<Donald Trump has slammed the appointment of a special counsel to oversee the investigations into his handling of classified information and the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021.

“I have been going through this for six years — for six years I have been going through this, and I am not going to go through it anymore,” Mr Trump told Fox News Digital on Friday after the counsel was revealed. “And I hope the Republicans have the courage to fight this.”

“I have been proven innocent for six years on everything — from fake impeachments to [former special counsel Robert] Mueller who found no collusion, and now I have to do it more?” he added. “It is not acceptable. It is so unfair. It is so political.”

“I am not going to partake in it,” Mr Trump said. “I’m not going to partake in this.”

He said it’s “not even believable”.

“I have never heard of such a thing. They found nothing. I announce and then they appoint a special prosecutor,” he said. “They found nothing, and now they take some guy who hates Trump. This is a disgrace and only happening because I am leading in every poll in both parties.”

“It is not even believable that they’re allowed to do this. This is the worst politicization of justice in our country,” he said.

The former president then went on to attack President Joe Biden and his family.

“Hunter Biden is a criminal many times over and nothing happens to him,” Mr Trump told Fox News Digital. “Joe Biden is a criminal many times over — and nothing happens to them [sic].”

“It is unfair to the country, to the Republican Party, and I don’t think people should accept it. I am not going to accept it,” he said. “The Republican Party has to stand up and fight.”

Regarding the allegation that he removed classified documents from the White House upon leaving office, Mr Trump claimed to Fox that “every other president took records, and they didn’t do anything about it”.

Regarding January 6, Mr Trump asserted that he “did nothing wrong” and that he told his supporters to protest “peacefully and patriotically”.

A spokesperson for the former president told Fox that “this is a totally expected political stunt by a feckless, politicized, weaponized Biden Department of Justice”.

Before Mr Trump spoke to Fox, The New York Times reported on his rage and that he’s hoping to use it to “muddy the waters”.

Mr Trump has told some of his close associates that the idea of a special counsel to review the litany of allegations against him put him into a rage, particularly because of his experience of the Mueller investigation which looked into the Trump campaign’s connections to Russia in 2016.

Mr Trump thinks the special counsel investigation into him “could hang over him for months,” according to the paper. But they also noted that the appointment of a special counsel could push back any prosecution.

Advisers to the former president say that his legal team has told him that declaring his 2024 campaign, as he did on the evening of 15 November, wouldn’t stop any incoming indictment.

The New York Times reported that Mr Trump knows that he can “use the unprecedented circumstances to muddy the waters”....>

Rest on the way....

<....The New York Times reported that Mr Trump knows that he can “use the unprecedented circumstances to muddy the waters”.

Despite the news of Attorney General Merrick Garland appointing Jack Smith, a former head of the Department of Justice public integrity section and who has held positions at the International Criminal Court and the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York, Mr Trump chose to use his bully pulpit on his Truth Social platform to complain about the conservative magazine National Review.

“Why does anyone read the National Review?” the former president asked on Friday afternoon. “They are so negative to Conservatives and me, and are seen as being led by lightweights that couldn’t shine the shoes of Bill Buckley. They have absolutely nothing going, it is failing fast, and my only question is, who is paying for the losses—when it loses plenty of money and serves no purpose at all. People are tired of haters—let the National Review die peacefully!”

The outburst was possibly a reaction to a piece by the editors of the magazine simply titled “No” in reaction to Mr Trump’s 2024 announcement, beginning “To paraphrase Voltaire after he attended an orgy, once was an experiment, twice would be perverse”.

“A bruised Donald Trump announced a new presidential bid on Tuesday night, an invitation to double down on the outrages and failures of the last several years that Republicans should reject without hesitation or doubt,” the editors wrote.

“The Trump administration was chaotic even on its best days because of his erratic nature and lack of seriousness,” they added.

“Throughout his career, Jack Smith has built a reputation as an impartial and determined prosecutor, who leads teams with energy and focus to follow the facts, wherever they lead. As special counsel, he will exercise independent prosecutorial judgment to decide whether charges should be brought,” Mr Garland said on Friday.

Mr Smith said in a statement that he intends to conduct the investigations under his purview and “ any prosecutions that may result from them independently and in the best traditions of the Department of Justice”.

“The pace of the investigations will not pause or flag under my watch. I will exercise independent judgment and will move the investigation forward expeditiously and thoroughly to whatever outcome the facts and the law dictates,” he added.

<The criminal trial of Donald J. Trump’s family business took an emotional turn Thursday as one of the former president’s most loyal executives laid bare the machinery of a sprawling tax fraud, scoring points for both prosecution and defense during hours of illuminating testimony.

The executive, Allen H. Weisselberg, several times bolstered Manhattan prosecutors’ contention that the scheme benefited not just himself, but the Trump Organization. He testified that the off-the-books luxuries he and other executives received saved the company money in taxes.

Yet Mr. Weisselberg, 75, who started working for the Trumps decades ago, rose to become chief financial officer and is now the prosecution’s star witness, also distanced Mr. Trump and his family from the wrongdoing. He testified that they did not team up with him, nor authorize him to commit crimes. He agreed more than a dozen times that he had acted only for himself. Near tears, he testified that he had betrayed a company he had served for decades.

And asked by a defense lawyer, Alan Futerfas, whether he was embarrassed, Mr. Weisselberg, his gravelly voice soft, replied, “More than you can imagine.”

The testimony, which unspooled over more than seven hours in a chilly downtown courtroom, injected a burst of human drama into what has otherwise been a dissection of financial minutiae. The jury, subdued during the trial's early days, appeared captivated by what might become the proceeding’s most crucial moments.

To avoid a long prison sentence, Mr. Weisselberg in August pleaded guilty to 17 felonies and agreed to testify against the Trump Organization. But he remains on its payroll, collecting a $640,000 salary, and has refused to turn on Mr. Trump, the subject of a broader investigation by the Manhattan district attorney’s office.

With his freedom and livelihood on the line, Mr. Weisselberg is the man in the middle. He is caught between the prosecutors with whom he struck a deal and the family that has employed him for nearly a half-century.

“Mr. Weisselberg’s legal situation is as complex as that faced by any witness,” said his lawyer, Nicholas A. Gravante Jr., noting that Mr. Weisselberg had to testify even though he continues to be “a loyal employee of the Trump Organization.” He added that Mr. Weisselberg will “answer every question truthfully, and let the chips fall where they may.”

In recent weeks, Mr. Gravante and Mr. Weisselberg met with both sides to prepare for his testimony, an unusual arrangement that underscores the delicacy of Mr. Weisselberg’s position.

The extensive preparation also reflects the importance of his testimony: The outcome of the trial may hinge on what Mr. Weisselberg says. If the company is convicted, facing financial penalties for felonies, his testimony will almost certainly have been invaluable.

Even an acquittal for the companies may not erase the stigma of a longtime lieutenant — someone whom Mr. Trump once called “a wonderful guy” — delivering an incriminating narrative to an eager courtroom. Mr. Weisselberg’s testimony, which began the same week Mr. Trump announced his third presidential run, will leave a lasting mark on the company, no matter the verdict.

The case centers on the inner workings of the Trump Organization, where Mr. Weisselberg and other executives were compensated under the table with lavish perks. Mr. Weisselberg failed to pay taxes on those benefits, which included his plush Manhattan apartment, tuition for his grandchildren, his leased Mercedes-Benzes and even his cable bill.

