Summary
That’s all for today’s live blog. Here are some of the biggest news events of the day:
Attorneys for Donald Trump filed a response to federal prosecutors request for a protective order. In it, Trump’s lawyers ask that the judge reject the request.
Donald Trump’s attempt to countersue E Jean Carroll, the advice columnist who won a $5m civil judgment earlier this year after a jury found he sexually abused her, was rejected by a judge.
Ron DeSantis again rejected Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election in an interview, drawing insults from a spokeswoman for the former president.
Aileen Cannon, the federal judge overseeing Trump’s trial over the Mar-a-Lago documents, appeared to disclose an ongoing grand jury investigation in a court filing.
Ohio will tomorrow vote on whether to raise the bar to amend the state constitution, part of a GOP-backed attempt to undermine a forthcoming ballot initiative to protect abortion access.
Here’s our latest story on Trump’s countersuit against E Jean Carroll being thrown out by a judge:
Updated
Key event
Attorneys for Donald Trump have filed a response to a protective order requested by federal prosecutors in the former president’s indictment for allegedly attempting to overturn the 2020 election.
The requested order is based on a a statement Trump made Friday: “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!” Trump, however, argued he was just exercising his right to free speech.
Trump’s lawyers argue that the former president’s first amendment right is at risk of being restricted by the US government and the Biden administration during the election season, the response reads. Trump’s legal team wants US district court judge Tanya Chutkan, who is overseeing Trump’s election conspiracy case, to reject the order, describing it as “overly broad”.
Protective orders are common in criminal cases, but federal prosecutors said it is “particularly important in this case” because Trump has posted on social media about “witnesses, judges, attorneys, and others associated with legal matters pending against him”, the Associated Press reported.
Updated
Hello, I am Abené Clayton, a west coast reporter taking over the blog from my colleague Chris.
I’ll be keeping an eye on the clock as Trump’s attorneys the 5pm eastern time deadline for Donald Trump’s attorneys response to a request for a protective order in the January 6 case from special counsel Jack Smith, over a statement Trump made Friday: “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!” Trump, however, argued he was just exercising his right to free speech.
There’s no telling when it might happen, but Donald Trump could very well soon be indicted by a grand jury in Georgia’s Fulton county for his campaign’s attempt to overturn Joe Biden’s victory in the state three years ago.
All signs point to Trump being among those targeted by Fani Willis, the Atlanta-area district attorney investigating the election subversion effort by the former president and his allies. She has said a decision on who to bring charges against will be made before September.
CNN reported today that the street outside the Fulton county courthouse has been closed to the public in advance of the expected indictment:
Police in Atlanta have closed the street in front of the Fulton County Courthouse ahead of a possible indictment of Donald Trump.
— The Recount (@therecount) August 7, 2023
DA Fani Willis has said she will announce a charging decision by Sept. 1 in the probe of Trump's efforts to overturn his 2020 loss in Georgia. pic.twitter.com/MnE7MlMvuW
A battle is brewing between the Biden administration and America’s electrical utilities, the Guardian’s Dharna Noor and Floodlight’s Kristi Swartz report. At issue are policies intended to cut down on greenhouse gas emissions, but which the utilities argue are too strict and complicated to carry out:
The main lobbying group for US electric utilities plans to oppose a Biden administration proposal to curb greenhouse gas emissions from existing gas power plants, raising questions about the industry’s commitment to reducing planet-heating pollution.
The pushback will put the Edison Electric Institute (EEI) out of step with many of its members’ stated commitments to cut emissions, critics say. It also runs counters to the US voters’ political views based on new polling shared exclusively with the Guardian and Floodlight.
The power plant rules, first proposed in May, would force power providers to clean up certain large coal- and gas-fired plants, either by installing new greener technologies or shutting the projects down. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is asking states and utilities to submit plans on how they choose to limit those emissions within 24 months of the rules’ final approval.
Public comments must be submitted by 8 August.
The Guardian’s Chris McGreal has taken a closer look at the argument, made by many Republicans, of a link between asylum seekers and America’s struggles with fentanyl, and finds that the rhetoric does not match the facts:
Republican politicians have been accused of exploiting the tragedy of America’s fentanyl crisis by blaming Joe Biden for the rising death toll, and linking it to his immigration policies and populist anger over the US’s troubled southern border.
