<Newly released unredacted documents reveal third-party royalties paid to National Institutes of Health scientists, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, before, during, and after the pandemic. These new findings raise more questions about Fauci's statements to lawmakers during congressional hearings.

The transparency watchdog OpenTheBooks released more than 1,500 pages of records revealing that NIH leadership and thousands of scientists personally received royalty payments from companies licensing their inventions that were made with taxpayer money.

NIH leadership, including Fauci, claimed while testifying before Congress that they could not release the names of the companies paying the NIH third-party royalties. OpenTheBooks filed a lawsuit with Judicial Watch on its Freedom of Information Act request to get the documents released from the NIH.

The new report from the watchdog showed payments between September 2009 and October 2020. Several of the royalty payments were from companies that received federal contracts and grants, which could be considered a conflict of interest. The NIH allows scientists to receive no more than $150,000 annually from royalties.

In Senate hearings in 2022, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) grilled Fauci on his NIH royalty payments, and he declined to answer questions. The immunologist deflected by suggesting that he "didn't understand" what the senator was saying.

When Paul pressed Fauci about royalty payments in another Senate hearing, Fauci said he "didn't know as a fact" about royalty payments.

Fauci pushed back, saying people who received royalties did not have to report the payments.

"As the most recognized official at NIH, Dr. Anthony Fauci was the face of the third-party royalties controversy. But our investigation was about a lot more than any single scientist," OpenTheBooks founder and CEO Adam Andrzejewski said.

He added, "It was about allowing for scrutiny of these records for potential conflicts of interest, public health implications, and even national security implications for all of us. Every American should understand the stakes in play when public health guidance is released by the federal government."

Andrzejewski told Russell Brand in January that Fauci had a history of investing taxpayer dollars into his own inventions and then benefiting from the royalties.

"In 2005, the Associated Press got an unredacted database, and they found that Fauci had burned down all the firewalls. He had received $45,000 of royalties for an AIDs therapeutic that he had invented," he said.

In the documents released on Wednesday, Fauci received payments from three different companies: Santa Cruz Biotechnology, which creates medical research; Ancell Corporation, which specializes in immunology; and Chiron Corporation.>

<Former President Donald Trump, his campaign, and his legal team have long sought to blur the lines between politics and the law, but they are more aggressively litigating his defense against special counsel Jack Smith's case alleging he tried to overturn the 2020 election.

But although the strategy, including calling for cameras in the courtroom before Friday's hearing regarding restrictions the federal government is hoping to place on Trump, appears to be helping the former president amid the 2024 Republican presidential primary, it may hinder him in next year's general election.

Trump's attorneys are publicly posturing concerning the unlikely prospect of Judge Tanya Chutkan permitting cameras in her Washington, D.C, federal courtroom as the former president seeks to undermine the government's case alleging he conspired to defraud the United States, obstructed an official proceeding and conspired to do so, and conspired to violate the public's right to vote.

"I’m convinced Biden administration does not want the American people to see the truth, and they acted on it by filing this protective order, which is an effort to keep important information about this case from the press," Trump lawyer John Lauro told Fox News last weekend. "I’m shocked actually that all the networks haven't lined up and filed pleadings already objecting to this — this very broad attempt by the Biden administration to keep information away from the American people during the election season."

Lauro's comments coalesce with counsel's disputed free speech defense as they seek to delay the trial before the judge, nominated by former President Barack Obama, and contend, more broadly, that the process has been politicized, despite federal courts traditionally being averse to cameras. Democrats, such as Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), have also advocated both of Trump's federal trials, encompassing the classified documents case, to be televised in order to encourage public acceptance of the outcome.

"Given the historic national importance of these cases, the American people deserve to witness how the trials are conducted, the strength of the evidence, and the credibility of witnesses first-hand," Schiff wrote in an email-building note Wednesday.

Former George W. Bush-appointed Arkansas U.S. attorney Bud Cummins, who described the government's case as "an abuse of authority to persecute political opponents," underscored how cameras can "create a lot of chaos some judges are unable to control."

"Television will probably cut both ways," Cummins told the Washington Examiner. "At times, President Trump will come off as having used poor judgment for all to see. But it will be worse for the government, in my opinion."

"The government strained to creatively indict a former president," he said. "It will be hard for the government to put lipstick on this pig and hide the fact that the Biden administration is stretching to target and prosecute a political opponent."

Rutgers University history, journalism, and media studies professor David Greenberg was unsure whether a televised trial would help or hinder Trump, though he was more certain it would "become a media circus."

"A jury is still a jury and should be shielded from outside news so as not to be influenced," he said. "Trump has both supporters and detractors out there, so it’s unlikely that a televised trial would cause a groundswell either way."....>

<....For Northeastern University political science professor and chairman Costas Panagopoulos, Trump's trial by media strategy is likely to consolidate his base and boost his fundraising.

"It's a risky strategy, seemingly with more downside than upside," he said. "Trump lacks the discipline to avoid shooting himself in the foot when it comes to how things play out in court if he makes this a public matter."

Trump has a commanding lead in the primary, averaging 54% support, a 38 percentage point advantage over Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), who is running second, but his post-indictment polling increases have been decreasing. Simultaneously, Trump's edge over President Joe Biden in a hypothetical rematch has disappeared since March when Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg charged him with crimes related to hush money payments he made before the 2016 election. Biden is now ahead, 45% to 44%, according to RealClearPolitics.

In addition to fewer supporters outside the courthouses and online searches, Trump, too, is raising less money post-indictments. Trump raised $4 million from 80,000 unique donors through the Republican fundraising platform WinRed after the Manhattan charges but only $1.3 million from 35,000 contributors after he was arrested and arraigned in the federal classified documents case last June.

The government is seeking a protective order to restrict how Trump discusses evidence in the 2020 election case as Chutkan receives more security. Legal analyst Paul Henderson, Vice President Kamala Harris's former prosecution chief when she was San Francisco's district attorney, reiterated that the request is "absolute routine."

"This case, in particular, deals with elected officials, official documents, privileged conversations, and protected communications, aside from ordinary evidence used in a 'normal' trial, meaning a heightened protective order is expected and necessary," Henderson said. "Beyond the bombastic claims being made about the prosecutor, the justice process, and the judge, Trump is already talking about his own commentary."

"If that harm to the public and potential jury pool weren't clear enough to measure a harm, Trump's lawyers appeared on no less than five public network shows, going over the details of the charges to address their opinions about both the case and the evidence," he added.>

<A Texas judge presiding over Republicans' widespread challenges to losses in the 2022 elections around Houston said Thursday not to expect a quick ruling following a trial in which no GOP voters came forward to testify that they were unable to vote because of ballot shortages or delayed poll openings last November.

More than 20 races disputed by Republicans are all in Harris County, the third-largest county in the U.S., which is controlled by Democrats and in recent years has become a recurring target of new Texas voting rules and restrictions passed by GOP lawmakers.

During the two-week trial, lawyers for the losing Republican candidates relied heavily on theories generated by their party members in lieu of testimony from voters or analysis from election law experts, according the Houston Chronicle.

State District Judge David Peeples said following closing arguments Thursday that he did not expect to issue a ruling for weeks.

