Daily Archives: November 13, 2021

WASHINGTON (AP) A federal appeals court on Thursday temporarily blocked the release of White House records sought by a U.S. House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection, granting for now a request from former President Donald Trump.

The administrative injunction issued by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit effectively bars until the end of this month the release of records that were to be turned over Friday. The appeals court set oral arguments in the case for Nov. 30.

The stay gives the court time to consider arguments in a momentous clash between the former president, whose supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, and President Joe Biden and Congress, who have pushed for a thorough investigation of the riot. It delays the House committee from reviewing records that lawmakers say could shed light on the events leading up to the insurrection and Trumps efforts to delegitimize an election he lost.

The National Archives, which holds the documents, says they include call logs, handwritten notes and a draft executive order on election integrity.

Biden waived executive privilege on the documents. Trump then went to court arguing that as a former president, he still had the right to exert privilege over the records and releasing them would damage the presidency in the future.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan on Tuesday rejected those arguments, noting in part, Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President. She again denied an emergency motion by Trump on Wednesday.

In their emergency filing to the appeals court, Trumps lawyers wrote that without a stay, Trump would suffer irreparable harm through the effective denial of a constitutional and statutory right to be fully heard on a serious disagreement between the former and incumbent President.

The Nov. 30 arguments will take place before three judges nominated by Democratic presidents: Patricia Millett and Robert Wilkins, nominated by former President Barack Obama, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, an appointee of Biden.

Given the cases magnitude, whichever side loses before the circuit court is likely to eventually appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The White House on Thursday also notified a lawyer for Mark Meadows, Trumps former chief of staff, that Biden would waive any executive privilege that would prevent Meadows from cooperating with the committee, according to a letter obtained by The Associated Press. The committee has subpoenaed Meadows and more than two dozen other people as part of its investigation.

His lawyer, George Terwilliger, issued a statement in response saying Meadows remains under the instructions of former President Trump to respect longstanding principles of executive privilege.

It now appears the courts will have to resolve this conflict, Terwilliger said.

The committee late Thursday threatened to begin contempt proceedings against Meadows if he doesnt change course and comply.

Simply put, there is no valid legal basis for Mr. Meadowss continued resistance to the Select Committees subpoena, the committee wrote to Terwilliger, saying it would view Meadows failure to turn over documents or appear at a scheduled deposition on Friday as willful non-compliance.

The House has already referred former Trump adviser Steve Bannon to the Justice Department for potential criminal prosecution for contempt of Congress.

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Associated Press writers Zeke Miller and Mark Sherman contributed to this report.

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Court temporarily delays release of Trump's Jan. 6 records - Associated Press

Former President Donald Trump addresses supporters during an August rally in Cullman, Ala. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images hide caption

Former President Donald Trump addresses supporters during an August rally in Cullman, Ala.

Let's assume you have spent at least a few minutes this week thinking about former President Donald Trump or something he has said or done. So ask yourself: Did anything seem different? Was it the same thought process with the same attitude as when you thought of him, say, two weeks ago?

You may not have noticed any difference. Or it may seem too subtle to measure or describe. Trump has been such an enormous force and phenomenon on our political landscape that a small change in his salience or trajectory may not be perceptible right away. Both have evolved over time and continue to evolve.

If, on the other hand, you sensed something in the air, it may have been more than the belated arrival of autumn after the summer's lingering heat.

Consider this: November brought the first election in six years that was neither directly nor indirectly a referendum on Donald Trump. The big story of the night was Virginia and the huge rural and Republican turnout for businessman Glenn Youngkin, who, after the GOP primary, had done all he decently could to separate himself from the former president and run on his own.

Trump immediately attributed the victory to "my base," and indeed most of Youngkin's voters had surely been Trump's voters first. But this month they turned out for another, distinctly different model of Republicanism and Trump's minimal involvement did not seem to matter that much.

What's more, Youngkin won because he far exceeded Trump's showing in the pivotal Virginia suburbs where Democrats had been dominating in recent elections at all levels.

In New Jersey, Democratic turnout was nothing short of embarrassing and their incumbent governor, Phil Murphy, nearly lost. Republican turnout was dandy, especially outside the urban-suburban corridor from metro Philadelphia to metro New York.

But here again, Trump had not been a major factor in the race, despite being a frequent presence in the state that is home to his Bedminster golf club. Jack Ciattarelli, the Republican who nearly won, had spoken at a "Stop the Steal" rally in 2020. But in June he billed himself as "an Abraham Lincoln Republican" after defeating two primary rivals who ran on Trump's false claims about the 2020 election.

