Donald Trump
Army of lobbyists helped water down banking regulations
It seemed like a good idea at the time: Red-state Democrats facing grim reelection prospects would join forces with Republicans to slash bank regulations — demonstrating a willingness to work with President Donald Trump while bucking many in their party.
That unlikely coalition voted in 2018 to roll back portions of a far-reaching 2010 law intended to prevent a future financial crisis. But those changes are now are being blamed for contributing to the recent collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank that prompted a federal rescue and stoked anxiety about a broader banking contagion.
The rollback was was leveraged with a lobbying campaign that cost tens of millions of dollars and drew an army of hundreds of lobbyists into the effort. It also was seeded with ample campaign contributions.
The episode offers a fresh reminder of the power that bankers wield in Washington, where the industry spends prodigiously to fight regulation and often hires former members of Congress and their staff to make the case that they are not a source of risk to the economy
“The bottom line is that these banks would have faced a tougher supervisory framework under the original ... law, but Congress and the Trump regulators took an ax to it,” said Carter Dougherty, a spokesman for Americans for Financial Reform, a left-leaning financial sector watchdog group. “We can draw a direct line between the deregulation of the Trump period, driven by the bank lobby, and the chaos of the last few weeks.”
President Joe Biden has asked Congress for the authority to impose tougher penalties on failed banks. The Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission have started investigations. And congressional Democrats are calling for new restrictions on financial institutions.
But so far there is no indication that another bipartisan coalition will form in Congress to put tougher regulations back in place, underscoring the banking industry's continued clout.
That influence was on full display when the banking lobby worked for two years to water down aspects of the 2010 Dodd-Frank law that had placed weighty regulations on banks designed to reduce consumer risk and force the institutions to adopt safer lending and investing practices.
Republicans had long looked to blunt the impact of Dodd-Frank. But rather than push for sweeping deregulation, Sen. Mike Crapo, an Idaho Republican who led the Senate banking committee, hoped a narrowed focus could draw enough support from moderate Democrats to clear the Senate’s 60-vote filibuster threshold.
Crapo broached the idea with Democratic Sens. Jon Tester of Montana, Joe Donnelly of Indiana and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota — all on the ballot in 2018 — as well as Mark Warner of Virginia. By the fall of that year, the bipartisan group met regularly, according to a copy of Tester’s office schedule posted to his Senate website.
A lobbying strategy also emerged, with companies and trade groups that specifically mention Crapo's legislation spending more than $400 million in 2017 and 2018, according to an Associated Press analysis of the public lobbying disclosures.
The bill was sold to the public as a form of regulatory relief for overburdened community banks, which serviced farmers and smaller businesses. Community bankers from across the U.S. flew in to Washington to meet repeatedly with lawmakers, including Tester, who had 32 meetings with Montana bank officials. Local bank leaders pushed members of their congressional delegation when they returned home.
But the measure also included provisions sought by midsize banks that drastically curtailed oversight once the Trump Fed finished writing new regulations necessitated by the bill’s passage.
Specifically, the legislation lifted the threshold for banks to be considered “too big to fail” — a designation that carries a strict regimen of oversight, including mandatory financial stress testing.
That component, which effectively carved large midsize banks out of more stringent regulation, has come under new scrutiny in light of the failure of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, whose executives lobbied on behalf of the 2018 rollback.
Read more: Silicon Valley Bank collapse concerns founders of color
“The lobbyists were everywhere. You couldn’t throw an elbow without running into one," Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat who vehemently opposed the bill, told reporters last week.
Campaign checks were written. Ads were cut. Mailers went out.
As a reward for their work, Heitkamp ($357,953), Tester ($302,770) and Donnelly ($265,349) became the top Senate recipients of money from the banking industry during the 2018 campaign season, according to OpenSecrets, a nonpartisan group tracking money in politics.
Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer freed members to vote for the bill, a move intended to bolster the standing of vulnerable moderate incumbents. But the move also bitterly divided the Democratic caucus, with Warren singling out the moderates as doing Wall Street's bidding.
In the hours before the bill passed the Senate with 17 Democratic votes, Heitkamp took to the chamber floor to inveigh against the “diatribe,” “hyperbole” and “overstatement” from opponents of the bill.
Tester, meanwhile, huddled with executives from Bank of America, Citigroup, Discover and Wells Fargo, who were there on behalf of the American Bankers Association.
The American Bankers Association, which helped lead the push, later paid $125,000 for an ad campaign thanking Tester for his role in the bill’s passage, records show.
Less than a month after the bill was passed out of the Senate, Tester met Greg Becker, the CEO for the now-collapsed Silicon Valley Bank, according to his schedule. Becker specifically lobbied Congress and the Federal Reserve to take a light regulatory approach with banks of his size. Lobbyists with the firm the Franklin Square Group, which had been retained by Silicon Valley Bank, donated $10,800 to Tester's campaign, record show.
Heitkamp was the only member of the group invited to the bill signing ceremony, beaming alongside Trump. Later, Americans for Prosperity, the grassroots conservative group funded by the billionaire industrialist Koch brothers, ran an online ad commending Heitkamp for taking a stand against her party.
In an interview, Heitkamp pushed back against suggestions that the legislation was directly responsible for the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. She acknowledged, however, that there was an open question about whether new rules put in place by the Fed after the measure was signed into law could have played a role.
“I’m willing to look at the argument that this had something to do with it,” Heitkamp said, adding: “I think you will find that (the Fed) was engaged in some level of some supervision. Why that didn’t work? That’s the question that needs to be resolved.”
In a statement issued last week, Tester did not directly address his role in the legislation, but he pledged to "take on anyone in Washington to ensure that the executives at these banks and regulators are held accountable.”
