Closing summary
That’s all for today, thanks for following along. Some key links and developments from the day:
The Washington Post reported that a foreign power’s nuclear secrets were among classified documents found by the FBI at former president Donald Trump’s Florida residence.
Former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe said the revelation showed federal agents “absolutely had to go in” to retrieve the intelligence, while Shawn Turner, former director of communications for US national intelligence, said knowledge Trump was hoarding classified nuclear documents was a “gamechanger with regard to the risk it poses to our national security”.
Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort and residence in Palm Beach, Florida, is a magnet for foreign spies, former intelligence officials have warned.
Barack and Michelle Obama returned to the White House for the unveiling of their official portraits. The former president paid tribute to his successor Joe Biden, while the former first lady said the unveiling showed “there’s a place for everyone in this country”.
Former Trump administration defense secretaries Jim Mattis and Mark Esper have joined a group of retired military officers who have written an open letter warning of an “extremely adverse environment” for the military – a thinly-veiled attack on the former president’s efforts to use servicemen and women to advance his political goals.
Massachusetts is on course to elect its first woman and first gay governor after Maura Healey won the Democratic primary on Tuesday and a Trump-backed candidate, Geoff Diehl, won the Republican contest to face her.
A federal judge in Texas ruled today that employers can refuse to cover HIV infection prevention drugs.
A judge struck down Michigan’s 1931 anti-abortion law, months after suspending it.
Updated
A US senator has dismissed an Israeli army report that claims a soldier accidentally killed the Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Aqleh in the midst of a gun battle, saying it is unsupported by the evidence, my colleague Chris McGreal reports:
Chris Van Hollen, a Democratic senator for Maryland, repeated his call for an independent US investigation into Abu Aqleh’s killing in the West Bank in May, saying that the United Nations and reconstructions by major news outlets found that the Al Jazeera television journalist was not in the immediate vicinity of fighting with Palestinian militants and could not have been caught in the crossfire.
On Monday, more than four months after her killing, Israel finally admitted it was “highly probable” that an Israeli soldier shot Abu Aqleh while she was reporting on a military raid on the occupied West Bank city of Jenin.
The report said Abu Aqleh was probably shot by an Israeli soldier who was under fire from a group of Palestinian gunmen. It claimed the soldier was using a telescopic sight and misidentified her as one from his armed opponents. The army said no crime was committed so no one will be prosecuted.
However, eyewitness accounts and videos of Abu Aqleh and the area around her at the time of her killing do not show a gun battle. She was also wearing body armour and a helmet clearly labelled as “press”.
A United Nations investigation said that Israeli soldiers fired “several single, seemingly well-aimed bullets” at Abu Aqleh and other journalists.
The crux of the “defense” in this IDF report is that a soldier was “returning fire” from militants. But investigations @NYTimes @AP @CNN @washingtonpost & @UN found no such firing at the time. This underscores need for independent US inquiry into this American journalist’s death. https://t.co/vblvL5Euha
— Senator Chris Van Hollen (@ChrisVanHollen) September 6, 2022
Updated
A federal judge in Texas ruled today that employers can refuse to cover HIV infection prevention drugs if they claim that it violates their religious beliefs. My colleague Maya Yang reports:
US district judge Reed O’Connor on Wednesday ruled in favor of Braidwood Management, a Christian-owned company based in Texas, saying it was not required to cover the cost of Truvada and Descovy, two pre-exposure prophylactic drugs also known as PrEP.
The drugs, which are taken every day by hundreds of thousands of Americans, are used to prevent HIV transmission and are made available through company health insurance via provisions for preventive healthcare in the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
A lawsuit filed by the conservative former Texas solicitor general Jonathan Mitchell on behalf of Braidwood Management against the US Department of Health and Human Services argued that the ACA provision “violated [the plaintiffs’] religious beliefs by making them complicit in facilitating homosexual behavior, drug use, and sexual activity outside of marriage between one man and woman”, in the words of the judge.
Mitchell is also known for designing Texas’s highly restrictive abortion law.
O’Connor ruled in favor of the company.
