The jury has also watched lengthy excerpts from an October videotaped deposition in which Trump vehemently denied raping Carroll or ever really knowing her.
Without Trump’s testimony, lawyers were scheduled to make closing arguments Monday, with deliberations likely to begin on Tuesday.
After prosecutors rested their case Thursday, Trump attorney Joe Tacopina immediately rested the defense case as well without calling any witnesses. He did not request additional time for Trump to decide to testify. Tacopina declined in an email to comment after the deadline passed Sunday.
On Thursday, Kaplan had given Trump extra time to change his mind and request to testify, though the judge did not promise he would grant such a request to reopen the defense case so Trump could take the stand.
At the time, Kaplan noted that he’d heard about news reports Thursday in which Trump told reporters while visiting his golf course in Doonbeg, Ireland, that he would “probably attend” the trial. Trump also criticized Kaplan, a Bill Clinton appointee, as an “extremely hostile” and “rough judge” who “doesn’t like me very much.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Cruz ended up performing better than expected in the state’s delegate fight. And after the imbroglio, Trump brought in veteran Republican strategist Paul Manafort as part of an effort to bring a level of professionalism to his delegate operation. In the years since, he has told advisers: “I won the primary but lost the delegates.” And when he sat down with the Louisiana Republican Party leaders, the story of that delegate fight with Cruz was among the topics discussed, according to a person familiar with the conversation.
Now engaged in another delegate battle, Trump has been aggressively courting party leaders — in Louisiana and elsewhere — who are expected to be delegates at the party’s 2024 convention in Milwaukee. He’s been dining with them at Mar-a-Lago, chatting them up at party events and offering them endorsements. The effort will intensify in the weeks to come, with Trump expected to make appearances at state party events that will be filled with future national delegates.
The courtship illustrates Trump’s transformation as a presidential candidate — from the political newcomer of 2016 who oversaw a chaotic operation, to the experienced campaigner now playing the inside game.
“They’re very organized very early. They’ve been in touch with us a number of times,” said Rhett Davis, a consultant to the Louisiana GOP. “President Trump is in a much better position in Louisiana than he was in 2016. He’s extremely strong here.”
“No other presidential campaign or potential campaign has reached out to us,” Davis added.
Presidential primaries and caucuses don’t elect candidates, they elect delegates. Whichever candidate wins a simple majority of those delegates at the national convention next year will become the nominee.
While those delegates are bound to specific candidates at the beginning of the convention process, they can become unbound in the event of a contested convention or if their candidate releases them. That, in turn, makes them targets of wooing. State party leaders and others who are active in Republican politics typically become delegates — and Trump has lavished attention on them since leaving the White House.
During Trump-hosted rallies ahead of the 2022 midterm election, local Republican Party chairs were frequently given speaking time, and last year the former president spoke remotely to a meeting of the South Carolina GOP executive committee. He also has placed full-page ads in Iowa Republican Party publications. And when Trump launched his 2024 bid, his first campaign stop was at a meeting of the New Hampshire Republican Party.
Trump is also using the trappings of his gilded Mar-a-Lago estate to woo would-be delegates. In early March, the former president hosted roughly a dozen Nevada Republican Party leaders for a three-hour dinner. Over steaks and ice cream, Trump talked about the political landscape in the state, which traditionally hosts an early nominating contest.
When Trump isn’t with future delegates in-person, he is finding other ways to reach them. When the Missouri Republican Party met in February, Trump called the state party chair, Nick Myers, who put the former president on speakerphone so he could address the audience.
In Michigan, he has worked to ensure he is on smooth footing with Kristina Karamo, the state’s newly elected party chair. Trump had earlier endorsed a rival candidate in the February contest for Michigan Republican Party chair, but he personally congratulated Karamo when he saw her at the Conservative Political Action Conference in early March, according to a person familiar with the exchange.
Trump has used his much-coveted endorsement as a tool to win over would-be delegates. Early this year, the former president provided his support to Caleb Heimlich during his successful race for reelection as Washington State GOP chair. And, last month, the former president dove into a more local race — endorsing Bruce Parks in his ultimately successful bid for the chairmanship of Nevada’s Washoe County GOP.
Guiding Trump’s strategy is a team of advisers who are veterans of delegate fights. The group includes Brian Jack, Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita — all of whom played key roles in the 2016 national convention. Also on the team is Clayton Henson, who served in the Trump White House and on the former president’s 2020 reelection campaign. Much of Trump’s team was present at the Republican National Committee gathering in Dana Point, Calif. earlier this year, where they met with party officials from a number of states.
Trump advisers believe their early outreach will give them a head start over rival candidates, who lack Trump’s long-standing connections to party officials.
“The Trump campaign … has spent the last eight years fine tuning its unmatched operation,” said Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesperson. “For any other campaign to think they can come even close to what President Trump has built is laughable and delusional.”
What Trump’s campaign is trying to avoid is a rerun of the 2016 national convention, when Cruz waged a last-ditch effort to stop Trump from winning the nomination. While it ended up being unsuccessful, it was embarrassing to Trump.
