GOP wants to impeach Maine secretary who cut Trump from ballot. It won’t be easy

Republicans who want to unseat Maine's secretary of state for barring former President Donald Trump from the primary ballot will face long odds impeaching a stalwart and influential Democrat whose party holds firm control over both Legislative chambers.

Shenna Bellows is the first secretary of state in history to block someone from running for president by using the U.S. Constitution’s insurrection clause. Trump, the early front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, appealed the decision on Tuesday and is expected to soon appeal a similar ban by the Colorado Supreme Court.

As Maine lawmakers returned to the Capitol on Wednesday to begin this year's legislative session, retribution against Bellows was among the first orders of business for many Republicans. They filed an order of impeachment against her, called for her to resign and encouraged legislators to vote her out of office.

“The secretary of state has jumped in way over her boots on this one,” said Rep. Billy Bob Faulkingham, the House Republican leader.

Bellows was elected secretary of state three years ago by the Maine Legislature, and Democrats have since maintained a solid majority in both houses, meaning there's little chance those same legislators would reverse course and oust her. Bellows said Wednesday she stands by her decision to unliterally remove Trump from the state's ballot, and isn't fazed by the calls for removal.

“This is little more than political theater produced by those who disagree with my decision,” Bellows said. “I had a duty to uphold the laws and the Constitution and that's what I did. And what I will continue to do — to serve the people of Maine.”

Section 3 of the 14th Amendment prohibits those who “engaged in insurrection” from holding office. Some legal scholars say the post-Civil War clause applies to Trump for his role in trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election and encouraging his backers to storm the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

However, several high-ranking Maine Republicans say they feel Bellows' action was a partisan one, and betrayed the confidence of Maine's people.

Faulkingham said during a news conference that Bellows’ decision “threatens to throw our country into chaos” by encouraging other secretaries to make arbitrary decisions about ballot access. Rep. John Andrews filed an impeachment order that he said will be on the legislative calendar next Tuesday or Thursday, and Rep. Shelley Rudnicki said on the House floor that Bellows' “behavior is unacceptable for a secretary of state” and she should resign.

Bellows, Maine's 50th secretary of state and the first woman to hold the office, ascended to the role in January 2021. She had a long history in Maine politics and liberal advocacy before that.

She grew up in rural Hancock before attending Middlebury College, and served as a Democratic state senator from 2016 to 2020. Prior to that, in 2014, she ran an unsuccessful campaign against longtime Republican U.S. Sen. Susan Collins that resulted in a fairly easy win for the incumbent, but increased Bellow's name recognition.

She was also the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Maine from 2005 to 2013 and worked on drives to legalize same-sex marriage, same-day voter registration and ranked choice voting — all of which were ultimately successful.

A fake emergency phone call led to police responding to Bellows' home last week, the day after she removed Trump from the ballot. Democrats and Republicans in the state widely condemned the call, known as “swatting.” Bellows said she, her family and her staff have been the target of more harassment this week.

Democratic Gov. Janet Mills said via a spokesperson Wednesday that the efforts to impeach Bellows are “unjustified.” Mills also believes the question of whether Trump violated the 14th amendment must be answered by courts.

“Without a judicial determination on that question, she believes that the decision of whether the former President should be considered for the presidency belongs in the hands of the people,” wrote the spokesperson, Ben Goodman.

The Maine Democratic Party asserted that decisions about ballot access are part of Bellows' duties as secretary of state.

Trump appealed Bellows' decision to a Maine Superior Court. The Colorado Supreme Court also found Trump ineligible for the presidency, and that decision has been appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Bellows said Wednesday that, “Should the Supreme Court of the United States make a decision that applies to the whole country, I would absolutely uphold it.”

While Maine has just four electoral votes, it’s one of two states to split them. Trump won one of Maine’s electors in 2020, so having him off the ballot there, should he emerge as the Republican general election candidate, could have outsized implications in a race that is expected to be narrowly decided.

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Abortion debate creates ‘new era’ for state supreme court races in 2024

The 2024 elections will be dominated by the presidential contest and the battle for control of Congress, but another series of races is shaping up to be just as consequential.

Crucial battles over abortion, gerrymandering, voting rights and other issues will take center stage in next year’s elections for state supreme court seats — 80 of them in 33 states.

The races have emerged as some of the most hotly contested and costliest contests on the ballot since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, eliminating the constitutional right to an abortion. The decision shifted the abortion debate to states, creating a “new era” in state supreme court elections, said Douglas Keith, senior counsel in the judiciary program at the Brennan Center for Justice, which tracks spending in judicial races.

“We have seen attention on state supreme court elections like never before and money in these races like never before,” Keith said.

Heated court races in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania in 2023 handed victories to Democrats and saw tens of millions of dollars in TV ads, offering a preview of 2024. They're also prompting groups to consider investing in states they would not previously have considered.

ABORTION AND GERRYMANDERING TOP ISSUES

At least 38 lawsuits have been filed challenging abortion bans in 23 states, according to the Brennan Center. Many of those are expected to end up before state supreme courts.

The ACLU is watching cases challenging abortion restrictions in Wyoming, Kentucky, Ohio, Utah, Florida, Nevada, Arizona, Nebraska, Georgia and Montana.

“After Roe v. Wade was overturned, we had to turn to state courts and state constitutions as the critical backstop to protecting access to abortion,” said Brigitte Amiri, deputy director at the ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project. “And the stakes are unbelievably high in each of these cases in each of these states.”

