Former Trump DOJ official Jeffrey Clark fights to save law license as disciplinary trial begins

Politico

Former Trump DOJ official Jeffrey Clark fights to save law license as disciplinary trial begins

Kyle Cheney – March 26, 2024

Jose Luis Magana/AP

Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department official who worked closely with former President Donald Trump in a bid to subvert the 2020 election, should face professional consequences — including the potential loss of his license to practice law — for his effort to throw the nation into chaos, D.C. bar disciplinary authorities argued Tuesday.

But a lawyer for Clark said it would be unreasonable to punish him for his work during the tumultuous days ahead of Jan. 6, 2021, when he spearheaded a proposal to encourage state legislatures to consider overturning the results. That plan was never adopted and Trump ultimately turned it down. Punishing Clark for being on the losing side of a policy dispute would set a dangerous precedent, Clark’s team argued.

The alternate realities were on display Tuesday as bar investigators began laying out their case to penalize Clark for his role in Trump’s scheme to remain in power. Investigators charged Clark with violating professional rules of conduct in late 2020 by attempting to coerce his bosses to send a letter to Georgia lawmakers encouraging them to reconsider the outcome of the election there based on “significant concerns” about the integrity of the vote.

For Clark, the opening arguments in the case — heard by a three-member panel of the D.C. Bar’s Board of Professional Responsibility — were never supposed to happen. Clark has spent two years fighting legal battles intended to scrap the case altogether, contending that the D.C. Bar has no jurisdiction over the conduct of federal government lawyers. But a federal court rejected Clark’s position, and an appeals court declined to step in to block the case from moving ahead.

Hamilton Fox, the lead investigator for the D.C. Bar’s Office of Disciplinary Counsel, said Clark’s efforts amounted to a “coup” attempt within the Department of Justice, aimed at taking out the sitting leadership in order to effectuate a plan that would have thrown the 2020 election into even further disarray. Clark held unauthorized talks with Trump, violating DOJ policies against White House contacts, and then sought to outflank then-Acting Attorney General Jeff Rosen and his deputy Richard Donoghue, by telling them he planned to accept an offer from Trump to take over the department unless they agreed to send his proposed letter to Georgia.

The showdown, which has been well documented by the Jan. 6 select committee and prosecutors in Georgia, led to an Oval Office confrontation on Jan. 3, 2021, in which Trump ultimately backed down from his plans to elevate Clark amid a mass resignation threat by top DOJ and White House officials. Clark has been criminally charged by Georgia prosecutors for his role in Trump’s effort to reverse the outcome of the election, and he was identified as a co-conspirator in special counsel Jack Smith’s Washington, D.C. case against Trump.

Donoghue was Fox’s first witness on Tuesday, describing his work to review claims of election fraud in 2020 and finding many of the fraud claims lodged by Trump and his allies to be meritless. He also described his conversations with Trump, recalling that Trump urged Rosen to simply declare the election “corrupt” and let him and his Republican allies in Congress do the rest. Donoghue recalled trying to educate Trump about DOJ’s limited role in elections and its work debunking many of the false allegations of fraud that had been circulating.

Disciplinary proceedings against the lawyers who formed the backbone of Trump’s effort have aired significant new details about the two months that threatened the peaceful transfer of power in 2020 and 2021.

John Eastman, one of the architects of Trump’s bid to subvert the 2020 election, is expected to face a disbarment ruling by Wednesday, when a California judge issues her proposed punishment for alleged violations of professional conduct.

Rudy Giuliani has similarly had his law license suspended in New York and Washington, D.C.

And other attorneys involved in failed legal efforts to overturn election results in 2020 have also faced disciplinary charges, some of which are still pending.

Clark’s case is unique, however, because he was employed by DOJ at the time as acting head of the department’s Civil Division and Environment and Natural Resources Division. He first reached Trump’s radar as a result of efforts by Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), who helped connect the little-known DOJ official to the president. Trump, who had publicly expressed frustration that the Justice Department hadn’t done enough to back up his claims of election fraud, soon began floating the notion of elevating Clark to replace Rosen.

Clarks’ lawyers, though, say punishing him for taking cues from the president — the chief law enforcement officer of the United States — and advocating for a position that he genuinely believed would send a chilling effect across government. Clark’s efforts were intended to remain confidential — and the letter he drafted, which was never sent to Georgia, was supposed to remain secret, protected by various forms of executive and law enforcement privilege, until a leak to the press exposed the fraught discussions.

Clark’s attorneys said he intends to argue, using witnesses from Georgia and statistical experts that Trump has relied on in the past, that his concerns about the election were well-founded, that DOJ officials rebuffed them and the entire dispute amounts to an internal disagreement about what DOJ’s official position should have been.

“There is nothing dishonest and nothing in violation of the rules of professional conduct about proposing a change in position,” Clark’s lawyer, Harry MacDougald, argued. “Mr. Clark did nothing wrong.”

Clark is unlikely to testify in the proceeding. His lawyers have indicated he is likely to assert his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination if called to the stand.

Fox intends to rely on testimony from White House and DOJ officials — including Donoghue, Rosen and former deputy White House counsel Pat Philbin. Clark’s lawyer said he intends to call former Attorney General Edwin Meese, as well as a member of the Atlanta-area election board who opposed certifying the results.

Column: Trump wants to round up over a million undocumented migrants from California. Here’s how he might do it

Los Angeles Times

Column: Trump wants to round up over a million undocumented migrants from California. Here’s how he might do it

Doyle McManus – March 25, 2024

Former President Donald Trump speaks during a visit to an unfinished section of border wall with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, in Pharr, Texas, Wednesday, June 30, 2021. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)
Former President Trump speaks near a section of border wall in Texas in 2021. His plans for a prospective second term include using National Guard troops in mass deportation operations to seize undocumented migrants, transport them to camps in Texas and expel them. (Associated Press )

Former President Trump has focused relentlessly on illegal immigration as a centerpiece of his campaign for the White House, just as when he first ran in 2016.

“They’re poisoning the blood of our country,” he has said of undocumented migrants, using language redolent of the racist doctrines of Adolf Hitler.

He promises to launch “the biggest domestic deportation campaign in American history” on Day One of his new presidency.

His chief immigration advisor, Santa Monica-born Stephen Miller, has spelled out what that would mean: Trump would assemble “a giant force” including National Guard troops to seize undocumented migrants, transport them to camps in Texas and expel them.

“A very conservative estimate would say about 10 million,” Miller told pro-Trump talk show host Charlie Kirk.

If “unfriendly states” — like California — don’t want to cooperate, Miller said, Trump could order Guard units from red states like Texas to cross their borders to enforce the law.

Read more: Column: Trump has big plans for California if he wins a second term. Fasten your seatbelts

The operation would be “as daring and ambitious … as building the Panama Canal,” Miller promised.

That’s a pretty bloodless way to describe a process that would uproot thousands of families, separate children from their parents and disrupt communities. But before we get to that, a preliminary question:

If he wins in Novembercould Trump really do that?

From a legal standpoint, the answer is yes.

If Trump invokes the Insurrection Act and declares that the National Guard is needed to enforce federal immigration law, he could send Texas troops into California whether Gov. Gavin Newsom agrees or not, legal scholars said.

“We normally don’t want the military enforcing the law inside the country; law enforcement is supposed to be provided by police forces that are local — and locally accountable,” said William Banks, an emeritus professor of law at Syracuse University. “But the Insurrection Act gives the president sweeping authority. You could drive a lot of trucks through that law.”

