The Mueller investigation of a democratic presidential candidate: The case against Donald Trump and the obstruction to the rule of law in the U.S. Senate

Even with his loyal base intact, Trump could face untold obstacles in the months to come as he tries to return to the Oval Office. He spent the days since the election arguing that he did nothing wrong and that he was not a bad person, he even lashed out at two Republicans who could complicate his path to the White House if they mount their own campaigns.

For today’s newsletter, I spoke with Maggie about what she’s learned, about how much the media should cover Trump and about what’s likely next for him.

You were a New York Post reporter in the 1990s and you have spent more time covering and interviewing Trump than anyone else. You have pointed out that he lies a lot. I want to know how interviewing him can help you better capture reality.

One question hanging over the congressional committee, however, is whether the higher standard of evidence required by a court could lead prosecutors to believe it would be hard to convict the former president. While witnesses and evidence were not subjected to the kind of cross-examination that occurs in court, it was difficult to judge the strength of the case against Trump.

The big news out of the final hearing was that after a lengthy investigation, the members of the committee were convinced there was enough evidence to charge former President Trump on four things:

The relatively little movement in public opinion since the hearings opened in June, at least as measured by an array of polls, underscored the calcification of American politics in recent years. Many voters have been kept out of the loop by their views. Mr. Trump’s supporters for the most part have remained loyal to him, brushing off the congressional investigation as the partisan exercise he claims it to be.

As a result, a former president who tried to overturn a demonstrably free and fair election to hang onto power in defiance of the voters, the Constitution and nearly two and a half centuries of democratic tradition remains the dominant figure in his political party and the odds-on favorite to win its nomination to run again. The committee documented the plot for history’s sake, but could not enforce accountability for it.

These unprecedented referrals suggest that Mr. Trump, who as president took an oath to uphold the Constitution, not only violated that oath, but also committed a series of specifically indictable crimes. One of these referrals — for the crime of inciting an insurrection — is the most stunning, the most unpredictable and the most crucial, for its implications and its remedy include barring the former president from holding political office.

Trump dropped his clearest hint yet Saturday of a new White House run at a moment when he’s on a new collision course with the Biden administration, the courts and facts.

It was already unusual for Trump to be mentioned in the same sentence as a political figure. A one-term president fades into history very quickly. It’s a testament to the firm hold he has over much of the GOP that he is still a key player nearly two years after losing reelection. And while there is growing talk about whether his thicket of legal and political controversies could convince some GOP primary voters it’s time to move on, Trump still seems to have plenty of juice.

The nation and its legal and political systems are not dealing with or moving on from the shock and awe of Trump’s tumultuous single White House term. Liz Cheney said on Sunday that the House select committee wants to make sure that Trump doesn’t turn his potential testimony into a circus.

The potential for a presidential campaign based on the ex- President’s claim of political persecution could cause even more upheaval than his four years in office.

While Democrats and Republicans disagree on policies on the economy, abortion, foreign policy, and crime, voters will mostly be interested in the former President’s past and future in the coming political period.

The committee investigating the January 6 insurrection is looking into Trump’s subpoena. The Justice Department is about to make a decision over whether or not to charge the ex- President over the mob riot.

The Case against Kari Lake: A Charge against Joe Biden for Defending the Integrity of the American Voter’s Fraud

In Arizona, one of the ex-President’s favorite candidates, GOP gubernatorial hopeful Kari Lake – a serial spreader of voter fraud falsehoods – is again raising doubts about the election system. “I’m afraid that it probably is not going to be completely fair,” Lake told AZTV7 on Sunday.

There’s a rising prospect next month’s election will install a Republican majority in the House that will effectively mean a return of Trumpism to political power given the hold the ex-President maintains over the House GOP. The Republicans who support the idea of a ‘Make America Great Again’ are already talking about trying to impeach Biden because they believe that he will clash with Trump in the future.

The Republican Party in Washington is likely to expand after the polls close. Scores of Trump-endorsed candidates are running on a platform of his 2020 election fraud falsehoods, raising questions over whether they will accept results should they lose their races in just over two weeks.

The former president was defeated by the Supreme Court in his attempt to hid his tax returns, which are set to land before a House committee. The judges of the appeals court appeared to be cool to his most recent attempt to slow the Mar-a-Lago case. The case against Trump, three of his children and his organization will go to trial in October of 2023, the same year that the Republican presidential primary season gets under way. The senator testified to a Georgia grand jury regarding the former president’s election-stealing bid.

Democrats have made their own attempts to return Trump to the political spotlight. President Joe Biden equated MAGA followers with “semi-fascism” and some campaigns have tried to scare critical suburban voters by warning pro-Trump candidates are a danger to democracy.

On the investigation of the collusion between Cheney and Biden with the White House Committee on Investigations of the 2016-2019 midterm elections

The party in power in Washington will be in bad shape if voters are worried about inflation and gasoline prices before going to the polls.

The ex-President told supporters at a rally in Texas on Saturday regarding the possibility of a new White House bid, “I will probably have to do it again.”

Cheney told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that it might take several days, and it will be done with a level of rigor and discipline that it deserves.

“This isn’t going to be, you know, his first debate against Joe Biden and the circus and the food fight that that became. This is a far too serious set of issues.”

The hearings were part of a broad case against Trump. The panel wanted to show that he did not lose the 2020 election, that he knew that Biden was the winner and that he tried to influence the outcome by harassing election workers and state GOP officials.

The committee’s work may continue even after its days are over. One of the two criminal probes Jack Smith is conducting into Trump is looking at the events leading up to January 6, and prosecutors could use a lot of testimony from people who have already given statements. Once the final report is released on Wednesday, the panel is expected to start releasing transcripts from the more than 1,000 interviews it conducted.

It is harder for the former President to control how his testimony would be used if it were video testimony, as it will be harder for him to dictate the terms of the exchanges.

This could all become academic anyway. Assuming a new Republican majority in congress would sweep the January 6 committee away as one of its first acts, the possibility of a legal challenge to the subpoena could drag on for months and become meaningless.

If there is evidence a crime was committed, Garland would face a dilemma over whether the national interest lay in implementing the law to its full extent or whether the consequences of prosecuting a former commander in chief in a fractious political atmosphere could tear the country apart.

A decision to charge an ex-president running for a non-consecutive second White House term would undoubtedly cause a firestorm. If there was evidence of a crime, sparing him from accountability would send a bad signal.

Donald Trump’s run for president: What will he learn if he loses his nomination? The role of the special counsel on the investigation of Russia and its collusion with the Pentagon

A professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University, Zelizer is a CNN political analyst. His forthcoming co-edited work is a book entitled “Myth America: Historians Take on the Biggest Lying about Our Past” (Basic Books). Follow him on Twitter @julianzelizer. The views expressed by him are not his own. CNN has more opinion on it.

It looks like Donald Trump will run for president again. On Thursday, Trump told his followers to get ready for his return to the presidential campaign trail and his top aides have been looking at a possible launch date of November 14, sources told CNN. It is believed that Donald Trump is hoping to become the first person since 1906 to win two elections in a row.

After disappointing midterms in 2018 and 2022, and a lost presidential reelection bid in 2020, Republicans have hopefully learned the downside of putting all their eggs in the MAGA basket. Cementing Trump as the sole figurehead of GOP politics puts future general election victories at risk. Republicans will be quick to punish candidates who are too fond of throwing Trump under the bus.

Polls show the GOP is in good shape going into the election, despite candidates such as Herschel Walker and Mehmet Oz who are both deeply flawed. Meanwhile, Democrats are scrambling to defend several seats and even candidates in reliably blue states such as New York are at risk.

A GOP midterm victory would also embolden Trump himself. He has escaped accountability at this point. Even though the criminal investigations are ongoing, Trump is still a viable political figure.

And if Trump announces his candidacy, the Department of Justice is weighing the possibility of announcing a special counsel to oversee two sprawling federal investigations into Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his alleged mishandling of national security documents kept at Mar-a-Lago. We have seen Trump use his attacks on the Russia investigation to get rid of the former special counsel. And once Trump is formally a candidate, it will make prosecuting him all the more difficult. It’s safe to say that any investigation will be used as a way to take Trump out of the running.

