Closing summary
Here’s a recap of today’s developments:
The US special counsel who is investigating Donald Trump obtained a search warrant for the former president’s Twitter account, and the social media platform delayed complying, a court filing on Wednesday showed. The delay in compliance prompted a federal judge to hold Twitter in contempt and fine it $350,000, the filing showed.
A previously unseen internal memo from the 2020 Trump campaign describes in detail the plot by Donald Trump and his lawyers to subvert election results in six states, according to a copy obtained by The New York Times. The memo describes a three-pronged plan to prevent Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s victory on 6 January 2020, that involved coordinating with Republican electors and campaign attorneys in six states, as well as Mike Pence.
The Fulton county district attorney investigating Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in the state of Georgia is expected to seek more than a dozen indictments when she presents her case before a grand jury next week, according to a report. The prosecutors in the office of district attorney Fani Willis completed its internal reviews for criminal charges in the Trump case weeks ago, and could present evidence to a grand jury and ask it to return indictments as early as next Tuesday, the Guardian reported on Tuesday.
The judge presiding over Donald Trump’s election subversion case, US district judge Tanya Chutkan, has set a date for a hearing on a proposed protective order by prosecutors. The protective order, if granted, will govern how evidence is handled in the case. The order, requested last Friday by special counsel Jack Smith’s team, asks for Trump to be prohibited from publicly sharing evidence in the case during the discovery phase.
The California US senator Dianne Feinstein, 90, was hospitalized on Tuesday evening after suffering a fall in her home, a spokesperson said. “Senator Feinstein briefly went to the hospital yesterday afternoon as a precaution after a minor fall in her home,” a spokesperson said in a statement. “All of her scans were clear and she returned home.” At 90, Feinstein is the oldest serving US senator.
Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor of Florida, suspended the top prosecutor in Orlando on Wednesday, claiming “dereliction of duty” on crime. In return, the prosecutor said DeSantis, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, was a “weak dictator” acting undemocratically and for political reasons.
A respected conservative judge who advised the former Republican vice-president Mike Pence not to attempt to overturn the 2020 election believes Donald Trump has destroyed the Republican party. “American democracy simply cannot function without two equally healthy and equally strong political parties,” J Michael Luttig told CNN on Wednesday. “So today, in my view, there is no Republican party to counter the Democratic party in the country.
J Michael Luttig told CNN:
A political party is a collection and assemblage of individuals who share a set of beliefs and principles and policy views about the United States of America. Today, there is no such shared set of beliefs and values and principles or even policy views as within the Republican party for America.
Donald Trump, he said, was a danger “more so today” than last year, when Luttig testified to the House January 6 committee.
A respected conservative judge who was considered for the supreme court under George W Bush, Luttig made a tremendous impact with his January 6 testimony.
Speaking on primetime television, Luttig said:
I believe that had Vice-President Pence obeyed the orders from his president … and declared Donald Trump the next president of the United States … [he] would have plunged America into what I believe would have been tantamount to a revolution, within a constitutional crisis.
On Wednesday, Luttig also told CNN he did not think Trump could avoid conviction for election subversion.
“The evidence is overwhelming that the former president knew full well that he had lost the election,” he said.
Updated
A respected conservative judge who advised the former Republican vice-president Mike Pence not to attempt to overturn the 2020 election believes Donald Trump has destroyed the Republican party.
“American democracy simply cannot function without two equally healthy and equally strong political parties,” J Michael Luttig told CNN on Wednesday. “So today, in my view, there is no Republican party to counter the Democratic party in the country.
And for that reason, American democracy is in grave peril.
American democracy has by most measures been in grave peril since 6 January 2021, the day Pence, as vice-president, took Luttig’s advice and refused to attempt to block congressional certification of Joe Biden’s election win.
A mob Trump told to “fight like hell” attacked the Capitol, some chanting for Pence to be hanged. The effort failed but nine deaths have been linked to the riot, including law enforcement suicides. More than a thousand people have been charged and hundreds convicted, some with seditious conspiracy.
A cousin of Elvis Presley is the Democratic candidate for governor in Mississippi, after winning his primary unopposed on Tuesday.
The general election will be held on 7 November. The Democrat, Brandon Presley, said he would advocate for people who struggle to make ends meet. He will face the current Republican governor, Tate Reeves, who defeated two first-time candidates, John Witcher, a physician, and David Hardigree, a military veteran.
