What happened

The Justice Department has reportedly demoted conservative activist Ed Martin from his role as President Donald Trump’s “weaponization czar,” leading a working group to investigate and punish alleged cases of prosecutorial overreach against Trump and his allies. Martin will remain the DOJ’s pardon attorney but “lost his title as an assistant attorney general” and is being relocated to a different office, “pulling him away” from the “most powerful figures” in the Justice Department, The Washington Post reported Monday.

Who said what

Martin played an “important role in the largely unsuccessful prosecutions of Trump’s political foes,” including New York Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI Director James Comey, said the Post. But he has “at times clashed” with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche “over his lack of productivity on the working group and his controversial social media posts,” said CBS News. “For his part, Martin felt Justice Department leaders had marginalized him,” The Wall Street Journal said.

Martin “continues to do a great job” as pardon attorney, a Justice Department spokesperson said Monday, declining to comment on the reported demotion. People close to Martin said they believed “Blanche’s move to marginalize him was intended to prompt his resignation,” The New York Times said, and Martin has “told people in his orbit that he is considering leaving, possibly for an as-yet-undetermined position in the White House.”

What next?

It was “not clear what purpose the task force” will have with Martin “out of the picture,” the Times said. But his demotion does not “signal a pullback from the department’s campaign to investigate, humiliate and punish targets singled out” by Trump, “whose thirst to seek revenge against his perceived political enemies remains unslaked after a year in office.”

What happened

A federal judge in Oregon on Monday rejected a Trump administration lawsuit seeking to compel the state to turn over its unredacted voter files. U.S. District Judge Mustafa Kasubhai dismissed the case after a hearing on “the basis and the purpose” of the Justice Department’s voter data demands in light of a letter from Attorney General Pam Bondi to Minnesota on Saturday linking its voter rolls to bringing “back law and order” and “an end to the chaos in Minnesota.” State officials called the letter, sent to Gov. Tim Walz (D) shortly after Border Patrol agents shot dead Alex Pretti, a “shakedown” and a “ransom note.”

Who said what

The Justice Department sued at least 23 states, including Oregon and Minnesota, last year after they refused to turn over detailed voter data including birth dates, driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers. Earlier this month, a federal judge in Georgia dismissed one such suit on procedural grounds, while a federal judge in California threw out the request as “unprecedented and illegal.”

Almost every state has a “public version of its voter roll,” but traditionally, no one can obtain the “complete, unredacted” version, “not even the Justice Department,” The New York Times said. The Trump administration’s “highly unusual” effort raised alarms “because the Constitution dictates that elections are run mainly by individual states, not the administration in Washington,” and because the effort was “led by Trump allies who long falsely claimed” he won the 2020 election, “raising concerns that the data could be used to cast doubt on future election results.”

What next?

Kasubhai said he had “great concerns” about the administration’s motives regarding raw voter data but was denying its petition because the Justice Department had failed to state an adequate legal rationale.

What happened

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on Sunday night disclosed that the Justice Department was “threatening a criminal indictment” against him over testimony he gave to the Senate last summer about an over-budget renovation of the Federal Reserve’s headquarters. Powell called the “unprecedented” criminal investigation part of President Donald Trump’s “threats and ongoing pressure” on him to slash interest rates, and many analysts agreed. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said he would use his vote on the Banking Committee to oppose any Trump nominees to the central bank until “this legal matter is fully resolved.”

Who said what

“The threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the president,” Powell said in a video message. His statement was “notable for its forceful pushback after years of generally avoiding commenting at all on Trump’s repeated attacks on the central bank,” The Washington Post said.

The White House “began highlighting cost overruns” in the Fed renovations “last summer after Trump grew unhappy that Powell wasn’t moving faster to cut interest rates,” The Wall Street Journal said. The “brouhaha” over costs “appeared to be an effort to erode the public’s trust in Powell, build a legal case to force him out, or both.” White House budget director Russell Vought — whose Project 2025 governing blueprint called for “effectively abolishing” the Fed — flagged Powell’s testimony for investigation in July, CNN said.

“I don’t know anything about” the Justice Department’s actions, Trump told NBC News Sunday night, and “I wouldn’t even think of doing it that way” to pressure Powell to lower rates. This investigation removes “any remaining doubt” that Trump’s aides are “actively pushing to end the independence of the Federal Reserve,” Tillis said. “It is now the independence and credibility of the Department of Justice that are in question.”

What next?

Opposition by Tillis to Trump’s Fed picks, including a new chair when Powell’s term ends in May, “wouldn’t doom a confirmation on its own,” Semafor said. But it would leave the committee with an 11-11 split that “would require “extra steps from party leaders to break.” Trump’s unprecedented effort to fire Fed board member Lisa Cook goes before the Supreme Court for arguments Jan. 21.

There is a political storm brewing in the US over the disclosure of the Epstein files and their link to President Donald Trump.

At least 13 files, including a photo containing Trump, were removed by the Department of Justice from the latest release of documents, only to be republished after a review following concerns over victim identification.

The evidence was reinstated without any “alteration or redaction”, said the DoJ, with deputy attorney general Todd Blanche explicitly stating on NBC News that “it has nothing to do with President Trump”.

What did the commentators say?

“The documents produced no major revelations,” said The New York Times. The photos in particular underlined how Jeffrey Epstein, the late convicted sex offender, “attracted a remarkably broad spectrum of famous people into his orbit”, with Michael Jackson, Mick Jagger and Walter Cronkite appearing in the latest batch.

The redactions have caused the most controversy, said The Guardian. Blanche argued that the government “did not have time to review all the files to make redactions needed to protect victims”, with at least one victim claiming that she had been identified in the DoJ dump.

Conversely, in some areas, the redactions were “too aggressive”. For instance, a picture of Clinton, Michael Jackson and Diana Ross was also mistakenly redacted to obscure a child’s face. The child was Jackson’s son, with images “readily available” from commercial photo archives.

There is only one “unequivocal takeaway” from this latest episode, said CNN. The Trump administration’s efforts to “quell the storm have whipped up a new vortex of political energy” that could potentially harm the president.

The most recent release has exposed the “stunning revelation that there are 1,200 people identified as victims or their relatives”, with “materials from dozens of hard drives, old CDs and computers”. Though there is nothing to suggest any direct wrongdoing on Trump’s part, it fuels the “ever-deepening political storm” surrounding him.

There are “several possibilities” explaining the administration’s actions. The “sheer size” of the data could be posing “genuine issues” for officials. The department “may lack the competence” to do such a vast job “comprehensively and quickly”, following “purges of career officials by Trump’s aides”. Lastly, critics of the president “would not be surprised” if the DoJ was trying to brazenly “protect” Trump. Whatever the reason, this will cause a significant “headache” for him.

If Trump has tried to “deflect attention” away from himself, he “may have succeeded”, as the latest tranche of documents “shifted the spotlight” on to former Democrat president Bill Clinton, said the Financial Times. After eventually signing the legislation to release the files, Trump has recognised the “political benefit” of using the files to “tarnish the reputation of a prominent Democrat” and “one of his great ideological foes”.

This speaks to how the files have become a “weapon in America’s escalating ideological war”. On the left, politicians are employing the new information to “discredit” Trump, while the president and his administration are using them to “attack his adversaries”. The conflict continues, as the battles over the files “underscore the claims of Democrats and others that Trump is using the DoJ to pursue his political opponents”: a charge that Trump has “repeatedly levelled at the Biden administration”.

What next?

Representatives Ro Khanna (Democrat) and Thomas Massie (Republican) are seeking to find Attorney General Pam Bondi in contempt of Congress, for not releasing more documents related to Epstein. Both were involved in the original drafting of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, and Khanna now wants to see the “60-count federal indictment of Epstein from 2007 and the accompanying prosecution memo”, said The Washington Post.

In a statement, the justice department said that materials “will continue being reviewed and redacted” in line with legal requirements, exercising an “abundance of caution as we receive additional information”.

What happened

U.S. District Judge Cameron Currie on Monday threw out the Trump administration’s criminal cases against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. Currie ruled that Lindsey Halligan, the insurance lawyer and White House aide hand-picked by President Donald Trump to prosecute both cases, had been “unlawfully” installed as U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, rendering both indictments void. But the judge dismissed both cases “without prejudice,” giving the Justice Department a chance to attempt a do-over.

Who said what

Currie’s twin rulings are the most “significant setback yet” for Trump’s ongoing effort to “force the criminal justice system to punish his perceived foes,” said The New York Times. The judge’s disqualification of Halligan also “added to a string of successful challenges” of Trump’s efforts to appoint U.S. attorneys outside the “customary Senate confirmation process,” The Wall Street Journal said.

Attorney General Pam Bondi had “defended Halligan’s appointment” but also named her a “‘Special Attorney,’ presumably as a way to protect the indictments from the possibility of collapse,” The Associated Press said. Currie rejected that attempt at retroactive validation, saying it would allow the government to “send any private citizen off the street — attorney or not — into the grand jury room to secure an indictment so long as the attorney general gives her approval after the fact. That cannot be the law.”

Disqualifying Halligan was “arguably the least painful way for the Justice Department to lose the Comey and James cases,” Politico said, because it left “unresolved the most explosive question in each: whether the indictments were the product of Trump’s personal animus.” Comey said on social media that “Trump will probably come after me again,” but “my attitude is going to be the same: I’m innocent. I am not afraid. And I believe in an independent federal judiciary.”

What next?

Bondi said the Justice Department would pursue an “immediate appeal” of the cases. Lawfully appointed prosecutors could try to revive the cases, though they would “face complications” with the Comey charges, as the five-year statute of limitations ended in September, the Journal said.

