonne Wingett Sanchez and Patrick Marley, Dec. 8, 2022 (print ed.). The requests seek all communications with former president Donald Trump, his campaign, and his top aides and lawyers involved in efforts to overturn the 2020 result.
Special counsel Jack Smith has sent grand jury subpoenas to local officials in Arizona, Michigan and Wisconsin — three states that were central to President Donald Trump’s failed plan to stay in power following the 2020 election — seeking any and all communications with Trump, his campaign, and a long list of aides and allies.
The requests for records arrived in Dane County, Wis.; Maricopa County, Ariz.; and Wayne County, Mich., late last week, and in Milwaukee on Monday, officials said. They are among the first known subpoenas issued since Smith was named last month by Attorney General Merrick Garland to oversee Trump-related aspects of the investigation of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, as well as the criminal probe of Trump’s possible mishandling of classified documents at his Florida home and private club.
The subpoenas, at least three of which are dated Nov. 22, indicate that the Justice Department is extending its examination of the circumstances leading up to the Capitol attack to include local election officials and their potential interactions with the former president and his representatives related to the 2020 election.
Washington Post, Trump team searches two of his properties amid court battle with DOJ, Jacqueline Alemany, Josh Dawsey, Spencer S. Hsu and Devlin Barrett, Dec. 8, 2022 (print ed.). The former president’s lawyers say no classified documents were found at Trump Tower in New York or at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J.
Lawyers for former president Donald Trump conducted a search of at least two of his properties for classified materials in recent weeks, after they were instructed by a federal judge to attest they had fully complied with a May grand jury subpoena to turn over all materials bearing classified markings, according to people familiar with the matter.
Trump’s legal team hired an outside firm to carry out the search of his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., and, more recently, Trump Tower in New York, according to the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information.
The team also offered the FBI the opportunity to observe the search, but the offer was declined, the people said. It would be unusual for federal agents to monitor a search of someone’s property conducted by anyone other than another law enforcement agency. Federal authorities have already searched Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s primary residence, and he spends almost all of his time at those three properties, advisers say.
Trump’s lawyers have told the Justice Department that the outside team did not turn up any new classified information during their search, according to people familiar with the process, and have said they utilized a firm that had expertise in searching for documents.
Dec. 7
Vicky Ward Investigates, Donald Trump and the Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Week, Vicky Ward, Dec. 7, 2022. What Trump Org tax fraud, the Georgia run-off, and those new classified documents say about the former president’s future.
'For rather obvious reasons, my phone has been pinging with texts and emails from readers suggesting that Donald Trump is having a very bad week. There’s the fact that the Trump Org was convicted of tax fraud. Then there’s the fact that his chosen Senatorial candidate, Herschel Walker, was beaten in the Georgia run-off by Sen. Raphael Warnock. And then there’s the news broken by the Washington Post that an outside team hired by Trump discovered items with classified markings in storage that they’ve passed on to the FBI to add to the pile found at Mar-a-Lago.
So, yes, the former president has probably had better weeks, but I am not sure that the consequences for his future are as disastrous as some of the alarmist headlines imply.
First: his business. I phoned around to my sources in real estate, who include people who run funds that have lent to Trump, and asked, Does the conviction change anything? Would you lend to him again?
The answer was yes.
As long as you are not a bank, where the underwriting committee probably would not let you lend to a business with a conviction against it, lending to Trump is actually now more enticing for the aggressive investment funds.
As for his numerous partners? (Remember, in New York City, the Trump Organization only owns two buildings outright: the ground lease of 40 Wall Street and the commercial condominium at Trump Tower. The other buildings that bear his name are licensing deals.) Well, my sources—who include fund managers, brokers and lawyers—agree it’s a question of whether those people still think there’s “brand value” in the Trump name. According to the straw poll I conducted in the actual industry, the answer as to whether they will do business again with Trump is either “I am not sure” or speculation that partners will stay and that foreigner investors in particular are attracted to his name.
Washington Post, Trump Organization convicted in N.Y. criminal tax fraud trial, Shayna Jacobs, Dec. 7, 2022 (print ed.). Former president Donald Trump’s namesake company was convicted Tuesday of tax crimes committed by two of its longtime executives after a Manhattan trial that gave jurors a peek at some of the inner workings of the Trump Organization’s finances.
The real estate, hospitality and golf resort operation headquartered at Trump Tower on Fifth Ave. faces the possibility of a $1.6 million fine. New York Supreme Court jurors began their deliberations mid-day on Monday.
The company was charged with scheme to defraud, conspiracy, criminal tax fraud and falsifying business records.
Prosecutors built the case largely around longtime Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg, who pleaded guilty in August to 15 counts including tax fraud, conspiracy and grand larceny. He was promised a steeply reduced sentence of five months in jail in exchange for testifying against the company. He had faced up to 15 years in prison.
Prosecutors claim to jurors that Trump knew of Weisselberg’s tax fraud
In his testimony, Weisselberg, right, detailed how he and the company’s comptroller, Jeffrey McConney, schemed to cheat state and federal tax authorities over a 15-year period beginning in 2005. Weisselberg used the company to cover major personal expenses like rent for a luxury apartment on the Hudson River, Mercedes Benz leases for himself and his wife and private school tuition for his grandchildren.
In some instances, he paid the company back for his personal expenses, which allowed him to use pre-tax compensation illegally. Other expenses were paid for by the company but not reported as taxable income as required by tax laws.
New York Times, Conviction Won’t Be a Financial Death Sentence for the Trump Organization, Ben Protess and Jonah E. Bromwich Dec. 7, 2022. Former President Trump’s family business will be forever tarred, but the maximum penalty it faces is relatively mild.
The conviction of Donald J. Trump’s family business on Tuesday represented a devastating blow to the former president, exposing what prosecutors called a “culture of fraud and deception” at his company and providing his political rivals with ammunition as he embarks on a third presidential campaign.
The Trump Organization itself, however, faces a much milder threat.
The maximum penalty the company could pay is $1.62 million, a drop in the bucket for the Trump Organization, which often raked in hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue per year during his presidency. The company has spent more money paying its lawyers to fight the case.
The size of the potential punishment underscores that while the tax fraud conviction has forever tarred the Trump Organization’s name — and branded it a felonious enterprise — the company is facing far less than a financial death sentence. And it helps explains why the company was unwilling to plead guilty.
The Trump Organization resisted a deal even after its long-serving chief financial officer, Allen H. Weisselberg, agreed to plead guilty and testify at the company’s trial, which was focused on off-the-books luxury perks that the company doled out to some of its executives.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office did not accuse Mr. Trump, or anyone in his family, of taking part in the scheme, though prosecutors named the former president and his adult children liberally at trial. In their closing arguments, they used a single exhibit to try to convince jurors that Mr. Trump had approved of the scheme.
Although the Trump Organization has maintained its innocence — and Mr. Trump has chalked up the case to a politically motivated witch hunt by the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg — the company might have been more willing to strike a deal if it had been facing a harsher punishment.
It is unclear what changes Mr. Trump might make to the company in the wake of the verdict. The Trump Organization is a collection of more than 500 corporate entities, only two of which were on trial.
It is possible that he could shutter those corporations — the Trump Corporation and the Trump Payroll Corp. — without much effort.
A company, of course, cannot be imprisoned, and the two convicted Trump corporations are not publicly traded. As such, there are no financial regulators to punish them or public investors to flee from them.
The Trump Corporation and the Trump Payroll Corp. are also not central to Mr. Trump’s moneymaking enterprise. They largely perform back-office functions, employing and paying top executives, so they do not hold any loans, liquor licenses or other privileges that might slip away in the wake of the conviction.
That’s not to say that the reputational harm from the conviction won’t inflict some damage. It could scare off potential lenders and business partners, or enable them to impose stricter terms on Mr. Trump. Local governments that do business with Mr. Trump — he operates public golf courses in Los Angeles and the Bronx — might use the verdict as leverage to wiggle out of their contracts, and it could discourage other government agencies from doing deals with him.
Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Commentary: Neo-Nazis on move in North Carolina and Germany, Wayne Madsen, left, author of 22 books and former Navy intelligence officer and NSA analyst, Dec. 7, 2022. In my The Rise of the Fascist Fourth Reich: The Era of Trumpism and the New Far-Right, this author calls for governments around the world to cooperate in suppressing resurgent Nazism and Fascism.
Recent events in North Carolina, Germany, and elsewhere have shown that governments are beginning to take more seriously the threat of international Nazism.
Germany's action December 7 in arresting more than a score of far-right insurrectionists underscores the global threat, as described below. In addition, Russian support for far-right terrorists is coming into sharper focus.
The right-wing terrorist attack on two Duke Energy electrical substations in Moore County, North Carolina, which knocked out power to 45,000 homes, businesses, schools, hospitals, and nursing homes, is being investigated by federal, state, and local law enforcement.
The neo-Nazi plotters in North Carolina were in possession of a handwritten list of a dozen sites in Idaho and surrounding states that, according to the federal indictment, "contained a transformer, substation, or other component of the power grid for the northwest United States."
Washington Post, Giuliani ‘weaponized’ law license in Trump election suit, D.C. Bar argues, Keith L. Alexander, Dec. 7, 2022 (print ed.). Trump adviser should be disbarred over ‘frivolous’ lawsuit, prosecuting attorney says.
Former New York City Republican mayor Rudy Giuliani defended his role challenging the 2020 presidential election as President Donald Trump’s personal attorney Monday, after the D.C. Bar accused Giuliani of misusing his law license and called for it to be revoked.
During his testimony before the D.C. Board on Professional Responsibility of the D.C. Bar, Giuliani at times minimized his role in a lawsuit that falsely alleged the November 2020 general presidential election was wrought with fraud in the key state of Pennsylvania after President Biden was declared winner.
Hamilton “Phil” Fox III, the lead prosecuting attorney for D.C. Bar’s Office of Disciplinary Counsel, called Giuliani’s fraud allegations in Pennsylvania “unfounded” and said they misrepresented or took advantage of two unprecedented events affecting the state: Pennsylvania had just started using mail-in ballots for the election, and the coronavirus pandemic forced independent observers to be distanced from poll workers tasked with opening mail-in ballots and reviewing signatures.
Fox argued that although several courts in Pennsylvania found “kinks” in the new voting system in Pennsylvania, there was no evidence of fraud.
Despite such court assertions, Giuliani “weaponized his law license by filing a frivolous lawsuit” and as a result, should have his licensed suspended or revoked, Fox said.
“There was no case in law nor fact for which Mr. Giuliani set forth on grounds of fraud,” Fox said.
Giuliani’s lawsuit on behalf of Trump seeking to throw out votes cast in the state was rejected by a judge. A federal appeals court refused to let the campaign file a revised complaint.
Giuliani and his attorney, John Leventhal, argued that Trump asked Giuliani to join the case a day after the elections and to “quickly” get up to speed on election results in at least 10 other states, including Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin, Georgia, Nevada, North and South Carolina, and New Mexico.
Leventhal argued that because Trump’s legal challenge did not go forward, there was no legal reason for Giuliani to have his law license revoked.
“The complaint was not accepted. This was never accepted by the court,” Leventhal said.
Under cross examination by Fox, Giuliani said another attorney drafted the initial fraud complaint and that he added a “few paragraphs.”
Fox introduced a second complaint that was filed, in which Giuliani said the fraud allegations were removed. But then Giuliani admitted that he instructed to have the fraud allegations added back into the complaint.
Repeatedly during questioning, Fox argued that Giuliani, a former federal prosecutor, was not answering his questions.
Testimony in the Giuliani hearings is expected to continue through this week and can be viewed via live on the web. At one point during Monday’s hearing, more than 1,000 viewers were tuned into the YouTube channel.
Dec. 6
Donald Trump, as portrayed in a fictionalized portrayal of his leadership of the Trump Organization on the former top-rated TV show The Apprentice.
Washington Post, Trump Organization convicted in N.Y. criminal tax fraud trial, Shayna Jacobs, Dec. 6, 2022. Former president Donald Trump’s namesake company was convicted Tuesday of tax crimes committed by two of its longtime executives after a Manhattan trial that gave jurors a peek at some of the inner workings of the Trump Organization’s finances.
The real estate, hospitality and golf resort operation headquartered at Trump Tower on Fifth Ave. faces the possibility of a $1.6 million fine. New York Supreme Court jurors began their deliberations mid-day on Monday.
The company was charged with scheme to defraud, conspiracy, criminal tax fraud and falsifying business records.
Prosecutors built the case largely around longtime Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg, who pleaded guilty in August to 15 counts including tax fraud, conspiracy and grand larceny. He was promised a steeply reduced sentence of five months in jail in exchange for testifying against the company. He had faced up to 15 years in prison.
Prosecutors claim to jurors that Trump knew of Weisselberg’s tax fraud
In his testimony, Weisselberg, right, detailed how he and the company’s comptroller, Jeffrey McConney, schemed to cheat state and federal tax authorities over a 15-year period beginning in 2005. Weisselberg used the company to cover major personal expenses like rent for a luxury apartment on the Hudson River, Mercedes Benz leases for himself and his wife and private school tuition for his grandchildren.
In some instances, he paid the company back for his personal expenses, which allowed him to use pre-tax compensation illegally. Other expenses were paid for by the company but not reported as taxable income as required by tax laws.
McConney, who admitted in his testimony to committing crimes, was granted immunity under New York law because he was called by prosecutors as a grand jury witness in the case.
Prosecutors argued the conduct of Weisselberg and McConney made the company criminally liable. Two Trump Organization entities — the Trump Corporation and the Trump Payroll Corp. — were on trial. Both were found guilty on all charges.
Lawyers for the entities argued that Weisselberg had no intent to help the company — only himself — and that prosecutors did not successfully prove there was corporate liability. Prosecutors argued the company saved on their Medicare tax responsibility and benefitted in other ways from the scheme.
The Manhattan District Attorney’s office also argued at the close of the case that Trump had personal knowledge of the tax cheating carried out by his executives. At one point in his summation, Assistant District Attorney Joshua Steinglass pointed to a document that had been initialed by Trump and called it “explicit” proof of his knowing that his executives were tinkering with expenses to reduce their tax liabilities.
