Politics

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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By Andrea Shalal and Michael Martina

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Joe Biden’s comment about China being a “ticking time bomb” referred to internal economic and social tensions that could have an effect on how Beijing interacts with the world, a White House official said Friday.

White House spokesperson John Kirby told reporters that one area of concern regarding China was “the way that they bully and coerce and intimidate countries around the world” by offering high-interest infrastructure loans and then seizing assets when countries defaulted.

He said that concern explained the administration’s request for supplemental funding of $3.3 billion to boost the World Bank’s lending to developing countries and provide a credible alternative to what he called China’s “dangerous” loans. The request was unusual since supplemental budgets are usually reserved for emergency needs, including wars and disasters.

Kirby defended the funding request, saying, “Yes, this is an urgent need for us to be able to provide an alternative.”

Biden’s comments on China, made during a political fundraiser in Utah, drew a sharp response. Chinese embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu warned Washington against “scapegoating” Beijing and fanning “division and confrontation.”

“We oppose the U.S. side seeking to make an issue of China, smearing China or talking down China’s prospects,” he said in a statement to Reuters on Friday, without mentioning Biden.

Biden told donors: “China is a ticking time bomb … China is in trouble. China was growing at 8% a year to maintain growth. Now close to 2% a year,” he said, misstating its growth rate. Data from China’s National Bureau of Statistics showed the economy grew 4.5% in the first quarter and 6.3% in the second, with gross domestic product up just 0.8% in April-June from the previous quarter after a 2.2% expansion in the first quarter.

Liu said China’s GDP growth continued to provide an important support for the development of the global economy.

Kirby said the United States – which also moved this week to limit outbound investment in certain Chinese sectors – had been consistent about pushing back against China’s behaviors.

“We’ve never shied away from calling it like we see it when it comes to (China’s) behavior, intimidation and coercion of not only their neighbors, but countries around the world,” he said.

“This is a difficult, complex bilateral relationship, the most consequential one in the world. The president understands that,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean there isn’t still a need to continue to improve our lines of communication.”

Kirby did not comment on whether the latest comments would scuttle plans for Biden to meet with President Xi Jinping later this year, possibly on the sidelines of next month’s Group of 20 leaders summit in India.

China, which has the world’s second largest economy, said this week said it was “gravely concerned” about the executive order on outbound investment and reserved the right to take measures.

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal and Michael Martina; Editing by Chris Reese and David Gregorio)

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By Andrew Goudsward

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden may be headed for a criminal trial, U.S. Special Counsel David Weiss said shortly after promotion into that role on Friday, in a sign that courtroom drama could play an outsized role in the 2024 presidential election.

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 in the House of Representatives are also threatening an impeachment inquiry into unproven claims that President Biden benefited from his 54-year-old son’s business ventures.

Weiss, who has been investigating Hunter Biden since 2019, filed misdemeanor criminal tax and gun charges in June, but a federal judge refused to accept a proposed plea deal.

Weiss said in a court filing on Friday that talks between the two sides have since broken down. “The Government now believes that the case will not resolve short of a trial,” he wrote.

The filing came moments after U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland elevated Weiss to special counsel status, giving him additional authority and independence to pursue the investigation.

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

TRUMP APPOINTEE

Weiss was originally appointed to his position as U.S. Attorney for Delaware by Trump and was allowed to stay on during the Biden administration.

As a special counsel, Weiss will be free from day-to-day supervision from the Justice Department and file charges anywhere in the United States. Garland can overrule his proposed actions but must notify Congress if he does so.

Weiss said he might bring different charges against Hunter Biden in Washington or California, where the alleged criminal conduct took place.

A lawyer for Hunter Biden said he expected Weiss not to bend to political pressures.

“Whether in Delaware, Washington, D.C. or anywhere else, we expect a fair resolution not infected by politics and we’ll do what is necessary on behalf of Mr. Biden to achieve that,” lawyer Chris Clark said in a statement.

Weiss will produce a report when his work is done, Garland said, and the Justice Department will make as much of it public as is possible.

“The appointment of Mr. Weiss reinforces for the American people the department’s commitment to both independence and accountability in particularly sensitive matters,” Garland told a press conference.

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.