The Epstein case has become an obsession for many on the Republican Right, so Trump's decision to close the case down, not to release files, and to dismiss it as a "hoax" was seen as a betrayal. Democrats joined the fray, accusing Trump of "hiding the Epstein list", and hinting that he himself might be implicated.

There remains very little hard proof to back up the more sensational claims: of a blackmail racket, of the widespread abuse of his victims by other powerful men (only Giuffre has publicly made such claims). But there are enough loose ends and clues to keep people asking questions.

What explains the fascination?

Epstein's story inspires both grim curiosity and conspiratorial thinking: there is the horrific nature of his crimes; his great wealth; his collection of famous friends; at least one attested cover-up; his sudden death in suspicious circumstances; and a series of unanswered questions.

The financier, who died in a jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges, left a $578 million estate that included a palatial Manhattan townhouse, a mansion in Palm Beach, Florida, and two Caribbean islands, Little and Great Saint James. The FBI concluded that Epstein had abused more than 1,000 girls and young women. Court documents detail how he trafficked girls as young as 12 to his properties and held them in sexual servitude.

How did he become so wealthy?

It's something of a mystery. Born to working-class parents in Brooklyn, Epstein never graduated from college but was hired by New York's prestigious Dalton prep school, where he taught maths and physics in the mid-1970s. He was fired for "poor performance", but not before impressing Dalton parent and Bear Stearns CEO Ace Greenberg, who hired him at the investment bank.

Epstein founded his own money management firm in 1988. He described himself as a "bounty hunter" who recovered stolen assets; he worked with the fraudster Steven J. Hoffenberg; but he was never a major Wall Street player. Various theories have circulated about the source of his riches – including that Epstein might have blackmailed influential people by collecting footage of them having sex with underage girls. What is known is that most of Epstein's money came from two clients, Victoria's Secret owner Leslie Wexner, and private equity mega-investor Leon Black, who together paid him a hefty $370 million in fees. Both Wexner and Black say they regret their ties with Epstein and deny wrongdoing.

Who did he associate with?

Epstein cultivated friendships with politicians, business leaders and celebrities. His social circle included Bill Gates, Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, Woody Allen, the former Israeli PM Ehud Barak, the law professor Alan Dershowitz, the former senator George Mitchell, the computer scientist Marvin Minsky – and Ghislaine Maxwell, who was first his girlfriend and then his accomplice and enabler. Some, including Clinton, Trump and Gates (all of whom deny wrongdoing) flew on Epstein's private plane, later nicknamed the "Lolita Express".

Trump and Epstein socialised frequently from the 1980s to early 2000s, and in 2002, Trump told New York Magazine that Epstein was a "terrific guy" who "likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side". The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Trump had sent a bawdy message to Epstein on his 50th birthday, referring to a "secret". However, their friendship ended in 2004 amid a bidding war over a Palm Beach mansion.

When did the abuse start?

At Maxwell's 2021 sex trafficking trial, a woman identified as Kate testified that Maxwell befriended her when she was 17 in 1994, promising to help her musical career. Maxwell pushed Kate to give Epstein massages that soon turned sexual, and to recruit other "cute" girls. It is clear that, in the early 2000s, Epstein entrapped scores of underage victims – many from broken homes – with the promise of modelling careers or other work. Courtney Wild, groomed by Epstein at 14, said she recruited "70 to 80 girls who were all 14 and 15 years old" for him. Virginia Giuffre, who died by suicide in April, said she was "passed around like a platter of fruit" and forced to have sex with Epstein associates such as Prince Andrew (who denies this).

Many of the alleged crimes took place in Palm Beach and at Little Saint James. According to one lawsuit, a 15-year-old victim tried to swim away from the island; she was caught and returned.

When did law enforcement get involved?

In 2005, the stepmother of a 14-year-old told Palm Beach police that Epstein had paid her step-daughter to perform a naked massage. An investigation uncovered many more victims, but produced an infamous 2008 sweetheart deal: Epstein received an 18-month sentence on minor prostitution charges; in return, an FBI probe was called off and immunity was given for "any potential co-conspirators". He had a prison wing to himself and was chauffeured six days a week to his West Palm Beach office, before being released five months early. He abused more girls during and after his sentence, according to lawsuits.

It took an exposé in the Miami Herald many years later, in 2018, to stir up a national outcry. Trump's then labour secretary, Alexander Acosta – who had helped broker the 2008 deal as a federal prosecutor – resigned, and Epstein was arrested on sex-trafficking charges in July 2019. Weeks later, the financier was found dead, aged 66, in a New York jail cell with a bedsheet around his neck.

Is there much we still don't know?

The full scope of his abuse, and whether he had other accomplices, is still not clear. Campaigning last year, Trump pledged to release all the Department of Justice's files on Epstein, and in February, Attorney General Pam Bondi claimed to have his client list on her desk. But in July, the Justice Department stated that the list didn't actually exist.

The FBI then concluded that there was no evidence incriminating third parties, or that Epstein had blackmailed prominent individuals; and it found that he had definitely died by suicide. Trump urged his supporters to move on from this "boring" case. This inflamed conspiracy theorists and others. "This was a man that was allowed to abuse girls and women for two decades," said Julie K. Brown, who reported on Epstein for the Miami Herald in 2018. "The victims deserve to know whether our government did the job that they were supposed to do."

The automatic right to trial by jury could be denied to defendants accused of all but the most serious crimes, under new justice plans for England and Wales proposed by the government.

It's an "idea whose time has probably come", Courts Minister Sarah Sackman told The Times. Jury trial "will always be a cornerstone of British justice for the most serious cases" but "really bold and really radical" measures are needed to bring down the huge backlog of cases awaiting trial.

How bad is the court backlog?

The crown court case backlog is "scandalous", said The Spectator. There are almost 80,000 cases waiting to be heard in England and Wales, leaving defendants and victims in limbo. "Some defendants are already being told that there are no free slots before 2028."

"Given the acute scale of the problem," Sackman told The Times, "we are going to have to use every lever at our disposal" to fix it.

How would jury-less trials work?

Instead of a 12-person jury, cases could be tried before a judge and two magistrates in a new kind of court, similar to that recommended by The Times' recent Crime and Justice Commission report, which was published after consulting police officers, victims, judges, lawyers, and academics.

The idea of establishing an "intermediate court", now backed by five former lord chancellors and two former lord chief justices, is not a new one. It was first mooted more than 20 years ago and was, last year, promoted by former Tory justice minister Alex Chalk. Its proposed adoption by the government now is undoubtedly a result of the need to bring victims swifter justice.

Former Court of Appeal judge Brian Leveson is currently conducting a review of crown courts in England and Wales, which is "expected to feature" the intermediate courts proposal, and Sackman "will wait to see" what he recommends, said The Times.

Which crimes might have jury-less trials?

The proposed intermediate courts would hear cases involving so-called "either way" offences – where, currently, a defendant can either choose for their case to be heard by magistrates or opt for crown court and a jury trial. Typical "either way" offences include theft, drug possession, dangerous driving, fraud and some forms of non-serious assault, and these cases currently make up over 50% of the crown court backlog. The most serious cases – involving, for example, murder, manslaughter, rape, serious violence or sexual assault – would still be heard in a crown court, in front of a judge and jury.

What are the concerns?

In theory, more jury-less trials could mean more convictions: it's well known that opting for a jury trial "materially increases the chance of acquittal", said The Spectator. But the Bar Council – which represents barristers in England and Wales – has opposed the idea, saying that "altering the fundamental structure of delivering criminal justice is not a principled response to a crisis which was not, in truth, caused by that structure in the first place". Introducing intermediate courts "would be an unnecessary distraction in a system that is already stretched and under-resourced", and removing juries could have "some serious potential risks to public confidence in the administration of justice".

The Law Society, the professional body for solicitors, has echoed these concerns, saying the new courts would "waste money, time and energy".

The Scottish government has already piloted jury-less trials but only for rape and serious sexual assault cases and the pilot was quickly scrapped after a "backlash from the highest levels of the legal profession", said The Guardian. Although the aim was to tackle the persistently low conviction rates for these kind of cases, there was a "near-unanimous boycott" of the pilot scheme from lawyers across Scotland.

How else could the court backlog be tackled?

Alternative suggestions put forward by lawyers to ease the backlog of cases include "greater use of out-of-court disposals, such as cautions and deferred prosecution agreements, more hearings conducted virtually over video link, and maximum use of judges – including those who have retired but could be brought back into service", said London's The Standard.

What happened

U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis said Sunday she had ordered the Trump administration to retrieve one of the migrants it had sent to a prison in El Salvador because the "grievous error" to deport him appeared to be "wholly lawless." The Justice Department had conceded that deporting Kilmar Abrego Garcia was an "administrative error" but said the judge had no jurisdiction in the case and it had no power to bring him back to Maryland — claims Xinis called "eye-popping."

Who said what

Sunday's "strongly worded order" from Xinis "served two purposes," The New York Times said. It "offered a more detailed explanation" of her bench order Friday, and it "rejected a request by the Justice Department to pause the order as a federal appeals court considered its validity."

Attorney General Pam Bondi confirmed Sunday that the Justice Department had put Erez Reuveni — the veteran government lawyer who appeared before Xinis on Friday and expressed frustration with the DOJ's lack of forthcomingness — on administrative leave for not having argued the government's case "zealously" enough.

What next?

Xinis ordered the Trump administration to bring Abrego Garcia home by Monday night. It's not clear if the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals will step in before then.

"Today was very nearly what the Tories were calling 'two-tier Tuesday,'" said Politico.

The Sentencing Council's updated guidelines for judges and magistrates in England and Wales, due to come into force today, advised courts to "normally consider" pre-sentence reports before sentencing people from 10 categories – including women and those from ethnic or religious minorities.

