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    Watergate Prosecutor Says ‘Trump Is Toast’ In Fraud Trial 

    By
    Madeleine Jackson
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    6
    Slowking4, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

    Former Watergate prosecutor Nick Ackerman said former President Trump is “toast” in his New York civil fraud case.

    New York Attorney General Letitia James’ case accuses Trump, his two adult sons, the Trump Organization, and top executives of falsely inflating the values of Trump’s real estate properties and other assets in order to get tax benefits and better loan terms.

    James seeks around $250 million in damages, and she wants to bar Trump and his co-defendants from running another business in New York.

    According to The Hill, Ackerman argued people are not only focused on the former president’s testimony but also his deposition with James’s lawyers last summer, where he invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 400 times.

    “Now what does it mean to take the Fifth Amendment? It means that you are refusing to answer a question, because a truthful answer would tend to be incriminating,” Ackerman said. “Then what did Donald Trump do last week? He went into court and said, ‘Oh, I didn’t do anything fraudulent, I wasn’t involved in a fraud.’ Which is just the opposite what in effect he was saying when he took the Fifth Amendment in his deposition.”

    “So you’ve got contradictory testimony,” Ackerman continued. “You can use his assertion of the Fifth Amendment against him to basically find that he’s lying, that he’s manipulating the system when he goes in, refuses to answer questions, answers the questions in a half-baked manner.”

    Earlier this week when Trump took the stand he fiercely defended his business practices and condemned those involved in the case as politically motivated “Trump haters.”

    “I just don’t see how this judge at the end of the day is not going to find that, with respect to Donald Trump … ‘Liar, liar, pants on fire,’” Ackerman said.

    Ackerman said that in his more than 40 years of civil law experience, he has never seen anyone “do such a stupid move as to suddenly start testifying” after they’ve taken the Fifth Amendment.

    D.C. Waitress Fired After Vowing To Refuse Service To Trump Officials

    By
    Madeleine Jackson
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    6

    A Washington, D.C.-based server has been fired after proudly saying in an interview that she planned to refuse service to Trump officials.

    The server was previously employed by Beuchert’s Saloon on Capitol Hill. She took part in a report by Washingtonian magazine about how the service industry would respond to President-elect Donald Trump’s team if they patronized her place of employment.

    Most individuals who were interviewed remained anonymous, but Suzannah Van Rooy provided her real name. 

    “I personally would refuse to serve any person in office who I know of as being a sex trafficker or trying to deport millions of people,” the server told the outlet, as The Daily Wire previously reported. “It’s not, ‘Oh, we hate Republicans.’ It’s that this person has moral convictions that are strongly opposed to mine, and I don’t feel comfortable serving them.”

    “People were a lot more motivated the first time around to do those kinds of shows of passion. This time around, there is kind of a sense of defeat and acceptance,” Van Rooy added. “But I hope that people still do stand up to this administration and tell them their thoughts on their misbehavior.”

    Beuchert’s Saloon denounced Van Rooy’s comments and confirmed she was no longer employed there, per Fox News Digital. The neighborhood restaurant and bar called her statements “reprehensible” and “unforgivable.”

    “Recent comments made by a member of staff who had no authority to speak on behalf of our entire restaurant have been, quite rightly, flagged as inappropriate, hostile, intolerant, and unacceptable. This staff member does NOT speak for us as a restaurant,” Beuchert’s Saloon said in a statement.

    Beuchert’s saloon provided a follow-up after the backlash from the employee’s comments.

    “Not only do Ms. Van Rooy’s comments clearly violate our zero-tolerance policy on discrimination, but her decision to sign into our social media accounts in the middle of the night to post her own rhetoric in wildly offensive responses to comments is a further breach of conduct and protocol. She has no authority to speak on our behalf, and her comments do not reflect the positions of over twenty other people who make up our staff,” the statement said.

    “For these reasons as well as the sheer dismay and disgust we feel at her unforgivable behavior, Ms. Van Rooy has been dismissed immediately. Our staff and families (many of whom are personally offended by Ms. Van Rooy’s comments about them) are still reeling from what Ms. Van Rooy said and did, and we as a restaurant are simply horrified to be associated with base prejudice.”

    Andrew Cuomo to Launch New Podcast with First Guest Anthony Scaramucci

    By
    Madeleine Jackson
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    2
    Photos from the opening of the new Delta Air Lines terminal in LaGuardia Airport in Queens, NY, on Tuesday, Oct. 29, 2019. (Chris Rank for Rank Studios) (Photos from the opening of the new Delta Air Lines terminal in LaGuardia Airport in Queens, NY, o

    Look at how far Andrew Cuomo has sunk.

