Former U.S. Capitol Police officers Michael Fanone and Harry Dunn, who were overwhelmed by the mob at the Capitol on Jan. 6, are interviewed during former President Donald Trump’s hush money trial in Manhattan Criminal Court on May 28, 2024 in New York City. Closing arguments were under way. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

Policy, politics and progressive commentary

WASHINGTON — Closing arguments in the first-ever criminal trial of a former U.S. president concluded Tuesday, leaving the jury to now decide if Donald Trump is guilty of faking reimbursement to his personal lawyer for hush money paid to a porn star just before the 2016 presidential election.

Just outside the Lower Manhattan courthouse during summations, the campaign to reelect President Joe Biden  held a press conference featuring actor Robert DeNiro and two former U.S. Capitol Police officers who were overwhelmed by the angry mob of Trump supporters who stormed the building on Jan. 6, 2021.

DeNiro bickered with a heckler and the Trump campaign then followed with its own press conference.

The trial’s final day of arguments wrapped up after nearly eight hours of closing arguments, during which the defense portrayed Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen as the “M.V.P. of liars” and Trump as a victim of extortion and too busy a leader in 2017 to understand the payments to Cohen.

Meanwhile, the prosecution walked jurors through excruciating details of events and witness testimony to show that Trump’s objective, along with those in his orbit, was to “hoodwink the American voter” leading up to the 2016 election, according to reporters at the courthouse.

New York does not allow recording in the courtroom but provides public transcripts of the proceedings. States Newsroom covered the trial in person on May 20.

Trump, the presumed 2024 Republican presidential nominee, is charged with 34 felonies, one for each of the 11 invoices, 11 checks, and 12 ledger entries that New York state prosecutors allege were cooked-up as routine “legal expenses,” hiding what were really reimbursements to Cohen for paying off adult film actress Stormy Daniels.

Daniels, also an adult film director, testified in early May to a 2006 sexual encounter at a Lake Tahoe golf tournament with Trump, which he maintains never happened.

Cohen, the prosecution’s key witness, later told the jurors that he wired Daniels $130,000 to secure her signature on a nondisclosure agreement in late October 2016, and that Trump was aware.

Cohen’s payment swiftly followed the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape, in which Trump was recorded telling a TV host that his fame allows him to grab women by the genitals.

The revelation spun Trump’s campaign into a frenzy over possibly losing women voters, additional witnesses testified.

Further, Cohen testified that Trump was present during conversations to hatch a plan with the Trump Organization’s longtime chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, to repay Cohen under the guise of “legal expenses.” Cohen would eventually receive a grossed-up sum of $420,000 to account for a bonus and taxes.

The hush money trial, which began in mid-April, is likely the only one to occur prior to the November election. Three other criminal cases against the former president, two federal and one in Georgia, remain stalled.

Throughout the six-week trial, jurors heard from nearly two dozen witnesses called by the prosecution to establish Trump’s history of working to suppress negative stories.

David Pecker, former National Enquirer publisher, testified to coordinating with Trump and Cohen earlier in 2016 to pay off former Playboy model Karen McDougal and bury her story of an alleged affair with Trump.

In his closing statements, Trump attorney Todd Blanche addressed the jury for nearly three hours, arguing that Trump made no such effort to influence the 2016 election by “unlawful means.”

Blanche told the jurors to put the idea of a conspiracy aside, emphasizing that the existence of a nondisclosure agreement is “not a crime.” Working with editors to buy sources’ silence and bury stories was routine, Blanche said.

“Every campaign in this country is a conspiracy,” he told the jurors, according to reporters at the courthouse.

While no hard contract existed between Trump and Cohen at the time, Blanche argued that the two had entered into an “oral” retainer agreement, and that Cohen was lying about how much work he was actually doing for Trump.

By the time Trump reached the Oval Office and personally signed nine of the 11 checks for Cohen, the then-president was too busy “running the country” to realize what he was signing, Blanche said.

As for the classification of the payments on the ledger, Blanche argued that the Trump Organization’s software featured limited dropdown menu categories, and that “legal expenses” was one of the options.

Blanche’s closing statements were largely dominated by his effort to persuade jurors that Cohen’s testimony could not be trusted.

“There is no way that you can find that President Trump knew about this payment at the time it was made without believing the words of Michael Cohen — period,” Blanche told the jurors, according to reporters in the courtroom.

Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 for lying to Congress.

Using another sports metaphor, Blanche told jurors that Cohen is the “G.L.O.A.T.”

“He’s literally the greatest liar of all time,” Blanche said.

He closed by urging the jurors to not send Trump “to prison” based on Cohen’s testimony.

Justice Juan Merchan admonished Blanche for mentioning prison, pointing out that a guilty verdict does not necessarily mean prison time. Merchan told the jurors to disregard that “improper” comment, according to reporters at the courthouse.

‘The only one who’s paid the price’

For just under five hours, prosecutor Joshua Steinglass led jurors through his closing argument, clocking the longest day of the trial.

Steinglass started off by telling them the prosecution only needs to prove the following: There were false business records used as part of the conspiracy and that Trump knew about them.

Steinglass reviewed earlier evidence presented to the jury — phone records, handwritten notes, recorded phone conversations and checks bearing Trump’s own signature. He also recalled the damning testimony of several Trump allies, including Pecker, the publisher.

“The conspiracy to unlawfully influence the 2016 election — you don’t need Michael Cohen to prove that one bit,” Steinglass said, according to reporters at the courthouse.

Steinglass leaned into Cohen’s seedy past, including his lying to Congress and his jail time for campaign finance violations related to hush money payments to women who alleged extramarital affairs with Trump.

These actions, he said, were taken on Trump’s behalf to defend and shield him; the irony, Steinglass said, is now they are being used against Cohen, again, to protect Trump.

Cohen transformed from a loyal Trump ally into a bitter foe who has published books titled “Disloyal” and “Revenge,” and produces a podcast called “Mea Culpa” on which he regularly lambastes Trump.

Cohen is “understandably angry that to date, he’s the only one who’s paid the price for his role in this conspiracy,” Blanche told the jurors, according to reporters, who noted Trump was shaking his head.

Steinglass attempted to humanize Cohen for the jurors, telling them one can “hardly blame” the former fixer — who now has a criminal record and no law license — for selling merchandise including t-shirts depicting Trump in an orange prison jumpsuit.

Steinglass also refuted the defense’s argument that Trump’s actions ahead of the 2016 were routine, describing the National Enquirer as “a covert arm” of the Trump campaign and “the very antithesis of a normal legitimate press function.”

“Everything Mr. Trump and his cohorts did in this case was cloaked in lies,” Steinglass said nearing the end of his closing statement. “The name of the game was concealment, and all roads lead to the man who benefited the most, Donald Trump.”

On the sidewalk just outside the New York County Supreme Court, the Biden campaign deployed DeNiro, the voice of the latest campaign ad, and former U.S. Capitol Police officers Harry Dunn and Michael Fanone. The officers are campaigning for Biden in battleground states, the campaign said in a press release.

The campaign’s Michael Tyler, communications director, introduced the trio and said they were not in Manhattan because of the trial proceedings, but rather because that’s where the media is concentrated.

Loud protesters, whom DeNiro called “crazy,” competed with the speakers.

“Donald Trump has created this,” DeNiro said, pointing to the demonstrators. “He wants to sow total chaos, which he’s succeeding in some areas … I love this city, and I don’t want to destroy it. Donald Trump wants to destroy, not only this city, but the country, and eventually he could destroy the world.”

“These guys are the true heroes,” De Niro said, pointing to Dunn and Fanone behind him. “They stood and put their lives on the line for these low lives, for Trump.”

A protester then interrupted DeNiro to call the officers “traitors.”

“I don’t even know how to deal with you, my friend,” DeNiro snapped back during the livestreamed event.

Both Dunn and Fanone testified two years ago before lawmakers investigating the violent mob that overran the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 as Congress gathered for a joint session to certify Biden’s 2020 presidential election victory. Trump still falsely claims he won the election.

Trump’s campaign immediately followed with its own press conference.

Jason Miller, senior adviser to Trump, held up Tuesday’s copy of the New York Post bearing the headline “Nothing to Bragg About,” a play on Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s name.