Mississippi is one of three states holding races for governor this year. Despite Republicans holding all statewide offices for 20 years, the Democratic Governors Association chair, Phil Murphy of New Jersey, has predicted a Democrat could win.
In his hometown, Nettleton, Presley took the stage at his victory party to See See Rider, a song Elvis Presley often used as walk-on music. The candidate said he would not sing, though.
“We’re trying to get votes,” Presley said. “We’re not trying to lose them.”
Updated
The US special counsel who is investigating Donald Trump obtained a search warrant for the former president’s Twitter account, and the social media platform delayed complying, a court filing on Wednesday showed.
The delay in compliance prompted a federal judge to hold Twitter in contempt and fine it $350,000, the filing showed.
The filing says the team of US special counsel Jack Smith obtained a search warrant in January directing Twitter, which recently rebranded to X, to produce “data and records” related to Trump’s Twitter account as well as a non-disclosure agreement prohibiting Twitter from disclosing the search warrant.
The filing says prosecutors got the search warrant after a court “found probable cause to search the Twitter account for evidence of criminal offenses”. The court found that disclosing the warrant could risk that Trump would “would seriously jeopardize the ongoing investigation” by giving him “an opportunity to destroy evidence, change patterns of behavior”, according to the filing.
Twitter objected to the non-disclosure agreement, saying four days after the compliance deadline that it would not produce any of the account information, according to the ruling. The judges wrote that Twitter “did not question the validity of the search warrant” but argued that the non-disclosure agreement was a violation of the first amendment and wanted the court to assess the legality of the agreement before it handed any information over.
The delay in compliance prompted a lower court to Twitter in contempt, and on Wednesday, the federal court in Washington upheld that decision.
Fulton county prosecutors to seek more than a dozen indictments in Trump case - report
The Fulton county district attorney investigating Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in the state of Georgia is expected to seek more than a dozen indictments when she presents her case before a grand jury next week, according to a report.
The prosecutors in the office of district attorney Fani Willis completed its internal reviews for criminal charges in the Trump case weeks ago, and could present evidence to a grand jury and ask it to return indictments as early as next Tuesday, the Guardian reported on Tuesday.
Willis has been eyeing conspiracy and racketeering charges, which would allow her to bring more than a dozen indictments against multiple defendants, CNN reported, citing sources.
In the Trump investigation, prosecutors have developed evidence to pursue a sprawling racketeering case that is predicated on a statute about influencing witnesses and computer trespass by Trump operatives in Coffee county, the Guardian has previously reported.
The extent of Trump’s legal jeopardy remains unclear. But the racketeering statute in Georgia is especially expansive and attempts to solicit or coerce certain activity – for instance, Trump’s call to the secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger – could be included in the indictment.
The district attorney’s office has also weighed several state election law charges, including: criminal solicitation to commit election fraud and conspiracy to commit election fraud, as well as solicitation of a public or political officer to fail to perform their duties and solicitation to destroy, deface or remove ballots.
The district attorney’s office has spent more than two years investigating whether Trump and his allies interfered in the 2020 election in Georgia, including impaneling a special grand jury that made it more straightforward to compel evidence from recalcitrant witnesses.
A group of LGBTQ+ veterans have filed a lawsuit against the defense department and defense secretary Lloyd Austin over their discharge status and the use of language that “identifies their actual or perceived sexual orientation as the reason for their discharge”.
The class action lawsuit was filed on Tuesday on behalf of five veterans in the US district court of the northern district of California.
“LGBTQ+ veterans are entitled to relief from the government’s ongoing discrimination through the removal of separation narratives and codes that identify their sexual orientation, modification of codes that prevent re-enlistment, and upgrades to their discharge statuses as needed,” the lawsuit said.
“Requiring LGBTQ+ veterans to first bear the stigma and discriminatory effects of carrying indicators of sexual orientation on their [discharge papers] and then navigate a broken record correction process to seek resolution violates their constitutional rights to equal protection, informational privacy, property, and due process protected by the Fourteenth and Fifth Amendments to the US Constitution,” it added.
The lawsuit comes 13 years after the repeal of “Don’t ask, don’t tell” in the military.
