Driving the Day
Trump’s trial for election obstruction is now set for March 2024. https://t.co/bNClNJMthY
— Defend Democracy Project (@DemocracyNowUS) August 29, 2023
Must Read Stories
Historic Trump surrender in Georgia (and mugshot) dominates headlines
- New York Times: A Trump Mug Shot for History: “As soon as it was taken, it became the de facto picture of the year. A historic image that will be seared into the public record and referred to in perpetuity — the first mug shot of an American president, taken by the Fulton County, Ga., Sheriff’s Office after Donald J. Trump’s fourth indictment. Though because it is also the only mug shot, it may be representative of all of the charges. For more audio journalism and storytelling, download New York Times Audio, a new iOS app available for news subscribers. As such, it is also a symbol of either equality under the law or the abuse of it — the ultimate memento of a norm-shattering presidency and this social-media-obsessed, factionalized age. ‘It’s dramatically unprecedented,’ said Sean Wilentz, a professor of American history at Princeton University.”
- Washington Post: Donald Trump marks return to X, formerly Twitter, with mug shot tweet: “Former president Donald Trump made a return to X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, late Thursday, with his account sharing his mug shot and a link to his website hours after his surrender and subsequent release from an Atlanta jail on charges connected to his attempts to reverse the 2020 election results in Georgia. ‘Never surrender,’ the caption read. It was the first tweet by Trump’s account since Jan. 8, 2021, when he announced he would not attend Joe Biden’s inauguration. Twitter suspended his account shortly afterward, saying it was concerned about the ‘risk of further incitement of violence’ after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack by Trump supporters on the U.S. Capitol.”
- The Hill: Cohen on Georgia bookings: If any co-defendants turn on Trump, it’s ‘destruction for rest’: “Former Trump attorney Michael Cohen warned that there’s a serious risk to the former president that his co-defendants could cooperate with Georgia prosecutors. Trump and 18 other defendants were charged in a broad racketeering case in Georgia this month, alleging that the former president led a scheme to overturn the 2020 election results in the state. ‘If any one of them ends up turning, it’s destruction for the rest,’ Cohen said in an MSNBC interview Saturday. Cohen himself turned on Trump, cooperating with New York prosecutors investigating falsified business records related to hush money payments for Trump’s alleged affairs. Once one of the former president’s closest confidants, he has since become one of his loudest critics.”
- New York Times: Trump’s Mug Shot: ‘Not Comfortable’ but Potentially Lucrative: “Former President Donald J. Trump has done his best to appear unfazed and unbowed by having been indicted four times since March, but even he acknowledged that he did not enjoy one particular element of his booking in Georgia on Thursday night on racketeering charges: the mug shot. ‘It is not a comfortable feeling — especially when you’ve done nothing wrong,’ he told Fox News’s website in an interview afterward. Not long after the release of the mug shot — the first taken of Mr. Trump in any of the criminal proceedings he faces and the first known to have been taken of any former president — it appeared prominently on Mr. Trump’s campaign website, under a ‘personal note from President Donald J. Trump.’ At the bottom were several tabs users could click to donate to his campaign in small-dollar increments.”
- Washington Post: Trump is selling his mug shot on shirts, koozies and bumper stickers: “Not long after Donald Trump was booked on felony charges alleging that he participated in a conspiracy to overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia, his 2024 presidential campaign was selling merchandise featuring the first mug shot of a former American president. The merchandise, which includes T-shirts, mugs, koozies and bumper stickers of the former president’s mug shot, was for sale about 90 minutes after he was released from an Atlanta jail on Thursday. The merchandise, which includes $34 shirts, is accompanied by the words ‘NEVER SURRENDER!’ Trump surrendered at the jail Thursday, was booked and got released on a $200,000 bond in a move his legal team negotiated this week. The Trump Save America Joint Fundraising Committee is also selling his mug shot, saying it would give out a T-shirt in exchange for a $47 donation. The Trump campaign claimed in a fundraising email that his mug shot was an attempt ‘to make him look like a criminal in front of the entire world.’”
