Biden is targeting Trump’s ‘extremist movement’ as he makes democracy a touchtone in reelection bid

Posted on September 28, 2023 by Associated Press

President Joe Biden is ready to argue “there is something dangerous happening in America” during a speech in Arizona on Thursday as he revives his warnings that Donald Trump and his allies represent an existential threat to the country's democratic institutions.

“There is an extremist movement that does not share the basic beliefs of our democracy. The MAGA movement,” Biden says in excerpts of the speech released in advance by the White House, referring Trump's Make America Great Again slogan.

Although voting in the 2024 Republican primary doesn't begin for months, Biden's focus reflects Trump's status as the undisputed frontrunner for his party's nomination despite facing four indictments, two of them related to his attempts to overturn Biden’s victory in the 2020 election.

Biden's speech is his fourth in a series of presidential addresses on the topic, a cause that is a touchstone for him as he tries to remain in office even in the face of low approval ratings and widespread concern from voters about his age, 80.

He's also facing fresh pressure on Capitol Hill, where House Republicans are holding the first hearing in their impeachment inquiry.

On the first anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot, Biden visited the Capitol and accused Trump of continuing to hold a “dagger” at democracy’s throat. Biden closed out the summer that year in the shadow of Philadelphia’s Independence Hall, decrying Trumpism as a menace to democratic institutions.

And in November, as voters were casting ballots in the midterm elections, Biden again sounded a clarion call to protect democratic institutions.

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The location for Thursday's speech, as was the case for the others, was chosen for effect. It will be near Arizona State University, which houses the McCain Institute, named after the late Arizona Sen. John McCain — a friend of Biden and the 2008 Republican presidential nominee who spent his public life denouncing autocrats around the globe.

“I have come to honor the McCain Institute and Library because they are home to a proud Republican who put country first," Biden says in the excerpts. “Our commitment should be no less because democracy should unite all Americans – regardless of political affiliation.”

As Biden has tried to do in the past, Thursday's speech is designed to avoid alienating moderate Republicans while confronting the spread of anti-democratic rhetoric.

“Not every Republican -– not even the majority of Republicans –- adhere to the extremist MAGA ideology. I know because I’ve been able to work with Republicans my whole career," Biden says. “But there is no question that today’s Republican Party is driven and intimidated by MAGA extremists.”

Republicans competing with Trump for their party's 2024 presidential nomination have largely avoided challenging his election falsehoods. In addition, Trump's allies on Capitol Hill are only becoming more emboldened as he eggs them on, including toward a looming government shutdown that appears all but inevitable.

In closed-door fundraisers, Biden has spoken at length about reelection, imploring supporters to join his effort to “literally save American democracy,” as he described it to wealthy donors this month in New York.

“I’m running because we made progress — that’s good — but because our democracy, I think, is still at risk,” Biden said.

Advisers see Biden’s continued focus on democracy as both good policy and good politics. Campaign officials have pored over the election results from last November, when candidates who denied the 2020 election results did not fare well in competitive races, and point to polling that showed democracy was a highly motivating issue for voters in 2022.

Candidates who backed Trump’s election lies and were running for statewide offices with some influence over elections — governor, secretary of state, attorney general — lost their races in every presidential battleground state.

In few states does Biden’s message of democracy resonate more than in Arizona, which became politically competitive during Trump’s presidency after seven decades of Republican dominance. After Biden's victory, the state was a hotbed of efforts to overturn or cast doubt on the results.

Republican state lawmakers used their subpoena power to obtain all the 2020 ballots and vote-counting machines from Maricopa County, then hired Trump supporters to conduct an unprecedented partisan review of the election. The widely mocked spectacle confirmed Biden’s victory but fueled unfounded conspiracy theories about the election and spurred an exodus of election workers.

In the 2022 midterms, voters up and down the ballot rejected Republican candidates who repeatedly denied the results of the 2020 election. But Kari Lake, the GOP gubernatorial candidate, has never conceded her loss to now-Gov. Katie Hobbs and is expected to soon launch her a bid for the U.S. Senate. Republican Senate candidate Blake Masters and Mark Finchem, who ran for secretary of state, also repeated fraudulent election claims in their respective campaigns.

Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., who defeated Masters, said the importance of defending democracy resonates not only with members of his own party but independents and moderate GOP voters.

“I met so many Republicans that were sick and tired of the lies about an election that was two years old,” Kelly said.

Indeed, Republicans privately concede that the election denialism rhetoric that dominated their candidates’ message — as well as the looming specter of Trump — damaged their efforts to retain the governor’s mansion and flip a hotly contested Senate seat, according to three Republican officials who worked in statewide races last cycle.

Arizona Rep. Ruben Gallego, who is seeking the Democratic nomination in next year’s Senate race, said a democracy-focused message is particularly important to two critical blocs of voters in the state: Latinos and veterans, both of whom Gallego said are uniquely affected by election denialism and the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection.

"You know, we come from countries and experiences where democracy is very corrupt, and many of us are only one generation removed from that, but we’re close enough to see how bad it can be," Gallego said. "And so Jan. 6 actually was particularly jarring, I think, to Latinos.”

