Former U.S. President Donald Trump is heading Thursday to Atlanta, Georgia, to surrender on racketeering and conspiracy charges linked to his efforts to upend his 2020 reelection loss in the southern state.

After flying in from his golf resort in New Jersey, Trump will head to the Fulton County jail in Atlanta, where he will be arrested and booked for an unprecedented fourth time in the past five months. After being fingerprinted and having a mug shot taken, he is expected to be released pending trial on a $200,000 bond his lawyers negotiated earlier this week with Fulton County prosecutor Fani Willis.

“Can you believe it? I’ll be going to Atlanta, Georgia on Thursday to be ARRESTED,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social account earlier this week.

No previous U.S. president has been charged with criminal offenses, but Trump is now facing 91 charges across the four indictments for his alleged actions before, during and after his single-term presidency ended in early 2021.

He faces 13 charges in Georgia, where Willis on Thursday called for an October 23 start date for his trial and that of 18 co-defendants. But Trump and others could object to a trial starting in two months. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee will ultimately pick the date.

Even with the array of charges he is facing, Trump is the leading Republican contender for the party’s 2024 presidential nomination to run against the presumptive Democratic nominee, President Joe Biden.

Regardless of when the trial in Atlanta might start, Trump is already facing weeks of criminal trials he would be obligated to appear at in the first half of 2024. But he made a calculated decision that his national polling lead over other Republican presidential hopefuls is so commanding — 40 percentage points or more — that he skipped the party’s first presidential debate Wednesday night.

The 77-year-old Trump, if convicted in any of the cases, could face years in prison.

He has denied all wrongdoing while assailing the three prosecutors pursuing the four cases against him and two of the four judges randomly picked to oversee his trials. He has claimed that the allegations leveled against him are a political witch hunt aimed at thwarting his 2024 campaign to reclaim the presidency.

In agreeing to the bond for his release in Georgia — the first time he has had to post cash to stay free pending trial — Trump also agreed to not threaten or intimidate witnesses, including on social media platforms.

For months, Trump has claimed that Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith, who has filed two of the cases against him, is “deranged” and a “crackhead,” while contending that two other prosecutors, Alvin Bragg in a New York case, and Willis, both of whom are Black, are “racist” for filing their indictments against him.

About half of Trump’s 18 co-defendants have already met Willis’ demand that they surrender by noon on Friday. Former Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani, best known as the New York mayor during the 2001 al-Qaida terrorist attacks on the city, Jenna Ellis and Sidney Powell all turned themselves in on Wednesday and were released on bail.

Trump’s last White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and former senior Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark both reached $100,000 bond deals with Willis to secure their release pending trials. 

Ahead of his flight to Georgia, Trump hired veteran Atlanta criminal defense lawyer Steve Sadow to oversee his defense.

Sadow said in a statement that Trump “should never have been indicted,” adding, “he is innocent of all the charges brought against him.”

He added that “prosecutions intended to advance or serve the ambitions and careers of political opponents of the president have no place in our justice system.”

The Georgia case against Trump stems broadly from his taped January 2, 2021, telephone call to the state’s election chief, Brad Raffensperger, asking him to “find” 11,780 votes, one more than Biden’s margin of victory, so he could claim victory in the state. Until Trump, no Republican presidential candidate had lost the state since 1992.

In addition, Trump is accused in Georgia of conspiring to create a slate of fake electors in the state to cast their ballots for him, rather than the legitimate ones for Biden, when Congress met on January 6, 2021, to certify the election outcome in the Electoral College.

At stake were Georgia’s 16 electoral votes, although the state counted the popular presidential vote three times, with Biden winning each time.

The U.S. does not pick its presidents in the national popular vote, although Biden won 7 million more votes than Trump in 2020. Rather, the national outcome is determined in 50 state-by-state elections, with the biggest states holding the most sway in the subsequent Electoral College vote count.

Trump contested the outcome in seven states he narrowly lost to Biden, claiming that voting irregularities and cheating cost him another four-year term in the White House. Overturning the Georgia result by itself would not have changed the national outcome.

To this day, Trump denies he lost the election. But dozens of judges have ruled against his fraud claims. None of the seven states Trump contested reversed its conclusion that Biden had legitimately won its electoral votes.
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A Moscow court on Thursday extended by three months the pre-trial detention of jailed U.S. journalist Evan Gershkovich. He will now stay behind bars on espionage charges until at least the end of November, Russian state news agency Tass reported.

