Quote:anonymous person on internet forum wrote:
This effort was extraordinarily stupid. Reading the article, it's apparent that the people in the group chat wanted to support Israel and genuinely felt the protests were antisemitic. Okay.
And they seemed to genuinely feel that the protests were illegal. One user complained about having to "grovel" to elected officials to get them to do their jobs. Okay.
But they moronically thought that having the mayor use brute force would somehow protect Jewish students from antisemitism and quell popular criticism of Israel. That was baffling. Do none of these people realize that sending in the NYPD to arrest a bunch of students will only help the protesters by making them look like martyrs? The obvious answer was to denounce the protests and move on.
These men had no comprehension of how social media works or what the public mood is.
Son of prominent conservative family sentenced to nearly 4 years for Jan. 6
A judge rejected the government request for terrorism enhancement but likened the actions of Leo Brent Bozell IV to those who spearheaded the riot.
A federal judge on Friday sentenced the son and grandson of prominent American conservative media figures to nearly four years in prison, saying Leo Brent Bozell IV led the charge of an angry mob at multiple key points in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack and lied at trial to cover up his actions.
Bozell broke through police lines guarding a northwest staircase, smashed windows through which hundreds of rioters entered the Capitol’s west side, then forced open its Rotunda doors from inside, allowing in hundreds more on the building’s east side. He raided an office of then-Speaker Nancy A. Pelosi (D-Calif.) and redirected a security camera to hide intruders’ actions in the Senate floor and gallery.
U.S. District Judge John D. Bates agreed with prosecutor Ashley Akers, who said that “without rioters like Mr. Bozell, this riot would not have been successful,” and that the defendant facilitated the action of hundreds of others.
While the judge likened Bozell’s conduct to that of Proud Boys’ member Dominic Pezzola and Texas Three Percenters recruiter Guy Reffitt — who similarly spearheaded rioters behind them to break into the building and overwhelm police — the 45-month sentence he handed Bozell was only a third of the nearly 12 years sought by prosecutors and years less than what Pezzola and Reffitt received.
The judge, a George H.W. Bush appointee, also rejected prosecutors’ unusual request for a terrorism enhancement for Bozell. Bates said that Bozell, a home improvement sales manager and father of three, should not carry the label of a “domestic terrorist” for life. Doing so “grossly overstated” his culpability, and his conduct did not rank among the “top five or six” Jan. 6 defendants such as Proud Boys convicted of seditious conspiracy.
Still, the judge said Bozell’s brazen lies on the witness stand at trial contradicted video evidence, common sense and sentencing statements from supporters attesting to his good character and community influence. “What happened on Jan. 6 is no way to express political beliefs,” the judge concluded.
Bozell, 44, of Palmyra, Pa., was convicted after a bench trial in September of 10 counts, including felony charges of assaulting police, rioting, destroying government property and obstructing Congress’s confirmation of the election.
Prosecutors sought one of the longest Jan. 6 sentences for Bozell, saying his crime met the federal statutory definition of terrorism by seeking to stop or intimidate Congress from certifying the results of the 2020 election “through the planned, threatened, and actual use of force.”
“He was so determined to advance his political goals … that he ransacked the building with others, and he did so through force,” Akers said.
For a week before the breach, Bozell texted about taking the Capitol and hanging traitors, Akers said. Afterward, he like other participants tried to blame “antifa” and police for letting rioters in, despite his firsthand role in events. He also encouraged his brother to get him to persuade their father to retract his public condemnation of violence on Jan. 6.
Bozell is the grandnephew of William F. Buckley Jr., founder of the National Review and a leading conservative intellectual. His father is the founder of a group of right-wing news outlets, including the Media Research Center, NewsBusters and CNSNews. Bozell’s grandfather L. Brent Bozell Jr. was a speechwriter for Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-Wis.), ghostwriter for 1964 GOP presidential nominee Barry Goldwater, and a prominent voice for conservative American Catholicism.
Bozell Jr. helped organize the first antiabortion march on Washington in June 1970 before he was arrested at another clinic demonstration and given a suspended sentence for unlawful entry, destruction of property and assaulting a police officer with a five-foot wooden cross.
Defense attorneys asked for no more than three years in prison for Bozell IV, who is also known as “Zeeker,” saying any longer would be devastating for his wife and three school-age daughters.
Bozell “is a good person who did a terrible thing,” attorney Eric Snyder said.
Bozell regrets his decisions and is ashamed of his actions, and while he had believed that the election was “rigged,” he now accepts that Biden is president, his attorney said.
In a statement to the court and onlookers, which included his wife and parents, Bozell apologized to D.C. and Capitol Police, lawmakers and congressional staff. He also apologized to “the people of D.C.," where he said he believed he was no longer welcome but would “go door-to-door and apologize” if he could for trashing what he said was the city that raised him.