Mr. Weisselberg and the company were charged in the summer of 2021; a year later, he pleaded guilty, reaching a deal with prosecutors that required him to testify truthfully about the scheme. If he does so, he is expected to be sentenced to five months in jail and with good behavior could end up serving as little as 100 days behind bars.

Related video: Weisselberg finishes testimony in Trump Org trial

But if the judge overseeing the case concludes that Mr. Weisselberg lied on the stand, he could face as much as 15 years in prison.

Already, Mr. Weisselberg has provided crucial testimony to support the prosecution’s case, admitting in his first appearance on the stand Tuesday that he had received the perks and that he knew he failed to pay taxes on them.....>

<....On Thursday, he built on those admissions, detailing the organic origins of the scheme, which was more a crime of opportunity than sophistication. It was enabled by the disorganization of the company’s accounting department and developed over the years.

As the company grew from a local real estate developer to a small empire that operated casinos and international properties, new perks were added on an ad hoc basis. At one point, Mr. Weisselberg learned that other employees received luxury cars; asked if he wanted one, too, “I said, ‘sure,’” he testified.

Yet another benefit was born of a casual remark from the boss. In explaining the origins of Mr. Trump personally paying the tuition for Mr. Weisselberg’s grandchildren, Mr. Weisselberg described a scene that took place in Mr. Trump’s office years ago, in which Mr. Trump was lamenting the expense of his own grandchildren’s tuition.

“If I have to pay more in the way of tuition bills for these kids, I may as well pay your grandkids’ too,” he said to Mr. Weisselberg, half-joking. But days later, Mr. Weisselberg walked back into Mr. Trump’s office with an invoice for the tuition, and soon Mr. Trump was paying it.

The testimony established the former president’s closest link to the tax scheme. While prosecutors have not accused Mr. Trump or his family of being involved in the scheme, they have sought to link him to some of the perks, a strategy that could help grab the jury’s attention.

Mr. Weisselberg testified that, after initially saying that he would repay Mr. Trump, he never did. When the lead prosecutor, Susan Hoffinger, asked Mr. Weisselberg how much the tuition actually cost, he quipped, “It was too much,” offering a rare moment of levity before saying that it was $100,000.

To prove their case against the Trump Organization, prosecutors must show that Mr. Weisselberg was acting “in behalf of” the company. While that phrase is open to some interpretation, the judge, Juan Merchan, has said that prosecutors must introduce evidence that Mr. Weisselberg’s “acts were not undertaken solely” for his own interests.

Under questioning from prosecutors on Thursday morning, Mr. Weisselberg appeared to provide them ammunition for the argument that he was acting in behalf of the company. Although he did not repay Mr. Trump directly for the tuition, he subtracted the money from his overall compensation. Mr. Weisselberg testified that he essentially paid the family back by reducing his salary and his bonus.

“The amount of money I was being given was too much, and I thought the right thing to do was pay the company back,” Mr. Weisselberg said.

Ms. Hoffinger also asked Mr. Weisselberg how an aspect of the scheme involving health care benefits benefited the company. “They were able to save a small portion of Medicare taxes,” he answered.

But if the company has a chance of securing an acquittal, or even a hung jury, the defense laid the groundwork on cross-examination.

Mr. Futerfas coaxed Mr. Weisselberg into acknowledging that Mr. Trump was not to blame for the scheme, saying, “He didn’t authorize you to commit tax fraud, did he?” Mr. Weisselberg agreed that Mr. Trump did not.

And when Mr. Futerfas asked Mr. Weisselberg, “Were you reducing the compensation because you didn’t want to hurt the company?” He responded, “No, my intention was to save pretax dollars,” a key admission that could undercut the prosecution’s attempt to show that Mr. Weisselberg was not acting solely for his own benefit.

Mr. Futerfas, referring to the tuition, asked if it was “solely done to benefit you, Allen Weisselberg.” Mr. Weisselberg agreed that it was.

Mr. Weisselberg’s testimony has presented a vexing challenge for the Trump Organization’s lawyers. They are eager to pin the tax scheme on him, with one of the company’s lawyers, Michael van der Veen, repeating throughout the trial that “Weisselberg did it for Weisselberg.”

And as cross-examination continues, the Trump Organization’s lawyers might suggest that Mr. Weisselberg agreed to testify only under duress, noting that he could have faced years in prison if not for the plea deal.

But the lawyers have also been careful to portray Mr. Weisselberg, whose cooperation prosecutors are seeking in the broader investigation of Mr. Trump’s business practices, in a compassionate light.

“Since the crimes have been discovered, he has been treated like a close family member who made serious and even criminal mistakes,” Mr. van der Veen said in his opening argument. “It’s a story as old as time. We all know the Bible story of the prodigal son.”>

<....Got news for you <keypusher>, nobody values your crap posts on the Rogoff page, so if you want to save them, go use the search kibitzing function, find them, save them in a Word doc and keep them on your PC.

These arrogant people actually think their political rants have genius level value, as if they should be enshrined forever in the annals of history.

Are you kidding me?

These eggheads are not well-adjusted.

Nobody's posts, on the whole, are of greater value than mine on the Rogoff page and you don't see me trying to save them....>

This, for the deniers who claim <jussie kudzu> never made a play against this site:

<....<Petrosianic....You know, if we wanted to be mean, we could have a chess debate here, and annoy everyone.>

<The former President of the United States accused the Federal Bureau of Investigation of extensively lying in a social media outburst.

Donald Trump took to his Truth Social account to cast doubt on FBI agents after special counsel Jack Smith was charged with investigating the Mar-a-Lago documents case, Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election, and the obstruction of justice.

"Nobody should ever be interviewed by the FBI without making a recording of the interview," Trump, who is not an attorney, counseled.

"The FBI doesn’t want recorded interviews because that way they can make up statements as to what was said - happens all the time," Trump alleged.

"Our corrupt 'justice' system is at work today like never before," he alleged.

In August, Trump invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination at least 440 times when being interviewed by the office of New York Attorney General Letitia James.>

<Hours before Kari Lake was projected to lose her race for Arizona governor, attorneys for her campaign and for the Republican National Committee spoke by phone Monday to a lawyer for Maricopa County, home to Phoenix and more than half the state’s voters.

The Lake representatives posed a series of questions about voting problems on Election Day, nearly a week earlier. Then, toward the end of the phone call, an attorney for the RNC stressed the importance of rapid answers, according to the Maricopa attorney, Tom Liddy, a lifelong Republican who heads the county’s office for civil litigation.

Liddy recalled that the RNC attorney, whom he and others identified as Benjamin Mehr, told him that there were “a lot of irate people out there” and that the campaign “can’t control them.”

Liddy said in an interview Friday that he considered those words a threat.

On Friday night, a Twitter account associated with Lake’s campaign posted a video of a portion of the call that captures Liddy cursing and raising his voice. The Lake campaign did not respond to a request for the full video, which was taken from inside the GOP’s war room at a Scottsdale resort. County officials said they were blindsided that the conversation had been recorded and then posted publicly with the names of only one side bleeped out.

