As Donald Trump campaigns to be a dictator for one day, he’s asking: “Are you better off now than you were when I was president?” Great question! To help answer it, our Trump Files series is delving into consequential events from the 45th president’s time in office that Americans might have forgotten—or wish they had.

Five years ago, Donald Trump told Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan to go ahead and invade Syria—an unexpected capitulation to personal pressure from the Turkish strongman that upended US policy, allowing Turkish attacks on Kurdish fighters seen as staunch US allies.

Trump’s green light to Erdogan during an October 6, 2019, phone call forced US troops in Syria to hastily flee from posts near the Turkish border and shocked Washington, drawing bipartisan condemnation of the president’s decision.

The Turkish troops who invaded went on to display “shameful disregard for civilian life, carrying out serious violations and war crimes, including summary killings and unlawful attacks that have killed and injured civilians,” Amnesty International charged. News reports said at least 70 civilians were killed while hundreds of thousands of people were displaced by the invasion.

The okay to invade was one of various ways that Trump helped Erdogan while in office. Trump intervened with the Justice Department to aid a Turkish national bank, Halkbank, which was accused of helping Iran evade US sanctions. Prosecutors have argued the bank helped to finance Iran’s nuclear weapons program. The case against the bank implicated allies of Erdogan, who had authorized the sanctions-evasion scheme, a witness in the case said. Under personal pressure from Erdogan, Trump also pressed his advisers, including DOJ officials, to drop a case against the bank built by prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, according to accounts of former Trump administration officials.

Geoffrey Berman, at the time the US attorney in Manhattan, later said in a book that he received pressure from acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker in 2018 and that Whitaker’s successor, Bill Barr, pressed him to settle the case on terms favorable to Halkbank. Berman charged that Barr urged him to grant immunity to Turkish officials with ties to Erdogan and suggested hiding those deals from a federal court—a step Berman said would be illegal. Berman and Barr did not respond to requests for comment.

Turkey’s invasion of Syria, oddly, caused problems Halkbank. The criticism Trump faced for allowing Erdogan to invade appeared to embarrass the US president. He responded by attempting to reverse course. In a bizarre public letter, he threatened to “destroy” Turkey’s economy. “Don’t be a tough guy,” Trump wrote. During this spat, Trump and his advisers, including Barr, dropped their opposition to indicting Halkbank. Berman later recounted that Trump’s “falling out” with Erdogan resulted in a “green light to indict Halkbank. And we did it within 24 hours.”

Trump’s approval of Turkey’s invasion of Syria, and his reaction to the criticism it drew, has received limited attention during the 2024 campaign. But it highlights several of Trump’s weaknesses in managing US foreign policy.

Though he casts himself as an effective negotiator, in office Trump consistently accommodated autocrats, offering concessions without winning concomitant benefits, former aides said. “He would interfere in the regular government process to do something for a foreign leader,” John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser, told the Times in 2020. “In anticipation of what? In anticipation of another favor from that person down the road.”

Bolton wrote in a book that Trump in 2019 told Chinese President Xi Jinping that his decision to detain Uighur Muslims in concentration camps was “exactly the right thing to do” and urged Xi to “go ahead with building the camps.” In another meeting that year, Bolton wrote, Trump “pleaded” with Xi to help Trump’s electoral prospects by purchasing US soybeans and wheat. Trump apparently hoped the trade would win him votes in rural states hurt by his trade war with China.

This tendency to appease autocrats who flatter him is part of Trump’s personalization of foreign policy, a tendency to make diplomacy about his own interests, rather than those of Americans.

Then there are the conflicts of interest. Trump, in late 2015, acknowledged that “I have a little conflict of interest” in dealing with Turkey, due to his licensing deal that paid him for his name to appear on two glass towers in Istanbul. The 2020 leak of some of Trump’s tax returns revealed that he had in fact received at least $13 million, including at least $1 million while he was the president, through the deal. A man who helped broker Trump’s licensing deal later lobbied the Trump administration on behalf of Turkish interests.

If he is elected again, Trump’s business interests will result in similar conflicts with Vietnam, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates, among others. Through his family, he would also have business-related conflicts with Albania, Qatar, Serbia, and Saudi Arabia, which has paid $87 million to a fund set up by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.

It is not clear to what extent financial interests—as opposed to flattery or a wish for the approval of autocrats—influences Trump. The problem is that Americans don’t know what interests he follows.

But it is likely that Erdogan expects Trump will be accommodating if he wins, perhaps starting with Halkbank. A federal appeals court recently ruled that the bank’s prosecution can proceed, following the bank’s effort to claim sovereign immunity.

Turkish interests allegedly spent heavily to corruptly influence New York Mayor Eric Adams, who is accused of ordering that Turkey’s 36-story consulate be allowed to open despite safety concerns. If Adams would help fix a fire code issue, what might Trump do for Erdogan?

Steve Bannon emerged Tuesday from four months in federal prison. He was tanned, supposedly “empowered,” and obviously eager to again help Donald Trump lie about election results if he loses.

Bannon was convicted of contempt of Congress after he ignored a subpoena from the House January 6 Committee. The former Trump strategist—who claimed “executive privilege” allowed him to blow off the committee in 2021, even though he had last worked in White House in 2017—likely could have avoided prison if he’d negotiated with the panel or shown up and asserted his Fifth Amendment rights.

But he presented himself on his War Room show and in a press conference Tuesday as a freedom fighter.

“If you’re not prepared to be thrown in prison by this weaponized justice system, then you’re not prepared to stand up and fight for your country,” Bannon said after serving his sentence at a low-security prison in Connecticut.

Bannon insisted in his press conference that the 2020 election “was stolen” from Trump and said he would again urge Trump to declare victory on election night even if the results, yet again, are unclear and ballots are still being counted.

The War Room host said Trump, who had falsely claimed victory after 2 am on election night four years ago, erred only by failing to lie about the results at “11 o’clock,” instead. This year, Bannon said, “if the votes come in like it looks like they’re gonna come in, he should step up and inform American citizens of exactly what’s going on and not keep people in the dark like was done in 2020.”

Bannon insisted that he urged Trump to declare victory in 2020 because “the Democrat Party was going to steal the election with illegitimate mail in ballots.”

But that’s not what Bannon said in 2020. In an audio recording from an October 31, 2020, meeting, which I reported in 2022, Bannon said that Trump planned declare victory on election night even if he was losing.

“What Trump’s gonna do is just declare victory,” Bannon said. “Right? He’s gonna declare victory. But that doesn’t mean he’s the winner. He’s just gonna say he’s the winner.”

