Will be out tomorrow, but a nice way to end a day....

Remaining 3 indictments

Trump’s remaining 3 indictments, ranked by the stakes

A quick guide to Trump’s indictments and why they matter.

by Li Zhou and Andrew Prokop

A Manhattan jury just found former President Donald Trump guilty on 34 felony counts. The former president is still facing other criminal charges across four jurisdictions — Georgia, Florida, New York, and the District of Columbia — all as he runs for the presidency again.

The cases, involving allegations of attempted election theft, mishandling classified documents, and hush money payments, have grown so sprawling that it’s tough for anyone but the most die-hard political obsessive to follow them in detail.

But in some, the stakes — for our democracy and for Trump personally — are higher than others.

The two prosecutions about Trump’s efforts to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 victory (in DC and Georgia) both come with the possibility of serious criminal penalties. They also have enormous implications for the future of American elections, and for whether Trump or someone like him will respect the results next time around.

The classified documents prosecution, in Florida, is also significant in that it involves sensitive intelligence material. However, prosecutors have presented no evidence that this sensitive material leaked out from Trump’s possession. The prosecution is mainly about his efforts to defy the government’s demands that he return the documents.

The New York case reached a verdict fastest but was the least important of the four. Trump was charged with falsifying business records related to hush money payments he’d made. The core violation here is, basically, that the Trump Organization logged these payments improperly as “legal expenses” — not the highest-stakes issue in the world. 

It’s all a lot to keep track of, so in this guide, we’ll walk through the charges and potential sentences in each prosecution in more detail. We’ve ranked the remaining indictments in order of importance based on the stakes and potential implications of each case.

1) Federal 2020 election case (District of Columbia)

How important is this indictment? Very important. As Vox’s Nicole Narea previously explained, this case “will legally define what a politician is able to do to reverse a defeat.” The outcome of this case could have major implications for the 2024 election and every race that follows: If Trump isn’t held accountable for the actions he took on January 6 and leading up to it, he and others could try to pull the same schemes in the future. 

Ultimately, this case has a significant bearing on the future of US democracy. 

Number of charges: Four felony counts. They include: 

• Charge of conspiracy to defraud the United States, which includes plotting to overturn the results of the 2020 election
• Conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, including plotting to prevent the 2020 election certification
• Obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, which includes actually blocking  the certification of the 2020 election results
• Conspiracy against rights, which includes a plan to deprive someone of a constitutional right (in this case, that is the ability to vote)

Potential jail time per count (these are maximum sentences that are unlikely to be imposed):   

• Conspiracy to defraud the United States: 5 years
• Conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding: 20 years
• Obstructing an official proceeding: 20 years
• Conspiracy against the right to vote: 10 years

2) Georgia election indictment

How important is this indictment? Very important. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis accused Trump and several of his associates of a sprawling racketeering conspiracy related to their efforts to overturn Biden’s win in the state. In contrast to the federal election indictment, where Trump is the only one charged so far, here 18 others were also charged for participating in this alleged conspiracy. These include famous names like Rudy Giuliani and former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, notorious Trump lawyers like John Eastman and Sidney Powell, and lower-level Georgia players.

Significantly, if Trump wins the presidency again in 2024, he would not be able to thwart this prosecution, since it is being carried out under state law.

Number of charges: 13 felony counts. They are:

• 1 count of violating the Georgia RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) Act, which is basically a catchall charge for the larger conspiracy to overturn the outcome
• 3 counts of solicitation of violation of oath by a public officer, which are about Trump’s attempts to convince Georgia officials to overturn the results
• 1 count of conspiracy to commit impersonating a public officer
• 2 counts of conspiracy to commit forgery
• 2 counts of conspiracy to commit false statements and writings
• 1 count of conspiracy to commit filing false documents
• 1 count of filing false documents
• 2 counts of making false statements and writings

Most of those counts relate to the Trump campaign’s effort to put together a slate of “alternate” electors from Georgia who would purport to cast electoral votes for Trump rather than the actual winner, Biden.

Potential jail time per count (these are maximum sentences that are unlikely to be imposed):    

• Violating the Georgia RICO Act: 20 years
• Solicitation of violation of oath by a public officer: 3 years
• Conspiracy to commit impersonating a public officer: 2.5 years
• Conspiracy to commit forgery: 7.5 years
• Conspiracy to commit false statements and writings: 2.5 years
• Conspiracy to commit filing false documents: 5 years
• Filing false documents: 10 years
• Making false statements and writings: 5 years

3) Federal documents case (Florida)

How important is this indictment? Important. This case centers on a president’s ability to endanger the country’s national security by taking and mishandling classified documents after leaving office. Documents that Trump kept addressed everything from US nuclear programs to the country’s defense and weapons capabilities to how America could respond in the face of a possible attack. Additionally, the case looks at how Trump obstructed FBI efforts to take back the documents.

Number of charges: 40 felony counts. They include: 

• 32 counts of willful retention of national defense information, which includes keeping classified documents related to military activities and nuclear weapons
• 1 count of conspiracy to obstruct justice, which includes Trump working with an aide to hold on to classified documents and hide them from a grand jury
• 1 count of withholding a document or record from an official proceeding, which included efforts to hide documents from a grand jury
• 1 count of corruptly concealing a document or record from an official proceeding, which included hiding boxes with classified documents
• 1 count of concealing a document in a federal investigation, which included covering up Trump’s ongoing possession of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago
• 1 count of scheming to conceal information the government is seeking, which includes hiding the fact that Trump still possessed classified documents
• 1 count of making false statements, which includes directing his attorneys to lie about returning all the classified documents in his possession
• 2 counts of altering, destroying, or concealing information the government is seeking, which includes plans to delete security footage

Potential jail time per count (these are maximum sentences that are unlikely to be imposed):    

• Willful retention of defense information: 10 years
• Conspiracy to obstruct justice: 20 years
• Withholding documents from an official proceeding: 20 years
• Concealing documents from an official proceeding: 20 years
• Concealing documents from federal investigators: 20 years
• Scheme to conceal: 5 years
• Making false statement to the US government: 5 years
• Altering, destroying, or hiding something the government is looking for: 20 years

Will Trump go to prison? How long could his sentence be?

The technical “maximum sentence” Trump could face if convicted of everything he’s been charged with is absurdly high — hundreds of years — but in practice, such high sentences are almost never given. Yet, though we’re a long way off from Trump actually being behind bars, he really is in danger of getting serious time.

His eventual sentence, if he is convicted, will depend on several factors in each jurisdiction, none more important than whether the juries will even convict him. The strength of each case and the politics of each area could well influence this — given political polarization, winning a conviction may well be easier in New York, where he was found guilty, and in DC, than in the mostly conservative area of Florida where he will be tried. (Recall it only takes one holdout juror to block a conviction.)

Then, if he is convicted, what sentence will the judge hand down? Judges have broad discretion to hand down a sentence they feel is appropriate. Judge Tanya Chutkan of DC will hear the federal case against Trump for trying to steal the 2020 election, and she has been the toughest sentencer for January 6 rioters, suggesting she may lean more toward the maximum if given the chance. Meanwhile, Judge Aileen Cannon of Florida has the documents case, and she is a Trump appointee who has already arguably stretched the law to try and help him out; a conviction in her courtroom could be on the lighter side.

Once he’s sentenced, will higher court judges rescue him on appeal? Some of the cases against him use novel legal reasoning that hasn’t been tested before. So far, the Florida case appears the clearest and best grounded in precedent, while the election cases are more novel (no president has tried to do what Trump did before, after all) and the New York hush money case has been somewhat legally controversial. If Trump is convicted, then, his eventual fate may end up in the Supreme Court.

Finally, any Trump sentence could be scuttled if he wins the presidency. If Trump is back in power, he would likely use executive power to end the federal prosecutions against him (the DC and Florida ones), and perhaps even pardon himself. He could not end the state prosecution in Georgia, but if he wins the presidency, he could likely put off serving prison time until after his term concludes. So, again, it’s the voters who ultimately have the power to maximize, or minimize, Trump’s chances of going to prison.

Sink 9% more....

Trump Media shares sink 9% after Donald Trump conviction

From CNN's Matt Egan

Shares of Truth Social owner Trump Media & Technology Group (DJT) tumbled 9% in after-hours trading Thursday after former President Donald Trump was found guilty on all 34 felony charges.

Trump Media’s share price was little changed until news broke that the jury had reached a verdict. Shares then fell sharply after the conviction was announced.

Trump is the chairman and leading shareholder of Trump Media, which went public in March after completing a controversial merger.

Even accounting for the after-hours selloff, Trump’s dominant stake of 114.75 million shares is valued at $5.4 billion on paper.

Experts have said the lofty valuation placed on Trump Media is hard to square with the fact that Truth Social remains a tiny player in social media and the company generates very little revenue.