If Trump avoids prosecution, he’d surely unleash a fierce assault on the President, who could very well still be struggling with a shaky economy and divisions within his own party. And if election deniers enter positions of power after the midterms, and Trump escapes any punishment for January 6, it’s likely he will take advantage of the loyalists who have infiltrated state and local election offices to make sure that victory is his. Trump’s experience at the rodeo will allow him to perfect the technique and rhetoric that propelled him into office in the first place. And now that Elon Musk has purchased Twitter, Trump could be reinstated – giving him a way to direct and shape the media conversation once again. (Trump, who founded Truth Social, where he has been active since he was banned from Twitter, has not publicly indicated that he will return).

This campaign is about the future. Issues will be the focus of this campaign. Joe Biden has put America on the fast track to ruin and destruction and we will ensure that he does not receive four more years,” Trump said at a small event Saturday in the South Carolina State House.

There are also signs that the power of the Republican grassroots is leading the GOP down a dark and futile road. The party that defeated Soviet Communism is now attempting to undermine US democracy. Moderate and suburban voters who helped the GOP to losses in key swing states are being scared off by Trump as a result of his lies about election fraud. Following Trump’s defeat in 2020, there’s a major question whether the no-compromise populism that the base demands can win national elections.

To hold onto their leadership jobs and adjust to what the country now wants from them, Republican leaders are scrambling to figure out what message the voters in the midterm election sent them.

There are still several uncalled House races that will determine control. And while it won’t decide the Senate majority, the still-important runoff election between Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker in Georgia won’t take place until December 6.

Perhaps GOP voters are so keen to win back the presidency that they will look for a change. Trump gave notice to everyone in the country that he will fight with everything he has to win the White House, in his speech at the CPAC, which was similar to the themes of his inaugural address. He told reporters that he would not be dropping out of the race even if indicted.

It will be the Republican Party that is thrust into the 2024 race, thanks to Trump, with the former President demanding endorsement and fealty from elected officials who are still trying to figure out what happened last week.

The Point: Trump is about Trump. He is the leader of the Republican Party, yes, but he simply does not prioritize the good of the party over his own good.

The legal chaos surrounding him has come into focus since he declared his third campaign for the Republican presidential nomination last week. It’s the first test of whether the swirling courtroom peril facing him on multiple fronts will detract from his capacity to mount a credible campaign and whether it will put off GOP primary voters who may consider an alternative candidate.

Seven years ago, the New York businessman entered the political fray on defense, working vigorously to cast himself as a serious contender for the Republican presidential nomination to the incredulity of veteran political operatives and his primary opponents. This time, Trump takes the plunge as the party’s indisputable frontrunner, but once again, he finds himself in a defensive crouch.

In Georgia, a man who was an adviser to Trump lost in a Senate election. That was also the day Trump posed for photos with a prominent QAnon conspiracy theorist at Mar-a-Lago.

On Saturday, CNN projected that Democrats will retain control of the Senate in the 118th Congress, an outcome that has fractured Republicans and left the party on tenterhooks as Trump readies his “big announcement.”

When Does Donald Trump Run for the Preside? An Insider’s View of a Former State Senator’s Candidate Glenn Youngkin

Three sources familiar with the matter said the former president believed Youngkin was supportive of comments his lieutenant governor, Winsome Earle-Sears, made during a Fox Business appearance last week. She told the network she would not support Trump if he runs for president a third time.

Responding to repeated questions about Trump’s impending 2024 announcement, Earle-Sears said, “A true leader understands when they have become a liability. A true leader understands that it is time to step away from the stage, and the voters have given us that very clear message.

Sears wouldn’t tell The Washington Post if Youngkin knew before the interview that she was going to split from Trump.

“If Glenn Youngkin decides to run for president, that’s his choice. John Fredericks, a Virginia based conservative radio host who chaired the Trump campaigns in the state in 2016 and 2020, said that Team Trump will mount a massive effort to win the delegates in Milwaukee that will hurt Youngkin.

It is true that the then-president’s endorsement in his first gubernatorial race helped elevate DeSantis, who in many ways adopted Trump’s culture war politics and “Make America Great Again”-style grievances toward political elites. At the same time, DeSantis has developed a powerful brand all his own and has implemented multiple Trump style policies targeting what he calls the “Far left-woke agenda” in schools and businesses that the former president never approached on a national level. He just won his reelection race by nearly 20 points, far outdistancing the performance of Trump in Florida in 2020. While Trump helped increase the popularity of the Florida Governor, he has turned into a GOP figure in his own right.

“I know there’s a lot of criticism and people saying, ‘Just focus on Georgia,’ but he figures there’s no point in waiting. If Herschel loses, he’ll be blamed for distracting from the runoff but if he wins, he doesn’t believe he will get any credit for energizing the base,” said a current Trump adviser.

Republicans have to choose between defending him or having to bind themselves even tighter to the controversial figure, which could lead to a split of the party. Navigating between those pitfalls will require some willingness to criticize Trump, while going hammer and tongs against the likely decision to prosecute a rather arcane alleged violation of state law.

“Nobody should be surprised. Michael Caputo is a former Trump administration official who is still close to the former president. “The question you have to ask is whether this format can work for him again.”

Some of the party’s biggest donors have been meeting with other potential presidential candidates to discuss funding alternative candidates, even though the former president has significant grassroots support. It’s a concern Trump allies are confronting head on as they privately explore ways to make the monstrous pile of cash he has raised since leaving office available to him as a presidential candidate. If the Florida governor runs for the GOP nomination in the race for the Presidency in four years, Ken said he would support him. Two other Republican donors who gave to Trump in 2016 and 2020 and requested anonymity for fear of retribution told CNN that they, too, were waiting to see what DeSantis decides to do, while one of them said they would also be willing to support former Vice President Mike Pence should he challenge his former boss.

A person close to Trump said that the Trump campaign would be a big challenge, but he believed that the candidate did not need deep-pocketed donors.

Some Trump allies said that a lack of seasoned campaign operatives willing to join his next campaign has arisen due to the donor challenges, Mid-term outcome and questions about his stature. The president has told his allies that he wants to keep his operation lean, but some have privately wondered if it’s out of preference or due to recruitment troubles. CNN has previously reported that Trump’s likely campaign is expected to be helmed by three current advisers – Susie Wiles, Chris LaCivita and Brian Jack – with assistance from a group of additional aides and advisers with whom the former president is already familiar. Overall, his 2024 apparatus is expected to dwarf in comparison to his reelection campaign two years ago, multiple sources said.

Allies who have stuck by him said they are ready for battle as Trump tries to find his footing on the road to the White House.

The Ex-Reality TV Star and Former Chairman in Chief of the House Ways and Means Committee: Mueller Investigations and a Case of Hurricane Daniels

The property developer, ex-reality TV star and former commander in chief faces multiple investigations after seeking to overturn the 2020 election and over his handling of classified documents after leaving office. But his most immediate exposure may be in a case over an alleged hush money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels.

Trump and his company deny any wrongdoing or criminality in all matters, state and federal, and have aggressively maintained innocence. The two lawsuits brought by Trump’s niece and former lawyer were dismissed this week.

On Wednesday, the Washington Post reported that a team of investigators hired by the former president’s lawyers, under a federal judge’s order, found two documents with classified markings in a Florida storage unit.

Given Trump’s massive legal exposure, and habit of using the courts’ deliberative pace to postpone accountability, it’s not unusual for him to have a tough time on the same day in simultaneously running cases.

Some GOP voters have doubts about whether Trump can win in the next election. In a February PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist poll, 54% of likely 2024 GOP voters said they believed the party would have a better chance to win next year if it nominated someone other than Trump, while only 42% said picking the former president again would give Republicans their best odds of success. The doubts were especially deep among Republicans holding at least a four-year college degree, with 71% of them saying that another nominee would improve the party’s prospects and only 26% saying Trump represented the GOP’s best bet. White evangelical Christians, another core group of Trump supporters, leaned slightly toward someone other than Trump, despite the fact that even Republicans without four-year college degrees split evenly on that question.

Hutchinson said that it was difficult for the public to see the chaos around the candidate for president. It is a reflection of all of the challenges that go with a Trump candidacy.

The first sign that Trump was determined to shatter rules was his refusal to follow precedent by showing his tax returns to the public. So the Supreme Court’s decision not to block the Internal Revenue Service from releasing his tax documents to the House Ways and Means Committee represented a significant personal defeat, as well as a political one.