The Wall Street Journal reporter was detained at the end of March while on assignment in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg.

Moscow has accused him of spying, which he, his employer and the U.S. government vehemently deny. The State Department has classified him as wrongfully detained.

Gershkovich is the first American reporter to be detained in Russia on espionage charges since the Cold War.

Gershkovich, 31, arrived at the Moscow court Thursday in a white prison van and was led out handcuffed. He appeared in court to hear the result of the prosecution’s motion to extend his arrest from August 30.

This is the second time his pre-trial detention has been extended, both times by three months.

Reporters were not allowed to witness Thursday’s proceedings in the court. Tass said it took place behind closed doors due to the classified nature of some details in the case.

On Thursday, The Wall Street Journal said in a statement, “Today, our colleague and distinguished journalist Evan Gershkovich appeared for a pre-trial hearing where his improper detention was extended yet again. We are deeply disappointed he continues to be arbitrarily and wrongfully detained for doing his job as a journalist. The baseless accusations against him are categorically false, and we continue to push for his immediate release. Journalism is not a crime.”
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Eight Republicans who want to be president of the United States shared a stage Wednesday night in Wisconsin for their party’s first debate ahead of next year’s election.

The two-hour televised debate, the first held by Republicans in this election cycle, featured spirited exchanges about what one of the moderators called “the elephant who is not in the room” – the absent party front-runner, former President Donald Trump, who decided he is so far ahead in the polls he did not need to be on the stage.

Some of the contenders, such as Trump’s former vice president, Mike Pence, and former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, deemed Trump disqualified from serving again because of what they said was his disrespect for the Constitution, as well as the 91 felony counts he now faces.

Trump is set to surrender for arrest and booking in Atlanta, Georgia, on Thursday in connection with the fourth indictment, which accuses him of racketeering and interference in trying to upend his 2020 reelection loss in the southern state.

“The American people need to know that the president asked me to put him over the Constitution,” demanding he refuse to oversee the congressional certification that Democrat Joe Biden had defeated Trump in the 2020 election, Pence told the audience in the Fiserv Forum.

Former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley declared, ”Trump is the most disliked politician in America. We can’t win a general election that way.”

However, political novice Vivek Ramaswamy, rising in the polls, stood by Trump, saying he believed he was “the best president of the 21st century.”

Other Republican presidential contenders, while acknowledging Pence’s role on Jan. 6, 2021, in rejecting Trump’s demand to stop congressional certification of Biden’s victory, described the prosecution of Trump as the political weaponization of the Justice Department overseen by Biden.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis declared, “This election is not about January 6. We’ve got to focus on your future, look forward.”

Only two of the eight candidates on the debate stage, Christie and former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson, said they would not support Trump if he were convicted and still won the Republican presidential nomination.

Trump leads by about 40 percentage points over his closest Republican presidential challenger, DeSantis, with all the other Republican opponents getting less than 10% apiece in national polls.

Ramaswamy on Wednesday evening stood apart in questioning American support for Ukraine, saying China is a bigger threat to the United States than Russia. Several other candidates, including Haley, also a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, expressed strong support for Ukraine in defending itself against Russian forces.

Others on the debate stage were South Carolina Senator Tim Scott and North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum.

All of the candidates said they favored restrictions on U.S. abortion rights but differed on the details, such as at what gestational number of weeks it ought to be banned. Last year’s Supreme Court decision upended a nearly 50-year right to the procedure in the U.S., leaving it up to the 50 states to decide whether to allow abortions or severely restrict them.

Ramaswamy, the youngest of the candidates at 38, claimed at one point, “It’s going to take an outsider” to create “a vision of what it means to be an American.”

Pence retorted, “Now is not the time for on-the-job training.”   

After the debate, Pence told reporters no one should have been surprised by his vigor on the debate stage.

“I was the leading champion of conservative values in the Trump-Pence administration. I know how to fight and I was happy to bring that fight tonight,” said the former vice president.

Pence’s primary sparring opponent of the evening, Ramaswamy, said he relished the verbal barrages directed at him.

“Mike Pence coming at me with the experience differential, I think that’s a great thing because I don’t think the people in this country are interested in going back to people who recite slogans they memorized in 1980,” said Ramaswamy.

