List of All Articles with Tag 'us politics'

Before departing from Washington DC after being arraigned on four federal charges, former president Donald Trump gave quick remarks in which he claimed the capitol had “filth”, “decay” and “broken buildings”. Mr Trump made a quick appearance at the nation’s capital on Thursday so he could appear in federal court to be formally charged with four counts related to his alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election and subsequent January 6 attack on the Capitol. “This is a very sad day for America,” Mr Trump told reporters before departing on his private plane to New Jersey. The ex-president has continuously claimed he is innocent and that the indictment, brought forth by Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation, is a politically-motivated action. But unlike his previous post-arraignment speeches, Mr Trump chose to direct most of his statement toward Washington DC’s environment. “It was also very sad driving through Washington DC and seeing the filth and the decay and all of the broken buildings and walls and the graffiti,” Mr Trump said. “This is not the place that I left. It’s a very sad thing to see it.” Mr Trump spent approximately two hours in Washington DC, most of which was spent inside the E Barrett Prettyman Federal Courthouse. The ex-president pleaded not guilty to the four counts he was indicted on; conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, conspiracy against rights and obstruction of, and attempt to obstruct, an official proceeding. The charges stem from Mr Smith’s probe into Mr Trump’s rhetoric in the days leading up to the January 6th attack on the Capitol, including Mr Trump’s false claims of election fraud. The most recent indictment alleges that Mr Trump knowingly spread lies that there was election fraud in 2020 and he actually won. “These claims were false, and the Defendant knew that they were false. But the Defendant repeated and widely disseminated them anyway – to make his knowingly false claims appear more legitimate, crate an intense national atmosphere of mistrust and anger, and erode public faith in the administration of the election,” the indictment reads. Despite the serious allegations, Mr Trump’s post-arraignment speech made little mention of the implications he is facing. “When you look at what’s happening this is a persecution of a political opponent. This was never supposed to happen in America. This is the persecution of the person that’s leading by very, very substantial numbers in the Republican primary and leading Biden by a lot so if you can’t beat them you persecute them or prosecute ‘em,” Mr Trump said before departing on his plane. Read More Live updates: Trump pleads not guilty at arraignment in 2020 election case What is an arraignment? Here’s what to expect following Trump’s indictment Trump pleads not guilty to federal conspiracy charges in plot to overturn 2020 election Trump rails against ‘filth’ in DC after arraignment on election conspiracy charges Trump ‘irked’ that arraignment judge didn’t call him ‘Mr President’ Former Trump spokesperson sheds light on Melania’s absence from his arraignment

