Presented by The National Council on Election Integrity
With help from Myah Ward
THE LOW DOWN — This year, for the first time in 20 years, a presidential election coincides with the once-in-a-decade redistricting cycle. Across the nation, normally under-the-radar, low-budget contests for state representative and senator have been transformed into high-profile, million-dollar races.
Ten years ago, the Republicans beat Democrats badly at the redistricting game. In 2010, state representatives and senators didn’t have a say in approving President Barack Obama’s federal health law. That didn’t stop local Republicans from tying their down-ballot opponents to the Affordable Care Act. The GOP flipped nearly 20 state Houses that year, including both the state House and the Senate in half a dozen states. In Alabama Republicans took control of the Legislature for the first time since Reconstruction.
This year, Democrats are pinning their hopes of clawing back power in state capitals on the declining popularity of a new incumbent in the Oval Office, President Donald Trump.
The correlation between presidential politics and state races has become “remarkable,” said Steven Rogers, a political scientist at Saint Louis University who studied how party control relates to national election outcomes. State legislative races are “pretty much determined by the party and what people think of national government,” Rogers said.
Still, many local races are won or lost by a few hundred votes, or in the case of Virginia, a random drawing. Local Republicans are hoping the party’s anti-Trump voters still cast a ballot for their local candidates. “Republicans have been keeping everything local,” said Austin Chambers, president of the Republican State Leadership Committee. “Democrats have tried to make every one of these races about Donald Trump.”
Democrats admit now that they made a huge strategic blunder in not fighting for state legislative seats in 2010. “Look, we got our clock cleaned,” said Patrick Rodenbush, communications director at the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, formed in 2017. Those decade-old losses still have a sway over congressional and statehouse elections today, because of the maps Republicans drew in 2010.
Democrats aren’t expecting a local blue wave like the 2010 red wave. In Texas, even if Democrats are successful at winning a majority in the state House, Republicans will still control the Senate and governor’s office. But, Rodenbush said, if they can flip a few chambers like the Texas state House and divide state governments, Democrats can force compromises or get maps kicked to courts.
In Kansas and Wisconsin, Democrats aren’t trying to take control of legislative chambers. They just want to keep Republicans from maintaining or winning supermajorities so that Democratic governors can veto maps they think are unfair.
Here are some of the other battlegrounds to watch on Election Day:
Arizona: The state legislature doesn’t control redistricting — that’s done through an independent commission — but Democrats are still hoping to pick up two seats for a majority in the lower chamber and three seats for a majority in the upper chamber.
Minnesota: Republicans hold a three-seat majority in the state Senate. They are aiming to pick up nine seats to gain a majority in the state House.
North Carolina: Democrats need six seats to retake the state House, and five seats in the state Senate. They could also pick up four state Senate seats and the tie-breaking lieutenant governor office. The state’s maps have been a point of contention among Democrats for years. They point to the 2018 election as an example of partisan gerrymandering: Democrats won more total votes in state legislative races, but Republicans maintained control of both chambers.
Iowa: Republicans will retain their state Senate majority. Democrats need four seats to win a majority in the state House for the first time in a decade.
Pennsylvania: Republicans would like veto-proof majorities in both chambers to override vetoes from Democratic Gov.Tom Wolf, but they are more likely to be fending off Democrats who are trying to pick up nine Republican house seats and four in the Senate to win majorities in both chambers. Like North Carolina, this is another state where Dems won more votes overall but still didn’t control the chamber.
By historical standards, Trump’s press coverage is actually favorable. It is giving generous allowance for the possibility that things aren’t as bad as they seem for the incumbent, and that he may yet have another surprise in store for anyone who thinks that conventional dynamics of politics apply to him.
The reason is simple: Journalists and the political professionals who are their sources emerged from Trump’s 2016 upset doubting their own instincts and believing that familiar analytical prisms aren’t a reliable way to view this politician. Any previous campaign in Trump’s circumstances — bad polls nationally, behind in multiple must-win states, coming after four years of low favorability ratings and steady off-year and midterm losses for the party he leads — would be facing coverage that would be the political equivalent of a hospital vigil for a very sick patient.
Ben Ginsberg, a veteran Republican lawyer and operative, said the reluctance of many journalists to trust their instincts about the state of the race, “helps Trump because he can hold out a sliver of hope for his supporters so they don’t give up the ship. Nobody likes a loser; you’re not going to admit you’re a loser.”
Covid-2020
THE BARRETT COURT — An evenly divided Supreme Court on Monday declined to block a Pennsylvania state court ruling allowing mail-in ballots to be counted up to three days after Election Day as long as they’re postmarked by Nov. 3. The decision showed how sharply divided the Supreme Court is on election law, and how Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation could sway the outcome of future decisions.
Nightly’s Myah Ward talked with Rick Hasen, an election law expert at University of California Irvine School of Law, about how the court might rule on its nextelection lawsuit. This conversation has been edited.
What were Republicans arguing for in this case?
Number one, they argued that this would violate the rule setting a uniform federal Election Day, in effect extending the date of the election until Nov. 6. I don’t think that argument is a very serious one, because many states accept ballots that arrive after Election Day under different rules about how to treat postmarks.