“Defendants outline a generalized policy to combat the spread of HIV, but they provide no evidence connecting that policy to employers such as Braidwood, nor do they provide evidence distinguishing potential religious exemptions from existing secular exemptions,” O’Connor said in his ruling.
Some additional context here:
BREAKING: US District Judge Reed O’Connor in Texas rules that requiring employers to provide coverage for PrEP drugs (preventing the transmission of HIV) violates the religious rights of employers under federal law (RFRA). pic.twitter.com/d85C3izqSF
— Chris “Subscribe to Law Dork!” Geidner (@chrisgeidner) September 7, 2022
And the full story:
Updated
Judge strikes down Michigan’s 1931 anti-abortion law
A judge today struck down a 1931 anti-abortion law in Michigan, months after suspending it, saying, “A law denying safe, routine medical care not only denies women of their ability to control their bodies and their lives – it denies them of their dignity. Michigan’s Constitution forbids this violation of due process.”
The law had long been inactive prior to the overturning of Roe v Wade and made it illegal to perform abortions unless there was a life-threatening emergency.
Judge Elizabeth Gleicher said the law “compels motherhood”, prevents a woman from determining the “shape of her present and future life” and “forces a pregnant woman to forgo her reproductive choices and to instead serve as ‘an involuntary vessel entitled to no more respect than other forms of collectively owned property’”.
Michigan’s Democratic governor praised the ruling, but warned it was likely to be challenged and said there were “extremists who will stop at nothing to ban abortion even in cases of rape and incest”.
Today, the courts ruled once again Michigan women have the right to make medical decisions for themselves.
— Governor Gretchen Whitmer (@GovWhitmer) September 7, 2022
However, this decision is likely to be challenged, and we know that there are extremists who will stop at nothing to ban abortion even in cases of rape and incest.
The decision comes amid an ongoing court battle that will determine whether another anti-abortion measure is on the ballot before voters in Michigan this year.
The full story on Gleicher’s decision:
Updated
Hi all, Sam Levin here in Los Angeles taking over our live coverage for the rest of the day.
A new report suggests that hundreds of US law enforcement officers, elected officials and military personnel were listed on leaked documents as members of the Oath Keepers, a far-right extremist group linked to the January 6 insurrection.
The Anti-Defamation League Center on Extremism reviewed 38,000 leaked names on a membership list of the group and said it identified more than 370 people believed to be active members of police agencies, in addition to more than 100 people currently in the military, the AP reports. The review also identified more than 80 people running for office or currently serving as elected officials as of this summer. The list included sheriffs and police chiefs, the AP said.
Some of the officials contacted by the AP responded they were members years ago but were no longer active.
In recent years, there has been escalating concerns about links between police departments and far-right extremist groups in the US, a problem that was widely scrutinized after the insurrection, where off-duty officers were present.
Last week, a retired New York police officer received the longest sentence yet for his involvement in the attack on the Capitol, during which he assaulted an officer with a flagpole.
The full story on the Oath Keepers leak:
Updated
Certain prominent legal experts aren’t pulling their punches this afternoon, already skeptical of the ruling by the federal judge in Florida granting Donald Trump’s request to have a special master interrupt and oversee the Department of Justice’s review of documents seized by the FBI from the former president’s residence at Mar-a-Lago.
Harvard’s Laurence Tribe, as pithy as usual, has quote tweeted former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann over what needs to happen next in the court case – and not long after.
A good list. I'd offer a friendly amendment to item 2:
— Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw) September 7, 2022
2. Indict Trump before this December. https://t.co/Zl4GiT3v2B
Tribe wrote for the Guardian today that the ruling two days ago on the special master by Aileen Cannon, the federal judge in West Palm Beach, “has to rank high in the annals of the worst reasoned judicial decisions in American history”.
He warns: “If it signals that judicial Trumpism has spread more broadly than we thought, there may be danger ahead to our entire system of equal justice.”
Tribe wrote the piece with former federal prosecutor Dennis Aftergut and you can read the rest of it here.
Tribe also notes that Trump’s attorney general Bill Barr has called Cannon’s ruling “deeply flawed”. (Barr also called it “a crock of shit”.)