The ACLU was among major spenders on behalf of Democrats in this year's state supreme court contests in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

Another big player in recent court races has been the Republican State Leadership Committee, which has said its focus is mainly on redistricting, or the drawing of political district boundaries. The group called state supreme courts the “last line of defense against far-left national groups,” but didn't say how much it intends to spend on next year's races or which states it's focusing on.

In Ohio, Democrats are expected to cast state supreme court races as an extension of the November election in which voters enshrined the right to abortion in the state constitution. The state has more than 30 abortion restrictions in place that could be challenged now that the amendment has passed.

“The state supreme court is going to be the ultimate arbiter of the meaning of the new constitutional amendment that the people voted for and organized around,” said Jessie Hill, law professor at Case Western Reserve University and a consultant for Ohioans United for Reproductive Rights. “That is a huge amount of power.”

With three seats up for a vote and a current Republican majority of 4-3, Democrats have an opportunity to flip the majority of the court while Republicans will try to expand their control. Hill said the “very high-stakes election” will serve as another test of the salience of the abortion issue in turning out voters.

“We saw an incredible number of voters come out to vote on that amendment and an incredible amount of investment in those campaigns,” Hill added. “I think we’ll see a similar attention and investment in Ohio come next year.”

Redistricting also is likely to be a main focus in the state's supreme court races, given the court will have realigned politically since it issued a series of rulings finding Ohio’s congressional and legislative maps unconstitutionally gerrymandered to favor Republicans, said David Niven, political science professor at the University of Cincinnati. He expects millions of dollars to be spent on those campaigns.

“There’s often little conversation about these races, but they are just so utterly consequential in very tangible, practical ways that touch voters’ everyday lives,” he said.

MAP BROADENS FOR CONSEQUENTIAL RACES

Pending legislative and congressional redistricting cases also could play a role in North Carolina.

Republicans in North Carolina are looking to expand their majority two years after the court flipped from Democratic control in the 2022 election. That flip to a 5-2 GOP majority led to dramatic reversals in 2023 on rulings made by the previous court, which had struck down a 2018 photo voter identification law as well as district maps for the General Assembly and the state’s congressional delegation.

Groups on both sides also are expected to focus on Michigan, where Democrats hold a 4-3 majority on the state Supreme Court. Candidates run without political affiliations listed on the ballot, though they’re nominated by political parties.

Two incumbents — one Democrat, one Republican — will be up for election in 2024. The court recently kept former President Donald Trump on the state's ballot, denying a liberal group's request to kick him off. It is currently weighing a high-profile case over a Republican legislative maneuver that gutted a minimum wage hike backed by voters.

2023 RACES A PREVIEW

In Wisconsin, abortion played a dominant role in the 2023 court race, with Democrats flipping the court to a 4-3 majority in a campaign that shattered previous national records for spending in state supreme court elections.

Liberal-leaning Justice Janet Protasiewicz defeated former Justice Dan Kelly, who previously worked for Republicans and had support from the state’s leading anti-abortion groups.

Protasiewicz was targeted with impeachment threats this year over comments she made on the campaign trail about redistricting as Republicans argued she had prejudged what then was an expected case on the state's heavily gerrymandered state legislative districts. Experts say the controversy is an example of how more money and attention have changed the dynamics of many state supreme court races to be increasingly partisan.

Democrats in Pennsylvania added to their majority on the court after a race with tens of millions of dollars in spending. Democrat Dan McCaffery won after positioning himself as a strong defender of abortion rights.

CONTESTED SEATS EVEN IN DEEP RED STATES

It remains to be seen whether abortion rights will play a factor in states where party control isn't at stake. That includes Arkansas, where the court is expected to maintain its 4-3 conservative majority. The seats up next year include the chief justice position, which has drawn three sitting justices.

A fight over abortion could wind up before the court, with a group trying to put a measure on the ballot next year that would scale back a state ban on the procedure that took effect once Roe was overturned.

Abortion rights supporters also aren't writing off longshot states such as Texas and its all-Republican high court, which rejected the request from a pregnant woman whose fetus had a fatal condition to be exempted from the state's strict abortion ban.

In Montana, Republicans have spent huge sums to try to push the court in a more conservative direction. The liberal-leaning court is expected to hear cases related to restrictions on transgender youth and abortion. A landmark climate change case also is pending before the court, which will have two of its seven seats up for election.

Jeremiah Lynch, a former federal magistrate running for the open chief justice position, has cast himself as a defender of the court's independence and has warned voters to expect a barrage of negative advertising. Cory Swanson, a county attorney also running for the post, announced his bid on a conservative talk show and recently vowed to weed out any “radicalized” applicants for law clerks in response to antisemitism on college campuses.

In West Virginia, where conservatives have a current 5-4 majority on the court and two seats will be up for grabs, GOP chair Elgine McArdle said Republicans aim to focus more on judicial races than in years past.

“One area the state party has never really engaged much in is nonpartisan races, including the judicial races," McArdle said. “That won’t be the case this time around.”

Trump is blocked from the ballot in two states. Can he still run for president?

First, Colorado's Supreme Court ruled that former President Donald Trump wasn't eligible to run for his old job in that state. Then, Maine's Democratic secretary of state ruled the same for her state. Who's next?

Both decisions are historic. The Colorado court was the first court to apply to a presidential candidate a rarely used constitutional ban against those who “engaged in insurrection.” Maine's secretary of state was the first top election official to unilaterally strike a presidential candidate from the ballot under that provision.

But both decisions are on hold while the legal process plays out.

That means that Trump remains on the ballot in Colorado and Maine and that his political fate is now in the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court. The Maine ruling will likely never take effect on its own. Its central impact is increasing pressure on the nation's highest court to say clearly: Can Trump still run for president after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol?

