PBS NEWS HOUR. New audio recording reveals Trump discussing ‘highly confidential’ document with interviewer.

 

Politics Jun 27, 2023 9:28 AM EDT

WASHINGTON (AP) — An audio recording from a meeting in which former President Donald Trump discusses a “highly confidential” document with an interviewer appears to undermine his later claim that he didn’t have such documents, only magazine and newspaper clippings.

The recording, from a July 2021 interview Trump gave at his Bedminster, New Jersey, resort for people working on the memoir of his former chief of staff Mark Meadows, is a critical piece of evidence in special counsel Jack Smith’s indictment of Trump over the mishandling of classified information.

The special counsel’s indictment alleges that those in attendance at the meeting with Trump — including a writer, a publisher and two of Trump’s staff members — were shown classified information about a Pentagon plan of attack on an unspecified foreign country.

“These are the papers,” Trump says in a moment that seems to indicate he’s holding a secret Pentagon document with plans to attack Iran. “This was done by the military, given to me.”

Trump’s reference to something he says is “highly confidential” and his apparent showing of documents to other people at the 2021 meeting could undercut his claim in a recent Fox News Channel interview that he didn’t have any documents with him.

“There was no document. That was a massive amount of papers, and everything else talking about Iran and other things,” Trump said on Fox. “And it may have been held up or may not, but that was not a document. I didn’t have a document, per se. There was nothing to declassify. These were newspaper stories, magazine stories and articles.”

Trump pleaded not guilty earlier this month to 37 counts related to the alleged mishandling of classified documents kept at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, as part of a 38-count indictment that also charged his aide and former valet Walt Nauta. Nauta is set to be arraigned Tuesday before a federal judge in Miami.

A Trump campaign spokesman said the audio recording, which first aired Monday on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360,” “provides context proving, once again, that President Trump did nothing wrong at all.” And Trump, on his social media platform late Monday, claimed the recording ”is actually an exoneration, rather than what they would have you believe.”

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Associated Press

SCOTT GETS "TOUGH" ON TWITTER.

 Rick Scott

@ScottforFlorida

I’m warning socialists and communists not to travel to Florida. They are not welcome in the Sunshine State.

MY RESPONSE: How about Fascists, Klansmen, Neo-Nazis, and Anarchists. etc., Are they also not welcome? We await the ANSWER.

NEW YORK TIMES. Supreme Court Rejects Theory That Would Have Transformed American Elections.

 By Adam Liptak

Reporting from Washington

The 6-3 majority dismissed the “independent state legislature” theory, which would have given state lawmakers nearly unchecked power over federal elections.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a legal theory that would have radically reshaped how federal elections are conducted by giving state legislatures largely unchecked power to set all sorts of rules for federal elections and to draw congressional maps warped by partisan gerrymandering.

The vote was 6 to 3, with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. writing the majority opinion. The Constitution, he said, “does not exempt state legislatures from the ordinary constraints imposed by state law.”

Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Neil M. Gorsuch dissented.

The case concerned the “independent state legislature” theory. The doctrine is based on a reading of the Constitution’s Elections Clause, which says, “The times, places and manner of holding elections for senators and representatives, shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof.”

Proponents of the strongest form of the theory say this means that no other organs of state government — not courts, not governors, not election administrators, not independent commissions — can alter a legislature’s actions on federal elections.

The case, Moore v. Harper, No. 21-1271, concerned a voting map drawn by the North Carolina Legislature that was initially rejected as a partisan gerrymander by the state’s Supreme Court. Experts said the map was likely to yield a congressional delegation made up of 10 Republicans and four Democrats.

The state court rejected the argument that it was not entitled to review the actions of the state’s Legislature, saying that adopting the independent state legislature theory would be “repugnant to the sovereignty of states, the authority of state constitutions and the independence of state courts, and would produce absurd and dangerous consequences.”

Republicans seeking to restore the legislative map last year asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene, arguing in an emergency application that the state court had been powerless to act.

The justices rejected the request for immediate intervention, and the election in November was conducted under a map drawn by experts appointed by a state court. That resulted in a 14-member congressional delegation that was evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats, roughly mirroring the state’s partisan divisions.

The Republican lawmakers appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, saying the state court was not entitled to second-guess the Legislature. When the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in the case in December, the justices seemed divided, if not fractured, over the limits of the theory.

The composition of the North Carolina Supreme Court changed after elections in November, favoring Republicans by a 5-to-2 margin. In what a dissenting justice called a “shameful manipulation of fundamental principles of our democracy and the rule of law,” the new majority reversed course, saying the Legislature was free to draw gerrymandered voting districts as it saw fit.

Many observers had expected the U.S. Supreme Court to dismiss the case in light of that development. But Chief Justice Roberts concluded that the Supreme Court retained jurisdiction over the case.

The Supreme Court has never endorsed the independent state legislature theory, but four of its conservative members have issued opinions that seemed to take it very seriously.

When the court closed the doors of federal courts to claims of partisan gerrymandering in Rucho v. Common Cause in 2019, Chief Justice Roberts, writing for the five most conservative members of the court, said state courts could continue to hear such cases — including in the context of congressional redistricting.

“Our conclusion does not condone excessive partisan gerrymandering,” he wrote. “Nor does our conclusion condemn complaints about districting to echo into a void. The states, for example, are actively addressing the issue on a number of fronts.” Seeming to anticipate and reject the independent state legislature theory, he wrote that “provisions in state statutes and state constitutions can provide standards and guidance for state courts to apply.”

THE GOOD OLD DAYS...

Nikki Haley@NikkiHaley

Do you remember when you were growing up, do you remember how simple life was, how easy it felt? It was about faith, family, and country. We can have that again, but to do that, we must vote Joe Biden out.

MY RESPONSE:

Yes, the Good old days of Jim Crow.

When women and children were treated like chattel.

The Thousands who died from Polio or Influenza.

Days before Integration when Blacks had to be escorted by armed soldiers to attend public school.

Family Abuse Ignored, not reported.

That is Haleys America.