Closing summary
The legal battle over documents seized by the government from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort continued, with the former president’s lawyers rejecting the justice department’s efforts to convince a federal judge to let them continue reviewing the materials. The filing avoided questions of whether what was taken was indeed protected – despite Trump’s assertions that he had declassified everything that was found before leaving office.
Here’s a rundown of what else happened today:
Trump also rejected the justice department’s nominees for special master, though declined to say why publicly.
Republicans are considering investigating the security failures that led up to the January 6 attack if they win control of the House.
Democratic candidates are polling strongly in some swing states – but an analysis from The New York Times warns it could be an illusion.
A new poll indicates sizable minorities of Americans would be ok with unelected leaders, and many would also be ok with the government overruling minority ethnicities and religions.
Democrats have spent almost $19 million across eight states in controversial efforts to promote rightwing Republican candidates, believing them to be weaker in the November midterm elections.
Meanwhile in Congress, lawmakers may be back in Washington but not much has happened – yet.
The Senate will soon confirm president Joe Biden’s 80th judicial nominee, CNN reports, as Democrats look to make their mark on the federal judiciary:
After Salvador Mendoza is confirmed today to the Ninth Circuit, he will be the 80th Biden judicial nominee confirmed -- something Schumer just said amounts to more than Trump, Obama, George W. Bush at similar points in their presidencies
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) September 12, 2022
The chamber’s Democratic leader Chuck Schumer has also confirmed that work is ongoing on a new government funding bill, and on finding 10 GOP senators willing to sign on to a bill codifying same-sex marriage rights, according to Politico:
Schumer updates: Senate on verge of confirming 80th judge of Biden presidency
— Burgess Everett (@burgessev) September 12, 2022
Bipartisan group still working on same-sex marriage bill, trying to get GOP votes
Work ongoing on bill to fund government past Sept. 30
“If you thought Fulton was a good county to bring your crime to, to bring your violence to, you are wrong.” So declares Fani Willis, the district attorney in Georgia’s Fulton County, in the opening lines of a profile published in The New York Times.
While the statement was made in the context of a gang racketeering case, the piece makes clear it could also be said about Donald Trump and the people from Georgia and elsewhere who helped in his attempt to meddle with the state’s 2020 election result. Willis has convened the special grand jury that is investigating that campaign, which has subpoenaed Trump allies including attorney Rudy Giuliani, Republican senator Lindsey Graham and others. The piece doesn’t contain much new details about what the grand jurors have learned, but it makes clear the scope of the ongoing investigation, which some analysts have warned is a source of legal peril for the former president.
Here’s more from the profile:
In recent weeks, Ms. Willis has called dozens of witnesses to testify before a special grand jury investigating efforts to undo Mr. Trump’s defeat, including a number of prominent pro-Trump figures who traveled, against their will, from other states. It was long arm of the law stuff, and it emphasized how her investigation, though playing out more than 600 miles from Washington, D.C., is no sideshow.
Rather, the Georgia inquiry has emerged as one of the most consequential legal threats to the former president, and it is already being shaped by Ms. Willis’s distinct and forceful personality and her conception of how a local prosecutor should do her job. Her comfort in the public eye stands in marked contrast to the low-key approach of another Trump legal pursuer, Attorney General Merrick B. Garland.
Ms. Willis, 50, a Democrat, is the first Black woman to lead Georgia’s largest district attorney’s office. In her 19 years as a prosecutor, she has led more than 100 jury trials and handled hundreds of murder cases. Since she became chief prosecutor, her office’s conviction rate has stood at close to 90 percent, according to a spokesperson.
Her experience is the source of her confidence, which appears unshaken by the scrutiny — and criticism — the Trump case has brought.
There’s been a new development in the ongoing legal wrangling over the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago and the documents found there. As The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports, Trump’s attorneys have objected to the candidates for special master proposed by the justice department:
New: Trump objects to proposed Special Master candidates proposed by DOJ — says it would offer rationale to judge privately https://t.co/1zfTaUzUt6
— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) September 12, 2022
Trump objects even to former US district court judge Barbara Jones, who was the special master in the Michael Cohen case in 2018 and Rudy Giuliani in 2021
— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) September 12, 2022
Last week, a federal judge granted Trump’s request for a special master to review documents taken by the FBI from Mar-a-Lago to screen for privileged material. The decision stopped the government’s ability to review the seized documents, and the justice department is appealing it.
