The Full Belmonte, 8/2/2023
Trump
“Former President Donald Trump was indicted Tuesday on criminal charges by a federal grand jury over his alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election leading up to the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol. Special counsel Jack Smith unveiled his case alleging that Trump — with the help of six co-conspirators — broke several laws in an effort to remain in the White House after losing the 2020 election. Trump, who has derided Smith's case as a politically motivated "fake indictment," has been summoned to appear at a Washington, DC, federal courthouse on Thursday. Now, with three indictments looming over his 2024 campaign, it begs the question: Could Trump serve as president if convicted? In short, yes. Should he win reelection in 2024, Trump could try to grant himself a pardon, appeal a conviction to the conservative Supreme Court, or attempt to dismiss the case entirely, according to experts on election law.” [CNN]
Heat wave
“One of the longest heat streaks in US history finally ended Monday when Phoenix's high temperature peaked under 110 degrees for the first time in a month. ‘It's been a year of abnormalities and streaks, so it's just a testament to just how strange this year has been,’ said Ryan Worley, meteorologist for the National Weather Service office in Phoenix. But the heat is far from over for Phoenix and millions of others across the central US that are still baking in triple-digit temperatures. Heat alerts are in effect for more than 50 million people from the Southern Plains to the Lower Mississippi River Valley. Forecasts show North Texas could get as high as 111 degrees today while New Orleans and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, could see up to 115 degrees.” [CNN]
”Fitch Ratings, one of the nation's big credit watchdogs, downgraded the federal government's AAA rating to AA+ yesterday, citing a "steady deterioration in standards of governance." The move comes two months after Washington narrowly avoided a potentially disastrous federal debt default.” [NPR]
Immigration
“The number of migrants crossing the treacherous Darien Gap, a mountainous rainforest region that connects South and Central America, has broken a new record. There have been 248,901 crossings so far this year, an immigration official in Panama said, surpassing the 248,284 crossings that occurred in all of 2022. The 37-mile hike through the Darien Gap brings migrants from Colombia to Panama and is a crucial passage for those hoping to reach the US and Canada. Around 20% of the people making the dangerous trek are children and adolescents, authorities say. This comes as human rights advocates say many migrants, who fled danger in their home countries, are living in limbo in Mexico as they wait for their asylum claims to be processed.” [CNN]
Vaccines
“Major US pharmacy chains are rolling out flu and RSV vaccine appointments ahead of the fall respiratory virus season. Anyone 3 or older can get a flu shot, and adults 60 and older are eligible for the RSV vaccine. Pharmacies including Rite Aid, CVS and Walgreens say they will also offer the new Covid-19 vaccines once they're available. But the FDA will have to authorize or approve them first, and the CDC will have to recommend them. In June, the FDA recommended that Covid-19 vaccine manufacturers make single-strain booster shots for this fall and winter that would target the Omicron subvariant XBB.1.5. The new Covid-19 vaccines, which could be ready by September, will be made available directly from the manufacturers as part of the commercial market, rather than through the US government.” [CNN]
DA cites 'massive amount' of evidence as Gilgo Beach murder suspect appears in court
“The man charged with three of the notorious "Gilgo four" murders on New York's Long Island 13 years ago is facing a "massive amount'' of evidence in the case, prosecutors said Tuesday as he appeared in court for a pretrial conference hearing before a Suffolk County judge. Prosecutors said at the hearing they’ve given Rex Heuermann’s lawyer about 2,500 pages of records, DNA reports and about 100 hours of surveillance video recorded outside Heuermann’s home and office before his July 13 arrest, along with crime scene photos. Read more
•How pizza broke the cold case: Police identified Heuermann as a person who could be a suspect in the case, tracked him down and found an abandoned pizza crust that he threw out in a Manhattan trash can, authorities said. The DNA on the food matched the DNA from a male hair officials found.” [USA Today]
Crime laboratory officers prepare to search the home of Gilgo Beach murders suspect Rex Heuermann in Massapequa Park, New York, on July 18, 2023.