As he pays tribute to McCain on Thursday, Biden will also announce new federal funds being directed to build the McCain Library, which the White House described as a “new multipurpose facility to provide education, work, and health monitoring programs to underserved communities in the state.”

The money comes from a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package passed in the early months of Biden’s presidency, and the project is in partnership with the with the McCain Institute and Arizona State University. The late senator’s wife, Cindy McCain, other members of their family, Gov. Hobbs, and the state’s representatives on Capitol Hill will be at the event commemorating McCain, “whose intolerance for the abuse of power and faith in America sets a powerful example to live by,” the White House said.

Nevada Republicans brace for confusion as party eyes election rules that may favor Trump

Posted on September 24, 2023 by Associated Press

Former President Donald Trump's push to bend state Republican parties to his will — and gain an advantage in his effort to return to the White House — is coming to a head in Nevada.

The state GOP, which is led by Trump allies, is insisting on moving forward with a presidential caucus on Feb. 8 despite a new state law that set a primary election two days earlier. Caucuses, which typically reward grassroots support and organizing, are expected to benefit Trump given his solid grip on the GOP's most loyal voters.

But the party is poised to go further on Saturday when it's expected to approve plans that some Nevada Republicans and Trump rivals argue would confuse and anger voters and further tilt the caucus for the former president. The proposed rules, copies of which were obtained by The Associated Press, include provisions to bar any candidate from the caucus if they're on the primary ballot. They would also restrict super PACs, like the one Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is relying on, from trying to bolster support for candidates in a caucus.

The result, some Republicans and Trump rivals argue, will be chaos at a crucial point in the presidential nomination process. Voters could be confused about which election to participate in and risk being disenfranchised if they vote in the primary. The Nevada GOP says it will only recognize — and award delegates to presidential candidates — based on the results of the caucus.

“Trump hates rigged elections, except when he’s doing the rigging, like he’s doing in Nevada,” said Ken Cuccinelli, who was the deputy secretary of Homeland Security during the Trump administration and is now the founder of the Never Back Down super PAC, which is backing DeSantis’ campaign.

Other campaigns have privately voiced similar concerns. And the Nevada Republican Club, which says it represents about 400 members in the state, sent a letter to local GOP officials this month urging them to speak out about the potential problems with the state having both a primary and a caucus and to defeat the proposed rule changes.

Having both will “frustrate, anger and confuse Nevada’s Republican voters,” and create bad publicity for the Nevada GOP, the club leaders wrote in the letter. They also questioned whether there are enough volunteers to staff a caucus across 17 counties and if the party should spend its money on other goals, like voter registration and getting out the vote in the general election.

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“This process will hurt the Republican Party and our candidates in 2024,” the leaders added. “The Nevada Republican Party will give average voters the impression they don’t care about them or their votes.”

Nevada GOP Chairman Michael McDonald didn't return multiple phone calls and text messages. He previously told the AP that the party pushed the caucus, which they have before, because the Democrat-controlled state Legislature would not pass a law requiring proof of identification at the ballot box, instead of just when registering to vote, among other measures.

The Trump campaign didn't respond to a message seeking comment.

Jim DeGraffenreid, a Republican National Committeeman for the Nevada GOP, declined to discuss the proposals that the party was considering, referring to them as “housekeeping.” But he called the idea that Nevada’s process is skewed for Trump “one of the most ridiculous things that I think I’ve ever heard.”

“It appears that Donald Trump is the last person that needs a thumb on the scale,” DeGraffenreid said, citing the former president’s polling and fundraising strength. “It is not in our interest to rig anything for anyone, especially for someone who apparently doesn’t need to have anything rigged for him.”

Still, the dynamic is a reminder of how Trump is approaching the 2024 campaign far differently than his first bid in 2016. During his initial run as a political neophyte, Trump and his team had little understanding of state parties and the intricate — yet significant — role they play in shaping rules that govern how delegates are awarded to the eventual Republican nominee.

That's not the case this time.

In Michigan, where the state GOP has become increasingly loyal to Trump, the party’s leadership this year voted to change the state’s longtime process of allocating all its presidential delegates based on an open primary election. Under a new plan widely expected to benefit Trump, 16 of the state’s 55 delegates will be awarded based on the results of a Feb. 27 primary. The other 39 will be distributed four days later in closed-door caucus meetings of party activists.

In Idaho, one of the country’s most Republican states, a new law passed by the state legislature earlier this year eliminated the presidential primary process by moving the state elections to May as lawmakers tried to consolidate the voting calendar. The party’s state central committee decided to instead hold caucuses on March 2.

Trump's ties to the Nevada GOP are especially deep, with the organization led by longstanding allies, including McDonald and DeGraffenreid. Both served as fake presidential electors in 2020 as part of a scheme in Nevada and other battleground states to try to overturn Trump’s election loss. The party’s executive director, Alida Benson, left that job this summer to run Trump's campaign in the state.

With Trump seeming to have such a heavy advantage in the caucus, some Republicans have speculated that other GOP presidential candidates might forgo trying to win the state’s relatively small number of GOP delegates, instead opting to run in the primary.