The second argument is much more significant: that the Constitution gives only state legislatures the power to set the rules for conducting presidential elections. And in this case, the state Supreme Court held that the state statutes enacted by the Legislature had to give way to a constitutional right to vote protected under the Pennsylvania State Constitution.
And so here we have a clash between the state Supreme Court and the state Legislature. And this is especially important in states like Pennsylvania and North Carolina that have Democratic-dominated state Supreme Courts and Republican-dominated legislatures.
This suggests that there could be a new majority on the court that would side with the Legislature over the ability of the state Supreme Court to rely on its own Constitution in setting the parameters for voting litigation.
How could this decision potentially set the stage for post-election litigation?
One of the unfortunate things that we’ve seen in recent years is that the courts, much like the rest of America, divides along party lines on key issues. And that’s not because the judges are political hacks or are necessarily doing anything wrongful. They have different ideological views about how to decide court cases that tend to line up with views of the political parties that appointed them. So Democratic-appointed judges are much more protective of voting rights, and Republican-appointed judges are much more willing to defer to states. They might make it harder to vote in the name of preserving order or preventing fraud or something like that.
The fact that in this case, the Supreme Court divided so closely, mostly along ideological lines with Chief Justice Roberts siding with the liberals, suggested in any post-election contest if Judge Barrett is Justice Barrett by the time of Election Day, that cases that get to the Supreme Court could divide along those same types of party lines.
PENN PALS — It’s the state that sealed Trump’s victory in 2016. Now it could spell the end of his presidency. In the latest POLITICO Dispatch, Shrewsbury, Pa.’s own Holly Otterbein breaks down where things stand in the fight for Pennsylvania.
On The Hill
IT’S UNANIMOUS— Senate Democrats plan to boycott Barrett’s Judiciary Committee vote Thursday in an act of protest, according to two Democratic aides. The Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to vote at 1 p.m. to advance Barrett’s nomination to the floor, with the full Senate set to hold a final vote on her nomination Monday, writes Marianne LeVine.
Nightly Number
PUNCHLINES
ORGANIZED ARGUING — In the latest Punchlines, Matt Wuerker interviews Rick Perlstein, the historian and author of Reaganland: America’s Right Turn 1976-1980, about presidential debates from the Lincoln-Douglas debates to today.
Parting Words
GAME OVER— Nightly editor — and former New York Times video game critic — Chris Suellentrop emails us:
Last night Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez cemented her status as Washington’s Most Famous Gamer.
Hundreds of thousands of people — more than 400,000 people concurrently, at one point — spent part of their Tuesday night watching “Squad” members AOC and Rep. Ilhan Omar — who tweeted a photo and details of her impressive gaming PC — play Among Us, a murder mystery game that resembles the card game Mafia. The GOTV event went down on the Amazon-owned streaming service Twitch.
But let’s focus on what’s really important here: AOC and Omar ended the comfortable six-year reign of Jared Polis, the Colorado governor and former Democratic House member, as the country’s most prominent politician-gamer.
The status handoff of Washington’s Most Famous Gamer from a libertarian-leaning white man to two millennial socialist women of color is, in some ways, the perfect summation of how video games have changed in recent years.
Video games were never really the exclusive province of white male loners, but that’s been the stereotype. And some players took that reputation seriously, so much so that they organized a backlash to try to protect it.
Six years ago, a disinformation campaign with the profoundly stupid name of “Gamergate” spent several months orchestrating a series of harassment campaigns of women game developers and critics. Several women fled their homes in fear for their safety. The harassers’ motivation: To drive people they dubbed “social justice warriors” — for their progressive values and their desire to see more realistic depictions of women and minorities in video games — out of the industry. The campaign worked well enoughthat Steve Bannon, as reported in Joshua Green’s Devil’s Bargain, used it as a template for Trump’s presidential campaign.
But Gamergate also prompted a backlash to the backlash. “It didn’t stop the thing it set out to stop,” Chris Plante, the editor-in-chief of Polygon, said to me today of Gamergate. “If anything, it made it go faster.” And so, in 2020, no one is surprised that two 30-something progressive women play video games.
Games have always been big and diverse, as disparate as TV and books and movies. They are played, and made, by people who just want to zone out with some dumb entertainment and by people who want to expand their horizons with something strange and sublime. No one person represents them. Video games don’t belong to a 31-year-old Nuyorican woman any more than they belong to reactionary Reddit trolls.
But, for one night, they did.
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‘The Ingraham Angle’ host blast the Biden administration for their lack of urgency with investigating the unknown origins of COVID-19
Fox News host Laura Ingraham ripped the Biden administration after it was confirmed they “quashed” an ongoing investigation into the origins of coronavirus on Thursday’s “The Ingraham Angle,” claiming the Democrats “helped” the Chinese Communist Party by calling ‘legitimate questions’ regarding the virus’ origins “conspiracies.”
INGRAHAM: Fox News confirmed this week that the Biden administration quashed an ongoing investigation into the virus’s origins earlier this year. Now, it had been initiated by the Trump State Department Mike Pompeo, but sources are telling CNN that the evidence for undertaking it supposedly wasn’t solid enough and relied on cherry-picked facts.