    After resigning as New York Governor due to allegations of sexual misconduct Cuomo announced he plans to start a new business venture. Cuomo’s newest foray into the public sphere comes in the shape of a podcast and one of his first guests is scheduled to be President Donald Trump’s former communications director Anthony Scaramucci.

    Scaramucci, who briefly served the Trump administration in 2017, has emerged as a critic of Trump and expressed his support for Biden in the 2020 election.

    According to The Hill:

    Cuomo will this week debut a new hourlong show he is calling “As a Matter of Fact” on podcast streaming service Quake, he told Axios, and the show will aim to “hear from people — their questions, their issues — and have that dialogue.”

    The former governor told Axios this week he has “learned from the entire situation.”

    “There’s a fundamental problem with the entire system here,” Cuomo told the outlet of the media ecosystem writ large. “We have such division of people and we have such dysfunction of government, and part of it is this hyper-partisan, extreme dialogue that goes on.”

    “There is a new sensitivity that I didn’t fully appreciate that some people have, and some people have a new sense of cultural boundaries that I didn’t appreciate enough,” Cuomo said.

    It seems the disgraced governor is following in his brother’s footsteps. Chris Cuomo, who was a leading anchor at CNN during the Cuomo sex scandal, also started a new podcast after being fired from the network.

    Trump’s Truth Social Merger Deal Hits A Pause

    By
    Madeleine Jackson
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    0
    Photo via Gage Skidmore Flickr

    It’s a bad time to be Trump…

    New reports indicate the potential merger deal with the former President’s Truth Social platform is dead in the water.

    The Daily Beast reports:

    The public shell corporation that has been preparing to merge with former President Donald Trump’s technology firm—the parent company of his social media platform, Truth Social—announced Thursday that it was dropping its plans to pursue the merger through a specialized process called a ​​private investment in public equity (PIPE) transaction. The company also said it planned to return $533 million it had raised from investors to complete the deal. The merger between Digital World Acquisition Corp. (DWAC), a special purpose acquisition company, and Trump Media & Technology Group failed to materialize by a September 2022 deadline set by U.S. regulators, giving DWAC the option to back out of the deal. A TMTG spokesperson claimed in a release Thursday that the two companies still planned to merge and said the development was, in fact, a positive step—but declined to comment when pressed by Reuters to say how backing out of the PIPE deal would benefit either party.

    This is a breaking news story. Click refresh for the latest updates.

    New Accusations Released About Member of Trump’s Family and Inner Circle

    By
    admin
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    4
    [Photo Cred: Office of the President of the United States, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons]

    Former Trump adviser Peter Navarro recently made some potentially damaging accusations about Jared Kushner, former President Trump’s son-in-law and longtime White House adviser.

    As reported by Mediaite, Navarro recently bashed Kushner about his portrayal of several dramatic actions he allegedly took while working at the White House.

    “Appearing on Newsmax, Navarro addressed Kushner’s claim in his recently-published book that he was treated for thyroid cancer while serving in the White House.

    Host Chris Salcedo flagged the excerpt from the book and stated Kushner “withheld a cancer diagnosis during tense negotiations with communist China.

    Navarro addressed Kushner’s book.

    “It’s fiction,” he continued. “And the thyroid thing, that came out of nowhere. I saw the guy every day. There’s no sign that he was in any pain or danger or whatever. I think it’s just sympathy to try to sell his book now.”

    Salcedo asked if Kushner is “worthy” of Trump’s trust.

    “No,” Navarro replied. “Time after time, whether it’s mismanagement of the campaign, mismanagement of the pandemic, taking too much credit for NAFTA, taking too much credit for the Abraham Accords. I mean, the guy was just a one-man wrecking crew, 36 years old I think when he got in there with no training. His only qualification was that he was the boss’s son-in-law.”

    Notably, Navarro is dealing with a few of his own issues at the moment. A few days ago he was sued by President Biden’s Justice Department for refusing to hand over emails from his personal accounts which were used to conduct official White House business. Earlier this summer, he was criminally charged for ignoring a subpoena from the Jan. 6 Committee.

    MyPillow Evicted From Warehouse

    By
    Madeleine Jackson
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    2
    Mike Lindell via Gage Skidmore Flickr

    A Minnesota court has ordered MyPillow to be evicted from the warehouse it formerly used.

    The Hill has more:

    The Minneapolis warehouse is approximately 125,000 square feet and has been leased to Lindell since December 2015. The lease agreement between Lindell and the landlord, First Industrial LP, has been amended twice. It lasts 10 years, seven months and 20 days, and the monthly rent was $57,794.12, according to the eviction complaint.

    According to the complaint, dated March 7, Lindell did not make rent payments for February and March 2024. Since it is not the first time MyPillow failed to pay its rent on more than two occasions in the previous 12-month period, per the lease agreement, the landlord is entitled to retake possession of the premises.