Defeated and Deficated

Biden says Trump can only be defeated at the ballot box after guilty verdict

From CNN's Kevin Liptak

President Joe Biden said the only way to defeat his GOP rival Donald Trump is at the ballot box, moments after Trump was found guilty on 34 criminal counts.

"There’s only one way to keep Donald Trump out of the Oval Office: At the ballot box," Biden wrote on X, linking to a fundraising page. 

Biden's campaign said in a statement that the verdict showed "no one is above the law."

"Donald Trump has always mistakenly believed he would never face consequences for breaking the law for his own personal gain. But today’s verdict does not change the fact that the American people face a simple reality. There is still only one way to keep Donald Trump out of the Oval Office: at the ballot box. Convicted felon or not, Trump will be the Republican nominee for president," Michael Tyler, Biden 2024 campaign communications director, wrote in a statement.

“The threat Trump poses to our democracy has never been greater," Tyler wrote. "A second Trump term means chaos, ripping away Americans’ freedoms and fomenting political violence — and the American people will reject it this November."

Ian Sams, a spokesperson from the White House Counsel’s office, said: "We respect the rule of law, and have no additional comment.”

This post has been updated with comments from Ian Sams.

All counts

Trump found guilty on all counts. Here's the count-by-count breakdown

From CNN

Former President Donald Trump returns to court as the jury reaches a verdict in his hush money trial at Manhattan Criminal Court on May 30 in New York City.

Former President Donald Trump returns to court as the jury reaches a verdict in his hush money trial at Manhattan Criminal Court on May 30 in New York City. Justin Lane/Pool/Getty Images

The verdict in Donald Trump’s hush money trial is now being read in the courtroom.  

The 34 counts stemmed from 11 invoices, 12 vouchers and 11 checks that make up Trump’s monthly reimbursement payments to Michael Cohen who fronted the $130,000 payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels.  

Follow the latest on the verdict for each of the counts below: 

Count 1: GUILTY

Count 2: GUILTY

Count 3: GUILTY

Count 4: GUILTY

Count 5: GUILTY

Count 6: GUILTY

Count 7: GUILTY

Count 8: GUILTY

Count 9: GUILTY

Count 10: GUILTY

Count 11: GUILTY

Count 12: GUILTY

Count 13: GUILTY

Count 14: GUILTY

Count 15: GUILTY

Count 16: GUILTY

Count 17: GUILTY

Count 18: GUILTY

Count 19: GUILTY

Count 20: GUILTY

Count 21: GUILTY

Count 22: GUILTY

Count 23: GUILTY

Count 24: GUILTY

Count 25: GUILTY

Count 26: GUILTY

Count 27: GUILTY

Count 28: GUILTY

Count 29: GUILTY

Count 30: GUILTY

Count 31: GUILTY

Count 32: GUILTY

Count 33: GUILTY

Count 34: GUILTY

Roberts declines... Pussy

Chief Justice John Roberts declines to meet with Democratic lawmakers about ethics flap and Alito’s flags

By John Fritze

Chief Justice John Roberts on Thursday rejected a meeting request from Democratic lawmakers who wanted to discuss two provocative flags hoisted at Justice Samuel Alito’s properties.

“Separation of powers concerns and the importance of preserving judicial independence counsel against such appearances,” Roberts wrote in a letter released by the Supreme Court.

In this file photograph, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito Jr., left, and his wife Martha-Ann Alito, pay their respects at the casket of Reverend Billy Graham at the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., on February 28, 2018. An upside-down American flag, a symbol associated with Donald Trump's false claims of election fraud, was displayed outside of Alito's home days after Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol, The New York Times reports. "It was briefly placed by Mrs. Alito in response to a neighbor's use of objectionable and personally insulting language on yard signs," Alito said in an emailed statement to the newspaper.

The chief justice’s letter landed a day after Alito told lawmakers in his own letters that he will not recuse in cases involving the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol. Alito said that his wife, Martha-Ann Alito, hoisted an upside-down American flag at their Virginia home in January 2021 in response to a neighborhood spat. He said she also raised the “Appeal to Heaven” flag at their New Jersey property last summer.

“My wife is fond of flying flags,” Alito wrote. “I am not.”

Both flags have become associated with supporters of former President Donald Trump and were waved at the Capitol during the riot. Alito said in his own letters Wednesday that he was not aware of their modern political meaning.

Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat, had demanded Alito’s recusal in those cases and also sought the meeting with Roberts “to discuss additional steps to address the Supreme Court’s ethics crisis.”

In his brief response Thursday, Roberts wrote that a meeting with leaders “of only one party who have expressed an interest in matters currently pending before the court” only served to underscore his belief “that participating in such a meeting would be inadvisable.” (Republican leaders of the Judiciary Committee were copied on the meeting request and Roberts’ response.)

The Supreme Court is considering two appeals tied to the 2020 election and the attack on the US Capitol. In one, the justices are weighing Trump’s claim of immunity from special counsel Jack Smith’s election subversion charges.

In another, a January 6 rioter is challenging an obstruction charge filed against him by prosecutors, arguing that Congress intended that law to apply to people destroying evidence, not storming a government building.

Whitehouse posted on social media that “the work must continue” until the Supreme Court applies “honest fact-finding and neutral decision-making” to itself.

“That really should not be hard,” Whitehouse posted on X. “It’s a tell that they’ve made it so hard.”

Guilty X 34........

Donald Trump Found Guilty on All Counts in Hush-Money Trial

The historic verdict makes him the first ex-president ever convicted of a crime.

RUSS CHOMA

A jury of Donald Trump’s peers has found him guilty on all 34 felony counts related to his 2016 hush-money payment to Stormy Daniels. The historic verdict, announced Thursday afternoon, followed a six-week criminal trial—the first ever for a former US president.

All of the charges were for the falsification of business records, which stemmed from the payment orchestrated by Trump—with the help of his former fixer and attorney Michael Cohen—to suppress stories about alleged extra-marital affairs Trump had in the years before he ran for president. (Trump has denied the affairs.) Cohen and Daniels, an adult film star who received $130,000 as part of an agreement not to share details of an alleged 2007 sexual encounter with Trump, were the prosecution’s star witnesses.

In a post on Truth Social, Trump raged against the verdict.

“THIS WAS A DISGRACE—A RIGGED TRIAL BY A CONFLICTED JUDGE WHO IS CORRUPT,” Trump posted. “WE WILL FIGHT FOR OUR CONSTITUTION—THIS IS LONG FROM OVER.”

Prosecutors made the case to jurors that Trump lied on various business records about what the payments were for. Although the falsifying of business records is typically a misdemeanor under New York state law—and, as such, would have fallen outside the statute of limitations—prosecutors were able to elevate the charges to felonies on the theory that they were committed as part of a scheme to violate state and federal election law, because the payments were made to protect Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and therefore constituted illegal campaign contributions.

“This scheme, cooked up by these men, at this time, could very well be what got President Trump elected,” prosecutor Joshua Steinglass told jurors during closing arguments. Steinglass argued that the prosecution didn’t need to prove that the secret payments—or what he called “this effort to hoodwink the American voters”—did sway the election for Trump, only that it was the purpose of the coverup.

The trial’s conclusion is far from the end of the case. Trump will be sentenced on July 11 at 10:00 a.m.

Moreover, Trump has already said he will appeal, and the case may not be resolved for years—especially if Trump is once again elected president and proceedings become frozen during his second term in office. Among other things, Trump’s appeals will likely focus on whether the allegations truly constituted violations of the law and whether prosecutors were justified in charging them as felonies.

Throughout the trial and in closing, Trump’s attorneys had argued that there was no crime—just payments that were totally legal. Trump paid off Daniels and the others to protect his family from untrue stories, his team argued, and Cohen and Daniels were just greedy opportunists. A significant part of the defense’s closing was spent on denigrating Cohen, who openly admitted on the stand that he had previously been dishonest. Much of that dishonesty had been in the service of Trump, who Cohen said he once deeply admired.

As the state presented its case, prosecutors repeatedly probed how other witnesses felt about Cohen, and almost universally, they spoke of him with disdain. When Cohen himself took the stand, a significant portion of his testimony was focused on his own faults—though unlike at Trump’s civil fraud trial last fall, Cohen managed to contain his own temper. It was all a strategy by prosecutors to head off the Trump team’s arguments that Cohen was not a credible witness. As Steinglass said during his closing on Monday, as unlikable as Cohen might be, it was Cohen’s own past dishonesty that made him the perfect person to talk about Trump’s misdeeds.

“We didn’t choose Michael Cohen to be our witness. We didn’t pick him up at the witness store,” Steinglass told jurors. “The defendant chose Michael Cohen to be his fixer because he was willing to lie and cheat on Mr. Trump’s behalf.”

