The Hill’s Morning Report — Trump arraigned; claims ‘I did everything right’

by Alexis Simendinger and Kristina Karisch - 06/14/23 6:20 AM ET

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Former President Trump let his lawyer do the talking Tuesday in a Miami courthouse: “Not guilty.”

During the few hours he spent in South Florida before flying back to his New Jersey golf club, Trump made history as he waved to greet boisterous supporters from inside a black Suburban, was fingerprinted and charged with violating the Espionage Act (among other allegations), and then visited a Little Havana eatery on his way to the airport, where fans sang “Happy Birthday” to the VIP customer and prayed.

By the time Trump landed in Bedminster for a fundraiser ahead of his 77th birthday today, he had honed his new profile as a criminal defendant seeking the presidency, a first for the United States. On social media, as in court, Trump’s message: “INNOCENT man” (The Hill).

By evening, his enemies list proved long. “I did everything right, and they indicted me,” he complained, using an argument he relied on to combat two impeachments and other controversies during his four years in office. Trump called Justice Department Special Counsel Jack Smith “deranged,” adding, “he looks like a thug” (The Hill). He told the crowd that President Biden is “the most corrupt president in the history of our country.”

In “the darkest hours of American history, I can say that I am in great spirits,” he wrote in an email that his campaign team titled “flying back.” Reporters allowed in the Miami courtroom said Trump appeared uncomfortable — arms crossed, eyes focused straight ahead, jaw clenched, silent. But by the time he was aloft in his private plane, Trump’s email did not hold back.

“My team showed me all of the support, the love, the prayers, and the donations YOU gave our movement while I was getting arraigned,” he wrote.

Later, in the Garden State, Trump hinted at elements of his possible defense, claiming that photos of boxes stacked at Mar-a-Lago were “staged” before inclusion in the government’s 49-page indictment. Trump claimed some cartons held memorabilia, not documents. His lawyers reviewed his remarks before his delivery, Politico reported.

“The Espionage Act has been used to refer to traitors and spies,” Trump said. “It has nothing to do with a former president legally keeping his own documents.”

▪ The New York Times fact check: Trump’s defenses during his post-arraignment speech included falsehoods and inaccuracies about the documents classification process, the Presidential Records Act and classified documents possessed by other former officials, including the Clintons.

▪ The Hill’s Niall Stanage: Five takeaways from Trump’s arraignment.

▪ The Associated Press: Trump pleads not guilty to federal charges.

▪ The Associated Press: The former president’s historic federal arraignment proceeding was virtually invisible to the public.

▪ The Wall Street Journal: Federal Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, is in the spotlight.

Trump was not required to surrender a passport; prosecutor David Harbach said he was not considered a flight risk, a likely recognition of his status as a presidential candidate, according to AP. He was told not to discuss the case with any witnesses. That includes Walt Nauta, his valet and personal aide, who was indicted last week on charges that he conspired with Trump at his direction to move documents sought by the government, and then lied to FBI investigators.

Nauta rode in the same motorcade to the courthouse with Trump, but in a separate vehicle. He did not enter a plea Tuesday because he did not have a local lawyer with him, AP reported.

The magistrate judge who presided over the arraignment directed the former president not to discuss the case with any witnesses, including Nauta, but said they can discuss work. Nauta continued to assist the former president as his personal aide on Tuesday.

Related Articles

▪ The Hill: Former Vice President Mike Pence, a presidential candidate, said the government’s charges are “very serious” stemming from Trump’s retention of classified documents. “I can’t defend what is alleged,” he told The Wall Street Journal editorial board. “But the president is entitled to his day in court, he’s entitled to bring a defense, and I want to reserve judgment until he has the opportunity to respond.”

▪ The Hill: Judge rules writer E. Jean Carroll can add Trump CNN town hall comments to a defamation lawsuit against the former president.

▪ Lawfare: A primer on the “silent witness rule” involving national security secrets and United States v. Trump.

LEADING THE DAY

➤ CONGRESS

While House Republicans managed to put a temporary stop to last week’s blockade of the chamber floor launched by right-wing members over the weekend; the animus within the conference spilled over into Tuesday, when moderate House GOP members used a closed-door party meeting to accuse the rebels — in apparently profane terms — of undermining the Republican agenda. As The Hill’s Emily Brooks, Mike Lillis and Mychael Schnell report, Reps. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) and Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.) castigated the hard-liners, according to a number of lawmakers in the room, in an exchange largely focused on the legislation that was blocked as a result of the conservative revolt. One GOP lawmaker, who spoke anonymously to discuss internal conversations, described the meeting as a “catharsis” and said it included cursing.