Twenty-one years after 9/11, CBS News reports that five of the defendants held at Guantanamo Bay for alleged involvement in the attacks are negotiating plea deals with the government.
The defendants have been incarcerated for years due to disputes over what evidence can be used in the court and, more recently, the Covid-19 pandemic. Plea deals would resolve several of their cases and likely result in lengthy jail sentences, but CBS reports some relatives of those killed in the attack oppose such agreements.
“The families are outraged,” said Debra Burlingame, whose brother was among those killed when hijackers steered his plane into the Pentagon.
Here’s more from CBS:
The chief defendant is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-described architect of 9/11. The other four defendants are Ramzi Binalshibh, Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, Walid bin Attash and Ammar al-Baluchi.
The possibility of a plea deal has angered the families of some 9/11 victims, including Debra Burlingame, whose brother, pilot Charles “Chic” Burlingame, was killed when al Qaeda terrorists took over his plane, American Airlines Flight 77, and crashed it into the Pentagon.
“We didn’t have remains for weeks,” his sister Debra Burlingame told CBS News. “We were constantly saying to each other, ‘What would Chic want? What would Chic do?’”
Burlingame said she has been in touch with other 9/11 families.
“The families are outraged,” she said of the possibility of plea deals. “They don’t want closure, they want justice.”
Another group, 9/11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, has said that a guilty plea and agreement not to appeal the sentence “would be partly in recognition of the torture each of the defendants experienced” and bring “some measure of judicial finality.”
“All five defendants and the government are all engaged in good faith negotiations, with the idea of bringing this trial which has become a forever trial to an end,” said James Connell, a defense attorney for al-Baluchi.
“Mr. al-Baluchi’s number one priority is obtaining medical care for his torture,” Connell continued. “In order to get that medical care, he is willing to plead guilty to a substantial sentence at Guantanamo in exchange for a guarantee of medical care and dropping the death penalty.
The Democratic candidate for Senate in Pennsylvania has put abortion at the center of his pitch to voters, in the latest sign the party is banking on the supreme court’s overturning of Roe v Wade to drum up support in the midterms. Richard Luscombe reports:
John Fetterman has placed abortion rights at the top of his agenda to capture Pennsylvania’s Senate seat in November, telling supporters at a raucous rally on Sunday: “Women are the reason we can win. Don’t piss off women.”
The Democrat was targeting comments made by his Republican opponent Mehmet Oz in May that abortion at any stage of pregnancy was “murder”.
Oz, in keeping with a recent trend among Republican candidates, has attempted to soften his extremist position as the fall’s midterm elections draw closer, insisting that he now believes in exceptions for rape, incest and the health of the woman.
But Oz’s rival was uncompromising in his criticism during Sunday’s rally at a community college in rural Pennsylvania attended by several thousand supporters, including a large number of women in pink “Fetterwoman” T-shirts.
The justice department has brought charges against a Texas woman who left threatening voice messages on the phone of a judge involved in disputes around documents taken by the FBI from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, Reuters reports.
“Donald Trump has been disqualified long ago, and he’s marked for assassination. You’re helping him, ma’am,” said one of the voicemails, which was allegedly left by Tiffani Shea Gish of the Houston area for Aileen Cannon, a US district judge in Fort Pierce, Florida. Cannon, who was appointed to the bench by Trump, last week granted his request for a special master to review documents taken from Mar-a-Lago as part of the government’s investigation into whether the former president unlawfully retained government secrets.
Here’s more from Reuters’ report:
Gish faces two criminal charges - influencing a federal official by threat and interstate communications with a threat to kidnap or injure.
Cannon, who was appointed to the bench in 2020 by Trump, ruled last week that she was granting the former president’s request over the Justice Department’s objections to install a “special master” to review the seized records to weed out possibly privileged materials.
