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Fox News Reporter Dismantles Trump Assassination Hoax

By
Madeleine Jackson
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Gage Skidmore Flickr

Fox News correspondent Jacqui Heinrich dumped cold water on former President Trump’s recent claims Joe Biden sought to assassinate the Republican during the unprecedented raid of his Mar-a-Lago estate.

The basis for the claim is standard language in the raid’s operation order that said agents “may use deadly force only when necessary, that is, when the officer has a reasonable belief that the subject of such force poses an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury to the officer or to another person.”

Trump is now reportedly fundraising on the debunked scenario.

On Wednesday night, Heinrich broke the news that the same guidance on deadly force that appeared in the Trump operations order was also in the orders for the raids on President Biden’s homes:

NEWS: FBI SEARCHES AT PRESIDENT BIDEN’S HOMES ALSO INCLUDED DEADLY FORCE POLICY (which is standard)

A person familiar with the Hur investigation confirms that the standard Department of Justice policy statement regarding the use of deadly force was also included in the operations order for the searches at President Biden’s residences in Delaware.

CONTEXT: yesterday, former President Trump suggested that the Biden administration wanted to kill him during a search of his Mar-a-Lago estate. A fundraising email read, “Joe Biden was locked & loaded ready to take me out”.

The FBI said standard protocol was followed, no additional steps were taken and there was no departure from the norm.
This news about the deadly force policy also being in place for the FBI searches at Biden’s homes underscores that point.

Report: Trump Team Surpasses Biden In Fundraising For First Time

    By
    Madeleine Jackson
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    Joe Biden via Gage Skidmore Flickr

    This is big news…

    Former President Donald Trump’s campaign passed President Joe Biden’s campaign in monthly fundraising for the first time in April, according to Reuters.

    Trump, alongside the Republican National Committee (RNC), which his camp has partnered with, raised $76 million in the month of April, Reuters reported Tuesday. Biden and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) raised about $25 million less than their competitors, bringing in $51 million in April.

    In March, the Biden campaign and the DNC brought in $90 million, while Trump and the RNC brought in $65.6 million. The former president’s team had $93.1 million cash on hand while Biden’s team had $192 million.

    The presumptive Republican nominee has been surging in recent polls.

    The former president is leading a recent New York Times/Siena College survey that shows Trump ahead of Biden across Nevada, Georgia, Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin by as much as 13 points.

    Trump Motions To Dismiss Classified Docs Case

    By
    Madeleine Jackson
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    Marine One lifts-off after returning President Donald J. Trump to Mar-a-Lago Friday, March 29, 2019, following his visit to the 143-mile Herbert Hoover Dike near Canal Point, Fla., that surrounds Lake Okeechobee. The visit was part of an infrastructure inspection of the dike, which is part of the Kissimmee-Okeechobee Everglades system, and reduces impacts of flooding for areas of south Florida. (Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian) [Photo Credit: The White House from Washington, DC, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons]

    On Tuesday, former President Donald Trump’s legal team filed a motion to dismiss the classified documents case.

    Trump’s lawyers asserted that prosecutors in the classified documents case violated his constitutional rights on several occasions, including the “unconstitutional” raid on Mar-a-Lago.

    In their filing on the raid, Trump’s attorneys argued the warrant, which they said was “executed in an egregious fashion and in bad faith,” lacked “the particularity required by the Fourth Amendment.”

    The warrant did not establish a basis for “rummaging through the majority” of the rooms at Mar-a-Lago, including “the private bedrooms of the First Lady and President Trump’s youngest son,” Trump’s attorneys wrote. They asked that evidence gathered from the raid, along with through a “subsequent unlawful violation of President Trump’s attorney-client privilege,” be suppressed.

    “What was unthinkable with respect to President Clinton’s recordings, and deemed unwarranted with respect to Hillary Clinton’s destruction of evidence, was determined to be appropriate by the Biden Administration for President Biden’s chief political rival,” his attorneys wrote. “Personally authorized by Attorney General Garland, and supported over FBI objections by DOJ leadership who did not ‘give a damn about the optics’ of these unprecedented steps, the raid of Mar-a-Lago was unconstitutional.”

    In the other motion to dismiss, Trump’s attorneys argued that “NARA, the Biden Administration, and DOJ ‘collude[d] in bad faith’ to deprive President Trump of his constitutional rights by using civil authorities to collect evidence for use in a criminal prosecution.”

    “Politically biased NARA officials violated the agency’s regulations, and broke custom and practice dating back to the enactment of the [Presidential Records Act], by colluding with the Biden Administration to initiate a criminal investigation of President Trump rather than simply collecting the records that President Trump had designated as Presidential Record,” they wrote.

    “As a result of this misconduct, under the guise of NARA’s civil and administrative authorities, the prosecution team collected evidence—including the 15 Boxes and statements by President Trump’s PRA representatives—that they used to further the criminal investigation in an unfairly prejudicial and unlawful fashion,” Trump’s attorneys continued.