Tim La Sota, an attorney for the Lake campaign who was present for the call, did not dispute Liddy’s characterization of the conversation but said he did not interpret Mehr’s comments as a threat. An RNC spokesman called Liddy’s account of the call “false” and issued a statement attacking Maricopa County officials as “completely inept.”

The tense exchange, between two Republican lawyers, lays bare the internal GOP war over the administration of elections. Nowhere is that feud more ferocious than in Maricopa County, the second-largest voting jurisdiction in the country, which became a focal point of former president Donald Trump’s efforts to reverse his 2020 loss. Vote-counting is still proceeding in the county, and the race for state attorney general, which could shape enforcement of election law, hangs in the balance.

The interaction captured on video reveals how intensifying distrust broke into open hostility in the aftermath of the midterm elections. Lake’s campaign has cited problems with printers that plagued voting across Maricopa County to argue that the results should not be certified and that county officials should be thrown out of their jobs.

Lake has not conceded to Democrat Katie Hobbs, who declared victory shortly after major networks called the race on Monday.

The exasperation evident on the call has continued to define Lake’s public comments in the days since, while her campaign’s legal strategy remains unclear. People close to her campaign say potential litigation would be aimed not at reversing the results but at narrowing the margin.

Lake has not called for protests, as Trump did following his loss, but her team has shared memes about Hobbs that portray the Democrat as a dog and call her “unfit” and “downright shady.”

The video clip circulated by the Lake campaign shows the RNC attorney, seated before a computer, holding a phone in his hand, with another person on the other side of him also holding up a phone as if to record the episode. In the clip, the RNC attorney says it would be helpful “for us to be able to say that Tom Liddy is giving us good information.”

“Guess what? Let me educate you,” Liddy replied, according to the video recording. “I cannot control what you say. Okay? You can say whatever you want to say. I can’t control that. Now, if you’re not happy working with me … then we’ll just stop. I don’t give a s---.”

At one point, Liddy said: “It sounds like you’re threatening me.” Mehr responded: “I’m definitely not threatening you, and I promise that.”

Liddy repeated the RNC attorney’s words back to him, as he recalled them. “If I don’t get these answers to you quickly, you’re not going to be able to tell the crazy people that I’ve been helpful,” Liddy said, according to the video recording. “I don’t give a f---.”

“I’m just saying what I’m worried about,” Mehr responded, to which Liddy told him, “I don’t care.”

Liddy’s call log shows the conversation lasted 12 minutes. He said the brief video lacks crucial context explaining his reaction to Mehr’s remarks — namely the alleged invocation of angry members of the public. The RNC spokesman, Nathan Brand, said the video shows “how a Maricopa County attorney responded to an RNC attorney seeking transparency — it’s completely unacceptable.”....>

<....La Sota, the Lake campaign attorney, told The Washington Post the call was one of many conducted with the county about “garden-variety” issues with ballots. Questions raised early in the call focused on the nature of outstanding ballots and the number of people who failed to properly check out of a voting center after encountering mechanical problems, potentially preventing them from casting a ballot elsewhere.

La Sota noted that the county attorney was in the middle of a stressful situation but said he thought Liddy overreacted. Liddy, a lifelong Republican, is the son of G. Gordon Liddy, the lawyer who devised the botched burglary that led to the Watergate scandal and the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon. He served as deputy counsel for the RNC during the 1990s.

Liddy told The Post he reported the exchange to his boss, County Attorney Rachel Mitchell, as well as to Sheriff Paul Penzone (D) and Bill Gates, the Republican chairman of the county’s governing board.

Lake’s campaign has been excoriating Maricopa County for problems with printers at 70 voting sites. The problems, which involved ink that was too light for ballots to be read, required some people to wait in long lines, travel elsewhere to vote or deposit their ballots in secure boxes that were transferred downtown and counted there. The county has yet to determine the cause of the printer problems.

Arizona precincts with voting problems were not overwhelmingly Republican

On Thursday, Lake told her followers on social media, “Arizona, we are still in this fight.” She traveled that day to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida, where she received a standing ovation at a luncheon hosted by the America First Policy Institute, a think tank founded last year by Trump allies and former members of his administration, according to a person who was there. That evening, she addressed a crowd at the club and claimed, falsely, according to a video circulated on social media, that officials “shut down the machines on Election Day.”

The county, for its part, has blamed Republican leaders in the state for spreading misinformation about early voting and making baseless claims of malfeasance. In the days surrounding the Nov. 8 election, the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office relocated Gates to an undisclosed location because of threats, Gates confirmed Friday to The Post....>

<....The county attorney’s office represents the two entities responsible for elections: the board of supervisors and the county recorder. After the 2020 race, Liddy played a leading role in advising county officials as Trump and his allies sought to delay and reverse certification of the results, and to undermine confidence in the results through a partisan ballot review that culminated in an investigation into county officials by Arizona’s Republican attorney general, Mark Brnovich.

Liddy told The Post that he reacted to the RNC attorney’s comments in the context of threats buffeting county officials and others who defended the legitimacy of the 2020 election. Among those targeted was Rusty Bowers, the Republican speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives, who resisted a pressure campaign to undo Trump’s loss in the state and faced protests outside his home as a result, including as his 42-year-old daughter was dying at his home in January 2021.

“This is in the context of us having people in the streets all throughout 2020; of people going out to the streets in front of Rusty Bowers’s home while his daughter was dying; of hundreds, if not thousands, of threats of death or imprisonment that have been sent to my clients who are officers or employees of Maricopa County, of death threats to me and to my son,” Liddy said.

Liddy said that the questions posed by Lake’s campaign were routine and that he worked to answer them promptly.

“What I found shocking,” he added, “is that a member of the bar would threaten another lawyer.”

The Monday call came amid increasingly fraught relations between Republican campaigns and Maricopa County.

On Nov. 10, two days after the election, a Phoenix-based attorney representing the RNC wrote to the county’s director of elections to ask that his department “remain running 24 hours a day” to process ballots and release results, according to emails obtained by The Post. A county leader replied that the elections department was already “operating at peak capacity.” Election officials had previously emphasized that counting could take as many as 12 days.

This past week, Lake issued a series of video testimonials on Twitter from voters who claim to have been denied a chance to cast their ballots. The voters described encountering mechanical glitches or other barriers they described as discouraging, though some concluded their direct-to-camera remarks by saying they did ultimately cast a ballot.

La Sota, the Lake campaign attorney, has also requested wide-ranging communications and other documents from the county, according to a copy of the request obtained by The Post. Addressed to Liddy, the request seeks all communications before Election Day among county officials and agents “with regard to problems with tabulation or printing of ballots at vote centers.”

La Sota wrote that none of the voter centers open for early voting on Oct. 12 encountered tabulation problems, which he argued “would not make any logical sense.” A county spokeswoman confirmed that printer problems only surfaced on Election Day. But early ballots were all tabulated downtown, the same place where ballots with ink that was too light were sent for counting.>

<In a column for Intelligencer, longtime political observer Jonathan Chait ridiculed Donald Trump over his protest late Friday after he learned that the DOJ is enlisting a special counsel to take over the current investigations into his inciting the Jan. 6 riot, and his squirreling away top secret government documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort, which could lead to espionage charges.

During Trump's harangue he complained, "We are innocent, they are not innocent by any stretch of the imagination. They're criminals, I've done nothing wrong, they've participated in massive criminal activity with many nations."