If that were true, then why didn’t the Biden administration say as much at the time and then launch its own investigation. Or is a virus that killed more than half a million Americans and cost trillions of dollars suddenly not worth investigating? Not a big enough deal? Or is Biden’s team afraid of what a real investigation and an unbiased review of Intel would actually reveal? Namely that China was culpable and that, as Trump said last spring, the virus escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Instead, while Democrats like Biden let the wet market lie percolate, China denied any role, deflected blame and of course, watched the political fallout hit President Trump. The cold truth is this. The Democrats helped the CCP by calling legitimate questions about COVID’s origins conspiracies. All done to hurt Trump. And they will never live that down because it makes them egregious China enablers.
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Muchos dirán que, en todo caso, las noticias siempre han sido mentira, pero este fenómeno quizás merece una reflexión que vaya un poco más allá.
Inventar noticias deliberadamente para engañar o entretener no es algo nuevo. Pero la llegada de las redes sociales hizo que las historias reales y las ficticias se puedan presentar de una manera tan similar que a veces es difícil distinguir entre ellas.
Si bien es cierto que internet ha permitido el intercambio de conocimiento a una escala con la que generaciones previas sólo podían soñar, también ha fundamentado lo que el ensayista Jonathan Swift escribió en 1710:
La falsedad vuela y la verdad viene cojeando tras ella”
En Estados Unidos, por ejemplo, una investigación del Pew Centre reveló que el 62% de los estadounidenses adultos reciben noticias a través de las redes sociales, de manera que es cada vez más probable que más de nosotros estemos viendo -y creyendo- información que no sólo no es precisa sino que a veces es totalmente inventada.
Hay cientos de sitios web de noticias falsas, desde las que imitan diarios reales, hasta sitios de propaganda gubernamental, y otras que se mueven por la fina línea que divide la sátira con la desinformación.
Image copyright National Report
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Una historia falsa sobre las elecciones en EE.UU. que asegura que los marihuaneros votan por Hillary Clinton.
Uno de esos medios es The National Report, que se promociona como “la primera fuente de noticias independientes de EE.UU.”, fundada por Allen Montgomery (no es su nombre real).
“Hay veces que es como una droga”, le dijo Montgomery a la BBC.
“Es genial ver cómo el tráfico sube y cómo pescaste a la gente con la historia. ¡Me divierte mucho!”.
Una de las más grandes de esas historias fue sobre una ciudad de EE.UU. que supuestamente estaba siendo acordonada debido a una enfermedad mortal.
Según explica Montgomery, han perfeccionado el arte de hacer que la gente lea y comparta las noticias falsas que The National Report les ofrece.
“El nombre mismo del sitio es parte de la fórmula: tienes que tener un sitio para tus noticias falsas que se vea lo más legítimo posible”.
“Obviamente, el titular es clave. La gente deja de leer después del titular y los dos primeros párrafos, así que si estos suenan como noticias legítimas, puedes hacer lo que quieras con el final de la historia, hasta volverla ridícula”.
Pero, ¿por qué lo hacen?
La respuesta es: serias cantidades de dinero.
Sitios como The National Report atraen publicidad de manera que pueden ser muy lucrativos.
Esas potencialmente abultadas recompensas seducen a los dueños de páginas web a abandonar los chistes satíricos y empezar a producir contenido más creíble que tiene posibilidades de ser más ampliamente compartido.
Y a las agencias de publicidad les interesa eso: que la gente comparta, pues la idea es que más personas vean lo que venden, sin importar si lo ven acompañado de mentiras.
“Algunas de nuestras noticias nos han dado US$10,000. Cuando damos en el clavo e impulsamos esas historias, ganamos miles de dólares”, dice Montgomery.
¿Debe preocuparnos que existan estos sitios de noticias falsas?
Brooke Binkowski de Snopes, uno de los sitios más grandes de chequeo de información que lucha contra la desinformación, piensa que aunque puede que no sea peligroso que circulen una que otra historia falsa su potencial para causar daño aumenta con el tiempo.
Image copyright Empire News
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Titular: “Hombre que murió en casa embrujada no fue descubierto por semanas: todos pensaron que era ‘un maniquí muy realista'”… ¿Broma o regalito?
“Hay mucho sesgo de confirmación: mucha gente queriendo probar que su visión del mundo es la apropiada y correcta”, explica.
Y es precisamente eso lo que Allen Montgomery dice que su sitio de noticias falsas trata de explotar: la idea de reforzar las creencias y confirmar con mentiras los prejuicios de la gente.
“Constantemente tratamos de sintonizarnos con los sentimientos que sospechamos que la gente tiene o quiere tener”.
“Recientemente publicamos una historia que decía que a Hillary Clinton le habían dado las respuestas antes de un debate. Ya había algunos rumores sobre eso -todos falsos-, pero ese tipo de titulares entra en la burbuja de los de derecha y son ellos los que mantienen viva la historia”.
El camino de la mentira a la verdad es corto
Craig Silverman, quien trabaja en Buzzfeed liderando el equipo que estudia los efectos de las noticias falsas, explica cuán fácil es que ese tipo de historias terminen siendo reportadas como ciertas en los medios tradicionales.
