Tag: Donald Trump

Judge grills attorneys over suit challenging Michigan results

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A federal judge grilled attorneys involved in a lawsuit that sought to overturn Michigan’s election results during a hearing Monday over whether the lawyers should be sanctioned for their conduct in the case.

U.S. District Court Judge Linda Parker posed pointed questions for the attorneys who made baseless claims in court that widespread election fraud caused former President Trump to lose the state to President Biden.

Parker appeared concerned that the affidavits submitted by the plaintiffs’ attorneys to support their election fraud claims may have violated the rules of professional conduct governing lawyers in federal court.  Continue reading.

Lawyers retreat from pro-Trump election suit

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At a hearing on possible sanctions over the Michigan case, some attorneys downplayed their roles. 

The legal reckoning for attorneys who pushed former President Donald Trump’s spurious claims of election fraud advanced on Monday, with a federal court in Detroit holding a hearing on whether to impose sanctions over a suit filed last year seeking to decertify Joe Biden’s victory in Michigan and declare Trump the winner.

Two of the most prominent attorneys in the pro-Trump camp — Dallas-based Sidney Powell and Atlanta-based L. Lin Wood — are among the lawyers who brought the unsuccessful suit and whose conduct is under scrutiny by U.S. District Court Judge Linda Parker.

Another pair of attorneys facing possible sanctions in the case, Emily Newman and Julia Haller, served in a variety of Trump administration posts but appear to have left government late last year to aid Powell in the post-election litigation. Continue reading.

Adviser to pro-Trump GOP group sent out a newsletter ‘so racist’ it could ‘make a Ku Klux Klansman blush’: report

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Pro-Trump Republicans often engage in subliminal racism or “dog whistle” attacks — that is, code words that they will insist aren’t racist. But when Florida resident Rip McIntosh, an adviser to far-right Trumpista Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA, sent out a fundraising newsletter on April 29, there was nothing subtle or subliminal about the racism in the newsletter. 

In the newsletter, Talking Points Memo’s Nick R. Martin reports, someone going by the pen name E.P. Unum wrote that Blacks have “become socially incompatible with other races” and that “American Black culture has evolved into an unfixable and crime-ridden mess.” Martin described Unum’s rant as being “so racist it might make a ku klux klansman blush.”

According to Martin, the newsletter that McIntosh e-mailed, “also said White people aren’t racist but ‘just exhausted’ with Black people. It portrayed post-Civil War America as a 150-year-long ‘experiment’ to see whether Black people could be ‘taken from the jungles of Africa,’ enslaved, and then integrated into a majority-White society. It said that experiment had failed.” Continue reading.

DOJ reviewed reports of potential misconduct, complicity by officers responding to Capitol riot

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The U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, D.C., said it is providing those reports at the request of multiple lawyers for the accused rioters.

The Justice Department has reviewed reports of alleged misconduct by police officers who responded to the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol and is preparing to share them with defense attorneys in the sprawling case, prosecutors revealed in a Monday filing. 

The U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, D.C., said it is providing those reports at the request of multiple lawyers for the accused rioters. Those lawyers have inquired about allegations that some officers may have been “complicit in the January 6 Capitol Breach,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Brandon Regan wrote in the filing.

“We have received copies of investigations into officer conduct, have finished reviewing them, and plan to disclose the relevant materials shortly,” Regan wrote in under the heading “certain specific defense requests.” Continue reading.

‘Land of misfit toys’: Former GOP lawmaker drops the hammer on CPAC ‘freak show’ after ‘reprehensible’ Trump appearance

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Appearing on CNN’s “New Day,” former Republican congressman Charlie Dent (R-PA) hammered the annual CPAC gathering that took place in Texas this past weekend, bluntly calling the confab a “freak show” that is not representative of mainstream conservatism.

Speaking with hosts John Berman and Brianna Keilar, Dent said he was both appalled and despondent at what he witnessed while noting that when he was still serving in the House, he refused to attend and be tainted by the extremism he saw there.