Critics say Republican leaders are guilty of a cynical political ploy by misrepresenting an increase in asylum seekers as a cause of the serious problem of cross-border drug smuggling driving a huge US public health crisis.
Fentanyl kills about 70,000 Americans a year. It is the leading cause of record drug overdose deaths in the US and the primary cause of death among adults under the age of 45.
The synthetic opioid, usually made from chemicals manufactured in China and put together in Mexico, is popular with drug cartels because it is many times more powerful than other narcotics and so requires smaller quantities, which are easier to smuggle than heroin or cocaine.
It is then laced into other drugs to boost their power and value. But because small amounts of the narcotic as so strong, fentanyl has driven up the number of accidental overdoses and deaths.
The Republicans’ push to blame the Biden administration follows record seizures of fentanyl at the US’s south-western frontier. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has discovered three times as much of the drug so far this year as during the same period in 2022. If seizures continue at that rate, CBP is on course to confiscate enough fentanyl in 2023 to kill close to a billion people – and that is almost certainly only a fraction of the drug smuggled into the US.
The Republican party claims this is evidence that “cartels have operational control of the border”. The speaker of the House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, tied the sharp increase in fentanyl seizures and deaths to the record number of undocumented migrants entering the US last year, and blamed the White House for letting them in. So did Congresswoman Mary Miller when she claimed that Biden and the homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, “opened our borders and flooded our streets with fentanyl”.
When Ron DeSantis was looking for someone to blame for the escalating death toll from the supercharged opioid his eye naturally fell on Biden.
When special counsel Jack Smith indicted Donald Trump last week over the failed plot to overturn the 2020 election, he referenced the actions of six co-conspirators, but did not name them.
However, one of them is believed to be John Eastman, who served as Trump’s attorney and was an architect of the legal strategy intended to stop Joe Biden from entering the White House.
He’s in the midst of defending his law license in California, where legal authorities have accused him of violating a number of ethics rules by participating in the election subversion attempt. Politico reports today that Eastman is seeking to have the disbarment proceedings postponed, because he is worried he may soon face criminal charges:
“[R]ecent developments in the investigation have renewed and intensified [Eastman’s] concerns that the federal government might bring charges against him,” his attorneys Randall Miller and Zachary Mayer wrote in an Aug. 4 filing posted to the court’s public docket on Monday.
Miller said the growing concern about criminal charges might prompt Eastman to assert his Fifth Amendment rights during disbarment proceedings. The Fifth Amendment generally allows people to refuse to provide testimony that could be used against them. But invoking the Fifth Amendment in the disbarment proceedings would jeopardize Eastman’s ability to defend his law license, his lawyers wrote.
“[Eastman] requests that the Court exercise its discretion to stay the State Bar’s disciplinary proceeding against him pending resolution of a parallel criminal investigation being conducted by Special Counsel Jack Smith and any trial or other proceedings that may result from that investigation,” Miller and Mayer wrote.
Bar discipline authorities have charged Eastman with multiple violations of professional rules and ethics — as well as the law — in his effort to upend the certified results of the 2020 election. Eastman’s bar discipline trial began in June — and he had even testified for several hours without asserting his Fifth Amendment rights. But it was postponed to late August after the proceedings ran longer than the initially anticipated two weeks.
Eastman is asking that the proceedings be postponed yet again until the resolution of Smith’s newly filed criminal case — in which Trump is, at least so far, the only defendant. If the disciplinary judge, Yvette Roland, denies that request, Eastman is asking her for a three-month delay to see whether he has been charged by then.
In recent months, several supreme court justices have been the subject of media reports outlining ties between them and parties with interests in their cases.
And while most of the justices scrutinized have belonged to the court’s six-member conservative majority, the Associated Press last month reported that liberal justice Sonia Sotomayor’s staff have prodded institutions where she appears to buy her book.
In an opinion article published today in the Washington Post, Margaret McMullan, an organizer of the Mississippi Book Festival, published her account of inviting Sotomayor to speak in 2019 – noting that the justice turned down a modest stipend and didn’t seem that interested in selling her book:
Subsequent emails and phone conversations were similar. No, Le said, the justice did not need us to provide lunch or dinner. No, she could not accept the $250 stipend.
