ВИБОРЧА ГАЗЕТА

Trump Investigated for Possible Violation of Espionage Act

The U.S. Department of Justice is investigating former President Donald Trump for possible violations of the Espionage Act and other crimes after the FBI recovered 11 sets of classified documents from his Florida home, Mar-a-Lago, earlier this week. White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara has the latest.
…

Congress OKs Democrats’ Climate, Tax, Health Bill, a Biden Triumph

A divided Congress gave final approval Friday to Democrats’ flagship climate, tax and health care bill, handing President Joe Biden a back-from-the-dead triumph on coveted priorities that the party hopes will bolster its prospects for keeping control of Congress in November’s elections. 

The House used a party-line 220-207 vote to pass the legislation, which is but a shadow of the larger, more ambitious plan to supercharge environment and social programs that Biden and his party envisioned early last year.

Even so, Democrats happily declared victory on top-tier goals like providing Congress’ largest ever investment in curbing carbon emissions, reining in pharmaceutical costs and taxing large companies, a vote they believe will show they can wring accomplishments from a routinely gridlocked Washington that often disillusions voters. 

“Today is a day of celebration, a day we take another giant step in our momentous agenda,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat. She said the measure “meets the moment, ensuring that our families thrive and that our planet survives.” 

Republicans solidly opposed the legislation, calling it a cornucopia of wasteful liberal daydreams that would raise taxes and families’ living costs. They did the same Sunday but Senate Democrats banded together and used Vice President Kamala Harris’ tiebreaking vote to power the measure through that 50-50 chamber. 

“Democrats, more than any other majority in history, are addicted to spending other people’s money, regardless of what we as a country can afford,” said House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican. “I can almost see glee in their eyes.” 

Biden’s initial 10-year, $3.5 trillion proposal also envisioned free prekindergarten, paid family and medical leave, expanded Medicare benefits and eased immigration restrictions. That crashed after centrist Senator Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, said it was too costly, using the leverage every Democrat has in the evenly divided Senate. 

Still, the final legislation remained substantive. Its pillar is about $375 billion over 10 years to encourage industry and consumers to shift from carbon-emitting to cleaner forms of energy. That includes $4 billion to cope with the West’s catastrophic drought. 

Spending, tax credits and loans would bolster technology like solar panels, consumer efforts to improve home energy efficiency, emission-reducing equipment for coal- and gas-powered power plants, and air pollution controls for farms, ports and low-income communities. 

Another $64 billion would help 13 million people pay premiums over the next three years for privately bought health insurance. Medicare would gain the power to negotiate its costs for pharmaceuticals, initially in 2026 for only 10 drugs. Medicare beneficiaries’ out-of-pocket prescription costs would be limited to $2,000 starting in 2025, and beginning next year they would pay no more than $35 monthly for insulin, the costly diabetes drug. 

The bill would raise around $740 billion in revenue over the decade, over a third from government savings from lower drug prices. More would flow from higher taxes on some $1 billion corporations, levies on companies that repurchase their own stock and stronger Internal Revenue Service tax collections. About $300 billion would remain to defray budget deficits, a sliver of the period’s projected $16 trillion total. 

Against the backdrop of GOP attacks on the FBI for its court-empowered search of former President Donald Trump’s Florida estate for sensitive documents, Republicans repeatedly savaged the bill’s boost to the IRS budget. That is aimed at collecting an estimated $120 billion in unpaid taxes over the coming decade, and Republicans have misleadingly claimed that the IRS will hire 87,000 agents to target average families. 

Representative Andrew Clyde, a Georgia Republican, said Democrats would also “weaponize” the IRS with agents, “many of whom will be trained in the use of deadly force, to go after any American citizen.” Senator Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican, asked Thursday on “Fox and Friends” if there would be an IRS “strike force that goes in with AK-15s already loaded, ready to shoot some small-business person.” 

Few IRS personnel are armed, and Democrats say the bill’s $80 billion, 10-year budget increase would be to replace waves of retirees, not just agents, and modernize equipment. They have said typical families and small businesses would not be targeted, with Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen directing the IRS this week to not “increase the share of small business or households below the $400,000 threshold” that would be audited. 

Republicans say the legislation’s new business taxes will increase prices, worsening the nation’s bout with its worst inflation since 1981. Though Democrats have labeled the measure the Inflation Reduction Act, nonpartisan analysts say it will have a barely perceptible impact on prices. 

The GOP also says the bill would raise taxes on lower- and middle-income families. An analysis by Congress’ nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation, which didn’t include the bill’s tax breaks for health care and energy, estimated that the corporate tax boosts would marginally affect those taxpayers but indirectly, partly due to lower stock prices and wages. 