Trump needed just one juror out of 12 to side with him and cause a mistrial—convictions require the jury to be unanimous in its decision. He wasn’t able to convince any of them.

I'm sure they did... Nazi's...

Fox News and right-wing media have already decided the Trump trial verdict

Analysis by Oliver Darcy

The jury might still be deliberating, but Donald Trump’s media allies have already delivered a verdict to their audiences

Throughout the duration of the Manhattan hush-money trial, Fox News and the rest of MAGA Media have set the stage to absolve Trump in the historic case. Day after day, week after week, popular personalities such as Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and Steve Bannon have lampooned the judicial system, portraying Trump as an innocent victim of political persecution.

Inside this alternate media universe, the actual facts of the case never penetrate the bubble that shields its audiences from detrimental developments for Trump. Instead, alternate dishonest storylines are disseminated as the gospel truth.

Not only is Trump entirely innocent of any and all wrongdoing in the MAGA Media world, but President Joe Biden is guilty of nefariously weaponizing government to wage “lawfare” on his political opponent. Audiences are told that Biden cannot win a fair fight with Trump, so he has resorted to illegal “election interference” by rigging the judicial system against Trump.

It goes without saying that these narratives are built on foundations of lies and innuendo that do not hold water. Biden does not control the judicial system. The hush-money case is taking place in New York state court with charges brought by the Manhattan district attorney. And it isn’t Trump’s left-wing enemies who have been making headlines testifying against the GOP candidate in the case, it’s his former allies, such as one-time fixer Michael Cohen and former National Enquirer boss David Pecker.

Nevertheless, millions consuming right-wing media have been fed these deceptive storylines, impacting how voters perceive current events and, more importantly, cast their ballots. In the Republican Party, voters absorb their information from outlets like Fox News, which has dishonestly run defense for Trump over the course of the trial.

“WHERE’S THE CRIME?” demanded a banner on Ingraham’s prime time show Wednesday along with a graphic showing images of Biden, Judge Juan Merchan, and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg “THE REAL FRAUDS.”

In the following hour, Jesse Watters accused Merchan in an on-screen graphic of “LEADING THE JURY” and intimated how “very fishy” it was that a “stop Trump” judge was selected to preside over the case.

The progressive Media Matters said in a study published this week that Fox News has leveled at least 200 attacks on Merchan alone since the trial commenced — a staggering number that does not include the attacks on others associated with the case. And the study only accounted for Fox News, not the host of other entities that make up the right-wing media universe.

It can be tempting to ignore the torrent of attacks Trump’s media allies are launching in their unrelenting efforts to undermine the case. But those forces are shaping how a large swath of the country understands the high-stakes and unprecedented trial taking place in lower Manhattan. And they’re a reminder that if Trump were to return to power, he has a powerful propaganda apparatus at his disposal that will do everything in its power to sanitize his actions — whatever they may be.

81-year-old

An 81-year-old accused of being a ‘serial slingshot shooter’ is charged after years of alleged vandalism, police say

By Cindy Von Quednow and Elizabeth Wolfe

For about a decade, the residents of a Los Angeles County neighborhood have been bedeviled by mysteriously shattered windows, cracked windshields and near misses from tiny projectiles, all allegedly at the hands of an 81-year-old neighbor who police are calling a “serial slingshot shooter.”

The suspect, Prince King, was arrested in Azusa, California, last week after a “lengthy investigation” revealed he had been pestering the community for 9 to 10 years, ultimately causing as much as $10,000 in damage, according to the Azusa Police Department.

After years of sporadic vandalism reports, a sergeant noticed some similarities in the incidents and began to dig deeper.

“What we had here was more than just random acts of vandalism,” police Lt. Robert Chivas told CNN. Investigators determined a person “broke windows, windshields and almost stuck people with ball bearings” over the years, police said in an online post.

King is accused of carrying out the acts and has been charged with five counts of felony vandalism and two counts of misdemeanor vandalism, according to the criminal complaint from the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office. He has pleaded not guilty.

“During the course of our investigation and surveillance, we did observe Mr. King commit a crime, which was firing a ball bearing from the sling shot,” Chivas said.

Ball bearings and a slingshot were also found in King’s home during a May 23 search that resulted in his arrest, police said.

King has been released from custody on his own recognizance, according to the district attorney’s office. He is scheduled to reappear in court on June 17.

CNN has sought comment from King and the Los Angeles County Public Defender’s Office, which is representing him.

It is unclear if King knew any of the victims personally, and the motive behind the alleged incidents remains unknown, Chivas said.

Fabiola Madrigal Rodriguez moved to the Azusa neighborhood about eight months ago and noticed one of her garage windows was damaged – a repair that could set her back about $500, she told CNN.

But it wasn’t until police came to her door and began investigating the broken window that she learned of the suspected serial vandal, Rodriguez said.

“I grew concerned. I have children, small children. We like to go outside, play with the dog, and of course you want to be safe,” she said.

When she learned her elderly neighbor had been arrested, she said she “couldn’t believe it.”

Wouldn’t be ‘talking about pardons’

Biden: If Black Americans stormed the Capitol, Trump wouldn’t be ‘talking about pardons’

The remarks came as the campaign launched a new Black voter outreach strategy in Philadelphia.

By MYAH WARD

President Joe Biden tore into Donald Trump over his record on race on Wednesday, targeting the former president for his past comments before a crowd of Black voters in Philadelphia.

“What would’ve happened if Black Americans had stormed the Capitol? I don’t think he’d be talking about pardons,” Biden said. “This is the same guy who wanted to tear gas you as you peacefully protested George Floyd’s murder. It’s the same guy who still calls the ‘Central Park Five’ guilty, even though they were exonerated. He’s that landlord who denies housing applications because of the color of your skin. He’s that guy who won’t say Black lives matter and invokes neo-Nazi, Third Reich terms.”

“We all remember, Trump is the same guy who unleashed the birtherism lie against Barack,” he continued.

Biden’s remarks came as he and Vice President Kamala Harris rallied supporters at Girard College, where they launched an organizing effort to win over Black voters. The campaign is planning an eight-figure investment in engagement with Black student groups, community and faith-based organizations across battleground states in the coming months, and Biden’s comments were among several direct appeals to Black Americans.

“Donald Trump is pandering and peddling lies and stereotypes for your vote so he can win for himself, not for you,” Biden said. “Well Donald Trump, I have a message for you: Not in our house, and not on our watch.”

It wasn’t the first time the president has leveled such attacks against Trump, but Wednesday’s speech marked the most forceful rhetoric he’s used. And it served as a response to efforts by Trump and his allies to appeal to voters in Democratic strongholds, including Atlanta and a heavily Latino and Black neighborhood in the Bronx. In his own campaign events, Trump recently has slammed Biden’s policies as harmful to communities of color.

“Joe Biden is gaslighting Black voters and failing to address his terrible policies that are hurting our community,” said Janiyah Thomas, the Trump campaign’s Black media director, in a statement. “The Biden campaign is panicking because they see that Black voters aren’t buying what Biden is selling, and President Trump is receiving a record high support in the polls from Black voters that we haven’t seen in decades.”

Convicts 14 pro-democracy activists

Hong Kong court convicts 14 pro-democracy activists

They stood accused of violating a security law imposed by Beijing designed to wipe out dissent.

By ASSOCIATED PRESS

A Hong Kong court Thursday convicted 14 pro-democracy activists in the city’s biggest national security case under a law imposed by Beijing that has all but wiped out public dissent.

Those who were found guilty included former lawmakers Leung Kwok-hung, Lam Cheuk-ting, Helena Wong and Raymond Chan. But the three judges approved by the government to oversee the case acquitted former district councilors Lee Yue-shun and Lawrence Lau. Those convicted could face life in prison.

They were among 47 democracy advocates who were prosecuted in 2021 for their involvement in an unofficial primary election. Prosecutors had accused them of attempting to paralyze Hong Kong’s government and topple the city’s leader by securing the legislative majority necessary to indiscriminately veto budgets.

Observers said their subversion case illustrates how the security law is being used to crush the political opposition following huge anti-government protests in 2019. But the Beijing and Hong Kong governments insist the law has helped bring back stability to the city and that judicial independence is being protected.

When Britain handed Hong Kong back to China in 1997, Beijing promised to retain the city’s Western-style civil liberties for 50 years. However, since the introduction of the 2020 law, Hong Kong authorities have severely limited free speech and assembly under the rubric of maintaining national security. Many activists were arrested, silenced or forced into self-exile. Dozens of civil society groups disbanded.

The prosecution of the primary case involves pro-democracy activists across the spectrum. They include legal scholar Benny Tai, former student leader Joshua Wong and a dozen former lawmakers including Leung and Claudia Mo.