“Everybody knows this case is complete garbage,” Miller said. “President Trump did nothing wrong. This is all politics.”

On Trump’s social media platform Truth Social, the former president posted “BORING!” in all capital letters during a break in the Steinglass summation.

Late Monday, Trump posted in all caps a complaint about the order in which closing arguments would occur — a routine, well-established series of remarks in trials.

“WHY IS THE CORRUPT GOVERNMENT ALLOWED TO MAKE THE FINAL ARGUMENT IN THE CASE AGAINST ME? WHY CAN’T THE DEFENSE GO LAST? BIG ADVANTAGE, VERY UNFAIR. WITCH HUNT!” he wrote.

The post The jury now will decide Trump’s fate in hush money trial, after lengthy closing arguments appeared first on Nevada Current.

The Nevada Gaming Control Board has recently initiated a related probe involving a number of casinos, including Resorts World.

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Three gamblers under federal investigation for their ties to illegal sports betting rings that allegedly laundered money through Las Vegas casinos lost just under $24 million at Resorts World alone since the casino opened less than three years ago, according to sources who asked not to be identified in order to provide confidential gambler information. 

The revelation could prove costly for Resorts World, which is being investigated by federal authorities from California, as first reported last year by the Current. Corporate fines are often levied by federal authorities as a means of divesting companies of ill-gotten gains. 

The Nevada Gaming Control Board has recently initiated a related probe involving a number of casinos, according to individuals who have been interviewed. 

Resorts World has not been charged with wrongdoing. General Counsel Gerald Gardner and a public relations firm hired by the company declined to speak on the record, other than to say the company is cooperating with investigators.  

Damien LeForbes, who is being investigated by federal authorities in connection with illegal sports betting, racked up $12.3 million in losses during close to four dozen trips to Resorts World, according to sources.

A casino record obtained by the Current reveals Resorts World turned over a bad check for $2.5 million from LeForbes to the Clark County District Attorney for prosecution, however, no case has been filed against the gambler. His Las Vegas attorney, David Chesnoff, declined to comment. District Attorney Steve Wolfson did not respond to requests for comment. 

LeForbes also owes $1 million to the Venetian, according to a source at that casino. That marker has also been sent to the District Attorney, according to the source, however no case has been filed. 

The gambler declined to comment on the record when contacted by phone Monday.

Ryan Boyajian, a regular on the Real Housewives of Orange County and associate of admitted illegal bookie Matt Bowyer, lost $3.7 million at Resorts World tables during 21 trips.

“There’s an investigation and I don’t want to compromise it,” Boyajian’s attorney Steven Katzman told the Current via phone Monday. Katzman confirmed Boyajian and Bowyer have been acquainted for years.

Bowyer, who admitted through his attorney to taking sports bets from Ippei Mizuhara, the former interpreter of baseball star Shohei Ohtani, made 32 trips to Resorts World, the Current learned. ESPN reported earlier this month that Bowyer lost $7.9 million at the casino between 2022 and 2023. 

Mizuhara, who stole close to $17 million from Ohtani’s bank account in order to fuel his gambling habit and pay off millions of dollars in debt, has entered a plea deal with federal authorities.

Some of Mizuhara’s payments to Bowyer, up to $500,000 a week, were sent to Boyajian and subsequently deposited in his gambling account at Resorts World, according to ESPN.

Illegal bookmakers are known to launder money by wiring ill-gotten gains to casinos, where they later withdraw the bulk of the funds.

“I don’t know what kind of money launderers blow it all at the tables,” said one source who asked not to be named. 

Bowyer, Boyajian and LeForbes have not been charged with any crimes.

Bowyer’s California home was raided last October by the same federal authorities who investigated former MGM Grand and Resorts World president Scott Sibella. A federal judge sentenced Sibella earlier this month to one year probation and a $9,500 fine for failing to ensure MGM filed a suspicious transaction report for a cash payment from gambler Wayne Nix, who has admitted to being an illegal bookmaker and is awaiting sentencing.

MGM Resorts agreed to pay federal authorities $7.5 million to avoid prosecution in the case, which included violations at MGM Grand and Cosmopolitan.

The investigation of Nix, Sibella and his former employers has widened to include other resorts and other alleged illegal bookmakers, including Bowyer and LeForbes. A dozen individuals have been charged or entered plea agreements in connection with the case, according to federal authorities. 

On the same day federal agents raided Bowyer’s home, they confiscated the phone of Las Vegan Jennifer Belcastro, an independent representative who served as Bowyer’s host for his first trip to Resorts World. 

Resorts World and state regulators subsequently approved Bowyer’s wife as an independent host, an arrangement that allowed her to represent her husband and recoup a percentage of his losses.    

Outside representatives are compensated on a trip-by-trip basis determined by their customer’s level of play and/or the amount lost per trip. They must be registered with the state and undergo a background check, according to Gaming Control Board spokesman Michael Lawton.

“Additionally larger companies with compliance plans are required to conduct their own due diligence for Independent Agents,” Lawton said.

Note: The original version of this story said state regulators approved Bowyer’s wife to represent him as an independent host. Regulators do not approve hosts for specific customers. 

The post Resorts World could face massive fines in alleged money laundering case appeared first on Nevada Current.

Former President Donald Trump sits in court during the final day of testimony in his New York trial. Trump, the first former U.S. president to face trial on criminal charges, is accused of falsifying business records to cover up hush money payments. (Photo by Justin Lane-Pool/Getty Images)

Policy, politics and progressive commentary

WASHINGTON — The end of the first criminal trial of a former U.S. president is in sight as Donald Trump’s defense team rested its case Tuesday in Manhattan, where jurors have heard weeks of testimony from nearly two dozen witnesses about Trump’s alleged reimbursement of hush money meant to silence a porn star before the 2016 presidential election.

Trump did not take the stand after his team called just two witnesses.

The former president is accused of 34 felonies for falsifying business records. New York prosecutors allege that Trump covered up reimbursing his former personal lawyer Michael Cohen for paying hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels just before Election Day in 2016 to silence her about a tryst with Trump.

Trump, the presumptive 2024 Republican candidate for president, denies the affair and maintains that he was paying Cohen for routine legal work.

The case will not resume until after the Memorial Day holiday, when closing arguments are expected.

A back channel to Trump

Trump’s defense team’s second and final witness, former federal prosecutor and longtime New York-based attorney Robert Costello, stepped down from the witness stand Tuesday morning. His brief but tense appearance began Monday afternoon and included an admonishment from Justice Juan Merchan for “contemptuous” conduct.

Costello testified to meeting a panicked and “suicidal” Cohen in April 2018 after the FBI had raided Cohen’s New York City hotel room as part of an investigation of his $130,000 payment to Daniels just before the 2016 presidential election.

After Merchan sustained a series of objections from the prosecution Monday, Costello exclaimed, “jeez” and “ridiculous” on the mic and at one point rolled his eyes at Merchan. Merchan cleared the courtroom, including the press, to address Costello and Trump’s defense team.

Costello’s testimony confirmed that he offered a back channel for Cohen to communicate with then-President Trump through Costello’s close contact and Trump’s former legal counsel Rudy Giuliani as Cohen was under investigation, according to reporters at the courthouse.

New York does not allow recording in the courtroom but provides public transcripts of the proceedings.

During cross examination, prosecutor Susan Hoffinger showed a series of Costello’s emails in an attempt to convince jurors that Costello was actively working to assure Trump that Cohen would not turn against him during the federal investigation.

In one email between Costello and his law partner, he asks, “What should I say to this (expletive)? He is playing with the most powerful man on the planet,” according to reporters at the courthouse.

Hoffinger also established from Costello during her final series of questions that Cohen never officially retained him for legal help — reinforcing that Costello showed up in Cohen’s life only after the FBI raid.

Trump’s multiple indictments

Costello has been publicly critical of the hush money trial against Trump, and of Cohen, as recently as May 15, when he testified before the GOP-led U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary’s Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.

There, Costello told lawmakers that the cases brought against Trump during this election year are “politically motivated.”

Trump, who faces dozens of criminal charges in four separate cases, was indicted in New York in April 2023.