He then added, "It's not a fair situation what's going on."

As Chait pointed out the former president suggested a legal maneuver that would get thrown out immediately in court, calling the former president's assertion, "comically mistaken."

According to Trump, "They tried it, and we went through the whole process, and we won. We went through the whole process. So wouldn’t this sort of be, a – then you take a look at the other. We went through two of them. Isn’t this sort of like double jeopardy? In the old days we used to call it 'double jeopardy.'"

Assuming Trump was referencing his two impeachments, Chait stated they were irrelevant.

'Trump’s first defense is that, because he was previously impeached twice by Congress but not removed from office, prosecuting him for stealing documents would be , double jeopardy,'" he wrote before explaining.

"There is some popular misunderstanding of the double jeopardy principle. The 1999 movie 'Double Jeopardy' starred Ashley Judd as a woman whose husband faked his own death and framed her for the murder. In prison, a fellow inmate advises her that once she gets out, she can find and kill her husband and avoid prosecution because she can’t be charged for the same crime twice. (Hence the title of the film,)" he wrote. "This advice is wrong — killing her husband years later would be a different crime, for which she could absolutely be charged — and in general you should not commit felonies on the basis of free legal advice you heard from a fellow inmate."

He then added, "Even so, this comically mistaken grasp of double jeopardy is less ridiculous than Trump’s notion that it means that, having beaten the rap for one crime (or in his case, many crimes), you are free to commit more crimes without prosecution," before joking, "That would be a gigantic loophole in the legal system.">

<....I hope Mike is going to do the right thing. I hope so. I hope so.

Because if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election. All he has to do, all this is, this is from the number one, or certainly one of the top, Constitutional lawyers in our country. He has the absolute right to do it. We're supposed to protect our country, support our country, support our Constitution, and protect our constitution.

States want to revote. The states got defrauded. They were given false information. They voted on it. Now they want to recertify. They want it back. All Vice President Pence has to do is send it back to the states to recertify and we become president and you are the happiest people.

<House Democrats swiftly pushed back at Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy in response to his threat to strip them of their committee assignments if he is elected as speaker.

After Republicans narrowly won back control of the House in the midterm elections, McCarthy this weekend doubled down on his pledge to remove several prominent House Democrats from their committee assignments if he becomes speaker. McCarthy said he would not allow Reps. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., to serve on their committees.

In a tweet posted Saturday alongside a video clip, McCarthy said that he would keep his promise to remove Omar from the House Foreign Affairs Committee “based on her repeated anti-semitic and anti-American remarks.” He made similar comments during an appearance on Fox News on Sunday.

Omar issued a blistering statement Monday in response to McCarthy’s remarks, taking aim at Republicans for making it “their mission to use fear, xenophobia, Islamophobia and racism to target me on the House Floor and through millions of dollars of campaign ads.”

Omar pointed to McCarthy’s support of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga. During an interview with CNN earlier this month, McCarthy said he would reinstate the far-right lawmaker’s committee assignments if he becomes speaker. Greene was stripped of her assignments last year in light of incendiary remarks musing about the execution of Democratic lawmakers.

“McCarthy’s effort to repeatedly single me out for scorn and hatred— including threatening to strip me from my committee — does nothing to address the issues our constituents deal with. It does nothing to address inflation, healthcare, or solve the climate crisis,” Omar said.

“What it does is gin up fear and hate against Somali-Americans and anyone who shares my identity, and further divide us along racial and ethnic lines,” she continued. “It is a continuation of a sustained campaign against Muslim and African voices, people his party have been trying to ban since Donald Trump first ran for office.”

Schiff, who serves on the House Intelligence Committee, similarly took aim at McCarthy in an interview with ABC News Sunday.

Schiff called McCarthy a “very weak leader” of the GOP conference who will adhere to Greene’s wishes.

“He will adhere to the wishes of the lowest common denominator,” Schiff said when asked about McCarthy’s vow to remove him from the House Intelligence Committee. “And if that lowest common denominator wants to remove people from committees, that’s what they’ll do.”

“It’s going to be chaos with Republican leadership,” Schiff added.

Asked by NBC News about his response to McCarthy’s vow, Swalwell said, “talk to me if Kevin McCarthy becomes speaker.”

McCarthy initially made his pledge to boot Schiff, Swalwell and Omar from their committee assignments if the GOP retakes the House in an interview with Breitbart News in January. All three Democratic lawmakers are vocal critics of former President Donald Trump and have repeatedly been targeted by conservatives.

Schiff, a former prosecutor, served as the lead House manager during Trump’s first impeachment trial and is a member of the Jan. 6 committee. Swalwell, also a former prosecutor, was an impeachment manager during Trump's second impeachment trial.

<Alex Jones was losing in court.

Sandy Hook families sued Alex Jones. Then he started moving money around.

Parents of children killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School had sued him and his media company for defamation after he repeatedly claimed the 2012 massacre in Connecticut was a hoax. Fans of the Infowars host had harassed and threatened grieving families. By the summer of 2020, two of the lawsuits weren’t going his way.

As the potential for damages mounted, Jones began moving millions of dollars out of his company, Free Speech Systems, and into companies controlled by himself, friends or relatives, according to a Washington Post review of financial statements, depositions and other court records. The transfers potentially put those funds out of reach of the Sandy Hook plaintiffs.

Between August 2020 and November 2021, Free Speech Systems signed promissory notes — essentially IOUs — for $55 million to cover what it said were past debts to a company called PQPR Holdings that Jones owns with his parents, according to financial records filed in court by Jones’s attorneys. PQPR, which is managed by Jones’s father, a dentist, had bought tens of millions of dollars in supplements for Jones that he then sold on his show, the records say. A lawyer for Free Speech Systems has said in court that the debt accrued unnoticed due to sloppy bookkeeping.

This year, Jones started paying his personal trainer $100,000 a week to help ship supplements and other merchandise, a Free Speech Systems attorney said in court. A company managed by Jones’s sister and listed as a “supplier or vendor” was paid $240,000, financial records show.

Courts have awarded the Sandy Hook families nearly $1.5 billion in damages against Jones, including $45.2 million in a Texas case in August and $965 million in a Connecticut case two months later. On Nov. 10, the judge in the Connecticut case ordered Jones to pay an additional $473 million in punitive damages, including $323 million for legal fees. Jones has said on his show that he plans to appeal.

The IOUs and other recent transactions helped tip Free Speech Systems into bankruptcy in July, according to Jones’s court filings. An accountant hired by Jones calculated that Free Speech Systems had $79 million in liabilities at the end of May and only $14 million in assets, court records show. As a result, the Sandy Hook families could be left vying with other creditors — including the companies tied to Jones himself — to collect.

The bankruptcy court will ultimately determine which creditors are paid and how much. It is examining whether the promissory notes to PQPR and other transactions are legitimate. Attorneys for PQPR have argued in court that it should be paid before unsecured creditors, a category that would include the Sandy Hook plaintiffs.

Attorneys for the Sandy Hook families contend in a separate suit filed in April in Texas state court that PQPR is “not actually an independent business” and that Jones has engaged in fraudulent transfers to shield his wealth. They have argued in bankruptcy court that Jones began moving money out of Free Speech Systems only after he began to face legal setbacks in the defamation cases.