- New York Times: Jeffrey Clark, Former Justice Department Official, Booked in Trump Georgia Case: “Jeffrey B. Clark, the former high-ranking Justice Department official criminally charged in Georgia in connection with efforts to overturn Donald J. Trump’s 2020 election loss in that state, was booked at the Fulton County Jail early on Friday, a few hours after the former president’s dramatic booking at the same Atlanta facility. Mr. Clark was one of five defendants in the case who turned themselves in at the jail after Mr. Trump did so at 7:35 p.m. Thursday, their appearances stretching well into the night. The last two defendants in the case, Trevian C. Kutti and Steven C. Lee, surrendered on Friday morning. The Fulton County district attorney, Fani T. Willis, had set a deadline of noon for all 19 defendants to turn themselves in or face arrest.”
Georgia case: trial date set; multiple defendants seek federal court relocation
- New York Times: Judge Sets Trial Date in March for Trump’s Federal Election Case: “The federal judge overseeing former President Donald J. Trump’s prosecution on charges of conspiring to overturn the 2020 election set a trial date on Monday for early March, laying out a schedule that was close to the government’s initial request of January and that rebuffed Mr. Trump’s extraordinary proposal to push off the proceeding until nearly a year and a half after the 2024 election. The decision by Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, issued at a contentious hearing in Federal District Court in Washington, to start the trial on March 4 potentially brought it into conflict with two other trials that Mr. Trump is facing that month. The district attorney in Fulton County, Ga., has proposed taking Mr. Trump to trial on charges of tampering with the election in that state on the same day. A second trial in Manhattan, in which Mr. Trump has been accused of more than 30 felonies connected to hush-money payments to a porn actress in the run-up to the 2016 election, is set to go to trial on March 25.”
- Washington Post: Mark Meadows, former Trump chief of staff, testifies in Georgia: “Mark Meadows, Donald Trump’s final White House chief of staff, testified in a federal courtroom in Georgia on Monday that he helped question the 2020 presidential election results out of a federal interest in ‘free and fair elections’ intended to build national trust in the outcome and bring on a peaceful transfer of power. Over nearly four hours of testimony, Meadows defended his participation in meetings and phone calls described by prosecutors as part of a plot to subvert Joe Biden’s victory, repeatedly insisting there was a ‘federal nexus’ to all of his actions. He said his duties managing the president’s calendar and extricating him from lengthy meetings necessitated participating in hundreds if not thousands of conversations each month. ‘Having open questions [about the election] continued to be a roadblock for initiating other plans,’ Meadows testified. He added: ‘I just needed to land the plane.’”
- PBS: Who is indicted alongside Trump in Georgia election case?: “Eighteen people have been charged alongside former President Donald Trump for allegedly participating in a wide-ranging effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Georgia. The alleged co-conspirators include well-known Trump allies – including his attorney and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows – as well as relatively unknown collaborators, including a former Georgia bail bondsman and the former director of elections for Coffee County, Georgia. The charges, from Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, range from racketeering to conspiracy to committing election fraud.”
- New York Times: Trump and His Co-Defendants in Georgia Are Already at Odds: “Even as former President Donald J. Trump and his 18 co-defendants in the Georgia election interference case turned themselves in one by one at an Atlanta jail this week, their lawyers began working to change how the case will play out. They are already at odds over when they will have their day in court, but also, crucially, where. Should enough of them succeed, the case could split into several smaller cases, perhaps overseen by different judges in different courtrooms, running on different timelines. Five defendants have already sought to move the state case to federal court, citing their ties to the federal government. The first one to file — Mark Meadows, Mr. Trump’s chief of staff during the 2020 election — will make the argument for removal on Monday, in a hearing before a federal judge in Atlanta.”
- Washington Post: Trump and his co-defendants in Georgia have surrendered. Now what?: “The last of former president Donald Trump’s 18 co-defendants in the Fulton County, Ga., racketeering case turned themselves in for mug shots, fingerprinting and processing Friday, giving way to intense legal maneuvering over the time and direction of the case. Trump, who surrendered late Thursday, and his allies are accused of participating in a vast criminal enterprise to try to overturn Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. The case has already generated numerous motions and replies, with defendants seeking to move it to federal court, delay the trial or speed it up — or dismiss it altogether. Legal experts expect the activity to intensify in the weeks ahead. ‘You need a spreadsheet to keep track of it all,’ said Caren Morrison, a former federal prosecutor now at Georgia State University’s law school.”
