This story was originally published by High Country News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

This April, at a steak dinner with oil and gas executives at the Mar-a-Lago Club, in Florida, former President Donald Trump made a request backed by a hefty promise: If the CEOs in attendance raised $1 billion to support his reelection bid, he would lower their taxes and eviscerate environmental and public health protections once he became president, clearing away the “regulatory burdens” that stand in the way of their companies injecting more carbon into the atmosphere—and profiting handsomely from it.

According to reporting by the Washington Post, Trump promised to reverse dozens of Biden administration policies, including a moratorium on approvals for liquefied natural gas exports, new restrictions on Arctic drilling, and many regulations of oil and gas drilling on public land. For good measure, he’d also scrap electric vehicle mandates and bring an immediate end to all offshore wind development.

Judging from Trump’s record, he fully intends to fulfill these promises, and then some. And his mission will be backed by a playbook—alarming for its extreme approach—fashioned by a right-wing coalition intent on dismantling the administrative state.

It’s astounding that the presumptive Republican presidential nominee can solicit a billion-dollar bribe to sell out America’s public lands and not be immediately disqualified or even prosecuted. After all, one-time Secretary of the Interior Albert B. Fall was disgraced and tossed into jail for doing the same thing, in an incident known as the Teapot Dome scandal in the 1920s. Even more dumbfounding is that, according to some polls, President Biden and Trump are statistically tied among young voters on the issue of climate change.

The reason for this is simple—and, I might add, simplistic. In March 2020, during a Democratic presidential debate, then-candidate Biden said his climate policy included “no more drilling on federal land.” He made a similar statement during a town hall in 2019. And yet, during the first four months of 2024, the Bureau of Land Management issued 969 permits to drill. So much for “no more drilling.” And that’s not all: In 2023, the administration approved a scaled-back—yet still massive and highly destructive—version of the controversial Willow drilling project on Alaska’s North Slope.

Climate advocates are right to hold Biden’s feet to the fire, and to count these moves as black marks on his record. But it is naive, foolish, and destructive to let these missteps obscure the administration’s more subtle, but ultimately more meaningful, actions to protect the climate and public lands from the fossil fuel industry. To see no difference between Biden and Trump is simply ignorant.

Biden’s public land and climate policies were all over the place during his first two years in office, but more recently he has cemented his legacy as a conservationist. In late April I wrote about a slew of new public lands protections enacted by the administration. In the weeks since, Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency has implemented new rules limiting coal power plants’ emissions of greenhouse gasses, mercury, and other toxic air pollutants; tightening regulations on coal ash disposal; and clamping down on wastewater releases by power plants. Additionally, the BLM proposed ending federal coal leasing in America’s largest coal field, Wyoming’s Powder River Basin, which signals a potential death knell for a declining industry. The BLM also canceled 25 oil and gas leases in a 40,000-acre area of southeastern Utah that is rich with cultural resources.

Since a Donald Trump “climate policy” is a contradiction in terms, we’ll look instead at Trump’s energy aims, which consist of little more than “unlock(ing) our country’s God-given abundance of oil, natural gas, and clean coal” by shredding environmental and public health protections at the behest of billionaire petroleum executives. Never mind that those same executives have boasted about achieving record-high domestic oil production and liquefied natural gas exports under the Biden administration. Never mind that ExxonMobil brought in $8.6 billion in after-tax profits during the first three months of the year—not too shabby for an industry purportedly under siege by radical environmentalists.

Since the Trump campaign lacks a concrete platform, a group of right-wing organizations calling themselves Project 2025 have taken it upon themselves to fashion an agenda and even a staff for the next administration to “rescue the country from the grip of the radical Left.” The coalition has published a document called “Mandate for Leadership,” which lays out a playbook for each government sector, providing an eerie glimpse into a second Trump presidency.

The chapter on the Department of the Interior was penned by none other than William Perry Pendley, a notorious anti-public lands zealot who served as Trump’s acting director of the BLM—illegitimately. In it, Pendley unabashedly advocates for returning to the pre-multiple use days, when the BLM was known as the Bureau of Livestock and Mining. He reiterates the absurd claim that wild horses pose an existential threat to public lands and calls for the immediate “rollback of Biden’s orders” and the reinstatement of “the Trump-era Energy Dominance Agenda.” Per the playbook, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the rest of the region would be reopened to drilling; the full Willow project (five drill sites rather than the scaled-back three) would be approved; coal leasing would be restored; drilling permits would be expedited; methane emissions rules and other pollution limits would be rescinded; national monuments would be shrunk or eliminated; protections for sage grouse, grizzlies, wolves and other imperiled species would be removed; and the administration would try to repeal the Antiquities Act of 1906.

And that’s just the DOI chapter. The Energy Department and EPA sections strike similar notes, calling on Trump to, among other things, “Stop the war on oil and natural gas;” lift the moratorium on liquefied natural gas export approvals (and stop considering climate change as a reason to stop LNG projects); support repeal of the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, both of which have created thousands of jobs in the clean energy and climate change mitigation industries; shift the departments’ focus away from climate change and renewable energy; end greenhouse gas emissions reporting for all but a select few facilities; and roll back coal plant pollution regulations.

The damage inflicted during Trump’s first term was somewhat mitigated by the administration’s incompetence. Project 2025’s 920-page playbook looks to remedy that, supplementing Trump’s greed and power-hunger with corporate-backed ideology and expertise. In office, Trump would create an authoritarian regime that cracks down on civil liberties, criminalizes immigrants, and bolsters the police state, while also letting corporate interests run wild at the expense of the planet and its most vulnerable people.

A recent report from Wood Mackenzie, a natural resource analytics firm, predicts that a Trump victory in November would bring an “immediate deceleration in support for decarbonization” and “unabated fossil generation would expand.” The report warns that “These steps would push the US even further away from a net zero emissions pathway.”

Biden may have broken a promise, but when it comes to Trump vs. Biden on the climate, the contrast couldn’t be more stark.

On Tuesday, the Biden administration issued a new sweeping executive order further limiting access to asylum at the US-Mexico border. The long-anticipated move, which relies on an authority previously invoked by the Trump administration to restrict immigration, will allow border officials to temporarily suspend asylum processing between official ports of entry and swiftly return migrants to neighboring Mexico and countries of origin at times when crossings rise to a certain threshold. The directive, which mirrors a now-defunct Senate border deal, is set to go into effect on Tuesday at midnight.