Despite its repeal, the lawsuit alleges that the government has taken no steps to “correct this discrimination systematically.”
“Instead, it directs LGBTQ+ veterans to a pre-existing record correction and discharge upgrade process to individually request modification of their records. This widely criticized process requires veterans to initiate lengthy individual actions (including the extended process of obtaining military records) and demands that veterans prove discrimination occurred, even though the government has already conceded both the discriminatory nature of its policies and the pernicious effects,” it said.
• This post was amended on 10 August 2023 to clarify language related to the nature of the complaint by the LBTQ+ veterans.
Updated
J. Michael Luttig, a prominent retired judge and adviser to former vice president Mike Pence said that “there is no Republican party.”
In an interview with CNN on Wednesday, Luttig, who has issued harsh criticisms towards Donald Trump over his alleged involvement in the 2021 Capitol Hill riots and advised Pence to not overturn the 2020 election results, said:
“American democracy simply cannot function without two equally healthy and equally strong political parties. So today, in my view, there is no Republican party to counter the Democratic party in the country…And for that reason, American democracy is in grave peril.”
Luttig, who in June published an op-ed in the New York Times and criticized “Republican’s’ spineless support” towards Trump, went on to criticize the Republican party, saying:
“A political party is a collection and assemblage of individuals who share a set of beliefs and principles and policy views about the United States of America. Today, there is no such shared set of beliefs and values and principles or even policy views as within the Republican Party for America.”
Luttig was a the former judge on the 4th US circuit court of appeals and was a key witness in the January 6 hearings.
Last year, during his testimony, he said efforts to overturn the election results were “tantamount to a revolution.”
Updated
Former GOP operative Anton Lazzaro has been sentenced to 21 years in prison following his conviction of giving teenage girls gifts, alcohol and money in return for sex.
Lazzaro was handed the sentencing on Wednesday after he was found guilty in March of seven counts involving “commercial sex acts” with five 15 to 16-year old girls in 2020. Lazzaro was 30 years old at the time.
The Associated Press reports US district judge Patrick Schiltz saying that Lazzaro only showed sympathy to two individuals throughout the trial – "to himself and Jeffrey Epstein,” the late disgraced financier and convicted sex offender.
“It’s almost as if Mr. Lazzaro set up a sex trafficking assembly line,” Schiltz said, adding that he was struck by the “soulless, almost mechanical nature” of how he took advantage of the girls.
On Wednesday, one of the victims spoke in court, saying, “I still see him in my nightmares, in my panic attacks, in men in their thirties. … Putting Tony behind bars will save so many girls.”
A mother of another different victim told Lazzaro, “The damage you caused my daughter, mentally and emotionally, you didn’t just cause that damage to her. You caused it to me and my family and all these victims and all of their families,” she said. “You stand up here and you don’t even care. You’re justifying your actions. … I hope you rot in hell,” the Associated Press reports.
Prosecutors seeking to obtain a search warrant for Donald Trump’s Twitter account “faced difficulties” when it first attempted to serve Twitter with the warrant and nondisclosure order, according to the court documents.
The filing says that Twitter objected to producing any of the account information on 1 February 2023, four days after the compliance deadline. The filing states:
Twitter informed the government that it would not comply with the warrant until the district court assessed the legality of the nondisclosure order.
A day later, Twitter filed a motion to vacate or modify the nondisclosure order, it says.
In its motion challenging the nondisclosure order, Twitter argued that the order violated the company’s First Amendment right to communicate with its subscriber, former President Trump. The company asserted that compliance with the warrant before resolution of the motion to vacate or modify the nondisclosure order would preclude the former President from asserting executive privilege to shield communications made using his Twitter account.
According to newly revealed court documents, Twitter was barred from notifying anyone that a search warrant had been obtained for Donald Trump’s Twitter account.
The special counsel’s office sought the warrant in January 2023 as part of its investigation into the former president’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
The filing says special counsel Jack Smith obtained a search warrant directing Twitter to produce “data and records” related to Trump’s Twitter account. The filing says the court “found probable cause to search the Twitter account for evidence of criminal offenses”.
The court “found that there were ‘reasonable grounds to believe’ that disclosing the warrant to former President Trump ‘would seriously jeopardize the ongoing investigation’ by giving him ‘an opportunity to destroy evidence, change patterns of behavior, [or] notify confederates’”, the filing writes.