Many of Cruz’s top alum are now serving on a super PAC bolstering Trump’s chief primary rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. The group includes former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, who in 2016 helped spearhead the anti-Trump push at the convention and at one point threw his credentials on the floor in protest.
Erin Perrine, a spokesperson for the pro-DeSantis group, Never Back Down, declined to comment directly on the group’s plans to engage in delegate outreach, but accused Trump of taking part in “Washington insider games” that “show he’s become the swamp he once vowed to drain.”
Still, there is little question, many state party leaders say, that Trump has a massive organizational head start over other candidates when it comes to wooing future delegates.
Mike Brown, the chair of the Kansas Republican Party, said he has had extensive conversations with Trump advisers about the state’s political landscape.
“They have done quite a bit in the way of staying in touch,” Brown said of the Trump campaign. “When it comes to the other campaigns, candidly, I haven’t heard from anybody.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Trump and his inner circle orchestrated a plan for GOP electors in seven states he lost to sign documents claiming to be legitimate presidential electors. Those false electors became a component in a desperate last-ditch bid by Trump to overturn the election on Jan. 6, 2021. Citing the certificates signed by the false electors, Trump and a cadre of fringe attorneys claimed there was a conflict that only Congress and then-Vice President Mike Pence could resolve on Jan. 6.
Ultimately, Pence refused to support the effort, claiming it was illegal and unconstitutional, and rejecting a pressure campaign to treat the false GOP electors as legitimate.
Dozens of false electors were subpoenaed by the Jan. 6 select committee as well as special counsel Jack Smith, who is mounting a similar criminal probe into Trump’s bid to subvert the election.
Not all of the false electors across the country were equally involved in Trump’s effort — and dozens have contended that they had no knowledge their signatures would be used as part of Trump’s Jan. 6 effort. Rather, they said they were advised that they were signing “contingent” certificates that would only be used if courts reversed Trump’s defeat. They argued that similar tactics were used in 1960, when Democrats signed contingent certificates amid a recount in Hawaii. (The recount ultimately reversed that state’s results and the contingent electors were counted.)
But some of the false electors were also state party chairs and key Trump allies who played larger roles in Trump’s bid to stay in power. Willis, who has previously indicated she considers all of the false electors “targets” of her investigation, has raised concerns that Debrow’s representation of 10 of the false electors could present a conflict if any of them testify against each other. Last month, Willis claimed that recent interviews with the false electors revealed incriminating evidence about one of them.
Debrow, in Friday’s filing, sharply rejected that contention and maintained that none of her clients believed they had done anything wrong. She is urging the judge presiding over the matter, Robert McBurney, to reject Willis’ attempt to disqualify her from the case.
Debrow accused Willis’ team of misleading the judge about the status of immunity discussions between the electors and the DA’s office and she indicated that the assistant DA leading the interviews had threatened to indict one of the electors after a tense exchange. Debrow said she recorded aspects of the exchange without the prosecutors’ knowledge.
McBurney previously rejected a bid by Willis to disqualify Debrow from representing numerous contingent electors but did require one of them, David Shafer, the chairman of the Georgia GOP, to separate from the larger group. Shafer appeared to be more exposed to potential criminal charges than the others, McBurney ruled at the time.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Lane also appeared to have attended a meeting where 11 Arizona Republicans falsely declared themselves presidential electors. In a video of that meeting, which was posted by the Arizona Republican Party, a man wearing a Trump campaign jacket with the name “Lane” on it is seen passing out papers for people to sign “certifying themselves Arizona’s ‘duly elected and qualified electors.’”
POLITICO also obtained a video from September of 2021 — during which time Lane was working as an RNC “election integrity” official in Virginia — in which he fanned conspiracy theories about the election. Lane was speaking to a gathering of conservative grassroots organizers about the RNC’s statewide plan to deploy poll workers and watchers in the upcoming gubernatorial election.
It’s important that “we learn from mistakes, we learn from any fraud, stealing,” said Lane.
“I don’t think there’s any doubt that last year was stolen. ‘Stolen’ means different things to different people. On one end, it can mean the Chinese, the Russians, uh, hacked machines, or there was an influx of ballots, or fake ballots, whatever,” Lane said in the video given to POLITICO from the group Documented, a non-partisan investigative watchdog that says it believes “democracy itself is under attack.”
“On the other end is, ‘Hey, Covid was a thing, Democrats took complete advantage of it, within the laws, and outside the laws.’ And there’s everything in between,” said Lane.
Lane was among a number of people from the 2020 Trump campaign who both received subpoenas from law enforcement and complied with those requests. The committee declined to comment about the incident or his work in the House. Lane, who does not appear to have faced any charges, did not respond to an email seeking comment.
Lane was a young aide on the Trump campaign at the time, fresh out of graduating from law school. But his career path from there through the House Administration Committee underscores how individuals connected to Donald Trump’s unsuccessful scheme remain well within the corridors of power, including on matters of election conduct.
