Putin Critic Alexei Navalny Has Gone Missing From Prison
Nikki McCann Ramirez – December 11, 2023
Allies of Alexei Navalny say the imprisoned Russian opposition leader has been missing for days.
On Monday, Navalny’s spokesperson Kira Yarmysh wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that “the lawyers tried to get to IK-6 and IK-7 — two [prison] colonies in the Vladimir region where Alexey
[Navalny] might be. They have just been informed simultaneously in both colonies that he is not there. We still don’t know where Alexey is.”
Yarmysh added in a separate post that Russian authorities had refused to disclose where Navalny had been transferred.
Last year, Navalny was sentenced to nine years in prison on what are widely regarded as fabricated charges of corruption intended to silence his criticism of Russian President Vladimir Putin. In August, an additional 19 years were added to his sentence. Prior to his imprisonment, Navalny survived at least two documented assassination attempts, once in 2017, and again in 2020.
This is a breaking news story and will be updated.
‘Putin is vulnerable’: Navalny camp to tap voter concerns on war and economy
Mark Trevelyan – December 11, 2023
A view shows a billboard in Moscow
LONDON (Reuters) -With his hands on all the levers of power in Russia, Vladimir Putin cannot be beaten in a presidential election, top aides to jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny say.
But they see the 100-day campaign as a chance to expose him as vulnerable on the issues that most matter to Russians: the war in Ukraine and the state of the economy.
Putin declared his candidacy for another six-year term last Friday and there is no serious rival to challenge him, with Navalny serving more than 30 years in prison and other critics also jailed or in exile. On Monday Navalny’s supporters said he had been moved from his previous penal colony and his current whereabouts were unclear.
With the Kremlin in full control of state media and able to decide who can and cannot run, the Navalny camp says this is not a real election. But it sees the campaign window as a rare opportunity to draw Russians into a political conversation and convince them that Russia’s main problems are of Putin’s making.
“Of course it’s impossible to beat Putin in the ‘elections’,” Navalny aide Leonid Volkov told Reuters. “The aim of our campaign is to change the political agenda in Russia.”
During an election campaign when people are focused on politics and expecting promises and solutions, it will be harder for the Kremlin to avoid difficult topics, he said.
“Putin is vulnerable because he does not have answers today to the questions that really worry people. These are the questions of an exit strategy for the war – when and how it should end and when the soldiers will return home – and the questions of destitution, poverty, corruption, financial credits and all the rest.”
The Kremlin says Putin will win another six-year term because he commands overwhelming support across Russian society, with opinion poll ratings of around 80%.
So far only three people have declared their intention to run against him. Two are low-profile figures, Boris Nadezhdin and Yekaterina Duntsova, who may struggle to gather the 300,000 signatures required to run. The third, nationalist Igor Girkin, is in jail awaiting trial on a charge of inciting extremist activity.
Other possible candidates who have yet to declare include Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov and liberal Grigory Yavlinsky, both political veterans and serial election losers.
‘NOT PUTIN’
Undaunted, the Navalny camp has launched its campaign by simply urging Russians to vote against the incumbent.
“We don’t have our own candidate. We had a candidate, Navalny, and they refused to register him, tried to kill him and put him in prison. Now we have, so to speak, a collective candidate ‘against Putin’,” said Lyubov Sobol, a close Navalny associate who, like Volkov, is on an official list of “terrorists and extremists” and is now based outside Russia.
Navalny’s supporters cast him as a Russian version of South Africa’s Nelson Mandela who will one day be freed from jail to lead the country.
Russian authorities view Navalny and his supporters as extremists with links to Western intelligence agencies intent on trying to destabilise Russia. Putin has warned the West that any meddling inside Russia will be considered an act of aggression.
The opposition is seeking volunteers from among the hundreds of thousands of people who have fled Russia since the start of the war and asking them to cold-call voters – ideally as many as 100 each, Sobol said in a telephone interview.
Many people would be scared and put the phone down, but others could be persuaded to talk, she said.
On its website NePutin (NotPutin).org, the Navalny team also calls for volunteers to spread videos and campaign messages online, and to stick up leaflets and scrawl graffiti in the streets – what Sobol described as “partisan” tactics.
“Putin’s task is to make sure these elections go as smoothly and calmly as possible, without any strain on the nerves. Our task is the opposite,” she said.
Within hours of parliament announcing the March 17 election last week, the Navalny camp had fired its first campaign shot. It posted photos on social media of giant blue billboards it had placed in major cities, with an innocent-looking new year greeting to Russians. Underneath was a QR code leading to the NotPutin website.
The stunt showed the ingenuity of Navalny’s tech-savvy team. But the impact was brief, as authorities took down the billboards and blocked access to the site.
‘POINTS OF TENSION’
The opposition has struggled in the past to present a united front between the Navalny camp and other prominent Putin opponents such as former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky and former world chess champion Garry Kasparov.
Volkov denied any split, saying all of them were appealing to the same audience.
But from outside Russia, they face a huge task to mobilise people in a country where nearly 20,000 have been detained since Moscow’s February 2022 invasion for protesting against the war in Ukraine.
Sobol said opposition polling showed many people were dissatisfied with Putin but were afraid to speak out. She said it was precisely the degree of repression in Russia that showed that the authorities are worried.
“We on the side of the opposition must create more points of tension for him,” she said. “We must make problems for him and his regime, and agitate, put out counter-propaganda and tell the truth.”
(Reporting by Mark Trevelyan. Editing by Jane Merriman and Gareth Jones)
Trump says he won’t testify again at his New York fraud trial. He says he has nothing more to say
Michael R. Sisak and Jill Colvin – December 10, 2023
Former President Donald Trump, center, sits at the defense table with his attorney’s Christopher Kise, left, and Alina Habba, at New York Supreme Court, Thursday, Dec. 7, 2023, in New York. (AP Photo/Eduardo Munoz Alvarez, Pool, File)Former President Donald Trump, second from left, sits at the defense table with his attorney’s Christopher Kise, left, Alina Habba, second from right, and Clifford Robert at New York Supreme Court, Thursday, Dec. 7, 2023, in New York. (AP Photo/Eduardo Munoz Alvarez, Pool)
NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump said Sunday he has decided against testifying for a second time at his New York civil fraud trial, posting on social media a day before his scheduled appearance that he “very successfully & conclusively” testified last month and saw no need to do so again.