YUKI IWAMURA, AFP via Getty Images
“Henrietta Lacks' family has settled with the biotech company it says used cells taken without Lacks' consent more than 70 years ago. Lacks was being treated for cancer in the 1950s when Johns Hopkins University doctors took cells from a tumor without her knowledge. The cells have played a role in scientific breakthroughs like the development of polio and COVID-19 vaccines. Her descendants say she and other Black women were never compensated for their genetic material.” [NPR]
Two Michigan Republicans were charged over alleged voting machine tampering.
“The background: The case stems from an attempt to prove the false claim that the 2020 presidential election was wrongly called for Joe Biden over Trump.
The latest: A former state lawmaker and a losing candidate for state attorney general were charged yesterday with felonies involving voting machines. More charges could follow.”
Read this story at Washington Post
War in Ukraine
The port of Izmail, Ukraine.Odesa Regional Military Administration
Russia struck a Ukrainian river port, one of the last shipping outlets for millions of tons of grain.
Doctors are triaging wounded Ukrainian soldiers in temporary clinics near the front lines of the counteroffensive. See photos of them at work.
‘Declaration of War’
Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, chair of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), reacts while addressing ECOWAS heads of state in Abuja, Nigeria, on July 30.Kola Sulaimon/AFP via Getty Images
“The prospect of an all-out regional conflict in the Sahel grew late Monday when both Mali and Burkina Faso announced that any move by a foreign power to directly undermine Niger’s ongoing coup would be deemed a “declaration of war” against their own countries.
Their vow appears to be directed largely at the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), which promised on Sunday to take “all measures necessary” to reinstate ousted Nigerien President Mohamed Bazoum if he is not back in power by the end of the week. Already, the bloc has imposed sanctions on Niger—suspending all transactions between the coup-struck nation and ECOWAS member states—as well as frozen all Nigerien assets in regional central banks.
If both sides keep their word, then the Sahel may be facing war. The probability of ECOWAS using force in the West African state is unlikely, argued Rida Lyammouri, a senior fellow at the Policy Center for the New South, a Moroccan think tank. However, “the consequences on civilians of such an approach if putschists chose confrontation would be catastrophic,” he said.
It’s unsurprising that the two countries to back the coup are both junta-led states themselves. In August 2020, Col. Assimi Goïta led the Malian army in a coup against then-President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta. Nine months later, Goïta further asserted his power in a second overthrow, this time naming himself leader. The junta has since delayed Mali’s constitutional referendum, which would vote on significantly reducing the parliament’s powers, until 2024—thereby cementing Goïta’s authority for another year. Burkina Faso has also faced internal turmoil. In January 2022, the Burkinabe army, led by Lt. Col. Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, dissolved the parliament, government, and Burkina Faso’s constitution. Then, a few months later, Capt. Ibrahim Traoré ousted Damiba.
All three nations—Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger—have been battling insurgencies by Islamist extremist groups that former colonizer France along with the United States have tried and failed to eradicate. Poverty and high costs of living also plague the West African states. The Russian paramilitary Wagner Group, which led its own failed coup against the Kremlin on June 23, has taken advantage of these states’ instability by heavily investing and deploying troops in the region, though the White House said on Tuesday that it did not believe Russia was involved in the Niger coup.
Meanwhile, Paris announced on Tuesday that it would begin immediate evacuations of French citizens and other Europeans from Niger. Italy quickly followed suit. The move comes after the French Embassy in Niger’s capital of Niamey was attacked on Sunday following France’s decision to suspend all aid to the West African state on Saturday. The White House said the United States has not changed its decision on maintaining a U.S. military presence in the country, where some 1,000 U.S. troops remain stationed but are restricted to the U.S. military base in Agadez, in central Niger.” [Foreign Policy]
“A drop in the bucket. Myanmar’s ruling military junta, known as the Tatmadaw, reduced the prison sentences of two key opposition figures on Tuesday. Former leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who was ousted in Myanmar’s 2021 coup, received a six-year reduction to her original sentence of 33 years. Just last week, reports emerged that Aung San Suu Kyi had been moved to house arrest. Former President Win Myint, who was also removed during the coup, had his sentence cut by four years.
