The high court did not offer any comment on its decision, which means Powell, Wood and the other defendants must pay a total of $132,693.75 to the city of Detroit and another $19,639.75 in legal fees to the state of Michigan.
In their unsuccessful effort to overturn the 2020 election results in Michigan, Powell, Wood and their co-defendants made wild claims in a lawsuit brought in the state alleging that Dominion voting machines were involved in fraud.
A district court judge ruled that the lawyers’ court challenges represented a “historic and profound abuse of the judicial process.”
The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals later upheld the bulk of the district court judge’s ruling, calling the fraud claims “simply baseless.”
In their appeal to the Supreme Court, the defendants continued to argue that they were simply pursuing “legitimate election challenges.”
Powell has pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges stemming from her efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia and has agreed to testify against Trump and 14 others still charged there.
Dominion is suing Powell for $1.3 billion over her false claims that the company rigged the election against Trump.
Wood has been subpoenaed to testify in the Georgia case.”
“A New York judge imposed a $364 million penalty Friday on Donald Trump, his companies and some executives, ruling that they engaged in a yearslong scheme to dupe banks and others with financial statements that inflated the former president’s wealth.”
…
“Engoron concluded that Trump and his co-defendants “failed to accept responsibility” for their actions and that expert witnesses who testified for the defense “simply denied reality.”
The judge called the civil fraud at the heart of the trial a “venial sin, not a mortal sin.”
“They did not rob a bank at gunpoint. Donald Trump is not Bernard Madoff. Yet, defendants are incapable of admitting the error of their ways,” wrote Engoron, a Democrat. He said their “complete lack of contrition and remorse borders on pathological.”
“The frauds found here leap off the page and shock the conscience,” the judge added.”
“”The mob was seeking to halt or overturn a core constitutional function at the seat of government, which can reasonably be described as an attempt to replace law with force,” Magliocca wrote. Furthermore, the criminal charges against some of the rioters indicated that they “intended to inflict bodily harm on members of Congress, which can be reasonably understood as a direct attack on the legislative branch itself and, more generally, the existing government.””
“No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.”
Quite a mouthful, right? Let’s simplify. Here’s a streamlined version of the clause with only the most relevant parts highlighted:
“No person shall … hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, … who, having previously taken an oath, … as an officer of the United States, … to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same …”
The justices are sure to delve into the precise meaning of those pivotal phrases. For example:
Was the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol an “insurrection”? If not, the insurrection clause doesn’t apply.
Even if Jan. 6 was an insurrection, did Trump “engage” in it? If not, he is eligible to hold office again.
When Trump took his oath of office as president, did he take that oath as “officer of the United States”? If not, the disqualification provision does not apply to him.”
“Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma spoke on Wednesday about the political challenges he’s encountered while serving as the top GOP negotiator on a bipartisan border security deal.
In a speech shortly before the expected failure of the deal, Lankford bemoaned the fact that some fellow Republicans were objecting to the bill for purely political reasons.
“Some of them have been very clear with me,” Lankford said of his GOP colleagues, “they have political differences with the bill. They say it’s the wrong time to solve the problem. We’ll let the presidential election solve this problem.”
Lankford went on to say that a “popular commentator” — without naming any names — threatened to “destroy” him if he negotiated the deal during a presidential election year, regardless of what was in it.
“I will do whatever I can to destroy you, because I do not want you to solve this during the presidential election,” Lankford recounted the commentator saying.
“By the way, they have been faithful to their promise, and have done everything they can to destroy me,” he added.”
“Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) on Thursday took aim at former President Trump for pushing Republican lawmakers to oppose a border deal so that he could use the issue to campaign against President Biden in the 2024 presidential election.
Romney told CNN’s Manu Raju he thought it was “really appalling” that Trump would try to prevent progress on addressing the surge in migration at the southern border.
“I think the border is a very important issue for Donald Trump,” Romney said. “And the fact that he would communicate to Republican senators and congresspeople that he doesn’t want us to solve the border problem because he wants to blame Biden for it is really appalling.”
“But the reality is that we have a crisis at the border, the American people are suffering as a result of what’s happening at the border, and someone running for president ought to try to get the problem solved as opposed to saying, ‘Hey, save that problem. Don’t solve it. Let me take credit for solving it later,’” Romney continued.”