The latest case of United States of America v Donald J Trump strikes at the heart of a question that has clouded the former president’s time in and out of office: Can he unequivocally lie and use that deceit to influence the outcome of a democratic election, against the will of millions of Americans? An indictment against the former president for his very public plot to overturn the 2020 presidential election is remarkable in that it is not only his third criminal indictment within four months, a historic precedent for this or any former or current president in US history. It also chronicles the alleged actions of a sitting president on his way out to bring American democracy down with him. Mr Trump already is criminally charged in New York City in a case connected to hush money payments to silence stories of his alleged affairs in the lead up to his 2016 election. The US Department of Justice also has charged him with his alleged retention of classified documents after leaving the White House. But the indictment unsealed on 1 August outlines a graver threat. Michael Waldman, president of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law, said the charges “matter beyond the fact that a former president is accused”. “Donald Trump and his co-conspirators tried to overthrow American democracy. They wanted to negate the votes of millions of Americans. They did this using phony claims of voter fraud and rigged elections. These conspiracy theories are still being used to justify changes to voting and election law all over the country. Donald Trump will stand trial,” he said in a statement to The Independent. “The Big Lie will be on trial too.” The indictment outlines the familiar contours of a conspiracy-driven scheme and the violence that followed it, a narrative that members of Congress investigated for more than a year before publishing an 845-page report detailing Mr Trump’s refusal to cede power, regardless of the outcome. That report and countless investigations into the events surrounding January 6 have painted the attack on the Capitol as part of a much-larger effort to preserve a fragile American democracy. Unlike the other indictments against him, the latest charges amount to accusations of crimes committed by a man who president when he allegedly committed them. For months leading up to the 2020 presidential election, then-President Trump routinely and publicly undermined the legitimacy of an election that hadn’t even happened yet, sowing doubt about whether Americans’ votes would be counted at all. But as the indictment alleges in a detailed, chronological accounting of the scheme, the former president was routinely made aware that his statements were false – by two attorneys general, Justice Department officials, an election security chief, his vice president, his campaign, and Republican governors and election officials who voted for and endorsed him. According to the indictment, one senior adviser said the campaign’s legal team “can’t back any” of the former president’s claims. “I’ll obviously hustle to help on all fronts, but it’s tough to own any of this when it’s all just conspiracy s*** beamed down from the mothership,” the adviser wrote, according to prosecutors. Federal prosecutors outlined what, allegedly, happened next, when it became clear Mr Trump was losing: Then-President Trump and his allies conspired with officials in states that he lost to invalidate ballots and use fraudulent electors to cast their electoral college votes on his behalf, relied on the Justice Department to force the plan through, and pressured his vice president to go along with it, before exploiting the violent disruption in the halls of Congress to make another last-ditch attempt to reject the outcome. “It was an attempt to usurp from the people our right to choose our own leaders, our own president, through the electoral college system,” according to Democratic US Rep Jamie Raskin, who served as the lead impeachment manager for Mr Trump’s second impeachment for the events surrounding January 6. “They’re very grave and serious charges, of course, but extremely well anchored in the facts,” he told MSNBC. The resulting four-count indictment accuses the former president of committing three criminal conspiracies while he was still in office. Mr Trump is accused of a conspiracy of “dishonesty, fraud, and deceit” to “impair, obstruct, and defeat” the process of collecting and certifying votes in the states, a conspiracy to obstruct the certification of those votes in Congress, and a conspiracy to deprive the right to vote and have one’s vote counted, a violation of long-standing civil rights law first enacted in the violent aftermath of the Civil War. The indictment also lists six unnamed co-conspirators who are likely to include Trump-connected attorneys and government officials. Mr Trump relied on his “prolific” lies to help organize fake electors in several states to submit false vote certificates to Congress, positioning Mike Pence to oversee a fraudulent certification of those bogus slates of electors on 6 January, 2021, the indictment alleges. The former president also allegedly leveraged the Justice Department to advance the scheme; at one point in the indictment, prosecutors suggest that the Trump administration was willing to deploy the military to crush opposition to his election, if he were to successfully overturn Mr Biden’svictory. Three days before January 6, a co-conspirator believed to be Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark spoke with a deputy White House counsel who had previously warned Mr Trump that “there is no world, there is no option, in which you do not leave the White House”. “Well,” Mr Clark allegedly replied, “that’s why there’s an Insurrection Act.” Following the hours-long siege at the Capitol on January 6, a violent show of force fuelled by Mr Trump’s baseless narrative, his aides and co-conspirators exploited that chaotic delay to pressure Congress to refuse the results for a final time. “We are talking about democracy on the brink, as you read through this indictment,” Alyssa Farah Griffin, a former White House communications director under then-President Trump, told CNN. “It shows how close we got.” The charges are unprecedented in their scope, but the tools to prosecute election interference and voter fraud conspiracies that have deprived Americans’ rights have been in place for more than a century. “Our democracy and our legal system are actually prepared to deal with these kinds of unprecedented situations,” Sean Morales-Doyle, director of the Brennan Center’s voting rights and elections programme, told The Independent. “I think the history is important, because we’re also not at the end of history here.” While he ultimately failed in his efforts, Mr Trump’s narrative of victimisation and “stolen” elections has infected a wide swath of the American public, particularly Republican officials and their supporters. Mr Trump’s rhetoric has persuaded roughly three in 10 Americans to believe the lie that the election was stolen from him. His false and inflated claims, spanning more than a decade, have sowed enough doubt among his supporters to construct the lie of “stolen” and “rigged” elections, animating Republican attempts to challenge results and craft dozens of pieces of legislation to do what Mr Trump failed to do in court and while in office. Since leaving office, the former president has continued a narrative of political persecution as he seeks the 2024 Republican nomination for president, with a reliable mention of “stolen” or “rigged” election in his fundraising messages, on his Truth Social, and on the stages of political conferences and campaign rallies. Mr Trump, who has frequently used projection to accuse his rivals of doing the very things of which he has been accused, now refers to the multiple investigations and indictments against him as politically motivated “election interference” – a charge at the center of his latest indictment. He accuses his rival of “weaponising” the federal government against him – once again, what prosecutors have alleged Mr Trump did to stop Mr Biden from winning the 2020 election. Mr Trump and his defenders argue that the real crime is the unrelated case involving Hunter Biden, and what they allege is a Justice Department coverup to protect him, while they ignore the Trump family history of alleged fraud, self-dealing and enrichment at the public’s expense. Fox News has spent considerable airtime suggesting that the indictments are timed to distract from spurious Republican-led investigations into the president’s son, casting Mr Trump as a victim of his politically motivated rival. The network – less than four months after its historic $787m settlement to avert a potentially devastating defamation trial involving many of the same lies at the center of Mr Trump’s push to overturn election results – immediately got to work to defend the former president as news of the indictment broke. Jesse Watters, who inherited Tucker Carlson’s prime-time slot after he was fired from the network, called the indictment “political war crimes”. Right-wing media pundits claim he was merely acting within his authority to challenge the outcome of the results, or simply using his First Amendment protected rights to reject them, or that he truly believed, despite overwhelming evidence, that the election was stolen from him. “I would like them to try to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Donald Trump believed that these allegations were false,” lead Trump lawyer John Lauro said on Fox News the night of his indictment. The indictment makes clear that Mr Trump has the right – “like every American” – to say whatever he wants about the election, even to falsely claim that he won. But what he cannot do, prosecutors argue, is weaponize those lies in a conspiracy to overturn the results. “They’re not attacking his First Amendment right,” former US Attorney General Bill Barr told CNN. “He can say whatever he wants. He can even lie. He can even tell people that the election was stolen when he knew better. But that does not protect you from entering into a conspiracy. All conspiracies involve speech, and all fraud involves speech. So, free speech doesn’t give you the right to engage in a fraudulent conspiracy.” With each indictment, the former president has fanned the flames of outrage and suggested that the US faces World War III and imminent violence without his leadership. With news of criminal charges in New York City in March, he demanded widespread protests and called America a “dying” and “third world” country where “leftist thugs” are “killing and burning with no retribution”. “There’s no other way to say it: our nation is teetering on the brink of tyranny,” a campaign fundraising message announced after news of his latest federal charges. On his Truth Social, he compared the current administration to “Nazi Germany in the 1930s, the former Soviet Union, and other authoritarian, dictatorial regimes”. Mr Trump remains the frontrunner for the Republican Party’s nominee in the 2024 presidential race, and by all measures it appears he would not do anything different should he return to the White House. His 2024 campaign agenda builds from his dark vision of American “carnage” from his first moments as president and the four chaotic years that followed. In recent months, he has demanded the executions of drug offenders and human traffickers, considered the “termination” of the US Constitution, pledged national restrictions on abortions and gender-affirming care for trans people, and promised political vengeance and “retribution” for his supporters, offering himself up as a martyr for a movement he inspired. “I’m being indicted for you,” he tells them. Federal prosecutors have already charged more than 1,000 people in connection with the attack on the Capitol on 6 January, 2021. Donald Trump is now one of them. “January 6 and the effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election, together with the first criminal trials of an American president, will now become singularly infamous events in American history,” conservative former federal judge J Michael Luttig said. “These events will forever scar and stain the United States. And they will forever scar and stain the United States in the eyes of the world.” Read More Trump indictment – live: Trump posts ominous video as court arraignment nears for 2020 election charges Eight key revelations from Trump’s January 6 indictment Trump’s election fraud claims were always bogus. Will his history of lies finally catch up to him? Why Trump is charged under a civil rights law used to prosecute KKK terror Trump supporters see latest indictment as proof of a conspiracy to take him down Trump, January 6 and a conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election: The federal investigation, explained Who is Jack Smith? The special prosecutor who just indicted Trump again

