Trump picks Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance as running mate
Donald Trump selected U.S. Senator J.D. Vance on Monday to serve as his vice-presidential running mate as the Republican Party officially nominated the former president as its 2024 presidential nominee at the start of the party’s national convention in Milwaukee.
In choosing Vance, Trump elevated a politician who once criticized the former president in acid terms but has since become one of his most stalwart defenders.
“After lengthy deliberation and thought, and considering the tremendous talents of many others, I have decided that the person best suited to assume the position of Vice President of the United States is Senator J.D. Vance of the Great State of Ohio,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
James David Vance, author of the bestselling memoir Hillbilly Elegy, could increase the odds of Trump supporters turning out for the Nov. 5 election as the Ohio native is deeply popular with the Republican candidate’s base.
A staunch conservative from a Republican state, Vance is unlikely to bring many new voters into Trump’s corner, however, and may even alienate some moderates. Some Trump supporters had pushed him to select a woman or person of colour as his No. 2 to expand a base that skews toward white men.
The former president, 78, survived an assassination attempt at a Pennsylvania campaign rally on Saturday by a gunman whose motive remains unknown.
Several of Trump’s highest-profile backers — including former senior adviser Steve Bannon and Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr. — have praised Vance for pushing the Republican Party to embrace a more hands-off foreign policy approach and for supporting trade barriers.
Vance has also delighted Trump supporters with his confrontational social media presence, a relative rarity in the Senate, where many lawmakers still try to maintain a sense of decorum and civility.
At 39, Vance will represent a younger generation in an election that features Trump and President Joe Biden, 81, bringing a counterweight to the Democratic ticket that also includes Vice-President Kamala Harris, 59.
In selecting Vance, Trump passed over other possible contenders, including U.S. senators Marco Rubio and Tim Scott and North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum.
Vance once harsh critic of Trump’s
Vance’s rapid ascent has been unusual for American politics. After a troubled and impoverished childhood in southern Ohio, he served in the Marine Corps, won a scholarship to Yale Law School and later worked as a venture capitalist in San Francisco.
He rose to prominence after 2016 with his memoir Hillbilly Elegy, in which he explored the socioeconomic issues of his hometown and the cycle of poverty that has entrapped Americans in the Appalachian Mountains, where his mother and her family are from.
In the book, Vance criticized what he saw as a self-destructive culture in rural America and sought to explain Trump’s popularity among impoverished white Americans.
The FBI has uncovered bits and pieces of the life of the 20-year-old gunman who tried to assassinate Donald Trump, but it’s still unclear what prompted him to go after the former U.S. president. Mary Ellen O’Toole, a former senior FBI profiler and special agent, explains what the identification process is like.
Vance himself was harshly critical of Trump before and after the latter’s 2016 election win against Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, calling him an “idiot” and “America’s Hitler,” among other epithets.
But as Vance geared up to run for the U.S. Senate in Ohio in 2022, he transformed into one of the former president’s most consistent defenders, supporting Trump even when some Senate colleagues declined to do so.
Trump endorsed Vance that year, despite his previous comments: “Like some others, J.D. Vance may have said some not-so-great things about me in the past, but he gets it now, and I have seen that in spades.”
Vance has played down the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. He said he “doubted” Mike Pence’s life was in danger, despite violent protesters getting within yards of the former vice-president as Secret Service agents rushed him out of the Capitol building.
Vance has also echoed Trump’s criticisms of how the Justice Department has prosecuted Jan. 6 rioters, accusing the department of disregarding due process.
In February, he declined to criticize Trump for encouraging Russian President Vladimir Putin to attack America’s NATO allies if they failed to increase their defence spending.
Front Burner25:31Trump assassination attempt: What’s next for U.S democracy?
In the wake of the apparent assassination attempt on former U.S. president Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday, we look at the potential for an event like this to ratchet up further political violence, and how pivotal this moment could be for a democracy already in crisis.
Vox senior correspondent Zack Beauchamp is our guest. His forthcoming book, The Reactionary Spirit, looks at global challenges to democracy.
For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts
While the Republican Party historically stood for free markets and embraced foreign intervention as an important national-security tool, Trump’s 2016 election opened up significant rifts within the party. Vance has been one of the most vocal opponents of continued aid to Ukraine in the Senate, a stance at odds with many Republican legislative leaders.
On the campaign trail, the former venture capitalist has also served as a bridge between Trump associates and wealthy Silicon Valley donors, many of whom have opened their wallets to Trump this election.
Still, Vance’s selection has its detractors among Trump associates, notably those who had wanted Trump to select a diverse vice-presidential candidate. Though Trump and Biden are virtually tied in most national polls, Trump trails the Democratic president by significant margins among women and Black Americans.
Some Trump associates privately questioned whether it would be wise to take Vance out of the Senate with Democrats and Republicans vying for control of the upper chamber. Democrats hold a one-seat advantage, though they are likely to lose ground in the November election.