“A little spicy in there,” the lawmaker added. Another GOP member said Van Orden “dropped an f-bomb,” which elicited applause from others in the room.

“He was just frustrated about being up here last week and not legislating any bills on the floor,” the first GOP lawmaker said of Van Orden.

The impassioned statements came the morning after the members who had held up floor action announced they would allow votes on party-line measures to proceed on the House floor as they negotiate a new “power-sharing agreement” with Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.). The moderates, however, continue to maintain that no such agreement exists.

That agreement, however, it ends up playing out, will be crucial to Congress in the next few months, as both chambers have only a few months to pass key spending bills ahead of a September deadline. That’s not to mention other crucial pieces of legislation, like the National Defense Authorization Act and the farm bill. The conservative hardliners are already gearing up for their next fight with McCarthy over hundreds of billions of dollars in spending cuts, Politico reports, but beyond that, they don’t know exactly what concessions they’re looking for.

“We’re meeting, trying to figure it out,” said Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), chair of the Trump-aligned House Freedom Caucus, describing the autumn government funding debate as “front and center” for conservatives, as it “should be.”

The uncertainty of the Freedom Caucus’s demands further complicates the situation for McCarthy’s slim and fractious majority. The Speaker’s biggest skeptics on the right are happy to use hardball tactics, even if it hurts the party’s priorities, but their lack of clear demands makes it nearly impossible for leadership to satisfy them.

▪ Roll Call: “F-bombs” and veiled threats: House GOP reacts to impasse-busting deal.

▪ The New York Times congressional memo: By voting against rules, those challenging McCarthy from the far right are violating a longstanding House tradition, fundamentally changing the nature of the chamber in ways that point to major dysfunction ahead.

▪ Politico: The Freedom Caucus adds new members in the wake of House floor rebellion.

▪ Axios: House lawmakers float bypassing GOP hardliners.

Among the infighting, House Republicans are plowing forward with plans to mark up their funding bills at lower levels than the limits agreed upon with Democrats just weeks ago, The Hill’s Aris Folley reports, teeing up what could be a nasty battle over spending between both sides later this year. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (Conn.), the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, told reporters Tuesday the latest move across the aisle “all but guarantees a shutdown.”

“This moves us in the direction of, you could say a [continuing resolution], but in October, we’re looking toward a shutdown,” DeLauro said.

Leaders on both sides agreed to spending caps for fiscal 2024 as part of the Fiscal Responsibility Act. Congress passed the bill earlier this month to raise the debt limit before an early June deadline to prevent a national default, but key spending cuts were necessary to win backing from Republicans. Despite bipartisan support for the plan, the bill has been met with growing opposition from conservatives since its passage as hard-liners criticize the measure for not going far enough to curb spending.

▪ The Hill: House fails to override Biden veto on D.C. accountability bill.

▪ The Hill: House votes to restrict feds from banning or regulating gas stoves.

▪ The Hill: House to consider a resolution to censure Rep. Adam Schiff (R-Calif.).

➤ POLITICS

Republicans are facing an uphill climb in the Wisconsin Senate race after Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) decided against mounting a bid next year, hurting their chances to unseat Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.). As The Hill’s Julia Manchester and Al Weaver report, Gallagher was considered a top Republican pick to challenge incumbent Baldwin next year and his decision not to run has some in the party worried about their prospects in what is expected to be a tough election. Despite Wisconsin becoming more of a battleground state in recent years, Baldwin has been an extraordinarily tough opponent for the GOP, having won reelection by more than 10 points only two years after Trump carried the state.

“Tammy Baldwin is good. Republicans have always underestimated her in the past, kind of the same way Democrats underestimate [Sen.] Ron Johnson [R-Wis.],” one Wisconsin-based GOP operative told The Hill, adding that she’ll be “very well-funded.”

With Gallagher stepping aside, a number of other Republican names have been floated to run including Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-Wis.), former hedge fund manager Eric Hovde, and businessman Scott Mayer. Meanwhile, former Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clark has continued to tease a potential bid.

Roll Call: Guilty pleas in “scam PAC” case tied to 2017 Wisconsin Senate race.