Trump has not been charged with wrongdoing. In a recent social media post, he denied having knowledge of the crimes Weisselberg and McConney committed.
New York Times, Michael Avenatti Gets 14-Year Sentence for Stealing Millions From Clients, Eduardo Medina, Dec. 6, 2022 (print ed.). Michael Avenatti, the 
brash lawyer known for representing the pornographic film actress Stormy Daniels (shown above) in lawsuits against former President Donald J. Trump, was sentenced on Monday to 14 years in prison for stealing millions of dollars from his clients and obstructing the Internal Revenue Service’s efforts to collect taxes from his coffee business, federal prosecutors said.
Mr. Avenatti, who rose to national prominence in 2018 while representing Ms. Daniels, was also ordered to pay nearly $11 million in restitution to the four clients he stole from, including a person who is paraplegic and has mental health issues, and to the I.R.S., the Justice Department said in a news release.
Prosecutors said Mr. Avenatti obstructed I.R.S. efforts to collect more than $3.2 million in unpaid payroll taxes, which includes money that he withheld from the paychecks of employees who worked for his coffee company, Global Baristas US LLC.
His 14-year prison sentence will run consecutively to the five-year prison term he is currently serving for two separate convictions in New York, prosecutors said. He has been in prison since Feb. 7.
Dec. 3
Twitter, Analysis: Seditious Conspiracy by Trump? Seth Abramson, left, attorney, professor and best-selling author, Dec. 3, 2022. Calling for the overthrow of our government via “the termination of all rules, 
regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution” is Incitement to Sedition. If Trump has taken any action in conjunction with anyone else to advance his goal [see announcement on Dec. 3 above] it is Seditious Conspiracy.
New York Times, Defaults Loom as Poor Countries Face an Economic Storm, Alan Rappeport, Dec. 3, 2022. Debt-relief efforts are stalling as developing economies are being hit by higher interest rates, a strong dollar and slowing global growth.
Developing nations are facing a catastrophic debt crisis in the coming months as rapid inflation, slowing growth, rising interest rates and a strengthening dollar coalesce into a perfect storm that could set off a wave of messy defaults and inflict economic pain on the world’s most vulnerable people.
Poor countries owe, by some calculations, as much as $200 billion to wealthy nations, multilateral development banks and private creditors. Rising interest rates have increased the value of the dollar, making it harder for foreign borrowers with debt denominated in U.S. currency to repay their loans.
Defaulting on a huge swath of loans would send borrowing costs for vulnerable nations even higher and could spawn financial crises when nearly 100 million people have already been pushed into poverty this year by the combined effects of the pandemic, inflation and Russia’s war in Ukraine.
The danger poses another headwind for a world economy that has been sputtering toward a recession. The leaders of the world’s advanced economies have been grappling privately in recent weeks with how to avert financial crises in emerging markets such as Zambia, Sri Lanka and Ghana, but they have struggled to develop a plan to accelerate debt relief as they confront their own economic woes.
Washington Post, Prosecutors tell jurors that Trump knew of Weisselberg’s tax fraud at Trump Organization, Shayna Jacobs, Dec. 3, 2022 (print ed.). The former president is not charged in the criminal trial of his namesake company. Jury deliberations are expected to begin Monday.
Donald Trump knew about a 15-year tax fraud carried out by longtime executives at his namesake company, a prosecutor argued Friday, saying the illegal activity ended when the company cleaned up its business practices around the time Trump entered the White House.
At the close of the Trump Organization’s criminal trial, prosecutors introduced the idea that Trump had knowledge of crimes committed by his top deputies. The claim was a way of supporting their theory that the real estate, hospitality and golf company is criminally culpable for and benefited from tax cheating.
“This whole narrative that Donald Trump was blissfully ignorant was just not real,” Assistant District Attorney Joshua Steinglass said during his summation. He asked jurors, who are likely to begin deliberations in the case on Monday, to dismiss the idea that executives who committed crimes had simply gone “rogue.”
At the same time, Steinglass also told the jury that it “doesn’t matter” whether they believe Trump knew about the fraud, because the former president is not considered a conspirator in the case.
Trump has not been charged with wrongdoing. Allen Weisselberg, right — his former chief financial officer and a Trump family employee for a half-century — pleaded guilty to fraud this summer. Testimony about the fraud from Weisselberg and Trump Organization comptroller Jeffrey McConney — who was granted immunity automatically by state law when he appeared before the grand jury — were key elements of the prosecution’s case.
Dec. 2
Partially redacted documents with classified markings, including colored cover sheets indicating their status, that FBI agents reported finding in former president Donald Trump’s office at his Mar-a-Lago estate. The photo shows the cover pages of a smattering of paperclip-bound classified documents — some marked as “TOP SECRET//SCI” with bright yellow borders and one marked as “SECRET//SCI” with a rust-colored border — along with whited-out pages, splayed out on a carpet at Mar-a-Lago. Beside them sits a cardboard box filled with gold-framed pictures, including a Time magazine cover. (U.S. Department of Justice photo.)
New York Times, Appeals Court Scraps Special Master’s Review in Trump Documents Case, Alan Feuer and Charlie Savage, Dec. 2, 2022 (print ed.). The decision removed a major obstacle that had hindered the Justice Department’s inquiry into former President Trump’s handling of sensitive material.
A federal appeals court on Thursday removed a major obstacle to the criminal investigation into former President Donald J. Trump’s hoarding of government documents, ending an outside review of thousands of records the F.B.I. seized from his home and freeing the Justice Department to use them in its inquiry.
In a unanimous but unsigned 21-page ruling, a three-member panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta shut down a lawsuit brought by Mr. Trump that has, for nearly three months, slowed the inquiry into whether he illegally kept national security records at his Mar-a-Lago residence and obstructed the government’s efforts to retrieve them.
The appeals court was sharply critical of the decision in September by Judge Aileen M. Cannon, right, a Trump appointee who sits in the Southern District of Florida, to intervene in the case. The court said Judge Cannon never had legitimate jurisdiction to order the review or bar investigators from using the files, and that there was no justification for treating Mr. Trump differently from any other target of a search warrant.
“It is indeed extraordinary for a warrant to be executed at the home of a former president — but not in a way that affects our legal analysis or otherwise gives the judiciary license to interfere in an ongoing investigation,” the court wrote.
Limits on when courts can interfere with a criminal investigation “apply no matter who the government is investigating,” it added. “To create a special exception here would defy our nation’s foundational principle that our law applies ‘to all, without regard to numbers, wealth or rank.’”
The panel’s ruling is set to take effect next Thursday. If there is no stay for an appeal before then, the review by the independent arbiter, or special master — Raymond J. Dearie, a judge who sits in the Eastern District of New York — would abruptly end. At that point, Judge Cannon would also be required to dismiss Mr. Trump’s lawsuit.
New York Times, Analysis: Trump Embraces Extremism as He Seeks to Reclaim Office, Peter Baker, Dec. 2, 2022 (print ed.). As he gets his 2024 campaign underway, former President Trump has aligned himself with forces that used to be outside the mainstream of U.S. politics.
Former President Donald J. Trump once again made clear on Thursday night exactly where he stands in the conflict between the American justice system and the mob that ransacked the Capitol to stop the peaceful transfer of power nearly two years ago.
He stands with the mob.
Mr. Trump sent a video statement of support to a fund-raiser hosted by a group calling itself the Patriot Freedom Project on behalf of families of those charged with attacking the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. “People have been treated unconstitutionally, in my opinion, and very, very unfairly, and we’re going to get to the bottom of it,” he said. The country, he warned, “is going communist.”
The video underscored just how much the former president has aligned himself with forces that used to be outside the mainstream of American politics as he seeks to reclaim the White House through a rematch with President Biden in 2024. With the Justice Department targeting him as well as some of his violent allies, Mr. Trump’s antigovernment jeremiads lately sound like those once relegated to the outer edges of the political spectrum.
He has embraced extremist elements in American society even more unabashedly than in the past. The video comes as Mr. Trump has been using music sounding like a QAnon theme song at recent rallies and hosting for dinner Kanye West, a rap star under fire for antisemitic statements, and Nick Fuentes, a prominent white supremacist.
Washington Post, Garland praises Oath Keepers verdict, won’t say where Jan. 6 probe goes, Perry Stein, Spencer S. Hsu and Devlin Barrett, Dec. 2, 2022 (print ed.). Justice Dept. will weigh seditious conspiracy conviction in deciding whether to pursue other high-profile Trump allies, people familiar with the matter said.
A day after a federal jury convicted two far-right extremists of leading a plot to unleash political violence to prevent the inauguration of Joe Biden, Attorney General Merrick Garland vowed that his Justice Department would continue to “work tirelessly” to hold accountable those responsible for efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Throughout the trial, prosecutors highlighted the defendants’ links to key allies of President Donald Trump, such as Roger Stone, “Stop the Steal” organizer Ali Alexander, former national security adviser Michael Flynn and attorneys Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani.
But Garland, right, declined to say Wednesday if he expected prosecutors to eventually file charges against them or any other people who did not physically participate in the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
“I don’t want to speculate on other investigations or parts of other investigations,” Garland told reporters at a briefing where he also touted Justice Department efforts to establish federal oversight of the water supply system in Jackson, Miss.
Garland called the sprawling Jan. 6 investigation, and Jackson’s water crisis, “significant matters of public interest.”
“I’m very proud of the attorneys, investigators and staff whose unwavering commitment to rule of law and tireless work resulted in yesterday in these two significant victories,” he said.
Palmer Report, Analysis: Everything is happening to Donald Trump all at once now, Bill Palmer, right, Dec. 2, 2022. When Donald Trump lost and tried to avoid leaving office, it was because he knew that without the protections of the presidency, he was on a path to prison one way or the other. After the Manhattan DA punted, it’s taken the Feds roughly as long as the glacially slow Feds usually take to bring federal criminal charges. But we’re up against it now, and a lot of things are suddenly moving fast.
Yesterday the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals fully put Trump’s special master stunt out of its misery, clearing what appears to be the final major hurdle in the DOJ’s effort to criminally indict Trump for stealing classified secrets.
This came even as a federal court separately ruled that former Trump White House Counsel Pat Cipollone must give full testimony to the grand jury in the DOJ’s criminal probe into Trump’s actions related to January 6th. This comes days after it was reported that longtime Trump adviser Stephen Miller has testified to that same grand jury.
Last night the New York Times also reported that multiple Trump associates, including his longtime social media guy Dan Scavino, have recently testified to the DOJ grand jury in the classified documents case.
In other words, a number of aspects of the DOJ’s various criminal investigations into Donald Trump, which had been twisting in the wind for some time, are now coming together rather quickly.
Newly appointed Special Counsel Jack Smith has clearly hit the ground running. He promised there would be no delays of any kind, and there haven’t been. But some of these recent developments were put into motion shortly before Smith was appointed. This is perhaps less about Smith coming in and cracking proverbial heads, and more about the long struggle to build this kind of federal criminal indictment finally reaching the endgame, and Merrick Garland having chosen to appoint Smith at this particular time because these criminal cases against Trump simply need a closer. In any case, we all know where this is heading now.
New York Times, Report Suggests Tax Audits of Trump Foes Were Random, but Leaves Questions, Michael S. Schmidt, Dec. 2, 2022 (print ed.). A report said that the returns were initially part of a randomly generated pool, but that a flaw in the final winnowing required further attention.
The Internal Revenue Service’s inspector general said in a report on Thursday that highly invasive audits of two of former President Donald J. Trump’s chief enemies — the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey and his deputy, Andrew G. McCabe — happened after their tax returns were randomly selected for inclusion in the initial pools from which the agency drew to carry out the examinations.
But the 19-page report said there appeared to be some deviations from the I.R.S.’s rigorous rules for random selection when the agency winnowed down the initial pools to make the final selections of the returns that would be audited. That created a risk, the report said, that someone could have had the chance to have a return from the larger pool chosen for the smaller group that would be audited.
As a result, the report said, the inspector general, known as the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, or TIGTA, would continue to look into what happened.
“Although we did not identify misconduct during our review, TIGTA is taking additional steps to assess the process used to select” the returns that would be audited, the report said.
New York Times, Trump Company Trial Nears End as Lawyers Dissect Words of Key Witness, Jonah E. Bromwich, Dec. 2, 2022 (print ed.). Defense lawyers and prosecutors delivered closing arguments in the trial of Donald J. Trump’s family business on Thursday, agreeing that its employees had engaged in a lucrative tax fraud scheme for more than a decade but drawing diametrically opposed conclusions about whether their actions implicated the Trump Organization itself.
Each team provided its own interpretation of the testimony of Allen H. Weisselberg, the Trump Organization’s longtime chief financial officer, who has already pleaded guilty to the scheme. Mr. Weisselberg, along with other executives, was partially compensated in perks that included an Upper West Side apartment and luxury cars that he was able to avoid paying taxes on.
As a condition of his plea deal, Mr. Weisselberg appeared for the prosecution at trial, and the closing arguments on Thursday zeroed in on his testimony, with both sides claiming that Mr. Weisselberg had proven their case. The defense kicked things off, with a lawyer for the Trump Organization, Susan Necheles, saying that the case was about “the greed of Allen Weisselberg.”
“You saw him on the witness stand almost crying,” she said. “He knew he was doing something wrong, and he was ashamed of it and he kept it secret.”
Washington Post, Judge sentences men behind election robocall scam to register new voters, Daniel Wu, Dec. 2, 2022 (print ed.). In the summer of 2020, tens of thousands of people across five states received robocalls urging them not to vote by mail. The calls falsely warned that mailing in their ballots that fall could lead to their information being harvested by police, debt collectors or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Ohio prosecutors in October 2020 charged right-wing operatives Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl with telecommunications fraud in connection with the scheme, and two years later, the two men pleaded guilty.
Now, they have their punishment: They must spend 500 hours helping register people to vote.
Judge John Sutula in Ohio’s Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court also sentenced Burkman and Wohl to two years of probation, fines of $2,500 each and electronic monitoring from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. for six months, according to the county prosecutor’s office.
