Breaking News

6, November 2023

Mamfe: 20 killed in Egbekaw village attack ⁰

Separatist rebels killed around 20 people, including women and children, on Monday in Egbekaw a village in Mamfe the chief town in Manyu.

The overnight attack occurred in Egbekaw village, the scene of deadly clashes between rebels and government forces for seven years.

“The attack left around 20 dead, men, women and children, and 10 seriously injured people are in hospital,” a senior regional administrative official said on condition of anonymity.

A security forces official and an official from a governmental body also confirmed the attack and provisional toll.

Cameroon’s primarily English-speaking Northwest and Southwest regions have been gripped by conflict since separatists declared independence in 2017.

It followed decades of grievances over perceived discrimination by the francophone majority.

President Paul Biya, 90, who has ruled the central African nation with an iron fist for 41 years to the day, has resisted calls for wider autonomy and responded with a crackdown.

The conflict has claimed more than 6,000 lives and forced more than a million people to flee their homes, according to the International Crisis Group.

Both the separatists and government forces have been accused of atrocities in the fighting.

Rebels “attacked the civilian populations of Egbekaw and the provisional toll is 23 dead and around 15 houses burnt,” a local gendarmerie officer told AFP by telephone, also speaking on condition of anonymity.

An official from the country’s human rights commission confirmed the attack and spoke of 15 dead. “But this figure can evolve,” the source told AFP.

There had been no claim of responsibility over the attack on Egbekaw.

“It happened at 4:00 am. Armed young people came and fired on sleeping residents in their houses and set a whole block of houses on fire,” a resident told AFP by telephone requesting not to be identified out of security concerns.

“Twenty-three people have already been removed from the debris, some of whom are not even recognisable because of the fire.”

He said there was reason to believe it was connected to the November 6 anniversary of Biya assuming power as president in 1982.

A meeting of the ruling Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement (RDPC) was planned in the area, he added.

Armed groups are regularly accused of abducting, killing or injuring civilians whom they accuse of “collaborating” with Cameroonian authorities.

Security forces are also often accused by international NGOs and the United Nations of killings and torture against civilians suspected of sympathising with the rebels.

Last month, rebels “summarily executed” two villagers in public in the Northwest region whom they accused of collaborating with the army.

In July, Amnesty International reported that security forces, separatist rebels and ethnic militiamen had committed “atrocities” in the Northwest Region, including executions, torture and rape.

By Alain Tabot-Tanyi

3, November 2023

Top Francophone army generals to soon be punished for their crimes ⁰

The exiled leader of the Ambazonia Interim Government has denounced the ongoing military campaign against Southern Cameroons villages and the loss of lives of civilians, stating that many of the Francophone army generals and their Anglophone acolytes will soon pay for their crimes.

On a Wednesday post on social media, Vice President Dabney Yerima said the French Cameroun genocidal machine is actively at work in the rural settlements in Southern Cameroons.

“French Cameroun war criminals and their known Anglophone advocates will soon kneel before the exemplary willpower and resilience of the Ambazonian nation; and will be punished for their crimes,” Yerima pointed out.

As of this week, at least 34 Southern Cameroonians have been killed by Francophone army soldiers among them women and children.

The exiled leader also stated that Anglophone journalists covering the war in Southern Cameroons are facing particularly high risks. Many have been killed and some have fled the country.

Dabney Yerima said due to the massive deployment of Francophone soldiers and raids on newspaper offices, journalists such as Nelly Epupa, Toto Roland Motuba and Ewang Miriam Metchane are now refugees in Europe and the US.

“The main challenge for journalists covering the Cameroon government military campaign in Southern Cameroons is their own safety” Yerima furthered.

“Journalists in Southern Cameroons have paid and continue to pay unprecedented tolls and face exponential threats,” Vice President Dabney Yerima concluded.

By Chi Prudence Asong

5, October 2023

Mali army, rebels head toward potentially decisive confrontation ⁰

Mali’s army is deploying towards a northern separatist rebel stronghold in a high-risk operation which could foreshadow a widescale confrontation and prove a turning point after a decade of conflict.

What’s happening on the ground?

A large Malian army convoy left the city of Gao on Monday headed towards the northern Kidal region.