When Donald Trump pleaded not guilty after being arrested and arraigned on Thursday for conspiring to overturn the 2020 presidential election, among those present in the courthouse was Aquilino Gonell. A US Capitol police officer, Mr Gonell resigned in December last year as he sought to continue recovering both “physically and mentally” from the trauma of the Jan 6 insurrection that occurred in 2021. “Our Democracy is worth fighting for,” the retired officer injured in the Capitol riot wrote on X (formerly Twitter) soon after the proceeding. “Not prosecuting is far riskier than having no consequences for the alleged power grab attempts. Justice and the rule of law must win for our democracy to survive,” he said of the former president who was indicted Monday on four charges as part of special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the alleged conspiracy surrounding the events from 6 Jan Capitol riot. Describing the incident, he wrote, “[As] Capitol Police sergeant, I found myself defending everything I sacrificed, and our very own democracy when it was threatened by an all out assault by a mob.” “As an American, the events on January 6 were shocking,” he said. “I was attacked by more than 50 people (one way or another) that I know of. I have given testimony to the congressional committee, investigators, prosecutors and the court.” He had earlier last year, while providing testimony before Congress, compared the experience of being at the Capitol on that day to his experience in Iraq with the US Army. “On January 6, for the first time, I was more afraid working at the Capitol than during my entire Army deployment to Iraq,” he had said in prepared remarks. “In Iraq, we expected armed violence, because we were in a war zone. But nothing in my experience in the Army, or as a law enforcement officer, prepared me for what we confronted on Jan 6.” He told legislators how he was punched, pushed, kicked, shoved, sprayed with chemical irritants and “blinded with eye-damaging lasers” – injuries that required multiple surgeries and a six-month medical leave. In a poetic twist of fate, Mr Trump’s latest arraignment brought him to the exact same courthouse where hundreds of people have been tried, convicted and sentenced to terms in prison as long as 18 years for charges in connection with the Jan 6 insurrection. Mr Trump, the man Liz Cheney once credited with having “assembled” and “summoned” members of the mob, is now the latest defendant among them. Mr Gonell was present in court along with two other police officers – Daniel Hodges and Harry Dunn – who defended the Capitol that day. They watched the former president’s arraignment from inside the court. Taking stock of the location’s symbolism where Mr Trump was produced, Mr Gonell said: “The same court in which hundreds of rioters have been sentenced. It’s the same court former President Trump is being arraigned in today for his alleged involvement before, during, and after the siege.” Read More Live updates: Trump pleads not guilty at arraignment in 2020 election case Trump pleaded not guilty. The stakes couldn’t be higher Trump was told not to talk to witnesses in 2020 election conspiracy case. That could be a challenge. Trump appears to stumble over his name and age at arraignment Watch view of the Capitol on day Donald Trump scheduled to be arraigned Trump supporters falsely claim former president faces death penalty