“There’s a lot of people who had a good night tonight,” according to Sean Spicer, who was Donald Trump’s first White House press secretary. “But does that good night move a needle? We’re going to find out really soon.”

Spicer, speaking to VOA in the post-debate “spin room,” said DeSantis and Haley had a good night while Ramaswamy “landed a bunch of good hits” but it remains to be seen “whether that was a good strategy or was he too aggressive?”

Spicer, who now hosts his own digital TV political show, added that none of the other candidates “had a bad night.”

“The rest of them were fine. I just don’t know that any of them landed a punch that’s going to move the needle,” he said.

The Republicans hold their second debate next month in California but only one of the candidates will be back on the same stage in Wisconsin in July to accept the party’s nomination. 
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Research shows that prolonged exposure to high levels of noise may be a risk factor for cardiovascular disease. In New York City, not only the largest U.S. city by population but also one of the loudest, avoiding noise can be an everyday struggle. Aron Ranen has the story from the Big Apple.
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The U.S. State Department, in coordination with other agencies from President Joe Biden’s administration, is seeking a six-month extension of the U.S.-China Science and Technology Agreement (STA) that is due to expire on August 27.

The short-term extension comes as several Republican congressional members voiced concerns that China has previously leveraged the agreement to advance its military objectives and may continue to do so.

The State Department said the brief extension will keep the STA in force while the United States negotiates with China to amend and strengthen the agreement. It does not commit the U.S. to a longer-term extension.

“We are clear-eyed to the challenges posed by the PRC’s national strategies on science and technology, Beijing’s actions in this space, and the threat they pose to U.S. national security and intellectual property, and are dedicated to protecting the interests of the American people,” a State Department spokesperson said Wednesday.

But congressional critics worry that research partnerships organized under the STA could have developed technologies that could later be used against the United States.

“In 2018, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) organized a project with China’s Meteorological Administration — under the STA — to launch instrumented balloons to study the atmosphere,” said Republican Representatives Mike Gallagher, Elise Stefanik and others in a June 27 letter to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

“As you know, a few years later, the PRC used similar balloon technology to surveil U.S. military sites on U.S. territory — a clear violation of our sovereignty.”

The STA was originally signed in 1979 by then-U.S. President Jimmy Carter and then-PRC leader Deng Xiaoping. Under the agreement, the two countries cooperate in fields including agriculture, energy, space, health, environment, earth sciences and engineering, as well as educational and scholarly exchanges.

The agreement has been renewed roughly every five years since its inception. 

The most recent extension was in 2018. 
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While the Islamic State terror group continues to lose influence in Iraq, U.S. Major General Matthew W. McFarlane recently warned that IS remnants still pose a threat to areas not under the protection of the U.S.-led coalition, including parts of Syria. Analysts see Islamic State expanding into Africa and Asia.

McFarlane commands the Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve based in Iraq, working to defeat Islamic State militants and prevent their resurgence.

In an online briefing to journalists this month, McFarlane, calling the group ISIS as well as the Arab acronym Daesh, said Islamic State no longer controls any territory, has lost leaders and fighters, and carries out fewer attacks than in the past.

He said there was a 65% reduction in Islamic State activity this year compared to last year.

“They continue to degrade. Having said that, there are still radical fighters out there that aspire to re-emerge or rebuild the caliphate,” McFarlane said. “We work very closely with our Iraqi counterparts.”

McFarlane said the U.S. and Iraq share intelligence to ensure they can address any possible re-emergence or possible threats that emerge from ISIS fighters that are still at large. He also said they work to address the long-term efforts like repatriation of internally displaced people and Daesh detainees that are in Syrian detention facilities.

Steven Heydemann, a nonresident senior fellow at Washington’s Brookings Institution, told VOA that McFarlane gave a “fairly balanced assessment” of Islamic State at this time.

However, Heydemann points to a recent United Nations report that says the Islamic State group still commands between 5,000 and 7,000 fighters in Syria and Iraq.

“There’s certainly no sense in which we can declare mission accomplished in terms of Operation Inherent Resolve,” Heydemann said. “It continues to play an important role in degrading ISIS. And yet ISIS retains the ability to sustain pretty high levels of insecurity in eastern Syria and northwestern Iraq.”

