<Chinese stocks rebounded on Monday morning after Beijing unveiled a raft of measures meant to halt their nearly month-long slide. But the rally proved to be short-lived as foreign investors used it as an opportunity to unload $1.1 billion of mainland Chinese equities, according to Bloomberg data.

China’s CSI 300 Index, which tracks the performance of the 300 largest firms on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges, rose as much as 5.5% on Monday before paring most of its gains to end the day up just 1.17%.

Over the weekend, Chinese authorities halved the tax charged on stock trades, called a “stamp duty,” and lowered the amount of collateral a trader has to deposit in order to borrow money to invest in stocks in a bid to “boost investor confidence,” according to a Google translation of a statement from China’s Ministry of Finance. Beijing also asked some mutual funds to avoid being net sellers of equities, Bloomberg reported, citing unnamed sources.

Despite the moves, foreign investors continue to flee Chinese markets. With Beijing cracking down on foreign consulting firms amid tensions between the U.S. and China and repeatedly requiring investment firms to avoid selling stocks when markets look shaky, investors seem increasingly nervous about the risks of holding capital in China.

In the first half of this year, the number of active China-focused hedge funds fell for the first time in more than a decade. And in the second quarter, direct investment liabilities—a measure of foreign direct investment into China—slumped 87% from a year ago to a record low of $4.9 billion, according to figures released by China’s State Administration of Foreign Exchange on Friday.

China’s weaker-than-expected post-COVID recovery and lingering economic issues—which include a property crisis, sky-high youth unemployment, nearly $13 trillion in local government debts, and fading industrial firm profits—have also led to a slowdown in foreign investment in the country.

“The change in global capital flows is seismic,” Robin Brooks, chief economist at the Institute of International Finance, wrote in a Sunday post on X.com. “For the past decade, China attracted the bulk of capital flows to EM [emerging markets], often at the expense of other BRICS. But China has now seen consistent and large outflows for the past 18 months, as investors grow wary of autocracies.”

In a wider sign that China is becoming a less friendly place for investors, Chinese millionaires are leaving the country in droves amid a regulatory crackdown against large private companies. The country will lose a record 13,500 millionaires this year, according to an estimate from the migration consulting firm Henley & Partners’ new Private Wealth Migration Report. That follows the loss of around 10,800 millionaires in 2022.

Mending a broken relationship?

Against this backdrop, on Monday, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo was seeking to mend the fractured relationship between the two nations with a visit to Beijing. Raimondo and Chinese Commerce Minister Wang Wentao agreed to set up a group to “seek solutions on trade and investment issues” following multiple hours of discussions in a sign that Washington is changing its attitude toward China.

“The world is counting on the U.S. and China to responsibly manage and maintain our commercial relationship,” the commerce secretary said, adding that “this is meant to be a dialogue where we increase transparency.”

Just days before Raimondo’s visit, the Commerce Department had removed 27 Chinese companies from a list which had prevented them from purchasing American technologies.

China’s Ministry of Commerce called the move “conducive to the normal trade between Chinese and American companies” in a statement, adding that it is now “entirely possible to find a solution that benefits companies on both sides.”

After meeting with Raimondo on Monday, Wang struck a positive tone as well. “I’m ready to work with you together to foster a more favorable policy environment, for stronger cooperation between our businesses to bolster bilateral trade and investment in a stable and predictable manner,” he told the U.S. commerce secretary.>

<With more than a year to go before the 2024 election, a constellation of conservative organizations is preparing for a possible second White House term for Donald Trump, recruiting thousands of Americans to come to Washington on a mission to dismantle the federal government and replace it with a vision closer to his own.

Led by the long-established Heritage Foundation think tank and fueled by former Trump administration officials, the far-reaching effort is essentially a government-in-waiting for the former president’s second term — or any candidate who aligns with their ideals and can defeat President Joe Biden in 2024.

With a nearly 1,000-page “Project 2025” handbook and an “army” of Americans, the idea is to have the civic infrastructure in place on Day One to commandeer, reshape and do away with what Republicans deride as the “deep state” bureaucracy, in part by firing as many as 50,000 federal workers.

“We need to flood the zone with conservatives,” said Paul Dans, director of the 2025 Presidential Transition Project and a former Trump administration official who speaks with historical flourish about the undertaking.

“This is a clarion call to come to Washington,” he said. “People need to lay down their tools, and step aside from their professional life and say, ‘This is my lifetime moment to serve.’”

The unprecedented effort is being orchestrated with dozens of right-flank organizations, many new to Washington, and represents a changed approach from conservatives, who traditionally have sought to limit the federal government by cutting federal taxes and slashing federal spending.

Instead, Trump-era conservatives want to gut the “administrative state” from within, by ousting federal employees they believe are standing in the way of the president’s agenda and replacing them with like-minded officials more eager to fulfill a new executive’s approach to governing.

The goal is to avoid the pitfalls of Trump’s first years in office, when the Republican president’s team was ill-prepared, his Cabinet nominees had trouble winning Senate confirmation and policies were met with resistance — by lawmakers, government workers and even Trump's own appointees who refused to bend or break protocol, or in some cases violate laws, to achieve his goals.

While many of the Project 2025 proposals are inspired by Trump, they are being echoed by GOP rivals Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy and are gaining prominence among other Republicans.

And if Trump wins a second term, the work from the Heritage coalition ensures the president will have the personnel to carry forward his unfinished White House business.

“The president Day One will be a wrecking ball for the administrative state,” said Russ Vought, a former Trump administration official involved in the effort who is now president at the conservative Center for Renewing America.

Much of the new president’s agenda would be accomplished by reinstating what’s called Schedule F — a Trump-era executive order that would reclassify tens of thousands of the 2 million federal employees as essentially at-will workers who could more easily be fired.

Biden had rescinded the executive order upon taking office in 2021, but Trump — and other presidential hopefuls — now vow to reinstate it.

“It frightens me,” said Mary Guy, a professor of public administration at the University of Colorado Denver, who warns the idea would bring a return to a political spoils system.

Experts argue Schedule F would create chaos in the civil service, which was overhauled during President Jimmy Carter's administration in an attempt to ensure a professional workforce and end political bias dating from 19th century patronage.

As it now stands, just 4,000 members of the federal workforce are considered political appointees who typically change with each administration. But Schedule F could put tens of thousands of career professional jobs at risk.

“We have a democracy that is at risk of suicide. Schedule F is just one more bullet in the gun,” Guy said.

The ideas contained in Heritage's coffee table-ready book are both ambitious and parochial, a mix of longstanding conservative policies and stark, head-turning proposals that gained prominence in the Trump era.

There’s a “top to bottom overhaul” of the Department of Justice, particularly curbing its independence and ending FBI efforts to combat the spread of misinformation. It calls for stepped-up prosecution of anyone providing or distributing abortion pills by mail.

There are proposals to have the Pentagon “abolish” its recent diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, what the project calls the “woke” agenda, and reinstate service members discharged for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine....>

<....Chapter by chapter, the pages offer a how-to manual for the next president, similar to one Heritage produced 50 years ago, ahead of the Ronald Reagan administration. Authored by some of today’s most prominent thinkers in the conservative movement, it’s often sprinkled with apocalyptic language.

A chapter written by Trump’s former acting deputy secretary of Homeland Security calls for bolstering the number of political appointees, and redeploying office personnel with law enforcement ability into the field “to maximize law enforcement capacity.”