Donald Trump appeared to stumble over his words when he was asked to state his full name and age at his arraignment on charges of attempting to overturn the 2020 election. Mr Trump arrived at the E Barrett Prettyman federal courthouse in Washington DC on Thursday where he pleaded not guilty to four criminal counts of an alleged election hoax conspiracy that led to the January 6 riots at the US Capitol. Mr Trump, dressed in his trademark navy blue suit and red tie, entered the courtroom at 3.51pm accompanied by John Lauro, a veteran Washington-based criminal defence attorney, and Todd Blanche, the New York-based lawyer who is leading his defence in the other criminal cases against him. He was made to wait about 25 minutes before the magistrate judge entered the room at 4.15pm, and appeared nervous and fidgety. After attorneys for the government and defence introduced themselves, Mr Trump stood to take his oath from a courtroom deputy. US Magistrate Judge Moxila Upadhyaya then asked the former president to state his full name. “Donald J Trump — John — Donald John Trump,” Mr Trump replied hesitantly. He was then asked for his date of birth, and tripped over his words again. At first, he said “seven seven,” before correcting himself and saying “77”. After explaining his rights to remain silent and to legal representation, and reminding him of the lengthy prison sentence he faces if convicted, Judge Upadhyaya asked Mr Trump if he understood. He replied in the affirmative. Mr Lauro then entered a plea of not guilty on all counts on his behalf. Prosecutors did not seek to detain Mr Trump, and set a date of 28 August for a first hearing before Judge Tanya Chutkan. Mr Trump is not required to attend. In comments to reporters afterwards, Mr Trump described it as a “very sad day” before claiming Washington DC had deteriorated in the two and a half years since he left office. “This was never supposed to happen in America.... if you can’t beat ‘em, you persecute them,” he said. As his motorcade returned to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, it was met with a chorus of insults from a small group of protesters. “F** you, terrorist,” one man yelled, according to Wall Street Journal reporter Andrew Restuccia. Earlier this week, Mr Trump was charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States, witness tampering, conspiracy against the rights of citizens, and obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding in relation to his attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. The indictment also described six unnamed co-conspirators, who have been identified from details contained in the document as New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former Mr Trump lawyer John Eastman, “Kraken” lawyer Sidney Powell, former top Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark, and attorney Kenneth Chesebro. Mr Trump has claimed in a series of unhinged posts to Truth Social that President Biden and the US Department of Justice had “weaponised” the federal government against him. Read More Live: Trump pleads not guilty at arraignment after arrest Trump pleads not guilty to federal conspiracy charges in plot to overturn 2020 election Who is Jack Smith? The special prosecutor who just indicted Trump again