Bannon explained pretty clearly back then that Trump intended to take advantage of a perception that he was ahead, even if the reality differed. Because Democrats were more likely to vote by mail, their ballots would take longer to be counted. That would give them “a natural disadvantage,” Bannon said at the time. “And Trump’s going to take advantage of it. That’s our strategy. He’s gonna declare himself a winner.”

Special counsel Jack Smith cited Bannon’s statement in an October 2 motion as one of various pieces of evidence indicating that Trump before Election Day 2020 had formulated plans, if he faced defeat, to use a “false declaration” of victory to attempt to steal the election.

In 2024, Democrats are again more likely to vote by mail. In Pennsylvania, Democrats are reportedly voting by mail at twice the rate of Republicans. Trump may again have a chance to try to use the “red mirage” to convince his followers that he’s being cheated.

Bannon may be in an interlude between prison sentences. He is set face trial in December in New York for allegedly defrauding donors to a charity that claimed to be raising private funds to help build Trump’s promised wall along the Mexican border.

But until then, Bannon will have the chance to once again “go the mattresses,” as he put it, to help Trump return to the White House.

As Donald Trump campaigns to be a dictator for one day, he’s asking: “Are you better off now than you were when I was president?” Great question! To help answer it, our Trump Files series is delving into consequential events from the 45th president’s time in office that Americans might have forgotten—or wish they had.

Donald Trump has said that if he is elected president again, he will use the Justice Department to prosecute political enemies. We should believe him, because he attempted to do just that in his first term, with some success. And he will be better prepared to execute his plans if he returns to the White House.

NPR recently tallied more than 100 times Trump called for the prosecution or jailing of his perceived foes. His stated targets include Kamala Harris, Joe Biden and his family, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Liz Cheney, Adam Schiff, James Comey, Bill Barr, John Kelly, Mark Zuckerberg, federal prosecutors, election officials, journalists, and pro-Palestinian protestors. He reportedly wanted retired military officers who criticized him, Admiral William McRaven and General Stanley McChrystal, called back to active duty so they could be court-martialed. He suggested that Mark Milley, who previously served as Trump’s chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, deserved to be executed.

The frequency of those threats makes them seem silly. Trump probably isn’t going to sic prosecutors on all those prominent people. But his record suggests he is serious about using the power of his office against many critics. Contrary to the claims of defenders like J.D. Vance—who said recently that Trump “didn’t go after his political opponents” while in office—Trump made sustained public and private efforts while in the White House to order up probes into critics and political opponents. Trump succeeded in numerous cases in having foes investigated, media reports and accounts of former aides show.

Lock Her Up

After calling for Hillary Clinton’s prosecution on the campaign trail, Trump, despite briefly disavowing the idea, pushed throughout his presidency for Clinton’s prosecution. This campaign came in public tweets and private pressure on aides, and was mounted alongside his anger over investigations into his campaign’s contacts with Russian agents in 2016. Trump pressured all three of his attorneys general to open or advance investigations targeting Clinton. They partly resisted but substantially complied.

Many people recall Trump’s fury at Attorney General Jeff Sessions for recusing himself from matters to the 2016 election—which led the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller. But despite that pledge, Sessions partly appeased Trump by instructing the US attorney for Utah, John Huber, to reexamine Clinton’s use of a private email server and allegations about the Clinton Foundation. Sessions’ order came amid Trump’s repeated public calls for him to look into Clinton’s “crimes.” After firing Sessions in 2020, Trump privately urged acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker to push Huber to be more aggressive, the Washington Post reported. When Huber’s investigation ended in 2020 without finding wrongdoing by Clinton, Trump publicly attacked the prosecutor as a “garbage disposal.”

But by then, Trump’s third AG, Bill Barr, had appointed John Durham, the Connecticut US attorney, to launch an investigation into the origins of the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation. Barr named Durham on heels of misrepresenting Mueller’s report, which found that the Trump campaign “expected to benefit” from secret Russian help in 2016. The Durham appointment also came after reports that Trump and his advisers were seeking revenge against his investigators.

Durham’s effort floundered legally, with the acquittal of two of the three men charged with crimes related to the investigation. But the probe, which lasted four years, fared better as an exercise in arming Trump with talking points. Durham appeared to consider that part of his job, though he has publicly disputed that. When the Justice Department’s inspector general in 2019 issued a report that found no evidence the FBI’s Trump investigation was politically motivated, Durham, in consultation with Barr, issued a strange statement disagreeing, without offering any evidence for why.

Durham decided to charge Michael Sussmann, a lawyer who worked for Democrats in 2016, with lying to the FBI, despite evidence so thin two prosecutors quit in connection with the charge. Sussmann was acquitted in 2022, but through filings in the case, Durham publicly aired allegations about Clinton campaign efforts to advance the Russia story, details that did not appear necessary to his case. Right-wing news outlets in February 2022 jumped one such-Durham motion to falsely report the Clinton’s campaign had spied on Trump White House servers. In his final report in 2023, Durham extensively cited material he acknowledged was dubious possible Russian disinformation in an effort to suggest Clinton had helped drive the FBI probe into Trump.

FBI

After firing James Comey as FBI director in 2017, which resulted in Mueller’s appointment, Trump pressed for the Justice Department to prosecute Comey for mishandling sensitive government information by allegedly orchestrating leaks that were damaging to Trump. According to the New York Times, this pressure led to “two investigations of leaks potentially involving” Comey. The DOJ declined to charge Comey.

Other former FBI officials who drew Trump’s ire—former deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe, and Peter Strzok, originally the lead FBI agent on the Russia investigation—faced DOJ probes after Trump railed against them. Sessions fired McCabe the day before his 2018 retirement, in what appeared to be a deliberate act to deny him a pension and benefits. Prosecutors in 2019 tried to charge McCabe for allegedly lying to FBI officials about media contacts, but in an unusual move that suggests a weak case, a grand jury declined to return an indictment.

John Kerry

In a March 2019 press conference, Trump said former Secretary of State John Kerry, who negotiated the 2015 deal freezing Iran’s nuclear weapons development, could be prosecuted for violating the Logan Act, a 1799 law barring private US citizens from negotiating with foreign governments in disputes with the United States. Trump was irked at Kerry’s ongoing contacts with Iranian officials and by past threats by Mueller’s team to charge former national security adviser Michael Flynn with violating the act. Trump told reporters that Kerry should be charged, but “my people don’t want to do anything,” adding, “Only the Democrats do that kind of stuff.

