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Elbridge Colby surrounded by Tucker Carlson, J.D. Vance, Josh Hawley, Laura Ingraham and Marco Rubio. | POLITICO illustration/Photos by U.S. Army, Getty Images, AP

By Jacob Heilbrunn

04/11/2023 04:30 AM EDT

Jacob Heilbrunn is editor of the National Interest and a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Councils Eurasia Center.

Elbridge Bridge Colby is, as Donald Trump might say, straight out of central casting for a member of D.C.s foreign policy elite. He has degrees from Harvard and Yale, a membership to Washingtons Metropolitan Club and the kind of coiffed hair and clipped accent that youd expect from an American blue-blood. So pristine is his pedigree his grandfather was head of the CIA that a lightly fictionalized version of him appears in the New York Times columnist Ross Douthats memoir of his undergraduate years at Harvard, titled Privilege.

But Colby, far from being a deep state darling, is the intellectual leader and rising star of an insurgent wing in the Republican Party rebelling against decades of dominant interventionist and Reaganite thinking.

For years, Colby has held that China is the principal threat abroad, and that the United States should focus on Asia to the near-exclusion of everywhere else including Russia and Ukraine. If Trump began the partys realignment away from the neoconservatives who want the U.S. to serve as the worlds policeman, Colby, who worked for Trump as a Defense Department official, is now looking to make that shift permanent. Especially since Russian President Vladimir Putins brutal invasion of Ukraine has drawn fresh eyes and resources toward confronting Russia, more in the GOP are coming around to Colbys point of view.

When Ron DeSantis in March dismissed Russias war on Ukraine as a mere territorial dispute and argued for a greater focus on the China threat, youd forgive Colby if he did a victory dance. Sure, the Florida governor and likely 2024 presidential hopeful walked back the statement slightly a few days later, but it was the latest sign that in the ongoing battle for the future of the Republican Party, Colbys views are advancing with lightning speed.

I would have a hard time identifying a single person in my time in Washington who has had a bigger impact in moving the needle of the debate on Ukraine and China, said A. Wess Mitchell, an assistant secretary of State in the Trump administration. Mitchell, who started a new think tank called the Marathon Initiative with Colby, is more hawkish on backing Ukraine than his co-founder.

Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, one of the vocal new populists and Ukraine skeptics in the GOP, added, Nowhere is Bridges leadership clearer than in the current debate over tradeoffs between aiding Ukraine and deterring China.

Colbys foreign policy influence is more than just another installment in the long-running fight between isolationists and hawks in the GOP. Its part of the mounting revival of the Asia First doctrine that the party championed in the aftermath of World War II, when the Nationalist forces of Chiang Kai-shek, a hero to American conservatives, fled to Taiwan in December 1949 as Maos communist forces won the civil war. The result was the rise of a vocal and highly influential China Lobby on the political right that demanded that Harry S. Truman withhold recognition of Red China and support Taiwan. Indeed, in 1951, Sen. Robert A. Taft, who was known as Mr. Republican, published a book called A Foreign Policy For Americans decrying Western Europeans for failing to pay for their own defense and warning that China was enemy number one.

Today, a new China Lobby is forming in the GOP, and Colby is one of its leaders. It espouses a self-consciously realist approach to foreign affairs, seeking to split the difference between the MAGA isolationists and the neoconservative hawks by arguing that China not Russia poses a dire threat to American national security, and that excessive support for Ukraine is jeopardizing it. It holds above all that American military planning and resources should be directed toward planning for a conflict with China over Taiwan.

When I spoke with Colby, he explained, Ukraine should not be the focus. The best way to avoid war with China is to be manifestly prepared such that Beijing recognizes that an attack on Taiwan is likely to fail. We need to be a hawk to get to a place where we can be a dove. Its about a balance of power.

