Special counsel Jack Smith Thursday handed over nearly 500 pages of materials to Donald Trump after the former president's lawyers accused him of "extraordinary" misconduct in the classified documents case, court records show.
In his letter to Florida federal court judge Aileen Cannon, Smith takes a stiff tone when he reports delivering 457 pages of discovery materials linked to Trump's accusations that the Justice department tampered with evidence.
"The Government’s position [is] that such production exceeds its current discovery obligations," Smith writes.
This measured remark stands in stark contrast to the letter from Trump's lead attorney Todd Blanche which spurred Thursday's massive document dump, court records show.
On May 4, Blanche accused Smith of "extraordinary breach of your constitutional and ethical obligations" regarding boxes of documents seized from Trump's social club Mar-a-Lago.
"We find your contentions to be self-serving and frivolous given your indefensible handling of the evidence at issue—you cannot seriously contend that your recent spoliation concession is irrelevant to President Trump’s pending pretrial motions," Blanche wrote.
In a further request for back-up from Cannon, dated May 6, Blanche sneered at Smith's "dismissive and condescending tone."
The subject of this tense legal battle is Smith's earlier admission that some documents were rearranged before they were scanned into the Justice department's system.
While Smith's team described the incident as an inconsistency, Blanche argued prosecutors were guilty of a "full-throated but now concededly false assertions of compliance with their discovery obligations."
This aligns with Trump's consistent messaging that the Justice Department is partaking in a political witch hunt to torpedo his 2024 presidential campaign.
A lawyer who worked for Donald Trump's White House says the 45th president is guilty as sin and it's all spelled out in a ruling from last year — before the case virtually went to sleep in U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon's court.
Ty Cobb appeared on CNN's "Out Front" on Wednesday to weigh in on the federal criminal case accusing Trump of hoarding the documents and obstructing the recovery of them by the feds.
On Wednesday, Special Prosecutor Jack Smith's team bludgeoned a motion to dismiss the case by Trump's defense team as a "garbage argument" brought by the former president's body man and co-defendant Walt Nauta (along with Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira) alleging vindictive prosecution.
Yet as she considers the claim, Cannon has snailed along without addressing how the classified evidence at issue can be used at trial and refuses to calendar the case for trial.
"She should read that opinion because it takes it from soup to nuts and makes it very clear how guilty the president is in this case, which has been laid out so clearly," Cobb said, and even assigning the ruling as reading material by Cannon so that she can see for herself.
"To be sure, the government has not provided direct evidence that the former president deliberately retained, or was even aware of, the particular classified-marked documents located by his counsel at Mar-a-Lago in December 2022," reads the document filed by U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell.
However, she scolded Trump's defense for being aloof to the presence of the stacks of banker boxes decorating his Mar-a-Lago palatial home in Palm Beach, Florida.
Howell wrote: "notably... no excuse is provided as to how the former president could miss the classified-marked documents found in his own bedroom at Mar-a-Lago."
"She makes it very clear that the evidence is really overwhelming," Cobb praised. "And to the commission of crimes and Trump's attempt to use his own lawyer as an instrumentality of the crimes by hiding documents from him and moving documents out of the storage facility so that when he searched it — he would not find the classified documents."
A "shouting match" erupted Wednesday during a hearing in former President Donald Trump's ongoing classified documents case, according to a new report.
The Florida federal courtroom devolved into chaos as lawyers grew increasingly upset over a defense attorney's contested claim he'd been threatened by a prosecutor, according to the Independent.
The argument centered on a previous meeting between prosecutor Jay Bratt and Trump-funded attorney Stanley Woodward, who represents the former president's co-defendant and body man, Walt Nauta, according to the report.
While Woodward has claimed Bratt threatened his potential nomination to a judgeship in violation of Justice department policy, special counsel Jack Smith has argued in court filings unsealed last month that the story doesn't add up.
"The allegations told an implausible, if not ludicrous tale," Smith replied in April, "in which a career prosecutor who had served the Department with distinction for more than 30 years concocted a plan to threaten an attorney."
For his part, Woodward claims Bratt mentioned a potential nomination to the D.C. Superior Court then said, "I wouldn't want you to do anything to mess that up."
In his reply, Smith noted the alleged threat took place in August 2022, about nine months before Woodward raised any complaint.