False. Trump’s public and private efforts had by then already secured DOJ scrutiny of Kerry. Former Trump national security adviser John Bolton told the Times he’d witnessed Trump demand Kerry’s prosecution “on at least a half dozen occasions” in 2018 and 2019. Trump also made the case in tweets and public statements. Days after one of Trump’s tweets, in May 2018, a top DOJ official had told prosecutors in Manhattan to investigate Kerry’s contacts with Iranians, according to the Times. Geoffrey Berman, at the time the US attorney in Manhattan, wrote in a 2022 book that the Kerry probe appeared to result from Trump’s edict. “No one needed to talk with Trump to know what he wanted,” Berman wrote. “You could read his tweets.”

Trump succeeded in sparking investigations into his critics and political foes by continually pressing subordinates to deliver actual prosecutions, as former aides like Kelly, Bolton and White House counsel Don McGahn have revealed. In some cases, the resulting probes appear to have been solutions settled on by officials attempting to manage Trump’s pressure with partial measures.

But in a new term, Trump will surely be more aggressive and even less restrained, as his public threats make clear. The Supreme Court’s July declaration that the president has absolute immunity from prosecution for many types of official conduct will leave him with few worries about facing legal consequences for his own actions. And the aides who partly restrained him before will be gone, replaced by more sycophantic enablers.

As Trump pledges to pervert presidential power to prosecute critics, Americans have to take him at this word. If he wins, who is going to stop him?

As Donald Trump campaigns to be a dictator for one day, he’s asking: “Are you better off now than you were when I was president?” Great question! To help answer it, our Trump Files series is delving into consequential events from the 45th president’s time in office that Americans might have forgotten—or wish they had.

Steve Bannon was indicted in 2020 for allegedly helping defraud Donald Trump fans who donated to a nonprofit that promised to privately fund a border wall. The other defendants in the plot went to prison. But in the final hours of his presidency, Trump pardoned Bannon, reportedly over the objections of various advisers, due to what the Washington Post described as Bannon’s “vociferous support” for Trump’s efforts to steal the 2020 election.

Trump doled out pardons and commutations throughout his presidency, culminating in a deluge of clemency during his final weeks office. He pardoned service members accused of war crimes whose cases were promoted on Fox News; Lil Wayne; most of the Republican congressmen convicted of federal felonies this century; the ex-husband of an unctuous Fox News host; and a former Dick Cheney aide whose pardon might irk former FBI chief James Comey. He even pardoned some people who probably deserved it.

But many of his pardons, like the one he gave Bannon, were clearly corrupt—a misuse of power to benefit his supporters and please his allies. Trump may have acted legally in exercising his constitutional pardon power, but that doesn’t make his actions any more defensible. He granted pardons in apparent exchange for political support, to campaign donors, and to clients of lawyers charging small fortunes for access to him. He dangled the possibility pardons for potential witnesses who might testify about his campaign’s ties to Russia.

This orgy of transactional clemency was a preview of the authoritarian powers Trump has promised to wield without restraint in a second term. Trump has pledged to pardon people charged with crimes connected to January 6 and, if he wins, he’s expected to claim power to order the DOJ to drop the two federal cases against him. And he appears prepared to use his power to block federal charges against federal officials who commit alleged crimes in service of his goals.

Here is a non-complete list of some of Trump’s most outrageous pardons.

Friends and Family of Jared

Trump’s process for assessing pardon pleas in his final days in office was reportedly chaotic, with little involvement from the DOJ office tasked with assisting federal clemency efforts. Instead, Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, oversaw the process. Many people with connections to Kushner won pardons, most notably his father, real estate developer Charles Kushner, who was convicted in 2005 of crimes that included hiring a prostitute to film herself having sex with his sister’s husband, a way to punish her for cooperating in a federal investigation. Trump’s pardon announcement did not mention what role Jared may have played in helping his dad. A Kushner spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

Kushner-connected pardon recipients include 27 people with ties two Orthodox Jewish organizations that had worked with Kushner on criminal justice reform, the New York Times reported. Several of those hired pro-Trump attorney Alan Dershowitz, who advised Kushner on Middle East policy and represented Trump during his first impeachment trial, to help them seek pardons.

That group includes Jonathan Braun, a Staten Island man whose 10-year sentence for drug dealing Trump commuted even as Braun was under investigation for his role in a loan-sharking scheme in which the defendants were accused of repeatedly threatening violence. A federal judge fined Braun for $20 million in February. In August, Braun was arrested and charged with assaulting his wife and her 75-year old father.

Another Dershowitz client who won a commutation was Eliyahu Weinstein, who Trump freed eight years into a 24-year sentence for running a ponzi scheme. Weinstein was indicted last year for allegedly running a new, similar scheme, that prosecutors said he launched “soon after” his release.

Ken Kurson, a close friend of Kushner’s, received a pardon for charges that he had cyber-stalked and harassed three people. In 2022, Kurson pleaded guilty to cyberstalking his ex-wife.

Anyone Who Might Support Him

Trump has mostly pardoned Republicans, but he did help a few Democrats. He pardoned former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who was convicted of attempting to sell a Senate appointment and who had appeared on “The Apprentice” in 2010. Since the pardon, Blagojevich has supported Trump. Trump in 2021 also commuted the 28-year prison sentence that former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick received for extensive corruption. Kilpatrick is now campaigning for Trump, explaining that he is “grateful” for Trump’s help.

In 2019, Angela Stanton, who was convicted in 2004 for her role in a car theft ring and later supported Trump’s foray into criminal justice reform, appeared on a Fox News panel of Black voters as a Trump supporter. In 2020, Trump pardoned Stanton.

Alice Johnson, a woman whose decades-long sentence for cocaine distribution Trump commuted in 2018, appeared in a 2020 Trump campaign ad that aired during the Super Bowl. Johnson also spoke in support of him at during the Republican National Convention that year. Trump granted her a full pardon the next day.

Celebrities

Trump’s 2021 pardon of Lil Wayne came after the rapper, whose real name is Dwayne Carter, endorsed him (and hired a lawyer who previously had appeared on the “Apprentice” in 2004). Kodak Black, another rapper, who was freed from prison when Trump pardoned him, released a pro-Trump song in August. Trump also pardoned Casey Urlacher on charges of helping run a massive gambling ring, after meeting months earlier with Urlacher’s brother, former Chicago Bears linebacker Brian Urlacher. The former All-Pro endorsed Trump in September and cut an ad for him.

Medicare Fraudsters

Trump’s cross-aisle pardons included Salomon Melgen, a Florida eye-doctor who was a financial backer and friend of former Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.). A hung jury in 2017 helped Menendez avoid conviction on charges that he did political favors for Melgen in exchange for financial benefits. (Menendez was convicted in July 2024 in a different corruption case.)

