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US Monthly Headline News September 2022
WCVB

BOSTON — A group says it is suing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and others over what it is calling a "fraudulent and discriminatory scheme" to transport nearly 50 Venezuelan migrants from San Antonio, Texas to the Massachusetts island of Martha's Vineyard without shelter or resources in place. The organization Lawyers for Civil Rights announced Tuesday that a federal civil rights class action lawsuit was filed on behalf of a class of affected immigrants, including the dozens flown to Martha's Vineyard, and Alianza Americas, a network of migrant-led organizations supporting immigrants across the United States.

According to Lawyers for Civil Rights, the group of migrants in San Antonio were targeted and induced to board airplanes and cross state lines under false pretenses. In addition to DeSantis, Lawyers for Civil Rights said it is suing Florida Department of Transportation Secretary Jared Perdue, the state of Florida, and their accomplices. "No human being should be used as a political pawn in the nation’s highly polarized debate over immigration,” Ivan Espinoza-Madrigal, executive director of Lawyers for Civil Rights, said in a statement. “It is opportunistic that activists would use illegal immigrants for political theater,” said Taryn Fenske, DeSantis' communication director, in a statement late Tuesday.
The sheriff’s move follows requests from Democrats for the Justice Department to investigate DeSantis over the flights.
By Andrew Atterbury

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — A Texas sheriff on Monday opened an investigation into the legality of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ recent move to fly dozens of mostly Venezuelan migrants to Martha’s Vineyard. Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar, an elected Democrat, said that while he could not cite specific laws that may have been broken by relocating the migrants, his office will be investigating what he called an “abuse of human rights.” The threat of criminal charges is an escalation against DeSantis amid widespread criticism from Democrats as the Republican governor promises to continue diverting migrants in Texas as a statement against Biden administration immigration policies.

“Somebody saw fit to come from another state, hunt them down, prey upon them, and then take advantage of their desperate situation just for the sake of political theater, just for the sake of making a statement,” Salazar told reporters Monday. “I believe people need to be held accountable for it to the extent possible.” The DeSantis administration last week paid an aviation company $615,000 to transport some 48 migrants from San Antonio — located in Bexar County — to the elite vacation enclave in Massachusetts. The Republican-led Florida Legislature had approved $12 million this spring for moving migrants out of Florida to other states, something DeSantis is now capitalizing on as he seeks reelection this fall.
By Matthew Chapman | Raw Story

On MSNBC Wednesday, Sandra Garza, the former partner of deceased Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, tore into former President Donald Trump for praising Ashli Babbit, the January 6 insurrectionist who was killed by police while trying to force her way though a broken pane of glass. Trump, who has repeatedly defended Babbitt and called her an "incredible woman," also called into a rally for the high-level January defendants in the D.C. jail this week.

"You could see [Babbitt] on video trying to climb through the chamber, which was the only piece of glass that was between these screaming insurrectionists who were trying to get in clearly to harm members of Congress, and she went through that glass and, you know, she wasn't killed in the street. She was killed trying to break into those offices and then praising her," said anchor Joy Reid. "What do you make of it?"

"First, I want to say Trump is disgusting," said Garza. "The comments that he made were incredibly insensitive. I do feel terribly for Ashli Babbitt's family. I know their pain is just as significant as my pain was, but what he said about Lieutenant Byrd, the officer who had to make that terrible decision and making that shot, was terrible. He put everybody there that day in a terrible position."
By Alex Henderson | AlterNet

On Tuesday, September 13, federal Judge Bruce Reinhart unsealed additional parts of the affidavit that was used as the basis for the FBI’s August 8 search of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago compound in Palm Beach, Florida. Although a heavily redacted version of the affidavit had been released in August, attorneys for the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) pushed for more parts of the affidavit to be unsealed — and on September 13, they were. New details in the affidavit that have been made publicly available, legal experts allege, indicate that Trump may have made false or misleading statements to his attorneys — who repeated them to DOJ officials.

Business Insider’s Tom Porter reports, “According to the newly-released information, one Trump attorney told the DOJ ‘he was not advised there were any records in any private office space or other locations in Mar-a-Lago.’ A lawyer for Trump, Christina Bobb, also signed a statement saying that all of the information requested by the government had been handed back. That information turned out to be false. When agents executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago on August 8, they found stashes of highly confidential records, including in Trump's offices, haphazardly kept alongside his personal items. Analysts say the new evidence indicates Trump himself was likely behind the attorney’s false claims.”
CBS News

Tallahassee, Florida — Florida Governor Ron DeSantis on Wednesday flew two planes of immigrants to Martha's Vineyard, escalating a tactic by Republican governors to draw attention to what they consider to be the Biden administration's failed border policies. Flights to the upscale island enclave in Massachusetts were part of an effort to "transport illegal immigrants to sanctuary destinations," said Taryn Fenske, DeSantis' communications director.
While DeSantis' office didn't elaborate on their legal status, many migrants who cross the border illegally from Mexico are temporarily shielded from deportation after being freed by U.S. authorities to pursue asylum in immigration courts — as allowed under U.S law and international treaty — or released on humanitarian parole. Terry MacCormack, press secretary for Massachusetts' Governor Charlie Baker, a Republican, said in a statement that the state's executive was "in touch with local officials regarding the arrival of migrants in Martha's Vineyard." "At this time, short-term shelter services are being provided by local officials, and the Administration will continue to support those efforts," MacCormack said.
By Brad Reed | Raw Story