WHAT'S THE LEGAL ISSUE?

After the Civil War, the U.S. ratified the 14th Amendment to guarantee rights to former slaves and more. It also included a two-sentence clause called Section 3, designed to keep former Confederates from regaining government power after the war.

The measure reads:

“No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.”

Congress did remove that disability from most Confederates in 1872, and the provision fell into disuse. But it was rediscovered after Jan. 6.

HOW DOES THIS APPLY TO TRUMP?

Trump is already being prosecuted for the attempt to overturn his 2020 loss that culminated with Jan. 6, but Section 3 doesn't require a criminal conviction to take effect. Dozens of lawsuits have been filed to disqualify Trump, claiming he engaged in insurrection on Jan. 6 and is no longer qualified to run for office.

All the suits failed until the Colorado ruling. And dozens of secretaries of state have been asked to remove him from the ballot. All said they didn't have the authority to do so without a court order — until Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows' decision.

The Supreme Court has never ruled on Section 3. It's likely to do so in considering appeals of the Colorado decision — the state Republican Party has already appealed, and Trump is expected to file his own shortly. Bellows' ruling cannot be appealed straight to the U.S. Supreme Court — it has to be appealed up the judicial chain first, starting with a trial court in Maine.

The Maine decision does force the high court's hand, though. It was already highly likely the justices would hear the Colorado case, but Maine removes any doubt.

Trump lost Colorado in 2020, and he doesn't need to win it again to garner an Electoral College majority next year. But he won one of Maine's four Electoral College votes in 2020 by winning the state's 2nd Congressional District, so Bellows' decision would have a direct impact on his odds next November.

Until the high court rules, any state could adopt its own standard on whether Trump, or anyone else, can be on the ballot. That's the sort of legal chaos the court is supposed to prevent.

WHAT ARE THE ARGUMENTS IN THE CASE?

Trump's lawyers have several arguments against the push to disqualify him. First, it's not clear Section 3 applies to the president — an early draft mentioned the office, but it was taken out, and the language “an officer of the United States” elsewhere in the Constitution doesn't mean the president, they contend.

Second, even if it does apply to the presidency, they say, this is a “political” question best decided by voters, not unelected judges. Third, if judges do want to get involved, the lawyers assert, they're violating Trump's rights to a fair legal procedure by flatly ruling he's ineligible without some sort of fact-finding process like a lengthy criminal trial. Fourth, they argue, Jan. 6 wasn't an insurrection under the meaning of Section 3 — it was more like a riot. Finally, even if it was an insurrection, they say, Trump wasn't involved in it — he was merely using his free speech rights.

Of course, the lawyers who want to disqualify Trump have arguments, too. The main one is that the case is actually very simple: Jan. 6 was an insurrection, Trump incited it, and he's disqualified.

WHAT'S TAKEN SO LONG?

The attack was three years ago, but the challenges weren't “ripe,” to use the legal term, until Trump petitioned to get onto state ballots this fall.

But the length of time also gets at another issue — no one has really wanted to rule on the merits of the case. Most judges have dismissed the lawsuits because of technical issues, including that courts don't have the authority to tell parties whom to put on their primary ballots. Secretaries of state have dodged, too, usually telling those who ask them to ban Trump that they don't have the authority to do so unless ordered by a court.

No one can dodge anymore. Legal experts have cautioned that, if the Supreme Court doesn't clearly resolve the issue, it could lead to chaos in November — or in January 2025, if Trump wins the election. Imagine, they say, if the high court ducks the issue or says it's not a decision for the courts to make, and Democrats win a narrow majority in Congress. Would they seat Trump or declare he's ineligible under Section 3?

WHY DID MAINE DO THIS?

Maine has an unusual process in which a secretary of state is required to hold a public hearing on challenges to politicians' spots on the ballot and then issue a ruling. Multiple groups of Maine voters, including a bipartisan clutch of former state lawmakers, filed such a challenge, triggering Bellows' decision.

Bellows is a Democrat, the former head of the Maine chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, and has a long trail of criticism of Trump on social media. Trump's attorneys asked her to recuse herself from the case, citing posts calling Jan. 6 an “insurrection” and bemoaning Trump's acquittal in his impeachment trial over the attack.

She refused, saying she wasn't ruling based on personal opinions. But the precedent she sets is notable, critics say. In theory, election officials in every state could decide a candidate is ineligible based on a novel legal theory about Section 3 and end their candidacies.

Conservatives argue that Section 3 could apply to Vice President Kamala Harris, for example — it was used to block from office even those who donated small sums to individual Confederates. Couldn't it be used against Harris, they say, because she raised money for those arrested in the unrest after the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police in 2020?

IS THIS A PARTISAN ISSUE?

Well, of course it is. Bellows is a Democrat, and all the justices on the Colorado Supreme Court were appointed by Democrats. Six of the 9 U.S. Supreme Court justices were appointed by Republicans, three by Trump himself.

But courts don't always split on predictable partisan lines. The Colorado ruling was 4-3 — so three Democratic appointees disagreed with barring Trump. Several prominent legal conservatives have championed the use of Section 3 against the former president.

Now we'll see how the high court handles it.

Maine secretary of state bars Trump from ballot

Maine’s Democratic secretary of state on Thursday removed former President Donald Trump from the state’s presidential primary ballot under the Constitution’s insurrection clause, becoming the first election official to take action unilaterally as the U.S. Supreme Court is poised to decide whether Trump remains eligible to continue his campaign.