Unlike Menendez, Melgen was convicted in 2017 on 67 counts related to bilking Medicare out of at least $73 million by persuading numerous elderly patients to undergo tests and get treatment for diseases they did not have. Trump’s pardon of Melgen, which came after a request from Menendez, is one of at least five the former president granted to people convicted of defrauding Medicare or Medicaid, the Washington Post noted in March. Such pardons coexist uneasily with Trump’s claim that he would cut federal spending on those programs by cracking down on fraud.

Of particular note, Trump pardoned Philip Esformes—who had been sentenced to 20 years in prison for his role in stealing more than $1.3 billion from federal programs via fraudulent billing at nursing homes he owned—after his father gave $65,000 to a Kushner-linked charity. Esformes was recently arrested on felony charges related to domestic violence.

People With Connected Lawyers

Trump’s willingness to grant pardons created a robust market for people claiming they had the president’s ear. Former Trump lawyer John Dowd reportedly earned tens of thousands of dollars securing a pardon for a Las Vegas gambler, William Walters, sentenced to prison in 2017 for insider trading. That’s nothing compared to Matt Schlapp, the head of the American Conservative Union, who disclosed receiving $750,000 to lobby for pardon for man named Parker Petit, who was convicted in 2020 of accounting fraud—even though Petit didn’t get a pardon. Rudy Giuliani has denied multiple claims that he requested $2 million to help pardon-seekers get Trump’s attention. Bradley Birkenfeld, a man convicted of fraud in 2008, told the Atlantic in 2021 that former Trump adviser Corey Lewandowski had demanded $500,000 to meet with Trump about a pardon and $1 million more if Trump granted it. Lewandowski denied that claim.

Russia, Russia, Russia

Trump’s attraction to revenge pardons and personal interest combined in his wiliness to undo charges against those caught in investigations into his campaign’s connections to Russia.

Trump pardoned even minor figures convicted of crimes in the scandal, such as George Papadopoulos, a Trump campaign foreign policy adviser who a Trump aide dismissed in 2017 as mere “coffee boy.” Trump pardoned Paul Erickson, a marginal Republican operative best known for dating convicted Russian agent Maria Butina. In a statement at the time, Trump said Erickson’s conviction “was based off the Russian collusion hoax.” In fact, Erickson pleaded guilty to defrauding would-be real estate investors in North Dakota in a scheme unrelated to the Russian matter.

Trump pardoned longtime adviser Roger Stone, who was convicted in 2019 of lying to Congress about his role in helping Trump benefit from Democrats’ emails hacked by Russian agents. Stone was “covering up for the president” when he lied to the House Intelligence Committee, Judge Amy Jackson Berman said while sentencing him. Trump’s pardon of former national security adviser Michael Flynn similarly appeared to reward loyalty. Flynn in 2017 pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about contacts with Russia. Just before Flynn’s plea, Dowd, the Trump lawyer, left a voicemail for a Flynn attorney in which he asked for a “heads up” if there was any “information that implicates the president.” Dowd added: “Remember what we’ve always said about the president and his feeling toward Flynn, and all that still remains.” Dowd has denied that he was dangling a pardon. Flynn later attempted to reverse his plea. And he never did implicate Trump in wrongdoing.

Nowhere did Trump use his pardon power more successfully than with Paul Manafort. As special counsel Robert Mueller’s team prosecuted Manafort over his secret lobbying for Ukraine’s former pro-Russian president and untaxed payments Manafort received, Trump “made it known that Manafort could receive a pardon,” Mueller later reported. Manafort did eventually plead guilty to some charges and signed a cooperation agreement. But prosecutors later determined he had likely lied to them. He even funneled information on the investigation to Trump’s lawyers, in an apparent effort to remain in line for the pardon Trump finally delivered in 2020.

While working for Trump’s campaign in 2016, Manafort met secretly with a suspected Russian agent to discuss winning Trump’s support for a plan to settle the conflict then occurring in eastern Ukraine by essentially handing control of the region to Moscow. It’s unclear what if anything Manafort said to Trump about this supposed peace plan at the time. But eight years later, following Russia’s full-scale invasion, Trump says he has a solution that would end the war in Ukraine immediately. His new plan sounds something like the idea Manafort discussed back in 2016.

In an extraordinary monologue Tuesday at a Univision town hall, Donald Trump repeated the lie that the mob that attacked the Capitol on January 6—which he described using the pronoun “we”—was unarmed.

“There were no guns down there. We didn’t have guns. The others had guns, but we didn’t have guns,” Trump said. “That was a day of love.”

That is a lie. The latest evidence showing that Trump’s claim is false came in a guilty plea Wednesday by a Texas man named Roger Preacher. Preacher admitted to carrying a pistol on the grounds of the Capitol on January 6, though he knew that doing so was illegal.

Preacher said that he traveled to Washington with two other men who also brought “pistols and AR-style” rifles on the trip. They drove into Washington on January 6 from a Virginia hotel room with three rifles in a bag, the filing says. They left the bag in the car, but Preacher carried his pistol in “an inside-the-waistband holster “ to the lower West Terrace of the Capitol grounds where he remained for around an hour. Preacher said he believed the other two men “were also carrying firearms on their persons.”

Preacher’s admission adds to the heap of evidence that many people in the crowd outside the Capitol on January 6 had guns. Mother Jones compiled evidence of the many guns among January 6 perpetrators back in 2021, in a report based on public video footage, congressional testimony, and criminal cases.

Because police officers made few arrests on January 6 itself to limit violence, few of the attackers were caught with firearms on them. This has allowed the myth pushed by Trump and his allies that the crowd was unarmed to spread. But numerous cases since have revealed that some rioters carried weapons or, like members of the Oath Keepers militia, stashed arms nearby.

The House January 6 committee’s final report, released in 2022, cited police reports indicating that DC officers spotted numerous people descending on the National Mall that day who appeared to be carrying guns. Police stopped few of them, presumably because they feared being shot.

The committee’s report notes that many Trump supporters who arrived for his speech at the Ellipse that day were armed, and that White House officials, including Trump, knew that.

In testimony to the House committee detailed in its final report, Cassidy Hutchinson, who served as a top aide to Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows, said that Trump berated a top Secret Service official on January 6 because agents had placed magnetometers around the Ellipse, deterring some of his gun-toting fans from attending. “I don’t fucking care that they have weapons,” Trump said, according to Hutchinson. “They’re not here to hurt me.”