The bill caps three months in which Congress has approved legislation on veterans’ benefits, the semiconductor industry, gun checks for young buyers and Ukraine’s invasion by Russia and adding Sweden and Finland to NATO. All passed with bipartisan support, suggesting Republicans also want to display their productive side. 

It’s unclear whether voters will reward Democrats for the legislation after months of painfully high inflation dominating voters’ attention and Biden’s dangerously low popularity with the public and a steady history of midterm elections that batter the party holding the White House. 

The bill had its roots in early 2021, after Congress approved a $1.9 trillion measure over GOP opposition to combat the pandemic-induced economic downturn. Emboldened, the new president and his party reached further. 

They called their $3.5 trillion plan Build Back Better. Besides social and environment initiatives, it proposed rolling back Trump-era tax breaks for the rich and corporations and $555 billion for climate efforts, well above the resources in Friday’s legislation. 

With Manchin opposing those amounts, it was sliced to a roughly $2 trillion measure that Democrats moved through the House in November. He unexpectedly sank that bill too, earning scorn from exasperated fellow Democrats from Capitol Hill and the White House. 

Last-gasp talks between Manchin and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, seemed fruitless until the two unexpectedly announced agreement last month on the new package. 

Manchin won billions for carbon capture technology for the fossil fuel industries he champions, plus procedures for more oil drilling on federal lands and promises for faster energy project permitting. Centrist Senator Kyrsten Sinema, an Arizona Democrat, also won concessions, eliminating planned higher taxes on hedge fund managers and helping win the drought funds.
…

Backers, Opponents of Abortion Rights Recalibrate After Surprising Kansas Referendum

A Republican-leaning state in America’s socially conservative heartland recently shocked both sides of the long-running battle over abortion, calling into question the conventional wisdom about how and where the procedure might be restricted or banned. 

Voters in Kansas cast ballots last week on a proposed amendment to the state’s constitution that would have eliminated an existing right to abortion. The amendment was expected to pass handily in a state no Democratic presidential contender has won in nearly 60 years and where Donald Trump beat Joe Biden by 15 percentage points in the 2020 election. 

Voters rejected the ballot measure, preserving abortion rights. 

“The consensus was that Republicans in Kansas were going to ban abortion like in many other conservative states,” University of Georgia political scientist Charles Bullock told VOA. “But we got a big surprise. Kansas voted to uphold abortion protections and the only way to explain it is that the vote exposed a rift. There seems to be a difference between what Republican politicians want and what voters – including some Republican voters – want.” 

When the U.S. Supreme Court overturned its landmark Roe v. Wade ruling in June, it gave each U.S. state the ability to decide whether to allow or ban abortion. 

Until last week, initial results seemed to follow states’ partisan leanings, with Republican-controlled states moving to outlaw abortions and Democrat-led states preserving and, in some cases, moving to bolster abortion protections.  

For example, just days after the Kansas vote, lawmakers in another conservative breadbasket state, Indiana, became the first in the post-Roe era to pass a law banning most abortions. Before the Supreme Court’s June ruling, several Republican-led state legislatures had passed so-called “trigger laws” that restricted or ended access to the procedure once Roe was overturned. 

“The difference between Kansas and the states like Indiana,” Bullock said, “is that in Indiana politicians in the legislature voted on the proposed laws, while in Kansas, the public got to vote directly. It turns out that distinction makes a big difference.” 

And the Kansas vote was decisive, defeating the anti-abortion-rights amendment 59% to 41%. 

While the result will impact the lives of women and families across the Sunflower State, Bullock believes the shock waves could be far reaching. 

“Politicians and activists from around the country are watching and analyzing what happened in Kansas,” he said, “and you might see both sides employing the lessons they’re learning when the fight comes to their own states.” 

Rift among Republicans 

Ann Mah, a Democratic member of the Kansas State Board of Education, remembers the moment she first thought abortion rights backers could win the amendment battle. 

“You have these Republican politicians who are always moving to the right to appeal to the loudest members of their base so they can win their primary,” she told VOA, “But I was getting the sense some conservative voters were becoming uneasy with the amount these proposed abortion policies were reaching into their private lives.” 

One day as the vote neared, Mah spoke with a neighbor she described as “ultra-conservative.”  

“We don’t agree on hardly anything, me and this person,” she said, “but he came to my house and asked for a ‘Vote No’ yard sign because he didn’t support the amendment. That’s when I knew we had a chance.” 

Not everyone believes what happened in Kansas will carry over to other states, however.