Thirty-one of them, including Tai, Wong and Mo, pleaded guilty to the charge of conspiracy to commit subversion. They have a better chance at shorter jail terms and will be sentenced at a later date.

The 16 others, including Leung, who pleaded not guilty and underwent a non-jury trial, were hearing their verdicts in the two-day case that started Thursday.

Dozens of residents lined up outside the police-guarded court building before 6 a.m. to secure a seat in the public gallery. Some supporters who were among the first in the line came as early as Wednesday evening.

Social worker Stanley Chang, a friend of one of the 16 defendants, said he arrived the site at 4 a.m. because he feared he could not get a seat. Chang said there were very few things supporters could do for them and that attending the hearing is a kind of company.

“I want to give some support for my friend and the faces I saw in news reports,” he said.

SL Chiu, who only gave his initials due to fear of government retribution, said the hearing marked a historic moment. To show his support, he said he had collected messages for the 47 activists from others in a sketchbook and planned to mail them if possible.

“Hong Kongers are still here. We haven’t given up. We are still with you all,” he said.

On Wednesday night, Lee Yue-shun, one of the accused, said on Facebook that Thursday was like a special graduation ceremony for him, though graduation is usually about sharing happiness with families and friends,

“This perhaps best reflects the common helplessness of our generation,” he said.

The July 2020 primary was meant to shortlist pro-democracy candidates who would then run in the official election. It drew an unexpectedly high turnout of 610,000 voters, representing over 13% of the city’s registered electorate.

The pro-democracy camp at that time hoped they could secure a legislative majority, which would allow them to press for the 2019 protest demands, including greater police accountability and democratic elections for the city leader.

But the government postponed the legislative election that would have followed the primary, citing public health risks during the coronavirus pandemic. The electoral laws were later overhauled, drastically reducing the public’s ability to vote and increasing the number of pro-Beijing lawmakers making decisions for the city in the legislature.

Beijing also had criticized the vote as a challenge to the security law, which criminalizes secession, subversion and collusion with foreign forces to intervene in the city’s affairs as well as terrorism.

I am sure the turd does......

Why Trump’s team thinks he can survive any verdict

The former president’s advisers and allies plan to situate any outcome within the same grievance narrative he’s been cultivating for years.

By ADAM WREN

Donald Trump’s pollsters have been tracking the impact of his indictments throughout his first trial and, moving to get ahead of events, are arguing that regardless of the verdict in the New York hush-money case, they can spin it in his favor.

In the campaign’s internal polling, two-thirds of respondents say politics played a role in his criminal indictments.

That is at odds with public polling, which has found that somewhere between a plurality and a majority of Americans believe the case has been handled fairly, with a sharp partisan split. Some 60 percent of voters have said they think the charges are very or somewhat serious. Even 6 percent of Trump voters say they would be less likely to back him if convicted.

But the Trump campaign’s interpretation of its own polling suggests what its strategy might be for dealing with a guilty verdict. Trump’s advisers and allies say the public, which has largely tuned out the trial, may have already factored the possibility of a conviction into how it sees Trump. And as Trump has before, he’ll use the case to bolster the grievance narrative he’s been cultivating for years.

“We’ve got 66 percent telling us that politics have played a role in it. Only 28 say ‘no role,’” said Jim McLaughlin, a Trump pollster whose firm conducted the survey. “The interesting part about that is, even 27 percent of Democrats are saying ‘politics played a role in the indictments.’”

No politician wants to be convicted of a crime, and if he is convicted, it is not out of the question that Trump could face prison time. But if the jury cannot reach a verdict or finds Trump not guilty?

“The media loves asking the question, ‘OK, what happens if Donald Trump is found guilty of a felony?’” McLaughlin said. “They don’t ask the question, ‘What happens if he’s found not guilty?’ If he’s found not guilty, I think he gets a bump out of it.”

The Trump campaign’s management of the verdict, which could come any day, after the case was sent to the jury on Wednesday, will help to define a frenetic phase of the campaign, with a presidential debate, Trump’s selection of a running mate and the Republican National Convention all looming in the next six weeks. President Joe Biden is preparing to break his vow of silence and address the trials when a verdict is reached, either capitalizing on a conviction or bracing for Republican attacks if Trump is acquitted.

Trump’s allies believe the former president is on track to defy both political and legal gravity again, after weathering the bankruptcy of three casinos, surviving the “Access Hollywood” imbroglio in 2016 and rocketing back to political relevance after his party considered the twice-impeached former president all but damaged goods following a 2020 election loss and then a bruising 2022 midterms.

“I think most people think this jury will indict Trump or convict Trump, and they’ll end up going to the appellate courts to resolve this. But I think it’s made the president stronger,” said Dave Carney, the veteran GOP strategist. “Since ’15, he’s been a victim, played the victim card — Russia, Russia, Russia, all this stuff. And now in full high-D, 5G TV, he confirmed that.”

What’s more, after the verdict is known — and if Trump does not go to prison — he will likely largely be free to resume a campaign that was expected to be litigated more in a courtroom — a scenario largely behind him after cases in Georgia and Florida have been delayed.

“The grand plans to use all these court cases to throw sand in the gears of Trump failed,” Carney said. “The trial itself? The only thing that could have been better was if it was actually on TV and people got to see firsthand.”

Is Teflon Don back?

“It’s not Teflon Don, because they were able to bring these charges. I think it just shows the American people. It’s further proof, I would say, of the lunacy of these efforts,” said David Urban, a Trump campaign adviser in 2016 and 2020. He added: “Nobody wants to be convicted. If you’re convicted, Democrats will use that as a cudgel no matter what. But I think the president’s legal team has done a masterful job at exposing the lawfare for what it is.”

Even Democrats are leery that a Trump conviction will have a significant effect.

“I don’t think any of them should count on these convictions or indictments somehow moving the needle against Donald Trump, it doesn’t seem so, so we’ve got to win on our own merits,” said a senior Biden reelection official, granted anonymity to discuss the case’s political impact frankly.

“The American people witnessed in real time the unprecedented and disgraceful weaponization of our justice system by Crooked Joe Biden’s Democrat Party,” Steven Cheung, a Trump spokesperson, told POLITICO. “The charges against President Trump should have never been filed and this show trial should have never occurred.”

But Trump is navigating entirely new terrain. A possible conviction still looms, and the gears of justice have finally ground down Trump to this moment. Never before has a major party nominee navigated a general election with a criminal conviction hanging over him.

“On the margins, and this is an election that is going to be decided on the margins, a conviction makes a difference,” said Sarah Longwell, publisher of the anti-Trump outlet The Bulwark and CEO of Longwell Partners.

But Trump has, after all, often had his back up against the wall. And voters are reflexively used to presenting him with the lowest bar to clear.

“He’s in so much trouble so often that voters are a bit numb to things that would otherwise be a major scandal for any other politician,” Longwell said.

Worse Than It Seems

The Alito Scandal Is Worse Than It Seems

The conservative justice knows he can get away with just about anything.

By ANKUSH KHARDORI

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito has been infuriating his critics for years. He has gone on undisclosed luxury vacations with conservative donors who have business before the court. He appears to have leaked the result of a major case to conservative activists before the decision was announced. And that doesn’t even get into his jurisprudence, including the opinion that threw out Roe v. Wade.

But the revelations over the last two weeks from The New York Times concerning the political flags flown at Alito’s homes — an upside-down American flag in the days after Jan. 6, 2021, and an “Appeal to Heaven” flag in the summer of 2023 — have pushed Alito’s behavior into an entirely different realm, one that raises serious questions about Alito’s partisanship, his ethics and the integrity of the court.

The upside-down American flag has historically been used as a sign of distress by the U.S. military but became a symbol of support for Donald Trump’s “Stop the Steal” movement following the 2020 election, and the Appeal to Heaven flag has been used by Christian nationalists. Both were flown by Jan. 6 rioters.

The Alito household’s display of those flags — no matter what prompted it or whose decision it was to fly them — means that Alito should recuse himself from the cases pending before the court concerning Trump’s alleged efforts to steal the election. His stated refusal to do so in a letter to senior Democrats Wednesday runs afoul of the most basic judicial ethical norms: Judges are not supposed to signal their views on matters that are likely to come before the court.

But this whole episode also shows the fecklessness of Democrats, who seem to be reluctant to try to hold the court to account — which may have only encouraged the conservative justices to feel like they have free rein to flout judicial norms. President Joe Biden, in particular, has been far too reluctant to challenge the court, both with his early, toothless effort to float court reforms and now amid a series of clear ethical breaches by the justices.

There are a few problems with Alito’s behavior.

For one, Alito may have intentionally tried to mislead the public about what happened and to position himself and his wife as the victims. Alito told Fox News that his wife hoisted the first flag after a neighbor had put up a sign blaming her for the Jan. 6 riot and had used derogatory language toward her, “including the C-word.” But the Times’ latest story reports that verbal altercation took place weeks after the flag had flown and come down.