But he adds in a tweet: “I’m glad Bill Barr is making the rounds on his “dismantle Trump” tour, but if it’s a “rehabilitate Barr” tour, count me out.”
I'm glad Bill Barr is making the rounds on his "dismantle Trump" tour, but if it's a "rehabilitate Barr" tour, count me out . . . https://t.co/ELnloUmIn2
— Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw) September 7, 2022
The rehab tour started in earnest with the main round of January 6 hearings, and no matter what it does or doesn’t do for Barr, his testimony to that House committee’s inquiry did a lot for the congressional investigation itself (as well as for Ivanka Trump’s view of who won the 2020 election, apparently).
Updated
White House: 'no calls to foreign governments to read out' over Trump nuclear discovery
Reporters at the White House press briefing are wondering if the US has had contact with any other countries over the reported discovery of a foreign power’s nuclear secrets among classified documents hoarded by ex-president Donald Trump.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre is sticking closely to her previous position of flat-out refusing to comment on the justice department’s investigation into Trump’s handling of secret material, but does say this:
We don’t have any calls to foreign governments to read out at this time on this particular issue as known.
When it comes to this specific issue, the ODNI [office of the director of national intelligence] is in the middle of an assessment, and DoJ [justice department] is in the middle of an ongoing criminal investigation. So I’m not going to comment.
It should be noted that Jean-Pierre is not saying no such calls have taken place, nor is she saying they have. She’s just saying that she has nothing that she can share.
Updated
We’ve hopped across the White House from the East Room to the briefing room, to join press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.
Monkeypox is first on the agenda. Robert Fenton, White House national monkeypox response coordinator, says the country has ample supplies of vaccines to supply the most at-risk.
“Our focus is to reach the remainder of the eligible population where they are,” he says, citing the success of thousands of doses being administered over the weekend at pride events in Louisiana, Georgia and elsewhere.
“These events demonstrate our strategy is working.”
Dr Demetre Daskalakis, deputy response coordinator, says the population at highest risk is largely men who have sex with other men.
“It’s important people know a safe and effective vaccine is available for those who need it,” he says.
“It’s important we speak to the community in a way that doesn’t stigmatize them. [The virus] doesn’t distinguish between people based on their sexual orientation or gender.”
Michelle Obama: 'There’s a place for everyone in this country'
Michelle Obama’s speech from her portrait unveiling at the White House is worth a read. The day, the former first lady said, belongs not to her or Barack Obama, and it’s not even about the paintings:
Too often in this country, people feel like they have to look a certain way or act a certain way to fit in. They have to make a lot of money, or come from a certain group or class or faith in order to matter.
But what we’re looking at today, a portrait of a biracial kid with an unusual name and the daughter of a water pump operator and a stay at home mom, what we are seeing is a reminder that there’s a place for everyone in this country.
Because, as Barack said, if the two of us can end up on the walls of the most famous address in the world, it is so important for every young kid who is doubting themselves to believe that they can too.
That is what this country is about. It’s not about blood or pedigree or wealth. It’s a place where everyone should have a fair shot. Whether you’re a kid taking two buses and a train just to get to school, or a single mother who’s working two jobs to put some food on the table.
Or an immigrant, just arriving, getting your first apartment, forging a future for yourself in a place you dreamed of.
That’s why for me this day isn’t about me or Barack. It’s not even about these beautiful paintings. It’s about telling that fuller story, a story that includes every single American in every single corner of the country so that our kids and grandkids can see something more for themselves.
And as much as some folks might want us to believe that that story has lost some of its shine, that division, and discrimination and everything else might have dimmed its light, I still know deep in my heart, that what we share, as my husband continues to say, is so much bigger than what we don’t.
Our democracy is so much stronger than our differences.
Updated
Joe Biden has tweeted about his “old pals act” at the White House on Wednesday, the vice-president turned president greeting his former boss Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama for the unveiling of their portraits.
“Someone once said that if you’re looking for a friend in Washington get a dog,” Obama said during his speech in the East Room.
