Politics

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (Reuters) – A U.S. judge on Thursday said he is leaning toward releasing some of the evidence presented by the U.S. Justice Department to justify its search of Donald Trump’s Florida home last week, in a case pitting news organizations against federal prosecutors.

Despite objections by the Justice Department, U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart said he believes “there are portions of the affidavit that could be unsealed,” referring to the sworn statement laying out the evidence for why there was probable cause to search Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.

He ordered the Justice Department to file a redacted version of the affidavit under seal by noon next Thursday, but said prosecutors will be given the opportunity to appeal if they don’t agree with his proposed version.

Reinhart’s order seemed to mark a victory for news outlets, who appeared in federal court in West Palm Beach on Thursday to persuade the judge that the public interest in the affidavit outweighs the benefits of keeping it sealed.

The search marked a significant escalation in one of the many federal and state investigations Trump is facing from his time in office and in private business. The Republican former president has suggested he might run for the White House again in 2024, but has not made any commitment.

The Justice Department opposes the release of the Mar-a-Lago affidavit, even in redacted form.

Jay Bratt, the head of the department’s counterintelligence and export control section, told the judge on Thursday that releasing the affidavit is not in the public interest because it could harm the ongoing probe, which he described as still being in the “early” stages and involving highly sensitive grand jury material.

“There is another public interest at stake and that is the public interest that criminal investigations are able to go forward unimpeded,” he said.

The search, which was approved by Reinhart on Aug. 5, is part of a federal investigation into whether Trump illegally removed documents when he left office in January 2021 after losing the presidential election to Democrat Joe Biden.

The Justice Department is investigating violations of three laws, including a provision in the Espionage Act that prohibits the possession of national defense information and another statute that makes it a crime to knowingly destroy, conceal or falsify records with the intent to obstruct an investigation.

Attorneys for several media outlets including The New York Times, the publisher of the Wall Street Journal, ABC News and NBC News told Reinhart on Thursday that the public’s right to know and the historic significance of the search outweigh any arguments to keep the records sealed.

“The public could not have a more compelling interest in ensuring maximum transparency over this event,” said Charles Tobin, one of the attorneys arguing for the media companies.

Trump has vocally made statements on social media calling on

the court to unseal the unredacted version.

However, his attorneys have not filed any such requests with the court seeking to unseal the records, which are likely to contain damaging information about Trump.

Christina Bobb, the Trump attorney who signed the warrant materials on the day of the Aug. 8 search, appeared in the courtroom on Thursday to watch the proceedings.

She left without making any statements to reporters.

The former president has repeatedly claimed the search was politically motivated, and his son Eric Trump told Fox News that his father intends to release surveillance tape showing the FBI searching Mar-a-Lago “at the right time.”

Trump has also tried to defend his actions, saying without providing evidence that he had a standing order to declassify the documents in question.

However, none of the three laws cited by the Justice Department in the search warrant require a showing that the documents were in fact classified.

Threats directed at FBI agents have increased since the raid.

In Ohio last week, police shot an armed man dead after he tried to breach an FBI building. A second man in Pennsylvania, meanwhile, has since been charged with making threats against FBI agents.

Bratt said on Thursday that the two agents whose names appeared on a leaked copy of the unredacted warrant have also since received threats.

In addition, he said, the department “is very concerned about the safety of the witnesses in the case.”

Reinhart has also faced a barrage of criticism from Trump’s supporters, who have publicly assailed his decision to approve the search warrant.

Trump’s rhetoric against the FBI has caught on with Republican voters, 54% of whom say federal law enforcement officials behaved irresponsibly in the case, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found this week.

The FBI seized boxes containing 11 sets of classified materials at Mar-a-Lago, some of which were labeled “top secret” – the highest level of classification reserved for the most closely held U.S. national security information.

Such documents usually are typically kept in special government facilities because disclosure could cause grave damage to national security.

