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On September 15, 2020, President Donald Trump, sitting next to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the foreign ministers of the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain on a White House balcony, delivered a speech in which he declared they were changing the course of history. Celebrating the signing of normalization agreements between Israel and these two Arab statesknown as the Abraham AccordsTrump proclaimed, Together, these agreements will serve as the foundation for a comprehensive peace across the entire region, something which nobody thought was possible, certainly not in this day and age. In his remarks, Trump never once mentioned the Palestinians.

That morning, Jared Kushner, Trumps son-in-law and key adviser on Middle East policy, hit the television news shows to hail the accords. He hyped them as the beginning of the end of the Israel-Arab conflict. When asked about the unresolved issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Kushner, supremely confident, remarked, Those issues arent as complicated as people have made them out to be.

Oops.

Trumps grand strategic approach to the Middle East, orchestrated by Kushner, was to focus on state-to-state relations between Israel and Arab nations. Cool down the temperature at that levelencourage trade, commerce tourism, cultural exchanges and other connections between Israel and its neighbors and allow Arab Muslims to visit the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalemand peace will follow. These agreements were commendable and genuine diplomatic advances. But this overall approach essentially kicked the Palestinians and their grievances (the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, its apartheid policies, and its blockade of Gaza, which turned the strip, according to Human Rights Watch, into an open-air prison) to the curb. This justifiably angered Palestinians. In Gaza and elsewhere, Palestinians protested the accords for allowing Arab states to normalize relations with Israel absent a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians. And the agreements ended up being not that popular in the Arab signatory states.

After Trump departed the White House, Kushner and other Trumpers insisted that Trump never received sufficient credit for the accords. Last September, at a ceremony marking the two-yearanniversary of the agreements (which also came to include Sudan, Kosovo, and Morocco), Kushner griped that Trump Derangement Syndrome had prevented the Biden administration from recognizing this historic achievement of the Trump crew. Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) called the accords the most significant peace agreement of the 21st century, and history will always remember the pioneers of this peace deal.

In March, speaking at a conference in Miami, Kushner again oversold the accords. He claimed that they boosted stability in the Middle East and that Arabs and Muslims [are] now able to say nice things about Israel and Jews,

In a way, Trump and Kushner engaged in trickle-down diplomacy. They concentrated on brokering deals among the leaders of Arab states and Israel that ignored the Palestinians. (Kushner came up with a plan for an Israeli-Palestinian accord, which went nowhere, and he has said he believed it fizzled because Palestinian leaders were corrupt and not incentivized to solve the problem.) The Abraham Accords Declaration, a brief document signed on that historic day at the White House, called for efforts to promote interfaith and intercultural dialogue to advance a culture of peace among the three Abrahamic religions and all humanity. It noted that the signers believe that the best way to address challenges is through cooperation and dialogue and that developing friendly relations among States advances the interests of lasting peace in the Middle East and around the world. It had no direct reference to the Palestinians.

Though the Biden administration rejected using the term Abraham Accordsit preferred calling these pacts normalization agreementsit recently was seeking a similar deal with Saudi Arabia, which could include a mutual defense pact and US assistance to the Saudis civilian nuclear program (which, of course, could also boost any effort by the Kingdom to cook up nuclear weapons). Like the agreements Trump and Kushner brokered, this accordnow presumably on hold or deaddid not appear to do much to address the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Not surprisingly, in the aftermath of the heinous Hamas attack on Israeli civilians and Israels counterstrikes on Gaza, Trump misleadingly claimed that he had brought peace to the Middle East when he was president. At a rally in New Hampshire, he asserted, Less than four years ago we had peace in the Middle East with the historic Abraham Accords. Today, we have an all-out war in Israel and its going to spread very quickly. What a difference a president makes.

Kushner, too, in recent days, has been insisting that Trump and he got it right in the Middle East. (Kushner certainly was generously rewarded for hiswork on the Middle East, which included arranging a $110 billion weapons sale to Saudi Arabia. Six months after leaving the White House, he secured a $2 billion investment from the kingdom for his new private equity firm.) In a podcast last week, he touted the Abraham Accords and said, My hope and prayers are that President Trump is reelected and that hes able to then restore calm and peace and prosperity to the world.

The peace achieved by the accords was hardly a full peace. It left out the most critical part of the Middle East conflict. Israelis, the Palestinians, and the world are now paying the price for the lack of progress on this front. Cobbling together the Abraham Accords was akin to clearing brusha useful and important endeavorbut it left in place a massive pile of tinder. A wildfire now rages, and Trump and Kushners strategy has gone up in smoke.