“It’s all my fault,” he said to his family. “I put a stain on my family forever.”
In one of 24 letters from supporters filed to the court, the defendant’s father, Leo Brent Bozell III, said his son is a “man of peace” who made a mistake. But he criticized prosecutors for seeking the terrorism enhancement.
“I have remained silent for the past 3½ years because I didn’t want to tip the apple cart of justice. But given what I saw in the trial, and more importantly learning about this terrorism enhancement, I no longer can. I believe there is more at play here,” Bozell III wrote. “I am not pleading my son’s innocence, only that his punishment match the crime.”
It’s not Joe Biden’s poll numbers that worry me, exactly. It’s the denial of what’s behind them.
Among likely voters, Biden is trailing Donald Trump by one point in Wisconsin and three points in Pennsylvania. He’s ahead by a point in Michigan. Sweeping those three states is one route to re-election, and they’re within reach.
Still, Biden is losing to Trump. His path is narrowing. In 2020, Biden didn’t just win Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. He also won Arizona, Georgia and Nevada. Now he’s behind in those states by six points, nine points and 13 points in the latest Times/Siena/Philadelphia Inquirer poll. Have those states turned red? No. That same poll finds Democrats leading in the Arizona and Nevada Senate races. The Democrats are also leading in the Senate races in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
National polls find Democrats slightly ahead of Republicans for control of congress. The “Never Biden” vote now looks larger than the “Never Trump” vote. The electorate hasn’t turned on Democrats; a crucial group of voters has turned on Biden.
This week, the Biden team appeared to shake up the race by challenging Trump to two debates. One will take place early, on June 27. The other will be in September. Biden’s video was full of bluster. “Donald Trump lost two debates to me in 2020,” he said. “Since then, he hasn’t shown up for a debate. Now he’s acting like he wants to debate me again. Well, make my day, pal. I’ll even do it twice.”
Biden, it seemed, was calling Trump’s bluff. He wanted the fight. But Biden wants fewer debates, not more. On the same day, he pulled out of the three debates scheduled by the Commission on Presidential Debates for September and October. He rebuffed the Trump campaign’s call for four debates. “I’ll even do it twice” is misdirection. He’ll only do it twice.
This is bad precedent and questionable politics. Debates do more to focus and inform the public than anything else during the campaign. Biden is cutting the number of debates by a third and he’s making it easier for future candidates to abandon debates altogether.
Strategically, it’s easy to see why a candidate in the lead wouldn’t want to blow his margin on a bad debate. That’s why Trump skipped the Republican primary debates. But Biden is behind. He needs opportunities to prove to voters that they are wrong about him. He needs opportunities to persuade them to ditch their nostalgia for Trump. He could have had three chances, or four, maybe more. Now he has two and only one will come after Labor Day, when it matters most.
Biden, in other words, is continuing to run like a candidate who is winning rather than one who is losing. He and the Democrats need a theory of why he’s trailing in the polls and what to do about it. Here are the most obvious:
The polls are wrong. This appears to be Biden’s view. “The polling data has been wrong all along,” he told CNN last week. Axios reports that polling denial is pervasive in Biden’s campaign.
There are two things to say about this. The first is that it’s false. Even as pundits predicted a red wave in 2022, the polls showed Republicans falling short, and they were right. “The polls were more accurate in 2022 than in any cycle since at least 1998,” FiveThirtyEight reported.
The second is that, to the extent polls have been wrong in recent presidential elections, they’ve been wrong because they’ve been biased toward Democrats. Trump ran stronger in 2016 and 2020 than polls predicted.
Sure, the polls could be wrong. But that could mean Trump is stronger, not weaker, than he looks.
It’s the media’s fault. As a member of the media, I’ve been hearing this one more often. Biden made the case himself at the White House Correspondents Dinner. “I’m sincerely not asking of you to take sides but asking you to rise up to the seriousness of the moment; move past the horse-race numbers and the gotcha moments and the distractions, the sideshows that have come to dominate and sensationalize our politics; and focus on what’s actually at stake,” Biden said.
It’s always the case that the media could be doing a better job. But as an explanation for Biden’s poll numbers, this doesn’t hold up. In April, NBC News released a national poll breaking the race down by where respondents got their news. Biden led by 49 points among voters who relied on newspapers. He led by 20 points among voters relying on national network news. In the slightly archaic-sounding category of “digital websites,” Biden led by 10 points. If the election were limited to voters relying on the kinds of outlets Biden was scolding, he would win in a landslide.
But Biden is behind, and here’s why: Among voters who rely on social media, Trump led by four points. Among voters who rely on cable news, Trump led by eight. Voters who get their news from YouTube and Google favor Trump by 16 points. And voters who don’t follow political news at all favor Trump by 26 points.
