for more we go go live to a key member of the president’s legal team jenna ellis thank you for joining us what’s the latest with the trump campaign and thank you so much and the trump campaign and in particular in pennsylvania where more than 20 pennsylvania state representatives recently backed calls disputing the state’s election results can you give us the latest here yeah so we’re very excited that the pennsylvania legislature led by doug mostriano and others there are almost 30 legislators now that are co-signers of this resolution that will use their article 2 section 1.2 authority to make sure that they don’t go along with an irredeemably corrupted election and so this is exactly why our founders put that provision in article 2 and to follow up on what jack was just reporting it’s really important to note that there are multiple vehicles to make sure that either the supreme court directs the state legislature to fulfill their duty or the or the state legislatures can do that themselves and that’s why it’s so incredibly important that the pennsylvania legislature allowed us that hearing last week and now they are moving forward with this resolution that they are going to not certify those election results and they are going to make sure to name their delegates uh according to the constitutional process to make sure that none of their constituents in pennsylvania are disenfranchised through a corrupt election we’re hopeful that as pennsylvania leads the way then other states including arizona michigan nevada others in georgia will also recognize how corrupt this election was and also take back their delegates to make sure that we the people genuinely get to select and prefer our president and we’re confident that when every legal vote is counted of course donald trump won and this is the constitutional process to remedy that corrupted election right certainly right certainly and earlier this week that it’s on to the supreme court would you still say you’re working toward a path to victory absolutely and again there are multiple vehicles and ways to get to the supreme court that may be through the third circuit that may be through other means and certainly the the emphasis on the state legislatures is incredibly important because they are the entity that is vested with constitutional authority to make sure that the delegates who actually go to the electoral college and that’s the method by which we choose our american president that they do that by a means that is not corrupted and they make sure as the direct representatives for their state and for their people that they do that in a method that’s according to the constitution and don’t just certify a corrupt election result right and speaking of integrity switching to arizona i understand your team has set up a public hearing on election integrity in phoenix for monday can you tell us a little bit more about that and what you were seeking to accomplish yes so this is a few days behind pennsylvania but basically we expect to mirror very similarly what we accomplished in pennsylvania last week by putting forth witnesses and testimony and expert testimony in arizona about what happened to their election and why this is irredeemably compromised in arizona as well and we’re hopeful that after that hearing arizona will also mirror pennsylvania by taking back their delegates and making sure that they don’t certify a corrupt process so it’s really encouraging i think that as president trump has continued to back the election integrity process to make sure that as the president of the united states he protects and preserves our constitutional republic that state legislators are taking notice and they’re uh they’re looking at all of the evidence and the witnesses that we’re bringing forth we’ve really been denied an evidence you’re hearing anywhere in the court process that’s really unfortunate that should never happen in the judicial branch and so we’re taking this directly to legislators who want to hear this who want to hear from witnesses see our evidence and so we’re very excited to put that forward on monday in arizona and the president has been speaking out about this he tweeted just this morning thinking quotes all the brave men and women in state houses who are defending our great constitution could you tell us how the president is holding up throughout this process yeah so i speak with him along with the mayor multiple times a day and you know he is really invested in making sure that not just the outcome of this election is safe and secure and is not corrupted but he understands that this is about the future of america and protecting and preserving our constitutional republic and our process to make sure that we don’t have corrupt elections and so he is committed to doing that on behalf of the american people he’s always been the president of america first to make sure that the constitution is protected and preserved and so he is 100 behind this and i am so proud of this president that president trump is completely behind protecting election integrity and making sure that the people and these corrupt election officials from governors to secretaries of state all the way down to these local election officials that they don’t get away with this and that they are uh that they are put under the spotlight to to be on notice that uh the republicans and president trump led by president trump are not going to allow this because this will impact the future of our country and we have to preserve and protect free and fair elections yeah the president the president has certainly made it clear he is behind a free and fair election now before i let you go is there anything else that you would like to add yeah thank you so much for that that question and i think that there’s just so much misinformation between all of the mainstream media outlets i’m really grateful to oan for actually giving me the opportunity to come on and explain what’s going on explain the constitutional process explain why these state legislators are actually fulfilling their constitutional duty so i would just tell the american people don’t listen uh to the mainstream media don’t listen to these pundits don’t listen to the twitterratty who are out there trying to just pretend that uh you know this is all over they’re giving misinformation or they’re giving you bad advice on the constitution make sure that you pay attention to what team trump is putting out to what the president is saying and make sure that you’re following up on that because there’s so much misinformation out there we have a really great opportunity right now to protect and preserve our u.s constitution and again we’re so grateful to these state legislators for stepping up and understanding their constitutional responsibility all right jenna ellis is a key member of the president’s legal team thank you so much for your time
Barr Told Prosecutors to Consider Sedition Charges for Protest Violence
Attorney General William P. Barr told federal prosecutors in a call last week that they should consider charging rioters and others who had committed violent crimes at protests in recent months with sedition, according to two people familiar with the call.
The highly unusual suggestion to charge people with insurrection against lawful authority alarmed some on the call, which included U.S. attorneys around the country, said the people, who spoke on the condition they not be named describing Mr. Barr’s comments because they feared retribution.