“Our family was lucky enough to have two wonderful dogs. But I was even luckier to have a chance to spend eight years working day and night with a man who became a true partner and a true friend.
“Joe, it is now America’s good fortune to have you as president”.
Barack and Michelle, welcome back. pic.twitter.com/wcdBvfMcGg
— President Biden (@POTUS) September 7, 2022
Intelligence officials: Trump residence 'a magnet for spies'
Mar-a-Lago – the Palm Beach resort and residence where Donald Trump reportedly stored nuclear secrets among a trove of highly classified documents for 18 months since leaving the White House – is a magnet for foreign spies, former intelligence officials have warned.
The Washington Post reported that a document describing an unspecified foreign government’s defences, including its nuclear capabilities, was one of the many highly secret papers Trump took away from the White House when he left office in January 2021.
There were also documents marked SAP, for Special-Access Programmes, which are often about US intelligence operations and whose circulation is severely restricted, even among administration officials with top security clearance.
Potentially most disturbing of all, there were papers stamped HCS, Humint Control Systems, involving human intelligence gathered from agents in enemy countries, whose lives would be in danger if their identities were compromised.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence is conducting a damage assessment review which is focused on the sensitivity of the documents, but US officials said it is the job of FBI counter-intelligence to assess who may have gained access to them.
That is a wide field. The home of a former president with a history of being enthralled by foreign autocrats, distrustful of US security services, and boastful about his knowledge of secrets, is an obvious foreign intelligence target.
“I know that national security professionals inside government, my former colleagues, [they] are shaking their heads at what damage might have been done,” John Brennan, former CIA director, told MSNBC.
“I’m sure Mar-a-Lago was being targeted by Russian intelligence and other intelligence services over the course of the last 18 or 20 months, and if they were able to get individuals into that facility, and access those rooms where those documents were and made copies of those documents, that’s what they would do.”
Barack Obama also thanked artists Robert McCurdy and Sharon Sprung for their respective portraits of himself and Michelle Obama.
“He captures every wrinkle of your face, every crease of your shirt, [and] you’ll note he refused all of my requests to make my ears smaller,” he said.
“He also talked me out of wearing a tan suit, by the way,” he added to laughter and applause, a nod to the social media firestorm he created back in 2014 when he wore one.
“What you realize when you’re sitting behind that desk, and what I want people to remember about Michelle and me, is that presidents and first ladies are human beings.
“I’ve always described the presidency as a relay race. You take the baton from someone, you run your leg as hard and as well as you can, and then you hand it off to someone else, knowing that your work will be incomplete.
“The portraits hanging in the White House chronicle the runners in that race.
Obama: America's 'good fortune' to have Biden as president
Having unveiled his portrait, Barack Obama is now paying tribute to Joe Biden, saying it is “America’s good fortune” to have him as president:
You have guided us through some perilous times, you have built on and gone beyond the work we all did together to expand healthcare, to fight climate change, to advance social justice and to promote economic fairness.
Thanks to you our faith in our democracy and the American people, the country is better off than when you took office.
He also acknowledged his aides, staffers and colleagues from his time in the White House. Many are in the audience in the East Room:
For eight years, even longer for some of you, I drew on your energy and dedication and your goodness. You inspired me and I never wanted to disappoint you.
Even during the toughest times it was all of you that kept me going. It’s good to be back and see all of you…what’s been a special joy to see what’s happened since.
[But] I am a little disappointed I haven’t heard anyone naming a kid Barack yet.
“Or Michelle…” the former first lady interjected from beside him.
Joe Biden is acknowledging Barack Obama as his inspiration for everything he does as president.
Speaking at the official unveiling of the former president and first lady, Michelle Obama, at the White House, Biden said:
With Barack as our president we got up every day and went to work full of hope, for real, full of purpose, and excited about the possibility before us.
Few people I’ve ever known have more integrity, decency, and moral courage than Barack Obama.
Mr President, nothing could have prepared me better, and more, to become president of the United States than to be your side for eight years. I mean it from the bottom of my heart.
No matter what the issue was, no matter how difficult, no matter what it was about, you never did what it was the easy way, the easy way out. It was never about doing it that way, it was always about doing what was right.