The leadership of the committee want the returns to make a determination about if there is a case for changes to tax laws regarding sitting presidents. The possibility of hidden conflicts of interests or obligations owed by presidents or missed or under payments on such returns could be problematic given a chief executive’s power in setting tax policy. A lower court had previously ruled that the committee had a valid legislative purpose for seeing the returns. With a few weeks left before the Republicans take over the House, it is not certain how much time Democrats would have to review the returns or make changes to the law.

On the substance of the case, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal, a Massachusetts Democrat, said that the Supreme Court had upheld a vital norm. Today’s principle of oversight is the same as it was since the ancient world came to an end. This rises above politics and the committee will conduct oversight that we have been seeking for the last three and a half years.

Kevin Brady warned that the court’s step away would mean that no citizen could be safe from a majority political party.

The tax returns fight will have an impact on how future Republican presidential candidates deal with their financial records. They wouldn’t reestablish a tradition of transparency for presidents by releasing them. They could potentially outflank Trump.

The panel of judges at the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals was not in agreement with Trump about why he was entitled to a special master and how to sift through 22,000 pages of material from his Florida resort. A key question at issue here is whether Trump, as a former president, is entitled to the kind of judicial intervention that could slow countless routine legal cases involving other Americans if it were widely adopted.

It is clear for the first time that the Justice Department has evidence that Trump may have committed a crime when it was reported by ABC News that a finding in a major ruling on Friday was related to that. And Howell ruled that prosecutors met the burden to overcome Trump’s right to shield discussions with his lawyers normally protected under attorney-client privilege.

“Other than the fact that this involves a former president, everything else about this … is indistinguishable,” Pryor told Trusty during the arguments.

Trusty was rebuked by another judge for making the FBI search of Trumps property look like a raid. “Do you think a raid is the right term for the execution of a warrant?” Grant asked, “Are you sure?” Trusty apologized for the use of that term.

Ryan Goodman, a former special counsel at the Department of Defense, told CNN’s Burnett the court could decide to overrule Judge Aileen Cannon, who appointed the special master, in what would be a severe blow to the ex-president.

A special counsel was appointed to oversee the documents case last week, so a move like that could speed up the case.

It may offer clarity to the public, who might now evaluate another political scenario involving Trump. The former president’s multiple legal challenges have slowed both cases, but Tuesday offered signs that each could be moving closer to resolution.

The price of supporting Donald Trump to the Republican Party keeps getting higher. There are fresh evidence that shows why the party could be in serious trouble if the former president runs for president again.

The Last Two Years: When Trump and the Republicans fought each other, and where does he stand today? How did Trump and his wife Kayne West dine?

This week was not a one-off. For instance, it comes after his decision to dine with Kayne West soon after Ye, as he’s now known, made more antisemitic comments. Also at the table that evening was Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes, who is a notorious promoter of racism of all kinds.

Scott Reed, a Republican strategist, said this week the two that came before were very bad for Trumps future viability. The New York Times quoted Reed as saying that the writing on the wall seems clear. “Abandonment,” he said, “has begun.”

Why might all of this matter now? After all, turmoil is Trump’s main currency. As businessman, reality television celebrity and president, he has always counted on generating controversy as his central strategy for garnering media attention. He uses the investigations and attacks that come his way as a basis for his position as a anti-establishment figure who sympathizes with the common person.

Trump seeks to weaponize the anger that he creates so as to be seen as someone who cares about people. Despite being insulted, Trump won both of the GOP presidential nominations and the election. The same dynamic stayed throughout his one term in office.

It has never proved to be a concern for the Republican powerbrokers that Trump has gone too far. This isn’t the issue that motivates them.

In recent weeks, almost nothing has been new to Trump. He was involved in scandal from the day he became a politician. As president, he constantly flouted the limits of power. And he has a history of making remarks that invoke antisemitic tropes.

To live with Trump, Republican officials and their rank and file have learned how to be loyal to him, because they believe that he can win. Whether it was out of fear or hope, Republicans showed that they would tolerate almost anything – even trying to overturn an election – to protect him.

To be sure, none of these developments mean that he is done. My argument has been that there are many ways in which Trump could win the Republican nomination in 2024.

Nonetheless, the frustration is growing. Besides actual legal peril, of all the political problems facing Trump right now, it is the most recent elections that put him in genuine peril with the party. Republicans are watching the ways that Trump and the candidates he supported cost them the majority power. McConnell might be forgiving of many things, but having to serve as the minority leader is not one of them.

The warning that the future threat to truth and democracy remains acute is brought by each sign that slowly burning efforts are heating up again. A Georgia lawmaker who is part of the incoming GOP House majority that is likely to attempt to shut down or prevent investigations into Trump, is now in a controversy over the insurrection.

The Georgia Republican claimed that if she had her way, the mob that broke into the Capitol would have been armed. She insisted that she was joking when she said the White House condemned her comments. The ex-president demanded that the Constitution be thrown out in order to highlight how his potential second term might play out if he is re-elected.

— In a third Trump legal entanglement, Fani Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, Georgia, said in January that charging decisions were imminent in an investigation into the ex-president’s attempt to overturn President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory in the critical swing state. Willis’ office, which is considering bringing racketeering and conspiracy charges, could make decisions this spring, CNN reported on Monday. In a Hail Mary move, Trump’s lawyers have tried to get a court to throw out the special grand jury’s final report.

“It’s been over 700 days since the Washington Post published the full hour audio … of that highly incriminating phone call – 700 days for the DOJ to finally get around to subpoena him. When does it happen? Under Jack Smith.”

If Trump’s legal team believed that Smith’s appointment would mean he was less influenced by the January 6 attack and a fresh mind would lean against indictments, then they were guilty of wishful thinking.

Preet Bharara, a former US attorney for the Southern District of New York, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday that Smith’s appointment and his assembling of a high-powered team of experienced prosecutors represented bad news for Trump.

I don’t think they would leave their former positions if there was a chance the Justice Department was going to charge. He thinks it will happen in a month.

The Daniels case is almost six years old, and as the country prepares to vote in a presidential election, questions about the case for anyone not involved in the investigation could be raised. Mark Kelly, a Democratic senator from Arizona, told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday that nobody in our nation should be above the law. But he also said: “I would hope that, if they brought charges, that they have a strong case, because this is … unprecedented. There are risks involved.

The CNN legal analyst says the case is coming up against a challenge to be finished before the election.

“So, I think they will bring a case on the documents side, if they can, as soon as they can,” Rodgers said, adding that any case on January 6 would probably take more time.

While Smith is following legal procedures, the political context makes it even more incumbent on the DOJ to demonstrate to Americans that it had no choice, for instance, to mount an unprecedented search at an ex-president’s home.

The former president will face more scrutiny in the final report of the January 6 committee, which wants to make a case for his record before it is expunged by the incoming House GOP majority next year.

Given its tone and direction, it would be something of a surprise if the panel did not recommend the House refer Trump, among other aides, to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution when it wraps up. The committee does not have the power to level charges. The DOJ has no right to act on any recommendations. Its own investigations would have to resolve the question of whether professional prosecutors agreed with the conclusions of Congress acting in its constitutional oversight role.

That’s yet another reason why the turn of the year and the early months of 2023 are beginning to look like a moment of reckoning for both Trump and those who are investigating him.

As it contemplates its final act, the committee is clouded by questions over its effectiveness, legitimacy and legacy despite the fact that Trump starts a new White House bid on the same day.

Could the act of sending criminal referrals to the DOJ risk furthering the perception of politicization of separate investigations into the aftermath of January 6?

The panel is expected to be wiped out next month by an incoming Republican House majority featuring scores of lawmakers who voted not to certify the last presidential election and who still whitewash that day of infamy nearly two years later.

In its highly produced hearings, the committee – with its seven Democrats and two Republicans who split with their own party to take part – painted scenes of horrific violence and intense efforts by Trump to steal Joe Biden’s presidency.

There was blood all over the place during the melee when the ex-president’s mob smashed its way into the Capitol. A mother and daughter who worked as election workers in Georgia said they faced racist threats after Rudy Giuliani accused them of vote stealing. In his testimony, the outgoing Republican speaker of the Arizona state House testified that Trump’s calls to meddle with the election were foreign to him.