Even if Alito’s account is completely true, though, there would still be no excuse for a Supreme Court justice to allow such a partisan symbol to fly outside of their home, especially one whose message overlaps with a pending case.

In the letter that Alito sent to lawmakers explaining his decision not to recuse himself from cases related to the 2020 election, Alito claimed that he “had nothing whatsoever to do with the flying of [the upside-down] flag.” He also said that his wife “has the legal right to use the property as she sees fit”; that she also flew the Appeal to Heaven flag but that neither of them was “aware of any connection” to Trump’s “Stop the Steal” movement; and that no one could reasonably question his impartiality unless they were motivated by “political or ideological considerations or a desire to affect the outcome of Supreme Court cases.”

His wife might have been the one who raised it, but given that it flew outside a house he lives in, it is entirely reasonable to assume that Alito explicitly or tacitly endorsed the message of the flag. As one sitting federal judge put it, “Any judge with reasonable ethical instincts would have realized immediately that flying the flag then and in that way was improper. And dumb.”

Alito himself has acknowledged the danger of overtly signaling political views. Here is what he said in his confirmation hearing when he was dodging questions about what he thought about Roe v. Wade or whether it was considered settled law: “It would be wrong for me to say to anybody who might be bringing any case before my court, ‘If you bring your case before my court, I’m not even going to listen to you. I’ve made up my mind on this issue.’”

The proposition that justices should not express opinions on issues that may come before them provides a basis for his recusal, but so does another basic and closely related principle that you can also find in the ethics code issued by the Supreme Court late last year, after a flurry of controversies involving Alito and Justice Clarence Thomas. The code provides that a justice “should disqualify himself or herself in a proceeding in which the Justice’s impartiality might reasonably be questioned, that is, where an unbiased and reasonable person who is aware of all relevant circumstances would doubt that the Justice could fairly discharge his or her duties.”

That standard is met here too.

Many conservatives have rushed to Alito’s defense. After the first Times story, one Republican lawyer quickly derided the reporting and mounted a classic “they did it too” defense, pointing to liberal judges whose spouses engaged in activism related to cases before them. But none of them did anything remotely like what Alito’s wife did. Alito’s defenders have pointed to remarks that former Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg made about Trump — that he was a “faker” and would be bad for the country. They may be right that those comments were unwise and perhaps even improper, but she has long since passed away, so it is a debater’s point at best.

Meanwhile, the leaders of the Democratic Party are struggling to figure out how to react.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin has refused calls to bring Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts in for a formal hearing on the issue. Instead, he and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, another senior Democrat on the panel, merely asked Roberts to push Alito to recuse himself on cases related to the 2020 election and to come in for a meeting. According to White House aides, President Joe Biden is reluctant to engage on the controversy because he fears that criticizing the conservative justices will undermine the court’s legitimacy as well as the president’s claim to be a supporter of the country’s democratic institutions and norms.

The latest Alito scandal has crystallized some of the most disturbing dynamics surrounding the court.

First, Alito’s conduct, including his potentially dishonest public defense, demonstrates the contempt that he has for his critics and for people outside of his political tribe — which appears to be far-right religious conservatives and Trump supporters. Supreme Court justices have long been reluctant to engage in full transparency, but at a time of growing public skepticism toward the court, he owes the country far more detailed — and far more substantive — answers to the serious questions that have been raised about his conduct and the backstory to the raising of both flags at his homes, including the evolution of his accounts in the media.

Second, the concept of recusal at the court appears to be dead, at least for the conservative justices; some liberal justices still do. Clarence Thomas should already have recused himself from the 2020 election cases but hasn’t. Alito should do the same but won’t. Such a decision could ultimately tip the balance in Trump’s immunity case.

Third, the court’s relatively new ethics rules — which were self-imposed and are unenforceable — are basically a sham. Alito and Thomas in particular appear to think that they can do whatever they want, and they appear to be right that Roberts will do nothing unless he is somehow forced to change course by virtue of political circumstances and public pressure. In the meantime, Roberts has tried to convince the public into thinking that the court is attending to its ethical problems, when it clearly is not.

Finally, and just as importantly, the Democratic Party — and Biden in particular — has fallen down on the job.

The court is in desperate need of structural reform. But instead of seriously pursuing that effort after his election (be it expanding the court, instituting term limits or anything else), Biden convened a largely pointless commission to study potential reforms. Their work — a ponderous, 300-page report issued in late 2021 — was barely read and promptly forgotten, perhaps by design.

There are reasonable debates to be had about the political viability of such a reform effort, but the Biden White House has shown through its own actions that they will invest considerable time and political capital into legislative efforts that they believe are worthy of their attention. Just as importantly, even if a court reform initiative had failed, Biden and the White House could have raised the salience of the issue among the general public and begun building the necessary political momentum over time. (That, after all, is precisely what conservatives did in order to secure their supermajority on the court.)

That might have positioned Biden to make court reform a real campaign issue in the 2024 presidential campaign, which would have paired well with his drive to reenshrine abortion rights. Instead, he voluntarily ceded the ground, and an about-face on the issue in the run-up to November will likely look politically motivated to many people.

Ironically, Biden’s solicitousness of the Supreme Court could ultimately prove to be the downfall of his own presidency.

He has essentially stood idly by while the court has upended key aspects of American life — from abortion to affirmative action — and angered huge swaths of the country, likely contributing to the widespread national discontent that threatens his reelection. The conservatives also gutted one of Biden’s most significant domestic policy initiatives by striking down his student-loan relief program. And they may be on the cusp of letting Trump escape without a trial on the Justice Department’s 2020 election prosecution before November.

That case is the most politically and legally significant of Trump’s pending criminal cases, including the hush-money prosecution in Manhattan. If Trump were convicted in the federal election subversion case, the result could plausibly swing the election against him — and with good reason: The American public should probably know whether a candidate engaged in an egregious and unprecedented criminal conspiracy to steal the last presidential election.

Instead, Biden finds his political fortunes beholden to a court that he has failed to control and that, in the end, could doom his own presidency.

Great, let them do it. Then Bidden can kill the orange turd and get away with it....

The Supreme Court Could Make the President a King

The high court’s decision in the Trump immunity case appears to set the stage for future abuses of the pardon power.

Opinion by KIMBERLY WEHLE

Any day now, the Supreme Court could issue its decision in former President Donald Trump’s case seeking immunity from criminal prosecution. While the most direct impact of the decision will be on how free presidents may feel to skirt or break criminal laws, the decision could also indirectly affect one of the other powers granted to U.S. presidents: the pardon power.

The pardon power is an odd monarchical feature tucked into the Constitution. For the framers, it was mostly a carryover relic — a bonus, almost subsidiary power they decided might be useful from time to time to foster social unity. They didn’t bother to put many limits on it, partly because they thought it would only be used thoughtfully and sparingly.

But the Supreme Court now appears poised to use the fact that there are few constraints on a president’s pardon power as a model for expanding the powers of the presidency by granting presidents unprecedented immunity from criminal prosecution.

What’s more, the Biden administration has appeared unaware of the danger.

Over and over during the Supreme Court’s oral deliberations in the case this spring, the justices brought up the power given to presidents to pardon people convicted of federal crimes. And repeatedly, a contingent of the court, as well as the lawyer for Special Counsel Jack Smith, seemed to agree without debate that under the Constitution, the president’s power, unlike virtually any other provision of the Constitution, cannot be reasonably construed as limited or constrained in any way, for any reason — even if used corruptly or to facilitate the commission of a crime.

This flawed assumption could come back to haunt the nation. The wide acceptance of the idea that the president’s pardon power has no external boundaries is not being seen as specific to the pardon power but could be used to lay the groundwork for a future president to operate in ways that until now would have seemed to be outside all norms of presidential behavior. For instance, the justices appeared open to the idea that a future president could offer pardons in exchange for personal loyalty on the first day in office — and then on the last day carry through by pardoning himself and anyone involved in crimes committed at his behest.

This means the immunity decision could set the stage for an Oval Office crime spree the likes of which we’ve never seen before. Until the Supreme Court agreed to hear Trump’s bid for criminal immunity, American presidents just assumed that committing crimes in office would come at a price. Yet judging by their questioning, a handful of justices seem eager to use the pardon power and their assumption that the power is absolute as a kind of excuse for expanding the presidential prerogative to include criminal activity.

That would be worrisome enough on its own, but many Democrats and liberals seem oblivious to this danger. By acquiescing too quickly to the myth that pardons are limitless, the lawyer representing Smith — and the Biden Administration more generally — seemed complacent about bootstrapping the pardon power into king-like superpowers.

All this while Trump has already made clear that he plans to pervert the pardon power again if he wins in November.

