Michael Cohen is settling his three-year lawsuit against the Trump organization, avoiding another trial over the former president’s role that was scheduled to begin Monday.
Cohen is a former private attorney and longtime restaurateur of the twice-accused, twice-accused, and guilty of sexual abuse (apparently, few reparations have been made). He filed a lawsuit against the Trump Organization in 2019, alleging that the company had breached agreements that it would pay attorneys’ fees and costs arising from his paintings on his behalf. that he owed approximately $1. 3 million in unpaid legal fees.
The precise terms of the settlement have yet to be announced, but Monday’s trial is well canceled.
Meanwhile, Trump still has an active lawsuit against Cohen in Florida federal court, while Cohen is expected to be a key witness against Trump in New York state court next year for the former president who paid cash to porn actress Stormy Daniels.
“As far as Cohen is concerned, he is doomed. He is a liar. He is let down at the highest level. He’s got a lot of problems,” Trump said in 2019, after Cohen testified before Congress about his enjoyment of running for the former president.
Trump also likely faces a third and fourth indictment: one from the Justice Department for his role in the Jan. 6 riots and his efforts to cancel the 2020 election and in Georgia, as well as his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, which includes racketeering charges.
This story has been updated.
Fox News host Jesse Watters advocated for abortion rights by trying to humiliate one of his co-hosts over vaccines.
Watters and his co-hosts of The Five on Thursday, Robert Kennedy Jr. ‘s congressional testimony the day before. Republicans had invited Kennedy to testify before the House Judiciary Committee on Censorship and Free Speech, a move Democrats called irresponsible.
During the show, host Jessica Tarlov (rightly) warned that Kennedy’s anti-vaccine and conspiracy theoretical positions are “dangerous,” which triggered Watters.
“If you think some vaccines are dangerous, so what, Jessica?So what?” Watters demanded, before admitting that he had vaccinated his own children on the recommendation of his pediatrician.
“It’s really a little weird that you’re so disappointed in what a Democrat thinks about vaccines!” continued Watters. “You can do whatever you need to do with your body; you can do whatever you need with your child’s body; Your doctor can tell you what to do with your body. What does this have to do with RFK Jr. ? »
“Thank you for protecting Roe!” Tarlov replied
Watters: It’s really a little strange that you’re so disappointed in what a Democrat thinks about vaccines. You can do whatever you need to do with your frame and your doctor can tell you what to do with your frame. Jessica: Are you protecting Roe pic. twitter. com/RQAtXQcIVP
Tarlov, of course, was referring to Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court ruling that legalized the nation’s right to abortion, and which the new conservative high court struck down last year. Since then, Republicans across the country have rushed to limit access to the procedure, neglecting the physical autonomy of millions.
Watters’ diatribe perfectly sums up the right’s approach to individual rights. It’s your body, your choice, until you try to do anything you disagree with, like abort or provide a transgender user with gender-affirming care.
On Thursday night, Ron DeSantis announced his courageous resolution to launch a state-led investigation into Bud Light, for. . . having made an Instagram video.
“We believe that when you take your eyes off the ball like that,” DeSantis said on Jesse Watters’ Fox show, while appearing to hold back a burp, “you’re not fulfilling your fiduciary duty to make it as productive as possible for your shareholders. So we’re going to launch an investigation into Bud Light and InBev. And that can be anything that leads to a derivative lawsuit filed on behalf of the shareholders of the Florida pension fund.
And DeSantis complied, uttering in a letter Friday calling for an investigation into AB InBev (Bud Light’s parent company) “regarding its Bud Light marketing campaign,” referring to the company’s only undeniably sponsored video featuring famed actress and influencer Dylan Mulvaney, who is also trans.
The letter from Florida’s governor and presidential candidate accuses the company of cutting inventory costs and potentially hurting shareholders of the Florida pension fund, because of the 45-second sponsorship ad — a perfectly accurate video that caused no damage until DeSantis and his allies made it a problem. (So if someone is guilty of the shareholders’ monetary loss, they likely have an equally meritorious case against DeSantis himself. )
“At the end of the day, there have to be penalties when you take your business away from your social agfinisha at the expense of workers,” DeSantis continued on the Watters show, ignoring that his own radical agfinisha has so far targeted millions of working people in Florida and the United States.