In The States
NORTH CAROLINA: Governor vetoes voter suppression bill, sparking override showdown with GOP supermajority
- CNN: North Carolina governor vetoes election overhaul bill: “North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper on Thursday vetoed an election overhaul bill passed by the Republican-controlled legislature last week. The Democratic governor called the legislation dangerous. ‘Right now, legislative Republicans in North Carolina are pushing an all-out assault on the right to vote, using the advice of Trump’s hand-picked election denier, Cleta Mitchell, who was on the call trying to help him overturn the election in Georgia,’ Cooper said at the start of a video posted on his official social media accounts announcing his veto. ‘This attack has nothing to do with election security, and everything to do with keeping and gaining power.’ Senate Bill 747 would overhaul the existing election laws of the Tar Heel State, adding new restrictions and deadlines and further empowering partisan poll watchers, among other changes. The measure would also change current same-day registration rules during the early voting period.”
- News and Observer: NC Supreme Court justice says he’ll step down next month. Here’s what we know: “North Carolina Supreme Court Justice Michael Morgan will step down from his position next month, before the official conclusion of his term, to leave the court ‘in the best possible position,’ he told The News & Observer. In a phone interview Thursday, Morgan elaborated on an earlier Twitter announcement that he plans to depart during the week of Sept. 4. ‘With the help of my outstanding staff, all of my opinions & assignments have been completed as the Court acts on them and concludes its current cycle in the coming days,’ Morgan wrote. Morgan, a North Carolina native who spent most of his childhood in New Bern, has served for more than three decades in the state’s judicial branch. He was an administrative law judge, a Wake County District Court judge and a Superior Court judge before joining the state Supreme Court in 2016. The 67-year-old announced in May that he would not seek reelection to the court.”
ARIZONA: State Supreme Court won’t order vote recount in Maricopa County
- Arizona Capitol Times: Arizona Supreme Court rules against attorney seeking to void 2022 election: “The state’s high court has tossed out a bid to void the results of the entire 2022 election. In a brief order Thursday, a majority of the justices said Scottsdale attorney Ryan Heath was asking them to order Maricopa County to re-do the process it used to verify signatures on early ballot envelopes. And they noted that Heath, representing David Mast and Cochise County Supervisor Tom Crosby, cited evidence that was introduced earlier this year in a challenge to the election results raised by failed Republican gubernatorial hopeful Kari Lake. Only thing is, the justices said, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson already ruled in May that ‘there is clear and convincing evidence that the elections process for the Nov. 8, 2022, general election did comply’ with the law. More to the point, they said that only those who were involved in the original lawsuit have the legal right to appeal the trial court’s decision.“
WISCONSIN: Wisconsin elections administrator Meagan Wolfe won’t appear before Wisconsin State Senate committee in saga over who will oversee Wisconsin’s 2024 election cycle
- PBS Wisconsin: Wisconsin elections head won’t testify at hearing Kaul says is improper: “Wisconsin’s top elections official said she will not testify on Aug. 29 at a Senate committee hearing on her reappointment, leaning on a letter from the state attorney general that says lawmakers have no authority to force a vote on firing her. Republicans who control the Senate have vowed to oust Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe before the 2024 presidential election. They moved in June to begin the process of holding a vote on her reappointment despite not receiving a nomination from the bipartisan elections commission, which deadlocked along party lines on the matter. Democratic elections commissioners hoped that by not nominating Wolfe, they could avoid a confirmation vote and keep her in office indefinitely under a state Supreme Court ruling in June 2022 that conservatives have used to maintain control of key policy boards.”