    The government wrote in response to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago filing that it “adopted a measured, graduated approach” since the start of the case. Prosecutors also argued that Trump’s “bad-faith collusion” narrative is “baseless.”

    Vince Fong Wins Special Election For McCarthy’s Seat

    By
    Madeleine Jackson
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    0
    Photo via Gage Skidmore Flickr

    California state Assemblyman Vince Fong won the special election to serve out the remainder of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) term in the House.

    Fong defeated Tulare County Sheriff Mike Boudreaux (R) in Tuesday’s runoff election. The former House Speaker and California Congressman was a mentor to Fong and endorsed him early in the race to succeed him.

    Though Fong is now set to fill McCarthy’s seat for the rest of the term, he and Boudreaux will go up against each other again to win a full term representing California’s 20th congressional district this November after they both advanced from a regularly scheduled primary earlier this year. 

    McCarthy announced his exit from the lower chamber after a short tenure in the top House role ended with his historic removal from the Speakership. 

    Prior to McCarthy’s resignation, Fong also filed to run for reelection in the California State Assembly, where he represents the Bakersfield area.

    California Secretary of State Shirley Weber (D) attempted to keep Fong out of the Congressional race, since he’d already declared for the state-level position and California law bars candidates from appearing twice. But, a judge ruled in late December that Fong could run.

    Ex-Obama Official Warns What A Second Trump Win Means For SCOTUS

      By
      Madeleine Jackson
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      0
      Duncan Lock, Dflock, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

      A second Trump presidency will have a lasting impact…

      Former adviser to President Barack Obama recently predicted on a podcast that if Trump wins the November election he will secure a “MAGA court majority” for years to come.

      Pod Save America co-host Dan Pfeiffer sounded alarm bells over the former President’s past Supreme Court picks and cautioned listeners against supporting the presumed Republican nominee.

      “Think about the stakes of the Supreme Court. If Donald Trump wins, he will almost certainly get two more appointments. By the end of Trump’s second term — were he to win — [Clarence] Thomas will be 82, [Samuel] Alito will be 78,” he said.

      Pfeiffer and his co-hosts agreed the pair will “definitely” be retiring in a second Trump term. Pfeiffer also noted Justice Sonia Sotomayor will also be 72 when Trump would be leaving a second term.

      Trump would ultimately have five appointments to the Supreme Court, creating a “MAGA” majority for decades, the political advisor argued.

      “If he gets two appointments, that means he will have appointed five Supreme Court Justices, all of whom will be around or below the age of 60 when he leaves office,” he said. “That is a court majority — a MAGA court majority that will rule for decades. We can win the next however many presidential elections and absent something sort of extraordinary happening, Trump’s fingerprints will be all over the Supreme Court and so I think we should make this a big issue.”

      Giuliani Enters Plea In Arizona Election Interference Case

      By
      Madeleine Jackson
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      0
      Photo via Gage Skidmore Flickr

      On Tuesday, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani and others pleaded not guilty to nine charges he is facing in Arizona in relation to a case focused on efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

      The Hill has more:

      Giuliani entered his not guilty plea remotely at an arraignment held in a courtroom in Phoenix. Numerous other individuals charged in the case, including former Arizona GOP Chair Kelly Ward, also entered not guilty pleas at their arraignments on Tuesday.

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

      Report: Trump Opts Not To Testify In Hush Money Trial

      By
      Madeleine Jackson
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      1
      Gavel via Wikimedia Commons Image

      Former President Donald Trump will not take the stand after all in the weekslong criminal hush money trial.

      “We’ll be resting pretty quickly — resting meaning resting the case. I won’t be resting,” Trump said outside the courtroom Tuesday morning. “I don’t rest. I’d like to rest sometimes, but I don’t get to rest.”

      The decision to keep Trump off the stand comes after weeks of uncertainty. The former president hinted to reporters he could testify, a risky move legal experts warmed Trump against. However, Trump would often flip-flop on the matter and at other times ignoring persistent questions on the issue. 

      Last week, Trump’s own attorneys signaled they were unsure whether their client would take the stand, just days before the Manhattan district attorney’s office was expected to rest its case-in-chief.  

      “That’s another decision that we need to think through,” Trump attorney Todd Blanche told the judge on Thursday.  

      The former president faces 34 counts of falsifying business records in connection with a hush money payment Cohen made to porn actress Stormy Daniels in the lead-up to the 2016 election to stay quiet about her alleged affair with Trump, which he denies.  

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

      Trump Campaign Loses It Over ‘The Apprentice’ Film – Vows Lawsuit

      By
      Madeleine Jackson
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      0
      Image via Gage Skidmore Flickr

      Donald Trump is not pleased with his portrayal in a film that just premiered at the illustrious Cannes Film Festival and is vowing to take legal action.