“President Biden believes we must secure our border,” a White House statement reads. “That is why today, he announced executive actions to bar migrants who cross our Southern border unlawfully from receiving asylum. These actions will be in effect when high levels of encounters at the Southern Border exceed our ability to deliver timely consequences, as is the case today.”

This latest and likely most drastic crackdown on asylum by a Democratic president in recent years comes at a time when migrant encounters at the southern border are in decline after record-breaking levels of migration. The move consolidates President Biden’s marked rightward shift on immigration and signals how far the administration is willing to go to rebut Republicans and Donald Trump’s “open borders” accusations. Critics and advocates say that, in trying to come on top of a sticky electoral issue ahead of the November vote, Biden might just end up outdoing his opponent’s hardline record by gutting access to asylum.

“It’s notable to see the White House prep a POTUS event on policies that Dems used to call illegal,” Andrea R. Flores, who once served as director for border management on Biden’s National Security Council, wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, prior to the announcement. “Pundits will say this is a smart move to the center on immigration, but this issue has moved so far to the right that Dems are embracing extreme asylum bans even when border numbers are down.”

The executive order is based on section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act which allows the president to suspend the entry of foreigners if “detrimental to the interests” of the United States. The directive places a cap on the processing of asylum claims and migrants that would be triggered once unlawful border crossings reach an average of 2,500 per day over a week. The partial ban would only be lifted 14 days after the weekly average of daily encounters fall to 1,500.

Last month, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) recorded a daily average of 3,700 encounters between ports of entry—a significant decrease from the 8,000 registered in December, but still high enough to set off the border closure. The executive order, which includes exemptions for unaccompanied minors and migrants fleeing imminent harm, is likely to prompt legal challenges—and potential court orders blocking the effort—similar to the ones the Trump administration faced.

BREAKING: The Biden administration just announced an executive order that will severely restrict people's legal right to seek asylum, putting tens of thousands of lives at risk.

This action takes the same approach as the Trump administration's asylum ban. We will be challenging…

— ACLU (@ACLU) June 4, 2024

In a 10-minute announcement, Biden blamed Republicans for not taking congressional action to secure the border. “Frankly, I’d have preferred to address this issue through bipartisan legislation,” he said, adding that “Republicans left me no choice.”

The president also tried to distance himself from the Trump administration. “I will never demonize immigrants,” he said. “I’ll never refer to immigrants as poisoning the blood of a country. And further, I’ll never separate children from their families at the border. I will not ban people from this country because of their religious beliefs. I will not use the US military to go into neighborhoods all across the country, to pull millions of people out of their homes and away from their families, to put detention camps while we’re waiting deportation, as my predecessor says he will do if he occupies this office again.”

The timing of the policy move follows the results of the presidential elections in Mexico that saw Claudia Sheinbaum, a protege of outgoing leader Andrés Manuel López Obrador, elected the country’s first woman president. The recent drop in migrant crossings into the United States is due in no small part to the Mexican government’s increased clampdown on migration. The return of migrants and asylum seekers per the executive order would inevitably require Mexico’s cooperation.

Almost since the moment Biden took office having vowed to restore “moral leadership” on immigration, he has been hit with a barrage of attacks from Republicans determined to weaponize the immigration debate to score political points. Despite calls from advocates and immigration experts to espouse an openly pro-immigrant agenda and underscore a fundamental contrast between Biden and Trump, the administration and Democrats have instead gradually ceded ground to the right.

“This is a dark day for the Biden administration,” Azadeh Erfani, senior policy analyst at the National Immigrant Justice Center, said. “After campaigning on restoring asylum access, Biden is now fully embracing Trump’s policies as his own, including now using the same statute that led to the Muslim and African bans.” This crackdown on asylum, she added, is unlikely to have the intended effect of managing the border. “If we learned anything from the Trump years,” Erfani said, “it is that even the cruelest policies cannot succeed in “deterring” people fleeing for their lives.”

In January, Biden had already promised to “shut down” the border when calling on Congress to pass a restrictive bipartisan Senate border deal that primarily delivered on Republicans’ border enforcement priorities. The proposed bill, which Trump successfully torpedoed to keep the border a salient issue he can hammer on to appeal to his base, has twice failed to gain enough support. Most recently, Senate Republicans—including Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma, one of the champions of the original bipartisan push—blocked a renewed attempt by Democrats at passing a deal, decrying it as political theater.

With lawmakers from both parties playing the blame game, Biden has latched on Republicans’ obstruction as a campaign target. “Congressional Republicans do not care about securing the border or fixing America’s broken immigration system,” Biden said in a May statement after the border deal. “If they did, they would have voted for the toughest border enforcement in history.” In the process, he is doubling down on the enforcement-first rhetoric to claim, “I’ve done all I can do.”

Following former President Trump’s first criminal conviction—and his rambling against the outcome—he’s claiming that the possibility of being sentenced to house arrest or jail time doesn’t bother him.

“I’m okay with it,” Trump said on Fox & Friends Weekend, in his first interview since a dozen jurors handed down guilty verdicts on 34 of 34 felony charges for falsifying business records on Thursday.

The Fox & Friends hosts said they spent 90 minutes interviewing the former president at his Bedminster, New Jersey estate. In the 11-minute clip that aired Sunday, Trump ranted and repeated many of his complaints about the case and his political opponents: the people trying to hold him accountable are “deranged,” the trial was “a scam,” President Biden “can’t put two sentences together,” Democrats are “a threat to democracy.” Trump also called the guilty verdict, which he plans to appeal, “tougher on my family than it is for me.”

And, ever the martyr, the former president added that he thinks a sentence of jail or house arrest would throw his adoring public into upheaval. “I’m not sure the public would stand for it,” he said. “I think it would be tough for the public to take. You know, at a certain point, there’s a breaking point.”

But that remains to be seen. A CBS News/YouGov poll released today found that while 45 percent of respondents thought Trump should not serve prison time for the conviction, 38 percent think he should, with 17 percent unsure. An ABC/Ipsos poll found that half of Americans agree with the verdict—and nearly as many, 49 percent, think Trump should end his presidential campaign because of it.

Meanwhile, top Republicans are privately bracing for the possibility that their presumptive nominee may be incarcerated when the party officially nominates him at July’s Republican National Convention, according to a report on CBS’ Face the Nation. The former president’s sentencing is set for July 11; the four-day RNC kicks off in Milwaukee on July 15.