The House Administration Committee is often considered a sleepy backwater that runs the logistics of the House, including doling out parking and office spaces. But it also has broad jurisdiction over elections — from campaign finance law to voting rights and election administration. Its chair, Rep. Bryan Steil (R-WI), did not vote to block certification of the 2020 election but it’s been holding numerous hearings recently about the 2022 election, some that include individuals who deny the legitimacy of the 2020 election.
Last week, it held a hearing featuring a number of individuals who participated in a recent Washington conference hosted by conservative groups pushing for voting restrictions. Among those who testified were Hans Von Spakovsky, the Heritage Foundation’s elections lawyer who has a long history of advocating for voting restrictions and insists the U.S. system is rife with voter fraud.
Lane’s role would typically include helping to plan hearings, recommend witnesses and draft questions and helping to draft legislation, according to a person familiar with the committee’s operations.
In a potential sign of Lane’s influence over the committee’s work, last month Lynn Taylor of the Virginia Institute for Public Policy testified before the election subcommittee on the issue of “election observer access.” Taylor worked closely in 2021 with Lane, whom she introduced at the September event, and Cleta Mitchell, an attorney who advised Trump in the 2020 election. Mitchell spread false election claims and participated in the former president’s infamous call with Georgia election officials where Trump urged them to “find” votes. Mitchell resigned from her law firm following criticism of her involvement in the call.
After the 2020 election, Mitchell created a network of activist groups to recruit and coach poll watchers and workers in multiple battleground states. Mitchell’s broader “Election Integrity Network” is now collaborating directly with Taylor, according to Lindsey Zea, a research analyst for the VIPP who spoke during a Feb. 21 Zoom meeting of activists obtained by POLITICO.
Mitchell has also spoken openly about having a working relationship with the House Administration Committee. At a meeting last week for the Election Assistance Commission, a federal agency that serves as a clearinghouse for election information and upon whose advisory board she serves, Mitchell praised the committee’s staff.
“They’ve been wonderful about working with and helping to educate volunteers and citizen activists on weekly calls,” Mitchell said of the staffers. Mitchell did not respond to a request for comment.
During those weekly meetings, which often occur over Zoom and include conservative activists, Mitchell has encouraged attendees to become familiar with local elections clerks as she pushes a menu of reforms that would reduce ballot access among certain groups, including university students.
In an April 13 call run by an allied group, Michigan Fair Elections, Mitchell said “we are at a turning point in our republic.” According to the call, which was obtained by POLITICO, Mitchell went on to say that U.S. “electoral systems” need to change or Republicans will “lose the presidential election” again in 2024. A lawyer on a separate April 6 call run by the same group spoke about plans to sue public universities in Michigan that help register students to vote.
Mitchell has served as a member of the EAC’s advisory board since late 2021, when she was appointed as one of the two representatives of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, an independent federal commission created in the 1950s. Her position there has been the subject of controversy given the key role she played in Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Though the board does not have a policy-making role and meets irregularly, it can make recommendations on voluntary guidelines to the EAC. The EAC certifies voting systems and advises local election offices on compliance with federal election regulations.
Earlier this month, the progressive think tank Center for American Progress issued a report highlighting the “failure” to hold Trump and his allies “fully accountable” for their “scheme to destabilize the democratic system for political purposes.”
As a RNC official, Lane collaborated with Mitchell in Virginia’s off-year gubernatorial election in 2021, which Mitchell considered a test pilot for nationwide “election integrity” coalitions. And in a January 2023 letter to RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel, Mitchell and other members of her coalition complained that Lane and some other “election integrity” officials had not retained their positions after the 2022 midterms. The letter referred to Lane as an “outstanding leader.”
“We were distressed, to say the least, to learn that all the state (election integrity directors) and the entire field staff were to be terminated,” the letter read. “Preventing cheating in our nation’s elections is a priority to voters,” it continued.
Shortly thereafter, Lane took up the job with the House Administration Committee, according to his LinkedIn page.
“I have already had the opportunity to meet with Secretaries of State and county election officials from across the country,” Lane said on his LinkedIn in announcing his new role. He said he is “ecstatic” to be in the position.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
In the deposition, conducted at Mar-a-Lago in October, Kaplan asked Trump about the “Access Hollywood” tape, a recording from 2005 in which Trump can be heard saying, “When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything,” adding: “Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.”
“Well, historically that’s true with stars,” Trump replied after watching a clip of his comments.
When Kaplan pressed him on whether he stood by the statement that a star could “grab them by the pussy,” the former president said: “Well, I guess if you look over the last million years, that’s been largely true — not always true, but largely true, unfortunately or fortunately.”
“And you consider yourself to be a star?” she asked.
“I think so, yeah,” Trump said.
During the deposition, Kaplan questioned him about several other women who have accused him of sexual assault, women Trump has characterized as not being his “type.”
