Trump Organization removes indicted top finance officer Allen Weisselberg from leadership roles at dozens of subsidiaries

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The Trump Organization has removed indicted chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg from his leadership roles at more than 40 subsidiary companies, according to corporate filings in the United States and Scotland.

The changes were made Thursday and Friday, a week after a grand jury in Manhattan indicted Weisselberg on 15 felony counts, including grand larceny and tax fraud. Weisselberg was accused by New York prosecutors of helping run a 15-year scheme to evade income taxes by concealing executives’ salaries — including more than $1.7 million of his own income — from tax authorities. Two Trump corporate entities were indicted alongside Weisselberg.

On Thursday, the Trump Organization removed Weisselberg as a director of the company that runs its golf course in Aberdeen, Scotland, according to British corporate records. Continue reading.

The Memo: Trump pours gas on tribalism with Jan. 6 rewrite

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Former President Trump is persevering with his attempts to rewrite the history of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

It is an effort that is being aided by his political and media allies. 

It also threatens to inflame his supporters anew, ruin any chance of anything resembling a national consensus on the riot and pour new gas on the fires of political tribalism. Continue reading.

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 Booster On Staten Island Under Investigation For Absentee Ballot Fraud

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Yet another Trump supporter who loudly repeated the former president’s lies about election fraud in the 2020 election is now under investigation for vote fraud himself.

According to multiple news outlets, both federal and state authorities are probing the recent campaign of Marko Kepi – a narrowly defeated candidate for City Council in the Republican primary on New York’s Staten Island. Kepi is suspected of forging absentee ballots by officials of the New York City Board of Elections.

Ironically many Republicans, including Kepi, have insinuated that Democrats misused absentee ballots authorized for use by voters wishing to avoid crowded voting places during the pandemic. Continue reading.