Heydemann added that the U.S. and others can’t underestimate the extent to which local groups that publicly affiliate with ISIS have in some ways overtaken the core group as a source of threat.

“Africa is clearly one arena in which we’re seeing that happen,” he said.

South Africa-based analyst Martin Ewi has also warned of the growing threat in Africa, where Islamic State is active in more than 20 countries already. He cautioned that the continent may represent “the future of the caliphate.”

Analyst Nicolas Heras at Washington’s New Lines Institute told VOA that Islamic State is like a “perennial” dormant in the Middle East heartland but regenerating and springing to life in central Asia and Africa.

“ISIS has numerous cells in Syria and has also established, in that sort of western badlands of Iraq, a support network,” Heras said. “ISIS has tried to manage the reality that it is an organization looking for this opportunity to spring back. The ISIS brand globally has found opportunity to grow in central Asia, particularly Afghanistan but also, it’s looking to spread into Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and is looking to take advantage of rising communal religious tensions in India.”

Heras said that in Africa, Islamic State is trying to take advantage of the war in Sudan and the destabilization of Ethiopia.
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The daughter of a German citizen of Iranian descent who was sentenced to death by Tehran pleaded Tuesday for the United States and Germany to act urgently to save him. 

The daughter of Jamshid Sharmahd was making her case in Washington, including holding a sit-in outside the State Department, on the heels of a deal by President Joe Biden’s administration to free five U.S. citizens who were imprisoned in Iran. 

According to his family, Sharmahd, a software developer who had been living in California, was kidnapped in 2020 on a visit to the United Arab Emirates and taken to Iran. 

He was sentenced to death over a deadly blast at a mosque in 2008 in the southern city of Shiraz, charges the family describes as ridiculous. Iran’s Supreme Court confirmed the death penalty in April. 

“What I’m asking the U.S. and Germany is to free my father, to bring my father back, to save (his) life,” said his daughter Gazelle Sharmahd, who lives in California. 

“This is a life-and-death situation,” she told a roundtable. 

She voiced frustration that Germany and the United States are playing “some form of responsibility ping-pong.”  

“It goes back and forth. Not my citizen. He doesn’t live here. Not my problem, not my problem. And we’re not getting through to them,” she said. 

Germany has said it is engaging at the highest levels and through all channels on the case, with a foreign ministry spokesman acknowledging that the family is “going through something unimaginable and unbearable.” 

But Gazelle Sharmahd insisted that German efforts were focused only on improving his conditions in prison. 

“What, does he need better toothpaste before they murder him right now?” she said. 

The U.S. State Department has called Iran’s treatment of Sharmahd reprehensible but said it was for Germany to discuss the case of its own citizen. 

Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said that all U.S. citizens have been released from prison under the deal, which drew fire from the Republican Party. 

Under the arrangement, the five U.S. citizens, all of Iranian origin, were freed to house arrest and are expected to be allowed to leave after the unfreezing of $6 billion in Iranian oil revenue that had been held in South Korea to comply with U.S. sanctions. 
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Two weeks after the deadliest U.S. wildfire in more than a century swept through the Maui community of Lahaina, authorities say anywhere between 500 and 1,000 people remain unaccounted for — a staggering number for officials facing huge challenges to determine how many of those perished and how many may have made it to safety but haven’t checked in.

Something similar happened after a wildfire in 2018 that killed 85 people and destroyed the town of Paradise, California. Authorities in Butte County, home to Paradise, ultimately published a list of the missing in the local newspaper, a decision that helped identify scores of people who had made it out alive but were listed as missing. Within a month, the list dropped from 1,300 names to only a dozen.

Hawaii officials have expressed concern that by releasing a list of the missing, they would also be identifying some people who have died. In an email Tuesday, the State Joint Information Center called it “a standard held by all law enforcement and first responders here in Hawaii, out of compassion and courtesy for the families, to withhold the names until the families can be contacted.”

As of Monday, there were 115 people confirmed dead, according to Maui police. All single-story, residential properties in the disaster area had been searched, and teams were beginning to search multistory residential and commercial properties, Maui County officials said in an update late Monday.

There are widely varying accounts of the tally of the missing. Hawaii Governor Josh Green said Sunday that more than 1,000 remained unaccounted for. Maui Mayor Richard Bissen said in a recorded video on Instagram that the number was 850. And during President Joe Biden’s tour of the devastation on Monday, White House homeland security adviser Liz Sherwood-Randall put it between 500 and 800.