Pro-Trump House Republican candidate J.R. Majewski squirmed during an interview this week when asked about his previous social media posts that promoted the QAnon conspiracy theory. Taylor Popielarz of Spectrum News DC this week conducted an interview with Majewski in which he asked him about the multiple times the Ohio candidate used QAnon hashtags and even going so far as to wear a shirt with the letter "Q" on it. "I would say that I have very rarely gotten a question about that," he replied. "The only time I get a question about that, it's from the mainstream media... voters in Ohio's 9th district don't care about QAnon." He then tried to pivot back to talking about inflation and high gas prices, both of which are Republicans' top issues heading into the 2022 midterm elections.
Zoe Tillman

(Bloomberg) -- Legal ethics prosecutions against Rudy Giuliani and Jeffrey Clark are progressing along with state, federal, and congressional probes exploring the role that they and others played in aiding Donald Trump’s effort to undo the 2020 election. The DC Bar’s Office of Disciplinary Counsel filed separate cases over the summer alleging that Giuliani and Clark -- both members of the local bar -- violated rules that govern the conduct of licensed attorneys. Clark, a former Justice Department official under Trump, responded earlier this month to the charges, which accuse him of dishonesty and making false statements. His lawyers argued that he did nothing wrong or unlawful. They say the DC Bar’s regulators lack jurisdiction to prosecute him over advice he gave to a sitting president, that the case improperly delved into executive branch discussions, and that Clark was being targeted for his political affiliation as a Republican.
Ed Mazza

Jimmy Kimmel was stunned on Wednesday by a new report that shows election-denying pro-Trump Republicans will be on the ballot in half the nation during the midterm elections. “How is this a thing?” Kimmel asked on Wednesday night. “There is literally no evidence of any kind of fraud, certainly not fraud that could’ve come anywhere close to changing the outcome of the election.”  Kimmel noted that the election was certified in all states by secretaries of state from both parties. “And yet these lowlifes continue with this lie,” he said. “It’s the dumbest thing. Imagine if half the Republican nominees believed that chicken is a vegetable, and just said, ‘That’s it.’ This is exactly as dumb as that.” Then, Kimmel looked at the latest on one of the nation’s most prominent election-deniers: MyPillow Guy Mike Lindell:
Pamela Brown Evan Perez Jeremy Herb Kristen Holmes
By Pamela Brown, Evan Perez, Jeremy Herb and Kristen Holmes, CNN

CNN —  Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows has complied with a subpoena from the Justice Department’s investigation into events surrounding January 6, 2021, sources familiar with the matter tell CNN, making him the highest-ranking Trump official known to have responded to a subpoena in the federal investigation.

Meadows turned over the same materials he provided to the House select committee investigating the US Capitol attack, one source said, meeting the obligations of the Justice Department subpoena, which has not been previously reported. Last year, Meadows turned over thousands of text messages and emails to the House committee, before he stopped cooperating. The texts he handed over between Election Day 2020 and Joe Biden’s inauguration, which CNN previously obtained, provided a window into his dealings at the White House, though he withheld hundreds of messages, citing executive privilege.
By Sarah K. Burris | Raw Story

Former President Donald Trump and his allies have claimed multiple times that there was a kind of "declassification order" on many of the documents that he took from the White House back to his country club in Florida. In an interview with the Fox network, Trump said that while he was in office he "often took documents, including classified documents, to the residence" and "had a standing order that documents removed from the Oval Office and taken to the residence were deemed to be declassified the moment he removed them." Former National Security Adviser John Bolton said that while he was there there was nothing of the sort going on, and that the idea of a standing declassification order is "almost certainly a lie."
BY LISA MASCARO | THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON — Upending the political debate, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham introduced a nationwide abortion ban Tuesday, sending shockwaves through both parties and igniting fresh debate on a fraught issue weeks before the midterm elections that will determine control of Congress. Graham's own Republican party leaders did not immediately embrace his abortion ban bill, which would prohibit the procedure after 15 weeks of pregnancy with rare exceptions, and has almost no chance of becoming law in the Democratic-held Congress. Democrats torched it as extreme, an alarming signal of where “MAGA” Republicans are headed if they win control of the House and Senate in November.

"America’s got to make some decisions," Graham said at a press conference at the Capitol. The South Carolina Republican said rather than shying away from the Supreme Court's ruling this summer overturning Roe vs. Wade's nearly 50-year right to abortion access, Republicans are preparing to fight to make a nationwide abortion ban federal law. “Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, we’re going nowhere,” the senator said flanked by women advocates from the anti-abortion movement. “We welcome the debate. We welcome the vote in the United States Senate as to what America should look like in 2022.”
Steve Benen

When it comes to the many ongoing scandals surrounding Trump World, it’s tempting to think the Mar-a-Lago controversy is the most serious. After all, the former president stands accused of having stolen classified materials, refusing to give them back, and obstructing the retrieval process. There’s an ongoing criminal investigation, and indictments are a distinct possibility. But by some measures, the most dramatic scrutiny of Donald Trump and his team remains the Justice Department’s criminal probe of the Jan. 6 attack and the Republicans’ efforts to overturn the election results.