      The Trump campaign reportedly plans to sue the filmmakers behind the new biopic film, “The Apprentice,” which follows the former president’s early years in the real estate business, for including what it calls “blatantly false assertions.” 

      “We will be filing a lawsuit to address the blatantly false assertions from these pretend filmmakers,” Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said in a statement to The Hill. “This garbage is pure fiction which sensationalizes lies that have been long debunked. As with the illegal Biden Trials, this is election interference by Hollywood elites, who know that President Trump will retake the White House and beat their candidate of choice because nothing they have done has worked.”

      “This ‘film’ is pure malicious defamation, should not see the light of day, and doesn’t even deserve a place in the straight-to-DVD section of a bargain bin at a soon-to-be-closed discount movie store, it belongs in a dumpster fire,” Cheung continued.

      “The Apprentice,” directed by Ali Abbassi premiered Monday at the Cannes Film Festival, where it reportedly received an eight-minute standing ovation. The film stars Sebastian Stan as a then-New York real estate developer Trump and Jeremy Strong of “Succession” as the future president’s real-life former attorney and mentor Roy Cohn.

      At Monday’s premiere, Abassi recalled, “When we did this movie, everyone said, ‘Why do you want to make a movie with Trump? You know, if you want to tell something about the world, do it in a nice way, in a metaphorical way.”

      But, he said to applause, “There is no nice, metaphorical way to deal with the rising wave of fascism. The messy way, the banal way, is only the way of dealing with this wave on its own terms, at its own level.”

      “It’s not going to be pretty,” he added, “but I think the problem with the world is that the good people have been quiet for too long.”

      Hours before its Monday premiere, Variety reported that Dan Snyder, the billionaire investor in the film, was not happy with its final creative direction. Sources told the outlet that Snyder, the former owner of the Washington Commanders and friend of Trump, invested in the biopic through film company Kinematics because he thought it would be a flattering depiction of the former president. 

      When he saw a cut of the film in February, he was reportedly furious and Kinematics’ lawyers were brought in in an attempt to stop the film’s release, Variety reported.

      Michael Cohen Admits To Crime Against Trump Organization

      By
      Madeleine Jackson
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      3
      IowaPolitics.com, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

      A surprising development…

      On Monday, former President Donald Trump’s “fixer” Michael Cohen admitted to Trump’s attorney Todd Blanche that he lied and previously stole money from the Trump Organization. The surprising admission comes as Trump’s team continues to cast the prosecution’s star witness as unreliable and untrustworthy.

      Trump’s 34 charges correspond to documents generated in repaying Cohen a total of $420,000 in 2017.

      Prosecutors say the amount included $130,000 to reimburse Cohen for the hush money payment at the center of the case, $50,000 for the tech firm bill and additional funds to “gross up” the amount for tax purposes and pay Cohen’s bonus.

      But Cohen admitted on the stand that he didn’t actually pay the tech firm, RedFinch Solutions, $50,000, despite telling the Trump Organization’s then-CFO he needed to be reimbursed for that amount.

      “You did steal from the Trump Organization based on expected reimbursement from RedFinch?” asked Todd Blanche, Trump’s attorney.

      “Yes, sir,” Cohen replied.

      Cohen’s testimony is expected to last through midday. It is unclear if the defense plans to put up a case or whether Trump himself will testify.

      The judge indicated that closing arguments in the case would be next Tuesday, delaying what was previously expected to be a near close of the trial before Memorial Day weekend, according to The Hill.

      Potential VP Flips On Trump Deportation Stance

      By
      Madeleine Jackson
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      1
      (Miami - Flórida, 09/03/2020) Presidente da República Jair Bolsonaro durante encontro com o Senador Marco Rubio..Foto: Alan Santos/PR

      Florida Sen. Marco Rubio (R) is changing his tune on Trump’s deportation plan.

      “Yes,” Rubio said during an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday, where he was asked whether he supports Trump’s plan to use the military to deport illegal immigrants from the country. “We cannot absorb 25, 30 million people who entered this country illegally. They’re here illegally, what country on earth could tolerate that?” 

      The comments were in stark contrast to Rubio’s previous stance on the issue, most notably as a primary rival of Trump’s in 2015. Rubio was critical of the Trump plan to round up and deport the millions of illegal immigrants living in the United States, panning the idea as “not a workable plan.”

      Pushed on why his stance has changed since campaigning against Trump nearly a decade ago, the Florida Senator argued that the situation itself has changed since then.

      “When I said that back in 2013 when I was involved in immigration reform, we had 11, 12 million people that had been here for longer than a decade, now we’ve had almost that number in the last three years alone,” Rubio said, noting that he believes some of those who have entered the country more recently could include “terrorists.”

      Trump has vowed to implement a plan of mass deportation if he wins November’s election, promising last month to use the National Guard if needed to deport illegal immigrants from the country.

      Rubio has been floated as a potential contender for vice president among other popular Florida Republicans such as Rep. Byron Donalds and former primary rival Gov. Ron DeSantis.

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