The district court also concluded the non-disclosure order was necessary because it “found reason to believe that the former President would ‘flee from prosecution’”, it says.
Updated
Special counsel Jack Smith obtained search warrant for Donald Trump’s Twitter account
Special counsel Jack Smith sought and obtained a search warrant for Donald Trump’s Twitter account as part of his criminal investigation of the former president, according to newly revealed court documents.
Twitter, now known as X, initially delayed production of the materials required by the search warrant, which resulted in a federal judge holding the company in contempt and levying a $350,000 fine.
Updated
Democratic Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer released a statement following the news that California senator Dianne Feinstein, 90, was hospitalized on Tuesday evening after suffering a fall in her home.
Schumer said:
I spoke with Sen. Feinstein this morning. She said she suffered no injuries and briefly went to the hospital as a precaution. I’m glad she is back home now and is doing well.
From HuffPost’s Igor Bobic:
Schumer statement: “I spoke with Sen. Feinstein this morning. She said she suffered no injuries and briefly went to the hospital as a precaution. I’m glad she is back home now and is doing well.”
— Igor Bobic (@igorbobic) August 9, 2023
Rudy Giuliani claims ‘dog ate my homework’ in Smartmatic case, lawyers say
A voting machine company behind a $2.7bn defamation lawsuit over lies about the 2020 election said Rudy Giuliani was using excuses like “the dog ate my homework” to avoid the discovery process.
Lawyers for Smartmartic wrote:
The dog ate my homework.’ ‘I have to wash my hair.’ ‘I can’t go out, I’m sick.’ Since the dawn of time, people have made up excuses to avoid doing things they do not want to do.
This is exactly what Giuliani has done here.
The former New York mayor turned personal attorney to Donald Trump, 79, is named alongside Fox News in the lawsuit, which follows a defamation suit Fox News settled for $787.5m with Dominion Voting Systems.
In the Smartmatic case, in Monday court filings first reported by CNN, lawyers expressed frustration over trying to get Giuliani to turn over relevant records.
They said:
For months, Giuliani has made up excuses to get out of his discovery obligations … To date, Giuliani has not produced a single non-public document responsive to the discovery requests Smartmatic issued 14 months ago.
The company asked a New York judge to force Giuliani to turn over materials.
Updated
The abortion rights group Naral Pro-Choice America said in a statement after Ohio voters rejected a proposal that would have made it considerably harder to amend the state constitution:
Ohioans’ support for abortion access and reproductive freedom was never in question. From defeating Issue 1 tonight to submitting nearly twice the amount of signatures needed to get a measure protecting abortion access on the ballot in November, Ohio voters have made clear that they will settle for nothing less than reproductive freedom for all.
Senator Sherrod Brown, a Democrat facing what is expected to be one of the toughest re-election bids next year, also praised the defeat of the amendment.
By rejecting Issue 1, Ohioans rejected special interests and demanded that democracy remain where it belongs — in the hands of voters, not the rich and powerful.
— Sherrod Brown (@SherrodBrown) August 9, 2023
That is what has always guided me. I am proud to stand with Ohioans in this fight.
The issue underscores the continued political salience of abortion since the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade last year. Campaigns linked to protecting abortion rights in politically competitive states, like a referendum Kansas and a supreme court race in Wisconsin, have been incredibly successful. Abortion rights have prevailed in all seven states where they have been on the ballot since last year.
The rejection also comes as activists are drafting a constitutional amendment that would strip lawmakers of their power to draw district lines and turn it over to a citizen-led commission instead. Last year, Ohio Republicans ignored repeated orders from the supreme court to draw maps that were not severely distorted to their advantage.
The rejection is a major win for the One Person, One Vote campaign, a broad coalition of good-government, labor and environmental groups that aggressively campaigned across the state urging people to reject the amendment. The contest was expected to be a low-turnout midsummer affair, but turnout actually surged during the election. The result is also a blow to Richard Uihlein, a GOP megadonor, who spent millions trying to get the amendment to pass.
Rachael Belz, CEO of Ohio Citizen Action, which worked to reject the amendment, said:
When they forced Issue 1 on to the ballot, they awakened a sleeping giant and unleashed a movement. And that movement isn’t going away tomorrow. It will continue to build and grow and to carry us through to victories in November and beyond. We thank Ohio voters for doing their homework and for going out to vote ‘no’ on Issue 1.
