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Donald Trump: Arizona attorney general investigating attempts to overturn 2020 vote, reports say – as it happened

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1 year ago

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From 11h ago

Arizona’s Democratic attorney general Kris Mayes is moving forward with an investigation into efforts by Donald Trump and his allies to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory in the crucial swing state, the Washington Post reports.

Mayes’s inquiry is the second known attempt by a state to hold the former president accountable for the effort to disrupt Biden’s win. Fani Willis, a Democratic prosecutor in Fulton county, Georgia, is reportedly close to obtaining indictments in her investigation of Trump’s campaign to overturn Biden’s win in that state. Separately, justice department special counsel Jack Smith is still investigating the former president over the January 6 insurrection, and the broader campaign to prevent Biden from entering the White House.

Here’s more from the Post’s report:

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes (D) assigned a team of prosecutors to the case in May, and investigators have contacted many of the pro-Trump electors and their lawyers, according to the two people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to candidly describe the probe. Investigators have requested records and other information from local officials who administered the 2020 election, the two people said, and a prosecutor has inquired about evidence collected by the Justice Department and an Atlanta-area prosecutor for similar probes.

It is unclear if the investigation will broaden into other attempts to undermine President Biden’s victory in the state, including a pressure campaign by Trump and his allies to thwart the will of voters and remain in office.

Dan Barr, Mayes’s chief deputy, said the investigation is in the “fact-gathering” phase. He declined to say whether subpoenas have been issued and which state statutes the team thinks might have been broken.

“This is something we’re not going to go into thinking, ‘Maybe we’ll get a conviction,’ or ‘Maybe we have a pretty good chance,’” he said. “This has to be ironclad shut.”

 

 

The Secret Service announced it closed the investigation into the cocaine discovered at the White House earlier this month without naming any suspects, but Republicans seem to want to keep the matter alive. Several lawmakers, including House speaker Kevin McCarthy, expressed skepticism at the agency’s conclusion, part of a pattern of attacks on federal law enforcement by the GOP’s right wing. Meanwhile, the Democratic leader of the Senate judiciary committee Dick Durbin outlined plans to continue pressing the supreme court to tighten its ethics, after a series of reports found questionable ties between the justices and parties with interests in its decisions.

Here’s what else happened today:

  • Arizona’s attorney general is moving forward with an investigation of Donald Trump and his attempt to overturn Joe Biden’s election victory in the state three years ago, the Washington Post reported.

  • Florida governor Ron DeSantis remains far below Trump in support among Republicans, but NBC News obtained a memo outlining his campaign’s strategy for success in the presidential primaries.

  • Mitch McConnell, the Senate’s top Republican, accused Democrats of seeking to retaliate against conservative supreme court justices.

  • Durbin left open the possibility of his committee investigating liberal justice Sonia Sotomayor after a report emerged of her staff asking institutions to buy her book.

  • Far-right Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene was among lawmakers who raised their eyebrows at the Secret Service’s decision to close the investigation into the White House cocaine.

A spat has broken out between Republican former president Mike Pence and a prominent progressive Democrat over Israeli president Isaac Herzog’s plans to address Congress next week during his visit to Washington DC.

Ilhan Omar, a progressive Democratic congresswoman from Minnesota, announced she would not attend Herzog’s speech, citing a 2019 episode in which Israel said fellow progressive Democrat Rashida Tlaib, who is of Palestinian origin, could visit family in the West Bank, but only if she avoided promoting the boycott campaign against the country:

This afternoon, Pence, who is seeking the GOP’s nomination for president, took direct aim at Omar, one of only three Muslims currently serving in Congress and the only Somali-American:

Back at the Capitol, Republicans continue to complain about the Secret Service’s conclusion that it can’t identify who left cocaine at the White House.

Here’s Tennessee congressman Tim Burchett’s take, as captured by CNN:

Ron DeSantis may be considered frontrunner Donald Trump’s biggest challenger for the Republican presidential nomination, but polls have consistently shown that it’s not a particularly close race.