The White House declined to comment. Biden officials have previously dismissed Republican allegations as “insane conspiracy theories” and has said that Biden did not participate in his son’s business affairs.

Hunter Biden has worked as a lobbyist, lawyer, consultant and investment banker and has said he has struggled with alcoholism and crack cocaine use.

Republicans said Weiss lacked credibility to continue the investigation. “If Weiss negotiated the sweetheart deal that couldn’t get approved, how can he be trusted as a Special Counsel?” McCarthy said.

Weiss is the third special counsel appointed by Garland to investigate politically sensitive matters.

One of those, Jack Smith, has filed criminal charges against Trump in two separate cases, while another, Robert Hur, is probing whether Biden mishandled classified documents after he left office as vice president.

In previous administrations, special counsels have investigated the outing of a CIA agent and Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Hunter Biden has been a focus of several Republican congressional committees.

One former associate told the House Oversight Committee that Hunter gave an impression that he emphasized his family ties while he was doing business in Ukraine nearly a decade ago, while his father was vice president. That witness, Devon Archer, said Hunter spoke with his father daily but said the conversations did not involve business dealings.

Trump also has frequently mentioned the younger Biden in an attempt to tar his father as the two gear up for a possible rematch in the 2024 presidential election. His spokesperson Stephen Cheung said Weiss should “quickly conclude” that Biden and his son “should face the required consequences.”

A June Reuters/Ipsos poll found half of Americans, including 75% of Republicans and 33% of Democrats, believed the younger Biden received preferential treatment from Weiss. But most said that would not affect their vote next year.

(Additional reporting by Sarah N. Lynch, Jeff Mason, Rami Ayyub, Moira Warburton, Jacqueline Thomsen and David Ljunggren; Writing by Andy Sullivan; Editing by Scott Malone and Alistair Bell)

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. prosecutors on Thursday asked a federal judge to begin former President Donald Trump’s trial on charges of trying to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden on Jan. 2, 2024.

That date would have the trial get under way just two weeks before the first votes are cast in the 2024 Republican presidential primary, a race in which Trump is the front-runner.

U.S. Special Counsel Jack Smith’s office asked a judge in a court filing on Thursday to start the trial on Jan. 2 in part due to the public’s interest in a speedy trial.

Smith’s office said that interest is “of particular significance here, where the defendant, a former president, is charged with conspiring to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election, obstruct the certification of the election results, and discount citizens’ legitimate votes.”

A spokesperson for Trump said Smith and the Justice Department “are blatantly playing political games,” citing Trump’s status as a front-runner in the 2024 election.

Trump himself said on his Truth Social platform that any trial should be held after the 2024 U.S. elections. Such a date would potentially give him the power to end his prosecution if he were to become president again.

“Such a trial …… should only happen, if at all, AFTER THE ELECTION,” Trump said in a post on Thursday.

Prosecutors also predicted it will take about four to six weeks to put forward the bulk of their case against Trump at trial.

Trump last week pleaded not guilty to charges over the alleged election conspiracy.

Smith’s office said it is prepared to turn over to Trump by the end of August most of the evidence it intends to use at trial in a process known as discovery.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan in Washington, who is presiding over the election case, is set to hold a Friday hearing on how that evidence may be handled by Trump and his defense team.

Prosecutors also said there is a “minimal” amount of classified information involved in the election case, and asked Chutkan to address that issue at a previously scheduled Aug. 28 hearing.

A January trial would have Trump on trial three times in the first half of 2024.

He will go to trial in March over New York state charges that he falsified documents in connection with hush money payments to a porn star. Trump also faces a May trial from Smith in southern Florida over the retention of classified documents after leaving office.

(Reporting by Jacqueline Thomsen, Jasper Ward and Kanishka Singh in WashingtonWriting by David LjunggrenEditing by Scott Malone, Deepa Babington and Matthew Lewis)

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By Sarah N. Lynch

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Donald Trump’s lawyers on Friday will urge a judge to give the former U.S. president more leeway to publicly share portions of the evidence that will be used in his trial on charges of plotting to overturn the 2020 election.

The lawyers’ request goes against the objections of prosecutors, who are concerned that Trump could use details of the confidential evidence to intimidate witnesses.

