Could Trump’s legal troubles come back to haunt him?
President Trump’s former advisor Steve Bannon predicted Thursday that President Trump will go to prison if a Democrat wins back the White House in 2028.
“God forbid we don’t win in ’28, President Trump is going to prison,” Bannon, who was Trump’s advisor in his first presidency, said Thursday during an appearance on Real America’s Voice.
“And people are sitting around – still with the glow of November 4th and all the inaugurations and all the balls. We’re at war and things that’ve happened in the last 72 hours, if you don’t understand we’re in political warfare, you’re not awake,” he said, in remarks highlighted by Mediaite.
Trump’s flurry of executive actions since taking office in January has spurred myriad legal cases. Courts have repeatedly paused actions like mass firings of federal workers and sweeping moves on immigration.
Bannon did not specify what charges might send Trump to prison. He also warned Democrats would seek to remove Trump from office if they win back the House next year.
“We are kidding ourselves if we don’t think that Democrats are pulling all stops out to stop President Trump to take the House through any means necessary to impeach Trump,” he said.
Last year, Special Counsel Jack Smith dismissed his two cases after Trump’s electoral victory, referencing the Department of Justice policy that prohibits prosecuting sitting presidents. A fourth case in Georgia remains technically open, though it is effectively inactive. He was convicted on 34 felony counts in a hush money case in New York.
President Donald Trump blasted the Supreme Court after the justices refused to hear his appeal of the $5 million civil judgment in the E. Jean Carroll case, calling it another example of “weaponization” and vowing to keep fighting in court.
The high court declined without comment to review Trump’s challenge to the 2023 jury verdict, leaving intact the ruling that found him liable for sexually abusing and defaming longtime advice columnist E. Jean Carroll. The justices did not note any dissents.
“Surprisingly, the Supreme Court declined to ‘review’ a Fake Case brought against me by a woman I never met (Decades old celebrity photo line, standing with her husband, does not count!),” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
“I will continue the fight against this Weaponization and Lawfare Case against me, including the ridiculous claim of Defamation, with all of my power and strength.”
The president argued the lawsuit was politically motivated, saying, “This Case is really against the United States of America, and all it stands for, and should never be allowed to happen to another President, or Candidate to be!”
Trump also renewed his criticism of New York’s Adult Survivors Act, the temporary law that opened a one-year window for decades-old sexual assault claims. He claimed the law was “tailormade” to target him and called the outcome an “Injustice.”
Monday’s decision effectively closes the door on Trump’s effort to overturn the original $5 million verdict, which stemmed from a civil trial in Manhattan in 2023. During that trial, jurors concluded Trump was liable for sexually abusing Carroll in the mid-1990s and for defaming her after she publicly accused him. Trump has consistently denied the allegations and has maintained that he never met Carroll.
The Supreme Court’s refusal to hear the case marks another legal setback for the president in his years-long battle with Carroll, but it is not the end of the broader litigation.
A separate case, in which a federal jury awarded Carroll $83.3 million after finding Trump repeatedly defamed her through public statements, remains on a separate appellate track. Trump’s legal team continues to challenge that judgment, arguing it should be overturned on multiple grounds.
Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, celebrated the ruling, saying the Supreme Court’s action “affirms once and for all” the jury’s verdict and Trump’s liability in the case.
For Trump, however, Monday’s order appears to have only intensified his determination.
“I will continue the fight,” the president wrote, signaling that his legal battle with Carroll is far from over—even as one of the highest-profile cases against him has now reached its end.
A federal judge on Monday blocked the Trump administration from revoking the legal status and work permits of the more than 530,000 migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela who flew into the United States during former President Joe Biden’s time in office.
The migrants came to the U.S. under Biden’s controversial CHNV mass humanitarian parole program.
In her order, Judge Indira Talwani, an Obama appointee, wrote that each migrant needs to have an individualized, case-by-case review.
“The Termination of Parole Processes for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans, 90 Fed. Reg. 13611 (Mar. 25, 2025), is hereby STAYED pending further court order insofar as it revokes, without case-by-case review, the previously granted parole and work authorization issued to noncitizens paroled into the UnitedStates pursuant to parole programs for noncitizens from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela (the “CHNV parole programs”) prior to the noncitizen’s originally stated parole end date,” she wrote.