Take this one from Morning Consult released on Tuesday. It shows Trump with 56% support among potential GOP primary voters, and DeSantis in second with a measly 17%. If there’s any news there, it’s that entrepreneur and first-time candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is in third place with 8%, ahead of more experienced Republicans like former vice-president Mike Pence and senator Tim Scott.

NBC News has obtained a confidential memo from the DeSantis campaign laying out their strategy in the GOP’s primary process. The Florida governor plans to aim for success in the first states that vote, particularly New Hampshire, and focus less on “Super Tuesday”, when 14 states will hold primaries on 5 March.

Here’s more from their story:

Ron DeSantis is trying to reassure donors and activists that his campaign only looks stalled.

A confidential campaign memo obtained by NBC News lays out what the Florida governor’s presidential campaign sees as its path forward: focusing on the early states, refusing to give up on New Hampshire, not yet investing in “Super Tuesday” battlegrounds, zeroing in on DeSantis’ biography and sowing doubts about his competitors — particularly Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C.

“While Super Tuesday is critically important, we will not dedicate resources to Super Tuesday that slow our momentum in New Hampshire,” the memo states. “We expect to revisit this investment in the Fall.”

The document, dated July 6, is labeled a “confidential friends and family update” and makes clear that it’s “not for distribution.” Its details about the campaign’s strategy are far more in-depth than what has been shared publicly.

As DeSantis’ ability to surpass Donald Trump as leader of the Republican Party is now an open question among the GOP faithful, the memo is an effort by the governor’s top aides to reach out to donors to provide more clarity on their path forward.

Across the DeSantis political universe there is a heightened awareness of the importance of the early states and the reality that DeSantis will burn out without strong performances there. It means that even as the group has a plan in place now, the strategy is subject to change.

“From my understanding, if we don’t see a bump in the polls, we are basically going to shut down the idea of a national operation,” a DeSantis-aligned operative told NBC News.

Donald Trump’s top opponent for the Republican presidential nomination is governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, which used to be considered a swing state, but lately has trended towards the GOP. The Guardian’s Sam Levine and Andrew Witherspoon report that the DeSantis administration is carrying out a crackdown against groups that are trying to encourage people to vote:

Florida Republicans have hit dozens of voter registration groups with thousands of dollars of fines, the latest salvo in an alarming crackdown on voting in the state led by Governor Ron DeSantis.

At least 26 groups have cumulatively racked up more than $100,000 in fines since September of last year, according to a list that was provided by Florida officials to the Guardian. The groups include both for-profit and nonprofit organizations as well as political parties, including the statewide Republican and Democratic parties of Florida.

The fines, which range from $50 to tens of thousands of dollars, were levied by the state’s office of election crimes and security, a first-of-its-kind agency created at the behest of DeSantis in 2022 to investigate voter fraud. Voter fraud is extremely rare, and the office has already come under scrutiny for bringing criminal charges against people who appeared to be confused about their voting eligibility.

Donald Trump’s legal trouble is both criminal, and civil. As the Associated Press reports, the former president yesterday suffered a setback in his attempt to defend himself against a potent defamation lawsuit:

Donald Trump lashed out on social media against the US justice department on Wednesday after it stopped supporting his claim that the presidency shields him from liability against a defamation lawsuit brought by a woman who says he sexually attacked her in the mid-1990s.

The former president said in a post on his social media platform that the department’s reversal a day earlier in the lawsuit brought by advice columnist E. Jean Carroll was part of the “political Witch Hunt” he faces while campaigning for the presidency as a Republican.

The justice department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Arizona’s Democratic attorney general Kris Mayes is moving forward with an investigation into efforts by Donald Trump and his allies to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory in the crucial swing state, the Washington Post reports.