It is reportedly to go first to the localities of Tessalit and Aguelhok north of the town of Kidal to take over camps being vacated by departing troops of the UN stabilisation force, MINUSMA.

The UN mission has been pushed out by the ruling junta and has been handing over its camps to Malian authorities.

The handover – which began with the camp at Ber in mid-August – is a prime factor in a recent resumption of hostilities by the separatists.

Against the backdrop of numerous armed groups vying for control, the separatists claim the UN sites should be returned to them.

The Coordination of Azawad Movements (CMA) – an alliance of predominantly Tuareg groups seeking autonomy or independence from the Malian state – has carried out a series of attacks on army positions since the Ber operation.

Its fighters are now regrouping in the Kidal region.

Source: AP

3, October 2023

Franck Biya, in the shadow of his corrupt and ailing father ⁰

He is not officially a candidate for anything and has never publicly leaked the slightest ambition. But her slender silhouette is increasingly visible in official meetings, on social networks and the images distilled by the Cameroonian presidency. A new presence which inevitably raises questions in a country where discussions around the succession of the “captain” are less and less theoretical: is Franck Biya positioning himself to inherit the presidential chair occupied for forty years by his father Paul, 90 years old since February 13?

In central Africa where, from Chad to Gabon, via the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), political dynasties have become a norm, seeing Franck Biya, 52, appearing behind the scenes of the Cameroonian presidency is a sign, even if everyone will be careful not to consider it as a dubbing. We can no longer count the ambitious people and putative successors struck down by the courts when their intentions became too clear. Kondengui prison in Yaoundé has become, for more than ten years, the place of residence of many ministers and secretaries general of the presidency.

Franck Biya remained in the shadows. Eldest son of the indestructible president and his first wife, Jeanne-Irène, who died in 1992, he did part of his studies at the University of South Carolina, then lived for a long time in France. A businessman, he invested, among other things, in real estate and forestry.

“He doesn’t waste money on nightclubs”

His discretion did not prevent non-governmental organizations (NGOs) from looking into his affairs. In 2012, Afrione Cameroun, one of his companies, was cited in a case of embezzlement of public funds. In 2020, Greenpeace claimed that it was “the minority shareholder” of South Cameroon Hévéa (subsidiary of Halcyon, global rubber giant), a company that the nature protection NGO accused of deforestation of several thousand hectares of forests. He never reacted to these accusations.

The person concerned says nothing about the intentions attributed to him by chroniclers from the Etoudi palace, but does nothing to deny them either. When Emmanuel Macron sets foot in Yaoundé in July 2022, the road from the airport to the capital is dotted with banners and signs calling for his candidacy. The authorities will quickly have them removed, but no observer will miss the handshake between Franck Biya and the French leader in the corridors of the presidency. In November, another appearance, this time in Garoua, the capital of the Northern region, to celebrate the forty years of Paul Biya’s accession to the presidency. The opportunity for a first contact with the activists of the Cameroon Peoples Democratic Movement (CPDM), the ruling party.

Culled from Globe Echo

3, October 2023

Time to resolve Southern Cameroons persistent yet forgotten crisis ⁰

Cameroon’s Anglophone conflict undermines national unity and is arguably the most damaging of the country’s multiple crises. It sparked demands for secession and led to separatists proclaiming a new state of Ambazonia in the country’s English-speaking North West and South West regions on 1 October 2017. The regions are home to about 20% of the population.

Celebrations surrounding ‘Independence Day’ are typically marred by clashes between government forces and armed separatist groups. Violent attacks during this year’s commemoration underscore the depth of the problem that seems forgotten.

The crisis was sparked in October 2016 when demands by teachers and lawyers for reform of the English-speaking regions’ educational and judicial systems were brutally suppressed. The authorities’ violent response to citizens’ concerns about the marginalisation of Anglophone linguistic and educational systems and the underrepresentation of English-speaking Cameroonians in politics turned into an ongoing political crisis.

The government made some concessions, including a Major National Dialogue in 2019, but failing to invite key separatist leaders, achieved little. Decisions stemming from the dialogue led to the granting of an ambiguous ‘special status’, with supposed autonomy, to the regions.

In October 2022, discreet talks between government and Anglophone leaders in the diaspora signalled interest in formal negotiations. However, these efforts haven’t quelled the separatist rebellion, which has claimed over 6 000 lives and internally displaced 630 000 people, with 86 000 seeking refuge in Nigeria.

