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11/29/2022

BORDER/MEXICO/WALL: “The USA will be paying a very big price, perhaps the biggest price of all, because of what is being allowed to happen at our Southern Border, which just two years ago was the most secure, by far, in history! I built hundreds of miles of desperately needed WALL, was able to get 28,000 Mexican Soldiers (free!) to guard the Border, and created, and got approved, the incredible STAY IN MEXICO POLICY. Now it has all gone to ‘dust,’ our Country is rapidly being destroyed. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!”

-Donald Trump, Truth Social, November 29, 2022

11/29/2022

2020 ELECTION/2022 MIDTERMS: “I was 232-22 in the MIDTERM ELECTIONS, and still have to listen to DEMS, RINOS, and the Fake News explain how poorly I did (Also, 98.6% in Republican Nomination Endorsements!). Without my Endorsement of Republican Candidates, the numbers would have been a disaster. Same for 2018 and the CORRUPT ELECTION OF 2020, where almost everyone won because, and with the help of, ME – EXCEPT ME – and that’s because the Presidential Election was RIGGED & STOLEN!”

-Donald Trump, Truth Social, November 29, 2022

11/29/2022

CELEBS: “During an interview with Timcast IRL on Monday night, November 28, the artist formerly known as Kanye West decided to speak out after Trump reportedly called the Donda rapper ‘a seriously troubled man’ in a post on his Truth Social app. He also reportedly told the Yeezy founder that it was a waste of time to run for president because he ‘can’t win.’ Ye, who previously said Trump talked down on his ex-wife Kim Kardashian, responded by saying Trump is ‘known for lying.’

‘Look at Pence,’ West said in reference to the former vice president who condemned his and Fuentes’ presence at the dinner. ‘He sold Trump out. You know what I’m saying? I would’ve never wanted to do anything that hurt Trump. I’m on Trump’s side. Trump said things that hurt me. He lied about me, but I mean, he’s known for lying. And when people used to tell me that he’s a liar, it’s like, you know I went into the trenches for Trump. There was no one else in my position that wore that hat.’”

-Tony M. Centeno, “Ye Walks Out Of Interview After He Claimed Donald Trump ‘Lied’ About Him,” iheart.com, November 29, 2022

11/29/2022

2024 ELECTION/ANTISEMITISM/GOP/RELIGION: “Just two days before Thanksgiving, Donald Trump was planning to have a private, uneventful dinner with an old friend: Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West…

Ye arrived with three guests, including white nationalist and antisemite Nick Fuentes.

Trump has since said he didn’t know Fuentes or his background when they dined together, a claim Fuentes confirmed in an interview, but others at the crowded members-only club figured out his identity. News of the meeting prompted an avalanche of criticism, from some Republican rivals and allies of Trump and his then-week-old presidential campaign…

The uproar underscores long-standing issues with Trump as Republicans consider whether they want him back as president again in 2024.”

-Marc Caputo, “The inside story of Trump’s explosive dinner with Ye and Nick Fuentes,” nbcnews.com, November 29, 2022

11/29/2022

ANTISEMITISM/GOP/RELIGION: “[L]ast week, Mr. Trump dined at his Palm Beach palace, Mar-a-Lago, with the performer Kanye West, who had already been denounced for making antisemitic statements, and with Nick Fuentes, an outspoken antisemite and Holocaust denier, granting the antisemitic fringe a place of honor at his table. Now, even some of Mr. Trump’s staunchest supporters say they can no longer ignore the abetting of bigotry by the nominal leader of the Republican Party.”

-Jonathan Weisman, “Jewish Allies Call Trump’s Dinner With Antisemites a Breaking Point,” nytimes.com, November 29, 2022

11/29/2022

DOJ/LAWSUITS/TRUMP PEOPLE: “A spate of major court rulings rejecting claims of executive privilege and other arguments by Donald Trump and his top allies are boosting investigations by the US justice department (DoJ) and a special Georgia grand jury into whether the former US president broke laws as he sought to overturn the 2020 election results.

Former prosecutors say the upshot of these court rulings is that key Trump backers and ex-administration lawyers – such as ex-chief of staff Mark Meadows and legal adviser John Eastman – can no longer stave off testifying before grand juries in DC and Georgia. They are wanted for questioning about their knowledge of – or active roles in – Trump’s crusade to stop Joe Biden from taking office by leveling false charges of fraud.”

-Peter Stone, “US courts ruling in favor of justice department turns legal tide on Trump,” theguardian.com, November 29, 2022

11/28/2022

CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS/DOJ: “Former President Donald Trump boasted on Monday [November 28, 2022] about how he ‘openly and transparently’ moved government records from the White House to Mar-a-Lago upon leaving office.

‘…When will you invade Bill and Hillary’s home in search of the 33,000 emails she deleted AFTER receiving a subpoena from the U.S. Congress?’ Trump wrote on his social media website, Truth Social. ‘When will you invade the other Presidents’ homes in search of documents, which are voluminous, which they took with them, but not nearly so openly and transparently as I did?’

The Justice Department is currently investigating whether Trump broke federal law by moving documents to Mar-a-Lago after leaving the White House.”

-Sonam Sheth, “Trump brags that he ‘openly and transparently’ took government documents from the White House to Mar-a-Lago,” businessinsider.com, November 28, 2022

11/28/2022

2022 MIDTERMS/ARIZONA: “Donald Trump on Monday [November 28, 2022] declared the Arizona midterm election ‘yet another criminal voting operation’ and demanded that defeated gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake be ‘installed Governor of Arizona.’ …

Lake, who lost her bid for governor to Democrat Katie Hobbs, has refused to acknowledge the election results…

An investigation by the Associated Press found that election certifications in most states were conducted ‘smoothly’ and with ‘few complaints.’ Despite this the former president has seized on Lake’s loss to revive his own conspiratorial claims. As previously reported by Rolling Stone, Trump had been making preparations amongst supporters and allies to challenge the results of the midterms months before they took place.”

-Nikki McCann Ramirez, “Trump, Done with Democracy, Calls on Kari Lake to Be ‘Installed’ as Arizona’s Governor,” rollingstone.com, November 28, 2022

11/27/2022

2020 ELECTION: “January 6th was all about a highly CORRUPT [2020] ELECTION, which is the only thing the Unselects refused to investigate!”

-Donald Trump, Truth Social, November 29, 2022

11/26/2022

CELEBS: “So I help a seriously troubled man, who just happens to be black, Ye (Kanye West), who has been decimated in his business and virtually everything else, and who has always been good to me, by allowing his request for a meeting at Mar-a-Lago, alone, so that I can give him very much needed ‘advice.’ He shows up with 3 people, two of which I didn’t know, the other a political person who I haven’t seen in years. I told him don’t run for office, a total waste of time, can’t win. Fake News went CRAZY!”

-Donald Trump, Truth Social, November 29, 2022

11/25/2022

ANTISEMITISM/CELEBS: “Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, was asking me for advice concerning some of his difficulties, in particular having to do with his business. We also discussed, to a lesser extent, politics, where I told him he should definitely not run for President, ‘any voters you may have should vote for TRUMP.’ Anyway, we got along great, he expressed no anti-Semitism, & I appreciated all of the nice things he said about me on ‘Tucker Carlson.’ Why wouldn’t I agree to meet? Also, I didn’t know Nick Fuentes.”

-Donald Trump, Truth Social, November 25, 2022

11/23/2022

DEMS/JOE BIDEN/SUPREME COURT/TRUMP TAXES: “Former President Trump on Wednesday [November 23, 2022] ripped the Supreme Court after it rejected his emergency appeal seeking to shield his tax returns from House Democrats…

‘Why would anybody be surprised that the Supreme Court has ruled against me, they always do!’ Trump wrote on Truth Social. ‘It is unprecedented to be handing over Tax Returns, & it creates terrible precedent for future Presidents. Has Joe Biden paid taxes on all of the money he made illegally from Hunter & beyond.’”