Newsom would presumably file a lawsuit against Trump to try to block the move, but it would almost certainly fail.

Read more: Column: Biden says America is ‘coming back.’ Trump says we’re ‘in hell.’ Are they talking about the same nation?

“No state has ever sued successfully to stop a deployment of the Guard under the Insurrection Act,” warned Joseph Nunn of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.

There are also practical concerns. Most National Guard units are neither trained nor equipped for law enforcement missions.

“Tracking down undocumented migrants is complicated and time-consuming,” Nunn noted. “You need people who know how to do it, like ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] agents.

“The Guard would resist that kind of mission mightily,” added Banks. “They hate this kind of stuff. They would be better suited to patrol the border — to stand next to the wall, the fence or the river and discourage people from coming across.”

So if Trump listens to his generals — not a sure thing — he’d be more likely to use Guard units to bolster weak spots on the border and manage those newly built transit camps for deportees.

Read more: Column: Trumponomics? He would impose the equivalent of a huge tax hike

That would free up ICE agents for raids on Central Valley farms and Los Angeles sweatshops — which is what immigration agents did in earlier crackdowns, including the offensively named Operation Wetback, which expelled more than a million Mexican migrants (and some U.S. citizens) in 1954.

So legally, there may not be that much California can do. But the fallout in a state home to an estimated 1.9 million undocumented people — roughly 5% of the population — would be difficult to imagine.

The human impact of uprooting most or all of these California residents would be gigantic. Many undocumented migrants are members of families that include legal residents and U.S. citizens, including children.

Many are deeply rooted in their communities; more than two-thirds have lived in the state longer than 10 years, according to one estimate.

“When you harm the undocumented, you harm U.S. citizens too,” said Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights in Los Angeles.

Read more: Column: Will ‘double haters’ determine the outcome of the 2024 presidential election?

“I’ve seen families devastated by the deportation of their loved ones. I’ve seen families, when the father is deported, go right into economic ruin,” Salas said. “The trauma for children, especially small children, is enormous.”

The economic impact of mass deportations would be huge, too. An estimated 1.5 million California workers, more than 7% of the state’s workforce, are undocumented. About half work in agriculture, construction, hospitality and retail, industries that already suffer from severe labor shortages.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell said this month that the growth of immigrants in the workforce had strengthened economic growth. “It’s just arithmetic,” said Powell, a Trump appointee. “If you add a couple of million people to an economy … there will be more output.” Abruptly subtracting a million or more would have the opposite effect.

Trump advisors aren’t planning to stop at removing undocumented people from the country.

Miller wants to go after some people in the country legally too.

He has proposed expanding the criteria for deportation to include people with valid visas “whose views, attitudes and beliefs make them ineligible to stay” in the eyes of the new Trump administration.

Read more: Column: Trump wanted to pull the U.S. out of NATO. In a second term, he’s more likely to try

“The obvious example here would be all of the Hamas supporters who are rallying across the country,” he said.

An immigration task force organized by the conservative Heritage Foundation and led by a former Trump administration official proposed blocking Federal Emergency Management Agency grants to state and local agencies that refuse to cooperate with ICE enforcement operations, a standard that would presumably disqualify most or all California agencies.

The task force also proposed denying federal loans and grants to students at universities that allow undocumented migrants to pay in-state tuition, a rule that would affect UC and the Cal State systems.

It adds up to a recipe for a major collision with California, the state most out of step with Trump’s determination to rid the country of undocumented migrants.

None of this constitutes a defense of the Biden administration’s policies, which have failed to deter thousands of migrants from crossing the border and applying for asylum on often-dubious grounds.

Read more: California poll reveals how minor candidates could throw 2024 presidential race to Trump

But it’s worth remembering that only a few weeks ago, Trump ordered Republicans in Congress to kill a bipartisan bill that would have increased funding for immigration enforcement and raised the bar for asylum claims — because, as he admitted, he didn’t want to allow President Biden to appear as if he was fixing the problem.

When Trump was first elected in 2016, I wrote that on immigration policy, “His bark may prove worse than his bite.”

I was wrong. He turned out to be dead serious.

Trump’s promises of mass deportations and detention camps should be taken seriously — and literally, too.

“If he says he’s going to do it, believe him,” Salas said.

Taliban leader says women will be stoned to death in public

The Telegraph

Taliban leader says women will be stoned to death in public

Akhtar Makoii – March 25, 2024

A Taliban fighter stands guard as women wait to receive food rations in Kabul, Afghanistan
The Taliban has quickly returned to harsh public punishments in Afghanistan – Ebrahim Noroozi/AP

The Taliban’s Supreme Leader has vowed to start stoning women to death in public as he declared the fight against Western democracy will continue.

“You say it’s a violation of women’s rights when we stone them to death,” said Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada in a voice message, aired on state television over the weekend, addressing Western officials.

“But we will soon implement the punishment for adultery. We will flog women in public. We will stone them to death in public,” he declared in his harshest comments since taking over Kabul in August 2021.

“These are all against your democracy but we will continue doing it. We both say we defend human rights – we do it as God’s representative and you as the devil’s.”

Afghanistan’s state TV, now under Taliban control, broadcasts voice messages purporting to be from Akhundzada, who has never been seen in public aside from a few old portraits.

He is believed to be based in southern Kandahar, the stronghold of the Taliban.

Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada
Akhundzada has never been seen in public – Xinhua/Shutterstock

Despite promising a more moderate government, the Taliban quickly returned to harsh public punishments like public executions and floggings, similar to those from their previous rule in the late 1990s.

The United Nations has strongly criticised the Taliban and has called on the country’s rulers to halt such practices.

In his voice message, Akhundzada said that the women’s rights that the international community had been advocating for were against the Taliban’s harsh interpretation of Islamic Sharia.

“Do women want the rights that Westerners are talking about? They are against Sharia and clerics’ opinions, the clerics who toppled Western democracy,” he said.

“I told the Mujahedin that we tell the Westerners that we fought against you for 20 years and we will fight 20 and even more years against you,” he said, emphasising the need for resilience in opposing women’s rights among Taliban foot soldiers.

“It did not finish [when you left]. It does not mean we would now just sit and drink tea. We will bring Sharia to this land,” he added. “It did finish after we took over Kabul. No, we will now bring Sharia into action.”

Women ‘living in prison’

His remarks have incited outrage among Afghans, with some calling on the international community to increase pressure on the Taliban.

“The money that they receive from the international community as humanitarian aid is just feeding them against women,” Tala, a former civil servant, told The Telegraph from the capital Kabul.

“As a woman, I don’t feel safe and secure in Afghanistan. Each morning starts with a barrage of notices and orders imposing restrictions and stringent rules on women, stripping away even the smallest joys and extinguishing hope for a brighter future,” she added.

“We, the women, are living in prison,” Tala said, “And the Taliban are making it smaller for us every passing day.”

‘Feeble, Confused And Tired’: Donald Trump Torched After Bizarre Gaffe-Filled Appearance

HuffPost

‘Feeble, Confused And Tired’: Donald Trump Torched After Bizarre Gaffe-Filled Appearance

Ed Mazza – March 26, 2024

President Joe Biden’s campaign on Monday released an unusually blunt statement tearing into Donald Trump as “feeble, confused, and tired” after an appearance marked by verbal stumbles as well as a bizarre social media post in which he likened himself to Christ.

“He spent the weekend golfing, the morning comparing himself to Jesus, and the afternoon lying about having money he definitely doesn’t have,” the statement said.