An unofficial, crowd-sourced spreadsheet of missing people posted online listed nearly 700 names as of Tuesday.

State Senator Gilbert Keith-Agaran, representing central Maui, said he’s not aware of any rules that prevent officials from making the list public. But as someone with several members of his extended family still unaccounted for, he understands why some may not want the list released.

“I’m not going to second-guess the approach by the mayor and his people right now,” he said.

Questions are also emerging about how quickly the names of the dead are being publicly released, even after family members have been notified. Maui residents are growing increasingly frustrated as the search for their loved ones drags on.

The Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported Tuesday that the Maui Police Department has instructed the medical examiner in Honolulu — where some burn patients were taken for treatment — not to release the names of anyone who dies from injuries sustained in Lahaina fire. The request came after one severely burned patient died and the man’s name appeared in media reports after notification of his next of kin.

“I don’t know why they aren’t releasing the names,” Honolulu Department of the Medical Examiner Supervising Investigator Theresa Reynolds told the newspaper.

Clifford Abihai said he feels like he’s getting the run-around from authorities. He came to Maui from California to try to find answers about his grandmother, Louise Abihai, 98. He has been just as frustrated on the ground in Maui.

“I just want confirmation,” he said last week. “Not knowing what happened, not knowing if she escaped, not knowing if she’s not there. That’s the hard thing.”

As of Tuesday, he said he had learned nothing further.

His grandmother lived at Hale Mahaolu Eono, a senior living facility where another member of his extended family, Virginia Dofa, lived. Authorities have identified Dofa as among the dead. Abihai described Dofa and Louise Abihai as best friends.

He said his grandmother was mobile and could walk a mile a day, but it was often hard to reach her because she’d frequently turn off her cellphone to save battery power.

Confirming whether those who are unaccounted for are deceased can be difficult. Fire experts say it’s possible some bodies were cremated in the Lahaina fire, potentially leaving no bones to identify through DNA tests.

The situation on Maui is evolving, but those who lived through similar tragedies and never learned of their loved ones’ fate are also following the news and hurt for the victims and their families.

Nearly 22 years later, almost 1,100 victims of the 9/11 terror attacks, which killed nearly 3,000, have no identified remains.

Joseph Giaccone’s family initially was desperate for any physical trace of the 43-year-old finance executive, who worked in the World Trade Center’s North Tower, brother James Giaccone recalled. But over time, he started focusing instead on memories of the flourishing man his brother was.

“So I am OK with the way it is right now,” he said.
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The first of the 18 co-defendants of former U.S. President Donald Trump facing 2020 election interference and racketeering charges in the southern state of Georgia are starting to turn themselves in to be arrested and booked.

John Eastman, a former Trump lawyer who pushed a plan to have then-Vice President Mike Pence attempt to block congressional certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s victory over Trump, surrendered Tuesday to Fulton County authorities in the Georgia state capital city, Atlanta. Another defendant, Scott Hall, a bail bondsman who was a Republican poll watcher in Georgia, also turned himself in.

Eastman faces nine charges that could, if he is convicted, land him in prison for years. On Monday, he reached a $100,000 bond agreement to be released pending trial.

Eastman was adamant in his intention to fight the allegations brought by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.

“I am here today to surrender to an indictment that should never have been brought,” Eastman said in a statement. “It represents a crossing of the Rubicon for our country, implicating the fundamental First Amendment right to petition the government for redress of grievances.”

In a separate election interference case filed against Trump alone in Washington by Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith, Eastman has been identified as one of Trump’s six unnamed co-conspirators in trying to upend the 2020 election outcome so Trump could stay in power.

But Eastman lawyer Harvey Silverglate has said his client has no intention of plea bargaining with either federal or state prosecutors to lessen the threat to his freedom.

“With respect to questions as to whether Dr. Eastman is involved in plea bargaining, the answer is no,” Silverglate said in a statement earlier this month. “But if he were invited to plea bargain with either state or federal prosecutors, he would decline. The fact is, if Dr. Eastman is indicted, he will go to trial. If convicted, he will appeal. The Eastman legal team is confident of its legal position in this matter.”