-Zach Schonfeld, “Trump rips Supreme Court after ruling he hand over tax records,” thehill.com, November 23, 2022

11/23/2022

TRUMP BUSINESS/TRUMP TAXES: “Donald Trump reported losses on his tax returns every year for a decade, including nearly $700 million in 2009 and $200 million in 2010, his longtime accountant testified Tuesday [November 22, 2022], confirming long-held suspicions about the former president’s tax practices.

Donald Bender, a partner at Mazars USA LLP who spent years preparing Trump’s personal tax returns, said Trump’s reported losses from 2009 to 2018 included net operating losses from some of the many businesses he owns through his Trump Organization.”

-Michael R. Sisak, “Accountant testifies Trump claimed decade of huge tax losses,” apnews.com, November 23, 2022

11/22/2022

2024 ELECTION/POLLS/RON DESANTIS: “Ex-President Donald Trump would defeat Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis by a wide margin in a hypothetical 2024 Republican presidential primary, according to a new poll.

Trump received 55% of Republican registered voters’ support, while DeSantis, his potential rival for the White House nomination, received just 25%, the Emerson College poll found.”

-Ashley Capoot, “Trump would beat DeSantis in 2024, as Biden approval rate remains underwater, new poll finds,” CNBC.com, November 22, 2022

11/22/2022

LAWSUIT: “Former President Donald Trump faces an unwelcome Thanksgiving Day entrée – a new lawsuit accusing him of battery in the alleged assault of E. Jean Carroll, a former magazine advice columnist…

Carroll, who’s already suing Trump for defamation over his denials and comments about her following the assault allegations, will file the new battery lawsuit in Manhattan federal court on Thanksgiving Day, according to a court filing last week.

That’s when New York state’s recently approved Adult Survivors Act opens a one-year window for survivors of sexual assault that occurred when they were past age 18 to sue alleged abusers, no matter when an assault may have occurred.”

-Kevin McCoy, “Donald Trump faces new lawsuit from E. Jean Carroll, who’s already suing him for defamation,” usatoday.com, November 22, 2022

11/22/2022

CONGRESS/SUPREME COURT/TRUMP TAXES: “The Supreme Court cleared the way on Tuesday [November 22, 2022] for a House committee to obtain former President Donald J. Trump’s tax returns, refusing his request to block their release after a yearslong fight…

The decision means the Treasury Department is likely to soon turn over six years of his tax returns to the House, which has been seeking his financial records since 2019.”

-Charlie Savage, “In Blow to Trump, Supreme Court Permits House to Obtain His Tax Returns,” nytimes.com, November 22, 2022

11/18/2022

2020 ELECTION/DOJ/INVESTIGATIONS: “Attorney General Merrick Garland tapped longtime federal prosecutor Jack Smith as special counsel to oversee a multi-pronged investigation into former President Donald Trump’s efforts to subvert the 2020 election and the unauthorized transfer of highly classified government documents to his Florida estate after exiting the White House.

Garland’s appointment is an attempt to shield the Justice Department from conflicts of interest in an unprecedented criminal investigation after Trump recently announced a bid to retake the White House now occupied by Garland’s boss, President Joe Biden.”

-Kevin Johnson, “AG Merrick Garland appoints special counsel to oversee Trump criminal investigations,” usatoday.com, November 18, 2022

11/15/2022

2024 ELECTION/GOP/FLORIDA: “Former President Donald Trump announced that he is running for the 2024 Republican nomination for president, seeking to stage a dramatic return to the White House after having lost his bid for re-election to Joe Biden in 2020.

Trump, a Republican and the leader of the ‘Make America Great Again’ movement, announced his third presidential bid on Tuesday during a speech at his Mar-a-Lago, Florida, home after having teased a bid since leaving office in 2021.”

-Brooke Singman, “Donald Trump announces 2024 re-election run for president,” foxnews.com, November 15, 2022

11/11/2022

2024 ELECTION/RON DESANTIS: “Donald Trump is keeping up his attacks on GOP rival Ron DeSantis following the Florida Governor’s impressive showing in the midterm elections and increased discussion of his potential as a 2024 presidential candidate.

In a long and at times surreal statement last night, Mr Trump claimed that in 2018, he single-handedly saved Mr DeSantis’s first gubernatorial campaign – and that he dispatched the FBI and US Attorneys to protect the governor from defeat in the face of supposed electoral fraud in key counties. There is no evidence that his story is true.”

-Io Dodds, Andrew Naughtie, Oliver O’Connell, and Gustaf Kilander, “Trump news – live: Trump claims he sent FBI to save DeSantis in 2018 in bizarre Truth Social rant,” independent.co.uk, November 11, 2022

11/11/2022

ENDORSEMENTS: “I had such great success on Endorsements, perhaps success like no one has had before, both for Republican Nominations and the General Election itself, and I continue to get Fake News, RINO, and Radical Left criticism, but seldom congratulations or praise. That’s the way it is, and that’s the way it will always be!”

-Donald Trump, truthsocial.com, November 11, 2022

11/11/2022

CHINA/CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS/IRAN: “Donald Trump’s lawyers provided a more detailed explanation in a court filing Thursday evening [November 10, 2022] as to why they say the former president had the authority to personally declassify sensitive government documents, though they again stopped short of saying Trump actually declassified materials that he kept after leaving the White House…

The president, they said in the filing, would be considered the supervisor of whoever classified any of the documents, some of which deal with the most sensitive government secrets involving countries including Iran and China.”

-Perry Stein, “In filing, Trump lawyers again claim he had right to declassify documents,” washingtonpost.com, November 11, 2022

11/10/2022

HILLARY CLINTON/LAWSUIT: “A federal judge on Thursday [November 10, 2022] excoriated and sanctioned several members of Donald Trump’s legal team, saying the former president’s massive lawsuit against his former rival, Hillary Clinton, and dozens of other adversaries amounted to an intentional abuse of the legal system.

‘These were political grievances masquerading as legal claims,’ said U.S. District Court Judge Donald Middlebrooks, a Florida-based jurist who dismissed Trump’s lawsuit in September. ‘This cannot be attributed to incompetent lawyering. It was a deliberate use of the judicial system to pursue a political agenda.’”

-Josh Gerstein and Kyle Cheney, “Judge slaps sanctions on Trump lawyers for ‘frivolous’ Clinton lawsuit,” politico.com, November 10, 2022

11/10/2022

2024 ELECTION/MEDIA/RON DESANTIS: “Ron DeSanctimonious is playing games! The Fake News asks him if he’s going to run [in the 2024 election] if President Trump runs, and he says, ‘I’m only focused on the Governor’s race, I’m not looking into the future.’ Well, in terms of loyalty and class, that’s really not the right answer…

This is just like 2015 and 2016, a Media Assault (Collusion!), when Fox News fought me to the end until I won, and then they couldn’t have been nicer or more supportive. The Wall Street Journal loved…

…Low Energy Jeb Bush, and a succession of other people as they rapidly disappeared from sight, finally falling in line with me after I easily knocked them out, one by one. We’re in exactly the same position now. They will keep coming after us, MAGA, but ultimately, we will win. Put America First and, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

-Donald Trump, truthsocial.com, November 10, 2022

11/10/2022

PENNSYLVANIA: “You know the sticker in Pennsylvania that says, ‘I voted’? Some people are wearing them saying, ‘I thought I voted.’ Pennsylvania is a very corrupt State with voting, but nobody ever wants to check that. How does Oz (smart guy!) lose to a guy who can’t string together two sentences? They don’t want to check, because they don’t want to make me right. It happened to me in 2020, I lost one million votes with possibly one of the biggest drops in History, happening in the middle of the night.”

-Donald Trump, truthsocial.com, November 10, 2022

11/9/2022

2020 ELECTION/FLORIDA/RON DESANTIS: “Now that the Election in Florida is over, and everything went quite well, shouldn’t it be said that in 2020, I got 1.1 Million more votes in Florida than Ron D got this year, 5.7 Million to 4.6 Million? Just asking?”