In short, both parties were left to contemplate how Republicans ran well without Trump being either on the ballot or in office, while Democrats found it hard to hold the gains they had been making in the suburbs in the Trump years. Those gains had been the key to the Democrats' capturing the House in 2018 and the White House in 2020.

It does not take much imagination to add that the suburbs are likely to be the key battleground again next year, when the stakes will be control of the House and Senate and 36 governorships.

The New Jersey result also prompted a crack from the Garden State's last Republican governor, Chris Christie. A presidential candidate himself in 2016, and considered by some a prospect for 2024, Christie couldn't resist noting that he had been reelected as New Jersey's governor (in 2013) with "60% of the vote" whereas when Trump sought a second term "he lost to Joe Biden."

One might have expected more sympathy from Christie, whose long history with Trump included prepping him for the debates with then-candidate Biden in the fall of 2020.

None of this should be interpreted to mean the period of "the Trump years" is approaching an end. For all we know, it has not yet reached its halfway point.

But the era has been nothing if not dynamic, with big swings up and down for the former president's popularity while he was in office and since. And while his approval sank to its all-time low in the Gallup Poll (34%) after the Jan. 6 rioters breached the Capitol, Trump has nevertheless defended that incident in his recent statements.

Just this week he released a statement saying: "The real insurrection happened on November 3rd, the Presidential Election, not on January 6th which was a day of protesting the Fake Election results."

As has often been his pattern, Trump does not dispute facts, he substitutes a complete counterfactual scenario (once famously described as "alternative facts") that he prefers to reality.

In this most recent instance, he was responding to the flurry of subpoenas issued by the House panel investigating the events of Jan. 6 and their connection to Trump's White House. The subpoenas cover many of Trump's inner circle, including his last chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and Trump's 2016 campaign strategist Steve Bannon both of whom have already refused to comply. On Friday, Bannon was indicted by a federal grand jury for contempt of Congress.

Whatever the committee may eventually find and report, a lengthy process that highlights a parade of non-cooperative witnesses who defy lawful subpoenas does not convey an impression of innocence.

There is no question that the former president remains the leading figure in the Republican Party, and arguably the most dominant personality on the American political stage. His only rival in that regard is the current president of the United States, who does not seem interested in competing for "most dominant personality" and that is putting it mildly.

With 26 months to go before the 2024 primaries begin, there is consensus that if Trump chooses to run again he will "clear the field" and reclaim his party's presidential nomination. At this moment, the party's nomination appears to be up to him not the party.

But one message to emerge from this month's developments is that not all Republicans are accepting the current terms of their marriage to the former president. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has urged Trump to stay out of the party's primaries in 2022. Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski has defied the former president (whom she had voted to remove from office in the second impeachment trial) by running for reelection despite his decrees against her.

Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, the chairman of the Republicans' Senate campaign committee for 2022, has indicated the party should focus on economic issues, education concerns and Biden's travails. When asked about Trump's insistence on having GOP candidates in 2022 promote his claims about 2020, Scott says "Americans are focused on the future" and adds: "We're not going to talk about the last election."

On the same day as Scott's interview, Axios co-founder Jim VandeHei, published a piece reporting on Republicans who were "slowly but surely charting a post-Trump ideology and platform."

These are, for now, straws in the wind. Among those he calls "my base," Trump remains the Alpha Male he has always cast himself to be.

No one commands his legions quite the way he does.

All acknowledge he brought new energy and millions of new voters to the Republican cause. He largely remade the federal judiciary in the image of the conservative Federalist Society. He cut taxes.

But he also lost the House, the Senate and the White House in the course of just one term. No president in either party had done that after such a short time in office since Herbert Hoover nearly a century ago.

Moreover, in the next year, as Youngkin goes from "new kid in town" to "favorite get" for conservative media, and the adjudication of Jan. 6 drags on everywhere else, Rick Scott's advice for his party's candidates is likely to look better and better.

Link:

Without Trump, Republicans showed unexpected strength on the ballot - NPR

The congressional attempt to expose any direct role that Donald Trump and his top associates played in the January 6th assault on the U.S. Capitol is intensifying. This week, the House select committee investigating the attack issued subpoenas to sixteen former senior Trump Administration and campaign officials, including the former White House adviser Stephen Miller and the former press secretary Kayleigh McEnany. A federal judge roundly dismissed Trumps effort to block his allies from having to testify before the committee, including his erstwhile strategist Steve Bannon. Legal experts suggested that the judges ruling could prompt Attorney General Merrick Garland to criminally prosecute Bannon for refusing to testify, a step that may induce others to coperate. And, late on Thursday, the committee threatened to hold Trumps former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, who spent hours with Trump on January 6th, in contempt if he does not testify on Friday morning.