Trump, facing 13 charges in the Georgia case, says he is set to fly from his golf resort in New Jersey to Atlanta on Thursday to be arrested and booked, the fourth criminal indictment filed against him in the last five months. In all, he is accused of committing 91 offenses before, during and after his single-term presidency.

“Can you believe it? I’ll be going to Atlanta, Georgia on Thursday to be ARRESTED,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social account.

The former president’s lawyers reached an agreement on Monday with Georgia authorities on a $200,000 bond so he could be released pending trial, with Trump also agreeing to not threaten or intimidate witnesses, including on social media platforms.

Even as he faces weeks-long trials in the first half of 2024, Trump holds a commanding lead among Republican voters for the party’s presidential nomination in next year’s national election. To this day, he contends that vote-counting fraud in the 2020 election cheated him out of another term in the White House. Trump has denied all wrongdoing in the four indictments against him.

In last week’s 41-count indictment encompassing 19 defendants, Willis, the Fulton County prosecutor, filed seven charges against Hall.

He is alleged to be involved in an effort to illegally breach election equipment in Coffee County, Georgia, more than 300 kilometers from Atlanta, to try to prove a conspiracy theory that the voting machines had been rigged in Biden’s favor.

At the heart of the case against Trump in Georgia is his taped phone call in early 2021 to state election officials asking them to “find” him 11,780 votes, one more than Biden’s margin of victory.

Willis has asked that the sprawling Georgia racketeering and conspiracy case be started March 4, but Trump’s lawyers have yet to propose a trial date. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee will eventually set the date.
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The first big event of the 2024 U.S. presidential election campaign will be held Wednesday when candidates of the Republican Party meet on a debate stage in the Midwestern city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Nine candidates have qualified under the Republican Party’s rules to be on the stage inside the Fiserv Forum, the overwhelming front-runner — former President Donald Trump — says he will be skipping the event.

Few of the participants have been outspoken in criticizing Trump. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is an exception. Others, such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is running a distant second to Trump, and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, have taken a more measured approach, hoping to convince a party base that remains loyal to Trump that they can implement the former president’s right-wing “Make America Great Again” agenda without the legal encumbrances and other controversies.

Then there is Trump’s former vice president, Mike Pence, who defends his ceremonial certification of the 2020 election results against Trump’s wishes. He is still in the low single digits in most polls of potential 2024 Republican voters.

In addition to Pence, Christie, DeSantis and Haley, others who have qualified for the event hosted by Fox News are Ohio businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson.

Trump posted on his social media platform Truth Social on Sunday that due to his vast lead in the polls and his known accomplishments during his one term as president, “I WILL THEREFORE NOT BE DOING THE DEBATES.”

Trump reportedly was referring to the first two debates of the primary airing on Fox News, including next month’s face-off in California, leaving open the possibility he is willing to face Republican rivals on stage later in the campaign season.

The former president has recently turned critical of Fox News, which championed his candidacy in the last two presidential elections. But the media empire of magnate Rupert Murdoch, which owns Fox News, has taken a more measured approach to Trump amid the current crowded field of Republican contenders.

Trump has also stated he will not sign the RNC’s “loyalty pledge,” which asks all the primary losers to eventually support the nominee, one of the requirements for participating in the Milwaukee debate.

“Surprise, surprise… the guy who is out on bail from four jurisdictions and can’t defend his reprehensible conduct, is running scared and hiding from the debate stage,” Christie posted Friday on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, foreshadowing the rhetoric he is expected to unleash against the absent front-runner on Wednesday. Christie added that Trump is a “certified loser, verified coward.”

Even without Trump exchanging insults with Christie and others, the conversation at the event is anticipated to be largely about him, including the more than 90 felony charges the former president faces for alleged crimes committed before, during and after his presidency

“It creates a very, very difficult environment for the other Republicans, because they have their own ideas for what they want to do with respect to key issues like the economy or Ukraine or immigration. But that doesn’t mean they’ll have much of a chance to talk about it. They’ll be asked about Donald Trump,” predicts Stephen Farnsworth, a political science professor at the University of Mary Washington.

The debate will not be very consequential for Trump — he will still be the front-runner regardless of what happens. But for the others, there could be a viral moment, good or bad, that significantly changes their polling numbers.