To that end, Biden cited Obama’s signature achievement, passage of the Affordable Care Act, nicknamed Obamacare, which survived a bumpy passage and overcame Republican opposition in the Senate to become law:
He never gave up on the simple truth that health care was a right for all Americans when so many were telling him, including me at one point, take the compromise, take the compromise… we weren’t sure we get anything done.
You refused. You went big. And now the Affordable Care Act is there permanently and it’s even being improved.
Here are the portraits:
JUST UNVEILED: The official @WhiteHouse portraits of @BarackObama & @MichelleObama. pic.twitter.com/dDTxblOe5e
— Peter Alexander (@PeterAlexander) September 7, 2022
Biden unveils White House portraits of Barack and Michelle Obama
Joe Biden is speaking at the White House, where he is unveiling the official portraits of former first lady Michelle Obama, and 44th president Barack Obama, whom he served as vice-president.
“Barack and Michelle, welcome home,” the president began.
Here’s a video interview with the portraits’ artists, Robert McCurdy and Sharon Sprung.
New York state is ending a 28-month-old Covid-19 mandate requiring masks on trains, buses and other modes of public transit, governor Kathy Hochul said at a news conference today, Reuters reports.
Starting today masks will be optional. We have to restore some normalcy to our lives...Masks are encouraged but optional,” Hochul said, citing recent revised guidance from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
New York first adopted the mandate in April 2020 as Covid-19 was rampaging in the New York City area.
It’s always been a visible reminder that something is not normal here, and it was there for the right reason. It protected health and now we’re in a far different place,” Hochul said.
In April, the Biden administration decided to no longer enforce a US mask mandate on public transportation after a federal judge in Florida ruled the directive was unlawful. New York declined to adopt the Biden policy in April.
In recent months, many riders in New York had stopped observing the mask policy.
Hochul said masks will still be required in some places like adult care facilities and some other medical facilities.
The US Justice Department appealed the Florida judge’s ruling invalidating the transportation mask mandate, but a federal appeals court has not yet set the case for oral arguments.
Updated
Interim summary
It’s been a lively morning in US political news and there’s more to come. The unveiling at the White House of the official portraits of Barack and Michelle Obama is just ahead, with Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in attendance, and the White House press briefing with Karine Jean-Pierre follows not long after that. We’ll be watching for any other significant breaking news and will bring it to you as it happens.
Here’s where things stand:
Former Trump administration defense secretaries Jim Mattis and Mark Esper have joined a group of retired military officers who have written an open letter warning of an “extremely adverse environment” for the military – a thinly-veiled attack on the former president’s efforts to use servicemen and women to advance his political goals.
Andrew McCabe, former deputy director of the FBI says federal agents “absolutely had to go in” to retrieve highly classified documents from Donald Trump’s private residence relating to the nuclear secrets of a foreign power.
Donald Trump’s legal jeopardy could be heightened by the reported discovery of a foreign nation’s nuclear secrets among his hoard of improperly retained classified materials, some experts believe.
The reported discovery of information about a foreign nation’s nuclear secrets in materials found at Donald Trump’s private residence in the FBI search last month is horrifying intelligence experts. The legal and security situation was already extremely serious and the further revelation has been called “a gamechanger”.
Massachusetts is on course to elect its first woman and first gay governor after Maura Healey won the Democratic primary on Tuesday and a Trump-backed candidate, Geoff Diehl, won the Republican contest to face her.
Healey, the state attorney general, said: “I am honored to receive the Democratic nomination … Together, we’re going to win in November and build a Massachusetts that works for everyone.”
Massachusetts has a long record of electing moderate Republicans. Only one Democrat – Deval Patrick, from 2007 to 2015 – has been governor since 1991.
Healey, a former college and professional basketball player, has been attorney general since 2015. Polls give her huge leads over Diehl.
The Republican backs Donald Trump’s lie that his defeat by Joe Biden in the 2020 election was the result of electoral fraud, opposed the extension of mail-in voting, opposed public health mandates in the Covid pandemic and supports the supreme court decision overturning Roe v Wade, the 1973 ruling that guaranteed the right to abortion.
