Author: PolitCens

U.S. lawmakers are getting back to work after a monthlong summer recess as the Senate returns this week and the House of Representatives comes back into session next week.

With narrow control of both chambers and some significant items already checked off President Joe Biden’s legislative agenda, Democrats are aiming to pass several key new pieces of legislation. But they have only a handful of weeks before Congress recesses again so that members can campaign ahead of the November 3 midterm elections.   

Government funding  

In what has now become almost a yearly routine, U.S. lawmakers will not reach an agreement on spending bills by the September 30 deadline when government funding runs out. Democrats and Republicans normally agree on a short-term continuing resolution, or CR, to keep the government operating. It remains to be seen, though, whether that CR will cover the rest of the calendar year or possibly even further out.   

Passage will also depend on whether the parties can agree on Biden’s request for $47 billion in additional funding, an amount that includes a new $13 billion tranche for U.S. military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine and $22.4 billion for continuing efforts to combat COVID-19.   

“Ukraine needs more help. We want to give it to them. And on monkeypox and COVID, we need to be prepared. We’ve always been prepared in this country. And it’s disgraceful that Republicans are playing political games with this when the health of the nation is at stake,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters Wednesday.   

Republicans are reluctant to approve Democrats’ new funding request, arguing the money should instead come out of unused COVID funds.   

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters, “The cleaner the CR, the better. Ukraine is obviously a priority for most of us on both sides of the aisle. We’ll see what they’re requesting and how much of it is actually designed to help Ukraine wage war.”   

Same-sex marriage  

The U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson decision earlier this summer, which overturned the nearly 50-year-old constitutional right to abortion guaranteed by Roe v. Wade, triggered a wave of legislation that would provide protection for other rights on the federal level.   

Democratic Senators Tammy Baldwin and Kyrsten Sinema are working to secure the Republican support needed to clear a 60-vote threshold to pass a bill protecting same-sex marriage. In June, the House passed similar legislation with the support of 47 Republicans.   

“A vote about marriage equality will happen on the Senate floor in the coming weeks, and I hope there will be 10 Republicans to support it,” Schumer told reporters Wednesday. 

“We prefer to do it as a separate bill,” Schumer said, leaving open the possibility it could be added to the CR, which would raise the stakes for Republicans by forcing them to shut down the government in order to block it.

January 6 investigation

The select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol is set to resume hearings this month. Originally scheduled to run for only seven hearings earlier this summer, lawmakers extended their public investigation into former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, culminating in the worst attack on the Capitol in two centuries.   

Republican Representative Liz Cheney – who lost her primary bid to seek re-election to her congressional seat in August – has already said Trump should face charges for his actions. The committee is expected to hear new evidence that has come to light because of its work earlier this summer.   

The Senate also could pass the Electoral College Reform Act clarifying the role of the vice president in certifying the results of a presidential election. The bipartisan legislation is aimed at preventing misuse of an 1887 law that came under scrutiny following the attack on the Capitol.   

Other agenda items   

Additionally, Democrats are expected to continue confirmation of Biden’s judicial nominees. And the so-called “Gang of Eight” top Democratic and Republican leaders from the Senate and the House could receive a classified briefing on Trump’s possession of classified documents at his residence in Mar-a-Lago.   

With Democrats gaining ground on Republicans in several key midterm races around the country, Schumer could decide to cancel the Senate’s two-week session in October in order to give members more time to campaign in their home states.
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The United States is at a dangerous junction in its battle to maintain democracy, President Joe Biden believes — and in a rousing speech from Philadelphia on Thursday night, he laid the blame at the feet of one man.

“There’s no question that the Republican Party today is dominated, driven and intimidated by Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans,” Biden said, referring to Trump’s 2016 campaign slogan, Make America Great Again. “And that is a threat to this country.”

Biden drew a dark picture of his opponents’ vision for America as he spoke in front of the hall where the nation’s founders wrote and debated both the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, nearly 250 years ago.

He spoke for 25 minutes, and in that time, said one word no fewer than 25 times: democracy.

He used the word as a cudgel against Trump-aligned Republicans who echo Trump’s claim that the 2020 election was stolen; who work to suppress voter turnout in key states; and who participated in the violent insurrection attempt at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

“History tells us that blind loyalty to a single leader and a willingness to engage in political violence is fatal to democracy,” he said “For a long time, we’ve told ourselves that American democracy is guaranteed. But it’s not. We have to defend it. Protect it. Stand up for it.”

In a refutation delivered ahead of the speech, House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy accused Biden of divisiveness and blamed Democrats for rising inflation, crime and government spending.

“In the past two years, Joe Biden has launched an assault on the soul of America, on its people, on its laws, on its most sacred values,” he said. “He has launched an assault on our democracy. His policies have severely wounded America’s soul, diminished America’s spirit and betrayed America’s trust.”

Biden’s condemnation earned him hecklers, who shouted obscenities in his direction as he spoke. Going momentarily off-script, he responded.

“Those folks over there, they’re entitled to be outrageous,” he said. “This is a democracy.”

But he also used the word to reflect what he believes is a better future, led by his party, whose recent legislative gains he touted as proof. Since taking office, Biden has shepherded through major legislation that his administration says will bring about economic recovery, massive infrastructure improvements, gun safety, affordable health care, clean energy and climate change reduction.

“Together, together, we can choose a different path,” he said. “We can choose a better path forward to the future. A future of possibility, a future to build a dream and hope – and we’re on that path moving ahead.”

This is Biden’s second visit to the Keystone State this week. Pennsylvania is a competitive state in what is shaping up as a battleground between Biden’s Democrats and Trump’s Republicans in midterm elections later this year.

Earlier in the day, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre stressed that this was not intended as a stump speech.

“This is so much broader, so much bigger than any one party, than any one person,” she said. “And it’s an optimistic speech, again, about where we are as a nation and where we can go. And it’s about the fundamental struggle around the globe between autocracy and democracy and how democracy is a critical foundation for this country to move forward.”

Analysts question that, as Biden’s recent legislative victories and priorities don’t overlap much with the themes of his speech.

“We’re beginning to see what issues that Democrats see as being advantageous: guns are one, democracy is another,” said William Howell, a professor of American politics at the University of Chicago. ”And it’s interesting, too, that he didn’t do much legislatively on either of those domains. And yet those are the ones he’s talking about, but not with an eye towards passing policy now but with an eye towards reshaping the composition of Congress.”

Historians who study presidential rhetoric say Biden’s tone has shifted noticeably as the November polls have gotten closer.

“I believe the sharper rhetoric from the president and other Democrats is working,” said Jeremi Suri, a history professor at the University of Texas at Austin. “There’s evidence that many independent voters – not Trump voters, many independent voters – particularly women, even in conservative states, like Texas and Kansas, are fed up with Republican obstructionism. And quite frankly, they’re fed up with the news of law-breaking by the former president. The more Trump is in the news, the better the Democrats look.”

After the speech, Suri noted that Biden’s words may now put his opponents on a back foot.

“Biden’s speech forces Republicans like [Senate Minority Leader Mitch] McConnell and McCarthy to either defend or renounce MAGA Republicans — no way to avoid the issue when commenting on this speech,” he said.