-Donald Trump, truthsocial.com, November 9, 2022

11/9/2022

2020 ELECTION/MIKE PENCE: “In a Dec. 5 call, the president [Donald Trump] for the first time mentioned challenging the [2020] election results in Congress…

Early on New Year’s Day, the phone rang. Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert and other Republicans had filed a lawsuit asking a federal judge to declare that I had “exclusive authority and sole discretion” to decide which electoral votes should count. ‘I don’t want to see ‘Pence Opposes Gohmert Suit’ as a headline this morning,’ the president said. I told him I did oppose it. “If it gives you the power,” he asked, ‘why would you oppose it?’ I told him, as I had many times, that I didn’t believe I possessed that power under the Constitution.

‘You’re too honest,’ he chided. ‘Hundreds of thousands are gonna hate your guts. . . . People are gonna think you’re stupid.’ …

The president laid into me. ‘You’ll go down as a wimp,’ he said. ‘If you do that, I made a big mistake five years ago!'”

-Mike Pence, “Mike Pence: My Last Days With Donald Trump,” wsj.com, November 9, 2022

11/1/2022

NANCY PELOSI: “Former President Donald Trump has joined a chorus of conservative voices who have shared baseless conspiracy theories about the attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi.

During an appearance on the Chris Stigall radio show that aired Tuesday morning in Philadelphia, Trump called the attack a ‘sad situation’ but questioned if there was more to the story being detailed by law enforcement…

[Trump said,] ‘The glass it seems was broken from the inside to the out so it wasn’t a break in, it was a break out … The whole thing is crazy, and if there’s even a little bit of truth to what’s being said. The window was broken in and it was strange the cops were standing there practically from the moment it all took place. So, you’re going to have to explain that to your audience, including me.’”

-Meridith McGraw, “Trump joins conspiracists stoking doubts about Pelosi attack,” politico.com, November 1, 2022

11/1/2022

SUPREME COURT/TRUMP BUSINESS/TRUMP TAXES: “Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts on Tuesday [November 1, 2022] temporarily blocked the House Ways and Means Committee from obtaining years of federal income tax returns of former President Donald Trump and related business entities from the IRS…

Trump wants the Supreme Court to block the committee from getting his tax returns and those of the related entities for the years 2015 through 2020 until he formally asks the high court to allow him to appeal lower court rulings that cleared the way for the records to be handed over.

The Democratic-controlled Ways and Means Committee has said it wants the returns as part of a probe of how the IRS audits presidential taxes.”

-Dan Mangan, “Supreme Court temporarily blocks Congress from getting Trump income tax returns,” cnbc.com, November 1, 2022

10/31/2022

TRUMP BUSINESS/TRUMP TAXES: “The criminal tax fraud trial of Donald J. Trump’s family business kicked off in Manhattan on Monday [October 31, 2022]…

The two entities, the Trump Corporation and Trump Payroll Corp., which employ and pay Mr. Trump’s top executives, are accused of 17 counts of tax fraud, conspiracy, scheme to defraud and falsifying business records…

If the corporations are convicted, the company faces the maximum $1.62 million penalty, a rounding error for Mr. Trump, who routinely collected hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue during his presidency.

Other than the money and reputational damage, there might be limited fallout for Mr. Trump’s business.”

-Jonah E. Bromwich, Ben Protess, William K. Rashbaum, and Maggie Haberman, “Prosecutor Says Trump’s Company Evaded Taxes on Lavish Perks to Executives,” nytimes.com, October 31, 2022

10/31/2022

CRIME/VENEZUELA: “President Donald Trump dug deep in an exclusive interview with Americano Media…

‘Look at what’s happened to San Francisco generally,’ Trump said, speaking to the uptick in violent crime in American cities. ‘Look at what’s happening in Chicago. It was far worse than Afghanistan, okay? We have Chicago. When I had Afghanistan…18 months we went without one soldier being shot. And you look at what happens in Chicago in one weekend – last weekend was brutal; it was like a warzone.’ …

In his interview with Americano, Trump posited that he had warned American voters that if ‘we don’t straighten this country out’ you’re ‘going to end up – you are literally going to end up with a Venezuela on steroids.'”

-Summer Lane, “‘Venezuela on Steroids’: Trump Warns What Will Happen if We Don’t ‘Straighten This Country Out,’” rsbnetwork.com, October 31, 2022

10/31/2022

2020 ELECTION/MIKE PENCE/RUDY GIULIANI: “A post-election meeting at which advisers led by Rudy Giuliani attacked campaign lawyers and urged Donald Trump not to accept his election defeat was ‘a new low’ for a president ‘well acquainted with rough-and-tumble debates’, Mike Pence writes in a forthcoming memoir…

By openly blaming Trump for events leading to the January 6 insurrection, when a pro-Trump mob attacked the US Capitol in an attempt to overturn Joe Biden’s election victory, Pence risks angering Republicans he must court as he considers the next nomination for president.”

-Martin Pengelly, “Pence blames Trump for events leading to January 6 in new memoir,” theguardian.com, October 31, 2022

10/31/2022

HILLARY CLINTON/LAWSUIT: “Hillary Clinton asked a federal judge to sanction former President Donald Trump and his lawyers for filing an allegedly frivolous lawsuit accusing them of conspiring to undermine his term in office.

Trump and his attorneys should be ordered to pay $1.06 million in legal fees and costs that were racked up by Clinton, her 2016 presidential campaign and several other Democratic-linked defendants for filing the suit as a ‘political stunt,’ according to a filing Monday in federal court in Florida.”

-Erik Larson, “Hillary Clinton Seeks Sanctions on Trump Over Failed Conspiracy Suit,” bloomberg.com, October 31, 2022

10/27/2022

2022 MIDTERM ELECTION/CAMPAIGN FINANCE: “With Election Day fast approaching and some Donald Trump-endorsed Republican nominees battling in highly competitive and high-profile races, the former president is dipping into his massive war chest to make some sizable investments to back those candidates.

After facing complaints that the GOP’s most ferocious fundraiser had failed to spread his wealth to help fellow Republicans in crucial Senate and gubernatorial contests, Trump over the past three weeks has opened his wallet to back MAGA-friendly Republican nominees in six key battleground states.”

-Mark Meredith and Paul Steinhauser, “Trump putting his money where his mouth is in midterm elections,” foxnews.com, October 27, 2022

10/27/2022

LAWSUIT/NEW YORK/TRUMP BUSINESS/TRUMP FAMILY: “Donald Trump’s namesake company urged a New York judge to reject a demand by the state’s attorney general to appoint a monitor to oversee its financial practices, after she accused it of ‘staggering’ fraud.

The Trump Organization’s filing on Wednesday night [October 26, 2022] came in connection with Attorney General Letitia James’ civil lawsuit accusing the former U.S. president and three of his adult children of lying to banks and insurers by fraudulently overvaluing his real estate assets and net worth.”

-Jonathan Stempel, “Trump’s company: We don’t need a monitor,” reuters.com, October 27, 2022

10/26/2022

NUCLEAR: “In a taped conversation with Bob Woodward, Donald Trump boasted about US nuclear weapons development.

‘I have built a weapon system that nobody’s ever had in this country before,’ the then president told the veteran Washington Post reporter. ‘We have stuff that you haven’t even seen or heard about. We have stuff that Putin and Xi have never heard about before.’ …

Woodward said he looked into Trump’s claim and was told by an official it was true.”

-Martin Pengelly, “Trump bragged about new US nuclear weapons, Woodward tape shows,” theguardian.com, October 26, 2022

10/26/2022

2024 ELECTION/GOP/MIKE PENCE/PAUL RYAN: “A growing number of prominent Republicans are warning that former President Trump should not run again in 2024 or that he will lose if he does, previewing rifts in the GOP that are likely to come into full view after the midterms.