There’s no evidence that the framers envisioned the pardon power as a foundational guide for defining — and expanding — the powers of a presidency, or as a green light for presidents to commit crimes and get away with it. Instead, it seemed more like an incidental power retained for its potential importance in effectively leading the nation, deriving from a common practice back home in England.

The problem with the absolutist conception of the pardon power is that it collides with the core idea of American democracy itself, which is structured around the idea that the people are the ultimate boss. This bottom-up framework assumes that political figures and federal judges serve at the pleasure of the people, who can fire them at the ballot box or through related levers of accountability. Foundationally, no one is above the law, and no person can be the judge in their own case.

The United States represents a repudiation of the monarchy of King George III, which historically fastened sovereignty on a belief that kings were divinely ordained by God. Not only was the monarch above the law — he was the law. A pardon was a reflection of the king’s unilateral mercy at a time when few formalized rules of criminal justice existed to protect the individual. It also enabled leaders to exercise amnesty for the good of the state — by pardoning rebels or military deserters, for example.

The pardon power made its way into Article II of the U.S. Constitution in 1788 with limited discussion at the state ratifying conventions. The text contains only one express exception: Presidents cannot pardon impeachments. (The British Parliament imposed the same constraint on the king in 1700.) At the Constitutional Convention, additional limits — such as a ban on pardons for treason, Senate approval of pardons and a requirement that convictions precede pardons — were all considered and rejected.

Although anti-Federalists expressed alarm over the possibility of presidential abuse, the delegates seemed more concerned about an overly powerful Congress. Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist No. 74 that affording the president an undivided pardon power by “sole fiat” would “naturally inspire scrupulousness and caution,” as “one man appears to be a more eligible dispenser of the mercy of the government, than a body of man.” The “principal argument” for the power, however, was amnesty: If an insurrection or rebellion occurred in the U.S., Hamilton added, “a welltimed offer of pardon to the insurgents or rebels may restore the tranquillity of the commonwealth.”

The Supreme Court has since acknowledged some restraints on the pardon power, which largely go unrecognized in how it is characterized these days. Presidents cannot pardon crimes that haven’t yet been committed, for example, and if a defendant paid a penalty into the U.S. Treasury as part of a sentence, presidents cannot use a pardon to reimburse them — that would violate Congress’s authority under the Constitution’s Appropriation Clause. Like most parts of the Constitution, the pardon power is rationally subject to external constraints imposed by competing constitutional provisions. A president who pardoned all white federal felons in the United States but excluded people of color would violate the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection.

All this means that the justices and the government probably went too far in their exchanges around how the pardon power might shape the scope of hypothetical criminal immunity. Among the conservative justices, there seemed to be a modicum of agreement that the existence of the pardon power shores up the case that presidents, like unlimited monarchs, enjoy significant immunity from prosecution for crimes cloaked in White House formalities.

Smith’s lawyer did not push back on this sweeping syllogism.

Sometime in the next month, a Supreme Court majority appears poised to rule that presidents can commit crimes with impunity — but only for official acts. For private criminal acts, they can still be prosecuted.

But this line between official and private for now is illusory. When the justices explored that distinction during oral argument and asked about categories of powers that might clearly be immune from prosecution if used to commit crimes, one that came up repeatedly was the pardon power.

When Justice Neil Gorsuch asked the counsel for the government what “core” powers would be indisputably untouchable by the criminal laws, for example, he responded: “The core kinds of activities that the court has acknowledged [is] a pretty small set, but things like the pardon power …” Justice Elena Kagan likewise asked about core executive functions shielded from criminal liability: “Pardon. Veto?” Counsel responded: “Well, with respect to the core powers, we think those are just things that can’t be regulated at all, like the pardon power and veto.” The pardon power, they all apparently assumed, is absolute.

Gorsuch and Justice Samuel Alito went further, suggesting that the pardon power is so broad that immunity from criminal prosecution is necessary to rein it in. Unless afforded criminal immunity, presidents will just pardon themselves and all of their cronies upon leaving office. To avoid having to go through this, they suggested, presidents need what amounts to a pre-pardon from the Supreme Court. Gorsuch said:

“What would happen if presidents were under fear — fear that their successors would criminally prosecute them for their acts in office … It seems to me like one of the incentives that might be created is for presidents to try to pardon themselves … And perhaps, if he feels he has to, he’ll pardon himself … every four years from now on.”

Alito agreed: “If a president has the authority to pardon himself before leaving office and … there is no immunity from prosecution, won’t the predictable result be that presidents on the last couple of days of office are going to pardon themselves from anything that they might have been conceivably charged with committing?”

Perhaps most remarkably, the government’s lawyer barely blinked an eye when confronted with the prospect of a president committing a crime and pardoning himself. Alito followed up: “On the question of whether a president has the authority to pardon himself … what’s the answer to that question?” Counsel for Smith waffled: “The only authority that I’m aware of is a member of the Office of Legal Counsel wrote on a memorandum that there is no self-pardon authority. As far as I know the Department has not addressed it further. And of course this Court had not addressed it either.”

Justice Amy Coney Barrett then asked whether a pardon could be a crime if the president intentionally used it to obstruct justice. As recently as five years ago, the answer was an obvious yes; During his Senate confirmation hearings for the job of Trump’s attorney general, Bill Barr testified that “it would be a crime” for a president to issue a pardon in exchange for a promise not to incriminate him. But during oral argument, the government responded to Barrett with another hedge: “If the Department of Justice ever returned an indictment that said the issuance of this pardon or this series of pardons constituted obstruction of justice, ... a motion could be made on the face of the indictment that says Article II precludes Congress from regulating these activities; the indictment needs to be dismissed.”

Take that in: Counsel for Smith appeared to concede that a president could instruct an aide to obstruct justice and then pardon him or her and it would be constitutional because any such actions are beyond the scope of the federal criminal laws. Is that really what the framers intended?

These admissions around the pardon power are significant because Trump, like the justices, has the pardon power on his mind. When asked by a Time Magazine reporter whether he would consider pardoning every one of the Jan. 6 insurrectionists, hundreds of whom have been convicted of federal crimes and are now in jail, he said, “Yes, absolutely.” Last year, Trump stated publicly that he discussed pardoning himself with his lawyers while still president.

Madison envisaged the pardon power as one that a president would use rarely and with caution, not routinely to protect cronies. But in his first term, Trump pulled the pardon lever for the likes of Steve Bannon (convicted of defrauding donors to Trump’s build-the-wall campaign), Mike Flynn (an avowed QAnon conspiracy theorist who pleaded guilty to lying to federal investigators), Paul Manafort (pleaded guilty to conspiring against the United States), and Roger Stone (convicted of obstructing the investigation into Russian interference to help Trump’s 2016 campaign). Many others within Trump’s orbit entertained the prospect of evading crimes that may have been committed for his benefit with pardons. After Jan. 6, according to former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows’s aide, Cassidy Hutchinson, multiple members of Congress asked Trump for pardons — including Mo Brooks, Matt Gaetz, Andy Biggs, Louie Gohmert, Scott Perry and Marjorie Taylor Greene. Jim Jordan, she said, inquired about the prospect of pardons, too. Rudy Giuliani is accused in a lawsuit of trying to sell pardons for $2 million apiece while tied to Trump, and reportedly sought a pardon for himself.

If all those abuses of the pardon power took place under the old rules, just imagine what could happen in a second Trump administration. The stage is now set for a flurry of crimes committed openly and even seditiously with the expectation that they can and will be shielded by the pardon power — and probably some measure of criminal immunity.

If that happens, the country will have the Supreme Court to thank.

Background Checks

Welcome to Washington, Where Background Checks Miss All Kinds of Red Flags

Martin Gruenberg has announced he will resign once a successor is confirmed, after reports of a toxic workplace culture at the FDIC.

By VICTORIA GUIDA

How much should presidents and senators consider a person’s management qualities before putting them in charge of an agency?

I don’t know the exact answer. But one I would suggest is: more than they do now.

Washington has seen its share of incompetent or abusive bosses, who throw important government institutions into disorder. But there are so many other factors to consider — expertise, policy positions, political support — that people who have been involved in vetting personnel over the years tell me that managerial skill and temperament almost never even come up.

He has been at the FDIC since 2005 and in charge of the powerful bank regulator multiple times. So when he was nominated to be the chair yet again in 2022, it seemed a no-brainer that he was qualified for the role. Now, he has announced he will resign once a successor is confirmed after reports of a toxic workplace culture at the agency. The White House says it will name a nominee soon.

I’ve never heard anyone question Gruenberg’s dedication to the FDIC’s work or its mission of safeguarding trillions of dollars in deposits and overseeing the nation’s lenders.

But here are some of the words that FDIC employees used to describe their boss when his temper flares, according to a probe into the agency’s workplace culture by the law firm Cleary Gottlieb: “aggressive,” “harsh,” “vitriol[ic]” and “disrespectful.”