“Una página de noticias falsas publica un embuste y, como recibe mucha atención en las redes sociales, otro sitio web lo toma, escribe la historia como si fuera verdad y no la vincula a la página de noticias falsas original”.
“Eso provoca una reacción en cadena hasta que algún periodista de un medio creíble la ve y escribe algo sobre ella. Como los periodistas ahora tratan de escribir tantas historias como sea posible y de que esas historias atraigan muchos lectores y atención en las redes, la tendencia es producir más y chequear menos“, dice Silverman.
Image copyright Clickhole
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Lejos de la verdad. Según el titular, el senador estadounidense Paul Ryan tuvo visiones de un nuevo partido republicano tras probar ayahuasca.
Además, señala Anthony Adornato, del departamento de periodismo del Ithaca College en New York, muchos medios tradicionales no están al día en cuestión de políticas de verificación.
“Es común hoy en día que los medios dependan del contenido compartido pero no todas las salas de redacción tienen una política respecto a cómo autenticar esa información”.
Un estudio reciente dirigido por Adornato en estaciones de televisión locales de EE.UU. reveló que casi el 40% de las políticas editoriales no incluían guías sobre cómo manejar la información de las redes sociales a pesar de que los jefes de noticias admitieron que más del 30% de sus boletines habían reportado información proveniente de esa fuente que luego resultó falsa o imprecisa.
¿Perdimos la batalla contra las mentiras entonces?
Image copyright Thinkstock
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¿Cómo distinguir la información falsa si la escriben como fidedigna?
Según Allen Montgomery, Facebook ya tomó medidas para reducir el impacto de sitios falsos.
“Hemos sido uno de los blancos específicos de los cambios en el algoritmo de suministro de noticias. Han ahogado nuestras historias para que no sean compartidas ni gustadas, y no dudo que estén haciendo lo mismo con otros sitios de noticias falsas”.
“Pero la verdad es que si se trata de algo que produce dinero – y esto lo produce- uno apela a la creatividad“.
Es por eso que Montgomery ahora tiene 9 sitios de noticias falsas por los que mueve el contenido para tratar de burlar la censura de Facebook.
*Parte o todo lo que le dijo a la BBC Allen Montgomery puede ser falso.
JAKARTA, Indonesia—Flag carrier Garuda Indonesia said it is seeking to cancel an order for 49 Boeing Co. 737 MAX jets, saying passengers have lost confidence in the aircraft following two deadly crashes in recent months.
The move makes Garuda the first airline to publicly confirm plans to cancel a 737 MAX order. The 737 MAX jets were grounded by regulators world-wide this month in the wake of an Ethiopian Airlines crash that killed all 157 passengers and crew on board.
ST. LOUIS, Mo. — This morning I continue to track this ever-evolving winter weather that brings us a Winter Storm Warning through tonight, expiring at 12 AM Tuesday. We have updates to the forecast.
On Sunday the St. Louis area received anywhere from 2″-3″ of snowfall, with slightly higher amounts just to the northwest. At last check Lambert received 2.4″.
This morning I continue to get in reports of light freezing drizzle that is creating for a light glaze. This will continue for the next few hours, before more substantial precip arrives later this morning and afternoon. The second batch of freezing rain/snow will start to arrive closer to 6-7 AM for areas southwest. It starts mainly as freezing rain as it moves in from the south.
The precipitation lifts to the northwest bringing in light/moderate snowfall to the St. Louis area after 10:00 am. This continues to expand north through the afternoon, but some areas north of I-70 may stay dry through a good chunk of the day. Ongoing snow is possible through the day in the area, as the intensity will change on and off. Like we saw yesterday for about an hour, we could receive a band of heavy snow, where rates are up to 1″ an hour. Areas south of Jeff CO see the better chance of freezing rain this afternoon.
Additional snow totals could range 3″-5″, localized areas higher, in the metro, with cutoffs in snow accumulation as you head north and south of St. Louis County. Of course, we will have to wait and see again where the heaviest bands set up. South see the better chance for additional ice accumulation.
Tuesday the system pulls east drying us out and keeping us cold.
Washington — The revelation late Tuesday that the Justice Department’s investigation into the events of Jan. 6, 2021, now includes questions about the actions of former President Donald Trump and his allies has heightened speculation as to whether the former president could face legal trouble for his conduct related to the assault. And as federal prosecutors all the way up to Attorney General Merrick Garland are facing growing external pressure to prosecute Trump, the crucial question remains as to what federal crimes might be successfully brought and tried against the former president.
As part of its probe, the Justice Department has been examining a scheme to name fake slates of presidential electors for Trump in key battleground states he lost in the 2020 presidential election. The Justice Department has also been examining the actions surrounding the Jan. 6 attack, when a mob of the former president’s supporters, many of them armed, breached the Capitol building to stop Congress from tallying state electoral votes and reaffirming President Biden’s victory.
Trump, Eastman, and Clark have not been charged with any crimes or accused of wrongdoing, and the news that questions are being asked about the former president’s conduct does not indicate Trump is the target of any federal probe. The former president maintains he did nothing wrong, and continues to claim, without evidence, that the election was rigged.
Former President Donald Trump speaks during the America First Policy Institute’s America First Agenda Summit in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, July 26, 2022.
Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images
The investigation from federal prosecutors is running alongside the wide-ranging examination of the events surrounding Jan. 6 from a House select committee, which concluded a tranche of eight public hearings last week, though more are expected.
Across the hearings, the House panel mapped out what it described as a multi-pronged campaign by Trump to remain in power, which included efforts to pressure Pence and state elections officials to reverse the results of the 2020 presidential election, and to push top Justice Department officials to challenge the election outcome, culminating with the mob of his supporters violently descending on the Capitol.
The former president’s plans ultimately failed, though, and Mr. Biden’s victory was reaffirmed by Congress in the early morning hours of Jan. 7.
Despite that failure, legal analysts and former prosecutors have honed in on two specific criminal charges that they say might pose a legal threat to the former president: obstruction of an official proceeding — the Jan. 6 joint session of Congress to tally electoral votes — and conspiracy to defraud the United States. The charges, experts said, would focus on Trump’s alleged knowledge that the election was not stolen and his attempt to halt the peaceful transfer of power despite knowing he lost.
Randall Eliason, a former assistant U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, said obstruction charges could stem from both the plan to name fake electors to cast their votes in Trump’s favor and the strategy hatched by Eastman for Pence to unilaterally reject electoral votes from key states during the Jan. 6 proceedings or send them back to the state legislatures.
Conspiracy to defraud the U.S., meanwhile, applies to corrupt efforts to obstruct a lawful government function: the certification of election results by Congress on Jan. 6.
“For any of the charges, it’s all going to be in the nature of a conspiracy charge,” Eliason, a law professor at George Washington University, told CBS News. The conspiracy charge requires a broader plan among co-defendants to commit a crime. “There’s the potential for senior people like Rudy Giuliani, Mark Meadows also to be implicated in the same case.”
Neither Meadows, Trump’s former chief of staff, nor Giuliani, his outside attorney, have been charged with any crime. The House Jan. 6 committee recommended Meadows be charged with contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with a subpoena, but the Justice Department declined to charge him.
The Justice Department could also pursue a charge of seditious conspiracy, Eliason said, though that would require prosecutors to show Trump conspired to use force “to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States.” Members of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, two far-right extremist groups, have been charged with seditious conspiracy for their roles in the Jan. 6 attack.
Scott Fredericksen, a former federal prosecutor and independent counsel, said bringing charges like seditious conspiracy and inciting a riot against the former president would demand a “higher standard” of evidence for prosecutors, who would have to both indict Trump and attempt to successfully convict him at trial.
Fredericksen believes the Justice Department should be examining the “whole concept” of the so-called “Big Lie,” the claim continually pushed by Trump that the election was stolen. Prosecutors, he said, “should be able to prove pretty clearly that Trump knew very well that he lost the election, this election was not stolen, and that was a complete fabrication,” which, according to Fredericksen, would make Trump’s claims and later attempts to prevent the transfer of power a potential aspect of a criminal conspiracy.
“It’s not just Jan. 6,” Fredericksen told CBS News, “Jan. 6 is, in some ways, the culmination.”
Testimony obtained by the committee sheds new light on the extent to which top White House and administration officials, as well as campaign advisers, told Trump his claims of widespread voter fraud were unfounded and encouraged him to accept his loss, though their warnings did little to deter Trump’s dogged efforts to thwart the transfer of power.
While Eliason said much of what has been revealed by the select committee in the course of its investigation thus far is potentially relevant to a case brought against Trump, “criminal charges have a much higher burden of proof.”
“It’s got to be as close to air-tight as it possibly can be, because it’s one thing to have testimony at a hearing that’s not being challenged, it’s quite another to have it at a trial where you’re subject to cross-examination and defense witnesses,” he said. “That would be a very different kind of animal. You have to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt before a unanimous jury of 12.”
Looming large over the potential for Trump to face charges is the unprecedented nature of such a case, as never before in U.S. history has a former president been prosecuted by the Justice Department, never-mind one who continues to tease another White House run.
A decision of whether to pursue criminal charges would be “the most consequential decision made by any attorney general,” Eliason said, and raises “weighty” issues to consider, including that such a move would involve an administration prosecuting the former president of the opposing party.
Fredericksen agreed: “The whole idea of politics pervades this entire case. It’s why I think the Department of Justice is extremely careful and reluctant to investigate, let alone charge, a former president. … It’s never been done before because it will be perceived by a good portion of the country as a political prosecution.”
“A prosecutor is going to stay away from charging any crime for which he uses some kind of political activity. A prosecutor is not going to touch that,” Fredericksen said, adding that the legal line between political acts and criminal acts is a complicated barrier for prosecutors. “On one hand, it could be political, but when it’s employed with the idea of overthrowing the government, then that’s criminal.”
To avoid the perception of politicization, prosecutors should proceed as they would in any other criminal case by interviewing witnesses, securing cooperation, and gathering as much evidence as possible, Fredericksen said.
“There is no special formula,” he added.
With each new revelation about the events surrounding Jan. 6, Garland has continued to come under scrutiny about future action by the Justice Department. In an interview with NBC News that aired Tuesday, Garland stressed, as he has before, that the Justice Department would “bring to justice everybody who was criminally responsible for interfering with the peaceful transfer of power from one administration to another, which is the fundamental element of our democracy.”