The first lawsuit to go to trial was brought by Republican Erin Lunceford, who was running to become a local judge and lost by more than 2,700 votes out of more than 1 million cast. At the heart of the challenge by Lunceford and other losing GOP candidates is that limited paper ballot shortages and delayed poll openings at some locations on Election Day last fall turned voters away.

Lawyers for Democrat Tamika Craft, who beat Lunceford, argued that the lawsuit was part of a “master plan” by the Harris County Republican Party to challenge election results and disenfranchise thousands of voters.

Similar court challenges have become more common around the country following baseless conspiracy theories spread by former President Donald Trump and his supporters alleging the 2020 presidential election was stolen by President Joe Biden’s backers.

Harris County has nearly 5 million residents, most of whom are Hispanic or Black. It was controlled by Republicans until 2018, and two years later, Biden won Texas' largest county by 13 points.

The county's elections have come under scrutiny in recent elections over issues that include long lines, poll worker shortages and ballots that weren't counted the day of the election.

In 2021, voting legislation brought forth by Texas legislators in the state's GOP-majority statehouse prompted a 93-day walkout by Democratic state representatives. Upon their return, Texas Republicans passed several laws based on legal challenges which the state previously brought against Harris County during the 2020 election cycle, including banning drive-thru voting and creating new requirements for voting by mail.

The changes ultimately led to protests by voting rights advocates regarding equitable accessibility to the ballot box and the rejection of more than 23,000 ballots in the first statewide primary election since the changes took place.>

<Prosecutors with special counsel Jack Smith's team asked a judge on Thursday to set a Jan. 2 trial date for former President Donald Trump in the case charging him with plotting to overturn his 2020 election loss.

If U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan agrees with prosecutors' proposal, the case against the early front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential primary would open right before the anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, which was fueled by Trump's false claims about the election.

The proposed date is also just under two weeks before the first votes are set to be cast in the Republican presidential race, with Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucuses scheduled for Jan. 15.

Trump reacted angrily to the proposed trial date on his Truth Social platform. “Only an out of touch lunatic would ask for such a date, ONE DAY into the New Year, and maximum Election Interference with IOWA!” he wrote Thursday night.

Prosecutors said in court papers that they want the case to move to trial swiftly in Washington's federal court, setting up a likely battle with defense attorneys who have already suggested they will try slow things down. Smith's team says the government's case should take no longer than four to six weeks.

"A January 2 trial date would vindicate the public’s strong interest in a speedy trial — an interest guaranteed by the Constitution and federal law in all cases, but of particular significance here, where the defendant, a former president, is charged with conspiring to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election, obstruct the certification of the election results, and discount citizens’ legitimate votes," prosecutors wrote.

Trump's lawyers have not submitted their proposed trial date. The judge is expected to set the date during a court hearing scheduled for Aug. 28.

Trump is already scheduled to be in a courtroom in the heat of next year’s presidential primary season, with a March 25 criminal trial scheduled in a separate case in New York stemming from hush money payments made during the 2016 campaign. The former president is scheduled to go to trial in May in another case brought by Smith over his handling of classified documents found at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida.

Trump faces charges including conspiracy to defraud the United States for what prosecutors say was a weekslong plot to subvert the will of voters and cling to power after he lost the 2020 election to Democrat Joe Biden.

The indictment accuses Trump of spreading lies about election fraud he knew were false to sow distrust in the democratic process and pressuring Vice President Mike Pence and state election officials to take action in a brazen attempt to cling to power.

Trump, who pleaded not guilty last week, says he is innocent and has portrayed the investigation as politically motivated. His legal team has indicated it will argue that he was relying on the advice of lawyers around him in 2020 and had the right to challenge an election he believed was rigged.

Trump has already said he will push to have the 2020 election case moved out of Washington, claiming he can't get a fair trial in the heavily Democratic city, which voted overwhelmingly for Biden. But it's extremely difficult to convince a judge that a jury pool is so biased that a trial must be moved. And judges in Washington, including Chutkan, have repeatedly rejected similar efforts by Trump supporters charged in the Jan. 6 Capitol attack....>

<....Smith's Washington case accuses Trump of orchestrating schemes to enlist slates of fake electors in seven battleground states won by Biden to sign false certificates representing themselves as legitimate electors and try to use the investigative power of the Justice Department to launch sham election fraud probes. When his efforts failed, prosecutors say, he badgered Pence to disrupt the ceremonial counting of electoral votes before Congress on Jan. 6, 2021, the day an angry mob of his supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol.

In an early glimpse into the intense legal fighting to come in the case, prosecutors and defense attorneys have been arguing over a protective order that would place rules on what Trump's legal team can do with evidence handed over by the government as they prepare for trial. Protective orders are not uncommon in criminal cases and are usually imposed with little legal wrangling.

But Trump's lawyers say prosecutors' proposal — which seeks to prevent Trump and his lawyers from publicly disclosing evidence handed over by the government — is too broad and would restrict his First Amendment rights. They are urging the judge to impose a more limited protective order that would restrict only the public sharing of information deemed “sensitive," like grand jury materials.

In urging the judge to impose the order, prosecutors noted Trump's tendency to use social media to talk about the legal cases against him and expressed concern that he would share sensitive information that could intimidate witnesses.

Chutkan is expected to hold a hearing on the matter on Friday in Washington's federal court.

It comes as Trump is also gearing up for a possible fourth indictment, in a case out of Fulton County, Georgia, over alleged efforts by him and his Republican allies to illegally meddle in the 2020 election in that state. The county district attorney, Fani Willis, a Democrat, has signaled that any indictments in the case would likely come this month.>

<A few hours after rioters laid siege to the Capitol, overpowering police in a violent attack on the seat of American democracy on Jan. 6, 2021, the White House’s top lawyer, Pat Cipollone, called his boss with an urgent message.

It’s time to end your objections to the 2020 election, Cipollone told Donald Trump, and allow Congress to certify Joe Biden as the next president. Trump refused.

Trump was no longer listening to his White House counsel, the elite team of attorneys who take an oath to serve the office of the president. But by all accounts, he hadn’t been listening to them for some time.

The extraordinary moment — fully detailed for the first time in the latest federal indictment against Trump unsealed last week — vividly illustrates the extent to which the former president's final weeks in office were consumed by a struggle over the law, with two determined groups of attorneys fighting it out as the future of American democracy hung in the balance.

Trump’s attempts to remain in power, according to the indictment and evidence compiled in congressional investigations, were firmly rejected by Cipollone and his top deputy, Pat Philbin. So Trump turned to outside allies including Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman and Kenneth Chesebro, among other legal advisers, to launch what federal prosecutors have called a “criminal scheme” to fraudulently overturn the election.

Cipollone and Philbin had been heard from before, as both testified to the House Jan. 6 committee under subpoena. But they were unable to disclose to Congress their interactions with Trump, citing the executive privilege that customarily shields their work in the White House.

Special counsel Jack Smith, who brought the indictment against Trump, faced no such barrier. A federal judge ruled the lawyers had to testify about their interactions with Trump in the chaotic weeks before the Jan. 6 insurrection.

As a result, prosecutors were able to obtain extraordinary new details that were used in the indictment of the former president. And Cipollone and Philbin seem likely to become important witnesses in Trump's upcoming trial.

Requests for comment from them were not returned.