Three other criminal cases were also brought against Trump in 2023. They all remain on hold.

• The former president was indicted by a federal grand jury in Florida in June 2023 on charges related to the mishandling of classified information. Federal District Judge Aileen Cannon indefinitely postponed proceedings, making a trial before the November election unlikely.

• Trump was indicted by a federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., in August 2023. A four-count indictment accused him of knowingly spreading falsehoods about the 2020 presidential election results and scheming to overturn them. Trump claimed presidential immunity from the criminal charges in October 2023, which both the federal trial and appeals courts denied. Trump is awaiting a decision from the U.S. Supreme Court.

• Weeks after the federal election interference indictment, Trump was indicted on state charges in Fulton County, Georgia, for allegedly interfering in the state’s 2020 presidential election results. The Georgia case has been mired in pretrial disputes over alleged misconduct by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.

Courtroom conditions

In the dim, tightly secured hallway just feet from the courtroom at the New York County Supreme Court, Trump again criticized the trial Monday and accused prosecutors of wanting to keep him off the campaign trail.

“We’re here an hour early today. I was supposed to be making a speech for political purposes. I’m not allowed to have anything to do with politics because I’m sitting in a very freezing cold courtroom for the last four weeks. It’s very unfair. They have no case, they have no crime,” he said before the news cameras that he’s stopped to speak in front of every day during the trial.

Trump told the cameras that outside the courtroom was like “Fort Knox.”

He complained that there are “more police than I’ve ever seen anywhere,” and said “there’s not a civilian within three blocks of the courthouse.”

That statement is false. States Newsroom attended the trial Monday and witnessed the scene outside the courthouse during the morning, mid-afternoon and late afternoon.

Just as dawn broke, people standing in the general-public line vying for the few public seats in the courtroom squabbled over who was in front of whom.

About an hour later, a woman with a bullhorn showed up in the adjacent Collect Pond Park to read the Bible and amplify contemporary Christian music played from her phone. A man paced the park holding a sign that read, “Trump 2 Terrified 2 Testify.”

Several people sat outside eating and talking at tables in Collect Pond Park during the 1 p.m. hour, as witnessed by reporters who left the courtroom after Merchan dismissed the jury for lunch.

By late afternoon, a small handful of protesters holding Trump flags and signs shouted that he was innocent.

The post Trump declines witness stand as testimony in his first trial concludes appeared first on Nevada Current.

Former President Donald Trump appears in court during his trial for allegedly covering up hush money payments at Manhattan Criminal Court on May 20, 2024, in New York City. Trump faces 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in the first of his criminal cases to go to trial. (Photo by Steven Hirsch-Pool/Getty Images)

Policy, politics and progressive commentary

NEW YORK — New York state prosecutors rested their case against Donald Trump Monday after four days of testimony from their key witness, Trump’s former fixer Michael Cohen, who says the former president was well aware of a hush money cover-up. The defense paints Cohen as a liar.

The Manhattan criminal trial, the first ever for a former president, now in its sixth week, was poised to reach closing arguments as early as Tuesday. But New York Justice Juan Merchan indicated Monday that proceedings would stretch beyond Memorial Day.

Trump attorney Todd Blanche, in a lengthy, and at times slow and disjointed cross- examination Monday, continued wringing Cohen for proof that would convince jurors the former fixer cannot be trusted.

Cohen’s earlier testimony that Trump reimbursed him for paying a porn star to stay quiet before the 2016 presidential election is at the crux of the prosecution’s case.

Trump is charged with falsifying 11 invoices, 11 checks, and 12 ledger entries as routine legal expenses rather than reimbursement of the hush money, amounting to 34 felony counts.

Trump denies any wrongdoing and maintains he never had a sexual relationship with adult film actress and director Stormy Daniels. She testified otherwise in excruciating and awkward detail in early May.

Monday’s proceedings were beset with objections and technology issues, and wrapped with tense testimony from the defense’s second witness, Robert Costello, Cohen’s legal counsel, who promised backdoor communication to Trump after Cohen was under the FBI’s thumb in 2018.

The day ended with a long shot, but expected, request from the defense to throw the case out. Merchan dismissed the court, saying he’d issue his ruling Tuesday. The defense is likely to rest its case then as well.

Closing arguments are expected after the holiday.

On a ‘journey’

Blanche began the day grilling Cohen on his previous business dealings, income and the money he’s made since breaking ties with the former president.

Cohen testified that he’s made millions of dollars on his books “Disloyal” and “Revenge,” and his podcast “Mea Culpa,” all of which sharply criticize the man from whom he used to seek praise, as he testified days earlier.

Prompted by Blanche, Cohen confirmed he’s mulling over a third book, has a television show in the works titled “The Fixer” and is considering a run for Congress because he has “the best name recognition” out there.

When Blanche suggested Cohen’s name recognition hinges on Trump, Cohen disagreed.

“I wouldn’t characterize it that way. My name recognition is because of the journey I’ve been on,” Cohen said.

“Well the journey you’ve been on … has included daily attacks on Trump,” Blanche responded.

Through the course of Blanche’s questioning, Cohen again acknowledged his previous crimes and also fessed up to stealing $30,000 from the Trump Organization when Trump lagged on paying a tech company to rig a CNBC poll of famous businessmen.

Minutes later, Blanche asked, “Do you have a financial interest in this case?”

“Yes, sir,” Cohen responded.

When Blanche pressed about whether a guilty verdict is Cohen’s preferred outcome, Cohen responded, “The answer is no. It’s better if he’s not (guilty) for me because it gives me more to talk about in the future.”

Prosecutor Susan Hoffinger conducted her redirect at a tidy and speedy clip, leading Cohen through each of Blanche’s doubting lines of questioning to reaffirm for the jury Cohen’s testimony that Trump’s hand was behind the hush money reimbursements.

“They’ve asked you a lot of questions about how you’ve made money and (your) podcast… Putting aside financial matters, how has telling the truth affected your life?” Hoffinger asked.

“My entire life has been turned upside down as a direct result,” Cohen responded.

Before the prosecution rested its case, the defense lobbed a lengthy objection to a still frame of a C-SPAN video depicting Trump with his bodyguard Keith Schiller just before 8 p.m. on Oct. 24, 2016. The parties eventually agreed to admit it.

Evidence that Trump and Schiller were together that night looms large for Cohen’s claim that he spoke to both of them on the phone about paying off Daniels.

Trump’s support inside the courtroom

A steady flow of high-profile Republican supporters has shown up for the GOP’s presumed 2024 presidential nominee.

Monday’s supporters included Trump ally and attorney Alan Dershowitz; legal adviser Boris Epshteyn, who himself is indicted in Arizona for trying to subvert the 2020 presidential election results; and Chuck Zito, an actor and one of the founders of New York City’s Hells Angels chapter in the 1980s.

Several Republican lawmakers, including vice presidential hopefuls, have flocked to Manhattan for the trial.

North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio and former GOP primary hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy attended May 13. Sens. Rick Scott of Florida and Tommy Tuberville of Alabama also made appearances last week, alongside Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird.

House Speaker Mike Johnson delivered remarks outside the courthouse May 14, slamming the “sham trial” and accusing New York prosecutors of only wanting to keep the former president off the campaign trail.

The Louisiana Republican cast Trump as a victim of a “travesty of justice.”

Nearly a dozen far-right Republican House members showed up Thursday, led by Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida. Accompanying Gaetz were other right-wing House Freedom Caucus members: fellow Floridian Reps. Anna Paulina Luna and Mike Waltz; Eli Crane and Andy Biggs of Arizona; Lauren Boebert of Colorado; Ralph Norman of South Carolina; Diana Harshbarger and Andy Ogles of Tennessee; Mike Cloud of Texas; and caucus Chair Bob Good of Virginia.

Speaking on the sidewalk outside the courthouse, Gaetz described the charges as the “Mr. Potatohead doll of crimes,” accusing the prosecution of combining things “that did not belong together.”

Reps. Byron Donalds and Cory Mills of Florida attended earlier in the week.

