When Vice President Kamala Harris used Tuesday night’s debate to tout her bipartisan appeal, she emphasized the backing she’d received from two particularly notable GOP officials.

“I actually have the endorsement of 200 Republicans,” she said, including “the endorsement of former Vice President Dick Cheney and Congressmember Liz Cheney.”

On its own, Harris welcoming the Cheneys to her tent is no big shakes. Liz’s work on the January 6 committee left her popular with Democrats. Dick is 83, old enough to seem less likely to start a reckless war, and long ago surpassed as a top Democratic bogeyman by Trump himself.

But if the Cheneys are no longer Republican voters, they remain unrepentant hawks, advocates of aggressively using US military power to achieve American policy aims. And Harris’ embrace of a top architect of the disastrous militarism of George W. Bush’s administration was one of several signals she offered suggesting fans of the neoconservative foreign policy associated with the Cheneys should feel comfortable with her as president.

On Gaza, Ukraine, Afghanistan, and other national security matters, Harris appeared to deliberately strike notes aimed at appealing to the interventionist consensus in Washington’s foreign policy establishment. The result was Harris’ latest and perhaps clearest suggestion that she will not venture far to the left of President Joe Biden, or former President Barack Obama, on national security. That may or may not be good politics, but it is a disappointment to the substantial number of Americans hoping that Harris would pursue a more restrained, anti-war foreign policy than Biden.

Harris, eager to make the election about Trump’s unfitness for office, is clearly trying to play it safe on national security, as with other policy areas. What’s notable, though, is what playing it safe entails.

Nowhere is that dynamic clearer than on Israel. While a handful of pro-Palestinian protesters clashed with Philadelphia police outside the debate, Harris responded to a question about achieving a ceasefire in Gaza by emphasizing her support for Israel’s “right to defend itself.” To be sure, she then pivoted. “It is also true far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed,” she said in a by-now-familiar caveat. “Children, mothers. What we know is that this war must end.” She also called for a two-state solution. But Harris’s formulation provides no real departure from Biden’s policy, which has, so far, failed to end the war.

On Tuesday Harris even seemed to suggest that she would limit US efforts to restrain Israel from actions that could cause a broader regional war. “The one thing I will assure you always, I will always give Israel the ability to defend itself, in particular as it relates to Iran and any threat that Iran and its proxies pose to Israel,” Harris said.

On Ukraine, Harris focused on distinguishing herself from Trump, who has touted his cozy ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin and repeated his dubious claim he could settle that war “before I even become president,” presumably by letting Russia keep the Ukrainian territory it now occupies.

Harris—appealing to “the 800,000 Polish-Americans right here in Pennsylvania”—argued that without US support, “Putin would be sitting in Kyiv with his eyes on the rest of Europe, starting with Poland.” What the vice president did not mention is that Poland, as NATO member, enjoys protection Ukraine does not, a mutual defense agreement with the US and its allies. Russia has invaded former Soviet republics, but never, dating to the formation of NATO, risked nuclear war by attacking a member of the alliance.

Harris also avoided offering her own prescription for ending the war in Ukraine, absent Ukraine, which is currently losing ground, achieving its increasingly far-fetched goal of regaining all the territory Russia has seized since 2014. (Nor did she or Trump opine on whether the US should allow Ukraine to launch missiles supplied by the US and other states at targets more than 60 miles inside Russian territory.)

Harris “acted as though it was still 2022 and would be forever as long as the U.S. kept funding the war,” with “no real explanation as to why this was in anyone’s best interest, even Ukraine’s, to continue on this course,” wrote Kelley Beaucar Vlahos, a senior adviser at the Quincy Institute, a think tank advocating more dovish US policy.

On Tuesday, Harris ticked off policy goals that included “ensuring we have the most lethal fighting force in the world.” Asked about US soldiers who died during the withdrawal from Afghanistan, Harris said she “agreed with President Biden’s decision to pull out of Afghanistan.” But the vice president also ripped Trump for launching the negotiations that preceded that pull-out. “He negotiated directly with a terrorist organization called the Taliban,” Harris said. Harris argued that the Trump gave away too much in those talks and failed to include Afghanistan’s then-government. That may be true, but her answer left her supporting the end of a 20-year war while deriding the mere existence of negotiations with the group the US had been fighting in that war.

Harris also mocked Trump for exchanging “love letters with Kim Jong Un.” The details of Trump’s diplomatic efforts are very much open to debate. But in singling out negotiations with the Taliban and North Korea, Harris flirted with the argument that the US should avoid talking to bad actors at all. That kind of criticism that has more often come from the hawkish right, and evokes the attacks that Republicans like John McCain and Mitt Romney—both of whom Harris name-checked Tuesday—once hurled at Obama.

In speaking about Afghanistan, Harris also made the curious statement that “as of today, there is not one member of the United States military who is in active duty in a combat zone in any war zone around the world.” That’s true if you do not consider the roughly 3,500 American solders in Syria and Iraq to be in war zones. But many of those troops are on bases repeatedly targeted by rocket attacks attributed to allies of Iran. In January, three American solders stationed in Jordan near the Syrian border were killed, and 30 injured, in a drone attack.

A Harris campaign spokesperson did not respond to questions about that statement. But the vice president’s comment does not suggest she sees an urgent need to end the US military presence in the Middle East.

Dick Cheney, who helped put US troops in Iraq 20 years ago, presumably approves.

Noah Lanard contributed to this article.

On August 1, people who had given money to the Democratic presidential ticket began getting ominous messages suggesting their identities may have been stolen. Some received texts from an unknown sender asking them to confirm recent donations. Others told Mother Jones that they received emails warning that their donations had been “flagged” and asking them to click a box to “verify” that they had really contributed the money—or to click “no” if they did not recall doing so.

One donor described the email he received as “mysterious, vague, and somewhat threatening.” That email, similar to the one pictured below, requested that he respond within “the next 24 hours.”

The recipients of these messages have something in common: they’re listed in federal campaign filings as having donated to Joe Biden or Kamala Harris using ActBlue, a ubiquitous online platform that makes it simple to contribute to a vast array of Democratic candidates and liberal causes. ActBlue, a non-profit, has become central to Democrats’ grassroots fundraising efforts. For years, Republicans struggled to emulate its success.

The mysterious emails were sent by the equally mysterious “Fair Election Fund”—a newly formed dark money group that says it is working to uncover supposed electoral malfeasance. When the organization released an initial advertisement in May, it touted a $5 million fund that it said would be used to pay whistleblowers who “expose cheating in our elections.” More recently, it launched a media blitz full of baseless and implausible claims that Kamala Harris’ eye-popping fundraising numbers might somehow be the result of a massive identity theft and money-laundering scheme carried out by ActBlue.

The goal of the Fair Election Fund’s messages to ActBlue users became clear on August 13, when the Washington Examiner reported the conservative group had “identified 60,000 people who were named as small-dollar donors in the Biden-Harris campaign’s July [FEC] report but did not recall making the contribution when contacted by the Fair Election Fund.” The Examiner said the organization had spent $250,000 to compile these initial findings.

“If the Democrats’ fundraising numbers sound outrageous, unbelievable, it’s because they might be,” the Fair Election Fund charged in a recent video, which displayed a headline about the $310 million Harris raised in July. “The Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue has been accused of stealing our identities to conceal donations from bad actors.” The group says it spent $50,000 to run this ad online.

This line of criticism piggybacks on long-running GOP attacks on ActBlue. Last year, James O’Keefe, a conservative activist previously ousted from the far-right video sting outfit Project Veritas, accused ActBlue of assigning large numbers of donations to the names and addresses of people who did not remember donating so often. Though O’Keefe’s claims of a “potential massive money laundering” scheme went unconfirmed, various GOP lawmakers, including Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), have faulted ActBlue for accepting some donations without requiring card verification values—the 3- or 4-digit codes on credit cards used to confirm their validity.

Contrary to the right-wing allegations, there is no public evidence that ActBlue has stolen anyone’s identity or has been involved in money laundering. ActBlue denies engaging in any wrongdoing. “We are aware of recent attempts to spread misinformation about our platform,” an ActBlue spokesperson told Mother Jones, while citing “robust and effective protocols in place to ensure our platform is secure.” The platform says that it now requires all new donors to provide CVV codes, though many longtime users can still make donations without them.

The Fair Election Fund’s recent claims about ActBlue coincided with Harris receiving an outpouring of support from first-time and small-dollar donors in the wake of Biden’s decision to drop out of the 2024 race. In just the first week of her campaign, she raked in more than $200 million dollars, two-thirds of which came from people who hadn’t donated yet this cycle, the campaign announced.