Talk like this has won Colby admirers among those surfing the rights new populist wave. That includes Tucker Carlson, who has proved to be an influential voice in pushing the GOP to jettison Ukraine. When Colby appeared on Carlsons show last year and blasted the Biden administrations moral posturing on Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the world, the Fox News host declared, Elbridge Colby, I wish you were running the State Department. This March, Colby went on Foxs Ingraham Angle to warn that the ties between China and Russia were a massive danger. The notion that America needed to aid Ukraine first was a delusion and had led to it becoming bogged down in Europe.

Colby is also making appearances in more private, if no less influential, settings. He was recently invited to Capitol Hill to discuss foreign policy by the Republican Senate Steering Committee, where he addressed some 40 GOP senators.

Hes particularly allied himself with the new generation of GOP foreign policy realists (many of whom are also products of the Ivy League) such as Hawley and J.D. Vance of Ohio. His advocacy for a return to a realistic approach to U.S. interests is exactly what the foreign policy establishment doesnt want, but it is exactly what our nation needs, Hawley said.

And on the question of U.S. support for Ukraine, theres no doubt the GOPs skeptical faction has momentum. As one GOP Senate aide, granted anonymity because he wasnt cleared to speak publicly, told me, Bridge is far and away leading the charge and even pulling more historically hawkish senators such as Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) along with him. In a recent essay in the American Conservative titled American Renewal, Rubio complained that Europe isnt pulling its weight on defense and that the polite caretakers of American decline bend over backwards to appease Chinas communist regime.

Colby is also close to Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts, who helped lead opposition to legislation last year that provided $40 billion in military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine. Nearly 60 House Republicans voted against it, a sizeable minority, and its far from certain that Congress would pass another one today. Roberts and Colby recently co-authored a piece in Time asserting that our concentration on Ukraine has undermined our ability to address the worsening military situation in Asia, especially around Taiwan.

Ultimately, the 2024 Republican presidential nominee will largely drive the partys agenda. Its no surprise, then, that DeSantis immediately faced harsh criticism from some corners following his initial statement on Ukraine; with the GOP increasingly ideologically unmoored, the infighting to steer the party is more intense than ever.

When I asked Colby about his ties to any presidential campaigns, he punted by responding that its all very embryonic when it comes to the specific foreign policy stands of the Republican aspirants. He worked for Trump once before. But DeSantis is on his radar, too: Colby praised DeSantis remarks on Ukraine on Twitter, and the Florida governors new aide and New Right wunderkind Nate Hochman immediately retweeted him.

For all his professed desire to bridge the gap between the partys hawks and isolationists, Colbys career has represented a long march against the neocons who he believes continue to dominate debate in Washington.

Like his grandfather, William Colby, who disclosed the CIAs secrets about assassinations and other schemes to the Senate Church Committee in 1975 and later supported a nuclear freeze, Colby has always had a maverick streak. After he graduated from Harvard in 2002, Colby worked in the George W. Bush State Department. In a 2021 column about the post-9/11 era, his friend Ross Douthat recalled that Colby was the only member of his circle who got the second Iraq War right: Nightly in our unkempt apartments he argued with the hawks which is to say all of us channeling the realist foreign policy thinkers he admired, predicting quagmire, destabilization and defeat.

Colby explains his own intellectual odyssey by noting that he recoiled against the Bush-Cheney belief that foreign policy realism was dead and that America could create its own reality, intervening unilaterally wherever and wherever it chose without suffering any blowback.

It may seem remarkable but the neocon old guard still has a dominant influence in many quarters, he says. That foreign policy was disastrous 20 years ago and would be calamitous today. We could actually lose a great power war for the first time in our history. Ukraine is not the source of the problem but Ukraine has exacerbated it.

Colbys prescience about Iraq did not serve him well in the GOP. The Wall Street Journal reported in 2015 that Colby, then a fellow at the Center for a New American Security, was being seriously considered for a top job in the Jeb Bush presidential campaign, but that prominent, interventionist neoconservatives objected to him and ensured that he was axed.