Biden created the CHNV program in 2023 via his executive parole authority. The program was launched in 2022 and initially first applied to Venezuelans before it was expanded to additional countries.
The Biden administration argued that CHNV would help reduce illegal crossings at the southern border and allow better vetting of people entering the country amid an influx of migrants.
The program was temporarily paused due to widespread fraud.
Officials with the Department of Homeland Security and the Trump administration told Fox News that Talwani essentially ruled that Trump can’t use his own executive authority, the same authority Biden used, to revoke the parole that Biden granted.
“It is pure lawless tyranny,” a Trump administration official told Fox News.
In March, the roughly 532,000 migrants under the CHNV program were told to leave the U.S.
On Thursday, former President Donald Trump revealed his daughter Tiffany Trump is pregnant.
Trump was delivering remarks at the Detroit Economic Club when he recognized several guests in the crowd, including businessman Massad Boulos, who is Tiffany Trump’s father-in-law.
“He happens to be the father of Tiffany’s husband, Michael, who’s a very exceptional young guy,” Trump said. “And she’s an exceptional young woman. And she’s going to have a baby. So that’s nice.”
Tiffany Trump, 30, is the daughter of the former president and Marla Maples. She and Boulos were married in 2022.
This is a breaking news story. Please check back for updates.
Former Vice President Mike Pence is blasting President Donald Trump’s controversial Iran agreement, warning that the deal looks less like a victory and more like a dangerous concession to a regime that was already on its knees.
In a scathing Wall Street Journal op-ed, Pence praised Trump’s military campaign against Tehran but argued the administration is now squandering the leverage won on the battlefield.
“The president deserves tremendous credit for taking the fight directly to Tehran,” Pence wrote. “But the memorandum of understanding with Iran signed last week falls well short of what is required to end the Iranian threat.”
His verdict was blunt.
“It smacks of the kind of appeasement the president rightly rejected during our first term,” Pence said. “It isn’t the deal a defeated Iran should be getting. It isn’t even a deal — it’s a plan to make a plan.”
The remarkable rebuke puts Pence at the forefront of a growing conservative revolt against the Trump administration’s newly signed 14-point memorandum of understanding with Iran.
The agreement, signed last week, commits both sides to negotiate a final settlement within 60 days while immediately easing pressure on Tehran. The framework includes the gradual lifting of the U.S. naval blockade, waivers for Iranian oil exports, and access to frozen Iranian assets while broader negotiations continue.
Critics argue the concessions come before Iran has verifiably dismantled its nuclear infrastructure or ended support for terrorist proxies throughout the Middle East.
Pence warned the agreement effectively rewards the regime before securing meaningful concessions.
“Maximum pressure worked. America’s military strength worked. The blockade worked,” Pence wrote. “Iran came to the table because the regime’s existence teetered on a knife’s edge.”
The former vice president said the administration should use the next 60 days to force Tehran into accepting far tougher terms, including the permanent elimination of its nuclear ambitions and support for regional terror groups.
“This 60-day period should be used to secure what this agreement doesn’t yet provide: an end to Iran’s nuclear ambitions, an end to Iranian-backed terror, and an end to its half-century of warfare against the U.S. and Israel,” Pence wrote.
“If those reasonable goals cannot be achieved, Mr. Trump should let the armed forces finish the job.”
Pence has doubled down on those concerns in television appearances this week, calling the agreement “much bigger than a mistake” and warning that sanctions relief could become “a lifeline to the Iranian regime.” He argued that the deal preserves the status quo on Iran’s nuclear program rather than forcing its dismantlement.
He’s not alone.
Republican lawmakers including Lindsey Graham, John Thune and other GOP hawks have demanded greater transparency about the agreement’s terms, while conservative commentators have compared the framework to the Obama-era nuclear deal that Trump famously abandoned during his first administration.
Even some Democrats have questioned whether Tehran is receiving significant economic relief without providing ironclad guarantees on nuclear compliance.
Supporters of the agreement, led by Vice President JD Vance, argue critics are mischaracterizing the deal. Vance has described the memorandum as a preliminary framework designed to stop the fighting and create conditions for a broader settlement. The White House insists sanctions relief and other benefits ultimately depend on Iranian compliance.
But for Pence, the issue is simple: America already holds the stronger hand.
The question now is whether Trump intends to play it.