Reinhart on Thursday also granted a request to unseal procedural records tied to the warrant, including the cover sheet and the government’s motion to seal the warrant. The cover sheet said the Justice Department is investigating the “willful” retention of national defense information, as well as the concealment or removal of government records and the obstruction of a federal investigation.

(Reporting by Brian Ellsworth in West Palm Beach, Florida, and Sarah N. Lynch in Washington; additional reporting by Christopher Gallagher; Editing by Scott Malone and Alistair Bell)

source

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Former U.S. Vice President Mike Pence said on Wednesday he would consider testifying before the House of Representatives committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol if he were to receive an invitation.

Aides to Pence told the panel in June that former President Donald Trump pressured the then-vice president to overturn his 2020 election defeat.

Pence has said he believes Trump was wrong to believe the vice president had the power to reverse the outcome of the election, whose results were being certified by Pence and lawmakers when the Capitol came under attack.

Trump has repeatedly denied wrongdoing.

One of Pence’s senior aides has testified to the committee, and his top staffer at the time, Marc Short, testified before a federal grand jury investigating the attack. The committee, however, has not publicly extended an invitation to Pence.

Speaking at an event in New Hampshire on Wednesday, Pence said he would give any invitation to testify “due consideration.”

“Any invitation that would be directed to me, I would have to reflect on the unique role I was serving in as vice president,” Pence told people gathered for a “Politics & Eggs” breakfast at New Hampshire’s Saint Anselm College.

A Jan. 6 committee spokesperson did not immediately respond on Wednesday to a request for comment. Members of the committee said in June they were considering whether to compel Pence to testify.

Pence said on Wednesday it “would be unprecedented in history for a vice president to be summoned to testify on Capitol Hill.”

The U.S. Senate website shows that Schuyler Colfax voluntarily appeared before a House select committee in January 1873 while vice president to Ulysses S. Grant from 1869-1873.

At least six current and former presidents have also testified before congressional committees, the website shows.

(Reporting by Rami Ayyub and Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Tim Ahmann and Howard Goller)

source

By Karen Freifeld

(Reuters) – A longtime senior executive at former President Donald Trump’s family business is expected to plead guilty on Thursday to conspiring with the company in a 15-year tax fraud.

Allen Weisselberg, the former chief financial officer at the Trump Organization, is expected to enter his plea before Justice Juan Merchan in a New York state court in Manhattan.

He is not expected to cooperate with Manhattan prosecutors, including in a larger probe of Trump himself, though he could be required to testify against the Trump Organization at trial, a person familiar with the matter said.

A grand jury last year indicted Weisselberg, 75, for concealing $1.76 million of “off-the-books” income.

That included rent for a Manhattan apartment, lease payments for two Mercedes-Benz vehicles, and tuition for family members, with Trump himself signing the checks for the tuition.

Weisselberg will likely be sentenced to five months in jail and could be freed after about 100 days, another person familiar with the matter said.

That’s far shorter than the many years in state prison he could face if, rather than pleading guilty, he were convicted at trial of the charges against him, which include grand larceny, scheming to defraud, conspiracy, tax fraud, and falsifying business records.

Weisselberg is expected to plead guilty to all the charges he faces, the second person said.

A spokeswoman for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg declined to comment. A lawyer for Weisselberg and a spokeswoman for the Trump Organization declined comment.

Last Friday, Merchan denied defense motions to dismiss the indictment, rejecting arguments that the defendants had been “selectively prosecuted” and that Weisselberg was targeted because he would not turn on his longtime boss.

Trump’s company manages golf clubs, hotels and other real estate around the world.

The company has pleaded not guilty, and could face fines and other penalties if convicted at trial.

Jury selection begins on Oct. 24, fifteen days before the Nov. 8 midterm election, where Trump’s Republican Party hopes to recapture both houses of Congress from Democrats.

Trump has not been charged, and has yet to say whether he plans another White House run in 2024.

Weisselberg has worked for Trump for about a half-century.