See the original post:
How Donald Trump and Jared Kushner overlooked the key to Middle East peace - Mother Jones

On Tuesday, Donald Trump was back in New York to attend his civil trial on charges of business fraud, and, as usual, he stopped directly outside the courtroom to attack the prosecutor, New Yorks attorney general, Letitia James; and the judge, Arthur F. Engoron. They are the frauds, Trump said, repeating his false allegation that James and Engoron personally valued his Mar-a-Lago estate at eighteen million dollars. (In fact, a Palm Beach property appraiser valued the property at between $18 million and $27.6 million.) Trump has denied all wrongdoing.

The former Presidents latest rant came a day after U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkanwho is overseeing his federal trial in Washington, D.C., on charges relating to his failed effort to overturn the results of the 2020 electionimposed a partial gag order on him, saying that he is not allowed to launch a pretrial smear campaign against participating government staff, their families, and foreseeable witnesses. In recent months, Trump has repeatedly referred to the special counsel Jack Smith, who is overseeing the cases prosecution, as deranged. He has also attacked Mike Pence, his former Vice-President, and the retired general Mark Milley, who was formerly the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staffboth of whom may well be called to testify about what they saw in the period after the 2020 Presidential election.

As Trump was renewing his assault on the courts, one of his staunchest allies in Washington, the Ohio Republican Jim Jordan, was making a bid to become the next Speaker of the House. In an initial floor vote, Jordan fell well short of the tally he needed, with twenty Republican representatives voting against him. The G.O.P. caucus subsequently indicated that it would hold another vote on Wednesday, and Jordan said, Were going to keep working.

If Jordan were to be elected Speaker, it would signal that the Republican Party on Capitol Hill had formally accepted its role as a mere appendage to an insurrectionary right-wing movement led by a self-aggrandizing megalomaniac. Jordan was a key point man in the House for Trumps efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Since then, in his roles as head of the House Judiciary Committee and chair of the new House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, he has acted as a mouthpiece for the former President and his efforts to discredit his accusers. Earlier this year, Jordan called for defunding parts of the F.B.I. and the Justice Department.

In seeking a limited gag order from Judge Chutkan, lawyers acting for the special counsel pointed out that, just as Trumps statements after the 2020 election were designed to undermine public faith in the U.S. political system, his attacks on judges, prosecutors, and potential witnesses are intended to undermine public confidence in an institutionthe judicial systemand to intimidate individuals. Trumps ultimate goal is the same one shared by all would-be despots: to discredit the existing system and liberate themselves from the normal bounds of democratic politics.

Campaigning in Iowa, Trump responded to Chutkans ruling by portraying himself as a victim and saying he would be the only politician in history that runs with a gag order where Im not allowed to criticize people. Actually, Chutkan clearly stated that Trump may still vigorously seek public support as a Presidential candidate, debate policies and people related to that candidacy, criticize the current administration and assert his belief that this prosecution is politically motivated. She added, But I cannot imagine any other criminal case in which a defendant is permitted to call the prosecutor deranged or a thug, and I will not permit it here simply because the defendant is running a political campaign.

Despite Chutkans ruling, the courts are still giving Trump a good deal of leeway because he is a former President running for relection. If any other defendant stood outside a court and called the judge and prosecutors frauds who were trying to set him up, they would risk being held in contempt, and maybe even being thrown in the slammer. Trump exploits his privilege, knowing that judges like to avoid political controversy and that elected Republicans like Jordan will back him up no matter what he says or does.

During Trumps 2016 election campaign, Jordan supported the future President and made his bones with the candidate by publicly campaigning for him shortly after the Access Hollywood tape was released. After the 2020 election, Jordan repeatedly expounded Trumps baseless charges that the election had been stolen. On January 5, 2021, according to the Times, he forwarded to his friend Mark Meadows, Trumps chief of staff, a text message he had received from a former Pentagon official that outlined a legal strategy to overturn the election, and on the following morning he spoke with Trump himself for ten minutes before the former President headed out to address his supporters at the Ellipse.