Trump on Monday faced two court decisions.

In one, a judge reduced the $464 million bond in his fraud case to $175 million and gave him 10 days to come up with the money. In another, a judge ruled that Trump’s criminal trial in the Stormy Daniels hush money case will start on April 15.

That led to a rambling appearance by Trump, which included several gaffes, including an odd moment when the former president insisted that “you can’t have an election in the middle of a political season.”

The former president added: “We just had Super Tuesday, and we had a Tuesday after Tuesday already.”

Trump also vowed to “bring crime back to law and order.”

Biden’s campaign torched the former president as “weak and desperate ― both as a man and a candidate for president” and mocked his fundraising struggles and lack of recent appearances.

“His campaign can’t raise money, he is uninterested in campaigning outside his country club, and every time he opens his mouth, he pushes moderate and suburban voters away with his dangerous agenda,” the campaign said in a statement. “America deserves better than a feeble, confused, and tired Donald Trump.”

Trump’s critics agreed:

Biden-Harris Campaign Statement on Trump's Press Conference

"Donald Trump is weak and desperate - both as a man and a candidate for President.
He spent the weekend golfing, the morning comparing himself to Jesus, and the afternoon lying about having money he definitely doesn't have.

His campaign can't raise money, he is uninterested in campaigning outside his country club, and every time he opens his mouth, he pushes moderate and suburban voters away with his dangerous agenda.

America deserves better than a feeble, confused, and tired Donald Trump."

Letters to the Editor: Trump is the grade-school bully running for class president

Los Angeles Tines – Opinion

Letters to the Editor: Trump is the grade-school bully running for class president

Los Angeles Times Opinion – March 26, 2024

Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump gestures to the crowd at a campaign rally Saturday, March 16, 2024, in Vandalia, Ohio. (AP Photo/Jeff Dean)
Former President Trump during a campaign rally in Ohio on March 16. (Jeff Dean / Associated Press)

To the editor: The false claims and empty promises made by President Biden’s predecessor remind me of when I was in the fourth grade. (“Trump has big plans for California if he wins a second term. Fasten your seatbelts,” column, March 18)

It was time to elect a student body president. Two candidates were running. The first was a hard-working, successful student who promised to do their best to serve our school and students. The second was a boisterous bully running on promises that water fountains would dispense soda and there would be mandatory class parties every Friday.

We voted for the first candidate. I have faith America will have the same sense as Palm View Elementary’s fourth-grade class of 1967.

Kevin Ferguson, Capistrano Beach

..

To the editor: For the first time in forever, I’m happy to hear the former president babble nonsense such as his ”plans” for California and about “bloodbaths.”

With every word, he reveals his increasing mania and should show the ”tipping point” to any voters uncertain of his qualifications for the presidency.

Remember that old cliche that if someone tells you who they are, believe them? Trump is a malignant narcissist, a liar, a grifter and, most importantly, someone who openly admires dictators.

He’s telling us who he is. Please pay attention.

Pam Wright, Pasadena

Judge in Trump hush money case sets trial date, rejecting delay bid

Good Morning America

Judge in Trump hush money case sets trial date, rejecting delay bid

Aaron Katersky, Peter Charalambous, Olivia Rubin and Emily Shapiro – March 25, 2024

Former President Donald Trump will stand trial over alleged hush payments to porn star Stormy Daniels beginning with jury selection on April 15, Judge Juan Merchan ruled Monday, rejecting Trump’s request for an additional delay.

The case, which was initially scheduled to begin jury selection on Monday, was adjourned for 30 days by Merchan earlier this month, after defense attorneys raised issues with the late production of over 100,000 pages of potential evidence by federal prosecutors.

The judge decided Monday that the District Attorney of New York County is not at fault for the late production of documents from the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York.

“The Manhattan District Attorney’s office made diligent, good faith efforts” to retrieve appropriate material, the judge said, adding that Trump will not suffer any prejudice as a result of the late disclosure.

During the hearing, the judge appeared skeptical that the case needed to be delayed or dismissed because of a dispute over potential evidence, and called the defense’s claims of prosecutorial misconduct “very disconcerting.”

“You are literally accusing the Manhattan DA’s office and the people assigned to this case of prosecutorial misconduct and to make me complicit in it, and you don’t have a single cite to support that position,” Merchan told defense attorney Todd Blanche.

“This court is of the opinion that there really are not significant questions of fact to be resolved,” Merchan said earlier about the defense’s arguments to delay or dismiss the case.

The defense accused the Manhattan district attorney’s office of “widespread misconduct” and “serious discovery violations” and argued they warranted a dismissal of the indictment, an adjournment of the trial and the prohibition on former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen and Daniels from testifying.

“This is a witch hunt. This is a hoax. Thank you,” Trump told the media before entering the courtroom this morning.

PHOTO: Former President Donald Trump arrives for his hearing to determine the date of his trial for allegedly covering up hush money payments linked to extramarital affairs, at Manhattan Criminal Court in New York City on March 25, 2024. (Justin Lane/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
PHOTO: Former President Donald Trump arrives for his hearing to determine the date of his trial for allegedly covering up hush money payments linked to extramarital affairs, at Manhattan Criminal Court in New York City on March 25, 2024. (Justin Lane/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

Prosecutor Matthew Colangelo aggressively pushed back on the allegation that the District Attorney’s Office actively suppressed potential evidence from defense attorneys.

“No, we are not actively suppressing … discovery or impeachment materials,” Colangelo said, reiterating the claim that most of the documents in question are irrelevant to the case against Trump.

Blanche argued that reviewing each document takes time and merits a delay. “Every document is important,” he said. “Every single one.”

Merchan set Monday’s hearing to resolve a recent defense motion related to the potential evidence and set a final trial date for the case.

MORE: Prosecutors blast Trump’s effort to further delay his criminal hush money trial

“[T]here are significant questions of fact which this Court must resolve before it may rule on Defendant’s motion,” Merchan wrote in a ruling earlier this month.

Defense attorneys have demanded a lengthier delay of the trial and limits on key testimony or the dismissal of the case based on the new materials, which they said damage the credibility of star witness and former Trump attorney Michael Cohen and contain “exculpatory information that undercuts the People’s theory of the case.”

Last week, prosecutors with the Manhattan district attorney’s office pushed back on the defense’s request, arguing that the recently disclosed potential evidence is “a red herring” and part of a “strategic delay.” While the 30-day adjournment provided defense attorneys with a “reasonable amount of time for defendant to review the information,” no further delay was necessary, according to the prosecutors’ filing.

“Defendant has taken every possible step to evade accountability in this case for more than a year,” prosecutors wrote in a filing last week. “Enough is enough. These tactics by defendant and defense counsel should be stopped.”‘

Trump last April pleaded not guilty to a 34-count indictment charging him with falsifying business records in connection with a hush money payment Cohen made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels just days before the 2016 presidential election.

Here are three things to know about the hearing.

How did defense lawyers find the new materials?

Two months after Trump was indicted last year, prosecutors turned over 3 million pages of documents, beginning the discovery process in which prosecutors share with the defense evidence obtained during their investigation.

“In the Manhattan DA’s office, they do what’s called open file discovery, which means their practice is to basically turn over every piece of paper that they get in the course of their investigation,” former federal prosecutor Josh Naftalis told ABC News.