Meanwhile, in a speech in New Hampshire, Liz Cheney, the committees vice-chair and one of the few Republicans daring to challenge Trump while seeking relection, said that the nation is confronting a domestic threat that weve never faced before: a former President whos attempting to unravel the foundations of our constitutional republic, aided by political leaders who have made themselves willing hostages to this dangerous and irrational man. She added, Political leaders who sit silent in the face of these false and dangerous claims are aiding a former President who is at war with the rule of law and the Constitution.

The political reality, though, is that Trumps hold on the Republican Party remains iron. A recent Morning Consult / Politico poll found that sixty-seven per cent of Republicans want Trump to run for President in 2024, a slight increase from several months ago. Other surveys showed similar numbers. The Republican nomination would likely be his for the taking, Nathaniel RakichandMackenzie Wilkes wrote on FiveThirtyEight. He remainsextremelypopular among Republicans.And opinion polls suggest that three-quarters of Wyoming Republicans plan to oppose Cheney when a Trump-backed candidate challenges her in the 2022 primary. Hours after Cheneys speech, Trump declared, in trademark Orwellian fashion, She is a threat to Free and Fair elections, adding that the 2020 election had been stolen from him in the Crime of the Century.

The situation is unprecedented. A former American President refuses to concede that he lost the election. He has launched a public effort to drive the state election officials who certified his defeat from office. He continues to employ the lies and rhetoric that helped incite violence on January 6th. And this week an independent review alleged that thirteen former Trump Administration officialsincluding Meadows and Trumps son-in-law, Jared Kushnercampaigned illegally for him in the final weeks of the 2020 election. Its increasingly clear to many observers that Trump plans to make every attempt to insure that he or an acolyte wins the 2024 election at any cost. On Wednesday, a hundred former national-security officials, Republicans and Democratsincluding Christopher Krebs, the former director of the Department of Homeland Securitys cybersecurity agency, who was hired and fired by the Trump Administrationpublished an open letter to Congress, warning that partisan interference, intimidation campaigns, and disinformation are rapidly undermining American democracy. In the course of our careers, many of us have analyzed the threats posed by unstable democracies elsewhere, never imagining we would begin to see similar threats at home, they wrote. Sadly, that moment has arrived.

Democrats focus on the fact that, among Americans as a whole, Trump remains broadly unpopular, with fifty-three per cent viewing him unfavorably and forty-one per cent seeing him favorably. Bidens numbers, though, arent much better, with fifty-one per cent approving of his performance in office and forty-three per cent disapproving. While political analysts and legal experts lose sleep over Trumps continued claims that he won in 2020, most Americans, according to Gallup polling, see COVID, the economy, and poor leadership as the countrys three most important problems. Only one per cent cited the need for election reform. If Republicans win control of the House in the 2022 midterm elections, they would almost certainly disband the January 6th committee and end its investigation.

Members of the committee vow to achieve results before then. The panel plans to produce a definitive account of Trumps actions and to propose laws that will prevent future Presidents from interfering in the Electoral College vote count. In a court hearing last week, Douglas Letter, a lawyer for the committee, said that investigators are seeking White House documents dating back to April, 2020, to help determine whether Trump engaged in a months-long effort to discredit the results if he lost. We think, maybe, this all ties in with... the fomenting of it, building a groundswell of feeling that this election was going to be tainted, Letter said. Timothy Mulvey, the committees communications director, told me that most witnesses called are coperating. Even among former Administration officials, he said, very few have flatly refused to comply with a subpoena. He added, about Trumps legal attempts to block the investigation, The former Presidents aim is to delay and impede our probe, but the committees work willnonethelesscontinue to move forward quickly.

Stephen Gillers, a professor of law at New York University, said that Attorney General Garland may wait for higher courts to rule on Trumps legal claims, but he believes that Garland will eventually prosecute Bannon. Gillers pointed out that if Bannon is not charged, those who were subpoenaed this week might be encouraged to try waiting out the investigation. Garland knows that, Gillers said, adding, Everything we know about his devotion to the rule of law makes me confident that hewill not allow that to happen.