The breakdown of the relationship between Trump and his White House counsel — a lawyer-president arrangement that dates back to Franklin D. Roosevelt — began in the weeks after the 2020 presidential election. Cipollone and Philbin at the time were providing “candid” advice to Trump that there was no evidence of fraud that could change the results of the election.

Despite this advice, Trump began to parade outside advisers into the White House for a series of long, contentious and at times nasty meetings about steps he could take to challenge the election.

In a now infamous Dec. 18, 2020 session in the Oval Office, Trump allies including Sidney Powell and Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser, proposed ordering the military to seize voting machines in crucial states Trump had lost.

Cipollone was blindsided by the meeting, having learned of it just as he was about to leave the White House for the night. He recalled in testimony to the Jan. 6 committee that Trump's advisers “forcefully” verbally attacked him and other White House lawyers when they shot down the idea of seizing voting machines.

"It was being brought to the president by people who I don’t believe had his best interest in mind," Cipollone told lawmakers in June 2022. “They were doing the country and the president, both in his capacity as president and his personal capacity, a disservice.”

Attorneys who have served as White House counsel said they were dumbfounded by what they read in the Trump indictment, calling the situation “unbelievable" and unlike anything they experienced in office.

“You cannot be effective as a lawyer, not just as White House Counsel, as a lawyer to any client, if you cannot have candid conversations about legal requirements," said Alberto Gonzales, who served as President George W. Bush’s White House counsel. "In the case of the presidency, to protect them from engaging in conduct, that while it may not turn out to be criminal, will have serious political consequences.”

And that is exactly what prosecutors say White House lawyers attempted to do. By January, when it was clear that they could not get Trump to listen, the lawyers began warning others about the grave consequences of continuing to deny the results of the election.

Three days before Jan. 6, Philbin told Jeffrey Clark, a Justice Department lawyer, that if Trump remained in office despite no evidence of fraud there would be “riots in every major city in the United States.”

To which Clark, according to prosecutors, responded: “That’s why there’s an Insurrection Act," referring to the specific statute that gives the president the power, in rare circumstances, to use military force inside the United States....>

<....In a meeting that evening, Trump met with leadership at the Justice Department as well as Cipollone and Philbin to express his frustration that the Justice Department was “failing to do anything to overturn the election results,” the indictment stated.

Clark, a low-level Justice Department attorney who had positioned himself as an eager advocate for election fraud claims in the weeks after the election, was in attendance. He was pushing to send a letter to key state legislatures stating falsely that the Justice Department had identified problems in the election results.

In that contentious Jan. 3 Oval Office meeting, Trump toyed with replacing acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen with Clark but backed down after he was told that it would result in mass resignations at the Justice Department and his own White House counsel's office. Cipollone scathingly called Clark's draft letter a “murder-suicide pact.”

“There is no world, there is no option in which you do not leave the White House on January 20th,” Philbin told Trump that day, according to the indictment.

By Jan. 4, Trump, tired of hearing no from his White House lawyers, began to convene meetings behind their backs, according to the indictment.

Kathryn Ruemmler, who served as Barack Obama's White House counsel, said that if she had ever been “intentionally excluded” from meetings where the president was being given contrary legal advice, she would have resigned.

“You really can’t operate at all under those circumstances and conditions,” she said.

That day Trump also met with then-Vice President Mike Pence and his chief of staff and legal counsel. The point of the meeting was for Trump — who at that point had lost numerous lawsuits and failed to identify evidence of widescale fraud — to convince Pence to use his ceremonial role overseeing the counting of the Electoral College votes on Jan. 6 to prevent Biden from becoming president.

Pence, both in that meeting and days later on Jan. 6, refused to do so. Since the indictment, he has said Trump was led astray by a group of “crackpot lawyers” who wanted to violate the Constitution.

But even in the hours after the Jan. 6 riot, as police struggled to clear the Capitol, Trump wasn't done trying to stop the certification of the election.

Trump and Giuliani began to make calls to Republican lawmakers in the House and Senate after the riot, according to the indictment, seeking to “exploit” the violence of the day to convince them they should delay naming Biden the winner.

Amid it all, Cipollone made his own final plea to Trump in a phone call at 7:01 p.m. asking him to withdraw his objections and allow the certification to move forward.

“I expressed what I needed to express,” Cipollone told lawmakers last year, when describing the call. He declined at the time to reveal what was said.>

<Republicans complaining about a “two-tiered” justice system might find the evidence they’re looking for in prosecutors’ treatment of their own de facto leader: Donald Trump.

From the lack of a cash bail requirement to the ability to keep his passport, to the absence of any sanctions for his attacks against judges and prosecutors, to his successful avoidance of the humiliation of a mug shot, the coup-attempting former president has been afforded remarkable deference in all three of his felony prosecutions to date.

Last week, Trump even posted the statement: “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!” ― but has yet to suffer any consequences.

“Most defendants who enter the federal criminal justice system do so with a knock and a warrant at 6 a.m.; handcuffs and possibly shackles; removal of cell phones, belts, shoelaces and wallets; mug shots and fingerprints; and some form of bail package,” said Danya Perry, a former federal prosecutor and now a defense lawyer. “They also face serious consequences if they issue threats or tamper with witnesses once released.”

Multiple lawyers representing Trump ― who as president suggested to police officers that they intentionally slam the heads of suspects into door frames as they pushed them into squad cars ― did not respond to HuffPost queries about the gentle treatment Trump has been enjoying.

“I do think Trump has been treated favorably by the prosecution in light of his status as the former president and a current candidate for president, and because, with Secret Service protection, he doesn’t present a risk of flight,” said Mary McCord, a former top official in the Justice Department.

Ty Cobb, a former Trump White House lawyer who was also once a federal prosecutor, said it was hard to say if Trump has been getting favorable treatment. “He is sui generis ― unique as a defendant,” he said. “Is it two-tier? It’s hard to say because he’s the only president who has ever been indicted.”

Trump and his allies in Congress and right-wing media have for months complained that prosecutors have been far more aggressive with Trump than they have been with the son of current President Joe Biden ― even though there is evidence that a complicating factor in the Hunter Biden investigation may have been Trump’s overt attempts as president to push charges against him to damage his father politically.

In reality, though, it is Trump who has received non-standard treatment for an accused criminal now facing a total of 78 felonies in three separate cases.

Ordinarily, in “white collar” prosecutions of fraud where the accused is wealthy and has easy access to private air travel, defendants are hit with sizeable bail requirements as well as the loss of their passports to discourage them from fleeing. Trump, on the other hand, has had to post no bond and retains unfettered access to his personal Boeing 757 jetliner ― which in theory could spirit him off to Riyadh or Moscow overnight.

“When Mr. Trump points to a two-tiered system of justice, he might have the tiers inverted but he might not be wrong,” Perry said.

Cobb, who worked in the White House Counsel’s office as Trump was under investigation for the assistance his 2016 campaign received from Russia, said he agreed that a defendant accused of monetary fraud, rather than trying to defraud the United States and its citizenry to remain in power, would have received stiffer pre-trial release conditions than Trump did.

“A wealthy defendant in a multi-million fraud indictment would certainly have to forfeit his passport at a minimum and possibly be incarcerated,” he said.