Cam Fine, who led the Independent Community Bankers of America trade group during the legislative push, said the overall the bill was a good piece of legislation that offered much needed relief to struggling community banks.
But like any major piece of legislation that moves through Congress, final passage hinged on support from a broad coalition of interests — including those of Wall Street and midsize banks.
“Was it a perfect piece of legislation? No. But there’s an old saying in Washington: You can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good,” said Fine.
Many of the moderate Democrats who supported the measure did not fare as well.
Of the core group who wrote the bill, only Tester won reelection. Others from red states who supported it, including Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Bill Nelson of Florida, lost.
Tester will be on the ballot again in 2024. Last week he was in Silicon Valley for a fundraiser.
One of the event's sponsors was a partner at a law firm for Silicon Valley Bank.
Facebook user data issue: Facebook parent company Meta will pay $725M
Facebook’s corporate parent has agreed to pay $725 million to settle a lawsuit alleging the world’s largest social media platform allowed millions of its users’ personal information to be fed to Cambridge Analytica, a firm that supported Donald Trump’s victorious presidential campaign in 2016.
Terms of the settlement reached by Meta Platforms, the holding company for Facebook and Instagram, were disclosed in court documents filed late Thursday. It will still need to be approved by a judge in a San Francisco federal court hearing set for March.
The case sprang from 2018 revelations that Cambridge Analytica, a firm with ties to Trump political strategist Steve Bannon, had paid a Facebook app developer for access to the personal information of about 87 million users of the platform. That data was then used to target U.S. voters during the 2016 campaign that culminated in Trump’s election as the 45th president.
Uproar over the revelations led to a contrite Zuckerberg being grilled by U.S. lawmakers during a high-profile congressional hearing and spurred calls for people to delete their Facebook accounts. Even though Facebook’s growth has stalled as more people connect and entertain themselves on rival services such as TikTok, the social network still boasts about 2 billion users worldwide, including nearly 200 million in the U.S. and Canada.
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The lawsuit, which had been seeking to be certified as a class action representing Facebook users, had asserted the privacy breach proved Facebook is a “data broker and surveillance firm,” as well as a social network.
The two sides reached a temporary settlement agreement in August, just a few weeks before a Sept. 20 deadline for Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his long-time chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, to submit to depositions.
The company based in Menlo Park, California, said in statement Friday it pursued a settlement because it was in the best interest of its community and shareholders.
“Over the last three years we revamped our approach to privacy and implemented a comprehensive privacy program," said spokesperson Dina El-Kassaby Luce. “We look forward to continuing to build services people love and trust with privacy at the forefront.”
Capitol insurrection: Jan. 6 panel unveils report, describes Trump 'conspiracy'
The House Jan. 6 committee’s final report asserts that Donald Trump criminally engaged in a “multi-part conspiracy” to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 presidential election and failed to act to stop his supporters from attacking the Capitol, concluding an extraordinary 18-month investigation into the former president and the violent insurrection two years ago.
The 845-page report released Thursday comes after the panel interviewed more than 1,000 witnesses, held 10 hearings and obtained millions of pages of documents. The witnesses — ranging from many of Trump’s closest aides to law enforcement to some of the rioters themselves — detailed Trump’s actions in the weeks ahead of the insurrection and how his wide-ranging pressure campaign to overturn his defeat directly influenced those who brutally pushed past the police and smashed through the windows and doors of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
“The central cause of January 6th was one man, former President Donald Trump, who many others followed,” reads the report. “None of the events of January 6th would have happened without him.”
The insurrection gravely threatened democracy and “put the lives of American lawmakers at risk,” the nine-member panel concluded.
Read more: Capitol insurrection: Jan. 6 panel urges criminal charges against Donald Trump
The report’s eight chapters of findings tell the story largely as the panel’s hearings did this summer — describing the many facets of the remarkable plan that Trump and his advisers devised to try and void President Joe Biden’s victory. The lawmakers describe his pressure on states, federal officials, lawmakers and Vice President Mike Pence to game the system or break the law.
Trump's repeated, false claims of widespread voter fraud resonated with his supporters, the committee said, and were amplified on social media, building on the distrust of government he had fostered for his four years in office. And he did little to stop them when they resorted to violence and stormed the Capitol.
The massive, damning report comes as Trump is running again for the presidency and also facing multiple federal investigations, including probes of his role in the insurrection and the presence of classified documents at his Florida estate. This week is particularly fraught for him, as a House committee is expected to release his tax returns after he has fought for years to keep them private. And Trump has been blamed by Republicans for a worse-than-expected showing in the midterm elections, leaving him in his most politically vulnerable state since he won the 2016 election.
It is also a final act for House Democrats who are ceding power to Republicans in less than two weeks, and have spent much of their four years in power investigating Trump. Democrats impeached Trump twice, the second time a week after the insurrection. He was acquitted by the Senate both times. Other Democratic-led probes investigated his finances, his businesses, his foreign ties and his family.
On Monday, the panel of seven Democrats and two Republicans officially passed their investigation to the Justice Department, recommending the department investigate the former president on four crimes, including aiding an insurrection. While the criminal referrals have no legal standing, they are a final statement from the committee after its extensive, year-and-a-half-long probe.
Trump has tried to discredit the report, slamming members of the committee as “thugs and scoundrels” as he has continued to falsely dispute his 2020 loss.
In response to the panel’s criminal referrals, Trump said: “These folks don’t get it that when they come after me, people who love freedom rally around me. It strengthens me.”