The decision by Secretary of State Shenna Bellows follows a ruling earlier this month by the Colorado Supreme Court that booted Trump from the ballot there under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. That decision has been stayed until the U.S. Supreme Court decides whether Trump is barred by the Civil War-era provision, which prohibits those who “engaged in insurrection” from holding office.

The Trump campaign said it would appeal Bellows' decision to Maine's state courts, and Bellows suspended her ruling until that court system rules on the case. In the end, it is likely that the nation's highest court will have the final say on whether Trump appears on the ballot there and in the other states.

Bellows found that Trump could no longer run for his prior job because his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol violated Section 3, which bans from office those who “engaged in insurrection.” Bellows made the ruling after some state residents, including a bipartisan group of former lawmakers, challenged Trump’s position on the ballot.

“I do not reach this conclusion lightly,” Bellows wrote in her 34-page decision. “I am mindful that no Secretary of State has ever deprived a presidential candidate of ballot access based on Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment. I am also mindful, however, that no presidential candidate has ever before engaged in insurrection.”

The Trump campaign immediately slammed the ruling. “We are witnessing, in real-time, the attempted theft of an election and the disenfranchisement of the American voter,” campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement.

Thursday's ruling demonstrates the need for the nation's highest court, which has never ruled on Section 3, to clarify what states can do.

“It is clear that these decisions are going to keep popping up, and inconsistent decisions reached (like the many states keeping Trump on the ballot over challenges) until there is final and decisive guidance from the U.S. Supreme Court,” Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California-Los Angeles, wrote in response to the Maine decision. “It seems a certainty that SCOTUS will have to address the merits sooner or later.”

While Maine has just four electoral votes, it’s one of two states to split them. Trump won one of Maine’s electors in 2020, so having him off the ballot there, should he emerge as the Republican general election candidate, could have outsized implications in a race that is expected to be narrowly decided.

That's in contrast to Colorado, which Trump lost by 13 percentage points in 2020 and where he wasn't expected to compete in November if he wins the Republican presidential nomination.

In her decision, Bellows acknowledged that the U.S. Supreme Court will probably have the final word but said it was important she did her official duty.

That won her praise from the former state lawmakers who filed one of the petitions forcing her to consider the case.

“Secretary Bellows showed great courage in her ruling, and we look forward to helping her defend her judicious and correct decision in court. No elected official is above the law or our constitution, and today’s ruling reaffirms this most important of American principles,” Republican Kimberly Rosen, independent Thomas Saviello and Democrat Ethan Strimling said in a statement.

The Trump campaign on Tuesday requested that Bellows disqualify herself from the case because she'd previously tweeted that Jan. 6 was an "insurrection” and bemoaned that Trump was acquitted in his impeachment trial in the U.S. Senate after the capitol attack. She refused to step aside.

“My decision was based exclusively on the record presented to me at the hearing and was in no way influenced by my political affiliation or personal views about the events of Jan. 6, 2021,” Bellows told the Associated Press Thursday night.

Bellows is a former head of the Maine chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. All seven of the justices of the Colorado Supreme Court, which split 4-3 on whether to become the first court in history to declare a presidential candidate ineligible under Section 3, were appointed by Democrats. Two Washington, D.C.-based liberal groups have launched the most serious prior challenges to Trump, in Colorado and a handful of other states.

That's led Trump to contend the dozens of lawsuits nationwide seeking to remove him from the ballot under Section 3 are a Democratic plot to end his campaign. But some of the most prominent advocates have been conservative legal theorists who argue that the text of the Constitution makes the former president ineligible to run again, just as if he failed to clear the document's age threshold — 35 years old — for the office.

Likewise, until Bellows' decision, every top state election official, whether Democrat or Republican, had rejected requests to bar Trump from the ballot, saying they didn't have the power to remove him unless ordered to do so by a court.

Wisconsin Supreme Court orders new legislative maps in redistricting case brought by Democrats

The liberal-controlled Wisconsin Supreme Court overturned Republican-drawn legislative maps on Friday and ordered that new district boundary lines be drawn as Democrats had urged in a redistricting case they hope will weaken GOP majorities.

The ruling comes less than a year before the 2024 election in a battleground state where four of the six past presidential elections have been decided by fewer than 23,000 votes, and Republicans have built large majorities in the Legislature under maps they drew over a decade ago.

The court ruled 4-3 in favor of Democrats who argued that the legislative maps are unconstitutional because districts drawn aren't contiguous. They also argued that the Supreme Court violated the separation of powers doctrine.

“Because the current state legislative districts contain separate, detached territory and therefore violate the constitution’s contiguity requirements, we enjoin the Wisconsin Elections Commission from using the current legislative maps in future elections,” Justice Jill Karofksy wrote for the majority.

The court said it will proceed with adopting remedial maps in time for the 2024 election unless the Republican-controlled Legislature can pass maps that Democratic Gov. Tony Evers will sign. Evers vetoed the current maps.

The lawsuit was filed a day after the court's majority flipped to 4-3 liberal control in August. That's when Justice Janet Protasiewicz joined the court after her April election victory.

Protasiewicz called the GOP-drawn maps “unfair” and “rigged” during her campaign, leading Republicans to threaten to impeach her before she had even heard a case. She sided with the other liberal justices in striking down the current maps.

Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, who had threatened impeachment the loudest, backed off on Wednesday and said even if she ruled in favor of throwing out the maps, impeachment was “super unlikely.”

She joined with Karosfky and justices Ann Walsh Bradley and Rebecca Dallet in the majority. Conservative justices Annette Ziegler, Rebecca Bradley and Brian Hagedorn dissented.

The ruling comes one month after the court heard oral arguments in the case in November. The state elections commission has said maps must be in place by March 15 if the new districts are to be in play for the 2024 election.