Often, it was Republicans – some who were with Trump in the West Wing on January 6 – who courageously testified about his assault on the Constitution, including Cassidy Hutchinson. The ex-aide recalled it was unpatriotic. It was un-American. We were watching the Capitol building get defaced over a lie.”

The hearings claimed that the committee had evidence that Trump helped to plot a scheme to subvert the election in Congress. When those efforts failed, after then-Vice President Mike Pence refused to wield powers he did not have, the committee argued that Trump called a mob to Washington and incited a vicious attack on the Capitol. Then, committee members argued, his inaction as the violence raged amounted to desecrating his sworn duty to protect Congress, the Constitution and the rule of law.

Someone tried to get state officials to find votes that weren’t there. The chair of the House Intelligence Committee and member of the January 6 committee said on Sunday that a person was trying to interfere with a joint session, even inciting a mob to attack the Capitol. “If that’s not criminal, then I don’t know what it is.

Do we really know where Donald Trump is after two years? Does Congress really care about Trump’s insurrection? An opinion piece from the Committee on Investigating the Russia Investigation

Will an impression be created that Trump is being treated unfairly after leaving the presidency two years ago, in favor of the Republicans?

And do Americans as a whole, at a time of national strain amid high inflation and the aftermath of a once-in-a-century pandemic, really care about events that rattled US democracy nearly two years ago?

“Every American must consider this,” Cheney said at one of the committee’s public hearings, in July. Can a president who is willing to make choices in the face of violence be trusted with authority again?

Americans turned down many of the candidates who had amplified Trump’s false claims of election fraud in order to protect American democracy.

It is difficult to determine how voters were affected by the work of the committee. Although the ex-president launched a new campaign that many consider to be politically motivated persecution, it did not stop the evidence of his insurrection from being in the news. This is important because of the attempts to distort what happened at the Capitol by some pro-Trump Republicans.

“This is a massive investigation that the committee has undertook. A former federal prosecutor told CNN that there was a lot of evidence and witnesses being identified.

“I think it’s the detail that accompanies the referrals themselves and the report that will give a roadmap to DOJ. There is a lot of pressure on the DOJ because they are playing catch-up, but they could use that detail to their advantage.

If nothing else, future generations will be able to judge the determination of the panel members, especially its two Republicans, and the courage of witnesses who told the truth to try save democracy.

Kinzinger’s actions in seeking to hold Trump to account was similar to those of Cheney, who served on the committee and will not be returning to Congress.

“Unfortunately we now live in a world where a lie is Trump’s truth, where democracy is being challenged by authoritarianism,” the Illinois Republican said.

“If we, America’s elected leaders, do not search within ourselves for a way out, I fear that this great experiment will fall into the ash heap of history.”

“Ours is not a system of justice, where foot soldiers go to jail and the masterminds and ringleaders get a free pass,” said committee member Jamie Raskin, D-Md., announcing the referrals.

More broadly, the committee has now sketched the most urgent framing of a perennial question about Trump’s riotous careers in business and politics: Will he ever face accountability for his rule-breaking conduct? The question is especially acute given that the norm crushed this time almost toppled US democracy.

The question of accountability gets to the core of the comment on foot soldiers, since many of the mob that trashed the Capitol have already been convicted and jailed. Since becoming President, Trump avoided paying political and legal prices as the ultimate example of a leader who skips past judgement. Former special counsel Robert Mueller, for example, unearthed a trove of information apparently showing Trump obstructed the Russia investigation but decided not to make a finding that the then-president committed crimes. Most of the Republicans in the Senate found reasons to keep Trump from being impeached twice.

Specifically, the panel said Trump should be charged with giving aid or comfort to an insurrection, obstructing an official proceeding, defrauding the US and making false statements. The committee claimed in its executive summary that the main cause of January 6 was former President Donald Trump. The events of January 6 wouldn’t have happened without him.

The DOJ has its own investigation into the events surrounding the insurrection, and will need to weigh whether the case stands up in a court of law or not.

Andrew says that the Justice Department has to go further on every one of the people who were touched and interviewed by the committee.

CNN legal analyst Elie Honig said that Trump’s lawyers would “go through every word of this, that is their job, that is their right. They are going to look for any inconsistencies, as well as looking for any reason to attack potential witnesses in court. That’s what defense lawyers do.

One particular complication for the Justice Department is that the nature of the insurrection and the involvement of a former president makes this an unprecedented case. A good defense team could seek to puncture a prosecution by reframing Trump’s true intent and muddying the question of what he honestly believed about whether or not there was fraud in the 2020 election. They were able to suggest that he was exercising his constitutional rights by telling his supporters to fight. Special counsel Jack Smith and Garland would have to satisfy themselves before laying charges that there was a substantial likelihood of obtaining a conviction if they decided to prosecute, after considering the likely thrust of Trump’s defense.

The most serious referral will most likely be against the First Amendment because it accuses Trump of giving aid and comfort to an insurrection.

The Department had to prove that the president’s comments were directed at lawless action. They would have to prove that he intended to have a mob engage in violent activity. It would be a problem to prosecute him under that charge.

Even if the select committee’s opinion is correct, it’s unlikely that prosecutors at the DOJ will change their mind about the former president being indicted. Still, the volume of testimony and other documents that have been amassed by the panel could be useful to the DOJ’s investigation, which is one reason prosecutors have been keen to get hold of its testimony and other materials for months.

It’s hard to say that Monday’s events will add to the pressure of investigating Trump, with the DOJ already facing enormous pressure. But at the same time, if Garland were to disregard multiple referrals, he would be certain to infuriate Democrats who already think the department has been slow to pursue Trump.

If the Manhattan investigation lead to an indictment of Trump for a simple misdemeanor, there would be serious consequences, according to Habba. It will cause a lot of trouble, Paula. I mean, it’s just a very scary time in our country,” Habba said. But she also said that “no one wants anyone to get hurt” and Trump supporters should be “peaceful.”

One way that the committee’s graphic depiction of Trump’s aberrant behavior could help Smith is by preparing the public – at least the portion that does not simply defend Trump whatever he does – for the grave possibility that a former president could go on trial. There are more attempted coups like fragile developing world democracies and dictatorships.

It is impossible for a man who behaves that way at that moment in time to serve in a position of authority again. Wyoming Republican said on Monday that he was not fit for office.

Rep. Bennie Thompson: “I know what I’m talking about, but what I don’t know” — and what I wouldn’t want to tell the president

“Accountability that can only be found in the criminal justice system,” committee Chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss. said. “We have every confidence that the work of this committee will help provide a roadmap to justice and that the agencies and institutions responsible for ensuring justice under the law will use the information we’ve provided to aid in their work.”

Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Smith once Trump announced he was running for president again as a way to show independence from the investigation.

All are close allies of Trump, and their resistance in the face of the rules has been emblematic of the antagonistic style of U.S. politics that was growing even before Trump came on the scene.

If Republicans control the ethics committee in the next Congress, it’s unclear if anything will happen to them.

It’s been clear to those of us who have covered Trump for a while, but that was confirmed by Hope Hunt, a former communications adviser in the Trump White House.

Hicks, whom we heard from for the first time Monday in the course of these hearings, said in taped testimony that she told Trump she was becoming concerned that these false claims of fraud were damaging his legacy.

“He said something along the lines of, ‘You know nobody will care about my legacy if I lose,’ ” Hicks said, ” ‘So that won’t matter, the only thing that matters is winning.’ “

It is undisputed by testimony from multiple former Trump administration officials that there was a lot of evidence that Trump knew he had lost and that he knew exactly what he was doing.

The Trump 2020 campaign manager, Bill Stepien, stated in testimony released by the committee that he usually had clear eyes. “Like, he understood, you know — you know, we told him where we thought the race was, and I think he was pretty realistic with our viewpoint, in agreement with our viewpoint of kind of the forecast and the uphill climb we thought he had.”

Stepien said that they would have to relay the news that someone had tipped off about the votes or the fraud. That would be our job as, you know, the truth telling squad and, you know, not — not a fun job to be, you know, much — it’s an easier job to be telling the president about, you know, wild allegations. It was hard to tell him that that wasn’t true.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/12/20/1144303656/5-takeaways-from-the-final-jan-6-committee-hearing

The Committee on Investigations of Electoral Fraud and Discrepancies: Why is the Donald Trump Campaign in a Key State?