But on this night in Philadelphia — as the president urged Americans to “vote, vote, vote” — he closed with a picture of the country he sees.

“We are the United States of America, the United States of America,” he said, stressing the word “united.” “And may God protect our nation. And may God protect all those who stand watch over our democracy. God bless you all. Democracy. Thank you.”
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US President Joe Biden used the word “democracy” dozens of times in an impassioned speech on what he sees as the dangerous junction the US faces because of Trump-backed Republicans who he says pose a threat to American democracy. And Biden made clear who he sees as responsible. VOA’s Anita Powell reports from Washington.
Video Editor: Barry Unger
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A federal judge on Thursday deferred a ruling on former President Donald Trump’s request for an independent review of records seized from his Florida home by the FBI during a search last month.   

Trump’s lawyers last week asked U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon of the Southern District of Florida to appoint a special master to determine if the documents contain any privileged material that should be returned to the former president.    

The Justice Department opposed the request, saying it has conducted its own review of the materials and that appointing a special master would impede its investigation into Trump’s handling of classified records. A special master is an independent third party who is appointed by a court in sensitive cases to review materials potentially covered by attorney-client or other privilege to ensure investigators do not improperly view them. 

Cannon indicated last weekend that she was inclined to grant Trump’s request, but after hearing arguments by Trump lawyers and government prosecutors, she said she would issue a ruling “in due course.”  

At issue is the status of more than 100 classified documents found during the FBI’s search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate as part of a federal investigation into how government documents ended up there.   

Under the Presidential Records Act, Trump was required to hand over his White House records to the National Archives at the end of his term in office in January 2021.   

The FBI is investigating potential crimes in connection with Trump’s retention of the documents, including violations of a part of the Espionage Act that makes it a crime to gather, transmit or lose national defense information.  

The investigation began after Trump’s representatives sent 15 boxes of materials to the National Archives in January 2022, almost a year after he left office, and the government records agency alerted the Justice Department that they had identified more than 100 classified documents.  

Seeking to prevent the FBI from examining the trove of documents found at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s lawyers last week asked Cannon to appoint a special master, claiming the documents may be subject to attorney-client privilege or executive privilege. 

The Justice Department opposed the request in a 36-page court filing on Tuesday, saying its privilege review team had identified a small number of documents subject to that attorney-client privilege.  

On Thursday, DOJ lawyers said in court that the team had found 64 sets of potentially privileged materials that amounted to more than 500 pages.  

The Justice Department has said the records kept at Mar-a-Lago included documents classified as top secret and special access program.  

The U.S. intelligence community is conducting a damage assessment of Trump’s retention of the documents, and the Justice Department says appointing a special master would “significantly harm important governmental interests, including national security interests.”  

Rejecting Trump’s claim of executive privilege over the documents, the Justice Department said the documents belong to the government, and as a former president, he has no right to keep them. 

Any independent review of the documents, the Justice Department said, should be limited to attorney-client privilege and completed by September 30.   

In its Tuesday filing, the Justice Department said that it obtained a search warrant for Trump’s residence after learning that government records “were likely concealed and removed” from a storage area at Mar-a-Lago and that “efforts were likely taken to obstruct the government’s investigation.”  

Trump’s legal team pushed back on Wednesday.   

Calling the search “unprecedented, unnecessary and legally unsupported,” the Trump lawyers accused the Justice Department of mounting “an all-encompassing challenge to any judicial consideration, presently or in the future, of any aspect of its unprecedented behavior in this investigation.”  

The government, they said, “has filed an extraordinary document with this Court, suggesting that the DOJ, and the DOJ alone, should be entrusted with the responsibility of evaluating its unjustified pursuit of criminalizing a former President’s possession of personal and Presidential records in a secure setting.”  

What the FBI found during the search, they wrote, “was to be fully anticipated.”   

“Simply put, the notion that Presidential records would contain sensitive information should have never been cause for alarm,” the Trump legal filing said. 

In the weeks since the August 8 search of his residence, Trump has taken to his social media platform, Truth Social, to claim that the action was politically motivated. 

 
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A House committee seeking financial records from former President Donald Trump has reached an agreement that ends litigation on the matter and requires an accounting firm to turn over some of the material, the panel’s leader announced Thursday. 

The long-running case began in April 2019, when the House Committee on Oversight and Reform subpoenaed a wealth of records from Trump’s then-accounting firm, Mazars USA. The committee cited testimony from Trump’s former attorney, Michael Cohen, that it said had raised questions about the president’s representation of his financial affairs when it came to seeking loans and paying taxes. 

Under the agreement, Trump has agreed to end his legal challenges to the subpoena and Mazars USA has agreed to produce responsive documents to the committee as expeditiously as possible, said Representative Carolyn Maloney, the New York Democrat who heads the committee. 

“After numerous court victories, I am pleased that my committee has now reached an agreement to obtain key financial documents that former President Trump fought for years to hide from Congress,” Maloney said. 

Several investigations

Trump is facing investigations on several fronts, including the storage of top-secret government information discovered at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home and whether the former president’s team criminally obstructed the inquiry. In Georgia, prosecutors are investigating whether he and allies illegally tried to interfere in the 2020 presidential election. Meanwhile, congressional committees are following through on investigations that began when he was president. 

The settlement over Mazars followed a July decision by a federal appeals court in Washington that narrowed what records Congress is entitled to obtain. The court said the committee should be given records pertinent to financial ties between foreign countries and Trump or any of his businesses for 2017-18. 

The appeals court also ordered Mazars to turn over documents between November 2016 and 2018 relating to the Trump company that held the lease granted by the federal government for the former Trump International Hotel, located between the White House and the Capitol. 

In the decision, the court said Trump’s financial records would “advance the committee’s consideration of ethics reform legislation across all three of its investigative tracks,” including on presidential ethics and conflicts of interest, presidential financial disclosures, and presidential adherence to constitutional safeguards against foreign interference and undue influence. 

The House investigation dates to February 2019, when Trump’s former personal attorney, Cohen, testified to the committee that Trump had a history of misrepresenting the value of assets to gain favorable loan terms and tax benefits. 

Cohen served time in federal prison after pleading guilty in 2018 of tax crimes, lying to Congress and campaign finance violations, some of which involved his role in orchestrating payments to two women to keep them from talking about alleged affairs with Trump. 

But his testimony prompted the committee to seek key financial documents from Mazars, and in April 2019, the committee issued its subpoena to Mazars seeking four targeted categories of documents. 

The following month, Trump sued to prevent Mazars from complying with the subpoena. The case has been winding its way through the court system since. 

Mazars cuts ties

Mazars earlier this year said it had cut ties with Trump and warned that financial statements the firm had prepared for Trump “should no longer be relied upon” by anyone doing business with him. 

Another House panel, the Ways and Means Committee, has been seeking Trump’s tax returns and waging its own litigation. In that case, a three-judge appellate court panel agreed last month with a lower court’s decision that the Treasury Department should provide the tax returns to the committee. 