- Washington Post: Wisconsin Supreme Court flips liberal, creating a ‘seismic shift’: “Standing in the marble-lined rotunda of the state capitol earlier this month, the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s incoming justice raised her right hand, swore to carry out her job ‘faithfully and impartially’ and launched a new, liberal era on a powerful court long dominated by conservatives. The fallout was immediate. Within days, the new majority stripped duties from the court’s conservative chief justice and fired its administrative director, a conservative former judge who once ran for the court. The abrupt changes prompted the chief justice to accuse her liberal colleagues of engaging in ‘nothing short of a coup.’ Before long, Republican lawmakers threatened to impeach the court’s newest member. Liberal groups, long accustomed to seeing the court as hostile terrain, quickly maneuvered for potential victories on a string of major issues. They filed lawsuits to try to redraw the state’s legislative districts, which heavily favor Republicans. And the Democratic attorney general sought to speed up a case challenging a 19th-century law that has kept doctors from providing abortions in Wisconsin.”
What Experts Are Saying
Norm Eisen for MSNBC, on Jim Jordan’s attempts to investigate Georgia law enforcement: “If it comes to litigation, the courts will see through Jordan’s efforts for the distracting and partisan political theatrics they are. The careful balance of power between the states and the federal government — although long debated ever since our nation’s founding and in the decades following — is now well-defined in all but the most extreme circumstances. This is not one.”
Praveen Fernandes in Newsweek, on threats to voting rights: “…These indictments are not the only reminder that voting rights are under attack. Last term, in two cases called Allen v. Milligan and Allen v. Castor, the Supreme Court issued a powerful ruling that vindicated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, striking down Alabama’s problematic 2021 congressional map and affirming a lower court ruling. But stunningly, Alabama thumbed its nose at the Supreme Court, creating a new map that fails to remedy the defects the Supreme Court (and a three-judge lower court panel based in Alabama) identified… We don’t know the results of the Trump trials (none of which have begun) or know how judges will react to Alabama’s new flawed map. But we know they remind us of how much work remains to be done to ensure that the right to vote—a right referenced in more places within the Constitution than any other right—exists not as a mere paper promise, but as a lived reality.”
Marc Elias with Democracy Docket: “The legal profession can redeem itself if it has the courage to act decisively. First, it needs to swiftly move to disbar all the lawyers involved in the attack on democracy following the 2020 election. The fact that it is 2023 and many of these proceedings are still ongoing reflects a lack of urgency the circumstances require. But individual disciplinary actions against individual lawyers only go so far. The legal profession needs to make significant structural changes to prevent another attack on democracy in the future.”
Joyce Vance on X (Twitter): “Every defendant has a life and most, a job. Trump isn’t special in Judge Chutkan’s courtroom, which is as it should be.”
Headlines
The MAGA Movement and the Ongoing Threat to Elections
New York Magazine: Palin’s Civil War Threat a Sign of Very Bad Things to Come
Mother Jones: At Least One Rich Man North of Richmond Has Now Been Identified
Trump Investigations
Washington Post: The Trump Cases: Highlights from last week and what’s coming this week
The Hill: Trump allies at center of Jan. 6 cases navigate dueling prosecutions
NPR: Judge in Trump trial has a tough sentencing record in Jan. 6 cases
The Hill: Most in new poll say Trump should be tried before election
Washington Post: Americans don’t view all of Trump’s indictments equally
January 6 and the 2020 Elections
NBC: FBI arrests Jan. 6 rioter they say assaulted officers with a speaker, a shoe and a lamp
Orange County Register: 2 Orange County women plead guilty to involvement in Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol breach
Washington Post: Ex-Virginia school board candidate accused of attacking police on Jan. 6
Opinion
New York Times: Trump’s Fate Belongs in the Hands of 12 Ordinary Citizens
Washington Post: GOP attacks on Fani Willis can’t save Trump from a jury’s judgment
New York Times: How Free Speech and Willful Blindness Will Play Out in the Trump Prosecution
The Hill: Trump’s coup failed in 2021 — now it’s continuing in our courts
In the States
USA Today: Voting rights for former felons could be on the line in Kentucky
Ohio Capital Journal: Ohio Redistricting Commission set to begin work again
NPR: Minnesota returns voting power to thousands. The question is whether they’ll use it
WFSU: How Florida’s congressional map could change before the 2024 elections