At the White House, the book suggests the new administration should “reexamine” the tradition of providing work space for the press corps and ensure the White House counsel is “deeply committed” to the president's agenda.

Conservatives have long held a grim view of federal government offices, complaining they are stacked with liberals intent on halting Republican agendas.

But Doreen Greenwald, national president of the National Treasury Employees Union, said most federal workers live in the states and are your neighbors, family and friends. “Federal employees are not the enemy,” she said.

While presidents typically rely on Congress to put policies into place, the Heritage project leans into what legal scholars refer to as a unitary view of executive power that suggests the president has broad authority to act alone.

To push past senators who try to block presidential Cabinet nominees, Project 2025 proposes installing top allies in acting administrative roles, as was done during the Trump administration to bypass the Senate confirmation process.

John McEntee, another former Trump official advising the effort, said the next administration can "play hardball a little more than we did with Congress."

In fact, Congress would see its role diminished — for example, with a proposal to eliminate congressional notification on certain foreign arms sales.

Philip Wallach, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who studies the separation of powers and was not part of the Heritage project, said there's a certain amount of “fantasizing” about the president's capabilities.

“Some of these visions, they do start to just bleed into some kind of authoritarian fantasies where the president won the election, so he’s in charge, so everyone has to do what he says — and that’s just not the system the government we live under,” he said.

At the Heritage office, Dans has a faded photo on his wall of an earlier era in Washington, with the White House situated almost alone in the city, dirt streets in all directions.

It's an image of what conservatives have long desired, a smaller federal government.

The Heritage coalition is taking its recruitment efforts on the road, crisscrossing America to fill the federal jobs. They staffed the Iowa State Fair this month and signed up hundreds of people, and they’re building out a database of potential employees, inviting them to be trained in government operations.

“It’s counterintuitive,” Dans acknowledged — the idea of joining government to shrink it — but he said that's the lesson learned from the Trump days about what's needed to "regain control.”>

<A number of Republican figures are continuing to target Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis after she indicted Donald Trump over his alleged criminal attempts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia.

Willis, who has denied any suggestions that her Georgia investigation is politically motivated, indicted Trump and 18 other people as part of her expansive RICO inquiry on August 14.

Soon after the indictment against Trump and others was filed, discussions were underway to have Willis removed from office or face investigations and impeachment hearings over allegations of a partisan probe against the former president and frontrunner in the 2024 GOP primary.

One such move Republicans have suggested is to take advantage of a law Georgia Governor Brian Kemp signed in May setting up a new commission that would have the power to remove local prosecutors who aren't able to fulfill their "constitutional and statutory duties."

In a statement at the time, Kemp's office said the establishment of the Prosecuting Attorneys Qualifications Commission (PAQC), which will start accepting complaints about prosecutors from October 1, will serve as a "valuable oversight mechanism" for district attorneys in the state.

"As hardworking law enforcement officers routinely put their lives on the line to investigate, confront, and arrest criminal offenders, I won't stand idly by as they're met with resistance from rogue or incompetent prosecutors who refuse to uphold the law," Kemp said.

"The creation of the PAQC will help hold prosecutors driven by out-of-touch politics than commitment to their responsibilities accountable and make our communities safer."

Four Georgia district attorneys have filed a lawsuit asking a judge to strike down the law to remove local prosecutors, arguing it violates U.S. and state constitutions.

In an August 21 post on Facebook, Georgia state Senator Clint Dixon, a Republican, said he will be calling on the PAQC to investigate Willis over her alleged targeting of Trump and her apparent "unabashed goal to become some sort of leftist celebrity."

Newsweek reached out to Willis' office via email for comment.

"Once the Prosecutorial Oversight Committee is appointed in October, we can call on them to investigate and take action against Fani Willis and her efforts that weaponize the justice system against political opponents," Dixon wrote.

"This is our best measure, and I will be ready to call for that investigation."....>

<....Clark D. Cunningham, a professor of law at Georgia State University, said that he believes "100 percent" that Republicans will try to remove Willis from office on October 1 using the PAQC. However, it is unclear if the move will be successful, given the commissioner's power to remove a local prosecutor is new and never been tested.

"However, I should say that what's being proposed, it would be a pretty serious misuse of this law," Cunningham told MSNBC's Rachel Maddow. "I would hope that the new members of the commission would not themselves allow the commission to be used for political purposes."

Cunningham added that the PAQC is "perhaps the only way" that Trump allies can remove Willis from office, given that any attempt to impeach her would be guaranteed to fail as it would require significant Democratic support.

Republican state Senator Colton Moore has called for an emergency session of the state legislature to review the actions of Fulton County District Attorney, and previously called for Willis to be impeached for allegedly targeting Trump with her investigation.

"We must defund her office... and if appropriate... IMPEACH," Moore posted in X, formerly Twitter, on August 17.

There were also calls from GOP figures for the Republican-majority Georgia state legislature to essentially shut down Willis' criminal investigation after Trump and the co-defendants were indicted.

Alafair Burke, a professor of law at Hofstra University and former deputy district attorney in Portland, Oregon, previously told Newsweek that while getting the Georgia state legislature to shut down a criminal investigation is a "nutty" idea, there is a longshot chance Willis' case could be quashed once PAQC is implemented.

"A couple of years ago, I would have said that's a complete no-go. The legislature writes the criminal code, but the executive branch enforces it with oversight by the judiciary. Straightforward separation of powers," Burke said.

"But Georgia has joined what I think is a dangerous trend of enacting laws intended to empower them to oust prosecutors they disagree with, passing legislation recently to create a commission to discipline or even remove elected prosecutors from office.

"So in theory, yes, this newly created commission could remove Fani Willis from her position in hopes that whoever took her place would dump the case," he said. "I could be wrong, mind you, but I am not aware of any mechanism by which they could directly dismiss the case short of repealing every applicable criminal code provision retroactively."

Elsewhere, House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan announced an investigation into the motivation of Willis' inquiry, and alleged that she had coordinated with Special Counsel Jack Smith's office, the federal prosecutor who charged Trump with four offenses in the investigation into events which led up the January 6 attack.

"The timing of this prosecution reinforces concerns about your motivation," Jordan wrote in a letter to Willis. "You did not bring charges until two-and-a-half years later, at a time when the campaign for the Republican presidential nomination is in full swing.

"Moreover, you have requested that the trial in this matter begin on March 4, 2024, the day before Super Tuesday and eight days before the Georgia presidential primary," the Ohio congressman said.

It is unclear at this stage what actions Willis could face if Jordan's office proves those allegations. Willis has denied having any contact with Smith during her inquiry.

"I don't know what Jack Smith is doing, Jack Smith doesn't know what I'm doing. In all honesty, if Jack Smith was standing next to me, I'm not sure I would know who he was. My guess is he probably can't pronounce my name correctly," Willis said ahead of her office filing the charges against Trump and others.>

<Attorney Kenneth Chesebro, one of the 19 defendants in the Fulton County election interference case, filed a motion Monday asking a judge to unseal a host of underlying records in the case -- including the special grand jury report that recommended charges, the transcripts of testimony heard by the panel, and any recordings of the proceedings.

Chesebro is set to stand trial in the case on Oct. 23, after a judge granted his request for a speedy trial. He, Smith and former President Donald Trump were charged along with 16 others earlier this month in a sweeping racketeering indictment for alleged efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in the state of Georgia. The former president says his actions were not illegal and that the investigation is politically motivated.