Growing belligerent, Trump told Kaplan herself that “you wouldn’t be a choice of mine, either, to be honest.” He added: “I wouldn’t in any circumstances have any interest in you.”
Trump has defended himself by saying Carroll, too, isn’t his “type,” but earlier in the deposition, after he was shown a photograph of himself engaging with Carroll at a party, he confused the image of her with that of one of his ex-wives, Marla Maples.
“It’s Marla,” he said, looking at the photo. “That’s Marla, yeah. That’s my wife.”
“I take it the three women you’ve married are all your type?” Kaplan asked him later. “Yeah,” he replied.
Calling Carroll “mentally sick” and a “nut job,” Trump suggested, as he had previously, that he didn’t know her.
“She’s accusing me of rape, a woman who I have no idea who she is,” he said. “She’s accusing me of rape — the worst thing you can do, the worst charge.”
Starting on Wednesday afternoon and continuing Thursday, the jury watched about 45 minutes of excerpts of the deposition. On Thursday, jurors also heard from witnesses including Carol Martin, a longtime friend of Carroll’s. Martin testified that Carroll told her about the alleged rape at Bergdorf’s a day or two after it happened.
“I’m here … to reiterate and remember what my friend E. Jean Carroll told me … about 27 years ago,” Martin said on the witness stand.
She added: “I believed it then and I believe it today.” After an objection from Trump’s lawyer, the judge — without elaboration — instructed the jury to disregard her last comment.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
“There is another 20 percent that care about who he endorses but that’s not going to be the decision maker. And then there’s probably another 60 percent of the party that doesn’t care who he endorses,” said LaRose, according to a recording of his remarks obtained by POLITICO.
LaRose said he suspects that, should he enter the race, he would earn Trump’s support. But he didn’t think that “begging for it” would prove useful.
“There’s also this game some play where they hire a bunch of former Trump people and then they think, ‘Oh, if I hire this person, I’ll get their endorsement.’ The president is generally smarter than that, he’s not going to fall for that,” LaRose said at a Cuyahoga Valley Republicans event in late April. “He’s going to endorse the candidate who has the best chance of beating Sherrod Brown.”
LaRose is considering entering the Republican primary to take on Brown in the 2024 Senate election in Ohio. Brown is seeking his fourth term but is widely seen as one of the more vulnerable Democrats up this cycle. Moderate Ohio state Sen. Matt Dolan and Cleveland businessman Bernie Moreno for the GOP’s have already announced they are seeking the nomination.
Trump hasn’t endorsed in the contest. But he did publicly encourage Moreno, whose daughter is married to former Trump White House official and freshman Rep. Max Miller (R-Ohio), to get in the race.
The recording offers rare insight into how top Republicans running for office privately think about Trump and that sway he has in the party. It also provides a window into how political courtship can work. In his private remarks, LaRose said he believed Miller, who he called a personal friend, is trying to help his father-in-law win Trump’s support.
“Max has been making trips down to Mar-a-lago saying hey Mr. Trump, President Trump, can you endorse my father in law? Notice that [Trump] didn’t endorse him but he said nice things about him,” LaRose said in the recording.
“Knowing how this goes,” he continued, “I can even picture it in my mind they’re sitting in the president’s office in Mar-a-Lago and he says, ‘You know, I’m not ready to endorse yet, you got a lot more time, you don’t have strong name ID, you haven’t any raised money yet, I’ll just say some nice things about your father in law on Twitter or Truth Social or whatever and then let’s talk about an endorsement six months from now.’”
LaRose declined to comment. A person close to LaRose, who was granted anonymity to speak about the secretary’s comments, said he “simply said what we already know.”
“Endorsements are great, but you won’t unseat a 48-year incumbent politician with a list of endorsements. We need a candidate who can win, and we need to wage a contest of ideas and vision that not only unites the entire Republican party but also a majority of Ohioans. If he runs, that’s what he’ll offer,” the person said.
A person close to Moreno, who was also granted anonymity, disputed LaRose’s characterization of Miller lobbying Trump and noted that Moreno has built his own relationship with Trump.
Few, if any, GOP candidates would openly downplay the significance of Trump’s endorsement. At the GOP event, he said that the 2022 midterms proved that the Trump endorsement doesn’t carry as much weight as it once did.
“Here’s an example, there is a new U.S. senator from Alabama — we can agree it’s a pretty conservative state. She won the primary in ‘22 and didn’t have the Trump endorsement. She was the better candidate,” LaRose said. “The guy Trump endorsed came out to be a dud of a candidate and so Katie Britt won the primary and got elected as U.S. senator from Alabama. So it’s entirely possible even back in ‘22 that the best candidate regardless of the endorsement is the one that wins.” Trump eventually endorsed Britt before her Senate primary runoff.
LaRose himself was endorsed by Trump in his 2022 race for Ohio secretary of state. It was notable then, because in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 riots on Capitol Hill and attempts by Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election results, LaRose criticized lawmakers who shared conspiracy theories about voting and said it was “irresponsible to fearmonger about elections administration.”