It wasnt until Trump became president that Colby received a political lifeline, joining the Defense Department in May 2017 as deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and force development. Trumps rejection of the Iraq War and its supporters, along with his antagonism toward China, mixed well with Colbys views. Soon Colby took the lead in crafting the Trump administrations 2018 National Defense Strategy, which focused on China as the principal great power threat to America. He encountered a good deal of bureaucratic infighting, including from the U.S. Central Command and the Joint Staff which resisted change, but ended up prevailing in his emphasis on China, partly with the support of the Navy and Air Force.

After he exited government in 2018, Colby started up the Marathon Initiative to develop strategies for the U.S. to compete with its global rivals and wrote a book expanding upon his views called The Strategy of Denial: American Defense in an Age of Great Power Conflict. Speaking like a true realist, Colby says that his own position represents a natural equilibrium between the messianic Wilsonianism of Bush 43 and the head-in-sand isolationists.

But is China truly the frighteningly powerful empire that Colby discerns? Or is it beginning to falter under the weight of its own internal problems? There are more than a few who dissent from Colbys narrative throughout Republican ranks, even among Trump supporters and realists.

Dan Caldwell, a vice president at the Trumpist Center for Renewing America, observed on March 22 in Foreign Affairs, Conservatives should not act as though a war with China is preordained, lest they wind up unintentionally sparking one. William Ruger, another prominent foreign policy realist and former Trump nominee for ambassador to Afghanistan, agreed. He said, A cold war approach would harm American economic interests that could best be handled by a Goldilocks strategy.

Matthew Kroenig, a vice president at the Atlantic Council and a hawk, said the contention that anything going to Ukraine is taking away from China doesnt make sense. Addressing the Asia First argument that U.S. troops should be moved out of Europe, he wondered, Where would you put brigades from Europe to Asia? Meanwhile, senior GOP officials such as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell vehemently support Ukraines battle against Russia.

Colby maintains that Europe can step up to the challenge of meeting the Russian threat without too much U.S. help and pooh-poohs the notion that China views Ukraine as a test case for Western will in resisting tyranny. He suggests that its interventionist intellectuals and writers such as the Washington Posts Max Boot who are going soft on opposing tyranny in Asia because of their avidity to keep defending Ukraine. In a column that took a swipe at Colby, Boot warned that the return of so many Republicans to a quasi-isolationist, Asia First foreign policy is an ominous development.

Colby is having none of it. For those who argue that its wrong to appease Vladimir Putin with a peace settlement, as some powers tried with Hitler, Colby turns the metaphor around.

If theres a Munich, Colby says, its because were appeasing China. A real Neville Chamberlain move would be to give up Taiwan.

The question hovering over this patrician and pugilist is whether he can create regime change in the GOP itself.

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Elbridge Colby Wants to Finish What Donald Trump Started - POLITICO

Federal investigators are asking witnesses whether former President Donald J. Trump showed off to aides and visitors a map he took with him when he left office that contains sensitive intelligence information, four people with knowledge of the matter said.

The map has been just one focus of the broad Justice Department investigation into Mr. Trumps handling of classified documents after he departed the White House.

The nature of the map and the information it contained is not clear. But investigators have questioned a number of witnesses about it, according to the people with knowledge of the matter, as the special counsel overseeing the Justice Departments Trump-focused inquiries, Jack Smith, examines the former presidents handling of classified material after leaving office and weighs charges that could include obstruction of justice.

One person briefed on the matter said investigators have asked about Mr. Trump showing the map while aboard a plane. Another said that, based on the questions they were asking, investigators appeared to believe that Mr. Trump showed the map to at least one adviser after leaving office.

A third person with knowledge of the investigation said the map might also have been shown to a journalist writing a book. The Washington Post has previously reported that investigators have asked about Mr. Trump showing classified material, including maps, to political donors.