The motion said that numerous witnesses "including co-Defendants, unindicted co-conspirators, and traditional witnesses" testified before the special purpose grand jury, and that Chesebro "anticipates that many of these same people will testify at his trial."

"Finally, there is also an overarching due process concern that Mr. Chesebro have access to all prior testimony of witnesses who are expected to testify at trial (and made statements before the special purpose grand jury) in order to properly defend himself," the filing said

Chesebro's attorney, Scott Grubman, told ABC News, "Mr. Chesebro has the right to obtain as much information as he can regarding the grand jury proceeding which, after indictment, is not considered secret. That is the purpose of these motions."

The special purpose grand jury -- which did not have indictment power but recommended that charges be brought -- was seated for nearly eight months and heard testimony from over 75 witnesses, including some of Trump's closest allies. A portion of its findings were released in a final report, excerpts of which were released to the public in February.

In a separate motion on Monday, Chesebro moved to conduct "voluntary interviews" of members of the separate grand jury that ultimately returned the indictment, in order to ask them if they "actually read the entire indictment or, alternatively, whether it was merely summarized for them," the filing said.>

<The notion of the police investigating crimes ought not to be front-page news; however, this is British policing, where “dog bites man” is the new “man bites dog”. The Home Secretary Suella Braverman has instructed forces to “investigate every theft”, including supposedly “low-level” crimes like burglaries and bicycle and phone theft, as if this were a novel idea.

Meanwhile, the new Met chief, Sir Mark Rowley, has warned his officers against getting drawn into political causes, and to stick to the job in hand. “If people don’t believe we operate without fear or favour,” he says, “that is pretty fatal to us more than pretty much anybody else and that is why … we have to be tougher on that.” That such things even need saying signals much deeper problems of competence and confidence in UK policing.

Though it will take more than another flurry of headline-grabbing announcements to rebuild public trust, at least they have recognised that there is a problem. Few could fail to notice a central disconnect in how the state treats the law-abiding majority versus how it treats criminals and wrong-doers. The former are constantly punished in the most efficient way imaginable. The latter are too often let off scot-free. Meanwhile, forces are intruding into areas that most people would scarcely consider criminal at all.

Among numerous recent examples; the pro-life activists arrested for praying silently 150 yards away from an abortion clinic, and the many individuals investigated for liking the wrong tweet or expressing views deemed “offensive” on social media. Simultaneously wildly sensitive and jack-booted on the ground, police forces seem to approach their jobs with all the emotional continence of a menstruating rhinoceros.

Sometimes you even get your collar felt for condemning such overreach; a Conservative councillor was recently arrested and held in custody for nine hours for an alleged hate crime, after retweeting a video criticising police treatment of a Christian street preacher, who was wrongfully arrested in 2019.

Compare such overkill with forces’ almost total lack of interest in a swathe of crimes. But perhaps this should come as no surprise; it’s easier to hound the lawful who you know will play ball, than it is to go after the genuinely violent, who won’t.

Earlier this month, West Yorkshire police dispatched no fewer than seven officers to drag a terrified autistic teenager from her home on suspicion of a “homophobic public order offence”. Her supposed crime? Pointing out that a police officer “looked like her lesbian nana”. Extreme examples, perhaps, but scarcely isolated incidents when the average citizen now has such a dysfunctional relationship with the state in even its most localised, mundane form.

How many of us have tales of local councils’ bully-boy tactics when administering fines and speeding tickets? I was recently handed a £200 Fixed Penalty Notice for failing to dispose of rubbish in the proper way. Having taken some cardboard to the outsize waste disposal unit near my flat, only to find the bins overflowing, I’d left my flattened boxes directly next to them, thinking this would suffice. A minor infraction, yet I was fined as if I’d dumped a mattress in the middle of the road, or left piles of industrial waste lying in a heap (and believe me, there’s plenty of that in my neighbourhood)....>

<....It almost pays not to be law-abiding. Had I, with sufficient malice aforethought, ripped off the address label from the cardboard, I’d have got away with my “crime”; yet trying to put it in the right place earned me a penalty. The council won’t empty the bins promptly; but they will certainly fine you for littering. It is invariably the low hanging fruit of least resistance.

If only every area of the state operated so effectively. If nothing else, it’s proof that they can be speedy when they want to be. A pothole? Forget it. A parking fine, or a few pieces of errant cardboard, and suddenly the doziest council worker is transformed into the SAS of small-scale debt collection. Or contrast the soul-destroying experience of contacting HMRC with their speed in imposing penalty fines. It’s as if the only time the state manages to function is when it gets the opportunity to inconvenience people, or extract money from them. Then its agents come down on you like a ton of bricks (on a non-health and safety compliant building site).

Stealing a laptop has no consequences, yet trying to report your stolen laptop involves yawning aeons of wasted time. The Kafkaesque process of filing a theft report is like a cruel and unusual extension of the original punishment; nothing will come of it, no one will care. The Apple service “find my iPhone” affords users the uniquely postmodern hell of watching their stolen electronic devices make their way across the country, tracking their locations in real time. Meanwhile, the police insist there’s nothing they can do, even when presented with the identity of the criminal, or the exact address where the pickpocketed belongings are being held. Police inaction is making vigilantes of us all.

Particular problems bedevil the countryside. When it comes to rural theft, ambulance waiting times or broadband issues, practical help from the state is generally thin on the ground. But erect a new wall or lay a patio or fence a couple of inches adrift, and a clipboard-wielding apparatchik of either Defra or the council will inevitably pitch up to tell you what you’re doing wrong.

A friend suffered a campaign of harassment from his local authority thanks to one persistent complainant, outraged that the property – a poultry farm – contained chickens, and those chickens made noise (as chickens will).

All this adds up to an incredibly raw deal for the law-abiding majority – a sense that every interaction with the bureaucratic or administrative state is a negative one. While any infrastructure the public might use deteriorates, enforcement of petty infringements remains in rude health. You can’t get a doctor’s appointment, the state has abdicated its responsibilities for safeguarding private property, and all the while taxes continue to rise.

What, exactly, are we paying for? Government failures ought to be tax-deductible. In fact the opposite is true; we pay through the nose for shoddier service than ever. >

<Former President Donald Trump's attorney lashed out at U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan during Monday's hearing but legal experts say he didn't do his client any favors as she scheduled his trial to kick off on March 4, just one day before Super Tuesday.

Lauro adamantly protested the judge's ruling, arguing that he could not adequately defend the former president within that timeline, amongst other complaints. Lauro during the hearing complained about the scope of the evidence turned over by prosecutors in discovery — about 12.8 million pages of material — even as prosecutors argued that much of the evidence has already been available to the former president's legal team. Lauro argued that the trial should be delayed until 2026.

"This is an enormous, overwhelming task," Lauro said, adding that he has begun drafting a series of motions in an effort to see Trump's case diminished or altogether dismissed.

Lauro's "heated outburst attacking Judge Chutkan" quickly gained traction across social media as legal experts warned that his tact could backfire on Trump.

Former federal prosecutor and MSNBC legal analyst Glenn Kirschner argued that Lauro "did not do himself any favors."

"He was a bomb thrower," he said Monday. "It sounded like he was making arguments to Donald Trump's base, not to the judge. When the judge implored him, 'give me a reasonable alternative proposal.' He said, and I think I can quote him because I was furiously taking notes. He said, 'We can't do it in anything less than the time we have proposed.' And she had had about enough. And she said, 'Well, then, you just bought yourself a March 4, 2024, trial date.'"