The complaint said that on Sept. 3, Cannon forwarded three separate voicemails from Gish, who referred to herself in some of them as “Evelyn Salt,” to the U.S. Marshals Service.
“Donald Trump has been disqualified long ago, and he’s marked for assassination. You’re helping him, ma’am,” one of the voicemails said, according to the complaint.
“He’s marked for assassination and so are you,” the caller also said, while including an expletive.
After FBI agents identified a cellphone number associated with the voicemails, they interviewed Gish at her home, the complaint stated. The FBI said she admitted to leaving the voicemails and confirmed that the number belonged to her and no one else had access to the cellphone.
One of the most controversial electoral tactics Democrats have deployed recently is spending money to elevate rightwing candidates in Republican primaries, the logic being that more extreme nominees will hurt the GOP in the November midterm elections.
The Washington Post has tallied the money spent on these candidates in an analysis released today, and found it adds up to almost $19 million across eight states, but could go up to $53 million if spending in Illinois is factored in. In that state, Democrats spent massively to help a Republican who said party leaders in the state should not have told Donald Trump to leave the White House when his term was up.
The tactic is controversial because it could backfire and result in Republicans who hold extreme views – such as that the 2020 election was stolen – elected to major offices in the November midterms.
Here’s more from the Post’s story:
The approach often involves TV ads suggesting that a far-right GOP candidate is too conservative for a state or district and drawing attention to the candidate’s hard line views on abortion, guns and former president Donald Trump — messages that resonate with conservative primary voters. In other cases, Democrats have run ads attacking GOP candidates seen as tougher to defeat in general elections in ways that could erode support for them in Republican primaries.
Total Democratic spending rises to roughly $53 million when a ninth state, Illinois, is added. There, the Democratic Governors Association and the campaign of Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) spent a combined $34.5 million successfully elevating a GOP candidate who has said it was “appalling” that party leaders in Illinois wanted Trump to concede the 2020 election.
Some Democrats explain their actions by saying they are simply getting a jump on attacking Republican candidates for the general election, while others openly acknowledge trying to secure weaker competition in the fall. But there is little dispute about the effect of altering the Republican primaries in ways that could affect the November matchups.
As primary season nears its Tuesday endpoint, Democrats are giving the strategy one more try in New Hampshire, in two congressional races. In the Republican Senate primary, Senate Majority PAC, a group aligned with Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), is spending $3.2 million on ads that effectively enhance the candidacy in the GOP primary of ret. Gen. Don Bolduc, by portraying his more moderate rival, state Senate President Chuck Morse, who has trailed in GOP primary polls to Bolduc, as beholden to the party establishment.
Neck and neck in Ohio senate
It is only one poll but a recent survey in the Ohio senate race shows Democrat Tim Ryan basically level with right-wing Trump ally and famous author JD Vance. Ohio is a state has has been drifting more red and so the news fits in with a revival of Democrat fortunes over the past month.
The Hill has more details: A USA TODAY Network Ohio/Suffolk University poll released Monday found 47 percent of Ohio general election voters said they would vote or lean toward Ryan if the Senate election were held today, while 46 percent said they could back Vance.
Six percent of respondents in the poll said they were undecided, while 1 percent said they would support someone else. The slim margin between the two leading candidates falls within the poll’s margin of error of 4.4 percentage points.
The day so far
The legal battle over documents seized by the government from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort continued, with the former president’s lawyers rejecting the justice department’s efforts to convince a federal judge to let them continue reviewing the materials. The filing avoided questions of whether what was taken was indeed protected – despite Trump’s assertions that he had declassified everything that was found before leaving office.
Here’s a rundown of what else happened today:
Republicans are considering investigating the security failures that led up to the January 6 attack if they win control of the House.
Democratic candidates are polling strongly in some swing states – but an analysis from The New York Times warns it could be an illusion.
A new poll indicates sizable minorities of Americans would be ok with unelected leaders, and many would also be ok with the government overruling minority ethnicities and religions.
