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Growing peril for Trump as scope widens in Capitol riot and election interference investigations
- NBC: Dozens of witnesses have testified as the Jan. 6-focused grand jury probes Trump: Federal grand jurors probing Donald Trump’s attempts to stop the transfer of presidential power after his 2020 election loss have heard testimony from dozens of witnesses in a wide-ranging investigation that has examined the former president’s conduct spanning the time from before Election Day through the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, an NBC News analysis found. Special counsel Jack Smith, appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland in November to oversee the investigations into Trump’s handling of classified documents and his efforts to stay in power, has led a sprawling investigation in the almost eight months since. While a grand jury in Miami indicted Trump on 37 counts on seven federal charges in early June in connection with the documents investigation and alleged efforts to obstruct it, a federal grand jury in Washington has continued to meet on the third floor of the E. Barrett Prettyman U.S. Courthouse in the 2020 election inquiry.
- MSNBC: Many Jan. 6 defendants agree on who sent them to the Capitol: As things stand, more than 1,000 people have been charged for taking part in the Jan. 6 violence at the U.S. Capitol. As HuffPost noted, many of them have said in no uncertain terms that they were acting in response to Donald Trump’s directions. Nearly 200 of the people arrested and charged for attacking the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, have said they were responding to calls by Donald Trump to help keep him in the White House, according to a new analysis by a government watchdog group. “CREW’s analysis bolsters the evidence that January 6th was the result of organized efforts by Donald Trump and his allies to halt the certification of a free and fair election by force,” the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington wrote in a report released Thursday.
- CNN: New glimpses into 2020 election interference probe suggest peril could be growing for Trump and his associates: Revelations that special counsel Jack Smith has been digging into efforts to overturn former President Donald Trump’s Arizona election loss in 2020 bolster growing indications that his investigation is nearing a critical point. New CNN reporting on Thursday also suggests that Smith remains interested in a chaotic Oval Office meeting days before Trump left office during which the former president considered some of the wildest schemes dreamed up to try to keep him in power, despite pushback from his White House counsel. Smith has already made Trump the first former president to be formally accused of federal crimes. Trump was charged last month with the willful retention of national defense information and over alleged obstruction of the investigation in connection with a trove of classified documents he kept at his Florida home after leaving office.
- Salon: Jack Smith is digging into Trump’s bizarre post-election Oval Office meeting: report: Special counsel Jack Smith’s team has reportedly bolstered its interest in an infamous Oval Office meeting held at the eleventh hour of Trump’s presidency, during which the former president fielded proposals of desperate methods to keep him in office despite his White House counsel’s objections. Investigators have questioned witnesses before the grand jury and during interviews about the meeting, which occurred six weeks after Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, multiple sources told CNN. Some witnesses were initially asked about the meeting several months ago. Others, like Rudy Giuliani, were questioned about the meeting more recently. Giuliani, in particular, conferred with investigators for two days last month in a voluntary interview about an array of topics, including the December 18, 2020 meeting he attended, CNN’s sources said.
Trump and aide Nauta push toward trial amid new discoveries from unsealed classified document mishandling search warrant
- CNN: Trump aide Walt Nauta pleads not guilty to charges of mishandling classified documents: Walt Nauta, an aide to former President Donald Trump, pleaded not guilty Thursday to multiple counts related to the mishandling of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, including several obstruction and concealment-related charges.The brief procedural hearing moves Nauta and Trump toward trial together in the historic case alleging mishandling of national security records and obstruction of justice. Trump is accused of illegally keeping classified documents from his presidency at his Mar-a-Lago resort and Nauta is accused of helping him to hide those documents from the federal government.
- The Independent: Prosecutors knew Trump was hiding more documents thanks to Mar-a-Lago CCTV tapes: Federal investigators knew Donald Trump was most likely concealing classified documents among the myriad boxes of presidential records and other paraphernalia stored at his Mar-a-Lago estate, because of surveillance footage obtained by subpoena, according to a less redacted version of the affidavit used to secure a search warrant for his property last year. The version of the affidavit was made public late Wednesday on the order of US Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart, who has been hearing arguments from a coalition of news organisations that have been seeking access to a fully unredacted version of the affidavit.