A primary run by the state of Nevada would offer early and absentee voting and same-day registration, processes that typically broaden participation. A win in that election, while not helping candidates collect some delegates needed to secure the nomination, could help them gain attention and early momentum by proving their electability among a broader pool of voters.

So far, Vivek Ramaswamy is the only presidential candidate to officially file for the caucus, though Trump is expected to join him.

Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley’s campaign did not respond to questions about Nevada and representatives for South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott and former Vice President Mike Pence declined to say whether they’ll try to run in one or both processes in Nevada, which is scheduled to vote third, after Iowa and New Hampshire.

“We’re exploring all options in Nevada to best position Ron DeSantis to be the next president,” DeSantis’ Communications Director Andrew Romeo said in a statement.

Never Back Down, which was organizing support for DeSantis, pulled its door-knockers from Nevada and other states — a move that Cuccinelli said was prompted in Nevada because of the GOP’s plans. The party's proposed rules would bar the super PAC's employees from attending any caucuses, conventions or local precinct meetings, bar them from obtaining lists of caucus attendees and bar them from handing out pamphlets outside of meetings, among other restrictions.

“If he’s going to keep putting his thumb on the scale and then put his arm on the scale and then climb on the frickin' scale," Cuccinelli said of Trump, "You know, does it really make sense to pour resources into an uphill, unfair fight like that versus other states?"

David Gibbs, president of the Nevada Republican Club, said he's not concerned about criticism that the process could favor Trump. He worried, however, that the dueling election processes could disenfranchise voters — especially those who may wonder why all of the major candidates aren't on their ballot when it’s time to vote.

“I like caucuses. I actually prefer caucus to a primary election,” he said. “But doing both is not good. And that’s what we face right now.”

A flamethrower and comments about book burning ignite a political firestorm in Missouri

Posted on September 23, 2023 by Associated Press

A longshot candidate for Missouri governor and his supporters describe his use of a flamethrower at a recent “Freedom Fest” event outside St. Louis as no big deal. They said it was a fun moment for fellow Republicans who attended, and that no one talked about burning books as he torched a pile of cardboard boxes.

But after the video gained attention on social media, State Sen. Bill Eigel said he would burn books he found objectionable, and that he'd do it on the lawn outside the governor's mansion. He later said it was all a metaphor for how he would attack the “woke liberal agenda.”

“From a dramatic sense, if the only thing in between the children in the state of Missouri and vulgar pornographic material like that getting in their hands is me burning, bulldozing or launching (books) into outer space, I’m going to do that,” Eigel said in an interview with The Associated Press. “However, I would I make the point that I don’t believe it’s going to come to that.”

Experts say Eigel's use of the flamethrower is a sign that rhetoric and imagery previously considered extreme are now being treated as normal in American politics. While Eigel didn't actually destroy books, his later statement about burning ones he deemed offensive ratcheted up fears that the video's circulation and his words on social media could help take the U.S. to a darker place.

“The slippery slope is that everything is a joke — everything can be kind of waved away,” said Kurt Braddock, an assistant professor of public communications at American University in Washington. “Everything can be seen as just rhetoric until it can’t anymore and people start using it as an excuse to actually hurt people.”

The 30-second video that put Eigel at the center of a social media storm is from a Sept. 15 event for Republicans at a winery near tiny Defiance, Missouri, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) west of St. Louis. He and another state senator shot long streams of flame onto a pile of cardboard in front of an appreciative crowd.

The video posted on the X platform, formerly known as Twitter, caught the attention of Jonathan Riley, a liberal activist in Durham, North Carolina, who posted Sunday that it showed “Missouri Republicans at a literal book burning," though he'd later walk that statement back to a “metaphorical” book burning.

“It fit a narrative that they wanted to put out there,” Freedom Fest organizer Debbie McFarland said about claims that Eigel burned books. “It just didn’t happen to be the truth.”

Some of Republicans' skepticism over the online outrage stems from Eigel's status as a dark horse candidate to replace term-limited GOP Gov. Mike Parson. The best known candidates for the August 2024 GOP primary are Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft and Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe.

The Ashcroft campaign declined to respond to the video, the uproar it caused or Eigel's follow-up statement. Kehoe's campaign had no official comment, but Gregg Keller, a GOP consultant working on Kehoe’s campaign, said Eigel’s promise to burn objectionable books is “typical electioneering hyperbole.”

He added, “I would challenge you to find me any non-psychotic Republican who has actually burned” a book deemed objectionable by conservatives.

Eigel posted on the X platform that his flamethrower stunt was meant to show what he would do to the “swamp” in the state capital of Jefferson City, but “let’s be clear, you bring those woke pornographic books to Missouri schools to try to brainwash our kids, and I’ll burn those too -- on the front lawn of the governor’s mansion.”

Republicans across the U.S. are backing conservative efforts to purge schools and libraries of materials with LGBTQ+ themes or books with LGBTQ+ characters. The issue resonates with Republicans in Missouri. An AP VoteCast survey of Missouri voters in the 2022 midterm elections showed that more than 75% of those voting for GOP candidates thought the K-8 schools in their community were teaching too much about gender identity or sexual orientation.