“And certainly, if you have the largest megaphone in the world, you should think very carefully before you say something that would cause people to lose faith in elections,” he went on to say.
LaRose, for his part, has not endorsed Trump’s current presidential campaign. Neither he nor Dolan have said whom they would support. So far, Moreno is the only candidate who has endorsed Trump.
Trump has conveyed to aides he is less concerned with putting his stamp of approval on other candidates when he is running for president himself. He has been working the phones and meeting with state leaders in an effort to earn endorsements of his own.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Tacopina said earlier this week that Trump himself also won’t take the witness stand.
The former president hasn’t attended the trial, which began last week, but on Wednesday jurors did see a 20-minute portion of his videotaped deposition, recorded in October 2022.
On screen, Trump appeared somewhat sullen, answering questions with his arms folded on a table in front of him and his shoulders hunched. He called Carroll’s allegation “the most ridiculous, disgusting story.”
“It’s just made up,” he said.
On Wednesday, the jury also heard testimony from a clinical psychologist, Leslie Lebowitz; Carroll’s sister, Cande Carroll; and Natasha Stoynoff, a writer who has alleged Trump sexually assaulted her in 2005.
During Stoynoff’s testimony, jurors were shown a clip of the “Access Hollywood” tape, a recording from 2005 in which Trump boasts, “When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything,” adding: “Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.”
Carroll’s lawyers are expected to show another portion of the deposition to jurors Thursday.
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By comparison, he said, “the DeSantis people are rookies.”
Trump’s onslaught has been disorienting for the nascent DeSantis operation. The Florida governor, who’s expected to announce his candidacy in the coming weeks, plans to make the case that he will counter Trump’s circus with a sense of normalcy that positions him to do what many Republicans fear Trump cannot: Defeat President Joe Biden. But that argument is running head first into the tidy — and muscular — organization the former president is putting together.
In recent weeks, Trump’s team has worked to bank wins before DeSantis officially enters the race. They have rolled out policy videos focused on a second Trump term and made hires in early voting states. They have developed relationships with state party leaders, met with lawmakers at Mar-a-lago and worked the phones to steal endorsements from DeSantis in his home state. Trump is even doing a town hall event with CNN, a former cable news foe of the ex-president, in an effort to reach more mainstream audiences. Now DeSantis — a politician who places a high premium on control – will be forced to catch up.
“This is a campaign run by adults who have excelled at the ‘crib kill’ strategy,” said Michael Caputo, a friend and longtime adviser to Trump, on how the campaign is targeting DeSantis by nailing down endorsements before DeSantis gets into the race. “Trump hasn’t done it before. He absolutely eschewed the congressional endorsements in 2016 and his campaign turned their nose up at it. It’s a completely different world.”
The change in that dynamic, people close to the campaign say, is due in part to Trump’s own knowledge of how the presidential campaign process works. This is, after all, his third time running. But it is also the product of a team of advisers who have had worked with Trump or on Trump-adjacent operations for years, including Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, as well as Brian Jack, who served as Trump’s political director in the White House.
Those advisers and others on his team have kept a low profile as they have worked behind the scenes to build out support in Congress, plan state visits and political events, put county-level operations in place, and tend to state party leaders who go on to become influential delegates. State-level GOP officials from places like Nevada and Louisiana have made visits to Mar-a-lago for fundraisers and other events, where Trump has made time to talk to them and follow through with any personal requests they have, like signing hats to auction off at home.
The dueling politicians’ strategies were described in interviews with over a dozen Republicans working for Trump, DeSantis, or in 2024 presidential politics.
Their focus on early blocking and tackling paid off when a majority of the Florida congressional delegation announced Trump endorsements just as DeSantis was visiting Washington, D.C. last month. Lawmakers said Trump had personally called and reached out. Some had only heard from a pollster for DeSantis, or revealed they had no relationship with their own state governor at all.
“The challenge that DeSantis and others face is that Donald Trump has a several years head start on this, they’ve continued to foster a significant organization across states that will make it difficult for later entrants who haven’t built that same infrastructure,” said a Republican strategist who has been in contact with almost every Republican presidential campaign. DeSantis, he said, “has a ton of money and not much organization.”
But, he added, it’s too soon for DeSantis supporters to panic. While some donors are beginning to worry that the Florida governor can’t beat Trump, those in his tightly-controlled orbit are expressing a mix of confidence in his standing as the lead alternative to Trump and hope that the ex-president’s legal troubles and recent election losses puncture his early dominance.
“Coming off of an historical re-election victory, DeSantis has the most robust political apparatus with national reach that no one is aware of,” said one person with close ties to the Florida governor, who was granted anonymity to speak freely before the campaign launches. “If he decides to run, there is no ramp up. The machine is built, full of rocket fuel and ready to launch.”
That machine begins with a deep budget, huge fundraising potential and a team of loyalists hiring staff in critical nominating states.