Ilya Somin, a libertarian legal scholar at George Mason University, predicted that the higher courts will uphold the committees right to subpoena individuals significantly involved in the events leading up to January 6th. It seems to me that it should be a no-brainer, that Congress should be able to subpoena witnesses, he said, particularly those who may have played a role in an attack on Congress. Somin doubts that the committees investigation will produce conclusive evidence of seditious acts by Trump. I think sedition is a high hill to climb, unless the committee uncovers some dramatic new information, he said. The broader political challenge is the countrys seemingly intractable polarization. Like the two impeachment trials of Trump, the January 6th probe may simply harden existing divisions rather than ease them. Barring some dramatic revelation, Im not sure it will fundamentally change anything, he said.

Cheney, in her speech, said that the country is in a time of testing and implored political leaders to recognize the fragility of American democracy. Will we defend our Constitution? Will we stand for truth? Will we put duty to our oath above partisan politics? she asked. Or will we look away from the danger, ignore the threat, embrace the lies and enable the liar? There is no gray area when it comes to that question. When it comes to this moment, there is no middle ground.She is right that Americas drift toward authoritarianism continues, but it is not inevitable.

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The January 6th Investigation Gets Closer to Donald Trump - The New Yorker

Chris Christie wants to be very clear about something: The election of 2020 was not stolen.

An election for president was held on November 3, 2020. Joe Biden won. Donald Trump did not, Mr. Christie writes in his new book, Republican Rescue: Saving the Party From Truth Deniers, Conspiracy Theorists, and the Dangerous Policies of Joe Biden.

That is the truth. Any claim to the contrary is untrue, Mr. Christie says.

It is not a popular view in the Republican Party right now, as Mr. Trump has promoted his baseless claims of widespread election fraud for more than a year, and as many Republicans have either echoed those claims or averted their gaze.

But its a view that Mr. Christie has been repeating since Election Day, as he urges the G.O.P. and Mr. Trump to move on from looking backward.

Its not a book about him, Mr. Christie said in a recent interview about the book, which will be released on Wednesday. Its a book about where we go from here and why it is important for us to let go of the past.

Of Mr. Trump, Mr. Christie was blunt: If he wants to be a positive force in the future, hes got to let this other stuff go. If he doesnt, I dont think he can be.

Mr. Christie pointed to the Virginia governors race and Glenn Youngkin, the Republican who won the state party convention without Mr. Trumps endorsement and then kept him at bay during the general election. Mr. Youngkin ultimately defeated his Democratic opponent, Terry McAuliffe.

Mr. Christie said the Youngkin victory knocks down this idea that if you dont agree with Donald Trump on everything, and pledge unfettered fealty to him, then you cant win because his voters quote unquote wont come out to vote, Mr. Christie said. No candidate owns voters. They dont.

He described Mr. Trumps conduct in the year since he left office and the anxiety felt by lawmakers who worry about crossing him in stark terms. Donald Trumps own conduct is meant to instill fear, he said.

Mr. Christie is a former governor of New Jersey, a former presidential candidate and a possible future one. He was one of Mr. Trumps earliest supporters in 2016 after he ended his own national candidacy, was a potential vice-presidential candidate, led Mr. Trumps transition effort until he was fired from that role and helped lead Mr. Trumps opioids commission.

He was with Mr. Trump throughout a tumultuous presidency, a fact that Mr. Christies critics say makes his critiques too late to be meaningful. Mr. Christie argues that his support for Mr. Trump, and their 15-year friendship before that, makes him a credible critic.

I think it was really important for people to understand why I did support the president for so long, Mr. Christie said. And the reason was, because I generally agreed with the policies that he was pursuing. When they would argue over the years, he added, it was rarely over policy.

The arguments were generally over how things were handled, Mr. Christie added, citing Mr. Trumps throwing of bouquets at President Xi Jinping of China as an example. Being generous with Mr. Xi when the Chinese government was withholding information about the coronavirus was unacceptable, Mr. Christie said.

Mr. Christie does not blame Mr. Trumps speech on Jan. 6 for the violence that followed at the Capitol by his supporters. He said instead that it was the months of Mr. Trumps false claims that the election was stolen from him that instilled anger in those who believed him.

The responsibility for what happened was months long in coming, he said. As a leader, you need to know that there are consequences to the words you use. And that those consequences at times can be stuff that you may not even be able to anticipate. I dont believe he anticipated that people would cause violence up on Capitol Hill. But I dont think he thought about it, either.

Mr. Christie began road-testing his themes in a speech at the Reagan presidential library in September, during which he didnt name Mr. Trump. When he spoke again at the Republican Jewish Coalition conference in Nevada last weekend, Mr. Trump took notice, and delivered a broadside that his aides intended as a warning shot.