Democrats argued for having all 132 lawmakers stand for election under the new maps, including half of the members of the state Senate who are midway through their four-year terms. The Legislature argued that no new maps should be enacted any sooner than the 2026 election.

Democrats argued in Wisconsin that the majority of current legislative districts — 54 out of 99 in the Assembly and 21 out of 33 in the Senate — violate the state constitution’s contiguity requirement.

Wisconsin’s redistricting laws, backed up by state and federal court rulings over the past 50 years, have permitted districts under certain circumstances to be noncontiguous, attorneys for the Legislature argued. Even if the court decided to address the issue, it could only affect alleged areas where districts aren’t contiguous and not upend existing district lines, Republicans argued.

Democrats also argued that the Supreme Court violated the separation of powers doctrine when it adopted the Republican-drawn map that Evers had previously vetoed, “improperly seizing powers for itself the Constitution assigns to other branches.”

The legislative electoral maps drawn by the Republican-controlled Legislature in 2011 cemented the party’s majorities, which now stand at 64-35 in the Assembly and a 22-11 supermajority in the Senate.

Since taking the majority in 2011, Republicans have enacted a wide range of conservative priorities. They have all but eliminated collective bargaining for public workers, and since 2019 they’ve been a block on Evers’ agenda, firing Evers appointees and threatening impeachment of Protasiewicz and the state’s elections leader.

Republicans are also just two seats short of a supermajority that would allow them to overturn Evers’ vetoes.

Litigation is ongoing in more than dozen states over U.S. House and state legislative districts enacted after the 2020 census.

Supreme Court refuses to rule quickly on whether Trump can be prosecuted

The Supreme Court said Friday that it will not immediately take up a plea by special counsel Jack Smith to rule on whether former President Donald Trump can be prosecuted for his actions to overturn the 2020 election results.

The issue will now be decided by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which has signaled it will act quickly to decide the case. Special counsel Jack Smith had cautioned that even a rapid appellate decision might not get to the Supreme Court in time for review and final word before the court’s traditional summer break.

Smith had pressed the Supreme Court to intervene over concerns that the legal fight over the issue could delay the start of Trump’s trial, now scheduled for March 4, beyond next year’s presidential election.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan has put the case on hold while Trump pursues his claim in higher courts that he is immune from prosecution. Chutkan raised the possibility of keeping the March date if the case promptly returns to her court.

She already has rejected the Trump team’s arguments that an ex-president could not be prosecuted over acts that fall within the official duties of the job.

“Former presidents enjoy no special conditions on their federal criminal liability,” Chutkan wrote in her Dec. 1 ruling. “Defendant may be subject to federal investigation, indictment, prosecution, conviction, and punishment for any criminal acts undertaken while in office.”

The Supreme Court separately has agreed to hear a case over the charge of obstruction of an official proceeding that has been brought against Trump as well as more than 300 of his supporters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

In the immunity case, Smith had tried to persuade the justices to take up the matter directly, bypassing the appeals court.

“This case presents a fundamental question at the heart of our democracy: whether a former president is absolutely immune from federal prosecution for crimes committed while in office or is constitutionally protected from federal prosecution when he has been impeached but not convicted before the criminal proceedings begin,” prosecutors wrote.

Underscoring the urgency for prosecutors in securing a quick resolution that can push the case forward, Smith and his team wrote: “It is of imperative public importance that respondent’s claims of immunity be resolved by this Court and that respondent’s trial proceed as promptly as possible if his claim of immunity is rejected.”

Justice Department policy prohibits the indictment of a sitting president. Though there’s no such bar against prosecution for a former commander in chief, lawyers for Trump say that he cannot be charged for actions that fell within his official duties as president — a claim that prosecutors have vigorously rejected.

Trump faces charges accusing him of working to overturn the results of the 2020 election he lost to Democrat Joe Biden before the violent riot by his supporters at the U.S. Capitol. He has denied any wrongdoing.

The high court still could act quickly once the appeals court issues its decision. A Supreme Court case usually lasts several months, but on rare occasions, the justices shift into high gear.

Nearly 50 years ago, the justices acted within two months of being asked to force President Richard Nixon to turn over Oval Office recordings in the Watergate scandal. The tapes were then used later in 1974 in the corruption prosecutions of Nixon’s former aides.

It took the high court just a few days to effectively decide the 2000 presidential election for Republican George W. Bush over Democrat Al Gore.

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Trump lawyers tell Supreme Court to stay out of 2020 election case for now

Lawyers for former President Donald Trump urged the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday to stand down from a dispute over whether he can be prosecuted on charges he plotted to overturn the 2020 election results.

Special counsel Jack Smith's team last week urged the nation's high court to take up and quickly consider Trump's claims that he enjoys immunity from prosecution as a former president. The unusual request for a speedy ruling seemed designed to prevent any delays that could postpone the trial of the 2024 Republican presidential primary front-runner, currently set to begin March 4, until after next year’s presidential election.

But Trump's lawyers told the Supreme Court that there was no reason for them to take up the matter now, especially because a lower appeals court in Washington is already considering the same question, and has scheduled arguments for Jan. 9.

“Importance does not automatically necessitate speed. If anything, the opposite is usually true. Novel, complex, sensitive, and historic issues — such as the existence of presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts — call for more careful deliberation, not less," Trump's lawyers wrote.

With Trump facing four criminal cases and 91 felony counts as he seeks to reclaim the White House, a core aspect of his defense strategy has been to try to delay the prosecutions, including until after the election, to prevent them from interfering with his candidacy. In urging the Supreme Court to defer consideration of the immunity question, the defense lawyers are looking to avoid a quick and definitive answer that could push the case toward trial early next year.