As to Trump’s menacing statement last week, which he shared immediately after posting a video attacking the prosecutors in his various cases, Cobb said U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan appears to be aware of it, given the accelerated schedule she has set to determine a “protective” order for evidence prosecutors will hand over to Trump’s lawyers. Prosecutors pointed out Friday’s social media post in a court filing just hours after Trump had shared it.

“I think Chutkan will address that. That’s wrong, and you can’t do it. That is intimidation, and that’s sanctionable, in my opinion,” Cobb said, adding that he supports the federal prosecutions, both for Trump’s attempts to hide top-secret documents from authorities as well as his attempt to fraudulently remain in power. “Those are bad things.”>

<Donald Trump's campaign is seeking to blunt the efforts of a super PAC supporting rival Ron DeSantis' presidential campaign by sending a letter to all state Republican parties on Thursday arguing that they cannot work with a super PAC as if it is representing a candidate.

David Warrington, an attorney for Trump's 2024 campaign, contends in the letter that a super PAC, which can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money, should not be allowed to undertake traditional campaign activities that directly benefit a candidate or “act as de facto campaign arms.”

While the letter does not specifically cite the well-funded Never Back Down organization, it’s aimed at the super PAC, which has been taking on an expansive role supplementing DeSantis’ campaign, such as helping voters fill out cards pledging to support him in Iowa’s caucuses and hosting the governor as a “special guest” on multi-city bus tours.

The letter is the latest example of the efforts by Trump, the early frontrunner in the crowded GOP primary, to use his influence across state Republican parties to solidify his position. He has also been particularly aggressive in encouraging the parties to advance rules that favor him in the process of selecting delegations that will ultimately decide the GOP nominee next year.

Trump's campaign said in a statement Thursday that it has received questions from some state parties and Republican voters “who are worried that the process will be hijacked by outside entities that would put the integrity of their party process and rules in jeopardy and that individual Republican voters in their state will have their votes diluted by non-party actors such as superPACs.”

Erin Perrine, a spokesperson for Never Back Down, said in a statement that “it’s abundantly clear that the former President and his campaign are terrified of Governor DeSantis and the Never Back Down movement behind his candidacy. Never Back Down will continue to do everything within the confines of the law to achieve our goal of retiring the former president.”

DeSantis’ campaign, which is facing a financial crunch, has repeatedly said it is taking advantage of offers to have him appear as a guest at Never Back Down events as part of its efforts to make the most of its resources. DeSantis also this week announced his new deputy campaign manager will be David Polyansky, a strategist who had been advising Never Back Down.

The relationship was on full display Thursday as DeSantis and his wife were set to appear in Coralville, Iowa as the special guests of the super PAC, traveling on a Never Back Down-branded bus.

“We will continue to follow the law as we maximize our resources to bring Ron DeSantis’ message to reverse the decline of this country and lead our Great American Comeback to as many voters as possible," Andrew Romeo, the DeSantis’ campaign communications director, said in a statement.

Trump, from his earliest days in the White House, has worked to expand his grip on the state parties. He's spent years helping allies win positions in the party, including chairmanships, and his political team has worked to rewrite the rules around delegates.

His broad popularity in the GOP also makes him a big draw for parties as they seek to raise funds, as he did on Friday when his keynote speech at an Alabama Republican Party dinner brought in $1.2 million in contributions—a record for the party.

Trump's campaign declined to cite any specific states or activities where it feels there have been violations of election law, but said, “It is common knowledge that a number of the lower-tiered campaigns, like the DeSantis campaign, have been unable to raise campaign funds and as a result have tried to outsource their campaigns to superPACs.”

The letter warns that in addition to any penalties under federal law that a candidate or super PAC could face for violating rules about illegal coordination, state parties that facilitate those activities could themselves face civil or criminal penalties.

“It’s just generally saber-rattling and it’s overly broad in parts and a little heavy handed. But it’s basically a fair general description of the law," said Brett Kappel, a campaign finance lawyer who has advised Republicans and Democrats and reviewed a copy of the letter....>

<....Kappel said rules around illegal coordination are narrow and would need to involve something like a state party working with a super PAC to send communications to the public supporting or opposing a candidate.

He said a super PAC that is acting independently of a campaign is perfectly free to “speak on behalf of” the candidate they are supporting but cannot hold themselves out as authorized or official representatives of a candidate.

Warrington's letter also seeks to discourage any state party from allowing a super PAC to play a role in the process of recruiting people to serve as the delegates who formally select the nominee at the party's national convention.

Campaigns typically want supporters serving as delegates to ensure they have secured the party's nomination and avoid any rules changes at a nominating convention that are not in their favor.

“Allowing super PACs to interject themselves into this process dilutes the relationship between the voters and the candidates themselves," Warrington wrote in the letter.

Perrine did not respond to a question Thursday about whether Never Back Down is involved in the delegate process.

Kappel said a super PAC can work to recruit people to serve as the delegates choosing a party’s nominee as long as they’re doing it independently of a campaign.>

<Donald Trump's lawyers — who were identified as co-conspirators in Trump's latest federal indictment — wanted Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to help them stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden's 2020 election victory.

That's according to emails previously obtained by the House select committee investigating the Capitol riot, as well as an internal campaign memo that The New York Times reported on this week.

"The point is to have the court say that probably the election was void, which should be enough to prevent the Senate from counting the Biden electoral votes from Georgia, right?" one Trump lawyer, Kenneth Chesebro, wrote in a December 31, 2020 email to other attorneys working on Trump's behalf to nullify Biden's victory.

Georgia was one of seven battleground states that Biden won in the 2020 election.

Chesebro went on to say that "possibly Thomas would end up being the key here — circuit justice, right? We want to frame things so that Thomas could be the one to issue some sort of stay or other circuit justice opinion saying Georgia is in legitimate doubt."

Thomas is the circuit justice for Georgia, Alabama, and Florida, meaning he oversees emergency requests coming from those states.

"Realistically, our only chance to get a favorable judicial opinion by Jan. 6, which might hold up the Georgia count in Congress, is from Thomas — do you agree, Prof. Eastman?" Chesebro wrote in the email.

He was referring to the conservative lawyer John Eastman, who was one of the recipients of the email.

"I think I agree with this," Eastman replied. "If the court were to give us 'likely,' that may be enough to kick the Georgia Legislature into gear, because I've been getting a lot of calls from them indicating to me they're leaning that way."

Both Chesebro and Eastman were referenced as unnamed co-conspirators in the special counsel Jack Smith's latest indictment against Trump. The former president was charged with four counts of conspiracy and obstruction earlier this month in connection to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Chesebro and Eastman haven't been criminally charged.>

<Donald Trump must have thought all his Christmases had come at once. As federal investigators explored his alleged hoarding of sensitive documents in 2022, Aileen Cannon, a judge nominated by the former president, was assigned the case.

It wasn’t just that Trump had appointed Cannon, who has since made rulings which would appear to help his defense. It was that Cannon was from an emerging rightwing cadre of the judiciary – a cabal of conservative judges created by Leonard Leo, the ultimate Republican kingmaker and a close Trump ally.

Those links between Cannon and a network of figures and groups on the right and far-right of US politics are coming under increasing scrutiny as the Trump case moves forwards but also because they show the very real impact of Leo and his actions on the US judiciary.