Mayes’s inquiry is the second known attempt by a state to hold the former president accountable for the effort to disrupt Biden’s win. Fani Willis, a Democratic prosecutor in Fulton county, Georgia, is reportedly close to obtaining indictments in her investigation of Trump’s campaign to overturn Biden’s win in that state. Separately, justice department special counsel Jack Smith is still investigating the former president over the January 6 insurrection, and the broader campaign to prevent Biden from entering the White House.

Here’s more from the Post’s report:

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes (D) assigned a team of prosecutors to the case in May, and investigators have contacted many of the pro-Trump electors and their lawyers, according to the two people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to candidly describe the probe. Investigators have requested records and other information from local officials who administered the 2020 election, the two people said, and a prosecutor has inquired about evidence collected by the Justice Department and an Atlanta-area prosecutor for similar probes.

It is unclear if the investigation will broaden into other attempts to undermine President Biden’s victory in the state, including a pressure campaign by Trump and his allies to thwart the will of voters and remain in office.

Dan Barr, Mayes’s chief deputy, said the investigation is in the “fact-gathering” phase. He declined to say whether subpoenas have been issued and which state statutes the team thinks might have been broken.

“This is something we’re not going to go into thinking, ‘Maybe we’ll get a conviction,’ or ‘Maybe we have a pretty good chance,’” he said. “This has to be ironclad shut.”

Joe Biden will meet the president of Israel, Isaac Herzog, at the White House next week, his spokeswoman has confirmed.

Herzog will be in Washington on 18 and 19 July and will deliver a joint address to Congress.

The Israeli president’s US visit comes amid protests in Israel at a government push to advance legislation that would weaken the supreme court’s independence.

Israel’s parliament recently voted for a bill that would scrap a “reasonableness” standard that allows the supreme court to overrule government decisions.

Biden and Herzog are due to discuss deepening Israel’s regional integration, a more peaceful Middle East and Russia’s relationship with Iran.

The White House statement on the visit said:

President Biden will stress the importance of our shared democratic values, and discuss ways to advance equal measures of freedom, prosperity, and security for Palestinians and Israelis.”

The Secret Service announced it had closed its investigation of the cocaine discovered at the White House earlier this month without naming any suspects, but Republicans seem to want to keep the matter alive. Several lawmakers, including House speaker Kevin McCarthy, expressed skepticism at the agency’s conclusion, part of a pattern of attacks on federal law enforcement by the GOP’s right wing. Meanwhile, the Democratic leader of the Senate judiciary committee Dick Durbin outlined plans to continue pressing the supreme court to tighten its ethics, after a series of reports found questionable ties between the justices and parties with interests in its decisions.

Here’s what else has happened today so far:

  • Mitch McConnell, the Senate’s top Republican, accused Democrats of seeking to retaliate against conservative justices.

  • Durbin left open the possibility of his committee investigating liberal justice Sonia Sotomayor after a report emerged of her staff asking institutions to buy her book.

  • Far-right Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene was among lawmakers who raised their eyebrows at the Secret Service’s decision to close the investigation into the White House cocaine.

In the latest indication that this is not the last we have heard about the White House cocaine saga, Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy is calling on the Secret Service to continue searching for whomever left the powder at the executive mansion, Fox News reports:

Here’s more from the Guardian’s Jenna Amatulli on the cocaine found at the White House, and apparent failure of the Secret Service to discover who brought it there:

The investigation into the bag of cocaine found at the White House has concluded, with no suspects identified.

In a statement from the Secret Service, the organization emphasized that it implemented safety closures after discovering the cocaine and that it then “field tested and preliminarily determined” the drug “to not be a hazardous compound”.

They said the US Department of Homeland Security’s National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center later analyzed the cocaine for any biothreats and those tests came back negative.

On how the item came to be inside the White House, the Secret Service said it conducted a “methodical review of security systems and protocols” that spanned “several days prior to the discovery of the substance”. They “developed an index of several hundred individuals who may have accessed the area where the substance was found” before ultimately concluding there was “insufficient DNA was present for investigative comparisons”.