It’s a bad time to be an incumbent. As my colleague Paul Krugman notes, Biden is more popular than the leaders of peer countries like Canada and Britain. This may just be a bad time to be an incumbent.
But is that true in the United States? The midterm elections of 2022 were widely expected to be a disaster for the incumbent Democrats and yet they survived just fine. Democrats are polling well in Senate elections. Morning Consult, a polling firm, tracks approval ratings for all 50 governors, and they find no evidence of a broad anti-incumbent mood. In January, every governor save Mississippi’s Tate Reeves was viewed more favorably than unfavorably by his or her state’s voters.
Nor was there obvious anti-incumbent fury in the Times-Siena poll. Fifty-seven percent of Pennsylvania voters approve of Gov. Josh Shapiro’s performance, while 25 percent disapprove — a net approval of 32 points. Bob Casey, the state’s senior senator, had a net approval of 18 points. Biden’s net approval was negative 22 points.
Polls are not showing an anti-incumbent mood. They’re showing an anti-Biden mood.
Voters are angry about rising prices and high interest rates. In the Times-Siena poll, 21 percent of voters say the economy will drive their vote, while 7 percent say inflation is their top issue. By contrast, immigration is the top issue for 12 percent of voters, abortion is the top issue for 11 percent, the war between Israelis and Palestinians is the top issue for 2 percent and crime is the top issue for fewer than 1 percent.
Prices are the most common explanation for Biden’s troubles. But Democrats performed — and polled! — well in 2022 when the economy was in far worse shape than it is now. And Biden’s numbers aren’t following the pattern we’ve seen with other recent presidents.
Voters turned on Ronald Reagan during the 1981 recession but rewarded him for economic recovery in 1984. High unemployment decimated Democrats’ congressional majorities in 2010, but even a sluggish recovery was enough for Barack Obama to poll ahead of Mitt Romney in May 2012.
Biden’s recovery is stronger than what either Reagan or Obama saw. In 1984, inflation was higher than it is now, unemployment was higher than it is now and the interest rate on a 30-year mortgage was above 13 percent — almost double what it is now. In May of 2012, unemployment was over 8 percent; it’s 3.9 percent now. Yet Biden is polling worse than Reagan and Obama were at this point in their re-election bids.
Voters think Biden is too liberal. The Biden administration has worried about shoring up its left flank, particularly since the war in Gaza. But the Times-Siena poll found that while Biden is losing only 2 percent of his “very liberal” voters from 2020 to Trump, he is losing 16 percent of his supporters who described themselves as moderate and conservative.
Tacking to the center is an old move in politics and it’s long been core to Biden’s identity as a politician. You can find video on C-SPAN of Biden, in 1995, coming out in support of a constitutional amendment to keep the federal budget balanced. That’s a horrible idea fiscally, but it reflects instincts Biden used to have about how to win over more conservative voters.
In 2020, Biden ran as the moderate alternative in a Democratic primary in which Bernie Sanders led many of the polls. He vocally opposed ideas like defunding the police. But after the primary, Biden welcomed the left into his coalition and his government. On the substance, I prefer the Biden of 2024 to the Biden of 1995, but the shift may have cost him a political identity that was once central to his success.
I found myself, this week, watching Trump’s May 1 rally in Waukesha, Wis. Most of it features Trump’s constant stream of overstatement, false nostalgia, wild braggadocio and barely veiled threat. But the tenor changed when Trump turned to abortion. Here, Trump swung suddenly to the left of his own base. The goal, he said, was “to get abortion out of the federal government. Everybody wanted that. That was uniform. Then about 10 years ago, people lost their way. They started talking about — how many months?”
This is Trump’s pivot on abortion. Unlike other Republicans, he’s saying the goal wasn’t, and isn’t, a nationwide abortion ban. The goal was letting states decide for themselves, and now they are.
“There are some very conservative states that voted a very much more liberal policy than anybody would’ve thought,” Trump said. “Very liberal policy, a couple of states. I won’t mention, but a couple of states really surprise people. But, basically the states decide on abortion. And people are absolutely thrilled with the way that’s going on.”
Thrilled? The one time you can hear the crowd boo Trump is during his abortion spiel. But he doesn’t back down. I don’t know if Trump’s effort to run to the center on abortion will work, but he’s definitely going to try, even if it offends his base. Is there any issue on which Biden is doing the same?
Voters think Biden is too old. This is the one that worries me most. Polls routinely find that majorities of as much as 70 percent to 80 percent think Biden is too old to be president. Fears about Biden’s age crested after the special counsel’s report questioned his memory. I argued then that Democrats should consider nominating another candidate at an open convention. But Biden gave a zesty State of the Union in which he seemed livelier and frankly younger than he had in years. That quieted his doubters, at least for a time.