A recent Amnesty International report details atrocities – including sexual and gender-based violence – by armed separatists, militias and security forces against civilians. The crisis has also disrupted hundreds of thousands of children’s education and halted socio-economic activities in the two regions.

Separatists have repeatedly expressed readiness for talks under international mediation

The government has intensified its pursuit of a military solution, hoping to take advantage of widening fragmentation between the armed separatist groups, which it calls ‘terrorists’. In early 2023, troops deployed to the North West attacked separatist positions.

Separatists are committed to fighting for an independent Ambazonia, regardless of the cost. They have repeatedly expressed readiness for talks under international mediation, but government won’t accept their conditions. These include the release of political prisoners, demilitarisation of the Anglophone regions and amnesty for exiled separatists.

The conflict continues to evade continental and international scrutiny. Besides some statements of concern by African Union (AU) Commission chairperson Moussa Faki Mahamat, the AU has done little. During Faki’s visit to Yaoundé in 2018, President Paul Biya committed to resolving the crisis, but these promises have fallen flat.

And despite the grave implications for stability in Central Africa, the AU’s Peace and Security Council (PSC) has yet to discuss the Cameroon crisis. As a PSC member, Cameroon likely blocks attempts by other member states to table the issue for debate.

Despite the grave implications for Central Africa’s stability, the AU PSC has not discussed the crisis

At the same time, the government has pulled the plug on mediation efforts. In September 2022, Biya halted a government-sponsored Swiss-led dialogue. A new initiative saw discreet pre-mediation meetings with several separatist groups in Canada late last year. Although the government denied seeking Canadian assistance, Canada’s foreign ministry maintained it had accepted an invitation from both parties to mediate.

Further political turmoil is brewing ahead of Cameroon’s 2025 general elections. Rival elites are jostling to succeed Biya, who has held power since 1982. He will be 92 when the polls open. Since gaining independence in 1960, Cameroon hasn’t had a single democratic transfer of power.

The military coup on 30 August that ousted Gabon’s Ali Bongo has had an unsettling effect in Cameroon. It forced Biya to reshuffle senior military roles and consolidate his power by reducing the influence of some security services branches and suppressing coverage linking Cameroon with coups.

Health problems could rule him out of the 2025 race, creating a power vacuum. Biya has reportedly been pursuing plans for his son Franck Biya to succeed him, although a dynastic succession would probably be unwelcome among the ruling Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement’s senior members. The military could exploit any succession-driven instability to justify a coup.

The country is also battling Boko Haram violence in the Far North. Fatalities from this conflict are well above 3 000, with at least 250 000 people displaced. Rebel incursions from the Central African Republic affect the country’s east, complicated by sporadic intercommunal clashes in the Far North and South. Farmer-herder tensions have also resurfaced between Nigerian pastoralists and Cameroonian farmers.

The PSC could deploy the Panel of the Wise as a preventive tool, instead of reacting after the country disintegrates

The nation is also grappling with a web of corruption scandals tied to the Africa Cup of Nations’ organisation in early 2022, and the assassination of journalist Martinez Zogo in January 2023.

Ahead of Ambazonia’s ‘Independence Day’, tensions soared in the North West and South West, and security forces stepped up attacks on separatist hideouts. Separatists have recently hardened their stance, enforced moratoriums on public life through ‘ghost towns’, threatened government employees, and increased violence against civilians. With both parties to the conflict unwilling to compromise, clashes will probably continue as economic and social neglect are further entrenched in the Anglophone regions.

The crisis cannot be ignored. The PSC must table Cameroon for discussion, especially as the Economic Community of Central African States – which has rarely tackled conflicts in its member countries – is unlikely to deal with the matter. The PSC could recommend deploying the Panel of the Wise as a preventive diplomacy tool, instead of reacting only after the country disintegrates.

Cameroon’s international partners should press for inclusive dialogue to resume. Should talks gain traction, partners must highlight the need to strengthen governance and expedite decentralisation so the Anglophone regions benefit from the autonomy their ‘special status’ should have granted them.

Source: Institute for Security Studies

15, September 2023

Southern Cameroons Crisis: 2 killed by gunmen in Buea ⁰

At least two people were killed by gunmen Friday morning in Cameroon’s war-torn English-speaking region of Southwest, according to local and security sources.