The former president, the leading contender for the 2024 Republican nomination, had been expected to return to the witness stand Monday as a coda to his defense against New York Attorney General Letitia James ‘ lawsuit.
James, a Democrat, alleges Trump inflated his wealth on financial statements used in securing loans and making deals. The case threatens Trump’s real estate empire and cuts to the heart of his image as a successful businessman.
“I will not be testifying on Monday,” Trump wrote in an all-capital-letters, multipart statement on his Truth Social platform less than 20 hours before he was to take the witness stand.
“I have already testified to everything & have nothing more to say,” Trump added, leaving the final word among defense witnesses to an accounting expert hired by his legal team who testified last week that he found “no evidence, whatsoever, for any accounting fraud” in Trump’s financial statements.
A Trump spokesperson did not immediately respond to questions about his decision.
The decision was an abrupt change from Trump’s posture in recent days, when his lawyers said he was insistent on testifying again despite their concerns about a gag order that has cost him $15,000 in fines for disparaging the judge’s law clerk.
“President Trump has already testified. There is really nothing more to say to a judge who has imposed an unconstitutional gag order and thus far appears to have ignored President Trump’s testimony and that of everyone else involved in the complex financial transactions at issue in the case,” Trump lawyer Christopher Kise said Sunday.
Trump’s decision came days after his son, Eric Trump, ditched his return appearance on the witness stand. Trump said on social media that he’d told Eric to cancel.
It also follows Trump’s first trip back to court since he testified in the case on Nov. 6. Last Thursday, he watched from the defense table as the accounting professor, New York University professor Eli Bartov, blasted the state’s case and said Trump’s financial statements “were not materially misstated.”
Trump’s cancellation caught court officials by surprise. Without Trump on the witness stand, the trial will be on hold until Tuesday, when Bartov will finish his testimony. State lawyers say they’ll then call at least one rebuttal witness.
In a statement, James said whether Trump testified again or not, “we have already proven that he committed years of financial fraud and unjustly enriched himself and his family. No matter how much he tries to distract from reality, the facts don’t lie.”
Trump was often defiant and combative when he testified Nov. 6. Along with defending his wealth and denying wrongdoing, he repeatedly sparred with the judge, whom he criticized as “extremely hostile,” and slammed James as “a political hack.”
Trump answered questions from state lawyers for about 3½ hours, often responding with lengthy diatribes. His verbose answers irked the judge, Arthur Engoron, who admonished, “This is not a political rally.”
Had Trump returned to the stand Monday, it would’ve been his defense lawyers leading the questioning, but lawyers from James’ office could have cross-examined him, too.
Engoron is now considering six other claims, including allegations of conspiracy and insurance fraud. James seeks penalties of more than $300 million and wants Trump banned from doing business in New York. The judge is deciding, rather than a jury, because juries aren’t allowed in this type of case.
Though testimony is nearly over, the trial that started Oct. 2 will bleed into next year. Closing arguments are scheduled for Jan. 11, just four days before the Iowa caucuses start the presidential primary season. Engoron said he hopes to have a decision by the end of January.
Trump has had a prime role in the trial. Along with his testimony, he has voluntarily gone to court eight days to watch witnesses, turning his appearances into de facto campaign stops. During breaks, he has taken full advantage of the cameras parked in the courthouse hallway, spinning what’s happening inside the courtroom, where cameras aren’t allowed, in the most favorable light.
Trump’s frequent presence in court — as a witness, observer and aggrieved defendant — has underscored the unique personal stakes for a billionaire who’s also juggling four criminal cases and a campaign.
Where other politicians have shied from legal peril, Trump has leaned in as his court and political calendars increasingly overlap, with primaries a few weeks away and the first of his criminal trials slated for March.
But Trump’s interest in vindicating his company and his wealth has also run up against the limitations of the gag order, which was reinstated at the end of November by a state appellate court after a two-week interlude. The same gag order was also in effect when he testified in November.
Despite the gag order, Trump was adamant in recent days that he’d testify again — even as one of his lawyers, Alina Habba, said she discouraged him from taking the stand.
“He still wants to take the stand, even though my advice is, at this point, you should never take the stand with a gag order,” Habba told reporters last week, before Trump changed his mind.
Trump spent Saturday evening with Habba at the New York Young Republican Club’s black-tie gala. At the event, about a mile from the courthouse, he went on at length highlighting his objections, saying, “I have proven my innocence literally every single day.”
“There’s a lot that has to be done to begin to rebuild the Republican Party, potentially to build a new conservative party,” Cheney told ABC “This Week” co-anchor Jonathan Karl in an interview that aired Sunday. “But in my view, that has to wait until after the 2024 election because our focus has got to be on defeating Donald Trump.”
Cheney, author of the new book “Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning,” said she hasn’t “ruled anything out” when asked if running as a third-party candidate next year is a possibility, but she stressed that she would not “do something that has the impact of helping Donald Trump.”
Democrats have contended that third-party candidates would only hurt President Joe Biden and benefit Trump in the general election, if he is the Republican nominee. They have particular animosity toward No Labels, a group working to secure ballot access across the country as it weighs putting forward an independent, bipartisan “unity ticket” made up of one Republican and one Democrat as the presidential and vice presidential nominees.
Cheney believes that because there are several third-party candidates already in the race — like Cornel West, Jill Stein and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — that even without a No Labels ticket, there is still going to be “a fractured electorate,” so the principal question remains: “What do we do to defeat the man who is an existential threat to our republic?”
PHOTO: ‘This Week’ co-anchor Jonathan Karl interviews former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney. (Al Drago/ABC)
The former three-term Wyoming congresswoman and member of Republican leadership said that it’s also “crucially important in this next cycle … to elect candidates who believe in the Constitution” to ensure that the peaceful transfer of power is completed after the next election, including on Jan. 6, 2025, when Congress will be tasked with counting the electoral votes submitted by the states — the final step before the next inauguration.
“I’ve expressed very clearly my view that having Mike Johnson as the speaker, having this Republican majority in charge, you can’t count on them to defend the Constitution at this moment,” Cheney said.