After learning of the messages the Fair Election Fund was sending to contributors, ActBlue published an August 2 tweet warning they appeared to be part of “a dangerous disinformation campaign” targeting “Democratic donors.” ActBlue advised users to avoid replying to the messages and to instead report them as spam.

Donor safety and security are our top priority. We will continue to monitor bad-faith attempts to undermine grassroots power. These attacks pale in comparison to the historic enthusiasm small-dollar donors are bringing to the 2024 elections. pic.twitter.com/hIVISJRDzb

— ActBlue (@actblue) August 2, 2024

The August 13 Examiner story didn’t make clear how the Fair Election Fund conducted its research or how it arrived at the 60,000 figure, and the group didn’t answer questions from Mother Jones about its methodology. But it appears that the Fair Election Fund used FEC reports to identify small donors and then purchased commercially available data that allowed the group to contact them. Recipients told Mother Jones they received messages at phone numbers and email addresses that they had not provided to ActBlue or to the Biden or Harris campaigns.

Such a method could easily generate inaccurate results. Clicking a box telling an unsolicited emailer you don’t recall making a donation is not a sworn statement that you got scammed. It’s unclear how the Fair Election Fund ensured that the donor contact information it obtained was correct, or whether it accounted for the possibility that some donors may have simply forgotten signing up to make recurring contributions.

One ActBlue user who contacted Mother Jones, and who asked not to be identified, said she had replied “no” to a text message asking if she recalled donating to Biden in June. That drew a quick follow-up call from a woman who said she worked for the Fair Election Fund and asked for confirmation the user did not recall giving the money. The donor told the caller she did not recall the donation, but later realized she may have been mistaken. She told Mother Jones in an email that she suspected she had inadvertently signed up for recurring monthly contributions when she made an earlier donation.

More significantly, the Fair Election Fund and other ActBlue critics have offered zero evidence of the broader conspiracy they’re insinuating, in which fraudsters are supposedly stealing thousands of identities and using them to make hundreds of millions of dollars worth of illegal donations to Democratic candidates in small increments.

Anyone who wants to secretly bankroll a campaign, after all, has much better options. Super-PACs can accept unlimited amounts of money to spend on a candidate’s behalf with far less transparency. And other dark money groups spending big on the 2024 election, including the Fair Election Fund itself, likewise face significantly less public scrutiny.

Ironically, ActBlue—like its GOP counterpart, WinRed—is actually more transparent than even traditional forms of small-dollar fundraising. Under federal election law, if a person makes a donation of less than $200 directly to a campaign, their identity is never disclosed publicly. But all donations made through conduits like ActBlue must be publicly reported, which creates a detailed paper trail that otherwise would not exist.

Nonetheless, the Fair Election Fund’s claims have had impact. The Examiner story noted that the group had shared its findings with the offices of five Republican state attorneys general, two of whom quickly said in statements they would look into the allegations. “We are grateful to Fair Election Fund for sharing these concerning findings with us, as we explore whether any of our constituents have been defrauded by ActBlue,” Alabama AG Steve Marshall said.

Two of the attorneys general, Ken Paxton of Texas and Jason Miyares of Virginia, have said they were already investigating ActBlue, as has House Administration Committee Chair Bryan Steil, a Wisconsin Republican. “Certain features of campaign finance law may incentivize bad actors to use platforms like ActBlue to covertly move money to political campaigns to evade legal requirements,” Paxton said in an August 8 statement.

The Fair Election Fund is working on other initiatives, as well. The group in May announced it would give people who claimed to have evidence of election fraud “payment from our $5 million dollar fund.” It has not explained what criteria it will use to determine payouts. But the effort, four years after Donald Trump used lies and debunked stories of ballot-stuffing to try to steal the 2020 election, appears squarely aimed at generating new election fraud claims that could turn out to be just as unreliable.

The Fair Election Fund used what it said was a “six-figure” ad buy in swing states during the Olympics to tell people who report voter fraud that they “could be eligible for compensation.” The Raleigh News & Observer reported the group also spent $375,000 on ads and billboards attacking North Carolina’s Democratic-controlled Board of Elections for denying ballot access to third-party candidates Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Cornel West. The group similarly said it spent “six figures” faulting efforts to keep West off the ballot in Michigan. It also recently touted an online ad that claims that efforts to keep West off Pennsylvania ballots would disenfranchise Black voters and represent “the real Jim Crow 2.0.”

Where all the money for these campaigns comes from is not clear. A spokesperson for the Fair Election Fund declined to comment on the group’s funding or to answer specific questions, including where the group is incorporated. Former Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.), who has been identified in press reports as a co-founder as a well as senior adviser to the group, did not respond to repeated inquiries by Mother Jones. He appears to be the only individual publicly declaring an affiliation with the group.

The group claims on its website to be a nonprofit but provides no information about its incorporation or tax status, as most nonprofits do. It also does not appear in a national database of tax-exempt organizations that have registered with the IRS. The group’s spokesperson did not respond to questions about its nonprofit status. In reports it was required to file to the Federal Communications Commission, the group listed the address of a small building in Pittsburgh.

Google’s online Transparency Center for ads indicates that some of the digital ads the Fair Election Fund has run were paid for by another organization, a corporation registered last year in Delaware called “For Which it Stands Fund, Inc.” That group has no evident online presence.

Brett Kappel, a campaign finance lawyer, said Fair Election Fund looks to be following a playbook favored by dark money recipients in recent election cycles. They can start operating without applying to the IRS for nonprofit status, as long as they plan to apply within the year. This delays the need to disclose any information publicly, including the filing of a so-called 990 tax form, until after the election. Some avoid even that belated disclosure by terminating their state registration before having to file a 990, Kappel said.

“Fair Election Fund appears to be a dark money group with very little known about how it’s funded or how it operates,” said Jordan Libowitz, a spokesperson for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a liberal-leaning watchdog group. “It seems to be trying to build out a conspiracy theory to use against Democratic candidates in the 2024 election. When groups like this pop up, it’s not out of the ordinary for them to hit quick and then disband before anything can be found out about them—or done about them.”

Campaign finance researchers contacted by Mother Jones said it was notable that the Fair Election Fund claimed to have $5 million when it launched but does not appear to be raising money online. That suggests the likelihood of a large preexisting source of money.

FCC filings list a woman named Tori Sachs as an official with the group. That is the name of a political consultant in Michigan who has helped spearhead several dark money efforts in support of Republican candidates in that state. Sachs has worked for multiple organizations funded by the billionaire DeVos family, including by Betsy DeVos, who was Trump’s Education secretary and previously chaired the Michigan GOP.

Sachs did not respond to inquires. A spokesperson for the DeVos family did not respond when asked if the family is providing funding for the Fair Election Fund.

Meanwhile, the Fair Election Fund is charging ahead, dangling cash for election fraud claims. And according to the Examiner, the group plans to “continue vetting Biden-Harris donors in the coming weeks.”

Additional reporting by Julia Lurie.

The Justice Department on Thursday charged Dimitri Simes, pro-Russian pundit and former head of a Washington think tank, along with his wife, Anastasia Simes, with violating US sanctions by accepting millions of dollars from a Russian state television network and laundering the proceeds.

Reached by phone in Moscow, where he has a home, Dimitri Simes, who was an adviser to Trump’s 2016 campaign, declined to comment on the allegations against him. But he denounced the charges against his wife as “lies and half-truths” and argued that the Biden administration is targeting the couple to punish him for expressing pro-Russian views.

“If you think this is a law abiding administration [it] would be shocking, but no, I am not terribly surprised,” Simes said, of the charges against his wife.

“I think that Mr. Garland would have to be ashamed of producing something like that,” Simes added. “It is beneath the dignity of the Department of Justice.”

Simes indicated that he does not plan to return the US to face the charges. He said he believes the Justice Department charged him “to stop me from coming to the US.”

“They want to punish me” for criticizing US support for Ukraine, he claimed.

Simes said he “would most certainly welcome an opportunity to come to a trial in Washington as a witness” to testify against Biden administration officials “who betrayed the US…and are trying to start World War III.”

The indictment against the couple alleges that they received $1 million, a personal car and driver, and a stipend for an apartment in Moscow, in exchange for work they did for Russia’s state-owned Channel One after the US sanctioned the network over Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

“These defendants allegedly violated sanctions that were put in place in response to Russia’s illegal aggression in Ukraine,” Matthew Graves, the US Attorney for Washington DC, said in a statement announcing the indictments. “Such violations harm our national security interests—a fact that Dimitri Simes, with the deep experience he gained in national affairs after fleeing the Soviet Union and becoming a US citizen, should have uniquely appreciated.”