    As of Wednesday, Lindell did not answer the eviction complaint or appear at the scheduled hearing, forcing the judge to order the eviction. He confirmed to the AP that MyPillow owes around $217,000 to the Delaware-based company for the rent.

    Lindell said the company no longer needed the space and removed its property from the warehouse last June before subleasing it to another company through December. The company backed out in January and “left us all stranded.” MyPillow offered to find another tenant, but the landlord wanted to take the warehouse back, he told the newswire.

    MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell faces multiple defamation lawsuits from two voting machine companies, after he spread lies that the 2020 presidential election was fraudulent and stolen from former President Trump. In February, a federal judge ruled he must pay $5 million in an election data dispute case.

    Billionaire Makes Massive Political Contribution To Trump

    By
    admin
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    1
    Image via Pixabay free images

    One of the largest single disclosed gifts ever…

    A reclusive billionaire from a storied American family with a legacy dating back to the Gilded Age has made one of the largest political contributions in the history of American politics.

    Timothy Mellon, heir to the Mellon banking fortune, made a $50 million contribution to the pro-Trump super PAC, Make America Great Again Inc.

    At the end of April, the organization had only $34.5 million.

    In a memo following Mellon’s donation, the PAC announced it had reserved $100 million in advertising through Labor Day.

    The New York Times continues:

    Mr. Mellon is now the first donor to give $100 million in disclosed federal contributions in this year’s election. He was already the single largest contributor to super PACs supporting both Mr. Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is running as an independent. Mr. Mellon has previously given $25 million to both.

    Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

    Democrats have sought to portray Mr. Kennedy as a spoiler supported by Republicans, in part by emphasizing Mr. Mellon’s dual contributions and seemingly split loyalties. The pro-Kennedy super PAC has distributed quotations from the hard-to-reach Mr. Mellon, and for a blurb that appears on the cover of Mr. Mellon’s upcoming book, Mr. Kennedy called the billionaire a “maverick entrepreneur.”

    It is not clear what Mr. Mellon’s mega-donation means for his support of Mr. Kennedy going forward. He has so far toggled between giving to support both candidates. His most recent donation to Mr. Kennedy’s super PAC was a $5 million contribution in April.

    But Mr. Mellon’s $50 million gift will significantly help pro-Trump forces narrow the financial advantage that President Biden and his allies have enjoyed so far. Miriam Adelson, the casino billionaire and widow of Sheldon G. Adelson, who died in 2021, has also made plans to fund a pro-Trump super PAC with at least as much money as the $90 million that her family gave in the 2020 campaign, although much of the cash has yet to arrive.

    Mellon’s contributions follow Donald Trump‘s conviction in a hush money trial.

    Critics argue that the case is politically motivated and based on an overly broad interpretation of campaign finance laws. They add that such payments are common among public figures seeking to avoid public scrutiny.

    The Mellon family‘s wealth started when an Irish immigrant named Thomas Mellon founded T. Mellon & Sons’ Bank in Pittsburgh in 1869. His sons, Andrew W. Mellon and Richard B. Mellon, later grew the bank into a strong financial institution. This bank eventually became Mellon Financial Corporation, one of the largest banking institutions in the United States.

    During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Andrew Mellon played a crucial role in financing and supporting key industries such as aluminum, oil, and steel, contributing to the growth of major corporations, such as Gulf Oil, and Union Steel. As secretary of the Treasury from 1921 to 1932, his influence shaped the economic policies of the 1920s, known as the Mellon Plan, which contributed to the economic boom of the decade.

    National Photo Company Collection, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

    In 2007, Mellon Financial Corporation merged with The Bank of New York to form BNY Mellon, one of the world’s largest asset management and securities services companies, preserving their 150-year legacy in banking and finance.

    Article Published With The Permission of American Liberty News

    Trump Media Investor Convicted Of Insider Trading

    By
    Madeleine Jackson
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    3
    Arrest image via Pixabay

    On Thursday, a Manhattan grand jury found financier Bruce Garelick guilty of insider trading charges in a scheme that involved the merger of former President Donald J. Trump’s social media company with a publicly traded shell company.

    Federal prosecutors had charged Garelick with five counts of securities fraud and conspiracy. 

    Authorities claimed Garelick shared confidential information with his boss and at least one other person that Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent company of Truth Social, was close to announcing a merger with Digital World Acquisition Group, the shell company.

    Mr. Garelick, 54, a former hedge fund manager, had been a board member of Digital World. 

    The New York Times has more:

    The information helped two brothers — Michael Shvartsman and Gerald Shvartsman — make nearly $23 million in illegal trading profits by buying Digital World securities in advance of the announcement, which sent the stock soaring. Mr. Garelick, who worked for Michael Shvartsman at a small Miami-based venture capital firm called Rocket One, made about $50,000 by trading off what authorities said was nonpublic information.