While the DA’s office said that, in June 2023, they turned over all the materials they received from U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York — which in 2018 secured a guilty plea from Cohen on campaign finance charges related to the Stormy Daniels payment — Trump’s lawyers sent a subpoena to the federal prosecutors on Jan. 18, 2024, seeking additional materials.

In their subpoena, defense lawyers requested Cohen’s tax filings, bank records, files from his iPhone and email accounts, records memorializing statements made by Cohen, and communications with other law enforcement offices.

MORE: Judge rules evidence related to ‘Access Hollywood’ tape admissible in Trump hush money trial

By Feb. 23, federal prosecutors with the SDNY agreed to disclose some of the records requested, including 10,778 pages of bank records and files from two iPhones and three email accounts, according to a defense filing. In total, federal prosecutors turned over 119,000 pages of records to Trump’s defense team, according to a filing earlier this month.

“That’s a lot of information for the defense to go through very quickly, so that kind of explains why the DA’s office agreed to at least a 30-day extension of the time,” former federal prosecutor Jarrod Schaeffer told ABC News.

What was included in SDNY’s production?

The exact breakdown of the 119,000 pages of documents remains unclear, but the DA’s office argues that most of the files are irrelevant to the case or have already been produced. In total, prosecutors said the materials contained fewer than 270 new documents, including 172 pages of new witness statements.

“[T]he People now have good reason to believe that this production contains only limited materials relevant to the subject matter of this case and that have not previously been disclosed to defendant: fewer than an estimated 270 documents, most of which are inculpatory and corroborative of existing evidence,” prosecutors with the DA’s office said.

MORE: Stormy Daniels says she is ‘absolutely ready’ to testify at Trump’s hush money trial

Defense lawyers have argued that the documents are highly relevant and include materials that could be used to discredit Cohen or absolve Trump of wrongdoing.

While defense lawyers have highlighted the sheer number of pages produced by federal prosecutors, Naftalis cautioned that the documents’ contents will ultimately determine Judge Merchan’s next move.

“My guess is that 30 days is all that Trump’s going to get because the volume of documents at issue really isn’t that large in the grand scheme of things,” Naftalis said. “That doesn’t mean that these are all new documents, and there could be substantial overlap.”

Why are Trump’s lawyers arguing for dismissal?

Defense lawyers have accused the DA’s office of misconduct in their push for a dismissal of the case, the limiting of key testimony, and a lengthier delay of the trial.

“The People have engaged in widespread misconduct as part of a desperate effort to improve their position at the potential trial on the false and unsupported charges in the Indictment,” defense attorney Todd Blanche wrote in a recent filing.

Attorneys with the Manhattan DA’s office pushed back on that motion, describing it as a inaccurate “grab-bag of meritless discovery arguments in the latest of a long series of attempts to evade responsibility for the conduct charged in the indictment.”

MORE: Trump, in hush money trial, won’t use ‘advice of counsel’ defense — but will still argue lawyers were involved

“Defendant’s accusations are wholly unfounded, and the circumstances here do not come close to warranting the extreme sanctions he has sought,” assistant district attorney Matthew Colangelo said in a filing last week.

If Judge Merchan does not dismiss the case, defense lawyers asked for a longer adjournment and preclusion of the testimony of Michael Cohen, Stormy Daniels, and an expert witness.

Merchan will ultimately have to consider who, if anyone, should be culpable for the late production of evidence.

“It’s really going to come down to have the prosecutors done what they’re supposed to do — meaning, have they been diligent and made a good-faith effort to get material that they believe exists and should be turned over,” Schaeffer said.

Judge Rips Into Trump Lawyers, Sets Hush Money Trial for April

Daily Beast

Judge Rips Into Trump Lawyers, Sets Hush Money Trial for April

Jose Pagliery – March 25, 2024

Spencer Platt/Reuters
Spencer Platt/Reuters

Just a couple weeks ago, before prosecutors handed over about 200,000 new documents to the former president’s defense team and the judge delayed the proceedings, March 25 was supposed to be the start date of Donald Trump’s first criminal trial. And until a pre-trial hearing for the hush money case started on Monday, March 25 was supposed to be the day—as the former president’s lawyers believed—the judge might excoriate prosecutors over the missing evidence and potentially issue sanctions against them.

But when the hearing was over Monday, it was clear March 25 will instead be remembered as the day the judge slammed Trump’s lawyers for more waiting games and set the new trial date for April 15.

New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan declined to issue sanctions against attorneys on either side, but he determined that a short-lived document scandal had essentially amounted to nothing.

“The defendant has been given a reasonable amount of time to prepare,” he said, ordering jury selection to begin in 21 days.

These Under-the-Radar Rulings in the Stormy Daniels Hush Money Case Are Really Bad for Trump

The judge indicated that the trial will commence days before the Jewish holiday of Passover and New York City’s spring break, but he promised not to hold court on any day that week if it would violate a person’s religious views.

Trump walked out of the courtroom with a grim look on his face, tossing a thumbs up at an acquaintance in the audience and whispering “thank you.”

Monday’s hearing knocked down what was perceived to be Trump’s last-ditch attempt to push back his trial, but it also served as the latest example of a judge running out of patience with Trump’s disruptive legal strategy.

Merchan questioned Trump’s legal team for more than an hour for what he eventually called a “misleading” tactic that threw trial plans into chaos this month, following a confusing moment when the feds suddenly dumped 200,000 pages of evidence.

Merchan laid the blame entirely at Trump’s feet, appearing flummoxed that the former president’s lawyers managed to briefly derail the trial with over-the-top accusations. He implied that this amounted to nothing more than continuing delay games.

The judge took particular aim at Trump defense lawyer Todd Blanche, saying that he should have known to seek out records for his client instead of sitting back and waiting for the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office to produce them—only to complain about it on the eve of trial. And Merchan didn’t hold back, noting that Blanche is a former federal prosecutor at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, the very same office now at the center of a storm over missing evidence.

“You were there for 13 years. So you know that the defense has the same ability as the prosecution to obtain these documents. So when you received the people’s first production, you could have very easily done exactly as you did in January. but for whatever reason you waited until two months before trial,” Merchan said.

“Your Honor,” Blanche began to say.

“Why didn’t you do it in June? Or July?” the judge continued.

Blanche tried to deflect blame back to the DA, citing a New York law that requires turning over evidence.

“It’s not our job to get it,” he said.

“It’s not the people’s job either,” the judge shot back.

The judge seemed perturbed that Trump’s team never brought up any of these issues during what was supposed to be the final pre-trial hearing on Feb. 15—only to have this issue crop up a month later, just weeks before the start of the first ever criminal trial against a former American president.

In court, Blanche continued to blame the DA’s office, claiming that the batch of records his team had just received from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York proved that DA prosecutors held back evidence.

For more than a year, the former president’s legal team has been trying to probe the personal life of Michael Cohen—the one-time Trump confidante who has since become a key witness in the DA’s case—and they scored a win by prodding SDNY for Cohen’s emails despite resistance from the DA and even the judge.

“There’s tremendous amounts of bank records that were produced, and people think we can simply ignore those,” Blanche said in court. “I mean, thousands and thousands… meetings with witnesses and the FBI related to the 2016 election.”

“You mean the Mueller investigation?” the judge asked impatiently, referring to the Justice Department’s Trump-Russia investigation.

“Yes,” Blanche responded.

“That’s not relevant,” Merchan shot back. “That has nothing to do with this case. I decide if it’s relevant. If you’re going to offer something from the Muller investigation, it’s not coming in.”

“The witness discussed what his job was,” Blanche said.