“We’ve seen from debates in past election seasons that candidates sometimes have a moment in a debate that ends up disqualifying them because they look bad. We’ve also seen moments in past debates where candidates have said something that got a lot of attention for them in a positive way and gave them a huge boost,” notes Provost Associate Professor Jordan Tama of American University’s School of International Service.

DeSantis is the candidate who perhaps has the most at stake. Once touted as the party’s Trump slayer, the second-term governor has dropped in the polls. In a few surveys, the relatively unknown Ramaswamy has pulled even with or surpassed DeSantis for distant second place.

“This is his moment,” says Farnsworth of DeSantis. “Remember, in 49 other states, these people do not know the governor of Florida. They maybe have seen a little bit on the news here and there. But most of the coverage is focused on the former president. As a result, Ron DeSantis will be introducing himself to the country. And one of the things he needs to do is make a good first impression. If he doesn’t, he won’t be able to really change the dynamics of the race in a significant way.”

The Fox News moderators are also certain to attempt to draw the candidates out on why they would be a better leader than President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic Party nominee, who would be 82 if he is inaugurated in January 2025.

The first Republican Party debate also puts the spotlight on Wisconsin, one of the few states expected to provide a true contest between the two major parties in next year’s presidential election. Milwaukee will host the Republican Party’s nominating convention next July.

Four of the last six presidential elections have been decided by less than a percentage point in Wisconsin. Trump won narrowly in the state in 2016 before losing by a similar margin to Biden four years later.
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A Maryland man charged in 2019 with planning an Islamic State-inspired attack at a Washington, D.C., area shopping and entertainment complex pleaded guilty on Monday to engaging in a separate plot to drive a stolen van into a crowd of people at a nearby airport.

Rondell Henry’s plea agreement with Justice Department prosecutors could lead to his release from federal custody as soon as October, when a judge is scheduled to sentence him in the airport plot, which Henry abandoned. Henry, who has remained in custody for over four years, didn’t harm anybody before police arrested him.

Henry, 32, of Germantown, Maryland, pleaded guilty to attempting to perform an act of violence at an international airport, court records show.

Henry admits that he stole a U-Haul van from a parking garage in Alexandria, Virginia, drove it to Dulles International Airport in Virginia and entered a terminal building on March 27, 2019.

“Henry unsuccessfully attempted to follow another individual into a restricted area of the airport, but the other individual prevented Henry from entering the restricted area,” according to a court filing accompanying his plea agreement.

Henry later told investigators that he went to the airport because he “was trying to hurt people there” and “was going to try to drive through a crowd of people,” but ultimately left because “there wasn’t a big enough crowd” at the airport, according to the filing.

Henry pleaded guilty to a felony that carries a maximum prison sentence of 20 years. But prosecutors and defense attorneys agreed that an appropriate sentence for Henry would be the jail time he already has served and lifetime supervised release with mandatory participation in a mental health treatment program, according to his plea agreement.

U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, who isn’t bound by that recommendation, is scheduled to sentence Henry on Oct. 23. He will remain jailed until his sentencing hearing.

Henry’s attorneys didn’t immediately respond Monday to an email seeking comment on his guilty plea and plea deal.

Henry was charged in 2019 with attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization, the Islamic State group. But the charge to which he pleaded guilty is unrelated to what authorities had said was a ISIS-inspired plot to carry out an attack at National Harbor, a popular waterfront destination in Maryland just outside the nation’s capital.

Monday’s filing doesn’t mention the Islamic State or specify any ideological motivation for an attack at the airport.

Henry left the airport and drove the stolen U-Haul to National Harbor, where he parked it. Police arrested him the next morning after they found the van and saw Henry jump over a security fence.

Henry told investigators he planned to carry out an attack like one in which a driver ran over and killed dozens of people in Nice, France, in 2016, authorities said. A prosecutor has said Henry intended to kill as many “disbelievers” as possible.

Monday’s court filings don’t explain why Henry didn’t plead guilty to any charges related to the alleged National Harbor plot.

The case against Henry remained on hold for years amid questions about his mental competency. Last year, Rondell Henry’s attorneys notified the court that he intended to pursue an insanity defense.

Xinis had ruled in February 2020 that Henry was not competent to stand trial. She repeatedly extended his court-ordered hospitalization.