Former Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) and former Vice President Mike Pence in recent days each indicated they’d rather see someone else on the ballot in the next presidential election.”

-Brett Samuels, “Growing number of Republicans say Trump won’t be GOP nominee,” thehill.com, October 26, 2022

10/25/2022

2020 ELECTION/DOJ: “The Justice Department has asked a federal judge to force the two top lawyers in Donald J. Trump’s White House to provide additional grand jury testimony as prosecutors seek to break through the former president’s attempts to shield his efforts to overturn the 2020 election from investigation, according to two people familiar with the matter…

The filing was the latest skirmish in a behind-the-scenes legal struggle between the government and Mr. Trump’s lawyers to determine how much testimony witnesses close to the former president can provide to the grand jury, which is examining Mr. Trump’s role in numerous schemes to reverse his election defeat, culminating in the mob attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.”

-Alan Feuer and Luke Broadwater, “Justice Dept. Seeks to Force Trump White House Lawyers to Testify in Jan. 6 Inquiry,” nytimes.com, October 25, 2022

10/24/2022

TRUMP BUSINESS/TRUMP TAXES: “The Trump Organization stands trial this week in what prosecutors allege was a 15-year scheme to compensate top executives of former President Donald Trump’s company ‘off the books’ to help them avoid paying taxes — with the company’s former chief financial officer appearing as the prosecution’s star witness.

Jury selection began Monday [October 022], with potential panelists likely to be questioned intensely about whether they can be impartial in a case that involves the former president and his eponymous company.”

-Dareh Gregorian, Tom Winter, and Adam Reiss, “Trump Organization’s criminal tax fraud trial begins,” October 24, 2022

10/21/2022

CHINA/CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS/IRAN: “Some of the classified documents recovered by the FBI from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home and private club included highly sensitive intelligence regarding Iran and China, according to people familiar with the matter. If shared with others, the people said, such information could expose intelligence-gathering methods that the United States wants to keep hidden from the world…

The classified documents about Iran and China are considered among the most sensitive the FBI has recovered to date in its investigation of Trump and his aides for possible mishandling of classified information, obstruction and destruction of government records.”

-Devlin Barrett, “Mar-a-Lago classified papers held U.S. secrets about Iran and China,” washingtonpost.com, October 21, 2022

10/21/2022

CONGRESSIONAL HEARINGS/TRUMP PEOPLE/STEVE BANNON: “Former Trump strategist Steve Bannon railed against the ‘Biden regime’ after being sentenced to four months in jail for contempt of Congress.

Bannon, 68, was convicted in July on two counts – for refusing to provide either testimony or documents to a committee probing the 6 January 2021 riot at the US Capitol.

In addition to the jail time, Bannon must also now pay a fine of $6,500 (£5,833).”

-Bernd Debusmann Jr, “Steve Bannon: Ex Trump adviser sentenced to four months in jail for contempt of Congress,” bbc.com, October 21, 2022

10/21/2022

CONGRESSIONAL HEARINGS: “In an extraordinary move, the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol subpoenaed former President Donald Trump on Friday, putting the panel into a legal confrontation with Trump, who has slammed the committee as politicized.

The committee ‘assembled overwhelming evidence’ that Trump ‘personally orchestrated and oversaw a multi-part effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election and obstruct the peaceful transition of power,’ according to a letter the panel sent Trump signed by its chairman, Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss.”

-Sean Rossman, “Jan. 6 committee issues subpoena to Donald Trump in probe of Capitol riot,” usatoday.com, October 21, 2022

10/19/2022

LAWSUIT: “‘We’re pleased that on behalf of our client, E. Jean Carroll, we were able to take Donald Trump’s deposition today,’ a spokesperson for the firm, Kaplan, Hecker & Fink told Fox News on Wednesday…

The decision comes in a lawsuit brought by Carroll, who is known for her “Ask E. Jean” column that ran in Elle Magazine. Carroll alleges that Trump raped her in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman, a department store in New York City.”

-Brooke Singman, “Trump deposed in E. Jean Carroll defamation lawsuit after federal judge rejected request for delay,” foxnews.com, October 19, 2022

10/19/2022

DOJ/INVESTIGATIONS: “A group of Justice Department prosecutors believe there is sufficient evidence to charge Donald Trump with obstruction of justice, but the path to an actual indictment is far from clear.

The team that’s part of the classified records probe has not yet made a formal recommendation to Attorney General Merrick Garland, who would ultimately approve or reject such a move, according to people familiar with the matter. It’s also unlikely officials would bring only obstruction charges amid several other Trump investigations into potential crimes, the people said.”

-Chris Strohm, “Trump Prosecutors See Evidence for Obstruction Charges,” bloomberg.com, October 19, 2022

10/19/2022

2020 ELECTION/CONGRESSIONAL HEARING/VOTER FRAUD: “U.S. District Court Judge David Carter wrote in an 18-page opinion that emails from attorney John Eastman, an architect of Trump’s last-ditch effort to subvert the 2020 election, needed to be turned over to the Jan. 6 select committee. Those emails, Carter wrote, ‘show that President Trump knew that the specific numbers of voter fraud were wrong but continued to tout those numbers, both in court and to the public.’ …

Carter’s ruling arms the Jan. 6 select committee with another batch of evidence supporting its investigation of Trump’s effort to subvert the 2020 election.”

-Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein, “Judge: Trump signed court document that knowingly included false voter fraud stats,” politico.com, October 19, 2022

10/18/2022

ERIC TRUMP/LAWSUIT/NEW YORK: “Donald Trump has lost the first legal skirmish in his battle against New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, and her $250 million fraud case against him: After three weeks and a court order, he’s been officially served with the 220-page lawsuit…

The lawsuit accuses the Trump Organization of a decadelong pattern of fraudulently exaggerating the company’s worth; it seeks a quarter-billion dollars in penalties and to bar the Trumps from doing business in New York.

Representatives for Trump and his son Eric, an executive vice president at his father’s company, had evaded service of the lawsuit ever since it was filed three weeks ago, on September 21.”

-Laura Italiano, “Donald Trump finally gets served $250 million NY fraud lawsuit after 3 weeks — and a court order,” businessinsider.com, October 18, 2022

10/18/2022

CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS: “An excerpt from a new audiobook revealed that President Donald J. Trump shared classified letters from Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, with the journalist Bob Woodward and seemed to acknowledge that they were sensitive material that he should not be sharing…

The Washington Post reported that a month later, in January 2020, Mr. Woodward also asked to see letters that Mr. Trump had written to the North Korean leader. Mr. Trump replied, ‘Oh, those are so top secret.'”

-Chris Cameron, “Trump Acknowledged in Interview That Letters to Kim Were ‘Top Secret,’” nytimes.com, October 18, 2022

10/17/2022

JOE BIDEN/POLLS: “More voters say they would vote for former President Trump than President Biden if the election were held today, according to a new poll from The New York Times and Siena College.

The poll of likely voters also showed Biden’s approval rating slipping below 40% for the first time since his boost in August. The NYT and Siena polled 792 registered voters in both English and Spanish over cellphones and landlines from October 9-12, reporting a margin of error of 4%. It found that the vast majority of Americans, 64%, believe the country is on the wrong track.

Trump narrowly beat out Biden in the election question, sporting 45% support to Biden’s 44%.”

-Anders Hagstrom, “Donald Trump edges out President Biden in election poll as Biden slips below 40% approval,” foxnews.com, October 17, 2022

10/17/2022

ISRAEL/RELIGION: “The White House press briefing is underway, and press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre began with a question about Donald Trump’s attack on American Jews.

She called the former president’s comments ‘antisemitic, as you all know, and insulting both to Jews and to our Israeli allies.’