Stormy Daniels, Michael Cohen Can Testify in Trump Hush Money Case, Judge Rules

Prosecutors have decried the invasive maneuver as nothing but a vengeful payback scheme to discredit a valuable witness and distract from the real issue: how Trump engaged in a coverup, using Cohen as a cutout to deliver Stormy Daniels $130,000 to keep her quiet about their one-night stand in order to save his 2016 presidential campaign from an embarrassing scandal and faking business records to hide Cohen’s reimbursement.

When the judge turned to the DA’s team, he heard an alternate take from Matt Colangelo, an assistant district attorney who has investigated Trump for years at the Attorney General’s office and now with the DA. Colangelo told the judge that most of the documents recently produced by the feds were mostly copies that Trump already had—and actually strengthened the case, not weakened it. Merchan pointedly asked how many records were actually new.

“Three hundred records or fewer… almost exclusively cumulative and largely inculpatory,” Colangelo said.

“Largely inculpatory?” the judge asked.

“Right, your Honor,” the prosecutor responded.

Although DA Alvin Bragg Jr. was in the courtroom, he remained quiet and seated with the audience a few feet behind the table where his prosecutors argued the case.

But the judge appeared almost enraged when he called attention to the way Trump tried to fabricate a scandal and drag in the court itself, noting how Trump has alleged in documents that the DA has held back evidence and was attempting to make the judge “complicit” in an “unethical strategy.” The judge narrowly defined the DA’s responsibilities, then when Blanche couldn’t cite cases that said otherwise, Merchan let it rip.

“If you don’t have a case right now, that is really disconcerting, because the allegation the defense makes in all of your papers about the people’s misconduct is incredibly serious. Unbelievably serious,” Merchan said. “You are literally accusing the Manhattan DA’s office… of engaging in prosecutorial misconduct—and of trying to make me complicit in it. And you don’t have a single cite to support that position, that the people by not obtaining the documentation at the US Attorney’s Office had somehow committed some sort of fraud on the court?”

While Trump was in court, he managed to score a temporary victory in his other ongoing legal nightmare in New York State. An appellate court gave him an extra 10 days to come up with the money necessary to halt the New York Attorney General from seizing his various properties as a result of losing a three-month bank fraud trial. Trump had previously failed to find a surety company willing to prove him a half billion dollar lifeline to halt last month’s $464 million judgment before a Sunday night deadline, but the appeals court lowered the sum needed to pause seizures down to $175 million.

Monday marked the first day that New York AG Letitia James could have moved to seize his various properties, something that Trump earlier in the morning was raging about on his Truth Social media site.

“Why should I be forced to sell my ‘babies,’” he complained in a post just before heading to the Manhattan courtroom for the day’s hearing.

James has already effectively put a blanket lien on his 212-acre, forested estate of Seven Springs north of the city earlier this month.

Biden Is Building a ‘Superstructure’ to Stop Trump From Stealing the Election

Rolling Stone

Biden Is Building a ‘Superstructure’ to Stop Trump From Stealing the Election

Asawin Suebsaeng and Adam Rawnsley – March 24, 2024

For years, Donald Trump has made it abundantly clear that if he doesn’t win the 2024 presidential election, he is willing to cheat and steal it. Since President Joe Biden’s inaugural address, according to sources with intimate knowledge of the situation, Biden and his inner circle have been drawing up meticulous plans and creating a large legal network focused on wargaming a close election finish, in which the former president and Republican Party launch a scorched-earth, Big Liefueled crusade.

Long before Trump began leading in battleground-state polling — and years before he was a declared 2024 candidate — the ex-president and many of his influential allies were already busy plotting ways to tilt the election in his favor. These yearslong efforts, conducted both secretly and out in the open, have already yielded tangible results for Trump and the conservative election denier movement. These wide-ranging operations have alarmed the Democratic Party elite, who aren’t just worried about Biden’s sagging poll numbers. Numerous Democratic lawmakers, operatives, Biden campaign advisers, and administration officials tell Rolling Stone that if the president does ultimately beat Trump this November, the election will be exceedingly close.

Over the past year, Team Biden has been conducting war games, crafting complex legal strategies, and devoting extensive resources to prepare for, as one former senior Biden administration official puts it, “all-hell-breaks-loose” scenarios. The preparations include planning for a contingency in which Biden’s margin of victory is so razor-thin that Trump and the GOP launch a tidal wave of legal challenges and political maneuvers to rerun his 2020 election strategy: declare victory anyways, and try to will it into existence.

“President Biden has been worried, for a while now, that Donald Trump is going to try to steal the election, if it’s very close on Election Day,” says a source familiar with Biden’s thinking. “If that ends up being the case, we are… also expecting the Republican Party to go into overdrive to help him steal it. We are continuing to build out the infrastructure to ensure that doesn’t happen — again — if President Biden wins and Trump and MAGA Republicans try to confuse [everyone] and sow chaos.”

After the 2020 race was called for Biden, Trump and much of the GOP embarked on a sprawling campaign — a blitz of lawsuits, rabid conspiracy theories, attempts to block certification, and slates of fake electors — to nullify Biden’s clear win. This culminated in the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, which Trump instigated, and led to years of criminal investigations and various indictments, as well as the mainstreaming of the MAGA election-denial movement. The efforts to overturn the election were unsuccessful, largely because Biden had won too many battleground states — unlike when the 2000 presidential race came down to the single state of Florida, and the Republican Party was able to successfully halt the recount of an extremely close vote.

This time around, the race could be much closer, and Trump’s efforts appear significantly more organized. He also has more of the party’s elite behind him and his anti-democratic election lies than he had during the last presidential election. If the 2024 election margins end up being wafer-thin, that level of institutional backing could, of course, redound to Trump’s benefit.

Top officials in both the Trump and Biden camps are expecting an uncomfortably tight election outcome in November, sources in both campaigns have told Rolling Stone on numerous occasions over the past year. Advisers to both candidates say they expect the race will turn on a margin of just tens of thousands of votes in a handful of key battleground states, if not a single state. One Trump adviser says that they had privately told the ex-president and presumptive 2024 GOP nominee to anticipate an electoral “knife fight to the death” on, and likely in the wake of, Election Day.

Team Biden’s in-house counsels and network of outside lawyers are currently preparing legal strategies for scenarios involving recounts that would make, in the words of one Biden official, “make Florida in 2000 look like child’s play.”

Sources in and around the president’s legal and political operations say the Biden campaign’s current wargaming is informed by questions aides asked themselves in the wake of the 2020 election: What if there’s a rematch in four years with Donald Trump? What do we do if Joe Biden wins and Trump tries to steal the election again?

Bidenworld spent a lot of time pondering such a scenario even before the 2020 election.

In the months leading up to November 2020, Trump offered repeated, public signals that he would try to delegitimize any outcome in which he lost the election. As the threats mounted, Biden’s campaign brass began preemptively working through different nightmare scenarios.

That prep work accelerated in the final weeks of the campaign as an armada of lawyers, numbering in the hundreds, sketched out various unconventional scenarios in which the then-president tried to cling to power in the face of defeat, according to current and former senior Biden campaign officials.

Democratic aides walked through a range of authoritarian possibilities, including one scenario in which Trump called out the National Guard either as a show of force or in an attempt to enforce his fictitious victory, the sources say. Another scenario involved gameplans for how to handle Trump refusing to leave the White House the day of Biden’s inauguration, even if the swearing-in had already concluded.

