Thor Brødreskift / Nordiske Mediedager, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Former Trump strategist Steve Bannon received his sentence Friday morning following his conviction on two counts of criminal contempt of Congress after he defied a subpoena from the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol raid.
Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee, sentenced Bannon to four months in prison and has been ordered to pay a fine of $6,500.
The judge said that Bannon “has expressed no remorse for his actions” and hasn’t demonstrated that he has any intention of complying with the subpoena from the Jan. 6 committee.
Federal prosecutor J.P. Cooney argued that Bannon is not above the law and should be sentenced and treated like any other citizen, according to ABC News.
“It must be made clear to the public and the grand jury … that no one is above the law,” Cooney said. “He hid behind a fabricated claim of executive privilege, to thumb his nose at Congress.”
“He had an interest in making a public spectacle of the committee’s hearings,” Cooney told the judge, saying that Bannon “has tried to make it about nothing but politics and retribution.”
During Friday’s proceeding’s Bannon attorney David Schoen hit back against the prosecutor’s claim Bannon did not have a legitimate claim of executive privilege when he rejected the committee’s subpoena.
In particular, Schoen went after Trump lawyer Justin Clark, who told DOJ investigators in July that at no point did former President Donald Trump ever invoke executive privilege over Bannon’s testimony.
“You wouldn’t believe a thing he says,” Schoen said of Clark, who also contradicted other claims made by Bannon’s defense team in their case.
Last week, the Justice Department announced it pushing for a more severe sentence for Bannon of at least 6 months. (RELATED:Feds Recommend Jail Time for Bannon)
Bannon’s attorney David Schoen argued that there should not be a 30-day mandatory minimum of jail time for the offense.
Nichols, however, rejected that argument, saying the statute is clear on the point that there is a mandatory minimum of 30 days and a mandatory maximum of 12 months.
In comments to reporters after the ruling Bannon appeared to hint at an appeal in the near future and said, “this thing about I’m above the law is an absolute and total lie.”
Jack Posobiec talks to Steve Bannon after the sentence: "We know this wouldn't have happened to anyone other than Steve Bannon…" pic.twitter.com/VImwCjaxwj
A federal appeals court dismissed the appeal charges brought against President Donald Trump aides Waltine Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira by former Special Counsel Jack Smith in his classified documents case, Fox News Digital reports.
The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed the case against Nauta and De Oliveira on Tuesday morning, two weeks after the Justice Department moved to drop the charges.
Nauta, Trump’s valet, and De Oliveira, the property manager of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, had pleaded not guilty to federal charges alleging they conspired to obstruct the FBI investigation into classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago.
The Justice Department had filed a motion in January to drop all criminal proceedings against Nauta and De Oliveira, putting an end to Smith’s probe more than two years after it began.
The classified records case was dismissed in July 2024 by U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida Judge Aileen Cannon, who ruled that Special Counsel Jack Smith was unlawfully appointed as special counsel.
This is a breaking news story. Please check back for updates.
Stormy Daniels, the pornographic actress who allegedly had an affair with then-candidate Donald Trump, will testify regarding the hush money payment made by Michael Cohen to cover it up, according to two sources.
Her attorney Clark Brewster confirmed to The Hill that his client was “likely” to testify during the trial’s third week of witness testimony.
The former president reacted to the news angrily on Truth Social before reportedly deleting the messages.
In his statement posted at 7:30 a.m. on his Truth Social platform, Trump said he has “just recently been told who the witness is today.”
“This is unprecedented, no time for lawyers to prepare,” the former president wrote in the now-deleted post. “No Judge has ever run a trial in such a biased and partisan way.”
He also proceeded to attack the judge in the case.
“He is CROOKED & HIGHLY CONFLICTED, even taking away my First Amendment Rights. Now he’s threatening me with JAIL & THEY HAVE NO CASE -This according to virtually all Legal Scholars & Experts! Why isn’t the Fake News Media reporting his Conflict?” Trump said.
Trump is being charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records to make alleged hush money payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels.
This is a breaking news story. Click refresh for the latest updates.
President-elect Donald Trump is suing the Des Moines Register and its top pollster J. Ann Selzer for “brazen election interference.”
Trump’s lawsuit centers around Selzer’s final Iowa poll conducted before the 2024 election that reported Democrat candidate Kamala Harris leading by three points before Trump went on to carry the state by 13 points.
