Donald Trump reportedly kept hundreds of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago – live | US politics

Two men guilty in plot to kidnap Michigan governor: AP

In other Florida news, voters are casting primary ballots as Democrats look ahead to November, where they’ll mount a challenge to governor and potential Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis. Joan E Greve has the latest on what to expect from today’s polls:

Florida voters will head to the polls on Tuesday to determine which candidates will have the chance to face off in this November’s general election. Voters will cast ballots in races for the governorship and Congress, all the way down to circuit courts and local school boards.

Democrats are competing to run against the state’s governor, Ron DeSantis, and US senator Marco Rubio, both of whom are considered potential Republican presidential candidates for 2024. On the House side, a new congressional map drawn by DeSantis is expected to give Republicans a hefty advantage in the November midterms.

Although Florida has long been considered a swing state, Republicans have a considerable edge heading into this election season. Republicans last year overtook Democrats in Florida’s voter registration rolls. And Donald Trump carried the state by three points in the 2020 presidential race, although Joe Biden defeated him in the electoral college while also winning the national popular vote by four points.

A more typical sentiment among Republicans in the House of Representatives is that expressed below by Jim Jordan, a notable ally of Donald Trump who will likely lead the chamber’s judiciary committee if the GOP wins a majority in the midterms:

Jordan refers to the many scandals and investigations that occurred during Trump’s four years in office, which generated headlines, rallied Democrats against him but ultimately didn’t lead to his early exit from office, as his most vociferous opponents hoped.

Here’s Donald Trump’s Monday statement about his lawsuit against the FBI to stop them from reading the documents seized at Mar-a-Lago.

In it, he makes a number of assertions, including that the search was illegal and approved by a judge with conflicts. He also seems to suggest “plants” were included in his property:

The statement was mocked by House Republican Adam Kinzinger, a foe of the former president who is on the January 6 committee investigating the attack on the Capitol, and will not be returning to Congress next year. Trump’s statement may appear a ramble, but as Kinzinger points out, “people will believe it”:

Citing many in the Republican party’s insistence that the 2020 election was stolen along with its stance on climate change, a Colorado state senator has defected to the Democratic party from the GOP, the Washington Post reports.

In a two-page letter explaining his decision, Kevin Priola declared there is “too much at stake right now for Republicans to be in charge” and, “Simply put, we need Democrats in charge.” Priola has been a Republican since 1990, and cited the January 6 insurrection as fundamentally changing his beliefs.

“I haven’t changed much in 30 years; but my party has,” he said. “I cannot continue to be a part of a political party that is okay with a violent attempt to overturn a free and fair election and continues to peddle claims that the 2020 election was stolen.” He also cited the GOP’s resistance to address climate change even as Colorado deals with serious wildfires and drought conditions. “I believe it’s immoral to saddle the next generation of Coloradans with even worse impacts,” Priola said.

The defection won’t change the state of play in the Colorado senate, which Democrats control. The Post reports that Republicans are meanwhile hoping to regain the majority in the November elections. The top Republican in the senate, John Cook, said the lawmaker’s defection “will not change the trajectory of this election cycle, nor the outcome of this year’s fight for the state Senate”, and added that Priola’s constituents “may explore their options for new representation”.

Yesterday, Trump unveiled his legal counter attack against the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago by filing a lawsuit to stop agents from reading the documents they retrieved. Here’s Martin Pengelly’s report:

Donald Trump on Monday filed suit against the US government over the FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago home, seeking to temporarily stop the bureau reading seized materials until a special court official can be appointed to review documents concerned.

As the Guardian reported on Saturday, citing Trump’s lead attorney, Jim Trusty, and two sources familiar with the matter, “the suit argues that the court should appoint a special master – usually a retired lawyer or judge – because the FBI potentially seized privileged materials in its search and the Department of Justice (DoJ) should not itself decide what it can use in its investigation”.

The suit, filed in US district court for the southern district of Florida, also “requires the government to provide a more detailed receipt for property; and … requires the government to return any item seized that was not within the scope of the search warrant”.

The brouhaha at Mar-a-Lago isn’t the only one involving Trump and sensitive records. The Washington Post reports lawyers trying to overturn the 2020 election shared election data with conspiracy theorists and rightwing commentators.

The revelation stems from a lawsuit over the security of voting systems in Georgia, according to the Post, and points to larger issues with election security nationwide. Here’s more from their story:

A Georgia computer forensics firm, hired by the attorneys, placed the files on a server, where company records show they were downloaded dozens of times. Among the downloaders were accounts associated with a Texas meteorologist who has appeared on Sean Hannity’s radio show; a podcaster who suggested political enemies should be executed; a former pro surfer who pushed disproven theories that the 2020 election was manipulated; and a self-described former “seduction and pickup coach” who claims to also have been a hacker.