“This appeal presents momentous, historic questions. An erroneous denial of a claim of presidential immunity from criminal prosecution unquestionably warrants this Court’s review,” the lawyers wrote. But, they added, that does not mean that the court should take “the case before the lower courts complete their review.”

They also said that the special counsel’s push to get the case to trial swiftly creates the appearance of political motivation: “to ensure that President Trump — the leading Republican candidate for President, and the greatest electoral threat to President Biden — will face a months-long criminal trial at the height of his presidential campaign.”

“As soon as the Special Counsel’s petition was filed, commentators from across the political spectrum observed that its evident motivation is to schedule the trial before the 2024 presidential election—a nakedly political motive,” they wrote.

A separate question before the court is Trump’s argument that he cannot be prosecuted in court for conduct for which he was already impeached — but then acquitted — before Congress. That argument has already been rejected by U..S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is presiding over the case.

The Supreme Court has indicated that it will decide quickly whether to hear the case but has not said what it will ultimately do.

Chutkan last week put the case on hold while Trump further pursues his claim that he is exempt from prosecution. But she left open the possibility of preserving the current trial date if the case returns to her court, saying that date and other deadlines were being paused rather than canceled.

At issue is Trump's claim that he is entitled to immunity for actions he took as part of his official duties as president. The Supreme Court has held that presidents are immune from civil liability for actions related to their official duties. But courts have never before had to wrestle with whether such immunity extends to criminal prosecution.

Chutkan ruled this month that former presidents "enjoy no special conditions on their federal criminal liability.”

Trump's team then appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, but special counsel Smith took the unusual step of attempting to bypass the appeals court — the usual next step in the process — and asking the Supreme Court take up the matter directly. Smith’s team has said there is nothing in the Constitution, or in court precedent, to support the idea that a former president cannot be prosecuted for criminal conduct committed while in the White House.

"The United States recognizes that this is an extraordinary request. This is an extraordinary case,” prosecutors wrote in asking for the Supreme Court's intervention.

The Supreme Court is expected to soon be asked to weigh in another Trump case with major political implications. Trump’s lawyers have vowed to appeal to the high court a decision on Tuesday barring him from Colorado’s ballot under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which prohibits anyone who swore an oath to support the Constitution and then “engaged in insurrection” against it from holding office.

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Feds raided Rudy Giuliani’s home and office in 2021 over Ukraine suspicions, unsealed papers show

A 2021 federal raid on Rudy Giuliani’s home and office was spurred by suspicions that the former New York City mayor had sought the removal of the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine partly because of the prospect of a financial reward from a Ukrainian official, according to documents made public Tuesday.

The documents provide new detail on the since-concluded investigation into Giuliani’s involvement with Ukrainian figures in the run up to the 2020 presidential election. Giuliani, a longtime ally of former President Donald Trump, was not charged with a crime as a result of the inquiry.

In a search warrant application, federal agents seeking to seize Giuliani’s cell phones, laptop and other electronic devices raised the possibility that he and three other people could be charged with acting as unregistered foreign agents.

The documents, unsealed at the request of The New York Times and dating to the weeks before the raids, confirmed past news reports that federal prosecutors in Manhattan were examining whether Giuliani had gotten anything of value from Ukrainian figures in return for lobbying the Trump administration to fire then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch.

The search warrant application said that Giuliani had been “incentivized” to lobby for the ambassador’s removal in two ways.

First, it said, Yuriy Lutsenko, the prosecutor general in Ukraine who wanted the ambassador fired, had offered to hire Giuliani to lobby the Trump administration for help recovering Ukrainian assets he believed had been misappropriated by a U.S. investment firm.

“As discussed below, Giuliani was interested in being engaged to do that work, and proposed a retainer with a $200,000 upfront payment. Thus, it appears that Giuliani took steps to cause the firing of the Ambassador to prove to what he could achieve in order to, among other things, secure the legal representation,” the search warrant said.

Secondly, the application said, Giuliani wanted Lutsenko’s help launching an investigation that might hurt Democratic rival Joe Biden.

Both Lutsenko and Giuliani have previously denied there was anything inappropriate about their interactions.

Prosecutors noted that the proposed $200,000 retainer was never paid. Giuliani has said he also never lobbied the Trump administration on Lutsenko's behalf.

A message seeking comment was left Tuesday with Giuliani's spokesperson.

In November 2022, federal prosecutors revealed in a letter to a federal judge that Giuliani would not face criminal charges over his interactions with Ukrainian figures before the 2020 presidential election.

“Based on information currently available to the Government, criminal charges are not forthcoming,” they wrote. They said the grand jury probe that led to the seizure of Giuliani’s electronic devices had concluded.

Giuliani tweeted soon afterward that it was a “COMPLETE & TOTAL VINDICATION.”

The contours of the investigation were broadly known even before its conclusion, but details of what evidence prosecutors were acting on when they sought to search Giuliani had not been revealed.

The Times wrote to the judge in October seeking copies of the search warrants, warrant applications, supporting affidavits and other documents.

Giuliani consented to releasing the search warrant documents, according to U.S. District Judge J. Paul Oetken’s order unsealing them.

The documents contained numerous redactions, with many names and other identifying information blacked out. Trump’s name appeared in the documents more than two-dozen times, mainly pertaining to Giuliani’s alleged lobbying efforts. There was no suggestion that investigators suspected Trump of wrongdoing.