Jim Jordan was privy to nearly everything, if not everything, about and pertaining to January 6th, Cassidy Hutchinson, who served as a senior aide to Meadows in the Trump White House, says in a new Democratic political ad that targets Jordan. Jim Jordan cant be trusted with the Constitution. Hutchinson is no Democrat; she just knows a Trump enabler when she sees one. Despite being in his ninth term as the representative of Ohios Fourth District, Jordan has yet to be the primary sponsor of a bill that has been enacted. Rather than making laws, he has concentrated on the politics of protest and performance, co-founding the House Freedom Caucus and consistently undermining efforts to forge bipartisan agreements on spending and other issues. The former G.O.P. Speaker John Boehner, in his 2021 memoir, said he never saw a guy who spent more time tearing things apart.

If Jordan still cant garner enough votes, the country will be spared the experience of having a legislative terrorist (Boehners words again) in the Speakers office. But the very destructive attributes that Boehner, Jordans fellow Ohio Republican, identified in him make him a perfect ally for Trump, and a walking embodiment of a radicalized G.O.P. That wont change, even if his Speaker bid fails because enough Republican representatives from Biden-majority districts hold the line and refuse to vote for such an extremist.

Read the rest here:
The Symbiotic, Democracy-Eroding Relationship Between Donald Trump and Jim Jordan - The New Yorker

Former President Donald Trump speaks after returning from a break during his civil fraud trial at New York State Supreme Court on Oct. 18 in New York City. Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images hide caption

Former President Donald Trump speaks after returning from a break during his civil fraud trial at New York State Supreme Court on Oct. 18 in New York City.

The Justice Department urged a judge Thursday to reject Donald Trump's bid to dismiss the federal election interference case against him, arguing for the bedrock principle that "no one is above the law."

"He is subject to the federal criminal laws like more than 330 million other Americans, including Members of Congress, federal judges, and everyday citizens," wrote assistant special counsel James Pearce.

Earlier this month, Trump's legal team moved to dismiss four felony charges against him in Washington, D.C., on the ground that he should enjoy presidential "immunity." The Supreme Court has not ruled on such a claim of absolute immunity from a current or former president.

Trump's legal team has suggested that they may seek review of the issue before the nation's highest court, which could also help him win a delay of the trial scheduled for March 4, 2024.

But in their new filing, prosecutors wrote that the legal issue is not a close or complicated one. Rather, they said, Trump mischaracterized the allegations against him and vastly overstated the historical and constitutional support for his claims.

Under Justice Department interpretations, sitting presidents enjoy only temporary immunity from prosecution that ends after they depart the White House, the special counsel team said. To extend such protections to a former president would "effectively preclude any form of accountability for a president who commits crimes at the end of his term of office."

If the court accepts Trump's sweeping arguments, the Justice Department said, it would shield presidents who take bribes in exchange for lucrative federal contracts for their family members; presidents who instruct the FBI to plant evidence on political adversaries; and presidents who sell nuclear secrets to foreign rivals. The logic is particularly troubling in a president's second term, the special counsel team wrote, when a president no longer needs to face voters in another election, removing yet another check on his behavior.

"Immunity from criminal prosecution would be particularly inappropriate where, as here, the former president is alleged to have engaged in criminal conduct aimed at overturning the results of a presidential election in order to remain in office," assistant special counsel Pearce wrote in the filing late Thursday.

The indictment handed up by a federal grand jury placed Trump at the center of a conspiracy to overturn the election results and exploit an atmosphere that led to the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, injuring more than 140 law enforcement officers. Trump stands accused of conspiring against the government he once led and of violating the civil rights of millions of American voters. He has pleaded not guilty.

"Breaking 234 years of precedent, the incumbent administration has charged President Trump for acts that lie not just within the 'outer perimeter,' but at the heart of his official responsibilities as President," wrote Trump attorneys John Lauro and Todd Blanche in their Oct. 5 motion to dismiss the election interference case. "In doing so, the prosecution does not, and cannot, argue that President Trump's efforts to ensure election integrity, and to advocate for the same, were outside the scope of his duties."

In his bid to dismiss the case, Trump's lawyers argued that no other American president had faced federal criminal prosecution, putting history and tradition on the side of presidential immunity. But prosecutors said it may be that Trump's unprecedented legal problems could simply reflect his unprecedented behavior. In all, he faces criminal charges in four separate jurisdictions: Florida; Fulton County, Georgia; New York; and Washington, D.C.

Lawyers working for special counsel Jack Smith cited the words of prominent conservative legal thinkers and Republican lawmakers during Trump's impeachment, including Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who said only weeks after the Capitol siege: "We have a criminal justice system in this country. We have civil litigation, and former presidents are not immune from being held accountable by either one."