Progressives who have watched long-shot Democratic candidate — and COVID-19 vaccine opponent — Robert F. Kennedy Jr. grab headlines are wondering what the lead up to the 2024 election could have looked like with a more credible primary challenger to President Biden, writes The Hill’s Hanna Trudo. Their discontentment with Biden has grown after being cut what they see as a raw deal over the debt limit, the latest snub from the president they rallied hard to elect. While Kennedy appears to be having a moment, progressives don’t claim him for their cause. Rather, some wish that a more inspirational candidate would have given Biden a real run for the nomination, with a handful still hopeful that there’s a chance that someone will.

“We are renewing efforts to encourage a progressive primary challenge from a visionary officeholder or a major leader of social movements,” said Norman Solomon, a delegate for Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in 2016 and 2020.

Other 2024 headlines: While relatively few Americans know Republican presidential candidate Sen. Tim Scott (S.C.), some Democrats see him as a tough general election opponent (NBC News). … But former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who has based his campaign on criticizing the former president, remains a long-shot candidate, analysts say (CNN). … After calling Trump “reckless,” presidential candidate and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley said Tuesday she would still be “inclined” to pardon him if he is convicted of federal charges (Politico). … Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, also in the race, said it would be “offensive” for GOP candidates to promise they’d pardon Trump (ABC News).

IN FOCUS/SHARP TAKES

➤ ADMINISTRATION & ECONOMY

Biden and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) share responsibilities at the U.S. southern border. But federal officials complain the state government often operates without consultation or adequate communication with Washington. “The biggest issue that we have is when there are moments in which [state leaders] take actions that are not coordinated,” a Biden administration official told The Hill’s Ellen Mitchell.

The Biden administration stopped taking mobile app appointments to admit asylum-seekers at a Texas border crossing that connects to a notoriously dangerous Mexican city after advocates warned U.S. authorities that migrants were being extorted. U.S. Customs and Border Protection gave no explanation for its decision to stop scheduling new appointments. Several asylum-seekers told The Associated Press that Mexican officials in Nuevo Laredo, across the border from Laredo, Texas, threatened to force them to miss their scheduled U.S. asylum appointments unless they paid the officials. Humanitarian groups in Laredo say they warned CBP that certain groups were controlling access to the international crossing on the Mexican side.

Meanwhile, the administration will extend temporary humanitarian protections to immigrants from El Salvador, Honduras, Nepal and Nicaragua. The decision will grant 330,000 migrants now living in the U.S. with temporary status to renew their work permits for another 18 months (Axios).

▪ Time: Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, during an interview last week, said of LGBTQ rights, “I don’t think anything is safe.”

Biden met Tuesday with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg at the White House and reiterated that the alliance is united in defending Ukraine against Russian aggression for as long as it takes. But neither offered clarity about the unsettled question of who will lead the alliance after Stoltenberg departs, which is scheduled in September when his term expires (Politico).

“We’ve strengthened NATO’s eastern flank, made it clear we’ll defend every inch of NATO territory. I say it again: The commitment of the United States to NATO’s Article 5 is rock solid,” Biden said, a reference to the charter’s fundamental provision under which an attack on one member nation is considered an attack against all (The Hill).

The alliance, Stoltenberg added, will “agree to sustain and step up the support for Ukraine,” which includes a “stronger commitment to increase defense spending.” He also defended Europe’s contribution to Kyiv and said, “European allies are also doing their part, with tens of billions of economic military support.”

U.S. prices: Everyone with a toehold in the American economy will be watching the Federal Reserve today, many expecting central bankers to announce what most analysts think will be a pause after 10 consecutive meetings that ended with rate hikes.

The consumer price index for May, released Tuesday, rose at a 4 percent annual pace for the month, the lowest reading in more than two years but still above the central bank’s 2 percent target, according to the government’s latest inflation report. Categories with price increases: housing, recreation, new vehicles, and household expenses. Areas in which prices dropped in the past year: airline fares, car and truck rentals, fresh whole milk, used cars and trucks, and citrus fruit (CNBC).

▪ The Wall Street Journal: CPI report shows inflation has been cut in half from last year’s peak.

▪ The Hill: Housing costs are so high, they pushed inflation up ahead of the Fed meeting.

▪ The Hill: Five takeaways from the steep May inflation decline.

OPINION

■ One of the last bastions of digital privacy is under threat, by Julia Angwin, contributing opinion writer and investigative journalist, The New York Times.

■ America is facing a mental health crisis, by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), opinion contributor, The Guardian.

WHERE AND WHEN

📲 Ask The Hill: Share a news query tied to an expert journalist’s insights: The Hill launched something new and (we hope) engaging via text with Editor-in-Chief Bob Cusack. Learn more and sign up HERE.