But Biden has good days and bad days on the campaign. His State of the Union was strong. His recent interview on CNN was weaker. A lot of voters see Biden only through the occasional clip, and particularly if they’re getting their news through social media or YouTube or TikTok, they’re seeing a lot of clips from Biden’s worst moments.
Biden’s age also shows up in the absence of great moments ricocheting across social media. If you compare his interviews and speeches with those of Obama or Bill Clinton before him — or especially with the Biden of the 2012 vice-presidential debate or the 2016 convention — his slippage as a campaigner is clear. Communication skills aren’t everything, but they aren’t nothing, either.
The optimistic take is that the bar for Biden is low and a strong debate performance or two will win him an unusual amount of support. The pessimistic take is that a lot of voters have concluded that Biden isn’t up to the job. Democrats have been telling them they’re wrong, but telling voters they’re wrong is a good way to lose an election.
Biden has some months yet to prove otherwise. The June debate will be his best opportunity. Doubts about age are really doubts about capability, and all Biden needs to do is persuade enough voters that he is more capable than the erratic criminal defendant across the stage, who turns 78 next month. But if the debate goes poorly, or if Biden’s numbers deteriorate further, Democrats will need to decide between a Biden-Harris ticket that is very likely to lose or an open convention.
Democrats need to redefine Trump. “Biden is not running against God,” as Bernie Sanders put it. “He is running against Donald Trump.” A year ago, Democrats were pretty confident than as the possibility of a Trump presidency came closer, voters would realize what they were risking and come home to Biden. That looks less likely with each passing day.
The mistake Democrats keep making about Trump again and again is to assume that the rest of the country will see Trump as they see Trump. But Trump won in 2016 and he came scarily close in 2020; absent the pandemic, he may well have been re-elected.
What Democrats want to do in 2024 is run against the threat Trump poses to American democracy. “Whether democracy is still America’s sacred cause is the most urgent question of our time, and it’s what the 2024 election is all about,” Biden said on Jan. 5, in the speech that kicked off his re-election campaign. But it’s not working. Or, at least, it’s not working well enough.
There are other ways to run against Trump: He cut taxes for rich people and tried to cut Medicaid for poor people. He cut funding for the police before a crime wave and got rid of the National Security Council’s pandemic preparedness group before the coronavirus hit. He told the oil companies to give him a billion dollars because they’d get preferential treatment if he’s re-elected. His son-in-law, Jared Kushner, took $2 billion from Saudi Arabia to fund his private equity firm. Trump’s flagrant violations of democratic norms and basic decency often overshadow the banal ways in which he governed, or let others govern, in cruel, stupid and corrupt ways. Right now, the Biden campaign has much more money than the Trump campaign; it should be using it to redefine Trump in the ways that matter to the voters they need.
Biden is right about what he said on Jan. 5: Preserving democracy is the most urgent question of our time. But that means doing what’s necessary to beat Trump, even if it’s not what Democrats want to do to beat Trump.
What I fear Biden’s allies will do is deny the polls until Democrats wake up, as they have before, to the shocking news that Trump has won. That would be a sin against the cause they claim as sacred. The first step toward winning is changing course when you’re losing.
The Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court sees sufficient evidence that Israeli politicians and Hamas leaders are responsible for crimes against humanity.
Karim Khan said that he believes Netanyahu, his defense minister Yoav Gallant and three Hamas leaders — Yehya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif and Ismail Haniyeh — are responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip and Israel.
ICC seeks arrest warrants against Sinwar and Netanyahu for war crimes over October 7 attack and Gaza war
Kinda ironic having someone with the name Sinwar...being accused of war crimes.
Kinda ironic having someone with the name Sinwar...being accused of war crimes.
Frank Apisa wrote:"Al-Sinwar" literally translates to 'fisherman' or 'the crafter of fishing hooks' (in Arabic).Kinda ironic having someone with the name Sinwar...being accused of war crimes.
ICC prosecutor seeks arrest warrants for Israeli PM and Hamas officials for war crimes
Karim Khan applies for warrants relating to alleged crimes committed during 7 October attack and the ensuing war in Gaza
The chief prosecutor of the international criminal court has said he is seeking arrest warrants for senior Hamas and Israeli officials for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his defence minister, Yoav Gallant, a move that puts the post-second world war rules-based order to the test and presents new challenges for Israel’s western allies.
Karim Khan said his office had applied to the world court’s pre-trial chamber for arrest warrants for the military and political leaders on both sides for crimes committed during Hamas’s 7 October attack and the ensuing war in Gaza.