“I’m not from Kansas or Indiana so I can’t speak to what people do in those states,” said Sarah Zagorski, communications director at Louisiana Right to Life, an anti-abortion-rights advocacy organization, “but I can say that one negative result in a state isn’t necessarily indicative of how the country feels about abortion. For pro-life people here in Louisiana, they just won’t be voting for radical abortion extremists and their policies.” 

But former Louisiana state Representative Melissa Flournoy, a Democrat, believes the reality and consequences of the Supreme Court’s abortion decision are only just now registering for many.  

Flournoy pointed to a recent case that made national headlines in which a child victim of rape had to be taken to another state in order to terminate a pregnancy. 

“We’re confronted with this story about a 10-year-old girl who was raped, became pregnant, and was about to be denied an abortion – that’s shocking to most of America,” Flournoy told VOA. “It’s like, ‘Yes, we really are outlawing abortion in all circumstances.’ It’s disorienting, and the implications are coming into focus, even among some voters who consider themselves pro-life.” 

Polling data 

An Ipsos/USA Today poll released Wednesday found 54% of respondents would vote to keep or make abortion legal in their state, with 28% indicating they would vote against abortion-rights measures. 

While it’s more common for legislatures to handle these matters, voters are increasingly clamoring for a direct say. In Republican-controlled South Dakota, for example, the Kansas vote has spawned an effort to pursue a statewide referendum on reestablishing abortion rights in the state. 

Additionally, this November, voters in California, Kentucky, Montana and Vermont will have the opportunity to weigh in on abortion rights via the ballot box, while plans are being finalized to give residents in Colorado and Michigan that same opportunity. 

In fact, according to the Ipsos/USA Today poll, 70% of Americans say they want to vote on abortion via state ballots, including 73% of Democrats, 77% of Republicans and 67% of independents.  

“Opinion on reproductive choice isn’t only based on party lines,” said Cynthia Lash, chair of the Osage County Democratic Central Committee in Kansas, speaking with VOA. “In our state, several nonpartisan groups formed solely to defeat the amendment. They canvassed, they texted voters in all counties regardless of party affiliation, they developed yard signs, they held rallies — they were much more active than traditional campaigns in reaching out to everyone.”  

Osage County is deeply Republican, but even there, 56% of voters opposed the abortion-rights amendment last week.  

“In our small, rural county, only 17% of registered voters are Democrats,” Lash said. “Even in the unlikely case that every Democrat and unaffiliated voter voted against the amendment, that means 31% of Republican voters cast a ballot against the amendment as well. That’s how unpopular it was.” 

Not all anti-abortion activists, however, are convinced a vote against the amendment was a vote against restricting abortions. 

“In Kansas, voters rejected an amendment that allows the legislature to limit or allow abortions as those politicians see fit,” said Laura Knight, president of Pro-Life Mississippi. “Maybe those voters wanted a total ban of abortion. Maybe they felt the amendment wasn’t strong enough. We don’t know.”  

Electoral implications 

Some in the Republican Party worry they are pushing too far in banning abortion, months before midterm elections that will determine control of the U.S. Congress. This past Sunday, on NBC’s Meet the Press, Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina compared the impact of anti-abortion initiatives to the fictional portrayal of an America in which women have no rights in a popular U.S. television series. 

“It will be an issue in November if we’re not moderating ourselves. ‘Handmaid’s Tale’ is not supposed to be a road map,” Mace said.

Others are urging anti-abortion officeholders to stay true to their beliefs. 

“Government officials are elected to vote their conscience, not to check in with the public on everything,” Tara Wicker, who leads Louisiana Black Advocates for Life, told VOA. “Children who are born of rape or incest are still innocent children and we should be protecting them, regardless of how popular that decision is among a subset of voters.” 

Bullock from the University of Georgia sees warning signs for advocates of abortion measures who ignore the will of voters. 

“Both sides have things they can learn from what we’re seeing in states like Indiana and Kansas,” he said, “and for Republicans, the warning is they seem to be pushing beyond what their voters want. It’s a lesson they’ve been confronted with before, but they don’t seem to be learning it.” 

At a time of economic uncertainty in America, the degree to which abortion could determine election outcomes remains to be seen. 

A recent poll in the swing state of Nevada by The Nevada Independent, a news website, and OH Predictive Insights, a market research company, showed abortion laws were the second most powerful issue for respondents – behind only the economy. But the gap between the two remained substantial (40% for the economy and 17% for abortion laws).

“Inflation and the economy as a whole is still front-of-mind for most Americans, but that doesn’t mean the abortion debate can’t impact elections this November,” Bullock said. “This is going to be a big issue for suburban white women, many of whom typically vote Republican. If 50,000 here or 100,000 there change their mind in especially tight districts or states, that’s enough to flip a result or two, and potentially even [determine] control of the [U.S.] Senate.” 
…

January 6 Attack Dominates Debate in Wyoming Congressional Race

Some 2,500 kilometers from Washington, D.C., the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol still looms large in the minds of Wyoming voters who will be heading to the polls on August 16 to decide if Republican Liz Cheney should keep her seat in Congress.