Preacher is one of around 1,500 people charged with crimes related to January 6, among them Trump himself. Special Counsel Jack Smith wrote in a filing on Tuesday that Trump was responsible for the attack. The former president, the filing said, “willfully caused his supporters to obstruct and attempt to obstruct the proceeding by summoning them to Washington, D.C.”

Special Counsel Jack Smith, in a court filing made public on Wednesday, revealed a litany of damning new allegations about former President Donald Trump’s attempts to steal the 2020 election—details that could impact the neck-and-neck presidential race between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.

After Trump’s 2020 presidential election defeat, “he resorted to crimes to try to stay in office,” the 165-page motion unsealed by Judge Tanya Chutkan says. “With private co-conspirators, the defendant launched a series of increasingly desperate plans to overturn the legitimate election results in seven states that he had lost.”

The filing presents new evidence that Trump knew his election fraud claims were false but proceeded anyway with a scheme to use so-called fake electors and outside pressure to stop Joe Biden’s electoral victory from being made official. Smith’s motion contains previously unreported information on Trump’s effort to pressure former Vice President Mike Pence to illegally refuse to certify the election results on January 6, 2021.

The document directly faults Trump for inciting the mob of supporters who attacked Congress on January 6 as part of his effort to disrupt the certification proceedings that day. And it details Trump’s effort to “exploit”—rather than halt—the attack, in the hope that the violence would create an excuse for delaying certification.

The lightly redacted filing argues that Trump’s scheme to use bogus election fraud claims to stop Biden from taking office “was fundamentally a private one” and did not involve “official conduct.” If the courts accept that argument, the indictment could survive the expansive presidential “immunity” standard invented by the Supreme Court in its controversial July 1 decision.

But regardless of the fate of Smith’s legal case, the motion matters politically. It bolsters the argument that Trump’s disregard for the Constitution, democracy, and the rule of law leave him unfit to return to office. And it functions as a reminder for distractible voters about the seriousness of the charges against the first election loser in American history to incite violence in bid to retain power.

Trump’s lawyers fought unsuccessfully in court to block release of the motion based on the claim that it could affect the election, an argument Chutkan, who has repeatedly said she does not consider Trump’s status as a presidential candidate to be relevant to her proceedings, rejected. Smith also filed an appendix that includes FBI interviews, grand jury testimony, and other evidence, which remains sealed, though parts of that could also be made public before election day.

Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung claimed without evidence Wednesday that Smith’s motion was part of an effort by the Biden administration to “weaponize” the Justice Department against Trump. “The entire case is a partisan, Unconstitutional Witch Hunt that should be dismissed entirely, together with ALL of the remaining Democrat hoaxes,” Cheung said in a statement.

The new filing offers a general narrative that has previously been outlined by the media and the House January 6 Committee. But the document includes extensive details that have not been reported, along with a pointed new description of Trump’s conduct.

It says that Trump told three advisers before Election Day that, if he had an early lead in the vote count on election night due to slower counting of mail-in ballots—which were expected to favor Biden—he would “simply declare victory before all the ballots were counted and any winner was projected.”

Smith’s filing also cites audio from October 31, 2020, first revealed by Mother Jones. In it, Trump strategist Steve Bannon said that on election night, “Trump is gonna declare victory. But that doesn’t mean he’s the winner. He’s just gonna say he’s the winner.” Trump “did exactly that” on election night, the brief notes, claiming that he should have won but was a victim of voter fraud.

Smith’s brief reveals that shortly after the election, a Trump aide gave the president an “honest assessment” that his fraud claims would fail in court. “The details don’t matter,” Trump responded.

“It doesn’t matter if you won or lost the election,” Trump told members of his family at another point, according to the brief. “You still have to fight like hell.”

Smith alleges in the filing that Trump signed a “verification of fraud” that he knew was false as part of a lawsuit he filed aimed at overturning his defeat in Georgia. The motion notes that attorneys, whose names are redacted, told Trump that the document contained inaccurate claims. One lawyer told the president that any attorney who the signed the complaint the verification supported “would get disbarred.” Trump signed it anyway.

Smith also points out that even as Trump pressured state election officials in states where he was narrowly defeated to refuse to certify his loss, he didn’t bother checking with them on the validity of his claims. “These officials would have been the best sources of information to determine whether there was any merit to specific allegations of election fraud in their states,” but Trump “never contacted any of them to ask,” the motion says.

The filing also details Trump’s effort to pressure Pence to refuse to certify the election, despite the VP’s protestations that he lacked that power.

Pence, the filing reveals, repeatedly urged Trump to accept defeat. At a private lunch on November 12, Pence suggested that Trump, even if he refused to concede, should “recognize the process is over.” At another private lunch on December 21, Pence suggested Trump, once his legal efforts were exhausted, should “take a bow,” meaning admit defeat.

Pence’s refusal to break the law led Trump to include lines calling on the vice president to do “the right thing,” in his remarks, helping drive anger at Pence when he did not comply with Trump’s demands. According to Smith, Pence’s refusal left the president determined to use the mob he had assembled in Washington as a last-ditch means to pressure lawmakers not to certify his loss.

Trump knew that he had “only one last hope to prevent Biden’s certification as president, the large and angry crowd standing in front of him,” the filing says. “So for more than an hour, the defendant delivered a speech designed to inflame his supporters and motivate them to march to the Capitol.”

Hours later, Trump tweeted that Pence “didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done,” incensing rioters who called to “hang” the vice president as they ransacked the Capitol. Alone in the White House dining room, Trump “personally posted the tweet,” prosecutors said, “at a point when he already understood the Capitol had been breached.”

Minutes later, an aide entered the dining room to inform Trump of efforts to ensure Pence’s safety. The filing says that Trump looked at the staffer “and said only, ‘So what?’”

In December 2018, Sam Nunberg met with Steve Bannon at the Loews Regency hotel in Manhattan. Nunberg, a former Donald Trump campaign aide, expected to discuss work he was doing for a PAC that Bannon ran. But Bannon, whom Trump had fired from a White House job the year before, had other plans.

Nunberg says that moments after the meeting began, Bannon pulled out what he said was a printed lawsuit and warned that the fugitive Chinese mogul Guo Wengui was poised to sue Nunberg.

Bannon—who was working for Guo at the time—said he could have the lawsuit shelved. But Bannon wanted something in return: Nunberg would have to appear in a video with Guo and claim that Nunberg had learned that three other men had conspired to fabricate a rape allegation against Guo made by a former personal assistant—an allegation that had resulted in a criminal case in China and a lawsuit in New York, both begun in 2017.