Simes is the former longtime head of the Center for National Interest, which was founded by Richard Nixon in 1994 and advocates for “strategic realism” in US foreign policy. Simes’ efforts in 2016 to arrange contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia drew scrutiny from special counsel Robert Mueller, but Simes was not accused of wrongdoing.

The charges against the Simes couple are part of a Justice Department crackdown on Russian influence efforts. Federal prosecutors yesterday indicted two employees of Russian state-controlled network Russia Today with violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act by secretly running a right-leaning media company they used to push pro-Kremlin messaging.

The site featured content from pro-Trump pundits including Benny Johnson and Tim Pool. Both Johnson and Pool said they are victims of the scheme.

Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, said the defendants in the Tenet case “used American-based individuals and entities to exploit, frankly, our free society to try to undermine our election,” including by deploying “unwitting influencers to push Russian propaganda and pro-Russian messaging.” 

DOJ alleges that Anastasia Simes received funds from a Russian businessman named Alexander Udodov, whom the Treasury Department sanctioned last year for his support for the Russian government. Prosecutors allege that Anastasia Simes helped Udodov evade sanctions by “purchasing art and antiques for the benefit of Udodov from galleries and auction houses in the United States and Europe, and having the items shipped to her residence in Huntly, Virginia, where they were stored for onward shipment to Russia.”

Anastasia Simes could not be reached, but Dimitri Simes said his those charges against his wife are false. “She started working with [Udodov] before the sanctions and was never aware of any sanctions” against the oligarch, Simes said.

He also said his wife took no steps, such as contacting a shipping company, “to ship goods to Russia.”

“There was no conspiracy, nothing,” Simes said. “She has a legitimate business. I am proud of my wife. I am very supportive of what she is doing.”

Simes’ attorney David Rivkin declined to comment.

The Justice Department on Thursday charged Dimitri Simes, pro-Russian pundit and and former head of a Washington think tank, along with his wife, Anastasia Simes, with violating US sanctions by accepting millions of dollars from a Russian state television network and laundering the proceeds.

Reached by phone in Moscow, where he has a home, Dimitri Simes, who was an adviser to Trump’s 2016 campaign, declined to comment on the allegations against him. But he denounced the charges against his wife as “lies and half-truths” and argued that the Biden administration is targeting the couple to punish him for expressing pro-Russian views.

“If you think this is a law abiding administration [it] would be shocking, but no, I am not terribly surprised,” Simes said, of the charges against his wife.

“I think that Mr. Garland would have to be ashamed of producing something like that,” Simes added. “It is beneath the dignity of the Department of Justice.”

Simes indicated that he does not plan to return the US to face the charges. He said he believes the Justice Department charged him “to stop me from coming to the US.”

“They want to punish me” for criticizing US support for Ukraine, he claimed.

Simes said he “would most certainly welcome an opportunity to come to a trial in Washington as a witness to testify against Biden administration officials “who betrayed the US…and are trying to start World War III.”

The indictment against the couple alleges that they received $1 million, a personal car and driver, and a stipend for an apartment in Moscow, in exchange for work they did for Russia’s state-owned Channel One after the US sanctioned the network over Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

“These defendants allegedly violated sanctions that were put in place in response to Russia’s illegal aggression in Ukraine,” US Attorney Matthew M. Graves said in a statement announcing the indictments. “Such violations harm our national security interests—a fact that Dimitri Simes, with the deep experience he gained in national affairs after fleeing the Soviet Union and becoming a US citizen, should have uniquely appreciated.”

Simes is the former longtime head of the Center for National Interest, which was founded by Richard Nixon in 1994 and advocates for “strategic realism” in US foreign policy. Simes’ efforts in 2016 to arrange contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia drew scrutiny from special counsel Robert Mueller, but Simes was not accused of wrongdoing.

The charges against the Simes couple are part of a Justice Department crackdown on Russian influence efforts. Federal prosecutors yesterday indicted two employees of Russian state-controlled network Russia Today with violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act by secretly running a right-leaning media company they used to push pro-Kremlin messaging.

The site featured content from pro-Trump pundits including Benny Johnson and Tim Pool. Both Johnson and Pool said they are victims of the scheme.

Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, said the defendants in the Tenet case “used American-based individuals and entities to exploit, frankly, our free society to try to undermine our election,” including by deploying “unwitting influencers to push Russian propaganda and pro-Russian messaging.” 

DOJ alleges that Anastasia Simes received funds from a Russian businessman named Alexander Udodov, whom the Treasury Department sanctioned last year for his support for the Russian government. Prosecutors allege that Anastasia Simes helped Udodov evade sanctions by “purchasing art and antiques for the benefit of Udodov from galleries and auction houses in the United States and Europe, and having the items shipped to her residence in Huntly, Virginia, where they were stored for onward shipment to Russia.”

Anastasia Simes could not be reached, but Dimitri Simes said his those charges against his wife are false. “She started working with [Udodov] before the sanctions and was never aware of any sanctions” against the oligarch, Simes said.

He also said his wife took no steps, such as contacting a shipping company, “to ship goods to Russia.”

“There was no conspiracy, nothing,” Simes said. “She has a legitimate business. I am proud of my wife. I am very supportive of what she is doing.”

Simes’ attorney David Rivkin declined to comment.

Special Counsel Jack Smith filed a new indictment of Donald Trump on Tuesday that leaves in place the same criminal charges—even as it narrows the underlying allegations—in response to the Supreme Court’s widely decried decision declaring that presidents’ official actions are immune from prosecution.

Trump is still charged with conspiring to defraud the United States, conspiring to obstruct an official proceeding, obstructing an official proceeding, and conspiring to deprive people of their civil rights. The charges relate to Trump’s bid to retain power after his 2020 election defeat.

But the new 36-page indictment drops a section that detailed Trump’s efforts to pressure the Justice Department to support his false claims of election fraud. It also no longer cites an unnamed official—who was easily identified as Jeffrey Clark, a former Trump loyalist in the Justice Department—among unindicted co-conspirators who assisted with Trump’s plot.

The superseding indictment also still includes allegations that Trump attempted to pressure then–Vice President Mike Pence to refuse to carry out his ceremonial role in certifying the electoral vote count. That section remains even though Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the court’s immunity ruling that Trump’s interactions with Pence were official conduct for which “Trump is at least presumptively immune from prosecution.” Roberts, with little specificity, said the government would have to rebut “that presumption of immunity.”

The filing comes a day after Smith filed an appeal asking a federal circuit court to reverse a decision by US District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee who has appeared eager to defer to the former president’s claims, throwing out Smith’s criminal charges against Trump over his efforts to avoid complying with a federal subpoena seeking the return of classified government documents Trump removed from the White House when he left office. Breaking with decades of legal precedent, Cannon ruled that Smith was not lawfully appointed as special counsel.

Those two rulings handed Trump major legal victories and created the appearance that conservative judges were eager to use their power to protect Trump from prosecution he has claimed is politically motivated.

In his appeal and the new indictment restating the same charges against Trump, Smith appears, within the bounds of the law, to be standing by the charges his office has leveled at Trump in a bid to hold former president responsible for his alleged crimes.

The new indictment comes 10 days before a Justice Department policy that bars charges within 60 days of an election, which would have effectively blocked Smith from issuing charges against Trump as he seeks reelection.

Smith, of course, will not determine what charges remain against Trump. The judge overseeing the January 6 case, Tanya Chutkan, will begin making that determination, using a test the Supreme Court vaguely outlined, at a hearing next week.

Trump is awaiting sentencing following his May conviction in New York of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to hide payments aimed at covering up a sexual affair with porn actress Stormy Daniels. He also faces criminal charges in Georgia related to his efforts to subvert his election defeat there in 2020.

In the two federal cases brought by Smith, Trump is widely expected to order the Justice Department to drop charges against him, or to pardon himself, if he wins reelection—though either act would be an unprecedented case of a president decreeing his own imperviousness to criminal charges.

Smith’s recent moves, however, make it clear that Trump remains in jeopardy. If Vice President Kamala Harris prevails in November, Trump faces n0t only another defeat but fair odds, sooner or later, of a federal conviction.

Special Counsel Jack Smith filed a new indictment of Donald Trump on Tuesday that leaves in place the same criminal charges—even as it narrows the underlying allegations—in response to the Supreme Court’s widely decried decision declaring that presidents’ official actions are immune from prosecution.

Trump is still charged with conspiring to defraud the United States, conspiring to obstruct an official proceeding, obstructing an official proceeding, and conspiring to deprive people of their civil rights. The charges relate to Trump’s bid to retain power after his 2020 election defeat.

