Reuters Videos
Trump-inspired death threats are terrorizing election workers
AUDIO FROM PHONE CALL: “If you have a hand in this, you deserve to go to prison. You actually deserve to hang by your goddam, soy boy, skinny-ass neck.” In the days and months following the 2020 U.S. presidential election, Fulton County elections director Richard Barron received hundreds of harassing messages. AUDIO PHONE CALL: “You are a fraud. You should just go to China, cause that’s where you belong, in communist China because you’re a crook.” His staff in Atlanta, Georgia – made up almost entirely of Black election workers – was targeted too. RICHARD BARRON, FULTON COUNTY ELECTION DIRECTOR: “The slurs were disturbing, sickening” … “The staff started getting all sorts of calls, threatening that people were going to come and kill everyone in their offices or in their chairs.” For senior election administrators to local volunteers, Trump’s baseless voter fraud claims have had far-reaching consequences in contested states from Georgia to Arizona to Michigan. Public servants and others who ran elections or refuted voter-fraud falsehoods continue to be targeted. Some have faced protests at their homes. Many have received death threats. In Georgia – where Trump faces a criminal investigation into alleged election interference – the fallout has been especially severe. GABRIEL STERLING, GEORGIA ELECTION OFFICIAL: “I’m concerned about future elections.” Gabriel Sterling, a senior election official in Georgia, who drew national attention in December when he denounced Trump’s fraud claims as dangerous, says he’s still being harassed and threatened. GABRIEL STERLING, GEORGIA ELECTION OFFICIAL: “Beginning of May, I still got a phone call at 2:36 in the morning telling me I was going to prison. So this stuff has continued and it’s continued for all of us.” Sterling’s boss, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and his family have also been targeted. In April, Raffensperger’s wife, Tricia received a chilling text message that read, “You and your family will be killed very slowly.”A week earlier, another anonymous text said, “we plan for the death of you and your family every day.” In an exclusive interview with Reuters, Tricia Raffensperger detailed the threats to her family since the election. In one previously unreported incident, people who identified themselves to police as Oath Keepers – a far-right militia group involved in the deadly U.S. Capitol riot on Jan. 6 – were found outside Raffensperger’s home, forcing him and his entire family into hiding. Trump’s loss to Democrat Joe Biden in Georgia in last year’s presidential election marked a dramatic political shift in the historically Republican state. His defeat left many in the party in disbelief and Trump lashed out at election officials claiming they rigged the results. No significant fraud was found in Georgia or elsewhere in the U.S.FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: “There’s no way we lost Georgia, there’s no way. That was a rigged election.” His false claims unleashed a torrent of hate and harassment against election workers. FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: “You watch what’s going to come out. Watch what’s going to be revealed.” Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is now investigating the former president for potential interference and said in a February letter that her office would probe “any involvement in violence or threats.” A spokesman for Trump did not respond to requests for comment, but has previously characterized the probe as a “witch hunt.” Criminal law specialists say the threats to election officials could increase the legal jeopardy for Trump. Georgia State University law professor Clark Cunningham. CLARK CUNNINGHAM, GEORGIA STATE UNIVERSITY LAW PROFESSOR: “The statement in her letter suggests one of the things she may be looking at is whether Mr. Trump or others acting together with him were actually encouraging or soliciting the making of death threats against Georgia election officials.” In April, two investigators from Willis’ office met with Fulton County’s elections director Richard Barron. During the hour-long meeting, which has not been previously reported, investigators sought information on threats against Barron and his staff. Willis’ office did not respond to a request for comment. Elections officials fear the fallout from Trump’s false and incendiary rhetoric could reverberate into future elections by making it harder to hire or retain people in public-service jobs that make them targets for violence. RICHARD BARRON, FULTON COUNTY ELECTION DIRECTOR: “You have a lot of good public servants just leaving… never seen an exodus like this before.”