Speaking of poor prioritization, while DeSantis has dedicated his time to attacking LGBTQ people, immigrants, and “woke” businesses, he welcomes the phosphate industry to pave Florida’s roads with the industry’s poisonous waste; its components are exposed to some of the temperatures recorded; And insurance corporations are fleeing their state en masse, because of the climate threat that Republicans have shown no interest in mitigating.
Even Republican Rep. Greg Stuebe weighed in, responding to Florida’s 206% increase in insurance premiums since DeSantis took office. “The result is that the state’s elected official is not in the crosshairs (and is not present) in Florida,” Steube tweeted Thursday. “This is a primary crisis for Floridians. “
Donald Trump, who has been impeached twice and expects to be impeached for a third time overnight, is already in the barrel of his fourth indictment. And the most recent may come with extortion charges.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has been investigating Trump for nearly two years for his role in efforts to cancel the 2020 election. He is expected to begin filing charges in a few weeks.
And one of the allegations may simply be an “extensive” extortion allegation, The Guardian reported Friday, bringing up two anonymous resources that have been briefed on the pending charges. Willis has enough evidence to show that Trump created a “company,” according to state law.
Georgia’s extortion law requires a style of activity in at least two “qualified” crimes. Willis’ indictment is reportedly based on witness influence fees and computer intrusion.
It’s unclear exactly what those allegations relate to, but it’s possible that influential witnesses are simply referring to Trump’s phone calls begging Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” 11,780 votes, the precise amount needed to return the state’s election effects to Trump.
It’s possible the computer intrusion was due to the breach of voting machines in Coffee County, which is located a few hours south of Fulton. A pro-Trump organization of people, paid through Sidney Powell, then Trump’s lawyer, edited the voting machines at the county elections office. They copied sensitive data and uploaded it to a site so that election deniers can simply use it to discover that the election had been rigged.
Coffee County falls under Fulton’s jurisdiction, but the extortion rate would allow prosecutors to report the data breach as part of a habit meant to keep Trump in force through corruption.
Trump is struggling to fend off the growing pile of accusations. Last week, he sought a new injunction to dismiss Georgia’s case. His legal team also advocated postponing the trial over the classified documents he dealt with until after the election. The trial date has just been set for May 2024.
Donald Trump is going to be tried. All in May 2024.
The two-time accused, twice-accused and sexually abused presidential candidate faces 37 counts of thief for allegedly seizing and mishandling top-secret documents. The charges make him the first former president to also be indicted through the federalArray.
And on Friday, Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, announced that Trump would go to trial on May 20, 2024, in the case of classified documents.
The trial will most likely last two weeks, meaning it will encompass the Kentucky and Oregon primaries. Several post-trial primaries will also be held in Washington, D. C. , Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico and South Dakota. The Republican National Convention is scheduled for July 15 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. (Trump is reportedly already preparing for the convention, should his nomination be blocked. )
While Trump had worked to postpone his trial until after the election, the date set through Cannon came at a time when Trump may well have won the Republican nomination.
While its warring parties could use the closed trial as fuel for the crusade, most of its warring parties have been reluctant to directly attack the former president for several weak points: being indicted twice, wasting the popular vote twice, potentially accumulating up to 4 accusations, being held responsible for sexual abuse and defamation, or any of his past crimes, such as defrauding Trump University participants or escaping. Tax.
This story has been updated.
Sen. Chuck Grassley released the FBI report Thursday that Republicans say proves the Bidens accepted bribes from Ukraine. But there’s just one problem: there’s no proof yet.
House Republicans have accused Biden’s circle of relatives of corruption for months, but have been unable to provide any genuine evidence linking President Joe Biden or his son Hunter to wrongdoing. The GOP has continually insisted that the newly released FBI document, which House members were first able to see in June, proves that either man accepted bribes.
But it’s an unverified way and it’s based on a conspiracy theory through Rudy Giuliani.
Donald Trump and Giuliani, his private lawyer at the time, first pushed the plot that Biden’s circle of relatives had accepted a $10 million bribe to indict former Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin in 2016 to prevent an investigation into Hunter Biden’s role in the oil company Burisma Holdings. Hunter Biden accepting the money. Anna Paulina Luna and Marjorie Taylor Greene said in June that Burisma executive owner Mykola Zlochevsky.
Grassley now has the form, which mentions that Zlochevsky made the first allegations of corruption. Republicans celebrate the decision and insist it proves the Bidens are to blame for corruption.