Host Joy Reid pointed out that a lot of the "information has been out for two years. And [Chutkan] goes on to say, the defense has not identified any case in the district where the defendant was given two years in which there were no co-defendants and no ongoing pandemic."

"You know, she called his bluff at every turn, and the prosecutors called the defense counsel's bluff at every turn," Kirschner said. "My favorite moment was when John Lauro was insisting he hadn't done anything to prepare the case. He hasn't had time. He hasn't looked at the documents. And the prosecutor stood up and said, 'Actually, he gave an interview to the media where he said he has read Mike Pence's book not once but twice and is already preparing cross-examination.' So, it sounds like the defense preparation is well underway."....>

<.....Kirschner also argued that Trump's legal team ruined their chances of gaining a more advantageous trial date by asking that the trial be delayed until 2026, well after the 2024 presidential election has taken place.

"She gave the defense team several opportunities to come up with a more realistic proposed trial date," he explained. "He refused to budge even one month or one day. By the end of the hearing, what she was thinking, she said, your idea and my idea of how much time is necessary are very different. I am setting jury selection for this case on March 4th, 2024. That gives them enough time to adequately prepare for trial."

Former attorney and MSNBC host Ari Melber, in conversation with former federal prosecutor David Kelley, observed Lauro's singling out of Hunter Biden during Chutkan's hearing, in which the lawyer accused the federal government of putting on a "show trial," and claimed that he intends to file a specific motion alleging that the Justice Department is targeting Trump because he is a political adversary of President Joe Biden.

"There are places where, in conversation or online, someone can say a fact that sounds negative about Trump and what he did, and someone else will say, 'but Hunter Biden,'" Melber said. "And as you know, David, I support free speech and you could say those three words any time you want and then, at a dinner or barbecue, you decide how much you think that is a rebuttal or not."

"I'm not saying Mr. Lauro said those three words — indeed, he didn't say the word Hunter," Melber added. "But he did shoehorn in what, in law school, you might call a clever or creative way — he shoehorned the president's son into the hearing today. And I didn't see the judge respond negatively, although she certainly didn't endorse what he was arguing. But he shoehorned it in legally by saying, but Donald Trump has attacked Hunter Biden, how do we not know — how do we not know, David, that those attacks on the president's son didn't create a chain of events where the president picked an AG who picked a special counsel who went after Donald Trump as a 'retaliatory measure?'"

"It's interesting, because the judge is going to have to decide what to do with this," Kelley replied. "In order ... to get this motion going anywhere, he's going to have to let specific facts in order to get a hearing on it. Because it's going to be a very fact-specific type of analysis, and I really doubt they're going to be able to allege facts that are going to tip the balance toward having a hearing. So, they're going to throw a lot of stuff out there, but I think, ultimately, the judge will have plenty of room to just say, this goes nowhere."

Former U.S. Attorney Harry Litman wrote in a column for the Los Angeles Times that it" certainly doesn't help Trump that Chutkan has made clear that his lawyer, John Lauro, is already in a fairly deep hole with the judge."

Though Litman conceded Lauro's "preposterous proposal" of an April 2026 trial date likely came at Trump's behest, the attorney continuously pushed back on Chutkan during the hearing, asserting that "the trial date will deny President Trump, the opportunity to have effective assistance of counsel."

"You and I have a very, very different estimate of… the time that's needed to prepare for this case," Litman quoted Chutkan as saying.

"She also noted that the Trump legal team's claim that 'median time' for similar cases to go to trial — which it used to get to the April 2026 date — was misleading," Litman observed. "That's the time from commencement of a case to sentencing, not to trial."

"In the setting of a federal court, these tart comments are the equivalent of a thorough boxing of Lauro's ears. They suggested not only that the outlandish proposal of April 2026 had backfired, but also that Lauro's credibility with Chutkan is already damaged, an ominous position, before the litigation has even started in earnest.">

<Clarence Thomas has faced criticism for alleged improprieties related to vacations and other gifts he's received, but his former clerks are here to set the record straight with a letter pledging that his integrity is "unimpeachable." One of those former clerks is indicted former Trump lawyer John Eastman.

This list of 112 signatories from former Supreme Court clerks obtained exclusively by Fox News also includes John Wood, a former U.S. attorney who served as the House Jan. 6 select committee’s senior investigative counsel.

"As his law clerks, we offer this response. Different paths led us to our year with Justice Thomas, and we have followed different paths since. But along the way, we all saw with our own eyes the same thing: His integrity is unimpeachable," the letter reads.

"And his independence is unshakable, deeply rooted seven decades ago as that young child who walked through the door of his grandparents’ house for a life forever changed."

The letter drew swift blowback.

“This is powerful evidence of how broken the clerking system is. Clerks' careers are tied to their Justices, so they resort to platitudes to defend the indefensible. Bonus points for including Eastman and (John) Yoo,” Texas A&M law professor Milan Markovic said.

One user on X wrote, "I mean, currently-indicted-in-Georgia former Trump lawyer, John Eastman, used to clerk for Justice Clarence Thomas. But sure, let's hear what the rest of his former clerks have to say about Thomas’ integrity.">

<Judge Tanya Chutkan is unlikely to release former President Donald Trump from prison pending release if he is convicted in the Department of Justice (DOJ) January 6 case, said former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner.

A grand jury indicted Trump earlier in August in the DOJ's investigation into his alleged attempts to thwart his defeat in the 2020 presidential election, which he has claimed without evidence was stolen via widespread voter fraud. Judge Chutkan on Monday set Trump's trial for March 4, 2024, more than two years earlier than the April 2026 date his legal team requested.

Kirschner, a former U.S. attorney and frequent Trump critic, discussed Trump's upcoming trial during an episode of The Legal Breakdown with political commentator Brian Tyler Cohen on Tuesday. Cohen asked Kirschner about whether Judge Chutkan would allow Trump to be released from prison pending appeal if a jury ultimately finds him guilty in the case.

While sentencing does fall to Chutkan's discretion, it is unlikely that she would not send the former president to prison if he is convicted, even if he tries to appeal the ruling, Kirschner said.

"The answer is he can be, yes. But defendants are almost never allowed to be on release, pending appeal, if they've been convicted and sentenced to prison," he said.

He said Judge Chutkan's record on January 6 cases suggests it is "all the more unlikely" that she would allow Trump to be released after a conviction.

"She has been one of the stiffest sentences in January 6 cases, and I have a feeling she will hold Donald Trump accountable. And I don't think there's any way she would allow him to be on release pending appeal. I think the jury convicts him. I think she hands down an appropriate sentence. It will involve prison time, and she will direct him to report to the Federal Bureau of Prisons," he said.

Kirschner noted that one notable high-profile individual who was released pending appeal was Trump's former political adviser and conservative political commentator Steve Bannon, who was found guilty by a jury for refusing to comply with subpoenas from the House committee investigating the January 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol building. Despite the conviction, Judge Nichols allowed him to be released from prison awaiting his appeal.

Kirschner said the move to release Bannon "outraged the legal community, including a number of judges."

"That was just a dead wrong decision," he said.

Newsweek reached out to Trump's campaign for comment via email.

Trump's spokespersons have previously rejected Kirschner's legal analyses, previously telling Newsweek that he is "a notorious trafficker of wild conspiracy theories and dubious legal analysis" who "has been shunned by the legal community at large."

Trump expressed outrage at the March 2024 trial date following the decision by Judge Chutkan.