But the new 36-page indictment drops a section that detailed Trump’s efforts to pressure the Justice Department to support his false claims of election fraud. It also no longer cites an unnamed official—who was easily identified as Jeffrey Clark, a former Trump loyalist in the Justice Department—among unindicted co-conspirators who assisted with Trump’s plot.

The superseding indictment also still includes allegations that Trump attempted to pressure then–Vice President Mike Pence to refuse to carry out his ceremonial role in certifying the electoral vote count. That section remains even though Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the court’s immunity ruling that Trump’s interactions with Pence were official conduct for which “Trump is at least presumptively immune from prosecution.” Roberts, with little specificity, said the government would have to rebut “that presumption of immunity.”

The filing comes a day after Smith filed an appeal asking a federal circuit court to reverse a decision by US District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee who has appeared eager to defer to the former president’s claims, throwing out Smith’s criminal charges against Trump over his efforts to avoid complying with a federal subpoena seeking the return of classified government documents Trump removed from the White House when he left office. Breaking with decades of legal precedent, Cannon ruled that Smith was not lawfully appointed as special counsel.

Those two rulings handed Trump major legal victories and created the appearance that conservative judges were eager to use their power to protect Trump from prosecution he has claimed is politically motivated.

In his appeal and the new indictment restating the same charges against Trump, Smith appears, within the bounds of the law, to be standing by the charges his office has leveled at Trump in a bid to hold former president responsible for his alleged crimes.

The new indictment comes 10 days before a Justice Department policy that bars charges within 60 days of an election, which would have effectively blocked Smith from issuing charges against Trump as he seeks reelection.

Smith, of course, will not determine what charges remain against Trump. The judge overseeing the January 6 case, Tanya Chutkan, will begin making that determination, using a test the Supreme Court vaguely outlined, at a hearing next week.

Trump is awaiting sentencing following his May conviction in New York of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to hide payments aimed at covering up a sexual affair with porn actress Stormy Daniels. He also faces criminal charges in Georgia related to his efforts to subvert his election defeat there in 2020.

In the two federal cases brought by Smith, Trump is widely expected to order the Justice Department to drop charges against him, or to pardon himself, if he wins reelection—though either act would be an unprecedented case of a president decreeing his own imperviousness to criminal charges.

Smith’s recent moves, however, make it clear that Trump remains in jeopardy. If Vice President Kamala Harris prevails in November, Trump faces n0t only another defeat but fair odds, sooner or later, of a federal conviction.

The story was produced in partnership with Important Context.

Last summer, Ava Chen appeared on the right-wing news outlet Real America’s Voice to rail against the RICO charges that had just been filed against Donald Trump and 18 co-defendants in Georgia. The indictment “reminds me a lot of China and the CCP,” Chen told host John Fredericks, a former Trump campaign aide who now anchors one of the fledgling TV network’s marquee shows.

Chen was identified during the August 2023 segment as a spokesperson for the New Federal State of China, a MAGA-aligned group founded by Steve Bannon and Guo Wengui—a dissident Chinese émigré who last month was convicted on RICO and fraud charges for stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from his own followers. Prosecutors named the NFSC as part of Guo’s fraud scheme, arguing that the group’s ostensible opposition to the Chinese Communist Party was part of Guo’s scam.

In recent years, members of the NFSC have made frequent appearances across Real America’s Voice, as well as on Fredericks’ radio show. But what viewers didn’t know was that at the time of these interviews, a firm tied to the NFSC was paying tens of thousands of dollars to have Guo’s representatives appear on Fredericks’ radio and TV shows, as well as on another show that aired on RAV. The firm was also attempting to purchase airtime for the NFSC elsewhere on the network.

These payments for appearances on Fredericks’ shows are detailed in a draft contract, court records, and bank statements reviewed by Mother Jones and Important Context. They were also described by three sources. Bank records show the payments went to Common Sense Media, a company tied to Fredericks’ radio show, which is independently produced and selects its own guests. Records we reviewed and the same sources indicated that Guo’s supporters also discussed a contract that would have allowed his followers to secure airtime elsewhere on RAV, but those talks fell through. 

The transactions involving the Fredericks broadcasts were one piece of a well-financed effort by Guo backers to push messaging supporting Guo. As part of their broader outreach campaign, Guo followers also arranged extravagantly pro-Guo op-eds written under the bylines of prominent far-right figures, including New York Young Republican Club chief Gavin Wax and Karoline Leavitt, who has since become a spokesperson for the Trump campaign. Guo supporters reportedly paid $75,000 for two booths at the influential Conservative Political Action Conference, and they showered campaign contributions on members of Congress who expressed sympathy for Guo’s cause. In their outreach to the MAGA world, Guo followers argued that, just like Trump, Guo was the victim of a politicized prosecution.

“This is the fourth indictment [against Trump] in the short span of four and a half months,” Chen said during her August 21, 2023, interview on the Fredericks show on RAV. “And this speaks a lot to the rule of law and to the weaponization of the entire justice system, as we have observed in…Guo’s case.”

Such arguments have received support from Bannon on his War Room broadcast, which is among the most popular shows aired by RAV. A company that federal prosecutors have said Guo controlled made large monthly payments to the Bannon-controlled company that produces War Room. These payments totaled at least $270,000, according to a filing in federal bankruptcy proceedings initiated by Guo. Guo has also paid Bannon millions of dollars since 2017, court documents show. And Bannon has enthusiastically repeated claims made by Guo about Guo’s business ventures and political movement. 

But in arranging to appear on RAV shows, the Guo backers appear to have tapped more deeply than was previously known into the growing and unruly ecosystem of far-right broadcasts. RAV is owned by Colorado media mogul Robert Sigg, whose previous success came through WeatherNation, an alternative to the Weather Channel that reportedly made a point of not mentioning climate change. RAV, which began broadcasting in 2018 as America’s Voice News, started distributing War Room shortly after the show’s 2019 launch. Bannon has credited Sigg with helping the show after Bannon was kicked off YouTube in the aftermath of the January 6 insurrection. 

With War Room as its anchor, RAV also broadcasts shows hosted by other MAGA celebrities, including Charlie Kirk, Eric Greitens, and John Solomon—a lineup that has allowed the upstart outlet to position itself as a competitor to Fox News, Newsmax, and OAN. Fredericks, a conservative radio veteran, hosts Outside the Beltway on RAV. Grant Stinchfield, whose show regularly features Guo backers, also broadcasts on the network. RAV has said it reaches viewers through “DISH, Pluto TV, Roku, Amazon Fire, Apple TV, Google Play,” and social media. Some of the shows RAV distributes, including Fredericks’ and Bannon’s broadcasts, are produced independently. Other RAV shows are produced in-house.

In interviews, four people familiar with booking practices for shows that have run on RAV said that they considered it unexceptional for guests to pay to appear on broadcasts, without any disclosure on the air that they have paid to appear. Usually these guests pay a booker or PR firm, which makes payments to the shows, the sources we spoke to said. The sources said they believed these types of arrangements are not limited to right-leaning media, though these people had limited experience with mainstream and left-leaning media.

“All channels do this,” said one person familiar with NFSC arrangements. “This happens all day long. You can call it ‘pay to play’ but this is not unusual.”

However common such arrangements may be, they are not transparent to RAV’s viewers. Neither Fredericks nor his NFSC guests made any reference in the segments we reviewed to the group paying to appear on this show.

The payments made by the New Federal State of China followers became public in part because of a bitter legal and public relations fight among former colleagues at a Georgia-based firm called L-Strategies. The firm acted as an intermediary, accepting payments from a Guo-linked company and, in turn, making payments for Guo followers to appear on Fredericks’ shows. A federal lawsuit filed by executives at L-Strategies against Angie Wong, a former partner there, alleges that Wong’s actions caused them “a loss of potential income [of] $120,000 per year” that they had hoped to earn brokering airtime for NFSC content on RAV. 

Jared Craig, a partner at L-Strategies who filed the complaint, said in an interview last year that he did not believe that paying broadcasters to interview clients as guests was unusual. Craig declined to detail the specifics of the payments, which he said were arranged by Wong, and he did not respond to more recent inquiries. Wong declined to comment.

According to that lawsuit, a Canada-based company called NewNoah signed a deal with L-Strategies in April 2023. NewNoah, which was acting on behalf of the New Federal State of China, was incorporated in November 2022 in Ontario at an address also used to register the NFSC’s website.