Wyoming’s only representative in the U.S. House, two-term Congresswoman Cheney has staked her political career on being one of the few Republicans to openly criticize former President Donald Trump. But she has an uphill fight to win her party’s nomination in a state that delivered Trump his most lopsided win of the 2020 election, with almost 70% of the vote.

The Wyoming Republican Party primary has pitted Cheney, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, against the Trump-endorsed candidate, former attorney Harriet Hageman. The least-populated state in the nation, Wyoming has been solidly Republican for decades. But the debate over Trump has forced voters to decide exactly what it means to be a loyal Republican and has turned the primary contest into a test for the former president ahead of the 2024 presidential election.

Cheney was one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump in 2021 for inciting the riot at the U.S. Capitol and has served as vice chair of the House select committee to investigate the January 6th attack. She was expelled from the state Republican Party for continuing to call Trump’s claims of fraud in the 2020 presidential election “the Big Lie.”

“Donald Trump made a purposeful choice to violate his oath of office, to ignore the ongoing violence against law enforcement, to threaten our constitutional order. There is no way to excuse that behavior,” Cheney said during a January 6th Committee hearing last month. She has also suggested Trump should face federal charges for his actions in the aftermath of the 2020 election.

“We need a leader like Liz,” Jan Cartwright, a retired health care executive from Cheyenne, told VOA. “I think that it’s important for us to look at what happened with both the Trump presidency and then January 6, and I think that truth has to overcome lies. I believe that that’s what she’s trying to do, is to get to the truth.”

Trump has criticized the work of the January 6th Committee, suggesting it is unfair that the two Republicans investigating his actions also voted to impeach him.

“Liz Cheney hates the voters of the Republican Party, and she has for longer than you would know,” Trump said at a Casper, Wyoming, rally for Hageman in May.

“Wyoming deserves a congresswoman who stands up for you and your values, not one who spends all of her time putting you down and going after your president in the most vicious way possible.”

But some Wyoming voters have been turned off by Trump’s messaging, saying Cheney’s determination is a Wyoming value. Independent voter Don Maloff told VOA he is switching his party registration just so that he can vote for Cheney.

“Cheney is being stepped on by Trump, which is wrong in every which way,” Maloff said, adding that he admires Cheney’s work on the January 6th Committee even though he doesn’t think it will change anyone’s mind.

In their only debate, on July 1, the two candidates focused on Trump, with Cheney suggesting Hageman knew Trump’s election fraud claims were false.

“The election was not stolen. She knows it wasn’t stolen. I think that she can’t say that it wasn’t stolen because she’s completely beholden to Donald Trump,” Cheney said.

But Hageman contended Cheney was ignoring her constituents by focusing on the investigation into the attack on the U.S. Capitol.

“Our republic is not in danger because of President Donald J. Trump. President Trump was an excellent president for the United States of America and especially for the state of Wyoming,” Hageman said in the debate.

Polling in the days leading up to the Tuesday primary has Hageman leading Cheney by a significant margin, an indication that Hageman’s criticism of the January 6th Committee is connecting with many Wyoming voters.

“She cannot like Donald Trump. She can do whatever she wants to try to get him where he can’t run again, the whole January 6 — whatever that whole nonsense is all about — but the voters in Wyoming stand — for the majority — stand solidly behind Trump,” Randy Mulkey, a Cheyenne voter who works for a roofing company, told VOA.

Hageman is running television advertisements suggesting Cheney wants to be re-elected as the state’s sole U.S. House representative because she is comfortable among the Washington elite.

That argument resonates with Kelly Krakow, an insurance salesman from Alban, Wyoming, who is concerned about the state of the economy.

“Cheney’s just stepped over the line on too much stuff,” Krakow said. “And really, she doesn’t live in Wyoming. She hasn’t for a long time. And I don’t think she has the Wyoming values behind her.”

Cheney’s father, meanwhile, is campaigning for his daughter. The former vice president, who also represented Wyoming in Congress in the 1980s, recorded a television ad in which he calls Trump “a coward” who lied to his followers about his 2020 election loss, and praises his daughter for “standing up for the truth.”

Even if she loses her primary, Cheney is expected to continue the January 6th investigation in Congress until the end of her term early next year.
…

Four Key Races in Wisconsin, Minnesota Midterm Primaries

Voters in states including Wisconsin and Minnesota picked candidates for the U.S. Congress and other offices in primaries on Tuesday, in another test of former President Donald Trump’s influence in the Republican Party ahead of the November 8 midterms.