Read more: Trump rebuked for call to suspend Constitution over election
The committee has also begun to release hundreds of transcripts of its interviews. On Thursday, the panel released transcripts of two closed-door interviews with former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, who testified in person at one of the televised hearings over the summer and described in vivid detail Trump’s efforts to influence the election results and indifference toward the violence as it occurred.
In the two interviews, both conducted after her July appearance at the hearing, she described how many of Trump’s allies, including her lawyer, pressured her not to say too much in her committee interviews.
Capitol insurrection: Jan. 6 panel urges criminal charges against Donald Trump
The House Jan. 6 committee urged the Justice Department on Monday to bring criminal charges against Donald Trump for the violent 2021 Capitol insurrection, calling for accountability for the former president and “a time of reflection and reckoning.”
After one of the most exhaustive and aggressive congressional probes in memory, the panel’s seven Democrats and two Republicans are recommending criminal charges against Trump and associates who helped him launch a wide-ranging pressure campaign to try to overturn his 2020 election loss. The panel also released a lengthy summary of its final report, with findings that Trump engaged in a “multi-part conspiracy” to thwart the will of voters.
At a final meeting Monday, the committee alleged violations of four criminal statutes by Trump, in both the run-up to the riot and during the insurrection itself, as it recommended the former president for prosecution to the Justice Department. Among the charges they recommend for prosecution is aiding an insurrection — an effort to hold him directly accountable for his supporters who stormed the Capitol that day.
The committee also voted to refer conservative lawyer John Eastman, who devised dubious legal maneuvers aimed at keeping Trump in power, for prosecution on two of the same statutes as Trump: conspiracy to defraud the United States and obstructing an official proceeding.
While a criminal referral is mostly symbolic, with the Justice Department ultimately deciding whether to prosecute Trump or others, it is a decisive end to a probe that had an almost singular focus from the start.
Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said Trump “broke the faith” that people have when they cast ballots in a democracy and that the criminal referrals could provide a “roadmap to justice" by using the committee's work.
“I believe nearly two years later, this is still a time of reflection and reckoning,” Thompson said. “If we are to survive as a nation of laws and democracy, this can never happen again.”
Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, the panel’s Republican vice chairwoman, said in her opening remarks that every president in American history has defended the orderly transfer of power, “except one.”
The committee also voted 9-0 to approve its final report, which will include findings, interview transcripts and legislative recommendations. The full report is expected to be released on Wednesday.
Read more: Some Capitol rioters try to profit from their Jan. 6 crimes
The report’s 154-page summary, made public as the hearing ended, found that Trump engaged in a “multi-part conspiracy” to overturn the election. While the majority of the report’s main findings are not new, it altogether represents one of the most damning portraits of an American president in recent history, laying out in great detail Trump’s broad effort to overturn his own defeat and what the lawmakers say is his direct responsibility for the insurrection of his supporters.
The panel, which will dissolve on Jan. 3 with the new Republican-led House, has conducted more than 1,000 interviews, held 10 well-watched public hearings and collected more than a million documents since it launched in July 2021. As it has gathered the massive trove of evidence, the members have become emboldened in declaring that Trump, a Republican, is to blame for the violent attack on the Capitol by his supporters almost two years ago.
After beating their way past police, injuring many of them, the Jan. 6 rioters stormed the Capitol and interrupted the certification of Biden’s presidential election win, echoing Trump's lies about widespread election fraud and sending lawmakers and others running for their lives.
The attack came after weeks of Trump’s efforts to overturn his defeat — a campaign that was extensively detailed by the committee in its multiple public hearings, and laid out again by lawmakers on the panel at Monday's meeting. Many of Trump’s former aides testified about his unprecedented pressure on states, on federal officials and Pence to object to Biden's win. The committee has also described in great detail how Trump riled up the crowd at a rally that morning and then did little to stop his supporters for several hours as he watched the violence unfold on television.
The panel aired some new evidence at the meeting, including a recent interview with longtime Trump aide Hope Hicks. Describing a conversation she had with Trump around that time, she said he told her that no one would care about his legacy if he lost the election.
Hicks told the committee that Trump told her, “The only thing that matters is winning."
Read more: Capitol riot panel blames Trump for 1/6 'attempted coup'
Trump’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but the former president slammed members of the committee Sunday as “thugs and scoundrels” as he has continued to falsely dispute his 2020 loss.
While a so-called criminal referral has no real legal standing, it is a forceful statement by the committee and adds to political pressure already on Attorney General Merrick Garland and special counsel Jack Smith, who is conducting an investigation into Jan. 6 and Trump’s actions.
On the recommendation to charge Trump on aiding an insurrection, the committee said in the report's summary that the former president “was directly responsible for summoning what became a violent mob” and refused repeated entreaties from his aides to condemn the rioters or to encourage them to leave.
For obstructing an official proceeding, the committee cites Trump’s relentless badgering of Vice President Mike Pence and others to prevent the certification of the election results on Jan. 6. And his repeated lies about the election and efforts to undo the results open him up to a charge of conspiracy to defraud the United States, the panel said.
The final charge recommended by the panel is conspiracy to make a false statement, citing the scheme by Trump and his allies to put forward slates of fake electors in battleground states won by President Joe Biden.
Among the other charges contemplated, but not approved, by the committee was seditious conspiracy, the same allegation Justice Department prosecutors have used to target a subset of rioters belonging to far-right groups like the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys.
Thompson said after the hearing that the seditious conspiracy charge is “something that the committee didn’t come to agreement on.”
The panel was formed in the summer of 2021 after Senate Republicans blocked the formation of what would have been a bipartisan, independent commission to investigate the insurrection. When that effort failed, the Democratic-controlled House formed an investigative committee of its own.