Under a draft media-buy agreement between NewNoah and L-Strategies that we obtained, L-Strategies agreed to pay $12,500-a-month “for media appearances to be sponsored by the John Fredericks Media Network.” The draft contract stated that the media package would include “at least one (1) television media hit and at least one (1) radio hit per week” to promote its client, Guo’s New Federal State of China. The draft contract also noted that “said media services shall be sponsored by the John Frederick’s Media Network” and that “host shall not mention Miles Guo at any time and for any purpose during media hits.” (Miles Guo is one of several names Guo uses.)

The draft contract, which was unsigned and undated, contains some confusing and seemingly inaccurate language. But bank statements posted online as part of L-Strategies’ dispute with Wong reveal that NewNoah began making monthly payments of $13,400 to L-Strategies in April 2023. L-Strategies in turn began making $12,500 monthly payments to Common Sense Media, a Virginia-based LLC tied to Fredericks’ show. Fredericks’ wife, Anita Fredericks, is the registered agent for Common Sense Media. The monthly bank statements, which run through May 2024, show regular $12,500 payments from L-Strategies to Common Sense Media up to that time. The bank statements indicate Common Sense Media had received at least $175,000 as of May as part of the arrangement. (In an interview, Stan Fitzgerald, an L-Strategies founding partner, confirmed that the bank statements were accurate but said he had not personally posted them.) 

On July 10, 2023, Fredericks’ radio show was guest-hosted by Nicole Tsai, a Guo supporter who had appeared on the program at least once a week up to that month as a representative of the NFSC. She appeared on his Real America’s Voice show nearly as frequently. When the New Federal State of China held a gala event last June celebrating the third anniversary of its founding, Fredericks was on hand hosting a panel. As of July 1, 2024, Fredericks had hosted a member of the NFSC on either his television or radio show nearly every week since April 3, 2023. 

The NFSC guests used these appearances to attribute all manner of US problems to CCP machinations.

In an August 2023 segment on Fredericks’ Outside the Beltway RAV show, discussing Donald Trump’s arraignment in Georgia, a Guo follower named Roy Guo (no apparent relation) suggested the charges against the former president were the result of infiltration by the Chinese Communist Party. In an appearance the following month on the same program, he claimed Chinese President Xi Jingping was facing stiff political pressure at home because he had “released the CCP virus at the end of 2019,” triggering the Covid pandemic. A month later, following the deadly October 7 terror attack by Hamas on Israel, Roy Guo asserted that the CCP was secretly aiding Hamas behind the scenes in order to bring other nations into the conflict in Gaza.

“CCP wants to get as many countries as possible involved in this, and also eventually they want to get [the] UK and US involved in this conflict so that they can divert the attention to, like, focus on the Middle East and deplete US resources and also to alleviate pressure for Russia in Ukraine,” he said. “And then, they will ultimately make [an] opportunity for themselves to attack Taiwan.”

Mark Serrano, a spokesperson for RAV, disputed the import of the deal between NewNoah and L-Strategies related to payments to Common Sense Media for appearances on Fredericks’ show. “Real America’s Voice is not a party to the contractual agreement you mention,” he wrote. “Any ancillary reference in the agreement to us is not our concern.”

Fredericks has previously faced scrutiny for selling access to his radio show. In 2020, the Justice Department forced a US institute funded by the Qatari government to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, resulting in the organization revealing it had paid Fredericks’ show $180,000 in 2018 for “access to key guests”; “regular show appearances by highly ranking Qatar officials”; broadcasts of “live shows every other month” and “regular discussions with US based and overseas Qatar officials for background and education.” Fredericks also broadcast live from Doha, Qatar’s capital, in March 2018.

Fredericks at the time claimed the payments were standard advertising. He told the Daily Beast: “They were paying me to promote their various events, which I did in my libraries when I was on the show.”

John and Anita Fredericks and the John Fredericks Show did not respond to requests for comment or to lists of specific questions. Ava Chen and Roy Guo declined to comment.

According to the L-Strategies’ lawsuit, NewNoah also paid for Guo fans to appear on another independently produced show that briefly aired on RAV, the David Brody Show. And the L-Strategies bank statements posted online show a payment of about $8,000 to the Brody show in April 2023. Brody declined to comment.

NewNoah and L-Strategies also attempted to negotiate a separate, $40,000-per-month contract under which L-Strategies would purchase airtime on RAV for a weekly one-hour “show” hosted by the NFSC, according to the complaint L-Strategies filed.

“Real America’s Voice package includes a one-hour program (approximately 48 minutes run time) on the Real America’s Voice network once per week, time to be determined,” the contract, attached to the complaint, reads. “The show will be self-produced by NewNoah, with final edit approvals by Real America’s Voice prior to airing.”  

According to the L-Strategies complaint and a source involved in the negotiations for the hour-long show, talks over that deal eventually broke down.

The L-Strategies complaint states that NewNoah did pay $40,000 to L-Strategies on April 28, 2023, and the bank statements posted online show L-Strategies received a $39,977.50 wire transfer, from an unidentified sender, on that date. In the “description” field, the statement says, “RAV 1 hour.” But the bank statements do not show any corresponding payment from L-Strategies to RAV. And Serrano, the RAV spokesperson, said that money was never paid to Real America’s Voice. Serrano did not respond to other questions about this proposed arrangement.

According to the RAV website, the outlet “demands the highest ethical standards from management and staff, and the company maintains a strict ethics policy.” The site notes that “staff members are prohibited from engaging in any conflicts of interest, including reporting on any enterprise in which the staff member has a financial stake.”

On Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed Congress as a partisan. He spoke not so much as a foreign leader, but, instead, as a man from Pennsylvania participating in United States domestic politics and leading the American right.

The Israeli Prime Minister, of course is most concerned with his home nation’s politics, but those politics are inseparable from US decisions. As President Joe Biden suggested, Netanyahu could likely lose power without the war in Gaza. And he cannot wage that campaign without US arms and money, which would not continue, string-free, without support from US lawmakers, and in particular Republicans.

Many foreign leaders rely on US support, but Netanyahu is unique because he often can, and does, go around the Secretary of State, the president, and even members of Congress to appeal directly to American voters. That’s what he did Wednesday in a made-for-TV, State of the Union-style speech, complete with family members of hostages and Israeli soldiers as props.

Netanyahu purported to address everyone. But he was primarily talking to his US constituency. That is not just US Jews anymore. It is conservatives. Netanyahu appealed to GOP voters likely to embrace his call for complete, preemptive US support for any of Israel’s actions—no matter how many civilians are killed—along with his contention that any criticism of the war is antisemitic, funded by Iran, or both.

Netanyahu and his far-right, explicitly racist, coalition is aligned with the American right. It has been for a while, but lawmakers have basically stopped pretending otherwise now.

The prime minister’s address included some standard platitudes and polite thanks to the outgoing President Biden for his decades as a “proud Irish-American Zionist.” But the bipartisan facade faded fast. Netanyahu revealed his preference by extensively praising “President Trump” for the Abraham Accords, moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, and recognizing the Golan Heights. Netanyahu did not mention Vice President Kamala Harris, who did not attend the speech.

Netanyahu said, with zero evidence, that “for all we know, Iran is funding the protests” that occurred outside the Capitol while he spoke. He said that demonstrators against Israel’s campaign in Gaza—which has killed around 40,000 people the vast majority of them civilians, without achieving its stated aims—“stand with Hamas.” And he insisted, with little evidence, that Israel’s war with Hamas is really a war with Iran, a conflict that he urged the United States to join.

Coverage of the speech has emphasized the partisan divisions over the address. Numerous Democrats, including Harris and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) did not attend.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s presentation in the House Chamber today was by far the worst presentation of any foreign dignitary invited and honored with the privilege of addressing the Congress of the United States.

Many of us who love Israel spent time today listening to Israeli…

— Nancy Pelosi (@SpeakerPelosi) July 24, 2024

But Democrats declining to listen to Bibi is more of a recognition of the current state of affairs than a cause of it.

Netanyahu’s 2015 address to Congress assailing the Iran nuclear deal, in defiance of former President Barack Obama’s White House, and in particular his effort to drum up domestic US opposition to the deal, was a watershed moment—a significant entry by a foreign leader into US affairs. His vocal praise of Trump on the eve of the 2020 election was all but an endorsement.   

In 2021, Trump denounced Netanyahu for congratulating Biden on his victory. “Fuck him,” Trump told an interviewer. Trump, that is, was mad at Netanyahu for failing to be an election truther. The two leaders have since patched things up, but the spat demonstrated the degree of support the former president demands from Bibi. And Netanyahu, who is scheduled to meet Friday with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, appears eager to deliver.