“I think it’s a despicable thing that you guys have done,” the judge said on Tuesday, comparing the robocall scam to efforts to suppress Southern Black voters in the 1960s, Cleveland.com reported.
Burkman, 56, and Wohl, 24, staged several irreverent stunts to add to the stream of disinformation that bombarded Americans in the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election. The pair called a news conference promising to produce a sexual assault accuser against special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, though the alleged accuser never showed. They allegedly recruited young Republican men to make false sexual assault claims against then-presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg. They staged a fake FBI raid on Burkman’s Arlington, Va., home that briefly fooled The Washington Post.
“These two individuals attempted to disrupt the foundation of our democracy,” a spokesperson for the Cuyahoga County prosecutor’s office wrote to The Post on Wednesday. “Their sentence of two years’ probation and 500 hours of community work service at a voter-registration drive is appropriate.”
In October 2020, Michigan’s attorney general first brought felony charges against the pair of intimidating voters, conspiring to violate election law and using a computer to commit a crime. Dave Yost, the Ohio attorney general, investigated Burkman and Wohl before referring them to the Cuyahoga County prosecutor the same month, he said in a statement. New York’s attorney general joined a lawsuit against the pair started by various civil rights organizations in May 2021.
The attorneys general alleged that the robocalling operation targeted minority communities to suppress their voting power.
The cases against Burkman and Wohl in Michigan and New York are ongoing. Burkman and Wohl may also face a historic $5 million fine from the Federal Communications Commission for making robocalls to cellphones without people’s consent.
Dec. 1
Washington Post, Opinion: Trump’s very bad week leaves him teetering on the brink of disaster, Jennifer Rubin, right, author of Resistance, shown below, Dec. 1, 2022. Donald Trump just had very bad week.
Five members of the Oath Keepers were convicted for serious felonies relating to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection that the former president instigated. The South Carolina Supreme Court ruled that his former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows must testify in Georgia’s criminal investigation into his attempt to overturn the state’s results. And a federal judge denied Trump’s claim that he has absolute immunity 
from civil suits.
And that’s just the court-related developments. More Republicans have turned on him for dining with a Holocaust denier. Congress also made progress to fund the government — including the Justice Department — through September, potentially taking away a tool that Republicans could have used to blunt Trump’s legal woes.
The convictions against the Oath Keeper members should be particularly troubling for Trump. Two members, Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes and Florida Oath Keeper Kelly Meggs, were found guilty of seditious conspiracy. The other three were not found guilty of seditious conspiracy, but all five were found guilty of obstructing a congressional proceeding and aiding and abetting. Rhodes faces up to 60 years in prison, unless he cuts a deal with prosecutors.
Each of these charges could be applied to Trump should he be indicted for his role in triggering the violence on Jan. 6, although the facts would differ for a seditious conspiracy case against him. Still, as Norman Eisen, who served as co-counsel for the House Judiciary Committee during Trump’s first impeachment, puts it, “Now we know D.C. jurors can be receptive to that count.” He adds, “Perhaps a more likely charge against the former president is obstruction of Congress, and here again, DOJ can only be emboldened by its success on those counts in the Oath Keepers case.”
Attorney General Merrick Garland, right, took a well-earned victory lap on Tuesday. “Today the jury returned a verdict convicting all defendants of criminal conduct, including two Oath Keepers leaders for seditious conspiracy against the United States,” Garland said in a written statement. “The Justice Department is committed to holding accountable those criminally responsible for the assault on our democracy on January 6, 2021.” That could include characters in Trump’s inner circle with whom Rhodes was in communication with, such as Roger Stone and Michael Flynn.
The convictions raise the Justice Department’s incentive to indict Trump for a number of reasons. First, the verdict should breed confidence in the Justice Department that juries will convict of serious crimes arising from the coup plot. It also effectively confirms that the violent assault on the Capitol to stop the transfer of power meets the definition of “sedition” and that seeking to disrupt the electoral voting counting amounts to an obstruction of an official proceeding. Second, failing to hold Trump accountable would appear contrary to the principle of “equal justice” for all people regardless of their position of power. Finally, these verdicts make convictions in cases against others who participated in the insurrection more likely, increasing the number of potential cooperating witnesses.
Washington Post, Trump’s dinner with antisemites provides test of GOP response to extremism, Isaac Arnsdorf, Josh Dawsey and Marianna Sotomayor, Dec. 1, 2022 (print ed.). Republicans are showing increasing willingness to criticize Trump over his meeting with white nationalist Nick Fuentes and Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West who has issued anti-Jewish diatribes.
Former president Donald Trump’s refusal to apologize for or disavow the outspoken antisemites he dined with last week is setting him increasingly at odds with leaders of his own party, providing the first test of his political endurance since launching his third run for the White House.
The fracas is also testing how Republicans will handle the party’s extreme fringe in the months ahead after years of racist, misogynist and antisemitic speech flooding into the political bloodstream during the Trump era.
Trump has been taken aback by the backlash and maintained that the controversy over his Mar-a-Lago dinner with white nationalist Nick Fuentes and the rapper Ye, who has been vocally spouting antisemitic conspiracy theories, would blow over, according to advisers who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential conversations. “I think it’s dying down,” they recalled Trump saying.
Washington Post, Opinion: Trumpists are vowing to sabotage Biden. Act on this now, Democrats, Greg Sargent, right, Dec. 1, 2022. It’s clear that the incoming House GOP majority will try to use debt-limit extortion to extract all kinds of concessions from Democrats. This will likely focus on refusing to raise the nation’s borrowing limit to try to secure deep spending cuts. The slimness of the GOP majority will empower the MAGA caucus, which will wield this weapon to wreak havoc we can only guess at.
A top Senate Republican has now signaled that his party will use the debt limit to seek cuts to entitlements. Sen. John Thune (S.D.) flatly declared this week that if Republicans withhold support for raising the debt limit — which would threaten default and economic disaster — it could increase pressure on Democrats to “deliver” on raising the Social Security retirement age. This is ominous coming from the Senate GOP whip.
Unfortunately, there are reasons to be skeptical that Democrats will use the lame-duck session to protect the country from the damage this could unleash. Senate Republicans are supposed to be the sober ones, relative to the House GOP. If such threats from a GOP leader in the upper chamber aren’t enough to get Democrats to act, what would be?
November
Nov. 29
Washington Post, Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes guilty of Jan. 6 seditious conspiracy, Spencer S. Hsu, Tom Jackman and Rachel Weiner, Nov. 29, 2022. Rhodes, above, stayed outside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, but prosecutors said he was the ringleader of a plot to unleash politically motivated violence to prevent the inauguration of President Biden.
A federal jury on Tuesday convicted Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes and a top deputy of seditious conspiracy for leading a months-long plot to unleash political violence to prevent the inauguration of President Biden, culminating in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
The panel of seven men and five women deliberated for three days before finding Rhodes and lead Florida Oath Keeper Kelly Meggs guilty of conspiring to oppose by force the lawful transition of presidential power. But three other associates were not convicted of the historically rare and politically freighted sedition count. All five were convicted of obstructing Congress as it met to confirm the results of the 2020 election. Both offenses are punishable by up to 20 years in prison.
Rhodes, 56, in a dark suit and black eye-patch from an old gun accident watched impassively as verdicts were read.
James Lee Bright, one of Rhodes’s attorneys, said Rhodes intended to testify on behalf of other Jan. 6 defendants “if asked.” Edward L. Tarpley Jr, another Rhodes lawyer, noted that the defendants were acquitted on 11 of the 28 counts: “This is not a total victory for the government in any way shape or form.”
Rhodes and his co-defendants were the first accused of seditious conspiracy and the first to face trial and be convicted on any conspiracy charge to date in the massive Jan. 6 investigation. He is the highest-profile figure to face trial in connection with rioting by angry Trump supporters who injured scores of officers, ransacked offices and forced lawmakers to evacuate the U.S. Capitol.
Rhodes and followers, dressed in combat-style gear, converged on the Capitol after staging an “arsenal” of weapons at nearby hotels, ready to take up arms at Rhodes’s direction in an attack on the ‘bedrock of democracy,’ the government charged. Rhodes’s defense said he and co-defendants came to Washington as bodyguards and peacekeepers, bringing firearms only in case Trump met their demand to mobilize private militia to stop Biden from becoming president.
Analysts called the outcome a vindication for the Justice Department.
“The jury’s verdict on seditious conspiracy confirms that January 6, 2021, was not just ‘legitimate political discourse’ or a peaceful protest that got out of hand. This was a planned, organized, violent assault on the lawful authority of the U.S. government and the peaceful transfer of power,” said Randall D. Eliason, a former federal prosecutor who teaches law at George Washington University.
“Now the only remaining question is how much higher did those plans go, and who else might be held criminally responsible,” Eliason said.
U.S. Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn, who helped defend the Capitol on Jan. 6, said he ran over to the federal courthouse when he heard there was a verdict. He sat sweating in the front row as the verdict was read.
“I was emotional,” Dunn said afterward. “I didn’t expect to cry.”
He thanked the jury and the Justice Department for their work on the case.
“I don’t look at it like a victory,” Dunn said. “A victory is when you win. This was right. This was about doing the right thing.”
The verdict in Rhodes’s case likely will be taken as a bellwether for two remaining Jan. 6 seditious conspiracy trials set for December against five other Oath Keepers and leaders of the Proud Boys, including the longtime chairman Henry ‘Enrique’ Tarrio. Both Rhodes and Tarrio are highly visible leaders of the alt-right or far-right anti-government movements, and were highlighted at hearings probing the attack earlier this year by the House Jan. 6 committee.
Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Commentary, January 6th Committee Report -- The devil may be in the details, Wayne Madsen, author of 22 books (including The Rise of the Fascist Fourth Reich, shown below) and a former Navy intelligence officer and NSA analyst, Nov. 30-Dec. 1, 2022. As the House Select Committee on the January 6th insurrection by Donald Trump and his allies wraps up, there is hope that some details of the planned coup d'état will be found either in the main report or its appendices.
As just one example, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies have not advanced their investigations of who planted pipe bombs at Democratic and Republican National Committee headquarters.
In September last year, the FBI was requesting the public to supply any additional information on the identity of the suspect who planted the bombs.
The FBI said that the two pipe bombs were of sufficient explosive strength to have seriously injured or killed bystanders had they detonated.
There is other evidence that points to the January 6th insurrectionists having inside help in the Congress, including the offices of the House and Senate Sergeant-at-Arms; the Secret Service; and possibly other federal and local law enforcement agencies.
With the November 29 convictions for seditious conspiracy being handed down by a Washington, DC jury for insurrection leaders Stewart Rhodes and Kelly Meggs, the government has established that there was a criminal plot to overthrow the government. Such a predicate will undoubtedly empower the January 6th Committee to identify in its report others who were part of the conspiracy.
Politico, Mark Meadows ordered to testify in Trump investigation, Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein, Nov. 30, 2022 (print ed.). South Carolina’s Supreme Court has ordered former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to testify to an Atlanta-area grand jury investigating Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the election in Georgia.
South Carolina’s Supreme Court has unanimously ordered former White House Chief of staff Mark Meadows to testify to an Atlanta-area grand jury investigating Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the election in Georgia.
“We have reviewed the arguments raised by [Meadows] and find them to be manifestly without merit,” South Carolina’s Supreme Court justices wrote in a brief opinion.
The decision affirmed a lower court’s ruling requiring Meadows, right, to testify to the Fulton County grand jury investigation led by District Attorney Fani Willis. Meadows was initially scheduled to appear for testimony on Nov. 30, and it’s unclear if that appearance is still on track.
Attorneys for Meadows and a spokeswoman for Willis did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The five-member court’s decision was just three paragraphs long. It cited the “exigent circumstances involved” but did not go into detail about the dispute.
Willis sought Meadows’ testimony in September as part of her expansive investigation into efforts by Trump and his allies to disrupt the election process in Georgia, including his push for Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to overturn Joe Biden’s victory in the state.
The fight over the Meadows’ subpoena wound up before the South Carolina courts under procedures many states have agreed on to enforce court orders for testimony issued by courts in another state. To compel testimony from out-of-state residents, Willis must first get the approval of local courts. Meadows is a resident of South Carolina.
Courts in New York and Florida have similarly upheld efforts by Willis to obtain testimony from non-Georgia residents, including Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani and former national security adviser Mike Flynn.
Nov. 28
New York Times, Guest Essay: If We Ignore Donald Trump We Might See Who He Really Is, Patti Davis, Nov. 28, 2022. Ms. Davis is an author and a daughter of President Ronald Reagan.
When I was about 8 or 9, I was bullied ruthlessly in school by a boy in my class. I faked being sick so I wouldn’t have to go to school, but my parents figured out that something was going on and my father came in to talk to me. I confessed to him that I was scared of my tormentor, and what followed was a lesson in the beauty of ignoring another person. He explained that bullies crave attention and that if they are ignored, they sort of deflate. He then showed me how frustrating it is to feel like you’re invisible, by ignoring me when I tried to speak to him. It worked. I returned to school, I ignored the bully and he gave up his attacks on me.
Donald Trump is like the abusive boyfriend or ex-husband who won’t go away. In that situation, one would take out a restraining order, but obviously we can’t do that with Mr. Trump. So how about not making him the predominant news story? I have noticed, to be fair, that he is a little less predominant, but let’s face it, he is still everywhere in the news. I understand that announcing his candidacy for president is news. But does it have to be a front-page story? Does the end of his exile from Twitter have to dominate the day’s coverage? Does every move he makes, every ridiculous statement he utters, have to be reported?
With each news story, each segment on television, we are giving him the elixir that keeps him going — attention. There are plenty of things going on in the world that are more important than Donald Trump. We have a planet to save. Russia is still waging war on Ukraine, and still imprisoning American citizens like Brittney Griner. The West is running out of water. There are mass shootings so often it’s hard to keep track of them. Just to name a few really important issues.
What if there was a collective pledge among responsible news organizations to take Donald Trump off the front pages, to not talk about him every single day? He would huff and puff and try to blow the house down, but no one would be paying attention. Think of how much calmer the waters would be. Think of how many other stories would get the bandwidth they deserve.