House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy of California, a Trump ally, decided not to participate after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rejected some of his appointments. That left an opening for two anti-Trump Republicans in the House — Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois — to join seven Democrats, launching an unusually unified panel in the divided Congress.
McCarthy was one of four House Republicans who ignored congressional subpoenas from the panel and were referred to the House Ethics Committee on Monday for their non-compliance.
The Republican leader, who is hoping to become speaker of the House when his party takes the majority in January, has acknowledged he spoke with Trump on Jan. 6. The committee also referred Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio, Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and Andy Biggs of Arizona, all of whom were in touch with Trump or the White House in the weeks leading up to the attack.
While the committee’s mission was to take a comprehensive accounting of the insurrection and educate the public about what happened, they've also aimed their work at an audience of one: the attorney general. Lawmakers on the panel have openly pressured Garland to investigate Trump’s actions, and last month he appointed a special counsel, Smith, to oversee two probes related to Trump, including those related to the insurrection and the presence of classified documents at Trump's Florida estate.
The committee members said that full accountability can only be found in the criminal justice system.
“No one should get a pass,” said Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif.
Meta oversight board urges changes to VIP moderation system
Facebook parent Meta’s quasi-independent oversight board said Tuesday that an internal system that exempted high-profile users, including former U.S. President Donald Trump, from some or all of its content moderation rules needs a major overhaul.
The report by the Oversight Board, which was more than a year in the making, said the system “is flawed in key areas which the company must address.”
Meta asked the board to look into the system after The Wall Street Journal reported last year that it was being abused by many of its elite users, who were posting material that would result in penalties for ordinary people, including for harassment and incitement of violence.
Facebook’s rules reportedly didn’t seem to apply to some VIP users while others faced reviews of rule-breaking posts that never happened, according to the Journal article, which said the system had at least 5.8 million exempted users as of 2020.
The system — known as “XCheck,” or cross-check — was exposed in Facebook documents leaked by Frances Haugen, a former product manager turned whistleblower who captured worldwide headlines with revelations alleging that the social media company prioritized profits over online safety and galvanized regulators into cracking down on hate speech and misinformation.
Nick Clegg, Meta’s president for global affairs, tweeted that the company requested the review of the system “so that we can continue our work to improve the program.”
To fully address the board’s recommendations, “we’ve agreed to respond within 90 days,” he added.
The company has said cross-check, which applies to Facebook and Instagram, was designed to prevent “overpolicing,” or mistakenly removing content thought to be breaking the platform’s rules.
The Oversight Board’s report said that the cross-check system resulted in users being treated unequally and that it led to delays in taking down content that violated the rules because there were up to five separate checks. Decisions on average took more than five days, it found.
Read more: Meta brings Facebook Reels to Bangladesh
For content posted by American users, the average decision took 12 days, and for Afghanistan and Syria, it was 17 days. In some cases, it took a lot longer: one piece of content waited 222 days — more than seven months — for a decision, the report said, without providing further details.
Among its 32 recommendations, the board said Meta “should prioritize expression that is important for human rights, including expression which is of special public importance.”
Human rights defenders, advocates for marginalized communities, public officials and journalists should be given higher priority than others put on the cross-check list because they are business partners, such as big companies, political parties, musicians, celebrities and artists, the report said.
“If users included due to their commercial importance frequently post violating content, they should no longer benefit from special protection,” the board said.
Addressing other flaws, the board also urged Meta to remove or hide content while it’s being reviewed and said the company should “radically increase transparency around cross-check and how it operates,” such as outlining “clear, public criteria” on who gets to be on the list.
The board upheld Facebook’s decision to ban Trump last year out of concern he incited violence leading to the riot on the U.S. Capitol. But it said the company failed to mention the cross-check system in its request for a ruling. The company has until Jan. 7 to decide whether to let Trump back on.
Clegg said in a blog post that Meta has already been making changes to cross-check, including standardizing it so that it’s “run in a more consistent way,” opening up the system to content from all 3 billion Facebook users and holding annual reviews to verify its list of elite users and entities.
After widespread criticism that it failed to respond swiftly and effectively to misinformation, hate speech and harmful influence campaigns, Facebook set up the oversight panel as the ultimate referee of thorny content issues it faces. Members include a former Danish prime minister, the former editor-in-chief of British newspaper the Guardian, as well as legal scholars and human rights experts.
The board upheld Facebook’s decision to ban Trump last year out of concern he incited violence leading to the riot on the U.S. Capitol. But it said the company failed to mention the cross-check system in its request for a ruling. The company has until Jan. 7 to decide whether to let Trump back on.
Clegg said in a blog post that Meta has already been making changes to cross-check, including standardizing it so that it’s “run in a more consistent way,” opening up the system to content from all 3 billion Facebook users and holding annual reviews to verify its list of elite users and entities.
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After widespread criticism that it failed to respond swiftly and effectively to misinformation, hate speech and harmful influence campaigns, Facebook set up the oversight panel as the ultimate referee of thorny content issues it faces. Members include a former Danish prime minister, the former editor-in-chief of British newspaper the Guardian, as well as legal scholars and human rights experts.
Some critics have previously questioned the board’s independence and said its narrow content decisions seemed to distract from wider problems within Facebook and concerns about government regulation.
Trump probe: Court halts Mar-a-Lago special master review
A unanimous federal appeals court on Thursday ended an independent review of documents seized from former President Donald Trump’s Florida estate, removing a hurdle the Justice Department said had delayed its criminal investigation into the retention of top-secret government information.