Did Le urge me to buy more books? No. She did ask whether we wanted any of the copies of “My Beloved World” to be in Spanish. In fact, we did, and I hadn’t thought to order them.
When Sotomayor came to Jackson, we had her speaking in the sanctuary at Galloway Memorial United Methodist Church, the church where Eudora Welty once worshiped. Backstage, Sotomayor smiled when she saw my clipboard of questions. She helped me with my tote bag full of books. She then clapped her hands together and said something like, “Okay. Here’s what we’re going to do.”
In addition to our planned onstage interview, she said, she wanted the freedom to go off-script. “They’re children,” I recall her saying. “I want to be sure I get to their questions.”
“Perfect,” I said.
She concludes:
There very well might be a culture of poor ethical conduct in the Supreme Court, but there is no moral equivalency between justices accepting rides on private jets to vacation with friends who had cases before the court and Sotomayor talking about her books and her life to a crowd of mesmerized young readers.
The standard royalty rate for authors is less than 10 percent of the sales price. I don’t know anything about Sotomayor’s deal with her publishers, but 10 percent would make her cut of the 1,500 books our foundation purchased approximately $2,250 — for which she had to fly to Mississippi and give two presentations. During the hottest month of the year.
Was that a bribe? You be the judge.
It’s not the first time someone who knows the justices has spoken out to defend their ethics. Harlan Crow, the billionaire and Republican donor who was reported to have taken conservative justice Clarence Thomas on luxury trips, has given multiple interviews in which he denied there being anything improper about their relationship.
There have been reports of long lines in Ohio as early voting has surged ahead of a closely watched special election on Tuesday that could make it harder to amend the state constitution:
One of Ohio’s many voting restrictions backed by Republicans means that counties can only have one early voting location regardless of population size.
— Stephen Wolf (@PoliticsWolf) August 7, 2023
So heavily Dem Franklin County’s 1.3 million people get one location just like heavily GOP Vinton County’s 13,000 people https://t.co/A15aXrTS5i
Ohioans are voting on Issue 1, a proposal that would require signatures in all 88 counties as well as a 60% supermajority to amend the state constitution.
Currently, voters need to collect 5% of the gubernatorial vote in all 44 counties to send a constitutional amendment to the ballot, which must win a simple statewide majority to pass. Republicans are seeking to change the rules ahead of a referendum to protect abortion rights this fall.
Republicans placed the special election on the ballot in August, hoping it would be a low-turnout affair. But turnout has been extremely strong – nearly 600,000 people have cast ballots so far. For more than a decade, Ohio Republicans have only allowed counties to have one in-person early voting site. That restriction can create a bottleneck in the more populous counties in the state, which tend to be Democratic-leaning.
A new law enacted by Republicans this year also imposes additional hurdles to voting early. The measure eliminated early voting on the Monday before election day, typically one of the busiest days, instead extending the hours on other available days. It also gave voters less time to request a mail-in ballot and only allows counties to offer a single ballot drop box, which must be available in front of the boards of elections.
Robert Reich: Will Trump be jailed before trial?
Our columnist Robert Reich considers Donald Trump’s characteristic disregard for the instructions of a judge, in the aftermath of his arraignment on charges related to his attempted election subversion, and whether federal authorities will take the logical next step…
At Donald Trump’s arraignment for trying to overturn the result of the 2020 election, magistrate judge Moxila A Upadhyaya warned him he could be taken into custody if he violated the conditions of his release, including attempting to influence jurors or intimidate future witnesses.
The judge said: “You have heard your conditions of release. It is important you comply. You may be held pending trial in this case if you violate the conditions of release.”
She asked: “Do you understand these warnings and consequence, sir? Are you prepared to comply?”
Trump responded: “Yes.”
But not 24 hours later, Trump posted on social media a message that could be understood as an attempt to influence potential jurors or retaliate against any witness prepared to testify against him. He wrote: “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!”
On Friday evening, prosecutors from the office of special counsel Jack Smith asked the court for a protective order to stop Trump from making public any of the information they were about to deliver to his lawyers under the discovery phase of the upcoming criminal trial, such as the names of witnesses who will testify against him.
On Saturday, the presiding judge in the case, Tanya Chutkan, ordered that Trump’s lawyers respond to the prosecutor’s request by 5pm Monday.
All through the weekend, Trump continued to threaten potential witnesses.