Ohio, while safely Republican in presidential elections, does occasionally elect Democrats in other races. Vance won his 2022 election by six percentage points.
Published at Sun, 14 Jul 2024 01:06:12 +0000
Judge hands Trump major legal victory, dismissing classified documents charges
A U.S. judge on Monday dismissed the criminal case accusing Donald Trump of illegally holding onto classified documents, dealing the former president another major legal victory in what some analysts believed was the most formidable case he was facing among his four criminal indictments.
Florida-based U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who was nominated by Trump, ruled that special counsel Jack Smith, who is leading the prosecution, was unlawfully appointed to his role and did not have the authority to bring the case.
It marked another blockbuster legal victory for Trump, following the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on July 1 that as a former president he enjoyed immunity from prosecution for many of his actions in office. It comes two days after he survived an assassination attempt, and as he prepares to announce his vice-presidential running mate as the presumptive nominee at the Republican convention this week in Milwaukee.
Trump has been accused of taking thousands of papers containing some of the nation’s most sensitive national security secrets when he left the White House in January 2021 and storing them in a haphazard manner at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. Reportedly, another document may have been in Trump’s possession at a New Jersey property he owned.
The 37-count indictment included violations of the Espionage Act, which criminalizes unauthorized possession of defence information, and conspiracy to obstruct justice, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. The charges included references to dozens of top-secret or secret documents.
Prosecutors are likely to appeal Monday’s ruling or potentially refile the charges in D.C., where the original request for documents emanated from. Courts in other cases have repeatedly upheld the ability of the U.S. Justice Department to appoint special counsel to handle certain politically sensitive investigations.
“This ruling flies in the face of about 20 years of institutional precedent, conflicts with rulings issued in both the Mueller investigation and in D.C. with respect to Jack Smith himself,” said Bradley Moss, a lawyer who specializes in national security.
But Cannon’s ruling throws the future of the case, which once posed serious legal peril for Trump, into doubt. Smith is also prosecuting Trump in federal court in Washington over his attempts to overturn the 2020 election, but the former president’s lawyers have not made a similar challenge to the special counsel in that case.
The classified documents investigation was first referred to prosecutors in 2022 after the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration tried for more than a year to retrieve presidential records from Trump.
Following the judge’s decision on Monday dismissing the documents case, Trump said his other outstanding prosecutions should also be thrown out. He is still awaiting trial on two cases — a federal prosecution in Washington and a Georgia state prosecution — for his attempts to overturn his 2020 election defeat.
Trump is also due to be sentenced in New York in September for trying to cover up a hush-money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels in the weeks before his 2016 election victory.
“This dismissal of the Lawless Indictment in Florida should be just the first step, followed quickly by the dismissal of ALL the Witch Hunts,” Trump said on his Truth Social site on Monday, also referencing the prosecutions of hundreds of his supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Former U.S. president Donald Trump left for the Republican National Convention a day after an assassination attempt at a campaign rally killed a bystander. Meanwhile, President Joe Biden called for unity as investigators searched for the shooter’s motive.
Congress approval needed, Trump lawyers argued
Trump’s lawyers challenged the legal authority for Attorney General Merrick Garland’s 2022 decision to appoint Smith to lead investigations into Trump. They argued the appointment violated the U.S. Constitution because his office was not created by Congress and he was not confirmed by the Senate.
Lawyers in Smith’s office disputed Trump’s claims, arguing there was a well-settled practice of using special counsel to manage politically sensitive investigations.
The ruling is the latest and most consequential in a series of decisions from Cannon favouring Trump’s defence and expressing skepticism about the conduct of prosecutors. The judge previously delayed a trial indefinitely while considering a flurry of Trump’s legal challenges.
In an unusual move, she allowed three outside lawyers, including two who sided with Trump, to argue during a court hearing focused on Trump’s challenge to Smith’s appointment.
Conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas also provided a boost to Trump’s challenge to the special counsel. In an opinion agreeing with the court’s decision to grant Trump broad immunity in the election case, Thomas questioned whether Smith’s appointment was lawful using similar arguments to those made by Trump’s lawyers.
Garland appointed Smith, a public corruption and international war crimes prosecutor, to give investigations into Trump a degree of independence from the Justice Department under President Joe Biden’s administration.
Two others — Trump personal aide Walt Nauta and Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira — were also charged with obstructing the investigation.
The search of Trump’s property in the summer of 2022 angered Republicans, and one Trump supporter was shot dead three days later after trying to enter an FBI office in Cincinnati.
The case also inspired searches among other high-profile politicians. Biden and former vice-president Mike Pence each returned documents that were located on properties they owned or managed as a result, with no criminal changes resulting.
Published at Mon, 15 Jul 2024 14:15:05 +0000