The outcry also comes after Missouri's GOP-supermajority Legislature banned gender-affirming health care for transgender minors and required K-12 and college students to play on sports teams that match their sex assigned at birth. Eigel has sponsored measures to ban schools from teaching about gender identity or gender-affirming care and to make it a crime to perform in drag in public.

Aggressive and even violent imagery have long been a part of American politics. It can sometimes backfire.

Large guns have been a popular prop for some Republicans. Last year, a Black candidate seeking the GOP nomination in an Arizona congressional district aired an ad in which he held an AR-15 rifle as people wearing Ku Klux Klan robes and hoods tried to storm a home. He finished last.

In Missouri in 2016, GOP candidate and ex-Navy Seal Eric Greitens ran an ad featuring him firing 100 rounds from a machine gun on his way to winning the governor’s race. After a sex and invasion-of-privacy scandal in 2018 forced him to resign, he attempted a political comeback in the state’s 2022 U.S. Senate race, running an ad featuring him with a shotgun declaring he was going hunting for RINOs, or Republicans in Name Only. He finished third in the primary.

Flamethowers also have popped up previously. In 2020, a GOP congressional candidate in Alabama showed her support for then-President Donald Trump by torching a mockup of the first articles of impeachment against him. She finished third in the primary. And in South Dakota, Gov. Kristi Noem’s staff gave her a flamethrower last year as a Christmas gift.

Experts who study political extremism said images involving fire or bonfires have long been associated with extremist groups. Eigel’s critics quickly posted online images involving the Ku Klux Klan and Nazi book burnings before World War II.

Evan Perkoski, an associate political science professor at the University of Connecticut, said it's been “traditional” for extremist groups to use images of fire to “simultaneously intimidate people and signal their intentions to destroy what exists and to rebuild or start over.”

“We’ve seen this time and time again from groups across countries where groups will burn effigies, crosses and other items, or even just film themselves around large conflagrations,” he said in a email to AP. “A large part of their motivation is the symbolic, frightening nature of fire.”

Experts continue to worry about how social media can spread extreme or violent images or words to potentially millions of people, increasing the chances of a single person seeing the material as a call to violence.

Javed Ali, a former senior FBI counterterrorism official who's now an associate professor at the University of Michigan, said law enforcement agencies struggle with thwarting homegrown political violence. He said the sheer volume of social media postings means, “Sometimes, you almost have to get lucky in order to stop it."

Braddock, the American University professor, said that after portraying a flamethrower as a weapon against “the woke agenda,” Eigel's supporters don't need “that big a leap of logic” to see it as a tool for settling actual political grievances. Talking about book burning enough can plant the idea in people's minds so that ”people think it’s actually a righteous thing to do."

Ali added: “That’s a pretty dangerous game to play.”

Eigel said he’s not worried the video will inspire violence in “reasonable, everyday Missourians,” which he said is the majority of people. But he said he’s concerned about the number of threats he, his family and his staff have received as a result.

A flamethrower and comments about book burning ignite a political firestorm in Missouri

Posted on September 23, 2023 by Associated Press

“It fit a narrative that they wanted to put out there,” Freedom Fest organizer Debbie McFarland said about claims that Eigel burned books. “It just didn’t happen to be the truth.”

He added, “I would challenge you to find me any non-psychotic Republican who has actually burned” a book deemed objectionable by conservatives.

Aggressive and even violent imagery have long been a part of American politics. It can sometimes backfire.

Ali added: “That’s a pretty dangerous game to play.”

3 fake electors want Georgia election subversion charges against them to be moved to federal court

Posted on September 20, 2023 by Associated Press

Lawyers for three Georgia Republicans, who falsely claimed that Donald Trump won the state and they were “duly elected and qualified” electors, are set to argue Wednesday that criminal charges against them should be moved from state to federal court.

David Shafer, Shawn Still and Cathy Latham were among the 18 people indicted last month along with Trump on charges they participated in a wide-ranging scheme to keep the Republican president in power after his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden. All 19 defendants have pleaded not guilty.

U.S. District Judge Steve Jones is set to hear arguments Wednesday on why Shafer, Still and Latham believe the case against them should be tried in federal court rather than in Fulton County Superior Court. Jones already rejected a similar effort from Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, who has appealed that ruling. He held a hearing Monday on a similar bid by former U.S. Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark and has yet to rule.

Shafer, Still and Latham have all indicated in court filings that they will not be present in court for the hearing.

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If their cases are moved to federal court, a jury would be drawn from a broader and potentially less Democratic pool than in Fulton County alone. And any trial would not be photographed or televised, as cameras are not allowed inside federal courtrooms. But it would not open the door for Trump, if he’s elected again in 2024, or another president to issue pardons because any conviction would still happen under state law.

Part of the overarching illegal scheme, the indictment alleges, was the casting of false Electoral College votes at the Georgia Capitol on Dec. 14, 2020, and the transfer of documentation of those votes to the president of the U.S. Senate, the National Archives, the Georgia secretary of state and the chief judge of the federal court in Atlanta. Those documents were meant to “disrupt and delay” the joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021, in order to “unlawfully change the outcome” of the election, the indictment says.