Ukraine is planning to ask Washington for more long-distance weapons to continue its offensive into Russian-held territory, including a missile system its ally had held off on providing for fears it could provoke Moscow, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Citing a document shared with US lawmakers, the Journal reports Ukraine will ask for 29 types of weapons and ammunition systems, including anti-ship missiles, drones and tanks. It will also ask for the Army Tactical Missile System, a long-range weapon that Washington fears could be used to strike Russian territory and start a war with Ukraine’s western allies.
Here’s more from the Journal’s report:
The Biden administration, which has dispatched more than $15 billion worth of weapons and other security assistance to Ukraine, has declined to provide that system over concerns Ukraine could use it to strike Russian territory and spark a wider conflict with the West.
Ukraine’s list of requirements for “offensive operations” includes 29 types of weapon systems and ammunition. Among them are tanks, drones, artillery systems; more Harpoon antiship missiles; and 2,000 missiles for the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or Himars, which the United States began providing earlier this year.
Ukraine’s requests come as its forces have routed Russian troops in northeastern Ukraine.
It follows the recent publication of a strategy statement by Valeriy Zaluzhny, the commander in chief of Ukraine’s force, and Mykhailo Zabrodsky, a member of the Ukrainian parliament and a senior military officer who led the most significant Ukrainian counterattack in the 2014 war with Russia.
They argued that Russia has long-range cruise missiles that greatly outdistance the systems in the Ukrainian inventory. A turning point could come if the Ukrainians also had longer-range systems, they argued, specifically mentioning the ATACMS.
Trump may be in hot water, legally speaking, for allegedly taking government secrets with him when he left the White House, but as Ramon Antonio Vargas reports, a new book reveals he never wanted to leave in the first place:
In the days after Joe Biden defeated him in the 2020 election, Donald Trump told an aide he was “just not going to leave” the White House, according to a new book on his presidency and its chaotic aftermath.
“We’re never leaving,” he vowed to another aide, says the book from New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman titled Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America. “How can you leave when you won an election?”
CNN, where Haberman also serves as a political analyst, said Monday it reviewed reporting for the book – set for a 4 October release – and published new details on Trump’s insistence that he intended to stay at the White House despite his electoral loss to Biden.
Democrats have grown increasingly upbeat about their prospects in the upcoming midterms, pointing to the outrage over the end of nationwide abortion rights, declining gas prices and the passage of major pieces of legislation intended to help Americans.
Indeed, polls in recent battleground states have shown Democratic Senate candidates ahead of their Republicans challengers, including in closely divided races such as those in Wisconsin, Nevada and Georgia.
But what if it was all a mirage? Polls in recent presidential races have been far off the mark in crucial states, and in 2020, overestimated Democrats strength among voters. The New York Times today published an analysis that takes into account these polling errors, and applies them to the latest surveys coming out in battleground Senate races across the country. The analysis finds that Democratic candidates may be far weaker than they appear in states like Nevada and Georgia, and actually running behind Republicans in North Carolina, Ohio and Wisconsin.
If the data is correct, here is what the Times says it would mean for Democrats’ quest to maintain control of the Senate:
The apparent Democratic edge in Senate races in Wisconsin, North Carolina and Ohio would evaporate. To take the chamber, Republicans would need any two of Georgia, Arizona, Nevada or Pennsylvania. With Democrats today well ahead in Pennsylvania and Arizona, the fight for control of the chamber would come down to very close races in Nevada and Georgia.
Regardless of who was favored, the race for Senate control would be extremely competitive. Republican control of the House would seem to be a foregone conclusion.
Outrage over the end of Roe v Wade has pushed some Republicans to soften their abortion stances as they look to court voters in the upcoming midterm elections, Maya Yang reports:
A growing number of Republicans are changing their positions on abortions since the fall of Roe v Wade as midterm elections approach in the US, signaling a softened shift from their previously staunch anti-abortion stances.
Since the supreme court overturned the federal right to abortion in June, many Republicans are adopting more compromised positions in attempts to win votes in key states through a slew of changes in messaging on websites, advertisements and public statements.
The moves comes amid a ferocious backlash to the decision that has seen Democrat hopes in the midterm elections revived and even see a solidly red state like Kansas vote in a referendum to keep some abortion rights.