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Scott Sibella, former president and COO of the MGM Grand, pictured here at a 2017 press conference. (Mark Damon/Las Vegas News Bureau)

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A federal judge on Wednesday sentenced Scott Sibella, the former president of MGM Grand and Resorts World Las Vegas, to one year of probation and a fine of $9,500 for violating a federal law requiring casinos to know the source of their customer’s funds and file a suspicious activity report. 

Sibella maintains he did nothing that benefited him personally. 

“I was charged from the very beginning for not filing a SAR, accepted a plea, and have taken full and complete responsibility for what I did,” Sibella said in a statement distributed shortly after the sentencing by his attorney John Spilotro. “I want to reiterate that by, anything alleged, I gained no benefit – neither personal, professional or financial.”

Sibella said he’s “relieved to have this matter concluded and accept the terms imposed today by the court. As I have said throughout this investigation, I regret the pain this has caused my friends and family and am extremely grateful for those who chose to stand with me throughout these difficult times.”

Sibella entered a guilty plea in January for allowing illegal bookmaker Wayne Nix to pay a $120,000 gambling debt to the MGM Grand without reporting the transaction to the federal government, a violation of the Bank Secrecy Act that is punishable by a fine up to $250,000 and prison time. 

“The decision to plead to the single charge, for failing to file a suspicious activity report (SAR) at MGM Resorts in 2017, was not easily arrived at given the underlying facts and realities in this matter,” Sibella said in the statement. 

“Contrary to published reports, Mr. Sibella never used a betting account and never made any illegal bets,” Spilotro said in a statement. “In addition, Mr. Sibella had no involvement in the bookmaking activities of Mathew Bowyer and nothing whatsoever to do with Ippei Mizuhara, the former interpreter of Shohei Ohtani.”

In a sentencing memo, federal authorities noted that when questioned by law enforcement in 2022, “defendant admitted that he had ‘heard that Nix was in the booking business’  and he ‘couldn’t figure out how he had all the money he gambled with.’ Defendant further admitted ‘I didn’t want to know because of my position, . . . in this business, they [bookies] are a dime a dozen. . . I stay out of it. If we know, we can’t allow them to gamble. . . I didn’t ask, I didn’t want to know I guess because he wasn’t doing anything to cheat the casino.’” 

Numerous individuals, including Clark County Sheriff Kevin McMahill asked Federal Judge Dolly Gee to show leniency in sentencing Sibella. 

“What he is accused of is out of character and doesn’t represent the person I’ve come to know,” McMahill wrote, according to legal documents. “For as long as I have known him, he has displayed unwavering support to Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department.”

Sibella’s attorneys wrote in a sentencing memo on April 24 that in 30 years in the gaming industry “…Mr. Sibella has never been disciplined by the Nevada Gaming Control Board or New Jersey Casino Control Commission. No fines, suspensions, or timeouts.” 

Days later,  the Nevada Gaming Control Board, which remained largely silent since news broke last year of the federal investigation, filed a complaint against Sibella that could result in the loss of his gaming license. 

The government noted in its sentencing recommendation that Sibella “is no longer a casino president, which was the environment in which the crime occurred. Per defendant, he was terminated from employment at another large casino in Las Vegas due to this case. In addition, the negative publicity surrounding defendant’s felony conviction for violating the Bank Secrecy Act serves as a deterrent for both defendant and others from engaging in similar conduct.”  

Sibella’s attorneys argued his “personal history reflects generations of hard-working, selfmade, successful people – including his grandparents and parents. He inherited both their work ethic and commitment to those around them. Starting out as a busboy, construction worker, and eventually front desk clerk at a casino hotel, Mr. Sibella rose to being a recognized and respected figure in the Las Vegas hospitality business.” 

The post Sibella gets probation, fine for violating anti-money laundering law at MGM Grand appeared first on Nevada Current.

On One America News Newtwork Christina Bobb made a series of dubious or demonstrably false claims about the 2020 Maricopa County election in a February 2021 special in an attempt to bolster the lie spread by former Donald Trump and others that he didn’t really lose Arizona by about 10,000 votes. (Screenshot via Bitchute)

Policy, politics and progressive commentary

Less than a week after the Republican National Committee unveiled a “historic” new program to monitor the polls for fraud in Nevada and other battleground states, a top lawyer with the committee was among those indicted for an alleged scheme to use false fraud claims to overturn the results of Arizona’s presidential election.

Indeed, the lawyer, RNC senior counsel for election integrity Christina Bobb, was scheduled to appear April 25 at an online meeting to recruit activists for the GOP’s vote-watching effort, though she didn’t show up. The meeting was organized by fringe conspiracy theorists who, like Bobb, have helped spread lies about illegal voting.

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes announced the indictments on April 24 against 18 people, seven of whose names are redacted. Multiple news organizations have used details in the indictment to identify Bobb and the other six. Mayes on Friday confirmed Bobb’s indictment.

The confluence of events involving Bobb, the RNC and a loose network of anti-fraud activists underscores how the Trump-controlled GOP appears to be laying the groundwork to contest this year’s election using the same false claims about illegal voting — and even some of the same key figures — as it did in 2020.

Asked for comment on Bobb’s reported indictment and whether she remained employed by the RNC, an RNC spokesperson declined to answer on the record.

Bobb did not respond to an inquiry about her failure to appear at the April 25 event.

GOP’s ‘historic’ vote-monitoring program

The Arizona indictments came less than a week after the Trump campaign and the RNC announced a “historic, 100,000 person strong” effort to closely monitor the voting process, calling it, “the most extensive and monumental election integrity program in the nation’s history.”

“Whenever a ballot is being cast or counted, Republican poll watchers will be observing the process and reporting any irregularity,” the RNC declared in a press release.

The committee called the initiative “an historic collaboration between the RNC, the Trump Campaign, and passionate grassroots coalitions who are deeply invested in fighting voter fraud.” That appeared to be a reference to the party’s outreach to anti-fraud activists like those at Thursday’s meeting — many of whom have bought in to lies about the 2020 election.

Multiple lawsuits found no evidence of systematic or widespread fraud in 2020.

The RNC’s vote-monitoring effort has been championed by Lara Trump, former President Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law, who took over as RNC co-chair in late February. Bobb was announced as an election integrity lawyer at the RNC soon afterward.

Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee for president in 2024.

Lara Trump warned in an April 23 interview that the vote-monitoring program will include “people who can physically handle ballots” at polling places on Election Day. The rules for partisan poll watchers differ from state to state.

17 charged in fake electors plot

Bobb’s failure to attend Thursday’s online meeting, after organizers had promoted her appearance in advance, may have been because she has more urgent matters on her mind.

The indictments filed in Arizona allege a plot to use fake electors to overturn the state’s 2020 presidential vote.

The 11 people named in the indictment are the Arizona fake electors themselves, all Trump allies. The other seven people, whose names are redacted, have been identified by news outlets, including CNN and the New York Times, as Bobb, as well as Trump allies Rudy Giuliani, Mark Meadows, John Eastman, Jenna Ellis, Mike Roman and Boris Epshteyn.

One of the seven, the indictment says, “was an attorney for the Trump Campaign” and “made false claims of widespread election fraud in Arizona and in six other states.” That person also “encouraged the Arizona Legislature to change the outcome of the election,” and “encouraged (Vice President Mike) Pence to accept the false Arizona Republican electors’ votes on January 6, 2021,” according to the indictment.

Bobb joined the Trump campaign as a lawyer in the aftermath of the 2020 vote, and was among the campaign officials, led by Giuliani, who organized a scheme to use false fraud claims as justification for submitting fake electors in seven states Trump lost, including Arizona, CNN has reported.

Bobb also tweeted on January 6, 2021: “@VP @Mike_Pence can solve this now by sending it back to the legislators.”

The indictment lists Trump — unnamed but described as “a former president of the United States who spread false claims of election fraud following the 2020 election” — as an unindicted co-conspirator.

The indictment alleges that as part of the scheme, the fake electors voted for Trump to receive Arizona’s electoral votes, “falsely claiming to be the duly elected and qualified Electors for President and Vice President of the United States from the State of Arizona.”