Some legal experts think Trump’s chances of jail time are slim given his age, 77, and his lack of a criminal record. He could simply be sentenced to probation. But incarceration is certainly possible, especially given Trump’s repeated violations of a gag order barring him from “threatening, inflammatory, denigrating” remarks about witnesses, jurors, court workers, and their families.

One thing is for sure: Jail time wouldn’t stop his campaign. “He is running for president,” Trump’s lawyer, Alina Habba, told the BBC on Sunday. “Nothing will change there.”

GOP Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), who previously called January 6 rioters “insurrectionists” who “should face the full extent of federal law,” is now singing a different tune: Many of those insurrectionists, he believes, should be “considered” for, and receive, presidential pardons.

On NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, Cotton said people “who did not attack a law enforcement officer, [and] who did not damage public property ” on Jan. 6 should be “considered” for a pardon.

“Anyone who is charged with silly misdemeanors about parading on public grounds without a permit, who did not attack a law enforcement officer, who did not damage public property, their pardon should be considered—in many cases, I would say it should be granted,” Cotton said. (As Meet the Press fill-in host Peter Alexander pointed out, that’s different from Trump’s recent pledge to pardon all of the more than 800 rioters who have been sentenced, whom he has called “hostages” and “political prisoners.”)

The senator went on to insist that he believes the Supreme Court will soon erase the insurrectionists’ convictions anyway, referring to Fischer v. US, the case focused on the Justice Department’s use of the “obstructing an official proceeding” charge against January 6 participants. (As my colleague Dan Friedman wrote, a favorable ruling for the rioters could disrupt the convictions of 350 participants; as Dan also wrote, it’s not clear how the high court will rule in the case, contrary to Cotton’s claims that it’ll be a slam-dunk for the rioters. A decision is expected by the end of the month.)

Cotton’s change of heart over the treatment of the insurrectionists under the law may have something to do with his rumored status as an increasingly attractive contender as Trump’s vice-presidential nominee, according to a New York Times report published last week. The Times report, which cites three anonymous people close to Trump, says the now–convicted felon sees Cotton as disciplined and an effective communicator, and likes the fact that he served in the Army and is a fellow Ivy League graduate.

Another part of his apparent VP audition on Meet the Press this morning came when Cotton—who voted to certify the 2020 election results—said that, while he does not believe that Congress has the authority to reject electors certified by states, he’d only accept this year’s results “if it’s a fair and a free election.”

“Any candidate of any party has a perfect right to pursue legal remedies if they believe there’s been fraud or cheating in an election,” Cotton said. Trump and his allies, of course, made use of this right, filing more than 60 court cases challenging the results of the 2020 contest. All but one failed; the sole legal victory was on a technical matter in Pennsylvania, and would not have changed the election outcome in the state, where Biden won by more than 80,000 votes, according to USA Today.

Other rumored Trump VP contenders have played the same game as Cotton, publicly reversing their previously articulated positions to align with Trump’s, or walking back previous criticisms of him. Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) have all gone on television and, in various ways, refused to commit to certifying this year’s election results no matter who wins—even though Scott and Rubio both voted to certify the 2020 results. (Vance was not yet in office in 2020, and has since said he would not have certified the results. Stefanik voted to overturn them.)

But for all his posturing, when this morning’s interview turned to talk about Trump’s VP shortlist, Cotton played coy. “I suspect only he knows who’s on his short list,” Cotton said of Trump. “I have not talked to the president or his campaign about his vice-presidential selection or any position in his administration.”

He added, “Any great patriot, if offered a chance to serve our country by the president, would have to consider it seriously.”

And any aspiring Trump VP, it appears, has to abandon their convictions and fall in line with the ex-president to be seriously considered for the job.

In the wake of Donald Trump’s conviction yesterday, far-right influencers have taken to Twitter to express their dismay—and desire for revenge. While some have simply urged Trump supporters to show their support at the ballot box in November, others have gone full apocalypse, urging retribution through thinly disguised calls for violence. Here are a few of the suggestions they have for standing up for their hero during his time of need.

First up: the more establishment wing of the MAGAverse. Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) oozes with disgust over “the left’s smirking, pretentious little faces:”

A disgraceful moment for our country, when activism and emotion trampled longstanding judicial principles and standards. This case is ripe to be overturned on appeal, as it should be, and Donald Trump will be reelected in November. Ultimately this will blow up in the left’s…

— Dan Crenshaw (@DanCrenshawTX) May 30, 2024

Then, there’s Charlie Kirk, head of the conservative student movement group TurningPoint USA. On Thursday following the verdict, he tweeted this to his 2.9 million followers on X:

They rigged the trial to rig the election.

Make them pay.

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) May 30, 2024

Relentless Sandy Hook conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who in 2022 was ordered to pay $1.5 billion dollars in damages to the families of the children slain during the 2012 massacre, plays his version of three-dimensional-conspiracist chess by claiming to his 2.3 million followers that calls for violence from Trump supporters are actually a “false flag” operation by Democrats.

Anonymous people on message boards are calling for violence. An investigation of the IP addresses would discover that leftist posing as Trump supporters are making the comments. False flag attacks emanating from the deep state are imminent. https://t.co/GGUyryITWm

— Alex Jones (@RealAlexJones) May 31, 2024

From Jackson Hinkle, an extremist antisemite and white nationalist with 2.6 million followers on X, comes this suggestion:

Donald Trump must IMPRISON these three WAR CRIMINALS FOR LIFE when he is reelected.

Expose their financial crimes, sex crimes, murders & war crimes @realDonaldTrump! pic.twitter.com/CSJgRSkML6

— Jackson Hinkle (@jacksonhinklle) May 30, 2024

Looking at some actors with fewer followers but equal passions, we can start with Stew Peters, a former bounty hunter-turned-extremist-livestreamer. He took a break from spewing his usual antisemitic horrors by tweeting on Friday to his 596,000 followers on X a video he dug up of a guy ranting about the sheer injustice of Trump’s conviction. “We’re going to put Donald Trump in office, and we want him to lock you motherfuckers up and put a lot of you motherfuckers to death,” he fumes.  

The 937,000 followers of the far-right account The Vigilant Fox were gifted with the tweet of an admiring description of a video it produced of conservative pundit Megyn Kelley. “She compares the Democrats to a wolf that just ‘tasted blood’ and suggests the only way to stop a wolf from ‘coming back for more’ is ‘if he loses a limb of his own.’

NEW: Megyn Kelly suggests a reckoning is coming for Biden, Obama, and Clinton after Trump verdict.