"The date set today deprives President Trump of his Constitutional right to a fair trial, a seminal bedrock of America, and continues to expose the corruption of the witch hunts being thrown against President Trump," his campaign wrote in a statement.

DOJ special counsel Jack Smith, who oversaw the investigation that led to the charges against the former president, had requested a trial date of January 2, 2024.>

<U.S. officials said Tuesday that the FBI and its European partners infiltrated and seized control of a major global malware network used for more than 15 years to commit a gamut of online crimes including crippling ransomware attacks.

They then remotely removed the malicious software agent — known as Qakbot — from thousands of infected computers.

Cybersecurity experts said they were impressed by the deft dismantling of the network but cautioned that any setback to cybercrime would likely be temporary.

“Nearly ever [sic] sector of the economy has been victimized by Qakbot,” Martin Estrada, the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, said Tuesday in announcing the takedown. He said the criminal network had facilitated about 40 ransomware attacks alone over 18 months that investigators said netted Qakbot administrators about $58 million.

Qakbot's ransomware victims included an Illinois-based engineering firm, financial services organizations in Alabama and Kansas, along with a Maryland defense manufacturer and a Southern California food distribution company, Estrada said.

Officials said $8.6 million in cybercurrency was seized or frozen but no arrests were announced.

Estrada said the investigation is ongoing. He would not say where administrators of the malware, which marshaled infected machines into a botnet of zombie computers, were located. Cybersecurity researchers say they are believed to be in Russia and/or other former Soviet states.

Officials estimated the so-called malware loader, a digital Swiss knife for cybercrooks also known as Pinkslipbot and Qbot, was leveraged to cause hundreds of millions of dollars in damage since first appearing in 2008 as an information-stealing bank trojan. They said millions of people in nearly every country in the world have been affected.

Typically delivered via phishing email infections, Qakbot gave criminal hackers initial access to violated computers. They could then deploy additional payloads including ransomware, steal sensitive information or gather intelligence on victims to facilitate financial fraud and crimes such as tech support and romance scams.

The Qakbot network was “literally feeding the global cybercrime supply chain,” said Donald Alway, assistant director in charge of the FBI's Los Angeles office, calling it “one of the most devastating cybercriminal tools in history.” The most commonly detected malware in the first half of 2023, Qakbot impacted one in 10 corporate networks and accounted for about 30% of attacks globally, a pair of cybersecurity firms found. Such “initial access” tools allow extortionist ransomware gangs to skip the initial step of penetrating computer networks, making them major facilitators for the far-flung, mostly Russian-speaking criminals who have wreaked havoc by stealing data and disrupting schools, hospitals, local governments and businesses worldwide.

Beginning Friday in an operation officials dubbed “Duck Hunt,” the FBI along with Europol and law enforcement and justice partners in France, the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, Romania and Latvia seized more than 50 Qakbot servers and identified more than 700,000 infected computers, more than 200,000 of them in the U.S. — effectively cutting off criminals from their quarry.

The FBI then used the seized Qakbot infrastructure to remotely dispatch updates that deleted the malware from thousands of infected computers. A senior FBI official, briefing reporters on condition he not be further identified, called that number “fluid” and cautioned that other malware may have remained on machines liberated from Qakbot.

It was the FBI's biggest success against cybercrooks since it “hacked the hackers” with the January takedown of the prolific Hive ransomware gang.

“It is an impressive takedown. Qakbot was the largest botnet" in number of victims, said Alex Holden, founder of Milwaukee-based Hold Security. But he said it may have been a casualty of its own success in its staggering growth over the past few years. “Large botnets today tend to implode as too many threat actors are mining this data for various types of abuse.”

Cybersecurity expert Chester Wisniewski at Sophos agreed that while there could be a temporary drop in ransomware attacks, the criminals can be expected to either revive infrastructure elsewhere or move to other botnets.

“This will cause a lot of disruption to some gangs in the short term, but it will do nothing from it being rebooted," he said. "Albeit it takes a long time to recruit 700,000 PCs.”>

<fredthebore>, got a problem with this content? Get shtupped!

<Some Republicans in Washington and Georgia began attacking Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis immediately after she announced the Aug. 14 indictment of former President Donald Trump for conspiring to overturn the 2020 presidential election results. But others, including Gov. Brian Kemp, have been conspicuous in their unwillingness to pile on.

Kemp, who had previously survived scathing attacks from Trump over his refusal to endorse the former president's false claims about the election, declined to comment on the indictment of Trump and 18 others at a conservative political conference hosted by radio host and Kemp ally Erick Erickson.

Noting that he had been called before a special grand jury to testify during the investigation, Kemp stated forcefully that Democratic President Joe Biden was the rightful winner of Georgia’s 16 electoral votes and said swinging the spotlight to Trump’s legal troubles would be a mistake.

“Democrats want us to be focused on things like this, so we’re not focused on Joe Biden’s record,” Kemp told Erickson on Aug. 18.

Trump, meanwhile, has kept up a withering assault on both Willis and Kemp.

“Governor Kemp of Georgia is fighting hard against the impeachment of the crooked, incompetent & highly partisan D.A. of Fulton County, Fani Willis, who has allowed murder and other violent crime to MASSIVELY ESCALATE,” the former president wrote Aug. 21 on his Truth Social platform. “Crime in Atlanta is WORST IN NATION. She should be impeached for many reasons, not just the Witch Hunt (I did nothing wrong!)”

There’s little evidence to support Trump's claim that crime is escalating — the number of homicides has fallen sharply in Atlanta this year.

Other Georgia Republicans didn't hesitate to assail Willis, with some joining Trump in the call to impeach the Atlanta-based prosecutor.

“Fani Willis should be ashamed of herself and she’s going to lose her job,” said Republican U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia. “We'll make sure of that.”

Greene spoke to reporters last Thursday outside the Fulton County Jail, shortly before Trump arrived by motorcade to submit to booking and a mug shot. That same day, House Republicans in Washington announced their own investigation of Willis.

By then, a few GOP lawmakers in Georgia were calling for a special session to impeach and remove Willis or defund her office. Others proposed amending the state constitution to let Kemp pardon Trump.

Both are longshot prospects.

Georgia’s General Assembly hasn’t impeached anyone in more than 50 years, and with Republicans holding less than the required two-thirds state Senate majority to convict Willis, they would have to persuade Democrats.

Colton Moore, a Republican state senator whose purist brand of conservatism wins him few allies, launched a petition for lawmakers to call themselves into special session, requiring signatures by three-fifths of both houses. That too would require some Democratic support.

Georgia voters amended the state constitution to shift pardon power from the governor to a parole board in the 1940s after a governor was accused of selling pardons. It would take a two-thirds vote of both houses to put a measure before voters to change that status, again requiring Democratic support....>

<.....And it’s not clear Kemp would pardon Trump even if he had that power. Kemp and Trump were on bad terms even before Kemp spurned Trump's calls to overturn Georgia's 2020 presidential election. And relations grew icier after Trump recruited former Sen. David Perdue for an embarrassingly unsuccessful Republican primary challenge to Kemp's reelection in 2022. Kemp, like some other Republican governors, now openly argues that his party needs to move on from Trump.

At least one other top Georgia Republican, state House Speaker Jon Burns, is siding with Kemp in opposing a special session. In a letter to fellow Republicans, he squelched talk of a special session, writing that he wants to look toward “a positive vision that prepares for the bright future our children and grandchildren deserve.”