He gave up the CFO job after he and the Trump Organization were indicted in July 2021, but remains on Trump’s payroll as a senior adviser.

The indictment arose from an investigation by former Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, but lost steam after Bragg became district attorney in January.

Two prosecutors who had been leading the investigation resigned in February, with one saying felony charges should be brought against Trump, but that Bragg indicated he had doubts.

Trump faces many other legal battles.

Last week, FBI agents searched the former U.S. president’s home for classified and other documents from his time in office.

Two days later, Trump was deposed in New York Attorney General Letitia James’ civil probe into his business but repeatedly refused to answer questions, citing his Fifth Amendment U.S. Constitutional right against self-incrimination.

(Reporting by Karen Freifeld in New York; Editing by Alistair Bell)

source

(Reuters) – Federal prosecutors examining the role of former President Donald Trump and allies in events ahead of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol have subpoenaed National Archives documents provided to a House of Representatives committee, the New York Times reported.

The subpoena was issued in May, sought “all materials, in whatever form” that were given to lawmakers and was signed by the prosecutor leading the Justice Department’s inquiry, according to the report.

The Justice Department did not immediately respond to an out-of-hours request for comment from Reuters.

The select committee investigating the Capitol assault asked for multiple records from the National Archives including photographs, videos, communications, calendars, schedules, movement logs and visitor records among other files.

Trump has repeatedly denied wrongdoing.

The onslaught on the Capitol by Trump supporters led to several deaths, injured more than 140 police officers and delayed certification of Democratic President Joe Biden’s victory over Republican Trump in the November 2020 election.

Trump falsely claims his election defeat was the result of fraud.

(Reporting by Costas Pitas in Los Angeles; editing by Grant McCool)

source

By Maria Alejandra Cardona

ATLANTA (Reuters) -Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump’s onetime personal lawyer, testified before a special grand jury in Atlanta on Wednesday in a Georgia criminal probe examining attempts by the former U.S. president and his allies to overturn the 2020 election results.

Giuliani, who helped lead Trump’s election challenges, spent more than six hours in the Fulton County courthouse after a judge ordered him to comply with a subpoena. His lawyers, who declined to comment on his testimony, said he would refuse to answer questions that violate attorney-client privilege.

The former New York City mayor, 78, appeared before Georgia state lawmakers in December 2020, echoing Trump’s false conspiracy theories about stolen ballots and urging them not to certify Democratic President Joe Biden’s victory over the Republican Trump.

“It’s a grand jury and grand juries, as I recall, are secret,” Giuliani told CNN on his arrival at the courthouse, when asked to comment on his testimony. “They ask the questions and we’ll see.”

Giuliani left the courthouse through one of the building’s side entrances, local media in Atlanta reported.

“We were ordered to be here, we showed up, we did what we have to do,” said Giuliani’s lawyer, Bill Thomas. “The special grand jury process is a secret process, and we’re gonna respect that process.”

The Fulton County probe began after a January 2021 recorded phone call in which Trump urged the state’s top election official to “find” enough votes to alter the outcome. The former president has asserted falsely that he won Georgia, as well as the 2020 presidential contest.

The special grand jury was convened in May at the request of county District Attorney Fani Willis.

Giuliani, a former crime-fighting U.S. Attorney, was among several Trump advisers and lawyers who received subpoenas from the grand jury last month, including U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

(Writing by Rami Ayyub, editing by Ross Colvin, Howard Goller and Deepa Babington)

source

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — When the U.S. Supreme Court repealed in June a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion, Wisconsin’s 1849 law that bans the procedure except when a mother’s life is at risk became newly relevant.

Republicans in the Legislature blocked an attempt by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers to overturn the law. Yet there’s disagreement inside the GOP over how to move forward when they return to the state Capitol in January.

The state’s powerful Republican Assembly speaker, Robin Vos, supports reinforcing the exception for a mother’s life and adding protections for instances involving rape and incest. Others, including GOP state Rep. Barbara Dittrich, say the law should stay as it is, without exceptions for rape and incest.