“You just wait, and it won’t be Hunter Biden the next time. It’s going to be Joe Biden. It could potentially still be Barack Obama. It could still potentially be Hillary… pic.twitter.com/VCl9DxBKwL

— The Vigilant Fox (@VigilantFox) May 31, 2024

The religious right also had strong feelings they needed to express. Smash Baals is an account, with 47,000 followers associated with a group of far-right Christian Nationalist pastors. It urged followers—maybe one notable follower in particular?—to fly a flag bearing the slogan “Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God.”

It’s time to hoist your colors. pic.twitter.com/d09nAeNiQe

— Smash Baals (@smashbaals) May 31, 2024

Lastly, let’s review a few reactions from a pair of brothers associated with the New Apostolic Reformation, a growing, controversial evangelical movement whose adherents believe they are called to fight for the supremacy of Christianity in all aspects of life—and that includes the US government. One distinguishing feature of the New Apostolic Reformation is the belief that God speaks through modern-day prophets. Guess who Tim Sheets, who says he is an apostle and pastor in Middletown, Ohio, considers that modern-day prophet to be?

Friday
May 31, 2024

We decree an angelic whirlwind over the Ekklesia and ministry. And these angels and this anointing will be sent and released over this country and the nations to call things back to divine order. So be it. pic.twitter.com/SenVQfmdqz

— Tim Sheets (@TimDSheets) May 31, 2024

Tim is less well known than his brother, Dutch, another NAR apostle who gained notoriety recently when Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito flew an “Appeal to Heaven” flag over his house. Dutch Sheets has frequently used the “Appeal to Heaven” phrase and symbols as a rallying cry for the ascendant Christian nationalist movement.

In a YouTube address to 340,000 followers on Friday titled “Stay Focused: God Will Have the Last Word,” Dutch Sheets said he had been “revisiting what I’ve been hearing from the Holy Spirit in the last several months.” He shared the dreams of several other prophets, which he said foretold the Trump verdict. “The fire and glory of God is coming to America—it will cleanse and it will empower,” he assured viewers. “It will tear down that which is evil, not us.”

On Tuesday, prosecutors in the federal trial of fugitive Chinese mogul Guo Wengui introduced a video that, they said, marked the moment Guo began executing a massive fraud against backers of his anti-Communist political movement.

But the first image that appeared on courtroom screens wasn’t actually Guo. It was his better-known ally and former well-paid adviser, Steve Bannon, wearing glasses and a few black shirts. And when the video rolled, the courtroom heard Bannon announce at a November 2018 news conference that Guo had committed “to establish a $100 million fund immediately” to support democracy and the rule of law in China.

That was not true. Guo never gave a more than sliver of that to the fund, but instead used his pretend pledge to convince opponents of the Chinese Communist Party, or CCP, to cough up their own money. That was the initial step in a years-long scheme to fleece his fans, according to the Justice Department. Here was a foundational lie of Guo’s alleged $1 billion fraud, and it came from Steve Bannon’s mouth.

On Thursday, prosecutors played another video of a meeting that, they alleged, led to Guo in 2020 misappropriating $100 million from investors in his video streaming company, GTV. But again, the first image jurors saw was Bannon, who brokered and attended a Dallas meeting where Guo was interviewed by Kyle Bass, who heads a hedge fund to which Guo later sent the money. Bass, who is not accused of wrongdoing, declined to comment.

Prosecutors have called Bannon a “co-conspirator” in an alleged racketeering conspiracy led by Guo, but Bannon so far hasn’t been charged in the case. His prominent role in the first week of trial, which is expected last into July, may leave jurors wondering why the former Trump strategist is not also on trial. Bannon has declined to comment on his alleged role in the Guo case.

Guo, a former Chinese real estate mogul who fled to the United States in 2015 ahead of criminal charges in Beijing, built a brand as a leading critic of the CCP. He leveraged that reputation to attract thousands of devoted fans in the Chinese diaspora, receiving substantial help from Bannon, who needed a new patron after his ouster from the White House in 2017. Bannon helped launch Guo’s nonprofits, and he advised on several for-profit ventures that prosecutors say Guo used to defraud supporters.

Bannon appears to have more pressing legal concerns. He may soon have to serve a four-month sentence for contempt of Congress. He is also set to face a trial for allegedly defrauding an unrelated MAGA-linked charity. He denies wronging in that matter.

But while the Guo case may not be a top legal threat for Bannon, it sure makes him look bad. Prosecutors argue that Guo’s anti-CCP movement was largely a con, launched to draw in suckers who bought Guo’s political claims and then fleece them via fraudulent investment offerings. Bannon helped create that supposed movement and reliably touted Guo’s often outlandish claims and dubious financial schemes. In the government’s telling, Bannon lent his celebrity to help Guo woo, and then rob, the hard-working Chinese immigrants who Bannon claims to champion.

“Without Bannon, Guo doesn’t have legitimacy, at least in the eyes of the Chinese,” Sasha Gong, a Chinese-American scholar who sat alongside Bannon on the board of one of Guo’s nonprofits before breaking with both men, said in an interview. Gong argued that pervasive corruption in China leaves many emigres believing financial success requires “some official backing.” Bannon, with his perceived ties to Trump, helped Guo create that illusion, Gong argued.

In 2020, Guo began selling shares in his GTV streaming company to his fans. He raised around $500 million from supporters, who received marketing material that said Bannon was on GTV’s board of directors. Many smaller investors never received stock or even receipts, and Guo embezzled most of the money raised, including by sending $100 million to Bass’ fund, according to the DOJ.

In 2021, Guo hawked a supposed cypto currency using what prosecutors said was a false claim that is was backed by gold, bogus boasts about blockchain technology, and a phony valuation. Bannon touted the currency as a “monumental success.”

Guo is accused of using funds he embezzled from this currency, from GTV, and from other ventures to purchase personal items like a Ferrari, a $35,000 mattress, a $65,000 television and a $26 million New Jersey mansion.

Guo has claimed an organization he and Bannon started, the New Federal State of China, will soon replace the Chinese Communist Party as the legitimate government in Beijing. In broadcasts that reached thousands of Guo followers, Bannon endorsed that notion, and he implied that a future US president could give the New Federal State, which has with no permanent staff and at the time was operating out of a Upper East Side townhouse, full diplomatic recognition.

That is wildly unlikely, but Bannon’s suggestion may have helped sell prospective Guo investors on the value of NFSC-linked offerings. Those include a pledge by Guo to provide people who invested $50,000 in one of his ventures with NFSC “passports.”