He named Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas chief in the Gaza Strip, and Mohammed Deif, the commander of its military wing, considered to be the masterminds of the 7 October assault, as well as Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of the group’s political bureau, who is based in Qatar, as wanted for crimes of extermination, murder, hostage-taking, rape, sexual assault and torture.
Netanyahu and Gallant are accused of extermination, causing starvation as a method of war, the denial of humanitarian relief supplies and deliberately targeting civilians.
“The world was shocked on 7 October when people were ripped from their homes, from their bedrooms in different kibbutzim … people have suffered enormously,” Khan told CNN on Monday. “We have a variety of evidence to support the applications we’ve submitted to the judges.”
“These acts demand accountability,” Khan’s office said in a statement.
The ICC has previously issued warrants for Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Muammar Gaddafi of Libya, and the Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony, but no leader of a “western-style” democracy has ever been issued a warrant. The court has moved remarkably quickly, by its usual standards, to request warrants within eight months; the case against Putin over his invasion of Ukraine took a year to build.
The world’s top court decided in 2021 that it had a mandate to investigate violence and war crimes committed by Israel and Palestinian factions in events dating back to 2014, although Israel is not a member of the court and does not recognise its authority. Israel’s establishment, and much of the public, have long maintained that the UN and associated bodies are biased against the Jewish state.
Khan visited the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing into Gaza in late October, and Israel and the West Bank in December, and had made clear that the scope of his office’s investigation would be expanded to include 7 October and its aftermath.
Last month, Netanyahu was publicly panic-stricken by the prospect of an ICC prosecution, and reportedly appealed to his ally Joe Biden, the US president, to intervene in any potential international legal action against Israel.
Monday’s statement notably does not include any Israel Defense Forces (IDF) officials, such as its chief of staff, Herzi Halevi, focusing instead on political decision-making.
Khan, the British ICC prosecutor, must request the warrants for the Hamas and Israeli suspects from a pre-trial panel of three judges, who take on average two months to consider the evidence and determine if the proceedings can move forward.
Daniel Machover, a co-founder of Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights, said: “This is massive news, albeit the wait to get to this point has been too long. The rule of law must now be upheld. The list of potential Israeli defendants is insufficient and the international crimes associated with settlements in the West Bank are notably absent but hopefully the ICC chamber will grant the application as soon as possible and more charges and defendants will be added.
“While not a single life has yet been saved or injury prevented through the application of the rule of criminal law, let’s hope for a deterrent effect from now.”
Condemnation of Khan’s decision from across the Israeli political spectrum was swift. Benny Gantz, a former military chief and member of Israel’s war cabinet alongside Netanyahu and Gallant, criticised the ICC’s announcement, saying Israel fought with “one of the strictest” moral codes and had a “robust judiciary capable of investigating itself”.
The Israeli opposition leader, Yair Lapid, called the ICC’s actions a “disaster”.
Hamas, too, was critical. The ICC prosecutor’s decision “equates the victim with the executioner”, the senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters.
Israel’s foreign minister, Israel Katz, said the chief prosecutor’s decision was “a historic disgrace that will be remembered forever”, and a special committee would be formed to “fight back” and work with world leaders to ensure that any such warrants were not enforced on Israel’s leadership.
While there is no imminent likelihood of prosecution, ICC warrants could put Israeli officials at risk of arrest in other countries, further deepening the country’s growing international isolation over its conduct in the war in Gaza. About 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed on 7 October, and about 35,000 people have been killed in the war in Gaza, according to the Palestinian health ministry, which does not differentiate between civilian and combatant deaths.
Khan made clear he was aware of the historical weight and potential ramifications of his unprecedented decision in a lengthy statement at The Hague on Monday.
“If we do not demonstrate our willingness to apply the law equally, if it is seen as being applied selectively, we will be creating the conditions for its collapse,” he said.
“Now, more than ever, we must collectively demonstrate that international humanitarian law, the foundational baseline for human conduct during conflict, applies to all individuals and applies equally across the situations addressed by my office and the court. This is how we will prove, tangibly, that the lives of all human beings have equal value.”
Israel is facing two other major international legal cases over its treatment of Palestinians.
In December, South Africa filed a case against Israel at the international court of justice (ICJ), alleging that its actions in Gaza breached the UN’s genocide convention, set up in 1948 in the aftermath of the Holocaust.
Israel denies those charges. The ICJ only hears cases between states, so it has no jurisdiction over Hamas.
In 2022, a UN general assembly resolution requested an advisory opinion from the ICJ on the “legal consequences arising from the policies and practices of Israel in the occupied Palestinian territory”, a move seen as important because while various UN bodies have found that aspects of the occupation are illegal, there has never been a judgment on whether the occupation itself, now in its 56th year, either is or has become unlawful.