“Although most did not want to — or feel comfortable — characterizing the behavior (as opposed to merely describing it), and others reported on their experiences with the chairman only after being granted anonymity, a number noted that Gruenberg, on these occasions, had acted ‘unprofessionally,’ ‘unreasonably,’ and/or ‘inappropriately,’” the law firm said in its report. “Generally speaking, these incidents arose when people were delivering bad news to Chairman Gruenberg or in discussing matters about which he disagreed.”

This type of behavior might sound familiar; nearly everyone has had an unpleasant or overly critical boss at some point.

But people who go through the Senate confirmation process receive particular scrutiny, including an extensive FBI background check, which means that if the government actually wanted to screen for these kinds of red flags, it could.

The White House should consider who might actually be good at managing the agency as it vets replacements for Gruenberg, who is stepping down in the wake of reports of problematic behavior that extends far beyond his own. The administration owes that to the FDIC’s employees, and it should feel similar obligations to other federal agencies, especially given President Joe Biden’s pledge to fire anyone “on the spot” for treating people badly.

After all, even if you aren’t moved by the prospect of government employees leading unhappy lives, poor management comes at a price.

“The policy becomes more effective when you work for a well-functioning organization,” said Graham Steele, who left a Senate-confirmed Treasury job earlier this year (he made clear to me that he has no interest in being considered for the FDIC post).

And although no one cast the problem as being a partisan one, Steele added a message for his side of the aisle: “To me, it ought to be a particular point of emphasis for the Democratic Party, which I think it’s fair to say prides itself on being the party of functional, effective government.”

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has said the president would nominate someone to replace Gruenberg who reflects “the values of decency and integrity.”

The FDIC declined to comment for this column, but Gruenberg has apologized “both in failing to recognize how my temperament in meetings impacted others and for not having identified deeper cultural issues at the FDIC sooner.”

Of course, government jobs differ from other institutions because political appointees come and go, while career staff might stay at an institution for decades. Indeed, career staff are often seen as the ballast keeping a department or an agency running, even if its political head is less effective as a manager.

This can be a positive, if they insulate the workforce from some of senior management’s worst impulses, but also a negative, if they themselves are bad bosses.

Multiple government officials noted that it can be hard for political appointees to make a big impact on workplace culture when they’re going to be there for only a few years. But it’s also harder to achieve their political goals without some attempt to build trust and a healthy work environment, they said.

And yet, managerial effectiveness isn’t often an oversight focus even after someone is put into a Senate-confirmed job.

“I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a member of the House or Senate ask an agency head, why are your [employee satisfaction] scores so low?” said Mark Calabria, who served as head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency under President Donald Trump.

(Calabria took over the agency after it suffered a different kind of blow to morale: His predecessor, Mel Watt, ended his term under the cloud of sexual harassment allegations. Employee satisfaction scores improved under Calabria.)

It’s tempting to suggest some baseline of management experience before being put into a top government job. That seems to be a consideration for some of the highest-profile Cabinet positions, but policy experts who are placed in other leading positions often have backgrounds working on the Hill or at think tanks in roles where they’ve never managed more than a few people.

“It would be great to have more people in positions in leadership who have proven records in leadership — and I say that knowing it probably would’ve excluded me,” Calabria told me.

For example, Jeff Zients, Biden’s chief of staff, has an extensive history of management. He has not only overseen private and public sector entities, but he was also literally a management consultant. That seems to have translated to his current role, and it was particularly useful in his previous position coordinating cross-governmental responses to the Covid-19 pandemic.

But if you talk with personnel people who work in government, they’ll tell you that empathy and character are just as important if not more so than management experience, which in and of itself isn’t a guarantee of success.

When Rex Tillerson stepped down as secretary of state in 2018, my colleague Nahal Toosi reported on his shortcomings as a boss: “Several State staffers have noted over the past year an irony at the heart of Tillerson’s tenure: He took over at Foggy Bottom having had a long track record in management but little diplomatic experience, and yet he proved to be better at the latter than the former.”

It’s worth noting that our standards for how people should be treated at work — yelling is generally no longer OK, for example — have also shifted over time.

Government vetting should adapt.

I’m not saying it’s easy to decide how much these things should matter compared with other factors, in a world where the pool of qualified candidates is finite. But it’s not as if gauging management skill is some impossible task, and a lot of relevant information is available already for rooting out warning signs.

Dale Cabaniss, a former director of the Office of Personnel Management, said people who have been vetting candidates for decades know what types of things to look out for, it’s just a matter of prioritizing them.

“All too often, the world is a difficult, demanding, scary place,” she said. “You’re dealing with so much when you’re on the Hill and when you’re in the administration, and sometimes I feel like we don’t pay enough attention to these kinds of issues, where, if we had looked, we would have seen it.”

Maybe not the best idea.......

Gavin Newsom warns against perils of over-regulating AI

The Democratic governor of California is a longtime ally of the tech industry.

By JEREMY B. WHITE

Gov. Gavin Newsom warned on Wednesday against stifling the burgeoning artificial intelligence sector, sending a signal to Democratic lawmakers who are advancing dozens of AI bills in the state Legislature.

“I don’t want to cede this space to other states or other countries,” Newsom said during a daylong AI event in San Francisco. “If we over-regulate, if we overindulge, if we chase the shiny object, we could put ourselves in a perilous position.”

The Democratic governor of California and former San Francisco mayor has long been solicitous of its homegrown technology industry, calling it a critical source of tax revenue and a key to the state’s competitive edge. The position has put him at odds with legislative Democrats and union allies who have increasingly sought to rein in major tech players like autonomous vehicle companies.

California is poised to become a national standard-setter on artificial intelligence as the Legislature considers ambitious bills to ban biased algorithms, curb election disinformation, require large models to be vetted for threats like biohazards and protect actors’ digital likenesses.

Newsom has avoided taking a public position on those bills, deflecting a question on Wednesday about a fiercely contested safety testing measure.

But he is likely to play a critical gatekeeping role as bills move closer to his desk ahead of a September 30 deadline. He said he was weighing innovation against warnings about the negative fallout from out-of-control AI. Industry luminaries like OpenAI founder Sam Altman and leading academics like Stuart Russell have pushed for a cautious approach.

“When you have the inventors of this technology, the godmothers and fathers, saying: ‘Help, you need to regulate us,’ that’s a different environment,” Newsom said.

Newsom also suggested he’s open to laws curbing deceptive campaign videos and images, relaying a conversation with someone concerned that AI would undermine open elections.

“I’ve got personal reasons to believe that’s legit — the voice, videos, these AI bots, the persuasion campaigns,” Newsom said.

A photo illustration shows a teenage girl sitting at a school desk with arms folded, staring into her phone. A facial recognition pattern appears in the background.

The governor issued an executive order last year directing state agencies to study using AI for functions like managing traffic and offering tax advice. Newsom touted that work earlier this month as a sign that generative AI is “not a job killer” but a tool to help the government save money and work more efficiently.

Earlier in the day, Newsom’s deputy chief of staff Jason Elliott said California needs to work with prominent tech companies to maintain the state’s dominance while ensuring AI’s benefits are evenly distributed and not just reserved for the wealthiest.

“We are in first place, California, in terms of being the center of GenAI technology,” Elliott said. “We will not be in first place forever unless we defend that position and part of that means working with companies that are headquartered here.”

Learning from California

What Washington’s learning from California on climate

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee is preparing to fend off a familiar challenge to the state’s landmark carbon program.

By JORDAN WOLMAN

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee is facing multiple attacks on his signature carbon-pricing program. He can look south for solace.

California ran a strikingly similar obstacle course more than a decade ago on the way to establishing its cap-and-trade program, now an éminence grise with more than $28 billion in sales.

Whether Washington’s program can navigate the same obstacles will shed light on the durability of state-level climate programs — and to what extent ambitious Democrats like Inslee can continue trying to stake their reputations on tackling climate change.

“We have the benefit of 10 years of California learning,” said former Washington state Democratic Sen. Reuven Carlyle, who authored the state’s 2021 law. “In Washington, we have the luxury of going second.”

Washington is currently facing a November ballot initiative to overturn its year-old program that’s already spooked the market enough to send carbon prices down 50 percent from last year — part of a series of attacks from conservatives on similar programs across North America. There’s also a lawsuit from a former state employee who alleges officials are trying to suppress the program’s effect on gas prices. And on the left, environmental justice groups are protesting Inslee’s plans to link the market with California.

California, which hurdled an industry lawsuit, another from environmental justice groups and an oil-funded ballot initiative, is cheering Washington on.

“I am optimistic that things are going to fall into place just as they did in California,” said Katelyn Roedner Sutter, the Environmental Defense Fund’s California state director. “This is just some natural growing pains that Washington will grow out of.”