The Justice Department, under the Trump administration, had defended a decision by then-Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to withhold the tax returns from Congress. Mnuchin argued that he could withhold the documents because he concluded they were being sought by Democrats for partisan reasons. A lawsuit ensued. 

After Joe Biden took office as president, the committee renewed the request, seeking Trump’s tax returns and additional information from 2015 to 2020. The White House took the position that the request was a valid one and that the Treasury Department had no choice but to comply. Trump then attempted to halt the handover in court.
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Democrat Mary Peltola won the special election for Alaska’s only U.S. House seat on Wednesday, besting a field that included Republican Sarah Palin, who was seeking a political comeback in the state where she was once governor.

Peltola, who is Yup’ik and turned 49 on Wednesday, will become the first Alaska Native to serve in the House and the first woman to hold the seat. She will serve the remaining months of the late Republican U.S. Rep. Don Young’s term. Young held the seat for 49 years before his death in March.

Peltola’s victory, coming in Alaska’s first statewide ranked choice voting election, is a boon for Democrats, particularly coming off better-than-expected performances in special elections around the country this year following the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade. She will be the first Democrat to hold the seat since the late U.S. Rep. Nick Begich, who was seeking reelection in 1972 when his plane disappeared. Begich was later declared dead and Young in 1973 was elected to the seat.

Peltola ran as a coalition builder while her two Republican opponents — Palin and Begich’s grandson, also named Nick Begich — at times went after each other. Palin also railed against the ranked voting system, which was instituted by Alaska voters.

The results came 15 days after the Aug. 16 election, in line with the deadline for state elections officials to receive absentee ballots mailed from outside the U.S. Ranked choice tabulations took place Wednesday after no candidate won more than 50% of the first-choice votes. Peltola was in the lead heading into the tabulation rounds.

Wednesday’s results were a disappointment for Palin, who was looking to make a political comeback 14 years after she was vaulted onto the national stage when John McCain selected her to be his running mate in the 2008 presidential election. In her run for the House seat, she had widespread name recognition and won the endorsement of former President Donald Trump.

But critics questioned her commitment to Alaska, citing her decision to resign as governor in July 2009, partway through her term. Palin went on to become a conservative commentator on TV and appeared in reality television programs, among other pursuits.

Palin’s defeat in the special election doesn’t necessarily mean she has lost her shot for the U.S. House seat. Along with Peltola and Begich, she is among the candidates vying for a full two-year term that will be decided in the November general election.

Palin has insisted her commitment to Alaska never wavered and said ahead of the special election that she had “signed up for the long haul.”

Peltola, a former state lawmaker who most recently worked for a commission whose goal is to rebuild salmon resources on the Kuskokwim River, cast herself as a regular Alaskan. “I’m not a millionaire. I’m not an international celebrity,” she said.

Peltola has said she was hopeful that the new system would allow more moderate candidates to be elected.

During the campaign, she emphasized her support of abortion rights and said she wanted to elevate issues of ocean productivity and food security. Peltola said she got a boost after the June special primary when she won endorsements from Democrats and independents who had been in the race. She said she believed her positive messaging also resonated with voters.

Alaska voters in 2020 approved an elections process that replaced party primaries with open primaries. Under the new system, ranked voting is used in general elections.

Under ranked voting, ballots are counted in rounds. A candidate can win outright with more than 50% of the vote in the first round. If no one hits that threshold, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated. Voters who chose that candidate as their top pick have their votes count for their next choice. Rounds continue until two candidates remain, and whoever has the most votes wins.
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When Democrats took over the presidency and scored razor-thin majorities in both houses of Congress in 2021, the general expectation was that their hold on Washington’s levers of power came with an expiration date.

Conventional wisdom and U.S. election history suggested that in the 2022 midterm elections, Republicans were likely to take over the House, the Senate, or both. 

Now, though, it’s beginning to look like President Joe Biden and his fellow Democrats may have at least a chance to buck history and extend their control of the federal government for another two years.

To be clear, the odds are still in favor of Republicans taking over at least part of the federal legislative apparatus after the elections in November. Historically, the party of the sitting president tends to lose seats in Congress during midterms. The net loss of even one seat in the 50-50 Senate would flip it to Republican control, and in the House, the Democrats’ current nine-vote majority could easily disappear.

On top of that, the country is still adjusting to high price inflation, which has driven the cost of living up for most Americans. And Biden’s low job approval ratings in public opinion polls remain a drag on his party, though the approval numbers have ticked up in recent weeks. 

Tempering expectations 

However, a number of factors — some completely out of the Democrats’ control — have combined to boost the party’s public support, raise Biden’s abysmal poll numbers and create a sense of momentum for the party that was absent during much of the past year. Among them are a controversial Supreme Court ruling on abortion rights, a string of legislative and policy accomplishments, unexpectedly poor showings by some key Republican nominees and a decline in gasoline prices from high levels earlier in the year.

Democrats have even notched successes in special elections in recent months, including some in districts where Republicans were expected to perform well, leading experts to wonder if those elections presage a weaker-than-expected performance by Republican candidates in November.

“That sound you hear is the crash of expectations of big GOP [Republican] gains in the House this fall,” the Cook Political Report wrote last week, after a Democratic candidate unexpectedly won a House race in New York’s 19th Congressional District.

‘A decent summer for Democrats’ 

“It’s been a decent summer for the Democrats,” Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, told VOA. “It looks a little bit better for them than it did.”

“In the House, I still think the Republicans are in good shape,” he said. “In the Senate, a couple of months ago, I thought it was really close, but that it would break toward the Republicans. I’m less sure of that now. The Senate is more of a clear toss up.”

In a recent Fox News interview, Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel downplayed talk of a “red wave” that would sweep Republicans into power in November. 

“I’ve been saying forever that I hate the phrase ‘red wave,’” she said. “We have to earn every single seat in the House and the Senate to take it back.”

Roe v. Wade

One of the most significant factors at play in the midterm elections has nothing to do with the president or Congress. The decision by the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade, the nearly 50-year-old ruling protecting a woman’s right to an abortion, appears to have energized Democrat-leaning voters and could motivate other voters to support Democrats over Republicans in upcoming elections.

The decision was highly controversial — a large majority of Americans support some form of abortion rights — and was handed down by a court that is currently dominated by six conservative justices, all of whom were appointed by Republican presidents. In the aftermath of the rulings, multiple states across the country have instituted total and near-total bans on the procedure, with others expected to take similar action in the future.

William A. Galston, a senior fellow in the Brookings Institution’s Governance Studies program, told VOA that of all the factors affecting November election expectations right now, “The most important was the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, and the public’s reaction to that decision. It had the effect of mobilizing a lot of Democrats and independents and even Republicans who were not pleased with the decision.” 

He added, “All of the survey evidence that I’ve examined suggests that it’s an issue working in favor of the Democrats and against the Republicans in this cycle.”

The Democratic Party platform — an expansive policy document issued every four years — has long supported abortion rights. While some elected Republicans back a woman’s right to abortion, the Republican Party’s platform has consistently opposed abortion.

Legislative and policy victories 

Another factor working in Democrats’ favor is a string of legislative victories notched this summer after months of stalemate in Congress. In recent months, Biden has signed a bipartisan gun control measure; a bipartisan bill expanding federal investment in semiconductors and other technology; and in August, a law making the largest federal commitment to fighting climate change in history.