The question of whether Mr. Trump was displaying sensitive material in his possession after he lost the presidency and left office is crucial as investigators try to reconstruct what Mr. Trump was doing with boxes of documents that went with him to his Florida residence and private club, Mar-a-Lago.

Among the topics investigators have been focused on is precisely when Mr. Trump was at the club last year. In particular, they were interested in whether he remained at Mar-a-Lago to look at boxes of material that were still stored there before Justice Department counterintelligence officials seeking their return came to visit in early June, according to two people familiar with the questions.

Mr. Trump typically leaves Florida for his club in Bedminster, N.J., earlier than he did last year, when he was still at Mar-a-Lago for the visit from the Justice Department officials, on June 3. Investigators have been gathering evidence about whether Mr. Trump had aides bring him boxes to sift through after a grand jury subpoena was issued in May for any government documents Mr. Trump still had in his possession, the people said.

After the June 3 visit, when Justice Department officials were handed a batch of documents with classified markings that had been found at Mar-a-Lago, a lawyer for Mr. Trump signed a certification saying a diligent search had been conducted and all government material had been returned. That statement proved untrue two months later when the F.B.I. found hundreds of pages of additional classified documents during a court-authorized search.

Investigators have also asked questions about whether Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was ever mentioned in discussions related to the boxes of material, as well as whether donors to Mr. Trump were ever part of discussions about the material, according to people familiar with the questions.

Christopher M. Kise, a lawyer working with Mr. Trump on some of his cases, faulted the Justice Department for its focus on the former presidentshandling of classified material, like documents related to his dealings with the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. Mr. Kise suggested that the department should be focused onthe recent leaks of intelligence under the Biden administration aboutthe war in Ukraine.

Seems the priorities are misplaced here, he said. Americas national security apparatus is spending much time and taxpayer money alleging President Trump had old photos of K.J.U. and some outdated map while real wartime intelligence data is flying out the door. Might be time to focus on what matters.

The documents investigation being overseen by Mr. Smith, the special counsel, is running in parallel with another he is managing that is focused on Mr. Trumps efforts to remain in power after his election loss in 2020 and how those efforts led to the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol.

As part of the documents investigation, federal prosecutors have been building a potential case that Mr. Trump obstructed justice by seeking to avoid returning all the classified material in his possession after leaving office.

Investigators have compiled extensive witness testimony, texts and emails from a number of key witnesses. They have constructed a timeline of Mr. Trumps actions and movementsandinterviewed dozens of people, including close advisers to Mr. Trump as well as staff membersat Mar-a-Lagoand former administration officials who had knowledge of how he handled documents in different settings.

They have heard from witnesses who described Mr. Trump being urged repeatedly in 2021 by aides and advisersto return material to the National Archives, and then how he handled the grand jury investigation by the Justice Department that began early last year and resulted in a subpoena for any remaining classified material in Mr. Trumps possession.

Among the witnesses interviewed was a Mar-a-Lago employee who moved boxes with a close aide to Mr. Trump, Walt Nauta, according to people familiar with the events.

It remains less clear whether prosecutors are building a case for other potential charges beyond obstruction. In seeking the search warrant used last summer at Mar-a-Lago, prosecutors cited potential violations of the Espionage Act, which relates to mishandling of national defense information, and the removal or destruction of records, in addition to obstruction.

Prosecutors have now interviewed nearly everyone who could offer insight in connection with the documents, according to one person briefed on the range of witnesses.

Among those interviewed recently is one of the lawyers involved in Mr. Trumps response to the grand jury subpoena for remaining documents. Prosecutors successfully asked the chief judge who had been presiding over the grand jury until recently, Judge Beryl A. Howell, to allow them to question the lawyer, M. Evan Corcoran.

Judge Howell ruled that Mr. Corcoran had to testify to the grand jury in the case and could not invoke attorney-client privilege on certain topics. Judge Howell cited what is known as a crime-fraud exception to attorney-client privilege.

