Tuesday, June 11, 2024

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1/ Judge Aileen Cannon denied convicted felon Trump’s effort to dismiss his classified documents case, but did agree to delete a paragraph in the federal superseding indictment that alleges he mishandled classified materials after he left the White House and obstructed attempts to retrieve them. Cannon said that special counsel Jack Smith’s inclusion of a paragraph, which alleges Trump showed a classified document in September 2021 about an “ongoing military operation” was “not going well” to someone without a security clearance, was “not appropriate,” because it’s not directly related to the charges Trump is facing. Trump isn’t charged with disclosing classified materials; only with illegally retaining them. (NBC News / Washington Post / New York Times / CNN)

2/ Attorney General Merrick Garland called the attacks on the Justice Department by Trump and his allies “baseless, personal and dangerous.” For the second time this month Garland has publicly pushed back against threats by House Republicans to defund special counsel Jack Smith – who is prosecuting Trump for attempting to overturn the 2020 election and illegally retaining classified documents and obstructing efforts to retrieve them – as well as conspiracy theories that the Justice Department was involved in the Manhattan District Attorney’s prosecution of Trump. Garland said the department was facing threats of violence “like never before,” adding that the “continued unfounded attacks against the Justice Department’s employees are dangerous for people’s safety. They are dangerous for our democracy. This must stop.” Meanwhile in a letter to House Republicans, the Justice Department said it had found no emails between DOJ leadership and District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office about any Trump case, calling it “conspiratorial speculation.” (Axios / Politico / NBC News / ABC News / Politico)

3/ House Democrats launched a task force to prepare for the so-called Project 2025, a 920-page policy blueprint compiled by the far-right Heritage Foundation for how a second Trump administration could expand the power of the presidency to act unilaterally while dismantling layers of the federal government. At its core, Project 2025 proposes purging thousands of civil servants and replacing them with Trump loyalists. “This stuff is going to be coming at us at lightspeed. And if we are on our heels and reacting to it, we could lose our democracy,” Jared Huffman said, one of the lawmakers spearheading The Stop Project 2025 Task Force. “So we’re going to need to be ready to confront it in real time. And those plans need to begin now.” Huffman added: “The stakes just couldn’t be higher.” (

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