On Sunday he called Jack Smith “deranged”, and accused the special counsel of waiting to bring the case until “right in the middle” of his election campaign.
In another post he asserted that he would never get a “fair trial” with Chutkan and jurors from Washington DC.
These statements directly violate the conditions of Trump’s release pending trial.
They also could inflame Trump supporters, thereby endangering those who are trying to administer justice, such as Smith and Chutkan, as well as potential witnesses.
It’s going to get a lot worse unless Chutkan – on her own initiative or at the urging of prosecutors – orders Trump’s lawyers to show cause why his release pending trial should not be revoked, in light of his repeated violation of the conditions of his release.
Read the whole piece…
Joe Biden has completed one of the less onerous presidential duties: welcoming to the White House a champion team from major league sports.
It was the Houston Astros’ turn today, having won the World Series last year. The pool reporter, Sabrina Siddiqui (of the Wall Street Journal but formerly of this parish), informs us that a collection of Texas notables also attended, among them Lena Hidalgo, the judge of Harris county, and David Martin, mayor pro-tem of Houston.
No word yet if Biden mentioned the impending Rugby World Cup, and how he thinks his beloved Ireland might do. Of course, he in all likelihood did not. But rest assured, this reporter – if perhaps no one else in the entire Washington or even global press corps – will continue to try to find out.
Indictments of Donald Trump regarding his attempt to overturn the 2020 election and his retention of classified information are “exquisite … beautiful and intricate”, the former House speaker Nancy Pelosi said.
“The indictments against the president are exquisite,” Pelosi, 83 and a regular antagonist of the 77-year-old former president, told New York magazine in an interview published today.
“They’re beautiful and intricate, and they probably have a better chance of conviction than anything that I would come up with.”
Pelosi’s words to New York magazine seemed likely to prompt a response from Trump, with whom she frequently clashed when she was speaker and he was in the Oval Office. In one high-profile incident, in February 2020, Pelosi famously tore up a Trump speech, after his State of the Union address.
Pelosi also told the magazine that if Trump were to win the Republican nomination and the 2024 election against Joe Biden, “it would be a criminal enterprise in the White House”.
“Don’t even think of that,” she said. “Don’t think of the world being on fire. It cannot happen, or we will not be the United States of America.”
Trump has – unsurprisingly – been in a somewhat combative mood.
Last week, Pelosi told MSNBC Trump looked like a “scared puppy” when he arrived in court in Washington to face four charges related to his attempt to overturn the 2020 election.
Trump, who has previously called Pelosi “crazy” and an “animal”, denied being scared.
He also called the former speaker “really quite vicious … a Wicked Witch … a sick and demented psycho who will someday live in HELL!”
The day so far
Donald Trump’s attempt to countersue E Jean Carroll, the advice columnist who won a $5m civil judgment earlier this year after a jury found he sexually abused her, was rejected by a judge. But the former president’s lawyers are no doubt keeping busy ahead of a 5pm eastern time deadline to respond to a request for a protective order in the January 6 case from special counsel Jack Smith, over a statement Trump made Friday: “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!” Trump, however, argued he was just exercising his right to free speech.
Here’s what else has happened today so far:
Ron DeSantis again rejected Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election in an interview, drawing insults from a spokeswoman for the former president.
Aileen Cannon, the federal judge overseeing Trump’s trial over the Mar-a-Lago documents, appeared to disclose an ongoing grand jury investigation in a court filing.
Ohio will tomorrow vote on whether to raise the bar to amend the state constitution, part of a GOP-backed attempt to undermine a forthcoming ballot initiative to protect abortion access.
Donald Trump’s legal troubles have made plenty of news, but are they causing his supporters to change their minds? The Guardian’s Chris McGreal has a reality check from Iowa, the first state to vote in the GOP primary process:
From his corner of rural Iowa, Neil Shaffer did more than his fair share to put Donald Trump in the White House and to try to keep him there.
Shaffer oversaw the biggest swing of any county in the US from Barack Obama to Trump in 2016, and increased the then president’s share of the vote four years later. But the chair of the Howard county Republican party is not enthusiastic at the prospect of yet another Trump presidential campaign, and he blames the Democrats for driving it.