Nov. 27
Washington Post, Editorial: Congress gets to see Trump’s tax returns. It shouldn’t have taken so long, Editorial Board, Nov. 27, 2022. Restoring the norm under which presidential contenders voluntarily disclose their tax returns — followed by nearly every major-party nominee since Nixon — is important.
Voters should expect to know what financial conflicts of interest they might bring to the job. And in Mr. Trump’s case, those records were especially relevant, given that he headed a sprawling and secretive privately held business. In addition to his tax records, he should have provided a detailed accounting of his holdings and interests. His refusal to do so became glaring as Mr. Trump pressed to reform the tax code in 2017. Americans could only guess how its provisions might personally enrich the president and his family.
If presidential candidates do not voluntarily share their returns, Congress might try to impose new rules. So could state lawmakers. In response to the Trump tax return saga, for example, New York legislators passed a law in 2019 allowing state officials to give congressional investigators the tax information they have on file. State lawmakers could also write laws that mandate the automatic release of candidates’ state tax returns after they claim major-party presidential nominations.
But it should not come to that. It would be healthier for the country to see candidates once again perform essential acts of honesty and transparency — not because they have to but because voters deserve it.
Nov. 23
Justice Department Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, left, and former President Donald Trump, shown in a collage via CNN.
New York Times, Justice Dept. Seeking to Question Mike Pence in Jan. 6 Investigation, Maggie Haberman and Michael S. Schmidt, Nov. 23, 2022. Prosecutors want to speak with the former vice president as a witness to former President Donald Trump’s efforts to remain in power, and he is said to be considering how to respond.
The Justice Department is seeking to question former Vice President Mike Pence as a witness in connection with its criminal investigation into former President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to stay in power after he lost the 2020 election, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Mr. Pence, according to people familiar with his thinking, is open to considering the request, recognizing that the Justice Department’s criminal investigation is different from the inquiry by the House Jan. 6 committee, whose overtures he has flatly rejected.
Complicating the situation is whether Mr. Trump would try to invoke executive privilege to stop him or limit his testimony, a step that he has taken with limited success so far with other former officials.
Mr. Pence was present for some of the critical moments in which Mr. Trump and his allies schemed to keep him in office and block the congressional certification of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory. An agreement for him to cooperate would be the latest remarkable twist in an investigation that is already fraught with legal and political consequences, involving a former president who is now a declared candidate to return to the White House — and whose potential rivals for the 2024 Republican nomination include Mr. Pence.
Thomas Windom, one of the lead investigators examining the efforts to overturn the election, reached out to Mr. Pence’s team in the weeks before Attorney General Merrick B. Garland appointed a special counsel on Friday to oversee the Jan. 6 investigation and a separate inquiry into Mr. Trump’s handling of classified documents, according to one of the people familiar with the matter. Mr. Garland has said that the appointment of the special counsel, Jack Smith, will not slow the investigation.
Officials at the Justice Department declined to comment. A spokesman for Mr. Pence also declined to comment.
The discussions about questioning Mr. Pence are said to be in their early stages. Mr. Pence has not been subpoenaed, and the process could take months, because Mr. Trump can seek to block, or slow, his testimony by trying to invoke executive privilege.
Mr. Trump has cited executive privilege to try to stop other former top officials from talking with investigators. While those efforts have generally been unsuccessful in stopping testimony by the officials to a federal grand jury, they have significantly slowed the process.
Mr. Trump’s efforts to slow or block testimony included asserting executive privilege over testimony from two of Mr. Pence’s top aides: his former chief of staff, Marc Short, and his general counsel, Greg Jacob. But both men returned for grand jury interviews after the Justice Department, in a closed-door court proceeding, fought the effort to apply executive privilege.
Mr. Pence, who rebuffed Mr. Trump’s efforts to enlist him in the plan to block certification of the Electoral College results, has been publicly critical of Mr. Trump’s conduct in the run-up to the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol and on the day of the attack, when members of a pro-Trump mob were chanting “Hang Mike Pence.”
“If there was an invitation to participate, I’d consider it,” Mr. Pence said at the time. But he added that he was concerned that speaking to a congressional committee would violate the doctrine of separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches. “But as I said, I don’t want to prejudge. If ever any formal invitation” came, he said, “we’d give it due consideration.”
However, in interviews for the release of his new book, “So Help Me God,” Mr. Pence has been more emphatic in his opposition to providing testimony to the House committee, asserting that “Congress has no right to my testimony” about what he witnessed.
“There’s profound separation-of-powers issues,” Mr. Pence told The New York Times in an interview. “And it would be a terrible precedent.”
But Mr. Pence, according to people familiar with his thinking, sees the Justice Department inquiry differently given that it is a criminal investigation. His testimony could be compelled by subpoena, though none has been issued.
The former vice president is being represented by Emmet Flood, a veteran Washington-based lawyer who served as the lead Trump White House lawyer dealing with the investigation by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, into possible conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia in 2016.
Prosecutors want to speak with the former vice president as a witness to former President Trump’s efforts to remain in power.
Mr. Pence is open to considering the request, according to people familiar with his thinking.
Washington Post, Jan. 6 panel staffers angry at Cheney for focusing so much of report on Trump, Jacqueline Alemany, Josh Dawsey and Carol D. Leonnig, Nov. 23, 2022. 15 former and current staffers expressed concern that important findings unrelated to Trump will not become available to the American public.
Since Rep. Liz Cheney accepted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s offer to serve as the vice chair of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, the Wyoming Republican has exerted a remarkable level of control over much of the committee’s public and private work.
Now, less than six weeks before the conclusion of the committee’s work, Cheney’s influence over the committee’s final report has rankled many current and former committee staff. They are angered and disillusioned by Cheney’s push to focus the report primarily on former president Donald Trump, and have bristled at the committee morphing into what they have come to view as the vehicle for the outgoing Wyoming lawmaker’s political future.
Fifteen former and current staffers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, expressed concerns that important findings unrelated to Trump will not become available to the American public.
The feuding brings to the fore a level of public acrimony within the Jan. 6 committee that previously had largely played out behind the scenes, as public attention was focused on a series of blockbuster public hearings focused on Trump’s role fomenting the attack.
Several committee staff members were floored earlier this month when they were told that a draft report would focus almost entirely on Trump and the work of the committee’s Gold Team, excluding reams of other investigative work.
Potentially left on the cutting room floor, or relegated to an appendix, were many revelations from the Blue Team — the group that dug into the law enforcement and intelligence community’s failure to assess the looming threat and prepare for the well-forecast attack on the Capitol. The proposed report would also cut back on much of the work of the Green Team, which looked at financing for the Jan. 6 attack, and the Purple Team, which examined militia groups and extremism.
“We all came from prestigious jobs, dropping what we were doing because we were told this would be an important fact-finding investigation that would inform the public,” said one former committee staffer. “But when [the committee] became a Cheney 2024 campaign, many of us became discouraged.”
Cheney spokesman Jeremy Adler issued a blistering statement Wednesday to The Washington Post in response to the criticisms.
“Donald Trump is the first president in American history to attempt to overturn an election and prevent the peaceful transfer of power,” Adler said. “So, damn right Liz is ‘prioritizing’ understanding what he did and how he did it and ensuring it never happens again.”
Adler added, “Some staff have submitted subpar material for the report that reflects long-held liberal biases about federal law enforcement, Republicans, and sociological issues outside the scope of the Select Committee’s work. She won’t sign onto any ‘narrative’ that suggests Republicans are inherently racist or smears men and women in law enforcement, or suggests every American who believes God has blessed America is a white supremacist.”
Tim Mulvey, the select committee’s spokesman, said in a separate statement that the panel’s “historic, bipartisan fact-finding effort speaks for itself, and that won’t be changed by a handful of disgruntled staff who are uninformed about many parts of the committee’s ongoing work.”
“They’ve forgotten their duties as public servants and their cowardice is helping Donald Trump and others responsible for the violence of January 6th,” Mulvey’s statement continued. “All nine committee members continue to review materials and make contributions to the draft report, which will address every key aspect of the committee’s investigation. Decisions about the contents of the report ultimately rest with the committee’s bipartisan membership, not the staff.”
The internal tensions over Cheney’s role also stand in contrast to the widespread public praise from many Democrats and even some Republicans, who have hailed her for standing up to Trump and defending democratic norms. Cheney, under siege by Trump and ostracized by the GOP, was defeated in the Wyoming primary this summer and will leave office in January.
Some staffers noted that the mission of the committee — as spelled out in the resolution authorizing its formation — was to discover what political forces and intelligence and security failures allowed the U.S. Capitol Police and its partners to be so overwhelmed and ill-prepared for the attack and to ensure that such an event could not happen again. Leaving any relevant information out of the final report would ignore important lessons for the future and issues that will outlive Trump, they argued.
But in the wake of an NBC News story earlier this month that the final report would not include much of the panel’s work not directly related to Trump, lawmakers on the committee are now reassessing what to include in the final draft and also eyeing different ways to publicly share more of the investigators’ work outside of the report. That could include sharing findings on the committee’s website or releasing internal transcripts.
A senior committee staffer told staff in a virtual conference meeting two weeks ago that none of the work done by people serving on teams other than the Gold Team that didn’t focus on Trump would be included in the final report.
“Everybody freaked out,” the staffer said.
The announcement, this staffer argued, was premature and based on negative reactions from lawmakers who concluded that draft chapters written by non-Gold investigative teams should not be included because they were either too long or too academic in nature. However, the staffer said, while committee members disliked those chapters, they were open to including some of that material in a more concise or streamlined form.
Nov. 22
Washington Post, Supreme Court denies Trump request to withhold tax returns from Congress, Robert Barnes, Nov. 22, 2022. The court’s order means that the Treasury Department may quickly hand over six years of tax records from former president Donald Trump and some of his companies to the House Ways and Means Committee.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday denied former president Donald Trump’s efforts to block the release of his tax records to a congressional committee that has sought the information for years.
The court’s order means that the Treasury Department may quickly hand over six years of tax records from Trump and some of his companies to the House Ways and Means Committee.
There were no recorded dissents in the court’s order.
Lawmakers have said they need Trump’s tax returns from his time in office to help evaluate the effectiveness of annual presidential audits. Trump has argued that Democratic lawmakers are on a fishing expedition designed to embarrass him politically.
Time is not on the side of Democrats who run the committee. The demands for the records will almost surely expire in January, when Republicans take control of the House as a result of the recent midterm elections.
“Delaying Treasury from providing the requested tax information would leave the Committee and Congress as a whole little or no time to complete their legislative work during this Congress, which is quickly approaching its end,” House general counsel Douglas N. Letter said in a filing to the court.
Trump’s lawyers said that was all the more reason to grant the request to block the release of the records. “The Congress has only a few days left on its legislative calendar,” lawyer Cameron T. Norris said in his filing. “Though a few days is enough time to improperly expose the most sensitive documents of its chief political rival, it’s not enough time to properly study, draft, debate, or pass legislation.”
Trump's early 2024 launch fails to rally GOP around him
Last month, the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit declined to review earlier rulings finding that lawmakers are entitled to the documents in the long-running legal battle. That court also refused to put the release of the papers on hold while Trump’s lawyers sought Supreme Court review.
New York Times, Opinion: Some Advice for Jack Smith, the New Special Counsel in the Trump Investigations, Andrew Weissmann, Nov. 22, 2022. Mr. Weissmann, right, 
was a senior prosecutor in the special counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Jack Smith, the special counsel appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland to take over the investigations of Donald Trump, has joined a select club: He is one of a small number of special prosecutors in modern history to investigate a sitting or former U.S. president. Now is a good time to look back to these examples and take stock of what we can learn from them.
The challenges for Mr. Smith will be shaped by the context in which he operates within the executive branch and the nature of his factual investigation. It is useful to take note of how this differs from the special counsel investigation of a president that immediately preceded him, led by Robert Mueller. I was a senior member of that team.
Mr. Smith is stepping into a political context very different from the one that confronted Mr. Mueller. Most notably, because of Justice Department policy, Mr. Mueller was forbidden to charge a sitting president. Now that Mr. Trump is a former president, Mr. Smith is not subject to that limitation. (That policy does not apply to presidential candidates like Mr. Trump.)
Mr. Trump also no longer has key weapons he wielded to frustrate the Mueller investigation: the destabilizing threat of firing the special counsel and Justice Department leadership to curtail the scope of the investigation and the ability to dangle and bestow presidential pardons to discourage witnesses from cooperating.
The Mueller team’s adversarial relationship with the White House at times also extended to the Justice Department, which sought to manage and scrutinize the investigation and narrow its scope in detrimental ways. Indeed, I experienced more senior Justice Department oversight, not less, when working on the special counsel investigation than I had for a standard Justice Department case.
Mr. Smith has other advantages that relate to the status of the work he is now called on to perform. He is assuming the helm of two substantial investigations in progress — one related to the events surrounding the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol, the other to the handling of government documents at Mar-a-Lago — with designated teams of prosecutors and agents he is inheriting. He is not, as Mr. Mueller was, required to fly and build the plane simultaneously.
The factual nature of the investigations is also an advantage: Although the Jan. 6 investigation is hydra-headed, it is far less complex than investigating political interference by a foreign country in a presidential election.
The Mar-a-Lago documents case is straightforward for experienced prosecutors and agents. In that regard, it is like the investigation of Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign chairman. That investigation, which I led, involved for the most part simple economic crimes that the department prosecutes routinely.
Mr. Smith will still face the challenges of Mr. Trump’s post-presidential bully pulpit and name-calling from his allies in Washington. And investigating and prosecuting matters in the blinding glare of the media poses numerous challenges. For one, as I learned from the Mueller investigation and the Enron Task Force, it is far harder to persuade a witness to admit to wrongdoing when that admission will be splattered across outlets nationwide.
- Washington Post, From Europe, Trump special counsel takes over Mar-a-Lago, Jan. 6 probes, Devlin Barrett and Perry Stein
Nov. 20
New York Times, Trump Family’s Newest Partners: Middle Eastern Governments, Eric Lipton and Maggie Haberman, Nov. 20, 2022. The government of Oman is a partner in a real estate deal signed last week by the former president, intensifying questions about a potential conflict as he seeks the White House again.
