Former Trump Organization financial leader Allen Weisselberg, who pleaded guilty to perjury in Donald Trump’s civil fraud trial, was sentenced Wednesday to five months in prison.
Weisselberg admitted to New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg that he lied under oath in July 2020 knowing that Trump had overvalued his Manhattan apartment. Trump was found to have consistently lied about his wealth in his real estate business.
The Republican presidential nominee recently posted $175 million bail, along with right-wing billionaire Don Hankey, while the $454 million sentence in the fraud case looks pretty.
Weisselberg was found guilty of perjury in March. He is a longtime friend and confidant of Trump and has been rewarded for his loyalty over the years with clandestine perks, adding expensive apartments and cars, which have also served to cover up a vast tax evasion scheme.
This is the second five-month sentence imposed on Weisselberg: He was also convicted of tax fraud in 2022, after helping the Trump Organization hide unreported sources of income from state and New York City tax authorities. He served one hundred days of the original sentence.
Arizona lawmakers were excited about banning abortion, until they were given what they wanted.
On Tuesday, the state Supreme Court called for reinstating a draconian ban on the medical procedure. But already several prominent (and politically vulnerable) Republicans in Arizona have spoken out against the proposal.
Senate candidate Kari Lake, for example, identifies as “100% pro-life” and in the past had called the ban a “big law,” but suddenly it was no longer her cup of tea once the resolution was taken.
“I oppose today’s resolution and call on Gov. Katie Hobbs and the state legislature for an immediate, common-sense solution that Arizonans can support,” Lake said in a statement. “At the end of the day, the Arizona electorate will make the decision in the November election. “
Two Republican state representatives, who are facing a tough festival from Democrats in this year’s election, also set fire to the resolution. David Schweikert, who has spent most of his career running to ban abortion without exceptions, wrote that he did not pass the resolution and that the Arizona legislature deserves to “address this factor immediately. “Juan Ciscomani, a rookie lawmaker who represents one of the state’s colorful districts, called it “a crisis for women and service providers. “
“In Arizona, our 15-week law guarantees women’s rights and a new life. Women of good repute and the difficult resolution of terminating a pregnancy, a resolution that I will never personally know and that I will not fully understand,” Ciscomani wrote in a post on X. , formerly Twitter. ” I oppose a national ban on abortion. Land law is archaic. We want to do more for women, and I call on our state’s policymakers to promptly address this factor in a bipartisan manner.
Just two years ago, Ciscomani described himself as “proudly pro-life” and praised the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Former Republican Gov. Doug Doucey also regretted the decision, though he is guilty of appointing four of the justices who contributed to the court’s majority opinion.
“I signed the 15-week bill as governor because it is a considered policy and technique for this very sensitive factor that Arizonans can agree on,” Ducey said in a statement. “Today’s resolution is not the end result I would have preferred, and I call on our elected leaders to heed the will of others and confront this factor with policy that is achievable and reflective of our constituency. “
This sea change is no coincidence, especially since abortion is a factor of attrition for Republicans nationally. The Supreme Court’s ruling to overturn abortion access nationwide proved disastrous for Republicans last November, resulting in significant losses in districts where abortion was a key topic of discussion. After the election, those stark numbers turned into surprising program changes for the Conservative Party, with GOP pundits calling the change in factor a “big wake-up call. “
Ousted House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has a theory about the motivation of the motion to overturn it put forward through Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, and it has little to do with political differences.
In an interview Tuesday at Georgetown University, McCarthy, without sounding crazy, said it was a “misnomer and a lie” that supposed concessions to congressional Democrats in the debt ceiling negotiations were behind his impeachment. He proposed to put on record directly the reasons why he had been removed as president.
“I’ll tell you the fact of why I don’t speak. That’s because one person, a member of Congress, sought me out to avoid an ethics complaint because he had slept with a 17-year-old girl. A moral denunciation that I have become a speaker before, and it is illegal, and I am not going to place myself in the middle. Did he or not? I don’t know, but ethics is interested. There are other people in prison. ” Therefore. And he sought me out to influence him,” McCarthy explained.
BREAKUP: Kevin McCarthy says he’s not a speaker because Matt Gaetz sought him out to end an ethics complaint because he slept with a 17-year-old pic. twitter. com/RhEKz5xhwu
That person? Gaetz, the leader of a successful effort to relinquish the presidency.
This is an explosive, if not entirely new, accusation made by McCarthy. Gaetz, who is expected to be charged in June as part of a civil defamation lawsuit, is charged with several sex crimes against children. One of the “other people in jail” McCarthy refers to convicted sex trafficker Joel Greenberg, who alleged that Gaetz paid him through Venmo to have sex with a 17-year-old girl. Greenberg is cooperating with the House Ethics Committee, which is investigating the allegations. Gaetz is accused of paying another woman for her involvement in alleged drug-fueled sex.
