Trump Administration 52 , CD3 DFL

Trump is using a peculiar strategy to maintain his power over the GOP: experts

Experts speaking to Newsweek say Donald Trump’s stalling when it comes to announcing whether or not he’ll run for president in 2024 could be a strategy to help maintain his grip over the Republican Party.

“There’s no doubt that Trump’s choice to delay announcing whether he will run for president extends his influence over the Republican Party,” Thomas Gift, founding director of University College London’s Center on U.S. Politics, told Newsweek. “The longer he holds out making a decision, the more the anticipation around his candidacy grows, the more ability he has to play kingmaker within the party for the 2022 midterms, and the more he can freeze out other potential GOP candidates in 2024.”

“For Trump, there’s little cost to waiting,” he continued. “If he’s genuinely eyeing the White House in 2024, securing the Republican nomination seems, if not preordained, highly likely given his resilient support within the party. If he’s not interested, then telling his supporters now can only prematurely diminish his stature and hasten his irrelevance.” Continue reading.

The Party Of Surrender…To Tyranny

When the violent mob finally dispersed from the Capitol late on January 6, it left behind a troubling choice that Republican congressional leaders are only now being forced to make.

This week, they had to decide whether to fulfill their constitutional oath by supporting a full and independent investigation of that day’s terrible events, which inevitably will reveal all the dimensions of former President Donald Trump’s responsibility for the insurrection, or to surrender to Trump by attempting to kill that investigation while muttering excuses that only underline their cowardly dereliction.

We know how that went. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, along with a majority of their caucuses, showed abject obedience to the would-be dictator, who now rules the Republican Party with a clenched fist. He publicly ordered the pair of them to oppose the National Commission to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol Complex, as the legislation is titled, and they heeled like whipped dogs. Continue reading.

Giuliani’s legal profession does not shield him from seizure of electronics, prosecutors say

NEW YORK — Rudolph W. Giuliani, the onetime personal attorney to former president Donald Trump, cannot claim his profession should have shielded him from the search warrant for electronics executed at his home and office last month, federal prosecutors argued in a filing unsealed Thursday evening.

The former New York mayor, through his attorneys, has argued that because of the extensive business-related communications authorities are likely to find on his phones and computers, it is impossible for the Justice Department to sort through his data without infringing on the rights of his clients.

In late April, FBI agents acting on a warrant obtained by the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan seized 18 electronic devices from Giuliani’s New York home and office, including some belonging to employees of Giuliani Partners. A phone belonging to D.C.-area attorney Victoria Toensing also was recovered. Continue reading.

Trump administration secretly obtained CNN reporter’s phone and email records

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration secretly sought and obtained the 2017 phone and email records of a CNN correspondent, the latest instance where federal prosecutors have taken aggressive steps targeting journalists in leak investigations.

The Justice Department informed CNN Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr, in a May 13 letter, that prosecutors had obtained her phone and email records covering two months, between June 1, 2017 to July 31, 2017. The letter listed phone numbers for Starr’s Pentagon extension, the CNN Pentagon booth phone number and her home and cell phones, as well as Starr’s work and personal email accounts.

It is unclear when the investigation was opened, whether it happened under Attorney General Jeff Sessions or Attorney General William Barr, and what the Trump administration was looking for in Starr’s records. The Justice Department confirmed the records were sought through the courts last year but provided no further explanation or context. Continue reading.

Opinion: The threat of violence now infuses GOP politics. We should all be afraid.

American politics is being conducted under the threat of violence.

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), who has a talent for constructive bluntness, describes a political atmosphere within the GOP heavy with fear. “If you look at the vote to impeach,” she said recently, “there were members who told me that they were afraid for their own security — afraid, in some instances, for their lives.” The events of Jan. 6 have only intensified the alarm. When Donald Trump insists he is “still the rightful president,” Cheney wrote in an op-ed for The Post, he “repeats these words now with full knowledge that exactly this type of language provoked violence on Jan. 6.” And there’s good reason, Cheney argued, “to believe that Trump’s language can provoke violence again.”

Sometimes political events force us to step back in awe, or horror, or both. The (former) third-ranking Republican in the House of Representatives has accused a former president of her party of employing the threat of violence as a tool of intimidation. And election officials around the country — Republican and Democratic — can attest to the results: Death threats. Racist harassment. Armed protesters at their homes. Continue reading.