Netanyahu’s increasingly overt alliance with the American right has been mirrored by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which has become one of the top sources channeling money from Republican donors to attack progressive Democrats in primaries.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s call in March for new leadership in Israel was an unprecedented dive by an American politician into Israel affairs. But it was also seemed like a declaration of a new reality. Netanyahu and his far-right, explicitly racist coalition is aligned with the American right. It has been for a while, but lawmakers have just about stopped pretending otherwise.

The crescendo of Netanyahu’s speech Wednesday was an insistence that US and Israeli interests are wholly aligned. “Our enemies are your enemies,” he said. “Our fight is your fight. And our victory will be your victory.”

He didn’t mean it this way, but it was easy to imagine the enemies he had in mind included Democrats, and the victory he hoped for might come in November.

Straight from jail, Peter Navarro told the Republican National Convention Wednesday: “I went to prison so you won’t have to.”

The former Trump White House trade advisor, who peddled phony election fraud claims in late 2020, in fact went to prison for contempt of Congress. Subpoenaed by the January 6 House committee, Navarro completely blew them off. He took the position that his own assertion of executive privilege relieved him from having to wrangle with the committee, a stance no American court has yet endorsed.

You actually don’t have to go prison as long as you pay a bit more attention to the law than the famously self-regarding Dr. Navarro, who is not a lawyer, but tried to play one in court. Executive privilege is real, but again, it is not magic.

Navarro declared Wednesday that the January 6 committee “demanded that I violate executive privilege,” but he “refused.” In fact, Navarro never produced any evidence that Trump asserted privilege to block him from appearing. Notably, Trump’s lawyers declined to confirm Navarro’s version of events. Navarro went to prison, in part, because Trump refused.

Navarro in his remarks also cited Steve Bannon, who was similarly imprisoned for contempt of Congress after refusing to negotiate at all with the January 6 committee after being hit with a subpoena. (Navarro did not name the exiled Chinese mogul Guo Wengui, who with Bannon launched a supposed government-in-waiting to replace the Chinese Communist Party. Navarro nominally worked for Guo and Bannon’s organization as an international ambassador. Guo was convicted Tuesday of using the group as a means to run a racketeering conspiracy that stole hundreds of millions of dollars from his supporters. Navarro wasn’t charged in the case.)

But Navarro’s depiction of himself as martyr to Democratic “lawfare” reinforced a key convention myth: A man who has vowed to use the Justice Department and other powers of the presidency to jail political foes is a victim of politicized prosecution.

“If they can come for me, if they can come for Donald Trump, they can come for you,” Navarro declared.

This supposed threat, Navarro said, requires Republicans to seize control of “all three branches of our government.”

Navarro told the Associated Press earlier on Wednesday that he planned to call for “unity.” On stage, however, he went in a different direction, urging the GOP to use the power they hope to win for retribution against their enemies.

With a note of menace, Navarro blamed Attorney General Merrick Garland, who has worked to restore the Justice Department’s nonpartisan reputation, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and the widely respected judge (and former defense attorney) who sentenced to four months in prison for contempt him as responsible for his imprisonment.

“Amit Mehta,” Navarro said. “Keep your eye on him.”

On election day, Navarro added, “America will hold these lawfare jackals accountable.”

A jury has convicted Guo Wengui—an exiled Chinese billionaire with a devoted following of thousands of Chinese emigres—of multiple felonies in his sprawling fraud trial. Guo, who has deep ties to the MAGA movement, was convicted on nine of 12 counts presented by federal prosecutors, including racketeering conspiracy and securities fraud, after a seven week trial.

The jurors agreed with prosecutors that Guo had used a series of supposed investment opportunities he launched starting in 2020—a media company, a loan program, a supposed membership club, and a crypto currency exchange—to steal hundreds of millions of dollars from investors.

The verdict also affirmed prosecutors’ contention that a political movement that Guo built alongside former Trump campaign chief Steve Bannon starting in 2018—which the men claim aims to “take down the CCP”—was largely a con, a pretense that Guo used win the support and trust of people in the Chinese diaspora, and then fleece them.

Guo, who has been jailed since his March 2023 arrest, could face decades in prison, and at least potentially, deportation to China, where he also faces criminal charges. Judge Analisa Torres set his sentencing for November 19.

Guo, who got rich in Chinese real estate with help from a top official in China’s Security Ministry, fled his native country in 2014 after the arrest of a key political patron in an anti-corruption purge. Guo bought a $66 million apartment in Manhattan, along with a membership in Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club and a $30 million yacht, fancy cars, and a closets full of Brioni suits.

In 2017, Guo began using YouTube and media interviews to reveal what he said was deep corruption by some top Chinese government officials. This drew a swift reaction from Chinese agents, who worked to silence him or force his extradition.

Guo deftly exploited publicity from China’s efforts against him, winning an ardent following of backers who formed groups, akin to fan clubs, around the world that aimed to bolster Guo’s messaging. Starting in the late fall of 2017, Guo had help from Bannon, to whom Guo has paid millions of dollars. Bannon helped Guo launch nonprofits and media companies; a fashion line (in 2021 the company sold a button-down with the word “ivermectin” on it for $1,820); and even a music company, which produced hip-hop-style videos featuring Guo.

In 2020, Guo began offering fans the chance to invest in his ventures. His solicitations included videos in which he regularly guaranteed supporters that they would make money investing with him and pledged that he would personally repay them if his lost money.

“If anyone loses money, please come to me,” Guo said in a video played repeatedly during the trial. “I will be responsible.” That was not true.

Prosecutors paired these videos with testimony of victims who said they relied on Guo’s phony guarantees when they decided to invest.

“Miles Guo stole my money,” Jenny Li, a Nevada resident who emigrated from China about 20 years ago, testified through an interpreter during the trial referring to one of the various names Guo uses. “I was cheated,” Li said.

The videos alone, prosecutors said, offered sufficient evidence to convict Guo of fraud. Citing an FBI photograph of a desk and a microphone that Guo used to make some of his broadcasts, Assistant US Attorney Ryan Finkel in his summation Wednesday stated: “This a crime scene.”

Prosecutors also introduced evidence showing Guo had money put up by investors moved through a series of accounts. In a tape recording, made secretly by a cooperating witness who testified under a non-prosecution agreement, Guo can be heard screaming at subordinates who balked at moving $100 million dollars into an account he controlled as quickly as he wanted. The money came from investors in a membership company, called G|Clubs, that Guo publicly claimed he did not control.  

“You bastard, get the fuck the out of here,” Guo, speaking Mandarin, told an underling who suggested he obtain board approval to make the transfer look more legitimate.

Other witnesses and bank statements showed that Guo then spent these funds on a $25 million mansion, $1 million worth of chandeliers, $978,000 of rugs, a $3.5 million Ferrari for his son, and two $36,000 mattresses.

Guo’s conviction follows a guilty plea in May by his former top subordinate, Yvette Wang, who is awaiting sentencing. Another charged co-conspirator, a Guo financier named William Je, remains a fugitive. Prosecutors have said he is in the United Arab Emirates, where Guo began to shift his operations prior to his March 2023 arrest.

Prosecutors have also named Bannon, along with a series of other Guo associates, as co-conspirators in the case, though they are not charged. Bannon helped Guo launch some of the companies that were part of Guo’s fraud scheme, publicly promoted them, and even advised Guo on how to set them up to avoid SEC scrutiny. Bannon’s perceived ties to Trump also helped Guo suggest his political movement, and associated financial ventures, enjoyed a link to Trump.

Finkel said in court Wednesday that “it’s not some accident…that Steve Bannon was involved,” in Guo’s crimes. Guo, Finkel said, “used Steve Bannon. He was hired for a million dollars so that Guo could use Bannon’s notoriety and his fame to promote himself.” Bannon has declined to comment on Guo’s trial.

Guo and his companies also paid or employed other prominent MAGA figures, including Trump adviser Jason Miller, Rudy Giuliani, former White House aide Peter Navarro, Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, Turning Point USA chief Charlie Kirk, and Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt.  Guo supporters are surely hoping those relationships, should Trump return to the White House next year, could help Guo secure a pardon or commutation.

Lawyers for Guo Wengui—the exiled Chinese mogul on trial in New York for allegedly stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from investors in business ventures he launched—rested their case this week with a seeming non-sequitur.

The defense’s last witness was George Higginbotham, a former Justice Department lawyer who pleaded guilty in 2018 to conspiracy to make false statements to a bank. Higginbotham did that as part of an illegal lobbying conspiracy that included efforts to pressure the Trump administration to extradite Guo to China, where the mogul faces various criminal charges, including fraud, bribery and rape.

Higginbotham testified that he and his conspirators—including Elliott Broidy, a former top fundraiser for Donald Trump, and Pras Michel, a former member of the Fugees for whom Higginbotham was moonlighting as a lawyer—received around $100 million for their illicit influence efforts and said that he once met with the Chinese ambassador about Guo in an effort to advance the scheme.