When former President Donald J. Trump returned briefly last week to his office at Trump Tower in New York, he was joined by his son Eric Trump and the top executive of a Saudi Arabian real estate company to sign a deal that creates new conflict-of-interest questions for his just-launched presidential campaign.
The deal is with a Saudi real estate company, which intends to build a Trump-branded hotel, villas and a golf course as part of a $4 billion real estate project in Oman. The agreement continues a practice that had been popular for the Trump family business until Mr. Trump was elected president — selling branding rights to an overseas project in exchange for a generous licensing fee.
But what makes this project unusual — and is sure to intensify the questions over this newest transaction — is that by teaming up with the Saudi company, Mr. Trump is also becoming part of a project backed by the government of Oman itself.
The deal leaves Mr. Trump, as a former president hoping to win the White House again, effectively with a foreign government partner that has complex relations with the United States, including its role in trying to end the war in Yemen and other important foreign policy agenda items for Washington.
Nov. 19
Washington Post, Opinion: Garland’s appointment of a special counsel was cautious. But also bold, Ruth Marcus, right, Nov. 19, 2022. Trump should not sleep soundly. Attorney General Merrick Garland, 
shown above, on Friday made a typically cautious decision in a bold way: He appointed a special counsel to investigate former president Donald Trump, but chose a veteran lawyer known for an aggressive streak and a fast prosecutorial metabolism.
This was a step Garland didn’t want to take; he believed the department’s career lawyers were capable of doing the job with integrity and independence. But he had been anticipating — and, careful lawyer that he is, preparing for — this possibility for months.
The first shoe to drop was President Biden’s statement that he intended to run again. That wasn’t enough, in Garland’s assessment, to trigger the requirements of the Justice Department’s special counsel regulations. Even if Trump was teasing another presidential run, the department’s twin investigations — into the classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago and the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection — could proceed as normal.
But Trump’s announcement that he would enter the 2024 race forced Garland’s reluctant hand. The rules, he believed, didn’t leave him any choice.
I thought Garland had more leeway to make the judgment call the other way, but in retrospect it seems almost inevitable that the by-the-books attorney general would go the special counsel route. Justice Department regulations provide that the attorney “will appoint a Special Counsel when he or she determines that criminal investigation of a person or matter is warranted” and that investigation or prosecution “would present a conflict of interest for the Department or other extraordinary circumstances.”
The regulations offer an out, one I previously wrote that Garland should take: The attorney general doesn’t have to name a special counsel if he decides that would not be in the public interest. But consider: An administration headed by a president who has announced his intention to seek reelection is investigating a former president who just declared he will run again. If this does not constitute an extraordinary circumstance, what would? What lesson would not appointing a special counsel send to future attorneys general? These are serious concerns.
If Garland had a mission on leaving the bench to return to Justice, it was to repair the department’s reputation for independence and integrity, battered after four years of Trump administration meddling, and to reassure its demoralized troops. Naming a special counsel was never going to assuage the concerns of Trump partisans that the Biden administration is out to get him, as the immediate reaction from Trumpworld underscored. Trump denounced the effort to take any whiff of politics out of the decision-making as “the worst politicization of justice in our country.” A Trump campaign spokesperson called the announcement “a totally expected political stunt by a feckless, politicized, weaponized Biden Department of Justice.”
But Garland’s goal was not to persuade the unpersuadable. It was, in the familiar language of the law, aimed at how a reasonable person would perceive the fairness of the investigation, and whether a reasonable person would think a special counsel was warranted under the facts at hand and the language and spirit of the regulations. It was telling that in this regard, Garland did not acknowledge that investigating Trump constituted a conflict of interest for the department — just that the circumstances had become extraordinary.
“I strongly believe that the normal processes of this department can handle all investigations with integrity,” Garland said. “And I also believe that appointing a special counsel at this time is the right thing to do.”
This is where the bold part comes in: Special counsels usually have big names. Former FBI director Robert S. Mueller III, tapped to oversee the Trump-Russia probe, is the most recent such example. History offers others: Harvard Law School professor Archibald Cox to conduct the Watergate investigation as special prosecutor; former U.S. attorney Robert Fiske and then former appeals court judge Kenneth Starr to handle the Whitewater investigation as independent counsels. They came to the job with a public reputation that, at least in theory, lent credibility to their oversight.
Jack Smith, right, Garland’s choice, is decidedly low profile. I spoke with a number of former prosecutors who not only didn’t know Smith — they hadn’t even heard of him. But Smith, a longtime federal prosecutor who has been working at The Hague investigating war crimes in Kosovo, offers advantages that the boldface names don’t. He knows how the department works. He knows how to speed an investigation along. “Stop playing with your food,” Mueller used to instruct hand-wringing prosecutors. Smith is, by all accounts, no food-player. And he offers a potential counter-balance to Garland’s innate cautiousness; hard-charging is the word that comes up in speaking with former colleagues.
“Jack Smith makes me look like a golden retriever puppy,” tweeted Andrew Weissmann, the famously aggressive former Enron and Mueller prosecutor who worked with Smith for years in the federal prosecutor’s Brooklyn office.
One example of Smith’s inclination to aggressiveness: the 2011 decision to charge former North Carolina senator John Edwards for accepting illegal presidential campaign contributions to help support his mistress. This was a stretch, as I wrote at the time, and the subject of controversy within the department. Smith, the head of the department’s Public Integrity Section, pressed to indict. The case ultimately fizzled as a jury acquitted Edwards on one count and deadlocked on five others; the department chose not to seek a retrial.
“For those concerned that the appointment of a Special Counsel will delay things: just the opposite,” Weissmann wrote. “Jack is a super fast, no-nonsense, and let’s-cut-to-the-chase kind of guy. And now, with less DOJ bureaucracy in decision-making, the investigations can move faster.”
That may be over-optimistic, but Trump should not sleep soundly. As a prosecutor, “you have to be able to admit that if it’s not there, it’s not there,” Smith said when he took the public integrity job in 2010. “I think that’s hard for people to do and having been a prosecutor for 15 years that is something I can do.”
Nov. 17
New York Times, Opinion: Trump Could Go to Prison, and Then Walk Free. Here Are His Five Investigations, Explained, Ankush Khardori, Nov. 17, 2022 (interactive). Mr. Khardori is a lawyer and legal analyst. He spent several years as a prosecutor at the Department of Justice. Before he joined the federal government, he defended corporate clients against charges of fraud and other crimes.
Donald Trump and his business empire are currently the subjects of no fewer than five major simultaneous investigations, a truly extraordinary challenge for anyone, let alone a former and possibly future president of the United States. These are complicated investigations, with long and winding paths to resolution. They involve scores of federal and state investigators and witnesses across the country, from politicians eager to shield themselves from scrutiny to employees turning on their colleagues to a former president who knows how to navigate — and manipulate — the legal system like no one else.
The public has very little visibility into how these investigations are proceeding day by day, as government officials quietly gather evidence and plan their next moves. Any number of unexpected developments — surprise witnesses, hung juries and perhaps even a special counsel empowered to oversee Justice Department investigations — could slow or derail their work.
The announcement of Mr. Trump’s candidacy for president does not halt any of these investigations, but it could affect how prosecutors weigh their options, and his uniquely polarizing status could affect how judges and juries resolve any cases that make it to trial. Were he to win the election, he could put an end to any pending federal prosecutions or investigations once in office.
Even at this stage, some potential scenarios are possible to discern, including the possibility — however improbable it may seem — that all of the investigations resolve in his favor, with no conviction and no serious legal consequences. Based on interviews with experts and analysis of media reports, as well as of the law itself, here is a close look at some of the paths by which such an outcome could come to pass.
Below we illustrate the likely key steps for prosecutors and other enforcement officials, as well as offramps Mr. Trump could use to stay out of prison or otherwise mitigate the possible repercussions from these probes.
New York Times, Some of former President Trump’s staunchest allies have shunned his attempt to recapture the White House, Reid J. Epstein, Lisa Lerer and Jonathan Weisman, Nov. 17, 2022. Early signs suggest he may struggle to win over Republican Party leaders for his third presidential bid, after a string of disappointments, but Donald Trump’s staunchest voters are another matter.
Three billionaire donors have moved on and others are actively weighing their options. A number of former allies are staying on the sidelines. A long list of potential rivals — from popular governors to members of Congress — are seriously assessing their chances for 2024. Even his own daughter has declined to get involved.
Within hours of Donald J. Trump announcing his third presidential bid on Tuesday, some of his former aides, donors and staunchest allies are shunning his attempt to recapture the White House, an early sign that he may face difficulty winning the support of a Republican Party still reeling from unexpected midterm losses.
While Mr. Trump has long faced opposition from the establishment and elite quarters of his party, this round of criticism was new in its raw bluntness, plainly out in the open by Wednesday and focused on reminding voters that the Trump era in Republican politics has led to the opposite of the endless winning Mr. Trump once promised.
“The message he delivered last night — which was self-serving, which was chaotic — was the same one that lost the last election cycle and would lose the next,” said Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, a Republican and Trump critic who spoke Wednesday from Iowa, where he is testing the waters for a presidential run in 2024. “We need alternatives.”
A growing chorus of Republican officials, lawmakers and activists blame the former president for their failure to regain control of the Senate and for what will be a narrow margin in the House.
The scope of the Republican losses has prompted some of his allies to publicly voice complaints they have long kept private about the former president’s ability to win the White House. For those who have been more vocal, their concerns have morphed into far more direct attacks as they try to seize what they see as a chance to move past Mr. Trump and embrace a new class of party leaders.
At an annual gathering of Republican governors in Orlando, donors and lobbyists mingled with governors past, present and future while weighing ways to wrest Mr. Trump from the party’s base. Their main complaint was not over policy or even style, but losses the party has taken since Mr. Trump won the White House in 2016.
Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota, a Republican often mentioned as a potential 2024 candidate, said she did not believe Mr. Trump offered “the best chance” for the party in 2024.
“If we narrow our focus there, then we’re not talking to every single American,” Ms. Noem said in an interview as she sat across a mahogany table from her political adviser, Corey Lewandowski, who served as campaign manager for an early portion of Mr. Trump’s 2016 bid. “Our job is not just to talk to people who love Trump or hate Trump. Our job is to talk to every single American.”
New York Times, Key Witness in Trump Organization Trial Takes Stand Under Pressure, Ben Protess and Jonah E. Bromwich, Nov. 17, 2022. Allen Weisselberg served the family firm for decades. A plea deal has him testifying in the company’s tax fraud case, telling the truth or facing jail time.
Allen H. Weisselberg, right, is the man in the middle.
To avoid a long prison sentence, he pleaded guilty to 17 felonies and on Thursday will continue testifying for Manhattan prosecutors in their criminal tax fraud case against Donald J. Trump’s family business, where Mr. Weisselberg worked for decades.
But Mr. Weisselberg, the chief financial officer of the company, remains on the payroll, taking a $640,000 salary, and has refused to turn on Mr. Trump — who is the subject of a broader investigation by the Manhattan district attorney’s office.
With his freedom and livelihood on the line, Mr. Weisselberg is caught between the prosecutors with whom he struck a deal and the family that has employed him for nearly a half-century.
Mr. Weisselberg stepped into his role as the prosecution’s star witness on Tuesday, testifying about his involvement in a tax scheme at the Trump Organization, where he and other executives were compensated in lavish off-the-books perks. Mr. Weisselberg failed to pay taxes on those benefits, which included his Manhattan apartment, his leased Mercedes-Benzes and even his cable bill.
Mr. Weisselberg and the company were charged in 2021; a year later, he pleaded guilty, reaching a deal that required him to testify truthfully. If he does, he is expected to be sentenced to five months in jail and with good behavior could serve as little as 100 days behind bars.
If the judge concludes that Mr. Weisselberg lied on the stand, he could face up to 15 years in prison.
“Mr. Weisselberg’s legal situation is as complex as that faced by any witness,” said his lawyer, Nicholas A. Gravante Jr., noting that his client must testify even though he continues to be “a loyal employee of the Trump Organization.”
“Mr. Weisselberg’s mission is clear. He will take the stand, answer every question truthfully, and let the chips fall where they may,” Mr. Gravante said.
New York Times, Donald Trump Is Running in 2024. The White House Has a Plan, Michael D. Shear, Nov. 17, 2022 (print ed.). President Biden’s advisers have been working on a strategy for responding to what they expect will be constant attacks.
With Donald J. Trump’s announcement that he is officially running to reclaim the Oval Office he falsely asserts was stolen from him, President Biden is ready to implement what some of his top aides refer to as “the Trump project.”
Mr. Biden has spent much of the last year putting a fearsome face on the “ultra-MAGA” agenda, taking aim at Republican senators, governors and state lawmakers. Now, he will return the focus to his once and future foil — Mr. “Make America Great Again” himself.
Inside the West Wing, a small group of presidential advisers has been working to develop a plan for how Mr. Biden and the White House will respond to what they expect will be a constant stream of invective from the former president now that he is formally a candidate.
Mr. Trump started the attacks almost immediately in his speech on Tuesday night announcing his presidential run, as he complained about “Biden and the radical-left lunatics running our government right into the ground.”
Washington Post, Opinion: Trump is out for vengeance — and to protect himself from prosecution, George T. Conway III, right, Nov. 17, 2022 
(print ed.). He was always going to run. Absent incarceration or interment, and perhaps only the latter, he inevitably would seek the presidency again. His narcissism, his megalomania, his delicate yet illimitable ego, would have it no other way.
Donald Trump craves the power. Even more, he craves the attention. And more than ever — after an unprecedented two impeachments, a humiliating reelection defeat that he can’t even admit, and amid multiple criminal investigations and civil suits — he seeks vengeance. The l’état c’est moi president who apparently tried to sic the IRS on his enemies (and perhaps succeeded), and who tried to extort Ukraine into smearing Joe Biden, can’t wait to get back on the job.
Trump won’t succeed, as his successive losses of the House, Senate, presidency and last week’s midterm results show. Too many Americans would crawl on broken glass to vote against him, no matter who his general election opponent may be. They have seen enough.