Also in August, the president announced a major policy decision that forgave student loan debt owed by millions of Americans, worth up to $20,000 per borrower.

Neither the laws he signed nor the student debt relief he initiated went as far as many in his party wanted, but all of them constituted victories in policy areas very important to large swaths of the Democratic Party. 

Inexperienced nominees 

Particularly in the battle for control of the Senate, Republicans may have hurt their own cause by nominating candidates seen by many as radical, extremely inexperienced or both. This potential problem is especially obvious in a number of states where races were expected to be highly competitive.

In Pennsylvania, for example, Republicans nominated Mehmet Oz, a physician and television personality with no political experience to run against John Fetterman, the state’s popular lieutenant governor. Oz has never held elected office, and only moved to the state of Pennsylvania in late 2020, seemingly to make his Senate run possible.

In Ohio, Republicans nominated J.D. Vance, a venture capitalist and author, to run against Representative Tim Ryan. Among other controversial positions, Vance has advised former President Donald Trump that if he returns to the White House he should “Fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, [and] replace them with our people.” Acknowledging that such an action would be illegal, Vance called on Trump to do it anyway.

In Arizona, the Republican nominee Blake Masters is facing off against incumbent Senator Mark Kelly. Masters has a history of making highly controversial statements. He has endorsed the falsehood that Trump actually won the 2020 election, and he has appeared to endorse the “Great Replacement” theory, which holds that there is a conspiracy in place to dilute the voting power of white Americans through immigration.

All three Republican candidates have performed poorly and trail in polls. 

Candidate quality 

Galston said that nominating weak candidates in Senate races is much more dangerous than in House contests, where gerrymandering has made the overwhelming majority of seats safe for one party or the other, almost regardless of the nominee.

“Candidate quality matters a lot more in the Senate than it does in the House,” Galston said. “In the House, individuals are less well known, and it’s much more of a generic ballot, where if you’re Republican, the chances are very, very strong that you’ll vote for the Republican in the House race.” 

However, he added, “Senators are a lot more visible. They’re better known. And, especially if candidates are trying to win a Senate seat for the first time, how they present themselves to the public makes a big difference.”
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U.S. President Joe Biden visited the swing state of Pennsylvania on Tuesday to defend his record on gun safety and unveil his $37 billion “Safer America” crime prevention plan that the White House said will “save lives and make communities safer.”

“When it comes to public safety in the United States, the answer is not defund the police. It’s to fund the police,” Biden said, distancing himself from calls by some members of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party to take away police departments’ funding.

Biden called out Republicans for opposing his proposal to restore a ban on assault-style weapons, including firearms similar to the AR-15 that have been used in recent mass shootings.

“It’s time to hold every elected official’s feet to the fire and ask them, are they for banning assault weapons, yes or no?” he said. “If the answer is no, vote against them.”

Biden is traveling to rally support for Democrats ahead of the November 8 elections in which Republicans hope to retake control of Congress, and tout recent legislative victories, including the narrow gun safety legislation passed in a rare bipartisan move earlier this year after mass shootings in Buffalo, New York and in Uvalde, Texas.

According to a recent Pew Research survey, 63% of Americans say they would like to see Congress pass another round of legislation to address gun violence.

However, Republicans accuse the president of pushing politically divisive measures that would damage Americans’ right to bear arms — protected under the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution — without making the nation safer. Polls show that gun ownership is higher among Republicans than Democrats in the U.S.

Through his plan, Biden wants Congress to spend $13 billion to help communities hire and train 100,000 police officers over five years. Another $3 billion would go to clearing court backlogs and resolving cases involving murders and guns, and $5 billion more would support programs that could help stop violence before it occurs.

In addition, he wants $15 billion to provide grants to initiatives aimed at preventing violent crime or creating public health responses to nonviolent incidents.

In the aftermath of mass killings across the country, Biden and Democrats see an opportunity to claim the mantle of being a force for order, stability and public safety, said William Howell, the Sydney Stein Professor in American Politics at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy.

“I don’t think that there’s an opportunity here for them to flip the script to actually gain an advantage,” Howell told VOA. “But those have been long-standing domains in which Republicans have owned the issue, and this is an effort on the part of Biden to push back.”

Biden has urged Congress to do more on gun safety, including ban high-capacity ammunition magazines, enforce universal background checks for all gun sales and eliminate gun manufacturers’ immunity from lawsuits.

Escalation of campaign rhetoric

In a significant escalation of campaign rhetoric ahead of the midterm elections, Biden attacked Republicans for their defense of the perpetrators of the January 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol and their response to the FBI search of former President Donald Trump’s home.

“Let me say this to my MAGA Republican friends in Congress,” Biden said, referring to Trump’s Make America Great Again campaign slogan. “Don’t tell me you support law enforcement if you won’t condemn what happened on the 6th. You can’t be pro law enforcement and pro insurrection. You can’t be a party of law and order and call the people who attacked the police on January 6 patriots,” he said.

Biden called out Republican verbal attacks on FBI agents and their families following the search on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, earlier this month, part of an investigation into the handling of presidential documents, including classified material.

“It’s sickening to see the new attacks on the FBI, threatening life of law enforcement agents and their families for simply carrying out the law and doing their job,” Biden said.

It’s the first time the president has waded into the politically sensitive subject of the Mar-a-Lago search amid Republican accusations that he is politicizing the investigation.

Howell said Biden is trying to claim the mantle of the great defender of democracy, to stand up for the rule of law, protect norms of governance and abide by restrictions on executive power.

However, it could be seen as an effort for a political vendetta against Trump, who during his 2016 presidential campaign led crowds to chant “lock her up” against then-Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

It’s a tricky space to navigate, Howell said. “To at once stand up for the rule of law but then not to be seen as using the power of government, using the power of the Justice Department, in order to prosecute enemies.”

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Biden will be back in Pennsylvania on Thursday to deliver a prime-time speech on “the continued battle for the soul of the nation” at Philadelphia’s Independence Hall, where he will speak about the nation’s core values and standing in the world.

“He will talk about the progress we have made as a nation to protect our democracy,” she told reporters Tuesday. “How our rights and freedoms are still under attack and how we will make clear who is fighting for those rights, fighting for those freedoms and fighting for our democracy.”
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U.S. President Joe Biden heads to the city of Wilkes-Barre in the swing state of Pennsylvania on Tuesday to push his “Safer America” crime prevention plan and defend his record on gun safety. 

The White House said Biden will call out Republicans for opposing his proposal to restore a ban on assault-style weapons, including firearms similar to the AR-15 that have been used in recent mass shootings. 

“A majority of Americans support this. … The NRA [National Rifle Association] opposes it,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Monday. “So, we’re going to hear from the president about the importance of making sure we protect our communities.” 

After mass shootings in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas, Democrats and Republicans worked together in a rare bipartisan move to pass narrow gun safety legislation earlier this year. According to a recent Pew Research poll, 63% of Americans say they would like to see Congress pass another round of legislation to address gun violence. 