The announcement coincided with a major religious holiday in the Buddhist-majority nation. To celebrate the holy day, the junta also released more than 7,000 prisoners, many of whom were foreigners charged with dissent. Aung San Suu Kyi herself was convicted on multiple counts of corruption, which rights activists have said was the Tatmadaw’s way of ensuring she could not run for reelection.” [Foreign Policy]
“Consulate shooting. A woman working at Sweden’s honorary consulate in Izmir, Turkey, was critically injured on Tuesday when a Turkish citizen opened fire outside. According to the local governor’s office, the assailant had a mental illness. The perpetrator’s motive is still unclear, and police are already investigating the matter.
Stockholm has faced intense criticism from Turkey and other majority-Muslim nations over Quran burnings in the country. Less than 24 hours before the consulate shooting, two Swedish protesters burned pages from a Quran outside Sweden’s parliament—making it the third such burning in recent weeks. Under Sweden’s vast free speech laws, the burning of religious objects is protected. Turkey and other Islamic countries have condemned these acts as Islamophobic.” [Foreign Policy]
“Democratic backsliding. Senegal’s government dissolved its rival opposition party, the African Patriots of Senegal for Work, Ethics, and Fraternity (PASTEF), on Monday after Senegalese President Macky Sall ordered the arrest of PASTEF leader Ousmane Sonko. Sonko was charged with calling for an insurrection, threatening national security, and conspiring against the state, among other accusations. He has continued to assert his innocence, calling his arrest unjust.
Protests quickly erupted across the country following Sonko’s arrest and the dissolution of his party. At least two demonstrators have been killed thus far. Sall responded by restricting mobile internet services, citing the “dissemination of hateful and subversive messages on social networks.”
‘Sall has repeatedly interfered in the judiciary to disqualify viable candidates who could challenge him for the presidency,’ Brookings Institution fellow Danielle Resnick argued in Foreign Policy. Enabling Sall’s constitutional coup could now threaten African democracy as a whole.” [Foreign Policy]
August 2, 2023
By German Lopez and Ian Prasad Philbrick
Donald TrumpHaiyun Jiang for The New York Times
‘Fueled by lies’
“The two previous indictments of Donald Trump focused on his personal conduct, one involving a sex scandal and the other his handling of classified documents. Yesterday’s indictment is different. It involves arguably the most central issue in a democracy: an attempt to subvert an American election.
‘At the core of the United States of America vs. Donald J. Trump is no less than the viability of the system constructed’ by the founders, our colleague Peter Baker, The Times’s chief White House correspondent, wrote. ‘Can a sitting president spread lies about an election and try to employ his government’s power to overturn the will of the voters without consequence?’
In today’s newsletter, we’ll explain the details of the indictment and focus on the new information that prosecutors released yesterday.
The charges
The new indictment lays out a scheme that, by now, is widely known: Trump falsely claimed the 2020 election results were rigged and tried to rally federal officials, state lawmakers and his supporters, including rioters at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to overturn his loss to President Biden.
The indictment accuses Trump of four crimes: conspiracy to violate Americans’ right to vote, conspiracy to defraud the government, obstructing an official proceeding and conspiring to do so. Unlike the previous indictments, the charges stem primarily from actions Trump took while he was president.
(You can read the full indictment, annotated by Times reporters, here.)
‘The attack on our nation’s Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was an unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy,’ Jack Smith, the special counsel who led the Justice Department investigation in the case, said yesterday. ‘It was fueled by lies — lies by the defendant targeted at obstructing a bedrock function of the U.S. government: the nation’s process of collecting, counting and certifying the results of the presidential election.’