Following a historic term that will be remembered for a series of conservative decisions including the end of nationwide abortion rights, the supreme court’s chief justice has responded to critics that say the jurors are risking their legitimacy, The Guardian’s Maya Yang reports:
US supreme court chief justice John Roberts has defended his conservative-leaning bench from attacks over its decision in June to overturn federal abortion rights, as US vice-president Kamala Harris launched a fierce attack on what she called today’s “activist court”.
Roberts, in his first public appearance since the bombshell ruling to overturn the landmark 1973 Roe v Wade decision, warned against linking contentious decisions with court legitimacy, saying at an event on Friday night: “The court has always decided controversial cases and decisions have always been subject to intense criticism, and that is entirely appropriate.”
But in her first sit-down interview with a TV network since becoming vice-president, Harris told NBC News that she now believes the supreme court is an “activist court” after the institution took away nationwide abortion rights.
The January 6 committee is unlikely to continue its work in 2023, particularly if Republicans win a majority in the House of Representatives. But that doesn’t mean the party is going to ignore the attack entirely.
Politico reports that the GOP is considering launching its own January 6 committee if it wins control of the House, but this one will avoid looking into the actions of Donald Trump and instead focus on security breaches that led to the attack. Here’s more from Politico’s report:
While past investigations by the Senate and Capitol Police inspector general have thoroughly explored many of those areas and made a laundry list of recommendations to bolster security, not to mention a forthcoming report from the Democratic-run Jan. 6 select committee, House GOP lawmakers are determined to run their own, Trump-free inquiry.
It’s a contradictory turn for a conference that has struggled for a successful message defending Trump against revelations already uncovered by the select panel, instead largely urging Washington to move on. But after two years of being on the outside looking in —Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy pulled his picks from the panel after Speaker Nancy Pelosi rejected two of them — House Republicans are eager to flip the script.
“I think it’s been very well-documented that there were significant intelligence and communications failures on Jan. 6. It’s not the first time we’ve had those issues,” Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.), who voted to certify President Joe Biden’s Electoral College win, said in an interview. “We have to stop that.”
Though House Republicans have stayed almost completely out of the ongoing Jan. 6 probe, they’ve quietly laid the groundwork for changes to the Capitol’s security apparatus that would take effect much more quickly than the investigations they plan to mount.
For example, they want to get rid of the metal detectors installed around the House floor after Jan. 6 that have fueled GOP ire and resulted in hefty fines for lawmakers who tried to dodge them. They are also eager to reopen the Capitol complex, which still has restrictions in place after shuttering at the start of the pandemic. Armstrong noted while many of his colleagues will look back at Jan. 6, his focus is on how the building operates moving forward on a “general 11 a.m. on a Wednesday.”
In their filing, lawyers for Donald Trump have downplayed the security risks of storing documents at Mar-a-Lago, and said there’s no evidence any secrets stored there were improperly shared.
“There is no indication any purported ‘classified records’ were disclosed to anyone. Indeed, it appears such ‘classified records,’ along with the other seized materials, were principally located in storage boxes in a locked room at Mar-a-Lago, a secure, controlled access compound utilized regularly to conduct the official business of the United States during the Trump Presidency, which to this day is monitored by the United States Secret Service,” they wrote in the 21-page document.
The lawyers also avoid the question of whether any of the documents found at Mar-a-Lago were actually classified or otherwise meant to be kept secret. “The Government has not proven these records remain classified. That issue is to be determined later.” However, that statement appears to contradict Trump, who has argued that he declassified the documents found at Mar-a-Lago.
Trump lawyers argue against government attempt to continue viewing Mar-a-Lago documents
Lawyers for former president Donald Trump have submitted their counterargument to the justice department’s attempt to halt a federal judge’s order preventing them from reviewing documents taken from Mar-a-Lago.
The filing is the latest in the squabble over the special master Trump wants appointed to sift through the documents, which the government has objected to because it stops them from reading the materials seized from the former president’s south Florida estate.
You can read the filing here.
More Americans than you might think have an affinity for unelected leaders, according to new data from the Axios-Ipsos Two Americas Index.