Biden also wants Congress to do more, including ban high-capacity ammunition magazines, enforce universal background checks for all gun sales and eliminate gun manufacturers’ immunity from lawsuits.  

Republicans accuse the president of pushing politically divisive measures that would damage Americans’ right to bear arms — protected under the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution — without making the nation safer. Polls show that gun ownership is higher among Republicans than Democrats in the U.S.  

Biden has laid out a $37 billion plan for addressing crime and boosting law enforcement resources. He wants Congress to spend $13 billion to help communities hire and train 100,000 police officers over five years. Another $3 billion would go to clearing court backlogs and resolving cases involving murders and guns, and $5 billion more would support programs that could help stop violence before it occurs. 

In addition, Biden is looking for $15 billion to provide grants to initiatives for preventing violent crime or creating public health responses to nonviolent incidents. 

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press.

 
…

A redacted version of the affidavit used to obtain a search warrant for the Florida residence and club of former President Donald Trump reveals that the Justice Department was concerned that human intelligence sources could be put in danger. VOA Senior Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine has more.
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The general public might not know a lot about grand juries, but the closed-door panels figure prominently in the legal aftermath of the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol and efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.

A grand jury subpoenaed the National Archives for all materials the agency gave to the House Select Committee looking into the events leading up to January 6. Justice Department prosecutors are working with a grand jury that is reportedly looking into former President Donald Trump’s role in efforts to reverse the election outcome. A grand jury in Fulton County, Georgia, subpoenaed members of Trump’s legal team during its probe into possible illegal interference in Georgia’s 2020 elections.

Mystery often surrounds grand juries because their work is, by law, conducted in secrecy.

“Washington, D.C., has been investigating the individuals who were responsible for the [January 6] break-in, but how much farther that goes and the extent to which they’re investigating Donald Trump or Donald Trump’s confidants, we only know of that, if at all, because either people told the press or they brought litigation resisting subpoenas,” says Bruce Green, a former federal prosecutor who is currently a professor at the Fordham University School of Law. “And even then, if one wanted to, you could file the litigation as a John Doe [unnamed person] if you want to preserve confidentiality.”

‘indict a ham sandwich’

Grand juries play a central role in the American justice system. They are tasked with listening to evidence presented by prosecutors and witnesses and then deciding, by a secret vote, whether there’s enough evidence to charge a person with a felony, which is any criminal offense punishable by at least one year in prison.

Grand juries are required in federal felony prosecutions, and many U.S. states have adopted a similar system. However, in some states, prosecutors can also present their evidence to a judge, who then decides whether someone can be charged with a crime.

Federal grand juries are made up of 16 to 23 members. At least 12 jurors must agree before an indictment — a formal charge — can be brought. Grand jurors are selected from the same pool of ordinary citizens who serve as trial jurors. They are identified from public records such as driver’s licenses and voting registries. Grand jurors serve from 18 to 36 months, usually meeting a few times a month, and have the power to question witnesses and issue subpoenas.

“The grand jury system is important in terms of deciding who’s going to face criminal charges, but it’s also important for involving citizens in the criminal justice system,” says Peter Joy, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis. “The origins of the grand jury system are based on, in a sense, a certain degree of trying to keep the government honest.”

Grand juries were originally conceived as a safeguard against government power, which is why the Founding Fathers wrote them into the U.S. Constitution. But former federal prosecutor Green isn’t convinced the so-called “people’s panel” fulfills that function in a meaningful way.

“If the original idea of the Founding Fathers was, as I believe it was, to be a restraint on government power … it’s probably not a very effective tool to protect people from prosecution overreaching,” Green says. “And there’s a pretty significant risk that, if the prosecutor gets it in their head that somebody’s guilty, they can achieve an indictment whether the person is guilty or not.”

Grand juries rarely decline to indict. In 2010, government statistics showed that federal grand juries brought charges more than 99% of the time. In 1985, a New York judge famously said that prosecutors have so much influence over grand juries that they could convince jurors to “indict a ham sandwich.”

High stakes

While the grand jury might be a rubber stamp in most cases, the panel is more likely to play a more meaningful role in cases that draw widespread public attention, Joy says.

“I think it’s very likely that prosecutors in presenting the evidence to the grand jury most likely tried to present more evidence than they might in a typical type of case and presented in a way that would be balanced,” he says.

Some states require prosecutors to show evidence that the accused might be innocent. However, federal prosecutors are not required to do so.

“The higher the profile the accused has, the greater the likelihood is that the prosecutor really wants to feel that he or she has a solid case, and they’re going to want to test out the evidence in a way that would give them increasing confidence in the case that they have,” Joy says.

“Because the stakes are high, a smart prosecutor — if there is some contrary evidence that might put into question guilt or innocence — they’re likely to use the grand jury as a vetting process for that.”

Green expects several grand juries to consider potential charges against people accused of breaking into the Capitol Building on Jan. 6, 2021. The high volume of cases could be too much for one grand jury to consider. However, that might not hold true in related cases higher up the food chain.

“If you’re looking at a number of people in the Trump orbit who may have been working together before January 6 to plan the break-in, then all the evidence is going to be related, and they’re all going to be in a relationship, and you’re going to want to have one grand jury look at everything because you want them to see all the evidence,” Green says.
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A federal judge directed the U.S. Justice Department late Thursday to unseal its redacted version of an affidavit it used to obtain a recent search warrant for former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.

U.S. magistrate judge Bruce Reinhart issued the order hours after the Justice Department proposed redactions to the document that prosecutors had said would be needed to guard sensitive details of their investigation into Trump’s handling of classified documents.

The affidavit is being sought by several U.S. news organizations and other groups amid intense public interest in the FBI’s unprecedented August 8 search of a former American president’s home.

During the search, FBI agents removed 11 sets of classified documents labeled confidential, secret or top secret, according to a property receipt given to Trump’s lawyer.

The search warrant was unsealed four days later, showing that the former president was under investigation for potential violations of the Espionage Act and other offenses.

Trump and his allies have denounced the action, accusing the Biden administration of “weaponizing” law enforcement against him. He has said he wants the affidavit unsealed.

Attorney General Merrick Garland, who authorized the Justice Department to seek the search warrant, has dismissed the accusation.

In his order, Reinhart wrote that he had reviewed the redacted affidavit as well as an accompanying legal memo, and found that “the Government has met its burden of showing a compelling reason/good cause to seal portions of the Affidavit because disclosure would reveal (1) the identities of witnesses, law enforcement agents, and uncharged parties, (2) the investigation’s strategy, direction, scope, sources, and methods, and (3) grand jury information protected by Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure.”

The Justice Department had opposed making the document public, saying it contains critical details about the ongoing investigations, including information about the government’s investigative techniques and witnesses interviewed by the FBI.

Reinhart gave the Justice Department until noon Friday to submit “a version of the affidavit containing the redactions” it proposed earlier on Thursday.

Just how much of the document will be unsealed and what details about the investigation it will reveal remains to be seen.

In opposing the unsealing of the affidavit, Justice Department prosecutors last week argued in court that they expected their redactions to the document to be so extensive as to render the document meaningless.