For months, there was ample speculation about whether investigators were moving forward with any vigor at all. As the latest New York Times reporting suggests, those questions continue to get answers. According to the Times’ reporting, much of which has been confirmed by NBC News, federal agents executed court-approved search warrants, taking the phones at least two people — Trump lawyer Boris Epshteyn and campaign strategist Mike Roman — while also issuing subpoenas to a variety of figures, including Dan Scavino, Trump’s former social media director, and Bernie Kerik. The subpoenas, according to the Times, were related to the investigation into the fake electors scheme.
CBS News

The Senate Judiciary Committee will investigate whether the Justice Department under then-President Donald Trump tried to use the Manhattan U.S. Attorney's office to go after Trump's political adversaries. Senator Dick Durbin, a Democrat who chairs the Judiciary Committee, called the allegations "astonishing" in a letter he sent to Attorney General Merrick Garland, asking the Justice Department to provide documents related to the allegations.

The allegations stem from a new book written by Geoffrey Berman, who as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York was the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan for half of Trump's presidency. He says in his book, "Holding the Line," that he was repeatedly pressured by Justice Department officials to use his office to aid the Trump administration politically, including by investigating former Secretary of State John Kerry. A Republican and Trump-administration appointee, Berman said he walked that "tightrope" for 2 1/2 years before "the rope snapped," the New York Times reported.
'Really shocking': Trump's meddling in Stone case stuns Washington
Alarmed veterans of the Justice Department said the legal system was entering uncharted territory.
By Natasha Bertrand and Daniel Lippman

President Donald Trump’s post-impeachment acquittal behavior is casting a chill in Washington, with Attorney General William Barr emerging as a key ally in the president’s quest for vengeance against the law enforcement and national security establishment that initiated the Russia and Ukraine investigations. In perhaps the most tumultuous day yet for the Justice Department under Trump, four top prosecutors withdrew on Tuesday from a case involving the president’s longtime friend Roger Stone after senior department officials overrode their sentencing recommendation—a backpedaling that DOJ veterans and legal experts suspect was influenced by Trump’s own displeasure with the prosecutors’ judgment.

“With Bill Barr, on an amazing number of occasions … you can be almost 100 percent certain that there’s something improper going on,” said Donald Ayer, the former deputy attorney general in the George H.W. Bush administration. The president has only inflamed such suspicions, congratulating Barr on Wednesday for intervening in Stone’s case and teeing off hours later on the prosecutors, calling them “Mueller people” who treated Stone “very badly.” The president said he had not spoken with Barr about the matter, but Ayer called the attorney general’s apparent intervention “really shocking,” because Barr “has now entered into the area of criminal sanction, which is the one area probably more than any other where it’s most important that the Justice Department’s conduct be above reproach and beyond suspicion.”
By Brad Reed | Raw Story

Lawyers representing former President Donald Trump today made a filing in an attempt to block the government from continuing its investigation into the top-secret government documents he hid at his Mar-a-Lago resort, but Daily Beast reporter Jose Pagliery believes he's found what he calls a "legal sleight of hand" in their arguments.

In particular, Pagliery notices that the Trump lawyers have not directly asserted that he declassified all of the documents that he stashed away at Mar-a-Lago, despite also saying he had the complete authority to do so. The reason for this, Pagliery speculates, is that making such a claim could open them up to legal problems of their own without proper evidence in their favor. "As legal scholars closely monitoring this case have pointed out, lawyers putting that in writing could force them to back that up with proof that Trump actually took appropriate steps as president to make that happen," he argues. "And so far, there’s no sign he did that."
By Sarah K. Burris | Raw Story

WASHINGTON — The New York Times reported Monday afternoon that at least 40 subpoenas have been filed for allies of former President Donald Trump over the attempt to overthrow the 2020 election using the fake electors. At least two of Trump's top advisers had their phones taken by the FBI, sources told the Times. Boris Epshteyn, a Russian-American Republican political strategist who served as a strategic adviser to Trump's 2020 campaign was one of those who had to surrender his phone. The other was Mike Roman an opposition researcher who worked for Trump from 2017 to 2018. He went on to work on the campaign, and became the person who handed off the envelope of fake electors to be given to Vice President Mike Pence. The Times described it as an indication that the Justice Department's case is escalating after slow movement for the past several months.
By Sarah K. Burris | Raw Story

Donald Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen has long said that he was disproportionately targeted by the Justice Department and the Department of Corrections after it became clear he would no longer cover for his former client. Former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Geoffrey Berman, has spoken to Congress, and publicly after he was shoved out of the Justice Department by former Attorney Bill Barr, after refusing to go after allegedly innocent people tied to former President Barack Obama. But another foe of Trump ultimately became Cohen. An excerpt of Berman's book, "Holding the Line," scheduled to be released on Tuesday, alleges that the SDNY was going after Cohen even after Cohen agreed to plead guilty. While Cohen has pleaded guilty to nebulous tax charges, he maintains that the crimes cited in his plea he was innocent of.
By Josh Gerstein and Kyle Cheney

Adecision by a judge appointed by former President Donald Trump to temporarily halt a Justice Department investigation into Trump’s handling of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate triggered an avalanche of criticism from across the legal spectrum, including attacks from conservatives who served in the Trump administration. “It was deeply flawed in a number of ways,” former Attorney General William Barr said. But Judge Aileen Cannon’s ruling is just one of a flurry of controversial decisions by Trump judges in recent months that have been criticized as out of step with longstanding legal principles.