“All those charged are innocent until proven guilty, and I am certain both sides will ensure this matter is exhaustively considered through the courts,” Burns wrote, saying he wouldn't comment further.

Burns' comments drew the scorn of Amy Kremer, a suburban Atlanta Republican activist who helped organize the Jan. 6 “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington that spawned the assault on the U.S. Capitol.

“We need to flip these corrupt RINO seats to true conservatives who will actually work and fight for the people,” Kremer wrote on social media. “So embarrassing.”

Looking for other options to go after Willis, some Georgia Republicans are coalescing around a plan to seek her removal by a new state prosecutorial oversight commission that begins work on Oct. 1.

The Prosecuting Attorneys Qualifications Commission was created with the aim of disciplining or removing wayward prosecutors. Republicans fought hard for the law because they said some Democratic prosecutors were incompetent or coddling criminals, improperly refusing to prosecute whole categories of crimes, including marijuana possession.

Democrats retorted that Republicans were the ones politicizing prosecutions, and some viewed the law as Republican retribution against Willis. She criticized the measure as a racist attack after voters elected 14 nonwhite DAs in the state.

The law lets the commission sanction prosecutors for “willful misconduct in office” or “undue bias or prejudice against the accused or in favor of persons with interests adverse to the accused.” It’s unclear how the commission will interpret those terms, because it hasn’t created rules yet.

Kemp, Burns and Republican Lt. Gov. Burt Jones name the commission’s five-member investigative panel to examine complaints. They also name a three-member hearing panel that decides on charges filed by the investigative panel.

Some district attorneys, not including Willis, are already suing to overturn the law. Barring court intervention, people can begin filing complaints on Oct. 1 for alleged misconduct occurring after July 1.

Such complaints could relieve political pressure on Georgia Republicans.

“District Attorney Fani Willis has demonstrated that she is nothing more than a liberal activist attempting to bend the law to fit a narrative that she has spent an egregious amount of taxpayer resources to craft,” state Sen. Jason Anivitarte wrote on social media, encouraging people to bring complaints.

But if the commission’s first act is to pursue Willis, critics say that will prove that it’s nothing but a political tool to enforce GOP rule in Georgia.

DeKalb County District Attorney Sherry Boston, a Democrat and plaintiff in the suit challenging the law, told The Associated Press Monday that using the commission against Willis would confirm that it's what its opponents warned it would be — “an assault on prosecutorial independence and the latest attempt to subvert democracy in Georgia.">

<Goldman Sachs established a fund using Chinese government money to acquire American and British-based companies, including one engaged in cyber security services for the U.K. government, the Financial Times reported.

Despite increasing tensions between Beijing and Western nations, Goldman has inked seven transactions through a $2.5 billion private equity "partnership fund" it created with China Investment Corporation (CIC) in 2017, according to numerous individuals who possess firsthand insight into the fund and its operations and who spoke to the FT.

These transactions encompass a range of sectors, including global supply chain tracking, cloud computing, drug testing, manufacturing systems for AI, drones and electric vehicle batteries, according to the FT.

While Goldman Sachs said it had made investments in these companies, it did not explicitly disclose the fund's contribution to the deals.

Goldman ex-CEO Lloyd Blankfein launched the partnership fund during former President Donald Trump's 2017 state visit to Beijing. The visit aimed at addressing trade imbalances by channeling Chinese government money into American enterprises.

The fund's partner, CIC, said it would serve as an "anchor investor" with active involvement in helping to expand the acquired firms in China. CIC is a sovereign wealth fund controlled by Chinese state.

Goldman said in a statement to the FT that "the co-operation fund is a US fund run by a US manager, and is managed to be in compliance with all laws and regulations. The bank added that it "continues to invest in U.S. and global companies, helping them increase their sales into the China market.”>

<Thirty-four days ahead of ex-President Donald Trump's New York civil trial for Attorney General Letitia James' " $250 million lawsuit filed against the 2024 hopeful alleging 'widespread fraud,' the banks and companies that lended [sic] the former president "millions of dollars for business deals" want to hide the proof from the public, The Daily Beast reports.

Per The Beast, Judge "Arthur F. Engoron, ruled that—aside from information like the home addresses of certain employees and bank account numbers—the public has a right to see the documents and communications."

According to the report, the judge said Tuesday that "he'd allow the companies to hide personal information, but he sided with the AG that most of the documents should stay in the open."

Engoron wrote, “Here, the non-parties have failed to demonstrate a compelling interest in favor of wholesale sealing that outweighs the public’s right to access and the presumption in favor of open judicial proceedings."

*Some of these records form the backbone of [New York] AG Letitia James' $250 million lawsuit against the Trumps, purportedly showing how the real estate mogul and the family members he made executives got away with minimal scrutiny—by asserting fantastical financial numbers that weren't examined carefully. Had they been, auditors and loan officers would have realized that Trump was easily doubling and tripling the value of property to snag better bank loans and insurance policies.*

"One employee who has already been publicly linked to the Seven Springs loan receives unwanted media inquiries every time the case appears in the news, which he finds 'disruptive and distressing,'" WSF Bank lamented, according to the report.>

<As the Supreme Court was putting the finishing touches on the final opinions of the last term, Chief Justice John Roberts told an audience in May that the ethics scandals swirling around the court were an "issue of concern" and that the justices were "continuing to look at things" to address the problem.

Since then, the ethics woes have only worsened and Roberts has remained silent. As attention shifts to a new term that will begin this fall, some Supreme Court watchers have grown pessimistic that anything will change.

"Chances of something actually happening, I would say, are zero with no rounding error," quipped Steven Lubet, an emeritus law professor at Northwestern University who has supported tighter ethical standards at the high court for decades. "I think if it was going to happen, it would have happened."

The debate over Supreme Court ethics may gain new attention in coming days as annual financial disclosure reports for Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito are released. Thomas, in particular, has been at the center of controversy involving private jet travel and luxury vacations paid for by a GOP megadonor.

Those disclosures for 2022 could provide new insight – and open new questions – about gifts offered to the justices. Thomas and Alito are the only two releasing financial details now because they were granted an extension to file their reports. It's not clear whether Thomas will submit amended disclosures for past years covering the previously unreported travel that has been the focus of controversy.

What does seem clear, based on statements from the justices over the summer, is that there is little-to-no agreement on how to proceed. Congress, meanwhile, is unlikely for now to approve legislation Senate Democrats are pushing that would require a code of ethics at the court. Republican lawmakers have balked at the idea.

Faith in the court has tanked in recent years. An Ipsos poll this week found that half of Americans have little or no trust in the justices and that faith in the Supreme Court has slipped below that of other legal institutions, including juries, local police and state judges. Only “corporate attorneys” fared markedly worse than the high court.

Roberts didn't respond to questions about what, if any, progress had been made since his remarks this year.

"The Supreme Court has failed to rise to the occasion by refusing to do anything of substance to address the growing concern Americans have about its integrity," said Gabe Roth, executive director of Fix the Court, which advocates for stricter ethical standards. "I'm putting my hopes in Congress” and the potential for future bipartisan support.

There was bipartisan interest in ethics changes at the Supreme Court in the past. But the fight has recently devolved into a partisan one, with Republican lawmakers accusing Democrats of hammering the issue as a way to undermine a court where conservatives hold a 6-3 advantage.

Roberts, as always, chose his words on the issue carefully in May as he accepted an award in Washington.

"I want to assure people that I am committed to making certain we as a court adhere to highest standards of conduct," Roberts said at an American Law Institute dinner. "We are continuing to look at things we can do to give practical effect to that commitment."