The political movement that Guo and Bannon touted took a hit Wednesday in testimony by former Guo employee Karin Maistrello, who served as the president of one of the Guo nonprofits, the Rule of Law Society, that Bannon helped launch in 2018. Maistrello said the organization’s stated goal of advancing democracy in China was phony.

The group did “nothing” to help people in China in the two years she worked there, Maistrello said. Instead it used the pretense of CCP opposition and other tricks to hit up Guo fans for money, she said. During a live-streamed 2019 fundraiser for the group, Guo underlings were ordered to temporarily move money from accounts he controlled to the Rule of Law Society so that fans watching would think “donate more,” she testified. The original funds were returned to Guo’s account after the event, Maistrello said. That was “not real money,” she said, complaining that Guo had used it to dupe donors.

These efforts occurred while Bannon was chairman of the organization’s board. But Bannon was not closely involved, Maistrello testified. He attended a few meetings, but otherwise “didn’t really do anything,” she said.

Still, Maistrello said that Bannon was paid $1 million in four installments, starting that year, by a company Guo controlled. She said it was not clear if the money was payment for his work for the nonprofit or what company the money came from. Those payments appear to be separate from $1 million that Axios previously reported Bannon received from Guo Media for consulting starting in 2018.

A Guo company has also helped to fund Bannon’s War Room broadcast, paying at least $270,000 to the show in 2021 and 2022, according to submissions by the US Trustee in a bankruptcy case filed by Guo. Guo also gave Bannon use of a private plane, a Connecticut home, and his yacht, where Bannon was living when he was arrested on unrelated fraud charges in 2020. (Trump ultimately pardoned Bannon in that case.)

In Guo’s trial, even the defense has brought up Bannon. On Wednesday, Guo attorney Sidhardha Kamaraju cited Bannon to suggest that Guo was not personally responsible for the false claim that he would give $100 million to his charity.

“That’s not Guo himself, right?” Kamaraju asked a witness, referring to the person who announced Guo’s pledge to make the donation. “That’s Steve Bannon.”

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Donald Trump was continuing to ask fossil-fuel executives to fund his presidential campaign on Wednesday, despite scrutiny of his relationship with the industry.

The former president attended a fundraising luncheon at Houston’s Post Oak hotel hosted by three Big Oil executives.

The invitation-only meeting comes a day after the defense rested its case in Trump’s criminal hush-money trial, and a week after Houston was battered by deadly storms. The climate crisis, caused primarily by the burning of fossil fuels, has created the conditions for more frequent and severe rainfall and flooding, including in Texas.

“Houstonians are staring at Trump in disbelief as he flies in to beg Big Oil for funds just days after the city’s climate disaster,” said Alex Glass, communications director at the climate advocacy organization Climate Power, and a former Houston resident.

It also follows a fundraising dinner at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club last month, where the former president reportedly asked more than 20 oil executives for $1 billion in campaign donations from their industry and promising, if elected, to remove barriers to drilling, scrap a pause on gas exports, and reverse new rules aimed at cutting car pollution.

“Donald Trump is telling us who he is, again,” said Pete Maysmith, a senior vice-president at the environmental nonprofit the League of Conservation Voters. “He has already asked oil executives for a billion dollars for his campaign; we can only assume this week’s meeting is to haggle over exactly what they will get in return.”

Executives from two of the companies reportedly represented at the Mar-a-Lago meeting were among the hosts of Trump’s Wednesday’s fundraiser.

Harold Hamm, the executive chairman and founder of Continental Resources and one of the Wednesday luncheon organizers, is a longtime Trump supporter and was reportedly also at the April dinner.

Hamm, a multibillionaire, was a major player in the rush to extract oil from the Bakken shale formation, which stretches across the US midwest and Canada.

During Trump’s first presidential campaign, Hamm was also reportedly one of the seven top donors to receive special seats at Trump’s inauguration. The oil magnate was briefly under consideration to be energy secretary during the former president’s first term but reportedly turned down the position. He turned away from Trump after his 2020 loss, choosing to donate to his opponents, but then donated to Trump’s primary campaign in August.

One of Hamm’s Wednesday co-hosts was Vicki Hollub, chief executive of Occidental Petroleum, which was also represented at the Mar-a-Lago fundraiser. Hollub has been criticized by climate activists for investing in carbon-capture technology in an effort to continue extracting oil and gas, despite warnings that fossil fuels must be phased out to avoid the worst effects of climate change.

Congressional Democrats launched an investigation into Occidental Petroleum and other companies on Wednesday after the Federal Trade Commission last month accused the head of Pioneer Natural Resources of illegal collusion with the oil production cartel Opec+ to keep fuel prices high.

The third co-host of Wednesday’s meeting, Kelcy Warren, is the executive chairman of Energy Transfer Partners—a company with whom Trump has close financial ties.

Throughout the 2024 campaign cycle, Warren has donated more than $800,000 to Trump’s campaign. In the 2020 election cycle, he held at least one fundraiser for the former president in 2020 and donated $10 million to a pro-Trump Super Pac.

During his first presidential run in 2016, Trump invested in the company while also receiving more than $100,000 in campaign contributions from Warren, the Guardian found.

Warren appears to have benefited from Trump’s first term: within days of taking office in 2017, Trump approved construction of his company’s highly controversial Dakota Access pipeline, triggering outrage from climate advocates, conservationists and nearby Indigenous tribal organizations.

Last year, the Texas Tribune found that Energy Transfer Partners profited to the tune of $2.4 billion as gas demand soared during Texas’s deadly winter freeze and the ensuing collapse of the state’s energy grid.

The fossil-fuel industry has funneled $7.3 million to Trump’s 2024 campaign and associated groups, making it his fifth-largest industry donor this election cycle.

The $1 billion “deal” that Trump allegedly offered to oil executives last month could save the industry $110 billion in tax breaks if he returns to the White House, an analysis last week found.

Last week, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) launched a House oversight investigation into nine oil companies after Trump reportedly offered to dismantle Biden’s environmental rules for their benefit and requested $1 billion in contributions to his presidential campaign.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) has also expressed interest in formally investigating the Mar-a-Lago meeting. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, the powerful Washington watchdog, also told the Guardian it is investigating.

Donald Trump can’t stop complaining that his fans are being barred from showing their support for him outside the Manhattan courthouse where he’s on trial.

On Monday, he told reporters that “they” had brought in extra police to lock down the area around the New York Supreme Court building at 111 Centre Street in Manhattan, specifically to keep his backers away.