Among the provocative decisions from Trump-appointed judges:
A Trump appointee in Arkansas ruled in February that the Voting Rights Act can’t be enforced by private individuals or groups, despite more than five decades of such litigation.

In May, another Trump appointee in Florida canceled scheduled arguments in a challenge to the federal mandate for mask use in transportation, then rushed out a decision striking down the requirement just days before it was set to expire.
Also in May, a Trump-appointed federal judge in Texas blocked the Biden administration from lifting pandemic-related immigration restrictions Trump imposed in 2020. Those envelope-pushing rulings have fueled questions about whether Trump’s judicial picks are more conservative or more partisan than those of previous Republican presidents and whether decades of unorthodox decrees from those judicial picks lie ahead.
Ana Ceballos, McClatchy Washington Bureau

While visiting a private Christian college in southern Michigan that wields influence in national politics, Gov. Ron DeSantis rephrased a biblical passage to deliver a message to conservatives. “Put on the full armor of God. Stand firm against the left’s schemes. You will face flaming arrows, but if you have the shield of faith, you will overcome them, and in Florida we walk the line here,” DeSantis told the audience at Hillsdale College in February. “And I can tell you this, I have only begun to fight.”

The Republican governor, a strategic politician who is up for reelection in November, is increasingly using biblical references in speeches that cater to those who see policy fights through a morality lens and flirting with those who embrace nationalist ideas that see the true identity of the nation as Christian.

He and other Republicans on the campaign trail are blending elements of Christianity with being American and portraying their battle against their political opponents as one between good and evil. Those dynamics have some political observers and religious leaders worrying that such rhetoric could become dangerous, as it could mobilize fringe groups who could be prone to violence in an attempt to have the government recognize their beliefs.
By Jack Queen

(Reuters) - U.S. conspiracy theorist Alex Jones faces trial this week in Connecticut to determine how much he must pay a group of families of victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting that left 26 dead, including 20 children, for falsely claiming it was a hoax. A jury in Texas, where Jones' radio show and webcast is based, last month held that he must pay two parents of a child killed in the Newtown, Connecticut, massacre $49.3 million. Here is a breakdown of the lawsuits against Jones and what comes next for Jones and Free Speech Systems LLC, the parent company of his right-wing website Infowars.

THE CONNECTICUT CASE
In the Connecticut trial beginning this week, 14 family members of Sandy Hook victims are seeking damages from Jones and Free Speech Systems for claiming they were “crisis actors” who lied about their relatives’ deaths as part of a gun-grabbing conspiracy by the U.S. government. “He urged the audience to ‘investigate,’ knowing his audience would respond by cyberstalking, harassing, and threatening the plaintiffs,” the families said of Jones in their 2018 lawsuit. The trial follows more than four years of delays after Jones failed to comply with court orders and the plaintiffs' requests for documents, leading a judge to issue a default judgment against him last November. The trial concerns only how much Jones and his company must pay in damages. Free Speech Systems filed for bankruptcy in August -- which typically shields companies from lawsuits -- but later agreed to face the trial.
By Brad Reed | Raw Story

A new book from New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman claims that former President Donald Trump planned to blockade himself in the White House and refuse to leave despite his loss to President Joe Biden in the 2020 election. CNN reports that White House aides told Haberman that Trump said multiple times that he would not leave the White House to make way for Biden, even though Trump had lost every court challenge and Biden had been certified as the winner of the election. "I'm just not going to leave," Trump told one aide who spoke with Haberman. "We're never leaving," Trump told a separate aide. "How can you leave when you won an election?
By Tom Boggioni | Raw Story

In interviews with the Guardian, former Department of Justice officials singled out Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) for their continuing attacks on the FBI and the DOJ as they attempt to protect Donald Trump who is under investigation. As the DOJ pursues possible Espionage Act and obstruction charges against the former president after he was caught holding sensitive government documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort -- necessitating a search by FBI agents armed with a warrant -- the two senior Republicans, as well as Trump, have ramped up attacking government agents for doing their jobs.

That has some former DOJ officials fuming.

According to the Guardian's Peter Stone, "The unrelenting attacks by Trump and loyalists such as McCarthy, senator Lindsey Graham, Steve Bannon and false conspiracy theorist Alex Jones against law enforcement have continued despite strong evidence that Trump kept hundreds of classified documents illegally," adding, "Former law enforcement officials and scholars warn that using such conspiratorial rhetoric impugning the motives and actions of the justice department and the FBI runs the risk of inciting threats of violence and actual attacks, fears that have already been proven warranted."
By ALANNA DURKIN RICHER and MICHAEL KUNZELMAN

The names of hundreds of U.S. law enforcement officers, elected officials and military members appear on the leaked membership rolls of a far-right extremist group that’s accused of playing a key role in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, according to a report released Wednesday. The Anti-Defamation League Center on Extremism pored over more than 38,000 names on leaked Oath Keepers membership lists and identified more than 370 people it believes currently work in law enforcement agencies — including as police chiefs and sheriffs — and more than 100 people who are currently members of the military.