““If someone is running for president and is trying to actively undermine governance, that’s bad,” Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., told USA TODAY. “Is it really better to have 10,000 people crossing a day illegally or 5,000? Clearly it’s 5,000. So somebody who is trying to defeat legislation, all in the name of running for office? That is irresponsible.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., acknowledged the new political challenges of linking Ukraine aid to border policy in the closed-door meeting Wednesday, according to reporting by Punchbowl. “We don’t want to do anything to undermine” Trump, McConnell reportedly said. “We’re in a quandary.””
“In early 2021, Richer was an Arizona Republican official who regularly attended local party events. At the time, he was the newly elected county recorder of Maricopa County. The job was a new level of prominence — he was now the most important election supervisory official in the state’s largest county — but going to Arizona Republican events was routine: the kind of thing that Richer, like any state politician, had done hundreds of times before.
But at one event, the crowd heckled and harassed him. When he tried to leave, they dragged him back in, yanking on his arms and shoulders, to berate him about the allegedly stolen 2020 election. He started to worry: Would his own people, fellow Republican Party members, seriously hurt him?
There was a clear reason for the madness. Many of the Republican faithful had recently decided that Maricopa County had been the epicenter of “the steal,” Joe Biden’s theft of Arizona from Donald Trump — and the entire presidential election with it. This wasn’t true, obviously. Richer tried to tell them it wasn’t true, hoping his long track record in the state Republican party would give him some credibility.
It did not. What happened instead reveals a pattern that is quietly reshaping American politics: Across the board and around the country, data reveals that threats against public officials have risen to unprecedented numbers — to the point where 83 percent of Americans are now concerned about risks of political violence in their country. The threats are coming from across the political spectrum, but the most important ones in this regard emanate from the MAGA faithful.
Trump’s most fanatical followers have created a situation where challenging him carries not only political risks but also personal ones. Elected officials who dare defy the former president face serious threats to their well-being and to that of their families — raising the cost of taking an already difficult stand.”
…
“It’s been well over two years since Richer attended the kinds of Arizona GOP grassroots events where he was once welcome. Today, the institutional Arizona Republican party is dominated by politicians who have embraced Trump’s lies about the election — people like Kari Lake, Blake Masters, and Mark Finchem. The harassment and threats from the MAGA faithful was one weapon in the extremist takeover’s arsenal, working to push voices of sanity out of key party events — breaking even determined ones like Richer.
In Arizona, the Trumpist threat of violence worked. And it worked for reasons that should worry all of us at the beginning of an election year that could decide the fate of American democracy.”
…
“In 2016, the Capitol Police recorded fewer than 900 threats against members of Congress. In 2017, that figure more than quadrupled, per data provided by the Capitol Police.
The numbers continued to increase in every year of the Trump presidency, peaking at 9,700 in 2021. In 2022, the first full year of Biden’s term, the numbers went down to a still-high 7,500. The 2023 data has not yet been released, but a spike in threats against legislators during the House Republican speaker fight and Israel-Hamas conflict suggests an increase over the 2022 numbers is plausible.
Members of Congress are taking these threats seriously. In September, three journalists at the Washington Post reviewed FEC filings to assess how much candidates for the House and Senate were spending on security. They found an overall increase of 500 percent between 2020 and 2022.”
“Trump’s misconduct included his refusal to accept Biden’s victory, his persistent peddling of his stolen-election fantasy, his pressure on state and federal officials to embrace that fantasy, the incendiary speech he delivered to his supporters before the riot, and his failure to intervene after a couple thousand of those supporters invaded the Capitol, interrupting the congressional ratification of the election results. All of that was more than enough to conclude that Trump had egregiously violated his oath to “faithfully execute” his office and to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.” It was more than enough to justify his conviction for high crimes and misdemeanors in the Senate, which would have prevented him from running for president again.”
…
“”At oral argument,” the opinion notes, “President Trump’s counsel, while not providing a specific definition, argued that an insurrection is more than a riot but less than a rebellion. We agree that an insurrection falls along a spectrum of related conduct.” But the court does not offer “a specific definition” either: “It suffices for us to conclude that any definition of ‘insurrection’ for purposes of Section Three would encompass a concerted and public use of force or threat of force by a group of people to hinder or prevent the U.S. government from taking the actions necessary to accomplish a peaceful transfer of power in this country.”