Wednesday's hearing was scheduled to allow Nauta's legal team to make their argument that Smith's team had vindictively and selectively charged him, according to the report.
Trump-appointee Judge Aileen Cannon did not immediately issue a ruling on that particular issue, CNN reports.
This is one of four criminal court cases facing the former president, who is currently standing trial in New York City on charges he falsified business records to conceal hush money payments ahead of the 2016 presidential election.
Trump has pleaded not guilty in each of these cases.
A prosecutor on special counsel Jack Smith's team has told U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon that a motion to dismiss a classified documents case involving Donald Trump was "garbage."
According to The Associated Press, Stanley Woodward, a lawyer for Trump's personal valet and co-defendant Walt Nauta, accused Smith of targeting his client with a vindictive prosecution.
Both Nauta and Trump have pleaded not guilty to charges related to the mishandling of classified documents.
Woodward "conceded to Cannon that there was insufficient evidence to dismiss the indictment on grounds of vindictive prosecution. But he said there was enough for her to order prosecutors to turn over all communication they had about Nauta to see if hostility existed," the AP reported.
"There was a campaign to get Mr. Nauta to cooperate in the first federal prosecution of a former president of the United States, and when he refused, they prosecuted him," Woodward reportedly said. "That's a violation of his constitutional rights."
Prosecutor David Harbach, however, called the argument "garbage."
"There is not a single bit of evidence of animus toward Mr. Nauta," he told Cannon.
Attorneys for Trump were also expected to argue to dismiss the case at the hearing.
Donald Trump's lawyers were attending hearings in District Judge Aileen Cannon's courtroom Wednesday — on the same day they had been scheduled to question jurors in the case they reportedly fear the most.
Jury selection was scheduled to begin this week in the Florida federal court, but Cannon instead will hear arguments in a long-shot effort by one of Trump's co-defendants to dismiss the charges after the judge postponed the trial indefinitely to settle various legal issues, reported the Washington Post.
“The court appears to be giving the defendant every opportunity to avoid a trial,” said veteran Miami defense attorney Philip Reizenstein. “In 37 years of practice in South Florida, I have never seen a judge give so much consideration to scheduling a case in a way that benefits the defendant.”
Attorneys for Mar-a-Lago employee Walt Nauta will argue the prosecution against him is "discriminatory and vindictive" because others who helped Trump move boxes of government documents were not charged, and they will ask for the case to be dismissed because prosecutors failed to clearly state in the indictment which laws the co-defendants allegedly broke.
Cannon has generally sided with the government so far in individual rulings, such as rejecting two Trump motions to dismiss the case and ruling for prosecutors on issues related to how classified information is handled at trial, but the judge's decisions have repeatedly slowed down the case, which at this point seems unlikely to go to trial before the November election.
Defense attorneys can file unlimited motions for dismissal, although legal experts say it's unusual that Cannon has held so many hearings on motions by Trump and his co-defendants because judges typically rule in those without holding sessions in court.
Reizenstein said the former president's strategy is obvious, and that Trump clearly hopes he can be re-elected president and then appoint an attorney general who would order the Justice Department to end special Jack Smith's prosecutions against him.
Donald Trump and his allies are falsely claiming President Joe Biden, the U.S. Dept. of Justice, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation had a plot to assassinate his top political rival, the ex-president, during the execution of a search warrant in 2022 at Mar-a-Lago. Critics, including law enforcement experts, are blasting Trump and his MAGA associates for the "dangerous" lie.
On Tuesday a U.S. District Judge unsealed court documents in Special Counsel Jack Smith's Espionage Act case against Trump where he faces 40 felony counts, most over his alleged unlawful removal, retention, and refusal to return classified documents including some of the nation's top nuclear secrets.
One of those filings, as The Washington Post reported, was a law enforcement documents that included a standard statement reminding FBI agents on the Bureau's policy on the use of deadly force, "which says officers may resort to lethal force only when the subject of such force poses an 'imminent danger of death or serious physical injury' to an officer or another person."