Her order ruling that Mr. Corcoran must testify was said to be accompanied by an 86-page memorandum of law. She found that the Justice Department had met the threshold for having a credible case that Mr. Trump had obstructed justice, justifying its request to override attorney-client privilege and require Mr. Corcorans testimony about his role, according to people familiar with the memorandums contents.

Judge Howell wrote not only about Mr. Trumps actions in relation to the subpoena last year, but also wrote that what she called misdirection with the National Archives in 2021 and early last year was apparently a dress rehearsal for how he handled the subpoena in May, according to a person briefed on its contents.

The court certainly appears to have allowed the government to invade the attorney-client privilege based on minimal proof, Mr. Kise said.

In a recent interview with Newsmax, Mr. Trump complained that Mr. Corcoran was being compelled to testify, saying he had always believed an attorney cant be subpoenaed.

If they testify truthfully, theyll see I did nothing wrong, Mr. Trump said.

This week, top congressional leaders and the senior Democrats and Republicans on the intelligence committees in both chambers of Congress gained access to classified documents recovered from Mr. Trump, as well as a smaller number discovered in recent months to be in the possession of President Biden from years earlier, and some recovered from former Vice President Mike Pence.

Read more:
Witnesses Asked About Trump's Handling of Map With Classified ... - The New York Times

Former first lady Melania Trump, who did not appear beside her husband during his recentcourt appearance in New York, has issued her first statement since he was charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in the first degree.

"News organizations have made assumptions about the former First Lady's stance on subjects that are personal, professional, and political over the past few weeks," the Office of Melania Trump tweetedTuesday. "In these articles, unnamed sources are cited to bolster the author's claims."

In a follow up tweet, the former first lady asks readers to "exercise caution and good judgment when determining whether or not stories concerning the former First Lady are accurate, particularly when they fail to cite Mrs. Trump as a source of information."

click to expand

She also tweeted "Happy Easter!" on Sunday; it was her first tweet in weeks.

Former President Donald Trump flew to New York for his arraignment on April 4 and returned to Florida as soon as it was over. That evening, headdressed his supportersat Mar-a-Lago, his Florida estate. Melania Trump was not at his side during the address.

Three of the former president's children, Donald Trump Jr., Tiffany Trump and Eric Trump, and Eric's wife Lara Trump, were in attendance at the Mar-a-Lago address. Other supporters in the crowd included GOP Representatives Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene, as well as Kari Lake, who lost the recent Arizona governor's race.

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Aliza Chasan is a digital producer at 60 Minutes and CBS News.

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Melania Trump cautions against assumptions in statement following Donald Trump's indictment - CBS News

Donald Trumps most recent Mar-a-Lago rant, the one following his first indictment on April 4, was mostly the same old stuff, delivered off a teleprompter with his usual listless monotoneas if by now his shtick bores even him. But one seemingly off-handed comment passed largely unnoticed, and the few who picked up on it largely laughed it off.

This lunatic special prosecutor named Jack SmithI wonder what it was prior to a change? Trump said that night. (The emphasis is mine.) He then paused for a moment, as if to let the cognoscenti savor his little aside, and a smattering of knowing, sinister laughter rippled across the room. At least a few people seemed to catch his drift.

But the mainstream media didnt. What was he suggesting, Jonathan Lemire asked on Morning Joethe next day? Was it that Jack Smith was using an alias? he asked with wonder. In fact, Trumps been throwing out the same question about Smith for months. Why he keeps bringing this up is something of a mystery, Steve Benen, a producer on The Rachel Maddow Show, wrote in late February

A little bit of historyAmericas and Trumpsmakes things considerably less mysterious. Any Jew of a certain age recognizes Trumps trope as a classic anti-Semitic slur, one dating back to Henry Ford and probably before.

Dont you know? Yet another way we Jews pull fast ones on real Americans is by hiding behind anglicized names (plain or pretentious) the better to insinuate ourselves into American life. With any other immigrant group, name changes are viewed largely as matter of convenience; if a Hungarian or Italian changes his name, its no big deal. But let a Jew do it, and its evidence of a plot.

