Politics

By Tim Reid

DES MOINES, Iowa (Reuters) -Republican presidential rivals Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis were holding competing events in the early nominating state of Iowa on Saturday, at a time when the former president overwhelmingly dominates opinion polls and the Florida governor is scrambling to reset his troubled campaign.

DeSantis, who has had two staff shake-ups in the past three weeks and is sinking in the polls, had long planned to attend the Iowa State Fair, a political must for aspiring presidential candidates in the state that kicks off the Republican nominating contest in January.

Trump’s late announcement on Tuesday that he was also going to attend the event on the same day as DeSantis amounted to a political gate-crashing of an appearance the Florida governor hopes will kick-start his stalled campaign.

DeSantis is making a high-risk bet that he can halt Trump’s march to the Republican presidential nomination by winning Iowa.

Asked about his governing style on Saturday, DeSantis said he cared more about protecting voters than his own fortunes.

“So we’ll do what’s right. We’ll take the consequences and let the chips fall where they may,” he said in an interview with Iowa’s Republican Governor Kim Reynolds at the fair.

At the start of the interview, Reynolds reproached a group of protesters who were blowing whistles.

Later on, a large crowd cheered Trump as he arrived at the fair. He is due to make a speech later in the day.

Iowa holds the first of the state-by-state Republican nominating contests on Jan. 15. DeSantis hopes that a win in the Midwestern state will give him valuable momentum against Trump before primaries in New Hampshire and South Carolina.

Trump’s appearance at the fair could steal the limelight from the governor and dominate the headlines. It is held in the state capital Des Moines and runs from Aug. 10 to Aug. 20. Last year, it attracted more than 1 million visitors.

Trump’s appearance will also complicate efforts for the rest of the Republican field. Apart from Trump and DeSantis, nine other candidates will be attending the fair between Aug. 11 and Aug. 18, but all are languishing in single digits, over 40 points behind Trump according to the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll of likely Republican voters.

According to that Aug. 3 poll, Trump also leads DeSantis by 34 points, 47% to 13%.

Most of Trump’s rivals had agreed to be interviewed individually by Reynolds between Aug. 11 and Aug. 18. Trump turned down her invitation, angered by her public neutrality in the primary race and her appearance with DeSantis at several of his Iowa events.

(Additional reporting by David Ljunggren;Editing by Jonathan Oatis)

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DES MOINES, Iowa (Reuters) – Republican presidential rivals Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis were holding competing events in the early nominating state of Iowa on Saturday, at a time when the former president overwhelmingly dominates opinion polls and the Florida governor is scrambling to reset his troubled campaign.

DeSantis, who has had two staff shake-ups in the past three weeks and is sinking in the polls, had long planned to attend the Iowa State Fair, a political must for aspiring presidential candidates in the state that kicks off the Republican nominating contest in January.

Trump’s late announcement on Tuesday that he was also going to attend the event on the same day as DeSantis amounted to a political gate-crashing of an appearance the Florida governor hopes will kick-start his stalled campaign.

DeSantis is making a high-risk bet that he can halt Trump’s march to the Republican presidential nomination by winning Iowa.

Asked about his governing style on Saturday, DeSantis said he cared more about protecting voters than his own fortunes.

“So we’ll do what’s right. We’ll take the consequences and let the chips fall where they may,” he said in an interview with Iowa’s Republican Governor Kim Reynolds at the fair.

At the start of the interview, Reynolds reproached a group of protesters who were blowing whistles.

Later on, a large crowd cheered Trump as he arrived at the fair. He later made a speech inside a fairground bar, where he boasted about his current lead. “We’re way up in the polls,” Trump said.

Iowa holds the first of the state-by-state Republican nominating contests on Jan. 15. DeSantis hopes that a win in the Midwestern state will give him valuable momentum against Trump before primaries in New Hampshire and South Carolina.

Trump’s appearance at the fair could steal the limelight from the governor and dominate the headlines. It is held in the state capital Des Moines and runs from Aug. 10 to Aug. 20. Last year, it attracted more than 1 million visitors.