“In the middle of this lawsuit, they started documenting debts that had no evidence of existing beforehand,” Sandy Hook attorney Avi Moshenberg said in an interview.

A Justice Department trustee whose role in the bankruptcy case is to ensure the integrity of the process also has criticized the agreement to pay PQPR. “We, the U.S. Trustee, we do have concerns with the underlying transaction,” attorney Ha Nguyen told the court, according to a transcript. An agency spokeswoman declined to comment.

Alex Jones, his personal attorney, and attorneys for Free Speech Systems and PQPR did not respond to requests for comment or to detailed lists of questions from The Post. David Jones, Alex Jones’s father, and an attorney representing him also did not respond to requests for comment.....>

<....Jones and his father have said in court proceedings that PQPR was created in 2013 for liability protection as Jones got into the supplement business and as his father took on a management role. The accountant hired by Jones told the bankruptcy court that PQPR was a legitimate business that shared responsibility with Jones’s main company for “setting up supply chains, obtaining required governmental certifications, negotiating with vendors, procuring and paying for product, and overhead.”

Raymond Battaglia, a lawyer for Free Speech Systems, has said that as the Infowars brand ballooned, and millions of dollars poured in, the family-run business never adopted “appropriate management and accounting controls,” and so it failed to note the debt that had built up to PQPR.

“This is kind of like the garage band that became the boy band overnight, and had his girlfriend running the books, and the head roadie being the business manager,” Battaglia said in August in the bankruptcy case.

On their own, the corporate structures were not unusual, said bankruptcy experts. Many small-business owners create separate but related entities to organize and protect their wealth. Experts say the fact that the entities do not have any employees, offices or owners other than Jones and his parents does not mean they are not legitimate businesses.

The issue, said Jay L. Westbrook, a University of Texas bankruptcy law professor, is whether the court rules the transfers of wealth were made in the ordinary course of business. “At the end the of the day, the question is whether these are valid payments,” Westbrook said.

The Post examined financial records, depositions and other documents from the court cases to trace the flows of money around Free Speech Systems and establish the ownership of the other companies that were involved. The analysis shows that the transfers echoed financial moves Jones made almost a decade earlier, when divorce proceedings jeopardized his fortune, according to sealed court records from the divorce case obtained by The Post.

Infowars has made Jones a wealthy man, to a degree that has become apparent only because of the Sandy Hook litigation. In August testimony, an expert hired by the Sandy Hook families estimated Jones’s net worth at between $135 million and $270 million. Jones has disputed the plaintiffs’ estimations of his wealth.

“I don’t have all this money they’ve made up,” he said recently.

The supplement business tied to PQPR is the engine of Jones’s fortune, according to financial records Jones submitted in bankruptcy, often generating 2,000 to 3,000 orders a day, according to court testimony. Among the offerings are Survival Shield X-3 iodine spray, DNA Force Plus capsules and Super Male Vitality dietary supplement.

Of the $65 million in income Free Speech Systems had in 2021, the vast majority came from supplement sales, according to those records.

Moshenberg said his clients may be willing to settle with Jones for less money if it meant Jones would end his broadcasting career.

“If he wants to agree to some sort of terms that hold him accountable for all he’s done, we’ll be open to listening,” Moshenberg said. “Whether that means walking away from public life, to paying Sandy Hook families in full, the Sandy Hook families are not going to stop until Jones is held accountable.”

Jones, 48, has said he will keep fighting no matter what.

“They want us off air, that’s their goal,” he said during one show last month. “You’ve got my commitment. I’m not backing down.”

An empire built on conspiracies, supplements

Jones grew up in Texas, first in Dallas and then in Austin. He has said his early thinking was shaped when, as a high school student, he read the book “None Dare Call it Conspiracy” by a member of the far-right John Birch Society. Jones was 19 in 1993 when federal agents raided the Branch Davidians’ compound in Waco, north of Austin, leading to a prolonged standoff that ended with 76 dead. He went to Austin Community College for a time but left after growing bored, he told the Austin-American Statesman.

He told the newspaper that his anger toward big government stemmed from problems his father and his grandparents had with the IRS. “That’s where the venom comes from with me,” he said.

Jones started his broadcasting career with a public access TV show in Austin in the early 1990s. Several years later, a local FM radio station gave him a show after his father agreed to sponsor it, according to an accounting expert Jones hired in bankruptcy filings.

By the late 1990s, dozens of stations nationwide carried his show.....>

<....On air, Jones called the Branch Davidians victims of “a government coverup of its violation of the First Amendment,” and he asked listeners to send donations to help the sect build a new church and memorial. He wore a pin to the 1999 groundbreaking that said “You burn it, we build it,” according to the Associated Press. He was 25.

Jones railed against the government, the media and what he called the New World Order. He claimed that major world events were not what they seemed — and often that they were manufactured crises, staged to serve as pretexts to accomplish the goals of a secret cabal of globalists and multinational corporations.

In 1999, Jones registered the site infowars.com. As the internet era took off, he launched a subscription-only streaming video service and began selling videos, books and T-shirts, according to bankruptcy records. In 2007 he incorporated Free Speech Systems and created a series of other companies that held intellectual property and film rights, splitting ownership with his then-wife, Kelly, whom he had met at the public access station.

How Alex Jones, conspiracy theorist extraordinaire, got Donald Trump’s ear According to records obtained by The Post, in 2009 Free Speech Systems took in $6.2 million in revenue, including $2.6 million in merchandise sales, $1.6 million in advertising and $1.2 million from his streaming video site.

A few years later, Jones’s business was booming, but his marriage was failing.

In the fall of 2013 — two months before Kelly filed for divorce — Jones and his father created a series of companies, including PQPR, which they said in depositions were aimed at protecting Jones from legal liability as he grew his business. PQPR was owned by two other companies, which in turn were owned by Jones or his parents, a representative of Free Speech Systems said in a deposition filed in the bankruptcy case.

PQPR was worth $4.4 million in 2014, according to an accountant Jones hired in the divorce case, records show. Accountants working for Kelly Jones said it was worth as much as $6.2 million.

Alex Jones recounted during a June deposition in one of the defamation cases that they created the companies after he spoke with attorneys familiar with the Food and Drug Administration, the federal agency that regulates dietary supplements. “For liability protection issues, you know, it’s good to have a separate company that then does all of the compliance, buys the products, does all of that,” he said.

Jones’s father said in a deposition filed in the divorce case that Jones recruited him to leave dentistry in order to help professionalize operations and protect the company from liability. “He wanted to be sure that the entities that had been created were up and running properly, that they were legally constituted, that they were doing business as they were supposed to do,” he said, according to a court transcript.

Jones’s ex-wife has alleged that he created the companies as the couple was headed to divorce in order to protect his money, much as the Sandy Hook plaintiffs now accuse him. “Our marriage was absolutely terrible at that time. We were in negotiations for us to break up,” she said in an interview with The Post. “So he did that to hide his assets for when we broke up.”

Records from the divorce case are sealed. It was not clear from the documents obtained by The Post if the court ever directly examined that allegation.

Before the divorce, Kelly was part owner of the main Infowars company and several original affiliates, holding stakes ranging from 49.5 percent to 51 percent, according to records from the divorce case. A 2015 divorce rendition grants her no interest in PQPR or in what were then the newly created companies. Her name does not appear on any of their registration documents.