Johnson joined with more than 100 other House Republicans in 2020 in supporting a lawsuit to overturn Biden’s win in some key swing states; Johnson and numerous other Republicans also voted against certifying the 2020 election results. After winning the speakership, Johnson declined to say whether he stood by that.
In her new book, Cheney writes about how she came to believe Trump needed to be impeached as the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol was unfolding and lawmakers were being whisked out of the chambers to safety. As the House Republican Conference chair at the time of the riot, Cheney ended up being the highest-ranking Republican — and one of just 10 Republicans total — to vote to impeach Trump on Jan. 13, 2021.
He has repeatedly maintained he did nothing wrong and was ultimately acquitted by Senate Republicans in a 57-43 vote, but Cheney continued to speak out against Trump, arguing he bore responsibility for the Jan. 6 attack.
Before losing her 2022 primary to a Trump-endorsed challenger, she served as vice chair of the House select committee investigating that attack.
Trump, for his part, has long criticized Cheney as well. He wrote in a recent social media post that she was “crazy” and has called her “smug.”
In a March 18, 2021, interview, Karl asked Trump if he really wanted to go to the Capitol on Jan. 6, as the riot was unfolding.
“I was thinking about going back during the problem, to stop the problem, doing it myself. Secret Service didn’t like that idea too much. And you know what? I would have been very well received,” Trump said, according to Karl’s latest book, “Tired of Winning.”
“Don’t forget — the people that went to Washington that day, in my opinion, they went because they thought the election was rigged,” Trump said then.
Karl asked Cheney in Sunday’s interview: “Isn’t that right there an admission by Trump himself of his own culpability?”
“Yes,” Cheney said. “One of the things that’s really important throughout all of this is Donald Trump’s intent. And we see again and again sort of the premeditation for this whole plan, the premeditation to claim victory, but also the fact that while the mob, the violence, was underway and the electoral vote was stopped — the armed mob at that point was carrying out his wishes.”
Three days after Jan. 6, Karl spoke to then-House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. In that interview, McCarthy told him, “What’s real crazy is back in our district, there’s tons of people who are ready to storm the Capitol again. I just don’t know about these people.”
Cheney told Karl that, behind closed doors, McCarthy initially “was being responsible” but then changed course.
“One of the things that was striking to me in writing the book was it was absolutely clear in those days, just after the sixth, on the calls that we were having in leadership, Kevin McCarthy was very clear and very strong about the potential for violence against members of the House,” Cheney said. “He actually understood reality and was being responsible in the beginning. But it didn’t take long until the political necessity of appeasing Donald Trump caused him to take a different path.”
A McCarthy spokesman said in a recent statement to CNN, responding to Cheney’s book, that she had “McCarthy Derangement Syndrome.”
PHOTO: ‘This Week’ co-anchor Jonathan Karl interviews former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney. (Al Drago/ABC)
Not even a month after the attack, which McCarthy had said Trump “bears responsibility” for, McCarthy visited Trump at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, a move that was seen by many as re-legitimizing Trump’s place in the Republican Party.
Cheney and others who have publicly taken a stance against Trump and how his influence has changed the Republican Party have faced threats in response. She called that a “sad” reality of the political environment today.
“This isn’t sort of the threat of physical violence because of terrorist organizations or outside entities. This is the threat of violence because of a former president of the United States. And I think we have to be very careful as a country that we stop and we think about what that means and the path that we’re going down,” she said.
Karl asked Cheney what she thinks people will say about her and her legacy, years in the future.
“I hope that they will say she did the right thing and that she put the country ahead of politics and ahead of partisanship at a moment when it really mattered,” she said.
“And that project is, in your mind, just getting started?” Karl asked.
“Certainly,” Cheney said. “Once we get through this election cycle and we defeat Donald Trump, I think there’s clearly a huge amount of work that has to be done to restore, to right the ship of, our democracy.”
Abcarian: Read Liz Cheney’s book and weep. America’s democracy hangs on the details.
Robin Abcarian – December 10, 2023
Former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney wants you to remember what Donald Trump is capable of. (Jacquelyn Martin / Associated Press)
You don’t read a book like former Wyoming U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney’s tell-all looking for literary pearls.
You read it to find out what was going on behind the scenes in Congress after the 2020 election, as Donald Trump’s Republican sycophants and enablers schemed with him to overturn the results of a legitimate U.S. election. You read it to remember just how feckless Trump was when he was in power, and to remind yourself exactly what he is capable of should the nightmare of a second Trump term come to pass.
Oh, and of course you read it because who could ever tire of revelations about former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s spinelessness and treachery? God, what a snake. No, strike that. Snakes actually have spines.
After forcefully blaming Trump for Jan. 6, McCarthy went to Mar-a-Lago to suck up to the former president, Cheney writes in “Oath and Honor,” because he needed money. Nearly every major corporate donor had threatened to withdraw support from Republicans who voted to object to the electoral college votes. Because McCarthy’s only real political skill was fundraising, she says, he was desperate for access to Trump’s extensive lists of small-dollar donors. “In order to use those lists,” she writes, “Kevin would have to help Donald Trump cover up the stain of his assault on our democracy.”
Like many who lean left politically, I have no enduring affection for the Cheney family. They oppose almost everything I support: reproductive rights, renewable energy, the Affordable Care Act, immigration reform, you name it. I was appalled by then-Vice President Dick Cheney’s warmongering and manipulation of then-President George W. Bush. And I’ve never forgotten, either, that Liz Cheney boycotted the 2012 wedding of her gay sister, Mary. She later said she was wrong, but her absence was downright cruel.
Imagine my surprise, then, when a tear actually sprang to my eye for a moment after reading about a particularly charged moment between Liz and her father on New Year’s Day 2021.
On Dec. 26, 2020, the Washington Post’s David Ignatius had written a column with a dire warning about Trump’s postelection plotting. Shortly after he lost, Trump had fired senior Defense Department officials and installed loyalists in their place, an unprecedented move by a lame-duck president. Was he stacking the military deck in order to invoke the Insurrection Act and stay in office?
A delegation of senior Republicans, wrote Ignatius, should pay a visit to Trump and tell him in no uncertain terms that he’d lost. There were two problems, however, as Cheney writes. First, not enough senior Republican officials would be willing to risk Trump’s wrath, and second, it was clear that privately urging Trump to do anything against his self-interest would be futile.