But after widespread criticism from both Labour and the Conservatives – with accusations of "two-tier justice" – the justice secretary demanded that the independent body U-turn on its guidance, and introduced emergency legislation to overrule it. Despite initially standing firm, the Sentencing Council "caved to government pressure" last night, said Politico, and suspended the guidance while Shabana Mahmood's bill is considered.

What are pre-sentence reports?

They provide courts with information about an offender's background and the circumstances surrounding the crime. Compiled by the Probation Service, the reports include a sentencing recommendation that "takes these factors into account, alongside the seriousness of the offence", said Daniel Alge, a senior lecturer in criminal justice, on The Conversation. But crucially, the judge or magistrate is "not bound by the recommendation".

Previously, pre-sentence reports were advised if the court was deciding between a community order or custody. The new guidance, published by the independent body this month after a consultation last year, included a revised list of the types of offender for whom a pre-sentence report might be particularly important.

Reports "will normally be considered necessary" for offenders in one of 10 cohorts, it said: women; a young adult; a sole or primary carer for a relative; a victim of domestic abuse; a victim of trafficking; an addict; someone suffering a serious chronic medical condition; and someone from an ethnic minority, cultural minority or faith minority.

What was the council's thinking?

"You are more likely to receive a custodial sentence if you are from an ethnic minority group, even after controlling for various offender and case characteristics," said Stephen Bush in the Financial Times.

There is "no statistically significant difference" as to whether someone is found guilty by a jury; there is, however, a "statistically significant difference at sentencing", being greatest for people in the "other" ethnic group. It is this disparity the council was seeking to address.

So what's the backlash?

Shadow justice minister Robert Jenrick said the guidance showed a "blatant bias against Christians and straight white men". He claimed it would "make a custodial sentence less likely" for those from an ethnic or religious minority, said Sky News.

That was a "gross oversimplification", said Joshua Rozenberg in the Law Gazette. But Mahmood "allowed herself to be wound up". On 20 March, the justice secretary "fired off a letter" to William Davis, lord chief justice and chair of the Sentencing Council. There is "a difference in sentencing outcomes for ethnic minorities", she wrote: "the disparity is clearly real."

While pre-sentencing reports "can be valuable in all cases", the government opposes "differential treatment on the basis of race or ethnicity".

She added: "A Muslim woman, like me, is safer in this country when she is treated no differently to her fellow citizens, regardless of the colour of her skin or the nature of her faith."

Ministers also argue that any action to tackle bias should originate from elected politicians and not a quango. "I'm very disappointed in the response of the Sentencing Council on this issue," Keir Starmer told GB News yesterday.

Then what happened?

The council "replied robustly", said Rozenberg. "I have seen it suggested that the guideline instructs sentencers to impose a more lenient sentence on those from ethnic minorities than white offenders," Davis wrote in a public letter. "Plainly that suggestion is completely wrong."

But judges must "do all that they can to avoid a difference in outcome based on ethnicity". They would be "better equipped to do that if they have as much information as possible about the offender".

The council refused to back down, so today Mahmood has introduced emergency legislation that would make the guidelines "unlawful". They "create a justice system where outcomes could be influenced by race, culture or religion", she said. "This differential treatment is unacceptable – equality before the law is the backbone of public confidence in our justice system."

But Mahmood was told it would be impossible to pass the bill through Parliament before the Easter recess, said The Guardian, so there would have been a "short, confusing period" during which the guidance would have applied. To avoid this "potentially chaotic process", the council confirmed it would not implement a guideline while there was a draft being considered that would make it illegal.

In a statement, it said it still believed the guidelines were "necessary and appropriate".

What happened

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg Monday reaffirmed his order barring President Donald Trump from deporting alleged Venezuelan gang members without a hearing, under a controversial interpretation of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act.

Justice Department lawyers, invoking the state secrets privilege, refused to provide Boasberg any more information on dozens of Venezuelans flown to an El Salvador prison on March 15, after he had ordered the flights aborted. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., appeared split Monday on whether to lift Boasberg's order.

Who said what

"Nazis got better treatment under the Alien Enemies Act" in World War II, appellate Judge Patricia Millett said to government lawyer Drew Ensign. "We certainly dispute the Nazi analogy," Ensign said, arguing that Boasberg's ruling was an "unprecedented and enormous intrusion" on the president's foreign policy decisions.

The Justice Department's unusual invocation of the state secrets privilege was a "patent act of defiance" to Boasberg that "sharply escalated the growing conflict between the administration and the judge — and, by extension, the federal judiciary — in a case that legal experts fear is precipitating a constitutional crisis," The New York Times said.

What next?

The appellate panel did not issue an opinion, but its eventual ruling "probably will shape how the Trump administration uses the Alien Enemies Act going forward," The Washington Post said, at least until the Supreme Court weighs in.

President Donald Trump campaigned on ending the "weaponization" of the Justice Department. The early going suggests that the Trump White House may instead use federal prosecutors to reward friends with dismissed prosecutions while subjecting the president's political enemies to heightened scrutiny. One such prosecutor — Ed Martin, the interim U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C. — already stands out.

Martin last week sent a letter to the dean of Georgetown University Law Center threatening not to hire the law school's grads as long as professors there to "promote and teach DEI," said CNN. The dean rebuffed Martin's threat: The prosecutor's letter is a "constitutional violation" that attacks the "University's mission as a Jesuit and Catholic institution," William Treanor said in his response. The exchange highlighted how Martin has used his newfound prosecutorial powers to "aggressively push Trump's retribution agenda," said CNN.

A firebrand eyeing Democrats

Martin is a "firebrand" conservative radio host who was an "active figure in Missouri politics for decades" before ascending to his current post, said The Washington Examiner. During Trump's time out of office, Martin was an "advocate for Jan. 6 Capitol rioters," said Bloomberg. After becoming the D.C. prosecutor, he oversaw the dismissal of "hundreds of criminal cases" against those same insurrection participants," while also demoting "multiple senior supervisors" who participated in the prosecutions during the Biden Administration. Such moves have "provoked the anger of Democrats," said the Examiner.

Apart from Jan. 6, Martin has "made his priorities unmistakable," said Vox. His office dismissed a campaign finance case against former Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (R-Neb.) while refusing to bring domestic violence charges against Rep. Cory Mills (R-Fla.). He has also signaled a desire to go after "Democratic politicians, the media, progressive groups" and other Trump rivals. In one incident, he responded to the controversy over the Associated Press' refusal to use the label "Gulf of America" by saying on X that as "President Trumps' lawyers [sic]" his office would be "vigilant in standing against entities like the AP that refuse to put America first." A community note appended to the post noted that the Justice Department is "not the personal law firm of the president."

Trump clearly likes what he sees. The president in February nominated Martin to take the federal prosecutor job on a permanent basis, said NBC News. The announcement came three days after Martin posted on X that he would investigate Jack Smith, the Biden-era special counsel who prosecuted Trump for trying to overturn the 2020 election. "We'll be in touch soon," Martin said in the post.

A 'real challenge' for confirmation

Democrats are also taking notice of Martin. Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee have filed a formal complaint accusing the prosecutor of "professional misconduct," said The Hill. Martin's behavior "undermines the integrity of our justice system and erodes public confidence in it," said the 10 Democrats who serve on the committee. It is also not clear whether Senate Republicans will back confirming Martin to keep the job permanently. That will be a "real challenge," said Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.).

What happened

TD Bank pleaded guilty to multiple criminal charges Thursday and agreed to pay the Justice Department and financial regulators more than $3 billion for facilitating hundreds of millions of dollars in money laundering by drug smugglers, terrorists, human traffickers and other criminal organizations. Along with the record financial penalties, Canada's No. 2 bank is prohibited from growing beyond its current size in the U.S. TD Bank is the 10th-largest U.S. retail bank, with more than 1,100 branches along the East Coast.

Who said what

The "flagrant" money laundering was "somewhat of an open secret" at TD Bank, The New York Times said, with managers making jokes about the activity and at least two employees taking bribes to enable it. "You guys really need to shut this down LOL," one bank manager emailed a colleague, fruitlessly, according to charging documents. "TD Bank created an environment that allowed financial crime to flourish," said Attorney General Merrick Garland. "By making its services convenient for criminals, it became one." TD Bank's outgoing CEO, Bharat Masrani, said the bank took "full responsibility" for the "failures" of its anti-money laundering program, and was working to fix them. "This is a sad day in our history, for which we are very regretful," he said.

What next?

The Justice Department will get the "biggest slice of the penalties, some $1.8 billion," while the Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network nets $1.3 billion, The Wall Street Journal said. Both agencies ordered independent monitors to "watch the bank closely and ensure compliance" with its commitments.

What happened

The Justice Department unsealed an indictment yesterday against two Americans it accused of running an online "transnational terrorist group" dedicated to fostering attacks on public officials and infrastructure "in the name of violent white supremacist ideology," Attorney General Merrick Garland said. The indictment identified Dallas Humber, 34, and Matthew Allison, 37, as leaders of the "Terrorgram Collective," a network of channels and group chats on Telegram.

Who said what

Humber and Allison were arrested Friday in California and Idaho, respectively, on 15 counts including soliciting murder and providing material support to terrorists. The DOJ said the pair took over Terrorgram in 2022 and urged followers to kill certain "high value targets," including a U.S. senator and a federal judge. The alleged goal of the violence was to ignite a "race war" and bring about a "white ethnostate." The hit list included names, addresses and photos, the indictment said, and the pair distributed detailed instructions on how to carry out a terrorist attack, including how to make bombs. "These are not mere words," Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen said. "Terrorgram users have carried out, or planned, attacks," including the stabbing of five people in Turkey last month, an attempt to destroy an electrical substation in New Jersey in July and a 2022 fatal shooting outside an LGBTQ bar in Slovakia.