“And by the way, outside looks like it’s supposed to be Fort Knox. There are more police than I’ve ever seen anywhere because they don’t want to have anybody come down,” Trump told reporters. “There’s not a civilian within three blocks of the courthouse, but at Columbia University they can set up a tent and burn down the doors right opposite the front entrance. It’s a disgrace.”

Trump never explained who “they” is, but regardless, he is wrong.

Nobody is preventing large crowds of Trump followers from coming to the courthouse. There just aren’t any large crowds of Trump followers trying to do that. In fact, on some days when I’ve attended the trial, there didn’t appear to be any Trump supporters outside the courthouse. And while there are indeed quite a few police officers, including officers assigned from other nearby courthouses, the area is not locked down like Fort Knox.

Immediately to the north of the courthouse is Canal Street, where Chinatown and Little Italy intersect, and at any given moment during the day there are thousands of people, mostly tourists, wandering and browsing for novelty New York City t-shirts, all within several hundred feet of where Trump’s trial is being held.

Two weeks ago a movie was being shot two blocks or so away on a narrow Chinatown side street, which had a heavy security presence of its own, complete with burly guards who blocked pedestrians with far more strictness than New York police and court officers have exerted against curiosity seekers outside of Trump’s trial.

The sidewalk on the block directly in front of the courthouse is closed—typically a lone police officer is standing by a bicycle rack-style piece of fencing—unless you have some kind of business with the court. That means hundreds of people walk up and down the sidewalk—people there to attend the Trump trial, construction workers next door where the old jail building is being torn down, lawyers, court employees, defendants, etc. It is very much not locked down.

And any one can go visit the Trump trial and watch the spectacle for themselves—provided they get up early enough. There are lines for both press and members of the public, and other than a willingness to wait in them, there is nothing prohibiting anyone from entering.

On some days—when prominent witnesses such as Michael Cohen have testified, for instance—the lines are extremely long and not everyone gets in. But on most days, there has been room to spare in the overflow courtroom. After the start of the trial and before Stormy Daniels and Cohen began testifying, there were days when there were dozens of empty seats in that room, which has a number of large television screens showing live shots of the judge, the witness stand, and the prosecution and defense tables.

Often, it’s seemed that the members of the public who did get into the courtroom were a bit disappointed. Despite Trump’s claims that he is being subjected to some dramatic act of political persecution, by mid-afternoon on most days, a large percentage of the public gallery (and, to be fair, the occasional member of the press) seemed—like Trump himself—to perhaps be dozing. (Trump has denied falling asleep.)

Trump has been bringing more and more people as part of his personal entourage—on Monday he had former New York City police commissioner Bernie Kerik, former Hells Angel Chuck Zito, and a Republican congressman from Georgia, among others—who sit in the first two rows of the main courtroom. Most of his guests don’t stay long and some—like Sen. J.D. Vance last week—make it clear they are there to make an appearance and use Twitter.

Those seats reserved for Trump’s entourage could otherwise be very valuable real estate. Last week, as Cohen testified, members of the public standing at the front of the line were attempting to sell their seats in the courtroom to hopefuls further back, including to a handful of people in red Trump hats, for as much as $350. (There was one taker, who excitedly handed over the cash and hurried inside.)

Alongside the often lively line of hopeful spectators, Collect Pond Park—a large space in front of the courthouse—is indeed partly fenced off, and is divided in half. One side is for the public to enjoy. The eponymous pond is currently drained, but there’s always a smattering of people around, feeding the pigeons or walking their dogs.

The other side of the park is set aside for political protests, but most days it has been empty or nearly empty, and in any case, court officers have generally allowed the handful of protesters who do show up to pass back and forth between there and the side of the park intended for general use. Other than a strip of sidewalk between the park and the courthouse reserved for elaborate television set-ups, including for conservative television outlets like Fox News, there’s nothing blocking any potential Trump supporters from seeing the courthouse—or from being seen from the courthouse windows.

There just typically aren’t many to speak of. Sometimes a group of anti-Trump protesters will be hanging around, and other days, small groups of pro-Trump protesters will float through.

While I haven’t been to the courthouse every day, the largest group I’ve seen was on May 7. Local news had warned that morning that “a large protest was being planned,” but when I arrived around 7 am., there was no one there except the people waiting to get into the courtroom. Around 8 am, about 35 Trump supporters appeared, but they spent most of their time trying to arrange a series of pro-Trump banners. They struggled with some of the support posts and could be seen shouting at each other as they tried to organize themselves to hold up their signage.

At one point, a van with pro-Trump flags drove past, honking its horn. The group in the park with banners posed for pictures, chanted “USA! USA!” five or six times, and did not react when Trump’s motorcade arrived. By the lunchtime break, all of the pro-Trump supporters and their flags had disappeared.

Guo grew up in China, made a fortune there through allegedly corrupt real estate maneuvers, and arrived in the United States in 2015 as a billionaire. Once in America, Guo built an eclectic empire of organizations, created a public brand as a leading critic of the Chinese Communist Party, and amassed large following of fellow Chinese emigres—people whose loyalty is reflected by their self-description as “ants.” 

Guo is accused of leading a conspiracy in which he defrauded those supporters, who believed they were part of a mission to “take down the CCP,” to line his own pockets. After priming them with attacks on China’s government—along with wild conspiracy theories about covid, the 2020 election, Jews, and economic disaster—he hit them up for investments in a series of financial ventures, drawing in more than $1 billion, then allegedly hoarding most of the proceeds.

This alleged conspiracy was led by Guo, but it relied on the perception that he was both a leading opponent of the Chinese regime and a Trumpworld insider, privy to plans of the US government. Those claims were enabled particularly by Steve Bannon, the former Trump adviser, who prosecutors have labeled a “co-conspirator” in Guo’s plot, though Bannon has not been charged. Other Trumpworld figures who have taken money, jobs, or titles from Guo include Rudy Giuliani, Trump adviser Jason Miller, former White House aide Peter Navarro, Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, Turning Point USA chief Charlie Kirk, and Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt. Even the fabulist former Rep. George Santos got in on the action. None of these figures have been accused of legal wrongdoing in the Guo case. 

After arriving in New York, Guo gained attention with purchases like a $67.5 million, 15-room penthouse residence on Central Park; a $30 million yacht; and a membership in Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club. But it was in 2017, as China began seeking Guo’s extradition to face criminal charges there, that Guo began publicly accusing some CCP figures of corruption. A few months into Guo’s campaign, waged in frequent YouTube videos and tweets, he applied for political asylum in the US. His efforts became more focus after he brought in Bannon, who Trump had just ousted from the White House, as an adviser.