As former President Donald Trump left Washington after answering charges of trying to subvert democracy, it felt like all the previous trauma and divisions of his eight-year journey into the nation's psyche were just the start.

Justice Elena Kagan declined Thursday to outright answer the question of whether Congress could impose an ethics code on the Supreme Court, but she did allow that it could do "various things" to regulate the high court.

President Joe Biden on Thursday called for the immediate release of Nigerien President Mohamed Bazoum in a written statement commemorating Niger's Independence Day, saying the US "stands with the people of Niger" as the country faces a "grave challenge to its democracy."

The two young, Black Tennessee state House Democrats whose expulsion sparked a nationwide controversy in April, will win reelection on Thursday, CNN projects.

The US is considering putting troops on commercial vessels in critical Middle East waterways to prevent Iranian seizures, a US official familiar with the plans said Thursday, a decision that could bring US and Iranian forces closer to direct confrontation.

The son of Colombian President Gustavo Petro acknowledged Thursday that his father’s 2022 election campaign received money of dubious origin, according prosecutors investigating the son for alleged illicit enrichment and money laundering. Nicolás Petro, who was a legislator representing a northern coastal region, agreed to cooperate with prosecutors in the probe after being charged Tuesday. Prosecutor Mario Andrés Burgos, who heads the investigation, said the younger Petro has revealed that unjustified increases detected in his assets came from two individuals being questioned by Colombian authorities. The money went partly into his own accounts and partly into the campaign that made his father Colombia's first elected leftist president, the prosecutor said. On Tuesday, when he was charged, prosecutors said the younger Petro took thousands of dollars from drug traffickers and used it to buy luxurious homes and expensive cars. Nicolás Petro, 36, pleaded innocent to the charges, but agreed to cooperate with authorities. The case has come at a time when Colombia’s president is losing popularity and has been exposed to attacks by opposition parties, which have become increasingly reluctant to cooperate with his legislative agenda. The investigation stems from a shocking declaration made by the son's former wife, Daysuris Vásquez, to local news magazine Semana in March. Vasquez said she was present at meetings where Nicolás Petro arranged a 600 million peso ($150,000) donation from a politician who was once convicted in Washington of drug trafficking and who wanted to contribute to Gustavo Petro’s 2022 presidential campaign. She accused her ex-husband of pocketing the money and said that the father’s presidential campaign had no knowledge of the donation. On Thursday, prosecutors said the “resources” in the case were around $270,000 that was delivered by Samuel Santander Lopesierra and Gabriel Hilsaca to Nicolás Petro. Lopesierra was convicted and extradited to the United States, where he was sentenced for drug trafficking. Hilsaca is the son of Alfonso Hilsaca, who is currently being prosecuted on charges of murder and criminal conspiracy in Colombia. Burgos said the president’s son has promised to deliver audio recordings and documentary evidence that would corroborate that part of the money he received was used to finance his father’s electoral campaign without being duly reported to authorities.. Prosecutors also accused Vásquez of co-operating in the money laundering scheme and said she helped her husband hide thousands of dollars in cash in suitcases that the couple kept at their home. The couple, who no longer live together, were arrested Saturday and have been held at the headquarters of the Chief Prosecutor’s Office in Bogota. Thursday’s hearing was held to hear arguments on whether Nicolás Petro’s detention should be switched to house arrest. The president has said he would not interfere with the investigation, and wrote a message on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, in which he said he hoped his son would “reflect on his mistakes.” Read More Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide Panama Canal foresees its income falling after shipping limited due to a drought Appeals court allows Biden asylum restrictions to temporarily stay in place as case plays out New Zealand to boost its defense capabilities as it faces increasing tensions in the Pacific

The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals will allow the Biden administration to carry out a controversial asylum policy that a district court judge had blocked last week, putting that injunction -- a ruling the judge had put on hold for two weeks -- on pause for longer while the case is appealed.

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