Father and daughter came up with a plan: Dick Cheney was a former Defense secretary, so together they would reach out to the nine other living former secretaries of Defense and ask them to sign a public letter urging a peaceful transition of power.
“Efforts to involve the U.S. armed forces in solving election disputes,” wrote the 10 secretaries, “would take us into dangerous, unlawful and unconstitutional territory.”
As Liz Cheney prepared to return to Washington from Wyoming in January 2021, her father gave her a hug, and then, she wrote, “He looked at me and with steel in his voice, said, ‘Defend the republic, daughter.’ “
“I will, Dad,” she replied. “Always.”
Unlike many of Cheney’s critics, I see nothing self-important or self-serving here.
Liz Cheney is one of the few heroic, high-profile Republicans who were willing to do the right thing after the 2020 election, even if it meant sacrificing her job and her political prospects.
Early in Cheney’s first House term, she writes, the loathsome Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio asked her to become a member of his ultra-right-wing Freedom Caucus. His pitch? “We don’t have any women and we need one.”
“Tempting as this offer was,” she dryly notes, “I took a pass.”
Her recollection of the debate among her colleagues about whether to kick her out of her leadership position for voting to impeach Trump is priceless.
Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York wanted Cheney’s head because Stefanik’s constituents were writing letters to their local papers asking why their representative had not taken the same “principled” stand against Trump that Cheney had. (“Many of us who had known Elise since before she abandoned all principle were curious about how she had lost her sense of right and wrong,” Cheney writes.)
A number of her House male colleagues simply did not appreciate Cheney’s tone. “Ralph Normal of South Carolina kept repeating that his problem with me was my attitude: ‘You’ve just got such a defiant attitude!’ ” (So unladylike!)
Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania was hurt by Cheney’s early statement in favor of Trump’s impeachment. “It’s like playing in the biggest game of your life,” he whined, “and you see your girlfriend sitting on the opponent’s side.”
Female members loudly objected.
“Yeah,” Cheney said. “I’m not your girlfriend.”
On Jan. 6, 2022, one year after the attack by deeply misguided Trump supporters — so many of whom face long prison terms for their crimes that day — there was a small ceremony and a moment of silence on the House floor. Only two Republicans showed up: Liz Cheney and her father.
The following month, Cheney and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, the two Republicans who served on the House Jan. 6 committee, were censured by the Republican National Committee for “participating in a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.”
Cheney, as always, was unbowed. “I do not recognize those in my party who have abandoned the Constitution to embrace Donald Trump,” she responded at the time. “History will be their judge.”
In her book, she reflects on the moment: “The resolution reflected a political party that had lost its principles and, frankly, seemed to be led by morons.”
Retribution Campaign: Trump again defends infamous ‘Access Hollywood’ comments and warns Biden, ‘Be very careful’
Lalee Ibssa, Soo Rin Kim and Kendall Ross – December 10, 2023
Former President Donald Trump spoke on Saturday night to some of his most staunch conservative supporters, filling a speech at the New York Young Republican Club’s annual gala with praise for his political allies on the far right and doubling down on his controversial comment that he’d only be a “dictator” if reelected on “Day 1.”
He also bragged about his ability to win the 2016 election after the release of a video from behind the scenes of “Access Hollywood” years earlier, where he was seen making lewd and vulgar statements about women.
Trump spotlighting the “Access Hollywood” tape — an infamous episode late in his 2016 campaign that fueled widespread condemnation and calls for him end his campaign — started out on Saturday as a seemingly off-the-cuff remark.
In his speech, he mentioned “the biggest inescapable” situation he endured in politics and then shared more details, making it clear he was talking about the “Access Hollywood” video.
In that notorious clip, he had said, “You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful [women] — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. … And when you’re a star they let you do it.”
“Grab them by the p—-,” Trump said in the video. “You can do anything.”
He later tried to play that down as “locker room talk,” including during one of the 2016 debates, but his defense only fueled some other notable Republicans to call for him to step aside.
Trump on Saturday described how all of his political advisers, except Steve Bannon, encouraged him to drop out of the 2016 race after the video surfaced. Trump claimed that an unnamed general told him the “locker room talk” explanation he gave was the “bravest thing I’ve ever seen” over witnessing people die on the battlefield.
“It was an incredible campaign and we won and nobody thought we could win,” Trump said.
The unusual rehashing of the “Access Hollywood” video — which has not been in the headlines for years — is the latest example of how Trump continues to brush aside scandal while remaining popular with the Republican base.
PHOTO: Former President Donald Trump speaks during a Commit to Caucus rally, Dec. 2, 2023, in Ankeny, Iowa. (Matthew Putney/AP)
Trump is campaigning for the White House for a third time while facing numerous legal battles, including four sets of criminal charges. He denies all wrongdoing and has pleaded not guilty to all of his charges.
In Saturday’s speech, he claimed it was another example of his opponents attempting to stop his political rise — an accusation prosecutors have rejected.
“Our mission in this race is to win a historic and powerful mandate to take back our nation from the shadow government of corrupt alliances,” he said.
He also continued focusing on a theme of retribution and retaliation, seemingly threatening President Joe Biden.
He has said that as president, he would appoint a special prosecutor “to go after” Biden and Biden’s family, whom he blamed for the destruction of the country.
“They’ve opened up a Pandora’s box and I only can say to Joe is: Be very careful what you wish for,” Trump said Saturday.
In front of a friendly crowd, he joked about his comments from a town hall with Fox News’ Sean Hannity last week where he said he wasn’t going to be a dictator if reelected “other than Day 1,” when he would focus on the border and drilling.
That statement raised new alarms about whether Trump would abuse his power as president, something he did not rule out when questioned by Hannity.
“You know why I wanted to be a dictator, because I want a wall. Right? I want a wall and I want to drill, drill, drill,” Trump said on Saturday to “build the wall” chants.
PHOTO: Formers Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump (L) and Democratic presidential nominee former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stand on stage during the town hall debate at Washington University on Oct. 9, 2016 in St Louis, Mo. (Win Mcnamee/Getty Images, FILE)
The club’s gala is known for making headlines with its speeches and a room full of guests with their own controversies.
Saturday’s event honored figures like Bannon, who was sentenced last year after being convicted of contempt of Congress.