More:
Trump is not 'above the law' and should not receive blanket immunity, DOJ says - NPR

Donald Trump just became his own hypeman in the trials he faces for attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

The ex-president promised yet again on Friday to produce irrefutable evidence in court that he got robbed of a victory after lying about his election loss for three years.

Massive information and 100% evidence will be made available during the Corrupt Trials started by our Political Opponent, he wrote on Truth Social. We will never let 2020 happen again. Look at the result, OUR COUNTRY IS BEING DESTROYED. MAGA!!!

Trump even threw in what many people identified as thinly veiled racism.

Does anyone notice that the Election Rigging Biden Administration never goes after the Riggers, but only after those that want to catch and expose the Rigging dogs, he said.

Following a similar statement about riggers in August, critics, including his former communications director Alyssa Farah Griffin, accused the ex-president of using a racist dogwhistle to appeal to bigots. Riggers, of course, is just a letter away from a heinous slur.

Weve been here before with Trump and his promises to verify his baseless claims of a stolen election. He recently announced a press conference to present a CONCLUSIVE report that would lead to a complete EXONERATION. But he canceled it.

Trump cant really cancel a trial, so maybe well see that purported evidence after all. Promises, promises.

In the meantime, potential legal jeopardy mounted for the autocratic ex-president and current Republican presidential front-runner. Trumps co-defendants Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro both pleaded guilty in the Georgia election conspiracy case and agreed to testify against their alleged accomplices, which would include Trump.

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Donald Trump Promises 100% Evidence Of 2020 Fraud With A ... - Yahoo News

Mr. Trumps adversaries often look to the courts for relief, but theres no remedy there for his tirades. The First Amendment protects all but the most explicit incitements to violence, so Mr. Trump has little reason to fear that prosecutors will bring charges against him for those remarks.

The most notorious moment of Mr. Trumps presidency also demonstrated the limits of relying on the courts as a meaningful check on his provocations. In his speech on the Ellipse on Jan. 6, 2021, he urged his supporters to fight like hell, and many did just that at the Capitol. But they paid a price, and he didnt. In yet another example of his life without consequences, more than 1,000 people have been charged for their conduct on Jan. 6, and many if not most of them broke the law because they thought thats what the president at the time wanted. Still, the special counsel Jack Smith refrained from charging Mr. Trump with inciting the violence, undoubtedly because of the Constitutions broad protection for freedom of speech. Incitements like Mr. Trumps, even if they are not crimes in themselves, can have dangerous consequences, as they did on Jan. 6.

Angry people, especially those predisposed to violence, can be set off by encouragement that falls well short of the legal standard for criminal incitement. To see the consequences of such constitutionally protected provocation, one need only look to the case of Timothy McVeigh, who set off the bomb at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people on April 19, 1995. More than a decade before the attack, when Mr. McVeigh was still in high school, he first read The Turner Diaries, a novel about a right-wing rebellion against the federal government. Earl Turner, the hero and narrator of the novel, ignites a civil war by setting off a truck bomb next to the F.B.I. building in Washington which planted the idea for what Mr. McVeigh later did in Oklahoma City. After Bill Clinton took office in 1993, Mr. McVeighs revulsion at the new president prompted him to move the idea from the back of his mind to a definite plan of attack.

Mr. McVeigh was specifically outraged by the F.B.I.s raid on the Branch Davidian complex near Waco, Texas, which led to the death of 82 Branch Davidians and four federal agents and ended on April 19, 1993, and by Mr. Clintons signing of a ban on assault weapons, which took place the following year.

Mr. McVeighs anger was boiling at a time of incendiary political language in the mid-1990s, when, for example, Newt Gingrich, who would go on to become speaker of the House in 1995, said: People like me are what stand between us and Auschwitz. I see evil all around me every day. In particular, on his long drives across the country, Mr. McVeigh became a dedicated listener to Rush Limbaugh, whose radio talk show was in its heyday. Mr. Limbaugh was saying things like, The second violent American revolution is just about I got my fingers about a quarter of an inch apart is just about that far away. Of course, all of this rhetoric, from the words of the novel to those of Mr. Gingrich and Mr. Limbaugh, was protected by the First Amendment.

Originally posted here:
Opinion | Donald Trump Is Going to Get Someone Killed - The New York Times