U.S. Special Counsel Jack Smith’s office last week asked a judge to impose rules known as a “protective order,” to guard evidence before sharing the materials with Trump’s lawyers

It is standard practice 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 have argued that the scope of the protective order is too broad, and would run afoul of his free speech rights under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

“The need to protect that information does not require a blanket gag order over all documents produced by the government,” Trump’s attorneys wrote in court papers.

The charges in a Washington, D.C., federal court are one of three prosecutions currently targeting Trump, the clear front-runner in the 2024 Republican presidential nomination race.

In Friday’s case, he 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.

‘I’M COMING AFTER YOU’

In the government’s request, it said a protective order was needed and cited a threatening message Trump posted last week on social media: “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU.”

“If the defendant were to begin issuing public posts using details — or, for example, grand jury transcripts — obtained in discovery here, it could have a harmful chilling effect on witnesses or adversely affect the fair administration of justice in this case,” prosecutors wrote in their motion.

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.”

“I never told a newly emboldened … Pence to put me above the Constitution, or that Mike was ‘too honest.,’” Trump wrote on social media, in a direct reference to the indictment which cites Pence’s recollections of conversations with Trump.

As a condition of his release, Trump agreed he would not try to intimidate or threaten any witnesses in the case.

At his arraignment, Trump’s defense attorney John Lauro complained about U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan’s intention to set a trial date at a hearing on Aug. 28, saying his team needed more time to understand the scope of the evidence.

At the same time, however, Lauro and his co-counsel Todd Blanche have also held up the discovery process itself by disagreeing with the terms of the government’s protective order.

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 all three cases.

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

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By Brendan Pierson

(Reuters) – A federal appeals court on Thursday appeared skeptical of the Biden administration’s bid to reverse a court order sharply limiting its ability to ask social media companies to remove content that it considers to be misinformation.

Daniel Tenny, a lawyer with the U.S. Department of Justice, told a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans that U.S. officials never forced social media companies to remove posts about COVID-19, the 2020 election and other topics, as Louisiana and Missouri claimed in a lawsuit. Instead, he said, the government had informed the companies of certain posts that spread harmful misinformation.

But Circuit Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod said that “irate” messages from officials taking social media companies to task for not removing certain posts quickly enough suggested “a very close working relationship” between the government and the companies.

“It’s like a supervisor complaining about a worker,” she said.

Circuit Judge Don Willett said public statements by Biden officials suggesting that social media companies could face antitrust enforcement, or lose immunity from certain lawsuits under federal law, could be seen as threats.

“That’s a really nice social media platform you got there – it would be a shame if something happened to it,” Willett said, describing what he saw as the statements’ tone.

Elrod and Willett, along with the third member of the panel, Circuit Judge Edith Brown Clement, were all appointed by Republican presidents.

Tenny countered that the social media companies mentioned in the lawsuit, including Meta Platform’s Facebook, Alphabet Inc-owned YouTube and Twitter, now known as X Corp, regularly refused government requests to remove content.

“The notion that the social media companies felt they had to bend to the FBI’s will when half the time they didn’t – it doesn’t fit any of these theories,” he said.

John Sauer, a lawyer for the states, compared the administration’s efforts to the government pressuring publishers to hold mass book burnings.

He said that the social media companies gave in to “unrelenting pressure from the most powerful office in the world.”

The administration is appealing a July 4 ruling, in which U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty sided with the states in finding that the government engaged in an “Orwellian” program to suppress opposing views, including those questioning the efficacy of mask mandates and lockdowns to fight COVID and the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, which Democrat Joe Biden won over Republican incumbent Donald Trump.

The Trump-appointed judge, whose courthouse in Monroe has become a favored venue for Republican challenges to Biden’s policies, said the “widespread censorship campaign” violated the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment’s free speech guarantees.

He barred government agencies, including the Department of Health and Human Services and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, from talking to social media companies to seek the removal or suppression of content containing protected free speech, with narrow exceptions.

The order is currently on hold while the 5th Circuit considers the administration’s appeal.

(Reporting By Brendan Pierson in New York; Editing by Nate Raymond, Aurora Ellis and Alexia Garamfalvi)

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By Brendan Pierson

(Reuters) -A lawyer for the Biden administration on Thursday urged a federal appeals court to lift a Louisiana judge’s order limiting the administration’s ability to ask social media companies to limit the spread of information it deems harmful or misleading.