Still, Garland’s vow to hold all who broke the law, “at any level,” accountable has done little to assuage some congressional Democrats and critics of Trump, who are pushing for a case to be brought swiftly.
But Eliason said the probe is moving at a pace that should be expected given its “size and complexity” and noted that prosecutions stemming from Watergate and Enron spanned several years.
“Prosecutors are moving up the ladder higher and higher, closer and closer to the inner circle,” he said, referencing the recent appearance of Short before a grand jury. “We don’t know how that ends, that doesn’t mean charges will be found to be justified, it just means they’re doing what Garland has said, starting with the rioters and working your way up.”
The Justice Department and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington declined to comment.
NEW YORK, Dec 3 (Reuters) – Ghislaine Maxwell’s defense attorneys on Friday questioned a former Jeffrey Epstein employee about when he met a woman who testified earlier this week that the British socialite set her up for abuse by Epstein starting when she was 14 in 1994.
Juan Alessi, who worked full-time at Epstein’s Palm Beach estate from 1991 to 2002, said at Maxwell’s sex abuse trial in Manhattan federal court that he saw two girls who appeared underage spend time with Epstein and Maxwell. He said one of those girls was Jane, the woman who testified this week.
Maxwell, 59, has pleaded not guilty to eight counts of sex trafficking and other crimes. Prosecutors accuse Maxwell of recruiting and grooming underage girls for Epstein to abuse, and say she participated in some of the encounters.
Alessi said on Thursday he met Jane in 1994, the same year Jane said she met Epstein and Maxwell and was first abused. He said Jane appeared to be 14 or 15 when he first saw her at the Florida property.
But upon cross-examinaton by the British socialite’s attorney Jeffrey Pagliuca during the fifth day of testimony on Friday, Alessi said he could not recall precisely which year he met her in. Pagliuca then asked whether Alessi met Jane in 1998 or 2000 – when she could have been of legal age to consent.
“No, that’s not true,” Alessi said.
Pagliuca then referred to a 2016 deposition Alessi gave to a lawyer for Virginia Giuffre, who accuses Maxwell and Epstein of trafficking her for sex while she was a teenager, in which Alessi said he recalled picking her up and driving her to Epstein’s house in 1998 or 1999.
Alessi replied that he could have been confusing Jane and Giuffre in the deposition. He said on Thursday that he recalled meeting Giuffre, formerly known as Virginia Roberts, in approximately 2001.
Alessi’s account came after Jane, now in her early 40s, testified that she had regular sexual contact with Epstein while she was a teenager and that Maxwell took part in some encounters.
Jane is the first of four Maxwell accusers expected to testify in the trial. Maxwell’s attorneys questioned Jane about discrepancies between her testimony and earlier statements she made during interviews with law enforcement agents, and have said the women’s memories have become distorted over time.
Maxwell’s attorneys also argue she is being scapegoated for Epstein’s alleged crimes since the globetrotting investor is no longer alive.
Epstein, a globetrotting financier, killed himself in a Manhattan jail in 2019 at the age of 66 while awaiting trial on sex abuse charges.
“The majority of the rulebook for the Paris Agreement has been created, which is something to be thankful for,” said Mohamed Adow, international climate lead at Christian Aid.
President Donald Trump will visit Rio Rancho, New Mexico this evening as part of his “Keep America Great” 2020 reelection campaign, with hopes the Republican Party can reclaim a state he lost in 2016 and which lost a House seat and the Governor’s office in 2018.
Local TV stations were reporting long lines and backed up traffic in anticipation of the rally. Rio Rancho Mayor Gregg Hull told KOAT-TV the city’s law enforcement officers are in “high security” mode and will have “zero tolerance” for anyone displaying violence or aggression throughout Monday night.
Below is a link to watch the live stream of Trump’s rally online:
Date: Monday, September 16, 2019
Time: 7: 00 p.m. MDT (Mountain Time), 9:00 p.m. EST.
Location: Santa Ana Star Center
A Democratic Party-led counter-rally will take place in Albuquerque, New Mexico just before Trump’s Monday evening speech. Incumbent Democratic Rep. Ben Ray Luján, who is running for an open Senate seat to replace retiring Democrat Tom Udall, will be among the speakers at the counter-rally. Two congressional seats are up for grabs in the upcoming 2020 election and a third currently held by a Republican must be defended.
“Rio Rancho is in my district, and anyone who undermines the safety, security, or way of life of our communities, isn’t welcome here,” Luján remarked on Twitter. Rio Rancho is only about a 20 mile drive from Albuquerque and city officials warned local news stations that traffic was already congested Monday afternoon.
“Big crowd expected in New Mexico tonight, where we will WIN. Your Border Wall is getting stronger each and every day — see you in a few hours!” Trump tweeted Monday afternoon en route to the Southwest state.
Trump lost the county in which Rio Rancho sits by 1,800 votes in the 2016 presidential election against former Democratic Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. But Trump’s 2020 campaign team are hoping to flip the state back to red in 2020.
“I’ve continued to say the president’s policies are a win for Latino voters across America … and one of the first symbols of this was the El Paso rally,” Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale told reporters on a call last week. “As we started doing polling there, we saw a dramatic increase from 2016 and I went over this with the president and he said, ‘Let’s go straight into Albuquerque.'”