It also identified more than 80 people who were running for or served in public office as of early August. The membership information was compiled into a database published by the transparency collective Distributed Denial of Secrets. The data raises fresh concerns about the presence of extremists in law enforcement and the military who are tasked with enforcing laws and protecting the U.S. It’s especially problematic for public servants to be associated with extremists at a time when lies about the 2020 election are fueling threats of violence against lawmakers and institutions.
Peter Stone in Washington DC

Donald Trump’s non-stop drive to paint the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago to recover classified documents as a political witch hunt is drawing rebukes from ex-justice department and FBI officials who warn such attacks can spur violence and pose a real threat to the physical safety of law enforcement. But the concerns have not deterred Republican House minority leader Kevin McCarthy and other Trump allies from making inflammatory remarks echoing the former US president.

The unrelenting attacks by Trump and loyalists such as McCarthy, senator Lindsey Graham, Steve Bannon and false conspiracy theorist Alex Jones against law enforcement have continued despite strong evidence that Trump kept hundreds of classified documents illegally. Before the 8 August raid, Trump and his attorneys stonewalled FBI and US National Archives requests for the return of all classified documents and did not fully comply with a grand jury subpoena in a criminal probe of Trump’s hoarding of government documents. The FBI search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home and club recovered 33 boxes with over 100 classified documents, adding to the 200 classified records Trump had earlier returned in response to multiple federal requests.
salarshani@businessinsider.com (Sarah Al-Arshani)

Senate Intelligence chair Mark Warner said it's "stunning" that 21 years after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, "the attack on the symbol of our democracy" hadn't come from foreign threats but from within the US. "I remember, as most Americans do, where they were on 9/11. I was in the middle of a political campaign and suddenly, the differences with my opponent seem very small in comparison and our country came together. And in many ways, we defeated the terrorists because of the resilience of the American public because of our intelligence community, and we are safer, better prepared," Warner told CBS's "Face the Nation" host Margaret Brennan. "The stunning thing to me is here we are 20 years later, and the attack on the symbol of our democracy was not coming from terrorists, but it came from literally insurgents attacking the Capitol on January 6th," he added.
Published Thu, Sep 8 20223:47 PM EDTUpdated 2 Min Ago
Kevin Breuninger, Dan Mangan

The Department of Justice on Thursday appealed a federal judge’s ruling to authorize a special master to review documents that the FBI seized from the Florida residence of former President Donald Trump. The Justice Department also asked Judge Aileen Cannon to pause her related order blocking the government from further reviewing documents marked classified that were found during last month’s search of Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Palm Beach resort home. The moves came three days after Cannon approved Trump’s request for a special master to sift through the seized materials to identify personal items and records that are protected by attorney-client privilege or executive privilege.

The DOJ had opposed that request, saying it had already completed a privilege review of the documents, and that a special master could harm the government’s national security interests. The FBI seized more than 10,000 government records when it raided Mar-a-Lago on Aug. 8. Many of those documents bore classification markings, including dozens of folders that were empty when they were collected by the FBI.
The former Trump strategist pleaded not guilty after being arraigned on the six-count indictment Thursday afternoon.
By Dareh Gregorian and Tom Winter

Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon was charged Thursday in New York with defrauding donors who were giving money to build a wall at the southern U.S. border. Bannon, 68, was indicted on charges including money laundering, scheming to defraud, and conspiracy in what prosecutors described as a year-long scheme. He pleaded not guilty during a brief arraignment before acting Justice Juan Merchan, and agreed to surrender his passports as a condition of his bail.

“He’s not going anywhere. He intends to fight these charges all the way,” Bannon's attorney David Schoen told the judge. The six-count indictment also names the group WeBuildTheWall.Inc, which it says worked with Bannon on the scheme in 2019. Bannon was chair of the "advisory board" for the group, which prosecutors say duped thousands of donors by maintaining that all the money raised would go to building a wall along the southern border and not to the people running the effort.
Steve Benen

The Washington Post’s report on the FBI finding nuclear secrets at Mar-a-Lago was obviously stunning, though the article used a specific phrase that warrants a closer look. According to the reporting, some of the documents seized at Donald Trump’s glorified country club was so highly sensitive that it fell under the category of “special-access programs.” The Post added, “Documents about such highly classified operations require special clearances on a need-to-know basis, not just top-secret clearance. Some special-access programs can have as few as a couple dozen government personnel authorized to know of an operation’s existence.”

On the show last night, Alex spoke to John Brennan, the former director of the CIA, who also acknowledged that the documents in question are “part of special-access programs, SAPs.” He added, “These are documents that are the most highly sensitive and highly restrictive within the U.S. government.” Obviously, the fact that the former president took such materials and refused to give them back is extraordinary, and may yet prove to be criminal. But the specific reference to special-access programs reminds me of something we last discussed a couple of weeks ago: a quote from a House Republican that’s worth revisiting.
Giovana Gelhoren

Cuoy Griffin, an Otero County, New Mexico, commissioner and founder of Cowboys for Trump, has been removed from office and disqualified from any future public office positions due to his involvement in the Jan. 6 capitol riots. The decision was made final on Tuesday by New Mexico Judge Francis Matthew, court documents reveal. The ruling was the result of a lawsuit in which plaintiffs urged for Griffin's removal under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. The section states that "No person shall hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as an officer of the United States, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same."
Kevin McCoy | USA TODAY