That description suggests a level of intent and coordination that seems at odds with the chaotic reality of the Capitol riot. Some rioters were members of groups, such as the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys, that thought the use of force was justified to keep Trump in office. But even in those cases, federal prosecutors had a hard time proving a specific conspiracy to “hinder or prevent the U.S. government from taking the actions necessary to accomplish a peaceful transfer of power” by interrupting the electoral vote tally on January 6. And the vast majority of rioters seem to have acted spontaneously, with no clear goal in mind other than expressing their outrage at an election outcome they believed was the product of massive fraud.
They believed that, of course, because that is what Trump told them. But to the extent that Trump bears moral and political responsibility for riling them up with his phony grievance (which he does), his culpability hinges on the assumption that the rioters acted impulsively and emotionally in the heat of the moment. That understanding is hard to reconcile with the Colorado Supreme Court’s premise that Trump’s hotheaded supporters acted in concert with the intent of forcibly preventing “a peaceful transfer of power.”
Nor is it clear that Trump “engaged in” the “insurrection” that the court perceives. After reviewing dictionary definitions and the views of Henry Stanbery, the U.S. attorney general when the 14th Amendment was debated, the majority concludes that “‘engaged in’ requires ‘an overt and voluntary act, done with the intent of aiding or furthering the common unlawful purpose.'”
Trump’s pre-riot speech was reckless because it was foreseeable that at least some people in his audience would be moved to go beyond peaceful protest. Some 2,000 of the 50,000 or so supporters he addressed that day (around 4 percent) participated in the assault on the Capitol. But that does not necessarily mean Trump intended that result. In concluding that he did, the court interprets Trump’s demand that his supporters “fight like hell” to “save our democracy” literally rather than figuratively. It also notes that he repeatedly urged them to march toward the Capitol. As the court sees it, that means Trump “literally exhorted his supporters to fight at the Capitol.”
The justices eventually concede that Trump, who never explicitly called for violence, said his supporters would be “marching to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.” But they discount that phrasing as cover for Trump’s actual intent. Given Trump’s emphasis on the necessity of “fight[ing] like hell” to avert the disaster that would result if Biden were allowed to take office, they say, the implicit message was that the use of force was justified. In support of that conclusion, the court cites Chapman University sociologist Peter Simi, who testified that “Trump’s speech took place in the context of a pattern of Trump’s knowing ‘encouragement and promotion of violence,'” which he accomplished by “develop[ing] and deploy[ing] a shared coded language with his violent supporters.”
That seems like a pretty speculative basis for concluding that Trump intentionally encouraged his supporters to attack the Capitol. Given what we know about Trump, it is perfectly plausible that, unlike any reasonably prudent person, he was heedless of the danger that his words posed in this context.”
…
“The Colorado Supreme Court’s belief that Trump intentionally caused a riot also figures in its rejection of his argument that his January 6 speech was protected by the First Amendment. The relevant standard here comes from the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1969 decision in Brandenburg v. Ohio, which involved a Klansman who was convicted of promoting terrorism and criminal syndicalism. Under Brandenburg, even advocacy of illegal conduct is constitutionally protected unless it is both “directed” at inciting “imminent lawless action” and “likely” to do so.
The Colorado Supreme Court quotes the 6th Circuit’s elucidation of that test in the 2015 case Bible Believers v. Wayne County: “The Brandenburg test precludes speech from being sanctioned as incitement to riot unless (1) the speech explicitly or implicitly encouraged the use of violence or lawless action, (2) the speaker intends that his speech will result in the use of violence or lawless action, and (3) the imminent use of violence or lawless action is the likely result of his speech.”
It is hard to deny that Trump’s speech satisfies the third prong, which is why it provoked so much well-deserved criticism and rightly figured in his impeachment. But what about the other two prongs?
Applying the first prong, the court cites “the general atmosphere of political violence that President Trump created before January 6” as well as the “coded language” of his speech that day. As evidence of the “specific intent” required by the second prong, it notes that “federal agencies that President Trump oversaw identified threats of violence ahead of January 6.” It also cites what it takes to be the implicit message of Trump’s speech and his reluctance to intervene after the riot started.
“President Trump intended that his speech would result in the use of violence or lawless action on January 6 to prevent the peaceful transfer of power,” the court says. “Despite his knowledge of the anger that he had instigated, his calls to arms, his awareness of the threats of violence that had been made leading up to January 6, and the obvious fact that many in the crowd were angry and armed, President Trump told his riled-up supporters to walk down to the Capitol and fight. He then stood back and let the fighting happen, despite having the ability and authority to stop it (with his words or by calling in the military), thereby confirming that this violence was what he intended.””