In an affidavit filed with Manhattan federal magistrates to secure search warrants, investigators wrote it appeared Giuliani had been aware of FARA registration requirements for some time and had publicly stated that he believed he was not required to register because he has never lobbied the U.S. government on behalf of his clients.

The disclosure of the search warrant documents comes amid a tangle of recent and ongoing legal challenges for the Republican ex-mayor.

Giuliani was indicted in August in Georgia on charges he acted as Trump’s chief co-conspirator in a plot to subvert Biden’s victory. He was also described as a co-conspirator but not charged in special counsel Jack Smith’s federal election interference case against Trump.

Last week, a jury in Washington, D.C. ordered Giuliani to pay $148 million in damages to two former Georgia election workers who sued him for defamation over lies he spread about them in the wake of Trump’s 2020 election loss.

The former workers, Wandrea “Shaye” Moss and her mother Ruby Freeman, sued Giuliani again on Monday, alleging he continued to defame them during the trial.

The April 2021 raid on Giuliani's Manhattan apartment and office was seen at the time as a major escalation of the Justice Department’s yearslong investigation of his dealings in Ukraine.

At the same time, agents also served a warrant for a phone belonging to Washington lawyer Victoria Toensing, a former federal prosecutor and close ally of Giuliani and Trump. Her law firm said she was informed she was not a target of the investigation. She was not charged.

Giuliani accused federal authorities at the time of “running rough shod over the constitutional rights of anyone involved in, or legally defending" Trump.

Giuliani was central to the then-president’s efforts to press Ukraine for an investigation into Biden and his son, Hunter.

Giuliani also sought to undermine Yovanovitch, who was pushed out on Trump’s orders. He met several times with a Ukrainian lawmaker who released edited recordings of Biden in an effort to smear him before the election.

Hunter Biden was charged by U.S. authorities in September with federal gun crimes and is scheduled to be arraigned next month on tax charges.

The federal Foreign Agents Registration Act requires people who lobby on behalf of a foreign government or entity to register with the Justice Department.

The once-obscure law, aimed at improving transparency, has received a burst of attention in recent years — particularly during Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of foreign election interference, which revealed an array of foreign influence operations in the U.S.

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The Republican leading the probe of Hunter Biden has his own shell company and complicated friends

Rep. James Comer, a multimillionaire farmer, boasts of being one of the largest landholders near his rural Kentucky hometown, and he has meticulously documented nearly all of his landholdings on congressional financial disclosure documents – roughly 1,600 acres (645 hectares) in all.

But there are 6 acres (2.4 hectares) that he bought in 2015 and co-owns with a longtime campaign contributor that he has treated differently, transferring his ownership to Farm Team Properties, a shell company he co-owns with his wife.

Interviews and records reviewed by The Associated Press provide new insights into the financial deal, which risks undercutting the force of some of Comer’s central arguments in his impeachment inquiry of President Joe Biden. For months, the chairman of the House Oversight committee and his Republican colleagues have been pounding Biden, a Democrat, for how his relatives traded on their famous name to secure business deals.

In particular, Comer has attacked some Biden family members, including the president’s son Hunter, over their use of shell companies that appear designed to obscure millions of dollars in earnings they received from shadowy middlemen and foreign interests.

Such companies typically exist only on paper and are formed to hold an asset, like real estate. Their opaque structures are often designed to help hide ownership of property and other assets.

The companies used by the Bidens are already playing a central role in the impeachment investigation, which is expected to gain velocity after House Republicans voted Wednesday to formally authorize the probe. The vote follows the federal indictment last week of Biden’s son Hunter on charges he engaged in a scheme to avoid paying taxes on his earnings through the companies.

But as Comer works to “deliver the transparency and accountability that the American people demand” through the GOP’s investigation, his own finances and relationships have begun to draw notice, too, including his ties to prominent local figures who have complicated pasts not all that dissimilar to some of those caught up in his Biden probe.

Comer declined to comment through a spokesman but has aggressively denied any wrongdoing in establishing a shell company.

After Democrats blasted him for being a hypocrite following the Daily Beast’s disclosure of the company last month, Comer countered by calling a Democratic lawmaker a “smurf” and saying that the criticism was the kind of thing “only dumb, financially illiterate people pick up on.”

The AP found that Farm Team Properties functions in a similarly opaque way as the companies used by the Bidens, masking his stake in the land that he co-owns with the donor from being revealed on his financial disclosure forms. Those records describe Farm Team Properties as his wife's “land management and real estate speculation” company without providing further details.

It’s not clear why Comer decided to put those six acres in a shell company, or what other assets Farm Team Properties may hold. On his most recent financial disclosure forms, Comer lists its value as being as much as $1 million, a substantial sum but a fraction of his overall wealth.

Ethics experts say House rules require members of Congress to disclose all assets held by such companies that are worth more than $1,000.

“It seems pretty clear to me that he should be disclosing the individual land assets that are held by” the shell company, said Delaney Marsco, a senior attorney who specializes in congressional ethics at the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center in Washington.

Marsco and other experts were perplexed as to why Comer would place such assets in a shell company, especially since he disclosed his other holdings and does not appear to have taken other efforts to hide his wealth.

“This is actually a real problem that anti-corruption activists would love to get legislative reform on,” said Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis who specializes in government ethics. “It is hard to trace assets held in shell companies. His is a good example.”

Comer created the company in 2017 to hold his stake in the six acres that he purchased two years earlier in a joint venture with Darren Cleary, a major campaign contributor and construction contractor from Monroe County, Kentucky, where the congressman was born and raised.

It’s not clear how Comer came to invest with Cleary, who did not respond to an interview request. They have offered mutual praise for each other over the years, including Comer having called Cleary “my friend” and “the epitome of a successful businessperson” from the House floor.