‘But let’s be clear, for years, for years now, Donald Trump has aligned with extremists and antisemitic figures and it should be called out,’ she added. ‘We need to root out antisemitism everywhere it rears its ugly head. … With respect to Israel, our relationship is iron clad and it’s rooted in shared values and interests. Donald Trump clearly doesn’t understand that either.'”

-Lauren Gambino, “White House calls Trump’s remarks on American Jews ‘antisemitic and insulting’ – as it happened,” theguardian.com, October 17, 2022

10/17/2022

ERIC TRUMP/SECRET SERVICE/TRUMP BUSINESS: “The Trump Organization charged the Secret Service up to $1,185 per night for hotel rooms used by agents protecting former President Donald J. Trump and his family, according to documents released on Monday by the House Oversight Committee, forcing a federal agency to pay well above government rates.

The committee released Secret Service records showing more than $1.4 million in payments by the department to Trump properties since Mr. Trump took office in 2017…

In 2019, Eric Trump said the Trump Organization charged the government only ‘like $50’ for hotel rooms during presidential visits.

Instead, records obtained by the committee showed, the Trump International Hotel in Washington repeatedly charged the Secret Service rates more than $600 per night.”

-David A. Fahrenthold and Luke Broadwater, “Trump Hotels Charged Secret Service Exorbitant Rates, House Inquiry Finds,” nytimes.com, October 17, 2022

10/16/2022

TRUMP BUSINESS: “A whistleblower has claimed to the government that Donald Trump’s eponymous media company — which sources say is under federal investigation — committed ‘fraudulent misrepresentations’ regarding possible mergers with two other firms as it sought to raise money, according to a federal filing.

The complaint from Will Wilkerson, a former executive at Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), alleges federal securities law violations were committed by TMTG and several company officials, as well as Benessere Capital Acquisition Corporation (BENE) and Digital World Acquisition Corporation (DWAC).”

-Aaron Katersky, Will Steakin, and Tal Axelrod, “Whistleblower complaint claims Trump media company committed ‘fraudulent misrepresentations,'” abcnews.go.com, October 16, 2022

10/14/2022

CONGRESSIONAL HEARINGS: “Donald Trump is considering testifying in front of the House January 6 committee, which this week concluded a dramatic hearing establishing what it says is his culpability for the deadly Capitol attack by voting to subpoena the former president…

If Trump refused to comply with the subpoena issued by the committee – which seeks testimony and documents – he too could be charged with contempt of Congress.

But that seems unlikely, given both his position as former president, de facto leader of the Republican party and possible 2024 presidential nominee, and the proximity of the midterm elections. If Republicans take back the House next month, as seems likely, the January 6 committee will in all probability be disbanded.”

-Martin Pengelly, “Donald Trump considers testifying before January 6 panel,” theguardian.com, October 14, 2022

10/14/2022

2020 ELECTION/JOE BIDEN/TRUMP PEOPLE: “Former president Donald Trump’s communications director recounted popping into the Oval Office roughly a week after the 2020 election to find a morose Trump watching TV: ‘Can you believe I lost to this f—ing guy?’ Trump lamented, referring to then-President-elect Joe Biden.

A young aide to Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows recalled Meadows telling her, ‘A lot of times he’ll tell me that he lost but he wants to keep fighting it.’”

-Ashley Parker, “Jan. 6 hearing shows Trump knew he lost — even while claiming otherwise,” washingtonpost.com, October 14, 2022

10/14/2022

2020 ELECTION/CONGRESSIONAL HEARINGS: “The U.S. House Jan. 6 committee’s unanimous decision to subpoena former President Donald Trump is unusual. But presidential subpoenas are not unprecedented — and the outcomes of prior clashes between the executive and legislative branches provide some context for the tensions surrounding the committee’s Oct. 13 decision.

The subpoena noted that 30 witnesses had cited the Fifth Amendment in declining to testify, leaving Trump as one of the panel’s few remaining options for fully understanding the events of Jan. 6, 2021, when pro-Trump rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol as the electoral votes for the 2020 presidential election were being formally counted.”

-Louis Jacobson, “The Jan. 6 Committee’s subpoena of Donald Trump: What does it mean?,” politifact.com, October 14, 2022

10/14/2022

2020 ELECTION/CONGRESSIONAL HEARINGS: “Former President Donald J. Trump responded on Friday [October 14, 2022] to a promised subpoena from the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 assault with a lengthy, rambling letter that attacked the panel’s work, reiterated false claims of widespread voting fraud and presaged a potentially bruising battle over whether he would be compelled to testify about his role in the riot and his efforts to subvert the 2020 election.”

-Luke Broadwater and Maggie Haberman, “Trump, Reacting to Pending Jan. 6 Subpoena, Repeats Election Lies in Letter,” nytimes.com, October 14, 2022

10/13/2022

CONGRESSIONAL HEARINGS: “The House committee investigating last year’s attack on the US Capitol voted to subpoena Donald Trump, a dramatic challenge to a former president just weeks before Republicans and Democrats face off in an election that will determine control of Congress.

The committee, in a unanimous vote on Thursday, agreed to demand documents and testimony from Trump about his role in the Jan. 6 attack.

A subpoena likely wouldn’t force immediate testimony from Trump, who has a record of using extensive maneuvers to delay legal proceedings.”

-Billy House and Mike Dorning, “Jan. 6 Committee Votes to Subpoena Donald Trump,” October 13, 2022

10/13/2022

2020 ELECTION/CONGRESSIONAL HEARINGS: Donald Trump sent a 14-page letter to the Chairperson of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol titled “Peacefully and patriotically.” The first sentence reads, “THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 2020 WAS RIGGED AND STOLEN!” Click the link to read the full text of the letter.

10/13/2022

LAWSUIT: “Former President Donald Trump angrily lashed out Wednesday [October 12, 2022], calling the nation’s legal system a ‘broken disgrace’ after a judge ruled he must answer questions under oath next week in a defamation lawsuit lodged by a writer who says he raped her in the mid-1990s…

The outburst late in the day came hours after U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan in Manhattan rejected a request by his lawyers to delay a deposition scheduled for Oct. 19.

Kaplan is presiding over the case in which Carroll said Trump raped her in the dressing room of a Manhattan Bergdorf Goodman store in the mid-1990s.”

-Larry Neumeister and Jill Colvin, “Trump angrily lashes out after his deposition is ordered,” apnews.com, October 13, 2022

10/13/2022

CONGRESSIONAL HEARINGS: “Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), the vice chair of the Jan. 6 select committee, said during Thursday’s televised meeting that former President Trump was the ‘central cause’ of the violence on Jan. 6…

‘None of this would have happened without him, he was personally and substantially involved in all of it.'”

-Erin Doherty, “Cheney: ‘Central cause’ of Jan. 6 was Donald Trump,” axios.com, October 13, 2022

10/13/2022

NEW YORK/TRUMP BUSINESS: “The New York attorney general’s office on Thursday [October 13, 2022] asked a judge to bar former President Donald Trump from moving his businesses to a new holding company he formed amid a pending civil lawsuit accusing him, three of his children, and the Trump Organization of widespread fraud.

That request is spurred by concerns that the AG’s office would have difficulty getting Trump to pay a fine, if he loses the suit, as a result of his assets being held by a company that is not named as a defendant in the case.”

-Dan Mangan, “New York AG asks judge to bar Trump from moving assets to new company he formed amid fraud lawsuit,” CNBC.com, October 13, 2022

10/12/2022

LAWSUIT: “This ‘Ms. Bergdorf Goodman’ case is a complete con job, and our legal system in this Country, but especially in New York State (just look at Peekaboo James), is a broken disgrace. You have to fight for years, and spend a fortune, in order to get your reputation back from liars, cheaters, and hacks. This decision is from the Judge who was just overturned on my same case.