“Defendants deceived the citizens of Arizona by falsely claiming that those votes were contingent only on a legal challenge that would change the outcome of the election,” the indictment continues. “In reality, Defendants intended that their false votes for Trump-Pence would encourage Pence to reject the Biden-Harris votes on January 6, 2021, regardless of the outcome of the legal challenge.”

RNC courts conspiracy theorists, election deniers

The meeting at which Bobb was scheduled to appear Thursday was organized by two Florida activists with ties to leading election deniers, including MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, and included hundreds of grassroots anti-fraud activists from across the country.

It follows a similar April 4 event, at which the director of the RNC’s election integrity program, Christina Norton, told activists how to get involved with the party’s vote-monitoring program. States Newsroom attended both virtual meetings.

The April 25 meeting featured a parade of speakers, including the former Democratic consultant Naomi Wolf, making claims about illegal voting in 2020 and 2022, predicting that this year’s vote will be similarly rigged, and rallying supporters to take action.

“The current situation is that President Trump will once again win the presidential election just as he did in 2020,” said one speaker, Greg Stenstrom, a Pennsylvania-based conspiracy theorist who co-authored the book “The Parallel Election: A Blueprint for Deception,” which alleged massive fraud in that state’s 2020 vote.

“But it will be taken from him, and all of us, again, unless we restore fair and honest elections in the short time we have remaining before November. He cannot hold onto the presidency unless we act.”

In place of a live appearance by Bobb, Steve Stern, an organizer of the call, played an interview he’d conducted recently with her for his podcast.

In the interview, Stern asked Bobb what could be done about President Joe Biden’s plan to add “a million illegal aliens” to the voter rolls. (There is no evidence that Biden has such a plan, despite frequent similar claims by the far right.)

Bobb agreed there is a “concerted effort to empower the illegals to cast ballots,” adding: “It’s a very, very, serious issue this time around, and it’s something that we’re looking into … Is it something that law enforcement needs to handle, because there could potentially be a criminal component to it?”

“As far as illegals voting,” Bobb continued, “once they have registered, it’s very hard to undo that process. Because the registration is presumed valid.”

Studies have consistently shown that the amount of voting by non-citizens is minuscule. A 2017 Brennan Center analysis found that suspected — not proven — votes by non-citizens accounted for just 0.0001 percent of all votes cast in the 2016 election.

Other connections

In addition to these two meetings, there have been other recent instances of RNC staff courting right-wing activists who have spread election disinformation.

Bobb spoke last month with the far-right podcaster Breanna Morello. And she joined a recent conference call with several Trump-allied groups that have promoted lies about 2020, the Guardian reported.

Both the April 25 and April 4 meetings were organized by Stern and Raj Doraisamy, two far-right Florida activists and Lindell allies who have helped spread false claims about illegal voting.

Last month, Stern spoke with Steve Bannon, the former Trump adviser, to promote the April 4 meeting. “We have so many illegal aliens in this country,” Stern said. “They want to vote. We gotta stop them.”

Doraisamy was reportedly outside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and went on to found a group, Defend Florida, that went door to door to gather thousands of “affidavits” from Floridians in an effort to show that the state’s 2020 election was corrupted by massive fraud.

At a 2022 event organized by the group, Doraisamy thanked Lindell for his help with the door-to-door effort.

Also speaking at the April 25 meeting call was Joe Hoft, whose Gateway Pundit website, co-founded with Hoft’s brother Jim, has been a key vector for the spread of false conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, the covid vaccine, and more.

Joe Hoft’s self-published book, “The Steal,”  is described this way on its Google Books page: “It’s early in the morning of November 4th, President Trump was way ahead in the swing states, but he warned of 4am ballot drops. He was right again. When Americans woke up later that morning, the election had been stolen.”

Another speaker at the meeting, Jay Valentine, used initial funding from Lindell to create voter data monitoring software.

According to documents obtained by the progressive group American Oversight, Valentine has worked closely with Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, a key figure in the effort to overturn the 2020 election, to convince lawmakers in Wisconsin and other states to use his “fractal programming technology” to uncover mass fraud.

“Voter fraud is a nationwide crime perpetrated locally, mostly by Democrats,” Valentine has written separately, promoting the idea of a national election fraud database. “We cannot fight industrial, sovereign, large-scale, election fraud with reports, press releases, and webinars.”

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Dozens of anti-Trump protesters gathered outside the U.S. Supreme Court on April 25, 2024, while the justices heard arguments about whether former President Donald Trump has immunity from prosecution on criminal charges related to his actions while in office. (Photo by Jane Norman/States Newsroom)

Policy, politics and progressive commentary

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court appeared skeptical Thursday of former President Donald Trump’s argument he is immune from criminal charges that he tried to overturn his loss in the 2020 election.

But conservatives who dominate the court appeared open to returning key questions to a trial court, possibly delaying Trump’s prosecution beyond the November election — and essentially assisting the former president as he fights legal challenges on multiple fronts.

Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, has argued in a federal trial court and in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia that his actions following the 2020 election and leading up to the violent Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, were “official acts” conducted while still in office and therefore are not subject to criminal prosecution.

While court precedent establishes that U.S. presidents are immune to civil damages for their official acts, and to criminal prosecution while in office, the justices now must decide the unanswered question of whether former presidents are absolutely immune from criminal law.

At oral arguments Thursday in Trump v. United States, much of the discussion centered on what should be considered an official presidential act.

Several conservative justices suggested that lower courts work to determine what aspects of the charges against Trump arose solely from his private conduct.

Such a detour could eat up additional weeks or months as the trial calendar converges with Election Day.

A decision from the court may not arrive until late June or early July. If a ruling calls for additional fact-finding at the trial court level, Trump’s election interference trial likely would not happen prior to the November election.

Trump’s lawyer, D. John Sauer, of St. Louis, argued that nearly everything a president does in office — including hypotheticals about ordering a military coup or assassinating a political rival — could be considered official acts.

While much of the court appeared skeptical of that broad view of official acts, several justices on the conservative wing asked about having the trial court determine what acts should be considered official. They also suggested prosecutors could drop sections of the four-count indictment against Trump that dealt with official acts.

The court’s three liberal justices voiced serious concerns about Trump’s immunity argument, with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wondering aloud if the court accepting a broad view of criminal immunity for the president would make the Oval Office “the seat of criminal activity.”

The case is one of four in state and federal courts in which criminal charges have been made against Trump. On Thursday, he was in a New York state courtroom where he faces charges in an ongoing hush-money trial; the judge there did not allow him to attend the Supreme Court arguments.

Conservative justices asked if they could avoid the constitutional question by having the trial court, presided over by U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, determine which parts of the allegations could be considered official or unofficial acts.

Special counsel Jack Smith and his team of prosecutors have indicated that prosecuting only Trump’s private conduct would be sufficient, Justice Amy Coney Barrett said.

“The normal process, what Mr. Sauer asked, would be for us to remand if we decided that there were some official acts immunity, and to let that be sorted out below,” Barrett said, referring to a process in which a case is sent back to a lower court. “It is another option for the special counsel to just proceed based on the private conduct and drop the official conduct.”

‘Absolute immunity’

Sauer argued, as he has for months, for “absolute immunity” from criminal prosecution for presidents acting in their official capacity.

No president who has not been impeached and removed from office can be prosecuted for official actions, Sauer said, broadly interpreting the meaning of official acts.

Liberal justices questioned Sauer about how far his definition of official acts would stretch. Trump’s attorney was reluctant to list any exceptions.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked a hypothetical that arose in a lower court: Would it be an official act for the president to order the assassination of a political rival?

“That could well be an official act,” Sauer answered.

He also answered Justice Elena Kagan that it could be an official act for a president to order a military coup, though Sauer said “it would depend on the circumstances.”

Michael R. Dreeben, representing the U.S. Department of Justice, argued that Trump’s broad view of presidential immunity would break a fundamental element of U.S. democracy, that no one is above the law.

“His novel theory would immunize former presidents for criminal liability for bribery, treason, sedition, murder, and here, conspiring to use fraud to overturn the results of an election and perpetuate himself in power,” Dreeben said.

Jackson, questioning Sauer, appeared to agree with that argument.

She said Sauer appeared worried that the president would be “chilled” by potential criminal prosecution, but she said there would be “a really significant opposite problem if the president wasn’t chilled.”