One reason Donald Trump’s trial this month is so notable is that it is actually happening. As recently as last summer, it appeared that Trump would face four criminal trials ahead of the 2024 elections: two in state court and two in federal court. Today, it looks like the New York state hush money case will be the only one to reach a jury before November, and possibly ever. There is plenty of blame to go around for the delays. But one person who deserves a lot of that blame—or credit—is Trump himself.
As the press and voters debate whether Trump’s authoritarian tendencies could be checked in a prospective second term, it’s important to recognize that Trump is already escaping accountability thanks to the judges he installed during his first term, who have pushed off both federal cases against him.
During his presidency, courts acted as a major check on Trump—most importantly when he and his allies filed dozens of lawsuits across the country to try to overturn the results of the 2020 election. When those legal efforts failed, Trump turned to extralegal means to stay in power, culminating in a violent attack on the US Capitol.
Now, the judges Trump put in place are helping him evade responsibility for these and other actions. At the Supreme Court, they are even contemplating granting new levels of immunity to presidents that Trump could enjoy if he returns to power. It’s not only a gauge of how much damage Trump has already done, but a warning sign of the lengths the people he surrounds himself with are willing to go and how it will be nearly impossible to contain his strongman ambitions if he wins again.
Last summer, Special Counsel Jack Smith secured two indictments against Trump. The first targeted his willful retention of top-secret documents at Mar-a-Lago after his presidency. Trump refused to give back all the records, then engaged in an attempted cover-up, first to hinder their return and ultimately to thwart prosecution.
The facts of the case are shocking, including classified documents left in a bathroom and an order to delete security camera footage sought by a grand jury. Legally, the case is “absolutely airtight,” Georgia State University constitutional law professor Anthony Michael Kries told the BBC. As NYU professor Melissa Murray and former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissman write in their book, The Trump Indictments, in the documents case against Trump, “the evidence of guilt seems abundantly clear.”
And yet Trump has evaded trial in the strongest case against him due exclusively to the judge overseeing the case. For two years now, federal Judge Aileen Cannon has repeatedly shocked the legal community with unprecedented orders that have flouted the law, delayed proceedings, and protected Trump. The ex-president was lucky that Cannon got assigned this case—but he also helped make his own luck by putting her on the bench. When Trump nominated Cannon in 2020, her signature qualifications were her youth (she was 39) and membership in the conservative Federalist Society. After Trump lost the election, she was confirmed in a vote that garnered support from 12 Democrats.
Cannon first came to Trump’s rescue in 2022, when his lawyers went to federal court to try to halt the Justice Department’s investigation into Trump’s handling of purloined classified documents. Cannon obliged in spectacular fashion by blocking part of the probe. It was, according to Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern, the first time in US history that a judge had intervened to stop a criminal investigation before an indictment. Her actions were so lawless that they were soon rolled back by two separate panels of the conservative 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, which held that Cannon had pushed “a radical reordering of our caselaw” that violated “bedrock separation-of-powers limitations.”
Some judges might have been chastened by this humiliation—but not Cannon. After the investigation, when Trump was charged and the documents case formally assigned to Cannon, it was clear prosecutors had drawn the short straw—and that Trump would never face trial, or at least a fair one, under her watch. Over the past year, Cannon has continued to issue bizarre orders, held hearings on inane questions, and engaged in every manner of delay. And she shows no signs of stopping. This month, she pushed the trial off indefinitely while scheduling hearings on motions filed by Trump’s legal team that, according to experts, should be dispatched with quickly. Cannon has turned her federal courtroom into a kangaroo court.
In August of 2022, Smith filed his second indictment against Trump, this one over attempting to overturn his election loss. The case was assigned to federal Judge Tanya Chutkan in DC, an Obama appointee. By limiting the charges to Trump, Murray and Weissman write, “the indictment was built for speed—to get a trial date so that the American public could see the evidence and hear the jury’s conclusions.” Chutkan recognized, with the election looming, it was important to move expeditiously. But in his attempts to delay, Trump found even more powerful allies than a district court judge—several justices of the US Supreme Court.
Were it not for the Supreme Court, with three justices appointed by Trump, the ex-president would almost certainly be standing trial for his attempt to overturn American democracy and stay in power. Instead, the federal election subversion case has been turned on its head. Rather than usher along efforts to hold Trump accountable, the US Supreme Court is likely to use the case to grant Trump and future presidents some level of immunity. That would not only make Trump’s lawless power grab harder to prosecute, but future presidents’ illegal actions as well.
Even if the GOP-appointed majority doesn’t declare a new level of immunity for Trump and other former presidents as expected, their delays will spare Trump from trial until after the election: the justices have three times come to Trump’s aid by pushing back the case. The delay aids Trump’s campaign. If he wins, he will never face federal trial, either because he pardons himself, or simply directs his appointees at the DOJ to drop the charges.