The odd thing is, its been decades since Jews changed their names in large numbers, whether to rid themselves of the unwieldy or unpronounceable, or to elude pervasive anti-Semitismor both. Today, most of us cope OK with the names we have, as do most of the non-Jews we deal with. Among ourselves, in fact, we even joke about it. That was Irwin Kniberg, Mel Brooks said after Alan King introduced him at a testimonial a Jewish group threw for Sid Caesar some years back. I am Melvin Kaminsky. The only real one here is Sid Caesar. Thats his name!

Donald Drumpf, er, Trump, however, remains a perfectly preserved time capsule of prejudiceseven ancient and anachronistic ones. Everything he learned at Fred Trumps bigoted feet hes retained, even dated dog whistles that state-of-the-art opportunists like Ron DeSantiswho toss around George Soross name with ease and impunityhave long-since abandoned.

Whether or not Smith is (a) Jewish and (b) changed his namedutifully but reluctantly, I asked his spokesperson both questions, and got the predictable and entirely understandable no comment in replyis completely immaterial; what matters is that Trump evidently thinks he is and he has. Maybe its Smiths dark beard, which, when combined with his intense lookyou can see it in one of the rare extant photographs of him, the one that keeps popping up on MSNBCdoes make him look a bit like Theodor Herzl. Or its that Smith of his: What better name, so wonderfully generic and nondescript, could a Hebrew adopt to slip unsuspected into the American mainstream?

Henry Ford, an inveterate anti-Semite from whom Hitler learned much, expounded on these Jewish manipulations a hundred years ago in his Dearborn Independent. To mollify a suspicion held against them wherever they have lived (a suspicion so general and so persistent as to be explainable only on the assumption that it was abundantly justified) the Jews have been quick to adopt the names and colors of whatever country they may be living in, he explained.

The Jewish passion for misleading people by names, Ford wrote, had just given immense camouflage to those Jews whod been behind the recent Russian Revolution and, closer to home, misled patrons of the countrys leading department stores. There is an immense difference in the state of mind in which a customer enters the store of Isadore Levy and the state of mind in which he enters the store of Alex May, Ford explained.

But it wasnt only merchants. Take the head of the American Jewish Committee, Louis Marshall. What could his old family name have been before it was changed for the name of the chief justice of the Supreme Court of the United States? Ford asked. (In Fords eyes, Marshall was guilty not only of deception but also of effrontery.) And actors, too: Charlie Chaplin, Ford speculated, had probably been Caplan or Kaplan. (It hadnt mattered to Ford, either, that Chaplin was not actually a Jew.)

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When anglicizing our names threatened Harvard President A. Lawrence Lowells mission to slash Jewish enrollment in the 1920s, Harvard decreed that all applicants must disclose whether their parents had changed their names. Twenty-five years later, during the Red Scare following World War II, the issue flared up again. Seeking to discredit a letter denouncing the House Un-American Activities Committee, Representative John Rankin of Mississippi rattled off the foreign-sounding, Jewish-sounding, birth names of some of the signatories, as if each were a smoking gun.

Danny Kaye, he said as he went down the list. We found out that his real name was David Daniel Kaminsky. Another one is Eddie Cantor, whose real name is Edward Iskowitz. There is someone who calls himself Edward Robinson. His real name is Emanuel Goldenberg. There is another one here who calls himself Melvyn Douglas, whose real name is Melvyn Hesselberg. Neal Gablers biography of Walter Winchell describes the same Rankin calling Winchell Lipschultz and declaring, I am a little skittish about a man who has his nose manicured, his face lifted, his name changed.