“Honestly, the Democrats are shooting themselves in the foot with these prosecutions,” he said. “Why is Trump doing so well? Because people feel like they are piling on him. If this is the Democrats’ effort to make him look bad, it hasn’t. It’s probably going to make him the [Republican] nominee and, honestly, he may win the general election again. And then whose fault would it be?”
After pleading not guilty on Thursday to federal charges over his attempts to steal the 2020 presidential election, Trump denounced the indictment as “a persecution of a political opponent”.
“If you can’t beat him, you persecute him or you prosecute him,” he said.
Updated
Judge tosses Trump countersuit against E Jean Carroll
A judge has thrown out Donald Trump’s countersuit against advice columnist E Jean Carroll, who earlier this year won a $5m defamation judgment against the former president after a jury found he sexually abused her:
JUST IN: Trump's counterclaim against E. Jean Carroll has been *dismissed* by Judge Kaplan. https://t.co/BAUsk2lfdE pic.twitter.com/GdyVaZ0UoR
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) August 7, 2023
Trump responded by filing a counterclaim against Carroll, arguing she defamed him by saying he raped her. That claim was rejected by judge Lewis Kaplan, who said the former president’s contention did not add up.
Ohio to vote on GOP-backed attempt to undercut abortion measure by changing rules
After the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade last year, abortion rights advocates in Ohio succeeded in collecting enough signatures to put a measure on the November ballot that will enshrine access to the procedure in the state constitution.
Republican lawmakers in the state, who support abortion restrictions passed into law prior to the supreme court’s decision, then moved to change the rules for amending Ohio’s constitution, with a ballot measure that will be voted on in a special election to be held tomorrow.
As the Guardian’s Sam Levine reports, it’s a big moment for democracy in the state that will have reverberations beyond just abortion rights:
An under-the-radar election in Ohio on Tuesday has quietly emerged as one of the most high-stakes stress tests for American democracy in recent years.
The question Ohio voters will decide on 8 August is simple: how easy should it be to amend the state constitution? Like 17 other states, Ohio allows citizens to place constitutional amendments on the statewide ballot if they get a certain number of signatures and more than 50% of the statewide vote. The process has been in place for more than a century in Ohio, and in November, voters will use it to decide whether to protect abortion rights.
In May, Republicans who control the state legislature abruptly sent a proposal to the ballot called Issue 1 that would make it much harder to change the constitution. If approved, a constitutional amendment would need 60% of the vote to pass instead of a simple majority. It would also make it significantly harder for citizens to even propose a constitutional amendment, requiring signatures from 5% of the voters in all of Ohio’s 88 counties (the state currently requires organizers to get signatures in 44).
In May, Republicans who control the state legislature abruptly sent a proposal to the ballot called Issue 1 that would make it much harder to change the constitution. If approved, a constitutional amendment would need 60% of the vote to pass instead of a simple majority. It would also make it significantly harder for citizens to even propose a constitutional amendment, requiring signatures from 5% of the voters in all of Ohio’s 88 counties (the state currently requires organizers to get signatures in 44).
Updated
Meanwhile, the Washington DC federal court has made public the document Donald Trump signed following his arraignment last Thursday in which he agreed to the conditions of his release:
NEW DOC: Here is Donald Trump's signature on the conditions of his release
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) August 7, 2023
(including the pledge not to tamper with or retaliate against witnesses/victims/informants or officers of the court) https://t.co/gcC6ncySCB pic.twitter.com/ZGrSnEY7Ta
And here's the part about not communicating with other witnesses in the case unless counsel is present. https://t.co/gcC6ncySCB pic.twitter.com/U1xHWQaSl8
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) August 7, 2023
You can find the entire document here.
As part of his defense against charges related to attempting to overturn the 2020 election, Donald Trump’s attorney John Lauro has mulled asking for the trial to be moved – perhaps to West Virginia.
The Mountain State is also one of the most Trump-friendly: the then-president carried it by nearly 69% three years ago, his second-biggest win nationwide, after Wyoming. Joe Biden, meanwhile, won Washington DC, where the charges were filed and where the trial will currently take place, by a whopping 92%.