Washington’s already learned some lessons that could help it at the polls, like calling the program “cap and invest” instead of “cap and trade” as in California. Carlyle said the name change was meant to emphasize benefits.

“We got to design a version 2.0, and a lot of the learning is that the investment dollars are the central drivers of value,” he said. Inslee is leaning into that as well, pointing to state investments in things like transportation infrastructure and heat pump and solar installations.

“Families are now seeing the benefits,” Inslee, a Democrat who leaves office in January, said in an interview last month. “They don’t want to lose those benefits.”

Another point in favor of the growing-pains argument: While the fossil fuel industry backed the 2010 ballot initiative to overturn California’s suite of climate programs, oil companies this time are either staying neutral or — in the case of oil major BP, which contributed $1 million — actively fighting the repeal effort.

“We’re staying out of it,” said Kevin Slagle, a spokesperson for the Western States Petroleum Association. “Our focus has continued to be that we don’t need to repeal it, we need to fix it,” citing concerns about the supply of allowances being too tight and driving up prices.

But the ballot initiative’s backer, conservative hedge funder Brian Heywood, also took lessons from the Golden State. He contends the emissions-capping program has led to high gas prices in Washington — a charge the Inslee administration rejects.

“I learned from California: That’s why I’m trying to stop this damn thing before it becomes so entrenched that you can’t get it out,” he said.

California voters soundly rejected a 2010 ballot measure seeking to suspend the state’s landmark climate law that established pollution reduction goals and a cap and trade program until unemployment dropped to 5.5 percent for at least a full year.

California also survived two lawsuits against cap and trade at the outset: A 2009 challenge from environmental justice groups over the state’s choice of cap-and-trade to reach its emissions targets and a 2012 challenge from the California Chamber of Commerce that, after multiple appeals, wrapped up in 2017.

Washington voters have rejected emissions-capping programs at the ballot in the past. Polling on the current measure to repeal the program varies widely, with one conducted in April by a group opposing the ballot measure finding it would fail by 20 points and another more neutral one conducted earlier this month showing it with a 10-point advantage.

The fact that California rode its wave of early turbulence to become a carbon-trading veteran is inspiring confidence in supporters of Washington’s program that they can push through.

But the fact that carbon prices are low “right now, from a political perspective, falling auction prices are not a bad thing for us,” said Washington state Democratic Sen. Joe Nguyen, who co-sponsored the law. “As long as we defend this program, we’ll be OK.”

Of course it's Flor-i-daaaaaaaaaaa

Florida sticks by social studies standard teaching ‘benefit’ of slavery

The updated standards include new required instruction surrounding the Sept. 11 attacks and the history of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, as well as several other more subtle changes.

By ANDREW ATTERBURY

The Florida Board of Education approved several tweaks Wednesday to the state’s standards for teaching social studies, but left intact controversial pieces on Black history that sparked widespread backlash last year.

The updated standards include new required instruction surrounding the Sept. 11 attacks and the history of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, as well as several other more subtle changes. Opponents, though, including Florida’s largest teachers union and free speech advocates, slammed the state for sticking by its “warped” telling of Black history.

Black history: Florida’s new teaching standards include the same language that scored national blowback last year for requiring middle school students to learn “how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”

Critics, including Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.), urged the state to reconsider that language. And others criticized the state’s phrasing on crucial lessons surrounding the 1920 Ocoee massacre and the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, which are labeled as violence perpetrated “against and by” African Americans.

But these lessons went unchanged, triggering further objection Wednesday from the Florida Education Association teachers union and free speech advocacy group PEN America, among others.

“It still refers to slavery as having a potential benefit,” Andrew Spar, president of the FEA, said during the state board meeting in Miami. “And that is a concern, as well as making sure that our students have a complete and honest history around both the African American experience and all experiences in our country.”

Civics: In one change, the state is requiring students to learn about the influences of ancient Jewish traditions on the founding of the United States as a constitutional republic.

While the tweak adds only one word — the study of “Jewish” civilizations alongside Greek and Roman history already entrenched in the lesson plan — it is giving pause to some religious freedom groups.

One organization, the Florida Freedom to Read Foundation, claims the addition could lead to schools teaching about the Ten Commandments, and that standard is “mandating that teachers expound on the Founding Fathers’ Christian faith and how that might have played into their framing of the Constitution.”

Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. defended how the state teaches civics during Wednesday’s meeting, saying students need to “understand clearly how the country was founded” and the issue is “not to be confused with religious freedom.”

“We are not going to back away from the founding of this country and the principles that it was founded under,” Diaz said.

More changes: Florida schools under the new standards are required to teach students specific lessons about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in middle and high school.

For high school, the standards call on students to “compare global responses to terrorism” after the attacks and examine other terrorist attacks like the Oklahoma City bombing. These lessons are meant to lead students to “recognize terrorism as being politically or ideologically driven acts of violence.”

Another change requires high schools to teach about the history of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, giving specific attention to the history of Japanese internment camps and the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II.

Too bad........

After 5 hours and 2 cryptic notes, Trump jury fails to reach quick verdict

How do you figure out what 12 anonymous New Yorkers who are meeting in secret are thinking?

By KYLE CHENEY and BEN FEUERHERD

Donald Trump’s criminal trial has reached its coda, the slow deep breath before a jury renders a historic decision that will unleash a whirlwind upon the 2024 presidential campaign.

The jury’s deliberations, which are carried out in secret, mark the most tense and suspenseful moment of a trial meant to determine whether Trump falsified business records to cover up a hush money scheme aimed at influencing the 2016 election.

His fate now rests with the 12 people his lawyers and prosecutors chose more than a month ago. After receiving final instructions from the judge on Wednesday morning, those 12 Manhattanites deliberated for nearly five hours before being excused for the day without reaching a verdict.

No one other than the jurors themselves know what they’re discussing in the drab cloisters of the Manhattan criminal courthouse or when — and even if — they might come to a unanimous verdict.

In other words, after weeks of noise — screaming matches among lawyers, blistering interrogations of high-profile witnesses, salacious details of an alleged sexual encounter between Trump and a porn star — everything has gone quiet.

And with that quiet has come intense speculation. Was a juror really making friendly facial expressions at Trump allies throughout the trial? Did the jurors’ request on Wednesday afternoon to review certain excerpts of testimony from key prosecution witnesses portend doom for Trump? And did their request, a few minutes later, to hear the judge rehash his instructions give Trump new reason to hope?

Guesswork, armchair psychoanalysis and expositions on human nature ruled the day.

In some respects, this period of limbo between testimony and verdict is a feature of every criminal trial, particularly when a defendant’s liberty is at stake. In this case, far more hangs in the balance, as Trump pursues a second term in the White House and appears for now to have a slight polling edge on President Joe Biden.

Trump himself has remained agitated, and seemed particularly so as the case shifted out of the lawyers’ hands and into the jury’s.

“I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT THE CHARGES ARE IN THIS RIGGED CASE,” Trump blared on Truth Social one hour into deliberations. “I AM ENTITLED TO SPECIFICITY JUST LIKE ANYONE ELSE. THERE IS NO CRIME!”

Trump also seems to be grappling with the possibility of jail time that could result from a conviction. In comments to reporters as he left court Wednesday, Trump alluded to his former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg, who he said was “suffering greatly” in jail at Rikers Island, where he’s serving five months for perjuring himself during the Trump Organization’s civil business fraud trial last year.

Trump and his allies have also been lowering expectations, suggesting a guilty verdict is all but assured. Trump said earlier Wednesday that “Mother Teresa” couldn’t beat the case he’s facing. And others predicted the jury would race to deliver a conviction because of a “rigged” process.

The only insight at all into the jury’s thinking came in the form of two jury notes.

The first note provided tea leaves for jury watchers. The panel requested to review testimony from four moments in the trial when key witnesses described events central to the allegation that Trump conspired with his former fixer, Michael Cohen, and tabloid publisher David Pecker to bury negative stories during the 2016 campaign.

The testimony requested delves into the pivotal 2015 Trump Tower meeting, a 2016 phone call between Pecker and Trump and evidence about why Pecker backed out of a deal to turn over Karen McDougal’s story to Cohen. (McDougal, a former Playboy model, said she’d had an affair with Trump.) All of the testimony relates to the conspiracy prosecutors alleged is at the heart of the case.

In a second note, jurors made another request that served as a Rorschach test for court observers: Could Merchan please reread his 55-page jury instructions?

At the start of those instructions, Merchan emphasized that the case was now up to the jury. He told them not to inform him of the status of their deliberations or which way the jury or individual jurors are leaning.

“It is not my responsibility to judge the evidence here,” he told the panel. “It is yours. You are the judges of the facts, and you are responsible for deciding whether the defendant is guilty or not guilty.”