Since then, the court has declined to provide clarity on what Roberts meant by "things we can do."

Private jets, paid for by mega-donors and a hedge fund billionaires

At the time of Roberts' speech, Thomas was under pressure following a series of stories in ProPublica that revealed private jet trips and luxury yacht travel he had accepted from Harlan Crow. The GOP megadonor also purchased property from Thomas and his family – none of which was reported on required annual disclosure forms.

Nearly a month later, Alito acknowledged that he flew to Alaska for a fishing trip on a private jet in 2008 that belonged to a hedge fund manager who repeatedly brought cases before the high court. Weeks later, the Associated Press reported that aides to Justice Sonia Sotomayor pressed colleges and a library to order copies of books she had authored in connection with public speaking events....>

<.....Alito and Thomas have both brushed aside the reports, saying they weren't required to disclose their travel because of a “hospitality” exemption to the reporting rules. And in an op-ed this year in the Wall Street Journal, Alito said he had no obligation to recuse himself from cases involving the hedge-fund billionaire who paid for the travel.

Roberts doesn’t have the power to impose ethical standards on his own, and there are signs that there isn't unanimous support for change among his colleagues. Speaking earlier this month in Portland, Oregon, Justice Elena Kagan said that "the nine of us have a variety of views about this − as about most things."

"It's a hard thing to get as much consensus as you can in the way that we like to do," Kagan said, "but I hope that we will make some progress in this area of the kind that the chief justice talked about."

Speaking on Monday, Justice Amy Coney Barrett said that she welcomed scrutiny of the court, according to several media accounts, but she did not discuss the ethics controversies directly.

"Justices and all judges are public figures, and public criticism kind of comes with the job," she said.

Barrett and the rest of the bench filed their financial disclosures in mid-May but Alito and Thomas sought extensions until mid-August. As they have in the past, the first batch of disclosures showed that several of the justices were reimbursed for travel to Europe or received outside income for teaching at law schools in 2022 – arrangements that have also come under scrutiny.

Advocates for greater transparency at the court said the reports are far from perfect, in part because it's unclear how closely they're being scrutinized internally for consistency with disclosure requirements in the law. Several of the justices have claimed that the law setting up the disclosures does not apply to the Supreme Court − because it is a separate branch of government − and that they are submitting the information voluntarily.

"How is that an ethics system? You can't have a system of ethics that relies on self policing," said Delaney Marsco, senior legal counsel for ethics at the Campaign Legal Center. "Other branches of government, to be clear, are not perfect…but they are miles ahead of the Supreme Court.">

<Former President Trump told conservative media personality Glenn Beck he would prosecute his political enemies if elected president again.

“You said in 2016, you know, ‘Lock her up,'” Beck reminded Trump of his statements about Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016 during an appearance on his BlazeTV show Tuesday. “And then when you became president, you said, ‘We don’t do that in America. That’s just not the right thing to do.'”

“That’s what they’re doing,” Beck continued, asking the former president, “Do you regret not locking her up? And if you’re president again, will you lock people up?”

Trump, who dismissed the various charges he faces in Georgia, New York, Florida and Washington, D.C., said there is “no choice.”

“Well, I’ll give you an example… The answer is you have no choice, because they’re doing it to us,” Trump said, adding that he “never hit Biden as hard as I could have.”

“I always had such great respect for the office of the president and the presidency … And then I heard he was trying to indict me, and it was him that was doing it,” he said.

The former president, also the current front-runner for the GOP nomination for president in 2024, has been indicted four times this year in connection with his personal business dealings, handling of classified documents and efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.

He has argued the criminal indictments he faces are political in nature and designed to keep him from winning another term in the White House.>

<Republican officials in Georgia have been threatening to punish or remove Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis over the election racketeering charges she brought against former President Donald Trump and 18 of his allies, including lawyers and local Republican operatives. But according to Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Greg Bluestein, state House Speaker Jon Burns has thrown cold water on the idea of impeaching her or defunding her office.

"As Hurricane Idalia bears down on our great state today ... we continue to have a few members of the General Assembly making misleading or false claims about the General Assembly's lawful powers regarding an ongoing criminal case before our Judiciary," said Burns in a statement. "A select few are calling to defund a duly-elected district attorney of this state and her office in an attempt to interfere with the criminal justice system. Regardless of your views of this case, removing this funding would also have the unintended consequence of causing a delay or complete lack of prosecution of other serious offenses like murder, rape, armed robbery, gang prosecution, battery etc."

Furthermore, Burns added, "Targeting one specific DA in this manner certainly flaunts [sic] the idea of separation of powers, if not outright violates it."

This comes as even Republicans who support ousting or investigating Willis are divided and arguing with each other over how to do it.

State Senate Majority Leader Steve Gooch has called for an investigation into Willis, but is pushing back on far-right lawmaker Colton Moore's demand to call a special session to impeach her, saying the votes aren't there for it. Moore has fired back, calling Republicans critical of his plan "buzzard cowards."

Burns is not the first prominent conservative Georgia Republican to declare Trump's allies are going too far in bending state law to get their way, noted MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin; Gov. Brian Kemp, Secretary of State, former Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, and the late former House Speaker David Ralston all defied the former president and his allies' demands to overturn the 2020 election results.

"First, it was Raffensperger, Kemp, Geoff Duncan, and the late David Ralston," Rubin wrote Wednesday. "Now add Jon Burns to the list of otherwise very conservative GA GOP leaders who don’t mind antagonizing Trump.">

<U.S. District Court Judge Steve Jones on Tuesday ordered Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and former president Donald Trump's chief of staff Mark Meadows to offer opinions on a key matter essential to addressing Meadows's argument that his Georgia prosecution should be tried in federal court.

Jones asked both parties to provide their views on whether "a finding that at least one (but not all) of the overt acts charged occurred under the color of Meadow's office [would] be sufficient for federal removal of a criminal prosecution under [the federal removal statute]."

When Meadows took the stand on Tuesday, he argued he was acting in his capacity as Trump's top White House aide when he reached out to Georgia officials following the 2020 elections. Fulton County prosecutors, on the other hand, asserted that Meadows' actions went well beyond the responsibilities of his federal position.

Meadows was charged in Willis' sprawling racketeering indictment, which accuses him and 17 others of conspiring to subvert the results of the 2020 election in Georgia.

In court documents, his legal team has already revealed their plans to seek the dismissal of the charges from a federal judge if the case is transferred to federal court, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Even if a judge doesn't dismiss the charges, the shift to federal court would provide Meadows with a broader and potentially more conservative pool of jurors and bar cameras from entering the courtroom.

The pivotal point of contention for the removal hinges mainly on whether Meadows can prove that he was indicted for actions he carried out in his capacity as a federal official.

"The judge has clearly concluded that some of Meadows' indicted conduct was not within the scope of his office (chief of staff)," Lee Kovarsky, a University of Texas law professor and expert in the removal statute, told Salon. "He wants to know whether there is removal when some – but not all – of the indicted conduct is within [the] official scope."

To get his case "removed" to federal court, Meadows needs to establish three things, which include proving that he was a federal officer at the time of the alleged offense, who was performing his "official duties" and took actions within "the color of his office."

To fulfill the third requirement, Meadows has put forth a federal defense known as Supremacy Clause immunity. This provides protection to federal officers, safeguarding them from state prosecutions that emerge due to actions they believed, subjectively and reasonably, to be "necessary and proper to their official duties," ​​Kovarsky explained in Lawfare.