Prosecutors allege that Shafer, Still, Latham — and the other Georgia Republicans who participated in that plan — “falsely impersonated” electors. The related charges against them include impersonating a public officer, forgery, false statements and writings, and attempting to file false documents.

Republicans in six other battleground states that Trump lost also met and signed fake elector certificates. Michigan's attorney general in July brought criminal charges against the fake electors there.

Lawyers for the three contend that a legal challenge to the state's election results was pending and that lawyers told them it was necessary to have an alternate slate of Republican electors in case the challenge was successful.

They cite the example of the 1960 presidential election when Republican Richard Nixon was initially certified as the winner in Hawaii. Supporters of Democrat John F. Kennedy filed a legal challenge that was still pending on the day the state's presidential electors were to meet. That day, the certified electors for Nixon and uncertified elector nominees for Kennedy met at the state Capitol to cast votes for their candidates and sent them to Congress as required by the Electoral Count Act. Kennedy ultimately won the election challenge and was certified the winner, and Congress counted the votes of the Kennedy electors.

At the time of the actions alleged in the indictment, Shafer was the chair of the Georgia Republican Party, Latham was the chair of the Coffee County Republican Party and Still was the finance chair for the state Republican Party. Still was elected to the state Senate last year and represents a district in Atlanta’s suburbs.

Their lawyers say their clients were acting as contingent U.S. presidential electors and in that role were or were acting at the direction of federal officers. Their actions outlined in the indictment stem directly from that service, and they were performing duties laid out in the U.S. Constitution and the Electoral Count Act, their lawyers argue. As a result, they assert defenses under several different federal laws.

The prosecution team led by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis argues that they were not federal officers and were not acting at the direction of a federal official carrying out a federal function. Instead, they were impersonating genuine electors at the direction of Trump's campaign with the goal of illegally keeping him in power, they said.

They argued in court filings that “contingent electors” are not presidential electors — either the contingency is met and they become presidential electors or it is not met and the losing candidate's electors have no role. Even if the Trump campaign's legal challenge to the election results had been successful, they wrote, the only solution a court could impose is a new election, not a substitution by the Republican slate of electors.

In addition to the charges related to the fake elector plan, Shafer is also accused of lying to investigators for the Fulton County district attorney's office. Latham is accused of participating in a breach of election equipment in Coffee County by a computer forensics team hired by Trump allies.

Former U.S. Rep. Steve Buyer of Indiana sentenced to 22 months in prison for insider trading

Posted on September 20, 2023 by Associated Press

A former U.S. congressman from Indiana was sentenced Tuesday to 22 months in prison for making illegal stock trades based on inside information while working as a consultant and lobbyist after he left office.

Former U.S. Rep. Steve Buyer, 64, a House Republican from 1993 to 2011, was also ordered to forfeit $354,027, representing the amount of illegal gains, and to pay a $10,000 fine.

Buyer, a lawyer and Persian Gulf War veteran, once chaired the House Veterans’ Affairs committee and was a House prosecutor at ex-President Bill Clinton’s 1998 impeachment trial.

Buyer was convicted in connection with insider trading involving the $26.5 billion merger of T-Mobile and Sprint, announced in April 2018, and illegal trades in the management consulting company Navigant when his client Guidehouse was set to acquire it in a deal publicly disclosed weeks later.

Defense lawyers had requested home confinement and community service as a punishment while prosecutors urged a three-year prison sentence.

Judge Richard M. Berman said Buyer's conviction by a jury in March was not a close call because the evidence against him “screams guilty." The judge said Buyer lied when he testified at his trial about when he learned about mergers that he profited from.

Berman noted that he had previously rejected claims that Buyer was unjustly prosecuted or that he could not obtain a fair trial in Manhattan because the population of New York City favors Democrats. Berman named six suburban counties outside of the city where jurors were also drawn from.

Buyer was ordered to report to prison on Nov. 28.

Prior to being sentenced, Buyer, who is from Noblesville, Indiana, told the judge he should visit Indiana, where someone buying a dozen ears of corn for $6 off the back of an unmanned trailer might put the money in a container that already has $300 in it without worrying that anybody will snatch the cash.

“It’s an honor system. It’s how we live. It’s how I’ve lived my life,” he said.

Hunter Biden sues the IRS over tax disclosures after agent testimony

Posted on September 18, 2023 by Associated Press

Hunter Biden has filed a lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service, arguing that two agents violated his right to privacy when they publicly aired his tax information as they pressed claims that a federal investigation of him had been improperly handled.

The lawsuit filed Monday says that his personal tax details shared during congressional hearings and interviews was not allowed by federal whistleblower protections.

The suit escalates the legal fight as a long-running investigation continues to unfold against a sharply political backdrop, including an impeachment inquiry aimed at his father, President Joe Biden.

It comes days after Hunter Biden was indicted on federal firearms charges alleging that he lied about his drug use to buy and possess a gun in October 2018. The case could be on track toward a possible high-stakes trial as the 2024 election looms.