“Biden HQ and the lawyers were essentially preparing for every insane scenario that anyone could think of, so that the campaign wouldn’t be stuck in neutral if the worst actually transpired,” says one attorney familiar with the extensive 2020 wargaming. “Even then, I’m not sure everybody was predicting just how crazy it would become and what Trump would actually do.”

Any attempt by Trump to try and undermine the 2024 election would likely look different than 2020, if only because he lacks the legal authority and access to federal resources he enjoyed as president.

Still, Team Biden has been planning for years sketching out what Trump could do as the leader of the GOP, and has partnered with the Democratic National Committee and a vast network of liberal attorneys and legal groups to conduct similar doomsday-style wargaming.

One swing-state Democratic election official involved with these efforts refers to it as a “superstructure” of various legal teams and liberal operatives who “are going to fight [Team Trump and election deniers] on all fronts and let them have it from all sides, if MAGA wants to tear down our democracy.”

According to two Biden campaign officials and two other sources with knowledge of the operation, draft pleadings and legal motions, for all kinds of possible Trump-related emergencies, are already written and at the ready. In critical swing states such as Georgia, Arizona, and Pennsylvania, Team Biden is regularly in contact with an array of outside counsels and local law firms that have been retained to actively monitor what is happening on the ground, including with regards to the activism of election-denying Trump allies.

Bidenworld’s closely-held list of nightmare scenarios — in which Democratic legal teams would have to battle it out tooth and nail with Republican counterparts before, during, or after Election Day 2024 — has grown “comically long,” says one source with direct knowledge of the matter. Biden campaign officials and other Democrats familiar with the topic tell Rolling Stone that a key concern, for which step-by-step gameplanning has already begun, is how to robustly respond if Trump and other leading Republicans try to engineer another Jan. 6-style power grab.

In these internal wargames among Bidenworld and Democratic attorneys in key states, this kind of Jan. 6 sequel has included scripts in which House Republicans or state officials refuse to certify a Biden victory — an act that prominent GOP politicians, including on Capitol Hill, have publicly dangled as an option.

A spokesperson for the Democratic National Committee tells Rolling Stone that the national party is also setting aside “tens of millions of dollars in a robust voter protection program to safeguard the rights of voters to make their voices heard against relentless attacks from Donald Trump and the GOP.”

“Meanwhile, the Trump campaign and the RNC have invested in an army of conspiratorial, election-denying legal staff to undermine our elections and make it harder for Americans’ ballots to be counted,” says the DNC spokesperson. “We won’t let Republicans get away with these baseless attacks on our democracy, and we will continue to use every tool at our disposal to strengthen our democracy as MAGA extremists attempt to tear it down.”

Of course, if much of the current national and swing-state polling holds, Trump could defeat his successor outright in a 2024 rematch. However, that is almost irrelevant to Trump and his MAGA brain trust’s goals of cementing their “heads I win, tails you lose” philosophy of election administration.

Trump, after all, has continued to falsely claim that the 2016 presidential race was somehow “rigged” in Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s favor. And that was the election he won.

Meet the surging ‘double haters’ who could decide whether Biden or Trump wins the election

USA Today

Meet the surging ‘double haters’ who could decide whether Biden or Trump wins the election

Joey Garrison, USA TODAY – March 25, 2024

WASHINGTON ― Jana Pender is no fan of Donald Trump. “All his lies. He’s despicable,” said the 67-year-old retired casino housekeeper from Detroit.

Yet despite voting for President Joe Biden in the 2020 election, Pender is not backing him in 2024. She said Biden has “blood on his hands” for supporting Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

“If nothing changes, I know I won’t vote for Trump and I know I won’t vote for Biden,” Pender said. “I just know I can’t vote for either of these people.”

Pender falls squarely within a group of voters known as the “double haters”− those who dislike Biden, the incumbent Democratic president, and Trump, the former president and presumptive Republican nominee.

This year, this group of skeptics is large and powerful. Double haters make up about 15% of the electorate, according to a poll this month by USA TODAY/Suffolk University, giving them significant sway in deciding the outcome of the November election. Other polls have found double haters make up as much as one-fifth of likely voters.

President Joe Biden walks across the South Lawn upon return to the White House in Washington, DC on March 21, 2023. Biden returned from a three-day campaign trip in Nevada, Arizona and Texas.
President Joe Biden walks across the South Lawn upon return to the White House in Washington, DC on March 21, 2023. Biden returned from a three-day campaign trip in Nevada, Arizona and Texas.

They pose a challenge for Biden as his campaign looks to keep the Democratic coalition united − amid signs of splintering − and not jump ship to one of the third-party candidates or sit the election out altogether. But double haters are also a wild card for Trump, whose divisiveness turns many of them off.

The USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll, taken March 8-11, found Trump leading Biden 40%-38% among registered voters, followed by independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy, 9%.

Twenty-five percent of the double haters supported Trump in the survey, compared to 18% for Biden. About 44% of the double haters currently back various third-party candidates. Kennedy drew more of these voters, 21%, than Biden did. Green Party candidate Jill Stein had the backing of 7% of double haters, while independent Cornel West was supported by 6%.

“He would be top on my list of people to vote for,” Sally Power, 73, of Pittsburgh, Pa., said of Kennedy. Power, who runs a nonprofit women’s retail shop, doesn’t approve of Trump’s “statements and interactions with others,” but has concerns about Biden’s age and capacity to effectively serve another term until he’s 86 years old.

“I don’t want to vote for either one of them, honestly. That’s the problem. And I think I’m not alone in saying that,” said Power, who voted for Trump in 2016 but Biden in 2020. “I find both of them not representative of my views. And I don’t see them as being representative of the country.”

VANDALIA, OHIO - MARCH 16: Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks to supporters during a rally at the Dayton International Airport on March 16, 2024 in Vandalia, Ohio. The rally was hosted by the Buckeye Values PAC. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images) ORG XMIT: 776119694 ORIG FILE ID: 2089688852
VANDALIA, OHIO – MARCH 16: Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks to supporters during a rally at the Dayton International Airport on March 16, 2024 in Vandalia, Ohio. The rally was hosted by the Buckeye Values PAC. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images) ORG XMIT: 776119694 ORIG FILE ID: 2089688852More
Who are the double haters?

In the 2016 election, Trump performed 17 percentage points better than Hillary Clinton among the double-hater voters − who made up about 20% of the vote − steering him to victory.

In 2020, Biden enjoyed higher favorability marks than Trump − 49% to Trump’s 45% in October of that year, according to Gallup − producing fewer double haters. They accounted for only 3% of voters in 2020. But this year, 55% of registered voters have an unfavorable opinion of Biden, according to the USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll, while 55% also have an unfavorable opinion of Trump.

“I think they will end up being the key swing vote because they’re the ones that could go third-party,” said Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster who conducted polling for Biden’s 2020 campaign. “They are the ones that could decide to stay home. They are the ones that swing back and forth because they’re not anchored by affection, they’re anchored by disaffection. These are the voters who decided 2016.”

Double haters are composed of an equal number of Democrats and Republicans. Many consider themselves independents. They skew younger. Most are white but Latino voters also make up a sizable share. Double haters are among those voters who have lingering concerns about the state of the economy despite a robust jobs market, low unemployment and a booming stock market.

Forty-percent of double haters in the USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll said the economy is the most important issue that will determine their vote, followed by immigration, 21%.