In addition to Fox News broadcasting the Monday event, several live streams are available on Facebook and Twitter to present events taking place outside the Santa Ana Star Center.
Shocking footage released on Sunday offers a new glimpse inside the deadly US Capitol riot, — following the invaders as they search for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other lawmakers, sit in Vice President Mike Pence’s seat and rifle through lawmakers’ documents.
The nearly 13 edited minutes of footage were shot by war correspondent Luke Mogelson and published Sunday by The New Yorker, for which Mogelson is a contributing writer.
The video opens with scenes of hordes of pro-Trump rioters overpowering US Capitol Police and streaming into the seat of American democracy through doors and shattered windows.
“You’re outnumbered!” one rioter can be heard telling a small contingent of cops trying to hold the line inside a Capitol hallway. “There’s a f–king million of us out there, and we are listening to Trump, your boss!”
The contingent of rioters backed the overwhelmed cops down a hallway through the sheer size of their group and headed up a stairway, with one invader yelling in parting, “We love you guys! Take it easy!”
One group of dozens chanted, “Treason! Treason! Treason!” as they stalked the halls, the video shows.
“Knock knock!” one man taunted as the doors to the Senate gallery were slammed open, sending rioters streaming inside. “We’re here!”
Members of that group can be heard wondering about the whereabouts of Congressional lawmakers, who had been attempting to certify the results of Joe Biden’s presidential election victory when the riot broke out following a rally in which Trump encouraged his supporters to “fight like hell” against the process.
“Where the f–k are they?” one man yelled upon seeing the deserted Senate floor.
“Where the f–k is Nancy?” was another call.
As rioters clad in combat gear made their way onto the Senate floor, a debate broke out about the optics of the takeover.
A rioter sitting in Vice President Mike Pence’s chair.YouTube
The spat centered around one intruder taking a seat in the chair reserved for the president of the Senate, Pence — who was accused by Trump of not doing enough to fight the election results and was among those forced to evacuate when the riot hit.
“Hey, get out of that chair!” Larry Brock, a zip tie-carrying retired Air Force lieutenant colonel from Texas can be heard telling the unidentified man occupying Pence’s seat.
“No, this is our chair!” a third man yelled back.
“It’s not our chair,” countered Brock. “I love you guys, you’re brothers, but we can’t be disrespectful.”
A rioter challenged Brock further, invoking a conspiracy theory that the 2020 presidential election was rigged against Trump.
“They can steal an election, but we can’t sit in their chairs?” the man asked.
“No, we’re not putting up with that either!” insisted Brock. “Look, it’s a PR war. … We’re better than that.”
While the group bickered, others rifled through lawmakers’ desks, apparently in search of documents to back their claim that the election was rigged.
A handful of intruders stumbled upon papers detailing what one identified as Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s “objection to the Arizona” election results.
Rioters reading Sen. Ted Cruz’s notes.YouTube
The discovery left some confused over exactly what the papers purportedly showed.
“His objection! He was gonna sell us out all along!” fumed one man.
“Wait, no, that’s a good thing!” chimed in another huddled around the document.
One of Trump’s most loyal supporters in Congress, Cruz was among those who questioned the legitimacy of Biden’s win in Arizona, lodging an unsuccessful protest even in the hours after the riot.
Two others flipped through a binder, apparently also in search of evidence or otherwise incriminating material, the video shows.
“There’s gotta be something in here we can f–king use against these scumbags,” muttered one man, haphazardly leafing through pages.
“[Republican Missouri Sen. Josh] Hawley, Cruz. I think Cruz would want us to do this,” another man intoned. “I think we’re good.”
Above them in the gallery, “QAnon Shaman” Jacob Chansley — done up in a horned helmet and red, white and blue face paint — chanted unintelligibly, rhythmically stomping his feet and the pole of an American flag.
Jake Angeli in Vice President Mike Pence’s chair inside of the chamber.YouTube
In a later segment, Chansley — also known as Jake Angeli — made his way down onto the Senate floor, closely followed by a lone cop, the video shows.
“You guys are f–king patriots,” said Angeli to the group. “Look at this guy. He’s covered in blood. God bless you.”
The man to whom Angeli was referring, splayed out on the floor with a small smear of blood on his t-shirt, said that he “got shot in the face with some kind of plastic bullet,” but declined an offer of medical help.
As Angeli ascended the dais and prepared to sit in Pence’s seat, the cop took his best shot at dispersing the crowd.
“Is there any chance I can get you guys to leave the Senate wing?” he asked.
Replied the bloodied man on the floor, “We will. I’ve been making sure they ain’t disrespecting the place.”
Angeli, however, decided to make himself at home.
“I’m gonna take a sit in this chair because Mike Pence is a f–king traitor,” he said.
As the cop looked on, Angeli asked another rioter to use his phone to snap a photo of him seated in Pence’s chair.
Once Angeli had his photo, the cop took another crack.
“Now that you’ve done that, can I get you guys to walk out of this room, please?” he asked.
The group appeared to be complying, but not before Angeli scrawled a message on a sheet of paper before Pence’s seat: “It’s only a matter of time[,] justice is coming!”