In a statement, Trump called the new charges ‘election interference’ and compared the Biden administration to Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.
What’s new
Much of the indictment builds on the work of the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack. But the indictment also presents some new information. Examples include:
Trump tried repeatedly to persuade Mike Pence that the vice president had the power to overturn the election results in Congress. When Pence said that he did not believe he had that authority, Trump allegedly responded, ‘You’re too honest.’
The indictment said that Trump had six co-conspirators, but it did not name them. The Times reported several likely candidates, including the former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark and lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell. Prosecutors could charge co-conspirators in the coming weeks.
A deputy White House counsel warned one alleged co-conspirator, believed to be Clark, that if Trump tried to stay in office, there would be ‘riots in every major city in the United States.’ That co-conspirator’s response seemed to suggest that Trump could use his power as commander in chief to crush the protests: ‘That’s why there’s an Insurrection Act.’
The top charges are punishable by up to 20 years in prison.
What’s next
Trump will be arraigned in federal court in Washington in the coming days and will likely be asked to enter a plea to the charges.
The federal judicial system uses a random system for assigning cases to judges, and Judge Tanya Chutkan, a Barack Obama appointee based in Washington, will oversee this case. She has overseen trials of the Jan. 6 rioters, issuing harsh sentences against them. Previously, she also rejected Trump’s attempt to avoid disclosing documents to the House’s Jan. 6 committee, writing, ‘Presidents are not kings.’ (Read more about Chutkan in The Washington Post.)
The timing of a trial remains uncertain, but it could be next year, when Trump is also set to face trials for his handling of classified documents and his attempt to hide a sexual encounter. Separately, a Georgia prosecutor is investigating Trump’s efforts to overturn the election results there and may soon file charges.
Will these cases hurt Trump’s 2024 campaign? So far, they have not. If anything, Republican primary voters have rallied to support him. Still, polls suggest that many swing voters believe Trump has committed crimes, and the spectacle of multiple trials could damage his general election campaign. For now, he and Biden are running very close to one another in the polls.
‘Trump likes to project bravado, but he is extremely angry and unsettled about this indictment, according to people who have spoken with him,’ our colleague Maggie Haberman, who covers Trump, wrote. ‘This particular indictment touches a lot of people in his orbit in a way the previous two do not.’
More on Trump
‘Despite having lost, the defendant was determined to remain in power,’ prosecutors wrote about Trump. Read four takeaways from the indictment.
Smith, the bearded, fast-walking special counsel, has moved quickly to investigate Trump. Yesterday, he praised the law enforcement officers who defended the Capitol on Jan. 6.
Ron DeSantis described the indictment as a weaponization of the federal government. Here’s how other Republican presidential candidates reacted.
In a separate case, a Michigan Republican who tried to overturn the state’s 2020 result was charged in a plot to access voting machines.
This guide helps you track all the Trump investigations.” [New York Times]
Lizzo’s former tour dancers accused her of sexual harassment.
“Why? Three dancers alleged in a lawsuit filed yesterday that the Grammy-winning singer exposed them to a ‘sexually charged and uncomfortable’ work environment.
Zooming out: The allegations paint a picture of harassment and body-shaming at odds with the artist’s public promotion of self-love and body positivity.”
Read this story at Washington Post
A Chinese zoo denied rumors that its bear is a human in disguise.
“What’s going on? A recent video of a sun bear standing upright and appearing to wave at visitors has gone viral. People said it looked like a person in an ill-fitting bear suit.
So is it a bear or a human? It’s a 4-year-old bear named Angela, Hangzhou Zoo said. And now she’s famous: The zoo had a spike in visitors this week as people came to see her.”
Read this story at Washington Post
”Lives Lived: Edward Sexton and his business partner, Tommy Nutter, upended staid British fashion with swaggering suits made for rock ’n’ roll icons and pop stars, including John Lennon and Harry Styles. Sexton died at 80.” [New York Times]