Alex Cannon, one of the lawyers for the Trump campaign, said in a phone call with the former chief of staff that there was nothing he could do to change the results in any of the key states.

Trump was told by email that the numbers of voter fraud were incorrect, but he continued to tout them in the court and in public. He swore a oath to the best of his knowledge and belief that the numbers are true and correct.

These aren’t people who are aligned with Democrats or were “Never Trump” or “Trump Haters,” as the former president likes to say. The same can be said about most of the testimony that’s been aired by the committee.

“Although the Committee’s hearings were viewed live by tens of millions of Americans and widely publicized in nearly every major news source, the Committee also recognizes that other news outlets and commentators have actively discouraged viewers from watching, and that millions of other Americans have not yet seen the actual evidence addressed by this Report.”

So the committee said it’s releasing video summaries with each relevant piece of evidence. Most likely, it’s because the beginning of the hearing included a lot of previously seen testimony from previous hearings, similar to the recap of a previous season of a series on streaming services.

Eighty percent of Democrats and 55% of independents said they were paying “a lot” or “some” attention to the hearings. Some Republicans said they weren’t.

They do not have to act on what the Jan. 6 committee recommends, though investigators are paying close attention to the details of its findings. The DOJ doesn’t give much info on the special counsel’s work as they typically don’t give much info on investigations until they are in court.

Politically, it’s going to be up to voters to choose. Trump’s base will likely continue to support him. As we noted, Republicans have been the least likely to be paying close attention to these hearings. Donald Trump is the front-runner in a multi-candidate primary.

But he’s in legal trouble in multiple states, not just federally, and many of his preferred candidates — and election deniers — lost in swing states. So whether it’s because of the chaos that often surrounds him, the threat he presents to U.S. democracy and faith in its elections, or simply because his brand is not a winner in competitive states where Republicans likely need to win to take over the White House and Congress, Trump is at his most vulnerable point since winning the presidency six years ago.

The N.A.A.C.P.’s Griggs, who has known Willis since he was an undergraduate and working alongside her in the city solicitor’s office, calls her “a great lawyer, a consummate prosecutor,” but continues, “I just think that, you know, sometimes she’s a little too gung ho. And I think that justice is somewhere in the middle.” We met in his law office, and when I brought up Trump, Griggs pulled a book from his shelf and read aloud from Title 21, the state elections law, which bars “criminal solicitation to commit election fraud.” Griggs told me that if I played the recording of Trump’s phone conversation to a grand jury and then read the state codes they would indict him. Griggs said he found himself on the side of the prosecution rather than the defense in the case. He didn’t say if this particular prosecutor gave him hope, but he sounded upbeat as he noted that the former president, if indicted, would receive his due process “not on Fox News, not on his Truth Social, but in a Georgia courtroom.”

It was a remarkable statement, even for a president who had serially abused the powers of his office. Having been told by the very department that had investigated his claims of fraud that they were untrue, Mr. Trump told the acting attorney general and his deputy to lie about it and said he would take it from there.

The Campaign of Andrew W. Johnson During the Civil War: When Did George W. Cheney End His Amenable presidency Come to an End?

In making these referrals, the committee was certainly considering the past as well. Representative Liz Cheney speaks of her great-great-grandfather, who was a member of the Ohio Infantry during the Civil War. After the war, he and his fellow soldiers walked through the reviewing stand and passed Andrew Johnson. She might also have added that Johnson, the 17th president of the United States, would soon be impeached. Like Donald Trump. Like Donald Trump, he was acquitted.

After Ulysses S. Grant won the election of 1868, Johnson went home to Tennessee, where he began to plot his comeback. Since he possessed a talent for uniting moderate and radical Republicans along with Democrats and former secessionists, many of whom either hated him or now wanted nothing more to do with him, it wouldn’t be easy. But it wasn’t illegal.

The weekend’s events pointed to the possibility of some of the potential damage that a DeSantis presidency could cause to Trump. While his speech at the Reagan Library demonstrated a talent for explaining policy and a conversation style, he lacked showmanship skills that Trump has used to dominate Republican politics. Trumpism has always been more of a visceral and emotional backlash than an exercise in actually implementing ideological conservatism.

There was also something jarring about a former president who tried to steal the last election – and incited an insurrection to try to cling to power – campaigning and being embraced by supporters as if nothing happened.

There is also a clear sense that Trump believes he is owed the Republican nomination and feels that certain sections of his party are not sufficiently grateful for his turbulent one-term presidency.

I consider that disloyal when I hear he might run. For a lot of people it is not about loyalty, but about being loyal, that is what Trump told reporters on the jet.

Bars and nightclubs were shut and people were told to limit gatherings on beaches in March 2020. But by September, he had cleared them to open again, defying the advice of federal government health officials. The former president wanted to get to the correct side of the Florida governor, even though he had an altercation with the Biden administration over the Pandemic. But while challenging federal health advice could be a powerful litmus test for a GOP primary, the idea that Trump’s disastrous handling of the pandemic could be a vote winner in the general election is quite a leap.

“He comes to New Hampshire, and, frankly, he gives a very mundane speech. The response we have received is, he read his teleprompter, he stuck to the talking points, he went away,” Sununu told Bash. “So he’s not really bringing that fire, that energy, I think, that a lot of folks saw it in ’16. I think that it was a bit disappointing to some people. … So I think a lot of folks understand that he’s going to be a candidate, but he’s also going to have to earn it. That is New Hampshire.

Judging by his remarks about DeSantis and evangelical leaders, Trump is not yet ready to acknowledge that reality. Though his decision to visit an ice cream parlor late in the day in South Carolina was an unusual foray into retail politics and first-person contact with voters.

The two years of fury over the 2020 election may have turned off voters in 2022, when a lot of the election-denying candidates he promoted in swing states lost, so it may have cost the GOP the Senate.

All of his rhetoric has remained the same. On Sunday evening, he called into a rally for one on his favorite election-denying midterm candidates – failed Arizona gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake, who is still falsely insisting she won in November. And earlier on Saturday, in New Hampshire, the former president – who is facing criminal investigations by the Justice Department and a district attorney in Georgia over his attempt to overturn the 2020 election – could not resist taking aim at institutions that are revealing the true course of events in 2020.

We will stop the weaponization of our justice system. This is a justice system that has never been done before. It’s all investigation, investigation,” Trump said. And he branded his resistance to such probes as more proof of the very quality that many Republicans embraced in 2016 and that helped propel him to the White House.

“There’s only one president who has ever challenged the entire establishment in Washington, and with your vote next year, we will do it again and I will do it again,” he said Saturday.

The gaffe of a fund-raiser for a candidate that was running for Lieutenant Governor, Burt Jones, when Willis was a prosecutor

If she has ambitions beyond the office of the district attorney, she hasn’t spoken publicly about them. One of the biggest gaffes so far is hosting a fund-raiser for Charlie Bailey, a former coworker at the D.A.’s office who was running for lieutenant governor. Bailey’s Republican opponent, Burt Jones, was one of 16 fake Trump electors Willis’s office was investigating, and the fund-raiser drew a sharp rebuke from Judge Robert McBurney of the Fulton County Superior Court — the same judge tasked with deciding whether to make public the special grand jury’s report — who called it a “what are you thinking” moment that created “horrific” optics and disqualified Willis from proceeding with her investigation of Jones.

Nearly two years into Willis’s term, “I give her all the positive marks for going after President Trump,” Jackson told me. I think it is a brave move. I believe it is the right move. She paused. “Yeah, that’s my praise.” Is her criticism? Jackson said that Willis was at the State Senate to talk about crime and public safety. Jackson had studied local crime statistics during the pandemic, however, and found a more complicated picture: murders up, other major crimes down. As Willis spoke, “I’m literally looking at the statistics — like, they’re on my desk right in front of me,” Jackson recounted. She said she struggled with that. “I mean, I understand what it is to be a politician. I understand that we have to be responsive to public pressure. We don’t have to add fuel to the fire. I respect her but there have been times when she has added fuel to the fire that we could have easily put out.