Bannon has had an off-and-on relationship with Trump, including serving briefly as a senior White House strategist in 2017. Trump pardoned him in early 2021 after Bannon was accused of money laundering and conspiracy to commit wire fraud by federal prosecutors. Bannon has pleaded not guilty to similar charges filed by prosecutors in New York City.
Other guests on Saturday included former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who is charged with Trump in a Georgia election subversion indictment (Giuliani has pleaded not guilty); and Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar, who was previously censured and removed from committees after posting a graphic anime clip featuring violence against New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
At one point during the gala, host Alex Stein tried to make a punchline out of stereotyping the Black and Hispanic community as criminals and gang members, saying it would be “good if Donald Trump went to jail” because it would help him earn the support from those communities.
Stein then repeated the joke later in the night when Trump was in the room.
“Once President Trump is back in office, we won’t be playing nice anymore. It will be a time for retribution,” the club’s president, Gavin Wax, said in his own remarks. “After baseless years of investigations and government lies and media lies against this man, now it is time to turn the tables on these actual crooks and lock them up for a change.”
ATLANTA, GEORGIA – AUGUST 14: Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis speaks during a news conference at the Fulton County Government building on August 14, 2023 in Atlanta, Georgia. A grand jury today handed up an indictment naming former President Donald Trump and his Republican allies over an alleged attempt to overturn the 2020 election results in the state.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis doesn’t appear to be messing around when it comes to former Donald Trump.
On Thursday, The Guardian reported on newly obtained emails from the District Attorney, revealing that Willis is aiming for serious jail time for Trump.
Willis recently announced that she will seek an Aug. 5 trial date for Trump in the election interference case, meaning that Trump could be facing at least two felony trials in the midst of the 2024 election.
In court, Trump’s attorney, Steve Sadow, argued that the August date amounts to “election interference.” Willis was asked by CNN about the allegation from Sadow on The Root’s red carpet. “I think it’s ridiculous; we’ve been conducting that investigation since 2021,” Willis said. “The investigation has taken the normal course, and we’re at the point that the investigation naturally took us to.”
Sadow responded to CNN: “What is utterly ‘ridiculous’ is Willis, the DA in Fulton County, GA, campaigning for substantial money handouts from left-wing democrats in Washington D.C. and NYC yet proclaiming her prosecution of President Trump is not political.”
Regardless of when the trial actually occurs, preparing to take on a former President in a sprawling RICO case will undeniably be labor intensive. But Willis told The Root that her main focus going into the new year is “violent crime.”
“We need to make sure that we keep the community safe,” she said. “You need to be safe no matter what your socio-economic status is, whether you’re living in an impoverished neighborhood or one that is plentiful.”
Trump’s Capitol Hill allies push part of his 2025 agenda
Sophia Cai – December 9, 2023
Photo illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios. Photo: Roberto Schmidt/AFP via Getty Images
Former President Trump’s allies in Congress are pushing a series of bills that reflect part of his 2025 agenda, including plans to crack down on mask mandates, affirmative action and who can become a U.S. citizen.
Why it matters: The recent proposals show that even as Trump plans to remake the executive branch in a way that would give him unprecedented power as president, Trump’s MAGA loyalists on Capitol Hill aim to turn many of his campaign-rally talking points into law.
The proposals also reflect Trump’s influence on Congress’ GOP caucus — despite losing the 2020 election, his not-so-stellar record endorsing other Republicans, and the prospect of facing four felony trials as he runs for president next year.
Trump’s been endorsed by at least 83 House Republicans and 16 GOP senators for the 2024 election, when Republicans will try to take over the Senate while Democrats will seek to regain control of the House.
Zoom in: Sen. J.D. Vance’s (R-Ohio), one of Trump’s most loyal backers in Congress, introduced a bill over the summer to bar the Department of Transportation from enforcing mask mandates, a popular cause in Trumpworld.
The bill, an echo of conservative criticisms of pandemic-era restrictions, passed the Senate with votes from 10 Democrats. Trump has promised to “use every available authority to cut federal funding to any school, college, airline or public transportation system” imposing a mask or vaccine mandate.
Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) and Vance this week introduced a bill to create a federal office to investigate any claims of colleges using affirmative action in admissions — essentially an agency to police a Supreme Court ruling this year that Trump and other Republicans cheered.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), another Trump loyalist, has joined Vance in proposing bills that would make gender-affirming care for minors a felony, another priority on the far right’s social agenda.
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), meanwhile, introduced legislation to end birthright citizenship for children of undocumented immigrants after Trump vowed to sign an executive order to do the same on his first day back in office day.
The intrigue: Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) and Greene have put forward a pair of legally dubious bills that would aim to “expunge” Trump’s two impeachments — an idea Trump talks about frequently and would favor, people familiar with his thinking tell Axios.
Legal analysts largely agree, though, that Congress has no such authority.
Between the lines: One of the biggest issues Trump had as president was a lack of ideological allies in the Senate even though it was controlled by the GOP, a person close to Trump’s campaign tells Axios.
If Trump were to win a second term, he’d hope for another GOP majority in the Senate and count on Vance and a few other like-minded Republicans senators such as Eric Schmitt (Missouri), Tommy Tuberville (Alabama) and Roger Marshall (Kansas) to be “bulldogs” for his policies, the source close to the campaign tells Axios.
In the House, Trump enjoys a close relationship with new Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.). During Trump’s first impeachment hearings, Johnson, then a member of the House Judiciary Committee, defended the president on TV.
Reality check: In today’s Democrat-controlled Senate — and as long as both chambers of Congress aren’t under total GOP control — the vast majority ofthe legislation proposed by Trump allies has no chance becoming law.
‘Grifters and sycophants’: the radicals who would fill key posts if Trump is re-elected
Peter Stone – December 8, 2023
Photograph: Leah Millis/Reuters
As Donald Trump and his allies start plotting another presidency, an emerging priority is to find hard-right lawyers who display total fealty to Trump, as a way to enhance his power and seek “retribution” against political foes.
Stocking a future administration with more ideological lawyers loyal to Trump in key posts at the justice department, other agencies and the White House is alarming to former DoJ officials and analysts who say such plans endanger the rule of law.