For decades, Republicans like Vos and Dittrich appealed to conservative voters — and donors — with broad condemnation of abortion. But the Supreme Court’s decision is forcing Republicans from state legislatures to Congress to the campaign trail to articulate more specifically what that opposition means, sometimes creating division over where the party should stand.

Dittrich says consensus among her Republican colleagues on an alternative to the 1849 law would be a “tremendous challenge.”

“We once heard that the Democrats were the big-tent party,” she said in an interview. “Now I would say the Republican Party is more the big-tent party on some of these issues.”

Of course, supporters of abortion rights are now a distinct minority in Republican politics. Just two GOP members of Congress — Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine — publicly support passing legislation to reinstate the protections of a woman’s right to choose that the Supreme Court struck down in overruling Roe v. Wade. In Colorado, U.S. Senate candidate Joe O’Dea is the rare Republican running this year who backs codifying Roe.

But the debate over even a limited set of circumstances in which abortion could be legal spurred some division within the GOP in Wisconsin and elsewhere.

In Indiana, after a decade of stalled legislation on abortion, empowered Republicans passed the first near-total abortion ban since the Supreme Court ruling. But even that measure drew dissent within the GOP. Exemptions for rape and incest up to 10 weeks prevailed after 50 Republicans joined with all Democrats to include them.

Still, 18 Republicans voted against final passage of the bill, with roughly half saying the bill went too far and the rest saying it was too weak.

In South Carolina, meanwhile, Republicans have spent decades curtailing abortion access and there is ongoing discussion about a near-total ban. But some in the legislature voiced concern about pushing the current six-week ban further and urged deceleration, particularly after seeing voters in Kansas spike a ballot measure that would have allowed the legislature there to ban abortion.

“It’s like you are playing with live ammunition right now,” Republican Rep. Tom Davis told The Associated Press.

The Supreme Court ruling paved the way for severe abortion restrictions or bans in nearly half the states. Nine states currently have laws banning abortion from conception, with three more — Tennessee, Idaho and Texas — set to take effect on Aug. 25. Three states — Georgia, South Carolina and Ohio — have laws banning abortion when fetal cardiac activity is detected, at about six weeks. Florida’s law bans abortion at 15 weeks, and Arizona’s will as of Sep. 24.

Some experts say the inconsistency among Republicans about how to move forward underscores how new the debate is — and how unprepared the party was for it.

“Historically, GOP candidates and policy makers were in a politically convenient spot when it came to being ‘pro-life,’” University of Denver political science professor Joshua Wilson told the AP in an email.

Until Roe was overturned, Republican-controlled states could introduce legislation to dismantle abortion access, knowing that federal courts bound by the law at the time would block the most aggressive regulations. That and the issue’s lower salience among Democratic and moderate voters, Wilson noted, “were linked guardrails against political backlash.”

The rejected ballot measure in Kansas surprised advocates on both sides, not only because it was defeated by a 20-percentage-point margin but also because turnout surged, driven by voters who weren’t participating in the Republican primary. Prioritization of abortion and women’s rights is growing among abortion rights supporters, and Democrats are seeking to capitalize on the shift by campaigning on the issue and pushing for ballot measures in other states.

Polling shows the most extreme anti-abortion laws are at odds with the American public and even most Republicans.

The July AP-NORC poll showed Republicans are largely opposed to abortion “for any reason” and at 15 weeks into a pregnancy. But only 16% of Republicans say abortion generally should be “illegal in all cases.”

Most Republicans said their state should generally allow a pregnant person to obtain a legal abortion if the child would be born with a life-threatening illness (61%), the person became pregnant as the result of rape or incest (77%) or if the person’s health is seriously endangered (85%).

A majority of Republicans, 56%, also said their state should generally allow abortion at six weeks into a pregnancy.

GOP politicians may begin to face pressure to satisfy their base’s most conservative anti-abortion opponents — they want total abortion bans — and the moderate or independent voter, who is more accepting of abortion at early points in the pregnancy and in extenuating circumstances.