The abortion issue alone has driven electoral successes that have Democrats hoping they can prosper in the midterm elections.
On Monday, Trump – the de facto leader of a party dominated by supporters Biden has called “semi-fascist” – told Massachusetts Republicans that Diehl would push back against “ultra-liberal extremists” and “rule your state with an iron fist”.
Full-story:
Former Trump administration defense secretaries Jim Mattis and Mark Esper have joined a group of retired military officers who have written an open letter warning of an “extremely adverse environment” for the military – a thinly-veiled attack on the former president’s efforts to use servicemen and women to advance his political goals.
“Military officers swear an oath to support and defend the Constitution, not an oath of fealty to an individual or to an office,” the letter, published by the online security analysis website War on the Rocks, states.
It is signed by eight former secretaries of defense, serving both Republican and Democratic administrations, and five retired generals or admirals who are former chairs of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, including Martin Dempsey, who served in the Obama administration from 2011 to 2015.
The letter does not mention Trump by name, but refers to a “disruption” in the transfer of power from one administration to the other. Trump is the only president in modern history to fail to acknowledge his successor’s victory and commit to handing over his administration peacefully.
“Politically, military professionals confront an extremely adverse environment characterized by the divisiveness of affective polarization that culminated in the first election in over a century when the peaceful transfer of political power was disrupted and in doubt,” the letter says.
“Looking ahead, all of these factors could well get worse before they get better.”
Polling oracle FiveThirtyEight has calculated that more than 50% of US voters will have an election denier somewhere on the ballot during November’s midterms.
Researchers drew on “news reports, debate footage, campaign materials and social media and reached out to every single Republican nominee for the House, Senate, governor, secretary of state and attorney general to determine their position on the 2020 election”.
Candidates who support former President Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen will appear on ballots in nearly every state this fall. https://t.co/huF3dyvfcK
— FiveThirtyEight (@FiveThirtyEight) September 7, 2022
Of 529 total Republican nominees running for office, FiveThirtyEight found 195 it says fully denied the legitimacy of the 2020 election by either stating the election was stolen from Donald Trump, or taking legal action to overturn the results including voting not to certify election results or joining lawsuits that sought to overturn the election.
You can find their research here.
Barack Obama will reunite with his former vice-president Joe Biden at the White House at lunchtime when the 44th US president and his wife Michelle return for the unveiling of their official portraits.
Large, formal portraits of presidents and first ladies adorn walls, hallways and rooms throughout the White House and, customarily, a former president returns for the unveiling during his successor’s tenure.
But the Obamas, who have remained popular since leaving the political limelight, did not have their ceremony while Donald Trump held power, as this Reuters report states.
Before winning election in 2016 and succeeding Obama in 2017, Trump was a longtime proponent of the “birther” movement that falsely suggested Obama was not born in the US.
A spokesperson for Obama declined to comment on the timing of the Obamas’ portrait unveilings.
The White House Historical Association president, Stewart McLaurin, said there was no prescribed process for presidential portraits.
“It’s really up to the current president in the White House and the former president that is portrayed in the portrait to determine the right moment, but there is no set timeline,” he said.
Obama hosted former president George W Bush and his wife, Laura, for their portrait unveilings in 2012, during Obama’s first term.
The Obamas and Bidens became close during Obama’s presidency, going through the ups and downs of their political and personal lives, including the death of Biden’s son, Beau, from cancer.
McCabe: FBI 'absolutely had to go in' to recover nuclear document
The former deputy director of the FBI says federal agents “absolutely had to go in” to retrieve highly classified documents from Donald Trump’s private residence relating to the nuclear secrets of a foreign power.
Andrew McCabe, whom Trump fired in 2018 before the justice department reversed the decision last year, also said the reported discovery dispelled claims from the former president’s legal team that it had been openly negotiating the return of hoarded documents to the National Archives.
McCabe told CNN on Wednesday:
The seriousness of the documents eliminates any question about whether or not the department and the FBI actually had to go in with a search, which at the time was perceived as this overly aggressive move taken out of the blue, without any sort of appropriate wind up.