Trump sought to delay and even derail the prosecution by claiming that ex-presidents enjoy absolute immunity for official acts made while in office—a bold assertion with no basis in the Constitution or precedent in the law. Chutkan smacked it down. When Trump sought review in the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, Jack Smith asked the Supreme Court to immediately take the case and leap-frog the appellate court. In their first move delaying the trial, the justices declined to step in.
After the appeals court rebuked Trump’s theory of immunity, Smith again asked the justices for help, as he urged the court to let the appellate ruling stand, or, failing that, to hear the case expeditiously. Instead, the justices took the case without any sense of urgency. Chutkan’s original March 4 trial date came and went. The justices heard the case on the last day of their term. After oral arguments, it appeared likely that the justices would wait until June to issue a ruling. When it comes, it will likely give some level of immunity to Trump, a complication that will mean the case cannot immediately proceed to trial.
There’s no way to know for sure which justices voted against taking the case when Smith first asked, which declined to let the DC Circuit decision stand, or which dragged their feet and kept the case moving slowly. But judging from oral arguments, it seems clear that the Trump-appointed justices, as well as those appointed by other Republican presidents, played a critical role.
The hearing offered evidence of the Trump appointees’ willingness to not only delay Trump’s trial, but also to make prosecuting a former president much harder. Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch both expressed interest in limiting the possibility to varying degrees. While Amy Coney Barrett was much more skeptical of Trump’s immunity claims, she displayed interest in a compromise that would create new immunities nonetheless. By the end, the GOP-appointed justices had defended Trump’s immunity claims so robustly that Trump’s own lawyer declined to use his rebuttal time. “I have nothing further,” he triumphantly told the court when it was his turn to speak.
There are plenty of people responsible for the fact that Trump will face voters again without having gone under trial for attempting to overturn the last election. You could include Attorney General Merrick Garland, who let the DOJ’s investigations drag on before appointing Smith, and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, whose sprawling Georgia-based conspiracy case took years to put together and now may be permanently derailed over her affair with one of the prosecutors.
But the person most responsible for escaping criminal prosecution is Trump himself, who, in four years as president, left his mark on the nation’s courts. Rather than a fluke, it might be a preview of how he can escape accountability if he becomes president again.
Dov Waxman
@DovWaxman
I welcome the ICC prosecutor’s request for arrest warrants for Hamas leaders, Sinwar, Deif and Haniyeh, and for Israel’s PM Netanyahu and Defense Minister Gallant. Hamas leaders should be held accountable for the war crimes and crimes against humanity they undoubtedly committed on October 7th (which includes the crimes of extermination, murder, torture, rape, and taking hostages). Netanyahu and Gallant should be held accountable for the war crime and crime against humanity of “starvation of civilians as a method of war” during Israel’s war in Gaza -- there is at the very least “reasonable grounds to believe” that they have committed such a crime (Gallant announced on Oct. 9, 2023, "I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel"; ten days later Netanyahu stated, "we will not allow humanitarian assistance, in the form of food and medicines, from our territory to the Gaza Strip"). This is not about drawing a moral equivalence between Hamas and Israel. It is about upholding international law and holding decision-makers accountable. For a detailed analysis of these charges, see: https://justsecurity.org/95864/internat
Biden wants progressives to believe he’s reining in Israel. He isn’t
Mohamad Bazzi
Biden will be remembered as a president who could have restrained Israel but instead made the US complicit in this war
ith great fanfare, Joe Biden confirmed on 8 May that his administration had suspended one weapons shipment to Israel, delaying the delivery of 3,500 bombs that can cause devastating casualties when dropped on population centers. Biden said he warned Israeli leaders that he would also block artillery shells and other munitions if Israel went ahead with a ground invasion of Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, where 1.4 million Palestinians have taken shelter.
It seemed Biden had finally decided to use the most effective leverage he has over Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, and his extremist government to force an end to Israel’s devastating war in Gaza. But less than a week later, it became clear that Biden had backtracked and he will continue sending Israel far more weapons than the one shipment he held back. Last Tuesday, the Biden administration notified Congress that it would move ahead with more than $1bn in new arms deals for Israel.
With that decision, Biden undermined his own strategy of trying to pressure Netanyahu and his government, who are intent on launching a ground invasion of Rafah despite months of warnings from the US about the fate of the many Palestinians driven out of their homes in other parts of Gaza by the Israeli military. If Israel was worried about replenishing its stockpile – a real concern since some Israeli officials warned in January that they could have run out of bombs to drop on Gaza without a steady supply of US weapons – Biden just reassured Netanyahu that Israeli munitions would be restocked no matter how much death and destruction Israel rains on Rafah.