After watching a clip of a CPAC panel disparaging efforts to get Americans vaccinated against COVID-19, the former lawmaker went off — while also questioning the straw poll taken at the get-together that anointed Donald Trump as the attendee’s preference in the 2024 presidential election. Continue reading.

Fox News runs disclaimer across the screen while Trump lies about 2020 election in CPAC speech

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Former President Donald Trump continued to spread his 2020 election lies in this CPAC speech Sunday. But one thing was notably different: Fox News ran a disclaimer that he was lying.

While Fox has spent the past several weeks allowing their prime-time hosts to spread lies about the COVID-19 vaccine. The network appears to be drawing a line when it comes to the election.

“The voting system companies have denied the various allegations made by President Trump and his counsel regarding the 2020 election,” the screen says. Continue reading.

Trump on Jan. 6 insurrection: ‘These were great people’

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The former president described the participants as loving and patriotic, and said Democrats could be blamed for any violence.

Former President Donald Trump on Sunday widely praised those who attended the Jan. 6 rally that preceded the insurrection at the Capitol, repeatedly using the word “love” to describe the tone of the event.

Echoing his rhetoric about the 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., Trump said, “These were peaceful people, these were great people.”

Speaking on “Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo” on the Fox News Channel, he also said the rally participants were patriots, that some of them were unjustly arrested and jailed, and that a woman who was shot and killed by law enforcement during the insurrection was a great hero. Continue reading.

An American Kingdom

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A new and rapidly growing Christian movement is openly political, wants a nation under God’s authority, and is central to Donald Trump’s GOP

FORT WORTH — The pastor was already pacing when he gave the first signal. Then he gave another, and another, until a giant video screen behind him was lit up with an enormous colored map of Fort Worth divided into four quadrants.

Greed, the map read over the west side. Competition, it said over the east side. Rebellion, it said over the north part of the city. Lust, it said over the south.

It was an hour and a half into the 11 a.m. service of a church that represents a rapidly growing kind of Christianity in the United States, one whose goal includes bringing under the authority of a biblical God every facet of life, from schools to city halls to Washington, where the pastor had traveled a month after the Jan. 6 insurrection and filmed himself in front of the U.S. Capitol saying quietly, “Father, we declare America is yours.” Continue reading.

Giuliani had a profanity-filled meltdown on the RNC’s counsel for questioning Trump’s election claims: report

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According to a report from Business Insider, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani had a major meltdown after Republican National Committee chief counsel Justin Riemer sent out a note calling into question Donald Trump’s claims of election fraud.

Reporting on excerpts taken from Michael Wolff’s upcoming “Landslide: The Final Days of the Trump Presidency,” the report states that Giuliani was given the note by fellow lawyer Jenna Ellis which stunned Trump insiders and set off a torrent of cursing.

“In the note, Riemer reportedly wrote to his RNC colleagues asking why they were backing Trump’s unfounded claims of election fraud, while also expressing that the organization raised more cash battling Democrats than challenging election results,” Business Insider reports. “Ellis, who was having dinner with Rudy Giuliani and former New York City police commissioner Bernie Kerik, passed her phone around for everyone to view the message, which reportedly left them ‘stunned.'” Continue reading.

GOP Pols Forced to Admit the ‘Big Lie’ Is BS During Farcical Texas Showdown

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Protesters filled the Texas State House on Saturday for a hastily organized special session to debate Gov. Greg Abbott’s restrictive “election integrity” measures.

Republican lawmakers were forced to admit they have not seen any evidence of widespread election fraud during a Saturday showdown in the Texas State House over restrictive “election integrity” measures being taken up in a special session called by Gov. Greg Abbott.

The move was decried by Democrats as little more than an attempt to suppress minority votes. Experts say that unnecessary election security measures like the ones being proposed in Texas actually do nothing to make elections more secure and disproportionately disenfranchise people of color. Large numbers of opponents showed up on Saturday to officially register their objection to the GOP initiative, including former Rep. Beto O’Rourke.

One of them, a 17-year-old San Antonian named Kyle Huang, began his testimony by saying he was there representing “myself, and I guess my fellow citizens.” Continue reading.