The decision by the three-judge panel represents a significant win for federal prosecutors, clearing the way for them to use as part of their investigation the entire tranche of documents seized during an Aug. 8 FBI search of Mar-a-Lago. It also amounts to a sharp repudiation of arguments by Trump’s lawyers, who for months had said that the former president was entitled to have a so-called “special master” conduct a neutral review of the thousands of documents taken from the property.
The ruling from the Atlanta-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit had been expected given the skeptical questions the judges directed at a Trump lawyer during arguments last week, and because two of the three judges on the panel had already ruled in favor of the Justice Department in an earlier dispute over the special master. The decision was a unanimous opinion from the panel of Republican appointees, including two who were selected by Trump. In it, the court rejected each argument by Trump and his attorneys for why a special master was necessary, including his claims that various seized records were protected by attorney-client privilege or executive privilege.
“It is indeed extraordinary for a warrant to be executed at the home of a former president — but not in a way that affects our legal analysis or otherwise gives the judiciary license to interfere in an ongoing investigation,” the judges wrote.
Read more: Musk restores Trump’s Twitter account after online poll
A Trump spokesperson said Thursday’s decision was “purely procedural” and did not address the “impropriety” of the raid, and promised that the ex-president would “continue to fight” against the Justice Department. Lawyers for Trump did not immediately respond when asked if they would appeal the ruling.
The special master litigation has played out alongside an ongoing investigation examining the potential criminal mishandling of national defense information as well as efforts to possibly obstruct the documents probe. Attorney General Merrick Garland last month appointed Jack Smith, a veteran public corruption prosecutor, to serve as special counsel overseeing that investigation. It remains unclear how much longer the investigation will last, or who, if anyone, might be charged. But the probe has shown signs of intensifying, with investigators questioning multiple Trump associates about the documents and granting one key ally immunity to ensure his testimony before a federal grand jury. And the appeals court decision is likely to speed the investigation along by cutting short the outside review of the records.
The conflict over the special master began just weeks after the FBI’s search, when Trump sued in federal court in Florida seeking the appointment of an independent arbiter to review the roughly 13,000 documents the Justice Department says were taken from the home. A federal judge, Aileen Cannon, granted the Trump team’s request, naming veteran Brooklyn judge Raymond Dearie to serve as special master and tasking him with reviewing the seized records and filtering out from the criminal investigation any documents that might be covered by claims of executive privilege or attorney-client privilege.
Read more: Jan. 6 panel summons Trump, shows startling new video
She also barred the Justice Department from using in its criminal investigation any of the seized records, including the roughly 100 with classification markings, pending the completion of Dearie’s work.
The Justice Department objected to the appointment, saying it was an unnecessary hindrance to its criminal investigation and that Trump had no credible basis to invoke either attorney-client privilege or executive privilege to shield the records from investigators.
It sought, as a first step, to regain access to the classified documents. A federal appeals panel sided with prosecutors in September, permitting the Justice Department to resume its review of the documents with classification markings. Two of the judges on that panel — Andrew Brasher and Britt Grant, both Trump appointees — were part of Thursday’s ruling as well. The department also pressed for unfettered access to the much larger trove of unclassified documents, saying such records could contain important evidence for their investigation.
In its ruling Thursday, the appeals court directed Cannon to dismiss the lawsuit that gave rise to Dearie’s appointment and suggested Trump had no legal basis to challenge the search in the first place.
“The law is clear. We cannot write a rule that allows any subject of a search warrant to block government investigations after the execution of the warrant. Nor can we write a rule that allows only former presidents to do so,” the judges wrote.
“Either approach,” they added, “would be a radical reordering of our caselaw limiting the federal courts’ involvement in criminal investigations. And both would violate bedrock separation-of-powers limitations.”
Musk restores Trump’s Twitter account after online poll
Elon Musk reinstated Donald Trump’s account on Twitter on Saturday, reversing a ban that has kept the former president off the social media site since a pro-Trump mob attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as Congress was poised to certify Joe Biden’s election victory.
Musk made the announcement in the evening after holding a poll that asked Twitter users to click “yes” or “no” on whether Trump’s account should be restored. The “yes” vote won, with 51.8%.
“The people have spoken. Trump will be reinstated. Vox Populi, Vox Dei,” Musk tweeted, using a Latin phrase meaning “the voice of the people, the voice of God.”
Read more: Musk gives remaining Twitter staff till Thursday to go “hardcore” or leave
Shortly afterward Trump’s account, which had earlier appeared as suspended, reappeared on the platform complete with his former tweets, more than 59,000 of them. However his followers were gone, at least initially.
It is not clear whether Trump would actually return to Twitter. An irrepressible tweeter before he was banned, Trump has said in the past that he would not rejoin even if his account was reinstated. He has been relying on his own, much smaller social media site, Truth Social, which he launched after being blocked from Twitter.
And on Saturday, during a video speech to a Republican Jewish group meeting in Las Vegas, Trump said that he was aware of Musk’s poll but that he saw “a lot of problems at Twitter,” according to Bloomberg.
“I hear we’re getting a big vote to also go back on Twitter. I don’t see it because I don’t see any reason for it,” Trump was quoted as saying by Bloomberg. “It may make it, it may not make it,” he added, apparently referring to Twitter’s recent internal upheavals.
The prospect of restoring Trump’s presence to the platform follows Musk’s purchase last month of Twitter — an acquisition that has fanned widespread concern that the billionaire owner will allow purveyors of lies and misinformation to flourish on the site. Musk has frequently expressed his belief that Twitter had become too restrictive of freewheeling speech.
His efforts to reshape the site have been both swift and chaotic. Musk has fired many of the company’s 7,500 full-time workers and an untold number of contractors who are responsible for content moderation and other crucial responsibilities. His demand that remaining employees pledge to “extremely hardcore” work triggered a wave of resignations, including hundreds of software engineers.