But Politico reports that federal judges, including Tanya Chutkan, who is presiding over the January 6 case, are unlikely to grant a change of venue for the proceedings. Here’s why:
At the heart of Chutkan’s analysis — like most of her colleagues’ as well — is a rejection of Trump’s premise. Just because a juror is affiliated with one political party — and even opposes the political views of someone facing charges — does not mean they are incapable of setting aside those views to judge a case based on evidence and facts.“People in this country have strong views … we expect people to have opinions. And one of the things — it’s fine to have an opinion,” Chutkan said in September 2022, swatting aside defendant Russell Alford’s bid to relocate his Jan. 6 case. “But what I’m going to be instructing the jury is ‘can you put aside your opinion and adjudge the defendant based on the evidence?’ And it’s amazing how, I have found, how seriously jurors take that charge. And what we’re looking for is not people without opinions; what we’re looking for is people who are able to put aside their opinion and focus their decision solely on the evidence presented in this courtroom.”
The protection for prosecutors and defendants concerned about juror bias is typically a thorough vetting process — known as “voir dire” — in which the judge and lawyers get to grill potential jurors under oath about their background, views and experiences, screening out those who might be incapable of deciding the case fairly. This process has helped seat jurors in other politically explosive recent cases, including the seditious conspiracy trials of leaders of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, who were charged with helping orchestrate and exacerbate the Jan. 6 attack.
Often, predictions about rampant bias in the jury pool are put to rest after interviews reveal jurors with diverse political viewpoints, little knowledge of the cases or issues present and no preconceived notions about the defendants or their potential guilt or innocence. And courts uniformly prefer to wait for this process to play out before considering a venue transfer.
Courts’ overwhelming reluctance to relocate trials is rooted in the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee for “a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed.” Appellate courts have repeatedly found that venue transfers are justified only in the most extreme circumstances — and even then only after an extensive voir dire has proven it impossible to seat a fair jury. Those circumstances include a tiny jury pool — much smaller than Washington’s 600,000-plus population of potential jurors — and pretrial publicity that uniquely taints that particular district.
Trump cites speech rights in opposing protective order
Ahead of an afternoon deadline for his lawyers to respond to a request from special counsel Jack Smith for a protective order in the January 6 case, Donald Trump said such a ruling would infringe on his free speech rights.
From his Truth social account:
No, I shouldn’t have a protective order placed on me because it would impinge upon my right to FREE SPEECH. Deranged Jack Smith and the Department of Injustice should, however, because they are illegally “leaking” all over the place!
The former president’s attorneys have until 5pm eastern time to respond to the request from Smith, who asked for the protective order after Trump on Friday wrote, “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!” on Truth.
Smith wants Trump’s attorneys barred from publicly sharing “sensitive” materials including grand jury transcripts obtained during the January 6 case’s pre-trial motions.
Judge in Trump documents case appears to disclose ongoing grand jury investigation
Aileen Cannon, the federal judge presiding over Donald Trump’s trial on charges related to keeping classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort, appeared to disclose an ongoing grand jury investigation in a court filing today, the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports:
NEW on Trump classified docs: US judge Aileen Cannon appears to disclose that Special Counsel is using an “out-of-district grand jury to continue to investigate and/or to seek post-indictment hearings” — and strikes two filings by prosecutors https://t.co/dSElatjEZY
— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) August 7, 2023
Cannon was appointed to the bench by Trump, and faced scrutiny last year for a decision in an earlier stage of the Mar-a-Lago case that some legal experts viewed as favorable to the former president, and which was later overturned by an appeals court.
Cannon’s is presiding over Trump’s trial in Florida on charges brought by special counsel Jack Smith, who alleges the former president illegally stored classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort, and conspired to hide them from government officials sent to retrieve them.
In response to the charges filed against him over January 6, Donald Trump’s lawyers have argued the former president did not know that he indeed lost the 2020 election. But as the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports, that defense may not be enough to stop prosecutors from winning a conviction:
Included in the indictment last week against Donald Trump for his efforts to subvert the 2020 presidential election was a count of obstructing an official proceeding – the attempt to stop the vote certification in Congress on the day his supporters mounted the January 6 Capitol attack.
The count is notable, because – based on a review of previous judicial rulings in other cases where the charge has been brought – it may be one where prosecutors will not need to prove Trump knew he lost the election, as the former president’s legal team has repeatedly claimed.
The obstruction of an official proceeding statute has four parts, but in Trump’s case what is at issue is the final element: whether the defendant acted corruptly.