Trump’s former senior adviser Stephen Miller, president of the Maga-allied legal group America First Legal, is playing a key role in seeking lawyers fully in sync with Trump’s radical agenda to expand his power and curb some major agencies. His search is for those with unswerving loyalty to Trump, who could back Trump’s increasingly authoritarian talk about plans to “weaponize” the DoJ against critics, including some he has labeled as “vermin”.
Miller is well known in Maga circles for his loyalty to Trump and the hard-line anti-immigration policies he helped craft for Trump’s presidency. Notably, Trump has vowed to make those policies even more draconian if he is the GOP nominee and wins again.
Such an advisory role for Miller squares with Trump’s desire for a tougher brand of lawyer who will not try to obstruct him, as some top administration lawyers did in late 2020 over his false claims about election fraud.
Trump doesn’t care about the rule of law or the quality of the criminal justice system. He only cares about fealty to him
Former Trump White House lawyer Ty Cobb
“They’re looking for lawyers who worship Trump and will do his bidding,” Ty Cobb, a former White House lawyer during the Trump years and former justice department official, said. “Trump is looking to Miller to pick people who will be more loyal to Trump than the rule of law.”
Cobb added that “Trump trusts Miller greatly”, although Miller is not a lawyer.
“Trump doesn’t care about the rule of law or the quality of the criminal justice system,” Cobb said. “He only cares about fealty to him.”
Miller’s legal group, which raked in a hefty $44m dollars in 2022, also has a board seat with Project 2025, a sprawling effort led by the Heritage Foundation and dozens of other conservative groups to map policy plans for a second Trump term – or another GOP presidency if Trump is not the nominee.
Project 2025 includes schemes to curb the justice department, the FBI and other agencies, giving Trump more power to seek revenge – as he has pledged to do in campaign speeches and Truth Social posts – against critics in both parties, which could benefit from conservative lawyers’ sign-offs, but which justice department veterans warn would undermine the legal system.
“It seems that they are looking for lawyers who will do whatever Trump wants them to do, and that is the antithesis of implementing the rule of law,” Donald Ayer, a former deputy attorney general under George HW Bush, said.
“When you consider the number of lawyers who became Trump’s severe critics after joining the first Trump administration and participating in a lot of questionable actions, selection for a new administration will have to exclude pretty much anyone who has any inclination to defend our legal system or question the president asserting absolute authority.”
Ayer’s analysis is underscored by Trump’s 2020 anger at top lawyers such as the then attorney general William Barr, the then White House counsel Pat Cipollone and others, who pushed back on Trump for his false claims that he lost to Biden due to fraud.
Trump has cited Barr – one of several former top lawyers and officials who later became critics – as someone he would press the justice department to launch inquiries against, according to the Washington Post.
The former president, who faces 91 criminal charges in four jurisdictions including 17 involving his aggressive efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat, has also threatened to appoint a special prosecutor to “go after” Biden and his family.
Trump has attacked the prosecutions against him as political witch-hunts, arguing they give him the right if he wins the presidency again to use the justice department and FBI as tools to attack his opponents.
Trump’s retribution agenda was partly revealed on Tuesday at a Fox News town hall, when he slyly said if he was elected again he would not be a dictator “except for day one”.
To help facilitate Trump’s agenda, Miller plus the former Trump aide John McEntee, who started as Trump’s personal aide and then became a key adviser in 2020, have reportedly been working with others at Project 2025 to identify tougher pro-Trump lawyers.
Besides Miller’s group, numerous conservative groups have board seats on Project 2025 including the Center for Renewing America, a thinktank run by the former Trump budget director Russ Vought. The center employs Jeffrey Clark, a former justice department official who pushed false information about voting fraud in 2020 as part of Trump’s efforts to overturn his election loss. Clark has written a paper that Vought’s center published titled The US Justice Department Is Not Independent.
However, Clark and several other former Trump lawyers are now facing major legal headaches after aiding Trump’s efforts to block Biden’s victory, which could complicate Miller’s hunt for new diehard Trump lawyers.
This is a search for people with situational ethics
Timothy Naftali of Columbia University
Clark and other key conservative lawyers including Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman have been charged by the Fulton county, Georgia, district attorney, Fani Willis, in a sprawling racketeering case against Trump and 18 others for seeking to thwart Biden’s Georgia victory. Other Trump legal advisers who were charged, including Kenneth Chesebro, Sidney Powell and Jenna Ellis, have struck plea deals with Willis.
Some experts foresee real dangers to democracy in Miller’s search for lawyers who would back Trump’s emerging far-right agenda.
“This is a search for people with situational ethics,” Timothy Naftali, a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, said.
“They’re trying to screen out people who have higher loyalties to the US constitution. It’s likely they’re looking for people whose higher loyalty is to Donald Trump,” he said. “They’re trying to find lawyers who believe in dictatorship. You have to wonder what kind of people in good conscience could sign up for a Trump revenge tour. This appears to be a casting call for an American political horror movie.”
If Trump wins, some of the lawyers who may be candidates for key posts according to the New York Times include a few who work at either Miller’s group or have worked for Texas’s attorney general, Ken Paxton, a close Trump and Miller ally who has faced several ethics and criminal inquiries.
Miller and his legal center did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
Miller’s lawyer search could benefit from his group’s contacts in Maga circles and rapid growth. When America First Legal was launched in 2021, it soon garnered $1.3m from the Maga-allied Conservative Partnership Institute, where Trump’s ex-chief of staff Mark Meadows is a senior official. Meadows and Vought have both served on the board of Miller’s group.
America First Legal’s deep pockets have helped fund an array of lawsuits against the Biden administration, states targeting immigration policies and what Miller has labeled “the equity cult”. Just last month, America First Legal filed a brief opposing the limited gag order placed on Trump by a federal judge overseeing special counsel Jack Smith’s four-count criminal indictment of Trump for election subversion.
More broadly, the mission statement of Miller’s America First Legal reveals its ideological compatibility with Trump’s authoritarian-leaning agenda, of which hard-right lawyers would be assets in implementing should Trump get another term.
“Our security, our liberty, our sovereignty, and our most fundamental rights and values are being systematically dismantled by an unholy alliance of corrupt special interests, big tech titans, the fake news media, and liberal Washington politicians,” the mission statement reads.