Axios
Schumer demands Barr and Sessions testify over DOJ’s targeting of House Democrats
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) called on former Attorneys General Bill Barr and Jeff Sessions Friday to testify over the Trump Justice Department’s secret subpoenas for data belonging to House Democrats.Driving the news: At least a dozen people linked to the House Intelligence Committee had records seized between 2017 and early 2018, as part of the Justice Department’s crackdown on media leaks related to the investigation into pot
Quartz
American workers are quitting at the highest rate in decades
There’s something unusual going on in the labor market: US workers are gaining leverage over employers. Recovery from the pandemic has been weird, the result of a collision between public health measures, economic relief provided by governments and central banks, and social changes inspired by the experience of enduring coronavirus. This has resulted in a labor market that seems at once too hot and too cold: The high number of long-term unemployed, for example, suggests a very loose labor market, while the number of firms who say they can’t fill jobs suggests a tight one.
The Daily Beast
Trump’s Loyal, ‘Low Profile’ Money Man Could Bring Him Down
Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast/Photos via GettyWhen leaders of The Trump Organization would prepare important documents like asset evaluations or taxes, there were usually only two people in the room: Donald Trump and chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg.To this point, prosecutors are still searching for ways to flip Weisselberg against his boss. And Trump is Trump. But according to a source with direct knowledge of the company’s inner workings, the man who brought the original docum
The Telegraph
Donald Trump: I trust Vladimir Putin more than US intelligence
Donald Trump has told Joe Biden to give his “warmest regards” to Vladimir Putin and not fall asleep at the US-Russian summit in Geneva next week. In a statement issued by his Save America campaign, Mr Trump also said he would trust Russia over “sleezebags” and “lowlifes” the US intelligence agencies, and claimed that his 2018 summit with Mr Putin in Helsinki helped win Washington Moscow’s respect. “Despite the belated Fake News portrayal of the meeting, the United States won much, including the
The Daily Beast
Here’s Why Schumer’s Mostly OK With Manchin Blocking His Agenda
Aaron P. Bernstein/GettyWashington’s most popular parlor game, after a round of Kamala Harris is wrong no matter what she does, is guessing What in the world is Joe Manchin up to?Manchin is now the man of the moment, with the fate of the Democratic agenda in his hands in a 50-50 Senate. He’s going about it in his wide-eyed, can’t-we-all-get-along way that his colleagues might find grating if it weren’t so sincere. Senators in his party who agree with him from afar on delicate issues like the For
Associated Press
Federal judge won’t halt upcoming South Carolina executions
A federal judge on Friday declined to halt the upcoming executions of two South Carolina prisoners slated to die later this month under the state’s recently revised capital punishment law. U.S. District Judge Bryan Harwell issued the decision to let the executions of Brad Sigmon and Freddie Owens continue after their attorneys argued in court that the state hasn’t exhausted all methods to procure lethal injection drugs.
Good Morning America
These cities have reached Biden’s 70% vaccination goal — and beyond
Seattle has become the first U.S. city to fully vaccinate 70% of eligible residents. In May, President Joe Biden set a goal for 70% of U.S. adults to receive at lease one dose of the vaccine by July 4 in the sprint to end the coronavirus crisis. Mayor Jenny A. Durkan announced Wednesday that Seattle went a step further and became the first “major American city” to hit that percent with fully vaccinated residents, also adding that 78% of Seattle’s population aged 12 and older have received their first dose of the shot.
The Telegraph
Exclusive: US has left Afghanistan with no hope of fighting Taliban, says ‘Butcher of Kabul’
He gained the nickname ‘the Butcher of Kabul’ by raining down rockets on the Afghan capital in the early 1990s. But Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a notorious warlord who has twice served as prime minister, is now warning that the ‘irresponsible’ American withdrawal is leaving behind a government unable to fight off the Taliban. In an interview with the Telegraph at his office near the Afghan parliament, he said: “The Americans are withdrawing with an urgency, and I might add irresponsibly, and they are l
The Daily Beast
McConnell Punts on Whether He’d ‘Welcome’ Trump’s Help: ‘He Has His Own Agenda’
Fox NewsWith twice-impeached former President Donald Trump inserting himself directly into the 2022 midterms, much to the chagrin of some conservatives, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell punted on Thursday when asked whether he’d welcome Trump’s help.After McConnell expressed confidence during a Fox News interview that he’ll end up with the Senate candidates he wants to retake the majority, anchor Bill Hemmer wondered aloud if he’d be receptive to the ex-president’s involvement. “Well, he h