    Last month, the Shvartsman brothers decided to forgo a trial and pleaded guilty to securities fraud charges. In their plea agreements, prosecutors have recommended a sentence of roughly four to five years for Michael Shvartsman; and three to four years for his younger brother.

    Digital World raised about $300 million from investors in its initial public offering in September 2021. A little over a month later, the SPAC announced a deal to merge with Trump Media. After a long delay, the merger was completed in March and Trump Media became a publicly traded company. Mr. Trump’s nearly 70 percent stake in the firm is worth about $6 billion.

    In a closing argument, Daniel Nessim, a federal prosecutor, described Mr. Garelick as a “sophisticated professional” who “cheated” and used inside information to benefit himself and his boss, Michael Shvartsman.

    Garelick could face at least 25 years in prison.

    This is a breaking news story. Please check back for updates.

    Senators Call On SEC To Open Investigation Into Trump For Insider Trading

    By
    Madeleine Jackson
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    5

    Democrats are getting desperate…

    Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) sent a letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) this week asking for an investigation into President Donald Trump’s social media posts urging stock market purchases ahead of his tariff pause announcement

    “We ask the SEC to determine whether President Trump, any members of his cabinet, or other donors, insiders, and administration officials engaged in insider trading, market manipulation or other securities laws violations on April 9, 2025, when President Trump announced that it was a ‘GREAT TIME TO BUY’ into the stock market,” the senators wrote in a scathing letter.

    Sens. Adam Schiff (D-CA), Ron Wyden (D-OR), Mark Kelly (D-AZ), and Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) also signed the letter, which slammed Trump for urging his social media followers to buy stocks “just hours before he announced a 90-day pause on his recently announced tariffs, leading to a historic market rally after days of dramatic market declines.”

    “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!!” Trump wrote on Truth Social at 9:37 am just ahead of his announcement that he would pause additional tariff increases on 75 countries for 90 days while slapping even higher levies on China.

    The letter was addressed to SEC Commissioner Paul Atkins, a Trump appointee, who was confirmed by the Senate on Thursday.

    “It is unclear which officials and affiliates for President Trump had advance knowledge of his plans to delay tariffs — but insiders may have known that he was going to announce a tariff pause and that the market would improve,” argued the Senators.

    Elon Musk Accuses Trump Ally Of ‘Leaking’ Info To The Media

    By
    Madeleine Jackson
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    3
    UK Government, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

    Tensions are running high within Trump’s inner circle…

    Billionaire Elon Musk clashed publicly with Boris Epshteyn, one of Trump’s closest allies in what sources called a “massive blowout” over key Cabinet appointments.

    According to three sources cited by Axios, the dispute reached a boiling point during a dinner at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club last week during which Musk accused Epshteyn of leaking sensitive details about the transition process, including potential personnel picks.

    “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Epshteyn reportedly fired back during the heated exchange.

    The altercation highlights a power struggle as Musk, a newcomer to Trump’s inner circle, increasingly advocates for his preferred candidates. Musk has reportedly criticized Epshteyn’s influence in selecting Justice Department nominees, including Matt Gaetz for attorney general.

    Musk is lobbying for Howard Lutnick, co-chair of Trump’s transition team, as Treasury secretary, over Wall Street veteran Scott Bessent.

    Despite the friction, Musk maintains considerable support among Trump’s family and allies. 

    However, the tech billionaire’s growing role in the transition has rankled longtime Trump loyalists, who view him as overstepping boundaries. 

    Musk has been among the president-elect’s most vocal and influential supporters since he endorsed Trump immediately after a July assassination attempt at a Pennsylvania rally but some in Trump’s inner circle say the Tesla CEO is being to overstay his welcome.

    “Elon won’t go home. I can’t get rid of him. Until I don’t like him,” Trump quipped, according to a source in the room when Trump met with Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill last Wednesday.

    some Republicans have questioned how long Trump and Musk can happily co-exist, particularly given Trump’s past frustration with those who take up too much of the spotlight.

    “Trump is not going to have another alpha. I think Trump is going to tire of him,” one source close to the transition told The Hill.

    One Republican lobbyist with ties to Trump said there are some in the president-elect’s orbit who think Musk is “a little big for his britches.”

    Trump transition team spokesperson Karoline Leavitt did not respond to requests for comment from The Hill, but in a statement on Wednesday to NBC News described Musk and Trump as “great friends and brilliant leaders working together to Make America Great Again.”

    “Elon Musk is a once in a generation business leader and our federal bureaucracy will certainly benefit from his ideas and efficiency,” Leavitt said.

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