Cannon rose to prominence after being handed Trump’s case in Florida, as investigators saw to gain access to boxes of documents found in his Mar-a-Lago club by the FBI. The judge, who was nominated by Trump and appointed in 2020, appointed a special master at the request of Trump’s lawyers, who was charged with vetting the seized records.

A federal appeals court later terminated the special master review, and scolded Cannon, saying she did not have the authority to prevent the justice department from accessing the materials found at Mar-a-Lago. Experts agreed.

Cannon remains in charge of the case, however, which is scheduled for May 2024. Trump was indicted in June and faces 37 federal counts, including 31 violations of the Espionage Act.

With Cannon’s profile higher than ever, her impartiality is being questioned. The judge’s financial disclosure form for 2021, which was reviewed by Accountable.US, a liberal leaning watchdog group that tracks government corruption, shows that she was reimbursed by George Madison University’s Antonin Scalia Law School for a six day trip to “colloquium seminar” held at a resort and spa in Montana in September.

The law school was renamed in after Scalia, a conservative supreme court justice in 2016 – months after his death – “the result,” the New York Times reported, “of a $30 million gift brokered by Leonard Leo.” George Madison University intended the Antonin Scalia school to become “a Yale or Harvard of conservative legal scholarship and influence”, the Times wrote.

The purpose of Cannon’s 2021 trip, according to her financial disclosure form, was to attend the “Sage Lodge Colloquium”, an annual conference held by the law school in the town of Pray, Montana. Newsweek reported that Cannon attended the colloquium again in 2022.

It is not clear why her hotel and travel was paid for. Organizations will commonly reimburse guest speakers or lecturers, but the agenda of that year’s seminar does not show Cannon doing any teaching or speaking.

Cannon was not required to state how much she was reimbursed by the law school, and there is no suggestion of any wrongdoing.

The Sage Lodge website describes the resort and spa as “the ultimate Montana luxury resort getaway”.

Seminars at the 2021 event terminated at 12.15pm each day. One class included “Woke Law!”, which was taught by Todd J Zywicki, a professor at George Mason University Antonin Scalia Law school and a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a thinktank founded by the Koch brothers.

There is no suggestion that Leo, who has worked as an adviser to Trump and is seen as the one of the most influential conservative activists in the US, directly funded the trips. But his influence runs so deep in conservative circles that other ties also exist between him and Cannon.

She has been a member of the conservative Federalist Society, which Leo co-chairs, since 2005. The society, its website states, is “a group of conservatives and libertarians dedicated to reforming the current legal order”.

The Federalist Society’s profile of Leo, who has come under scrutiny for reportedly directing tens of thousands of dollars to the wife of supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, boasts of his influence over the upper echelons of the American judicial system.

“Leonard has advised President Trump on judicial selection, assisted with the Gorsuch and Kavanaugh supreme court selection and confirmation process,” the Federalist Society profile reads.

“He also organized the outside coalition efforts in support of the Roberts and Alito US supreme court confirmations.”....>

<....Those efforts have had striking ramifications, none more so than the supreme court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade, which guaranteed the right to abortion in the US, last year.

“Leonard Leo has written the playbook on judicial influence-peddling. It’s no surprise that Judge Cannon has benefited from Leo’s well-funded network,” said Kyle Herrig, senior adviser at Accountable.US. “Over decades, Leo has used shady tactics to curry favor with judges at all levels in service of his ultimate goal: to force an extreme, radical agenda on Americans.”

Leo, Politico reported, has also been responsible for the installation of “dozens of lower court federal judges across the country”.

Since Cannon has taken control of Trump’s case, legal experts have voiced concerns she could slow down the trial, which could benefit Trump. Last month, however, Cannon rejected the Trump team’s request to delay trial until after the November 2024 presidential election, although her decision to hold it in May also disappointed government prosecutors, who had requested a December 2023 start date.

Questions surrounding her handling of the trial are unlikely to go away, however, given her links to the Leo-dominated Federalist Society and the Leo-aided Antonin Scalia law school.

“Ultimately it calls into question the judge’s impartiality and who she’s serving,” Herrig said.

“Is she serving the American people or is she serving Leonard Leo and the Federalist Society.”>

<U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida Judge Aileen Cannon is facing having a verdict in another one of her cases overturned because of a simple error of her own making.

According to a report from the Daily Beast's Jose Pagliery, Cannon, who is currently overseeing a deeply complex and highly scrutinized federal case where former president Donald Trump is accused of obstruction of justice, made an "egregious" error where she did not give a jury an option of finding a defendant "not guilty" and now that verdict is being appealed.

As the report notes, in the case of Christopher Wilkins, she provided jurors with a verdict form that did not list "not guilty" as an option and defense lawyer Jeffrey Garland formally filed an appeal on Thursday.

In an interview, he explained, "How far does somebody have to go to school to say that a verdict form is supposed to say guilty and not guilty? That would be one of the more egregious versions of jury instruction error… it’s such a rare error.”

He added, "This is the judge’s deal. This is nobody else’s deal. I’m gonna tell ya, I’ve done a lot of appeals, and I’ve got a pretty good winning record. This is a great issue."

As the report points out, Cannon has scant trial experience and, combined with her earlier rulings on the investigation into Trump's hoarding of documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort that were overturned by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in rough fashion, the latest episode raises more questions about her competence.

"Last month, The New York Times discovered that Cannon has only handled four trials, collectively accounting for just 14 days in court—less than three weeks of experience before handling a potential turning point for American democracy," the Pagliery wrote. "Last week, Reuters exposed how Cannon kept family members of an accused viewer of child sex abuse locked out of her courtroom during some of his trial in June, violating his Sixth Amendment rights to have a public trial—and somehow forgot to swear in the prospective jury pool, the most basic of mandatory procedures."

As for her latest gaffe, University of Georgia law professor Elizabeth Taxel said of the bungled verdict form, "I’ve never seen anything like it. I am a law professor, and I found it cumbersome to read and follow. It’s unclear to me why the court didn’t, out of an abundance of caution, include ‘guilty or not guilty.’”

Defense attorney Garland was much more brutal in his assessment, telling the Beast, "That’s her verdict form. There’s no ‘guilty’ and ‘not guilty.’ The traditional format is ‘guilty’ and ‘not guilty,’ as it was on the proposed form the government and I had created. We agreed on that. And she comes up with this. This is her creation. This is her baby. It’s kind of funny. It’s ridiculous.">

<At a Politburo meeting last month, China’s leaders referred to the economic recovery this year as “torturous”. You won’t often hear such candour coming from a Chinese Communist party institution, let alone such an elevated body. They were referring to current conditions, of course, but China’s problems reveal much that is systemically out of kilter in its economic and political system.

During the past few days, some of the statistics China has published have caused a stir. Consumer prices in July were lower than a year ago, suggesting it might be on the cusp of deflation, which reflects a chronic shortage of demand in the economy. And China’s foreign trade in the same month showed a sharp fall in exports due to weak global demand, with a sharper decline in imports signifying weakness in demand at home. There were murky factors affecting both but the message is that something more serious is amiss in China.

Indeed, China was widely expected to bounce back from the pandemic and there was a bit of a flurry early in 2023. Yet, consumption has generally been very subdued especially for big-ticket items such as cars and houses, and private investment, the backbone of China’s economy, fell in the first half of this year, for the first time since such data was published many years ago.