Trump’s appearance will also complicate efforts for the rest of the Republican field. Apart from Trump and DeSantis, nine other candidates will be attending the fair between Aug. 11 and Aug. 18, but all are languishing in single digits, over 40 points behind Trump according to the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll of likely Republican voters.

According to that Aug. 3 poll, Trump also leads DeSantis by 34 points, 47% to 13%.

Most of Trump’s rivals had agreed to be interviewed individually by Reynolds between Aug. 11 and Aug. 18. Trump turned down her invitation, angered by her public neutrality in the primary race and her appearance with DeSantis at several of his Iowa events.

(Additional reporting by David Ljunggren; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)

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By Tim Reid

DES MOINES, Iowa (Reuters) -Republican presidential rivals Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis were holding competing events in the early nominating state of Iowa on Saturday, at a time when the former president overwhelmingly dominates opinion polls and the Florida governor is scrambling to reset his troubled campaign.

DeSantis, who has had two staff shake-ups in the past three weeks and is sinking in the polls, had long planned to attend the Iowa State Fair, a political must for aspiring presidential candidates in the state that kicks off the Republican nominating contest in January.

Trump’s late announcement on Tuesday that he was also going to attend the event on the same day as DeSantis amounted to a political gate-crashing of an appearance the Florida governor hopes will kick-start his stalled campaign.

DeSantis is making a high-risk bet that he can halt Trump’s march to the Republican presidential nomination by winning Iowa.

Asked about his governing style on Saturday, DeSantis said he cared more about protecting voters than his own fortunes.

“So we’ll do what’s right. We’ll take the consequences and let the chips fall where they may,” he said in an interview with Iowa’s Republican Governor Kim Reynolds at the fair.

At the start of the interview, Reynolds reproached a group of protesters who were blowing whistles.

Later on, a large crowd cheered Trump as he arrived at the fair. He later made a speech inside a fairground bar, where he boasted about his current lead. “We’re way up in the polls,” Trump said.

Iowa holds the first of the state-by-state Republican nominating contests on Jan. 15. DeSantis hopes that a win in the Midwestern state will give him valuable momentum against Trump before primaries in New Hampshire and South Carolina.

Trump’s appearance at the fair could steal the limelight from the governor and dominate the headlines. It is held in the state capital Des Moines and runs from Aug. 10 to Aug. 20. Last year, it attracted more than 1 million visitors.

Trump’s appearance will also complicate efforts for the rest of the Republican field. Apart from Trump and DeSantis, nine other candidates will be attending the fair between Aug. 11 and Aug. 18, but all are languishing in single digits, over 40 points behind Trump according to the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll of likely Republican voters.

According to that Aug. 3 poll, Trump also leads DeSantis by 34 points, 47% to 13%.

Most of Trump’s rivals had agreed to be interviewed individually by Reynolds between Aug. 11 and Aug. 18. Trump turned down her invitation, angered by her public neutrality in the primary race and her appearance with DeSantis at several of his Iowa events.

(Additional reporting by David Ljunggren; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)

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By Joseph Ax

(Reuters) – A Georgia prosecutor probing whether Donald Trump and his allies illegally sought to overturn the state’s 2020 election results is expected to seek an indictment from a grand jury next week.

Two witnesses who previously received subpoenas confirmed on Saturday that they have been told to appear before a grand jury in Atlanta on Tuesday, the clearest indication yet that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis will lay out her case to the jury after more than two years of investigating.

Geoff Duncan, the state’s former lieutenant governor, told CNN that he had been asked to testify on Tuesday.

“I’ll certainly answer whatever questions are put in front of me,” said Duncan, a Republican who has criticized Trump’s false conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.

An independent journalist, George Chidi, said in a post on X, the site formerly known as Twitter, that he had also been instructed to appear on Tuesday.

A spokesperson for Willis’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday. She has already indicated she would seek charges by the end of next week, and security measures have visibly increased around the county courthouse in recent weeks.