I don’t know this woman, have no idea who she is, other than it seems she got a picture of me many years ago, with her husband, shaking my hand on a reception line at a celebrity charity event. She completely made up a story that I met her at the doors of this crowded New York City Department Store and, within minutes, ‘swooned’ her. It is a Hoax and a lie, just like all the other Hoaxes that have been played on me for the past seven years. And, while I am not supposed to say it, I will. This woman is not my type! …

Our Justice System is broken along with almost everything else in our Country. Her lawyer is a political operative and Cuomo crony who goes around telling people that the way to beat Trump is to sue him all over the place. She is suing me on numerous frivolous cases, just like this one, and the court system does nothing to stop it. In the meantime, and for the record, E. Jean Carroll is not telling the truth, is a woman who I had nothing to do with, didn’t know, and would have no interest in knowing her if I ever had the chance. Now all I have to do is go through years more of legal nonsense in order to clear my name of her and her lawyer’s phony attacks on me. This can only happen to ‘Trump’!”

-Donald Trump, “Statement by Donald J. Trump, 45th President of the United States of America,” donaldjtrump.com, October 12, 2022

10/12/2022

CONGRESS/SECRET SERVICE: “The probably final public hearing of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol is expected to highlight newly obtained Secret Service records showing how President Donald Trump was repeatedly alerted to brewing violence that day, and he still sought to stoke the conflict, according to three people briefed on the records…

After being alerted to violence erupting at the Capitol when he returned to the White House, Trump tweeted criticism of Vice President Mike Pence for not blocking the certification of the election, whipping up supporters who had already trampled over security barricades and were battling police to break into the halls of Congress.”

-Carol D. Leonnig and Jacqueline Alemany, “New evidence to show Trump was warned of violence on Jan. 6,” washingtonpost.com, October 12, 2022

10/12/2022

LAWSUIT: “A federal judge has denied a request by former president Donald Trump to pause proceedings in a defamation case brought against him in 2019 by an author who said he raped her in a department store dressing room decades ago.

The decision clears the way for Trump, who denies the claim, to be deposed as scheduled next week.”

-Shayna Jacobs, “Judge clears way for Trump to be deposed in defamation case,” washingtonpost.com, October 12, 2022

10/12/2022

2020 ELECTION/ENDORSEMENTS: “Over two dozen corporate leaders and businesses are quietly donating to the campaigns of at least four Republicans who have pushed false claims about the 2020 election results while running to become secretaries of state, according to a review of state campaign finance disclosures.

The secretary of state candidates in Jim Marchant, Mark Finchem, Kristina Karamo and Chuck Gray — all endorsed by former President Donald Trump — have disputed the 2020 election results on the campaign trail. If elected, they could have ultimate administrative control over their states’ election processes.”

-Brian Schwartz, “Some corporate leaders are funding Trump-backed election deniers in secretary of state races,” cnbc.com, October 12, 2022

10/11/2022

CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS/DOJ/FBI: “The Biden administration on Tuesday urged the Supreme Court to steer clear of a legal fight over classified documents seized during an FBI search of former President Donald Trump’s Florida estate.

The high court is weighing an emergency appeal from Trump asking it to overturn a lower court ruling and permit an independent arbiter, or special master, to review the roughly 100 documents with classified markings that were taken in the Aug. 8 search of Mar-a-Lago.

The Justice Department said in a 32-page filing that Trump’s claim has no merit, noting the case involves ‘extraordinarily sensitive government records.’”

-Mark Sherman and Eric Tucker, “Justice Department asks court to deny Donald Trump plea over FBI search,” pbs.org, October 11, 2022

10/10/2022

CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS: “The National Archives put a trigger warning on the Constitution of the United States — did you know that — and the Bill of Rights, and other great documents that we have in our country, founding documents, considering them to be dangerous…

They should give me immediately back everything that they’ve taken from me, because it’s mine. It’s mine. … Likewise, under the Presidential Record Act, everything should come back. All should come back.

[The Archives] lose documents, they plant documents. ‘Let’s see, is there a book on nuclear destruction or the building of a nuclear weapon cheaply? Let’s put that book in with Trump.’ No, they plant documents.”

-Aaron Blake, “Trump’s nonsensical riff on past presidents and classified documents,” washingtonpost.com, October 10, 2022

10/10/2022

CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS: “[Donald Trump stated that] ‘[Bill Clinton] kept classified recordings in his sock. Did you know about that? They say he left the White House with recordings in his sock, and they found [them] in his sock drawer.’ …

Clinton didn’t leave the White House with the recordings; they were stored in a sock drawer in the White House during Clinton’s tenure.

And they weren’t classified; they were tapes of conversations Clinton had with an author who was working on the president’s oral history…

Trump’s team and its allies have cited this as proof that a president has the authority to determine what is personal record, rather than a presidential one…

‘Under the socks decision — this is a very important decision, they call it the socks decision, because again it had to do with Bill Clinton and his socks — there is no crime,’ Trump said Sunday [October 9, 2022]. ‘You know, there is no crime. It’s not a crime.’

But that same ruling repeatedly notes that this authority pertains to a president’s time in office. It does not deal with a former president removing material with classified markings.”

-Aaron Blake, “Trump’s nonsensical riff on past presidents and classified documents,” washingtonpost.com, October 10, 2022

10/10/2022

BUSH FAMILY/CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS/RALLY: “Appearing at a rally in Arizona on Sunday [October 9, 2022], Trump repeatedly compared his retention of presidential records to the actions of his predecessors…

‘George H.W. Bush took millions and millions of documents to a former bowling alley pieced together with what was then an old and broken Chinese restaurant. They put them together. And it had a broken front door and broken windows. Other than that, it was quite secure. There was no security.’ …

It’s not at all clear what Trump was referring to by broken doors and windows. But the idea that there was ‘no security’ is flat wrong.”

-Aaron Blake, “Trump’s nonsensical riff on past presidents and classified documents,” washingtonpost.com, October 10, 2022

10/9/2022

UKRAINE/VLADIMIR PUTIN: “During an interview on Saturday morning [October 8, 2022] on Real America’s Voice, a right-wing network, the former president accused the US and its leadership of goading Putin into waging a botched invasion of Ukraine on February 24.

‘They actually taunted him, if you really look at it, our country and our so-called leadership taunted Putin,’ Trump said. ‘I would listen, I would say, you know, they’re almost forcing him to go in with what they’re saying. The rhetoric was so dumb.’ …

Earlier in the interview, the former president claimed that the war between Russia and Ukraine would never have happened if he had won the election and served a second term.”

-Joshua Zitser, “Trump blames US for ‘almost forcing’ Putin to invade Ukraine, says ‘dumb’ rhetoric taunted Russia,” yahoo.com, October 9, 2022

10/9/2022

2020 ELECTION: “You know the biggest crowd I’ve ever seen? January 6th. And you never hear that. They were there largely to protest a corrupt and rigged and stolen [2020] election.”

-Khaleda Rahman, “Key Moments From Donald Trump’s Nevada Rally,” newsweek.com, October 9, 2022

10/9/2022

IRAN/NUCLEAR/UKRAINE: “In Ukraine, with potentially hundreds of thousands of people dying, we must demand the immediate negotiation of a peaceful end to the war in Ukraine, or we will end up in World War III and there will be nothing left of our planet all because stupid people didn’t have a clue, they didn’t have a clue. They really don’t understand. I rebuilt our military, I rebuilt our nuclear power, they don’t understand that they’re dealing with, the power of nuclear, they have no idea what they’re doing. I withdrew from the disastrous Iran nuclear deal.”

-Khaleda Rahman, “Key Moments From Donald Trump’s Nevada Rally,” newsweek.com, October 9, 2022

10/6/2022

DOJ: “A top Justice Department official told former President Donald J. Trump’s lawyers in recent weeks that the department believed he had not returned all the documents he took when he left the White House, according to two people briefed on the matter…

It is not clear what steps the Justice Department might take to retrieve any material it thinks Mr. Trump still holds.”