The definition of “corruptly” is currently under review by the US court of appeals for the DC circuit in the case titled United States v Robertson. Yet previous rulings by district court judges and a different three-judge panel in the DC circuit in an earlier case suggest how it will apply to Trump.
In short: even with the most conservative interpretation, prosecutors at trial may not need to show that Trump knew his lies about 2020 election fraud to be false, or that the ex-president knew he had lost to Joe Biden.
“There’s no need to prove that Trump knew he lost the election to establish corrupt intent,” said Norman Eisen, special counsel to the House judiciary committee in the first Trump impeachment.
“The benefit under the statute is the presidency itself – and Trump clearly knew that without his unlawful actions, Congress was going to certify Biden as the winner of the election. That’s all the corrupt intent you need,” Eisen said.
Donald Trump’s team has clearly been paying attention to Ron DeSantis’s NBC News interview, with a spokeswoman attacking the Florida governor for his comments dismissing the ex-president’s false claims about his 2020 election loss:
If you think Joe Biden got 81 million votes, you’re an idiot
— Liz Harrington (@realLizUSA) August 7, 2023
If you’re just saying that, you’re either a coward or corrupt
Either way it’s disqualifying https://t.co/vGWe5LAhG5
Speaking of Republican presidential candidates, NBC News scored a sit-down interview with Florida governor Ron DeSantis, and got him to again say that his chief rival Donald Trump lost the 2020 election.
DeSantis, whose campaign for the White House is in troubled waters, had been vague on the issue until last week, when he started saying publicly that he did not believe the former president’s false claims about his election loss.
Here he is saying it again, on NBC:
Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL): "Of course he lost."
— The Recount (@therecount) August 7, 2023
NBC News' Dasha Burns: “Trump lost the 2020 election?”
DeSantis: "Joe Biden's the president. But the issue is, I think what people in the media and elsewhere, they want to act like somehow this was just like the perfect election. pic.twitter.com/hzL7oNKCrz
Pence emerges as potential witness in Trump January 6 trial
In his final days as vice-president, Mike Pence faced pressure from Donald Trump to go along with his plan to disrupt Joe Biden’s election victory. Pence refused his then-boss’s request, and the two running mates are now foes, but could Pence potentially be a witness in the trial on the federal charges brought against Trump over the election subversion plot?
In an interview with CBS News broadcast over the weekend, Pence, who is running for the Republican presidential nomination, said he has “no plans to testify”, but added “people can be confident we’ll obey the law. We’ll respond to the call of the law, if it comes and we’ll just tell the truth.”
Far from being worried about what Trump’s former deputy might have to say about him, the former president’s attorney John Lauro said his legal team would welcome Pence’s testimony.
“The vice-president will be our best witness,” Lauro said in a Sunday appearance on CBS, though he didn’t exactly say why he felt that way. “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.”
Trump faces deadline to respond to prosecutors' request for protection after warning 'I’m coming after you'
Good morning, US politics blog readers. Mere days have passed since special counsel Jack Smith indicted Donald Trump for his failed effort to reverse his 2020 election loss, but the two sides are already battling over what the former president can say and do. On Friday, Trump wrote “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!”, prompting Smith’s prosecutors to request a protective order that would restrict what the former president’s legal team can share publicly, saying it is necessary to guard people involved in the case against retaliation.
Trump’s lawyers have until 5pm eastern time today to respond. It’s an early salvo in what is expected to be the lengthy process Smith’s case is expected to take, and which will undoubtedly hang over the 2024 election, where Trump is currently the frontrunner. Either way, the former president has not been shy about sharing his thoughts regarding the unprecedented criminal charges leveled against him, and do not be surprised if today is no different.
Here’s what else is happening:
Voters in Ohio are gearing up to decide on Tuesday whether to approve a Republican-backed proposal that will raise the bar for changing the state’s constitution. What this is really about is a ballot initiative scheduled to be put to a vote in November that would enshrine abortion protections in the state’s laws, but which would face a much more difficult road to passage if tomorrow’s vote succeeds.
Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor whose presidential campaign appears to be floundering, just sat down for an interview with NBC News, where, among other things, he reiterated that he believed Trump lost the 2020 election.
Joe Biden is hosting World Series winners the Houston Astros at the White House today, before heading to the Grand Canyon.
Updated