What next?

Humber pleaded not guilty on Monday and Allison is expected to make his first court appearance Tuesday.

What happened

The Justice Department announced several steps to push back against Russian efforts to sway U.S. politics ahead of the 2024 election, including the indictment of two Russians accused of illegally funneling $9.7 million into a Tennessee media company. The founders of the unidentified company, widely reported to be Tenet Media, knew their funding came from "the Russians," as they called their patrons, the unsealed indictment said. High-profile far-right influencers hired by the company, including Tim Pool, Benny Johnson and Dave Rubin, said they were unwitting "victims" in the alleged scheme.

Who said what

The indicted Russians, Kostiantyn Kalashnikov and Elena Afanasyeva — both employees of state broadcaster RT — used fake identities and shell companies to pay the Tennessee company to "pump pro-Russian propaganda and disinformation across social media to U.S. audiences," Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said. "The American people are entitled to know when a foreign power engages in political activities or seeks to influence public discourse," Attorney General Merrick Garland said at a news conference.

"Disinformation experts have long struggled to measure the effectiveness of Russian influence campaigns," The New York Times said, but the indictment said the videos put out by the company, "most of which support the goals of the Russian government, have gained 16 million views on YouTube." Garland said the goals of those videos, and a broader Russian-run influence campaign called "Doppelganger," included "amplifying U.S. domestic divisions in order to weaken U.S. opposition to core Russian interests, particularly its ongoing war in Ukraine."

What next?

"The investigation is ongoing," Garland said. Legally speaking, as long as Pool, Rubin and the other influencers "claim to be duped by these awful Russians, they're in the clear," Marcy Wheeler said at Emptywheel. Kalashnikov and Afanasyeva, if caught and convicted, could face two decades in prison.

What happened

The U.S. has seized a luxury jet used by Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, the Justice Department announced yesterday, saying the Dassault Falcon 900EX was purchased by a shell company in violation of U.S. sanctions and smuggled out of the U.S.

Who said what

The plane, "described by officials as Venezuela's equivalent to Air Force One," was flown to Florida from the Dominican Republic, where it had been undergoing repairs, CNN said. Attorney General Merrick Garland said the aircraft was "illegally purchased for $13 million" for use by "Maduro and his cronies." Venezuela's government said the seizure of Maduro's jet "cannot be described as anything other than piracy."

What next?

Maduro's private jet was one of dozens the U.S. has seized from top Venezuelan leaders either sanctioned or indicted for alleged drug trafficking or corruption. Investigating the "corrupt practices of the Venezuelan government" is a "continued body of work," Anthony Salisbury, a special agent at Homeland Security Investigations, said to The Associated Press. "Obviously, we are not done yet." The U.S. will be pursuing forfeiture with the confiscated Falcon, CNN said, so "the Venezuelan government has a chance to petition for it" after the U.S. searches it for evidence.

"Russia, Russia, Russia." Such has been former President Donald Trump's dismissive assessment of the various, often intersecting scandals that defined a large portion of his first term in office. But while investigations into Moscow's alleged efforts to penetrate the innermost corridors of American political power have produced compelling — albeit not legally conclusive — narratives in support of Trump's Russian susceptibility, claims of an entirely different national influence operation have surfaced in the closing weeks of the 2024 presidential election, adding another layer of international intrigue to Trump's political ascendency.

At the heart of these separate allegations are a series of suspicious transactions at Cairo's state-run National Bank of Egypt. There, just days before Trump took the oath of office in 2017, some $10 million USD was withdrawn from an account associated with Egypt's national security apparatus — an amount which corresponded to a separate donation made by Trump into his own campaign in the waning days of the 2016 race. The move, which corresponded with a CIA inquiry into claims that Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has sought ways to bolster and align himself with Trump's candidacy, accelerated an ongoing Justice Department investigation into this vector of potential foreign influence peddling.

While the broad contours of the Trump-Egypt allegations have been public for several years, the scope and scale of the DOJ's investigation — and then-Attorney General Bill Barr's role in ultimately shuttering the pursuit — had largely remained hidden until a Washington Post exposé reignited interest in the episode this past summer. In early October, Senate Democrats pushed the Justice Department to examine whether the Trump administration "interfered with and, ultimately, blocked" the earlier investigation — all as Trump himself stands on the cusp of possibly returning to the White House in January.

What did the commentators say? 

While much of the country spent the bulk of the Trump administration focusing on alleged Russian influence, investigators pursuing these largely underreported allegations claimed the trail of Egyptian money represented the "most concrete lead" they had for foreign meddling, The New York Times said. This is the "most serious allegation of a bribe in White House history," Washington Post reporter Carol Leonning said on X.

The allegations may be "rock bottom" in America's long history of potentially criminal political bribery, said Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch. "Do not let the matter of Trump, Egypt and the $10 million disappear," and push the Democratic-controlled Senate to "open a full-blown investigation, with efforts to subpoena Barr and other Justice Department higher-ups to explain in public why the case was dropped." Meanwhile, the allegations can "still be pursued as a civil case."

"Every American should be concerned about how this case ended," one of the Post's sources said, under condition of anonymity. "The Justice Department is supposed to follow evidence wherever it leads — it does so all the time to determine if a crime occurred or not."

Citing Sen. Robert Menendez's (D-N.J.) recent conviction for "taking bribes of cash and gold bars while acting as a middleman between New Jersey businessmen and foreign governments, including Egypt" Trump's case — if proven true — "shows a much higher level of corruption from the country," The New Republic said. At the same time, can "anything be done about it?" It's unclear given the Supreme Court's recent ruling on presidential immunity.

What next? 

Several lawmakers have begun speaking out about the need for further information: The allegations present a "creepy tale" featuring both "strange machinations to round up the $10,000,000" as well as "strange machinations to shut down the investigation," Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) said on X. "This has a very bad smell." Senate Republicans "need to hold a hearing on this explosive allegation," said Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) while Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) cited the Trump family's "history of corrupt and unconstitutional foreign payments" as reason to "hold them accountable immediately."

While the statute of limitations for federal illegal campaign contribution charges is nearly three years expired, it is "hard to imagine with reporting like this that the story ends there," MSNBC anchor Alex Wagner said.

A spokesperson for the former president denied any wrongdoing on behalf of Trump, and said to The Washington Post that their story is merely "textbook Fake News."

Hunter Biden is hardly the first presidential relation to have their personal struggles and legal challenges turned into national news and fodder for their family's political opposition. Nevertheless, the younger Biden's three felony convictions this week are a particularly notable entry in the long history of first family challenges. It comes after years of conservatives pointing to both Hunter's history of addiction and various business dealings as evidence of his father's alleged — and to date unsubstantiated — criminality. That Hunter now potentially faces hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of fines and an extended prison sentence for having lied on federal firearm purchasing forms would presumably be occasion for celebration from the same Republicans who have long sought to prosecute the first family.

Hunter's conviction is a "step toward accountability" House Oversight and Accountability Chairman Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) said in a statement. Still, until the Justice Department pursues "everyone involved in the Bidens' corrupt influence peddling schemes," Comer said, "it will be clear department officials continue to cover for the Big Guy, Joe Biden."

Comer's heavily qualified approval offers a glimpse into how conservatives have responded to Hunter Biden's conviction — and highlights why this particular guilty verdict is not the political slam dunk many had hoped for. 

'Deep State's sacrificial lamb'

For many of the GOP's most vocal Biden critics, Hunter's conviction is merely a distraction — or worse, a deliberately engineered diversion — from his family's allegedly more serious crimes. "Don't be gaslit," former top Trump administration adviser Stephen Miller said on X. The younger Biden's gun-related charges are merely a "giant misdirection," and an "easy op for DOJ to sell to a pliant media that is all too willing to be duped." In being convicted, Hunter "became the Deep State’s sacrificial lamb to show that Justice is 'balanced' while the other Biden crimes remain ignored," agreed Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.).

Republican arguments that the DOJ "treated President Joe Biden's son with kid gloves while zealously prosecuting Trump" have been "hurt by the Biden-led Justice Department prosecuting the president's son," U.S. News and World Report said. In making the argument that the Biden DOJ is targeting political opponents, those same Republicans "may be trying to deflect from Trump's own stated intentions to wield the criminal justice system against opponents if he returns to the White House." Given that "truth rarely matters" in the Trump-era, and "inconvenient facts never [penetrate] the echo chamber that dominates Republican politics and conservative media," the former president's allies have used Biden's conviction to "conjure a new round of falsehoods and conspiracy theories," CNN's Stephen Collinson said. 

'Backfire in the court of public opinion'

Republicans "can't agree on how" to prevent Hunter Biden's convictions from "undermining their argument that the judicial system is being weaponized against Donald Trump," Politico said. In part, that's a byproduct of the nature of Biden's crimes themselves and the role his well-publicized drug use played in his criminal actions. Addiction is a topic "both sensitive and salient for millions of American families," ABC News said. Attacks on that front "could backfire in the court of public opinion" where Americans are "looking for leaders who sympathize and have solutions."

Moreover, the political realities of Biden's conviction for illegally purchasing and owning a firearm presented a unique dilemma for Republicans who, as a whole, "favor far more relaxed laws than Democrats," The Guardian said. However bad the verdict is for Hunter Biden himself, it's similarly "bad news for the Second Amendment," said Fox News' Greg Gutfeld. 