 

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Austrian far-right party hopes for its first national election win in a close race

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46 mins ago

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September 28, 2024

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VIENNA (AP) — Austria’s far-right Freedom Party could win a national election for the first time on Sunday, tapping into voters’ anxieties about immigration, inflation, Ukraine and other concerns following recent gains for the hard right elsewhere in Europe.

Herbert Kickl, a former interior minister and longtime campaign strategist who has led the Freedom Party since 2021, wants to become Austria’s new chancellor. He has used the term “Volkskanzler,” or chancellor of the people, which was used by the Nazis to describe Adolf Hitler in the 1930s. Kickl has rejected the comparison.

But to become Austria’s new leader, he would need a coalition partner to command a majority in the lower house of parliament.

And a win isn’t certain, with recent polls pointing to a close race. They have put support for the Freedom Party at 27%, with the conservative Austrian People’s Party of Chancellor Karl Nehammer on 25% and the center-left Social Democrats on 21%.

More than 6.3 million people age 16 and over are eligible to vote for the new parliament in Austria, a European Union member that has a policy of military neutrality.

Kickl has achieved a turnaround since Austria’s last parliamentary election in 2019. In June, the Freedom Party narrowly won a nationwide vote for the first time in the European Parliament election, which also brought gains for other European far-right parties.

In 2019, its support slumped to 16.2% after a scandal brought down a government in which it was the junior coalition partner. Then-vice chancellor and Freedom Party leader Heinz-Christian Strache resigned following the publication of a secretly recorded video in which he appeared to offer favors to a purported Russian investor.

The far right has tapped into voter frustration over high inflation, the war in Ukraine and the Covid pandemic. It also been able to build on worries about migration.

In its election program, the Freedom Party calls for “remigration of uninvited foreigners,” and for achieving a more “homogeneous” nation by tightly controlling borders and suspending the right to asylum via an “emergency law.”

Gernot Bauer, a journalist with Austrian magazine Profil who recently co-published an investigative biography of the far-right leader, said that under Kickl’s leadership, the Freedom Party has moved “even further to the right,” as Kickl refuses to explicitly distance the party from the Identitarian Movement, a pan-European nationalist and far-right group.

Bauer describes Kickl’s rhetoric as “aggressive” and says some of his language is deliberately provocative.

The Freedom Party also calls for an end to sanctions against Russia, is highly critical of western military aid to Ukraine and wants to bow out of the European Sky Shield Initiative, a missile defense project launched by Germany.

The leader of the Social Democrats, a party that led many of Austria’s post-World War II governments, has positioned himself as the polar opposite to Kickl. Andreas Babler has ruled out governing with the far right and labeled Kickl “a threat to democracy.”

While the Freedom Party has recovered, the popularity of Nehammer’s People’s Party, which currently leads a coalition government with the environmentalist Greens as junior partners, has declined since 2019.

During the election campaign, Nehammer portrayed his party, which has taken a tough line on immigration in recent years, as “the strong center” that will guarantee stability amid multiple crises.

But it is precisely these crises, ranging from the COVID-19 pandemic to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and resulting rising energy prices, that have cost the conservatives support, said Peter Filzmaier, one of Austria’s leading political scientists.

Under their leadership, Austria has experienced high inflation averaging 4.2% over the past 12 months, surpassing the EU average.

The government also angered many Austrians in 2022 by becoming the first European country to introduce a coronavirus vaccine mandate, which was scrapped a few months later without ever being put into effect. And Nehammer is the third chancellor since the last election, taking office in 2021 after predecessor Sebastian Kurz — the winner in 2019 — quit politics amid a corruption investigation.

But the recent flooding caused by Storm Boris that hit Austria and other countries in Central Europe brought back the topic of the environment into the election debate and helped Nehammer slightly narrow the gap with the Freedom Party by presenting himself as a “crisis manager,” Filzmaier said.