IRS supervisory special agent Greg Shapley, and a second agent, Joe Ziegler, have claimed there was pattern of “slow-walking investigative steps” into Hunter Biden in testimony before Congress. The Justice Department has denied any political interference in the case.

The IRS and lawyers for the two men did not immediately return messages seeking comment.

Ken Paxton was acquitted at his impeachment trial, but he still faces legal troubles

Posted on September 16, 2023 by Associated Press

For years, the powers and protections that come with being Texas’ top lawyer have helped Ken Paxton fend off ethics complains, criminal charges and an FBI investigation.

With the Texas Senate’s Saturday vote to acquit Paxton of corruption charges at his impeachment trial the Republican has once again demonstrated his rare political resilience. And he retains the shield of the attorney general's office in legal battles still to come.

After being cleared, Paxton, 60, thanked his lawyers for “exposing the absurdity” of the “false allegations” against him, and he promised to resume doing legal battle with the administration of President Joe Biden.

"The weaponization of the impeachment process to settle political differences is not only wrong, it is immoral and corrupt," he said in a statement. “Now that this shameful process is over, my work to defend our constitutional rights will resume.”

Back in office, Paxton nonetheless still faces serious risk on three fronts: an ongoing a federal investigation into the same allegations that led to his impeachment; a disciplinary proceeding over his effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election; and felony securities fraud charges dating to 2015.

Here's what to know about each.

THE FEDERAL INVESTIGATION

Paxton came under FBI investigation in 2020 when eight of his top deputies reported him for allegedly breaking the law to help a wealthy donor, Austin real estate developer Nate Paul.

The former deputies' accusation that Paxton abused his power to help Paul were at the core of Paxton's impeachment. Lawmakers in the Texas House of Representatives say it was the still-open question of funding a $3.3 million settlement in a lawsuit brought by four of the deputies that sparked the impeachment investigation.

Several of Paxton's former deputies took the witness stand against him. They recounted going to the FBI and testified that the attorney general tried to help Paul fend of a separate FBI investigation

They also testified that Paul employed a woman with whom Paxton had an extramarital affair. Another former employee, Drew Wicker, said Paxton second-in-command later discouraged him from speaking with the FBI.

Paul was indicted in June on charges of making false statements to banks. He has pleaded not guilty and was not called to testify at the impeachment trial.

The federal investigation of Paxton has dragged on for years and was shifted in February from a prosecutors in Texas to ones in Washington, D.C. In August, federal prosecutors began using a grand jury in San Antonio to examine Paxton and Paul's dealings, according to two people with knowledge of the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity because of secrecy rules around grand jury proceedings.

One said the grand jury heard from Wicker, Paxton’s former personal aide. At the impeachment trial, Wicker testified that he once heard a contractor tell Paxton he would need to check with “Nate” about the cost of renovations to the attorney general’s Austin home.

Paxton has consistently denied wrongdoing. One of his defense attorneys, Dan Cogdell, acknowledged in August that authorities were still interviewing witnesses but said the “case will go nowhere at the end of the day.”

THE SECURITIES FRAUD CASE

In 2015, Paxton was indicted on charges of defrauding investors in a Dallas-area tech startup by not disclosing he was being paid by the company, called Servergy, to recruit them. He faces five to 99 years in prison if convicted and has pleaded not guilty.

The indictments were handed up just months after Paxton was sworn in as attorney general. He won second and third terms despite them.

Paxton's trial has been delayed by legal debate over whether it should be heard in the Dallas area or Houston, changes in which judge would handle it and a protracted battle over how much the special prosecutors should get paid.

Weeks after the Republican-led Texas House voted to impeach Paxton, the state's high criminal court ruled his trial would proceed in Houston. The judge overseeing it said in August that she would set a trial date after the impeachment trial.

Cogdell said that month that if Paxton were removed from office it would open the possibility of him making a plea agreement in the case.

THE DISCIPLINARY HEARING

Also on hold during Paxton's impeachment trial was an ethics case brought by the state bar.

In 2020, Paxton asked the U.S. Supreme Court to, effectively, overturn then-President Donald Trump's electoral defeat by Joe Biden based on bogus claims of fraud. The high court threw out the request.

Afterward, the State Bar of Texas received a series of complaints alleging that Paxton and a deputy had committed processional misconduct with the suit. The bar didn't initially take up the complaints but later launched an investigation.

Last year, the bar sued seeking unspecified discipline for Paxton and his second-in-command, alleging they were “dishonest" with the Supreme Court.

Paxton dismissed the bar's suits as “meritless” political attacks. The attorney general's office has argued that because it is an executive branch agency and the bar is part of the judicial branch, the cases run afoul of separation of powers under the state constitution.

A judge overseeing the bar's case against the deputy, Brent Webster, accepted this argument. But he was reversed on appeal in July. That month, another court scheduled arguments in the disciplinary case against Paxton only to delay them when it became clear they would fall in the middle of his impeachment trial.

The attorney general's office continued to defend Paxton in the case even after he was suspended from office. If he's found to have violated ethics rules, Paxton faces the prospect of disbarment, suspension, or a lesser punishments.