But on Tuesday, Trump explosively posted on Truth Social, "WOW! I just came out of the Biden Witch Hunt Trial in Manhattan, the 'Icebox,' and was shown Reports that Crooked Joe Biden’s DOJ, in their Illegal and UnConstitutional Raid of Mar-a-Lago, AUTHORIZED THE FBI TO USE DEADLY (LETHAL) FORCE. NOW WE KNOW, FOR SURE, THAT JOE BIDEN IS A SERIOUS THREAT TO DEMOCRACY. HE IS MENTALLY UNFIT TO HOLD OFFICE — 25TH AMENDMENT!"
"TRUMP ALERT," it begins. "BREAKING FROM TRUMP: BIDEN'S DOJ WAS AUTHORIZED TO SHOOT ME!"
"You know they're just itching to do the unthinkable... Joe Biden was locked & loaded ready to take me out & put my family in danger."
Attorney and former FBI Special Agent Asha Rangappa observed, "Including the deadly force policy [in] an ops plan is SOP [standard operating procedure]. But just so I make sure I’m following the plot, according to Trump’s position in court, what he is accusing Biden of would be perfectly legal and within the scope of his 'official' powers, right?"
Trump repeatedly has insisted presidents must have complete and total "absolute immunity." His attorneys have argued in federal court and before the U.S. Supreme Court a president could order Seal Team Six to assassinate his political rival and it would be lawful, as was noted here:
U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) was among the top allies who falsely characterized the court filing.
"The Biden DOJ and FBI were planning to assassinate Pres Trump and gave the green light," she posted to her official federal government account on X. "Does everyone get it yet???!!!! What are Republicans going to do about it?"
She also wrote: "This is grounds for impeachment of Wray and Garland. Trump and team was cooperating the entire time with the FBI," Greene claimed, both of which are false.
"Was deadly force authorized against Biden for his docs? Were they going to shoot SS then Pres Trump, Melania, and Barron too??? Speaker Mike Johnson fully funded the DOJ and FBI plus new building and tied our hands behind our backs to hold them accountable. We have the power of the purse and Johnson has handed the purse to Chuck Schumer. All of this is unforgivable."
Fox News Business host Maria Bartiromo also promoted the false claims Wednesday morning:
NBC News' Ryan Reilly mockingly explained the situation: "GOP members of Congress think the feds wanted to assassinate Trump and so they did a raid on his place in Florida when they knew him to be in New Jersey because Mar-A-Lago was closed for the season."
Meanwhile, critics are sounding the alarm on Trump's and the GOP's lies.
"This is wildly irresponsible, even for professional troll like Marjorie Taylor Greene," wrote conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg. "FBI knew Trump wasn’t there. It was all coordinated with Secret Service in advance. This is deeply dangerous bullshit."
"Trump wasn’t there," said talk radio host Joe Walsh, a former GOP U.S. Congressman, responding to U.S. Rep. Greene's remarks. "Everything was coordinated with Secret Service & local law enforcement. Even for you, this is a deeply irresponsible and dangerous thing to say."
David Axelrod, the former top Obama strategist and White House advisor, remarked, "This is patently nuts...and dangerously provocative!"
The criminal hush money trial in Manhattan is drawing to a close with the jury on track to start deliberating as soon as next week, wrote former White House ethics czar and impeachment counsel Norm Eisen for MSNBC — and that's a stunning rebuke to how the Supreme Court has tied up the former president's federal January 6 trial.
Trump currently faces four criminal trials, with the Manhattan trial the only one proceeding on schedule. The Georgia election racketeering case is delayed by an appeals court weighing an ethics complaint against prosecutor Fani Willis, while the Mar-a-Lago documents case has been indefinitely delayed by the judge — and the federal election case, which by all accounts should have been ready to go, is waiting on the Supreme Court to rule if Trump has presidential immunity.
While prosecutors rested their case on Monday in Manhattan, "The negative milestone came in Washington, regarding the federal prosecution of Trump in the District of Columbia for allegedly interfering in the 2020 election. On Monday, the Supreme Court blew past a critical date, by which precedent teaches the dispute over Trump’s claim of presidential immunity should have been decided. However the New York case turns out, its rapid movement should serve as a rebuke to the ethically conflicted Supreme Court justices who are obviously and unduly stalling the Washington case."