- Huffington Post: Ex-Federal Prosecutor Flags ‘Interesting’ Discovery In Trump Search Warrant: A former federal prosecutor says a tidbit in newly unredacted sections of the Justice Department’s warrant to search Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort damages one of the former president’s potential defenses. On Wednesday, a federal magistrate judge unsealed a slightly less redacted version of the affidavit that ultimately allowed the FBI to search Trump’s Florida estate on Aug. 8 last year. One previously redacted sentence about material found at the property read: “Multiple documents also contained what appears to be FPOTUS’s handwritten notes.”
In The States
TEXAS: Harris County sues to stop Texas law abolishing elections office
- NBC News: Texas’ largest county, home to Houston, sues state over law ousting its election chief: Harris County, Texas, filed a lawsuit Thursday to block a new state law overhauling its election administration, County Attorney Christian Menefee said. The suit challenges a new state law that would eliminate the office of the county’s elections administrator, which was created in 2020, and transfer the management of elections back to two local elected officials, the county tax assessor and county clerk. The county’s elections administrator is a nonpartisan official appointed by the county’s four commissioners, three of whom are Democrats. The filing asks the court to temporarily block the law before it takes effect on Sept. 1 and allow the county’s elections administrator to continue overseeing elections and voter registration. Menefee said the law, Senate Bill 1750, violates the Texas Constitution, which prohibits state lawmakers from writing local laws like this.
- The Texan: Election Day Chaos Detailed in Call Log as Harris County Sues to Keep Elections Administrator: A new filing with a state district court regarding pending Harris County election contests alleges some voting locations were not given any paper at the start of Election Day 2022, while other locations were denied assistance or additional supplies. While previous reports indicated that some of the 782 voting locations ran out of paper or were delayed in opening due to missing equipment, malfunctioning equipment, or workers who did not show up, an amended complaint for 17 of the election contestants includes details from the Elections Administration Office’s (EAO) support line for election workers. The county’s call log indicates that the presiding judges for the Klein Multipurpose Center and the University of Houston Clear Lake locations called at 6:49 a.m. and 7:01 a.m. respectively because they had not been given any ballot paper at all. In another instance, the call center failed to denote the location of a precinct reporting no ballot paper, while others began reporting a shortage of paper before 9 a.m. Many of these calls on the county report are marked “pending” with no evidence of resolution.
MISSISSIPPI: Mississippi Supreme Court hears oral argument in a lawsuit challenging anti-democratic law targeting the state capital
- WLBT: Mississippi Supreme Court hears oral arguments in House Bill 1020 challenge: We’re now awaiting a decision from the state’s Supreme Court Justices on the challenge to House Bill 1020. The case claims aspects of the law are unconstitutional. This appeal is the last stop for the state court case. ”The Mississippi constitution forbids the judicial appointments demanded by HB 1020 and permitted by Mississippi code section 9-1-105(2),” said attorney for plaintiffs, Cliff Johnson, Director of the MacArthur Justice Center. “We have elected our circuit court judges in Mississippi for over 100 years.” Cliff Johnson is one of the attorneys for the plaintiffs and argued before the justices that appointing judges is only constitutional if they are replacing a judge who can no longer serve. The state argues such appointments have been done for years, without challenge. “I think the core constitutional question before this court is whether the legislature may equip the courts of our state with the tools needed for the administration of criminal justice,” said Mississippi Solicitor General Scott Stewart. “That’s the core question. I think the answer has to be yes.”
TENNESSEE: State Supreme Court upholds law making it harder for former felons to vote
- WPLN: The Tennessee Supreme Court is making it tougher for former felons who moved from another state to vote: The Tennessee Supreme Court has made it tougher for former felons who moved to the state to vote. Three years ago, Grainger County resident Ernest Falls tried to register to vote. He had served his sentence for a felony he committed in Virginia in the 1980s, and was pardoned by the governor. Since he was eligible to vote in Virginia, he figured he would be able to register in Tennessee, where he now lives. But he wasn’t. “When Earnest registered to vote, the Secretary of State’s office had changed their mind. And their new policy was now everybody has to get a Certificate of Restoration,” explained Blair Bowie with the Campaign Legal Center. “Everybody has to go through this process to get their voting rights restored in Tennessee.” To get a restoration certificate, people have to go to court and show documents that prove they’ve served out their sentence. This includes probation and parole, and also paying off any court costs.