In a later segment, however, Angeli and others were back on the dais, using a megaphone to shout a “prayer.”
The group prayer inside of the chamber.YouTube
“Thank you, heavenly father, for being the inspiration needed to these police officers to allow us into the building, to allow us to exercise our rights, to allow us to send a message to all the tyrants, the communists and the globalists,” said Angeli.
In the hall outside the Senate chamber, cops were doing what they could to direct rioters out of the building.
“We support you guys, OK?” one rioter could be heard telling an officer. “We know you’re doing your job.”
Back outside the Capitol, however, it was a different scene as another contingent of rioters clashed with cops attempting to restore order.
“F–k the blue! F–k the blue!” some in the mob chanted, the video shows, in an apparent reference to police.
US anti-missile defences have intercepted as many as five rockets targeting Kabul airport as key American diplomats flew out of the Aghan capital in the final hours of the western evacuation under the threat of further Islamic State attacks.
Officials told Reuters that core US diplomats had on Monday joined the 122,000 foreign nationals and Afghans to be evacuated since mid-August, although it was not clear whether the acting ambassador, Ross Wilson, was among them.
The last few hundred US troops are due to pull out of the country by Joe Biden’s Tuesday deadline, drawing to a close their country’s longest military conflict, which began 20 years ago in retaliation for the 11 September 2001 attacks.
No casualties were reported from the rockets fired on Monday morning. IS, which opposes both the west and the hardline Islamist Taliban movement that swept back to power in Afghanistan a fortnight ago, claimed responsibility.
The White House confirmed a rocket attack on the airport but said airlift operations were “uninterrupted”. Biden had “reconfirmed his order that commanders redouble their efforts to prioritise doing whatever is necessary to protect our forces on the ground”, a White House statement said.
Afghan media said Monday’s attack had been launched from the back of a vehicle which was subsequently hit by a US drone strike, with several rockets striking different parts of the Afghan capital. Those targeting the airport were intercepted by its missile defence system.
The latest attacks followed a deadly IS suicide bombing on Thursday that killed more than 140 Afghans waiting in desperation outside the crowded airport gates in hopes of boarding a flight out of Kabul, as well as 13 US soldiers.
Relatives and neighbours gather round a car destroyed by a US drone strike in Kabul, killing 10 members of one family including six children. Photograph: Marcus Yam/Los Angeles Times/Rex/Shutterstock
Washington has warned of more attacks within the next 24 to 36 hours and carried out two airstrikes against IS targets, including one on Sunday which it said thwarted an attempted suicide bombing by blowing up a car packed with explosives.
The Sunday drone strike on the car, parked outside their home, killed 10 members of one family including six children, relatives told the BBC, adding that some of the dead had worked for international organisations and held visas for entry to the US.
US officials said the explosives in the car had caused secondary blasts. “We are aware of reports of civilian casualties following our strike on a vehicle in Kabul,” said Capt Bill Urban, a US Central Command spokesman. “We would be deeply saddened by any potential loss of innocent life.”
The Washington Post said the dead were from a single extended family who had been getting out of a car when the strike hit a vehicle nearby. Relatives told the paper eight children or young adults were among those killed, all aged between two and 12.
A Taliban spokesman told Agence-France Presse the group expected IS’s attacks to end once foreign forces leave. “We hope that those Afghans who are influenced by IS will give up their operations on seeing the formation of an Islamic government in the absence of foreigners,” Zabihullah Mujahid said.
“If they create a situation for war and continue with their operations, the Islamic government … will deal with them.”
An unidentified Taliban source told Al Jazeera the group would take “full control” of Kabul airport immediately after the US withdrawal ends on Tuesday.
Britain ended its evacuation on Saturday and France on Friday, although the French president, Emmanuel Macron, has proposed a “safe zone” in Kabul to allow allies “to maintain pressure on the Taliban” while more of the thousands of Afghans who helped western countries, but did not make it out in time, try to leave.
The Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said on Monday that the French plan, which Macron said France and Britain would put before the UN security council later on Monday, was “certainly a proposal that must be discussed”.
The Taliban have promised a softer brand of rule compared with their first stint in power. But many Afghans fear a repeat of the movement’s brutal interpretation of Islamic law, as well as violent retribution for working with foreign militaries, Western missions or the previous US-backed government.
The US national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said the US does not plan to have an embassy presence after the final troop withdrawal but it “will make sure there is safe passage for any American citizen, any legal permanent resident” after Tuesday, as well as for “those Afghans who helped us”.
The US state department said on Sunday that about 100 countries, as well as Nato and the EU, had received assurances from the Taliban that people with travel documents would still be able to leave the country.
The UN, meanwhile, has said the entire country faces a dire humanitarian crisis, cut off from foreign aid amid a drought, mass displacement and the Covid-19 pandemic. “The evacuation effort has undoubtedly saved tens of thousands of lives, and these efforts are praiseworthy,” the UN’s refugee chief, Filippo Grandi, said on Monday.
“But when the airlift and the media frenzy are over, the overwhelming majority of Afghans, some 39 million, will remain inside Afghanistan. They need us – governments, humanitarians, ordinary citizens – to stay with them and stay the course.”
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