A member of the secret panel studying Wisconsin Supreme Court justice’s impeachment backed her rival

Posted on September 15, 2023 by Associated Press

One of the former Wisconsin Supreme Court justices tapped to investigate impeaching newly elected Justice Janet Protasiewicz for taking Democratic Party money accepted donations from the state Republican Party when he was on the court.

The former justice, Republican David Prosser, gave $500 to the conservative candidate who lost to Protasiewicz, did not recuse from cases involving a law he helped pass as a lawmaker and was investigated after a physical altercation with a liberal justice.

Prosser is one of three former justices tapped by the Republican Assembly speaker to investigate the criteria for taking the unprecedented step of impeaching a current justice. Speaker Robin Vos has floated impeachment because Protasiewicz accepted nearly $10 million from the Wisconsin Democratic Party and said during the campaign that heavily gerrymandered GOP-drawn legislative electoral maps were “unfair” and “rigged.”

The impeachment threat comes after Protasiewicz’s win this spring handed liberals a majority on the court for the first time in 15 years, which bolstered Democratic hopes it would throw out the Republican maps, legalize abortion and chip away at Republican laws enacted over the past decade-plus.

It also comes at the same time that Assembly Republicans passed a sweeping redistricting reform bill Vos described as an “off ramp” to impeachment and Senate Republicans voted to fire the state's nonpartisan elections director. Both moves take on heightened importance in Wisconsin, one of a handful of swing states where four of the past six presidential elections have been decided by less than a point.

Vos won’t say who he’s chosen for the secret, three-judge impeachment review panel, but Prosser confirmed to The Associated Press that Vos asked him to participate. None of the other eight living former justices, six of whom are conservatives, have told the AP they have been picked. Justices are officially nonpartisan in Wisconsin, but in recent years the political parties have backed certain candidates. Others, like Prosser, formerly served in partisan positions.

A former liberal justice, Louis Butler, said he was not asked. Four former conservative justices — Jon Wilcox, Dan Kelly, 7th U.S. Circuit Court Chief Judge Diane Sykes and Louis Ceci — told the AP they were not asked.

Ceci, 96, is the oldest living former justice. He served on the court from 1982 to 1993 and served one term as a Republican in the state Assembly in the 1960s.

Ceci, interviewed at his suburban Milwaukee home in a retirement high-rise, said he doesn’t know anything about the impeachment threats Protasiewicz faces beyond what he reads in newspapers. Vos has not approached him about serving on the panel, he said.

A seventh former justice, Janine Geske, told the Wisconsin State Journal she was not asked. Vos said former Justice Michael Gableman, whom Vos fired from leading an investigation into the 2020 election, was not on it.

The most recently retired justice, conservative Patience Roggensack, declined to comment to the AP.

“I can’t talk to you right now,” she said Thursday, adding that she was on her way to a college class before hanging up.

Roggensack and Prosser voted to enact a rule allowing justices to sit on cases involving campaign donors. In 2017, a year after Prosser left the court, Roggensack voted to reject a call from 54 retired justices and judges to enact stricter recusal rules.

Roggensack, in 2020, sided with the conservative minority in a ruling that fell one vote short of overturning President Joe Biden’s victory in the state. And she endorsed Dan Kelly, the conservative opponent to Protasiewicz in this year’s election. Prosser donated $500 to Kelly, who replaced Prosser on the court after he retired.

Prosser served on the Supreme Court from 1998 to 2016 and also spent 18 years before that as a Republican member of the Assembly — two years as speaker.

There were numerous times during Prosser’s years on the court where he did not recuse himself from cases involving issues he had voted on as a member of the Legislature.

Prosser did recuse himself from cases involving the constitutionality of a cap on medical malpractice damages because he was speaker of the Assembly when the cap was instituted. But in 2004 he changed course and authored the majority opinion upholding the law he helped pass. He dissented from a 2005 Supreme Court ruling overturning the law.

Prosser also refused a request to recuse in 2015 from considering three cases related to an investigation into then-Gov. Scott Walker and conservative groups that supported him. The groups in question had spent $3.3 million to help elect Prosser in 2011.

He defended hearing the cases, saying that because the money was spent four years earlier, enough time had passed to make them irrelevant.

Prosser then voted with the majority to shut down the investigation.

Prosser was also embroiled in one the court’s most contentious periods in 2011, accused by a liberal justice of attempting to choke her. Impeachment was never raised as a possibility, even though police investigated but no charges were filed. The Wisconsin Judicial Commission recommended the court discipline him but nothing happened because the court lacked a quorum when three justices recused.

In 2016, Prosser received $25,000 of in-kind contributions from the Wisconsin Republican Party. Less than three weeks later he resigned with nearly three years left on his term.

Vos said Prosser’s past wouldn’t affect his ability to fairly offer advice on how to proceed.

“First of all, all he is doing is giving advice on whether or not someone ought to recuse and the criteria for impeachment,” Vos said. “That has nothing to do with what happened before when he was on the Supreme Court.”

Prosser said the charge given to him by Vos was investigating “whether there’s a legitimate reason for impeaching” Protasiewicz.

When asked whether he thinks the panel should include liberals, Prosser said, “I’m really not going to answer that question.”