Many double hates are wary of Biden’s age − even though Trump, 78, isn’t significantly younger − and convinced Biden has been weak and ineffective in office. But they have a fear factor with Trump − what they perceive as self-centeredness, the constant drama with his court cases, his controversial statements that echo dictators, and his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

“I think Biden’s been an abject failure,” said Robert Brown, a 35-year-old from Minneapolis, who works in marketing and advertising. “Trump’s a piece of s—, too. Just to be real.” Brown said he’s leaning toward voting for Kennedy. “He’s a third option. How many times do we have to pick the lesser of two evils, right?”

Peter O’Connor, a 26-year-old student studying strategic communications at The Ohio State University, voted for Biden in 2020 and doesn’t like Trump. He is considering a vote for Kennedy this year. “I’ve heard a little bit about this Robert Kennedy guy. He sounds interesting to me,” O’Connor said.

Jim Meikle, 80, from Albrightsville, Pa., called Trump “an egotistical maniac” who cares about himself, not the country. Still, he said he will likely vote for Trump again, like he did in 2016 and 2020, over Biden, who he criticized over migration at the southern border, pushing the expansion of electric vehicles and his administration’s rocky military withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.

“You know, it’s really a shame. We’ve got a population of over 300 million people in this country, and this is the best that we can offer to be our president?” said Meikle, an 80-year-old retired manager at a sheet metal plant.

President Joe Biden speaks at the Washoe Democratic Party Office in Reno, Nev., Tuesday March 19, 2024. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin) ORG XMIT: NVJM326
President Joe Biden speaks at the Washoe Democratic Party Office in Reno, Nev., Tuesday March 19, 2024. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin) ORG XMIT: NVJM326
Can Biden win the double haters back?

In a troubling sign for Biden, 87% of the double-hater voters in the USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll said they believe the country is on the wrong track. Only 11% said they approve of Biden’s job performance, compared to 41% who said they approved of the job Trump did as president from 2017 to 2021.

“If you’re Biden, you have to say, ‘Hey, your memory is wrong, his presidency was awful compared to mine,'” said David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center. “Or if you’re Trump, you have to say, ‘All of this boogeyman stuff against me, is unfounded. I was president for four years, the world didn’t fall apart and people have pretty good impressions of what I did.'”

This week, Biden started to embrace an age-old election question that Trump has posed: “Are you better off than you were four years ago?”

“I hope everyone in the country takes a moment to think back what it was like in March of 2020 – COVID had come to America and Trump was president,” Biden told supporters Wednesday at a fundraiser in Dallas. He described a period in which hospitals were overcrowded, nurses wore garbage bags for protection, unemployment soared to 14% and the stock market crashed.

Independent Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks during a campaign rally at Legends Event Center on December 20, 2023 in Phoenix, Arizona.
Independent Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks during a campaign rally at Legends Event Center on December 20, 2023 in Phoenix, Arizona.

Paleologos said double-haters’ fixation on the economy presents an opportunity for Biden, pointing to growing optimism among Americans that the economy has recovered from the pandemic. Thirty-three percent of registered voters now believe an economic recovery is underway, compared to a low of 9% in July 2022.

“To me, there’s an opportunity for Biden to do something that Hillary Clinton was not able to do in 2016, which is to either make Trump more unfavorable,” Paleologos said, or make inroads among double haters over the economy. “The fact of the matter is if the economy continues to rebound, that’s Joe Biden’s economy.”

Lake, who regularly conducts focus groups with likely voters, said the Biden campaign must first crystalize the choice before voters when it comes to Biden and Trump.

“Do you want someone who you think may be a little old or do you want someone who you think may be a little crazy? And God knows where he would take the country,” Lake said of Trump.

Yet that contrast alone might not be enough. “Right now, they’re headed to third party,” she said, arguing it puts the onus on Democrats for voters to understand that the third-party candidates “are not viable, and they may not be who you think they are.”

Data suggests the popularity of third-party candidates is often inflated when voters are given their names in a poll. It’s also unclear how many states they will make it on the ballot.

Yet even if Kennedy, Stein and West don’t match their current polling in November, they could be major factors in battleground states potentially decided by a few thousand votes or less.

Ultimately, whether Biden can win over double haters mulling a third-party vote could come down to their perceptions of the economy. Lake said they must connect how the president’s policies have improved their outlook.

“These are downscale voters who need steady progress,” Lake said. “They need six months of good news. So the most important thing for them is going to be what’s the economy in May and June. You tell me what their perceptions of the economy are in May and June, and I’ll tell you where they’re headed.”

Reach Joey Garrison on X, formerly Twitter, @joeygarrison.

Millions of Americans could soon lose home internet access if lawmakers don’t act

CNN

Millions of Americans could soon lose home internet access if lawmakers don’t act

Brian Fung – March 23, 2024

Every week, Cynthia George connects with her granddaughter and great-grandson on video calls. The 71-year-old retiree reads the news on her MSN homepage and googles how to fight the bugs coming from her drain in Florida’s summer heat. She hunts for grocery deals on her Publix app so that her food stamps stretch just a little further.

But the great-grandmother worries her critical lifeline to the outside world could soon be severed. In fact, she fears she might soon have to make a difficult choice: Buy enough food to feed herself — or pay her home internet bill.

George is one of millions of Americans facing a little-known but fast-approaching financial cliff, a catastrophe that policy experts say is preventable but only if Congress acts, and quickly.

By as soon as May, more than 23 million US households risk being kicked off their internet plans or facing skyrocketing bills that force them to pay hundreds more per year to get online, according to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

The looming disaster could affect nearly 1 in 5 households nationwide, or nearly 60 million Americans, going by Census Bureau population estimates.

Such broad disruptions to internet access would affect people’s ability to do schoolwork, to seek and do jobs, to visit their doctors virtually or refill prescriptions online, or to connect to public services, widening the digital divide between have and have-nots and potentially leading to economic instability on a massive scale.

‘I have to account for every penny’

The crisis is linked to a critical government program expected to run out of funding at the end of April. Known as the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), the benefit provides discounts on internet service valued at up to $30 per month to qualifying low-income households, or up to $75 per month for eligible recipients on tribal lands.

Lawmakers have known for months about the approaching deadline. Yet Congress is nowhere close to approving the $6 billion that President Joe Biden says would renew the ACP and avert calamity for tens of millions of Americans.

This past week, congressional leaders missed what advocates say was the last, best legislative opportunity for funding the ACP: The 11th-hour budget deal designed to avert a government shutdown. The bill text released this week includes no money for the program, heightening the odds of an emergency that will plunge millions into financial distress just months before the pivotal 2024 election.

Now, with time running out for the ACP, the FCC has been forced to begin shutting down the program — halting new signups and warning users their benefits are about to be suspended.

The US Capitol in Washington, DC, on March 22. - Pedro Ugarte/AFP/Getty Images
The US Capitol in Washington, DC, on March 22. – Pedro Ugarte/AFP/Getty Images

“Because of political gameplay, about 60 million Americans will have to make hard choices between paying for the internet or paying for food, rent, and other utilities, widening the digital divide in this country,” said Gigi Sohn, a former top FCC official. “It’s embarrassing that a popular, bipartisan program with support from nearly half of Congress will end because of politics, not policy.”

Without the aid, low-income Americans like George would be priced out of home internet service. The prospect of losing a critical lifeline to the modern economy has put ACP subscribers on edge. Many tell CNN they are irate at Congress for letting them down and, through inaction, taking away a basic, essential utility.