Citing the “historical significance” of the Mar-a-Lago search, media outlets pressing for the unsealing of the affidavit filed a new motion on Thursday asking that portions of the Justice Department’s memo justifying the redactions be unsealed.

“Like the search warrant affidavit itself, the Brief is a judicial record to which a presumption of public access applies,” they wrote.

The FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago came seven months after Trump turned over to the National Archives 15 boxes of government records that he’d taken to Mar-a-Lago after leaving the White House in January 2021.

Under the Presidential Records Act, all presidential records are the property of the U.S. government and must be turned over to the National Archives by outgoing presidents.

In a May 10 letter to a Trump lawyer, acting U.S. archivist Debra Wall wrote that the boxes included more than 100 classified documents consisting of more than 700 pages. The National Archives released the letter this week.

The FBI investigation of Trump’s handling of classified records represents the latest legal headache for him as he mulls another presidential run in 2024.

In the 21 months since he lost his re-election bid in November 2020, Trump has been under investigation by congressional investigators and prosecutors for his efforts to overturn the results of the vote.
…

U.S. President Joe Biden called on Democrats Thursday “to vote to literally save democracy once again” — and compared Republican ideology to “semi-fascism” — as he led a kickoff rally and a fundraiser in the state of Maryland 75 days out from the midterm elections.

Addressing an overflow crowd of thousands at Richard Montgomery High School in Rockville, Biden said: “Your right to choose is on the ballot this year. The Social Security you paid for from the time you had a job is on the ballot. The safety of your kids from gun violence is on the ballot, and it’s not hyperbole, the very survival of our planet is on the ballot.”

“You have to choose,” Biden added. “Will we be a country that moves forward or a country that moves backward?”

The events, in the safely Democratic Washington suburbs, were meant to ease Biden into what White House aides say will be an aggressive season of championing his policy victories and aiding his party’s candidates. He is aiming to turn months of accomplishments into political energy as Democrats have seen their hopes rebound amid the legacy-defining burst of action by Biden and Congress.

From bipartisan action on gun control, infrastructure and domestic technology manufacturing to Democrats-only efforts to tackle climate change and health care costs, Biden highlighted the achievements of the party’s unified but razor-thin control of Washington. And he tried to sharpen the contrast with Republicans, who once seemed poised for sizable victories in November.

Just months ago, as inflation soared, Biden’s poll numbers soured and his agenda stalled, Democrats braced for significant losses. But the intense voter reaction to the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade and a productive summer on issues of core concern to Democrats have the party feeling like it is finally on the offensive heading into the Nov. 8 vote, even as the president remains unpopular.

Ahead of the rally, Biden raised about $1 million at an event with about 100 donors for the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Grassroots Victory Fund in the backyard of a lavish Bethesda home.

After his speech at the rally, Biden lingered with the largely mask-free crowd for nearly 30 minutes, diving back into the style of campaigning that had been disrupted for Democrats for more than two years by the COVID-19 pandemic. The president, who was identified as a close contact of first lady Jill Biden on Wednesday when she was diagnosed with a “rebound” case of the virus, did not appear to wear a face covering as he posed for selfies and hugged supporters.

Biden’s Thursday events come a day after the president moved to fulfill a long-delayed campaign pledge to forgive federal student loans for lower- and middle-income borrowers — a move that Democrats believe will animate younger and Black and Latino voters.

Republicans, though, saw their own political advantage in the move, casting it as an unfair giveaway to would-be Democratic voters.

“President Biden’s inflation is crushing working families, and his answer is to give away even more government money to elites with higher salaries,” said Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell. “Democrats are literally using working Americans’ money to try to buy themselves some enthusiasm from their political base.”

Biden on Thursday expanded on his effort to paint Republicans as the “ultra-MAGA” party — a reference to former President Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” campaign slogan — opposing his agenda and embracing conservative ideological proposals as well as Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election.

“What we’re seeing now is either the beginning or the death knell of an extreme MAGA philosophy,” Biden told donors at the fundraiser. “It’s not just Trump, it’s the entire philosophy that underpins the — I’m going to say something, it’s like semi-fascism.”

“I respect conservative Republicans,” Biden said later. “I don’t respect these MAGA Republicans.”

The Republican National Committee called Biden’s comments “despicable.”

“Biden forced Americans out of their jobs, transferred money from working families to Harvard lawyers, and sent our country into a recession while families can’t afford gas and groceries,” said spokesperson Nathan Brand. “Democrats don’t care about suffering Americans — they never did.”

Since the June Supreme Court ruling removing women’s constitutional protections for abortion, Democrats have seen a boost in donations, polling and performance in special elections for open congressional seats. The latest came Tuesday in a Hudson Valley swing district that, in a Republican wave year, should have been an easy GOP win.

Instead, Democrat Pat Ryan, who campaigned on a platform of standing up for abortion rights, defeated Republican Marc Molinaro.

“MAGA Republicans don’t have a clue about the power of women,” Biden said, noting the resonance of the abortion issue with women voters as some in the GOP push a national ban on the procedure. “Let me tell you something: They are about to find out.”

The shift is giving Democrats a new sense that a Republican sweep of the House is no longer such a sure bet, particularly battle-tested incumbents polling better than Biden work their districts.

Meanwhile, Democrats have benefited from Republican candidates who won primaries but are struggling in the general campaign. Trump-backed Senate candidates have complicated the GOP’s chances in battleground states like Pennsylvania, Georgia and Arizona, while several Trump-aligned candidates in House races were not always the party’s first choice.

Trump’s grip on the GOP remains strong and has perhaps even become tighter in the aftermath of the FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago home.

JB Poersch, the president of Senate Majority Project, an outside group that is working to elect Democrats to the Senate, said the Republican candidates are “getting caught up in the Trump tornado once again — that is exactly what voters of both parties don’t want.”

Biden’s political event, sponsored by the Democratic National Committee, comes as the president and members of his Cabinet are set to embark on what the White House has billed as the “Building a Better America Tour” to promote “the benefits of the President’s accomplishments and the Inflation Reduction Act to the American people and highlight the contrast with Congressional Republicans’ vision.”

Meanwhile, the White House has benefited from a steady decline in gasoline prices, which, while still elevated, have dropped daily since mid-June.

“Our critics say inflation,” Biden said, dismissing GOP attacks that his policies resulted in inflation being at a 40-year high. “You mean the global inflation caused by the worldwide pandemic and Putin’s war in Ukraine?”

In Maryland, Biden was joined by gubernatorial candidate Wes Moore and a host of other officials on the ballot. Moore, introducing Biden, said his Trump-backed rival “Dan Cox is not an opponent. He’s a threat.”

Months ago, Democratic lawmakers facing tough reelection fights sought to make themselves scarce when Biden came to town, though White House aides said Biden could still be an asset by elevating issues that resonate with voters and sharpening the distinction with Republicans.

Now, allies see the fortunes beginning to change and the president as more of a direct asset to campaigns.

“Joe Biden is not the ballot technically,” said House Majority Leader Rep. Steny Hoyer. “But Joe Biden is on the ballot, and Joe Biden needs your support.”
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The U.S. Justice Department on Thursday proposed redactions to an affidavit that FBI agents used to obtain a search warrant for former President Donald Trump’s Florida estate as part of an investigation into Trump’s handling of classified government documents.