Further, Bannon wanted Nunberg to say that the same three supposed accomplices—a Chinese entrepreneur named Bruno Wu, casino mogul Steve Wynn, and GOP fundraiser Elliott Broidy—were involved in the issuing of a “red notice” by Interpol seeking the arrest of Guo for alleged financial crimes in China, Nunberg recalled.

“You have to cooperate, and this can be dropped,” Bannon said, according to a memo Nunberg wrote shortly after the incident. “Otherwise Kwok is going to bankrupt you and ruin your life.” (Ho Wan Kwok is one of several aliases used by Guo.) Nunberg, who recounted this exchange in a series of recent interviews with Mother Jones, wrote in his memo that the quotes he used are “almost verbatim.”

Nunberg, who said the story Bannon proposed was totally false, refused his demands. Days later, Guo sued Nunberg for defamation and other claims.

Bannon is currently serving a four-month federal prison sentence in Connecticut following his 2022 conviction on contempt of Congress charges related to his refusal to comply with a subpoena from the House January 6 committee. He did not respond to requests made through his attorney to comment for this story. Representatives for Guo, Broidy, Wu, and Wynn declined to comment.

The narrative Bannon wanted Nunberg to recite incorporated some reality. Wu was a Guo adversary already embroiled in litigation against Guo. And Wu acknowledged, in a 2021 deposition, that after learning of the rape accusation against Guo, he had helped Guo’s accuser find a US lawyer, a step with which Nunberg, who did legal work for Wu, had assisted. Wu also said in the deposition that he paid the legal costs for the accuser’s US lawsuit against Guo, which included putting up a $150,00o retainer.

Broidy and Wynn had both lobbied Trump in 2017 to have Guo—who’d fled China in 2014 and later styled himself a top critic of the Chinese Communist Party—extradited to his home country. In 2020, Broidy pleaded guilty to conspiring to violate foreign lobbying laws, in part by working at the behest of a Chinese government official to have Guo returned. The Justice Department sued Wynn in 2022 for failing to register as a foreign agent for China, arguing that he had personally lobbied Trump for Guo’s extradition in a bid to get favorable treatment for casinos he owned in China’s Macao region. Wynn, who denied those allegations, prevailed in court.

But while Bannon had correctly identified four actual Guo enemies, there is zero evidence that they had conspired to concoct the rape allegation against Guo or were responsible for other charges being leveled against him in China.

The rape accusation against Guo was made by Rui Ma, a former personal assistant for Guo who sued the tycoon in New York. Ma detailed her allegations in a daylong deposition on June 3, 2021, which she took part in via video from China. Ma said that Guo, after hiring her in 2015 when she was in her mid-twenties, had effectively held her as a prisoner for two years before she escaped via the Chinese embassy in London. In her complaint and her deposition, Ma detailed the circumstances of at least five alleged assaults.

“I have been raped by him so many times,” Ma said in the deposition. “It made me hate myself so much.” Ma said that the attacks left her depressed. “I wanted to commit suicide every day, every second,” she recounted later in the deposition. “Kwok has cursed me, abused me, attacks me in ways, the worst words you can use in this world.”

Guo has denied Ma’s allegations, claiming that they, along with various criminal charges he faces in China, were invented by Chinese Communist Party officials in retaliation for his criticism of the country’s rulers. Ma said in her deposition that she had reported the assaults to local police at the encouragement of her parents, without any outside influence.

Nunberg said in recent interviews that he had nothing to do with the rape charge, beyond helping Ma find a US lawyer, or the other allegations against Guo in China. Nunberg also said that he has never met Broidy or Wynn, let alone conspired with them. Wu said in his deposition in the Ma case that he had contacted Ma and helped her file suit in the US only after learning she had reported Guo’s alleged attacks to Chinese police.

Bannon’s intervention in the dispute gained new relevance in July, when a jury in New York convicted Guo of nine felonies related to federal charges that he stole hundreds of millions of dollars in investments he had raised from ardent supporters of an anti-CCP political movement that he and Bannon had launched together. One of the charges Guo was convicted on was racketeering conspiracy. Prosecutors argued that Guo and his associates protected their criminal enterprise through various thuggish methods.

Federal prosecutors named Bannon as a co-conspirator in the case, though Bannon has not been charged with a crime in the matter.

Bannon’s alleged threat to Nunberg highlights how deeply enmeshed in Guo’s operations the former Trump campaign chief was. Bannon was infamously arrested on Guo’s yacht in 2020 as part of an unrelated case, but his role in helping to launch Guo’s political and financial operations in the United States exceeds what is generally known or what Bannon has publicly acknowledged.

Guo had made a fortune in Chinese real estate before fleeing China in late 2014 ahead of the filing of criminal charges for fraud and bribing a top state official. In 2017, from a $68 million penthouse in Manhattan, Guo began broadcasting allegations about corruption in the Chinese Communist Party, and he began cultivating ties to US political operatives close to Trump, most prominently Bannon.

Guo in 2018 began paying Bannon $1 million a year, according to information revealed during Guo’s trial. Guo also allowed Bannon to use his private plane and gave him access to his Connecticut house and the $30 million yacht. In addition, Guo became a key funder for War Room, the influential podcast Bannon launched in 2019.

Bannon in turn helped Guo start a series of companies and nonprofits supposedly aimed at undermining the Chinese Communist Party. The men called this collective enterprise a “whistleblower” movement and leveraged it to win support from tens of thousands of people in the Chinese diaspora. When Guo in 2020 began rolling out “investment opportunities” for his supporters, Bannon provided behind-the-scenes advice along with public promotion. He continued extolling Guo, who he called the “George Washington of the new China,” even as critics began complaining that Guo had ripped them off. Bannon, in short, was crucial to the fraud scheme that Guo was recently convicted of executing.

Bannon’s alleged threat against Nunberg appears to have been part of a pattern of Guo and his allies using expensive lawsuits to harass his critics. Guo sued the Wall Street Journal, CNN, and McClatchy newspapers for reporting on allegations that he had acted in the US as a Chinese intelligence agent. He sued former employees who criticized him. He sued Broidy, past business partners, even a law firm that once represented him. Guo has found little success in court. Many of his suits were quickly dismissed. But his complaints, often accompanied by allegations that the person he sued was a CCP agent, made it clear that he was willing to use his wealth to impose legal costs on detractors.

In 2023, a federal judge sanctioned Guo lawyers for filing a “frivolous” lawsuit accusing the US trustee in a bankruptcy case initiated by Guo of violating foreign lobbying laws. Though the suit was filed on behalf of a group of Guo supporters, Judge Valerie Caproni said in her ruling that the case was part of a legal campaign waged by Guo. Caproni ripped the attorneys for their “pattern of bringing meritless…claims against Mr. [Guo’s] adversaries — conduct that he has praised.” She said the plaintiffs’ “true preoccupation is…trying to ‘defend’ [Guo] by harassing those perceived to be his adversaries.”