Given Miller’s strong ties to Trump, some GOP congressional veterans are alarmed by his search for more ideological lawyers who would not question Trump’s emerging authoritarian agenda.
“They’re looking for grifters and sycophants like Jeffrey Clark and Ken Paxton,” said the former House member Charlie Dent.
In Dent’s eyes, these kinds of lawyers would “do whatever they’re told. This is absolutely dangerous.”
Behind the Curtain — Exclusive: How Trump would build his loyalty-first Cabinet
Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei – December 7, 2023
Clockwise from top left: Stephen Miller, Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio; Steve Bannon, Mike Davis, Tucker Carlson and Kash Patel. Photos: Giorgio Viera/AFP, Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Eva Marie Uzcategui/Bloomberg, Brandon Bell, Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Former President Trump, if elected, would build a Cabinet and White House staff based mainly on two imperatives: pre-vetted loyalty to him and a commitment to stretch legal and governance boundaries, sources who talk often with the leading GOP presidential candidate tell Axios.
Why it matters: Trump would fill the most powerful jobs in government with men like Stephen Miller, Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio and Kash Patel — with the possible return of Steve Bannon. If Trump won in 2024, he’d turn to loyalists who share his zeal to punish critics, purge non-believers, and take controversial legal and military action, the sources tell us.
Trump and his prospective top officialsdon’t mince words about their plans:
What’s happening: Trump hasn’t settled on specific roles for specific figures, and hates it when his staff and friends speculate otherwise. It’s not in his DNA to do detailed personnel planning, and a lot depends on the last few people he’s talked to.
But in rolling conversations with friends and advisers, he’s been clear about the type of men — and they’re almost all older, white men — he’d want to serve at his pleasure if he were to win a second term.
Between the lines: We wrote last month about the multimillion-dollar effort to vet loyalists for up to 50,000 lower-level government jobs in a Trump administration. This is about their potential bosses.
It’s unclear who would land where, but make no mistake: These are specific prototypes of Trump Republicans who would run his government. This is very different from the early days of his first term, when he was restrained by more conventional officials, from John Kelly to James Mattis to Gary Cohn.
This time, it’d be all loyalists, no restraints.
Here’s our latest intelligence on what’s being discussed among Trump and a small group of confidants:
Vice president: Trump talks openly to friends about several possibilities for running mate. Table stakes for these candidates is proving you believe the 2020 election was stolen and that former Vice President Mike Pence wimped out by allowing its certification.
Those who’d be considered include J.D. Vance, the “hillbilly Elegy” author and a MAGA favorite; Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders; Kari Lake, a leading election denier now running for U.S. Senate in Arizona, and South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem. (Vance might prefer to remain in the Senate as “Trump’s hammer,” we’re told.)
Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.), one of the few Black Republicans in Congress, has traveled with Trump on the campaign and would love to be V.P. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who lost her House committee assignments because she pushed baseless conspiracy theories, also gets mentioned.
But here’s an interesting twist: Melania Trump is an advocate for picking Tucker Carlson, the booted Fox News star. She thinks Carlson would make a powerful onstage extension of her husband, a source close to Trump told us. The former first lady has made few campaign appearances this time around — but a Trump-Carlson ticket might encourage her to hit the trail.
Trump, asked last month about Carlson as a potential V.P., said: “I like Tucker a lot. … He’s got great common sense.”
The idea of Tucker Carlson has been discounted by many people close to Trump because they assume he’d never pick someone who could outshine him. And Trump’s staff is convinced (correctly) that Carlson can’t be controlled. But the two men talk a lot.
Others likely to wield power in a second Trump term share a lot in common with Carlson. They’re full, proud MAGA warriors, anti-GOP establishment zealots, and eager and willing to test the boundaries of executive power to get Trump’s way. They include:
Stephen Miller: He could be your next attorney general and, if not that, get a Cabinet-level role to greatly influence immigration policy.
He was the architect of Trump’s most controversial immigration plans in the first term — including family separation — and has written and spoken extensively about unprecedented plans to detain, purge and punish undocumented immigrants if put back in charge. He’s eager to test the boundaries of what courts and the military can do to make this happen fast.
Miller currently heads a nonprofit dedicated to suing the Biden administration and promoting “America First” causes, and has been leading efforts to recruit an army of right-wing lawyers to staff a MAGA-dominated executive branch.
Carlson told Axios that Miller would be his first choice to lead the Justice Department: “He’s a serious person and he understands how the system works.”
Mike Davis: Donald Trump Jr. has floated Davis, the former chief counsel for nominationsto then-Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), to be Trump’s interim attorney general — saying it would be a “shot across the bow of the swamp.”
In his public auditions for the job, the bombastic Davis has promised a “three-week reign of terror” in which he would “put kids in cages” and jail prosecutors and journalists who have gone after Trump — even telling MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan that he has “his spot picked out in the D.C. gulag.”
A source close to the Trump campaign told us A.G. is the office where Trump is “most likely to make a shocking pick,” with the defiant view: “You want to weaponize DOJ, mother—-er?'”
Steve Bannon: In the early days of Trump’s first term, he was arguably the most powerful man on staff, plotting personnel and policy decisions from his Capitol Hill townhouse. Then, he was ousted and frozen out. Now, thanks to his popular podcast and pro-Trump fervency, he’s back.
He could be the next White House chief of staff, an idea Carlson and a few others are pushing hard with the former president.
Carlson tells Axios that Bannon would diligently implement promises after Trump lost interest. “Steve believes: If you said we’re building a wall, we’re building a wall,” Carlson said.
Bannon — who is appealing a contempt of Congress conviction — has proud authoritarian beliefs and sees everything as an existential war between good (Trump) and evil (Democrats, establishment Republicans, the media).
Kash Patel: A protege of former Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) who led efforts to discredit the Russia investigation, Patel came to be viewed as a political mercenary in Trump’s war against the intelligence community. The former Pentagon official would be considered for a top national security job in the next administration, possibly even running the CIA or NSC.
In 2021, Patel authored an illustrated children’s book about the Russia investigation in which “King Donald” is a character persecuted by “Hillary Queenton and her shifty knight.”
Trump took a shine to Patel in his first term but was talked out of making him a deputy director of the FBI or CIA by senior officials — including former Attorney General Bill Barr, who wrote in his memoir that it would happen “over my dead body.”