Gaetz, for what it’s worth, corroborated McCarthy’s theory, at least behind closed doors. The Daily Beast reported that the Florida congressman privately admitted that the resolution to oust McCarthy was revenge for McCarthy’s refusal to overload the ethics investigation, not a stance opposed to bipartisan negotiation.
McCarthy, who subsidized convicted rapist Donald Trump for president, became the first speaker of the House of Representatives in U. S. history to be removed from office by a motion to overturn. Still, he claims he would “do it again. “
Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has no private motives to protect the Jan. 6 rioters: At least one of his aides would likely be among them.
The campaign has tried in days to distance itself from its New York state director, Rita Palma, who has claimed that the campaign’s real purpose is to upset President Joe Biden.
“The only way Trump can take New York, even if it’s a long way off, is for Bobby to be on the ballot. If it’s Trump and not Biden, Biden wins. Biden gains six days, seven days a week. With Bobby in the mix, anything can happen,” Palma said at a town hall with New York Republicans.
But it is clear that Palma has deeper ties to Donald Trump. In social media posts analyzed by CNN, the worker continually referred to the Republican presidential candidate as her “favorite president,” said she would vote for him in 2024 and also suggested a candidacy. in 2028, and blamed the Jan. 6 violence on “rigged elections,” and even admitted to being provided on the day Trump supporters stormed the U. S. Capitol.
“January 6 was not a riot. A small organization of other people was a problem. It was 99. 9 peaceful, respectful. I’m there,” he wrote.
Over the past week, Kennedy’s crusade has taken several U-turns in his Jan. 6 message. On Thursday, the independent presidential candidate released a fundraising email calling the rioters “militant. “The next day, Kennedy claimed that this specific language had been used in error, but still did not understand that the occasion constituted a “real insurrection” as the rioters were unarmed, although this was absolutely false, as the rioters brandished guns. And he can be seen doing so in mountains of recorded recordings. Video of the day.
Rioters targeted Capitol Police officers with guns, knives, stolen police shields, stun guns, chimney extinguishers and even resorted to hand-to-hand combat, sending more than a dozen officers to the hospital.
Then, on Monday, Kennedy appeared to backtrack on his correction. In his appearance on NewsNation, the 70-year-old claimed that his campaign had made “some mistakes” in issuing the revised statement, while once again insisting that the events were not an insurrection.
“I think there were other people who tried to stand in the way of the nonviolent movement of force from one government to another. I would say that it is a very traumatic day in the history of our country and that other people committed criminal acts. “These other people deserve to be in jail,” Kennedy said.
Donald Trump’s card money space is starting to crumble.
The Republican presidential candidate, who since 2016 has placed his private wealth at the center of his candidacy, fell from the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The list is a ranking of the world’s 500 richest people, and as of Tuesday, Trump is no longer qualified.
The blow comes just days after Trump Media’s stock value plummeted and two major investors in the merger between Trump Media and Technology, the parent company of Truth Social, and Digital World Acquisition Corporation, a shell company, were charged with insider trading.
Trump has already struggled to cash in on his wealth after the bail bond company that subsidized the $175 million bail in his civil fraud lawsuit was revealed to be insolvent, unlicensed in New York and possibly would not have agreed to pay the fine if Trump fails to show up. their wealth. Money.
With a starting price of $8 billion, Trump Media has lost some of its price since its debut in March. The price drop does little to dispel claims that inventory is a conceivable pump-and-dump ploy devised by Trump to funnel cash from his gullible supporters. in their mounting legal debts. You can’t sell or borrow your inventories on Trump Media for six months. So even if this new embarrassment is just a cosmetic blow to his net worth, it’s still conceivable that he’s incentivized enough of his constituents to pay some of the sum.
But in the meantime, Trump has another temporarily embarrassed billionaire.
Alabama’s secretary of state said Tuesday that under state law, the Democratic National Convention is too late for the party to nominate its presidential and vice presidential candidates in the November election.
Wes Allen, a Republican, said Alabama has until Aug. 15 for political parties to submit a certificate of nomination for president and vice president. The Democratic National Convention will be held in Chicago on August 19.
“If this office has not obtained a valid nomination certificate from the Democratic Party after its conference within the legal deadline, I will not be able to certify the names of the Democratic Party’s presidential and vice presidential candidates for election preparation for the 2024 general election. . Allen said in a letter to Randy Kelley, chairman of the Alabama Democratic Party.
Alabama state law states that parties will have to certify their applicants “no later than the 82nd day before the consistent day for the election. “This year’s election will be held on Nov. 5, so Aug. 15 will be the 82nd day earlier, Allen said. he said in the letter. His workplace says the 82-day deadline has been enshrined in Alabama election law since 1975.