Never Back Down, a super PAC formed by ex-Trump staffer Ken Cuccinelli, has raised $33 million so far to support DeSantis’ pending campaign, according to a representative for the group, who was granted anonymity to speak about the fundraising ahead of an official filing in July. In addition, the $85 million war chest DeSantis built up during his gubernatorial campaign can likely be transferred into a PAC supporting his presidential bid — giving him an enormous financial advantage heading into the election.
“The energy our team is seeing for Ron DeSantis from Iowa to South Carolina day in and day out continues to build, and we are leveraging all the tools at our disposal to expand this momentum and, ultimately, get Ron DeSantis elected to the White House,” PAC spokesperson Erin Perrine said in a prepared statement.
“This is spring ball right now. The campaign will kick off shortly and then people will start putting points on the board,” said one Florida-based political operative who supports DeSantis but would only speak on the condition of anonymity since he is not yet an announced candidate.
The PAC, which has reportedly received $20 million from real estate mogul Robert Bigelow, has been running ads in four early voting states touting DeSantis’ blue-collar roots and conservative record.
The entity has hired operatives in Iowa, South Carolina, New Hampshire and Nevada and is staffing up its Atlanta-based senior team, including former Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt. It also recently launched “Students for DeSantis,” which mobilizes college students to phonebank and canvas for the campaign.
Election law prohibits coordination between PACs and campaigns, but Never Back Down has thus far been serving as the vehicle to promote DeSantis ahead of his launch.
“They’re going to use the super PAC as the ground game operation,” said someone else close to the DeSantis team, who was granted anonymity to speak openly about strategy. “The campaign is going to be basically in charge of TV messaging, the candidate’s scheduling and time. Paid media is going to be the campaign and grassroots operation is going to be the Super PAC.”
Meanwhile the governor — who returned this week from an overseas trip intended to bolster his foreign policy chops — is planning to host a dinner at his official residence in Tallahassee next week with fundraisers, according to two people familiar with the event.
Nevertheless, one political strategist working on Trump’s re-election effort said they have an inherent advantage in not having to spend millions simply introducing the public to the ex-president.
“Donald Trump is Donald Trump. We don’t have to spend a single dollar telling people why you should vote for him,” said the strategist, who was granted anonymity to discuss this stage of the race freely. “All we need to do is beat the shit out of DeSantis. So their money has to do a whole lot of different things: their super PAC has to build a ground game, tell who he is, and tell people why they shouldn’t vote for Trump.”
The pro-Trump Make America Great Again super PAC has spent millions over the past five weeks on advertising that targets DeSantis’ record on Social Security and Medicare.
Meanwhile the Trump campaign has worked on staffing in early primary states like New Hampshire. Trump’s campaign was the first to announce any hires in New Hampshire in late January when it brought on the former New Hampshire GOP chair Stephen Stepanek as a senior adviser focused on the state. In late March Trump brought on Trevor Naglieri, an alum of Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz’s presidential campaigns, as state director.
Last week in Iowa, Trump announced the endorsements of 13 state legislators and former elected officials from eastern Iowa. A Trump adviser credited some of those endorsements to the work of Trump’s hires in the state, which includes Bobby Kaufmann, the son of the Iowa GOP chairman Jeff Kaufmann, Alex Latcham, who worked in the Trump White House, and state director Marshall Moreau.
Trump’s campaign is also working on identifying potential donors or volunteers in states based on data they’ve compiled from events or from the previous two campaigns in the state. According to another Trump adviser, they have already identified 192,000 people in New Hampshire who have donated or signed up online to say they want to do something with the campaign, or attended rallies over the last six years.
That’s not to say Trump won’t inject chaos into everything again. He has been discussing the possibility of not participating in upcoming Republican primary debates. But the overall operation’s discipline is now playing out in the polls. A CBS News/YouGov Poll released on Monday showed Trump with 58 percent of support from Republican primary voters, compared to DeSantis with 22 percent.
“Definitely in the last couple of weeks there’s been a growing resignation to the likelihood that Trump may yet end up as the nominee again,” Cullen said.
Lisa Kashinsky contributed to this report.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
But Trump’s lawyer Joe Tacopina had demurred when asked several times by U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan whether Trump would testify, leaving the option open.
On Tuesday, however, Tacopina informed Kaplan that Trump had decided against taking the witness stand.
The jury, however, will hear from Trump, albeit not live or in person. An attorney for Carroll said she expects to play about 45 minutes of a videotaped deposition of Trump for jurors.
Jurors heard from a variety of witness on Tuesday, including a friend of Carroll’s, Lisa Birnbach, who testified that Carroll called her about five minutes after the alleged incident at Bergdorf’s and, “breathless” and “hyperventilating,” told Birnbach that Trump had attacked her. Jurors also heard from a woman named Jessica Leeds, who has accused Trump of sexually assaulting her on an airplane in the late 1970s.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Let’s take the state level first. Each state has its own process for pardons and commutations, which differ from pardons in that they reduce the punishments for crimes rather than wiping them out altogether. Some states lodge those powers with their governor and some with a range of executive officials.