The report was a joke, and I was told several explanations of why the data was flawed. 25 people are in the Fulton County Jail, and they are there for 48 hours. “Unfortunately,” she added, “a lot of people with crimes that I think a regular citizen would say, ‘Hey, they need to stay in jail, they burglarized my house’ — that’s not even the kind of people that stay in jail here. People are released.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/02/magazine/she-took-on-atlantas-gangs-now-she-may-be-coming-for-trump.html

The 2020 Atlanta Grand Jury & the Foreperson of the Investigating Grand jury: Tim Heaphy explains his disappointment with the Trump campaign during January 6 riot

Mark Binelli writes for the magazine. He wrote about the opera director Yuval Sharon, and the legal aftermath of the biker brawl in Texas. A visual artist from Atlanta, Nydia Blas uses a Black female perspective to tell her stories. She was named one of The British Journal of Photography’s Ones to Watch in 2019.

There will probably be indictments in Georgia and at the federal level unless there is information that is not consistent, which I don’t expect, according to Timothy Heaphy.

In Georgia, the foreperson of the Atlanta-based grand jury that investigated former President Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election told CNN on Tuesday that the panel is recommending multiple indictments and suggested “the big name” may be on the list.

A telling under-told detail is that many of the 75 witnesses interviewed by Willis’ special grand jury — including this author — are Republicans who had voted for Trump in 2020. They had seen his antics first-hand. Many had been on the receiving end of his wrath in his desperate unrealistic attempt to cling to power.

Now that the grand jury is finished, it’s up to Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to review the recommendations and make charging decisions. The decisions made in this case will have a big impact on the presidential campaign.

For some significant events, they were present. The special counsel will want to hear about the president’s understanding of the election results and also what happened on January 6. And they both had direct communications with him about the events preceding the riot at the Capitol,” he said.

There is lots of evidence that the special counsel needs to comb through before it can even consider charging anyone. Among the evidence already in hand are testimony given to the House by local officials, subpoenas from Trump’s own lawyers and a pile of discovery collected from his allies.

Smith will not stop because of a family relationship, because of executive privilege. “He believes that the law entitles him to all of that information, and he’s determined to get it.”

The Media Empire of Murdoch and the Trump Era: Turning Fox News into a False News Channel in the Presidency of the 2020 Election

A lot of the conservative media empire and the Republican Party are based on the same premise as the Rolling Stones song: giving the party base exactly what it wants to hear.

Fox News is an example of an opinion former being held hostage to the fury they helped to cause. The revelation from a defamation lawsuit this week shows that some of the channel’s stars endorsed false claims about the 2020 election to stop viewers from defecting. Some Fox hosts were worried about alienating their audience if they told the truth about Trump’s lies.

Key players on the right feel that they have no choice but to appease, satisfy and further inflame the voters and viewers on whom their profits or hopes of political power depend.

The GOP’s most fervent, constantly self-radicalizing voters have long led its leaders. GOP stalwarts like former Florida Gov., Jeb Bush and others see their career ends due to resisting the tide. It is possible that those that buy in, like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis or New York Rep.s, can rocket to prominence.

Some media commentators would argue that Murdoch’s entire business model – using television stations in his native Australia and tabloid newspapers like The Sun in Britain, as well as Fox News in the US – has evolved from seizing upon and feeding political anger. And while he’s more known for backing conservatives, Murdoch has switched sides when business demands – for instance, when The Sun endorsed the British Labour Party’s Tony Blair over the fading Conservative Party in a 1997 general election.

There are also signs that the billionaire publisher may finally be getting buyer’s remorse over Trump given the headline in his New York Post after the ex-president’s low energy 2024 campaign launch in November, which read, “Been there, Don that.”

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/01/politics/trump-fox-republican-party-2024/index.html

The Color of a Dollar: Why the Left Wants to Run riot: Kevin McCarthy, the Dominion, the Capitol, and the Future of Business

As he said in a deposition made public in a court filing on Monday in the Dominion case: “It is not red or blue, it is green,” referring to the color of a dollar.

The calculation that the political market will make is one that the Republican politicians on Fox are influenced by. Their unfiltered adoption of much of the doctrine favored by the conservative grassroots ultimately stretched American democracy to the limit.

In order to get that base to support him in the election, Trump broke the Republican establishment presidential field. GOP lawmakers who held power because of their adherence to not crossing the president then allowed Trump to run riot. That provided the platform for a radical tide that led to the US Capitol insurrection in 2021, and eventually led to Republicans acquitting him in two impeachment dramas.

The secret sauce that forced Kevin McCarthy to give up his job as Speaker of the House was the huge power of the Republican base. McCarthy had earlier watched as two predecessors, former Speakers John Boehner and Paul Ryan, tried to resist the GOP’s far right insurgency and lost their job. As McCarthy showed by handing Fox host Tucker Carlson access to hours of Capitol Hill security footage last week – despite Carlson’s conspiracy theories about January 6, 2021 – his speakership is a totally owned subsidiary of the GOP’s most extreme elements.

McCarthy’s dominance by the same GOP base that Murdoch worried about driving away is one reason why a coming showdown with the White House over raising the government’s borrowing limit has so many financial experts fretting about a possible default that could rattle the global economy.

During the general election, Democrats and Republicans try to win the hearts of base voters while trying to appeal to middle America. This political leap may require the skills of whoever emerges from the GOP’s “America First” primary.

Trump was able to see that his winning coalition was angry and frustrated with the years of foreign wars and globalization because they were the only Republican candidates who did it. The voters were fed up with politicians, the media and the elite in business who they thought condescended to them. They don’t like political correctness, a wave of social and cultural change, permissive immigration policies, and the diverse coalition that won two terms for President Barack Obama. They wanted to have someone in Washington break all the rules to get rid of what Trump referred to as the swamp.

The theme of Republican failure to effectively represent the values of the people who elected them foretold the nomination of Donald Trump in 2016 according to the author of the book “The Courage to be Free”.

“The chasm between the aspirations of the GOP voter base and the behavior of party leaders in Washington would continue to grow wider in the ensuing years.”

DeSantis complains that politicians who go to Washington forget where they come from – and soon become instruments of a political system that works against their constituents’ interests. Yet issues like the need to raise the debt ceiling to keep the government solvent and the economy running or key foreign policy questions, like US support for Ukraine, sometimes require leaders to take a different view of the national interest than prevails back at home.

At the annual Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Kansas City last year, Trump had foretold of the marriage of convenience of his presidency and the conservative media infrastructure.

“Stick with us. Don’t believe the crap you see from these people, the fake news. He said what you’re seeing and what you’re reading are not what’s happening.

Trump served up his familiar brew of fury, falsehoods and dishonest braggadocio at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Saturday, billing himself as the only man who could save the planet from World War III, girding his adoring supporters for their “final battle” against communists, globalists and the “Deep State,” and declaring: “I am your retribution.”

“We will beat the Democrats, we will rout the fake news media, we will expose and appropriately deal with the RINOs (Republicans in Name Only). We will evict Joe Biden from the White House and we will liberate America from these villains and scoundrels once and for all,” Trump told the crowd at a Maryland convention center outside Washington on Saturday.

“I can tell you in four years, you didn’t see our administration leaking like a sieve, you didn’t see a lot of drama or palace intrigue,” said DeSantis, whose punch-by-punch speaking style is far more ordered and methodical than Trump’s wild flights of rhetoric. What you saw was very precise and surgical. Day and night after day. And because we did that, we beat the left day after day after day.”

The back-to-back speeches that highlighted two Republicans who would be the early favorites if it was a GOP primary, came with a bit of irony. The split screen showed how Trump engineered the party’s ideological splitting when he crushed establishment candidates. CPAC, where Trump spoke, for decades kept alive the flame of the two-term president Reagan, who redefined the conservative movement when he won the 1980 election and left a legacy that dominated the GOP until Trump arrived. Once a rite of passage for potential GOP presidential candidates, CPAC has since become a platform for Trump’s personality cult. DeSantis did not speak there, instead appearing last week at a dueling Club for Growth donor conference to which Trump was not invited.

DeSantis was not the only possible alternative to Trump who laid out his case in recent days. Both former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former US ambassador to the United Nations, Haley, braved the lion’s den at CPAC, and both launched veiled attacks on their former boss.

“If you’re tired of losing, put your trust in a new generation,” Haley said, playing into criticisms that both Trump, 76, and Biden, 80, should yield to younger leaders.