That’s led some candidates to pivot from hard-line positions in their primaries to more diffuse rhetoric ahead of their general election in purple states. In Arizona, the Republican candidate for governor, Kari Lake, who said during the primary that “abortion is the ultimate sin” and abortion pills should be outlawed, punted to the Legislature when asked about the specifics of abortion policy after she won.

When he was running to be Georgia Republicans’ nominee for the U.S. Senate, Herschel Walker was unequivocal in his support for an outright abortion ban with no exceptions. Now that he is the nominee running in a tight general election contest, he’s more circumspect. When asked plainly whether he’d vote for an absolute prohibition in a Republican-controlled Senate, Walker demurred.

“That’s an ‘if,’” Walker said, telling reporters he won’t entertain such a hypothetical scenario “right now.”

Back in Wisconsin, Evers, who is up for reelection this year, has consistently vetoed anti-abortion legislation brought forth in recent years by the Republican legislature. The Republican candidate for governor, Tim Michels, who won the Republican primary last week, said during his campaign that the state’s 1849 law is “an exact mirror” of his position; he doesn’t support exceptions for rape or incest.

The July AP-NORC poll showed 55% of moderate and liberal Republicans said abortion in general should be legal in all or most cases and 39% said abortion should be illegal in most cases. Just 5% said abortion should be illegal in all cases.

But even among conservative Republicans, only 24% say abortion should be illegal in all cases; 60% of conservative Republicans said abortion should be illegal in most cases.

The subject is increasingly the focus of ads for Democratic candidates for the U.S. House and Senate this summer, while it’s tapered off in ads for Republican candidates, according to analysis by the Wesleyan Media Project. Democrats are painting Republicans as extreme on abortion, hoping to see the issue win over voters in the midterm elections.

“If we want to be relevant to the debate, there’s got to be some negotiation. If we draw a hard line, we may be on the outside looking in in legislative chambers and in Congress,” said Republican strategist Jason Roe.

Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser said the overturning of Roe democratizes the process of regulating abortion and it’s up to each state to come to a consensus “where it’s very likely that the true believers on both sides will not get what they want,” she said.

Still, to Dannenfelser, “every single law that’s passed is a gain for the pro-life movement because for almost 50 years, we had nothing,” she said. “It’s more than we had, and so that’s how I look at it.”

___

Fingerhut reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Bill Barrow in Athens, Georgia; Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, South Carolina; Jonathan J. Cooper in Phoenix; and Tom Davies in Indianapolis contributed to this report.

___

Follow AP’s coverage of abortion at https://apnews.com/hub/abortion.

source

By David Morgan and James Oliphant

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – After being soundly rejected by Wyoming Republican voters, U.S. Representative Liz Cheney vowed to spend the next two years trying to stop Donald Trump from returning to the White House – possibly with her own anti-Trump presidential bid.

Cheney moved quickly on Wednesday to convert her campaign for reelection to the House of Representatives into a new political action committee after losing her nominating primary and said she was considering whether to launch a 2024 White House campaign.

Her Tuesday night defeat was a significant victory for the former president in his campaign to oust Republicans who backed his impeachment after a mob of his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in a failed attempt to overturn his election defeat.

“I will do whatever it takes to ensure Donald Trump is never again anywhere near the Oval Office, and I mean it,” Cheney said in her concession speech after campaigning on her duty to the U.S. Constitution and opposition to Trump’s repeated falsehoods about a stolen 2020 election.

“Let us resolve that we will stand together – Republicans, Democrats and independents – against those who would destroy our republic,” said Cheney, who serves as vice chair of the House committee on Jan. 6, a position she used throughout her reelection campaign to highlight the dangers to democracy that she says Trump and his supporters pose.

On Wednesday, Cheney told NBC’s Today Show that she would decide “in the coming months” whether to mount a White House run.