“Once we say, ‘No criminal liability, Mr. President, you can do whatever you want,’ I’m worried that we would have a worse problem than the problem of the president feeling constrained to follow the law while he’s in office,” Jackson said.

‘A special, peculiarly precarious position’

But other members of the court appeared more amenable to Sauer’s argument that subjecting presidents to criminal prosecution would constrain them.

Justice Samuel Alito, one of the court’s conservatives, asked Dreeben about Trump’s argument that a president’s duties require a broad view of immunity.

The president has to make difficult decisions, sometimes in areas of law that are unsettled, Alito said.

“I understand you to say, ‘If he makes a mistake, he makes a mistake, he’s subject to the criminal laws just like anybody else,’” Alito said. “You don’t think he’s in a special, peculiarly precarious position?”

Dreeben answered that the president has access to highly qualified legal advice and that making a mistake is not what generally leads to criminal prosecution.

He also noted that the allegations against Trump involve him going beyond his powers as president to interfere with the certification of an election, which is not a presidential power in the Constitution.

Incumbents leaving office

Alito, who seemed to be the justice most sympathetic to Trump’s argument that allowing a president to be prosecuted would undermine the powers of the office, also raised the prospect that incumbents who lose elections may seek to illegally stay in power precisely because prosecution would await after they leave office.

“A stable democratic society requires that a candidate who loses an election, even a close one, even a hotly contested one, leave office peacefully,” he said.

“If an incumbent who loses a very close, hotly contested election, knows that a real possibility after leaving office is … the president may be criminally prosecuted by a bitter political opponent, will that not lead us into a cycle that destabilizes the functioning of our country as a democracy?”

Dreeben answered that “it’s exactly the opposite,” because there are well-established lawful options, including court challenges, available to challenge election results.

Trump posted several times Thursday morning on his social media platform Truth Social that the president would “have no power at all” without absolute immunity.

“That would be the end of the Presidency, and our Country, as we know it, and is just one of the many Traps there would be for a President without Presidential Immunity. Obama, Bush, and soon, Crooked Joe Biden, would all be in BIG TROUBLE,” he wrote.

‘Writing a rule for the ages’

Some justices indicated they will be thinking beyond the question as it relates to Trump’s election interference charges, possibly hinting at a drawn-out process in issuing an opinion.

Criminally prosecuting a former president could open the door to prosecution based on motives, including the motive to get reelected or for other personal gain, conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch suggested.

“I’m not concerned about this case, but I am concerned about future uses of the criminal law to target political opponents based on accusations about their motives,” Gorsuch said in a lengthy back-and-forth with Dreeben.

“I’m going to say something that I don’t normally say, which is: That’s really not involved in this case,” Dreeben said, eliciting a laugh from Gorsuch.

“I understand that. I appreciate that. But you also appreciate that we’re writing a rule for the ages,” Gorsuch responded.

At another point, Dreeben tried to redirect the justices to specific details of the Trump case, including his point that the judicial system has safeguards against purely politically motivated and retaliatory legal action.

Dreeben attempted to detail for Alito that the Justice Department functioned “in the way that it is supposed to” when Trump’s alleged plan to ask officials to send fraudulent letters to states regarding election results failed.

Alito pushed back, saying he wanted to discuss the case “in the abstract.”

“I understand that Mr. Dreeben. But as I said, this case will have effects that go far beyond this particular prosecution,” Alito said.

Alan Morrison, a law professor at George Washington University who has argued 20 cases before the Supreme Court, said in a phone interview after oral arguments that the court will not reach “a fast decision” as the justices wrestle with the extent of what is considered a president’s official acts.

“Neither side is going to get everything they want,” Morrison said. “And the hardest questions to answer are going to be what are official and what are not official acts.”

‘Reacting against a monarch’

Sticking to the specifics of the indictment against Trump, Kagan ran through a list of the allegations and asked Sauer to discern what constituted an official act.

“The defendant asked the Arizona House Speaker to call the legislature into session to hold a hearing based on their claims of election fraud,” Kagan said, citing the indictment.

“Absolutely an official act for the president to communicate with state officials on a matter of enormous federal interest and concern,” Sauer answered, “attempting to defend the integrity of a federal election to communicate with state officials and urge them to view what he views as their job under state law and federal law.”

Kagan moved to hypotheticals and asked if a president who ordered a military coup, but was never impeached and convicted by Congress, could not be held to U.S. criminal law.

“He was the president. He is the commander in chief. He talks to his generals all the time, and he told the generals, ‘I don’t feel like leaving office. I want to stage a coup.’ Is that immune?”

“If it’s an official act, there needs to be impeachment and conviction beforehand,” Sauer said, citing the defense’s reliance on the Constitution’s Impeachment Clause argument.

“That is the wisdom of the (Constitution’s) framers,” he added.

“The framers did not put an immunity clause into the Constitution,” she quickly responded. “… They didn’t provide immunity to the president, and you know, not so surprising. They were reacting against a monarch who claimed to be above the law.”

“Wasn’t the whole point that the president was not a monarch and the president was not supposed to be above the law?” she said.

Federal election interference charges

A federal grand jury charged Trump with four felony counts in August 2023 for working with several co-conspirators to overturn election results in seven states.

The indictment charged the former president with conspiracy to defraud the United States and obstruction of an official proceeding, among other charges.

Trump allegedly worked with several others to replace legitimate electors with fraudulent ones in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, according to the indictment.

The prosecution also alleges that he tried to leverage the Justice Department to pressure the states to replace their slates of electors, and pressure Vice President Mike Pence into altering results during Congress’s joint session to certify the results on Jan. 6, 2021.

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Arizona’s 11 fake electors sign a document in Phoenix on Dec. 14 2020, falsely claiming that they were the state’s electors and that Donald Trump won the presidential election in Arizona. (Screenshot via AZGOP)

Policy, politics and progressive commentary

A grand jury has indicted 18 people, including two Arizona state senators and the former head of the Arizona Republican Party, in a fake elector scheme that aimed to install Donald Trump as the president after he lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden.

The Arizona Attorney General’s Office has not released the names of everyone who was indicted, but all 11 fake electors were charged:

• Kelli Ward, former AZGOP chairman
• Arizona Sen. Jake Hoffman, leader of the Arizona Freedom Caucus
• Arizona Sen. Anthony Kern, member of the Arizona Freedom Caucus
• Tyler Bowyer, Turning Point USA CEO
• Michael Ward, husband of Kelli Ward
• Nancy Cottle, a Republican who’s been active in local politics for a decade
• James Lamon, a failed 2022 U.S. Senate candidate
• Robert Montgomery, former chairman of the Cochise County Republican Committee
• Samuel Moorhead, former chairman of Gila County Republican Party
• Lorraine Pellegrino, former president of the Ahwatukee Republican Women
• Gregory Safsten, former executive director of the AZGOP

There were also seven people indicted whose names were redacted.

Richie Taylor, a spokesman for the Attorney General’s office told the Arizona Mirror that the names were redacted because they haven’t yet been served. He said that service should happen quickly and once it is completed, an unredacted indictment will be published.

The identities of some of the redacted defendants were obvious, including Rudy Giuliani, who was described as an attorney for Trump who was often referred to as “the mayor,” former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and Mike Roman, the director of Election Day operations for the Trump campaign.

Giuliani was one of the big names who spread false claims of election fraud following the Nov. 3, 2020 election, and he held a hearing in Phoenix in late November where he claimed that Arizona’s elections officials had made no effort to ensure that the results of the presidential election were accurate.

All 11 of the fake electors were charged with conspiracy, fraudulent schemes and artifices, fraudulent schemes and practices and forgery, which are all felonies.

The fake electors were indicted by a grand jury on April 23 for signing bogus documents claiming that Donald Trump won the 2020 election, after Trump’s campaign allegedly urged them to do so.

Trump is identified in the indictment as “unindicted co-conspirator 1.”

In the indictment, all of the fake electors are implicated in an attempt to deceive “the public with false claims of election fraud in order to prevent the lawful transfer of the presidency.”

They are accused of attempting to keep “President Donald J. Trump in office against the will of Arizona voters, and depriving Arizona voters of their right to vote and have their votes counted.”