Gunmen believed to be separatist fighters operating in the region opened fire on a car that was driving to Buea, chief town of the region, said a military official in the region.

“Two people were killed including the driver and a passenger. The other miraculously survived. They are all civilians who were going about their daily activities before the terrorists did that despicable act,” the official who asked not to be named said.

There has been renewed violence in the country’s two Anglophone regions of Northwest and Southwest since Monday last week after separatists declared a two-week lockdown to disrupt school resumption.

Cameroon has been fighting an armed separatist insurgency in the regions since 2017.

Source: Xinhuanet

9, September 2023

Chief Buthelezi, South Africa’s Inkatha leader, dies aged 95 ⁰

Mangosuthu Buthelezi, the once-feared Zulu nationalist and historic leader of Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) which presided over South Africa’s deadliest violence ahead of the first all-race elections, died Saturday aged 95, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced.

“I am deeply saddened to announce the passing of Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi … Traditional Prime Minister to the Zulu Monarch and Nation, and the Founder and President Emeritus of the Inkatha Freedom Party,” Ramaphosa said in a statement.

“Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi has been an outstanding leader in the political and cultural life of our nation, including the ebbs and flows of our liberation struggle, the transition which secured our freedom in 1994 and our democratic dispensation,” Ramaphosa said.

“He quietly and painlessly stepped into eternity in the early hours of the morning” Buthelezi’s family said in a statement.

Buthelezi, last week was discharged from hospital after a prolonged stay. Funeral arrangements have not yet been confirmed.

Born of royal blood on August 27, 1928, Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi was to some the embodiment of the Zulu spirit: proud and feisty. To others, he bordered on a warlord.

For years he was defined by his bitter rivalry with South Africa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC), a party that was his political home until he broke away to form IFP in 1975.

He led the party from its inception, until the age of 90, a reign marked by bloody territorial battles with ANC supporters in black townships during the 1980s and 1990s that left thousands dead.

Founding father

The current IFP leader, Velenkosini Hlabisa, said in a statement that “as South Africa mourns, the IFP gives thanks –- even through our tears -– for the exceptional leader given to us for so many years. He blessed our country beyond measure. We cannot begin to express our gratitude.”

South Africa’s largest opposition party the Democratic Alliance said on X that South Africans had “have lost a founding father”.

As premier of the “independent” homeland of KwaZulu, a political creation of the apartheid government, Buthelezi was often regarded as an ally of the racist regime.

He was dogged by allegations of collaborating with the old government to fuel violence to derail the ANC’s liberation struggle — a claim he furiously denied.

The country’s second largest opposition party, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) said in a statement that “his legacy will remain a debate in the South African political terrain for years to come”.

But the EFF commended him for managing “the realms of politics and the Zulu monarchy for decades”.

In the 1980s, the rift between his party and the ANC intensified as he distanced himself from the party and its anti-apartheid strategies, denounced by then-jailed Nelson Mandela as undermining the black leadership.

He also stirred the wrath of the liberation movements by calling for increased international investment in South Africa, opposing the call for sanctions to put pressure on the white government.

Thousands killed

Violence between Inkatha supporters and rival liberation groups escalated in the mid-1980s. By 1990 more than 5,000 people had been killed in clashes.

In 1991, Mandela and Buthelezi held talks and called for an end to the bloodshed.

But a year later, reports resurfaced of IFP-fomented violence, backed by apartheid security forces in Johannesburg and in the eastern Natal region.

A charismatic speaker with a heavy stutter, Buthelezi blamed the ANC for the unrest that threatened to become a full-blown civil conflict, which the apartheid government garishly referred to as “black-on-black” violence.

There was a new surge of unrest between ANC and IFP supporters in the run up to the first democratic elections in 1994, that claimed about 12,000 lives.

Long-serving politician

The violence largely dissipated after 1994, with Buthelezi appointed home affairs minister. He went on to become one of the longest-serving lawmakers.

Debilitated and barely able to walk, the once-feared leader stood hunched back and small, a shadow of his former self, peering at the crowd over his glasses perched on his nose, as he attended the Zulu annual reed dance in September 2022.