That goes also for many Republicans, particularly the sophisticated ones. Their views were succinctly stated by Marc Thiessen just the other day: “Mr. President, it is not in your interest to run in 2024. If you do, you will likely lose. And you will destroy what remains of your legacy in the process. Please, don’t do it,” Thiessen begged.
Legacy? Trump has none, other than his impeachments and the stain of Jan. 6, 2021. He’ll never be remembered for much else. Historians will perpetually rank him as among the worst — if not the worst — in the presidential pantheon. As they should, befitting a man who, despite having sworn an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, did his level best to destroy it.
Trump can’t ruin a legacy he doesn’t have, but he could easily wreck something else: the Republican Party. Which is why so many in the GOP are, at long last, so alarmed. And why Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, the right-wing donor class and so many Republican Party operatives seek an alternative. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, they hope, will save the day.
Nov. 16
Washington Post, Opinion: At Trump’s angry announcement, the magic is gone, Dana Milbank, right, Nov. 16, 2022 (print ed.). Donald Trump, The Post reported 
Tuesday, “wants to recapture the underdog vibe" of his 2016 campaign for the presidency.
If that is his goal, he has already scored a big win. Huge, in fact.
Republicans are (justifiably) blaming Trump for their pratfall in last week’s midterms, the third straight election in which voters rejected the MAGA brand. #Winning
Trump-endorsed election deniers, such as Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, lost up and down the ballot, as Republicans blew their chance to take the Senate and win a workable majority in the House. #Winning
Aides pressed Trump, publicly, not to announce his 2024 presidential candidacy on Tuesday night, so soon after the dismal election. #Winning
Republican office holders conspicuously avoided Mar-a-Lago for Trump’s “special announcement.” Even Trumpophilic Rep. Matt Gaetz (Fla.) begged off, claiming bad weather kept him from flying from Washington to Palm Beach, when in fact air travel Tuesday was normal. Reporters spotted only one current member of Congress: Rep. Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina — and he was defeated in a primary.
Republicans, sick and tired of so much winning, are crying out to Trump: Please, stop winning.
But the Mussolini of Mar-a-Lago replies: No, we’re going to keep winning.
“In order to make America great and glorious again, I am tonight announcing my candidacy for president of the United States,” he informed to his guests — an announcement that surprised no one and delighted only slightly more.
Trump aide Jason Miller promised a 35-minute, “very forward-looking” speech. Instead, it was interminable, meandering and, well, low-energy, as Trump kept departing from the teleprompter into gibberish.
He was defensive. He said the “fake news” is “trying to blame me” for the disappointing election showing, but he had an “unprecedented success rate” (!) with his endorsements.
He spoke nonsense: “I’ve gone decades — decades — without a war, the first president to do it that long,” he said of his four-year term.
Washington Post, Trump, who as president fomented an insurrection, says he is running again, Isaac Arnsdorf
Washington Post, Trump’s 2024 candidacy won’t stop Justice Dept. criminal probes, Devlin Barrett and Perry Stein, Nov. 16, 2022 (print ed.). Officials have discussed whether a special counsel should be appointed as Trump runs. But some legal experts think it’s too late for that.
Donald Trump’s just-announced 2024 presidential bid won’t protect him from criminal probes but could complicate the decision-making process at the Justice Department, as senior officials strive to show that investigating a political figure is not the same thing as a political investigation.
Privately, Justice Department officials have discussed the possibility of appointing a special counsel to take over investigations involving Trump — such as the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case or the attempts to prevent Joe Biden from ascending to the presidency after the 2020 election — if Trump formally declares himself a 2024 presidential candidate, people familiar with the matter said.
How serious those discussions were and how long ago they occurred are not clear. But Attorney General Merrick Garland and others may soon face a decision point, as Trump, who lost his bid for a second term in 2020, announced his next presidential campaign Tuesday night.
A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment. The people familiar with the matter spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
Trump, who as president fomented an insurrection, is running for the White House again
Plenty of political candidates have been investigated while they ran for office — including Hillary Clinton, Trump’s Democratic opponent in 2016. The FBI investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server was opened in mid-2015, continued throughout the primaries, was closed just before the nominating convention and then publicly reopened less than two weeks before Election Day.
No special counsel was appointed for that probe.
Justice Department regulations say the attorney general “will” appoint a special counsel, essentially a prosecutor handpicked to tackle a particularly criminal investigation, if a case meets several criteria, specifically: that an investigation is warranted in a way that presents a conflict of interest for the Justice Department “or other extraordinary circumstances,” and that under those circumstances “it would be in the public interest” to appoint a special counsel to handle the case.
Critically, even if a special counsel is appointed, that person would still report to the attorney general, who would have the ultimate authority on what to do about the evidence.
Garland made that point earlier this year when asked at a Senate hearing why he had not appointed a special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden, the president’s son, who is the focus of a long-running probe involving his business dealings and taxes.
The status of key investigations involving Donald Trump
“This is a fact and law determination in each case,” Garland told the lawmakers, adding that special counsels “are also employees of the Justice Department” — meaning they still report to the attorney general.
Sarah Isgur served as an adviser to Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein in 2017, when he appointed Robert S. Mueller III a special counsel to investigate any possible ties between Russian election interference and the Trump campaign. She said she doesn’t think Garland has much choice but to name a special counsel if Trump runs for president.
Washington Post, Trump campaign operation takes shape ahead of expected 2024 announcement, Ashley Parker, Josh Dawsey and Michael Scherer, Nov. 16, 2022 (print ed.).The former president envisions a smaller campaign akin to his 2016 effort rather than the better funded but losing 2020 bid.
A trio of longtime Republican operatives will lead Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign, which the former president is set to announce Tuesday evening in the ballroom of his private Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla., according to five people familiar with the staffing decisions.
There are expected to be notable differences from his 2020 campaign, advisers say. His nascent presidential bid is not currently expected to have a traditional campaign manager, with multiple advisers in top roles, according to some of the people familiar with the situation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to reveal internal deliberations. Trump is famous for firing campaign managers.
Compared with 2020, the 2024 bid is expected to have a smaller staff and budget, advisers say, as Trump has complained that his failed 2020 campaign had too many people and spent too much money. He often told people that he did not even know what some of the people on his last campaign did.
The new campaign is expected to be based in South Florida, advisers say, instead of having a Washington presence.
Trump has told others he wants to re-create the underdog vibe of the 2016 campaign. He faces a range of challenges, including multiple federal and state investigations, growing criticism from Republicans, and unpopularity in many of the early 2024 states.
Trump is famous for overriding campaign advisers and pitting aides against each other, and some allies have already predicted drama and cinematic firings — before the campaign has even launched.
The top advisers include Chris LaCivita, a longtime Republican strategist who is directing a super PAC tied to Trump, and Susie Wiles, a Florida-based political consultant who helped Trump win the state in his previous two presidential bids and has led his political operation for the past 18 months.
Washington Post, Trump’s 2024 candidacy won’t stop Justice Dept. criminal probes, Devlin Barrett and Perry Stein, Nov. 16, 2022 (print ed.). Officials have discussed whether a special counsel should be appointed as Trump runs. But some legal experts think it’s too late for that.
Donald Trump’s just-announced 2024 presidential bid won’t protect him from criminal probes but could complicate the decision-making process at the Justice Department, as senior officials strive to show that investigating a political figure is not the same thing as a political investigation.
Privately, Justice Department officials have discussed the possibility of appointing a special counsel to take over investigations involving Trump — such as the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case or the attempts to prevent Joe Biden from ascending to the presidency after the 2020 election — if Trump formally declares himself a 2024 presidential candidate, people familiar with the matter said.
How serious those discussions were and how long ago they occurred are not clear. But Attorney General Merrick Garland and others may soon face a decision point, as Trump, who lost his bid for a second term in 2020, announced his next presidential campaign Tuesday night.
A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment. The people familiar with the matter spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
Trump, who as president fomented an insurrection, is running for the White House again
Plenty of political candidates have been investigated while they ran for office — including Hillary Clinton, Trump’s Democratic opponent in 2016. The FBI investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server was opened in mid-2015, continued throughout the primaries, was closed just before the nominating convention and then publicly reopened less than two weeks before Election Day.
No special counsel was appointed for that probe.
Justice Department regulations say the attorney general “will” appoint a special counsel, essentially a prosecutor handpicked to tackle a particularly criminal investigation, if a case meets several criteria, specifically: that an investigation is warranted in a way that presents a conflict of interest for the Justice Department “or other extraordinary circumstances,” and that under those circumstances “it would be in the public interest” to appoint a special counsel to handle the case.
Critically, even if a special counsel is appointed, that person would still report to the attorney general, who would have the ultimate authority on what to do about the evidence.
Garland made that point earlier this year when asked at a Senate hearing why he had not appointed a special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden, the president’s son, who is the focus of a long-running probe involving his business dealings and taxes.
The status of key investigations involving Donald Trump
“This is a fact and law determination in each case,” Garland told the lawmakers, adding that special counsels “are also employees of the Justice Department” — meaning they still report to the attorney general.
Sarah Isgur served as an adviser to Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein in 2017, when he appointed Robert S. Mueller III a special counsel to investigate any possible ties between Russian election interference and the Trump campaign. She said she doesn’t think Garland has much choice but to name a special counsel if Trump runs for president.
Nov. 15
Emptywheel, Analysis: Devlin Barrett’s “People Familiar With The Matter,” Emptywheel, (Marcy Wheeler, right), Nov. 15, 2022. As Devlin Barrett’s sources would have it, a man whose business ties to the Saudis include a $2 billion investment in his son-in-law, a golf partnership of undisclosed value, and a new hotel development in Oman would have no business interest in stealing highly sensitive documents describing Iran’s missile systems.
I’ll let you decide whether the claim, made in Barrett’s latest report on the stolen documents case, means the FBI is considering the issue very narrowly or Barrett’s sources are bullshitting him.
That review has not found any apparent business advantage to the types of classified information in Trump’s possession, these people said. FBI interviews with witnesses so far, they said, also do not point to any nefarious effort by Trump to leverage, sell or use the government secrets. Instead, the former president seemed motivated by a more basic desire not to give up what he believed was his property, these people said.
Barrett has a history of credulously repeating what right wing FBI agents feed him for their own political goals, which means it’s unclear how seriously to take this report. Particularly given several critical details Barrett’s story does not mention:
Partially redacted documents with classified markings, including colored cover sheets indicating their status, that FBI agents reported finding in former president Donald Trump’s office at his Mar-a-Lago estate. The photo shows the cover pages of a smattering of paperclip-bound classified documents — some marked as “TOP SECRET//SCI” with bright yellow borders and one marked as “SECRET//SCI” with a rust-colored border — along with whited-out pages, splayed out on a carpet at Mar-a-Lago. Beside them sits a cardboard box filled with gold-framed pictures, including a Time magazine cover. (U.S. Department of Justice photo.)
Washington Post, Investigators see ego, not money, as Trump’s motive on classified papers, Devlin Barrett and Josh Dawsey, Nov. 15, 2022 (print ed.). A review by agents and prosecutors found no discernible business interest in the Mar-a-Lago documents, people familiar with the matter said.
Federal agents and prosecutors have come to believe former president Donald Trump’s motive for allegedly taking and keeping classified documents was largely his ego and a desire to hold on to the materials as trophies or mementos, according to people familiar with the matter.
As part of the investigation, federal authorities reviewed the classified documents that were recovered from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home and private club, looking to see if the types of information contained in them pointed to any kind of pattern or similarities, according to these people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation.
That review has not found any apparent business advantage to the types of classified information in Trump’s possession, these people said. FBI interviews with witnesses so far, they said, also do not point to any nefarious effort by Trump to leverage, sell or use the government secrets. Instead, the former president seemed motivated by a more basic desire not to give up what he believed was his property, these people said.
Several Trump advisers said that each time he was asked to give documents or materials back, his stance hardened, and that he gravitated toward lawyers and advisers who indulged his more pugilistic desires. Trump repeatedly said the materials were his, not the government’s — often in profane terms, two of these people said.
The people familiar with the matter cautioned that the investigation is ongoing, that no final determinations have been made, and that it is possible additional information could emerge that changes investigators’ understanding of Trump’s motivations. But they said the evidence collected over a period of months indicates the primary explanation for potentially criminal conduct was Trump’s ego and intransigence.
A Justice Department spokesman and an FBI spokeswoman declined to comment. A Trump spokesman did not return a request for comment Monday.
Trump and the Mar-a-Lago documents: a timeline
The analysis of Trump’s likely motive in allegedly keeping the documents is not, strictly speaking, an element of determining whether he or anyone around him committed a crime or should be charged with one. Justice Department policy dictates that prosecutors file criminal charges in cases in which they believe a crime was committed and the evidence is strong enough to lead to a conviction that will hold up on appeal. But as a practical matter, motive is an important part of how prosecutors assess cases and decide whether to file criminal charges.
Robert Mintz, a former federal prosecutor, said keeping hundreds of classified documents, many marked top secret, at a private home “is such a perplexing thing to do” that it makes sense for prosecutors to search for a motive.
“It makes perfect sense as to why prosecutors would be spending time scouring through the various records and documents to look for some kind of pattern or theme to explain why certain records were kept and why others were not,” Mintz said. “In presenting a case to a jury, prosecutors typically want to explain the motive for committing a crime. It’s not necessary to prove a crime, but it helps tell the story of exactly how a crime unfolded, according to the government.”
Court papers say the Justice Department has been investigating Trump and his advisers for three potential crimes: mishandling of national security secrets, obstruction, and destruction of government records.
The Washington Post has previously reported that among the most sensitive classified documents recovered by the FBI from Mar-a-Lago were documents about Iran and China, according to people familiar with the matter.
At least one of the documents seized by the FBI at Mar-a-Lago on Aug. 8 describes Iran’s missile program, according to these people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe an ongoing investigation. Other documents described highly sensitive intelligence work aimed at China, they said. The Post has also reported that some of the material focuses on the defense systems of a foreign country, including its nuclear capabilities.