-Michael S. Schmidt, Maggie Haberman, and Katie Benner, “Justice Dept. Is Said to Believe Trump Has More Documents,” nytimes.com, October 6, 2022

10/6/2022

CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS/TRUMP ADMIN: “Donald Trump has identified yet another federal institution he wants to purge of qualified officials and stack with his lackeys: the National Archives.

Since this summer, Trump has told close associates that he wants to gut the nonpartisan historical agency, which the former president believes is full of anti-MAGA subversives, two sources with knowledge of the matter tell Rolling Stone. Trump has said he plans to make it a priority if he wins a second term, the sources say.”

-Asawin Suebsaeng and Adam Rawnsley, “Trump’s Latest Revenge Fantasy: Purge the National Archives,” rollingstone.com, October 6, 2022

10/4/2022

CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS/FBI/TRUMP POST-PRESIDENCY: “A lawyer for Donald Trump refused to report to the National Archives that the former president had turned over all Oval Office documents as required out of concern that the claim was a lie.

Earlier this year, Trump returned 15 boxes of federal government records from his Mar-a-Lago resort home to the National Archives, and he directed one of his lawyers, Alex Cannon, to inform the agency that the boxes contained all the documents taken from his time in office…

Trump later directed a statement in February to aides saying that all his documents from his time in office had been returned to the National Archives and Records Administration. But federal agents later learned Trump still had government documents at Mar-a-Lago, including some records marked with the highest level of classification.”

-Coral Murphy Marcos, “Trump lawyer refused to report all Mar-a-Lago records had been turned in,” theguardian.com, October 4, 2022

10/4/2022

STEVE BANNON/TRUMP PEOPLE/WALL: “Former Trump White House adviser Steve Bannon will stand trial in November 2023, a judge in New York said Tuesday [October 4, 2022].

Bannon is charged with defrauding donors to the ‘We Build the Wall’ campaign, which was an independent effort intended to raise money for former President Donald Trump’s signature policy project.”

-Aaron Katersky, “Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s trial won’t take place until November 2023,” abcnews.go.com, October 4, 2022

10/4/2022

LAWSUIT: “Former president Donald Trump sued CNN on Monday [October 3, 2022], alleging defamation and seeking $475 million in punitive damages, a move that escalates his conflict with U.S. news organizations that have critically reported on his career.

The 29-page lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, alleges that CNN took part in a ‘campaign of dissuasion in the form of libel and slander’ that ‘escalated in recent months’ because the network feared Trump would again run for president. The lawsuit took issue with CNN’s use of the words ‘racist’ and ‘insurrectionist,’ as well as associations made between the former president and Adolf Hitler.”

-Kelly Kasulis Cho, “Trump sues CNN for defamation, seeks $475 million in damages,” washingtonpost.com, October 4, 2022

10/4/2022

2020 ELECTION/FBI: “Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes began planning to resist the result of the 2020 U.S. presidential election days after the vote, telling followers that Donald Trump ‘will need us and our rifles,’ an FBI witness testified on Tuesday.

Rhodes and four co-defendants – Thomas Caldwell, Kenneth Harrelson, Kelly Meggs and Jessica Watkins – are on trial in federal court in Washington, accused of conspiring to prevent Congress from certifying the election victory of President Joe Biden in a failed bid to keep Trump, a Republican, in power.”

-Chris Gallagher, “Oath Keepers leader said Trump ‘will need us and our rifles,'” reuters.com, October 4, 2022

10/3/2022

CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS/NORTH KOREA/OBAMA/TRUMP POST-PRESIDENCY: “The National Archives and Records Administration on Monday publicly released a small fraction of communications related to government documents removed by former President Donald Trump and his reported destruction of some White House records.

The communications related to NARA’s efforts to recover those documents, which included letters to Trump from former President Barack Obama and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. They also expressed the agency’s concern about Trump’s reported penchant for ripping up some documents he read in the White House.”

-Dan Mangan, “Torn-up Trump papers, missing Obama and Kim Jong Un letters detailed in new release on White House documents,” cnbc.com, October 3, 2022

10/3/2022

SUPREME COURT/TRUMP PEOPLE: “Mike Lindell, a prominent ally of former President Donald Trump, must face a $1.3 billion lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems Inc accusing him of defamation for pushing false claims that its voting machines rigged the 2020 presidential election, with the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday [October 3, 2022] turning away his appeal.

The justices rejected a bid by Lindell and his company My Pillow Inc to immediately appeal a federal judge’s refusal to toss the lawsuit. A lower court also snubbed his effort to quickly review the case, allowing the litigation to proceed.”

-Andrew Chung, “U.S. Supreme Court rejects Trump ally Lindell’s defamation case appeal,” reuters.com, October 3, 2022

10/1/2022

RALLY: “Teasing another presidential campaign, former President Donald Trump promised his Save America rally crowd in Warren, Michigan, on Saturday night he will ‘continue fighting.’

‘I am their No. 1 target, but I am proud to be fighting for you, and I’m going to be fighting for you a long time,’ Trump told his enthusiastic crowd at the Macomb Community College…

‘The choice in this election is simple: If you want the decline and fall of America, then vote for the radical-left Democrats, that’s what’s happening,’ he continued. ‘We have a nation, as they say, in decline. If you want to stop the destruction of our country and save the American dream, you must vote Republican.’

Trump said two more years of ‘Democrat rule’ will ‘obliterate our country.'”

-Eric Mack, “Trump: ‘I Am Their No. 1 Target,’ but I ‘Will Continue Fighting,'” newsmax.com, October 1, 2022

10/1/2022

RALLY: “‘No matter what the left-wing tyrants throw at us, no matter what they do to us, we have no choice, we have to keep on going,’ Trump told his rally at Macomb Community College, which aired live on Newsmax. ‘We have to keep on fighting because we are on a mission to restore the republic to greatness.

‘We’re on a mission to bring it back, and it’s really down and it’s down very big — bad, very bad — very precarious what’s going on.'”

-Eric Mack, “Trump: ‘We Are on a Mission to Restore the Republic to Greatness,'” newsmax.com, October 1, 2022

9/30/2022

LAWSUIT/NEW YORK: “New York Attorney General Letitia James wants to accelerate her $250 million fraud lawsuit against former President Donald Trump, his children, his company, and two of its executives.

James, in a letter to the state’s chief administrative judge, signaled her intention to push for a trial before 2024…

James has accused Trump of ‘staggering’ fraud and alleges that the former president, with the help of his three eldest children and two corporate executives, ‘grossly inflated’ his net worth by billions of dollars.”

-Aaron Katersky, “New York AG seeking to expedite fraud suit against Trump and company,” abcnews.go.com, September 30, 2022

9/30/2022

POLLS: “Given ‘what we know about the ongoing investigations into Donald Trump,’ a narrow majority of registered voters (51%) now believe he should not ‘be allowed to serve as president again in the future,’ according to a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll.

Just 35% of voters say Trump should be allowed to serve again. The rest (14%) are unsure.”

-Andrew Romano, “Poll: Most U.S. voters now say Trump should not be allowed to serve as president again,” news.yahoo.com, September 30, 2022

9/30/2022

DOJ/FBI/IMPEACHMENT/RUSSIA: “The Document Hoax Lawsuit, which is the ‘Weaponization’ of the Justice Department and the FBI, is yet another Scam against me, much like Russia, Russia, Russia, Impeachment Hoax #1, Impeachment Hoax #2, the Mueller Report (No Collusion!), Spying on my Campaign (and getting caught!), Lying to the FISA Court, Lying to Congress, Illegally Breaking into my home in Florida in violation of the Fourth Amendment, also violating the Presidential Records Act, and so much more. This is all being done in order to hurt a political opponent, me, who is leading in all of the polls by over 50 points against Republicans, and from 5 to 10 points against the two primary Democrats, Biden and North Korea Sympathizer Kamala Harris. They have been doing this to me for six years ever since my wonderful journey down the ‘Golden Escalator.’ The Radical Left Democrats are out-of-control, and our Country is going to Hell!”