Those companies all have a stake in Jones’s biggest revenue source: the supplements that he promotes as a way for viewers to improve their health and keep his show running. The supplement sales dramatically boosted his business, according to bankruptcy filings and former employees.

The profit margin on supplements ranges from between three and five times their cost, far more than most of the products he sells, according to the filings. Free Speech Systems often collects $70 million to $80 million annually, according to the accounting expert Jones hired, and it took in more than $500 million in revenue from 2012 to 2022.

Josh Owens, who worked as a video editor at Infowars from 2013 to 2017, said he helped Jones with his first advertisement for an iodine supplement. “Everything changed after that,” he said. “It snowballed after that. It was pretty quickly creating new products, selling new products.”....>

<....Payments to friends, family come under scrutiny

In 2018, three years after his divorce was finalized, Sandy Hook families filed a series of lawsuits against Jones. They recounted how he had claimed that the parents were “crisis actors” and that the event was staged to further gun-control efforts.

Jones sought to have the cases thrown out. The day before an appeals court rejected his motion to have one of the cases dismissed, Jones signed a promissory note to PQPR for $29.6 million on Aug. 13, 2020. He also agreed to provide all of his company’s assets and revenue as collateral for the debt to PQPR, according to a contract Jones and his father signed.

On Sept. 27, 2021, a trial court in Texas ruled that Jones had violated the rules of the discovery process by failing to turn records over to the plaintiffs. Four days later, Jones signed an agreement to send PQPR $11,000 per day to cover the alleged debt outlined in the promissory note. On Nov. 10, Jones signed a secondary promissory note saying, in effect, that he had discovered another unpaid debt to PQPR, this time for $25.3 million.

Jones was also taking money out of the company for himself, records from the court cases show. By the end of 2021, he had withdrawn $61.9 million, according to the records. Jones’s attorneys have said in court that the withdrawals occurred over 15 years, and that half that amount was used to pay taxes. The plaintiffs’ attorneys have suggested the withdrawals may have been meant to prevent Sandy Hook families from accessing the money.

In February of this year, Jones transferred ownership of his Austin home — appraised at $2.8 million — into his wife’s name, according to county property records.

His personal trainer, Patrick Riley, in March created a logistics company, Blue Asension Logistics, to pack and ship supplements and other merchandise ordered by Infowars fans. The company hired nearly all of its employees from Infowars and uses the same Infowars warehouse, rent-free, to fulfill the orders, according to Riley’s testimony in the bankruptcy case. Jones agreed to pay him $400,000 upfront and then $105,000 per week, according to bankruptcy records.

Riley did not respond to voice mails seeking comment. He testified that he is the sole owner of the company.

An attorney for the Sandy Hook families, Marty Brimmage, said “this is not an arms-length transaction,” during an Aug. 12 hearing. “It isn’t even close.”

First, they lost their children. Then the conspiracy theories started. Now, the parents of Newtown are fighting back.

Battaglia argued that, while Riley may be friends with Jones, his business was independent. “Does Mr. Riley have a relationship with Mr. Jones? Absolutely. Is he an insider? No,” Battaglia said in the hearing.

In May and June, Free Speech Systems made six payments totaling $240,000 to a company managed by Jones’s sister, Marleigh Jones Rivera, according to bankruptcy records. The records do not specify who owns the company or the nature of its business.

Marleigh Jones Rivera did not respond to requests for comment.

On Nov. 10, the Connecticut judge temporarily blocked Jones from accessing the company’s money beyond what he needs for “ordinary expenses.”

The bankruptcy judge in Texas, Christopher M. Lopez, is expected to determine whether Jones engaged in fraudulent tactics designed to wall off assets from creditors. If the court finds that he did, the money that has been paid out or committed as debt could be divvied among creditors, said Georgetown University law professor Adam J. Levitin, an expert in corporate bankruptcy.

Levitin said the most likely scenario may be that Free Speech Systems chooses to liquidate, which would likely mean Jones forgoing the rights to all his films, brands and intellectual property, the Infowars name included. “There is nothing beyond a real Hail Mary route for him to avoid liability at this point,” he said.

In one of the defamation courts, Jones apologized to the Sandy Hook families and said he now believes the killings did occur. On his show, he remains defiant.

“I don’t lose sleep at night about giving them a billion dollars,” he said at a news conference he held in Connecticut in October. “They just misrepresent how much money I have. It’s a total fraud.”>

<There has been a strange shift in the wellness space. It is becoming less about New Age-y holistic alternative health strategies and more about ideology-fueled manly optimization. We’ve gone from Gwyneth’s vagina (eggs and candles) to Tucker’s testicles (tanning them, that is). Oh sure, it is still evidence-free hooey. But he-man health hacks are increasingly the flavor of the day.

The best and most bizarre example of this trend is Tucker Carlson’s much mocked wellness “documentary,” The End of Men. Ostensibly about an emerging health crisis, the show is really the cable news equivalent of that comic book advertisement for Charles Atlas where the 98-lb weakling gets sand kicked in his face. Muscles to the rescue! “Oh, Mac! You are a real man after all!”

The message—sometimes explicit, sometimes implied—in Tucker’s show is that our limp constitutions and less-than manly social policies, diets, work, and recreational activities (do real men play Minecraft or write code for Microsoft?) have driven down our testosterone count. Tucker isn’t really concerned about tackling genuine public health challenges—there are, of course, legitimate, and very serious, issues with the American diet and sedentary lifestyle.

Tucker’s point here is to use cherry-picked data, anecdotal evidence (read: not actual evidence), wellness guru testimonials, and paradoxically homoerotic imagery, to encourage us to do something about our pathetic feebleness or we’ll be overrun by commie soy boy globalists! Apparently, we need “bro-science” to save us all from, well, real science.

From an evidence perspective, there is so much wrong with the documentary that it is tough to know what to highlight. But the testicle tanning recommendation—which is so absurd that I first thought it was satire—has emerged as the biggest punchline, so let’s focus on that....>

More to follow....

<....We know that wrapping health misinformation in ideology makes it more likely to spread and be believed—especially among those with the political leaning of Tucker’s audience. (Yes, the spread of misinformation happens across the ideological spectrum. But at this cultural moment, evidence tells us this is more of an issue for the political right.) A 2022 study examined almost one-hundred thousand bits of social media misinformation to map the typical characteristics of viral bunk. The research found that, on average, as compared to scientifically accurate and reliable content, misinformation is easier to process, more emotional, scarier, and focused on morality. A claim that there is an urgent need to irradiate your balls to save your manliness and, indeed, the entire free world seems to fit this formula pretty well.

The reality about testicle tanning? Yes, studies have found that there has been a drop in testosterone, but not as steep as the documentary claims and the causes are unclear and undoubtedly complex (e.g., rise in obesity rates, unhealthy diets, COVID, less sleep, changes in environmental exposers to chemicals). But there is no evidence this reduction is the result of a soy boy global conspiracy, as suggested by Tucker and his soy globalist “expert” Raw Egg Nationalist (seriously, that’s his handle). And there is also no evidence to support testicle tanning—or, really, anything mentioned in the show—as a solution.