Two advisers to the former president who personally reviewed boxes of material in Trump’s White House said he often threw hundreds of pieces of paper in boxes — mixing in highly sensitive documents with years-old schedules and other mundane material.
Top national security prosecutor joins Justice Dept.' Mar-a-Lago investigation
The FBI has recovered three batches of classified documents from Mar-a-Lago in the past year. The first batch, in January, came when Trump agreed to hand over to the National Archives and Records Administration 15 boxes of material that the agency believed contained historical presidential records. In those boxes, archivists found 184 classified documents, including 25 marked top secret, which were scattered throughout the boxes in no particular order, according to court filings.
Washington Post, Trump campaign operation takes shape ahead of expected 2024 announcement, Ashley Parker, Josh Dawsey and Michael Scherer, Nov. 15, 2022. The former president envisions a smaller campaign akin to his 2016 effort rather than the better funded but losing 2020 bid.
A trio of longtime Republican operatives will lead Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign, which the former president is set to announce Tuesday evening in the ballroom of his private Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla., according to five people familiar with the staffing decisions.
There are expected to be notable differences from his 2020 campaign, advisers say. His nascent presidential bid is not currently expected to have a traditional campaign manager, with multiple advisers in top roles, according to some of the people familiar with the situation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to reveal internal deliberations. Trump is famous for firing campaign managers.
Compared with 2020, the 2024 bid is expected to have a smaller staff and budget, advisers say, as Trump has complained that his failed 2020 campaign had too many people and spent too much money. He often told people that he did not even know what some of the people on his last campaign did.
The new campaign is expected to be based in South Florida, advisers say, instead of having a Washington presence.
Trump has told others he wants to re-create the underdog vibe of the 2016 campaign. He faces a range of challenges, including multiple federal and state investigations, growing criticism from Republicans, and unpopularity in many of the early 2024 states.
Trump is famous for overriding campaign advisers and pitting aides against each other, and some allies have already predicted drama and cinematic firings — before the campaign has even launched.
The top advisers include Chris LaCivita, a longtime Republican strategist who is directing a super PAC tied to Trump, and Susie Wiles, a Florida-based political consultant who helped Trump win the state in his previous two presidential bids and has led his political operation for the past 18 months.
New York Times, Documents Detail Foreign Government Spending at Trump Hotel, Luke Broadwater and Eric Lipton, Nov. 15, 2022 (print ed.). Six nations spent lavishly at the hotel as they sought to influence the Trump administration, according to a breakdown released by the House Oversight Committee.
Officials from six nations spent more than $750,000 at former President Donald J. Trump’s hotel in Washington when they were seeking to influence his administration, renting rooms for more than $10,000 per night, according to documents that his former accounting firm turned over to Congress.
The governments of Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey and China spent more money than previously known at the Trump International Hotel at crucial times in 2017 and 2018 for those countries’ relations with the United States, according to the documents, which were obtained by the House Oversight Committee and released on Monday.
The officials spent freely at the hotel, the records show. The Malaysian prime minister, for instance, hired a $1,500 personal trainer during his stay at the Trump hotel in 2017. The Saudi Ministry of Defense rented several suites, costing $10,500 each, with rooms reserved under the name “His Excellency.” Qatari officials spent more than $300,000 there in the weeks leading up to a meeting with Mr. Trump in 2018.
The documents build on the public record of how Mr. Trump’s hotel brought in millions during his presidency from foreign governments. The Oversight Committee has previously estimated that the hotel received more than $3.75 million from foreign governments from 2017 to 2020, raising concerns about possible violations of the Constitution’s foreign emoluments clause.
New York Times, Supreme Court Allows Subpoena for Arizona Republican’s Phone Records, Adam Liptak, Nov. 15, 2022 (print ed.). The Supreme Court paved the way for the Jan. 6 panel to obtain phone records of the Arizona Republican Party’s chairwoman.
The Supreme Court paved the way on Monday for the House committee investigating the Capitol attack to obtain phone records of Kelli Ward, the chairwoman of the Arizona Republican Party.
As is its custom in ruling on emergency applications, the court’s brief order gave no reasons. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. noted dissents, also without giving reasons.
Experts in legal ethics have said that Justice Thomas should recuse himself from cases concerning the Jan. 6 attack in light of the efforts of his wife, Virginia Thomas, to overturn the 2020 election. Ms. Thomas’s activities included lobbying the speaker of the Arizona House to try to reverse Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory in the state.
Lower courts had ruled against Dr. Ward, an osteopathic physician who the committee said had played a key role in efforts to subvert the election.
New York Times, Former Vice President Mike Pence said former President Trump was “reckless” in assailing him on Jan. 6, Maggie Haberman, Nov. 15, 2022 (print ed.). In excerpts from an interview with ABC, the former vice president said he was angered that Donald J. Trump’s tweet during the Capitol attack had endangered him and his family.
Former Vice President Mike Pence told ABC News that he was “angered” by former President Donald J. Trump’s “reckless” tweet assailing him during the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, in his first interview about the violent efforts by Mr. Trump’s supporters to keep him in power.
The first excerpts from Mr. Pence’s interview, with the ABC anchor David Muir, were aired on Sunday and Monday, with more to be broadcast on Monday night. The former vice president gave the interview to promote his new book, “So Help Me God,” which is scheduled to be released on Tuesday.
Mr. Pence provided his views as Mr. Trump prepares to announce a third presidential campaign on Tuesday night at a rally at his private club in Florida, Mar-a-Lago, which the F.B.I. searched over the summer to recover dozens of classified documents that had left the White House with Mr. Trump.
“The president’s words that day at the rally endangered me and my family and everyone at the Capitol building,” Mr. Pence told Mr. Muir, referring to the former president’s comments at an event on Jan. 6, 2021, at the Ellipse near the White House. At the rally, Mr. Trump repeatedly pressured Mr. Pence to use his ceremonial role overseeing certification of the Electoral College results of the 2020 election to delay or overturn the outcome, and then called on the crowd to march to the Capitol.
Nov. 14
New York Times, Trump Wanted I.R.S. Investigations of Foes, Top Aide Says, Michael S. Schmidt, Nov. 14, 2022 (print ed.). John Kelly, who was White House chief of staff, said former President Trump wanted investigations into perceived enemies like the former F.B.I. director.
While in office, President Donald J. Trump (shown above in a White House photo during his presidency) repeatedly told John F. Kelly, his second White House chief of staff, that he wanted a number of his perceived political enemies to be investigated by the Internal Revenue Service, Mr. Kelly said.
Mr. Kelly, right, who was chief of staff from July 2017 through the end of 2018, said in response to questions from The New York Times that Mr. Trump’s demands were part of a broader pattern of him trying to use the Justice Department and his authority as president against people who had been 
critical of him, including seeking to revoke the security clearances of former top intelligence officials.
Mr. Kelly said that among those Mr. Trump said “we ought to investigate” and “get the I.R.S. on” were the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey and his deputy, Andrew G. McCabe. His account of Mr. Trump’s desires to use the I.R.S. against his foes comes after the revelation by The Times this summer that Mr. Comey and Mr. McCabe had both been selected for a rare and highly intrusive audit by the tax agency in the years after Mr. Kelly left the White House.
Mr. Trump has said he knows nothing about the audits. The I.R.S. has asked its inspector general to investigate, and officials have insisted the two men were selected randomly for the audits.
Mr. Kelly said he made clear to Mr. Trump that there were serious legal and ethical issues with what he wanted. He said that despite the president’s expressed desires to have Mr. Comey and Mr. McCabe investigated by the I.R.S., he believes that he led Mr. Trump during his tenure as chief of staff to forgo trying to have such investigations conducted.
After Mr. Kelly left the administration, Mr. Comey was informed in 2019 that his 2017 returns were being audited, and Mr. McCabe learned in 2021 that his 2019 returns were being audited. At the time both audits occurred, the I.R.S. was led by a Trump political appointee.
(Comey was a Republican whose firing by Trump during Comey's 10-year term was reported by the New York Daily News in front page story at right on New York Daily News May 9, 2017.)
Mr. Trump regularly made his demands in response to news reports in which he thought his perceived enemies made him look bad. The president would carry on about having them investigated to the point that Mr. Kelly thought he needed to tell the president that what he wanted was highly problematic, explaining, in sometimes heated conversations, that what Mr. Trump wanted was not just potentially illegal and immoral but also could blow back on him.
Mr. Trump would eventually let the idea go, Mr. Kelly said, but during subsequent outbursts about his enemies he would again bring up his desires to have them investigated.
Throughout Mr. Trump’s presidency he regularly, in both public and private, ranted about Mr. Comey, whom Mr. Trump had fired in May 2017, and Mr. McCabe, who played a leading role in the investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.
McCabe, a career federal prosecutor and Justice Department official, successfully sued to regain his pension that had been eliminated one day short of vesting when Trump's team fired him. He wrote a memoir, "The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump."
New York Times, Former Vice President Mike Pence said former President Trump was “reckless” in assailing him on Jan. 6, Maggie Haberman, Nov. 14, 2022. In excerpts from an interview with ABC, the former vice president said he was angered that Donald J. Trump’s tweet during the Capitol attack had endangered him and his family.
Former Vice President Mike Pence told ABC News that he was “angered” by former President Donald J. Trump’s “reckless” tweet assailing him during the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, in his first interview about the violent efforts by Mr. Trump’s supporters to keep him in power.
The first excerpts from Mr. Pence’s interview, with the ABC anchor David Muir, were aired on Sunday and Monday, with more to be broadcast on Monday night. The former vice president gave the interview to promote his new book, “So Help Me God,” which is scheduled to be released on Tuesday.
Mr. Pence provided his views as Mr. Trump prepares to announce a third presidential campaign on Tuesday night at a rally at his private club in Florida, Mar-a-Lago, which the F.B.I. searched over the summer to recover dozens of classified documents that had left the White House with Mr. Trump.
“The president’s words that day at the rally endangered me and my family and everyone at the Capitol building,” Mr. Pence told Mr. Muir, referring to the former president’s comments at an event on Jan. 6, 2021, at the Ellipse near the White House. At the rally, Mr. Trump repeatedly pressured Mr. Pence to use his ceremonial role overseeing certification of the Electoral College results of the 2020 election to delay or overturn the outcome, and then called on the crowd to march to the Capitol.
New York Times, The Justice Department and Donald Trump’s lawyers clashed over the status of seized documents in newly unsealed briefs, Charlie Savage and Alan Feuer, Nov. 14, 2022. A pair of unsealed briefs argue over the ex-president’s power to claim White House materials as his property and invoke executive privilege.
The Justice Department has urged a special master to broadly reject assertions by former President Donald J. Trump that he owns a range of documents the F.B.I. seized from his Florida residence and that he can invoke executive privilege to bar criminal investigators from looking at some of them.
But lawyers for Mr. Trump have put forward the opposite case, laying out a sweeping vision of his power to declare documents as his personal property and to keep files from his presidency secret from the Biden-era executive branch.
The opposing views were on display in rival briefs partly unsealed on Monday. The two sides had recently submitted the briefs to Judge Raymond J. Dearie, the special master who is overseeing a process of resolving disputes about the status of some 13,000 documents and photographs seized in August.
Nov. 13
Marla Maples, left, Michael Boulos, Tiffany Trump and former President Donald J. Trump at Mar-a-Lago on Saturday (Photo by Hy Goldberg for DenisLEON&Co.)
New York Times, Tiffany Trump Weds at Mar-a-Lago, Tammy La Gorce, Nov. 13, 2022 (print ed.). Tiffany Trump and Michael Boulos, whose wedding was almost derailed by Hurricane Nicole, treated their guests to an American-Lebanese celebration at her father’s private residence.
The arrival of Hurricane Nicole at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., on Thursday may have paused preparations for the wedding of Tiffany Trump and Michael Boulos, but the ceremony, which took place at 4:30 p.m. on Saturday at the club and private residence of former President Donald J. Trump, went ahead as planned despite the severe weather days before.
Toni Breiss, a Lebanese wedding and event planner known for his over-the-top productions, was brought on to realize the couple’s dream wedding.
Ms. Trump, 29, was escorted down the aisle before 250 guests by her father, Mr. Trump. The bride wore a custom dress designed by Elie Saab.
Ms. Trump chose the Grecian goddess-inspired gown by the Lebanese designer as a nod to Mr. Boulos’s heritage and thought it fitting for their American-Lebanese wedding, Ms. Trump said via Mr. Watts.
Mr. Boulos, whom Vanity Fair described as her “billionaire heir boyfriend,” was born in Lebanon and is the 25-year-old heir to Boulos Enterprises, a Nigerian distribution and assembly company for vehicles including motorcycles and power bikes, run by his father, Massad Boulos.
The couple started dating in 2018, according to Town and Country, and announced their engagement on Instagram in January 2021, on the final full day of Mr. Trump’s presidency. Ms. Trump graduated from Georgetown University Law Center in 2020.
Ms. Maples, 59, of Miami, was married to Mr. Trump from 1993 to 1999. Ms. Trump, the couple’s only child, has managed to keep a lower public profile than Trump’s other children have. She is the only adult child of Mr. Trump’s not to be sued by the New York attorney general, Letitia James.
Washington Post, In filing, Trump lawyers again claim he had right to declassify documents, Perry Stein, Nov. 12, 2022 (print ed.). But as they have before, lawyers for the former president stop short of saying he declassified documents seized at Mar-a-Lago.
Donald Trump’s lawyers provided a more detailed explanation in a court filing Thursday evening as to why they say the former president had the authority to personally declassify sensitive government documents, though they again stopped short of saying Trump actually declassified materials that he kept after leaving the White House.
The legal team’s explanation was included in a 67-page response to the Justice Department’s appeal of a lower court’s decision to appoint an outside arbiter to sift through the thousands of documents seized from Trump’s Florida residence on Aug. 8 to see if any should be shielded from criminal investigators because they are privileged.
Trump’s lawyers acknowledged that there is a process to declassify documents, which they stated includes going to the person who originally classified the document — or to that person’s supervisor — to declassify them.