Private firms and entrepreneurs are not spending much on investment or on hiring people. Youth unemployment has topped 21%, or double what it is in the UK and almost three times the rate in the US. The annual graduation of 11-12 million students in the the summer is aggravating an already difficult situation because of the problems of finding suitable work, and also because the Chinese labour market has become one in which most jobs are in the lower-pay, low-skill, gig or informal economy compared with higher quality jobs in manufacturing and construction.

It would be wrong though to pin this all on the pandemic. Most things weighing on China’s economy have been building for several years, even while much of the world was wowed by China’s global brands such as Huawei, Alibaba, Tencent and TikTok, property was booming, and China was leaving its footprint all over the world through the “belt and road” initiative and its rising governance engagement with global entities such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Health Organization.

In spite of its unequivocal accomplishments and successes, China has, during the past decade or more, spawned a mountain of bad debt, unprofitable and uncommercial infrastructure and real estate, empty apartment blocks and little-used apartments and transport facilities, and excess capacity in, for example, coal, steel, solar panels and electric vehicles. Productivity growth has stalled, and China can unfortunately boast one of the world’s highest levels of inequality.

It is ageing faster than any other country on the planet but with a skinny social security system in which most of its 290 million migrant workers are not eligible for most social benefits. Under Xi Jinping, moreover, it has also developed an increasingly repressive, state-centric and controlling governance system, both for political reasons and to deal with the effects of its failing development model.

These are testing times for Chinese citizens, especially the fabled rising middle class whose savings have mostly found a home in an outsized real estate sector which has now entered a period of structural decline. Most of the housing stock, overbuilding, collapse in transactions and weakness in prices are not in big agglomerations such as Beijing, Shenzhen and Shanghai, but in hundreds of smaller cities and towns that rarely make news.

China’s leaders have been vocal this year about strengthening consumption and about improving the business environment for private firms and entrepreneurs, who have been pressured or punished to align their commercial interest with the party’s political goals. We still await evidence that such rhetoric has substance.

In the coming weeks and months, we should probably expect the authorities to ease financial and budgetary policies, housing regulations, and borrowing caps to finance infrastructure. There might even be measures that look consumer-friendly but also fail to boost the income that alone can sustain higher consumption.

These things may give the economy a temporary lift over the winter but the underlying weakness of the economy and the greater authoritarianism that China features are now two sides of the same coin that seem irreversible, certainly for the time being.

<A Wisconsin judge on Thursday rejected an effort to dismiss a civil case against 10 fake electors for former President Trump and two of Trump’s attorneys, court records show.

The case centers on an effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election by submitting false slates of electors for Trump in seven targeted battleground states, including Wisconsin, where President Biden won.

The fake elector scheme was part of Trump’s team’s efforts to keep the former president in power, and it was a key focus of the latest indictment against him. Federal prosecutors claimed in the indictment the fake elector scheme originated in Wisconsin.

The suit in Wisconsin was filed by two Democratic electors and a voter, and it alleged the defendants were part of Trump’s conspiracy to stay in power. They are seeking $2.4 million and are asking the judge to bar the GOP electors from serving as electors again. One of the defendants, attorney Kenneth Chesebro, is understood to be one of the unnamed coconspirators mentioned in the federal indictment against Trump.

Many GOP electors who submitted false certifications for Trump claim they thought they were signing the certificate in case the legal challenges were successful.

The case is scheduled to go to trial just two months before the 2024 election, beginning Sept. 3, 2024, and lasting one month.

The charges come after Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel announced felony charges against 16 Republicans in July related to the fake elector scheme in her state. All 16 pleaded not guilty.>

<A Michigan Republican whose wife is being prosecuted for allegedly taking part in the Trump campaign’s scheme to send false electors to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory said state charges could trigger a “civil war.”

“If the government continues to weaponise these departments against conservatives and the citizens that are then the taxpayers, you know what’s going to happen to this country,” Michigan representative Matt Maddock told the crowd at a pool party fundraiser this month for the 16 Michigan false electors facing charges, according to audio obtained by The Messenger. “Someone’s going to get so pissed off, they’re going to shoot someone. That’s what’s going to happen. Or we’re going have a civil war or some sort of revolution. That’s where this is, where this is going.”

In July, Attorney General Nessel charged 16 Trump-backing electors for their participation in a scheme to allegedly manipulate the counting process for the 2020 presidential election results from each state. Among those named as defendants was Meshawn Maddock, the state representative’s wife, who was former co-chair of the Michigan Republican Party. All those cited in the indictment have pleaded not guilty.

The civil war comments took place at a PAC fundraiser called the Free The 16 Electors Poolside Party at Mr Maddock’s home, with the event promising to “support the legal defence funds for the 16 Michigan Electors fighting the politicised attacks from the Evil [Michigan Attorney General] Dana Nessel!”

“In the privacy of my own home, I exercised my right to free speech when I expressed concern about how people’s frustration over an overreaching government worries me,” Mr Maddock told The Messenger in a statement.

Mr Maddock has frequently expressed his anger at the charges, comparing them to Nazism.

“They’re trying to take away our right to appeal an election or just to question the election,” he has said. “They want to make damn sure that anyone who questions the election or disputes the election in 2024 is threatened by what they’re doing to our electors and other people throughout this nation. That you will not say anything. You are going to shut the F up and you were going to walk into that gas chamber. That’s what they want because that’s what’s coming for us.”

The Michigan prosecution was just the beginning of investigations and charges across the country related to the false electors scheme.

On the federal level, the indictment against Donald Trump for allegedly conspiring to overturn the 2020 election has revealed that prosecutors have an internal memo from the Trump campaign, where leaders discussed what they called a “bold, controversial strategy” to send slates of Trump-backing electors from the states to attempt to cast votes in the Electoral College on his behalf, even in states where the Biden campaign won.>

<When Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA) questioned US climate envoy John Kerry at an oversight hearing in July — a month that became the hottest ever recorded — he sidestepped that the country was in the grip of repeated heat waves, fires, and a looming hurricane season. Over a six-minute interrogation, the House Freedom Caucus chair claimed Kerry wanted to charge taxpayers a “quadrillion dollars to fix a problem that doesn’t exist” and accused him, along with thousands of scientists and the 195 governments signed onto the Paris climate accord, of “grifting.”

Kerry shook his head when Perry concluded. “That’s a pretty shocking statement,” he said, “that you believe all the scientists of the world are grifters.”

The shock from the emotionally charged attack may have been the point. “There’s a longstanding history of climate deniers going after the messenger as well as the message,” Geoffrey Supran, a University of Miami associate professor who studies climate disinformation, told Vox. “The harder it is to dismantle the message, the easier it is to go after the individuals most prominently communicating it.”

Collective climate change denial in the Republican Party is not new. But the Perry-Kerry exchange illustrates how the GOP’s claims are becoming increasingly audacious — as signals from human-caused climate change become all the more apparent.

Record heat? “Normal”: “It’s hot, hot, hot all right,” said Laura Ingraham on her Fox News show. “After all, we’re in the middle of a season called ‘summer.’” (Fact check: More than 3,000 temperature records were shattered in the US for the month of July alone, something scientists say would be “virtually impossible” without human-caused climate change.)