The House will meet at 10 a.m.

The Senate will convene at 10 a.m. and resume consideration of the nomination of P. Casey Pitts to be a U.S. district court judge for the Northern District of California.

The president will receive the President’s Daily Brief at 11 a.m. Biden at 7:55 p.m. will headline the League of Conservation Voters’ annual dinner with a speech in Washington.

Vice President Harris will join Biden for the President’s Daily Brief in the Oval Office.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken attends conference events with State Department Chiefs of Mission throughout the day.

Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra will be in Las Vegas to speak at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas at 10:45 a.m. PDT with local stakeholders about how Medicaid renewal requirements resume now that the federal COVID-19 public health emergency has ended. The secretary will hold a news conference at the university at 11:45 a.m. PDT. Becerra at 12:30 p.m. PDT will meet with the Culinary Workers Union Local 226 and Bartenders Union Local 165 for a panel discussion about strides in health care in the Inflation Reduction Act. The secretary plans a news conference at the union hall at 1:20 p.m. PDT.

First lady Jill Biden will be in Los Angeles to raise contributions for the Biden Victory Fund at 12:30 p.m. PDT. The event to benefit the president’s reelection campaign will be hosted by the Democratic Party and the Women’s Leadership Forum (MyNewsLA).

The Federal Reserve will conclude a two-day meeting with a 2 p.m. written statement. Chair Jerome Powell will speak to reporters at 2:30 p.m.

Economic indicators: The Bureau of Labor Statistics at 8:30 a.m. will report on the Producer Price Index in May.

The United States Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, supported by the State Department, will invite experts during a meeting at 2 p.m. EDT to discuss artificial intelligence as a tool for international diplomacy and engagement. Information is HERE.

Second gentleman Doug Emhoff will join members of the Congressional Dads Caucus, advocate and cookbook author Jessica Seinfeld and other participants at 10 a.m. to mark Father’s Day with a roundtable at the Library of Congress focused on issues affecting working families. He will attend at 7 p.m. the annual Congressional Baseball Game for Charity at Nationals Park in Washington.

The White House daily press briefing is scheduled at 1:45 p.m.

ELSEWHERE

➤ INTERNATIONAL

The death toll has climbed into the double digits in Kryvyi Rih, central Ukraine, where Russian forces struck a warehouse and an apartment building, killing 11 and injuring 28. The steel and mining city — the hometown of President Volodymyr Zelensky — was already grappling with the aftermath of the Kakhovka dam disaster.

Residents on Tuesday described a scramble in the early morning hours as they heard the whistles of hurtling missiles, the latest in a string of rocket and drone attacks that have tormented civilian areas. Video shared by Zelensky showed fires blazing from the blown-out windows of the five-story apartment building that was hit (The New York Times). As battles raged along the front line in Ukraine’s southeast, Russia responded to Kyiv’s counteroffensive with its latest deadly overnight missile barrage (The Washington Post).

“Russian killers continue their war against residential buildings, ordinary cities and people,” he said on Twitter.

Meanwhile, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has said his country has started taking delivery of Russian tactical nuclear weapons. The deployment is Moscow’s first move of such weapons outside Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union (Reuters).

▪ The Associated Press: The U.S. is sending a $325 million package of military aid to Ukraine.

▪ Reuters: Ukrainian flag, Russian corpses are evidence of Kyiv’s advance in the south.

▪ Politico EU: “Not a Hollywood movie.” Russia mounts a strong fightback to Ukraine’s counteroffensive.

▪ The Wall Street Journal: The U.S. warned Ukraine not to attack the Nord Stream pipeline. The CIA pressed Kyiv weeks before explosions sabotaged the natural-gas pipelines bringing Russian gas to Europe.

▪ The Associated Press: Russian President Vladimir Putin says he might try to seize nearby territory in Ukraine to prevent cross-border strikes.

China’s cyber-espionage and sabotage capacities are an “epoch-defining threat,” said the top U.S. cybersecurity official, warning that in the event of open warfare “aggressive cyber operations” would threaten critical transportation infrastructure “to induce societal panic.”

“I think this is the real threat that we need to be prepared for,” Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Jen Easterly said at an appearance Monday at the Aspen Institute in Washington, D.C. The warning comes as tensions with China are heightened, and corporate executives have far less insight into potential Chinese partners or customers than they did even a year ago — so fending off cyber threats from China and Asia has become a top priority for the U.S. government (CNBC).

