Pence: If Trump is arrested, protests should be peaceful

If former President Donald Trump is indicted this week, any protests that take place should be peaceful and lawful, former Vice President Mike Pence said Sunday.

Trump took to social media over the weekend to call on his supporters “take our nation back” should he face criminal charges.

“I believe that people understand that if they give voice to this, if this occurs on Tuesday, that they need to do so peacefully and in a lawful manner,” Pence told ABC’s Jonathan Karl during an interview that aired on “This Week.”

“The violence that occurred on January 6, the violence that occurred in cities throughout this country in the summer of 2020, was a disgrace. The American people won’t tolerate it and those that engage in that kind of violence should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” he said.

The former vice president declined to say whether Trump’s call for protests on social media was irresponsible, instead calling the investigation by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg politicized.

“It just feels like a politically charged prosecution here,” Pence said, later adding that he supports efforts in Congress, led by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, to investigate Trump’s potential prosecution.

“Nobody's above the law. But nobody's beneath the law either,” Pence said. “And the American people are troubled after four years of our administration, seeing the politicization of the Justice Department, I strongly support the efforts in Congress to investigate the role that politics is playing in our justice system today.”

Though criminal charges appear imminent in the case over Trump's handling of a hush money payment made during his 2016 presidential campaign, there is no clear basis for the former president's claim that he expects to be arrested Tuesday.

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Germany, Japan pledge to boost cooperation on economic security

Chancellor Scholz is trying to reduce Germany’s dependence on China for raw materials.

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Ukraine grain export deal extended for 120 days

More than 20 million tons of Ukrainian produce have been transported under the initiative so far.

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Russian President Putin visits occupied city of Mariupol

KYIV, Ukraine — Russian President Vladimir Putin has visited the occupied port city of Mariupol, Russian state news agencies reported Sunday, his first trip to the Ukrainian territory that Moscow illegally annexed in September.

Earlier, on Saturday, Putin traveled to Crimea, a short distance southwest of Mariupol, to mark the ninth anniversary of the Black Sea peninsula’s annexation from Ukraine. Mariupol became a worldwide symbol of defiance after outgunned and outmanned Ukrainian forces held out in a steel mill there for nearly three months before Moscow finally took control of it in May.

The visits, during which he was shown chatting with local residents in Mariupol and visiting an art school and a children’s center in Crimea, were a show of defiance by the Russian leader two days after a court issued a warrant for his arrest on war crimes charges. Putin has not commented on the arrest warrant, which deepened his international isolation despite the unlikelihood of him facing trial anytime soon.

The trip also came ahead of a planned visit to Moscow by Chinese President Xi Jinping this week, expected to provide a major diplomatic boost to Putin in his confrontation with the West.

Putin arrived in Mariupol by helicopter and then drove himself around the city’s “memorial sites,” concert hall and coastline, Russian news reports said, without specifying exactly when the visit took place. They said Putin also met with local residents in the city’s Nevskyi district.

Speaking to the state RIA agency Sunday, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnulin made clear that Russia was in Mariupol to stay. He said the government hoped to finish the reconstruction of its blasted downtown by the end of the year.

“People have started to return. When they saw that reconstruction is under way, people started actively returning,” Khusnulin told RIA.

When Moscow fully captured the city in May, an estimated 100,000 people remained out of a prewar population of 450,000. Many were trapped without food, water, heat or electricity. Relentless bombardment left rows upon rows of shattered or hollowed-out buildings.

Mariupol’s plight first came into focus with a Russian airstrike on a maternity hospital on March 9 last year, less than two weeks after Russian troops moved into Ukraine. A week later, about 300 people were reported killed in the bombing of a theater that was serving as the city’s largest bomb shelter. Evidence obtained by the AP last spring suggested that the real death toll could be closer to 600.

A small group of Ukrainian fighters held out for 83 days in the sprawling Azovstal steel works in eastern Mariupol before surrendering, their dogged defense tying down Russian forces and coming to symbolize Ukrainian tenacity in the face of Moscow’s aggression.

Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, a move that most of the world denounced as illegal, and moved on last September to officially claim four regions in Ukraine’s south and east as Russian territory, following referendums that Kyiv and the West described as a sham.

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Manhattan DA Bragg privately warns on intimidation after Trump calls for protest

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg offered a private retort to Donald Trump’s message Saturday urging supporters to protest his expected indictment, telling office employees in an email that “we do not tolerate attempts to intimidate our office or threaten the rule of law in New York,” according to a copy obtained by POLITICO.