Ohio voters reject measure in victory for abortion rights supporters
Ohio voters on Tuesday rejected a proposal that would have made it considerably harder to amend the state constitution in a major win for reproductive rights and democracy advocates in the state.
The result means that Ohio will keep its current process for amending the state constitution in place. The procedure first requires voters to collect a certain number of signatures from at least 44 of the state’s 88 counties to send an amendment proposal to the ballot and then a simple majority to pass it.
Issue 1, the proposal under consideration, would have made both of those steps harder. It would have required voters to collect signatures in all 88 counties and then required a supermajority of 60% to pass it.
US president Joe Biden said of the result: “democracy won”.
It was the first time since 1926 that Ohio voters cast ballots on a proposed constitutional amendment in August. Republicans, who control the state legislature, rushed the measure to the ballot in an effort to make it harder to pass a referendum to protect abortion rights that’s set for this fall.
With a little over half of the vote counted, the “no” vote led 59% to 41%. A majority vote would have been needed to approve the amendment, which was not possible given votes left to be counted, the Associated Press projected.
At 90, Dianne Feinstein, who was hospitalized on Tuesday evening after suffering a fall in her home, is the oldest serving US senator.
She has said she will retire at the end of her term next year. The race to succeed her is heating up, the former House intelligence chair Adam Schiff competing with two other representatives, Katie Porter and Barbara Lee.
But continued health problems have stoked calls for Feinstein to step aside sooner.
Earlier this year, Feinstein was absent from Congress for nearly three months while suffering from shingles. Since her return, she has sometimes appeared frail and confused.
The Chronicle said Feinstein had been due to attend an event celebrating the city’s cable cars on 2 August, but had missed it after developing a cough.
The first woman to be mayor of San Francisco, Feinstein was elected to the US Senate in 1992. Between 2017 and 2021, she led Democrats on the judiciary committee.
She is not the only prominent US politician to face questions about her age and health.
The 81-year-old Republican leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, has suffered a number of falls and last month froze during remarks to reporters, prompting both expressions of concern and calls for him to step down.
Responding to her suspension by Florida governor Ron DeSantis, state attorney Monique Worrell said the move was “simply a smokescreen” for DeSantis’ “failing and disastrous presidential campaign”.
Worrell said:
Under this tyranny, elected officials can be removed simply for political purposes and by a whim of the governor. No matter how you feel about me, you should not be OK with that.
“This is simply a smokescreen for Ron DeSantis' failing and disastrous presidential campaign.”
— The Recount (@therecount) August 9, 2023
— State Attorney Monique Worrell (D) slams Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) for suspending her from office pic.twitter.com/7RDZczg64W
Ron DeSantis suspends elected Florida state attorney Monique Worrell
Florida governor Ron DeSantis suspended the Orlando-area state attorney, Monique Worrell, accusing her of under-prosecuting criminals in her jurisdiction.
Worrell, a Democratic elected official who took office in 2021, was suspended for “dereliction of duty” on crime, DeSantis announced at a press conference in Tallahassee.
An executive order signed by DeSantis and secretary of state Cord Byrd accused Worrell of “systematically” allowing criminals to evade incarceration and pursuing lenient sentences and declining to prosecute certain charges.
“Prosecutors do have a certain amount of discretion about what cases to bring and which cases to not,” DeSantis said.
But what this state attorney has done is abuse that discretion and effectively nullified certain laws in the state of Florida that breaches her duties that she owes to the people of Florida under our state constitution, and provides the basis for the suspension.
The decision marks the second time DeSantis has suspended a democratically elected prosecutor from office. Both have been Democrats.
Last year, the Florida governor suspended Hillsborough county state attorney, Andrew Warren, after Warren said he would not enforce state restrictions on abortion or gender-related surgery.
Updated
The previously unseen internal memo from the 2020 Trump campaign describes a three-pronged plan to prevent Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s victory on 6 January 2020, that involved coordinating with Republican electors and campaign attorneys in six states, as well as Mike Pence.
It also emphasized the importance of the participation by “all six states” and “messaging about this being a routine measure” as well as “logistics” regarding what is now known as the fake electors scheme.