Such outing has largely vanished from American life. In her book A Rosenberg by Any Other Name, Kirsten Fermaglich, a historian at Michigan State University, notes that some American Jews have even reclaimed their original family names. But Trump never got the message. Only a few weeks after Smiths appointment, he started with the innuendos. Apart from calling him a thug, he put Smiths name in scare quotes, then appended a question mark to it. The night before his indictment, he was back at it, referring to Jack Smith (What did his name used to be?).

Trumps queries sent Geoff Herbert of the Syracuse Post-Standard to check on Smiths origins, at least back to his high school days in Liverpool, N.Y. All he found was that Smith had played varsity football and baseball. Trump has provided no evidence to suggest that Smith changed his name, he reported. Smith is identified in his high school yearbook as Jack Smith.

Trumps relationship with Jews is complicated. His mentor (Roy Cohn) was one, and his daughter married anotherand even became one herself. But that hasnt stopped him from trafficking in a long list of anti-Semitic tropes. His obsession with Jewish genealogy is also nothing new. If Jon Stewart is so above it all & legit, why did he change his name from Jonathan Leibowitz[?] he tweeted in 2013, probably after Stewart had ridiculed him. He should be proud of his heritage!

Stewart wasnt taken in, let alone impressed, by Trumps new pose as defender of the Jews. So I start to think to myself, oh, I think this guy is trying to let people know Im a Jew, he later said. And I think to myself, doesnt my face do that? It would be funny, he said, if it wasnt so toxically crude and horrible.

Many people dont know, but Donald Trumps real name is Fuckface Von Clownstick, he then added. I wish he would embrace the Von Clownstick heritage.

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Donald Trump Sinks to a New Low by Dog-Whistling an Old Racist Tune - The Nation

Without fanfare, the Justice Departments investigation into former President Donald J. Trumps attempts to overturn the 2020 election is approaching an important milestone.

After nearly nine months of behind-the-scenes clashes, Mr. Trumps lawyers have largely lost their battle to limit testimony from some of his closest aides to a federal grand jury. The decisions, in a string of related cases, represent an almost total failure by Mr. Trump to constrain the reach of the inquiry and have strengthened the position of Jack Smith, the special counsel overseeing the investigation, as he builds an accounting of the former presidents efforts to retain power after his defeat at the polls.

Having lost their challenges to grand jury subpoenas and largely failed to limit the scope of their testimony with assertions of executive and attorney-client privilege, a last group of aides is now being forced to answer questions.

On Tuesday, it was Stephen Miller, an adviser and top speechwriter for Mr. Trump, who showed up in Federal District Court in Washington and spent several hours in front of the grand jury. On Thursday, it was John Ratcliffe, the former director of national intelligence. The process could culminate near the end of this month with an appearance by former Vice President Mike Pence.

While questions linger over pending appeals and potential efforts by some of the witnesses to delay things further by invoking the Fifth Amendment, the developments suggest that Mr. Smith is close to finishing the fact-finding phase of his work and is moving closer to a decision about seeking charges against Mr. Trump and others.

There are no clear indications about when Mr. Smith might decide about charges in the case, but he faces pressure on several fronts to keep the process moving.

The political season could be a consideration: The 2024 presidential race is heating up, with Mr. Trump still regarded as the front-runner for the Republican nomination, and the first debate of the G.O.P. primary season has been scheduled for August.

On the legal front, the looming decision by a district attorney in Georgia, Fani T. Willis, on whether to seek indictment of Mr. Trump on charges related to his efforts to overturn his election loss has placed added pressure on Mr. Smith, who must decide whether allowing another prosecutor to go first with similar charges could complicate any prosecution he pursues.

The speed of the Georgia state investigation increases the pressure on Jack Smith to move with alacrity and to get his witnesses before the federal grand jury now, said John P. Fishwick Jr., an Obama appointee who served as the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Virginia from 2015 to 2017. Once the state indictment comes down, it can really bog down the D.O.J. investigation.

Among those who have worked with him, Mr. Smith is seen as a diligent manager bent on collecting the information needed to make a decision while remaining cognizant of the time pressures and the highly partisan atmosphere in which he is operating.