Read more: 'Be careful what you wish for': Musk discusses Twitter, workload at G-20 forum
Users have reported seeing increased spam and scams on their feeds and in their direct messages, among other glitches, in the aftermath of the mass layoffs and worker exodus. Some programmers who were fired or resigned this week warned that Twitter may soon fray so badly it could actually crash.
Musk’s online survey, which ran for 24 hours before ending Saturday evening, concluded with 51.8% of more than 15 million votes favoring the restoration of Trump’s Twitter’ account. It comes four days after Trump announced his candidacy for the presidency in 2024.
Trump lost his access to Twitter two days after his supporters stormed the Capitol, soon after the former president had exhorted them to “fight like hell.” Twitter dropped his account after Trump wrote a pair of tweets that the company said cast further doubts on the legitimacy of the presidential election and raised risks for the Biden presidential inauguration.
After the Jan. 6 attack, Trump was also kicked off Facebook and Instagram, which are owned by Meta Platforms, and Snapchat. His ability to post videos to his YouTube channel was also suspended. Facebook is set to reconsider Trump’s account suspension in January.
Throughout his tenure as president, Trump’s use of social media posed a significant challenge to major social media platforms that sought to balance the public’s interest in hearing from public officials with worries about misinformation, bigotry, harassment and incitement of violence.
But in a speech at an auto conference in May, Musk asserted that Twitter’s ban of Trump was a “morally bad decision” and “foolish in the extreme.”
Earlier this month, Musk, who completed the $44 billion takeover of Twitter in late October, declared that the company wouldn’t let anyone who had been kicked off the site return until Twitter had established procedures on how to do so, including forming a “content moderation council.”
Read more: Musk's latest Twitter cuts: Outsourced content moderators
On Friday, Musk tweeted that the suspended Twitter accounts for the comedian Kathy Griffin, the Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson and the conservative Christian news satire website Babylon Bee had been reinstated. He added that a decision on Trump had not yet been made. He also responded “no” when someone on Twitter asked him to reinstate the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ account.
In a tweet Friday, the Tesla CEO described the company’s new content policy as “freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach.”
He explained that a tweet deemed to be “negative” or to include “hate” would be allowed on the site but would be visible only to users who specifically searched for it. Such tweets also would be “demonetized, so no ads or other revenue to Twitter,” Musk said.
Trump looking to defy history with 3rd run for president
Former President Donald Trump is preparing to launch his third campaign for the White House on Tuesday, looking to move on from disappointing midterm defeats and defy history amid signs that his grip on the Republican Party is waning.
Trump had hoped to use the GOP's expected gains in last week's elections as a springboard to vault himself to his party's nomination by locking in early support to keep potential challengers at bay. Instead, he now finds himself being blamed for backing a series of losing candidates after disappointing results in which Democrats retained control of the Senate and House control remains too early to call.
“Hopefully, tomorrow will turn out to be one of the most important days in the history of our Country!” Trump wrote on his social media network on Monday. An announcement was expected at 9 p.m. EST Tuesday from his club in Palm Beach.
Read more: US midterm election: Democrats repel Republicans backed by Trump in several left-leaning states
Another campaign is a remarkable turn for any former president, much less one who made history as the first to be impeached twice and whose term ended with his supporters violently storming the U.S. Capitol in a deadly bid to halt the peaceful transition of power on Jan. 6, 2021. Just one president in U.S. history has been elected to two nonconsecutive terms: Grover Cleveland in 1884 and 1892.
Trump is also facing a series of intensifying criminal investigations, including a Justice Department probe into the hundreds of documents with classified markings that were discovered in boxes and drawers at his Mar-a-Lago club.
Aides and allies had urged Trump to wait until after the midterms were over — and then until after a Dec. 6 Senate runoff election in Georgia — to announce his plans. But Trump, eager to return to the spotlight, is also hoping to stave off a long list of potential challengers, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who cruised to reelection last week and is now being urged by many in his party to run for president a well.
Trump has tried to blame Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell for the GOP’s performance — and McConnell allies have criticized Rick Scott, the Florida senator who heads the Senate Republicans’ campaign committee.
However, Trump has received the brunt of criticism for elevating candidates in states like Pennsylvania and Arizona who were unappealing to general election voters because they embraced his lies about 2020 election or held hard-line views on issues like abortion that were out of step with the mainstream.
While Trump has the backing of the No. 3 House Republican, Rep. Elise Stefanik, others were already moving on.
Read more: Biden, Trump to make final appeals ahead of crucial midterms
Asked whether she would endorse Trump in 2024, Republican Sen. Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming told reporters Monday: “I don’t think that’s the right question. I think the question is, who is the current leader of the Republican Party?”
Asked who that was, she replied: “Ron DeSantis.”
Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, a longtime Trump critic, compared Trump to a pitcher who keeps losing after GOP disappointments in 2018, 2020 and now 2022.
“He’s been on the mound and lost three straight games. If we want to start winning, we need someone else on the mound. And we’ve got a very strong bench that can come out," Romney said. "I know, there’s some fans that love him. Just like, you know, an aging pitcher, they’re always fans that want to keep them there forever. But if you keep losing games, try to put some new players on the field.”
Others expressed concern that Trump’s announcement would be a distraction from the Georgia race and urged potential candidates to focus there.
“What’s really important for anybody who wants to be a 2024 candidate is to help us right now in 2022 to finish the cycle by winning the state of Georgia," said Sen. John Thune, R-S.D.