The letter was written by Kenneth Chesebro, an attorney associated with Donald Trump, and addressed to a Wisconsin lawyer, James R Troupis, the lead attorney for the Trump campaign in Wisconsin, who oversaw the fake electors scheme in his state.
Troupis filed a lawsuit in December 2020 asking the Wisconsin supreme court to throw out hundreds of thousands of absentee ballots, saying they violated voting requirements. The court ultimately rejected the lawsuit.
Chesebro wrote to Troupis that “it seems feasible” the Trump campaign could subvert Biden’s victory. His plan would “force the Members of Congress, the media, and the American people to focus on the substantive evidence of illegal election and counting activities in the six contested States, provided three things happen”. He then lays out those three steps, describing a plan in detail.
Secret memo shows Trump campaign knew fake elector scheme was likely to fail
An internal Trump campaign memo by Kenneth Chesebro, a lawyer allied with Donald Trump, reveals new details about how the former president and his team initiated the plan to interfere with the electoral college process and install fake GOP electors in multiple states after losing the 2020 presidential election.
The 6 December 2020 memo, made public on Tuesday by the New York Times, shows how Chesebro laid out the plan to put forth slates of Republican electors in seven key swing states that Trump had lost.
The document, which federal prosecutors described as a “fraudulent elector memo”, revealed that Chesebro proposed the appointment of fake electors, and detailed a “messaging” strategy to portray them as evidence if legislatures later concluded Trump as the victor in those states.
In the memo, Chesebro acknowledges that he is suggesting a “bold, controversial strategy” that the supreme court would “likely” ultimately reject. He argues that the plan would focus attention on claims of voter fraud and “buy the Trump campaign more time to win litigation that would deprive Biden of electoral votes and/or add to Trump’s column”.
The memo was referenced in the four-count indictment against Trump by a Washington DC grand jury last month. The indictment identifies, but does not name, Chesebro as a co-conspirator in Trump’s alleged conspiracy to obstruct certification of the 2020 election.
In separate, previously seen emails, Chesebro had also suggested having then-vice president Mike Pence open and count the electoral votes alone. Pence would then certify the fake electors’ votes, even though Biden would have won the state, according to the plan.
Updated
There has been open debate within the Democratic party over whether Senator Dianne Feinstein, 90, whose health and cognitive abilities have come into question after a two-and-a-half-month absence due to shingles and other medical complications, should resign.
Questions over Feinstein’s ability to effectively represent California, the most populous US state, have been a sensitive issue for Democrats going back years. As her diminishing health plays out in the public eye there is a renewed urgency to the situation. Riding out her term in absentia until retirement next year is also not a viable option, with Feinstein the tie-breaking vote on the Senate judiciary committee, which holds confirmation hearings for judicial nominees, and effectively the only person who can ensure that Joe Biden’s picks for judges go through.
Feinstein’s compounding health issues and status as the oldest member of Congress now present Democrats with a complex problem that has pitted several prominent members of Congress against each other, as several lawmakers issued calls in recent weeks for Feinstein to step down.
California Democrats, who voted her into office six times, are increasingly divided over whether she should continue to serve. More than 60 progressive organizations called on her to step down – noting that the 39 million constituents she represents deserve “constant representation”. It hasn’t helped that the senator has physically shielded herself from her constituents and the press, dismissing questions about her health and ability to serve.
Feinstein’s eventual return to Washington on 10 May only prompted a new round of debate and news coverage, after she arrived looking exceedingly frail and appeared confused by reporters’ questions about her absence. Feinstein suffered more complications from her illness than previously disclosed, the New York Times reported, including post-shingles encephalitis and a condition known as Ramsay Hunt syndrome which causes facial paralysis.
California senator Dianne Feinstein’s latest medical setback comes days after she reportedly handed power of attorney over to her daughter.
Katherine, a former San Francisco judge, is said to have been given power of attorney over her mother amid an ongoing dispute regarding her late husband Richard Blum’s estate, according to the New York Times.
Senator Dianne Feinstein hospitalized after fall
Senator Dianne Feinstein was hospitalized after tripping and falling in her San Francisco home, according to multiple reports.
The 90-year-old Democratic senator was taken to a nearby hospital and returned home on Tuesday night, TMZ reported.