One Guo legal action that did succeed was a 2018 lawsuit he filed against longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone. Stone, in appearances on Alex Jones’ Infowars, had falsely claimed that Guo was found guilty and convicted of financial crimes in the US and had made illegal political donations to Hillary Clinton. Guo sued Stone for defamation, seeking $100 million in damages.

Stone settled the suit in December 2018 by acknowledging his remarks were untrue and apologizing in ads he was required to place in national newspapers. In a statement he issued at the time, Stone, who had previously worked closely with Nunberg before the two had a falling out, blamed his former colleague. “I made the error of relying on the representations of Sam Nunberg in my report on this matter and for that I apologized,” Stone said.

Bannon’s attempt to pressure Nunberg came the day after news of Stone’s settlement. And Bannon referenced it in the Loews meeting. “You saw what just happened to Roger Stone,” Bannon said, according to Nunberg’s memo.

Nunberg said in an interview that Stone’s statement was false. “I never talked to Roger about Guo,” he maintained.

But Guo’s lawsuit against Nunberg picked up on Stone’s story. It accused Nunberg of conspiring with Wu to spread “false information about [Guo] to prominent United States media personalities.” These claims were separate from the rape allegations. A New York judge dismissed Guo’s suit, finding it failed to provide sufficient facts about how Nunberg and Wu supposedly defamed him.

A few months later, Nunberg sued Guo for defamation, citing a series of online videos in which Guo repeated, and elaborated on, the allegations he made in his lawsuit against Nunberg. In his complaint, Nunberg called Guo’s allegations “preposterous fictions.” Nunberg’s lawsuit, along with Ma’s case against Guo, is pending.

Guo, who has been jailed since his March 2023 arrest, is likely to receive a long prison term when he is sentenced on December 9. Nunberg said he hopes that by speaking up about the 2018 incident, he can help thwart any efforts by Bannon to win clemency for Guo if Trump retakes the White House. Bannon received his own pardon on Trump’s last day in office in 2021, allowing Bannon to avoid federal prosecution on charges that he helped to defraud donors to a charity that purported to raise private funds to build Trump’s border wall. Bannon is set to face trial on similar state-level charges in New York in December.

“Steve is completely compromised by Guo,” Nunberg said. “He will do anything and everything to push for Guo to be pardoned for his massive, billion-dollar fraud scheme. I hope any future Trump White House rejects Bannon’s request.”

Special Counsel Jack Smith, in a court filing made public on Wednesday, revealed a litany of damning new allegations about former President Donald Trump’s attempts to steal the 2020 election—details that could impact the neck-and-neck presidential race between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.

After Trump’s 2020 presidential election defeat, “he resorted to crimes to try to stay in office,” the 165-page motion unsealed by Judge Tanya Chutkan says. “With private co-conspirators, the defendant launched a series of increasingly desperate plans to overturn the legitimate election results in seven states that he had lost.”

The filing presents new evidence that Trump knew his election fraud claims were false but proceeded anyway with a scheme to use so-called fake electors and outside pressure to stop Joe Biden’s electoral victory from being made official. Smith’s motion contains previously unreported information on Trump’s effort to pressure former Vice President Mike Pence to illegally refuse to certify the election results on January 6, 2021.

The document directly faults Trump for inciting the mob of supporters who attacked Congress on January 6 as part of his effort to disrupt the certification proceedings that day. And it details Trump’s effort to “exploit”—rather than halt—the attack, in the hope that the violence would create an excuse for delaying certification.

The lightly redacted filing argues that Trump’s scheme to use bogus election fraud claims to stop Biden from taking office “was fundamentally a private one” and did not involve “official conduct.” If the courts accept that argument, the indictment could survive the expansive presidential “immunity” standard invented by the Supreme Court in its controversial July 1 decision.

But regardless of the fate of Smith’s legal case, the motion matters politically. It bolsters the argument that Trump’s disregard for the Constitution, democracy, and the rule of law leave him unfit to return to office. And it functions as a reminder for distractible voters about the seriousness of the charges against the first election loser in American history to incite violence in bid to retain power.

Trump’s lawyers fought unsuccessfully in court to block release of the motion based on the claim that it could affect the election, an argument Chutkan, who has repeatedly said she does not consider Trump’s status as a presidential candidate to be relevant to her proceedings, rejected. Smith also filed an appendix that includes FBI interviews, grand jury testimony, and other evidence, which remains sealed, though parts of that could also be made public before election day.

Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung claimed without evidence Wednesday that Smith’s motion was part of an effort by the Biden administration to “weaponize” the Justice Department against Trump. “The entire case is a partisan, Unconstitutional Witch Hunt that should be dismissed entirely, together with ALL of the remaining Democrat hoaxes,” Cheung said in a statement.

The new filing offers a general narrative that has previously been outlined by the media and the House January 6 Committee. But the document includes extensive details that have not been reported, along with a pointed new description of Trump’s conduct.

It says that Trump told three advisers before Election Day that, if he had an early lead in the vote count on election night due to slower counting of mail-in ballots—which were expected to favor Biden—he would “simply declare victory before all the ballots were counted and any winner was projected.”

Smith’s filing also cites audio from October 31, 2020, first revealed by Mother Jones. In it, Trump strategist Steve Bannon said that on election night, “Trump is gonna declare victory. But that doesn’t mean he’s the winner. He’s just gonna say he’s the winner.” Trump “did exactly that” on election night, the brief notes, claiming that he should have won but was a victim of voter fraud.

Smith’s brief reveals that shortly after the election, a Trump aide gave the president an “honest assessment” that his fraud claims would fail in court. “The details don’t matter,” Trump responded.

“It doesn’t matter if you won or lost the election,” Trump told members of his family at another point, according to the brief. “You still have to fight like hell.”

Smith alleges in the filing that Trump signed a “verification of fraud” that he knew was false as part of a lawsuit he filed aimed at overturning his defeat in Georgia. The motion notes that attorneys, whose names are redacted, told Trump that the document contained inaccurate claims. One lawyer told the president that any attorney who the signed the complaint the verification supported “would get disbarred.” Trump signed it anyway.

Smith also points out that even as Trump pressured state election officials in states where he was narrowly defeated to refuse to certify his loss, he didn’t bother checking with them on the validity of his claims. “These officials would have been the best sources of information to determine whether there was any merit to specific allegations of election fraud in their states,” but Trump “never contacted any of them to ask,” the motion says.