Trump ally Christian Ziegler, who is vice chair of the Florida Republican Party, said Wyoming voters sent Cheney a message of “rejection, condemnation, expulsion, retirement” and dismissed any presidential bid by her.

“Cheney has no chance at public office going forward,” he said.

Trump continues to flirt publicly with the idea of running again in 2024 but has not yet formally declared his candidacy. That has left other Republican White House hopefuls, notably Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and former Vice President Mike Pence, waiting to declare their next moves.

‘MEGAPHONE’ MOVE?

Some Republicans said Cheney would not expect to win the party nomination if she ran, but rather would devote her energies to keeping Trump from victory – a role she could play even without a formal candidacy.

“She knows she won’t beat Trump in a Republican primary. But her candidacy would give her an opportunity — and a megaphone,” said Charlie Sykes, a former Wisconsin conservative radio talk show host and frequent Trump critic. “She would be a constant thorn in his side.”

Analysts said Cheney could find herself barred from any primary debates, as Republican Party officials cut contact with perceived threats to Trump. An independent run could backfire and inadvertently help Trump by drawing independent voters and moderate Republicans away from his Democratic rival.

Brendan Buck, a one-time aide to former House Speaker Paul Ryan, said Cheney and her advisors would have to think long and hard about how best to oppose Trump.

“That doesn’t even necessarily mean she needs to be on the ballot,” Buck said. “She may just be running a campaign from the outside. And that means raising money, being a spokesperson, pulling together different political organizations and factions.”

After her defeat in Wyoming, Cheney filed documents with the Federal Election Commission to convert her campaign into a leadership PAC called “The Great Task,” a phrase President Abraham Lincoln used in his famed Gettysburg Address, during the nation’s 19th Century Civil War.

Cheney is expected to use the organization to educate the public about the threat she believes Trump presents and to mobilize efforts to oppose any presidential campaign by him.

She noted in her concession speech that Lincoln, regarded as one of the greatest American presidents, lost — and admitted to losing — multiple races before winning the presidency.

Her campaign had about $7.5 million in cash on hand at the end of July.

Cheney, who was first elected to Congress in 2016, has won national praise from Trump critics for her prominent role on the Jan. 6 committee.

Despite her principled stand against lies and insurrection, she has been criticized by what many Republicans, in Wyoming and elsewhere, regard as her disloyalty to their party’s charismatic leader.

“A lot of this just emphasizes the fact that so much of our politics is no longer about policy, but about the question of Trump and where you stand in relation to him,” said Matthew Continetti, senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

(Reporting by David Morgan and James Oliphant; Editing by Scott Malone and Alistair Bell)

source

ELKHART, Ind. (AP) — Former Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill is dismissing as “old news” the question of whether allegations that he drunkenly groped four women during a 2018 party could hurt his chances of replacing Republican U.S. Rep. Jackie Walorski following her death in a highway crash.

Hill is the most prominent of the dozen candidates who met Wednesday’s deadline to enter the Republican caucus vote. The vote, set for Saturday, will choose who will take Walorski’s place on the November election ballot in northern Indiana’s solidly GOP 2nd Congressional District.

Other candidates for the Republican congressional bid include Rudy Yakym, an executive with Elkhart distribution company Kem Krest, and former Walorski campaign aide who has been endorsed by Walorski’s husband.

Hill, who was the Elkhart County prosecutor before winning the 2016 attorney general election, denied wrongdoing but the state Supreme Court ordered a 30-day suspension of his law license after finding “by clear and convincing evidence that (Hill) committed the criminal act of battery” against three female legislative staffers and a state lawmaker during the party.

The allegations were a key campaign issue when he lost the 2020 Republican attorney general nomination for his reelection to Todd Rokita, who took office in January 2021.

Hill said he didn’t believe the groping allegations would hurt his chances.

“I’m sure someone’s going to bring up all sorts of old business, but that’s old news,” Hill told WISH-TV. “The folks in this district need somebody who’s a fighter, who can take the heat. And if there’s one thing that I’ve proven over the last several years is I can take a licking.”