Daniel Tenny, a lawyer with the U.S. Department of Justice, told a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans that Louisiana and Missouri, which sued the administration claiming that conservative speech had been censored on social media platforms, were not actually harmed by any of the government’s actions.

“These are things that they have no standing to challenge, that don’t cause them irreparable injury,” he said. Tenny said that government officials had not coerced social media companies to suppress any information, and that the court-imposed limits could prevent them from alerting social media companies to dangerous false information in a natural disaster, for example.

The states are expected to make their argument later in the afternoon.

U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty, in his July 4 ruling, agreed with the states’ Republican attorneys general who filed the lawsuit, saying government officials had illegally pushed social media companies to censor disfavored viewpoints.

Doughty, an appointee of former Republican President Donald Trump, said those “Orwellian” efforts began under Trump’s administration in 2019 with officials asking social media companies such as Meta Platform’s Facebook, Alphabet Inc-owned YouTube and Twitter, now known as X Corp, to limit the spread of posts they considered to be misinformation.

Doughty said those actions led to the suppression of posts opposing vaccines, mask requirements and government-ordered lockdowns to combat COVID-19’s spread and opposition to the validity of the 2020 election, which Biden won over Trump.

The judge, whose courthouse in Monroe has become a favored venue for Republican challenges to Biden’s policies, said the “widespread censorship campaign” violated the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment’s free speech guarantees.

He barred government agencies, including the Department of Health and Human Services and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, from talking to social media companies to seek the removal or suppression of content containing protected free speech, with narrow exceptions.

The Biden administration quickly appealed, and the 5th Circuit temporarily put the judge’s ruling on hold while it considers the case.

The three judges on the panel, U.S. Circuit Judges Edith Brown Clement, Jennifer Walker Elrod and Don Willett, were all appointed by Republican presidents.

The case has drawn numerous friend-of-the-court briefs, which have broken down largely along partisan lines. Republican state attorneys general and members of Congress have weighed in to support the two states, while Democratic-led states are backing the administration.

(Reporting By Brendan Pierson in New York; Editing by Nate Raymond, Aurora Ellis and Alexia Garamfalvi)

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By Jacqueline Thomsen

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. prosecutors on Thursday asked a federal judge to begin former President Donald Trump’s trial on charges of trying to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden on Jan. 2, 2024.

That date would have the trial get under way just two weeks before the first votes are cast in the 2024 Republican presidential primary, a race in which Trump is the front-runner.

U.S. Special Counsel Jack Smith’s office asked a judge in a court filing on Thursday to start the trial on Jan. 2 in part due to the public’s interest in a speedy trial.

Smith’s office said that interest is “of particular significance here, where the defendant, a former president, is charged with conspiring to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election, obstruct the certification of the election results, and discount citizens’ legitimate votes.”

A spokesperson for Trump said Smith and the Justice Department “are blatantly playing political games,” citing Trump’s status as a front-runner in the 2024 election.

Trump himself said on his Truth Social platform that any trial should be held after the 2024 U.S. elections. Such a date would potentially give him the power to end his prosecution if he were to become president again.

“Such a trial …… should only happen, if at all, AFTER THE ELECTION,” Trump said in a post on Thursday.

Prosecutors also predicted it will take about four to six weeks to put forward the bulk of their case against Trump at trial.

Trump last week pleaded not guilty to charges over the alleged election conspiracy.

Smith’s office said it is prepared to turn over to Trump by the end of August most of the evidence it intends to use at trial in a process known as discovery.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan in Washington, who is presiding over the election case, is set to hold a Friday hearing on how that evidence may be handled by Trump and his defense team.

Prosecutors also said there is a “minimal” amount of classified information involved in the election case, and asked Chutkan to address that issue at a previously scheduled Aug. 28 hearing.

A January trial would have Trump on trial three times in the first half of 2024.

He will go to trial in March over New York state charges that he falsified documents in connection with hush money payments to a porn star. Trump also faces a May trial from Smith in southern Florida over the retention of classified documents after leaving office.

(Reporting by Jacqueline Thomsen, Jasper Ward and Kanishka Singh in WashingtonWriting by David LjunggrenEditing by Scott Malone, Deepa Babington and Matthew Lewis)

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