Vermont and Connecticut also held nomination contests, while Minnesota held a special election for its vacant 1st Congressional District. The following are four key races:

Wisconsin Republican governor’s primary

In its final stretch, the Republican nomination contest for Wisconsin’s gubernatorial race became another proxy battle between Trump and his estranged former vice president, Mike Pence.

Trump endorsed construction company owner Tim Michels in June, upending a race that until then was led by former state Lieutenant Governor Rebecca Kleefisch, who Pence endorsed in July.

On Tuesday, Michels defeated Kleefisch, according to Edison Research. It was the third high-profile race this year in which Pence and Trump backed opposing candidates. In the previous contests, Pence-backed Georgia Governor Brian Kemp won the party nomination for his re-election bid, while Trump-backed Kari Lake, a former news anchor, won the Republican nomination for the Arizona governor’s race.

Pence, who like Trump is considering running for president in 2024, has recently distanced himself from Trump’s repeated falsehoods that the 2020 election was stolen.

Wisconsin Democratic US senate primary

In the race to challenge Republican U.S. Senator Ron Johnson, Wisconsin’s Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes, a progressive backed by U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, easily won the Democratic nomination after a leading moderate opponent dropped out of the race in late July. The focus now shifts to Barnes’ ability to appeal to moderate voters in the race against Johnson, which could be one of November’s tightest and most consequential Senate races.

Minnesota Republican governor’s primary

Former Minnesota state senator Scott Jensen, who has vowed he will try to ban most abortions in the state, won the Republican Party nomination for the governor’s race.

Despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, abortion remains legal under state law in Minnesota. Jensen recently said he supports abortion rights in cases of rape or incest.

Jensen, a physician who has cast doubt on the seriousness of COVID-19, will now face Democratic Governor Tim Walz in November. Walz is seen as potentially vulnerable.

Minnesota special congressional election

Democrats face an uphill battle to gain the U.S. House of Representatives seat left vacant following the February death of Republican U.S. Representative Jim Hagedorn.

Ahead of Tuesday’s special election, Republican Brad Finstad, a former agriculture official in the Trump administration, was ahead of Democrat Jeff Ettinger 46% to 38%, according to a public opinion poll conducted in the last week of July by Survey USA.

Political observers have said the race could be close after Ettinger, a former CEO at Hormel Foods, spent early on television ads making the case that his business experience set him up as a problem-solver on run-away food prices.
…

Trump Cries Foul After FBI Searches His Home

Former President Donald Trump claims he is being politically persecuted after the Federal Bureau of Investigation searched his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida on Monday, in what appeared to be part of a long-running investigation of whether he has kept official documents instead of sending them to the National Archives when he left office. White House bureau chief Patsy Widakuswara looks at the political fallout of the search.
…

Trump Facing Major Criminal Investigations as He Considers 2024 Presidential Run

As he strongly hints at another campaign for the White House in 2024, former U.S. President Donald Trump is facing major federal and state criminal investigations into his actions in the immediate aftermath of his failed reelection campaign in 2020.  

Monday’s unprecedented FBI raid at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida was the latest indication that investigators remain focused on the country’s 45th president. Reports say the investigators were seeking classified documents he may have taken with him when he left Washington last year. 

The search was court-authorized and was likely sanctioned at the highest levels of the Justice Department. But details of the search warrant filed by investigators and their justification for it are not yet publicly known, nor is the name of the judge who authorized it. The White House says it was not given advance notice of the raid. 

Under the Presidential Records Act of 1978, the official records of all presidents and vice presidents remain publicly owned, even after they leave office. The statute’s premise is that the papers belong to the American public, not the individuals who served as the country’s leaders. 

About a year after he left office, Trump turned over to the National Archives 15 boxes of documents from his presidency, some of which were said to include classified papers. But investigators who searched Trump’s office and opened a safe at his Florida seaside estate Monday carted away more documents that were not turned over in January. 

Trump belittled the search, much as he has the election-related investigations, as an attempt to keep him from running again in 2024.  

“These are dark times for our Nation, as my beautiful home, Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, is currently under siege, raided, and occupied by a large group of FBI agents,” the former president said in a statement. 

“Nothing like this has ever happened to a President of the United States before,” he said, contending the search was the result of “prosecutorial misconduct, the weaponization of the Justice System, and an attack by Radical Left Democrats who desperately don’t want me to run for President in 2024.” 

He claimed such a event “could only take place in broken, Third-World Countries. Sadly, America has now become one of those Countries, corrupt at a level not seen before.” 