That the "prevailing reaction among Republicans" after Biden's convictions was "not so much hailing the verdict as claiming that this case was a smokescreen" suggests that the GOP understands that most voters "aren't particularly concerned about this case," The Washington Post said. Fervent MAGA Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) offered a similar, if blunter, assessment: 

At the same time, the Post said, there is still a risk that some may see Biden as "having gotten off somewhat easy." While his three counts carry up to 25 years of prison time, Biden, as a first-time offender, likely wouldn't get "anywhere near the maximum sentence," The Associated Press said. 

Throughout his career as both a business mogul and political whirlwind, Donald Trump has never made secret his love of revenge. "Get even with people," he said to attendees at the 2011 National Achievers Congress in Sydney, Australia. "If they screw you, screw them back 10 times as hard."

"I really believe it," he added, as if putting to rest any doubts about his commitment to vengeance. 

But while retribution has served as Trump's guiding light for the bulk of his time in the public eye, his calls to use it against a host of perceived enemies and persecutors have increased in recent months. The former president now faces his first criminal conviction and the possibility that he may spend time inside a jail cell. "It's a terrible, terrible path that they're leading us to," Trump said in an interview with the conservative Newsmax network this week. "It's very possible that it's going to have to happen to them." While Trump's threats of using the office of the presidency to target his political adversaries are not in and of themselves new, they and their echoes across conservative media come with "renewed intensity since a New York jury delivered its guilty verdict" last month, CNN said. 

Should Trump win reelection in November, would he truly pursue punitive reprisals against his political foes? And if he does make good on his many longstanding threats, what would that look like? 

What did the commentators say?

Trump has positioned political revenge as a "central part of his presidential campaign," Axios said. In part, that includes his previous suggestion that he might "install a special prosecutor to investigate [President Joe] Biden if he returns to the White House." He has also told his inner circle of advisors and friends that he would like the Department of Justice to "investigate specific former aides and allies who are now critical of him" in a second term, The Washington Post said. 

Among Trump's allies, the "intensity of anger and open desire" to politicize the criminal justice system for his personal agenda "surpasses anything seen before" during his time in office, The New York Times said. That intensification is manifested in the "range of Republicans who are saying retaliation is necessary and who are no longer cloaking their intent with euphemisms." For the immediate time being and without control of the White House, conservatives close to Trump are "urging district attorneys and attorneys general in red states to start aggressively targeting Democrats for unspecified crimes," the Times said. 

"Is every Republican D.A. starting every investigation they need to right now?" longtime Trump advisor Stephen Miller said on Fox News after Trump's Manhattan conviction. "There are dozens of ambitious backbencher state attorneys general and district attorneys who need to 'seize the day' and own this moment in history," said former Trump advisor Steve Bannon in a statement to the Times. 

"Time for Red State AGs and DAs to get busy," sitting Congressman Mike Collins (R-Ga.) said on X. 

All this "dovetails with a massive plan of action" led by the right-wing Heritage Foundation through its Project 2025 initiative, CNN said. In this plan, should Trump be reelected, the Justice Department would "no longer be treated as an independent body making decisions based on law" and instead "would come under 'the direct supervision and control of the President.'"

What next? 

Although there is a "history of Republicans prosecuting Democrats and vice versa," Rep. Glenn Ivey (D-Md.) is "relatively confident that these cases will continue to be resolved by jurors who come to the jury box taking their job seriously and trying to follow the evidence and the law," The Associated Press said. 

Still, Republicans in Congress have already begun using their House majority to set the stage for future retribution against many of Trump's supposed enemies. One day after his guilty verdict in the Manhattan hush money trial, the House Judiciary Committee chair proposed an "appropriations package that would 'defund the lawfare activities' of state and federal prosecutors leading 'politically sensitive investigations,'" Fox News Digital said. 

While it is unclear whether a reelected Trump and his allies could make politically motivated charges stick, "at the very least, they'd be able to make his opponents' lives very uncomfortable, a victory on its own," said The Washington Post.

Donald Trump came face to face with the man who could put him behind bars as the former president pleaded “not guilty” in a Washington D.C. court to conspiring to overturn his 2020 election defeat.

For a “fleeting moment” during Thursday’s hearing, said Politico’s Congress reporter Kyle Cheney, Trump and special counsel Jack Smith “appeared to make eye contact” as the former president “prepared to fend off charges that he sought to subvert American democracy itself”. Smith announced the four felony charges on Tuesday, just weeks after securing another indictment against Trump related to the mishandling of classified documents.

Smith was assigned to the cases having garnered a “reputation for winning tough cases against war criminals, mobsters and crooked cops”, said Reuters’s US Justice Department reporter Sarah N. Lynch. Appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland last November to take over the DoJ’s two investigations into Trump, Smith is known as a “dogged investigator” who is “unafraid to pursue the truth”.

Who is Jack Smith?

Born on 5 June 1969 and raised in the New York suburb of Syracuse, Smith attended Harvard Law School after graduating from the State University of New York in 1991.

He began his career as a prosecutor at the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, before moving to the US Attorney’s Office in Brooklyn, where he “climbed up the ranks”, wrote BBC reporter Sam Cabral. Smith led investigations into “violent gangs, white-collar fraudsters and public corruption cases”, and reportedly “once spent a weekend sleeping in the hallway of an apartment building so he could convince a woman to take the witness stand in a domestic violence case”.

Former colleagues said he “stood out from the start”, according to The New York Times (NYT), and appeared “more intense and more focused” than his peers. And his drive and “competitiveness is not limited to the law”, the paper continued.

Smith is “an avid runner and cyclist” and has participated in “at least nine full Iron Man triathlons”.

His equally impressive performance on the career treadmill continued with a two-year stint as a director of investigations for the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague. After returning from the Netherlands to the US in 2010, Smith led the Public Integrity Unit at the DoJ, investigating “politicians and other public figures accused of corruption”.

However, the NYT added, he experienced a “spotty record of success in high-stakes cases”, something that Trump’s legal team has now “seized on”.

In 2015, Smith took up a post with the Federal Prosecutor’s Office in Nashville, Tennessee, “so he could be closer to family”, according to the BBC’s Cabral. He left in 2017 to work for a private health care company, after “being passed over for a permanent appointment under the Trump administration”.

The following year, Smith returned to The Hague, to serve as a chief prosecutor investigating allegations of war crimes in Kosovo in the 1990s.

He left this role to join the Trump investigations, “saying he viewed his long-term obligations to the department as his primary professional responsibility”, the NYT reported.

‘Obvious choice’

Trump has described Smith as “deranged” and accused the prosecutor of a “witch hunt”.

Yet Smith has “expressed few political beliefs that might indicate any bias” over the course of his career, said The Telegraph’s Washington editor Rozina Sabur. A “registered independent”, he has a reputation for being “just as determined in seeking to have criminal charges dropped for the innocent as he is in pursuing convictions against the guilty”.

Smith’s appointment has added an “extra layer of independence” to the investigations into Trump, Sabur wrote, and he was an “obvious choice” for the role.

The charges brought against Trump by Smith and his team “do not have the air of a prosecutorial stretch”, said Ruth Marcus in The Washington Post. But this second indictment risks “inflaming even more distrust” of what Trump’s supporters “will claim is a partisan ‘weaponised’ Justice Department”, and potentially “unleashing a punitive cycle of prosecuting political opponents”.

Yet while Smith’s indictment of Trump is “grave, even perilous, step”, Marcus concluded, “condoning his behaviour by ignoring it would be far worse”.

The dramatic FBI morning raid on Donald Trump’s Florida home this week has again raised the spectre of the former US president facing prosecution.

The Mar-a-Lago raid, said to be related to claims of unlawful removal and destruction of White House records, is “the latest indication of a sharply intensifying criminal investigation by the US justice department into his affairs”, reported The Guardian. This includes the probe into his business empire, the Trump Organisation, and his influence over the US Capitol riot.

According to the latest PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist poll, Americans are divided down the middle on whether Trump should face criminal charges for his role in the deadly insurrection on 6 January 2021. Fewer than half, however, think he will actually be prosecuted.

Trump has denied any wrongdoing, regularly describing investigations into his activities as a “witch-hunt”.

Here are some of the arguments for and against prosecutors pursuing charges against him.

1. Pro: nobody is above the law

“For some, the decision to prosecute is easy; no one is above the law, including Donald Trump”, said Elaine Kamarck on the Washington-based Brookings institute think tank blog.

She said Trump could be prosecuted for any number of offences, including “obstructing an official proceeding” in his efforts to block the Electoral College vote, “conspiracy to defraud the United States” for his various schemes to overturn the 2020 election, and “dereliction of duty” for his refusal to intervene to stop the attack on the Capitol or even treason for “inciting an insurrection”,

According to Politico, nearly 900 people have now been arrested in connection with the 6 January riots, on charges that range from trespassing on restricted grounds to seditious conspiracy. Many argue that as “Instigator-in-Chief” Trump is as culpable, if not more so, as those who actually stormed the Capitol and, therefore, should suffer the same legal fate.

2. Con: making Trump a martyr

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Dave Aronberg, the state attorney for Palm Beach, the location of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, said he believes the former president will use Monday’s raid “to regain his martyr status because that’s the area he feels most comfortable in, to be a mega martyr”.

He claimed Trump would use it as a way to mobilise his base and take attention away from the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, a potential rival for the Republican presidential candidacy. Aronberg said martyr status resulting from a prosecution “could be very useful to [Trump] as many people rally around him during this time”, adding “who needs ideas when you can just run on grievances?”

Prosecuting someone like Trump “who continues to be popular has the potential to make that person into a martyr and to facilitate and to enable – radicalise, even further – the movement they are associated with”, agreed Aziz Huq, a professor and constitutional law scholar at the University of Chicago Law School.