Hill had been seen as a rising African American star among Republicans and worked to build support among social conservatives, touting himself as an anti-abortion and tough-on-crime crusader. He made appearances on Fox News to discuss topics such as San Francisco’s troubles with homelessness.

Walorski, who was 58, was a passenger in an SUV with two members of her congressional office staff Aug. 3 when it crossed the median of a northern Indiana state highway and collided with an oncoming vehicle, the Elkhart County Sheriff’s Office said. The two staff members and the other driver were also killed.

Walorski was seeking reelection to the seat that she first won in 2012.

The Republican field to replace Walorski also includes former state Rep. Christy Stutzman, the wife of former U.S. Rep. Marlin Stutzman, and state Rep. Curt Nisly, a hardline conservative who lost his reelection campaign in the May Republican primary.

source

WASHINGTON (AP) — Liz Cheney’s resounding primary defeat marks the end of an era for the Republican Party as well as her own family legacy, the most high-profile political casualty yet as the party of Lincoln transforms into the party of Trump.

The fall of the three-term congresswoman, who has declared it her mission to ensure Donald Trump never returns to the Oval Office, was vividly foreshadowed earlier this year, on the first anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

As the House convened for a moment of silence, Cheney, who is leading the investigation into the insurrection as vice chair of the 1/6 committee, and her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, stood almost alone on the Republican side of the House floor.

Democratic lawmakers streamed by to shake their hands. Republicans declined to join them.

“Liz Cheney represents the Republican Party as it used to be. … All of that is gone now,” said Geoff Kabaservice, vice president of political studies at the center-right Niskanen Center.

What comes next for Liz Cheney is still to be determined.

“Now the real work begins,” she said in an election night concession speech in Wyoming, summoning the legacy of both Abraham Lincoln and his Civil War-era military and presidential successor Ulysses Grant in her campaign against Trump.

Cheney could very well announce her own run for the White House — unlikely to win a hostile Republican Party’s nomination but to at least give those opposed to Trump an alternative.

Overnight, she transferred leftover campaign funds into a new entity: “The Great Task.” That’s a phrase from The Gettysburg Address.

“I will be doing whatever it takes to keep Donald Trump out of the Oval Office,” Cheney told NBC’s “Today” show early Wednesday. Pressed, she said that running for president “is something I’m thinking about and I’ll make a decision in the coming months.”

Whether she runs or not, her belief that Trump poses a danger to democracy is a conviction that runs deep in her family.

But it’s a view that has no home in today’s GOP.

Trump is purging the Republican Party, ridding it of dissenters like Cheney and others who dare to defy him, shifting the coast-to-coast GOP landscape and the makeup of Congress.

Of the 10 House Republicans including Cheney who voted to impeach Trump for inciting the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection, at the Capitol, only two remain candidates for re-election. The others have bowed out or, like Cheney, have been defeated by Trump-backed challengers.

If Republicans gain control of the House and Senate in the November elections, the new Congress is destined to be remade in Trump’s image. However, his influence may in fact cut two ways, winning back the House for Republicans but costing the party the Senate if his candidates fail to generate the broader appeal needed for statewide elections.

“It’s just a party of Donald Trump’s fever dreams,” said Mark Salter, a former longtime Republican aide to the late Sen. John McCain.

“It’s just Donald Trump’s club.”

For 50 years, the Cheneys have had important influence in Washington, from the time Dick Cheney first ran for Congress — later being elected vice president — to the arrival of his daughter, elected in 2016 alongside Trump’s White House victory.

Identified with the hawkish defense wing of the Republican Party, the Cheneys with the Presidents Bush represented a cornerstone of the GOP in the post-World War II era, when it thrived as a party of small government, low taxation and muscular foreign policy.

Liz Cheney never wavered, chosen by House GOP colleagues to the same position her father held, the No. 3 Republican in the House, its highest-ranking woman.