Trump retains a wide following among a base of Republican voters, although an array of Republican officials, including Mike Pence, Trump’s vice president, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and others, have been broadly hinting they could seek the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. 

Ongoing investigations 

The Justice Department is also investigating Trump’s role in instigating the riot at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, when about 2,000 of his supporters rampaged into the building to block lawmakers from certifying Democrat Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election. At a rally shortly beforehand, Trump urged supporters to walk to the Capitol and “fight like hell.” 

Despite White House aides and then-Attorney General William Barr repeatedly telling Trump there was no evidence of widespread fraud in the vote-counting sufficient to overturn his defeat, Trump demanded publicly and privately that Pence stop certification of the Electoral College vote count favoring Biden.  

But Pence refused to do so on the advice of lawyers who told him the Constitution did not give him that authority. 

Investigators are looking into the role Trump played in carrying out a plan promoted by some of his advisers to name unauthorized slates of electors in states where he lost who would seek to replace the official electors pledged to Biden. 

In the United States, presidents are effectively chosen in separate elections in each of the 50 states, not through the national popular vote. Each state’s number of electoral votes is dependent on its population, with the biggest states holding the most sway. The rioters who stormed the Capitol tried to keep lawmakers from certifying Biden’s eventual 306-232 victory in the Electoral College.  

In a third investigation, a prosecutor in the southern state of Georgia is investigating Trump for possible solicitation of election fraud. 

In a taped January 2, 2021, telephone call, Trump asked Georgia’s top election official to “find” him 11,780 votes — one more than Biden defeated him by — out of 5 million ballots that were cast in the state. 

During the call, Trump said, “I only need 11,000 votes. Fellas, I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break.” 

 
…

FBI, Justice Department Routinely Prosecute Misuse of Classified Documents

Federal officials are saying little so far about Monday’s FBI search of former President Donald Trump’s home in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, but Trump and one of his sons have said the move is part of an investigation into Trump’s removal of official documents from the White House.

While such a search of a former U.S. president’s residence would appear to be unprecedented, investigations into the removal or unlawful retention of classified information is not.

Since 2005, the FBI and the Justice Department have launched at least 11 such investigations, some targeting high-profile former U.S. officials, including a former national security adviser and a former CIA director.

Others who have been prosecuted and who have pleaded guilty or were convicted include Defense Department employees, defense contractors and employees or contractors with the FBI, the CIA and the National Security Agency.

Here’s a list of some notable cases:

April 2005 – Former U.S. national security adviser Sandy Berger pleaded guilty to knowingly removing classified documents from the National Archives and Records Administration. Berger admitted to concealing and removing five copies of a classified document from the Archives in September and October 2003.

Berger also admitted to concealing and removing handwritten notes in violation of the Archives’ policy. In September 2005, Berger was ordered to pay a $50,000 fine and give up his security clearance for three years.

March 2013 –Retired Lieutenant Colonel Benjamin Pierce Bishop was arrested in Hawaii and charged with one count of unlawfully retaining documents related to the national defense and one count of willfully communicating national defense information to a person not entitled to receive such information. Court papers alleged Bishop, who was working for a defense contractor, stored 12 documents containing classified information at his residence. The documents further allege Bishop willfully communicated that information to a 27-year-old Chinese woman with whom he had a relationship.

Bishop pleaded guilty in March 2014. He was sentenced to more than seven years in prison followed by three years of supervised release.

March 2015 – Retired U.S. Army General David Petraeus, a former CIA director, pleaded guilty to one count of unauthorized removal and retention of classified material. The plea followed revelations that Petraeus shared some of the materials with his biographer and mistress.

Petraeus was sentenced to two years of probation and a $100,000 fine.

July 2015 – U.S. Navy reservist Bryan Nishimura was sentenced to two years of probation and a $7,500 fine after he pleaded guilty to downloading and storing classified documents from his deployment to Afghanistan in 2007-2008 on his personal devices and media. A search of his home in May 2012 turned up numerous classified materials, both in digital and hard copy formats.

August 2016 – Former National Security Agency contractor Harold Martin was arrested for what federal prosecutors described as a theft of top-secret government information that was “breathtaking in its longevity and scale.”

Martin was indicted in February 2017 on charges of stealing and retaining classified documents and other material, according to a statement from the Justice Department. The department further alleged Martin “stole and retained” highly classified top secret documents covering 20 years, keeping them in his home and in his vehicle.

According to the indictment, the documents stolen and retained by Martin contained NSA planning information and information on intelligence collection targets. Other documents, from U.S. Cyber Command, contained information on U.S. military capabilities, some to be used in specific operations, and documents about gaps in U.S. cyber capabilities.