If Trump is charged in Georgia, it would mark his fourth indictment in less than five months, and the second to arise from his efforts to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 victory. He was charged earlier this month in Washington federal court with orchestrating a multistate conspiracy to reverse the election results.

Special Counsel Jack Smith, who brought the Washington case, has also charged Trump separately in Florida with illegally retaining classified documents after leaving office and with obstruction of justice.

Manhattan prosecutors, meanwhile, indicted Trump this spring for falsifying business records to conceal hush money payments to a porn star who says she had a sexual encounter with Trump years ago.

Trump remains the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, despite his legal woes. He has portrayed all the investigations as part of a coordinated effort by Democrats to undermine his candidacy.

In a post on his Truth Social site on Saturday, Trump again called the Georgia investigation a “witch hunt.”

Willis is expected to charge multiple people, possibly by using the state’s broad racketeering statute. Her investigation began soon after Trump made a phone call to the state’s top election official, Republican Brad Raffensperger, and urged him to “find” enough votes to alter the outcome.

In addition to efforts to pressure Georgia officials, Willis has examined a breach of election machines in a rural county and a plot to use fake electors in a bid to capture the state’s electoral votes for Trump rather than Biden.

Chidi, the journalist, has written about happening upon a secret meeting of those electors at the state capitol in December 2020.

Duncan, the former head of the state Senate, publicly criticized Republican lawmakers and Trump associates who pushed the false narrative that the election was tainted by fraud.

(Reporting by Joseph Ax; Editing by Daniel Wallis)

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By Jarrett Renshaw and Nandita Bose

(Reuters) -The appointment on Friday of a special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden ensures that the criminal probe of the president’s son will cast a long shadow over his father’s reelection campaign.

Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss’ new role as special counsel, announced on Friday, may force President Joe Biden to deal with unpleasant headlines and distract him and his campaign when he would prefer to talk about the economy or signature legislation as he campaigns for the 2024 presidential election, according to senior Democrats.

“This will have a sizable impact on the re-elect. They run the risk of constantly getting knocked off message. Every time someone goes before a grand jury or is subpoenaed, the press will keep asking about it. Biden wants to talk economy, guns, national security and he’ll be less able to,” said a senior Democrat.

Democrats also fear that special counsel investigations could grow in scope.

“Special counsels always find things they don’t expect to find. (The probe of former President Bill) Clinton started as an investigation into a real estate deal he and Hillary did when he was governor and ended with Monica Lewinsky,” the senior Democrat said.

The Biden campaign did not respond to requests for comment.

Hunter Biden in July pleaded not guilty to charges of failing to pay more than $100,000 in taxes owed on over $1.5 million in income in 2017 and 2018. He did not enter a plea in a separate case in which he is charged with unlawfully owning a firearm while using illegal drugs, which is a felony.

Top Democrats were hopeful a plea agreement between Hunter Biden and Weiss would have allowed the president to move past his son’s legal troubles and relegate the issue to Republican-led congressional investigations.

But a federal judge refused to accept a proposed plea deal and Weiss said in a court filing on Friday that talks between the two sides have since broken down.

A potential trial raises the possibility of an unprecedented spectacle in U.S. history: The son of a sitting president facing criminal charges while his father campaigns for re-election, likely against Republican Donald Trump, who faces at least three upcoming criminal trials of his own.

Republicans have accused the elder Biden of profiting from his son’s business ventures in Ukraine and China, though they have yet to produce any evidence of wrongdoing. House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy said in July that the chamber might launch an impeachment inquiry in the autumn.

Half of Americans believe Hunter Biden received preferential treatment from prosecutors who tried to reach a plea deal, a Reuters/Ipsos poll in June found before the plea deal fell apart. But most Americans said the Hunter Biden plea deal did not affect their likelihood of voting for Biden next year, the poll found.

(Reporting By Jarrett Renshaw and Nandita Bose; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

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(Reuters) – The appointment on Friday of a special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden helped ensure that the criminal probe of the president’s son will cast a long shadow over his father’s reelection campaign.

Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss’ new role as special counsel, announced on Friday, may force President Joe Biden to deal with unpleasant headlines and distract him and his campaign when he would prefer to talk about the economy or signature legislation as he campaigns for the 2024 presidential election, according to senior Democrats.

“This will have a sizable impact on the re-elect. They run the risk of constantly getting knocked off message. Every time someone goes before a grand jury or is subpoenaed, the press will keep asking about it. Biden wants to talk economy, guns, national security and he’ll be less able to,” said a senior Democrat.

Democrats also fear that special counsel investigations could grow in scope.

“Special counsels always find things they don’t expect to find. (The probe of former President Bill) Clinton started as an investigation into a real estate deal he and Hillary did when he was governor and ended with Monica Lewinsky,” the senior Democrat said.

The Biden campaign did not respond to requests for comment.

Hunter Biden in July pleaded not guilty to charges of failing to pay more than $100,000 in taxes owed on over $1.5 million in income in 2017 and 2018. He did not enter a plea in a separate case in which he is charged with unlawfully owning a firearm while using illegal drugs, which is a felony.

Top Democrats were hopeful a plea agreement between Hunter Biden and Weiss would have allowed the president to move past his son’s legal troubles and relegate the issue to Republican-led congressional investigations.

But a federal judge refused to accept a proposed plea deal and Weiss said in a court filing on Friday that talks between the two sides have since broken down.

A potential trial raises the possibility of an unprecedented spectacle in U.S. history: The son of a sitting president facing criminal charges while his father campaigns for re-election, likely against Republican Donald Trump, who faces at least three upcoming criminal trials of his own.

Republicans have accused the elder Biden of profiting from his son’s business ventures in Ukraine and China, though they have yet to produce any evidence of wrongdoing. House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy said in July that the chamber might launch an impeachment inquiry in the autumn.

Half of Americans believe Hunter Biden received preferential treatment from prosecutors who tried to reach a plea deal, a Reuters/Ipsos poll in June found before the plea deal fell apart. But most Americans said the Hunter Biden plea deal did not affect their likelihood of voting for Biden next year, the poll found.

(Reporting By Jarrett Renshaw and Nandita Bose; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

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By Alexandra Ulmer and Joseph Tanfani

(Reuters) – As Florida Governor Ron DeSantis scrambles to shore up his struggling run for the Republican presidential nomination, he has spent far more than any rival on courting an influential Christian conservative leader and his following in the key early voting state of Iowa.

Trailing far behind former President Donald Trump in national polls and beset by turmoil in his campaign, DeSantis and his advisers are spending heavily in Iowa in hopes of stalling Trump’s momentum by beating him in the state’s caucuses on Jan. 15, where Republicans begin to choose their next presidential nominee. The state’s influential evangelical voting base is crucial to that strategy.

The DeSantis campaign, a super PAC linked to him and a nonprofit group supporting him together paid $95,000 in recent months to the Family Leader Foundation, an Iowa-based nonprofit led by evangelical leader Bob Vander Plaats, according to campaign finance reports and a document prepared by an Iowa state lawmaker who was helping the Vander Plaats organization raise money for a July 14 presidential candidate forum.

The document and the amount spent by DeSantis and his allies are previously unreported.

For that money, DeSantis and supporting groups got three pages of advertisements in a booklet distributed at the July forum attended by 2,000 Christian conservatives, and tickets to the summit, lunch and an after-dinner event.

But the real value may be more in building a relationship with Vander Plaats, whose endorsement is coveted in the early-voting state, said three campaign finance experts and an academic who studies Iowa campaign spending.

Vander Plaats and his group are leaders in the state’s Christian conservative movement, which has enormous political influence in Iowa. Roughly two-thirds of the state’s Republican caucus-goers in 2016 identified as evangelical, according to pollsters Edison Media Research.

“It’s a lot more money” than you typically see allocated in Iowa, said Steffen Schmidt, an emeritus political science professor at Iowa State University who studies political spending in the state. “It is a large amount for a very limited exposure in a booklet and for a single event,” he said.