Trump currently faces actual or potential criminal charges in two states, New York and Georgia. He has been indicted by a Manhattan grand jury on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records under New York law. The only pertinent pardon power related to those charges belongs to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, who is unlikely to agree to pardon the former Republican president.
The second state-level investigation is ongoing in Fulton County, Ga., in connection with Trump’s infamous recorded call imploring Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger that “I just want to find 11,780 votes” to swing that state in his column. If district attorney Fani Willis produces an indictment, which she recently announced could be forthcoming this summer, Trump would have to turn to a five-member Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles for a pardon. Georgia’s Republican Gov. Brian Kemp has the power to appoint members, but they serve staggered, seven-year terms that are subject to confirmation by the state Senate. And unlike presidential pardons, which can be doled out arbitrarily with few legal constraints, Georgia’s pardon program has stringent eligibility requirements. Trump could only apply for a pardon in Georgia after he is indicted and convicted, and only after five additional years have passed since completion of his sentence.
In both New York and Georgia, therefore, a politically motivated pardon — which Trump himself embraced unabashedly by pardoning the likes of advisors Steven Bannon, Roger Stone and Paul Manafort (his 2016 campaign manager) — is not in the cards.
Federal pardons
But if a federal indictment issues, the law — and history — around the presidential pardon power are less clear.
Trump is currently embroiled in three criminal probes at the federal level. Attorney General Merrick Garland tasked Special Counsel Jack Smith with looking into the classified documents Trump unlawfully kept at Mar-a-Lago months after the FBI and the National Archives requested their return. A second federal investigation involves the Securities and Exchange Commission plus a federal grand jury, which are considering whether his company, Trump Media, violated federal criminal laws in connection with its initial public offering for his social medial platform, Truth Social, as well as its reported receipt of $8 million in related loans wired from entities connected to an ally of Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin. The third is Smith’s investigation of Trump’s role in the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection at the Capitol, a probe that now reportedly includes possible wire fraud in connection with the massive fundraising that occurred over his false election claims.
If any of these produces an indictment, the question will inevitably arise: Should President Joe Biden pardon Trump? Given the precedent set by President Gerald Ford’s pardon of a disgraced former president, Richard Nixon, there will be considerable pressure on Biden to do so. (And given the nearly ubiquitous attacks on Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg’s indictment decision, it’s fair to assume that such pardon pressure would come from both the right and the left.)
As a matter of historical precedent, Ford broke new ground by pardoning Nixon before any charges were brought, ushering in a modern norm of presidential unaccountability. Ford wrote in his pardon that “a trial of Richard Nixon, if it became necessary, could not fairly begin until a year or more has elapsed. In the meantime, the tranquility [of] this nation . . . could be irreparably lost by the prospects of bringing to trial a former President of the United States.” The same logic could hold true for Trump: He is the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, and a federal trial would likely stretch past the election.
Ford’s move is widely believed to have cost him a second term. Biden just announced that he is running again. That decision changes any potential political calculus around pardoning Trump.
Naturally, clemency for the first indicted former president in American history would be measured against a long tradition of presidents issuing pardons in the name of amnesty — or in order to heal the nation after times of crisis. Long before Ford pardoned Nixon, Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson both pardoned Confederate soldiers en masse after the Civil War, with Johnson explaining that his action would “renew and fully restore confidence and fraternal feeling among the whole people, and their respect for the attachment to the National Government, designed by its patriotic founders for the general good.”
On his first full day in office in 1977, Ford’s successor, President Jimmy Carter, granted an unconditional pardon to tens of thousands of Americans who evaded the draft during the Vietnam War, many having immigrated to Canada in fear. The decision was controversial, angering veterans’ groups who opposed amnesty for draft-dodgers. Carter also drew criticism for excluding military deserters from the scope of Proclamation 4483, also known as the “Granting Pardon for Violations of the Selective Services Act,” because draft-evaders tended to be middle class and well-educated (including the likes of Presidents Clinton, George W. Bush, and Trump), while military deserters were more likely to come from lower-income families. Like Ford before him, Carter lost his reelection bid, this time to President Ronald Reagan, a Republican.
If Biden is serious about four more years, he would be hard-pressed to preemptively exonerate the man who tried to seize power from the U.S. electorate in the last round. The country remains exceedingly polarized, with a political plurality of Americans (46 percent) believing that Trump has done something illegal, according to a March 2023 NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll.
A presidential self-pardon?
Finally, although it’s a highly speculative option, it’s possible that Trump could try to pardon himself with a “pocket pardon.” That is, Trump may have issued himself a self-pardon while he was president and squirreled it away in a desk drawer or storage closet for use in rebuffing possible federal charges down the line. If Trump issued a self-pardon while still president, his actions will have again pushed the constitutional envelope beyond any boundary this country has seen before.