I asked urologist Dr. Rena Malik for her take on the procedure. “There is no scientific evidence supporting testicular tanning or red-light therapy to the scrotal skin,” was her concise response. “Bottom line: it doesn't work and it's a waste of your hard-earned money.” So, yeah, don’t.

The best advice, as is so often the case, is to focus on a healthy lifestyle—exercise, sleep, real food, not smoking, and drinking alcohol in moderation (or not at all). If you have real concerns about your testosterone levels, see a physician.

It should also be noted that promoting a traditional (or, let’s be honest here, entirely mythical) view of masculinity—a core theme in Tucker’s world—comes with its own health risks. For example, studies have shown that people who view themselves as masculine are less likely to seek health-related help and more likely to catch COVID, to have heart disease, and poorer cancer outcomes. They are also at increased risk for being lonely, having fewer friends, and experiencing other mental health challenges. For example, a study from 2021 found that “higher conformity to masculine norms was associated with an increased risk of current depressive symptoms.” Other research, published in 2020, found a link between masculinity and suicidal ideation in boys and younger men. The authors of the study suggest that their work highlights “the importance of presenting young males with alternative and multiple ways of being a male.”

While we need to be careful not to over-interpret these findings (most come from observational studies that cannot confirm causation), this body of research emphasizes that the relationship between masculinity and health is, at a minimum, complex. Despite what Tucker tells us, more isn’t necessarily better.

< A New York judge has scheduled an October 2023 trial for former U.S. President Donald Trump, three of his adult children and the Trump Organization in a lawsuit brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James accusing them of fraudulently overvaluing the real estate company's assets and Trump's net worth.

Justice Arthur Engoron of the state Supreme Court in Manhattan set the trial date during a contentious hearing on Tuesday following motions by the Trumps the night before to have the civil lawsuit dismissed.

"I ruled on all these issues. It seems to me the facts are the same. The law is the same. Parties are the same," Engoron told Alina Habba, Trump's lawyer. "You can't keep making the same argument after you've already lost."

Habba had accused the judge of bias. Trump, a Republican, has accused James, a Democrat, of suing him because she dislikes him and his politics.

In her lawsuit filed on Sept. 21, James accused Trump, his company, his children Donald Jr, Eric and Ivanka and others of inflating Trump's assets by billions of dollars in a decade of lies to banks and insurers. James called the fraud "staggering."

The complaint seeks $250 million in damages. It also seeks to stop the Trumps from running businesses in the state and ban Trump and his company from acquiring New York real estate for five years.

Engoron is expected to rule on the motions to dismiss by early January. Trump is already appealing Engoron's order requiring an independent watchdog to monitor his company.

The trial, scheduled for Oct. 2, 2023, and other legal issues could complicate Trump's campaign, announced last week, for the presidency in 2024.

The Trump Organization is now on trial in another Manhattan courtroom on criminal tax fraud charges.

In addition, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland last week named a special counsel to oversee two criminal investigations, one related to the FBI's seizure of government documents from Trump's Florida home and the other examining Trump's role in efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Trump also faces a criminal investigation in Georgia into whether he interfered with the 2020 election results in that state.

He has called these cases and investigations politically motivated, and has labeled Engoron a "puppet judge" for James.

In seeking to dismiss the case filed by James, Trump maintained that the attorney general lacked authority to pursue a lawsuit designed to "get" him when neither the public nor the marketplace was harmed.

"Who stands to gain from this highly-politicized farse [sic], aside from the politically-compromised Attorney General of the State of New York?" Trump's filing said.

Other defendants also urged dismissals.

Lawyers for Trump's sons called the lawsuit a "textbook example of throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks." Ivanka Trump's lawyers said there were no allegations that she lied to or defrauded anyone.

The Trump Organization's former longtime Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg and its Controller Jeffrey McConney also sought dismissals of claims against them. Both testified as prosecution witnesses in the Manhattan criminal trial in which prosecutors accused the company of engaging in tax fraud spanning 15 years.>

<Fox News went right back to stoking hatred and fear of the LGBTQ community barely a day after a gunman massacred five people at a Colorado Springs gay bar, and NBC News reporter Ben Collins drew parallels between that rhetoric and the early days of the Nazi regime.

Collins covers the darkest online corners of the internet to expose the hateful speech that incites real-world violence, but he told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" that Fox News host Tucker Carlson and other mainstream conservative media figures spread the same rhetoric to their audience of millions.

"I think we have to have a come-to-Jesus moment here as reporters," Collins said. "Are we more afraid of being on Breitbart for saying that trans people deserve to be alive or are we more afraid of the dead people? I'm more afraid of the dead people. I don't want to wake up on a Sunday and see all of these headlines came to fruition."

GOP officials at all levels have stoked fear of trans people for political gain, and Collins said journalists haven't done enough to make that clear.

"Because of the attention economy that we live in, they get more clicks for it," he said. "They end up on Tucker Carlson. Last night, by the way, Tucker Carlson attacked my colleague Brandy Zadrozny, my co-byline on almost all of these stories -- not me, but Brandy, of course, he attacked Brandy, and he went right back into this idea that some 'they' is trying to groom your kids, trying to sexualize your children, right. Who's the 'they,' first of all, and second of all, all of her reporting was right. All of it was right."

Collins said hate speech against LGBTQ people helped whip up hysteria that allowed Nazi fascism to flourish in Germany, and he said the same thing was happening in the U.S.

"[A rhetoric professor] was telling me about this thing called 'hate objects,' where they take people they describe as degenerates, right," Collins said. "Before Nazi Germany, there was [sic] gay people, people who played with gender conformity, and they say they are contributing to the downfall of society. They are the reason that, you know, things cost more, that the crops aren't coming up, right? We have been through this in the past. It's very dark, and the people playing around with this don't take responsibility. They go right back into it."

"Also, algorithmically it's easier to sell fear -- the hate gets clicks," he added. "The hate gets people tuning back in. It gets the hate objects, you create new hate objects."

Although he specializes in fringe websites and forums, Collins despaired that those messages had become mainstream for many conservatives with predictably grim consequences.

"These people are being used as props right now, they're being used as props, explicitly for electoral or monetary purpose," Collins said. "Right now, the fact that 12 hours, 24 hours after a shooting there is no inward reflection here, it's just, you know, continue to use these people as props, continue to use the grief of these people as props. I think as reporters we've got to look in here, and double down. Who are we afflicting here if not the people who are grieving by not standing with them."

"I really want to say, [NBC correspondent] Maura Barrett, who's on the ground for us, by the way, has done incredible reporting here, and she talked to a person who lived through that shooting," Collins added. "And they called home, and the family members at home said, 'Well, you have to look inward at your degenerate, at your lifestyle.' This person just saw five people die and that was the response, and that's because that's an acceptable response right now from the guys across the street at the other cable network, and an entire political party.">

<Tomlinsky: <Defund the police! Great work, libs.>

<A woman who alleges that U.S. Senate candidate Herschel Walker pressured her into having an abortion in 1993 on Tuesday challenged the Republican, who has said he opposes abortion with no exceptions, to meet her publicly before next month's Georgia run-off election.

The woman, who appeared at a news conference with attorney Gloria Allred but withheld her name, issued the challenge two weeks ahead of the Dec. 6 run-off contest in which Walker hopes to unseat Democratic U.S. Senator Raphael Warnock.