He’s the second red-state election leader to claim Democrats are holding their nominating conference too late. Last week, Paul DiSantis, senior counsel for Ohio Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose, said state law requires presidential candidates to be qualified 90 days in advance. the general election.
The secretaries of state of Ohio and Alabama said the challenge could be resolved if the respective legislatures passed a one-time exception or if the Democratic National Committee moved its conference on time.
While Allen and LaRose would arguably be turning only to state laws, those measures seem remarkably suspect given the recent lawsuits filed against Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. The Colorado State Supreme Court has attempted to exclude Trump from the 2024 election because of his role. in the Jan. 6 insurrection, which the justices said violated Article 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment.
In March, the Supreme Court struck down Colorado’s ruling and, by extension, similar rulings in two other states, in a unanimous, fast-track ruling that states simply cannot apply the clause to federal workplace holders. Five conservative justices on the Court even said the clause would only apply if Congress passed a law to keep it.
Based on this decision, if Ohio and Alabama stubbornly refuse to allow President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris to vote, the Supreme Court will have to temporarily reinstate them, as states do have the strength to overturn federal elections. But that would require consistency on the part of John Roberts’ Supreme Court, whose values are being questioned.
Republicans temporarily embraced Donald Trump’s new abortion signal, and one House member has already regurgitated on national television the Republican presidential nominee’s blatant lie that Democrats need to “execute” young children after birth.
North Carolina Rep. Greg Murphy continued to weave the thread on Fox Business on Tuesday, telling host Maria Bartiromo that Democrats need to kill young people when they “come out of the birth canal. “
“Yes, [abortion] is going to be a big issue every time, because there are other people on both sides, probably more Democrats, who need abortion literally when the child comes out of the birth canal, to force the issue. Murphy said. Because it’s an emotionally charged issue, and that’s what elections are, they’re emotionally charged events. “
Republican Rep. Greg Murphy accuses Democrats of failing to perform abortions “literally when the child comes out of the birth canal”pic. twitter. com/9Kb57ORv6k
Trump has been on every side of the abortion debate for more than 25 years, and even described himself as “very pro-choice” in 1999. But on Monday, the former president posted a video that ostensibly clarifies his position on the issue, but actually avoids taking a genuine position on the ongoing votes on abortion rights across the country and criticizing Democrats for anything they simply don’t do: “supporting execution after birth. “
“A lot of other people have asked me where I stand on abortion and abortion rights, especially because I was proudly guilty of ending something that all jurists – on both sides – were looking for and that really wasn’t easy to stop: Roe v. They wanted it stopped,” Trump said. “It is worth remembering that the Democrats are the ultimate radicals in this position because they abort up to the ninth month and even beyond. The concept of having an abortion in the last few months and even being executed after birth, and that is precisely what it is all about, that the baby is born and the baby is executed after birth, is unacceptable and, at most, everyone agrees with it.
However, this is false. No one advocated for the children’s deaths.
Trump’s stance infuriated both sides: Conservatives demanded a federal ban on abortion, while abortion rights advocates warned that by saying he believed states deserved to regulate abortion, Trump was actually imposing the most draconian restrictions on the procedure.
Shortly after posting the video on Truth Social, Trump voiced another disguised warning to Democrats, suggesting that their involvement in this factor would lead to their downfall.
“You know, Democrats are ‘shocked’ when they don’t react to my recent speech on abortion, beyond ‘he’s joking,’ ‘he’s going to replace it,’ or ‘he’s not going to do this, he’s going to do anything else. ”” he posted. I guess that means we’re going to win the election because they’re so bad at everything, that’s the only thing they’re focused on!”
Far-right provocateur Jacob Wohl and lobbyist Jack Burkman have a history of peddling conspiracy theories, unsuccessfully getting public figures accused of fabricated sexual assault and saying fraudulent things. They now have to pay more than $1 million for an automated calling formula designed to discourage Black voters in the 2020 election.
New York Attorney General Letitia James reached a settlement with the two men, who were found guilty of violating the Voting Rights Act and the Ku Klux Klan Act through a New York federal judgment in 2023. Wohl and Burkman were ordered to pay “up to $1. 25 million” in the settlement.
“The right to vote is the cornerstone of our democracy and belongs to everyone,” James said Tuesday. “We will not allow anyone to threaten this right. Wohl and Burkman orchestrated a depraved, misinformation-laden crusade to intimidate Black people. electorate in an effort to sway the election in favor of their preferred candidate.