“We obviously had higher expectation in the Senate, which didn’t pan out. I think there are a lot of different things that contribute to that," Thune added. “But I do think that, you know, folks who were unduly focused on the 2020 election, that’s not a winning strategy with independent voices.”
Even the former president’s right-flank allies in the House Freedom Caucus kept their distance ahead of Trump's announcement.
“I am focused on what’s happening here,” said Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., the Freedom Caucus chairman, as lawmakers returned to Capitol Hill on Monday. “I’m just not paying attention to any of those things, so I don’t want to comment on that.”
Meanwhile, in Utah, 86 Republican lawmakers on Monday sent out a news release urging DeSantis to run, reflecting dissatisfaction with having Trump as their party’s standard-bearer. The state’s Mormon majority has long been skeptical of Trump’s isolationism and foul language.
And in Michigan, Paul Cordes, chief of staff of the Michigan Republican Party, penned a four-page internal memo that criticized Trump-backed candidates for “statewide sweeps” that will give Democrats full control of the state's government for the first time in 40 years. That includes Tudor Dixon, who lost the governor’s race to Democratic incumbent Gretchen Whitmer by double digits.
Trump, Cordes wrote, was “popular amongst our grassroots and a motivating factor for his supporters, but provided challenges on a statewide ballot, especially with independents and women in the midterm election.”
Biden, Trump to make final appeals ahead of crucial midterms
An election year that unfolded against the backdrop of economic turmoil, the elimination of federal abortion rights and broad concerns about the future of democracy is concluding with a final full day of campaigning in which leaders of both parties will issue urgent appeals to their supporters.
President Joe Biden is holding a Monday evening rally in Maryland, where Democrats have one of their best opportunities to reclaim a Republican-held governor's seat. The appearance is in line with Biden's late-campaign strategy of sticking largely to Democratic strongholds rather than stumping in more competitive territory, where control of Congress may ultimately be decided.
His predecessor, former President Donald Trump, will hold his final rally of the campaign in Ohio. As he readies another run for the White House, Ohio holds special meaning for the former president because it was one of the first places where he was able to prove his enduring power among Republican voters. His backing of JD Vance was crucial in helping the author and venture capitalist — and onetime Trump critic — secure the GOP's nomination for a Senate seat.
Read more: Biden slams GOP, Trump warns of 'tyranny' ahead of midterms
With more than 41 million ballots already cast, Monday's focus will be ensuring that supporters either meet early voting deadlines or make plans to show up in person on Tuesday. The results will have a powerful impact on the final two years of Biden's presidency, shaping policy on everything from government spending to military support for Ukraine.
In the first national election since the violent Jan. 6 insurrection, the final days of the campaign focused on fundamental questions about the nation's political values.
Campaigning in New York for Gov. Kathy Hochul on Sunday, Biden said Republicans were willing to condone last year’s mob attack at the Capitol and that, after the recent assault of Paul Pelosi, husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, some in that party made “light of it” or were “making excuses.”
“There’s never been a time in my career where we’ve glorified violence based on a political preference,” the president said.
Meanwhile, a Sunday evening Trump rally in Miami, a reference to Nancy Pelosi prompted changes of “Lock her up!" — a stark reminder of the nation's deep divide.
Trump was campaigning for Florida Sen. Marco Rubio's reelection, but also focused on his own political future. After telling a crowd in Iowa last week that he's “very, very, very probably” going to run for president again, he again teased the possibility on Sunday and encouraged supporters to watch his Ohio rally.
“I will probably have to do it again, but stay tuned,” Trump said, teasing the Monday event. “We have a big, big rally. Stay tuned for tomorrow night.”
Read more: Amidst recession fears, Biden has to convince Americans job gains mean better days ahead
Not attending the Miami event was Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, who is running for reelection against Democrat Charlie Crist and is widely considered Trump’s most formidable challenger if he also were to get into the White House race.
DeSantis held his own, separate events Sunday in other parts of the state where he stuck to the centerpieces of his reelection campaign, including railing against COVID-19 vaccine mandates. The governor’s counter political programing avoided antagonizing Trump — meaning it didn’t deliver the dueling 2024 events that could be in his and Trump’s near future.
Trump said Sunday that Florida would “reelect Ron DeSantis as your governor.” But he was more confrontational during a Pennsylvania rally on Saturday, referring to Florida’s governor as “Ron DeSanctimonious.”
It’s a rivalry that’s been simmering for more than a year as DeSantis has taken increasingly bold steps to boost his national profile and build a deep fundraising network — even as Trump remains unquestionably the party's most popular leader.
For national Democrats, meanwhile, the focus is on their narrow control of the House and Senate, which could evaporate after Tuesday.
Voters may rebuke the party controlling the White House and Congress amid surging inflation, concerns about crime and pessimism about the direction of the country. History suggests the party in power will suffer significant losses in the midterms.
Biden has made the case that the nation's very democracy is on the ballot and the first lady went to Texas on Sunday to sound a similar alarm.
“So much is at stake in this election,” Jill Biden said in Houston. “We must speak up on justice and democracy.”
Traveling in Chicago Vice President Kamala Harris said, “These attacks on our democracy will not only directly impact the people around our country, but arguably around the world.”
Trump has long falsely claimed he lost the 2020 election only because Democrats cheated and has even begun raising the possibility of election fraud this year. Federal intelligence agencies are warning of the possibility of political violence from far-right extremists.
Ronna McDaniel, the Republican National Committee chairwoman, said Democrats were “inflation deniers,” trying to deflect the other side’s branding of her party as anti-democracy for rejecting the results of 2020’s free and fair presidential election simply because Trump lost it.