In emailed comments to Reuters, Vander Plaats said the charges were “not even close to exorbitant” for the chance to be promoted before an audience of nearly 2,000 “engaged grassroots activists” at a forum that received extensive national political coverage.

“My only regret is that we probably should have charged more,” he said.

A spokesperson for DeSantis, Andrew Romeo, said the campaign was “proud to sponsor an ad with one of the largest and most effective social conservative groups in the state of Iowa.”

IOWA ‘KINGMAKER’

Vander Plaats, 60, has deep influence in the conservative and religious midwestern state. The last three Republican presidential candidates he endorsed – former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee in the 2008 election, former Senator Rick Santorum in 2012 and Senator Ted Cruz in 2016 – won the Iowa caucus but did not go on to win the Republican nomination.

In 2010, the year he took charge of the Family Leader group, he led a campaign that unseated three Iowa Supreme Court justices who had voted to overturn the state’s gay marriage ban.

He has said publicly that he could endorse someone near the end of the year besides Trump, who he has publicly criticized.

Vander Plaats said there was no link between money and his endorsement. “My endorsement has never been and never will be for sale,” Vander Plaats said. “My only interest is in bold, courageous, principled leadership for this country.”

But the cost to appear in the Vander Plaats’ group booklet in July was substantially above the prices of similar events.

Another religious advocacy organization, the Iowa Faith & Freedom Coalition, also sponsors a forum for presidential candidates each cycle, scheduled this year for Sept. 16 in Des Moines. That event charges attendees $75 per ticket. Candidates can buy sponsorship packages ranging from $500 to $5,000, said the group’s president, Steve Scheffler.

At the higher end, Scheffler said, candidates get more seats, a mention in the program as a sponsor and a table to hand out literature. He said the group covers most of the cost from donors, not from candidates. Scheffler said he does not endorse anyone.

Vander Plaats has long touted the power of his endorsement. In a 2015 email sent to a conservative group and reviewed by Reuters, he took credit for Santorum winning in Iowa in 2012. “We endorsed Rick Santorum and he stormed to a caucus victory due to our base of supporters,” Vander Plaats wrote.

“Vander Plaats clearly understands his political power, his kingmaker status in Iowa, and how thirsty candidates are for his endorsement,” said Paul S. Ryan, a lawyer who worked previously at two nonpartisan campaign finance watchdogs, Common Cause and the Campaign Legal Center.

A spokesperson for the pro-DeSantis super PAC Never Back Down, Jess Szymanski, said they had “proudly sponsored” the summit, “like every other participating political organization.”

Neither the DeSantis campaign nor Never Back Down answered detailed questions from Reuters, including whether the payments were meant to influence an endorsement decision.

PRICEY PACKAGES

The states in the Republican nominating calendar that vote after Iowa, including New Hampshire and Nevada, look more unfavorable to DeSantis, putting pressure on his team to deliver an upset win in Iowa that would revive their flagging campaign.

The fundraising document, reviewed by Reuters, lists contacts at Republican presidential campaigns, super PACs and other groups supporting the candidates, and details how much each was willing to spend ahead of the mid-July Family Leader forum, among the largest gatherings of social conservatives in Iowa before the caucuses. Six Republican presidential candidates spoke at the event.

A note at the top of the document says it was created by a Republican state representative, Jon Dunwell, who was helping raise money for Vander Plaats’ group. Dunwell referred a request for comment to Vander Plaats, who said Dunwell had been paid as an “independent contractor” since June.

According to the Vander Plaats’ group fundraising document, the DeSantis campaign paid $25,000 to the organization for its ad in a commemorative booklet distributed at the event and an invitation to a special after-event dinner with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

A political nonprofit backing DeSantis, And to the Republic, agreed to buy a table at the after-event dinner for $20,000, the document said. Representatives of the group did not return requests for comment.

Never Back Down paid for a two-page advertisement and dinner tickets for $50,000, according to the document and the group’s filings with the Federal Election Commission (FEC).

Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy and a group allied with Senator Tim Scott, another Republican candidate, spent $25,000 each on ads in the commemorative booklet, campaign finance reports and the document show. Tricia McLaughlin, a senior advisor to Ramaswamy, said they paid for advertising because the Vander Plaats event does “a remarkable job of rallying conservative caucus-goers.”

A spokesperson for Scott referred questions to the pro-Scott super PAC, Trust In The Mission. A spokesperson for Trust In The Mission declined to comment.

Some candidates balked at the expense.

Former Vice President Mike Pence, a devout evangelical, declined to contribute. “There was a request for a large contribution for sponsorship, which we declined,” said Marc Short, Pence’s former chief of staff and a campaign advisor. “We didn’t think that was the best use for our donors’ money.”

The six candidates who attended the summit were not charged a fee, and those who did not pay for the booklet were also free to mingle with caucus goers. All six were interviewed by Carlson.

An examination of campaign finance filings shows that presidential candidates and supportive groups have been contributing to the Vander Plaats organization since at least 2011. Before this year, the largest contribution appears to be from the Patriot Voices super PAC, founded by Santorum and his wife, Karen. Patriot Voices sent the Family Leader organization $25,000 in 2012.

Santorum said in an email to Reuters that he and his wife founded the PAC after he dropped out of the race in order to support a grassroots movement of “pro-family conservatives.”

Trump did not attend last month’s event in Des Moines. That was Trump’s loss, Vander Plaats said in a post on the messaging platform X, formerly known as Twitter. He added that it “becomes more clear…people want to turn the page.”

A spokesman for Trump declined to comment.

Vander Plaats, meanwhile, has been making positive comments about presidential candidates Ramaswamy, Haley and Scott — and especially DeSantis. On Aug. 6, Vander Plaats said he and his wife attended church with DeSantis and his wife, Casey.

“They’re very easy people to be around. You like being around them,” Vander Plaats said on conservative podcast host Steve Deace’s show on Monday. “If the caucuses were held today, I don’t believe Trump wins. I think it’s probably DeSantis that wins.”

(Alexandra Ulmer reported from San Francisco. Joseph Tanfani reported from Washington. Additional reporting by Jason Lange. Editing by Jason Szep)

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By Andrew Goudsward

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Prosecutor David Weiss has spent years probing allegations involving President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden. Now as a U.S. special counsel, he will have a chance to dig deeper while facing intense scrutiny from the president’s opponents.

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Weiss, the Delaware U.S. attorney, to the special counsel job on Friday, two weeks after a federal judge held off accepting Weiss’s deal to let Hunter Biden plead guilty to failing to pay taxes and unlawfully owning a firearm while addicted to illegal drugs.

Garland said Weiss asked for the appointment.

After being appointed on Friday, Weiss said in a court filing that plea negotiations had stalled and the case would likely go to trial.

Weiss supervised the Biden investigation from its start in 2018, focusing initially on potential violations of tax and money laundering laws in Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings, particularly in China, Reuters has reported.

Weiss’s legal career has been built on a string of high-stakes assignments involving political and business figures in the Bidens’ home state of Delaware. Weiss’s firm represented the family of Anne Marie Fahey, a secretary of Delaware’s then-governor who went missing in 1996.

Weiss pressed federal authorities to get involved in the investigation, said Thomas Ostrander, who worked with Weiss at law firm Duane Morris, a move that helped lead to the murder conviction of Delaware’s former deputy attorney general.

Weiss also oversaw the prosecution of Christopher Tigani, a Delaware beer distributor who solicited donations for Joe Biden’s unsuccessful 2008 presidential campaign and was later convicted of campaign finance violations, Politico reported.

Weiss’s office suffered a setback in a high-profile corporate case in 2021 when a federal appeals court overturned the convictions of four former Wilmington Trust executives accused of hiding troubled loans in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. Prosecutors later agreed to drop all charges.

A TRUMP APPOINTEE, WEISS A REPUBLICAN TARGET NONE THE LESS

Republican then-President Donald Trump in 2018 named Weiss to his post as the top federal prosecutor in Delaware. Weiss agreed to stay in the job after Biden took office in January 2021 to complete his long-running probe into Hunter Biden’s finances.