But Higginbotham did not say a word about the extensive fraud case that prosecutors have laid out against Guo. That case includes videos in which Guo falsely guaranteed fans that he would not allow them to lose money investing in his business activities, bank statements and testimony from cooperating witnesses indicating that Guo moved investor funds into accounts he controlled, and various evidence that Guo then used the funds to buy stuff like a $26 million mansion, a $4.4 million Bugatti, and two $36,000 mattresses.

Higginbotham, who knew nothing about that case, could offer no information related to the charges Guo faces. His appearance highlights a strategy by Guo’s lawyers to instead play up their client’s self-styled image as a critic of the Chinese Communist Party, and to point out that Chinese agents have made extensive efforts to silence him.

During the trial, Guo’s lawyers have missed no chance to brandish a stipulation they reached with prosecutors, which says that “in 2017, a US law enforcement agency assessed that Mr. Miles Guo was the highest priority of China repatriation efforts” aimed at CCP critics within the Chinese diaspora.

Guo lawyer Sidhardha Kamaraju cited the stipulation repeatedly during the first portion of his summation on Wednesday. Kamaraju argued that CCP targeting of Guo and the scheme Higginbotham took part in gave Guo “reason to believe that the CCP could influence DOJ employees.”

Last week, the defense elicited testimony from Paul Doran, a corporate risk adviser who testified as an expert on China. Doran said that Guo, in broadcasts in 2017, had “exposed corruption at the highest levels in China, which is extremely embarrassing for President Xi [Jinping] and his close circle.”

“In my professional opinion, Mr. Guo is public enemy number one in China,” Doran said.

This focus on the Chinese government’s dislike of Guo is, arguably, responsive to the prosecution’s contention that the anti-CCP movement Guo built with former Trump adviser Steve Bannon was effectively a con—a means of winning the trust of CCP-hating Chinese emigres in order to fleece them. One of Guo’s lawyers, Sabrina Shroff, has also suggested that Chinese hacking efforts explain why Guo created numerous bank accounts. Prosecutors say it was for money laundering.

Another reason to highlight China’s beef with Guo may be to hint at a claim that Guo’s supporters have made since his arrest last year: that the Justice Department’s prosecution of Guo is itself the result of nefarious Chinese influence efforts.

Judge Analisa Torres has barred Guo’s team from making this argument in court, ruling that the theory is unsubstantiated and prejudicial. And though Higginbotham’s illegal lobbying had nothing do with his DOJ day job—he was in fact fired as result of his moonlighting—prosecutors and Torres have accused the defense of hoping that Higginbotham’s onetime employment at the department now prosecuting Guo will confuse jurors.

“Clearly bringing that up is merely a rather clumsy way of trying to link the prosecution in this case with corruption and the Chinese government,” Torres said during a sidebar with attorneys on Monday.

Guo’s lawyers did call witnesses aimed at undermining aspects of the government’s case. And Kamaraju argued in detail Wednesday that prosecutors have not proved Guo committed fraud. But much of the defense’s focus has been on asserting that Guo’s attacks on the CCP were sincere. Shroff, in the defense’s opening statement, called this campaign “the essence of [Guo’s] entire being.” That assertion tracks the biography Guo has promoted since 2017 and may have pleased the scores of his supporters who packed the Manhattan courtroom throughout the trial.

The problem, though, is that Guo’s beef with the CCP, the centerpiece of his defense, is not necessarily exculpatory. Guo could be a real target of Chinese spies while also being a fraud. Guo’s lawyers might lack better options, but they are left banking on the hope that at least some jurors find the freedom-fighter story they are selling so appealing—and perhaps so confusing—that they overlook the mountain of the evidence against Guo.

Federal prosecutors, who are presumably eager to keep their sprawling RICO case as simple as possible, have regularly responded to defense efforts to position Guo as an uncompromising CCP critic by returning jurors’ focus to his alleged crimes.

As a result, the defense, for much of the seven-week trial, has had fairly free reign to present a simplified, and highly dubious, version of their client as a lifelong dissident. Jurors, all of whom attested they knew nothing about Guo’s case before the trial, remain presumably unaware of years of robust questioning of “whether Guo is, in fact, a dissident or a double agent,” as federal Judge Lewis Liman—presiding over a lawsuit in the same courthouse as Guo’s current trial— put it in a 2021. At the time, Liman concluded that the “evidence at trial does not permit the Court to” resolve that question and that “others will have to determine who the true Guo is.”

Last year, prosecutors filed a heavily redacted motion revealing that federal agents in 2019 executed search warrants against Guo that resulted in the seizure of “more than 100 electronic devices and documents” from a safe in one of his homes. That search was not related to the fraud case for which Guo is currently on trial, the filing said. And according to a former lawyer for a Guo codefendant, it was carried out by “counterintelligence agents from the FBI”—an indication that the feds may have suspected Guo of ties to foreign espionage. But prosecutors have not mentioned that raid in open court. Nor have they pointed to lawsuits alleging Guo is CCP agent, a charge Guo denies.

But as the defense made their case over the last few weeks, prosecutors have gone further than they had before in noting that the truth is more complicated than Guo’s attorneys suggest, and have even highlighted some of the evidence of Guo’s ties to Chinese intelligence.

On Tuesday, Guo’s lawyers used Higginbotham’s testimony to introduce transcripts from 2017 phone calls in which Liu Yanping, a top official in China’s ministry of security, appeared to threaten to arrest Guo’s family members in China in a effort silence Guo’s attacks on the CCP, or convince him to return to China.

But the calls also included discussion of an “agreement” between Guo and Liu in which Guo promised to would limit his criticisms to certain CCP officials, notably excluding Xi. On cross examination, Assistant US Attorney Juliana Murray pointed to a portion of one of those calls in which Guo said he “just wanted to protect my money, my life, and my wealth.” He added that “I still love the country and the party.”

Guo has said these statements were coerced. Still, about three months later, he sent a letter to Communist Party leaders in which he offered to “desist from revealing information” if they dropped efforts to extradite him and unfroze his assets. “I will definitely devote my life to…uphold[ing] the core beliefs of Chairman Xi, and sacrifice my everything for Chairman Xi,” Guo wrote.

Earlier in the trial, on June 3, Assistant US Attorney Ryan Finkel also brought up Guo’s past ties to another senior Security Ministry official, named Ma Jian. Ma’s influence, as Mother Jones and others have reported, appears to have helped Guo make a fortune in Chinese real estate.

In his summation, Kamaraju suggested that Guo fled from China in 2014 due to his criticism of the CCP. That’s not true. Guo fled China due Ma’s 2014 arrest on allegations that included accepting bribes from Guo. (Guo has denied bribing Ma and all other charges he faces in China.)

But Guo’s ties to Ma suggest Guo may have actually been a beneficiary of the corrupt security apparatus he later faulted, part of a faction that lost out in an internal CCP power struggle. Finkel hit that point while questioning Doran.

“To be a billionaire in China requires some connections or help from the CCP, right?” Finkel asked Doran, the defense’s China’s expert. Doran agreed.

“You know Miles Guo lent money to Ma Jian’s sister, right?” Finkel asked Doran. “Ma Jian’s sister then spent that money to buy properties…Then Guo bought back those properties from Ma Jian’s sister. Did you know that? And this was designed so Ma Jian can make a profit.”

Doran said he knew none of that.

Finkel also used Doran’s presence on the stand to ask about a notable item FBI agents found during a search of Guo’s home last year: a box with the logo of the People’s Liberation Army, the Chinese military, on it. The defense had previously introduced a photo of Lieutenant General Bi Yi, head of the PLA branch purportedly responsible for cyber spying—part of their effort to highlight China’s targeting of Guo.

Finkel showed the jury a picture of the logo on the box from Guo’s home alongside a picture of the logo on Bi’s hat. They matched.

Shortly after this, though, the government returned to their main argument. Doran had testified that he was targeted by Chinese agents while living in China. Noting this, Finkel asked the witness if he “ever raised money by making false promises online” or “committed fraud.” Doran said he had not.

“Being targeted by the CCP doesn’t give you license to do those things, does it?” the prosecutor asked.

“No,” Doran said.

Lawyers for Guo Wengui—the exiled Chinese mogul on trial in New York for allegedly stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from investors in business ventures he launched—rested their case this week with a seeming non-sequitur.