No court has yet considered the question of whether presidents can pardon themselves, even for crimes committed in the Oval Office. Article I, Section 3 of the Constitution states of impeachment, which is the most apparent remedy for presidential wrongdoing in office, that “the party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to indictment, trial, judgment and punishment, according to law.” Given that impeachments cannot be pardoned under Article II, the impeachment language — which makes former presidents subject to the criminal laws for impeachable conduct — could be read to suggest that crimes related to impeachments cannot be pardoned, either. Trump was impeached for his role in Jan. 6, with the House of Representatives charging him with “incitement of insurrection” against the U.S. government and “lawless action at the Capitol.” Arguably, then, any crimes arising from the same conduct would be immune from a self-pardon.
In addition, Section 3 of the 14th Amendment holds that “[n]o person shall . . . hold any office, civil or military, under the United States . . . who, having previously taken an oath . . . 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.” If Smith’s grand jury indicts Trump under the section of federal sedition law which provides that “[w]hoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto . . . shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States,” a self-pardon would clash with the Supreme Court’s longstanding recognition, discussed below, that pardons cannot undermine other parts of the Constitution. The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel also opined in August of 1975 — during Nixon’s presidency — that “[u]nder the fundamental rule that no one may be a judge in his own case, the President cannot pardon himself.”
Constitutionally legitimizing a self-pardon for Jan. 6 should therefore be unthinkable. At least one would hope. At the very least, that debate could thrust the country into a much-needed discussion of whether the Article II pardon power’s susceptibility to abuse has outlived its benefits.
Still, many commentators widely assume that except in cases of impeachment, the president’s pardon power is unconstrained and may even extend to self-pardons, a perspective that likely traces back to the Supreme Court’s characterization of the power as “unlimited” in a post-Civil War case. But as a matter of history, theory and Supreme Court precedent, that understanding is overblown.
The U.S. president’s pardon power derives from medieval England, originating between 668 and 725 A.D. That history forms the backdrop for understanding the scope of the president’s power to pardon today. In 1833, the Supreme Court wrote of the English monarch’s power to pardon: “We . . . look into their books for the rules prescribing the manner in which it is to be used by the person who would avail himself of it.”
Yet a primary reason for the King’s nearly unlimited authority to pardon no longer applies. Under England’s early hereditary monarchy, the “law” as we understand it today — as a set of written rules that are supposed to apply to the general population even-handedly — did not exist. There were no police, so justice was the responsibility of local communities. Until the jury trial was established in 1215, accused persons in England often underwent an ordeal — by fire, which meant walking three paces holding a red-hot iron bar; by water, which meant being tied up and thrown into water; or by combat. If the accused survived, the verdict was not guilty. In this harsh environment, the royal “prerogative of mercy” operated, at least ostensibly, to achieve justice for especially worthy individuals. By contrast, there are elaborate rules governing the systems of criminal justice in modern American courts — including constitutional due process, the right against self-incrimination, and the right to a jury trial, among many others — so in theory, the need for an executive branch official to swoop in as a backstop for miscarriages of justice is less evident.
What’s more, the English monarch’s pardon power was not unlimited. By the time of the American Revolution, the power was shared with the Parliament and the Church of England. As early as 1389, for example, Parliament passed a law requiring that pardons “for murder, or for the death of a man slain by await, assault, or malice prepensed, treason or rape . . . be specified.” Unless the King listed the relevant crimes, in other words, his pardon was invalid as a matter of law.
The pardon power made its way into the U.S. Constitution after little debate, and it remains unclear how broadly it does — or should — extend. The Constitutional Convention produced a relatively short job description for presidents under Article II, which prominently includes an obligation that presidents “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed” — hardly a sovereign-like power. Although ideas for limiting the pardon power were floated and rejected — such as banning pardons for treason, requiring Senate consent, or making an actual criminal conviction a prerequisite for eligibility — the sole constraints in the Constitution’s final text are that presidents can pardon only federal crimes and they cannot pardon “in Cases of Impeachment.”
The Supreme Court later recognized a number of constraints on the pardon power, however, including that pardons cannot “otherwise offend the Constitution.” A pardon cannot require the government to refund money “paid into the treasury” as part of a defendant’s sentence, for example, as only Congress has the power of the purse under the Constitution’s Appropriations Clause. Presidents cannot encroach on that prerogative via the pardon power even though no such limitation is explicit in the text of the Constitution. The Court could certainly see fit to justify additional limits, such as a ban on self-pardons, if it were presented with that question.
In justifying a broad pardon power for the president, Alexander Hamilton assuaged detractors in Federalist No. 69 that the president’s power would be “much inferior” to that of the despised King George III. “The person of the King of Great Britain is sacred and inviolable,” he explained, as “[t]here is no constitutional tribunal to which he is amenable; no punishment to which he can be subjected without involving the crisis of a national revolution.”
Whether Hamilton was correct, or whether modern presidents have in fact become kings, is a question that Trump’s record of epic wrongdoing in office has forced the country to face head-on, once again.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