Washington Post, Analysis: Trump’s claim about using the FBI to stop 2018 vote counting, explained, Philip Bump, right, Nov. 12, 2022. The former president made a remarkable claim on his social 
network — a claim that's almost certainly false.
Donald Trump told his supporters that they ought to tune in next week for a special announcement — almost certainly some sort of formalization of his months-long winking about seeking the Republican presidential nomination in 2024. But Trump is not waiting for that announcement to begin taking shots at the man generally considered his most formidable opponent, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R).
Over at the social media platform Trump helped start, the former president has been on a tirade against DeSantis, very clearly out of frustration that DeSantis sailed to reelection on Tuesday while Trump-endorsed candidates were battered. So Trump is offering up context like “shouldn’t it be said that in 2020, I got 1.1 Million more votes in Florida than Ron D got this year, 5.7 Million to 4.6 Million?”
Most of this was just part of the ambient Trump noise that Americans generally tune out. But then there was another claim, a new one, that raised eyebrows. As part of a thread claiming credit for nearly every aspect of DeSantis’s political career (not completely unfairly), Trump brought up the aftermath of the 2018 election in Florida that DeSantis narrowly won.
“After the Race, when votes were being stolen by the corrupt Election process in Broward County, and Ron was going down ten thousand votes a day, along with now-Senator Rick Scott,” Trump wrote, “I sent in the FBI and the U.S. Attorneys, and the ballot theft immediately ended, just prior to them running out of the votes necessary to win. I stopped his Election from being stolen.…”
This is a really remarkable claim, that as president he leveraged the Justice Department to intervene in an election. It is also almost certainly false.
It’s useful to remember what happened that year. In an echo of the midterm elections just ended, 2018 was a remarkably good year for Democrats — except for Florida. There, Democratic advantages in the gubernatorial and Senate races evaporated, leading to narrow Republican victories. DeSantis won by about 30,000 votes; incumbent Gov. Rick Scott won election to the Senate by about 10,000.
Those margins were close enough that attention turned to the counting of mail ballots in the days after the election, a process that is by now deeply familiar to political observers. So was the context in which that counting took place: Scott alleged that the slow process of counting votes in Democratic-heavy counties like Broward offered the opportunity for illegal ballots to be injected. There was no actual evidence of this; he and his allies insisted that ballots were appearing out of nowhere to be included, which wasn’t true. But it was a way to cast doubt on the vote and, potentially, to shut down a vote count that had consistently eroded his advantage after Election Day.
This is what Trump appears to be referring to. But the timeline of what happened makes clear that none of this had anything to do with DeSantis.
Scott first made his allegations about fraudulent voting in a news conference on the evening of Nov. 8, 2018. This was the first moment at which this idea that the vote count was suspicious was introduced (beyond rumblings for a few hours prior). But notice that it was Scott who was making these allegations, not DeSantis.
There’s a good reason for this: DeSantis’s race had already been called! The Associated Press declared DeSantis the winner of the gubernatorial race nearly two days before.
Vote counting did continue to reduce DeSantis’s lead, but there were not enough outstanding votes to potentially alter the outcome. So the call was made, and there was no question whether he would have “the votes necessary to win,” as Trump put it.
You may also recall that a potentially related incident occurred at the same time: Trump’s first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, resigned his position. Was this a function of resistance to pressure to influence the outcome in Florida?
Probably not. Sessions’s resignation was announced on the afternoon of Nov. 7, 2018, before there was any public question about the vote counting in Florida. What’s more, there had been months of animosity between Sessions and Trump over the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. There was plenty of reason to think that Trump wanted Sessions gone unrelated to any purported FBI pressure.
Nov. 10
New York Post, Opinion: Here's how Donald Trump sabotaged the Republican midterms, John Podhoretz, Nov. 10, 2022 (print ed.). "What Tuesday night’s midterm election results suggest is that former President Donald Trump is perhaps the most profound vote repellant in modern American history."
Hey, Lyin’ Ted and Sleepy Joe: Meet Toxic Trump. You know, if the former president had any self-knowledge or even the slightest ability to be self-deprecating, he might consider giving himself this alliterative nickname.
After three straight national tallies in which either he or his party or both were hammered by the national electorate, it’s time for even his stans to accept the truth: Toxic Trump is the political equivalent of a can of Raid.
What Tuesday night’s results suggest is that Trump is perhaps the most profound vote repellent in modern American history.
The surest way to lose in these midterms was to be a politician endorsed by Trump.
This is not hyperbole.
Except for deep-red states where a Republican corpse would have beaten a Democrat, voters choosing in actually competitive races — who everyone expected would behave like midterm voters usually do and lean toward the out party — took one look at Trump’s handpicked acolytes and gagged.
Liberal fundraisers actually put money behind Trump-endorsed candidates in GOP primaries all over the place to help them prevail so that Democrats could face them in the general election. It was transparently cynical and an abuse of our political process. But it worked like gangbusters.
As Kevin Robillard of the Huffington Post noted on Wednesday afternoon when a Michigan Democrat named Hilary Scholten was finally declared the winner of her House seat against a raving lunatic named John Gibbs: “With this race call, every single Republican who won their primary with help from Democratic meddling has lost in the general election.”
Gibbs is an example of Trump’s monomania. A former official for Trump’s Department of Housing and Urban Development, Gibbs tweeted that officials associated with Hillary Clinton participated in Satanic rituals. But no matter! Gibbs believed the 2020 election was “stolen” from Trump, the only stance that matters to the former president.
Trump backed Gibbs in the primary to unseat a sitting Republican, Peter Meijer, because Meijer had the temerity to vote in favor of impeachment after the shame of Jan. 6.
Trump got his way. Republicans lost the seat.
This pattern repeated itself over and over and over again.
In almost every place a Trumpster lost, there had been a regular Republican who could and should have been the party’s nominee — a nominee who could have taken advantage of the uniquely horrible facts and fundamentals confronting Democratic candidates in 2022.
But then Toxic Trump came into these races, picking the candidate who bowed lowest — or, as in Pennsylvania, went for a snake-oil doctor salesman because, it seems, his wife enjoyed watching Mehmet Oz carny-bark on afternoon TV.
And the independent voters’ history tells us would ordinarily have flocked to the GOP and said, “Oh, man, what is that stink?”
In the past four midterms, indies by double-digit margins chose the party that did not hold the White House. In 2018, with Trump as president, the independent vote was 12 points in the Democrats’ favor. In 2006, with George W. Bush in the Oval Office, the number was 18 points. When Barack Obama was president in 2010 and 2014, indies went 16 and 12 points in the Republican direction, respectively.
New York Times, What to Know as the Trump Organization’s Trial Resumes, Lola Fadulu, Nov. 10, 2022. After pausing because of a Covid outbreak, the prosecution of the former president’s company was to start again Thursday. Reacquaint yourself with events so far and what’s to come.
The tax-fraud trial of Donald J. Trump’s family business is scheduled to resume in State Supreme Court in Manhattan on Thursday after not having met since Nov. 1 because of an outbreak of Covid-19.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office last year accused two Trump Organization entities — the Trump Corporation and the Trump Payroll Corp. — of a scheme that began in 2005 that involved doling out tax-free perks to top executives, including rent-free apartments and leased luxury vehicles.
Defense lawyers argued in their opening statements that the key beneficiary of the scheme — the company’s chief financial officer, Allen H. Weisselberg — acted on his own behalf and that the two corporate entities could not be held criminally responsible. Mr. Weisselberg, who was originally charged in the scheme, pleaded guilty and is expected to testify.
Though the court hasn’t met in 10 days, only three workdays have been missed: There is no court on Wednesdays or Friday afternoons, and courts were closed for Election Day.
Palmer Report, Analysis: Donald Trump confesses to Florida election crime just to harm Ron DeSantis, Bill Palmer, right, Nov. 10, 2022. The 2022 midterm elections have finally proven to everyone that Donald Trump is indeed every bit as unpopular and non-influential as we’ve spent the past twenty-two months saying he was. At this point Trump has no realistic 2024 prospects, and is only relevant in the sense that everyone is waiting for him to be indicted for espionage and arrested.
Trump seems to understand that his political relevance is fading by the minute, and so he’s going to great lengths today to try to get himself into the headlines. First he made a point of calling himself a “stable genius” again, even though he has to know how poorly it played the last time he used that phrase. Now Trump is doing something far more substantive: he’s confessing to crimes.
Trump announced on his social media network today that in 2018 he ordered the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s office to prematurely stop the vote counting in Florida, and that this single handedly allowed Ron DeSantis to declare a narrow victory. Trump is framing his actions as an attempt at stopping the election from being “stolen.” But the actions he’s describing are felony election fraud.
This is the same thing he got caught doing in Georgia during the 2020 election, and that he’s now under criminal investigation for at the federal and state level. The difference is, he was more blatant about it in 2020, and got caught in the act. The 2018 election in Florida did seem highly suspicious at the time, going the complete opposite of the way every other demographically similar state played out in that same election cycle. But there wasn’t any evidence that Trump had the Feds block Florida officials from finishing the vote count.
Trump could simply be making this up. That’s how far gone Trump is. He’s openly confessing to a four year old felony, and we’re left trying to figure out whether he’s making it up. But either way, Trump just put the public’s focus on the suspicious manner in which DeSantis was very narrowly elected to begin with, in a way that scandalizes DeSantis and portrays him as a weak candidate – even as DeSantis is hoping the media will portray him as dominant and inevitable.
At this point Donald Trump does have the benefit of knowing, deep down, that he’s likely on his way to prison no matter what. This means he can confess to a 2018 felony like this, and it doesn’t really change anything for him; he’s already set to be indicted on more serious and easily proven charges. If Trump consciously or subconsciously understands that he’s going down anyway, he doesn’t really have to worry about how much he harms himself in the name of trying to take his designated enemies like DeSantis down with him.
Nov. 9
Rolling Stone, Trump Keeps Musing About Journalists Being Raped in Prison — He’s Not Joking, Ryan Bort and Asawin Suebsaeng, Nov. 9, 2022. A knowledgeable source tells Rolling Stone that the former president has wondered how he might be able to jail reporters if he retakes the White House.
Donald Trump ended his pre-midterm rally blitz in disgusting fashion, calling House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “an animal,” championing the death penalty, and giddily imagining the prison rape of the journalist who reported on the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
“The leaking from the Supreme Court is unbelievable,” the former president said Monday night at a rally in Ohio. “But you get the information very easily. You tell the reporter who is it … and if the reporter doesn’t want to tell you it’s ‘bye bye.’ The reporter goes to jail. When the reporter learns he’s going to be married to a certain prisoner who’s extremely strong, tough, and mean, he will say, ‘you know, I think I’m going to give you the information.'”
The rally on Monday wasn’t the first time Trump imagined journalists being raped in prison. He laid out the same fantasy at a rally in Texas last month, saying the reporter would give up the identity of the leaker as soon as they realize they are “going to be the bride of another prisoner very shortly.” The audience burst out in laughter, just as they did Monday night in Ohio.
It isn’t just a laugh line.
This year, as Trump has privately strategized about what a second term, potentially starting in 2025, could look like, he’s begun occasionally soliciting ideas from conservative allies for how the U.S. government and Justice Department could go about turning his desires — for brutally imprisoning significant numbers of reporters — into reality.
“He said other countries do it — the implication being: Well, why not here?” the source recounts.
The other countries here are un-free authoritarian states, the kind for which Trump has long showed admiration. North Korea does not tolerate free expression. China and Russia are well known for jailing journalists. Viktor Orban, the Trump-endorsed autocratic ruler of Hungary, has been targeting reporters, as well. Trump has repeatedly made clear he wants to reshape America into a similarly brutal, fascist state. He praised China on Monday for executing drug dealers and sending the bullet to their families, drawing cheers from the crowd. He touted his “great relationship” with the man responsible, President Xi, at a rally last week. “He’s president for life,” Trump said. “I call him king.”
Trump closed the rally on Monday by noting that he will be making a “very big announcement,” which is widely expected to be a declaration of his 2024 presidential candidacy, at Mar-a-Lago next Tuesday.
Trump hasn’t just recently started wondering about how he might be able to jail journalists should he reclaim the White House in 2024. He was wondering about it almost immediately upon arriving there for the first time, as well. The New York Times reported in 2017 that less than a month after Trump took office, he griped to then-FBI Director James Comey about leaks to the media, and told Comey he should consider imprisoning journalists who publish classified information. It’s unclear how Comey responded. Trump would fire him less than three months later.
Raw Story, 'Furious' Trump is pinning the blame on Melania for his decision to back Dr. Oz: reporter, Brad Reed, Nov. 9, 2022. 'Furious' Trump is pinning the blame on Melania for his decision to back Dr. Oz: reporter.
Still more reports are coming in about former President Donald Trump's angry reactions to seeing some of his hand-picked candidates face defeat during Tuesday's midterm elections.
The New York Times' Maggie Haberman chimed in on Twitter with her own dispatch that claimed the twice-impeached former president is now even blaming former first lady Melania Trump for some of his own poor endorsements.
"Trump is indeed furious this morning, particularly about Mehmet Oz, and is blaming everyone who advised him to back Oz -- including his wife, describing it as not her best decision, according to people close to him," Haberman writes.
Haberman also reports that the losses of Trump-backed candidates such as Oz and Don Bolduc may impact his decision to announce his third presidential campaign next week.
READ MORE: 'An absolute disaster': Fox News pundit calls GOP midterm performance a 'searing indictment of the Republican Party'
"There are people pushing Trump to reschedule his announcement next week, and several Rs have texted asking whether he will, but it’s risky and would be acknowledging he’s wounded by yesterday, something that some of his advisers insist is not the case," she writes.
Trump started teasing his third presidential campaign earlier this week, and he also issued a warning against Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis against pursuing the presidency in 2024.
"I really believe he could hurt himself badly," Trump said of a potential DeSantis White House run. "I think he would be making a mistake, I think the base would not like it — I don’t think it would be good for the party."
Raw Story, ‘Stupid and reckless’: GOP operative declares ‘the end of the Trump era’ after midterm ‘catastrophe,’ Sky Palma, Nov. 9, 2022. ‘Stupid and reckless’: GOP operative declares ‘the end o