"The truth is we should have already had or been close to a verdict in the federal prosecution brought by special counsel Jack Smith," wrote Eisen. "That case concerns the conspiracy Trump allegedly orchestrated to manipulate the results of the 2020 presidential election, which culminated in the Jan. 6 insurrection."
"The Washington case had been set to begin in early March, and Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg had expressed openness to postponing the New York case so the Washington one could go first. With the federal trial estimated to last eight to 12 weeks, it would most likely be done or wrapping up by now."
This is also considering the fact that the court could have taken up the case months before it did, at Smith's request, and decided to wait until the appellate court had ruled instead.
Furthermore, even when the court does decide that case, the right-wing justices appear to be considering a ruling that would require lower courts to spend months sorting out what is and isn't an official act, snuffing out any chance of the case being heard before the November election can take place — something that the arch-conservative legal theorist, retired federal Judge Michael Luttig, has adamantly insisted is not necessary for this trial to move ahead.
"At a minimum, given Roberts’ repeated statements of concern for the credibility of the court, he owes the public a transparent accounting of how Alito and Thomas can be allowed to continue to sit on this case," wrote Eisen, referenceing their conflicts of interest.
"This has gone much too far already. Each day without a ruling on immunity from the Supreme Court is an intentional delay that most likely ensures Trump won’t be held accountable for his alleged attempts to steal the last election ahead of the next one."
Former President Donald Trump had even more classified documents hidden away in his bedroom — four months after the FBI executed their search at Mar-a-Lago.
The revelation, spelled out in newly-released court filings, caused an eruption from observers on social media.
"Crimes on top of crimes," wrote music producer Shawn Patterson.
"In my observation, not even the anti-anti-Trumpers defend the 'documents case.' (The outright Trumpers, sure. With them, the Fifth Avenue Principle applies.)" wrote Jay Nordlinger, an editor for the conservative National Review.
"Utter disregard shown for US security," wrote Doug Thompson of the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Other commenters took aim specifically at U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, the jurist overseeing the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case against the former president.
A Trump-appointee, Cannon caused outrage when she punted the case indefinitely, beyond the election, citing the large number of unresolved issues to rule on — many of which critics say she sat on for months without action.
Cannon in a recent filing also expressed her "disappointment" in special counsel Jack Smith for asking for redactions to protect witnesses and grand jurors.
"Reminder that the MAL docs case was and will always have been the cleanest, most straightforward criminal prosecution of the four against the former president," wrote national security lawyer Bradley Moss. "That the public won't see it brought to fruition before they go to the voting booth is a stain on the judicial system."
"Trump was still keeping classified documents in his bedroom AFTER the Mar-a-Lago search but according to Judge Cannon, what they were, why he had them & what he did with them are simply not questions the American people should have answers to before casting our votes in November," wrote political commentator @JoJoFromJerz.
"Cannon is a f---ing accomplice and you can't convince me otherwise," wrote former Ohio Democratic congressional candidate Aaron Paul Godfrey.
Donald Trump had more classified documents at Mar-a-Lago that were not originally found when the FBI completed its execution of a search warrant, according to a recently unsealed 87-page court document in special counsel Jack Smith’s prosecution of Donald Trump in the Espionage Act case. Trump faces 40 felony charges in the case, including 32 directly related to classified documents..
“No excuse is provided as to how the former president could miss the classified-marked documents found in his own bedroom at Mar-a-Lago,” U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell wrote, according to Forbes. Howell “notes the government forced Trump’s attorneys to search Trump’s properties even after FBI investigators searched Mar-a-Lago in August 2022.”
Trump’s attorneys conducted searches of some of his other properties after the FBI raid, including his Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, Trump Tower in Manhattan, and other storage units and offices.
More classified documents were located at “an off-site office, a storage unit and at Mar-a-Lago, Howell wrote, noting Trump’s lawyers found a box with four documents that included classified materials in a Mar-a-Lago closet.”
Politico added, “The FBI’s August 2022 search of Mar-a-Lago confirmed that dozens of other classified documents remained on the property — but as Howell notes, there were at least two more rounds of classified materials found on Trump’s property following additional searches.”
Forbes also reports, Howell “asserts Trump purposely obstructed the government’s investigation after it subpoenaed him to turn over all the remaining classified documents in his possession, saying the government ‘sufficiently demonstrated’ Trump violated the obstruction statute by showing he ‘intentionally concealed the existence of additional documents bearing classification markings’ from his attorneys.”