A Democratic candidate for the Georgia House is under fire after proposing a sweeping—and controversial—“punishment” for Trump supporters: kicking them off social media for four years.
Suzanna Karatassos, a self-described “progressive fighter” running for a seat held by Republican state Rep. Houston Gaines, made the remark in a now-deleted video that quickly spread online.
“When this is all over and Trump’s gone and Democrats are back in charge and we’re rebuilding everything, the punishment for MAGA for voting for Trump three times needs to be they remove their internet access for four years,” Karatassos said.
“That they cannot post videos or comments on social media for four straight years, so that none of us are subjected to their lies and misinformation while we are rebuilding the chaos that they caused the whole world and America gets to be without their BS online for 4 straight years.”
“Can we all agree to this?” she added.
Meet Suzanna Karatassos (D). She’s running for Georgia State House.
She says if Democrats win then anyone who voted for Trump should lose internet access for four years.
Karatassos later deleted the video—but not before it was captured and widely shared by critics.
Her comments land in the middle of a heated national fight over free speech, censorship, and Big Tech’s role in policing online content.
In 2023, U.S. District Judge Terry A. Doughty issued a sweeping injunction blocking federal agencies—including the FBI and Department of Health and Human Services—from pressuring social media companies to suppress “protected free speech.”
Doughty pointed to 25 instances of alleged government pressure on tech platforms, according to reporting tied to a thread by Substack writer Justin Hart.
But the Supreme Court later struck down that ruling in a 6–3 decision, saying the states and individuals who brought the case lacked legal standing. Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch dissented.
Separate emails from April 2021 also showed the Biden White House pushing Facebook over content, including a Tucker Carlson video on COVID-19 vaccines.
Meanwhile, Karatassos’ remarks are already fueling backlash—raising fresh questions about how far some candidates are willing to go when it comes to policing political speech online and Donald Trump.
On Friday, a New York judge ordered former President Donald Trump to pay $354 million in penalties stemming from the civil fraud case against his business empire.
Engoron also barred Trump from serving as a corporate officer or a director of a company in the state of New York for three years. There was one silver lining in the ruling for the Trumps: the judge did not issue an order revoking the Trump Org’s certificate to do business, which has commonly been referred to as the “corporate death penalty.”
According to The Hill, Judge Arthur Engoron’s 92-page decision came just weeks after closing arguments in the case following a months-long trial last year during which Trump frequently lambasted the judge and the prosecutor who brought the case.
Engoron previously ruled that Trump committed fraud in his real estate empire and he is expected to issue a penalty ruling Friday, according to sources familiar with the matter.
In addition to a $370 million financial penalty, James has asked Engoron to ban Trump from New York’s real estate business for life.
New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) sued Trump in 2022, alleging he falsely altered his net worth on key financial statements to receive tax and insurance benefits. The documents, which detailed the value of the Trump Organization’s various assets, were sent to banks and insurers to secure loans and deals, which the state purports is evidence of fraud.
This is a breaking news story. Please check back for updates.
[Photo Credit: The White House from Washington, DC, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons]
Mark Sanford is back — and once again running headlong into President Donald Trump’s political machine.
The former South Carolina governor and congressman announced Thursday that he is seeking the Senate seat previously held by the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, joining a rapidly expanding Republican field despite Trump already throwing his support behind Graham’s sister, Sen. Darline Graham.
“Our country is at a financial tipping point, and I can’t sit on the sidelines while Washington adds a trillion dollars to the debt every 100 days,” Sanford wrote on social media.
“I’ve spent my entire time in politics fighting this fight, and I’m running for U.S. Senate to keep the American dream alive for our sons, my grandson, and those you love. Join us,” he added.
Our country is at a financial tipping point, and I can't sit on the sidelines while Washington adds a trillion dollars to the debt every 100 days. I've spent my entire time in politics fighting this fight, and I'm running for U.S. Senate to keep the American dream alive for our… pic.twitter.com/q5ByORi0M3
Sanford’s announcement included a video in which he reflected on Graham’s death and described the loss as a reminder of “how short and precious life is.”
“My own dad got Lou Gehrig’s disease when I was in high school, and this notion of all of us having just a little time has always hit me hard,” Sanford said. “We’re stewards of our lives and the things that we love for just a short time.”
The campaign gives Sanford another opportunity to revive his longtime crusade against federal spending — but it also places him squarely against Trump’s preferred candidate.