Walker has called the woman's allegations, first made publicly on Oct. 26, untrue. He has also denied the allegation of another woman who claims he paid for her to have an abortion in 2009 and that she later gave birth to one of his children.

Neither woman has revealed her identity publicly. Reuters has not been able to independently confirm either woman's claim.

"Do you have the guts to meet with me in person, in public, look me in the eye and tell me to my face that you don't know me and that none of what I just said is true? I'm looking forward to your response," the woman said on Tuesday.

The Walker campaign was not immediately available for comment.

The woman and her attorney presented voice recordings they claimed to be Walker's. The attorney has said the woman has years of material, including receipts and greeting cards, documenting her romantic relationship with Walker from the late 1980s through the 1990s.

The Warnock-Walker race is going to a runoff because neither candidate secured the necessary 50% of the vote in the Nov. 8 midterm elections.

A Warnock victory would expand Democrats' razor-thin margin in the Senate by one, giving President Joe Biden's party more room to maneuver.>

<Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake is refusing to concede her loss to Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, who defeated Lake in the November 8th election by 17,116 votes.

Lake, who had the backing of former President Donald Trump and claimed throughout the campaign that fraud would taint the results of the race, has teased filing lawsuits to challenge the outcome. According to the Arizona Capitol Times, no formal legal action has yet been taken.

Two counties – Cochise and Mojave – have delayed certification of Hobbs' victory, based on unfounded conspiracy theories about ballot-counting machines and unsubstantiated claims of disenfranchisement. Lake's focus, however, has been on Maricopa County, the most populous in the Grand Canyon State where there were glitches and errors with electronic equipment.

"The county’s top elections officials have acknowledged that 70 of the county’s 223 voting centers experienced the printing issue but deny that any citizen was denied an opportunity to vote," The Hill pointed out on Tuesday. But, the publication noted, "election officials say voters could wait in line until the issue was fixed, cast a ballot at another vote center or deposit their original ballot in a separate, secure box that was sent to the county’s central facility for tabulation."

On Wednesday, Lake appeared on Real America's Voice and issued vague threats against Hobbs and outgoing GOP Governor Doug Ducey, whom Lake alleges are colluding to cover up supposed malfeasance. Her statements were similar to those made by MyPillow Chief Executive Officer Mike Lindell, one of the discredited ringleaders of Trump's debunked denials about the 2020 election.

"They're dragging their feet. They don't want to give us this information so we're asking the courts to force them to give us information," Lake said. "This is not our main case. When our main case drops, they will hear it. Trust me. They will hear it. And they better think really hard before Ducey and Hobbs sign their John Hancock to that certification. They better think long and hard about what they know about what happened in this election. Because when we drop our lawsuit, they will hear it. We have whistleblowers coming forward and at least one smoking gun in it. And we will not stand here and make a mockery of our sacred vote.">

<Herschel Walker experienced a slip of the tongue when he accidentally said "erection" instead of "election" on live television. The embarrassing blunder happened on Tuesday night while he was discussing the still-undecided Georgia senate race with fellow right-winged politicians Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham, andcoincidentally just hours after the second woman spoke out, detailing how Walker allegedly paid for her abortion when she fell pregnant with his child, RadarOnline.com has learned.

While speaking with Senators Cruz and Graham on Fox News, Walker addressed the significance of the race; however, his words were quickly overshadowed by his sexual gaffe.

"This election is about more than Herschel Walker,” the former NFL star-turned-senate candidate said. “This erection is about the people.”

Neither Cruz nor Graham seemed to catch the error, but the Internet did. #Erection began trending on Twitter soon after Walker's faux pas.

"Who else thinks it’s hilarious that both Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham nod their heads in agreement when Herschel Walker says 'this erection is about the people,'" one person tweeted.

"The moment Ted and Lindsey realize Herschel is talking about erections and suddenly become interested and slightly aroused," someone replied. "Of course Lyndsey [sic] was nodding, he cannot wait to be around for Hershel’s erection!" joked another.

Walker's erection slip-up came at a time when all eyes are on him.

As RadarOnline.com reported, Walker's second accuser — identified only as Jane Doe — released new audio evidence that she said shoots down his claim that he did not know her.

According to her attorney, Gloria Allred, the politician had a romantic relationship with Jane Doe "for 6 years, caused her to become pregnant, and then pressured her to have an abortion, even though she wanted to have their baby."

The relationship reportedly began in the late '80s when Walker was still married to his first wife.

Allred then played a voicemail clip Walker allegedly left Jane Doe, saying, "Ah you, this is your stud farm calling, you big sex puppy, you. Can't believe you're not in. I will talk to you later, you be sweet. Bye bye."

She came forward with allegations against Walker last month, making her the second female to claim the GOP Senate candidate paid for their abortions.

Walker, who projected a strong pro-life stance during his campaign, denied both women's allegations.>

<Jenna Ellis, former senior legal adviser to Donald Trump, has attracted furious backlash after her hateful commentary about the mass shooting Saturday at the Club Q gay nightclub in Colorado.

Five people died and at least 18 others were injured in the attack in Colorado Springs, which came amid a campaign by conservative media and politicians to demonize trans people and drag queens and pass hostile legislation targeting the LGBTQ community as a whole. The fear campaign has coincided with a spike in anti-LGBTQ harassment, threats and violence. The suspect in the killings faces murder and hate crime charges.

In an episode of her podcast this week, Ellis suggested that the victims of the shooting deserved to die because they weren’t, in her eyes, Christian.

“Even more tragic than untimely death, is that the five people who were killed in the nightclub that night, there is no evidence at all that they were Christians,” the far-right attorney said. “And so assuming that they had not accepted the truth of the Gospel of Christ and affirmed Jesus Christ as the lord of their life, they are now reaping the consequences of having eternal damnation.”

Ellis, also a right-wing media pundit, played a top role in Trump’s failed legal push to overturn the 2020 presidential election and most recently worked as a legal adviser to extremist Republican gubernatorial nominee Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania, who lost. Her history of anti-LGBTQ rhetoric dates back years.

In one 2017 Facebook post recorded by Media Matters, for example, she wrote: “Whether or not homosexuals are nice, wise people, or misunderstood, or mean is not the issue. … Sin is always sin, even if nice people commit it.”

And after the 2016 Pulse nightclub massacre in Orlando, Florida, in which 49 people were killed and 53 wounded, she voiced her disappointment that “conservatives are acquiescing to the LGBT agenda.”

“The Orlando shooting was absolutely terrible and tragic. But the response to this tragedy should not be embracing and advocating for gay rights,” she said after the deadly attack on the gay nightclub.

Earlier this week, she criticized the Colorado Springs Police Department because it included each of the Club Q victims’ pronouns when sharing their identities.

In the wake of the attack, right-wing figures have rebuffed accusations that their rhetoric helped create the environment for anti-LGBTQ violence, instead accusing critics of “politicizing” the tragedy and doubling down on their false narratives vilifying the community and its allies.

Ellis met fierce condemnation online Wednesday after clips of her Club Q commentary circulated.

In response to the outcry, Ellis insisted she doesn’t have anything against gay and trans people, just anyone she deems not to be Christian enough.

“I am concerned for ANYONE and EVERYONE who is not saved,” she tweeted. “The point isn’t that these people were gay/trans, but that there is no evidence they were saved. Y’all need church.”>