Forest fires? “Nature naturally burns itself off every 11 years with natural disaster forest fires,” said Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK). “This is a forest fire.” (Fact check: The severity of wildfires such as the historic blazes in Canada this year are fueled by complex conditions including forest management and drought primed by climate change.)

Stronger hurricanes? Just a part of life: “This is something that is a fact of life in the Sunshine State,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said in a Fox News interview. “I’ve always rejected the politicization of the weather.” (Fact check: Climate change drives the warming of ocean waters, which provide fuel for more devastating hurricanes and typhoons.)

More Americans are impacted by climate change; 62 percent of all voters recognize climate change is caused by human activity, according to a Gallup poll from this spring. Yet, climate change denial is not only alive and well in the GOP, it’s become “a lot more insidious and polarizing,” said John Cook, a University of Melbourne researcher who has tracked the path of climate disinformation online using artificial intelligence.

Here is what has made climate change denial worse.

Climate change denial is becoming more personal

Americans increasingly care about climate change, unless you’re asking the Republican voter base. The GOP’s obsession that liberal elites want to worsen the average person’s way of life through climate action has chipped away at their voters’ support for solutions and belief that the planet is warming. Party leaders and presidential candidates have insisted, wrongly, that Democrats’ climate solutions will mean bans on laundry machines, hamburgers, and gas stoves and that unabated “wokeism” has infiltrated the corporate world.

It’s a useful scare tactic, employed to delay action. Supran, who has conducted research on historical oil industry ads, found those in the 1990s “trotting out the same rhetoric, with different wording: ‘No more SUVs, no more driving around freely,’” to stave off new energy efficiency standards.

“It plays into this elitist narrative, that these are the elites and they aren’t like us and they’re trying to tell us all these cultural changes they’re trying to bring about,” explained Bob Inglis, a Republican and former South Carolina member of Congress who now runs the advocacy group RepublicEn to promote climate solutions among conservatives. Inglis said it’s helpful for the politicians who sell doubt on climate change to make it seem like people who support solutions “have their heads in the clouds trying to solve things the rest of us practical people don’t need.”

Inglis pointed out the problem with this narrative. “The thing about climate change is we’re all experiencing it right now,” he said. “We’re all in the midst of it.”

The party is making climate a culture war issue

Republicans have spent years hammering this message to the electorate and it has made a major difference to the average Republican voter. Research shows that the GOP politicians’ cues do impact how voters see the issue.....>

<.....We can measure the effect of their rhetoric in the polling: A recent Gallup survey looked at partisan divides on a number of issues every 10 years from 2003 to 2023. One of the starkest shifts in the polling was around party views on global warming and environmental issues, ranking alongside gun laws and abortion as having the highest polarization. Republicans have become less concerned with global warming, even as the effects have grown more pronounced since 2013. And fewer Republicans think global warming is a result of human activity today than they did 20 years ago.

There are serious consequences to all this, and the far right plans to translate climate denial into official federal policy that encourages fossil fuels and blocks a clean energy transition, should Donald Trump win the next presidential election.

The conservative think tank Heritage Foundation has drawn a 920-page blueprint called Project 2025 to unravel all of the US’s efforts so far to tackle climate change. It is a methodical, systematic undoing of the federal bureaucracy, Politico first reported, shuttering key programs from the Environmental Protection Agency, slashing climate and clean energy solutions, blocking the expansion of wind and solar on the grid, and turning over pollution oversight to the fossil fuel industry and handpicked Republican officials.

The GOP’s only “climate” policy is actually bad for the environment

Cook has found in his research that Republicans are increasingly concerned with spreading misinformation about solutions, grossly oversimplifying what needs to be done to avoid addressing fossil fuel emissions. One of those misleading ideas is a House Republican push for the Trillion Trees Act, which has not come up for a vote.

When Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-AR) first proposed the Trillion Trees Act in 2020, environmentalists said the bill “would significantly increase logging across America’s federal forests, convert millions of acres into industrial tree plantations, increase carbon emissions, increase wildfire risk, and harm wildlife and watersheds.” The idea was a wolf in sheep’s clothing, effectively giving loggers more allowances as long as they planted seedlings which are decades away from delivering climate benefits.

But the GOP has come to champion the idea as their climate plan. “We need to manage our forests better so our environment can be stronger,” said House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA). McCarthy proposed planting trees so the US could focus on its natural gas industry, one of the world’s leading methane polluters. “Let’s replace Russian natural gas with American natural gas, and let’s not only have a cleaner world, let’s have a safer world,” he said.

Trump was in favor of a tree initiative while president, even while he was dismantling government action on climate change. And other leading climate deniers have focused on “forest management” or the timber industry as an easy fix for worsening wildfires. In a CNN town hall in June, presidential candidate Mike Pence said, “We’ve got to be able to tell some of the radical environmentalists that you’ve got to harvest some trees in the forest to keep the forest healthy.”

Planting a trillion trees to save us from climate change is not a serious proposal on its own. The authors of the 2019 study that has inspired the GOP’s talking point have themselves said that planting trees alone does not eliminate “the urgent need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”

As Inglis put it, “trees can be part of the solution, but they’re not a solution on the scale of the problem. ... What we’re looking for is a worldwide solution to the challenge of climate change.” Inglis’s group advocates for what he calls a conservative approach that does address the scale of the problem, a revenue-neutral carbon tax along with a border tax adjustment that works across the economy.

The GOP idea to plant more trees may seem innocuous compared to calling climate change a hoax, but the outcome is the same. They will try “anything that pushes the problem downstream,” said Supran, to shut down more immediate action. Invariably, inertia on climate change benefits the status quo — which just so happens to benefit fossil fuel industries, a major benefactor of the Republican Party.

“There’s so much talk but so little commitment to action both from the GOP and fossil fuel interests,” Supran said. “I feel like we’re in some kind of twilight zone, the talking points go round and round. The end result is just the same as it’s always been, which is lackluster action.”>

<Donald Trump should be paying attention to the recent development in another high-profile case, according to political and legal experts.

Trump was slapped with a compromise protective order earlier in the day in the criminal case alleging he unlawfully attempted to overturn the 2020 presidential election. That same day, news came down that FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried to jail for witness tampering.

"Go ahead DJT," said former chief White House ethics lawyer Richard W. Painter. "SBF wants a cell mate and he'd love to meet you."

Former FBI agent Peter Strzok also made note of similarities.

"Wealthy, high-profile defendant thrown in jail by federal judge for violating bail conditions by engaging in witness intimidation through leaking derogatory information about a witness to the media," he said Friday.

Former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance added, "Hope Trump is paying attention" after seeing the news.

The news comes in the aftermath of Trump social media posts that some experts said bordered on witness tampering misconduct.>

Viddy well!

<Former President Donald Trump could potentially face a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) case in Georgia, according to an expert.

Georgia’s RICO statute is considered more expansive than the federal code. To prove racketeering, prosecutors must convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that at least two of the racketeering activities are related in terms of method, purpose, or victims, said Morgan Cloud, a law professor at Emory University.

Cloud believes the goal in Trump’s case was to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.