The attorney general has also asked prosecutors in the Justice Department’s civil rights division to explore whether they could bring criminal charges against Mayor Jenny Durkan of Seattle for allowing some residents to establish a police-free protest zone near the city’s downtown for weeks this summer, according to two people briefed on those discussions.
The directives are in keeping with Mr. Barr’s approach to prosecute crimes as aggressively as possible in cities where protests have given way to violence. But in suggesting possible prosecution of Ms. Durkan, a Democrat, Mr. Barr also took aim at an elected official whom President Trump has repeatedly attacked.
Justice Department representatives did not respond to requests for comment. The Wall Street Journal first reported Mr. Barr’s remarks about sedition.
The disclosures came as Mr. Barr directly inserted himself into the presidential race in recent days to warn that the United States would be on the brink of destruction if Mr. Trump lost. He told a Chicago Tribune columnist that the nation could find itself “irrevocably committed to the socialist path” if Mr. Trump lost and that the country faced “a clear fork in the road.”
Mr. Barr’s actions have thrust the Justice Department into the political fray at a time when Democrats and former law enforcement officials have expressed fears that he is politicizing the department, particularly by intervening in legal matters in ways that benefit Mr. Trump or his circle of friends and advisers.
The protest zone in Seattle became a flash point in the national debate over issues of race and policing this summer. Officers had abandoned the police station there for weeks before retaking it in late July amid escalating violence, including deadly shootings. Ms. Durkan said at the time that she had been forced to act because of the lawlessness.
Days later, federal Homeland Security officials sent tactical agents to the city. Ms. Durkan protested that their arrival would potentially exacerbate tensions between residents and local officials.
Mr. Trump has called the people who lived in the zone “domestic terrorists” and warned that Ms. Durkan and Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington needed to regain control of the area. “If you don’t do it, I will,” the president wrote on Twitter. “This is not a game.”
The attorney general’s question about whether Ms. Durkan, the former U.S. attorney in Seattle, had violated any federal statutes by allowing the protest zone was highly unusual, former law enforcement officials said.
“The attorney general seems personally, deeply offended by the autonomous zone and wants someone to pay for it,” said Chuck Rosenberg, the former U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia. “If the people of Seattle are personally offended, they have political recourse. There is no reason to try to stretch a criminal statute to cover the conduct.”
His supporters say Mr. Barr’s approach is necessary to preserve order at a moment that threatens to spiral into violence and to tamp down unrest in cities where the local authorities will not.
More than 93 percent of the protests in the United States this summer were peaceful, according to a report by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, which monitors political upheaval worldwide. The report looked at 7,750 protests from May 26 through Aug. 22 in 2,400 locations across all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
Sign up to receive an email when we publish a new story about the 2020 election.But far-right and far-left groups, as well as looters and rioters, have seized on the protests to commit acts of violence, including deadly shootings — serious crimes that some federal prosecutors said could not be dismissed out of hand as anomalous, particularly as the threat from extremist groups grows.
Two men associated with Boogaloo, a far-right movement that supports the coming of a second civil war, were arrested on terrorism-related charges last week. Prosecutors said they used the protests as cover to try to sell weapons to the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which the United States and other countries consider a terrorist group, and to use the money to support the Boogaloo movement.
Mr. Barr told federal prosecutors on the call that they needed to crack down on rioting, looting, assaults on law enforcement officers and other violence committed during the protests that have continued across the country since George Floyd, a Black man in Minneapolis, was killed by the police in May.
Mr. Barr mentioned sedition as part of a list of possible federal statutes that prosecutors could use to bring charges, including assaulting a federal officer, rioting, use of explosives and racketeering, according to the people familiar with the call. Justice Department officials included sedition on a list of such charges in a follow-up email.
After Mr. Barr spoke, Richard P. Donoghue, a top aide to the deputy attorney general, interjected to note that some of the U.S. attorneys on the call worked in districts where violence during protests was less common, and that the federal prosecutors may not need to use tools as aggressive as sedition charges.
Mentioning that he had visited Portland, Ore., Mr. Donoghue also assured the prosecutors that the Justice Department would support all efforts to crack down on violence.
“If Barr was saying that if you have a sedition case, then bring it, that is fine,” Mr. Rosenberg said. “But if he is urging people to stretch to bring one, that is deeply dangerous.”
The most extreme form of the federal sedition law, which is rarely invoked, criminalizes conspiracies to overthrow the government of the United States — an extraordinary situation that does not seem to fit the circumstances of the riots and unrest in places like Portland, Ore., and elsewhere in response to police killings of Black men.
The wording of the federal sedition statute goes beyond actual revolutions. It says the crime can also occur anytime two or more people have conspired to use force to oppose federal authority, hinder the government’s ability to enforce any federal law or unlawfully seize any federal property — elements that might conceivably fit a plot to, say, break into and set fire to a federal courthouse.
Congress has treated seditious conspiracy as an unusually serious crime: While ordinary federal offenses carry a maximum sentence of five years, a conviction on a charge of seditious conspiracy can carry up to 20 years in prison.