The survey shows that anti-democratic views exist among minorities of both Republicans and Democrats, with 33% of voters surveyed agreeing with the statement “Strong, unelected leaders are better than weak elected ones”. That includes 31% of Democrats and 42% of Republicans.
“The findings from this poll shatter the myth that Americans overwhelmingly agree on a common set of democratic values around checks and balances on elected leaders, protection of minority rights and freedom of speech,” Axios wrote, adding that the data also runs counter to president Joe Biden’s insistence that Trump supporters pose the biggest threat to democracy.
Democrats outpolled Republicans on the question of “Presidents should be able to remove judges whose decisions go against the national interest”, with 29% of GOP voters agreeing with that against 42% of Democrats – perhaps a reflection of outrage over recent decisions by the conservative-dominated supreme court.
A significant 38% of voters polled agreed with the statement “Government should side with the majority over ethnic/religious minority rights”, with Republicans and Democrats drawing about even in support.
Over the weekend, vice-president Kamala Harris continued to push Democrats’ message that the upcoming midterm elections were about far more than just which party controls Congress, as Ed Pilkington reports:
Kamala Harris warned on Sunday that the midterm elections in November would determine whether the “age-old sanctity” of the right to vote would be protected in the US or whether “so-called extremist leaders around the country” would continue to restrict access to the ballot box.
With just 56 days to go until the elections, and with the paper-thin Democratic majority in both chambers of Congress, the vice-president said that “everything is on the line in these elections”.
In an interview with NBC News’ Meet the Press, she said that the country was facing a rising domestic extremism threat.
“I think it is very dangerous and I think it is very harmful, and it makes us weaker,” she said.
The department of justice’s investigation into the government secrets found at Mar-a-Lago ground to a halt after a Trump-appointed federal judge last week granted an order for a special master to oversee the documents.
The government is demanding that its access to the documents be restored, or it will take the matter up to a higher court. Trump’s lawyers are expected to make their counterargument in the filing due at 10 am.
It’s a tortuous case, and here are more details from The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell about just what the government is asking:
The filings amounted to a forceful response against the decision by the judge – a Trump appointee – to give unusually deferential treatment to Trump on account of his status as a former president.
The justice department focused on the classified documents in its motion to stay the order barring it from reviewing the seized materials, arguing that Trump did not have “possessory interest” for the records – the key legal standard at issue – and were themselves the subject of the investigation.
Even if Trump attempted to make an executive privilege argument to set aside the classified documents from the evidence cache, the government argued, he could not say that he had a “possessory interest” for classified documents that belonged to the state.
Meanwhile, the Senate intelligence committee wants its own briefing on what was found at Mar-a-Lago. “Some of the documents involved human intelligence, and if that information got out people will die,” Mark Warner, the committee’s Democratic chair, said on Sunday. “If there were penetration of our signals intelligence, literally years of work could be destroyed.”
But the judge’s order also means it’s unclear when that briefing could happen.
Trump to fire latest salvo in legal wrangling over Mar-a-Lago search
Good morning, US politics blog readers. Lawyers for Donald Trump are up against a 10am ET deadline to submit their response to the government’s appeal of a judge’s order allowing a special master to handle documents taken from Mar-a-Lago. The filing will be the latest – but certainly not the last – in the legal wrangling over the FBI’s search of Trump’s Florida resort last month, and what they can do with the documents they found. Meanwhile, Congress is back in session, with Democrats looking to make the most of what may be their last few months controlling both the House and Senate ahead of November midterm elections that will decide control of the chambers.
Here’s what else is happening today:
President Joe Biden is heading to Boston, where he will deliver remarks on both last year’s infrastructure investment bill at 12.45pm, and on his administration’s “goal of ending cancer as we know it” at 4pm.
Congress has a ton on its plate, including a new spending agreement to keep federal agencies open, a request from the White House for $47bn for everything from Ukraine aid to Covid relief, and a bill that would head off efforts – mulled by Trump - to make federal employees easier to fire.
Top administration officials are in Mexico City for the US Mexico High Level Economic Dialogue between the two major trading partners, including secretary of state Antony Blinken and commerce secretary Gina Raimondo.