The filing also details Trump’s effort to pressure Pence to refuse to certify the election, despite the VP’s protestations that he lacked that power.

Pence, the filing reveals, repeatedly urged Trump to accept defeat. At a private lunch on November 12, Pence suggested that Trump, even if he refused to concede, should “recognize the process is over.” At another private lunch on December 21, Pence suggested Trump, once his legal efforts were exhausted, should “take a bow,” meaning admit defeat.

Pence’s refusal to break the law led Trump to include lines calling on the vice president to do “the right thing,” in his remarks, helping drive anger at Pence when he did not comply with Trump’s demands. According to Smith, Pence’s refusal left the president determined to use the mob he had assembled in Washington as a last-ditch means to pressure lawmakers not to certify his loss.

Trump knew that he had “only one last hope to prevent Biden’s certification as president, the large and angry crowd standing in front of him,” the filing says. “So for more than an hour, the defendant delivered a speech designed to inflame his supporters and motivate them to march to the Capitol.”

Hours later, Trump tweeted that Pence “didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done,” incensing rioters who called to “hang” the vice president as they ransacked the Capitol. Alone in the White House dining room, Trump “personally posted the tweet,” prosecutors said, “at a point when he already understood the Capitol had been breached.”

Minutes later, an aide entered the dining room to inform Trump of efforts to ensure Pence’s safety. The filing says that Trump looked at the staffer “and said only, ‘So what?’”

JD Vance did a decent job for the first 94 minutes of Tuesday night’s debate.

“Vance’s Dominant Debate Performance Shows Why He’s Trump’s Running Mate,” a post from the Vance-pilled New York Times opinion columnist Ross Douthat declared, barely halfway through the CBS-hosted event.

Then Tim Walz asked the Ohio senator if Trump lost the 2020 election.

“Tim, I’m focused on the future,” Vance said in a response in which he did not acknowledge that Joe Biden won. “Obviously, Donald Trump and I think that there were problems in 2020.”

Walz: Trump is still saying he didn't lose the election. Did he lose the 2020 election?

Vance: Did Kamala Harris censor Americans?

Walz: That is a damning nonanswer. pic.twitter.com/f59Q8H1BA4

— Acyn (@Acyn) October 2, 2024

The Minnesota governor, whose clipped and at times rambling answers made for a disappointing performance for much of the night, didn’t miss on this one.

“That is a damning nonanswer,” Walz said.

Former Vice President Mike Pence’s decision to carry out his ceremonial duty to certify Biden’s election victory is “why Mike Pence isn’t on this stage,” Walz continued. “What I’m concerned about is, where is the firewall with Donald Trump? Where is the firewall if he knows he could do anything, including taking an election, and his vice president is not going to stand up to it? That’s what we are asking you, America.”

Tim Walz called it out.

"Where is the firewall if he knows he could do anything, including taking an election, and his vice president is not going to stand up to it?" pic.twitter.com/oJyhdOliBP

— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) October 2, 2024

Vance, a guy with historically low likability numbers, worked hard Tuesday to present himself as more relatable han the dude who sneers at childless cat-ladies and pushes racist rumors about legal immigrants in his own state.

But Vance’s January 6 dodge undid much of that work—and revealed a lot about the GOP VP nominee. Vance also called it “really rich for Democratic leaders to say that Donald Trump is a unique threat to democracy when he peacefully gave over power on January the 20th.” That statement suggests that it’s unreasonable to worry about the threat Trump poses to democracy because his coup attempt failed.

Vance is not Trump’s running mate because he’s a best-selling author, because he’s smart, or because he can give answers that thrill Ross Douthat. He’s there because he won’t say that Trump lied, and continues to lie, about the 2020 election.

And if Trump turns out not to have been totally joking when he called to “terminate” the Constitution and vowed to be a dictator for a day, if he pursues his stated plans to ignore the Constitution and rule of law to deport millions of immigrants and use the Justice Department to prosecute political enemies, JD Vance is not going to be the one to stop him. That’s the top takeaway from Tuesday’s debate.

JD Vance did a decent job for the first 94 minutes of Tuesday night’s debate.

“Vance’s Dominant Debate Performance Shows Why He’s Trump’s Running Mate,” a post from the Vance-pilled New York Times opinion columnist Ross Douthat declared, barely halfway through the CBS-hosted event.

Then Tim Walz asked the Ohio senator if Trump lost the 2020 election.

“Tim, I’m focused on the future,” Vance said in a response in which he did not acknowledge that Joe Biden won. “Obviously, Donald Trump and I think that there were problems in 2020.”

Walz: Trump is still saying he didn't lose the election. Did he lose the 2020 election?

Vance: Did Kamala Harris censor Americans?

Walz: That is a damning nonanswer. pic.twitter.com/f59Q8H1BA4

— Acyn (@Acyn) October 2, 2024

The Minnesota governor, whose clipped and at times rambling answers made for a disappointing performance for much of the night, didn’t miss on this one.

“That is a damning nonanswer,” Walz said.

Former Vice President Mike Pence’s decision to carry out his ceremonial duty to certify Biden’s election victory is “why Mike Pence isn’t on this stage,” Walz continued. “What I’m concerned about is, where is the firewall with Donald Trump? Where is the firewall if he knows he could do anything, including taking an election, and his vice president is not going to stand up to it? That’s what we are asking you, America.”

Tim Walz called it out.

"Where is the firewall if he knows he could do anything, including taking an election, and his vice president is not going to stand up to it?" pic.twitter.com/oJyhdOliBP

— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) October 2, 2024

Vance, a guy with historically low likability numbers, worked hard Tuesday to present himself as a more relatable guy than the dude who sneers at childless cat-ladies and pushes racist rumors about legal immigrants in his own state.

But Vance’s January 6 dodge undid much of that work—and revealed a lot about the GOP VP nominee. Vance also called it “really rich for Democratic leaders to say that Donald Trump is a unique threat to democracy when he peacefully gave over power on January the 20th.” That statement suggests that it’s unreasonable to worry about the threat Trump poses to democracy because his coup attempt failed.

Vance is not Trump’s running mate because he’s a best-selling author, because he’s smart, or because he can give answers that thrill Ross Douthat. He’s there because he won’t say that Trump lied, and continues to lie, about the 2020 election.

And if Trump turns out not to have been totally joking when he called to “terminate” the Constitution and vowed to be a dictator for a day, if he pursues his stated plans to ignore the Constitution and rule of law to deport millions of immigrants and use the Justice Department to prosecute political enemies, JD Vance is not going to be the one to stop him. That’s the top takeaway from Tuesday’s debate.

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.”