For months, it has been clear that Israel’s bloodshed in Gaza would not be sustainable without deep US complicity and assistance. This has been Biden’s pattern since he pledged unwavering support for Netanyahu’s government after Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October: whatever concern Biden might express for Palestinian civilians, his actions tell a different story. The latest weapons package that the administration approved is significantly larger than the single shipment that Biden stopped earlier this month: Washington plans to provide Israel with $700m in tank ammunition, $500m in tactical vehicles and $60m in mortar rounds.
Top Biden administration officials were spooked by criticism from Republicans in Congress and some pro-Israel Democratic party donors. Haim Saban, a media mogul and Democratic mega-donor, sent an email to senior Biden aides criticizing the president’s decision to withhold the recent shipment of bombs. “Let’s not forget there are more Jewish voters who care about Israel than Muslim voters who care about Hamas,” Saban wrote.
In fact, a day after Biden announced that he might withhold other arms from Israel over its actions in Rafah, his aides rushed to make clear that it would be business as usual. “Weapons shipments are still going to Israel. They’re still getting the vast, vast majority of everything that they need to defend themselves,” White House spokesman John Kirby told reporters on 9 May. “There is no weapons shipment cut-off here.”
The US is, by far, the biggest supplier of arms to Israel, providing $3.8bn in military aid per year – and it’s all paid for by American taxpayers. (Israel is also the largest aggregate recipient of US foreign aid in the world, having received about $300bn since the Jewish state was founded in 1948.) Last month, after intense lobbying by Biden, Congress approved $26bn in additional support to Israel, which includes $14bn in unconditional military aid.
Biden and his top aides passed up another opportunity this month to restrict most arms shipments and end US complicity in Israel’s war. On 10 May, the state department sent a long-awaited report to Congress in which the administration must certify that recipients of US weapons are abiding by international law and allowing the transport of humanitarian aid during active conflicts. The administration said it found written assurances from Israeli officials that they would use US arms in accordance with international humanitarian law to be “credible and reliable”.
The 46-page report was an exercise in bureaucratic double-speak, and it showed how far the Biden administration is willing to contort itself to avoid concluding that Israel violated any international laws, or had intentionally obstructed humanitarian aid into Gaza. Either of those findings would have shown that Israel had violated a new national security memo that Biden issued in February, and required the administration to suspend or restrict most arms shipments to Israel under existing US laws.
The state department report, which contradicted itself in numerous places, argued that the US could not find hard proof that Israel had used US weapons in specific incidents that might have involved human rights violations. But for months, numerous rights groups and independent monitors have documented Israel’s violations of international law, including its use of starvation as a weapon of war and methodical campaign to obstruct the delivery of food and other aid into Gaza.
An independent taskforce of legal experts, which was created after Biden issued his national security memo, released a detailed report last month citing dozens of examples of Israeli violations of human rights law during its assault on Gaza. The report documented Israel’s “systematic disregard for fundamental principles of international law, including recurrent attacks launched despite foreseeably disproportionate harm to civilians” in some of the world’s most densely populated areas. The taskforce includes Josh Paul, a former state department official who was one of the first US officials to resign in protest over Biden’s unconditional support for Israel.
In perhaps its most embarrassing conclusion, the Biden administration’s report also did not find that Israel had intentionally blocked humanitarian aid from reaching Palestinians who are facing a full-blown famine in northern Gaza. That conclusion contradicts a reality that most of the world can see, often in real time on social media. In fact, Israel has not only blocked aid from entering Gaza – violating international and US laws – it has made it exceedingly difficult for the UN and international relief groups to provide food and other support. To overcome Israel’s obstacles, the US has gone to extraordinary measures, including airdrops of supplies and building a floating pier off the coast of Gaza.
It’s clear that the Biden administration avoided holding Israel responsible for blocking aid because that conclusion would have triggered a section of the Foreign Assistance Act, passed in 1961, which forbids the US from providing weapons to a country that is obstructing American humanitarian aid. As Senator Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat from Maryland who has been a leading critic of the Biden’s administration policy toward Israel, said after the report’s release: “They don’t want to have to take any action to hold the Netanyahu government accountable for what’s happening.”
After seven months of enabling Israel’s large-scale destruction of Gaza, which caused enormous Palestinian suffering, Biden finally took a step toward accountability by suspending one shipment of bombs. But within days, it became clear he would allow Israel to receive a far larger flow of weapons.
Biden will go down in history as a president who had the power to restrain Israel, but refused to use his influence effectively – and allowed the US to be complicit in a ruthless war.
Mohamad Bazzi is director of the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies, and a journalism professor at New York University