-Donald Trump, “Statement by Donald J. Trump, 45th President of the United States of America,” donaldjtrump.com, September 29, 2022

9/29/2022

CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS/FBI/INVESTIGATIONS: “Judge Aileen M. Cannon told Donald Trump’s lawyers Thursday [September 29, 2022] that they did not need to comply with an order from special master Raymond J. Dearie and state in a court filing whether they believe FBI agents lied about documents seized from the former president’s Florida residence…

Dearie last week told the former president’s legal team that it couldn’t suggest in court filings that the government’s description of the seized documents — including whether they were classified — was inaccurate without providing any evidence…

But according to Cannon, who has the authority to overrule Dearie’s orders, such a decision is not required right now…

Trump’s legal team has argued that answering questions about the inventory list and whether the documents are classified could put them at a disadvantage in the face of a possible future criminal prosecution, or a future legal fight over getting the seized documents returned to Trump.”

-Perry Stein, “Judge rules Trump lawyers don’t have to clarify Mar-a-Lago document claims,” washingtonpost.com, September 29, 2022

9/29/2022

DONALD ON DONALD: “I know many people who wanted to write a really good book about me, but their publishers wouldn’t let them. They were not interested in any way, shape, or form unless they were willing to say bad things. Some took a pass, and some sold out to the Enemy.”

-Donald Trump, “Statement by Donald J. Trump, 45th President of the United States of America,” donaldjtrump.com, September 29, 2022

9/29/2022

2020 ELECTION/SUPREME COURT: “Virginia ‘Ginni’ Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, stood by her concerns about the 2020 election during an appearance before the Jan. 6 committee Thursday, according to her lawyer.

Thomas reportedly fielded questions from the panel behind closed doors for about 3 1/2 hours. Investigators were keen on questioning her about her communications with Trump allies who attempted to overturn the 2020 election…

During the aftermath of the 2020 election, Thomas also had multiple communications with those tied to Trump’s efforts to challenge the 2020 election. For example, she texted White House chief of staff Mark Meadows shortly after the election, imploring him to prod Trump not to concede and later to ‘release the Kraken,’ in reference to lawyer Sidney Powell.”

-Ryan King, “Ginni Thomas stood by 2020 election fraud claims during Jan. 6 deposition: Lawyer,” washingtonexaminer.com, September 29, 2022

9/27/2022

LAWSUIT: “A federal appeals court set aside a judge’s ruling that Donald Trump could be sued for defamation by E. Jean Carroll after denying he raped her, though it stopped short of declaring the former U.S. president immune from the author’s lawsuit.

In a 2-1 decision on Tuesday [September 27, 2022], the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan asked an appeals court in Washington to weigh in on whether the laws of that district shielded Trump from liability.”

-Jonathan Stempel, “Donald Trump wins ruling in rape accuser Carroll’s defamation lawsuit,” reuters.com, September 27, 2022

9/23/2022

2024 ELECTION/FEC/PAC: “Top allies of former President Donald Trump are creating a new super PAC that’s expected to serve as the main vehicle for his midterm spending and could become a key part of his campaign infrastructure should he move forward with a 2024 White House run.

The political action committee, called MAGA Inc., will supersede Trump’s existing super PAC, Politico first reported. Paperwork for the new committee was filed Friday morning [September 23, 2022] with the Federal Election Commission.”

-Jill Colvin, “Donald Trump allies create a new super PAC called MAGA Inc.,” pbs.org, September 23, 2022

9/22/2022

CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS/FBI/INVESTIGATION: “In his first TV appearance since a court-authorized search of his Florida home last month, Donald Trump reasserted Wednesday [September 22, 2022] that any documents taken from the White House to Mar-a-Lago were declassified while he was in office, adding that a president can carry that out ‘even by thinking about it.’ …

Prosecutors have said that about 100 of the documents taken from Mar-a-Lago were marked classified, including some labeled top secret.

‘If you’re the president of the United States, you can declassify just by saying it’s declassified,’ the former president added…

Trump’s comments were made ahead of a Wednesday appeals court decision that the FBI can use the seized documents in its criminal investigation.”

-Julian Mark, “Trump says presidents can declassify docs ‘even by thinking about it,’” washingtonpost.com, September 22, 2022

9/21/2022

INVESTIGATIONS/NEW YORK: “Another Witch Hunt by a racist Attorney General, Letitia James, who failed in her run for Governor, getting almost zero support from the public, and now is doing poorly against Law & Order A.G. candidate, highly respected Michael Henry. I never thought this case would be brought — until I saw her really bad poll numbers. She is a fraud who campaigned on a ‘get Trump’ platform, despite the fact that the city is one of the crime and murder disasters of the world under her watch. She is a failed A.G. whose lack of talent in the fight against crime is causing record numbers of people and companies to flee New York. Bye, bye!”

-Donald Trump via Ryan King, “‘Another Witch Hunt by a racist’: Trump family bashes Letitia James after suit,” gazette.com, September 21, 2022

9/21/2022

NEW YORK/TRUMP BUSINESS/TRUMP FAMILY: “New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a lawsuit Wednesday accusing former president Donald Trump, three of his grown children and executives at his company of flagrantly manipulating property valuations to deceive lenders, insurance brokers and tax authorities into giving them better rates on bank loans and insurance policies and to reduce their tax liability.

The 222-page civil complaint asks the New York Supreme Court to bar Trump, as well as Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump and Eric Trump, from serving as executives at any company in New York, and to bar the Trump Organization from acquiring any commercial real estate or receiving loans from any New York-registered financial institution for five years.

It seeks to recover more than $250 million in what James’s office says are ill-gotten gains received through the alleged deceptive practices.”

-Shayna Jacobs and Jonathan O’Connell, “Donald Trump, 3 of his children accused of business fraud by New York AG,” washingtonpost.com, September 21, 2022

9/21/2022

DOJ/INVESTIGATION: “In a stark repudiation of Donald Trump’s legal arguments, a federal appeals court on Wednesday [September 21, 2022] permitted the Justice Department to resume its use of classified records seized from the former president’s Florida estate as part of its ongoing criminal investigation.

The ruling from a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit amounts to an overwhelming victory for the Justice Department, clearing the way for investigators to continue scrutinizing the documents as they consider whether to bring criminal charges over the storage of top-secret records at Mar-a-Lago after Trump left the White House.”

-The Associated Press, “An appeals court rules the DOJ can regain access to documents seized from Mar-a-Lago,” npr.org, September 21, 2022

9/20/2022

FOREIGN DIGNITARIES/JOE BIDEN: “Former President Donald Trump is claiming he would have gotten a better seat than President Joe Biden at Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral.

Monday’s state funeral was one of the biggest gatherings of world leaders in years, to bring closure to Britain’s longest-reigning monarch, who died Sept. 8 at age 96…

‘If I were president, they wouldn’t have sat me back there.’ Trump wrote. ‘In Real Estate, like Politics and in Life, LOCATION IS EVERYTHING!!!'”

-Natalie Neysa Alund, “‘They wouldn’t have sat me back there’: Trump mocks Biden on seat at queen’s funeral,” usatoday.com, September 20, 2022

9/20/2022

INVESTIGATIONS: “The senior federal judge tasked with reviewing the materials seized by the FBI from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate sharply questioned the former president’s attorneys Tuesday during their first hearing in his courtroom.

Judge Raymond Dearie repeatedly challenged Trump’s lawyers for refusing to back up the former president’s claim that he declassified the highly sensitive national security-related records discovered in his residence…

Dearie bristled at the effort by Trump’s lawyers to resist his request for proof that Trump actually attempted to declassify any of the 100 documents that the Justice Department recovered from his estate.”

-Josh Gerstein and Kyle Cheney, “Special master to Trump’s lawyers: ‘You can’t have your cake and eat it,’” politico.com, September 20, 2022

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