“Our law enforcement partners will ensure that any specific or credible threats against the office will be fully investigated and that the proper safeguards are in place so all 1,600 of us have a secure work environment,” Bragg wrote, adding that the office has been coordinating with the New York Police Department and Office of Court Administration, the administrative arm of the court system in New York.

Bragg added that “as with all of our investigations, we will continue to apply the law evenly and fairly, and speak publicly only when appropriate.” In his email, Bragg didn’t identify Trump by name, referring only to the “public comments surrounding an ongoing investigation by this office.”

A spokeswoman for Bragg’s office declined to comment.

On Saturday morning, the former president and 2024 GOP presidential candidate told supporters on his social media platform to “Protest, take our nation back!” citing “illegal leaks” about the investigation, which he said indicated he would be arrested Tuesday. Though a person familiar with the Trump operations said they were not actively organizing protests, Trump’s comments raised alarms about how his followers might be incited to act.

Bragg’s office appears poised to bring criminal charges against Trump in connection with a hush-money payment made to a porn actress, Stormy Daniels, at the height of the 2016 presidential campaign. A flurry of activity related to the grand jury investigation into the hush-money issue, including recent testimony by Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer who arranged the payment to Daniels, has signaled an indictment is likely to happen soon.

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Who said it: Ron DeSantis or Donald Trump?

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Gov. Ron DeSantis is often called “Trump 2.0” for his embrace of conservative policies and his take-no-prisoners style of politics.

And ahead of the 2024 presidential election — as both Florida men vie to lead the party and ultimately the nation — they have openly feuded over Covid-19 and vaccines and whether DeSantis is truly loyal to the former president, whose 2018 endorsement helped the Florida governor win election.

But the men are also very similar in their approach to issues like critical race theory, China and especially their criticism of Democrats and President Joe Biden.

How similar? POLITICO collected some of Trump’s and DeSantis’ quotes. See if you can tell who said it.

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D.C. chief judge post turns over with Trump probes in balance

To hear Beryl Howell’s colleagues tell it, the tenure of the federal district court’s outgoing chief judge has been defined by work of monumental importance that the public — and even most of them — will never see.

Howell formally handed off that post to a colleague Friday, but not before she was toasted, and occasionally roasted, by fellow judges who made clear they were as tantalized as the rest of the the political world by Howell’s secret work presiding over grand juries that could lead to charges against former President Donald Trump — particularly for his bid to subvert the 2020 election.

Howell seemed to freeze in her seat as the most senior jurist on the court, Judge Paul Friedman, publicly described her still-secret rulings in grand jury-related matters, pointing to press accounts of Howell ruling in favor of Trump in a contempt dispute over his office’s response to a grand jury subpoena for classified records and against Trump on an effort to assert attorney-client privilege in the same probe.

“What fascinating issues!” Friedman declared wryly as Howell remained stone-faced on the dais. “We’d all love to read her opinions, but we can’t,” he said to laughter.

Friedman did note, however, that Howell had issued 100 secret grand jury opinions during her seven-year term.

Another colleague, Judge Tanya Chutkan, also alluded to Howell’s work resolving disputes related to the court’s grand juries over the past seven years.

“There’s so much work Chief Judge Howell has done that we may never know about,” Chutkan said.

Another tribute to Howell came from Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who served on the district court in D.C. before being elevated to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals and then the Supreme Court. Jackson said Howell has been vital to keeping the critical district court in the Capital operating through a series of major challenges.

“She’s like that steel beam in a construction project that holds everything else up,” Jackson said.

Howell was replaced as chief Friday by Judge James Boasberg. Both are appointees of President Barack Obama.

Boasberg also referenced Howell’s handling of secret grand jury proceedings.

“Most of the work she has done has been secret so she doesn’t even get credit for that,” he said.

By law, the chief judge position on federal courts is filled chiefly by seniority, with a maximum term of seven years. Howell, a former prosecutor and Senate aide who has served on the U.S. District Court since 2010, will continue to hear cases in the normal rotation.

No major shift in the direction of the court or those probes is expected as a result of the change, but Boasberg will now have to resolve privilege fights and other disputes at the grand jury and could receive remands from the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is now considering several appeals related to Howell’s decisions.

Howell’s work overseeing the high-profile grand jury matters involving former special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, the ongoing Trump probes and the criminal cases stemming from the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol have brought her a cult following on social media.

Chutkan alluded to that fame in her remarks Friday, pointing to memes about Howell on TikTok and to “stans” who applauded her rulings.

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