Mr. Christie was just absolutely massacred by his statements that Republicans have to move on from the past, meaning the 2020 Election Fraud, Mr. Trump said in a statement that also attacked Mr. Christie for a low approval rating, which Mr. Trump mischaracterized by half.

Mr. Christie said that Mr. Trump should focus less on personal vendetta, and added, I just think if he wants to have that kind of conversation about me then Im going to point out that I got 60 percent of the vote in a blue state with 51 percent of the Hispanic vote.

Mr. Christie said he would not make a decision about running for president in 2024 until after the midterm elections in 2022. He said that Mr. Trump would not factor into his thinking and that he would not rule out supporting the former president if he saw no path for himself.

A key issue yet untested. Donald Trumps power as former president to keep information from his White House secret has become a central issue in the Houses investigation of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. Amid an attempt byMr. Trumpto keep personal records secret and the indictment of Stephen K. Bannon for contempt of Congress, heres a breakdown of executive privilege:

What is executive privilege? It is a power claimed by presidents under the Constitution to prevent the other two branches of government from gaining access to certain internal executive branch information, especially confidential communications involving the president or among his top aides.

What is Trumps claim? Former President Trump has filed a lawsuit seeking to block the disclosure of White House files related to his actions and communications surrounding the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. He argues that these matters must remain a secret as a matter of executive privilege.

Is Trumps privilege claim valid? The constitutional line between a presidents secrecy powers and Congresss investigative authority is hazy. Though a judge rejected Mr. Trumps bid to keep his papers secret, it is likely that the case will ultimately be resolved by the Supreme Court.

Is executive privilege an absolute power? No. Even a legitimate claim of executive privilege may not always prevail in court. During the Watergate scandal in 1974, the Supreme Court upheld an orderrequiring President Richard M. Nixon to turn over his Oval Office tapes.

May ex-presidents invoke executive privilege? Yes, but courts may view their claims with less deference than those of current presidents. In 1977, the Supreme Court said Nixon could make a claim of executive privilege even though he was out of office, though the court ultimately ruled against him in the case.

Is Steve Bannon covered by executive privilege? This is unclear. Mr. Bannons case could raise the novel legal question of whether or how far a claim of executive privilege may extend to communications between a president and an informal adviser outside of the government.

Throughout the book, Mr. Christie places Mr. Trump in the historical context of a political strain in the country that is centuries old. The QAnon conspiracy theorists of the last several years are in many ways the descendants of John Birch Society members, Mr. Christie writes, and he contrasts how Ronald Reagan handled extremist voices in his party with how Mr. Trump has.

He faults Mr. Trump for spreading the birther campaign about former President Barack Obamas birthplace in 2011.

He truly showed everyone how a lie like that can be exploited, Mr. Christie said, taking note of other Republicans who encouraged questions about where the first Black president was born.

And Mr. Christie writes that he knows Mr. Trump was furious after he was laughed at during the White House Correspondents Dinner in 2011, when Mr. Obama roasted him over his birther crusade. Mr. Trump later boasted that he was unbothered, but Mr. Christie said he spoke with Mr. Trump about it. Just beside himself with fury, Mr. Christie writes.

Mr. Christie also describes some of the debate prep sessions that he led for Mr. Trump before he took the stage with President Joseph R. Biden Jr. last year. In one session, Mr. Trump turned to Mr. Christie and began to excoriate him for recommending Christopher Wray for F.B.I. director.

Hes doing an awful job, and hes your pick. He was your pick, Mr. Trump told Mr. Christie in front of a half-dozen other Trump aides.

Hold on a second, Mr. Christie replied, praising Mr. Wray. He wasnt my pick. He was your pick. He was my recommendation. Im not the president. I dont get to pick.

Mr. Christie reveals how worried he and others were for his survival when he became infected with the coronavirus after being at the White House around the same time that Mr. Trump and several other aides contracted Covid-19. Mr. Christie writes that his priest arrived in the hospital and rubbed oils on his forehead in the sign of the cross, praying over him.

He got a call from a hospitalized Mr. Trump, who had one main concern: Are you gonna say you got it from me? Mr. Trump asked him.

Mr. Christie is unsparing in the book about Mr. Biden, whose policies he says he cannot align himself with. In the interview, he faulted the president for running as one kind of politician but governing as another, citing the aftermath of the withdrawal from Afghanistan as an example.

If they had known how he was going to govern, Mr. Christie said of voters, Mr. Biden may not have won.

Link:

Chris Christie Wants the Post-Trump G.O.P. to Move Past 2020 - The New York Times