Steve Bannon, a longtime adviser to former President Donald Trump, is expected to surrender for arraignment Thursday in New York City on new criminal charges involving an alleged fundraising scheme. The case is expected to echo aspects of a previous federal criminal case that accused Bannon and three co-defendants of conspiring to dupe donors who contributed more than $25 million to build a security wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. Those who ponied up to a crowdfunding campaign allegedly were assured all of the money raised would go toward the construction project – helping to boost a signature goal of the Trump White House.
Kalyn Womack

When the students of Charles Page High School returned for the school year, they were greeted by a number of other students handing out “white privilege cards” in the hallways. According to Fox23 News, the BIPOC students who were fed up with the nonsense hosted a walk out in protest of the racism. The report says these cards, sold on Amazon, were seen nationally but this is the first time they were spotted locally in Oklahoma. The cards read, “White Privilege Trumps Everything. Member since birth. Good thru death. Card holder, Scott Free.” One student, Fabian Gaytan, said he was handed a card and called a racial slur in the same moment. Previously, a picture of a Black student circulated Snapchat, offering a cash reward “if caught.” Parents had previously complained about racism within the Sand Springs school district. This time, the students had enough.
insider@insider.com (Cheryl Teh)

A former FBI official said former President Donald Trump may have wanted to keep top-secret documents about a foreign power because of the astronomical price that country — or its adversaries — might have paid for such information.  Former FBI assistant director Frank Figliuzzi was asked by MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle on Wednesday why Trump would have wanted to keep top-secret documents about a foreign country's nuclear program at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida as was earlier reported by The Washington Post.

In response, Figliuzzi posited that the high price of these documents would make them attractive assets to possess. "If I were to be asked what the highest price tag or highest value might be on what kind of classified US government information, certainly among the top of my answers would be: nuclear-related information," he said. He elaborated that such information has "potentially the greatest value" if one were to try to "market it and capitalize" on having such files. "Well, first, a country would give its right arm to learn what the US knew about its nuclear program and capabilities, not only for the obvious reason of, 'Hey, they figured this out,' but also because it would signal what we don't know about their program," Figliuzzi said.
By MICHELLE R. SMITH, Associated Press

Michael Flynn, a retired Army lieutenant general and onetime national security adviser to President Donald Trump, has been systematically building a political movement based on Christian nationalist ideas. Flynn was a leader of the “Stop the Steal” effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election that Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden. Flynn sat in the front row at a rally near the White House on Jan. 6, 2021, when then-President Trump urged his supporters to march on the Capitol.

In the years since, Flynn has traversed the United States, trying to assemble his own political support. An investigation by The Associated Press and the PBS series “Frontline” found that Flynn has used public appearances to energize voters, made political endorsements to build alliances and amassed a network of nonprofit groups to advance the movement. Along the way, Flynn and his companies have earned hundreds of thousands of dollars for his efforts.
Former intelligence chiefs say national security officials are ‘shaking their heads at what damage might have been done’
Julian Borger in Washington

Mar-a-Lago – the Palm Beach resort and residence where Donald Trump reportedly stored nuclear secrets among a trove of highly classified documents for 18 months since leaving the White House – is a magnet for foreign spies, former intelligence officials have warned. The Washington Post reported that a document describing an unspecified foreign government’s defences, including its nuclear capabilities, was one of the many highly secret papers Trump took away from the White House when he left office in January 2021.

There were also documents marked SAP, for Special-Access Programmes, which are often about US intelligence operations and whose circulation is severely restricted, even among administration officials with top security clearance. Potentially most disturbing of all, there were papers stamped HCS, Humint Control Systems, involving human intelligence gathered from agents in enemy countries, whose lives would be in danger if their identities were compromised.
The GOP war on voting just took a new turn
By Bob Brigham | Raw Story

Republicans are not just fighting to limit access to the ballot box but are increasing battling what questions can even appear on ballots.

"Hundreds of thousands of people signed petitions this year backing proposed ballot initiatives to expand voting access, ensure abortion rights and legalize recreational marijuana in Arizona, Arkansas and Michigan," the Associated Press reported. "Yet voters might not get a say because Republican officials or judges have blocked the proposals from the November elections, citing flawed wording, procedural shortcomings or insufficient petition signatures."

The AP noted GOP lawmakers in both Arizona and Arkansas are attempting to amend their constitutions to make it harder put citizen initiatives on the ballot. "The Republican pushback against the initiative process is part of a several-year trend that gained steam as Democratic-aligned groups have increasingly used petitions to force public votes on issues that Republican-led legislatures have opposed," the AP reported.
bdawson@insider.com (Bethany Dawson)

A 2020 video clip of Donald Trump calling Democrats "fascists" has resurfaced on social media.
bdawson@insider.com (Bethany Dawson)

The video, which has gone viral on Twitter, shows the former president speaking at Mankato regional airport, Minnesota, in August 2020 when he was on the presidential campaign trail. He tells his supporters that Democrats are "fascists," saying they want to "destroy our second amendment, attack the right to life, and replace American freedom with left-wing fascism. Fascists, they are fascists."
Trump is support the insurrectionist and seditious people who attacked and sacked our capitol.