In his first and only public comments a statement emailed to reporters shortly after his appointment in November he vowed that the pace of his Trump investigations would not pause or flag, noting that he would move the investigations forward expeditiously and thoroughly to whatever outcome the facts and the law dictate.

Mr. Smith is also overseeing the parallel investigation into Mr. Trumps handling of classified information after leaving office and whether the former president obstructed government efforts to reclaim the materials.

Attorney General Merrick B. Garland, who will ultimately make the decision on whether to indict Mr. Trump, has told associates that he will not overrule Mr. Smiths judgment, whatever it turns out to be, unless he believes the special counsel has deviated from departmental standards and procedures.

Mr. Garland, and his top deputy Lisa O. Monaco, have publicly projected an air of detachment from the case, but they have been following developments in the privilege fights that have been playing out in the federal courthouse that sits just a few blocks from their office. They have been receiving regular briefings from aides who are getting updates from members of Mr. Smiths team, according to two people familiar with the situation.

The legal battles over privilege began well before Mr. Smith was appointed to the special counsel post and have pitted two powerful forces against each other.

In the course of the investigation into Mr. Trumps efforts to overturn the election, federal prosecutors have subpoenaed an army of Mr. Trumps former aides in an effort to have the grand jury hear as many firsthand accounts as possible of his behavior in the White House in the days leading up to the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Mr. Trumps lawyers have countered by asserting that any adviser close to the former president should not have to answer certain questions in front of the grand jury because of attorney-client privilege, which protects communications between lawyers and those they represent, and executive privilege, which shields some communications between the president and members of his administration.

Among the first people to engage in this debate were Marc Short and Greg Jacob, two of Mr. Pences top aides, who went into the grand jury in July and asserted privilege in response to certain questions, prompting prosecutors to file motions compelling their full testimony. Setting a pattern for the months that followed, Mr. Trumps lawyers fought those motions but ultimately lost their case in front of Beryl A. Howell, then the chief federal judge in Washington, and subsequently in front of a federal appeals court.

With the privilege waived, Mr. Short and Mr. Jacob testified for a second time in October. They were followed two months later by Pat A. Cipollone and Patrick F. Philbin, the two top lawyers in Mr. Trumps White House, who went through the same process.

The fight dragged on into this year as another round of aides including Mr. Miller; Dan Scavino, a onetime deputy chief of staff; and Mr. Scavinos boss, Mark Meadows, Mr. Trumps final chief of staff all tried, and failed, to assert forms of privileges. The last skirmish took place just a couple of weeks ago when a new chief judge, James E. Boasberg, turned down efforts to limit Mr. Pences testimony.

While getting these witnesses in front of the grand jury has been challenging and time consuming, the accounts they have given or will eventually give are only a fraction of the total body of evidence that Mr. Smith and his predecessors have gathered.

Well before Mr. Smith arrived, another prosecutor, Thomas P. Windom, obtained grand jury testimony from pro-Trump figures like Ali Alexander, who organized several prominent Stop the Steal events, and from a wide array of state officials involved in a plan to create fake slates of pro-Trump electors in swing states that were actually won by President Biden.

Mr. Windom, who now works with Mr. Smith, also oversaw the seizure of phones from lawyers close to Mr. Trump, including John Eastman, Jeffrey Clark and Boris Epshteyn. Mike Roman, a campaign strategist who was the director of Election Day operations for the Trump campaign in 2020, also had his phone seized under Mr. Windoms watch.

Other prosecutors who now work with the special counsel began an inquiry before Mr. Smith arrived into Save America PAC, a fund-raising operation that Mr. Trump created after his loss in the election. As part of that investigation, dozens of subpoenas have been issued to companies that have received money from the PAC, including some law firms.

Danny Hakim contributed reporting.

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Witness Testimony Helps Prosecutors Advance Trump Election Case - The New York Times