Former CIA director Gina Haspel threatened to resign over a plan to install Patel as her deputy in the final weeks of Trump’s presidency, when he became convinced the intelligence community possessed documents that could damage his political enemies.
Steve Bannon said this week on his “War Room” podcast that Patel would “probably” be CIA director in a second term.
Patel told Bannon:“One thing we learned in the Trump administration the first go-round is we’ve got to put in all of our compatriots from top to bottom. And we’ve got them for law enforcement … [Defense Department], CIA, everywhere. … Yes, we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens.”
To avoid a confirmation battle, Patel also might have a National Security Council role where he could do special projects for Trump — or even be national security adviser.
Johnny McEntee, Trump’s loyalty vetter and enforcer, headed presidential personnel in the first term. McEntee might return to that role with even more power. He also could be Trump’s gatekeeper as head of Oval Office operations, or could be Cabinet secretary, riding herd on the White House liaisons to each department.
A former colleague described McEntee to us as “Trump’s utility player — a guaranteed loyal ally, wherever you place him, who’d make sure the Trump agenda was being implemented.”
The 33-year-old former UConn quarterback was empowered by the end of Trump’s term in a way his predecessors never were — tasked with systematically purging officials deemed insufficiently loyal and making significant staffing changes without the consent of agency heads.
By late 2020, McEntee had explicit lists of top officials to fire and hire in a Trump second term, reaching far down the federal bureaucracy in a mission to truly “clean out” the “Deep State.” That project has continued outside of government with a $22 million presidential transition project led by the Heritage Foundation.
“The president’s plan should be to fundamentally reorient the federal government in a way that hasn’t been done since F.D.R.’s New Deal,” McEntee told the N.Y. Times, arguing the current system “was conceived of by liberals” and must be completely overhauled.
In the final days of the Trump administration, McEntee sought to orchestrate the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Germany and Africa — a last-minute gambit by the president stifled by guardrails that likely wouldn’t be present in a second term.
Jeffery Clark — a former assistant attorney general for Trump who could get a top Justice Department slot — is the rare person to be considered for a future administration while under indictment.
In the weeks after the 2020 election, the little-known environmental lawyer urged top DOJ officials to announce they were investigating baseless claims of election fraud, which they rejected.
Trump then considered appointing Clark as acting attorney general as the pair plotted to overturn the election results, prompting DOJ leadership to threaten to resign en masse.
Clark was charged as part of the Trump racketeering case in Fulton County, Ga., over his attempts to have DOJ send a letter to Georgia officials declaring that fraud may have altered the outcome of the 2020 election.
Prosecutors say the statement was false and furthered the conspiracy to overturn the election. Clark pleaded not guilty.
Ric Grenell — former ambassador to Germany, and Trump’s acting director of national intelligence — would be on the short list for secretary of state.
Grenell infuriated European diplomats with his “America First” broadsides during his time in Berlin, and has basked in his reputation as an online troll beloved by the MAGA movement for his willingness to go on the attack.
Career intelligence officials have labeled Grenell — who declassified Obama-era intelligence in an effort to reshape perceptions of the Russia investigation — the least-experienced and most overtly political appointee ever to serve as head of the intelligence community.
In Grenell’s last Cabinet meeting before his exit, Trump praised him as an “all-time great acting [official], at any position.”
Former national security adviser Robert O’Brien, a more traditional conservative who remains in Trump’s good graces, would be a more confirmable pick for secretary of state.
Susie Wiles: Some in Trumpworld assume the most likely chief of staff is Wiles, the longtime Florida political operative who’s running Trump’s campaign.
The campaign so far has avoided the gusher of leaks that have been hallmarks of Trump operations. She’s seen as an adept Trump enabler who would serve loyally, with discipline. By bridging the campaign and the administration, she’d provide continuity.
Trump’s pell-mell style could push him to a wild-card choice for chief. “Everyone he knows is a direct report,” said one former Trump administration official.
John Ratcliffe, the former Texas congressman who was Trump’s final DNI, would be considered to head the CIA, for a return to DNI, for defense secretary or even for vice president.
Ratcliffe, a China Hawk, was one of Trump’s fiercest allies in Congress during the first impeachment inquiry. He later used his authority as the nation’s top intelligence official to declassify information aimed at calling into question the origins of both COVID and the Justice Department’s Russia investigation.
Jamie Dimon: Trump is open to a few more mainstream picks if they bring celebrity or pizzazz. For example, Trump would consider JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, a Democrat, to head Treasury. “He wants a big name,” a source close to the campaign said. “And he loves billionaires.”
It’s not clear Dimon would take the job — he’s been talking privately with Nikki Haley about the global economy as she tries to knock off Trump for the nomination. Dimon told the N.Y. Times DealBook conference that Haley would be “a choice on the Republican side that might be better than Trump.”
Dimon added: “He might be the president, and I have to deal with that, too.”
Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas — a former Army infantry officer known for his hard edge, and who wrote a New York Times op-ed in Trump’s first term supporting use of the Insurrection Act against civil disorder — would be considered to head the Pentagon.
Lee Zeldin —a former congressman from Long Island who deployed to Iraq as an Army paratrooper — is another confirmable option for the Pentagon.
Like Cotton, Zeldin is considered more confirmable than many others in the mix.
Jared Kushner, who was a huge power center in Trump’s West Wing, has mostly kept his distance from the campaign so far — but might well return to the White House if his father-in-law wins again, with a continued interest in Middle East policy.
Because Kushner would be talking with Trump’s authority to world leaders anyway, one option would be secretary of state.
What to watch: The heads of Cabinet departments don’t have full powers unless confirmed by the Senate. Many of Trump’s wannabe secretaries would have difficulty winning confirmation.
But Trump made unprecedented use of “acting” Cabinet members, who have temporary power over agencies even without Senate approval. And we’re told he’d be prepared to push the envelope on ambiguities about how many stints an “acting” could serve.
“I sort of like ‘acting,'” Trump said in 2019. “It gives me more flexibility.”
Zachary Basu and Sophia Cai contributed reporting.
“Behind the Curtain” is a column by Axios CEO Jim VandeHei and co-founder Mike Allen, based on regular conversations with White House and congressional leaders, CEOs and top technologists.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include that Bannon is appealing a contempt of Congress conviction.