“If we win back the House and the Senate, it’s the American people saying to Joe Biden, we want you to work on behalf of us and we want you to work across the aisle to solve the problems that we are dealing with,” McDaniel told CNN.
Biden slams GOP, Trump warns of 'tyranny' ahead of midterms
President Joe Biden pilloried Republicans up and down ballots across the nation as election deniers who reveled in political violence, while his predecessor, Donald Trump, urged voters to oppose “growing left-wing tyranny" on the final Sunday before midterm elections that could reshape Washington's balance of power.
Wrapping up a five-state, four-day campaign swing with an evening rally at Sarah Lawrence College in Yonkers, New York, Biden championed Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul. She's locked in a tight race with Rep. Lee Zeldin, who is looking to become the state's first GOP governor since George Pataki left office in 2006.
The president said hundreds of Republican candidates for state, federal and local office are "election deniers, who say that I did not win the election, even though hundreds of attempts to challenge that have all failed, even in Republican courts.”
Biden said that for the deniers, “There are only two outcomes for any election: either they win or they were cheated.”
Biden said Republicans were willing to condone last year's insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and that, after the recent attack on Paul Pelosi, husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, some in that party made “light of it” or were “making excuses.”
“There's never been a time in my career where we've glorified violence based on a political preference," the president said.
Read more: Amidst recession fears, Biden has to convince Americans job gains mean better days ahead
More than 39 million people have voted early in Tuesday's races, which will decide control of Congress and key governorships — the first national election since a mob overran the Capitol. Earlier Sunday, as Trump addressed supporters in Miami, a reference to the House speaker prompted chants of “Lock her up!" — a stark reminder of just how far apart each side is.
Trump is hoping that a strong GOP showing on Election Day will generate momentum for the 2024 run that he is expected to launch this month.
“I will probably have to do it again, but stay tuned,” Trump said, teasing an event he has with Republican Senate candidate in Ohio, JD Vance, for Monday. "We have a big, big rally. Stay tuned for tomorrow night.”
Trump also told the crowd that "every free and loving American needs to understand that the time to stand up to this growing left-wing tyranny is right now,” while calling on his supporters to reject the “radical left-wing maniacs” and adding that Hispanics would show up strong for GOP candidates.
Sen. Marco Rubio joined Trump at the rally as he seeks reelection. Not attending the Miami event was Florida's Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, who is running for reelection against Democrat Charlie Crist and is widely considered Trump’s most formidable challenger if he also were to get into the White House race.
Instead, DeSantis held his own, separate events Sunday in another part of the state where he stuck to the centerpieces of his reelection campaign, including railing against COVID-19 vaccine mandates and “wokeness” in schools and other parts of society. The governor's counter political programing avoided antagonizing Trump — meaning it didn't deliver the dueling 2024 events that could be in his and Trump's near future.
Trump said Sunday that Florida would “reelect Ron DeSantis as your governor.” But he was more confrontational during a Pennsylvania rally on Saturday night, referring to Florida's governor as “Ron DeSanctimonious.”
It's a rivalry that's been simmering for more than a year as DeSantis has taken increasingly bold steps to boost his national profile and build a deep fundraising network.
Trump remains the most popular figure in the Republican Party. Still, many of his supporters are eager for the prospect that DeSantis might run, seeing him as a natural successor to Trump, without the former president's considerable political negatives.
Read more: G-20 summit could put Biden in the same room with Putin and MBS
For national Democrats, meanwhile, the focus is on the fate of their narrow control of the House and Senate, which could evaporate after Tuesday.
New York Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, head of the Democrats’ House campaign arm, is in a tough contest for his seat. But he insisted Sunday that Democrats are “going to do better than people think on Tuesday,” adding that his party is “not perfect” but “we are responsible adults who believe in this democracy.”
“I think this race is razor-close and I think everybody who cares about the extremism in this ‘MAGA’ movement — the racism, the antisemitism, the violence — needs to get out and vote and that’s not just Democrats, it’s independents and fair-minded Republicans,” Maloney told NBC’s “Meet the Press,” referring to former President Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan.
Voters may rebuke the party controlling the White House and Congress amid surging inflation, concerns about crime and pessimism about the direction of the country. History suggests the party in power will suffer significant losses in the midterms.
On a weekend that also featured Democratic rallies by former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, first lady Jill Biden attended church services while campaigning in Houston on Sunday. Like her husband and his presidential predecessors, she argued that democracy itself was on the ballot.
"So much is at stake in this election," she said. "We must speak up on justice and democracy.”
Traveling in Chicago Vice President Kamala Harris struck a similar tone, saying, “These attacks on our democracy will not only directly impact the people around our country, but arguably around the world.”
Trump has long falsely claimed he lost the 2020 election only because Democrats cheated and has even begun raising the possibility of election fraud this year. Federal intelligence agencies are warning of the possibility of political violence from far-right extremists.
Ronna McDaniel, the Republican National Committee chairwoman, said Democrats were “inflation deniers,” trying to deflect the other side's branding of her party as anti-democracy for rejecting the results of 2020's free and fair presidential election simply because Trump lost it.
“If we win back the House and the Senate, it’s the American people saying to Joe Biden, we want you to work on behalf of us and we want you to work across the aisle to solve the problems that we are dealing with," McDaniel told CNN's “State of the Union."
Lee Saunders, president of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, the nation’s largest union of public employees, has been traveling the country rallying for Democrats. He said, “It’s going to be hard, it’s going to be tough, but we aren’t giving up hope."
“Clearly people are concerned about the economy," Saunders said. But he added that voters also are “concerned about the freedoms being taken away from them, whether you’re talking about voting rights or whether your talking about a women’s right to choose.”