3. Pro: putting evidence first

The decision to prosecute Trump should be based on evidence, not its social ramifications, Jonathan Turley, a conservative law professor at George Washington University School of Law, told Voice of America.

“The key is that you have to have a strong and unassailable case but if one exists, I don't think that it makes any sense to give a president some constructive immunity from the criminal code,” he said.

“Most legal and constitutional experts agree,” said Newsweek, “that given the facts that have come to light about Trump’s role in the attack on the Capitol, and the efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, it is now plausible that he will be charged with crimes, tried and convicted.”

4. Con: exacerbating divisions in US

“The longstanding reluctance to prosecute former leaders is based on legitimate concerns about the justice system being used to settle political scores,” said the Boston Globe. With Trump supporters maintaining an almost cult-like loyalty to him, the question of whether he should be prosecuted is “laden with consequences”, said AFP.

Jack Goldsmith, a former assistant attorney general in the George W. Bush administration, wrote in The New York Times that prosecuting Trump “would be a cataclysmic event from which the nation would not soon recover” and “would be seen by many as politicised retribution”.

“To avoid a potential political tit for tat, the Department of Justice and state prosecutors must remain completely apolitical in their handling of Trump’s case,” said the Globe. Norman Eisen, a former ethics advisor in the Obama administration, added that “his crimes should be investigated independently, and the president should stay a thousand miles away.”

5. Pro: warning for future leaders

In The Atlantic, Paul Rosenzweig, who served as senior counsel to Ken Starr during the Whitewater investigation of Bill Clinton in the 1990s, said while the chances that Trump will be convicted of any crime are slim to none, “my guess is that a failure to convict will only embolden him and his followers”.

“Those who say Trump should be prosecuted predict that if he isn’t, the next authoritarian in government will feel empowered,” said Rich Barlow at BU Today, Boston University’s website. That is why some argue that prosecutors need to send a clear message not only to Trump and his supporters but also to any future leader who tries to push the boundaries of presidential authority and accountability.

While Congress should pass new laws to constrain future officeholders, “imposing stricter rules on future presidents, by itself, is clearly insufficient”, said a Boston Globe editorial. “Those presidents also need a clear message, one that will echo through history, that breaking the law in the Oval Office will actually be punished”.

6. Con: birth of more conspiracies

Trump’s time in office was dominated by conspiracy theories, ranging from birtherism to QAnon to claims the 2020 election was rigged.

Consider then the possibility that Trump is indeed indicted on charges stemming from Capitol riots but found not guilty, “fuelling partisan anger and conspiracy theories about a ‘deep state’ out to get Trump”, said US News.

Trump did little to dispel these concerns in a bitter statement following Monday’s raid, which he labelled a result of “prosecutorial misconduct, the weaponisation of the Justice System, and an attack by Radical Left Democrats who desperately don’t want me to run for President in 2024”.

The public can now watch some UK trials online under a new law designed to promote “open and transparent” justice.

The new rules will cover all courts and tribunals – from Crown and magistrates’ courts to family courts and immigration tribunals – and allow the public and press to observe hearings remotely via video link.

Anyone wanting to watch cases will have to identify themselves by their full name and email address, as well as agree to “conduct themselves appropriately”.

The new law, introduced on Tuesday, “expands and makes permanent” temporary powers put in place during the Covid-19 pandemic to permit courts to hear cases by audio or video link to “reduce backlogs of cases”, said The Daily Telegraph.

According to guidance seen by the paper, judges must now “give due weight to the importance of open justice”.

“This is a mandatory consideration. Open justice serves the key functions of exposing the judicial process to public scrutiny, improving public understanding of the process, and enhancing public confidence in its integrity,” continues the guidance.

Judges will have the final say over whether proceedings are streamed and who can watch, but the guidance says remote viewing should be allowed if it is “in the interests of justice”.

However, judges will be able to disallow streaming in cases where it could block or jeopardise “the administration of justice”; for example, if it meant witnesses were unwilling to testify, or reporting restrictions were at risk of being breached.

The move is a significant step in a decades-old debate over whether cameras should be allowed in UK courtrooms.

1. Pro: increasing transparency

Proponents of streaming and televising trials say that it will bolster the legal principle of “open justice” and increase transparency around the judicial process. They also say it will increase trust and understanding in the sentencing system.

The new rules are an expansion of previous laws, introduced in 2020, which allowed TV cameras to film judges passing sentences in murder, sexual offences, terrorism and other serious high-profile criminal cases in Crown Courts in England and Wales, including the Old Bailey.

At the time, the BBC argued that the move was “a radical change and a significant extension to the operation of open justice”. The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Burnett, said at the time: “It is important that the justice system and what happens in our courts is as transparent as possible.

"My hope is that there will be regular broadcasting of the remarks in high profile cases, and that will improve public understanding.”

2. Con: risk of sensationalism

Opponents of the streaming or filming of trials often point to famous televised trials that have taken place abroad, such as that of OJ Simpson in 1994, or more recently, the 2014 trial of Oscar Pistorius.

Both became sensationalised media circuses, leading to accusations that justice was being turned into a form of entertainment. But top prosecutors have argued in the past that the workings of the British legal system are very different, and therefore not as likely to end up in the “free for all” seen in US trials.

When cameras were first allowed into the UK Court of Appeal in 2012, some feared it would lead to sensational US-style trials. But leading prosecutor Brian Altman QC, speaking to the BBC, said at the time: “One has to understand the process in America against a background of complete almost unfettered freedom and discretion”.

And it seems high-profile court cases in the UK where filming was already allowed – such as in the Supreme Court – do not attract large viewing figures.

The Supreme Court hearing for Julian Assange’s extradition to the US in February 2012 was watched by only 14,500 people, according to government documents – although public appetite for watching trials could have increased since then.

3. Pro: educating the public

The streaming of trials could lead to a better understanding of the sentencing system, thereby increasing confidence in the courts and judicial process.

That was part of the government’s argument when cameras were first allowed into the Court of Appeal in 2012. A government white paper, Swift and Sure Justice, said that the operation of the criminal justice system is “a mystery to victims and the public” and broadcasting what happens in court would help to “demystify” the process.

4. Con: risk of influencing juries

The ubiquitous use of social media and the rise of the internet means that streaming or televising trials could risk putting the jury at much greater risk of being influenced by public opinion.

This was a fear highlighted by Amber Heard’s lawyers ahead of the defamation trial brought against her by her former husband, the movie star Johnny Depp. Heard’s team unsuccessfully tried to exclude cameras from the trial, which took place in Virginia, where trial judges have “almost total discretion” over whether cameras are allowed into the courtroom, said Variety.

Heard’s lawyer, Elaine Bredehoft, argued ahead of the trial that there was already tremendous media attention as well as interest from “fearful anti-Amber networks” who would have access to the footage. “What they’ll do is take anything that’s unfavorable – a look,” Bredehoft said. “They’ll take out of context a statement, and play it over and over and over and over again.”

During the trial, Heard was at the receiving end of a significant amount of online vitriol. She told the court that she received “hundreds of death threats regularly if not daily, thousands since this trial has started, people mocking my testimony about being assaulted”.

5. Pro: research shows no negative impact

Cameras have been shown to have little to no effect on criminal proceedings, and in fact improve the administration of justice because the court is subject to greater public scrutiny.

Research conducted in 2000 on the impact of using cameras during UN International Criminal Tribunals found that court participants – which includes witnesses, lawyers and judges – are “not affected by cameras in court” and most felt that “cameras have a positive effect, or no effect, on the administration of justice”.

6. Con: risk to safety of victims and witnesses

Opponents argue that court participants could be recognised in public, which could lead to intimidation or jeopardise the safety of witnesses, lawyers and judges.

“If the public see judges’ faces in the living room on television and are able to identify them more readily then unfortunately they are more likely to be personally attacked, and possibly details published about them which should not be,” said Bar Council chairwoman Amanda Pinto QC when cameras were first introduced to England and Wales’s Crown Courts in 2020.

Dominic Raab wants the government to have the power to veto parole board decisions in a crackdown on the release of dangerous criminals.

The justice secretary is due to announce a “root-and-branch” review of the parole system, which will include plans that could allow him to overrule the parole board “in the most high-profile and sensitive cases involving murder, rape, terrorism and ‘those who have caused or allowed the death of a child’”, reported The Telegraph.

It will be the “biggest shake-up” of the board in its 54-year history and is designed to prevent repeats of scandals including the release of double-child murderer Colin Pitchfork, and an abandoned decision to free black-cab rapist John Worboys, said the paper.

Up to 100 criminals could be prevented from being released under the plans. Officials will sift through “more than 600 cases” a year where the parole board has recommended release in order to identify cases that could be reviewed by the justice minister who could then veto the decision and keep offenders locked up.

The move will restore powers to block the release of high-risk criminals, once held by ministers, but which were removed after legal challenges in Europe and the UK found that allowing politicians rather than judges to determine sentence lengths breached the human rights of prisoners.

Raab is hoping the review will allow the justice department to “focus on protecting the public – rather than the rights of offenders – by offering more prescriptive guidance on when prisoners should be freed”, wrote The Independent.

“Keeping the public safe is Government’s first duty, and the British people expect us to keep dangerous criminals behind bars for as long as necessary to protect them. I am not satisfied our approach is as robust as it needs to be, which is why I’ll be setting out plans to restore public confidence in the system,” the justice minister added.

Victims will also be given the right to attend parole hearings in full for the first time, “as set out in the Conservative Party’s 2019 manifesto”, noted Sky News. The parole board will also be required to take into account submissions made by victims, and they will be allowed to ask questions in the submissions.