The calls, targeting spaces with predominantly Black populations, made outlandish claims in the summer of 2020 about the harmful nature of mail-in voting. The robocalls insisted that voting by mail would divulge people’s non-public knowledge under threat of being used through local media. Law enforcement to track down old court orders, are used through credit card corporations to collect debt, and are even used to create a knowledge base for “vaccine mandates. “The robocalls spoke of Burkman and Wohl through their names, making it easier for the government to link the effort to the two. men.
Tuesday’s settlement is rarely the only legal fallout the two men face for their voter intimidation efforts, which have also affected Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and several other states. In June 2023, the Federal Communications Commission fined Burkman and Wohl $5,134,500 for this scheme. , the highest penalty ever imposed at the time he proposed the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. In Ohio, Burkman and Wohl were each sentenced to network service, a $2,500 fine and probation. In Michigan, the case is pending before the state Supreme Court. .
If the two men fail to pay at least $105,000 in fines to the New York Attorney General’s Office, the National Coalition for Black Civic Engagement, and those harmed by the plan by Dec. 31, 2024, the fine will increase to $1. 25 million. .
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is back to set House Speaker Mike Johnson on fire.
On Tuesday, the Georgia Republican attempted to threaten her colleague, circulating a cruel five-page memo calling for his removal from leadership while accusing the caucus of ignoring the will of its constituents and the party’s supposed “complete and utter surrender” to Democrats under Johnson. . .
“If those moves through our convention leader continue, then we’re not a Republican Party; We are a united party determined to stay on the path of self-destruction,” he wrote, according to a copy of the memo obtained. through the New York Times. ” I will not participate and will not participate in it, nor will the other people we represent. “
Last month, Greene introduced a motion to resign Johnson after running with Democrats and Republicans in the Senate to pass a $1. 2 trillion omnibus bill, capping a six-month test to fulfill one of the legislature’s most sensible annual responsibilities: investing in government. This mammoth achievement obviously remains a precedent for Greene.
“Abortion with full reversal, the trans agenda, the climate agenda, foreign wars, and Biden’s border crisis ensure freedom, opportunity, and safety for all Americans,” Greene wrote Tuesday.
Although the budget sets aside budget for projects like the climate update and U. S. border security, it turns out Greene has forgotten that the federal budget cannot be used for abortion in cases of rape, incest, or a life-threatening medical emergency. Nor does it mention transgender people.
But those weren’t the only pieces of the schedule Greene struggled with. Also on the list of reasons Johnson was ousted: the inability to fund special counsel Jack Smith’s lawsuit against Donald Trump for seeking to overturn the effects of the 2020 presidential election. and for hoarding classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, and for making promises on aid to Ukraine, which Johnson has pledged to keep in recent weeks.
“Mike Johnson is saying publicly that investing in Ukraine is now his most sensible priority, whereas less than seven months ago he was opposed to it,” Greene continued. “The other Americans disagree — they say our border is the only one worth having. “a war, and I agree with them. “
Meanwhile, other conservatives are certain Greene’s outburst spells the end of Johnson, adding House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner, who told CNN on Sunday that he doesn’t think Johnson is at “any risk” of being fired.
Jared Kushner’s investment firm, Affinity Partners, has invested about $1. 2 billion since its inception in 2021. Almost all of this cash comes from foreign sources, raising moral red flags.
According to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, 99% of Affinity’s investor budget comes from foreign sources, the New York Times reported Tuesday.
The $3 billion Affinity has secured investment from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, as well as business tycoons such as Terry Gou, who founded electronics giant Foxconn.
These are all countries that Kushner worked with when his father-in-law, Donald Trump, was in the White House. Kushner’s envoy leader Trump to the Middle East and played a key role in brokering the Abraham Accords, which normalized relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, as well as between Israel and Bahrain.
Kushner’s fund invested in an Israeli car rental and finance company, a Dubai-based online real estate company and an Abu Dhabi-backed fast-food company that operates more than 1,000 restaurants in Brazil, the Times reported.
Kushner announced two of his biggest deals last month: a $500 million hotel and condominium complex in Serbia and two luxury developments in Albania. None of those deals could have come to fruition without Kushner’s time in the Trump administration, where he met with the president of Serbia and the prime minister of Albania, who were directly interested in the respective deal.
During Trump’s presidency, Kushner probably made many, many millions of dollars. These revenues were also controversial, most notably because of his industrial agreements with countries such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar, while meeting with them in his capacity as White House.
Although Kushner specialized in the Middle East during Trump’s tenure in the White House, he has been criticized for his stance on Palestine. Since the start of Israel’s war in Gaza, the Abraham Accords have been criticized for ignoring the Palestinians.
Recently, Kushner told an audience at Harvard University that he considered Gaza’s seashore to be “very precious,” and necessarily advocated Israeli ethnic cleansing of the land in order to expand it. If he continues down this path, he will possibly face more direct protests. like the ones who derailed their awards rite at an Anti-Defamation League event last month.