While his former colleague did not get a good reception in ex-president’s turf, the former Cabinet member made a point of stacking his speech so he could not take on Trump. There is more to this remark than it seems, and it can be seen as a rebuke to the ex-president and the Democrats he specifically targeted.

People don’t want the leader of our country to engage in a personal vendetta. He talks about his personal vendettas when he talks about vengeance, that is not good for America. It isn’t healthy for our party.

If Hogan’s reluctant decision to bow out foreshadows similar decisions by other long-shot candidates, it could point to a Republican nominating race that does not replicate the fracturing of the anti-Trump vote that helped his remarkable rise to power in 2016. If the Florida governor decides to get into the race, it would fuel a bitter nomination race between Trump and DeSantis in a swathe of winner-take-all primaries.

“Right now, you have Trump and DeSantis at the top of the field soaking up all the oxygen, getting all the attention, and then a whole lot of the rest of us in single digits. And the more of them you have, the less chance you have for somebody rising up,” Hogan told CBS News.

We went from winning by less than 3000 votes in the year 1998 to more than 1.5 million in the year 2022, and so on. We received the most votes of any Republican candidate in the history of Florida.

Bragg: What do we need to know about the investigation of the case of the hush-money backreaction against the ex-president and 2024 presidential candidate?

Trump’s prediction on Saturday that he could be arrested this week – and his attempt to ignite a preemptive backlash – made what had been the theoretical prospect of an ex-president and 2024 candidate being criminally charged appear much more real. And it signaled America is headed for an even more politically divisive ordeal that will test his influence over the GOP.

No one can act surprised that Trump, though he has denied knowledge of the payment, may have an alleged role in falsifying records to conceal a hush-money deal over an affair with an adult film actress. And no one should be so innocent as to believe prosecutors never respond to political incentives when choosing to file charges.

GOP leaders rushed to condemn Braggs potential indictment of Trump for being illegitimate and politically motivated, reminding the leadership that it is still not safe to criticize Trump in almost any way. Republicans in the House demanded documents from Bragg and promised to investigate the investigators.

It appears Trump’s strategy is still effective, as Republicans have rallied to his defense in a Pavlovian fashion. The airwaves this past week have been filled with Republicans playing their familiar roles. It only took a few days after Trump’s social media announcement for Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio to further weaponize the House Judiciary Committee by calling for an investigation into Bragg. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, seemingly unable to separate himself from Trump, accused Bragg of unfair treatment, saying, “Lawyer after lawyer will tell you this is the weakest case out there, trying to make a misdemeanor a felony.”

Kevin McCarthy said it was the weak case he had seen. The California Republican, who has instructed GOP-led committees to investigate whether the Manhattan DA used federal funds to probe the hush money payment, said at a news conference that he had already spoken to Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan – who is investigating “the weaponization” of the government against political opponents – about looking into that question.

Do Republicans Really Care About Trump? A Comment on McCarthy’s Twitter-Violation, the Bragg Investigation, and an SRSS Poll of the GOP

But the speaker also said people should not protest over what may or not happen and insisted that Trump didn’t want that either. McCarthy wants calm and no violence or harm to anyone else if this is to happen.

Further underscoring Trump’s firm hold on the GOP base, his social media post prompted several of his Republican critics to line up beside him. It just feels like a politically charged prosecution, which is why the former Vice President is considering a campaign against the president in the next election. I just feel like the American people don’t want to see that.

The governor of New Hampshire said that the Bragg investigation was building a lot of sympathy for the former president. He added: “I (had) coffee this morning with some folks, and none of them were big Trump supporters, but they all said they felt like he was being attacked.”

The debate of whether putting the president on trial will affect the national interest or not is limited by the fact that the January 6 investigations hold less lasting constitutional implications. History may not approve of failed prosecutions.

The flurry of events has made clear that the former president is still the center of the GOP universe.

“You would think they would have learned their lesson” from Trump’s defeat in 2020 and the GOP’s surprisingly weak showing in 2022, said Jennifer Horn, a former state Republican party chair in New Hampshire, who has emerged as a staunch Trump critic. “It’s like they are addicted to him. The GOP can’t break their addiction to Trump.”

“I think there are core Trump voters that this galvanizes,” says Dave Wilson, a conservative strategist in South Carolina with close ties to the evangelical community. There is a larger group of Republican/conservative voters that I think would be given enough pause to say, “I’ll at least look at everyone else in the field.”

Yet there’s no guarantee that broad sentiment will translate into enough support for a specific GOP alternative to deny Trump a third nomination. The latest CNN national poll of GOP primary voters, conducted by SRSS, highlights that difficulty.

The survey found that about three-fifths of GOP voters said they most prioritized a nominee who shared their positions on issues, while about two-fifths wanted someone who had the best chance of beating President Joe Biden. Trump led among the voters who wanted a candidate who shared their views, while Gov. Ron DeSantis led among those who prioritized electability, according to previously unpublished results provided by CNN polling director Jennifer Agiesta. The problem for DeSantis: not only was the group focused on shared values larger, but Trump led among them by nearly twice as much (nine percentage points) as the Florida governor led among those who emphasized beating Biden (five points).

In South Carolina, Wilson also expects the same kind of bifurcated reaction. Wilson thinks an indictment of Trump could reinforce the sentiment of the conference the Palmetto Family Council, a social conservative group held in Charleston last weekend, for GOP leaders and potential candidates. That sentiment, he said, revolved around the belief “that Americans can and should be focused on 2024, as opposed to dredging up issues” from the past. “People want to be focused on what we are doing for the next four, eight, twelve, twenty years from now, not looking in the rear-view mirror,” he added.

Robinson warned that the hopefuls may not have enough republican voters to reach that conclusion. The prospect of legal trouble for someone who wants to pass a figure as large as Trump could be a powerful argument for them in their case, if the other candidate wants voters to vote for them. “The alternative to Trump would be someone to say, ‘We can’t be having this, this isn’t what the election should be about,’” Robinson spoke.

By moving so aggressively to defend Trump – even to the point of appearing to intimidate an ongoing investigation –House Republican leaders have made clear that while many GOP strategists or donors want the party to distance itself from the former president, they have not received that memo. Horn said McCarthy’s call to investigate the investigation echoes language that might be heard in an authoritarian state like China. “That is genuinely outrageous,” she said. “We call everything an outrage in this country lately, but to have the speaker of the House suggest that a legitimate, detailed legal investigation should somehow be undermined by the US Congress because it’s against their guy – it’s anti-democracy. It’s anti-American.”

Which is the reason Democrats are watching as McCarthy tattoos the Trump stamp onto the House GOP. “You’ve now had several elections from the past year showing that this is not only dangerous for the country, but it’s completely ineffectual,” said Dan Slayer, former executive director for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “Defending Donald Trump has never been a winning electoral strategy-ever.”

Matt Bennett, executive vice president for public affairs at Third Way, a centrist Democratic group, agreed that the Republicans may be getting the broader electorate very wrong. But whatever the near-term partisan consequences, Bennett, like Sena and Horn, believes the much larger and more ominous signal is the continuing indication that Republicans, especially in the House, are willing to break almost any convention to protect Trump.

Bennett said it was profoundly dangerous and bad. “This is the conduct, the quisling approach to strong men, that gets countries into very serious trouble.”

Interactions between Donald Trump and Stormy Daniels in the midst of a grand jury investigation of the alleged scheme to pay hush money to an adult film star

Two advisers said that the former president appears to have resigned himself to the likelihood of an indictment, with one close adviser calling his perceived distancing from the matter “compartmentalization.”

Even as there are signs the investigation into Trump’s alleged role in the scheme to pay hush money to adult film star Stormy Daniels is nearing an end and that preparations are being made for an indictment, it is not clear yet that the former president will be charged or when those charges could be unveiled.

CNNexclusively reported Tuesday that communications between Daniels and an attorney for Trump were turned over to the Manhattan district attorney’s office. The exchanges show that Daniels was seeking representation at one point, suggesting that the Trump attorney could be out of a job.

CNN has not seen the records in question, and they deny that there is a conflict or that confidential information was shared with his office. He says he didn’t speak to Daniels. The impact of the disclosure on the case will be determined by the circumstances and the substance of the communications.