Feinstein’s spokesperson told the San Francisco Chronicle that she spent an hour or two in the hospital. Her scans were clear, he added.
Feinstein has struggled with her health in recent years. She was absent from the Senate for two-and-a-half-months due to shingles and other medical complications.
Updated
Judge schedules Friday hearing on protective order in January 6 case
The judge presiding over Donald Trump’s election subversion case, US district judge Tanya Chutkan, has set a date for a hearing on a proposed protective order by prosecutors.
The protective order, if granted, will govern how evidence is handled in the case. The order, requested last Friday by special counsel Jack Smith’s team, asks for Trump to be prohibited from publicly sharing evidence in the case during the discovery phase.
The decision to schedule the hearing for Friday morning comes a day after the special counsel’s office and Trump’s legal team filed dueling motions over the proposed protective order.
Trump is not required to be present at the Friday hearing in Washington DC, Chutkan said.
Updated
Donald Trump last week pleaded not guilty to charges that he conspired to overturn the results of the 2020 election by conspiring to block Congress from confirming Joe Biden’s victory over him. He also pleaded not guilty to charges that he obstructed the certification by directing his supporters to descend on the Capitol on the day of the January 6 attack.
He is also accused of – and has pleaded not guilty to – scheming to disrupt the election process and deprive Americans of their right to have their votes counted.
John Lauro slammed the indictment as politically motivated and full of holes. He said:
This is what’s called a Swiss cheese indictment – so many holes that we’re going to be identifying.
Lauro suggested that his side would argue that Trump’s actions were protected by his constitutional right to free speech as well as presidential immunity.
Taking aim at Biden, the Democratic incumbent, Lauro added:
This is the first time in history that a sitting president has used his justice department to go after a political opponent to knock him out of a race that creates grave constitutional problems.
Lauro confirmed that he planned to file a motion to dismiss the conspiracy charges, as well as another to transfer the case from Washington DC’s federal courthouse to one in West Virginia, a state where Trump won 69% of the votes in 2020, his second largest margin of victory in a state after Wyoming.
“We would like a diverse venue and diverse jury to have an expectation that will reflect the characteristics of the American people,” he said. “I think West Virginia would be an excellent venue.”
Lauro was brought on to Trump’s legal team in mid-July. He has defended a string of controversial clients who include Dewayne Allen Levesque – manager of the Pink Pony nightclub in Florida who was acquitted of charges of racketeering, conspiracy, and aiding and abetting prostitution – and the disgraced NBA referee Tim Donaghy, who admitted to taking payoffs from bookies in exchange for a one-year, three-month prison sentence.
Trump will not accept a plea deal in the criminal conspiracy charges, Lauro told CBS.
Donald Trump’s attorney has suggested that Mike Pence could help his former boss fight off the 2020 election-related criminal conspiracy charges against Trump, claiming that the former vice-president would be the “best witness” for the defence.
In an interview with CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday, attorney John Lauro played down differences between the former president and Pence’s accounts of what happened in the run up to the 6 January 2021 certification of Joe Biden’s victory over Trump, whose supporters attacked the US Capitol that day.
Asked on Face the Nation whether he feared that Pence would be called as a prosecution witness in the case, Lauro said: “No, no in fact, the vice-president will be our best witness.
There was a constitutional disagreement between the vice-president [Pence] and president Trump, but the bottom line is never, never in our country’s history, as those kinds of disagreements have been prosecuted criminally. It’s unheard of.
Earlier on Sunday, Pence – who is running against Trump for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination – told CBS that he had “no plans” to testify for the prosecution. But he did not rule it out. In response to Lauro’s assertion last week that all Trump did was ask him to pause the certification, Pence said: “That’s not what happened.”
The Fulton county district attorney’s office investigating Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in the state of Georgia has been issuing summons to witnesses to testify before the grand jury, as part of the final presentation by prosecutors that is expected to take just a couple of days before they ask the grand jury to return an indictment, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Charges stemming from the Trump investigation could come as early as next Tuesday if the presentment starts on Monday, the people said. That dovetails with a timeline inferred from district attorney Fani Willis instructing her staff to move to remote work during that period because of security concerns, the Guardian has previously reported.
The district attorney’s office has spent more than two years investigating whether Trump and his allies interfered in the 2020 election in Georgia, including impaneling a special grand jury that made it more straightforward to compel evidence from recalcitrant witnesses.