By 2020, many of Guo’s followers had set up online clubs, based around the world, that worked to support him and advance his conspiratorial political claims. As Mother Jones has detailed, Guo also began using those clubs, which he called “farms,” to raise money, sending video solicitations to the groups with instructions on how to support his ventures. 

The first was a “private stock offering” for GTV, a Chinese-language streaming and news platform. Guo guaranteed backers that they would make money. He also claimed that by investing with him, China’s top foe, they would help “take down the CCP.” These lies helped Guo raise nearly $500 million from supporters, the feds alleged. Many investors never received any stock or interest of any kind, the SEC later charged. Because the offering was not legally registered with the SEC, banks froze accounts that received money from the GTV victims, prosecutors say.

Guo’s response, according to charging documents, was to continue raising money for the venture by other means. He asked his fans to cough up fees of up to $50,000 to join a membership club, called “G|CLUBS,” which marketing material described vaguely as offering “a gateway to carefully curated world-class products, services and experiences.” In reality, members received “few to no discernable membership benefits,” prosecutors said. But Guo also sent messages to supporters telling them that G|Club members could get discounted access to GTV stock. That was the real lure of “membership.”

Another investment scheme involved supposed crypto currencies. Guo in 2022 touted a product called HCoin, in part via a music video. He then claimed its value had increased 26,900 percent, for a fantastical total of $27 billion, after its release. That value, and various claims about the technology behind HCoin, was completely made up, prosecutors have said.

Prosecutors allege that Guo stole hundreds of millions of dollars his fans put up for these ventures, transferring funds into accounts he controlled and using the money to fund a lavish lifestyle for himself and family members that included a $3.5 million Ferrari, a $26 million mansion, the $30 million yacht, a $140,000 piano, and two $36,000 mattresses. 

The Justice Department has said it will argue that this massive financial fraud was made possible by Guo’s public brand as an anti-CCP crusader. That brand was boosted by Guo’s Trumpworld allies, especially Bannon. The indictment against Guo dates the start of his conspiracy to 2018. That’s when Guo, with Bannon at his side, launched two nonprofit organizations, which they claimed would expose corruption in China. Guo said he was putting $100 million of his own funds into organizations. But that was not true, He never donated more than a fraction of that. Instead he relied on donations from fans to fund the groups. He also leveraged them as part of his con, prosecutors say.

Guo “used the nonprofit organizations to amass followers who were aligned with his purported campaign against the Chinese Communist Party and who were also inclined to believe [Guo’s] statements regarding investment and moneymaking opportunities,” Guo’s indictment said. Then Guo and others hit them up with “false and materially misleading information to promote these ‘opportunities’ and to defraud [Guo’s] followers and other victims.”

Bannon sat on the board of one of those nonprofits. He was also on the board of GTV, according to information sent to Guo fans soliciting their donations. Bannon led meetings in which Guo and his advisers, including two aides who were charged along with him, plotted how to continue raising money for Guo’s ventures, despite SEC scrutiny. “All I’m trying to do is get around securities law,” Bannon said during one meeting in 2020 on G|Club, as Mother Jones reported last month.

Bannon also relentlessly hyped Guo’s investment offerings. He seconded Guo’s claims that investments in the various companies would allow Guo fans to make money and attack the CCP. In 2021 he touted HCoin, with its preposterous valuation, as a “monumental” and “extraordinary” success. 

Guo paid Bannon at least $1 million and also gave Bannon use of a private plane, a Connecticut home, and his yacht, where Bannon was living when he was arrested in 2020 on separate federal charges for allegedly defrauding donors who gave money to build a wall along the US southern border. (Trump subsequently pardoned Bannon in that case; Bannon is slated to go on trial later this year on similar charges in New York state court.)

In 2020, Bannon helped arrange for Guo to secretly funnel $100,000 to fund a legal effort to overturn Joe Biden’s electoral victory in Georgia, part of more than $500,000 Guo quietly spent in late 2020 to back “stop the steal” efforts. 

That same year, Bannon had joined with Guo in launching what they called the New Federal State of China. This group claims to be a quasi-sovereign organization preparing to replace the Chinese government after its inevitable fall. Under a Republican president, Bannon has claimed, the United States might recognize the group as the legitimate government of China. That fantastical claim—coming from a purported Trump confidant—suggested to Guo’s fans that their investments in companies linked to NFSC would grow. Guo even suggested that HCoin, as the currency of the New Federal State, would become China’s monetary unit.

These unlikely claims got a boost when Navarro, a former top Trump adviser involved in trade disputes with China, signed on as a supposed “international ambassador” for the group. Navarro, who is currently serving a jail sentence for contempt of Congress, has not answered questions about whether he was paid for that role.

The New Federal State has held annual galas since its founding. In 2021, Giuliani and Flynn spoke at the event, backing conspiracy theories about China’s supposed role in influencing the 2020 election. Each billed the group $50,000 for appearing. At the group’s 2023 gathering, Santos and far-right Reps. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) and Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) embraced Guo’s movement. (Gosar memorably accused China of using Tik-Tok to promote “hedonism and mindless dancing.”) The congressmen later received substantial infusions of campaign donations from Guo supporters.

Prosecutors have also said that Guo, at least until his arrest, controlled Gettr, a right-leaning social media app modeled on Twitter. Launched in 2021, Gettr, under Guo’s direct instructions, attempted to downplay his influence and instead highlighted its connections to Trump. Gettr hired Miller—the former Trump aide who has since rejoined Trump’s campaign team. A person familiar with Miller’s thinking told Mother Jones last year that Miller was assured that Guo did not run the company. Miller was paid $750,000 a year by Gettr, along with a $250,000 annual bonus, court filings indicate.

Gettr has also acknowledged paying prominent right-wing figures—including Kirk, Dinesh D’Souza, Jack Posobiec, and Andy Ngo—to use the site. 

Guo’s trial is expected to last up to two months. Though it will focus on details of Guo’s finances, his deep involvement with Trumpworld means the proceedings will likely shed new light on how powerful political figures were cashing in, even as Guo was allegedly conning his supporters out of huge sums of money.

As the press and voters debate whether Trump’s authoritarian tendencies could be checked in a prospective second term, it’s important to recognize that Trump is already escaping accountability thanks to the judges he installed during his first term, who have pushed off both federal cases against him.