Hunter Biden’s legal woes have been amplified by Republican lawmakers who have pressed unproven claims that his father, a Democrat, has benefited from his son’s business ventures.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was among Republican leaders to criticize Weiss after his special counsel appointment, asking how Weiss’s fairness could be trusted after he negotiated what McCarthy called a “sweetheart” plea deal that a judge would not approve.

Republican House Majority Leader Steve Scalise called him a “sham special counsel.”

Garland has previously vowed not to interfere in the criminal investigation and answered Republican criticism by emphasizing Weiss’s role leading the probe. Former colleagues described Weiss as an independent-minded prosecutor.

“I don’t think he’s thinking about the politics at all,” Ostrander told Reuters in June. “He’s simply thinking about doing his job and doing what’s appropriate under the circumstances.”

Weiss’s nomination as Delaware’s U.S. attorney was backed by Delaware’s two Democratic U.S. senators. He previously served as the top deputy in the office and was interim U.S. attorney during the early years of the 2009-2017 Obama administration.

Lawmakers credited Weiss with prosecuting corruption, money laundering, drug offenses and helping to secure federal funding to fight illegal drug trafficking in Delaware.

(Reporting by Andrew Goudsward; Editing by David Bario and Howard Goller)

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By Bianca Flowers

CHICAGO (Reuters) – U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris jumped into another divisive American issue ahead of the 2024 re-election campaign on Friday, vowing support for activists trying to end gun violence and accusing gun law opponents of “hypocrisy.”

Harris, who has embraced a more combative role as President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign kicks into gear, took a swipe at Republicans who have blocked Democrats’ proposed gun safety laws, saying such changes are no threat to Americans’ constitutional gun rights.

“There are some people who are just trying to sell a false choice … that you’re either in favor of the Second Amendment, or you want to take everyone’s guns away,” she said.

The “very people who refuse to engage in a meaningful debate and discussion on this, who refuse to pass reasonable laws are the same ones who talk about accountability all the time,” she said at a Chicago event organized by Everytown for Gun Safety, an anti-gun violence organizations. “The hypocrisy of that.”

The U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment protects the rights of Americans to “keep and bear arms,” citing the necessity of a “well-regulated militia.” Gun rights groups have fought any legislative attempt to curb those rights, calling them an infringement on the Constitution, even as most Americans say they favor stronger gun laws.

Biden last year signed into law the first major federal gun reform in years and has pursued executive actions on the issue. But he has been unable to secure votes for a renewed ban on large-capacity and semiautomatic “assault” weapons, even as the U.S. has suffered a surge in mass shootings since the COVID-19 pandemic.

Harris was speaking at Everytown’s “Gun Sense University” in Chicago, an annual event where activists and survivors of gun violence, many of them members of the 10 million-strong “Moms Demand Action” group, gather for training and political organizing.

The United States has by far the highest rate of gun deaths among rich countries, and gun deaths became the top cause of death for children and teens in 2020.

The Biden campaign are hoping that anger at gun violence could help propel young people to vote and regard engaging them as critical to delivering the president another four-year term in office. Now, they plan to deploy Harris increasingly to engage with that segment of voters, according to a person familiar with those plans.

“Your generation is critical,” Harris said to loud applause when a student asked her what role she could play. “We are counting on you. We need you.”

On Thursday, four major gun safety groups, including Everytown, endorsed Biden’s 2024 re-election bid, which unlocks donations by the interest groups’ political action groups.

Everytown is founded by billionaire former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, who spent $1 billion on his 2020 Democratic presidential bid before becoming the largest donor supporting Biden and other Democrats.

Makayla Jordan, a 19-year-old member of Students Demand Action, said mass shootings are just one part of the country’s “everyday” gun violence epidemic. The danger of being shot on the way to school was higher than that of in-school shootings for many Black children, she said.