Five people — including a Capitol Police officer attacked by rioters — died as a direct result of the events of Jan. 6, 2021
By Virginia Chamlee

While those involved in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol have been widely denounced by politicians on either side of the aisle, as well as condemned by the American justice system, Donald Trump says he would considering pardoning them if elected again. What's more, the former president said this week he is financially supporting some of the rioters. Roughly 850 people have been arrested for crimes related to the 2021 attack. More than 250 of those have been charged with assaulting or impeding law enforcement.

Speaking to radio host Wendy Bell, Trump said that if he runs for president in 2024 and wins, he will "be looking very, very strongly about pardons, full pardons." Reuters reports that elsewhere in the interview, Trump — who has previously declared himself "the president of law and order" — said he is "financially supporting" some of the rioters facing legal consequences due to their involvement, though he did not offer specifics. "I am financially supporting people that are incredible and they were in my office actually two days ago. It's very much on my mind. It's a disgrace what they've done to them," he said.
Besides documents marked top secret and classified, newly unsealed information shows Trump also had a mountain of other documents and photos.
By Dareh Gregorian and Ryan J. Reilly

In addition to troves of information marked "secret" and "top secret," the FBI's search of former President Donald Trump's Florida home turned up over 10,000 U.S. government documents and photographs without classification markings, a newly unsealed Justice Department inventory of the seized items shows. The Justice Department court filing, filed under seal earlier this week but unsealed by a judge Friday, also shows investigators found more than 40 empty folders with "classified" banners on them at Mar-a-Lago. It's unclear what happened to the information that had been inside the folders.
Lauren Gambino in Washington

Joe Biden warned that American democracy was in grave peril by Republican forces loyal to Donald Trump who “fan the flames” of political violence in pursuit of power at any cost. In a primetime address from Philadelphia, the city where American democracy was born, the US president said the United States was in a continued battle for the “soul of the nation.” It was reprising a theme that animated his campaign for the White House in 2020 to frame the stakes of the November elections as an existential choice between his party’s agenda and Republicans’ “extreme Maga ideology”.

“Donald Trump and the Maga Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our Republic,” Biden said in remarks delivered at Independence Hall. Maga is short hand for “Make America great again” – a slogan from Trump’s 2016 election campaign. Biden emphasized that not all, not even most, Republicans are “Maga extremists” but there was not a question, he said, that the party was “dominated, driven and intimidated” by his White House predecessor – and perhaps would-be successor.

These Trump Republicans, he said, “thrive on chaos” and “don’t respect the constitution” or the rule of law. They “promote authoritarian leaders and they fan the flames of political violence”, he continued, adding that they believe there are only two possible outcomes to an election: either they win or they were cheated. “You can’t love your country when only you win,” Biden said to thundering applause.
Domenico Montanaro

Democrats have picked up some momentum this election cycle with wins in multiple special elections, following the Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade. And the FBI search of former President Trump's Florida home has thrust Trump back into the spotlight, front and center. Lots of his candidates have won contentious primaries; he's consolidated his base; and his renewed presence has threatened to make the November elections a choice rather than a referendum on President Biden.

Biden and the White House leaned into that Thursday night with an unusual prime-time address that broke no news or made any big announcements. Instead, Biden took the opportunity to elevate Trump and make it a choice between what Biden and Democrats stand for and MAGA Republican extremism, as he sees it, and their rising influence in positions of power throughout the country.
insider@insider.com (Cheryl Teh)

President Joe Biden on Thursday called out the MAGA world for only respecting free and fair democratic elections when they win them. During a prime-time speech, he spoke about the "battle for the soul of the nation" and slammed "MAGA Republicans" for fanning the "flames of political violence." In his speech, Biden called upon Americans to reject political violence and not allow the integrity of the country's elections to be undermined. While he acknowledged that politics in a "big, complicated country" like America could be "fierce and mean and nasty," he said that democracy would endure only if its people "accept the results of free and fair elections."
Katherine Fung

Lawyers for former President Donald Trump reversed course Thursday, opposing the unsealing of a more detailed list of the items seized during the FBI's Mar-a-Lago search. In its court filing this week, the Department of Justice (DOJ) said it would be OK with the court releasing its more comprehensive list detailing exactly what was found during the August 8 raid by federal investigators. However, Trump's team objected to the document being unsealed, according to former Prosecutor Andrew Weissmann.

Thursday's hearing marked the first time Trump's lawyers appeared in court for a proceeding related to the Mar-a-Lago search. While the hearing was not open to the public, several reporters were present in the Florida courtroom. The debate over whether Trump should be granted his request for a special master in the Mar-a-Lago matter is expected to reach a conclusion now that both sides have delivered their arguments to U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon. On Thursday, Cannon held a closed-door hearing to consider Trump's bid for an outsider to be assigned over the review of documents seized. The judge did not make a ruling from the bench. It is unclear when her written order will come. Legal scholars noted that Trump's team had asked for the detailed inventory to be unsealed in its original motion.
The wife of supreme court justice Clarence Thomas urged a Wisconsin state senator and representative to do their ‘duty’
Martin Pengelly

Ginni Thomas, the wife of the US supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, lobbied lawmakers in Wisconsin as well as Arizona in November 2020, seeking to overturn Joe Biden’s victories over Donald Trump in both swing states. Thomas emailed lawmakers in support of Trump’s lie that Biden won thanks to electoral fraud. The Washington Post reported Thomas’s efforts in Arizona earlier this summer. On Thursday it detailed her efforts in Wisconsin, citing emails obtained under public-records law. Thomas emailed a Wisconsin state senator and a state representative, both Republican, on 9 November, two days after the election was called for Biden.