?BREAKING? Form FD-1023 alleging that then-Vice President JOE Biden participated in a $5,000,000 bribery scheme with a Burisma executive published through @ChuckGrassley. Read ? pic. twitter. com/Mc6dVIwdsG
But the fact is that FD 10-23 is used to record unverified information. This whole document only confirms that someone said that Zlochesvky had filed the accusation. It does not provide concrete evidence. Several State Department officials and intelligence experts on Russia and Ukraine have continuously denied this claim.
In addition, the confidential human source, or CHS, admits in the same document that the data may not be true. The source told the FBI that it is not unusual for Ukrainian businessmen to “brag or brag,” according to the document.
“As such, CHS is in a position to provide any other opinions on the veracity of Zlochevsky’s aforementioned statements,” the document concludes.
Zlochevsky himself also said he never got the help of the Bidens. When asked via Politico in 2020 whether Biden had ever helped Burisma while he was vice president, he simply replied, “No. “
But Republicans, led by Comer, have insisted that Biden is to blame for corruption, though they continually admit they have no proof, don’t know if their data is legitimate and don’t even care if the allegations are accurate. His star witness has also just been charged with acting as a foreign agent and arms trafficking.
While Grassley would likely have noted some vital problems with his party by releasing the form, he most likely found himself in trouble with the FBI. Last month, the office warned House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, who led Biden’s investigation, that he was too lax with security restrictions in FD 10-23.
“We are implicated that members did not heed the Committee’s agreement that the data contained in the document would no longer be released,” the FBI said in a letter. “Several committee members have made public the main points related to their compilation of confidential resource reports allegedly referenced in the document. “
“The conduct of some committee members at the June 8 review blatantly ignored our agreement and has the potential to cause serious harm. “
On Tuesday, Turner tweeted: “Insulin let loose. Let the medicine be loose. It is certainly not a radical call for life-saving medicines, nor more broadly in the context of 73 other countries with flexible or universal physical care. Nor remembering that the average cost of insulin in the United States is around $100; the next closest is Chile, with just over $20; The charge in the following 31 countries ranges from $2. 64 to $16. 48.
But by committing even remotely to one of those facts, the New Hampshire Libertarian Party tried something different.
“Nina Turner picking crops be free,” the state party tweeted.
It’s racist and anti-black. In no case is the promotion of loose insulin comparable to mobile slavery. Shameful and instructivo. pic. twitter. com/ad1jMJSdvw
“Insulin be free” is as offensive as asking someone to be forced to pick crops, the party later added, after facing a first wave of backlash. “They are the same ethical statement, and we respond to them with the same ethical horror,” he continued, displaying the same intellectual rigor as a 15-year-old who just discovered a list of words and Jordan Peterson’s YouTube channel for the first time.
But it’s not just a dishonest social media worker pushing the line.
“None of the things you advocate are ‘free. ‘ They want labor and fabrics that want to be compensated,” the National Libertarian Party added. “Otherwise, you are defending slavery. I hope this is helping you. “
“Being black doesn’t give you a loose pass to advocate for fashionable slavery, just with more steps. You are virtuous. You are greedy and evil under a veneer of respectability that would cause unspeakable human dystopian misery,” Libertarian National Convention Secretary Caryn Ann Harlos tweeted. “Save me your indignation. “
Was there a flirtation of a real claim to recover underneath all this?Harlos, in another tweet, gave the impression of distilling part of the argument that “coercively taking some of almost everyone’s paintings is just more respectable slavery. “
Libertarianism has a tendency toward disbelief in society’s perception, in the idea that Americans come together to help each other in their unusual, inexplicable adventure on earth. But unless it is proposed that everyone deserves to live completely separate lives, without common ties that ensure a strong community of life (access to water or electricity or transportation, for example), a moderate user deserves to be able to believe what could be part of a basic community of life. As an essential physical care.
But with such contempt not only for the truth we are a part of, but also for the truth we can only help create, libertarians were enough to make the ridiculous comparison between kidnapped slaves, raped, whipped, forced to work in the heat for hours and. . . A society that believes taxpayers’ money goes to life-saving drugs is a smart thing to do.
The Senate Judiciary Committee on Judiciary issued a resolution Thursday to combat corruption at the Supreme Court, proposing a bill that would force judges to adopt a code of ethics.
The High Court has come under fire following reports that Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito accepted lavish gifts from billionaire Republican donors. Many others have asked the court to identify a code of ethics to avoid such conditions in the future, which the judges have resisted.
The Senate’s judiciary voted 11-10, depending on the party, to pass the Supreme Court Ethics, Rejection and Transparency Act, which would require the court to identify a code of conduct. It would also create a procedure for other people to register ethics court cases opposed to judges.