The sealed affidavit – essentially the legal justification for conducting the controversial and unprecedented search of the former president’s property – is being sought by a number of U.S. news organizations and other groups.

But federal prosecutors have opposed making the document public, saying it contains critical details about the ongoing investigation, including information about the government’s investigative techniques and witnesses interviewed by the FBI.

Justice Department spokesman Anthony Coley said the DOJ’s submission was made under seal in response to an August 22 court order directing prosecutors to propose redactions to the affidavit.

“The Justice Department respectfully declines further comment as the Court considers the matter,” Coley said in a brief statement.

It remains unclear whether Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart, who issued the court order, will ultimately decide in favor of releasing the document.

That is because prosecutors have argued in court that the information in the affidavit is so sensitive that blacking it out will render the document meaningless.

Reinhart has said that “the Government has not met its burden of showing that the entire affidavit should remain sealed.”  But he’s held out the possibility that he may accept the prosecutors’ argument.

“I cannot say at this point that partial redactions will be so extensive that they will result in a meaningless disclosure, but I may ultimately reach that conclusion after hearing further from the Government,” Reinhart wrote in his Monday court order.

The August 8 search of Mar-A-Lago set off a political firestorm, prompting Trump and his allies to accuse the Biden administration of “weaponizing” the Justice Department and the FBI.

Attorney General Merrick Garland, who authorized the Justice Department to seek a search warrant for Mar-A-Lago, has dismissed the accusation.

During the search, FBI agents removed 11 sets of classified documents labeled confidential, secret or top secret, according to a property receipt given to Trump’s lawyer.

The content of the documents remains secret.  But the information was deemed sensitive enough that Garland personally intervened in the case.

The search came months after Trump turned over to the National Archives 15 boxes of government records that he’d taken to Mar-A-Lago after leaving the White House in January 2021.

Under the Presidential Records Act, all presidential records are the property of the U.S. government and must be turned over to the National Archives by outgoing presidents.

In a May 10 letter to a Trump lawyer, Debra Wall, acting archivist of the United States, wrote that the boxes included more than 100 classified documents consisting of more than 700 pages. The National Archives released the letter this week.

The FBI investigation of Trump’s handling of classified records represents the latest legal headache for the former president as he mulls another run at the White House in 2024.

In the 21 months since he lost his re-election bid in November 2020, Trump has been probed by congressional investigators and prosecutors in connection with his efforts to reverse the results of the vote.
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A federal judge on Wednesday blocked Idaho from enforcing an abortion ban when women with pregnancy complications require emergency care, a day after a judge in Texas ruled against President Joe Biden’s administration on the same issue. 

The conflicting rulings came in two of the first lawsuits over the Democratic administration’s attempts to ease abortion access after the conservative majority U.S. Supreme Court in June overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized the procedure nationwide. 

Legal experts said the two state rulings, if upheld on appeal, could force the Supreme Court to wade back into the debate. 

About half of all U.S. states have or are expected to seek to ban or curtail abortions following Roe’s reversal. Those states include Idaho and Texas, which like 11 others adopted “trigger” laws banning abortion upon such a decision. 

Abortion is already illegal in Texas under a separate, nearly century-old abortion ban that recently took effect after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision. Idaho’s trigger ban takes effect on Thursday, the same day as those in Texas and Tennessee. 

In Idaho, U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill agreed with the U.S. Justice Department that the abortion ban taking effect Thursday conflicts with a federal law that ensures patients can receive emergency “stabilizing care” at hospitals. 

Threat to patients cited

Winmill, an appointee of former Democratic President Bill Clinton, issued a preliminary injunction blocking Idaho from enforcing its ban to the extent it conflicts with federal law, citing the threat to patients. 

“One cannot imagine the anxiety and fear she will experience if her doctors feel hobbled by an Idaho law that does not allow them to provide the medical care necessary to preserve her health and life,” Winmill wrote. “From that vantage point, the public interest clearly favors the issuance of a preliminary injunction.” 

The Justice Department has said the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act requires abortion care in emergency situations. 

Winmill’s decision came after a late-night Tuesday ruling in Texas by U.S. District Judge James Wesley Hendrix holding the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under Biden went too far by issuing guidance holding the same federal law guaranteed abortion care. 

Hendrix agreed with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, that the guidance issued in July “discards the requirement to consider the welfare of unborn children when determining how to stabilize a pregnant woman.” 

Hendrix, an appointee of former Republican President Donald Trump, said the federal statute was silent as to what a doctor should do when there is a conflict between the health of the mother and the unborn child and that Texas’s law “fills that void.” 

He issued an injunction barring the federal government from enforcing HHS’s guidance in Texas and against two groups of anti-abortion doctors who also challenged it, saying the Idaho case showed a risk the Biden administration might try to enforce it. 

Hendrix declined, though, to issue a nationwide injunction as Paxton wanted, saying the “circumstances counsel in favor of a tailored, specific injunction.” 

Appellate courts

Appeals are expected in both cases and would be heard by separate appeals courts, one based in San Francisco with a reputation for leaning liberal and another in New Orleans known for conservative rulings. 

Greer Donley, an assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh Law School and expert on abortion law, said should those appeals courts uphold this week’s dueling rulings, the U.S. Supreme Court may feel pressured to intervene and clarify the law. 

“Without a federal right to abortion, this is the type of legal chaos that most people were predicting would be happening,” she said. 

Shannon Selden, a lawyer at Debevoise & Plimpton who represents several medical associations supporting the Justice Department’s Idaho case, said “there’s a huge cloud over physicians’ ability to provide stabilizing care for patients who need it.” 

“The Justice Department is trying lift that cloud through its Idaho action, and the Texas court has made that cloud darker,” she said.
…

The U.S. Justice Department on Wednesday released a confidential 2019 memo that advised then-Attorney General William Barr not to pursue criminal charges against then-President Donald Trump for obstructing the special counsel investigation of Russian election meddling.

The memo by Steven Engel, then head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, and Edward O’Callaghan, another senior official, was written on March 24, 2019, the same day Barr told Congress that there was “not enough” evidence to charge Trump with obstruction of justice in connection with the Russia probe.

“We recommend that you conclude that, under the Principles of Federal Prosecution, the evidence developed during the Special Counsel’s investigation is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offense,” the memo stated.

The nine-page document was released in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, a left-leaning ethics watchdog based in the nation’s capital.

The Justice Department had resisted releasing the full report, arguing that it reflected sensitive internal deliberations. But a federal appeals court panel last Friday ordered the law enforcement agency to make the report public.

The memo came at the conclusion of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of allegations the Trump campaign had colluded with Russia to change the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.

In his final report to Barr, Mueller wrote that he had not found enough evidence that Trump or his associates had criminally conspired with the Russian government.

But Mueller left unresolved the question of whether Trump had obstructed the federal investigation, leaving it to Barr to decide the matter.

Partly relying on the internal DOJ memo, Barr determined that Trump could not be prosecuted for obstruction of justice.