What Experts Are Saying
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW): “One hundred seventy-four defendants from 37 states who were charged for their participation in the January 6th insurrection have said they were answering Donald Trump’s calls when they traveled to Washington and joined the violent attack on the Capitol. CREW’s examination of court filings, transcripts, and news items regarding defendants in January 6th cases shows that defendants—ranging from convicted seditionists such as members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers to individual members of the public—considered Trump their leader and believed they were following his lead by joining the insurrection.” Report: “Trump has called all patriots”: 174 Jan. 6th criminal defendants say Trump incited them
Hakeem Jefferson, an assistant professor of political science at Stanford University: “We cannot have it both ways. We either choose to have a flourishing multiracial democracy of political equals, or we choose to have no democracy at all. That is the choice we face and for all our sake, I hope we choose wisely.” San Francisco Chronicle Op-Ed: Is America’s rigid racial hierarchy compatible with democracy?
Aziz Huq, Frank and Bernice J. Greenberg Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School: “The Supreme Court’s changed gears this year. Last year it went gang-busters on abortion, gun rights, religion, and more. It cast decades of established precedent to the wind, stripping many of what had seemed inalienable rights, and exposing many others to new harms. The Court Term that closed this June again wrapped up with important decisions—this time on affirmative action, student debt relief, and religious compliance with the civil rights law. None, however, depended on sudden, large jumps in the law. A more cautious, more legalistic tribunal seemed at work. The Justices seemed in first gear, not turbo mode…If the Justices are hitting the brakes, therefore, it may well be that ultimate effect is exactly the opposite of what it might seem: A more powerful Court, less respectful of democracy, driving the policy further and further to the right.” TIME Op-Ed: No, the Roberts Court Is Not Moderating
Elie Honig, former Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York: “If [Walt] Nauta sticks by Trump, the parties will need to grapple with another vital issue: should Trump and Nauta be tried together or separately? Typically, prosecutors want to try all defendants at once. This is primarily a strategic consideration; the prosecutor usually wants to show the jury the entirety of the criminal scheme, all at once. And part of it is pragmatic; prosecutors don’t want whichever defendant goes second to have the benefit of seeing the witnesses testify in advance.” CAFE
Headlines
The MAGA Movement And The Ongoing Threat To Elections
Salon: Trump’s violence has been normalized: Why the media ignored MAGA’s threat against Barack Obama
Nation: How Rumble Is Planning to Be the Premier MAGA Platform
Guardian: With Trump in trouble, Republicans step up assault on DoJ and FBI
Trump Investigations
NBC: Special counsel Jack Smith subpoenaed Arizona secretary of state’s office in Jan. 6 probe
New York Times: The Trump Classified Documents Indictment, Annotated
Washington Post: Prosecutors in Trump classified documents case are facing threats
New York Times: Trump Asked About I.R.S. Inquiry of F.B.I. Officials, Ex-Aide Says Under Oath
Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Grand jurors who will consider Trump charges to be selected Tuesday
January 6 And The 2020 Election
Vanity Fair: Remember When Donald Trump Discussed Seizing Voting Machines and Invoking Martial Law? Special Counsel Jack Smith Sure Does
Rolling Stone: The DOJ Is Probing Trump’s Push to Overturn the Election. Here’s What We Know
Bloomberg: Trump’s Lingering Appeal Over Pence’s Jan. 6 Testimony Dismissed
NBC-2 Houston: Trump-appointed judge gives a ‘break’ to Jan. 6 rioter who wants to be a police officer
Opinion
Washington Post: Why MAGA elites are facing a fresh set of disasters
New York Times: Look at What John Roberts and His Court Have Wrought Over 18 Years
MSNBC: Trump’s effort to flip Arizona in 2020 didn’t need to stay secret
New York Times: The John Roberts Two-Step
Los Angeles Times: The lasting threat is not the ‘next Trump,’ but the MAGA base
In the States
Star Tribune: With felon voting rights restored, Minnesota Secretary of State Simon encourages registration
Washington Post: How the former Confederate capital slashed Black voting power, overnight
FOX 13: Utahns hit the streets to support lawsuit involving redistricting process