(Reporting by Bianca Flowers in Chicago; Writing by Trevor Hunnicutt; Editing by Heather Timmons and Rosalba O’Brien)

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By Sarah N. Lynch

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -A federal judge on Friday granted former U.S. President Donald Trump leeway to publicly share some non-sensitive evidence that will be used in his trial on charges of plotting to overturn the 2020 election, but she warned him to tread carefully before making inflammatory public statements about the case.

“Even arguably ambiguous statements by the parties or their counsel- if they can be reasonably interpreted to intimidate witnesses or to prejudice potential jurors – can threaten the process,” U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan said on Friday.

“I caution you and your client to take special care in your public statements about this case. I will take whatever measures are necessary to safeguard the integrity of these proceedings.”

Chutkan’s warning came at a federal court hearing on Friday where prosecutors and Trump’s lawyers hashed out disagreements over how much evidence in the case Trump can share with the public.

Chutkan’s decision to permit Trump to share some non-sensitive material went against the objections of prosecutors, who pointed to threatening messages Trump posted last week on social media as evidence that he might try to use details of the confidential evidence to intimidate witnesses.

The judge ruled that the government had not met its burden to show why all of the evidence should be subject to a “protective order,” which safeguards evidence from being shared with the public in order to prevent witness intimidation or tainting a jury pool.

At the same time, however, she agreed to protect certain records from disclosure that Trump wanted to share, such as excerpts from the hundreds of transcripts of witness interviews and recordings.

She later officially approved a protective order that will allow Trump to share any records that are already in the public domain or that he obtained independently.

He is not, however, permitted to share other kinds of materials such as those arising from the grand jury or items obtained through sealed search warrants.

“He is a criminal defendant. He is going to have restrictions like every single other defendant. This case is proceeding in the normal order,” Chutkan said.

“The fact the defendant is engaged in a political campaign is not going to allow him any greater or lesser latitude than any defendant in a criminal case.”

The charges at issue in Friday’s hearing are one of three prosecutions currently targeting Trump, the front-runner in the 2024 Republican presidential nomination race.

Trump has pleaded not guilty to criminal charges that he orchestrated a plot to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election to keep himself in power.

“The existence of a political campaign is not going to have any bearing on my decision,” Chutkan said.

It is standard for federal prosecutors to request protective orders before sharing evidence with defense lawyers to protect confidential records and ensure the integrity of the trial.

Often, defense lawyers do not oppose them because doing so slows down the government’s production of evidence, a process known as “discovery,” to help them prepare.

But Trump’s attorneys said the scope of the protective order was too broad, and ran afoul of his constitutionally-protected free speech rights.

“This kind of blanket order is extraordinary,” Trump’s lawyer John Lauro said on Friday. “We have to face the fact we are in uncharted waters.”

Federal prosecutors revealed on Friday that they will soon release to Trump’s defense team 11.6 million pages and records of evidence, in addition to a hard drive containing images extracted from electronic devices.

‘I’M COMING AFTER YOU’

The government’s request for a protective order last week cited a threatening message Trump posted last week on social media: “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU.”

Since then, Trump has also attacked Smith’s character as well as that of former Vice President Mike Pence, a key witness in the case, calling his former No.2 “delusional.”

As a condition of his release, Trump agreed he would not try to intimidate or threaten any witnesses in the case, though no one has accused him of violating those conditions.

Chutkan sought to remind Trump’s lawyers about this on Friday, saying she will be watching his statements and “scrutinizing them very carefully.”

Trump is separately facing a second set of charges brought by Smith’s office in Florida for retaining highly classified records after leaving the White House and New York state charges over hush-money payments to a porn star.

He has pleaded not guilty in those cases as well.

At Friday’s hearing, prosecutors asked the judge not to let Trump view sensitive evidence in a room by himself, noting he has been criminally charged in the Florida case with willfully retaining classified material.

“He has shown a tendency to hold onto material,” prosecutor Thomas Windom said.

Chutkan ruled that Trump will be allowed to view the evidence without his lawyers present, but during that time he will be banned from having access to electronic devices.

(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by Scott Malone and Alistair Bell)

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