Of course, we now know that that’s not true. We know that the parties were not negotiating in good faith. We know that the folks on the Trump team were misleading the government… [and] resisted the return of these documents for basically a year and a half.
Knowing what was in there, they absolutely have to go in and recover this material. It’s essential to national security.
Top former Trump strategist Steve Bannon is expected to be indicted on Thursday on state fraud charges connected to his role in a fundraising scheme to build a border wall, according to two sources familiar with the matter, years after he received a presidential pardon in the federal case.
The expected move by the Manhattan district attorney’s office was quietly communicated to Bannon in recent days, the sources said of the sealed indictment, and indicated the state charges will likely mirror the federal case in which he was pardoned.
Bannon and three others were charged in that case by federal prosecutors in Manhattan with falsely claiming that they would not take compensation in the private “We Build the Wall” fundraising effort to underwrite part of the construction of the wall on the US-Mexico border.
The architect of Trump’s 2016 election campaign and later White House adviser was accused of personally taking more than $1m from what people had donated to the fundraising push that promised to secure funding in order to ensure the completion of the border wall.
Bannon – alongside disabled veteran Brian Kolfage, Andrew Badolato and Timothy Shea – raised more than $25m in the online crowdfunding effort, which also promised donors that all of the proceeds would go towards constructing the wall.
Though Bannon pleaded not guilty to the federal charges in August 2020, two others, Kolfage and Badolato, pleaded guilty to siphoning off money from the scheme and defrauding others for their own gain.
Bannon received a last-minute pardon in the final days of the Trump administration that expunged the federal indictment. But presidential pardons do not apply to state-level charges.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office started examining whether to pursue a case against Bannon almost immediately after he received the pardon, one source with knowledge of the matter said, and several close Bannon allies were subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury in recent months.
Read the full story:
Experts: 'No good way' for Trump to spin nuclear revelations
Donald Trump’s legal jeopardy could be heightened by the reported discovery of a foreign nation’s nuclear secrets among his hoard of improperly retained classified materials, some experts believe.
Michael Moore, former US attorney for Georgia, was asked on CNN if the finding could provide the justice department – which is conducting a criminal investigation into the former president’s handling of secret documents – with more evidence to bring charges:
I really think that’s probably the case. The documents that they had dealing with national defense may have been enough as it was under the Espionage Act, [which] doesn’t really require classified materials to be held and stolen. It [only] required defense information.
This information about nuclear capabilities and defense is particularly troubling to me, and there’s no good way to spin it for the [ex]-president. The three blind mice would say that he’s in trouble with this at this point.
Conversely, Moore added, the apparent leaking to the media about the content of the papers seized by the FBI in their search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida last month had “justified” one aspect of his legal defense:
I’m worried about is how the news is getting information about what the documents are. It seems to me that Trump’s request for a special master is justified, because somebody somewhere is leaking information about the specifics of these highly classified, highly sensitive documents.
That may change the dynamics, not just on the criminal side, but also the legal side.
Senior Democrats, intelligence experts and retired senior military officers are among those offering thoughts this morning on the alleged discovery of a foreign power’s nuclear secrets at Donald Trump’s Florida residence.
Adam Schiff, representative for California and chair of the House intelligence committee:
New reporting that Trump had highly classified information, including on foreign nuclear programs.
— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) September 7, 2022
If true, it raises yet more questions.
Why would Trump take them to Mar-a-Lago?
Why did he refuse to return them?
The investigation must continue uninterrupted and unimpeded.
Mark Hertling, retired US Army lieutenant general and national security analyst:
NB (note bene): this is just the beginning…and it’s gonna get much, much worse.
— Mark Hertling (@MarkHertling) September 7, 2022
Special Access Programs (SAP), TS/SCI, NOFORN…some of our most closely guarded secrets.
Yeah, this is more than a “storage problem,” @marcorubio https://t.co/NtCzAY3L8I
Democratic congressman for California, Ted Lieu:
Donald Trump was, and remains, a U.S. national security disaster.
— Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) September 7, 2022
Anyone else in America holding highly classified nuclear information at their residence would have been arrested and indicted. And Trump as ex-President doesn’t even have a security clearance. https://t.co/HtfX27ro9x
John W Dean, White House counsel for Richard Nixon during Watergate crisis:
Donald Trump is a serious threat to the national security of the United States...
— John W. Dean (@JohnWDean) September 7, 2022
Key event
Donald Trump doesn’t seem too concerned that information about a foreign nation’s nuclear capabilities was reportedly found at his Florida mansion.
The former president, according to a post on his troubled Truth Social network this morning, would seem to indicate he’s more worried by federal agents having sight of his medical records.
“At least they’ll see that I’m very healthy, an absolutely perfect physical specimen!” wrote Trump, who has a questionable history at best over claims about his weight and overall health.
“Not only did the FBI steal my Passports in the FBI Raid and Break-In of my home, Mar-a-Lago, but it has just been learned through court filings that they also improperly took my complete and highly confidential medical file and history, with all the bells and whistles.
“Plus personal Tax Records (Illegal to take), and lawyer/client/privileged information, a definite NO, NO. Days of the Soviet Union!
Updated
Nuclear secrets at Trump residence 'a gamechanger'
The reported discovery of information about a foreign nation’s nuclear secrets in materials found at Donald Trump’s private residence is horrifying intelligence experts.
Federal agents seized the document during their search of Mar-a-Lago, the former president’s Palm Beach mansion in Florida, last month, the Washington Post reported. It appears to confirm officials’ worst fears about the nature of the intelligence he should have returned to the National Archives.
Shawn Turner, former director of communications for US national intelligence, was searing in his criticism during an interview Wednesday on CNN’s New Day:
The fact we now know there were highly classified, restricted access documents about another country’s nuclear defense capabilities stored at Mar-a-Lago is a gamechanger with regard to the risk it poses to our national security.
That these documents may have been seen by unauthorized personnel … tells individuals what our capabilities are with regard to intelligence collection related to nuclear programs.
More important is it identifies or exposes our gaps with regard to intelligence collection.
The bottom line is others are going to look at this information and determine what we know and don’t know, and they’re going to make decisions about their nuclear programs based on that information. And that is an extremely dangerous thing.
The Post’s reporting is only the latest twist in a weeks-long saga over the justice department’s investigation into his handling of classified materials after he left office in January 2021.
Trump, who is mulling another run for the presidency in 2024, attacked the department at a weekend rally where he called the FBI and DoJ “vicious monsters”.
Many others, including Trump’s former attorney general, William Barr, have defended the investigation into his retention of government records, saying that it posed a major national security risk.
Read more:
Updated
Good morning US politics blog readers! Wednesday begins with another extraordinary development in the saga of Donald Trump’s hoarding of classified documents at his Florida residence.
Among the papers found by the FBI during a search last month was one describing a foreign government’s nuclear capabilities, the Washington Post reported. It would appear to confirm security officials’ worst fears about the nature of the material the former president refused to hand back to the National Archives.
We’ll be watching for reaction.
There’s also increasing scrutiny and growing criticism of the judge in the case, Trump appointee Aileen Cannon, who made the decision to appoint an independent special master to review the evidence in the justice department’s inquiry.
Some legal scholars question the legitimacy of the unprecedented decision, saying it places Trump above the law. Bill Barr, Trump’s former attorney general, was more succinct, telling the New York Times: “It’s a crock of shit.”
Here’s what else we’re watching today:
Steve Bannon, Trump’s former senior strategist who is already awaiting sentencing for contempt of Congress after refusing to cooperate with the January 6 trial, is expected to be indicted on fraud charges relating to a fundraising scheme.
Barack and Michelle Obama return to the White House at 1.30pm for the unveiling of their official portraits, hosted by Joe and Jill Biden.
Victory by Geoff Diehl, a Trump-supporting election denier, in Massachusetts’ Republican primary could pave the way for an openly gay Democrat Maura Healy to become state governor in November’s midterms.
The White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, is scheduled to deliver her daily briefing at 2.45pm.