Source: AFP

7, September 2023

Ambazonia’s ‘deadliest back-to-school massacre’: Many feared dead in Mile 17 ⁰

Some Church leaders have called the killings ‘a worrying escalation’ of the conflict in Southern Cameroons and a local human rights group says it is extremely difficult to count the bodies of students killed in today’s attacks in Buea and Muea.

Scores of bodies of students – too many to count – remain inside burnt cars from an attack described by Buea residents as the deadliest massacre in the history of back-to-school ever since the beginning of the crisis in English speaking Cameroon.

Fighting started today Thursday in Muea, one kilometer away from Buea the chief city in the South West region where Ambazonia fighters seized the main road linking Muea to Buea.

Cameroon government security forces reportedly responded rapidly and deployed significant military assets but could not stop the attacks that were going on.

Our correspondent in Buea who contributed to this report said that most of the victims were school children and their parents who could not escape from the vehicles when Amba fighters entered Muea and Buea firing on residents.

A businessman in Mile 17 told Cameroon Intelligence Report that it was a onerous task attending to the corpses and even the seriously injured ones who may have died after the fighters left the scene.

The attacks come some days after schools in some areas in Southern Cameroons reopened their doors.

There are fears that the back-to-school project currently being marketed by the Biya Francophone regime in Yaoundé is likely to trigger even more bloodshed. Thousands of Southern Cameroonians have been displaced by the violence

The Yaoundé government has made no official comment on the alleged Buea-Muea massacres.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

1, September 2023

Niger revokes French ambassador’s diplomatic immunity, orders his expulsion ⁰

Niger’s military junta said it revoked the diplomatic immunity of France’s ambassador and ordered police to expel him from the country, according to a statement. The French foreign ministry has said the junta, which seized power last month, has “no authority” to expel the French ambassador.

The mutinous soldiers who ousted Niger’s president more than one month ago gave French Ambassador Sylvain Itte 48 hours to leave the country last week. The deadline expired on August 28 without France recalling Itte.

The French government says it does not recognise the coup rulers as the country’s legitimate leaders.

French President Emmanuel Macron on Monday said the ambassador would stay in the country despite the junta’s pressure.

The latest communique sent by Niger’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Itte “no longer enjoys the privileges and immunities attached to his status as a member of the diplomatic staff of the embassy.”

The document also said the diplomatic cards and visas of the ambassador’s families have been canceled.

Since toppling Niger’s democratically elected President Mohamed Bazoum, the junta has leveraged anti-French sentiment among the population to shore up its support. People chant “Down with France” at near daily rallies in front of a French military base in the capital, Niamey.

Regional tensions rising

France has some 1,500 military personnel in Niger who trained and conducted joint operations with Nigerien security forces to beat back a growing jihadi insurgency linked to al Qaeda and the Islamic State (IS) group. The operations have ceased since the coup, and jihadist attacks are increasing.

Insurgents killed 17 soldiers and wounded nearly 24 this month, the first major attack in half a year against the army in Niger.

Regional tensions are also rising as the junta ignores calls from other West African countries to release and reinstate Bazoum, even amid the threat of military force.

The regional bloc ECOWAS deployed a “standby” force and ordered it to transition Niger back to constitutional rule. The force has not yet entered Niger, and the bloc says the door remains open to dialogue but it won’t wait forever.

The junta has appointed a new government and said it would return Niger to the system of government prescribed by the constitution within three years, a timeline that ECOWAS has rejected.

Source: Reuters

2, August 2023

US: Trump indicted for efforts to overturn results of 2020 presidential election ⁰

Donald Trump was charged Tuesday in a Justice Department investigation into his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in the run-up to the violent riot by his supporters at the US Capitol.

The charges include conspiracy to defraud the United States government and witness tampering.

The indictment, the third criminal case brought against the former president as he seeks to reclaim the White House in 2024, follows a long-running federal investigation into schemes by Trump and his allies to subvert the peaceful transfer of power and keep him in office despite a decisive loss to Joe Biden.

Even in a year of rapid-succession legal reckonings for Trump, Tuesday’s criminal case was especially stunning in its allegations that a former president assaulted the underpinnings of democracy in a frantic and ultimately failed effort to cling to power.

Federal prosecutors say Donald Trump was “determined to remain in power” in conspiracies that targeted a “bedrock function of the United States federal government: the nation’s process of collecting, counting and certifying the results of the presidential election.” Trump is due in court on Thursday before US District Judge Tanya Chutkan.