The lawsuit was filed Monday night in Polk County, Iowa under the Iowa Consumer Fraud Act and related provisions. It says it seeks “accountability for brazen election interference committed by” the Des Moines Register (DMR) and Selzer “in favor of now-defeated former Democrat candidate Kamala Harris through use of a leaked and manipulated Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll conducted by Selzer and S&C and published by DMR and Gannett in the Des Moines Register on Nov. 2, 2024.” The lawsuit is also against the parent company of the Des Moines Register, Gannett, which also owns other publications, including USA Today.
Selzer’s poll, though, had been hyped up by the media ahead of the elections, as her polling predictions in previous elections had been historically accurate.
Trump attorneys said Selzer had “prided herself on a mainstream reputation for accuracy despite several far less publicized egregious polling misses in favor of Democrats” and said she “would have the public believe it was merely a coincidence that one of the worst polling misses of her career came just days before the most consequential election in memory, was leaked and happened to go against the Republican candidate.”
“The Harris Poll was no ‘miss’ but rather an attempt to influence the outcome of the 2024 Presidential Election,” the lawsuit states, adding that “defendants and their cohorts in the Democrat Party hoped that the Harris Poll would create a false narrative of inevitability for Harris in the final week of the 2024 Presidential Election.”
“Instead, the November 5 election was a monumental victory for President Trump in both the Electoral College and the Popular Vote, an overwhelming mandate for his America First principles, and the consignment of the radical socialist agenda to the dustbin of history.”
Trump’s attorneys noted that it’s not entirely uncommon for Democrat pollsters to attempt to influence electoral outcomes through manipulated data coupled with high error rates but Selzer’s large platform is cause for concern.
“While Selzer is not the only pollster to engage in this corrupt practice, she had a huge platform and following and, thus, a significant and impactful opportunity to deceive voters,” the lawsuit states. “As Selzer knows, this type of manipulation creates a narrative of inevitability for Democrat candidates, increases enthusiasm among Democrats, compels Republicans to divert campaign time and money to areas in which they are ahead, and deceives the public into believing that Democrat candidates are performing better than they really are.”
According to Fox News, Trump is demanding actual damages upon trial of the case; statutory damages three times the actual damages suffered; an order enjoining defendants’ “ongoing deceptive and misleading acts and practices relating to the Harris Poll and compelling defendants to disclose all information upon which they relied to engage in the deceptive and misleading acts relating to the Harris Poll; attorneys’ fees and costs associated with the case; and any other relief as deemed just and proper by the court.
The lawsuit Monday night comes just hours after the president-elect said during a press conference at Mar-a-Lago that he planned to sue the Des Moines Register and Selzer.
Following the 2024 election Selzer also announced her retirement after more than 35 years.
On Thursday, a court spokesperson revealed Judge Arthur Engoron is now expected to announce a ruling in the $370 million civil fraud case brought against former President Trump by the New York attorney general’s office in “early to mid-February.”
Judge Arthur Engoron previously said he would aim to issue a decision by the end of January but emphasized that the deadline was not firm. The new mid-February deadline is a “rough estimate” and is “subject to modifications,” according to the court spokesperson.
Closing arguments in the trial finished last week as New York Attorney General Letitia James seeks to fine Trump more than $370 million in a lawsuit alleging Trump misled the value of his company’s assets in financial statements.
Engoron has already rescinded some of Trump’s business licenses in New York, finding Trump and some of his top executives, including Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, liable for fraud.
Trump’s defense has argued that their client’s financial statements were unaudited estimates and were clearly offered as such, adding that the estimates of his net worth were too low, the opposite of what James is claiming.
“There have been no losses to any party, as the loans here were negotiated between very sophisticated parties,” Trump’s lawyers Christopher Kise and Michael T. Madaio wrote in court papers on Friday. “Lenders made their own informed decisions.”
It’s possible that air marshals have been monitoring you for years.
According to a Federal Air Marshal Service (FAMS) representative, the Biden administration monitored individuals who traveled to Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6 even if they did not participate in the attack on the Capitol.
The revelation follows news the FBI reportedly halted a probe into an alleged child pornographer to investigate participants in the Capitol riot.