According to the indictment, the fake electors forged certificates of Electoral College votes for President Donald J. Trump and Vice President Michael Pence and filed those with the Arizona Secretary of State and the chief judge of the Federal District Court for the District of Arizona.

The group is also charged with pressuring the Maricopa Board of Supervisors, the state Legislature and then-Gov. Doug Ducey to change the election results.

The fake electors are additionally accused of trying to trick Arizonans into believing that their fraudulent votes were contingent on a successful outcome in Trump’s challenge of the 2020 election results, when they were actually trying to urge Pence to reject the votes for Biden on Jan. 6, 2021.

According to the indictment, Ward organized the fake elector vote, and proclaimed that they were Arizona’s “true electors.”

Several of the fake electors, including Hoffman, Kern, Ward and Bowyer, have continued to spread the unfounded claim that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, even though no evidence of that has ever come to light.

Hoffman sent a letter to then-Vice President Mike Pence on Jan. 5, 2021, asking him to delay the certification of the election results and to check with the Arizona Legislature to determine which slate of presidential electors to use.

Hoffman issued a statement Wednesday evening, shortly after Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes released news of the indictments.

“Let me be unequivocal, I am innocent of any crime, I will vigorously defend myself, and I look forward to the day when I am vindicated of this disgusting political persecution by the judicial process,” Hoffman wrote. “Kris Mayes & the Democrats’ naked corruption and weaponization of government will long be a stain on the history of our great state and nation.”

Hoffman additionally alleged that Mayes made up her mind that the fake electors were guilty before she even began an investigation, saying that the indictments were an effort to go after her political opponents.

The Arizona Republican Party condemned the indictments and called them “politically motivated” and “designed to silence dissent and weaponize the law against political opponents.”

“The timing of these charges—precisely four years after the 2020 election and as President Biden seeks re-election—is suspiciously convenient and politically motivated. This is not justice; it is pure election interference,” the AZGOP said in its statement.

There were multiple fake elector schemes in Arizona, one tied to the AZGOP which included the above-named electors, as well as another one by the Sovereign Citizens of the Great State of Arizona that was not tied to the Trump campaign.

Georgia, Michigan and Nevada have already brought charges against fake electors there, and Wisconsin is still investigating possible charges for its fake electors.

Arizona Senate Minority Leader Mitzi Epstein lauded Mayes for sending the message that attempting to subvert the will of the people and stop the peaceful transfer of power comes with legal consequences.

“I appreciate Attorney General Mayes’ leadership in ensuring that Arizona’s fake electors are held accountable,” Epstein said in a statement. “ The individuals who played into and spread the big lie that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump are dangerous to our nation’s democracy.”

This story was originally published in Arizona Mirror, which like Nevada Current is a part of States Newsroom.

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Protesters gather outside the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday, April 24, 2024, while justices hear oral arguments about whether federal law protects emergency abortion care. (Sofia Resnick/States Newsroom)

Policy, politics and progressive commentary

U.S. Supreme Court justices spent two hours Wednesday debating whether a federal law about emergency treatment encompasses abortion care even in states with strict abortion bans, with no clear indication of how they may ultimately rule.

A decision could come as soon as the end of June to decide whether Idaho’s near-total abortion ban means doctors who might need to terminate a pregnancy during a health emergency would be protected from prosecution under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, or EMTALA, a federal law that requires hospitals to treat patients who come to an emergency room regardless of their ability to pay.

If the court decides it does not provide that protection, then hospitals and doctors in Idaho have said they will have to continue transferring patients out of state for that treatment. Since January, when the court decided to take the case and struck down an injunction that provided protection under EMTALA, the number of transfers out of state for pregnancy complications that may require termination has increased from one in 2023 to six over the course of four months.

The arguments began with aggressive questioning of Idaho Deputy Attorney General Josh Turner by the court’s more liberal justices, Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Their questions revolved around what EMTALA, which was signed into law in 1986 by President Ronald Reagan, explicitly says about stabilizing treatment and whether abortion procedures fall into that definition when complications occur before a fetus can survive outside of the womb, even with medical intervention.

Turner argued that Idaho’s law should supersede federal law in the case of abortion procedures because if a treatment isn’t available based on a state law, then it is in conflict with EMTALA and the federal law doesn’t apply, even if it goes against commonly accepted medical care standards.

Sotomayor rejected that argument.

“There is no state licensing law that would permit the state to say, ‘Don’t treat diabetics with insulin. Treat them only with pills,’” Sotomayor said. “Federal law would say you can’t do that.”

She said federal law requires treatment of a person who is at risk of serious medical complications without that treatment, but Idaho’s law does not provide that much leeway.

“Idaho law says the doctor has to determine not that there’s really a serious medical condition, but that the person will die. That’s a huge difference, counsel,” she said.

Idaho’s abortion ban went into effect in August 2022, a few months after the U.S. Supreme Court issued its Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, ending federal protection for abortion access and allowing states to regulate it instead. Providers who are prosecuted for performing an abortion are subject to two to five years in prison plus the loss of their medical license, and they are also subject to civil enforcement laws by any family members related to the person who had the abortion.

Conscience objections, expansion of ‘emergency’ definition 

The more conservative justices offered mixed questions to U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, who argued on behalf of the government. Justice Neil Gorsuch posed questions related to the federal Supremacy Clause about when federal law can override state law in the context of medicine, while Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked about whether conscience exceptions exist for doctors who don’t feel comfortable terminating a pregnancy even in emergency situations. Or if a hospital in general did not want to provide the procedure, such as a Catholic hospital, would be exempt under EMTALA for conscience reasons. One of Idaho’s largest hospital systems, Saint Alphonsus, is a Catholic hospital.

Prelogar confirmed that yes, individual doctors and entire medical entities qualify for those conscience objections and are therefore not required to perform an abortion under EMTALA. But at a hospital that did not have a blanket objection, they would take individual objections into consideration for appropriate staffing so that there is always someone available to provide that care if necessary.

“If the question is, could you force an individual doctor to step in over a conscience objection, the answer is no, and I want to be really clear about that,” Prelogar said.

Justice Sam Alito also asked Prelogar if EMTALA could be understood to apply to other emergency situations such as a mental health emergency, if someone was expressing suicidal thoughts and wanted to end their pregnancy to resolve those thoughts. Idaho’s legal representation, conservative religious law firm Alliance Defending Freedom, argued in its brief to the court that a ruling in favor of EMTALA protection would allow such situations to occur. Prelogar said no, the proper treatment would be to administer medications to alleviate the suicidal thoughts.

“There can be grave mental health emergencies, but EMTALA could never require pregnancy termination as the stabilizing care … because that wouldn’t do anything to address the underlying brain chemistry issue that’s causing the mental health emergency in the first place,” Prelogar said. “If she happens to be pregnant, it would be incredibly unethical to terminate her pregnancy. She might not be in a position to give any informed consent.”

The court is expected to rule in the case by the close of its current term, which typically occurs toward the end of June.

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The justices must consider whether Trump can be tried on criminal charges, and depending on the timing of their decision, whether a trial on charges of trying to overturn the 2020 election results can move forward before the 2024 presidential election. (Photo: Hugh Jackson/Nevada Current)

Policy, politics and progressive commentary

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments Thursday over former President Donald Trump’s pursuit of absolute immunity from criminal charges alleging that he schemed and knowingly fed lies to subvert the 2020 presidential election, eventually leading to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.

In the final argument of this term, the justices must consider whether Trump can be tried on criminal charges, and depending on the timing of their decision, whether a trial can move forward before November’s presidential election.

The former president and presumed 2024 Republican presidential nominee is seeking immunity from charges that include conspiracy to defraud the United States for spreading “prolific lies about election fraud,” working with co-conspirators to develop fake electors in seven states and pressuring his vice president, Mike Pence, to alter election results using the slates of fake electors.

Oral arguments are at 10 a.m. Eastern in the Supreme Court chamber Thursday, and audio will be live-streamed on the Supreme Court website. Audio and a transcript also will be available later on the site.

Here’s a guide to the complicated path from Trump’s false election fraud claims that inflamed his supporters to his immunity claim reaching the nation’s highest court this week:

When was Trump charged?

A federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., indicted Trump on Aug. 1, 2023.

The 45-page indictment outlined four felony criminal charges against the former president as a result of an investigation of his actions following the November 2020 presidential election. In addition to conspiracy to defraud the U.S., they include:

• Conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding
• Obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding
• Conspiracy against rights

Trump’s “pervasive and destabilizing lies” about his 2020 presidential election loss to Democrat Joe Biden “targeted a bedrock function of the United States federal government: the nation’s process of collecting, counting and certifying the results of a presidential election,” prosecutors wrote.

The indictment details Trump’s alleged schemes with co-conspirators to falsify election results in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

The indictment also describes a steady pressure campaign to “enlist” Pence to alter the outcome during his ceremonial role in certifying presidential election results during a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, prior to Inauguration Day.

Among the multiple phone calls and conversations detailed in the indictment is Trump’s outreach to Pence on both Christmas and New Year’s Day to send holiday greetings, during which he “berated” the vice president as “too honest” for refusing to join the scheme.

Why hasn’t the case gone to trial?

Department of Justice special counsel Jack Smith said upon the indictment’s release that he would seek a speedy trial in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

The case began to move, and Trump pleaded not guilty on Aug. 3, 2023 at his arraignment before Magistrate Judge Moxila A. Upadhyaya.

District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who waived Trump’s appearance at the first hearing on Aug. 28, 2023, set jury selection to begin on March 4 despite protests from Trump’s lawyers who asked to delay the trial until January 2026.

However, March has come and gone, and proceedings have been on hold as Trump and his legal team steadily marched his immunity challenge to the high court and hopscotched between the several other criminal and civil cases against him.

Trump, who is currently on trial for criminal charges in New York, will not attend Thursday’s Supreme Court arguments. The state judge has mandated Trump to be in the Manhattan courtroom every day throughout the proceedings.

Trump’s motion to dismiss his federal election interference case, which he filed in October 2023 and based on the argument of presidential immunity, was denied by Chutkan in early December.

Trump appealed the ruling on Dec. 7, 2023, and Smith quickly asked the Supreme Court justices to leapfrog the appellate court and promptly rule on the question of presidential immunity. The justices denied Smith’s request.

On Jan. 9, a three-judge panel — made up of one former President George W. Bush appointee and two Biden picks — grilled Trump’s lawyer over claims that former and sitting presidents should be immune from criminal prosecution.

The oral arguments notably featured a line of questioning from Judge Florence Y. Pan on whether a president could order SEAL Team Six to assassinate a political rival with impunity.

In early February, the federal appeals court turned down Trump’s immunity argument.

The former president then asked the Supreme Court to pause his federal trial while he requested a hearing before a full panel of appeals judges.

But the justices decided on Feb. 28 that they would be the final arbiters and scheduled arguments for the last week of the term.

Trump’s federal trial would meanwhile remain on hold.

What do the critics say about the delay?

Critics contend that Trump’s quest for immunity has been an exercise in delaying his trial until after the November 2024 presidential election.

“It’s much more about that than this underlying immunity claim,” said Tom Joscelyn, senior fellow at the Reiss Center on Law and Security at New York University and former senior staff member on the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol.

“Now, we’ve had to delay the federal trial for a couple of months because they’re taking up this claim,” Joscelyn told States Newsroom, as he lambasted the legal community for “having these navel-gazing arguments for hours on end over stuff that is obviously nonsense.”

“There’s no way a president, current or former president, can be immune from charges that stem from that president seeking to overturn the will of the American people in a democratically held election, and that’s what these charges are all about,” said Joscelyn, one of the principal authors of the select committee’s Jan. 6 report. “Nothing is more unconstitutional.”

Former Rep. Liz Cheney, who was vice chair of the Jan. 6 select committee, published an op-ed in the New York Times Monday urging the justices to swiftly rule on the immunity question.

“If delay prevents this Trump case from being tried this year, the public may never hear critical and historic evidence developed before the grand jury, and our system may never hold the man most responsible for Jan. 6 to account,” the Wyoming Republican wrote.

What arguments will Supreme Court justices hear?

Trump and supporters of the presidential immunity argument paint a doomsday picture of a hamstrung executive office should the justices decide that a president can be held criminally accountable.

The former president maintains that the framers of the U.S. Constitution intended a strong executive to face virtually no liability from the judicial branch, and that a “234-year unbroken tradition” of not prosecuting presidents bolsters his case.

“The President cannot function, and the Presidency itself cannot retain its vital independence, if the President faces criminal prosecution for official acts once he leaves office,” Trump’s attorneys wrote in March.

They wrote later in the brief: “Even if some level of Presidential malfeasance, not present in this case at all, were to escape punishment, that risk is inherent in the Constitution’s design.”

Trump’s lawyers argue that the only exception that makes a president vulnerable to criminal prosecution is if he or she is first impeached and convicted.

The former president was impeached by the U.S. House twice — the second time for inciting an insurrection on Jan. 6. He was acquitted by the U.S. Senate on both occasions.

In his response, special counsel Smith characterized Trump’s arguments as “radical” and akin to the monarchy rule that the U.S. broke away from at its birth.

“If petitioner were correct that the former President has permanent immunity from federal criminal prosecution except after his impeachment and Senate conviction — which has never happened — it would upset the separation of powers and usher in a regime that would have been anathema to the Framers,” Smith wrote.

Impeachment, Smith wrote, is a “political remedy” and “not intended to provide accountability under the ordinary course of the law.”

History also illustrates that presidents have presumed they must follow the law, the special counsel argued.

Following the Watergate scandal, former President Richard Nixon’s “acceptance of a pardon implied his and President Ford’s recognition that a former President was subject to prosecution,” Smith wrote.

Who is weighing in on the case?

The case has attracted nearly 50 friend-of-the-court filings, otherwise known as amici briefs.

Like supporters of the immunity argument, opponents similarly envision a bleak future for the presidency, and the nation, if the ruling doesn’t go their way.

Twenty-six former U.S. Department of Justice attorneys, lawmakers and others, who were either elected Republicans or served during GOP administrations, warned of “terrifying possibilities” that would endanger the nation’s hallmark peaceful transfers of power.

“Under former President Trump’s view of absolute immunity, future first-term Presidents would be encouraged to violate federal criminal statutes by employing the military and armed federal agents to remain in power,” they wrote.

Several retired four-star generals also argued that absolute immunity for a commander-in-chief would result in “​​irreparably harming the trust fundamental to civil-military relations” if he or she ordered generals to direct troops unlawfully.

“Immunizing the Commander-in-Chief from criminal prosecution, as Petitioner argues for here, would fly in the face of that duty, creating the likelihood that service members will be placed in the impossible position of having to choose between following their Commander-in-Chief and obeying the laws enacted by Congress,” the generals wrote.

Filings in support of the former president insist the criminal charges against Trump are “partisan” and warn of opening the proverbial “floodgates” of politically motivated cases against presidents if immunity is not granted.

Several state attorneys general accused the Department of Justice of timing the case with Trump’s 2024 presidential run.

The “lengthy delay in bringing charges … followed by an unexplained rush to take him to trial, gives credence to the concern that factional interests can drive criminal investigations and prosecutions of the President for his official acts,” Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall wrote in a brief co-signed by 17 other Republican attorneys general.

U.S. Sen. Steve Daines, a Montana Republican and chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, contends that the Constitution already dictates a process of accountability for the president through impeachment.

The fact that the Senate acquitted Trump over his actions surrounding Jan. 6, 2021, “should have ended the matter,” Daines and the NRSC wrote.

“Not every impeachment inquiry will result in the punishment that a President’s political opponents believe he deserves, but that is not a reason for prosecutors and the courts to go hunting for an alternative.”

After voting to acquit Trump in the impeachment trial accusing Trump of inciting insurrection in 2021, Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell explained his decision by saying impeachment was neither appropriate nor constitutional because by the time the House delivered the impeachment for trial in the Senate, Trump was no longer president.

“We have a criminal justice system in this country. We have civil litigation. And former presidents are not immune from being held accountable by either one,” McConnell added at the time.

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