Professor of law, MSNBC/NBC News legal contributor, and former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance remarked, “This makes Judge Cannon’s foot-dragging on this case even more incomprehensible. Not like it involves serious matters, or anything.”
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon has ground the trial to a halt, most recently putting an indefinite suspension in place.
ABC News adds that Special Counsel Jack Smith believed Trump “instructed aides to return several boxes they had previously removed from a storage room in the [Mar-a-Lago] club’s basement — without being caught on camera.”
Howell wrote that after Trump attorney Evan Corcoran “informed Trump of the subpoena for video footage on June 24, 2022, it set into motion a scramble by [co-defendant Walt] Nauta to change his travel plans and fly from Bedminster, New Jersey, to Palm Beach, Florida.”
“The government urged that this scramble to Mar-a-Lago in the wake of the June 24, 2022 phone call reflects the former president’s realization that the removal of the boxes from the storage room before [redacted] search was captured on camera — and his attempts to ensure that any subsequent movement of the boxes back to the storage room could occur off camera,” Howell wrote. She added: “This theory draws support from the curious absence of any video footage showing the return of the remaining boxes to the storage room, which necessarily occurred at some point between June 3, 2022 — when the room had approximately [redacted] boxes, according to FBI agents and [redacted] — and the execution of the search warrant on August 8, 2022 — when agents counted 73 boxes.”
Special counsel Jack Smith responded Tuesday after Donald Trump's attorneys moved to dismiss the classified documents case against him.
In a 25-page court filing Tuesday, Trump's legal team claimed prosecutorial misconduct and due process violations.
Trump's lawyers argued that the Biden administration and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) improperly coordinated with the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the FBI to target Trump. They claimed this coordination violated the Presidential Records Act and Trump's due process rights.
"This case has been investigated and prosecuted in full compliance with all applicable constitutional provisions, statutes, rules, regulations, and policies," Smith wrote. "There has been no prosecutorial misconduct, and his motion should be denied."
Smith refuted the claim that NARA and the DOJ colluded in bad faith. He explained that NARA's interactions with the DOJ were part of their statutory duties and not part of a criminal investigation.
The response also dismissed claims of pre-indictment delay. Smith argued that the time taken was necessary for a thorough investigation and did not aim to gain a tactical advantage over Trump.
Regarding the grand jury process, Smith stated there was no abuse in presenting evidence to a grand jury in the District of Columbia instead of Florida, as the investigation spanned multiple districts and involved activities in both.
Politico's Kyle Cheney pointed out that Smith's filing alleged that additional classified documents were found at Trump's Mar-a-Lago home after an FBI search had taken place.
"Trump’s motion should be denied," Smith concluded. "As set forth in the Government’s response to the defendants’ hearing requests, no hearing is necessary before doing so."
It was not immediately clear if U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon would schedule a hearing on the motion to dismiss.
Former FBI Director James Comey has overcome his initial skepticism about the hush money case against Donald Trump and now believes he's quite likely to be convicted.
The former president has been charged with falsifying financial records to cover up hush money payments to an adult film actress to prevent voters from learning about their sexual relationship, which prosecutors say amounts to an illegal campaign contribution, and Comey told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" the evidence is much stronger than the indictment indicated.
"I've tried a lot of cases, so it is dangerous to talk about them when you haven't been in the courtroom for every moment," Comey said. "This seems to have gone very well, built brick-by-brick in a way that's not cross-examinable, with documents and texts and the defendant's own voice – much better than I expected. I told my family, from the outside, I would think this is a very high likelihood of conviction, less likely of a hung jury, approaching zero for an acquittal."
However, even if he's convicted, Trump is the presumptive Republican presidential nominee and quite likely to be re-elected to a second term, and Comey has grave concerns about that possibility.
"He is a threat to the rule of law in America," Comey said. "That's, to me, what this election is about. It's not about policy differences, it's about what kind of country are we going to be? If he has the ability, smarter than he was last time, to use the power of the Department of Justice and FBI to target his enemies, especially, the rule and law of America will change."