“It has to be not just one separate isolated event, but a series of interrelated actions,” Cloud said, adding, “The racketeering statute does not look simply at a single crime, it tries to look at the big picture of view.”

Cloud suggested several key events after the 2020 election could be considered “actions taken as part of that scheme” under Georgia’s RICO statute. This includes three phone calls Trump made to Georgia officials encouraging them to find fraud.

Letters were sent in 2022 by Willis’ office to multiple Trump allies, warning that they could face unspecified charges. This includes Trump’s former attorney, Rudy Giuliani, and so-called “fake electors.”

Trump has denied any wrongdoing, describing his conversation with Georgia Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger as “an absolutely perfect phone call.”

The ongoing investigations into Trump and his allies over the 2020 election loss in Georgia are part of a series of legal difficulties faced by the former president. Notably, Trump’s legal battles have escalated in recent months, with potential charges relating to the mishandling of classified documents and a trial for his alleged attempts to overturn his defeat in the 2020 election.>

Yer hamstrung, sucka!!!!

<Democrat Tamie Wilson is running for Congress. The self-described small business owner, mother and former USMC spouse is campaigning to unseat Ohio Republican incumbent Jim Jordan in the 2024 election. Wilson says she’s “fighting for equality, education, workers, families, climate, econ, cut taxes & crime.”

Wilson’s campaign is encouraged by this week’s special election in Ohio, where voters overwhelmingly shot down “Issue 1” — a Republican-led proposal to raise the threshold for approving future changes to the state constitution (including, notably, abortion rights) to 60% from the simple majority currently required.

Issue 1 was promoted heavily in the state by MAGA GOP heavyweights, including former Arizona governor candidate and MAGA star Kari Lake — who claimed on the day Ohioans lined up to vote that the voting machines “don’t work.” (Lake’s chief talking point is rigged elections, by which she sticks despite what courts say.)

Candidate Wilson, reading the results as further evidence of Rep. Jordan’s vulnerability, replied to Lake directly. Wilson even implied that Lake’s backing helped sink the ship, since the Arizonan does more harm than good for her side when campaigning on an issue. Wilson wrote:

“Girl, for once, take off your tin foil hat and just accept your MAGA cult just got CRUSHED! It’s no conspiracy to say 2/3 of Ohio destroyed Issue 1 because 1) You came to our state and promoted it 2) Ohio is NOT a red state.”>

<Former Donald Trump election fraud advocate Sydney [sic] Powell should expect a criminal indictment in the very near future because allies of the former president have been ratting her out to special counsel Jack Smith's investigators.

According to a report from Rolling Stone, the controversial lawyer has been thrown under the bus by Trump insiders for her part in a plot to steal the 2020 presidential election.

Former top Trump attorney Tim Parlatore admitted in an interview that longtime Rudy Giuliani associate Bernie Kerik pointed the finger at Powell while also questioning her sanity.

In an interview Parlatore explained, "Based on the contents of their questions, and my understanding of criminal law, the main individual who was discussed who Mr. Kerik gave any information that could be incriminating would be Sidney. That there was no back-up for anything she said, that when she was asked to provide proof she didn’t produce anything, and when she was cut loose [from the official Trump legal team], how she kept trying to push her way in.”

The report notes that there were questions over whether Powell might have suffered a "mental break" and that the term "lunatic" was bandied about.

The report adds that the intensity and focus on Powell in questioning led one person who spoke with investigators to conclude, “Sidney’s f**ked," to which Parlatore added: “I agree.”>

<If Wisconsin state Rep. Jimmy Anderson wants to visit residents in some of the northern neighborhoods he represents, he first must leave his own district — twice.

From his Fitchburg home in suburban Madison, Anderson must exit his 47th Assembly District, pass through the 77th District, reenter the 47th District, then head north through the 48th District to finally reach a cluster of homes assigned like a remote outpost to his district.

Unusual? Yes. Inconvenient? Yes.

Unconstitutional? Perhaps.

Though the Wisconsin Constitution requires legislative districts “to consist of contiguous territory,” many nonetheless contain sections of land that are not actually connected. The resulting map looks a bit like Swiss cheese, where some districts are dotted with small neighborhood holes assigned to different representatives.

Wisconsin's nationally peculiar practice of detached districts is cited as one of several alleged violations in a recent lawsuit seeking to strike down current Assembly and Senate districts and replace them before the 2024 election.

Like similar cases in states ranging from North Carolina to Utah, the Wisconsin lawsuit also alleges partisan gerrymandering is illegal under the state constitution's guarantee of equal protection and free speech.

Though such claims have had mixed results nationally, Democrats hope the Wisconsin Supreme Court's new liberal majority will deliver a resounding rejection of gerrymandering that has given Republicans a lopsided legislative majority.

But the challenge to noncontiguous districts could provide judges a way to decide the case without ever addressing whether partisan gerrymandering is illegal.

“It could be that this gives the court a completely neutral basis for deciding the maps are no good,” said Kenneth R. Mayer, a University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor.

Wisconsin's Assembly districts rank among the most tilted nationally, with Republicans routinely winning far more seats than would be expected based on their average share of the vote, according to an Associated Press analysis. In other states, such as Nevada, Democrats have reaped a disproportionate advantage from redistricting.

Most states are guided by at least four traditional principles for reshaping state legislative districts after each decennial census. Those include districts being nearly equal in population, compact and contiguous and following the boundaries of cities and counties. “Contiguous” generally is understood to mean all parts of a district are connected, with some logical exceptions for islands.

In some states, mapmakers have gotten creative by using narrow strips of roads or rivers to connect otherwise distinct parts of a district. But few have gone so far as Wisconsin in treating contiguous as a loose synonym for “nearby.”

Wisconsin's detached districts are ”profoundly weird," said Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Marymount University Law School in Los Angeles who created the All About Redistricting website.

Anderson's legislative district, for example, includes more than a dozen remote territories scattered around the Madison area that are disconnected from the district's main portion in Fitchburg, McFarland and Monona. That makes door-to-door canvassing particularly challenging for Anderson, who uses a wheelchair that must be repeatedly loaded and unloaded from a van.

The situation also is confusing for his remote constituents whose neighbors are represented by someone else, Anderson said.

“It just doesn’t serve the people that live in those little bubbles to not have the same kind of community cohesion and interests being represented," he said.

Gabrielle Young, 46, lives in one of the “land islands” Anderson represents. But until she was contacted by lawyers filing the redistricting lawsuit, Young said she had no idea Anderson had to travel through another district to campaign in her neighborhood. Young agreed to serve as a plaintiff in the lawsuit alleging the disconnected districts violate the state constitution.

“I could have gone the rest of my life living here not realizing it was happening, but that doesn’t make it OK,” she said. “It’s ridiculous.”

Among other things, the lawsuit cites an 1892 case in which the Wisconsin Supreme Court stated districts “cannot be made up of two or more pieces of detached territory.” Yet the practice proliferated over time, with 55 of the 99 Assembly districts and 21 of the 33 Senate districts now composed of disconnected portions, according to the lawsuit.

“Clearly, at some point, things sort of went awry,” said Mark Gaber, senior director of redistricting at Campaign Legal Center, a Washington, D.C.-based group that helped bring the lawsuit.

"It seems pretty clear to me that you have to enforce the words as they are written,” Gaber added....>