But the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol changed all that.

Cheney was unequivocal, laying blame for the attack on the defeated president and his false claims of voter fraud and a rigged election.

Trump “summoned this mob, assembled the mob and lit the flame of this attack,” she said at the time, announcing her vote to impeach.

“There has never been a greater betrayal by a president of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution.”

House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy initially defended Cheney but quickly reversed as Republicans booted her from party leadership. When Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi named Cheney to the 1/6 panel, her exile was all but complete.

Trump gloated at Cheney’s GOP primary defeat Tuesday night, deriding her as “sanctimonious” and a “fool” for suggesting his claims of a rigged election were false.

Trump had swooped into the Cowboy State to rally for Harriet Hageman, who was once highly critical of him but beat Cheney by embracing the former president, backed by McCarthy and other party leaders.

Cheney’s defeat follows that of the last Bush in public office, Jeb’s son George P. Bush, who was defeated in the Republican primary for Texas attorney general by Trump-backed Ken Paxton in May.

On Fox News, conservative author Charlie Kirk called Tuesday’s election a “mass repudiation” of the Bush-Cheney-McCain era.

Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, who replaced Cheney in House GOP leadership and endorsed Hageman, said in a statement she was glad to see Pelosi’s “puppet” defeated.

Former Sen. Alan Simpson of Wyoming who served in Congress alongside Dick Cheney and has known Liz Cheney since she was a child, says he can no longer recognize the party that he joined, casting his first presidential vote for Dwight Eisenhower.

“What’s happened to our party is a fear of Donald J. Trump,” Simpson said.

Founded in the mid-19th century, the Republican Party’s core conservative values have shifted in the Trump era into a strain of politics that is more inward focused on grievances at home and isolationism abroad.

Those running for Congress include many Republican incumbents who voted against certifying Joe Biden’s election, amplifying Trump’s relentless false claims of a rigged election and fueling the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol.

And many of the new GOP candidates for Congress are also election deniers, according to a tally by Democrats.

“The House is — should be — the people’s House,” said former Republican Rep. Carlos Curbelo of Florida. Instead, he said, “It’s controlled by Mr. Trump,”

Cheney walks alone many days at the Capitol, flanked by plain-clothes Capitol police who guard her amid an onslaught of violent threats.

Her mission of denying Trump a return to the presidency can be seen in her daily schedule, much of her time devoted to the 1/6 committee deepening and completing its work.

Fellow Wyoming Republican Simpson said he has no doubt what’s next for Cheney: “She’ll mount a new set of horses and ride to the finish line.”

source

(Reuters) – Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump’s onetime personal lawyer, arrived at an Atlanta courthouse on Wednesday to testify in a Georgia criminal probe examining attempts by the former U.S. president and his allies to overturn the 2020 election results.

Giuliani, who helped lead Trump’s election challenges, was due to testify before a special grand jury in Fulton County after a judge ordered him to comply with a subpoena. His lawyers say he will refuse to answer questions that violate attorney-client privilege.

The former New York City mayor, 78, appeared before Georgia state lawmakers in December 2020, echoing Trump’s false conspiracy theories about stolen ballots and urging them not to certify Democratic President Joe Biden’s victory over the Republican Trump.

“It’s a grand jury and grand juries, as I recall, are secret,” Giuliani told CNN on his arrival at the courthouse, when asked to comment on his testimony. “They ask the questions and we’ll see.”

The Fulton County probe began after a January 2021 recorded phone call in which Trump urged the state’s top election official to “find” enough votes to alter the outcome. The former president has asserted falsely that he won Georgia, as well as the 2020 presidential contest.

The special grand jury was convened in May at the request of county District Attorney Fani Willis.

Giuliani, a former crime-fighting U.S. Attorney, was among several Trump advisers and lawyers who received subpoenas from the grand jury last month, including U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

(Reporting by Rami Ayyub, editing by Ross Colvin and Howard Goller)

source