"In the first term, it was a wish: 'I want people to go after so and so,' go after Andrew McCabe, the former deputy director of the FBI," Comey added. "In a second term, he'd go a step further, I'm highly confident, and say, 'I want him criminally investigated.' He was close to the bottom of the barrel in his appointees last time. He will be at the very bottom, those are the people who will carry out that order."
Trump himself has been indicted four times, although only the hush money case appears likely to be tried before the November election, and Comey predicted that Trump would kill the other prosecutions if re-elected.
"Yes, the person who would incite a mob to sack the Capitol will dismiss the cases pending against him," Comey said. "He puts an attorney general in, more likely puts an acting [attorney general] in who dismisses [special counsel] Jack Smith and they drop the indictment, as simple as that."
Much to special counsel Jack Smith's frustration, Judge Aileen Cannon has repeatedly delayed the trial for his Mar-a-Lago documents case against former President Donald Trump. Cannon has postponed the trial indefinitely, and it appears unlikely it will now take place before the 2024 presidential election.
On Sunday, Cannon made a decision in the case that former federal prosecutor Joyce White Vance considers "particularly problematic."
Cannon, a Trump-appointed federal judge, wrote, "The Court does not authorize Defendant Trump's proposed redactions to witness statements in Exhibit 9." And according to Vance, who is often featured as a legal analyst on MSNBC, this is a problem because revealing a witness' testimony could put the person at risk.
In her Civil Discourse blog, Vance explained, "The judge has already agreed to redact witnesses' names from the motion because they would be exposed to risk if they were made public.
“Judge Cannon, as a former federal prosecutor, and based on specific arguments prosecutors made here, should understand that even when a name is withheld, revealing a witness' testimony can be sufficient to identify them."
Vance added, "She seems OK with that, though. That's unacceptable in a case with a defendant like Trump."
Newsweek reported, "Cannon has long faced criticism and calls to recuse herself from the case for making a number of decisions that some say have favored the former president. Earlier this month, for instance, Cannon indefinitely suspended the start of the trial while other legal disputes related to the case are settled."
"Vance said that Cannon delayed the case because 'the judge seems to have no appetite for justice in this matter," the report stated.
Former President Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results are the focus of two of the four criminal indictments he is facing — one being prosecuted by special counsel Jack Smith for the U.S. Department of Justice and the other by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis for the State of Georgia.
And some of Trump's allies are up against criminal charges in an election interference case being prosecuted by Arizona State Attorney General Kris Mayes, including former Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis and ex-Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.
But despite all those criminal indictments, many MAGA Republicans are declaring their commitment to "election integrity" — a GOP talking point that journalist Kirk Swearingen urges fellow reporters to avoid in a biting article published by Salon on May 20.
"Can journalists please stop repeating the term 'election integrity' just because Republicans insist on saying it?" Swearingen writes.
"Heck, if they don't offer credible evidence — because there is none — I wouldn't even quote Republicans when they use the term, at least not without setting the record straight. Election laws being put into place in Republican-controlled states have nothing to do with integrity and everything to do with denying citizens their right to vote and intimidating election officials and volunteers."
Swearingen warns that the "MAGA party" is using "election disinformation" and dishonest "scare tactics" in the hope of "cheating its way to permanent minority rule."
"If the idea that Joe Biden stole the 2020 election — which he won by more than 7 million votes, with a 306-232 electoral vote victory — is Trump's Big Lie, then Republican efforts to ensure 'election integrity' around the country are lies metastasizing from the malignant tumor Trump introduced into our democracy," Swearingen explains. "Trump's con about election fraud is intended to succeed where his multifaceted effort to overturn the 2020 election failed."
Swearingen emphasizes that in order to do their jobs well, journalists will need to repeatedly debunk MAGA Republicans who are making false claims of widespread voter fraud.
"Media outlets must strive not to repeat any Republican permutation of 'election integrity' and must patiently spell out the truth again and again — and then again, as tiresome as that may be," Swearingen writes. "They should also report on the larger Republican effort to undermine confidence in elections, pass more rules that make it harder for Democratic constituencies to vote and intimidate those voters who show up anyway."
The journalist adds, "While the Biden Administration is doing what it can to promote voting, Republicans are working diligently to create the illusion that they support free and fair elections, all while creating a system of roadblocks and intimidation. They hope to create a system where voting takes place but the outcome is guaranteed."