Legal challenges likely

Raab is likely to face legal challenges to his plans, however, as a senior judicial source fears the state will be “acting not only as prosecutor but also as judge and jury”.

Ministers have taken legal advice and are “confident” that they will be able to see off court appeals to block the new powers from coming into force, reported The Telegraph. But a legal source has warned that handing powers to politicians to take a role in the sentencing could threaten the independence of the judiciary.

“We will end up in a position where the Crown Prosecution Service is going to be prosecuting someone but they want to make sure they have someone on the jury to reach the verdict they want to get,” said the source.

“It interferes with the independence of the judiciary. It will need primary legislation and I don’t know how that would tackle the issue of [the state] effectively wanting to be judge, jury and executioner”.

Two Chinese men linked to Beijing’s intelligence service targeted vaccine development research during a six-year cybertheft campaign in which trade secrets worth hundreds of millions of dollars were hacked, US prosecutors claim.

Li Xiaoyu, 34, and Dong Jiazhi, 33, are alleged to have stolen data from a wide range of technology companies in countries across the world, including one unnamed “UK artificial intelligence and cancer research firm”, The Times reports.

The US Department of Justice (DoJ) says that the pair’s hacking operation was also “aimed at industries such as defence contractors, high-end manufacturing and solar energy companies” and that they sometimes “operated on behalf of China’s spy services and sometimes to enrich themselves”, adds The New York Times (NTY).

Having previously stolen information about “other Chinese intelligence targets like human rights activists”, the duo shifted their focus to trying to steal coronavirus vaccine research this year, the newspaper reports. It is not clear whether the Covid-related hacking was successful.

According to the DOJ indictment, when “they were stealing information of obvious interest” to the Chinese government, the hackers “were assisted by, and operated with the acquiescence of” the Ministry of State Security (MSS), China’s intelligence agency.

The indictment lists 11 criminal charges against Li and Dong, including conspiracies to commit computer fraud and theft, as well as multiple counts of aggravated identity theft.

According to The Times, the hackers “would often find a way into a network by looking for flaws in software products, especially vulnerabilities that had just been announced and for which most businesses had not had time to install an update to fix”.

Computer security expert Alan Woodward, a visiting professor at Surrey University’s Cyber Security Centre, told the paper that the aim with such a strategy is to “establish a toe hold using one of these vulnerabilities and then directly access data or establish a shell which provides you with your own direct access to the system”.

Announcing the charges against the two Chinese men, US Assistant Attorney General John Demers said that “China has now taken its place, alongside Russia, Iran and North Korea, in that shameful club of nations that provide a safe haven for cybercriminals in exchange for those criminals being ‘on call’ to work for the benefit of the state”, reports Al Jazeera.

The goal for Li and Dong was “to feed the Chinese Communist Party’s insatiable hunger for American and other non-Chinese companies’s hard-earned intellectual property, including Covid-19 research”, added Demers, who leads the DOJ’s National Security Division.

The former FBI deputy director who authorised an investigation into Donald Trump’s ties with Russia is suing the bureau and the Justice Department (DOJ) over allegations that he was fired as a result of “constitutionally improper motives”.

Andrew McCabe filed a lawsuit on Wednesday outlining his claims that he was illegally ousted as part of a plot by the president to remove officials not loyal to him, reports The Washington Post.

McCabe was dismissed from his role as acting chief of the US intelligence agency in March 2018 just hours before he was due to formally retire - causing him to lose key benefits.

The lawsuit

McCabe was sacked by then attorney general Jeff Sessions after an internal review found he had leaked information and then lied to investigators. However, his lawsuit alleges that his firing was politically motivated and in violation of his right to free speech and due process, reports the Daily Mail.

The legal papers claim that Trump threatened senior officials at the DOJ - including Sessions, his deputy Rod Rosenstein, and inspector general Michael Horowitz - in order to “induce their compliance with Trump’s desires”.

“Trump demanded Plaintiff’s [McCabe’s] personal allegiance, he sought retaliation when Plaintiff refused to give it, and Sessions, Wray, and others served as Trump’s personal enforcers rather than the nation’s highest law enforcement officials, catering to Trump’s unlawful whims instead of honouring their oaths to uphold the Constitution,” says the lawsuit.

McCabe wants a judge to declare his sacking illegal and restore him to a status where he would receive “his full earned law enforcement pension, healthcare insurance, and other retirement benefits”.

His legal action follows that of former FBI special agent Peter Strzok, who was fired over anti-Trump texts that he allegedly exchanged with agency colleagues during the presidential election.

Trump target

The US president had hinted that McCabe’s days were numbered back in December 2017, tweeting: “FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe is racing the clock to retire with full benefits. 90 days to go?!!!”

The lawsuit claims that a series of equally angry tweets by Trump about McCabe pushed officials to sack the FBI deputy chief to prove their loyalty to the president.

“It was Trump’s unconstitutional plan and scheme to discredit and remove DOJ and FBI employees who were deemed to be his partisan opponents because they were not politically loyal to him,” according to the legal documents, which add that McCabe’s firing “was a critical element of Trump’s plan and scheme”.

McCabe has continued to clash with the president following his sacking. In April this year, Trump branded McCabe’s behaviour “illegal and treasonous” following a TV interview in which the former FBI man claimed then deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein had held talks in 2017 about invoking a clause that can remove a president deemed unfit, reports the BBC.

A 27-year-old woman in Alabama has been charged with manslaughter for allegedly starting a fight that resulted in the death of her unborn baby.

Police say Marshae Jones “initiated and continued the fight” that ended with her being shot in the stomach by another woman, Ebony Jemison. But while Jemison will not face prosecution, Jones has been indicted by a grand jury to stand trial for manslaughter.

The two women clashed outside a shop in the city of Pleasant Grove on 4 December 2018. The fight, reportedly over the baby’s father, ended with Jemison firing a single shot at Jones, who was five months pregnant. The bullet struck Jones in the stomach, killing the foetus.

Police officer Lieutenant Danny Reid told Alabama’s AL.com that Jemison had reacted to defend herself, and that he would not call Jones a shooting victim.

“The investigation showed that the only true victim in this was the unborn baby. She had no choice in being brought unnecessarily into a fight where she was relying on her mother for protection.”

Jones was charged only after a grand jury had failed to indict Jemison for manslaughter, notes the news site.

Why is the story gaining national attention?

CNN says the story is the latest of several controversial incidents in Alabama involving the legal status of unborn children. “Once again, Alabama is at the forefront of a nationwide debate over the rights of pregnant women,” the broadcaster notes.

In other cases, women have been charged for drug use during pregnancy or a car accident that resulted in the death of a foetus, The New York Times reports.

Earlier this year, Alabama passed the most restrictive abortion legislation in the US. A doctor who performs an abortion for any reason except risk to the life of the mother may now face up to 99 years in prison, although the law will almost certainly be overturned as incompatible with the federal right to abortion.

CNN says that the language used by police to describe the recent shooting incident – in particular, that the foetus was “relying on her mother for protection” – has “incensed critics who say Alabama keeps prioritising foetuses over women”.

And the reaction?

Amanda Reyes of the Yellowhammer Fund, which helps women travel out of Alabama to have abortions, said: “Marshae Jones is being charged with manslaughter for being pregnant and getting shot… The state of Alabama has proven yet again that the moment a person becomes pregnant their sole responsibility is to produce a live, healthy baby and that it considers any action a pregnant person takes that might impede in that live birth to be a criminal act.”

The Guardian quotes Ilyse Hogue, president of Naral Pro-Choice America, who said: “This is what 2019 looks like for a pregnant woman of colour without means in a red state. This is now.”

The shooter, Jemison, told BuzzFeed News she felt Jones should take some responsibility for her actions, but added: “I don’t feel she should be charged with manslaughter because she didn’t go upon killing her baby herself… I don’t feel as if it’s fair for her to sit in jail after dealing with her losing her child situation.”

Fifteen protesters who blocked a government deportation flight could be facing life imprisonment after being found guilty of a terrorism offence.

The so-called Stansted 15, as they have come to be known, cut through a perimeter fence at Stansted Airport on 28 March 2017 and secured themselves around the nose wheel and wing of a plane due to transport people for repatriation to Nigeria, Ghana and Sierra Leone.

A total of 11 of the passengers who were to be deported “have now been given legal status in the UK”, reports Sky News.

Stansted 15 member Ruth Potts told the broadcaster that this proves that the protesters’ actions were justified and had prevented wrongful, and in some cases illegal, deportations.

“To us, this is a window into the reality of people being deported unfairly, and into circumstances where their lives and liberty are at risk,” she said.

Nevertheless, the 15 protesters were yesterday found guilty of endangering the safety of the airport, in a prosecution that has been condemned by human rights groups.

The verdict “is a particularly cold blast in the increasingly chill wind blowing against public dissent in the UK”, write university lecturers Steven Cammiss, Brian Doherty and Graeme Hayes, who attended the trial, in an article for the New Statesman.

What did the Stansted 15 do?

After cutting through the fence and accessing the runway, four of the campaigners locked themselves together around the Titan Airways Boeing 767’s nosewheel. The others erected a tripod behind the portside wing, and chained themselves around the plane, as the aircraft waited on the asphalt at the airport in Essex.

Police arrived quickly but it took ten hours for a specialist dispersal team to release all the protesters. The airport authorities closed the runway for around 80 minutes, diverting 23 flights. The Titan Airways flight was cancelled.

At the time, the UK threat level in relation to international terrorism was classed as “severe”, notes the London Evening Standard. The prosecution pointed out that the number of armed officers available to protect passengers in the terminal was reduced as a result of the Stansted 15’s actions.

Who are the Stansted 15?