"Willis has arguments on both prongs (2) and (3)," ​​Kovarsky said. "She'll argue that you don't meet prong (2) unless all of the indicted conduct relates to official duties. And she'll argue on prong (3), where Meadows' has asserted 'Supremacy Clause immunity,' that the defense is not colorable unless it could defeat the RICO count entirely and it cannot defeat the RICO count entirely if some of the indicted conduct is not within the scope of the office."

He added that if Meadows' case is removed then Trump will most likely argue that "his case rides along with Meadows and that he gets removal" as well....​>

<.....Clark Cunningham, professor of law at Georgia State University, also weighed in on X, formerly Twitter, arguing that this order "could be very bad news" for Willis.

"If I were the DA, I would ask grand jury for a superseding indictment that removes the name of Mark Meadows from Acts 5, 6, 7, and 19 of Count 1 (but continuing the allegations as to Donald Trump)," he wrote.

The first three alleged overt acts by Meadows (Acts 5, 6 and 7) are not necessary to establish his liability under RICO, but keeping them in the indictment now runs an "enormous risk" for the DA of losing the removal issue, in light of Judge Jones' order, since these overt acts come closest to meeting the test for federal officer removal, he added.

Cunningham explained that Acts 5 and 7 involve White House meetings between Trump and state legislators, for which Meadows made "plausible claims" on the witness stand that his role was limited to what the Chief of Staff typically does. Act 6 alleges only that Meadows asked a member of Congress from Pennsylvania for the phone numbers of the leaders of the state legislature in Pennsylvania, again saying this was a typical task for a chief of staff.

"Act 19 alleges that Trump & Meadows met together with another White House staffer, John McEntee and asked him to prepare a memo for a strategy to disrupt the January 6 session of Congress," Cunningham wrote. "Meadows testified firmly that Act 19 did not describe anything he had done and it is not worth continuing to try and prosecute Meadows for Act 19."

Jones ordered that Willis and attorneys for Meadows file their briefs by 5 p.m. on Thursday.

"This is a genuinely uncertain area of law," Kovarsky said. "Removal is going to be a close call, although I don't think the immunity defense itself will succeed when ultimately asserted.">

<Amid all the excitement generated by the indictments against Donald Trump in Washington, D.C., and in Fulton County, Georgia, for election subversion, it’s easy to lose sight of the Mar-a-Lago documents case, which is set for trial next May. But of all Trump’s legal woes, that case is the only one that looks like a slam dunk.

Trump stands accused of committing forty felonies for absconding from the White House with a trove of classified and top-secret papers, stashing them at his Palm Beach golf resort, and refusing to return them to the federal government on demand. Two other defendants—Walt Nauta, Trump’s longtime valet; and Carlos de Oliveira, the resort’s property manager—are accused of committing some crimes jointly with Trump and others on their own.

Unfortunately, there is one big problem facing Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team in the Sunshine State: The trial will be presided over by District Court Judge Aileen Mercedes Cannon, who may just be in the metaphorical tank for the former President.

Cannon, who was born in Colombia and grew up in Miami, was nominated by Trump in May 2020 to serve on the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida. She was thirty-nine-years-old, relatively young by federal judicial standards.

Cannon was confirmed by the Senate on November 12, 2020, nine days after Trump lost the presidential election, despite having only four minor jury trials on her resume as a practicing attorney. Her scant record as a published author at the time of her nomination included a series of human-interest pieces she wrote as an undergraduate for El Nuevo Herald, a Miami-based Spanish-language daily newspaper. Among the topics she covered were prenatal yoga, the health benefits of tomatoes, and Flamenco dance.

By all appearances, Cannon grew more serious in law school at the University of Michigan, joining the Federalist Society and establishing herself as a staunch conservative. She served as an assistant U.S. attorney in southern Florida from 2013 to 2020, and in that capacity, caught the eye of the Trump Administration as a worthy candidate to add to the growing cadre of right-wing judges the ex-President had appointed.

Once enrobed, Cannon was assigned to a courtroom in Fort Pierce, north of West Palm Beach. Under normal circumstances, she would have remained under the radar for years, handling a challenging but standard docket of civil and criminal litigation. The FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago on August 8, 2022, changed that trajectory in a flash.

Cannon was assigned to hear a highly unusual civil lawsuit Trump’s lawyers filed on August 22, seeking an emergency protective order to block the government from indicting Trump until the propriety of the search could be reviewed by an independent arbiter known as a “special master.” Suddenly, she found herself in the national spotlight.

To the shock and dismay of many legal observers, Cannon ruled quickly in Trump’s favor, issuing an order on September 5, appointing a special master, and reasoning that Trump was entitled to be treated differently than other criminal suspects in order to avoid the “reputational harm” that could have resulted from a hasty indictment. “As a function of Plaintiff’s former position as President of the United States,” Cannon wrote, “the stigma associated with the subject seizure is in a league of its own.”

At the Special Counsel’s request, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals quickly intervened and rebuked Cannon in a stinging reversal, holding:

"We cannot write a rule that allows any subject of a search warrant to block government investigations after the execution of the warrant."

—11th Circuit Court of Appeals

“The law is clear. We cannot write a rule that allows any subject of a search warrant to block government investigations after the execution of the warrant. Nor can we write a rule that allows only former Presidents to do so. Either approach would be a radical reordering of our case law limiting the federal courts’ involvement in criminal investigations. And both would violate bedrock separation-of-powers limitations.”....>

<.....Incredibly, now that Trump has actually been indicted, Cannon is once again presiding, apparently impervious to demands that she recuse herself due to the appearance of bias. According to the district-court clerk, she was randomly selected to act as the trial judge from a total pool of seven active judges.

Given the broad authority of federal trial judges and her obvious pro-Trump bias, Cannon will be uniquely positioned to help the ex-President as the case unfolds. She will rule on all pretrial motions, including any motions to suppress the documents on Fourth Amendment grounds, as well as any that seek to dismiss the indictment for selective prosecution or prosecutorial misconduct. She will also have the last word on the admissibility of evidence at trial.

Given the broad authority of federal trial judges and her obvious pro-Trump bias, Cannon will be uniquely positioned to help the ex-President as the case unfolds.

Cannon’s greatest impact, however, may be on jury selection. Under the federal rules of criminal procedure, the prosecution will only have six peremptory jury challenges, allowing it to automatically exclude potential jurors it believes will be unfair. After that, the prosecution will be limited to challenges for cause (such as implied or actual bias), which Cannon will have the sole power to grant or deny. It will only take one rogue juror who holds out for acquittal regardless of the evidence to spare Trump.

Even if Cannon were not biased herself, there is good reason to doubt her ability to supervise the high-profile selection of Trump’s jury. In a recent criminal case, according to a transcript obtained by Reuters, she arguably committed an egregious Sixth Amendment error when she excluded the family of a criminal defendant and the general public from her courtroom during jury selection, pointing to a lack of space. She also neglected to swear in the jury pool, and was forced to restart jury selection after realizing her mistake.

Cannon could also play a decisive role post-trial if Trump’s attorneys ask her to issue a directed verdict that would take the question of guilt out of the jury’s hands. Such motions are routinely made in criminal trials, but are rarely granted.

If all this seems like a prescription for disaster, take heart: Trump will soon be in the dock in the District of Columbia, Georgia, and New York State—all far beyond Judge Cannon’s reach.>