Plaintiffs in a long-running federal lawsuit over the security of Georgia’s voting systems obtained the new records from the company, Atlanta-based SullivanStrickler, under a subpoena to one of its executives. The records include contracts between the firm and the Trump-allied attorneys, notably Sidney Powell. The data files are described as copies of components from election systems in Coffee County, Ga., and Antrim County, Mich.

A series of data leaks and alleged breaches of local elections offices since 2020 has prompted criminal investigations and fueled concerns among some security experts that public disclosure of information collected from voting systems could be exploited by hackers and other people seeking to manipulate future elections.

Access to U.S. voting system software and other components is tightly regulated, and the government classifies those systems as “critical infrastructure.” The new batch of records shows for the first time how the files copied from election systems were distributed to people in multiple states.

Marilyn Marks, executive director of the nonprofit Coalition for Good Governance, which is one of the plaintiffs in the Georgia lawsuit, said the records appeared to show the files were handled recklessly. “The implications go far beyond Coffee County or Georgia,” Marks said.

Some of the documents Trump kept after leaving the White House were marked “special access program materials”, one of the government’s most highly sensitive classifications, Politico reports.

Citing a letter publicly posted by a Trump ally who was one of his liaisons with the National Archives, the report indicates the alarm raised after 700 pages of classified material were retrieved from Mar-a-Lago in January, but it was only in May that the FBI and justice department was able to view them, after lengthy negotiations with the former president’s lawyers.

Here’s more from Politico:

The May 10 letter – posted late Monday on the website of John Solomon, a conservative journalist and one of Trump’s authorized liaisons to the National Archives to review papers from his presidency – showed that NARA and federal investigators had grown increasingly alarmed about potential damage to national security caused by the warehousing of these documents at Mar-a-Lago, as well as by Trump’s resistance to sharing them with the FBI.

These records included 700 pages of classified material, according to the letter, sent by National Archivist Debra Wall to Trump’s attorney, Evan Corcoran, and it doesn’t include records recovered by the Justice Department and FBI during a June meeting and the Aug. 11 search of the Mar-a-Lago premises.

Wall’s letter describes earlier correspondence in which Trump’s team objected to disclosing the contents of the 15 boxes to the FBI.

“As you are no doubt aware, NARA had ongoing communications with the former President’s representatives throughout 2021 about what appeared to be missing Presidential records, which resulted in the transfer of 15 boxes of records to NARA in January 2022,” Wall wrote. “In its initial review of materials within those boxes, NARA identified items marked as classified national security information, up to the level of Top Secret and including Sensitive Compartmented Information and Special Access Program materials.”

NARA aides did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the letter, and Corcoran could not immediately be reached.

The correspondence shows that even though NARA retrieved the 15 boxes in January, Justice Department and FBI investigators didn’t see their contents until May, after extended negotiations with Trump’s representatives. The letter also shows that in the interim, DOJ asked President Joe Biden to authorize NARA to provide the records to investigators despite an effort by Trump to claim executive privilege over the records. Wall indicated she had rejected Trump’s claim because of the significance of the documents to national security.

“NARA informed the Department of Justice about that discovery, which prompted the Department to ask the President to request that NARA provide the FBI with access to the boxes at issue so that the FBI and others in the Intelligence Community could examine them,” Wall wrote.

Trump kept hundreds of classified documents after leaving White House: report

Voters will choose candidates for a slew of offices in New York and Florida today, but one race with an immediate – although not decisive – effect on the balance of power in Congress is taking place in New York.

The state’s 19th district has swung between supporting Democrats and Republicans, and there, voters will choose a new congressman to serve for a few months as a replacement for Antonio Delgado, a Democrat who was appointed New York’s lieutenant governor.

The Republican candidate Marc Molinaro has centered his appeal to voters on fighting inflation, while Democrat Pat Ryan has tried to win support by capitalizing on the party’s recent productivity in Congress, as well as outrage at supreme court decisions like the reversal of Roe v. Wade. “A win here would validate that the ground is shifting,” Ryan told Politico in an interview.

If Ryan wins, the Democrats will have one more vote in their tiny House majority. If Republicans win, they’ll have one less, making any resistance to the last pieces of legislation they’re expected to consider before the year ends more problematic. The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter considers the race a toss-up.

Florida and New York voters to make electoral mood known in primaries