The defense’s last witness was George Higginbotham, a former Justice Department lawyer who pleaded guilty in 2018 to conspiracy to make false statements to a bank. Higginbotham did that as part of an illegal lobbying conspiracy that included efforts to pressure the Trump administration to extradite Guo to China, where the mogul faces various criminal charges, including fraud, bribery and rape.

Higginbotham testified that he and his conspirators—including Elliott Broidy, a former top fundraiser for Donald Trump, and Pras Michel, a former member of the Fugees for whom Higginbotham was moonlighting as a lawyer—received around $100 million for their illicit influence efforts and said that he once met with the Chinese ambassador about Guo in an effort to advance the scheme.

But Higginbotham did not say a word about the extensive fraud case that prosecutors have laid out against Guo. That case includes videos in which Guo falsely guaranteed fans that he would not allow them to lose money investing in his business activities, bank statements and testimony from cooperating witnesses indicating that Guo moved investor funds into accounts he controlled, and various evidence that Guo then used the funds to buy stuff like a $26 million mansion, a $4.4 million Bugatti, and two $36,000 mattresses.

Higginbotham, who knew nothing about that case, could offer no information related to the charges Guo faces. His appearance highlights a strategy by Guo’s lawyers to instead play up their client’s self-styled image as a critic of the Chinese Communist Party, and to point out that Chinese agents have made extensive efforts to silence him.

During the trial, Guo’s lawyers have missed no chance to brandish a stipulation they reached with prosecutors, which says that “in 2017, a US law enforcement agency assessed that Mr. Miles Guo was the highest priority of China repatriation efforts” aimed at CCP critics within the Chinese diaspora.

Guo lawyer Sidhardha Kamaraju cited the stipulation repeatedly during the first portion of his summation on Wednesday. Kamaraju argued that CCP targeting of Guo and the scheme Higginbotham took part in gave Guo “reason to believe that the CCP could influence DOJ employees.”

Last week, the defense elicited testimony from Paul Doran, a corporate risk adviser who testified as an expert on China. Doran said that Guo, in broadcasts in 2017, had “exposed corruption at the highest levels in China, which is extremely embarrassing for President Xi [Jinping] and his close circle.”

“In my professional opinion, Mr. Guo is public enemy number one in China,” Doran said.

This focus on the Chinese government’s dislike of Guo is, arguably, responsive to the prosecution’s contention that the anti-CCP movement Guo built with former Trump adviser Steve Bannon was effectively a con—a means of winning the trust of CCP-hating Chinese emigres in order to fleece them. One of Guo’s lawyers, Sabrina Shroff, has also suggested that Chinese hacking efforts explain why Guo created numerous bank accounts. Prosecutors say it was for money laundering.

Another reason to highlight China’s beef with Guo may be to hint at a claim that Guo’s supporters have made since his arrest last year: that the Justice Department’s prosecution of Guo is itself the result of nefarious Chinese influence efforts.

Judge Analisa Torres has barred Guo’s team from making this argument in court, ruling that the theory is unsubstantiated and prejudicial. And though Higginbotham’s illegal lobbying had nothing do with his DOJ day job—he was in fact fired as result of his moonlighting—prosecutors and Torres have accused the defense of hoping that Higginbotham’s onetime employment at the department now prosecuting Guo will confuse jurors.

“Clearly bringing that up is merely a rather clumsy way of trying to link the prosecution in this case with corruption and the Chinese government,” Torres said during a sidebar with attorneys on Monday.

Guo’s lawyers did call witnesses aimed at undermining aspects of the government’s case. And Kamaraju argued in detail Wednesday that prosecutors have not proved Guo committed fraud. But much of the defense’s focus has been on asserting that Guo’s attacks on the CCP were sincere. Shroff, in the defense’s opening statement, called this campaign “the essence of [Guo’s] entire being.” That assertion tracks the biography Guo has promoted since 2017 and may have pleased the scores of his supporters who packed the Manhattan courtroom throughout the trial.

The problem, though, is that Guo’s beef with the CCP, the centerpiece of his defense, is not necessarily exculpatory. Guo could be a real target of Chinese spies while also being a fraud. Guo’s lawyers might lack better options, but they are left banking on the hope that at least some jurors find the freedom-fighter story they are selling so appealing—and perhaps so confusing—that they overlook the mountain of the evidence against Guo.

Federal prosecutors, who are presumably eager to keep their sprawling RICO case as simple as possible, have regularly responded to defense efforts to position Guo as an uncompromising CCP critic by returning jurors’ focus to his alleged crimes.

As a result, the defense, for much of the seven-week trial, has had fairly free reign to present a simplified, and highly dubious, version of their client as a lifelong dissident. Jurors, all of whom attested they knew nothing about Guo’s case before the trial, remain presumably unaware of years of robust questioning of “whether Guo is, in fact, a dissident or a double agent,” as federal Judge Lewis Liman—presiding over a lawsuit in the same courthouse as Guo’s current trial— put it in a 2021. At the time, Liman concluded that the “evidence at trial does not permit the Court to” resolve that question and that “others will have to determine who the true Guo is.”

Last year, prosecutors filed a heavily redacted motion revealing that federal agents in 2019 executed search warrants against Guo that resulted in the seizure of “more than 100 electronic devices and documents” from a safe in one of his homes. That search was not related to the fraud case for which Guo is currently on trial, the filing said. And according to a former lawyer for a Guo codefendant, it was carried out by “counterintelligence agents from the FBI”—an indication that the feds may have suspected Guo of ties to foreign espionage. But prosecutors have not mentioned that raid in open court. Nor have they pointed to lawsuits alleging Guo is CCP agent, an allegation Guo denies.

But as the defense made their case over the last few weeks, prosecutors have gone further than they had before in noting that the truth is more complicated than Guo’s attorneys suggest, and have even highlighted some of the evidence of Guo’s ties to Chinese intelligence.

On Tuesday, Guo’s lawyers used Higginbotham’s testimony to introduce transcripts from 2017 phone calls in which Liu Yanping, a top official in China’s ministry of security, appeared to threaten to arrest Guo’s family members in China in a effort silence Guo’s attacks on the CCP, or convince him to return to China.

But the calls also included discussion of an “agreement” between Guo and Liu in which Guo promised to would limit his criticisms to certain CCP officials, notably excluding Xi. On cross examination, Assistant US Attorney Juliana Murray pointed to a portion of one of those calls in which Guo said he “just wanted to protect my money, my life, and my wealth.” He added that “I still love the country and the party.”

Guo has said these statements were coerced. Still, about three months later, he sent a letter to Communist Party leaders in which he offered to “desist from revealing information” if they dropped efforts to extradite him and unfroze his assets. “I will definitely devote my life to…uphold[ing] the core beliefs of Chairman Xi, and sacrifice my everything for Chairman Xi,” Guo wrote.

Earlier in the trial, on June 3, Assistant US Attorney Ryan Finkel also brought up Guo’s past ties to another senior Security Ministry official, named Ma Jian. Ma’s influence, as Mother Jones and others have reported, appears to have helped Guo make a fortune in Chinese real estate.

In his summation, Kamaraju suggested that Guo fled China in 2014 due to his criticism of the CCP. That’s not true. Guo fled China due Ma’s 2014 arrest on allegations that included accepting bribes from Guo. (Guo has denied bribing Ma and all other charges he faces in China.)

But Guo’s ties to Ma suggest Guo may have actually been a beneficiary of the corrupt security apparatus he later faulted, part of a faction that lost out in an internal CCP power struggle. Finkel hit that point while questioning Doran.

“To be a billionaire in China requires some connections or help from the CCP, right?” Finkel asked Doran, the defense’s China’s expert. Doran agreed.

“You know Miles Guo lent money to Ma Jian’s sister, right?” Finkel asked Doran. “Ma Jian’s sister then spent that money to buy properties…Then Guo bought back those properties from Ma Jian’s sister. Did you know that? And this was designed so Ma Jian can make a profit.”

Doran said he knew none of that.

Finkel also used Doran’s presence on the stand to ask about a notable item FBI agents found during a search of Guo’s home last year: a box with the logo of the People’s Liberation Army, the Chinese military, on it. The defense had previously introduced a photo of Lieutenant General Bi Yi, head of the PLA branch purportedly responsible for cyber spying—part of their effort to highlight China’s targeting of Guo.

Finkel showed the jury a picture of the logo on the box from Guo’s home alongside a picture of the logo on Bi’s hat. They matched.

Shortly after this, though, the government returned to their main argument. Doran had testified that he was targeted by Chinese agents while living in China. Noting this, Finkel asked the witness if he “ever raised money by making false promises online” or “committed fraud.” Doran said he had not.

“Being targeted by the CCP doesn’t give you license to do those things, does it?” the prosecutor asked.

“No,” Doran said.