▪ Bloomberg News: The return of El Niño threatens new levels of economic destruction.

▪ The Associated Press: 110 million people forcibly displaced as Sudan, Ukraine wars add to world refugee crisis, U.N, says.

➤ TRENDS

⛪ Religion: Some Southern Baptist Convention conservatives who fear a liberal drift are pressing for ideological purity and arguing that female pastors are a precursor to acceptance of homosexuality and sexual immorality. They are set to vote on a strict ban against women in church leadership. Two churches, one in Louisville, Ky., and another in Southern California, are appealing their expulsions (The New York Times).

Artificial intelligence: On Monday, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres backed a proposal by some artificial intelligence executives for the creation of an international AI watchdog body like the International Atomic Energy Agency. Generative AI technology has captivated the public since ChatGPT launched six months ago and became the fastest growing app of all time, but the technology has also become a focus of concern over its ability to create deep fake pictures and other misinformation (Reuters).

“Alarm bells over the latest form of artificial intelligence — generative AI — are deafening. And they are loudest from the developers who designed it,” Guterres told reporters. “We must take those warnings seriously.”

▪ The Associated Press: How Europe is leading the world in the push to regulate AI.

▪ The Guardian: The harm from AI is already here. What can the U.S. do to protect us?

▪ CBS News: Exploring the human-like side of artificial intelligence at Google.

▪ The Wall Street Journal: Microsoft and OpenAI: The awkward partnership leading the AI boom.

🚶Urban planning: The 15-minute city is either an epiphany in urban planning or a totalitarian conspiracy theory — depending on who you ask. The Hill’s Daniel de Visé reports the new-ish idea, based on urban science dating back at least a century, urges people to live, work, shop and play within a radius of 15-minute travel by foot or bicycle.

While surveys suggest people love the idea and are flocking to self-contained communities, conspiracy theorists in recent months have spawned sinister rumors and even issued death threats against demographers. But while the 15-minute city has become a loaded term, most Americans seem to like the ideas behind it.

“People are overwhelmingly in support of 15-minute cities if you define it for them,” Rachel Kirsch, a senior creative strategist at the consumer site eBikes.org, told The Hill.

▪ The New York Times: The 15-minute city: Where urban planning meets conspiracy theories.

▪ CNN: How 15-minute cities turned into an international conspiracy theory.

Medicine: The Hill’s ongoing series about cancer focuses today on how COVID-19 set back the battle against the disease. … Catch up with The Hill’s cancer reporting: Who you are, where you live help determine your chances of beating cancer and Special Report: Curing Cancer.

Maternal health: New York, as announced last year, expanded its coverage under Medicaid to cover a full year of postpartum health care after pregnancy, making an additional 26,000 people eligible in the Empire State. The federal government is working to remind recipients that their states are requiring reenrollment in order to continue benefits beyond pregnancy (Kaiser Health Foundation). An estimated 509,000 Americans across 35 states and the District of Columbia now have access to extended postpartum coverage, according to the Biden administration (Kaiser Family Foundation state tracker).

THE CLOSER

And finally … 🐻 Bears are on the loose. It’s not an urban legend.

The furry creatures have been spotted in cities across the country, from Washington, D.C. — where Franklin the bear, found lumbering through Brookland, now has his own line of commemorative, limited-edition T-shirts — to Destin, Fla. — where a black bear shocked beachgoers as it swam through the Gulf of Mexico before fleeing the crowd.

The bears, which are often captured by local agencies and released further afield where they won’t run into humans again, have startled commuters, drawn crowds and fascinated experts such as Andrew Tri, the bear project leader for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources based in Grand Rapids, Minn., who said his region has experienced an influx in bear sightings over the last 15 years (MPR News).

“That’s kind of a cool thing from an ecological perspective,” he said. “There are lots of cities and areas that can coexist with bears and do it quite well and people just learn to live with it. Bears in the metro is just kind of a new thing and it’ll take some time for people to get used to it. I’m not overly concerned about widespread rashes of really intense human-bear conflict.”

While we at Morning Report were fascinated by our deep-dive into ursine sightings, we want to remind readers that if you do spot a bear out in the wild — exercise caution, and leave it alone.

▪ The Mercury News: In photos: Bears made headlines in three cities in four days.

▪ WTOP: Another black bear spotted — this time, in Rockville, Md.

▪ CBS News: Why have there been so many recent bear sightings in the Twin Cities?

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