The messages used the same text as those sent to Arizona officials and were also sent using a form-emailing platform. The subject line read: “Please do your constitutional duty!” The text said: “Please stand strong in the face of media and political pressure. Please reflect on the awesome authority granted to you by our constitution. And then please take action to ensure that a clean slate of electors is chosen for our state.”
Wife of Supreme Court justice was apparently leading wide-ranging effort to influence local officials
John Bowden

The wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was active in not just one but two states as she sought to overturn the rightful results of the 2020 election in favour of Donald Trump, new emails show. The Washington Post reported on Thursday that Ginni Thomas emailed at least two elected lawmakers in Wisconsin, urging them to back the plot for a vote to “decertify” the state’s election results (which is not something the state legislature can legally do) in favour of a slate of Trump-supporting “electors” who would go to Washington and cast Electoral College votes.
Thursday hearing at West Palm Beach courthouse the latest stage in dispute stemming from FBI search at Trump’s Florida home
Ed Pilkington

Lawyers for Donald Trump and the Department of Justice were going head to head on Thursday in front of a federal judge in Florida as they fought over whether to appoint a “special master” to review the documents seized by the FBI at Mar-a-Lago earlier this month. Thursday’s hearing at a federal courthouse in West Palm Beach was the latest stage in the dispute that erupted after Trump’s resort and residence was searched on 8 August. The FBI action, conducted in an active criminal investigation about the alleged harboring of secret documents at Trump’s premises, was the first time a former president has been subject to such an indignity in US history. Judge Aileen Cannon, of the federal district court for the southern district of Florida, was appointed to the bench by Trump himself in 2020. She has indicated that she is inclined to side with the former president and appoint a special master – an outside person, usually a lawyer, who would review the documents to see whether any were covered by privilege and should be returned to Trump. In a filing to the judge on Wednesday, Trump’s legal team called for independent oversight of the justice department’s actions. “The court should task the special master with conducting a review of all of the seized materials … to identify documents subject to attorney-client and/or executive privilege.”
Analysis by Stephen Collinson, CNN

(CNN) Donald Trump's scattershot defense in the weeks since FBI agents descended on his Mar-a-Lago resort has only exposed the depth of the mess he faces over his refusal to return classified documents that led to an unprecedented search of an ex-president's home. As he keeps inadvertently giving the Justice Department new openings, there are also signs that the fast-expanding drain on Trump's time and focus is having a political impact as he considers delaying his timeline for the launch of a likely 2024 White House bid, as CNN's Gabby Orr and Kristen Holmes reported Wednesday. But Trump is not done with the time-honored strategy of delaying, distorting and trying to tie the legal system up in knots, which has throughout his life in business and politics often succeeded in postponing or preventing accountability. In a legal filing on Wednesday laced with trademark chutzpah ahead of a critical new court hearing in Florida, Trump ditched a core argument he's made for days -- that he had already declassified documents found on his property. In a head-spinning pivot, Trump's legal team effectively argued that no one should be shocked he had classified documents at his home -- he was once president, after all. "Simply put, the notion that Presidential records would contain sensitive information should have never been cause for alarm," the filing said.
By Kevin Liptak, Phil Mattingly and Kaitlan Collins, CNN

(CNN) A pair of fiery speeches inside packed gymnasiums over the past week left even some White House aides surprised at President Joe Biden's new-found sense of electricity. Yet when he delivers a rare prime-time address Thursday evening in Philadelphia, Biden's somber assessment of American democracy isn't likely to generate any cheering from the small in-person audience in front of Independence Hall.
Thursday's remarks will instead adopt a far graver tone, officials say. After tearing into Republicans for what he calls "MAGA extremism" and "semi-fascism," administration officials say Biden has determined the time is right to provide a serious, sober reckoning on what he regards as growing anti-democratic forces building across the country. "This is not a speech about the former President," a senior administration official told reporters. "This is a speech about democracy." It's a topic Biden has come to embrace more publicly in recent months after initially attempting to ignore the after-effects of his predecessor and focus instead on national unity. At its core, the speech, which the White House says will center on the "continued battle for the soul of the nation," represents the same overarching theme that defined the launch of his presidential campaign in 2019 as he set out to defeat Trump.
Controversial former vice-presidential candidate’s bid to return to frontline politics dramatically falls short
Eric Garcia

Former state legislator Mary Peltola beat former governor Republican governor Sarah Palin to become the first Democrat to represent Alaska in Congress in almost fifty years. Ms Peltola, a former state representative whose mother was Yup’ik, will also be the first Native Alaskan to represent the state since it formally joined the union as a state in 1959. She responded to the result by tweeting: “It is a GOOD DAY.” NBC News reported that Ms Peltola had secured 51.5 per cent of the vote (91,206 votes), while Ms Palin managed 48.5 per cent 85,987 votes).
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