But the judge ruled in May 2022 that Henry had become mentally competent to stand trial, could understand the charges against him and was capable of assisting in his defense. Xinis said a March 2022 report on Henry’s medical condition found experts had restored his mental competence.

Prosecutors have said Henry watched Islamic State group propaganda videos of foreign terrorists beheading civilians and fighting overseas. Investigators said they recovered a phone Henry had discarded on a highway in an apparent attempt to conceal evidence, including images of the Islamic State flag, armed Islamic State fighters and the man who carried out the 2016 Pulse nightclub massacre in Orlando, Florida.

Henry is a naturalized U.S. citizen who moved to the country from Trinidad and Tobago more than a decade ago.
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As former President Donald Trump braces for two separate trials over his alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, his lawyers are scrambling to come up with legal defenses that could test the limits of the law and the Constitution.

They’ve signaled that they will argue that Trump was merely exercising his First Amendment rights when he spread baseless claims that the election had been stolen and then pressed state officials to change the results in his favor.

They will contend that the former president was simply following the counsel of his lawyers who advised him he had the right to “petition” the officials to investigate fraud.

And they may even invoke the idea that as president he should be immune from prosecution, arguing that the actions he took after the election were related to his presidential duties.

But legal experts say when the case goes to trial the key question the jury will have to answer is: Did Trump know he had lost the election?

“A jury is not going to focus on whether he had a First Amendment right to petition for redress of grievances and [is] not going to focus on whether he had any executive privilege to meet with his vice president and urge him to not count the votes from the swing states that were contested,” said John Malcolm, a former federal prosecutor who is a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation. “They’re going to focus on the president and his belief.”

Election indictments

Trump faces two separate indictments in connection with the 2020 election scheme that culminated in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

On Aug. 1, a federal grand jury in Washington issued a four-count indictment, accusing Trump of conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy against the rights of citizens, obstructing an official proceeding and conspiring to obstruct an official proceeding.

Then last week, a grand jury in Georgia indicted Trump and 18 others for racketeering and a raft of other crimes in connection with efforts to overturn the election outcome in that state.

While the state and federal cases are different in scope, they both alleged election fraud and require that prosecutors prove “mens rea” or criminal intent on the part of Trump, according to legal experts.

“In both jurisdictions, general principles of criminal law in the U.S. probably are quite relevant,” said Morgan Cloud, a professor of law at Emory University in Atlanta. “Not all, but most crimes, including felonies like the ones charged in these current federal and state indictments… require proof of… mens rea.”

Trump has long claimed that he lost the 2020 election fraudulently, despite no evidence of that assertion, and his lawyers are now challenging prosecutors to disprove his sincerity.

“I would like them to try to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Donald Trump believed that these allegations were false,” John Lauro, who represents Trump in the special counsel case, told Fox News after special counsel Jack Smith announced the federal charges against Trump.

Circumstantial evidence

Proving criminal intent can be challenging but it’s not impossible, according to legal experts.

To prove criminal intent, prosecutors can use two types of evidence: direct and circumstantial.

Direct evidence shows a defendant’s state of mind or actions, while circumstantial evidence can imply a guilty mind.

In Trump’s case, direct evidence could include testimony about his private admission that he had lost the election. At least two former White House aides have come forward with claims to that effect. One of them, Cassidy Hutchinson, testified before Congress last year that she was told by her boss, former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, that “a lot of times (Trump will) tell me that he lost, but he wants to keep fighting it.”

Prosecutors can also marshal circumstantial evidence to prove Trump knew he had lost. Among other things, they can cite testimony by senior Justice Department officials, White House aides, and Trump’s own campaign staff who told Trump that they had found no evidence of widespread fraud.

Though circumstantial, this kind of testimony can persuade a jury that Trump knew he had lost the election.

A “myth I think people have is that you have to have the smoking gun, the guy on the audiotape saying, ‘I did it,” but you don’t,” said Kimberly Wehle, a former federal prosecutor now a professor of law at the University of Baltimore. “You can prove crimes beyond a reasonable doubt with circumstantial evidence.”

Yet Trump, notorious for rejecting expert advice, could claim he was swayed by other advisers who insisted the election was stolen.

“I don’t think there’s any question that there were people around former President Trump at the time who were telling him that he was not wrong, and that the election really had been stolen,” Malcolm said.

Without proving Trump’s criminal intent, Malcolm said, “the case collapses.”
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