What’s Behind the New York Attorney General’s Criminal Probe of the Trump Organization

There’s a strong likelihood that evidence has been established of intent to commit fraud.

The announcement by New York Attorney General Letitia James that her office is “actively investigating the Trump Organization in a criminal capacity” was greeted with a wave of nearly unanimous snap analysis that this spelled big trouble for former President Donald Trump and his company. But behind the scenes, many lawyers, including experienced prosecutors in New York, expressed confusion about what the move actually signifies.

It turns out that James’ unusual public statement portends bad news for Trump and his family-run operation but not for the reason you likely suspect.

The attorney general’s spokesperson noted that the AG was investigating “along with the Manhattan D.A.,” whose office has been conducting for some time a criminal investigation into whether Trump’s company inflated the value of its properties to obtain loans and lowered the values to limit its tax burden. Rather than a new, independent investigation into similar matters, the announcement was more of a combining of resources. Members of the AG’s staff have been named as “special assistant district attorneys” and will be working as part of District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr.’s team. For that reason, it might have been more accurate to say that her team is assisting the DA’s already underway investigation. Continue reading.

Proud Boys member who allegedly shouted about taking the Capitol before breach arrested

U.S. authorities have arrested three more alleged associates of two right-wing groups in the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol, including one who allegedly shouted, “Let’s take the f—ing Capitol!” an hour before the assault while marching with a large group of Proud Boys around the building.

Charging papers identified Daniel Lyons Scott, 28, of Bradenton, Fla., as the Proud Boys member nicknamed “Milkshake,” who after allegedly yelling about taking the Capitol was admonished, “Let’s not f—ing yell that, okay?” by a Proud Boys leader on a video live-streamed by the group that day. In the same moments, court documents allege, accused leader Ethan Nordean was recorded saying, “It was Milkshake, man, you know . . . idiot!”

Nordean and three other Proud Boys seen near him that day have pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiring to obstruct police and the joint session of Congress to confirm the 2020 election results. Continue reading.

Maricopa County will need new voting machines after GOP’s audit, Arizona secretary of state says

The machines must be replaced because election officials don’t know what was done to them by the Republican auditors, she said.

Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs said Thursday that the voting machines Republicans turned over to private companies as part of their audit of the 2020 election are no longer safe for use in future elections.

In a letter sent to Maricopa County officials and shared with NBC News, Hobbs, a Democrat, cited security concerns about losing the chain of custody over the equipment when it was handed over to the auditors and urged the county to get new machines. If it does not, her office would consider decertifying the equipment involved in the audit, she wrote. That would remove the machines from service.

State Senate Republicans subpoenaed nearly 400 of Maricopa County’s election machines, along with ballots cast by voters in November’s election, to facilitate an unusual audit of the election results. The GOP hired private firms, led by the Florida-based cybersecurity company Cyber Ninjas, to do the work. Continue reading.

GOP leader’s Jan. 6 call to Trump draws scrutiny in commission fight

For Kevin McCarthy, the race to move beyond Jan. 6 is personal.

The House Republican leader not only has his eyes set on the Speakership after next year’s midterms, he was also the only lawmaker to speak directly to President Trump in the midst of the violent attack on the Capitol.

Those seemingly unrelated facts are in fact related in the context of the debate over the Jan. 6 commission. The dynamics make McCarthy unique among Republicans — and leave him with an equally unique dilemma. Continue reading.

New report details the craven way the GOP became dependent on Trump

Former President Donald Trump has been gone from the White House for four months. But his influence on the Republican Party hasn’t disappeared, and most Republicans in Congress — apart from outspoken critics like Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah and Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois — are terrified of the possibility of offending him. Reporters Meridith McGraw and Sam Stein, this week in an article for Politico, offer a major reason why so many Republicans are still embracing Trump: GOP fundraising.

“In the days immediately following the January 6 riots,” McGraw and Stein explain, “the Republican National Committee went dark. Its fundraising e-mail account did not send a single message as the prospect sank in that the president it had long trumpeted — Donald Trump — was a pariah for inciting the rioters who ransacked the Capitol…. If the Committee’s intent was to leave the impression that it was moving on from Trump, it was short-lived…. Since resuming its e-mail fundraising, the RNC account has sent 97 e-mails mentioning Trump, according to a Politico review.”

McGraw and Stein add that “GOP institutions” have “become increasingly reliant on Trump to help generate enthusiasm at the grassroots level.” Continue reading.

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