Nehammer said in a video Thursday that “this is about whether we continue together on this proven path of stability or leave the country to the radicals, who make a lot of promises and don’t keep them.”

The People’s Party is the far right’s only way into government.

Nehammer has repeatedly excluded joining a government led by Kickl, describing him as a “security risk” for the country, but hasn’t ruled out a coalition with the Freedom Party in and of itself, which would imply Kickl renouncing a position in government.

The likelihood of Kickl agreeing to such a deal if he wins the election is very low, Filzmaier said.

But should the People’s Party finish first, then a coalition between the People’s Party and the Freedom Party could happen, Filzmaier said. The most probable alternative would be a three-way alliance between the People’s Party, the Social Democrats and most likely the liberal Neos.

___

Associated Press videojournalist Philipp Jenne contributed to this report.

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In Alabama, Trump goes from the dark rhetoric of his campaign to adulation of college football fans

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September 28, 2024

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TUSCALOOSA, Ala. (AP) — As Donald Trump railed against immigrants Saturday afternoon in the Rust Belt, his supporters in the Deep South had turned his earlier broadsides into a rallying cry over a college football game as they prepared for the former president’s visit later in the evening.

“You gotta get these people back where they came from,” Trump said in Wisconsin, as the Republican presidential nominee again focused on Springfield, Ohio, which has been roiled by false claims he amplified that Haitian immigrants are stealing and “eating the dogs … eating the cats” from neighbors’ homes.

“You have no choice,” Trump continued. “You’re going to lose your culture. You’re going to lose your country.”

Many University of Alabama fans, anticipating Trump’s visit to their campus for a showdown between the No. 4 Crimson Tide and No. 2 Georgia Bulldogs, sported stickers and buttons that read: “They’re eating the Dawgs!” They broke out in random chants of “Trump! Trump! Trump!” throughout the day, a preview of the rousing welcome he received early in the second quarter as he sat in a 40-yard-line suite hosted by a wealthy member of his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida.

Trump’s brand of populist nationalism leans heavily on his dark rendering of America as a failing nation abused by elites and overrun by Black and brown immigrants. But his supporters, especially white cultural conservatives, hear in that rhetoric an optimistic patriotism encapsulated by the slogan on his movement’s ubiquitous red hats: “Make America Great Again.”

That was the assessment by Shane Walsh, a 52-year-old businessman from Austin, Texas. Walsh and his family decorated their tent on the university quadrangle with a Trump 2024 flag and professionally made sign depicting the newly popular message forecasting the Alabama football team “eating the Dawgs.”

For Walsh, the sign was not about immigration or the particulars of Trump’s showmanship, exaggerations and falsehoods.

“I don’t necessarily like him as a person,” Walsh said. “But I think Washington is broken, and it’s both parties’ faults — and Trump is the kind of guy who will stand up. He’s a lot of things, but weak isn’t one of them. He’s an optimistic guy — he just makes you believe that if he’s in charge, we’re going to be all right.”

The idea for the sign, he said, grew out of a meme he showed his wife. “I thought it was funny,” he said.

Katie Yates, a 47-year-old from Hoover, Alabama, had the same experience with her life-sized cutout of the former president. She was stopped repeatedly on her way to her family’s usual tent. Trump’s likeness was set to join Elvis, “who is always an Alabama fan at our tailgate,” Yates said.

“I’m such a Trump fan,” she said, adding that she could not understand how every American was not.

Yates offered nothing disparaging about Trump’s opponent, Democratic nominee and Vice President Kamala Harris, instead simply lamenting that she could not stay for the game and see Trump be recognized by the stadium public address system and shown pumping his fist on large video screens in the four corners of Bryant-Denny Stadium.

That moment came with 12:24 left in the second quarter, shortly after Alabama quarterback Jalen Milroe ran up the right sideline, on Trump’s side of the field, to give the Crimson Tide an eye-popping 28-0 lead over the Vegas-favored Bulldogs.