Martin pleaded guilty to the willful retention of national defense information in March 2019. In July 2019, Martin was sentenced to nine years in prison, followed by three years of supervised release.

January 2017 – Former defense contractor and sailor Weldon Marshall was arrested for unlawfully retaining classified information, stored on compact discs and computer hard drives that he kept at his home in Texas. The information included classified documents from Marshall’s time with the U.S. Navy and from his time as a defense contractor in Afghanistan.

Marshall pleaded guilty in March 2018. He was sentenced in June 2018 to more than three years in prison followed by a year of supervised release.

January 2018 – Former CIA officer Jerry Chun Shing Lee, also known as Zhen Cheng Li, was arrested on charges of unlawful retention of national defense information. Prosecutors alleged that Lee, while staying at hotels in Hawaii and Virginia, was in possession of two, small books that contained handwritten notes that included the true names and phone numbers of assets and covert CIA employees, operational notes from asset meetings, operational meeting locations and locations of covert facilities.

Lee was indicted in May 2018 on two counts of unlawfully retaining documents related to the national defense, as well as one count of conspiracy to deliver national defense information to a foreign government.

Lee pleaded guilty and was sentenced in November 2019 to 19 years in prison for conspiring to communicate, deliver and transmit national defense information to China.

May 2018 – Former CIA contractor Reynaldo Regis pleaded guilty to charges of unauthorized removal and retention of classified materials, as well as to making false statements to federal law enforcement officers. Prosecutors said during his time at the CIA, Reyes conducted unauthorized searches of classified databases and copied the information into dozens of notebooks, which he then took home.

In November 2018, Reyes was sentenced to 90 days in jail. Regis’ lawyer later told the Associated Press and other news outlets that his client “had no nefarious purpose. It was just a mistake.”

August 2019 – Former National Security Agency (NSA) employee Elizabeth Jo Shirley was arrested in Mexico City on charges of parental kidnapping and was later charged with retaining top secret documents on her electronic devices, both in Mexico and some stored at her home in West Virginia.

Prosecutors additionally alleged that Shirley sought to offer the information to the Russian government.

In July 2020, Shirley pleaded guilty to one count of willful retention of national defense information and to one count of international parental kidnapping. She was sentenced in January 2021 to more than eight years in prison for the willful retention of national defense information. She was also sentenced to three years in prison on the kidnapping charges.

June 2020 — Investigators conducted a search of the Hawaii home of Asia Janay Lavarello, a U.S. Defense Department employee, following her return from a temporary assignment to the U.S. Embassy in Manila. Investigators found numerous classified documents, writings, and notes relating to the national defense or foreign relations and said the documents – first seen by guests at a dinner party hosted by Lavarello – had not been transported by secure diplomatic pouch, as required.

Lavarello pleaded guilty to knowingly removing classified information in July 2021. She was sentenced in February 2022 to three months in prison and a $5,500 fine.

May 2021 – Kendra Kingsbury, an employee at the FBI’s Kansas City division, was indicted on two counts of having unauthorized possession of documents relating to the national defense. The court documents allege Kingsbury removed sensitive material and classified documents from her workplace over a period of more than 12 years and kept them at her home. One of the documents included information on al-Qaida members in Africa, including a suspected associate of al-Qaida founder Osama bin Laden.
…

Lawyer: Giuliani Won’t Testify Tuesday in Georgia Election Probe

Rudy Giuliani will not appear as scheduled Tuesday before a special grand jury in Atlanta that’s investigating whether former President Donald Trump and others illegally tried to interfere in the 2020 general election in Georgia, his lawyer said. 

A judge last month had ordered Giuliani, a Trump lawyer and former New York City mayor, to appear before the special grand jury Tuesday. 

But Giuliani’s attorney, Robert Costello, told The Associated Press on Monday that Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney, who’s overseeing the special grand jury, had excused Giuliani for the day. 

Nothing in publicly available court documents indicates that Giuliani is excused from appearing, but McBurney has scheduled a hearing for 12:30 p.m. Tuesday to hear arguments on a court filing from Giuliani seeking to delay his appearance. In a court filing Monday, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis asked the judge to deny Giuliani’s request for a delay and to instruct him to appear before the special grand jury as ordered. 

Willis opened an investigation early last year, and a special grand jury with subpoena power was seated in May at her request. 

Last month she filed petitions seeking to compel testimony from seven Trump advisers and associates, including Giuliani. Because they don’t live in Georgia, she had to use a process that involves getting a judge in the state where they live to order them to appear. 

New York Supreme Court Justice Thomas Farber on July 13 issued an order directing Giuliani to appear before the special grand jury on August 9 and on any other dates ordered by the court in Atlanta. 