Cleary, his businesses and family have donated roughly $70,000 to Comer’s various campaigns, records show. He has also lauded Comer on social media for “For Fighting For Us Everyday” and has posted photos of the two on a golf course together.

At the time he and Comer entered their venture, Cleary was selling an acre of his family's land to Kentucky so it could build a highway bypass near Tompkinsville, which was completed in 2020. He sold Comer a 50% stake for $128,000 in six acres he owned that would end up being adjacent to the highway.

Comer, a powerful political figure in this rural part of Kentucky, announced his bid for Congress days after purchasing the land.

Marketing materials described the land as “choice” property and play up its proximity to the bypass. The partnership sold off about an acre last year for $150,000, a substantial increase over its value when purchased, property records show.

Farm Team Properties has also become more valuable. On Comer’s financial disclosure forms, it has risen in value from between $50,000 and $100,000 in 2016 to between $500,001 and $1 million in 2022, records show.

As House Oversight Committee chairman, Comer has presented himself as a bipartisan ethics crusader only interested in uncovering the truth. As evidence, he has pointed to a long career as a state legislator and official who sought to build bridges with Democrats and to “clean up scandal, restore confidence, and crack down on waste, fraud, and abuse.”

Interviews with allies, critics and constituents, however, reveal a fierce partisan who has ignored wrongdoing by friends and supporters if they can help him advance in business and politics.

“The Jamie Comer I knew was light and sunshine and looking for common ground. Now he’s Nixonian,” said Adam Edelen, a former Democratic state auditor and friend, comparing the lawmaker to a disgraced former president who resigned from office amid the Watergate scandal.

In Comer’s telling, he is a man of self-made wealth who founded his first farm while still enrolled at Western Kentucky University and shrewdly invested in land.

After graduating in 1993, Comer got into the insurance business with Billy D. Poston, a family friend.

The two later had a falling out. When poor health prevented Polston from running for reelection as a state representative in 2000, Comer, then 27, took on Polston’s wife in the GOP primary, winning that race and the general election. For years, Comer took credit in interviews for defeating the 'incumbent.”

Comer cut his teeth in the bare-knuckled machine politics of Monroe County, Kentucky, and knew how to win allies, according to those who knew him.

When he was barely out of high school, Comer was writing campaign checks to state politicians, including a $4,000 contribution to a Republican candidate for governor in 1990, followed by another check in 1991 for $1,050, according to campaign finance disclosures published in local news stories. Both contributions listed Comer’s occupation as “student.”

Comer followed in the footsteps of his paternal grandfather, Harlin Comer, who was a leading figure in local Republican politics, as well as a construction contractor and bank officer.

When Harlin Comer died in 1993, the 21-year-old Comer took over as chairman of the Monroe County GOP. A wave of indictments against local Republican office holders, some of whom helped launch Comer’s political career and became close friends, soon followed.

Mitchell Page and Larry Pitcock were among those charged in the sweep. Page, then the county’s chief executive, and Pitcock, the former county clerk, were sentenced in 1996 to 18 months in prison for tampering with a state computer database so that they and their families could avoid paying vehicle taxes.

Rather than turning on Pitcock and Page, Comer has remained close to the men. He praised Page on the House floor in 2020 for his “principled leadership.”

Page did not respond to a request for comment. Pitcock could not be reached at phone numbers listed to him.

Pitcock and his family members have donated about $9,000 to Comer’s political campaigns and held one of Comer’s first fundraisers when he ran to become state agriculture commissioner, records show. Comer dismissed questions about the propriety of having Pitcock sponsor a fundraiser for him, noting to CN2 News that it helped him raise nearly $60,000.

Comer eventually hired Pitcock’s son to work for him in the agriculture commissioner’s office, records show. Members of the Pitcock family have since attended a House Republican fundraiser with Comer in Washington and posed for photographs with him inside the U.S. Capitol.

In 2011, a voter fraud case roiled local politics and swept up Billy Proffitt, Comer’s longtime friend and former college roommate. Proffitt pleaded guilty in December 2011 and was sentenced to probation.

A few years later, Proffitt came to Comer’s defense from allegations that nearly derailed the future congressman's political career. During the 2015 Republican primary for governor, a local blogger began posting about accusations that Comer had abused a college girlfriend.

Comer vehemently denied the allegations. And in the hopes of discrediting the stories, he leaked emails to a local paper that suggested a rival campaign had been coordinating the coverage with the blogger, according to The New York Times. The leak allegation may have discredited the other candidate, Hal Heiner, but ended up hurting Comer’s campaign.

The coverage angered the former girlfriend, who wrote a letter to the Louisville Courier-Journal in which she asserted that Comer had hit her and that their relationship had been “toxic.” She also told the newspaper that Comer became “enraged” in 1991 after he learned she had used his name on a form she submitted before receiving an abortion at a Louisville clinic.

Proffitt, however, told the newspaper that he had never seen Comer be abusive toward Thomas.

“That doesn’t sound like Jamie at all,” said Proffitt, using Comer’s nickname, adding that he had never heard about the allegations of Thomas getting an abortion.

Comer ended up losing the primary by 83 votes to Matt Bevin, who went on to win the general election. It was the only campaign that Comer has lost.

The lawmaker and Proffitt remain close friends and business associates.

Profitt’s family’s real estate company is spearheading the efforts to sell the land held by Farm Team Properties.

In a brief interview, Proffitt called the focus on Comer’s shell company “much ado about nothing,” adding that the lawmaker “is a loyal friend and a good man who comes from a really, really good family.”

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