“My grandkids, they make fun of me,” George said with a chuckle. “They say I’m cheap. I go, ‘No, Grandma’s thrifty.’ I don’t have any choice; I have to account for every penny. And this would mean that that food bill would have to be cut down. There’s no place else I would be able to take it from.”

Military families, older Americans and rural residents most at risk

The ACP has quickly gained adoption since Congress created the program in the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law. It is overwhelmingly popular with both political parties, surveys show.

Military families account for almost half of the ACP’s subscriber base, according to the White House and an outside survey backed by Comcast.

More than a quarter of ACP users live in rural areas, the same survey said, with roughly 4 in 10 enrolled households located in the southern United States alone. As many as 65% of respondents said they feared losing their job without the ACP; 3 out of 4 said they worry about losing online health care services, and more than 80% said they believe their kids would fall behind in school.

Large swaths of the ACP’s user base trend older; Americans over 65 account for almost 20% of the program. And as many as 10 million Americans who use the program are at least age 50.

Michelle McDonough, 49, works part time at a tobacco shop in Maine and lives off Social Security disability payments. She is one statistics class away from earning an associate degree in behavioral health. Not only does she go to class virtually, but she also sees a psychiatrist who only meets patients through telehealth visits.

Michelle McDonough says she would have to cut back on groceries if the ACP goes away. - Courtesy Michelle McDonough
Michelle McDonough says she would have to cut back on groceries if the ACP goes away. – Courtesy Michelle McDonough

Like George, McDonough also expects she’ll have to cut back on groceries if the ACP goes away. There’s a library roughly five miles from her home with internet access, but having to go out of her way would cost her even more time and money she doesn’t have, she said. Besides, McDonough added, her car is dying and the library is rarely open in snowy weather.

If politicians allow the ACP to collapse, it will be a sign of how out of touch they are with their voters, McDonough said.

“I’m trying to become a productive member of society, something that they say people on low income are not,” McDonough said. “I’m trying. And, you know, one of the programs that’s helping me, they’re talking about taking it away — when there are definitely a lot of other things that they probably could take the funding from.”

How the ACP works to bring American communities online

Congress authorized the ACP with an initial $14 billion in funding in 2021. That money has now spread to virtually every congressional district in the country. It is the largest internet affordability program in US history, the government has said, describing it as working hand-in-glove with billions of dollars in new infrastructure spending.

Building out high-speed internet cables is costly; even more so to places that internet providers have traditionally overlooked as unprofitable or hard to reach. Historically, that has left millions of people with no or spotty service or facing sky-high prices just to get a basic internet plan.

Ethernet cables are seen running from the back of a wireless router in Washington, DC on March 21, 2019. - Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images
Ethernet cables are seen running from the back of a wireless router in Washington, DC on March 21, 2019. – Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

Investing in infrastructure is a first step, but it means nothing if Americans cannot afford the connectivity it provides. So the ACP helps bridge that price gap for consumers while also benefiting internet providers, many of whom say the program ensures a base of demand to support building in otherwise money-losing markets.

“I can think of lots of examples where we’re boring under a river to get to two customers, and that was extremely costly,” said Gary Johnson, CEO and general manager of Paul Bunyan Communications, a Minnesota-based telecom cooperative serving some of the furthest reaches of the state. “To get fiber in the most rocky areas, we’re literally using a rock saw and we’re cutting, slicing a path through that rock so we can put our fiber cable in. The fact you’re dividing that [cost] over a very small number of customers? That’s ultimately challenging.”

In a recent FCC survey, more than half of rural respondents — and 47% of respondents overall — said the ACP was their first-ever experience with having home internet.

Extra shifts, grocery cuts: What an ACP collapse would mean

If the ACP collapses, some, like George and McDonough, will make cuts to their budget to stay online.

Kamesha Scott, a 29-year-old mother in St. Louis who works two jobs delivering Amazon packages and handling restaurant takeout orders, told CNN she would have to pick up extra shifts to make ends meet. And that would mean seeing her two kids even less, she said.

Kamesha Scott, 29, says she would have to work extra shifts to make ends meet if her internet bills go up. - Courtesy Kamesha Scott
Kamesha Scott, 29, says she would have to work extra shifts to make ends meet if her internet bills go up. – Courtesy Kamesha Scott

Expect others to resort to a mishmash of ad hoc solutions, policy experts say.

That could include using the free Wi-Fi at fast-food restaurants, school parking lots, and other public spaces. Or it could mean falling back on cellphone data service, at least where it’s available and plans are still affordable.

Roughly a third of the country’s 123,000 public libraries offer mobile hotspot lending, allowing visitors to borrow palm-sized devices that pump out a cellular signal that can substitute for home internet service in a pinch, said Megan Janicki, a policy expert at the American Library Association. But they aren’t a perfect solution: The cell signal may be weak, or users could have to wait to check one out.

“Depending on how long the waitlist is, they’re waiting at least three weeks, if not longer,” Janicki said.

ACP subscribers could turn to other government aid. The FCC’s Lifeline program, which dates to the Reagan administration, similarly gives low-income households a monthly discount on phone or internet service. But the benefit pales in comparison: It’s worth only $9.25 a month, or $34.25 for tribal subscribers — a fraction of what ACP subscribers are currently eligible for.

Turning low-income Americans into political pawns

Despite the ACP’s popularity, routine congressional gridlock and the politics of an election year have turned low-income Americans into unwitting — and in many cases unwilling — pawns in a much larger battle.

Earlier this year, a bipartisan group of Senate and House lawmakers unveiled legislation to authorize $7 billion to save the ACP — that’s $1 billion more than the Biden administration asked for.

The bill has not moved.

“The House Republicans attempting to demonstrate that they are cutting back on government spending makes re-funding the ACP very difficult,” Blair Levin, a telecom industry analyst at New Street Research, wrote in a research note in January. “It is unlikely the House Republican leadership will allow the bill to go to the floor.”

A crew works on a cell tower in Lake Havasu City, Ariz., on Tuesday, August 24, 2021. - Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc/Getty Images
A crew works on a cell tower in Lake Havasu City, Ariz., on Tuesday, August 24, 2021. – Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc/Getty Images

But there is growing evidence that money spent through the ACP ends up saving taxpayers in the long run. In a recent study, Levin said, researchers estimated that every $1 of ACP spending increases US GDP by $3.89, while other research has outlined how telemedicine can lead to substantial savings in health care.

Even though extending ACP benefits could help lawmakers from both parties as they head home to campaign, perhaps the biggest political beneficiary may be Biden as his campaign touts the administration’s economic record ahead of the election.

Jonathan Blaine, a freelance software engineer in Vermont and an ACP subscriber, pins the blame on certain Republicans that he says would rather hurt working-class people than give Biden a political victory.

“You guys seem to promote that you’re for the working-class people, but realistically, the working-class people are the ones that you’re screwing over most of the time,” Blaine said, speaking directly to GOP lawmakers. “You’re taking ACP away from the farmers that can check the local produce prices and be able to reasonably negotiate their prices with retailers. You’re removing disabled people’s ability to fill their prescriptions online.”

Lawmakers are likely to feel voters’ wrath in November if the ACP falls apart, Blaine added.

He called it “sickening” that lawmakers keep removing these benefits for poorer Americans from legislation “left and right.”

“But the fact that you sit there and smile to our faces trying to say you’re for the working class? You’re for the poor? You’re for the less fortunate? It’s absolute bulls**t,” he added. “And most of us see right through your bulls**t, and that is why you’re losing seats.”