All of the defendants are members of the End Deportations protest group, which describes itself as “a campaign to stop the brutal, secretive and barely legal practice of deporting large groups of people using charter flights”.

The defendants are aged between 27 and 44, and include a college lecturer and freelance journalist. Twelve of them list addresses in north London, while the other three are from Brighton, Bristol and Reading.

What were the charges against them?

After a nine-week trial and nearly three days of deliberations, the jury at Chelmsford Crown Court found the defendants guilty of intentional disruption of services at an aerodrome, under the 1990 Aviation and Maritime Security Act, “a law passed in response to the 1988 Lockerbie bombing”, says The Guardian.

The verdict was delivered after Judge Christopher Morgan “told the jury to disregard all evidence put forward by the defendants to support the defence that they acted to stop human rights abuses”, adds the newspaper. Morgan instead instructed jurors to only consider whether there was a “real and material” risk to the airport.

The maximum penalty for the charge is life imprisonment. This “reflects the origin of this Act as legislation on terrorism”, say Cammiss, Doherty and Hayes.

The three academics argue that it is curious that the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) pressed for terrorism offences, with defendants in previous incidents of direct action at airports “charged with and convicted of aggravated trespass, and given non-custodial sentences”.

And the reaction?

Amnesty International’s UK director Kate Allen described the verdicts as a “crushing blow for human rights in the UK”.

In interviews with The Guardian, Stansted 15 members Alistair Tamlit and Ben Smoke spoke of their dismay but insisted that their actions had been justified by the “brutal” and “racist” deportation policy against which they were protesting.

“We were charged with endangering life but we took the actions at Stansted to try to protect life. That point needs to keep on being put into the spotlight,” said Smoke.

Smoke added: “The fact that we were found guilty of this has huge ramifications on the ability of people to engage in what is a very long tradition of direct action in this country. It is part of the contract of our democracy.”

But Judith Reed, of the CPS, insisted: “These people placed themselves, the flight crew, airport personnel and police at serious risk of injury or even death due to their actions on the airfield.

“The CPS worked with the police to build a strong case which reflected the criminality of the defendant’s actions, regardless of their motivation.”

End Deportations have said they will be appealing the court's verdict, in a post on a crowdfunding site set up to help pay for the group’s legal costs.

The government plans to abandon its private probation contracts two years early at a cost of £170 million, a decision that acknowledges failures in reforms carried out by former justice secretary Chris Grayling.

Agreements with eight private firms that run 21 Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs) to manage low-risk offenders in England and Wales will now end in 2020 rather than 2022, after accusations the arrangements had put public safety at risk, says The Independent.

Last month a report by the justice committee said it was “unconvinced the changes would deliver an effective or viable service for managing offenders in the community”. It described the current predicament as a “mess”.

What were the reforms?

The CRC contracts, which began in 2015, were part of a major £3.7bn part-privatisation programme for England and Wales introduced by Grayling in 2014.

Under the reorganisation, the state-run National Probation Service (NPS) would deal with the most high-risk offenders, while the supervision of low and medium-risk offenders was “farmed out” to CRCs in contracts worth almost £4bn over seven years, Sky News reports.

The Guardian says that Grayling’s proposal also included a “payment by results” system based on reducing rates of reoffending.

What went wrong?

In February, an investigation by Sky News found that CRC whistleblowers believed the reforms put public safety at severe risk as the contracted firms lacked the resources to “properly supervise” offenders in the community.

“Re-offending rates for some of the most serious crimes, including murder, rape and other violent offences have risen by 26% since the government reorganised the probation system in 2014,” the site adds.

The Times writes that under the reforms some offenders on probation were being monitored with a phone call “every six weeks”, rather than a face-to-face visit.

“How then can you read body language to tell if they’re reoffending, whether they’re back on drugs or involved in domestic abuse?”, one CRC staff member said.

What happens next?

Although current Justice Minister David Gauke has vowed to reform the programme, the government still insists that the private sector has “a role to play” in probation services, The Guardian reports. It will be putting contracts out to tender for the overhauled framework proposed for 2020 onwards.

Gauke said there were “lesson to be learned” but added: “Rather than ripping it up and starting again we should listen to the concerns that have been raised and respond in a pragmatic way.”

Ian Lawrence, the general secretary of probation union Napo, said: “It is unbelievable that the government’s initial response to the Justice Committee’s thorough inquiry into this catastrophe is to give private companies a bigger slice of the pie.

“It is clear they are wedded to a failed and unworkable ideology, and cannot accept the undeniable fact that justice and public safety cannot be subject to the rule of supply and demand.”

Dominic Raab has resigned as justice secretary and deputy prime minister after a five-month inquiry into allegations of bullying reported to the prime minister.

The inquiry, conducted by senior lawyer Adam Tolley KC, was ordered by Rishi Sunak after complaints about Raab’s behaviour as a minister.

It found that on one occasion Raab had “acted in a way which was intimidating, in the sense of unreasonably and persistently aggressive in the context of a workplace meeting”.

This “conduct was bound to be experienced as undermining or humiliating by the affected individual, and it was so experienced”, the report said.

Tolley’s verdict is “likely to end” Raab’s “abrasive political career”, said The Guardian.

In his resignation statement, Raab said that the inquiry “dismissed all but two of the claims levelled against me”. He insisted that the conclusions of a report into his conduct set a “dangerous precedent” but stressed he wanted to “keep his word” after he had undertaken to quit if it found against him.

Who is Dominic Raab?

Raab was born in Buckinghamshire to a Czech-born Jewish father who came to Britain in 1938 as a refugee.

He studied law at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, and for a master’s at Cambridge, winning the Clive Parry Prize for International Law. He began his working career as a business lawyer at City law firm Linklaters, where he specialised in project finance, competition law and international litigation.

He also completed secondments at human rights NGO Liberty and in Brussels advising on European Union and World Trade Organization law, the government website said.

From 2000 to 2006, Raab worked at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) on a range of issues including investor protection. As an FCO lawyer, Raab was also the lead on a team “focusing on bringing war criminals to justice at The Hague”, the BBC reported.

He is married to Brazil-born Erika, a former Google marketing executive, with whom he has two sons. He holds a black belt third Dan in karate and is a keen boxer, with a picture of Muhammad Ali reportedly spotted hanging in his Commons office.

Raab’s parliamentary career

Raab is “not short on experience”, said Tominey in The Telegraph last summer, when he was being talked about as a potential successor to Boris Johnnson. He became MP for Esher and Walton, a safe Tory seat, in 2010, and has served in government since after the 2015 election, initially working in the Ministry of Justice before moving to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government in January 2018.

In 2017, Raab was described as “offensive” by then Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron, after saying that “the typical user of a food bank is not someone that’s languishing in poverty, it’s someone who has a cash flow problem”.

Brexiteer Raab was promoted to secretary of state for Leaving the European Union in July 2018, a post he held until November 2018, when he resigned over his disapproval of Theresa May’s EU Withdrawal Agreement.

He “famously received a slap down from [May] in 2011 in her role as minister for women and equalities”, after he labelled feminists “obnoxious bigots”, said The New Statesman.

Raab ran in the race to succeed her as Tory party leader in 2019, but was eliminated in the second ballot of Conservative MPs and instead endorsed Johnson for the job.

Johnson subsequently named him foreign secretary and first secretary of state (effectively deputy prime minister), in July 2019. In April the following year, Raab took over the PM’s responsibilities while Johnson was hospitalised with Covid. At the time, colleagues told Politico that the state secretary would be “a forensic stand-in” for the PM – “albeit one who sometimes lacks charm”.

Last September, Raab was demoted to the role of lord chancellor. But he “insisted” that as well as becoming secretary of state for justice, he should also have the official title of deputy prime minister “rather than the de facto role of first secretary of state”, a demand that sparked curiosity as to whether Raab “had let his ego get the better of him”, said The Telegraph’s Tominey.

Bullying allegations and resignation

In November last year, The Guardian reported on allegations of bullying against the deputy PM from the civil service. One source saying Raab had created a culture that was “demeaning rather than demanding” and that the minister “wasn’t just unprofessional, he was a bully”. The Guardian’s article was quickly followed by similar allegations in The Sun and The Mirror.

John Stevens, the political editor of The Mirror, then reported that Raab had been nicknamed “The Incinerator” by workers at the Ministry of Justice “as he burns through officials”.

A total of 44 pieces of written evidence and 66 interviews were taken into consideration by Tolley, when putting together the report into Raab’s behaviour and Raab himself was interviewed four times.

The report eventually concluded that Raab had “acted in a manner which was intimidating, in the sense of going further than was necessary or appropriate in delivering critical feedback”.

In a column for The Telegraph explaining his decision to resign, Raab described the bullying inquiry as “Kafkaesque” and said that “normal rules of evidence and procedural fairness were disapplied”.

His resignation caught some by surprise. ITV’s political editor, Robert Peston, tweeted last night that, having read Tolley’s report, Raab “believes it does not show he breached the Ministerial Code, and therefore he will not be offering his resignation”. Sunak would have to “decide whether to sack him”.

This morning, speculation has turned to whether Raab jumped before he was pushed – or was fired. Tom Newton Dunn, presenter of TalkTV’s politics programme, tweeted that there was “no acceptance in Raab’s resignation letter that he bullied”. The letter was “an outright attack on the Tolley report instead – so he was clearly fired rather than walked”, he added.

However, the BBC’s chief political correspondent, Nick Eardley, said this morning “sources inside Downing Street are insisting” that Sunak “did not ask Dominic Raab to resign”.

The “coming days” will “tell us more about the extent to which Raab was pushed or jumped”, said CNN. “If it’s the former, he could have reason to make life difficult for Sunak later down the line when he struggles with Johnson allies on the right of the party”.