The move would require judges to adhere to strict new rules for disclosing any gifts or sources of income they or their employees get — obviously a direct reaction to gifts Thomas and Alito have accepted over the years.
Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin called the law “a very important first step in restoring acceptance as true in court,” after a “steady stream of reports of moral failings by judges. “
But Republicans on the committee introduced 61 amendments to lengthen the committee’s hearing. Lindsey Graham, a member of the ranking, accused Democrats of doing “virtually everything that needs to be done to delegitimize this court. “
But the judges did very well on their own. For years, Thomas accepted piles of thousands of dollars in gifts from Republican megadonor Harlan Crow in the form of island-hopping yacht vacations; the Nazi collector also paid school fees for Thomas’ nephew and bought assets from the Thomas family, where Thomas’ mother still lives.
Thomas has refused to recuse himself from cases similar to the Jan. 6 riots, even though his wife, Ginni Thomas, is a prominent right-wing activist.
Alito also accepted a luxury vacation from a billionaire Republican megadonor. Right-wing activist (then head of the Federalist Society) Leonard Leo helped organize the event and also participated.
Meanwhile, Chief Justice John Roberts’ wife, Jane Roberts, allegedly paid more than $10 million through several law firms, at least one of which argued a case before her husband, after he had already paid her thousands of dollars.
And the review is rarely limited to conservative justices: Justice Sonia Sotomayor is in the spotlight after The Associated Press reported that her aides insisted on establishments where she planned to speak to buy hundreds, if not thousands, of copies of her books.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. , one of the country’s leading anti-vaccine propagators, just said under oath that he is not anti-vaxxers and that he has not told the public to get vaccinated.
The comments took place here the appearance of the presidential candidate before the Special Subcommittee on Militarization of the Federal Government of the House of Representatives in a hearing focused on the alleged censorship of social networks.
And Kennedy, who was driven by Big Tech CEO Elon Musk, sought to set the record directly on anything else while holding the platform.
“I’ve never been anti-vaxxers,” said the guy who chairs an anti-vaccine organization that has conspiracy theories about the covid-19 vaccine. “I never told the public, ‘Avoid vaccination. ‘”
RFK Jr: I’ve never been anti-vaxxers. I never told the public to get vaccinated pic. twitter. com/zFkYlBTbo0
Kennedy noted that his children are vaccinated and he is fully vaccinated, when it comes to Covid.
Earlier in the hearing, Kennedy also said, “Although I am under oath, in all my life I never uttered a racist or anti-Semitic phrase. “A few days ago, Kennedy claimed that covid “was intended to attack Caucasians and blacks,” while pardoning those who are “Ashkenazi and Chinese Jews. “
The star witness strategy that Republicans have developed in relation to the Hunter Biden case does not seem to be going as planned.
On Wednesday, at a House Oversight Committee hearing, amid deranged nude and waved photographs of Hunter Biden by Marjorie Taylor Greene (and subsequently, in all likelihood, illegally sending those nudes to a children’s organization), Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi used his line of questioning to identify a critical point. Many court cases about alleged interference in investigations deserve to be directed at Trump appointees.
The U. S. representative. U. S. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) reminds witnesses alleging political interference in Hunter Biden’s tax case that many of their court cases involve Trump appointees, adding former Attorney General Bill Barr and U. S. Attorney David Weiss, a time when Joe Biden was no presidente. pic. twitter. com/JGcQjCbRkO
Krishnamoorthi had directed his questions to Joseph Ziegler and Gary Shapley, two IRS whistleblowers who allege that the breakdown of justice slowed their investigation into Hunter Biden. The witnesses are part of Republican efforts to accuse the Bidens of corruption, though they have run out of weapons.
“You were afraid that. . . Attorney General Bill Barr will consolidate the series of instances in the Delaware U. S. Attorney’s Office,” Krishnamoorthi began. “Now, of course, Bill Barr nominated through Donald Trump, right?” he continued, eliciting an affirmative reaction from Ziegler.
Krishnamoorthi provoked the same reaction from Ziegler about U. S. Attorney David Weiss.
“You said the warrants were in a position since April 2020 to start searching records, but no action has been taken in relation to the warrants,” Krishnamoorthi asked Shapley. “Again, Joe Biden was not president in April 2020.
Shapley finally agreed, puncturing some other tire at James Comer’s chaotic clown car committee hearings.