The criminal case comes while Trump leads the field of Republicans vying to capture their party’s presidential nomination. It is sure to be dismissed by the former president and his supporters – and even some of his rivals – as just another politically motivated prosecution. Yet the charges stem from one of the most serious threats to American democracy in modern history.

Refusal to accept loss

They focus on the turbulent two months after the November 2020 election in which Trump refused to accept his loss and spread lies that victory was stolen from him. The turmoil resulted in the US Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, when Trump loyalists violently broke into the building, attacked police officers and disrupted the congressional counting of electoral votes.

In between the election and the riot, Trump urged local election officials to undo voting results in their states, pressured former Vice President Mike Pence to halt the certification of electoral votes and falsely claimed that the election had been stolen – a notion repeatedly rejected by judges.

The indictment had been expected since Trump said in mid-July that the Justice Department informed him he was a target of its long-running Jan. 6 investigation. A bipartisan House committee that spent months investigating the run-up to the Capitol riot also recommended prosecuting Trump on charges, including aiding an insurrection and obstructing an official proceeding.

The mounting criminal cases against Trump – not to mention multiple civil cases – are unfolding in the heat of the 2024 race. A conviction in this case, or any other, would not prevent Trump from pursuing the White House or serving as president.

In New York, state prosecutors have charged Trump with falsifying business records about a hush money payoff to a porn actor before the 2016 election. The trial begins in late March.

In Florida, the Justice Department has brought more than three dozen felony counts against Trump accusing him of illegally possessing classified documents after leaving the White House and concealing them from the government. The trial begins in late May.

Trial to be held in Washington

The latest federal indictment against Trump focuses heavily on actions taken in Washington, and the trial will be held there, in a courthouse located between the White House he once occupied and the Capitol his supporters once stormed. No trial date has been set.

Prosecutors in Georgia are investigating efforts by Trump and his allies to reverse his election loss to Biden there in 2020. The district attorney of Fulton County is expected to announce a decision on whether to indict the former president in early August.

The investigation of Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election was led by Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith. His team of prosecutors has questioned senior Trump administration officials before a grand jury in Washington, including Pence and top lawyers from the Trump White House.

Rudy Giuliani, a Trump lawyer who pursued post-election legal challenges, spoke voluntarily to prosecutors as part of a proffer agreement, in which a person’s statements can’t be used against them in any future criminal case that is brought.

Prosecutors also interviewed election officials in Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan and elsewhere who came under pressure from Trump and his associates to change voting results in states won by Biden, a Democrat.

Focal points of the Justice Department’s election meddling investigation included the role played by some of Trump’s lawyers, post-election fundraising, a chaotic December 2020 meeting at the White House in which some Trump aides discussed the possibility of seizing voting machines and the enlistment of fake electors to submit certificates to the National Archives and Congress falsely asserting that Trump, not Biden, had won their states’ votes.

For Trump, this is a witch hunt

Trump has been trying to use the mounting legal troubles to his political advantage, claiming without evidence on social media and at public events that the cases are being driven by Democratic prosecutors out to hurt his 2024 election campaign.

The indictments have helped his campaign raise millions of dollars from supporters, though he raised less after the second than the first, raising questions about whether subsequent charges will have the same impact.

A fundraising committee backing Trump’s candidacy began soliciting contributions just hours after the ex-president revealed he was the focus of the Justice Department’s Jan. 6 investigation, casting it as “just another vicious act of Election Interference on behalf of the Deep State to try and stop the Silent Majority from having a voice in your own country.”

Attorney General Merrick Garland last year appointed Smith, an international war crimes prosecutor who also led the Justice Department’s public corruption section, as special counsel to investigate efforts to undo the 2020 election and Trump’s retention of hundreds of classified documents at his Palm Beach, Florida, home, Mar-a-Lago. Although Trump has derided him as “deranged” and suggested that he is politically motivated, Smith’s past experience includes overseeing significant prosecutions against high-profile Democrats.

The Justice Department’s investigation into the efforts to overturn the 2020 election began well before Smith’s appointment, proceeding alongside separate criminal probes into the Jan. 6 rioters themselves.

More than 1,000 people have been charged in connection with the insurrection, including some with seditious conspiracy.

Source: AP