Giuliani’s legal team last week asked Willis’ office to delay his appearance, saying he was unable to travel because of a medical procedure. That request was rejected after Willis’ team found evidence on social media that he had traveled since his medical procedure. 

A Giuliani attorney then clarified to Willis’ team that Giuliani is not cleared for air travel, but Willis still refused to postpone his appearance, the motion says. 

In her Monday court filing, Willis wrote that her team had obtained records indicating that between July 19 and July 21, Giuliani bought multiple airline tickets, including tickets to Rome, Italy, and Zurich, Switzerland, for travel dates between July 22 and July 29. Willis said her team offered to provide alternative transportation — including bus or train fare — if Giuliani wasn’t cleared for air travel. 

Giuliani had also offered to appear virtually, for example by Zoom, his motion says. 

“It is important to note here that Mr. Giuliani is no way seeking to inappropriately delay or obstruct these proceedings or avoid giving evidence or testimony that is not subject to some claim of privilege in this matter,” the motion says, noting that Giuliani had appeared virtually before the committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and testified for more than nine hours. 

“Mr. Giuliani is willing to do the same here under conditions that replicate a grand jury proceeding,” the motion says. 

In the petition for Giuliani’s testimony, Willis identified him as both a personal attorney for Trump and a lead attorney for his campaign. 

She wrote that he and others presented a Georgia state Senate subcommittee with a video recording of election workers that Giuliani alleged showed them producing “suitcases” of unlawful ballots from unknown sources, outside the view of election poll watchers. 

Within 24 hours of that hearing on Dec. 3, 2020, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office had debunked the video and said that it had found that no voter fraud had taken place at the site. Nevertheless, Giuliani continued to make statements to the public and in subsequent legislative hearings claiming widespread voter fraud using that debunked video, Willis wrote. 

Evidence shows that Giuliani’s appearance and testimony at the hearing “was part of a multi-state, coordinated plan by the Trump Campaign to influence the results of the November 2020 election in Georgia and elsewhere,” the petition says. 

 
…

Trump Says Mar-a-Lago Home in Florida Raided by FBI

Former U.S. President Donald Trump said FBI agents have raided his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida.  

“My beautiful home, Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida is currently under siege, raided, and occupied by a large group of FBI agents,” Trump said in lengthy statement Monday evening. “After working and cooperating with the relevant government agencies, this unannounced raid on my home was not necessary or appropriate.”  

The circumstances of the search were not immediately clear, according to media reports. The Justice Department, however, has been actively investigating the discovery of classified information in boxes of records that were taken to Trump’s Florida residence after he left the White House in January 2021. 

Trump, who was in New York City on Monday, did not say why the raid took place. The FBI and Justice Department did not immediately comment on Trump’s statement. 

Justice Department spokesperson Dena Iverson declined to comment on the search to The Associated Press. Iverson also declined to comment about whether Attorney General Merrick Garland had personally authorized the search, according to media reports. 

A person familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation, told the AP the search happened earlier Monday.  

Earlier this year, the National Archives and Records Administration said it had found classified material in 15 boxes at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence. It then referred the case to the Justice Department. 

The Presidential Records Act of 1978 established that all presidential records are owned by the public and automatically transfer into the custody of the National Archives as soon as a commander-in-chief leaves office. All presidential libraries and museums are part of the National Archives.  

“Presidential records are the property of the United States government and are administered by the National Archives,” Meghan Ryan Guthorn, acting deputy chief operating officer of the agency, told VOA earlier this year. “So, all presidential papers, materials and records in the custody of the National Archives, whether donated, seized or governed by the Presidential Records Act, are owned by the federal government.” 

The former president accused the government of “prosecutorial misconduct,” saying the raid amounts to the “weaponization of the Justice System.” 

“Nothing like this has ever happened to a President of the United States before,” he said. 

Trump said FBI agents even broke into the safe in his home.  

Evan Corcoran, a lawyer representing Trump, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Washington Post. 

The developments come as Trump has been preparing for a potential presidential run in 2024, possibly setting himself up for a rematch against President Joe Biden. He accused Democrats of “desperately” not wanting him to run again. 

Top Biden White House officials said they were not given advance notice of the raid, according to media reports. 

The Justice Department has been investigating the removal of official presidential records to Trump’s Florida estate at the conclusion of his presidency. It is not clear if the raid has anything to do with that investigation. 

Trump has previously said he agreed to return certain records to the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, calling it “an ordinary and routine process.” 

The Justice Department also has been investigating efforts by allies of Trump to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.  

The department has not announced whether it will seek criminal charges against Trump in that investigation. 

Dora Mekouar contributed to this report. Some information in this report comes from The Associated Press and Reuters. 

 
…