Trump did not react to Milroe’s scamper, perhaps recognizing that Georgia, not reliably Republican Alabama, is a key battleground in his contest against Harris. But when “the 45th president of the United States, Donald J. Trump” was introduced to the capacity crowd of more than 100,000 fans — all but a few thousand wearing crimson — Trump smiled broadly and pumped his fist, like he had done on stage in July after the bullet of a would-be assassin grazed his ear and bloodied his face.

The crowd roared its approval, raising cell phone cameras and their crimson-and-white pompoms toward Trump’s suite, where he stood behind the ballistic glass that has become a feature after two assassination attempts. A smattering of boos and a few extended middle fingers broke Trumpian decorum, but they yielded to more chants of: “USA! USA! USA!”

Indeed, not everyone on campus was thrilled.

“There is, I think, a silent majority among the students that are not with Trump,” argued Braden Vick, president of Alabama’s College Democrats chapter. Vick pointed to recent elections when Democratic candidates, including President Joe Biden in 2020, vastly outperformed their statewide totals in precincts around the campus.

“We have this great atmosphere for a top-five game between these two teams, with playoff and championship implications,” Vick said, “and it’s just a shame that Donald Trump has to try to ruin it with his selfishness.”

Trump came as the guest of Alabama businessman Ric Mayers Jr., a member of Mar-a-Lago. Mayers said in an interview before the game that he invited Trump so that he could enjoy a warm welcome. And, as Mayers noted, Trump is a longtime sports fan. He tried to buy an NFL team in the 1980s and helped launch a competing league instead. And he attended several college games as president, including an Alabama-Georgia national championship game.

Mayers also invited Alabama Sens. Katie Britt and Tommy Tuberville. Britt, a former student government president at Alabama, delivered the GOP response to Biden’s last State of the Union address, drawing rebukes after using a disproven story of human trafficking to echo Trump’s warnings about migrants. Tuberville, a former head football coach at Auburn University, Alabama’s archrival, is a staunch Trump supporter.

Joining the politicians in the suite were musicians Kid Rock and Hank Williams Jr. Herschel Walker, a Georgia football icon and failed Senate nominee in 2022, traveled in Trump’s motorcade to the game.

Fencing surrounded parts of the stadium, with scores of metal detectors and tents forming a security perimeter beyond the usual footprint. Sisters of the Alpha Omicron Pi sorority showed their security wristbands before being allowed to their sorority house directly adjacent to the stadium. Bomb-sniffing dogs stopped catering trucks carrying food. Hundreds of TSA agents spread out to do a potentially unpopular job: imposing airport-level screening for each ticket-holder.

But what seemed to matter most was a friendly home crowd’s opportunity to cheer for Trump the same way they cheered the Crimson Tide, unburdened by anything he said in Wisconsin or anywhere else as he makes an increasingly dark closing argument.

“College football fans can get emotional and kooky about their team,” Shane Walsh said. “And so can Trump supporters.”

They didn’t even mind that Trump’s tie was not crimson. It was Georgia red.

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B.C.’s NDP, Conservatives nominate full slates of candidates for Oct. 19 election

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September 28, 2024

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VICTORIA – Elections BC says the New Democrats and Conservatives have nominated full slates of candidates for the upcoming Oct. 19 provincial election.

Elections BC says in a statement the two main parties will field candidates for each of the province’s 93 ridings, while the Green Party nominated 69 candidates.

Nominations closed Saturday afternoon with 323 total candidates, of which 269 represent seven different political parties and 54 who are contesting the election as Independents or unaffiliated candidates.

Elections BC says the official list includes five Freedom Party of B.C. hopefuls, four Libertarians, three representing the Communist Party of B.C. and two candidates from the Christian Heritage Party of B.C.

There are no BC United candidates.

BC United officials said earlier they might run some candidates in the election to preserve the party entity for the future after Leader Kevin Falcon announced the suspension of BC United’s election campaign in late August to prevent a centre-right vote split.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 28, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

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