News
August 16, 2022 – 3:30 pm (ET)
The Hill, August 17, 2022 – 6:00 pm to 7:00 pm (ET)
Tuesday’s primaries in Alaska and Wyoming will help set the tone for November’s general elections, with a number of critical contests at stake.
In Wyoming, Rep. Liz Cheney is in a fight for her political life as she faces Harriet Hageman, who has the endorsement of former President Trump, in the state’s Republican House primary. At the same time, incumbent Sen. Lisa Murkowski will also face off for the first time against Trump-backed Kelly Tshibaka and other candidates in Alaska’s Republican Senate primary. Tuesday will also test former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) as she seeks to make a comeback to elected office in the state’s special congressional election.
Here are five things to watch ahead of Tuesday’s primaries.
Liz Cheney has cut a national profile, crossing former President Donald Trump because of his conduct on Jan. 6.
The Wyoming Republican is one of two Republicans on the House Jan. 6 committee, of which she is the vice chair — and her voice has been one of the clearest laying blame for the insurrection on Trump.
But on Tuesday, Cheney faces voters back home in Wyoming who will determine her fate and whether they want to send her back to Congress.
And she looks to be in significant trouble.
CNN, – August 16, 2022
The Justice Department is opposing the release of details in an affidavit that lays out the argument that investigators made to a federal magistrate judge explaining the probable cause it had to search former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate last week.
In their new filing arguing for some continued secrecy, the Justice Department made clear the seriousness of the ongoing criminal investigation, saying it “implicates highly classified materials.”
“Disclosure of the government’s affidavit at this stage would also likely chill future cooperation by witnesses whose assistance may be sought as this investigation progresses, as well as in other high-profile investigations,” the Justice Department wrote. “The fact that this investigation implicates highly classified materials further underscores the need to protect the integrity of the investigation and exacerbates the potential harm if information is disclosed to the public prematurely or improperly.”
Media organizations, including CNN, had asked for the affidavit to be unsealed after the search last week at Trump’s Palm Beach, Florida, club and residence.
The Justice Department on Monday rebuffed efforts to make public the affidavit supporting the search warrant for former President Donald Trump’s estate in Florida, saying the investigation “implicates highly classified material” and the document contains sensitive information about witnesses.
The government’s opposition came in response to court filings by several news organizations, including The Associated Press, seeking to unseal the underlying affidavit the Justice Department submitted when it asked for the warrant to search Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate earlier this month.
Trump, in a Truth Social post early Tuesday, called for the release of the unredacted affidavit in the interest of transparency.
The court filing — from Juan Antonio Gonzalez, the U.S. attorney in Miami, and Jay Bratt, a top Justice Department national security official — argues that making the affidavit public would “cause significant and irreparable damage to this ongoing criminal investigation.”
PBS NewsHour – August 16, 2022 (08:11)
Rep. Liz Cheney’s uphill battle to keep her seat in Wyoming’s GOP primary on Tuesday underscores how Donald Trump’s hold on the Republican Party is tightening even as the former President’s legal challenges are mounting. That dynamic poses stark choices for the thin band of Republican elected officials and voters resistant to his dominance within the party.
If Cheney loses Tuesday, as expected, the result will place an exclamation point on a summer that has seen Trump-backed candidates, almost all of whom echo his falsehoods about the 2020 election, win most hotly contested party primaries. Virtually no GOP elected officials have dared to criticize him over damaging revelations either from the House select committee investigating January 6, 2021, or the Justice Department investigation of his handling of classified information.
Trump’s muscle-flexing has dashed the expectations, or maybe the hopes, of many conservative commentators who took his losses in several late May Georgia primaries as evidence that his influence was waning. Instead, by rejecting multiple opportunities to move away from the former President, both Republican officials and voters in the three months since have sent an unmistakable message to Trump skeptics that they remain the subordinate minority in the party.