Five days after the January 6, 2021, protest at the Capitol, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) and then-Rep. John Katko (R-NY) wrote to the head of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), David Pekoske, to demand that the agency “disrupt the travel of terrorists who just attacked the seat of the U.S. government,” citing “online chatter” as evidence that they might be al-Qaeda-style bombers.
Soon, TSA appeared to be doing just that — a situation discovered only because of an almost comical situation in which one Air Marshal was forced to monitor another Air Marshal because his wife was in D.C. during that time period.
In January 2023, David Londo and Sonya LaBosco, the president and executive director of the Air Marshal National Council, an association that represents air marshals, wrote to House leaders saying that innocent Americans were being put on watchlists.
“We have recently become aware that the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and the Federal Air Marshal Service (FAMS) are improperly classifying innocent Americans as ‘Domestic Terrorists’ on internal TSA/FAMS databases and watchlists,” the pair wrote. “Most of these classifications occur in the absence of any investigation or even any follow up.”
A federal judge on Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) claiming President Donald Trump’s executive orders had threatened the independence of the Federal Election Commission (FEC).
In his ruling, U.S. District Judge Amir Ali, a Biden appointee, said the DNC failed to demonstrate “concrete and imminent injury” – or the burden needed to justify their request for a preliminary injunction. He said that the concerns raised by the party about the FEC’s independence as a result of Trump’s executive order were far too speculative to satisfy the court’s higher bar for emergency relief.
At issue in the case was the executive order Trump signed on Feb. 18, titled, “Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies.”
Democrats filed the lawsuit just 10 days after the order was signed, arguing that the order threatened to encroach on the independence of the FEC and risked subjecting it to the whims of the executive branch.
The lawsuit focused largely on the claim that the FEC is an independent regulatory agency and argued that the credibility of the entire regulatory enterprise would be “fatally undermined if the party controlling the White House can unilaterally structure campaign rules and adjudicate disputes to disadvantage its electoral competitors.”
Notably, Ali said Tuesday that he had not found any evidence to date that the White House or the Trump administration had taken steps to change or undermine how the FEC interprets federal election law, or target its independent role.
The “possibility that the president and attorney general would take the extraordinary step of issuing a directive to the FEC or its Commissioners purporting to bind their interpretation of FECA is not sufficiently concrete and imminent to create Article III injury,” Ali said Tuesday.
Ali said the DNC was welcome to submit an amended filing to the court to reconsider the case.
“This Court’s doors are open to the parties if changed circumstances show concrete action or impact on the FEC’s or its Commissioners’ independence,” Ali said.
Reports indicate Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) plans to create a legal defense fund to help pay for tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees relating to the federal criminal probe into his dealings with foreign regulators.
Menendez’s office confirmed plans to create the fund to NBC News as the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York continues its months-long investigation into the Democrat.
Federal investigators opened to new probe into Menendez in October and have given no indication of how long it is expected to continue.
The probe has already cost Menendez roughly $200,000 in campaign funds, according to filings obtained by NBC.
“Senator Menendez is confident that this official inquiry will be successfully closed, but as it is still unresolved he will be opening a separate legal defense fund so as not to drain any further campaign funds,” a spokeswoman for Menendez told the outlet. Fox News Digital reached out to Menendez’s office for additional comment, but they did not immediately respond.
The probe, which involves several federal organizations, is investigating lavish gifts Menendez’s wife received from a food producer that obtained an exclusive contract with the Egyptian government to certify Halal food exports across the globe.
The inquiry is considering whether Menendez may have improperly used his position on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to influence the deal.
The committee controls roughly $2 billion in U.S. aid to Egypt, according to NBC.
Menendez was previously indicted on federal bribery charges in 2016.
Freedom Convoy, Ottowa, Canada 2022 via Wikimedia Commons
Christine Anderson, a member of the European Parliament and a member of Germany’s conservative Alternative for Germany (AfD) party says that freedom, Democracy, and the rule of law are on the brink of collapse in Western nations and the Covid-19 pandemic is partially to blame.
“We are now violating what we thought was the foundation our societies were built on,” Anderson said.
Anderson recently completed a tour in Canada visiting the Freedom Convoy and decided to take the opportunity to attend this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) which is known to host thousands of conservative supporters, activists, and lawmakers to draw attention to the threats currently facing Western democracy.