An adviser to Trump questioned whether the indictment from the New York grand jury could ruin his plans for a campaign rally in Texas on Saturday.

On the State of the Art: Indicting a New Jersey Governor over a Campaign for a Second White House Stimulus

It may, as former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said last Sunday, harm Trump’s campaign for a second White House stint — “being indicted never helps anybody. It isn’t a help. Or, as National Review editor-in-chief Rich Lowry has suggested, it may have the opposite effect, serving to “rally more Republicans” to Trump’s side.

Over the weekend, Trump on his social media page called for protests of what he said was his impending arrest. He has moved away from that language in recent days, possibly because he’s listening to anyone around him.

The FBI and the DHS are keeping an eye on online calls for civil war after Trump made those calls. The information, coordination and volume that preceded the January 6 attack on the US Capitol were lacking so far, according to US officials and security experts.

There is speculation that former president Donald Trump may be indicted over the payments he made to an adult film actress.

It’s obvious that this is a sham. Was federal funds involved? Did this stem from — it sure looks like it grew out of the special counsel investigation, because those are the legislative concerns we have as Congress.

The Trial of Michael Cohen: Reconciling the Charges of Robert Costello with the Evidence of the Mar-A-Lago

There are signs that one witness could be asked to reappear. CNN was told that the Manhattan District Attorney, who has been a target of attack from the GOP, was taking a break. Bragg’s team is considering asking Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer, to come back and testify to refute Robert Costello’s testimony this week, according to Miller.

We will not be intimidated by attempts to undermine the justice process, nor will we allow baseless accusations to deter us from applying the law. In every prosecution, we follow the law without fear or favor to uncover the truth. Our skilled, honest and dedicated lawyers remain hard at work.

The appeals court ruled on Wednesday that Trump and his lawyer must testify before a grand jury in relation to the Mar-a-Lago case. The ruling that came with surprising speed was important because the DOJ had to convince the court there was enough evidence to show Trump had committed a crime to puncture the convention of attorney-client privilege.

Cohen, who made the payment to Daniels, is seen by some analysts as a weak link in any trial since his credibility could be undermined by his own conviction for lying to Congress. Bragg would have to try to find out whether or not Cohen was trustworthy when he went before a grand jury or trial. He said it was in their interests to step back and make a decision. It happens all the time as prosecutors decide on how to bring cases.

The Diehards’ Campaign against the Trump-DeSantis Attorney’s Charges: A Brief Account of a Political Debate with a Porn Star

Editor’s Note: Patrick T. Brown is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a conservative think tank and advocacy group based in Washington, DC. He worked as a senior policy adviser to the Joint Economic Committee. On social media, follow him. The views expressed are of his own. CNN has more opinion on it.

The greatest political impact might be in creating a tightrope that Trump’s would-be challengers and other Republicans will need to walk.

On the legal question itself, many Republicans will go on the record as calling it the politicized decision of an overzealous prosecutor. Some will be tempted to back Trump to the hilt, arguing that the party should unify against the arrayed forces of the “deep state” and the media. The diehards’ strategy, in the words of populist Republican Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona, will be convincing rank-and-file Republicans that “[i]f they can come for Trump, they will come for you.”

“I don’t know what goes into paying hush money to a porn star to secure silence over some type of alleged affair,” DeSantis told a news conference Monday, while stressing that he sees the prosecutor’s potential charges as an example of “pursuing a political agenda and weaponizing the office.” Conservative stalwart Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, who has already endorsed DeSantis despite him not even having officially announced yet, offered a similar version of this strategy on a radio show.

The ancient Greeks had a word for this kind of rhetorical move — apophasis, or, the art of bringing up a subject in a debate by claiming not to be bringing it up. The Republicans who offered a response were the ones who highlighted implicit criticism of Trump and criticized the Manhattan District Attorney.

It is at risk of being a little too clever. DeSantis’ quip infuriated the usual MAGA online crowd, including the former president himself. If Republicans were solely focused on the legal escapades of the Manhattan district attorney’s office and not laying out subtle critiques of Trump, it would make it harder for them to run or endorse any other candidate for the nomination.

Successful candidates and parties need to have a compelling story around their campaign. The narrative of the Republican Party will be centered around Trump and his adversaries, no matter what case is made for why Trump shouldn’t be the presumptive nominee. It is a risk to let Trump claim the nomination if there is only a single focus on the sins of prosecutors in New York.

The New York/Georgia Politics War: A CNN Contribution and an Addendum to “Trump Investigations in Fulton County, Georgia” by David Ralston

The CNN political contributor and Republican, who served as Georgia’s lieutenant governor from 2019 to 2023, has an additional note. He was a professional baseball player and is the author of “GOP 2.0: How the 2020 Election can lead to a Better Way forward for America’s Conservative Party.” His own views are expressed in this commentary. CNN has more opinion articles.

It can be difficult to keep the multiple and simultaneous investigations straight, but here is the key distinction between New York’s and Georgia’s. There is a probe into whether or not Trump was involved in a scheme to pay Stormy Daniels, who was an porn star, hush money during his presidential campaign.

CNN reported the Fulton County investigation was focusing on possible racketeers and conspiracy charges, which are more often associated with TV crime dramas like “The Sopranos” than a former president of the United States.

The Republicans are telling it. The world was about to find out what had happened in New York City, and most of the GOP, from Kevin McCarthy to potential presidential rivals, rushed to defend Trump. The House Republicans called for investigations into the Manhattan District Attorney.

The story could not be any more different in Georgia, where Trump’s legal team has been the prominent voice leading the counteroffensive against Willis. The leading Republicans in the state, including Gov. Brian Kemp, have remained out of the spotlight with little exception.

Trump and his legal team were urging Republican legislators in Georgia to call a special session to overturn Biden’s victory. Like Raffensperger, Georgia House Speaker David Ralston, who died in November, stood his ground, telling Trump, “I will do everything in my power that I think is appropriate,” according to media reports.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/23/opinions/georgia-gop-trump-criminal-investigation-duncan/index.html

Trump, Biden, and the Dark Sides of the Republican Party: How Donald Trump Awoke to the Oval Office in 2020 and How he Met Joe Biden

Although detached from reality, these rumors achieved their intent of sowing doubt about the election where no one has ever presented evidence of widespread fraud.

The results of 2020 must be accepted, we should put Trump in the mirror and start writing the new chapter of the Republican Party. Rather than concocting ways to overturn a nearly three-year-old election, our efforts should be re-directed toward winning hearts and minds before the next batch of votes are counted.

In a way that would make Richard Nixon jealous, Trump is able to weaponize attacks like no other and make the case that his adversaries are abusing power. This strategy was used with former Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, as well as former FBI Director James Comey, and former Special Counsel Robert Muller. After Joe Biden won the presidency in 2020, Trump attacked the entire election system. The Manhattan District Attorney was called a “woke tyrant” by him.

And then there is a part of Trump that has always loved the tough-guy, mob boss image. Professional wrestling fans will remember the gusto with which he embraced the fighting spectacle and the connections he forged to the world of professional boxing. As someone who rose to prominence in New York in the 1970s and 1980s, he is not deterred by the idea that many Americans are more likely to see him as a character out of “The Godfather” or “Goodfellas” than someone who belongs in the West Wing.

This will allow Trump to revel in the tough self-confidence of the anti-hero and suit the cultural era of the anti- hero. And shortly after he entered the Oval Office, he surrounded himself with military officials who bolstered his image as a man of strength.

Trump doesn’t seem to have a sense of shame, and he seems to have escaped the psychological pressure that other would feel to step down due to scandal.

Put all of this together and it becomes easier to understand why an indictment might not be the worst thing to happen to the former president. It must also be said that an alleged relationship with a porn star, which Trump denies having, may no longer be an automatically disqualifying issue the way that it used to be. The allegation about his personal life is small in comparison to the full-throated campaign to reverse the will of the electorate and undermine our democratic system in 2020.

The law and the constitution should never be affected by who benefits from an investigation or indictment. And regardless of the outcome of the many investigations, they are — contrary to what Trump may claim — worthy pursuits of justice.

If a conviction were to prevent Trump from becoming president, voters can still respond how they like. The electorate will be important when it comes to deciding who should be in the Oval Office, because many factors will determine whether we can reestablish many of the guardrails that have disappeared.