Trump announced last week that Darline Graham would receive his “Complete and Total Endorsement” if she entered the race, enthusiastically declaring: “RUN, DARLINE, RUN!” (RELATED: Trump Speaks Out On Potential Lindsey Graham Replacement)
Graham, who was appointed by Gov. Henry McMaster to temporarily fill her brother’s seat, confirmed during an interview with Sean Hannity that she would seek the full six-year term. Her appointment made her the first woman to represent South Carolina in the Senate.
Sanford’s entry creates an especially combustible matchup because he and Trump have already fought — and Trump won.
Sanford repeatedly criticized Trump during his first administration, drawing the president’s wrath while seeking another House term in 2018. Just hours before polls closed in that year’s Republican primary, Trump endorsed Sanford’s opponent, state Rep. Katie Arrington, and declared that Sanford had been “very unhelpful” and was “better off in Argentina.”
The jab referenced Sanford’s infamous 2009 disappearance while serving as governor. His staff initially said he was hiking the Appalachian Trail, but Sanford later acknowledged that he had traveled to Argentina to visit a woman with whom he was having an affair.
Arrington narrowly defeated Sanford, handing him his first loss in a South Carolina election. Arrington had spent much of the campaign portraying Sanford as a “Never Trumper.”
Sanford returned the challenge the following year by launching a long-shot campaign against Trump for the 2020 Republican presidential nomination. That effort, which also focused heavily on the national debt, lasted roughly two months before Sanford pulled the plug after struggling to gain traction.
His latest campaign also represents a reversal from the position he took only months ago.
Sanford briefly launched a campaign for his former House seat earlier this year but withdrew in April, saying “the most effective way I can contribute right now is not by seeking office.” At the time, he said he planned to build a nonprofit and grassroots movement focused on the country’s growing debt.
Graham’s death, however, opened a rare statewide opportunity — and Sanford is now arguing that Washington’s spending binge demands his return to elected office.
The 66-year-old served as South Carolina’s governor from 2003 through 2011. He represented the state’s 1st Congressional District from 1995 through 2001 and again from 2013 through 2019.
Sanford joins a Republican field that already includes Graham, Reps. Russell Fry and Ralph Norman, businessman Mark Lynch and attorney Duke Buckner. Norman has secured support from several prominent conservatives, including Rep. Nancy Mace and former Sen. Jim DeMint, underscoring the resistance to Trump’s effort to consolidate the party behind Graham.
The compressed campaign leaves Sanford little time to rebuild his political organization or convince Republican voters to look past his long-running feud with Trump.
Candidate filing closes July 28. The special Republican primary will be held Aug. 11, followed by an Aug. 25 runoff if no candidate receives a majority. The winner will advance to the Nov. 3 general election against Democrat nominee Annie Andrews, according to the South Carolina Election Commission.
Florida Judge Aileen Cannon is currently holding a hearing to consider whether the appointment of U.S. Special Counsel Jack Smith and the funding of his investigations is “unlawful.”
Upon postponing the classified documents trial, Cannon scheduled deadlines for reports on June 10 and 17 and a hearing on a motion to dismiss on Friday, “based on unlawful appointment and funding of special counsel.”
Cannon expanded Friday’s hearing to allow amici to argue before the court, as well as Trump defense attorneys and federal prosecutors according to Fox News.
Former Attorney General Ed Meese, who served under former President Reagan, filed an amicus brief in the case, in which he argues that Attorney General Merrick Garland’s appointment of Smith as special counsel – a private citizen at the time – violates the appointments clause of the Constitution.
Garland appointed Smith as special counsel on Nov. 18, 2022, mere days after Trump announced he would run for president in 2024.
Meese argues that the “illegality” of Smith’s appointment is “sufficient to sink Smith’s petition, and the Court should deny review.”
Meese and company noted in the brief that Smith was appointed “to conduct the ongoing investigation into whether any person or entity [including former President Trump] violated the law in connection with efforts to interfere with the lawful transfer of power following the 2020 presidential election or the certification of the Electoral College vote held on or about January 6, 2021.”
Earlier this month, Garland defended his move during a hearing on Capitol Hill, arguing that “there are regulations under which the attorney general appoint special counsel. They have been in effect for 30 years, maybe longer, under both parties.”