The Freedom Convoy is a series of ongoing protests and blockades in Canada against Covid-19 vaccine mandates and restrictions. The convoy was originally created to protest vaccine mandates for crossing the United States border but later evolved into a protest about oppressive Covid-19 restrictions in general.
The German politician noted that her concerns are focused on Western democracy, admitting she doesn’t expect governments in China, North Korea, or even Russia to value ideals like freedom and rule of law.
“I hold the Western democracies to a higher standard, but we are now violating what we thought was the foundation our societies were built on and a really scary thing is that all these Western democracies seem to be in lock-step right now with whatever agenda they are trying to implement and push,” she explained.
The right-leaning EU parliament member says it’s time for the people to hold countries accountable for their actions.
“What is Democracy all about?” Anderson questioned. “Democracy is all about the people telling the government what to do, not the other way around.”
Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, Americans were forced to shutter businesses, close schools, and blindly agree to take newly released vaccinations. And if anyone dared speak against the latest narrative regarding vaccines or the virus? They could expect to be ridiculed, questioned, and ostracized by friends, family, co-workers, and even leaders in government.
“The whole narrative about ostracizing people was frustrating…the whole narrative of ‘my choice my body’ was gone. People were ridiculed and scapegoated,” the German politician reflected.
In 2021, President Joe Biden insulted Americans who had yet to receive “the jab” conveniently forgetting the fact he had cast doubt on the vaccines while Donald Trump was in the White House.
“If you’re not vaccinated, you’re not nearly as smart as I thought you were,” Biden said.
Joe Biden insults unvaccinated Americans: "You're not nearly as smart as I thought you were" pic.twitter.com/KsMCPY90yp
President Biden was an outspoken critic of former President Trump’s Operation Warp Speed program which is largely credited for helping create and distribute Covid-19 vaccines.
“The way [then-President Donald Trump] talks about the vaccine is not particularly rational,”
Biden said per the Western Journal. “He’s talking about it being ready, he’s going to talk about moving it quicker than the scientists think it should be moved. … People don’t believe that he’s telling the truth, therefore they’re not at all certain they’re going to take the vaccine.”
“And one more thing,” he said. “If and when the vaccine comes, it’s not likely to go through all the tests that needs to be and the trials that are needed to be done.”
However, while Covid-19 was able to highlight some government corruption Anderson says this dangerous assault on democracy has been happening for decades.
“We’ve seen a full-blown gaslighting of the people.” Anderson said. “Now, fundamental rights are being discussed as though they are privileges that the government grants or withholds depending on the citizen’s behavior.”
But all hope is not lost. The German politician was optimistic that more people have “woken up” over the past three years and are ready to push back.
“The so-called pandemic highlighted the left’s pressure campaign to redefine certain concepts,” Anderson reckoned. “It highlighted their ridiculousness and their willingness and determination to push back against people, disenfranchise them, and take away their rights.”
Anderson noted that her home country came dangerously close to repeating history by enacting legislation that would have forced unvaccinated citizens to pay for their own medical treatments or even be turned away for treatment altogether.
Germany’s public healthcare system ensures free healthcare for all.
“My country has been there historically,” Anderson warned. “This is exactly the stuff totalitarianism is made of. I had hoped that the Germans had learned their lesson, but I have to say they have not learned a damn thing.”
However, despite what some could call insurmountable odds Christine Anderson said she’s ready to take a stand against anti-democratic efforts whenever she sees it and refuses to let history repeat itself.
“I will always say what I believe to be true. When I see parallels between another totalitarian regime I will be there and I will point it out.”
On Wednesday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) officially endorsed Donald Trump for President.
McConnell unveiled the endorsement only after former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R), Trump’s final remaining opponent, dropped out of the race following Trump’s big wins on Super Tuesday.
“It is abundantly clear that former President Trump has earned the requisite support of Republican voters to be our nominee for President of the United States. It should come as no surprise that as nominee, he will have my support,” McConnell said.
“During his Presidency, we worked together to accomplish great things for the American people including tax reform that supercharged our economy and a generational change of our federal judiciary – most importantly, the Supreme Court. I look forward to the opportunity of switching from playing defense against the terrible policies the Biden administration has pursued to a sustained offense geared towards making a real difference in improving the lives of the American people.”
Despite Haley dropping out of the race, the former United Nations ambassador has yet to endorse Trump for President.
This is a breaking news story. Please check back for updates.