During his presidency, courts acted as a major check on Trump—most importantly when he and his allies filed dozens of lawsuits across the country to try to overturn the results of the 2020 election. When those legal efforts failed, Trump turned to extralegal means to stay in power, culminating in a violent attack on the US Capitol.

Now, the judges Trump put in place are helping him evade responsibility for these and other actions. At the Supreme Court, they are even contemplating granting new levels of immunity to presidents that Trump could enjoy if he returns to power. It’s not only a gauge of how much damage Trump has already done, but a warning sign of the lengths the people he surrounds himself with are willing to go and how it will be nearly impossible to contain his strongman ambitions if he wins again.

Last summer, Special Counsel Jack Smith secured two indictments against Trump. The first targeted his willful retention of top-secret documents at Mar-a-Lago after his presidency. Trump refused to give back all the records, then engaged in an attempted cover-up, first to hinder their return and ultimately to thwart prosecution.

The facts of the case are shocking, including classified documents left in a bathroom and an order to delete security camera footage sought by a grand jury. Legally, the case is “absolutely airtight,” Georgia State University constitutional law professor Anthony Michael Kries told the BBC. As NYU professor Melissa Murray and former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissman write in their book, The Trump Indictments, in the documents case against Trump, “the evidence of guilt seems abundantly clear.”

And yet Trump has evaded trial in the strongest case against him due exclusively to the judge overseeing the case. For two years now, federal Judge Aileen Cannon has repeatedly shocked the legal community with unprecedented orders that have flouted the law, delayed proceedings, and protected Trump. The ex-president was lucky that Cannon got assigned this case—but he also helped make his own luck by putting her on the bench. When Trump nominated Cannon in 2020, her signature qualifications were her youth (she was 39) and membership in the conservative Federalist Society. After Trump lost the election, she was confirmed in a vote that garnered support from 12 Democrats.

Cannon first came to Trump’s rescue in 2022, when his lawyers went to federal court to try to halt the Justice Department’s investigation into Trump’s handling of purloined classified documents. Cannon obliged in spectacular fashion by blocking part of the probe. It was, according to Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern, the first time in US history that a judge had intervened to stop a criminal investigation before an indictment. Her actions were so lawless that they were soon rolled back by two separate panels of the conservative 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, which held that Cannon had pushed “a radical reordering of our caselaw” that violated “bedrock separation-of-powers limitations.”

Some judges might have been chastened by this humiliation—but not Cannon. After the investigation, when Trump was charged and the documents case formally assigned to Cannon, it was clear prosecutors had drawn the short straw—and that Trump would never face trial, or at least a fair one, under her watch. Over the past year, Cannon has continued to issue bizarre orders, held hearings on inane questions, and engaged in every manner of delay. And she shows no signs of stopping. This month, she pushed the trial off indefinitely while scheduling hearings on motions filed by Trump’s legal team that, according to experts, should be dispatched with quickly. Cannon has turned her federal courtroom into a kangaroo court.

In August of 2022, Smith filed his second indictment against Trump, this one over attempting to overturn his election loss. The case was assigned to federal Judge Tanya Chutkan in DC, an Obama appointee. By limiting the charges to Trump, Murray and Weissman write, “the indictment was built for speed—to get a trial date so that the American public could see the evidence and hear the jury’s conclusions.” Chutkan recognized, with the election looming, it was important to move expeditiously. But in his attempts to delay, Trump found even more powerful allies than a district court judge—several justices of the US Supreme Court.

Were it not for the Supreme Court, with three justices appointed by Trump, the ex-president would almost certainly be standing trial for his attempt to overturn American democracy and stay in power. Instead, the federal election subversion case has been turned on its head. Rather than usher along efforts to hold Trump accountable, the US Supreme Court is likely to use the case to grant Trump and future presidents some level of immunity. That would not only make Trump’s lawless power grab harder to prosecute, but future presidents’ illegal actions as well.

Even if the GOP-appointed majority doesn’t declare a new level of immunity for Trump and other former presidents as expected, their delays will spare Trump from trial until after the election: the justices have three times come to Trump’s aid by pushing back the case. The delay aids Trump’s campaign. If he wins, he will never face federal trial, either because he pardons himself, or simply directs his appointees at the DOJ to drop the charges.

Trump sought to delay and even derail the prosecution by claiming that ex-presidents enjoy absolute immunity for official acts made while in office—a bold assertion with no basis in the Constitution or precedent in the law. Chutkan smacked it down. When Trump sought review in the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, Jack Smith asked the Supreme Court to immediately take the case and leap-frog the appellate court. In their first move delaying the trial, the justices declined to step in.

After the appeals court rebuked Trump’s theory of immunity, Smith again asked the justices for help, as he urged the court to let the appellate ruling stand, or, failing that, to hear the case expeditiously. Instead, the justices took the case without any sense of urgency. Chutkan’s original March 4 trial date came and went. The justices heard the case on the last day of their term. After oral arguments, it appeared likely that the justices would wait until June to issue a ruling. When it comes, it will likely give some level of immunity to Trump, a complication that will mean the case cannot immediately proceed to trial.

There’s no way to know for sure which justices voted against taking the case when Smith first asked, which declined to let the DC Circuit decision stand, or which dragged their feet and kept the case moving slowly. But judging from oral arguments, it seems clear that the Trump-appointed justices, as well as those appointed by other Republican presidents, played a critical role.

The hearing offered evidence of the Trump appointees’ willingness to not only delay Trump’s trial, but also to make prosecuting a former president much harder. Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch both expressed interest in limiting the possibility to varying degrees. While Amy Coney Barrett was much more skeptical of Trump’s immunity claims, she displayed interest in a compromise that would create new immunities nonetheless. By the end, the GOP-appointed justices had defended Trump’s immunity claims so robustly that Trump’s own lawyer declined to use his rebuttal time. “I have nothing further,” he triumphantly told the court when it was his turn to speak. 

There are plenty of people responsible for the fact that Trump will face voters again without having gone under trial for attempting to overturn the last election. You could include Attorney General Merrick Garland, who let the DOJ’s investigations drag on before appointing Smith, and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, whose sprawling Georgia-based conspiracy case took years to put together and now may be permanently derailed over her affair with one of the prosecutors. 

But the person most responsible for escaping criminal prosecution is Trump himself, who, in four years as president, left his mark on the nation’s courts. Rather than a fluke, it might be a preview of how he can escape accountability if he becomes president again.