Meese, however, in his briefs filed in several points in the Trump cases, argued that “none of those statutes, nor any other statutory or constitutional provisions, remotely authorized the appointment by the Attorney General of a private citizen to receive extraordinary criminal law enforcement power under the title of Special Counsel.”
Meese’s brief was even mentioned in a question by Justice Clarence Thomas in the Supreme Court oral arguments over Trump’s presidential immunity in Smith’s other case regarding 2020 election interference, which the high court is expected to decide this month.
Presenting arguments on June 21 in Florida on behalf of Meese will be Gene Schaerr; Josh Blackman on behalf of Professor Seth Barrett Tillman; and Matthew Seligman on behalf of constitutional lawyers, former government officials, and “State Democracy Defenders Action.”
This is a breaking news story. Please check back for updates.
Secretary of Health Dr. Rachel Levine answering questions from the press. As states across the country begin to reopen and nearly half are seeing COVID-19 cases rise, Governor Tom Wolf announced Friday that Pennsylvania is not one of them. ...Today at a daily COVID briefing with Health Secretary Dr. Rachel Levine, he noted another milestone: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention proprietary data for states indicates that we are one of just three states that has had a downward trajectory of COVID- 19 cases for more than 42 days. The other two states are Montana and Hawaii. JUNE 17, 2020 - HARRISBURG, PA.
ANALYSIS– This should be one of the biggest stories in America. The bloated, overreaching, over-powerful, over-taxing federal government gave nearly half a TRILLION of our tax dollars for so-called ‘COVID-19 relief’ to grifters, scammers and fraudsters.
If that doesn’t cause national outrage, nothing will.
They used to say sarcastically, ‘a billion here and a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.’
Well, this is $400 billion worth of real money, and the monstrosity we call the federal government literally gave it away to criminals.
Often the fraud involved identity theft and crooks overseas. Sadly, some of those criminals might also be your next-door neighbors, family, or friends.
Everyone, it seems, ‘wanted in’ on an easy payday.
And the government gave it all to them in about three years. Fortune reported:
An Associated Press analysis found that fraudsters potentially stole more than $280 billion in COVID-19 relief funding; another $123 billion was wasted or misspent. Combined, the loss represents a jarring 10% of the $4.2 trillion the U.S. government has so far disbursed in COVID-relief aid.
That number is certain to grow as investigators dig deeper into thousands of potential schemes.
There are myriad reasons for the staggering loss. Investigators and outside experts say the government, in seeking to quickly spend trillions in relief aid, conducted too little oversight during the pandemic’s early stages and instituted too few restrictions on applicants. In short, they say, the grift was just way too easy.
“Here was this sort of endless pot of money that anyone could access,” said Dan Fruchter, chief of the fraud and white-collar crime unit at the U.S. Attorney’s office in the Eastern District of Washington. “Folks kind of fooled themselves into thinking that it was a socially acceptable thing to do, even though it wasn’t legal.”
It was theft. Some big; some small. But together it equaled a mass of scams so large it is unprecedented in U.S. history.
And it all occurred when America was being devastated with overrun hospitals, school closures, closed businesses, and many others who really needed help.
This is what happens when a giant faceless government bureaucracy is enabled by politicians from both parties (but generally more so from the Democrats) and detached from reality, taken from the people, and then decide who to give it to afterward.
As Fortune notes: “Too much government money, Republicans argue, breeds fraud, waste, and inflation.” And it does.
But it also shows the state of American society where almost everyone wants something for nothing and is willing to scam and steal to get it.
And in this case, both sides are to blame for the massive spending and waste.
At the height of the pandemic, President Donald Trump approved emergency aid measures totaling $3.2 trillion, according to figures from the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee, and reported by Fortune.
And then came Joe Biden with his 2021 ‘American Rescue Plan’ spending another $1.9 trillion.
The committee’s most recent accounting shows that about a fifth of the $5.2 trillion (over $1 TRILLION) has yet to be fully paid out.
Perhaps they should put that on hold until they can figure out what fraudsters they will be giving it out to, and also recover the $400 billion already wasted.
At least Republicans and Democrats have agreed on one way to fix it.
They are giving the government more time to catch fraudsters with legislation passed in August To increase the statute of limitations from five to 10 years on crimes involving the two major programs managed by the Small Business Administration.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