“I really don’t know what the process is going to be, who’s going to be doing the writing,” Prosser said. “I just really don’t know.”

No matter who is on the impeachment review panel, Democrats say the process is a joke.

“The entire concept of having a secret panel deliberating in secret to advise an Assembly speaker on an unconstitutional impeachment on a justice who has yet to rule on a case is a farce,” said Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler. “This is a charade.”

Vos said impeachment may be warranted if Protasiewicz doesn’t step down from hearing two Democratic-backed redistricting lawsuits seeking to undo Republican-drawn legislative maps.

Vos argues that Protasiewicz has prejudged the cases. She never said how she would rule on any lawsuit.

Under the Wisconsin Constitution, impeachment is reserved for “corrupt conduct in office or for the commission of a crime or misdemeanor.”

It is up to each justice to decide whether recusal in a case is warranted, and the conservative majority of the court adopted a rule saying that justices don’t have to recuse if they accepted money from parties arguing a case. Other current justices have also been outspoken on hot-button issues before they joined the court and all but one have taken money from political parties.

When asked Thursday if the panel would include liberals, Vos dodged the question.

“I’m trying to have people who are respected as smart,” Vos said. “And I think that you will find very quickly that the people that we asked are both of those categories. Hopefully they come back to us with their recommendations so that the Legislature has even more good information to act on whether or not it’s required for us to proceed with some kind of impeachment proceedings."

Former firearms executive turned gun industry critic to run for Montana governor

Posted on September 14, 2023 by Associated Press

Former firearms executive turned gun industry critic Ryan Busse is seeking the 2024 Democratic nomination to challenge first-term Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte in Montana.

Busse told The Associated Press about his intentions in advance of a planned public announcement Thursday. It's his first run for public office.

If the 53-year-old from Kalispell makes it past next June's primary, he faces an uphill battle in trying to unseat Gianforte, who is able to draw from immense personal wealth to bankroll his campaign and whose party has dominated Montana during recent election cycles. Former President Donald Trump won the state in 2020 with a 16-point advantage over Joe Biden.

But Busse suggested that Republicans are vulnerable in the state after failing to keep housing prices affordable, not taking action to prevent potential property tax increases and threatening women’s health care by passing several abortion restrictions.

“To me this is a narrative about Greg Gianforte making this a playground for the wealthy and ignoring the people of Montana,” Busse said Wednesday. “They had time to extend massive tax breaks to industry, to profitable industry. They had time to blow a $2.8 billion surplus. They had time to discuss the impacts of this tax increase to Montana homeowners, and they chose to do nothing about it.”

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Recent increases in home valuations could lead to an $80 million spike in residential property taxes in each of the next two years, the Revenue Department estimated. The agency suggested a change in the state’s tax rate on residential property to avoid a tax increase, but the Republican-controlled Legislature did not adopt it, instead passing a $675 property tax rebate for resident homeowners in each of the next two years.

During a 25-year career in the firearms industry, Busse said, he directed the sale of almost 3 million guns from the manufacturer Kimber America. But he became disaffected as the increasingly politicized industry began aggressively marketing military-style assault rifles such as those used in numerous mass shootings.

Since leaving the industry in 2020, Busse has served as a policy adviser for Biden’s 2020 campaign and written a book and articles highly critical of the National Rifle Association and gun manufacturers.

His remonstrations against America's gun culture could become a flashpoint in the campaign given the strong support for gun rights in Montana politics. Busse, who favors background checks before purchases but opposes bans on assault rifles, predicted Republicans will portray him as anti-gun.

“I know there’s a vast, frustrated majority out there that are decent, responsible gun owners, and those are the people I represent," he said.

Busse's two sons were among 16 young plaintiffs in a high-profile climate change lawsuit that resulted in a groundbreaking ruling last month that said Montana agencies were violating their constitutional right to a clean and healthy environment by allowing fossil fuel development without considering greenhouse gas emissions.

“Ryan Busse is straight out of the far left’s central casting – an anti-gun extremist and radical environmentalist,” Montana Republican Party Chairman Don K. Kaltschmidt said in a statement.

Gianforte spokesperson Kaitlin Price declined to say if he intends to seek another term. She said his accomplishments in office include increasing funding for schools and teachers, paying off the state’s debt and cutting taxes.

“Governor Gianforte remains focused on building upon what he committed to do and has proudly accomplished so far,” Price said in a statement.

Gianforte is a former tech industry entrepreneur who first won public office with a victory in a special U.S. House election in 2017, a day after gaining national attention for assaulting a reporter covering his campaign.

He was reelected to the House in 2018 and two years later rolled to the governorship in a race against Lt. Gov. Mike Cooney. Gianforte spent millions of his own money on that campaign, which broke state spending records.

His victory wrested control of the governor’s seat from Democrats, who had held it 16 years.

Republican State Rep. Tanner Smith of Lakeside plans to challenge Gianforte in the primary. Smith is a business owner and school board trustee who said he would ensure high-quality education, increase teacher pay and support responsible fiscal policies that would allow the state to reduce taxes.

The filing deadline with the Secretary of State's Office for candidates to run in next year's election is March 11.