Barr’s announcement led Trump to tweet at the time: “No collusion. No obstruction, Complete and Total EXONERATION.”

Barr, who was a critic of the special counsel investigation before becoming Trump’s second attorney general in early 2019, drew fire from Democrats and other critics for giving Trump a pass.

In their memo for Barr, the two top DOJ officials wrote that Mueller’s findings did not warrant the prosecution of Trump.

“While cataloging actions that the President took, many of which took place in public view, the Report identifies no actions that, in our judgment, constituted obstructive acts, done with a nexus to a pending proceeding, with the corrupt intent necessary to warrant prosecution under the obstruction-of-justice statutes,” the officials wrote.

They also noted that Trump had not been charged with any crime or criminal conspiracy in connection with Russian election meddling.

“It would be rare for federal prosecutors to bring an obstruction prosecution that did not itself arise out of a proceeding related to a separate crime,” the memo stated.

In a statement, CREW said the memo “presents a breathtakingly generous view of the law and facts for Donald Trump.”

“It significantly twists the facts and the law to benefit Donald Trump and does not comport with a serious reading of the law of obstruction of justice or the facts as found by Special Counsel Mueller,” CREW said.

CREW faulted the memo for premising its conclusion on “the fact that there was no underlying criminal conduct, which is not what Mueller found.”
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In a cluster of contentious Democratic primaries Tuesday, two New York incumbents were ousted from the U.S. House after redistricting shuffled congressional districts in one of the nation’s largest liberal states. 

Rep. Carolyn Maloney, a 15-term incumbent who chairs a powerful House committee, lost to longtime colleague Rep. Jerry Nadler, while Rep. Mondaire Jones, a first-term progressive who was one of the first openly gay Black members of Congress, was defeated by Daniel Goldman, a former federal prosecutor who served as counsel to House Democrats in the first impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump. 

In other races in the state, the chair of the House Democrats’ campaign arm, Sean Patrick Maloney, survived a primary challenge of his own from a progressive. Democrats held on to a swing district in a special election — at least for a few more months. 

In Florida, an incumbent Republican narrowly defeated a far-right provocateur. Meanwhile, U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, a conservative firebrand, won his primary with the specter of a federal investigation looming over him. 

Some of the highest-profile elections: 

End of an era 

Nadler and Carolyn Maloney each chair powerful committees and had spent 30 years representing Manhattan’s Upper West Side and Upper East Side, respectively. But they ended up in the same race after new redistricting maps merged much of their longtime congressional districts. 

The race for New York’s 12th District, between Maloney, 76, and Nadler, 75, became contentious. The two stopped speaking after deciding to run against each other, Nadler said, and the campaign became barbed, with Maloney questioning his mental acuity. 

Nadler, who was endorsed by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, has talked up his role overseeing Trump’s impeachments while serving as chair of the House Judiciary Committee. Maloney has touted her own check on the former president while serving as chair of the powerful House Oversight Committee and positioned herself as a feminist champion. 

Challenging them both was 38-year-old lawyer Suraj Patel, who argued it was time for a new face in Congress. 

Crowded field for an open seat 

With Nadler and Maloney running in the district immediately north, a congressional seat covering southern Manhattan, including Wall Street, and Brooklyn, was a rare open contest in one of the most liberal and influential areas of the country. 

Goldman, a Democratic attorney who built his reputation as a federal mob and securities fraud prosecutor but made a national name for himself as House Democrats’ lead counsel in Trump’s first impeachment hearing, won a crowded primary for New York’s 10th District, which attracted a bevy of progressive candidates. Among the contenders was Jones, a congressman from the New York City suburbs, who moved to the area to run and finished third in the primary. 

House Democrats’ campaign chief wins primary 

Sean Patrick Maloney, who became New York’s first openly gay congressman when he was elected a decade ago, survived a primary challenge from state Sen. Alessandra Biaggi in New York’s new 17th District, home to idyllic towns along the historic Hudson River Valley. 

Maloney, who had the backing of former President Bill Clinton, campaigned on Democrats’ recent legislative wins in Congress and warned that the congressional seat could fall to Republicans in November if the Democratic nominee is too liberal. 

Biaggi, a 36-year-old progressive endorsed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is a granddaughter of former Bronx congressman Mario Biaggi. She had sought to portray Maloney as out of touch and part of the establishment. 

State GOP chair defeats controversial candidate 

New York’s Republican Party chair, Nick Langworthy, won a primary in western New York by defeating controversial Buffalo businessman Carl Paladino in New York’s redrawn 23rd District. 

Paladino, who unsuccessfully ran for governor in 2010, has a long history of inflammatory and offensive remarks, including recent comments that praised Adolf Hitler and circulated conspiracy theories around mass shootings. 

The heated primary came as Langworthy and Paladino sought to replace GOP Rep. Chris Jacobs, who decided not to seek reelection after facing backlash from his own party for voicing support for an assault weapons ban following a racist mass shooting in his hometown of Buffalo in May. 

A win for Republicans, a win for Democrats in special elections 

In addition to the primary races, New Yorkers elected two new House members to fill vacancies for the rest of the year. 

Democrat Pat Ryan won one of the special elections, a battleground race in southern and central New York to replace Democrat Antonio Delgado, who became New York’s lieutenant governor. Ryan defeated Republican Marc Molinaro in what is currently New York’s 19th Congressional District. 

In western New York, Republican Joe Sempolinski defeated Democrat Max Della Pia in a special general election to serve out the rest of the year in what is currently New York’s 23rd District. Sempolinski will replace Republican Rep. Tom Reed, who resigned in May after being accused of sexual misconduct. 

Far-right provocateur loses again 

Florida Republican Rep. Dan Webster defeated Laura Loomer, a far-right provocateur in Florida who’s been banned on some social media networks because of anti-Muslim and other remarks. 

Webster, who has served central Florida districts since 2011, won the unexpectedly tight primary in Florida’s 11th District, which is home to The Villages, the nation’s largest retirement community and a GOP stronghold. 

Loomer unsuccessfully ran for the House in 2020, winning a Republican primary but losing the general election that year to incumbent Democrat Lois Frankel for a Palm Beach-area seat that includes Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. 

On social media, Loomer regularly posted conspiracy theories and misinformation around Minnesota’s Ilhan Omar, the first Somali American elected to Congress. Among them was the false claim that Omar and other Democrats were plotting to institute Sharia law in Minnesota. 

Gaetz wins republican primary amid scandal 

Gaetz, a Trump protégé under federal investigation in a sex trafficking case, won a primary contest that was seen as a test of whether he could keep support among moderate Republicans. 

Gaetz has not been charged and denies wrongdoing. He was facing a challenge from Mark Lombardo, a former Marine and executive at FedEx who had blanketed the western Panhandle with attack ads centering around the investigation as he tried to take him on in Florida’s 1st Congressional District. 

Rebekah Jones, a former Department of Health employee who questioned the state’s COVID-19 data, won the Democratic primary for the seat in the heavily Republican district. A state inspector general’s report concluded Jones’ allegations were unfounded, but in her race for Congress, she tapped into national support for fundraising, bringing in more than $500,000. 
…