Unlike in the federal system, grand juries in the state of Georgia need to already be considering an indictment when they subpoena documents and testimony. By using a special grand jury, prosecutors can collect evidence without the pressure of having to file charges.
The special grand jury in the Trump investigation heard evidence for roughly seven months and recommended indictments of more than a dozen people including the former president himself, its forewoman strongly suggested in interviews with multiple news outlets.
Trump’s legal team sought last month to invalidate the work of the special grand jury and have Willis disqualified from proceedings, but the Georgia supreme court rejected the motion, ruling that Trump lacked “either the facts or the law necessary to mandate Ms Willis’s disqualification”.
Fulton county prosecutors to seek new 2020 election charges next week
The Fulton county district attorney investigating Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in the state of Georgia is expected to present evidence to a grand jury and ask it to return indictments as early as next Tuesday, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The prosecutors in the office of district attorney Fani Willis completed its internal reviews for criminal charges in the Trump case weeks ago, the people said. The review process, to identify any weakness with the case, is typically seen as the final step before charges are filed.
Willis has also privately indicated to her senior staff that the prosecutors on the Trump case were sufficiently prepared that they could go to trial tomorrow, the people said.
In the Trump investigation, prosecutors have developed evidence to pursue a sprawling racketeering case that is predicated on a statute about influencing witnesses and computer trespass by Trump operatives in Coffee county, the Guardian has previously reported.
The extent of Trump’s legal jeopardy remains unclear. But the racketeering statute in Georgia is especially expansive and attempts to solicit or coerce certain activity – for instance, Trump’s call to the secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger – could be included in the indictment.
The district attorney’s office has also weighed several state election law charges, including: criminal solicitation to commit election fraud and conspiracy to commit election fraud, as well as solicitation of a public or political officer to fail to perform their duties and solicitation to destroy, deface or remove ballots.
Willis originally suggested charging decisions were “imminent” in January, but the timetable has been repeatedly delayed after a number of Republicans who sought to help Trump stay in power as so-called fake electors accepted immunity deals as the investigation neared its end.
The newly disclosed memo by Trump lawyer Kenneth Chesebro includes a strategy to explain why pro-Trump electors were meeting in states where Joe Biden was declared the winner, the Times reported.
Chesebro wrote:
I believe that what can be achieved on Jan. 6 is not simply to keep Biden below 270 electoral votes. It seems feasible that the vote count can be conducted so that at no point will Trump be behind in the electoral vote count unless and until Biden can obtain a favorable decision from the Supreme Court upholding the Electoral Count Act as constitutional, or otherwise recognizing the power of Congress (and not the president of the Senate) to count the votes.
Secret Trump memo laid out plan to overturn election
Good morning, US politics blog readers. A lawyer allied with former president Donald Trump initially pitched the now-infamous plan to use fake electors in swing states to subvert the 2020 election results as “a bold, controversial strategy” that the supreme court would “likely” reject, according to a secret memo.
Federal prosecutors are portraying the memo, dated 6 December 2020 and written by Kenneth Chesebro, as a crucial link in how the Trump team’s efforts to keep him in power evolved into a criminal conspiracy, according to a New York Times report. The existence of the memo came to light in last week’s indictment of Trump.
Chesebro, identified as “co-conspirator 5” in the federal indictment of Trump, reportedly argued that the plan would focus attention on claims of voter fraud and “buy the Trump campaign more time to win litigation that would deprive Biden of electoral votes and/or add to Trump’s column”. He wrote in the memo:
I recognize that what I suggest is a bold, controversial strategy, and that there are many reasons why it might not end up being executed on Jan. 6. But as long as it is one possible option, to preserve it as a possibility it is important that the Trump-Pence electors cast their electoral votes on Dec. 14.
The document, described by prosecutors as the “fraudulent elector memo”, provides new details about how the plan originated and was discussed behind the scenes. The memo show the plan was a criminal plot to engineer “a fake controversy that would derail the proper certification of Biden as president-elect”, prosecutors said.
Here’s what else we’re watching today:
3pm EST: President Joe Biden will speak about his administration’s clean energy and manufacturing investments in Albuquerque.
5.55pm EST: Biden will fly to Salt Lake city.
The House and Senate are out.
