Hours after being indicted for a second time and Donald Trump has parted ways with two of his attorneys.
Shortly after being indicted in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified materials after leaving the White House on Thursday two of Trump’s lawyers have reportedly resigned.
“This morning we tendered our resignations as counsel to President Trump, and we will no longer represent him on either the indicted case or the January 6 investigation,” Trusty and Rowley said in a statement Friday. “It has been an honor to have spent the last year defending him, and we know he will be vindicated in his battle against the Biden Administration’s partisan weaponization of the American justice system.
“Now that the case has been filed in Miami, this is a logical moment for us to step aside and let others carry the cases through to completion,” they added. “We have no plans to hold media appearances that address our withdrawals or any other confidential communications we’ve had with the President or his legal team.”
Trump, taking to his TRUTH Social on Friday, said he will bring on a new attorney, Todd Blanche.
“For purposes of fighting the Greatest Witch Hunt of all time, now moving to the Florida Courts, I will be represented by Todd Blanche, Esq., and a firm to be named later,” Trump wrote. “I want to thank Jim Trusty and John Rowley for their work, but they were up against a very dishonest, corrupt, evil, and “sick” group of people, the likes of which has not been seen before.”
He added: “We will be announcing additional lawyers in the coming days. When will Joe Biden be Indicted for his many crimes against our Nation? MAGA!”
Trump was indicted on at least seven counts involving obstruction of justice, conspiracy, and illegal retention of classified government material.
ANALYSIS – Former President Donald Trump faces a slew of legal onslaughts, the latest being a federal indictment by Joe Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ) for violating the Espionage Act by mishandling classified information.
Like the FBI raid on his Florida home, this divisive and politically charged indictment is an unprecedented development that makes him the first former president in U.S. history to face criminal charges by the federal government.
And the political fallout will be huge.
Trump denies any wrongdoing and is calling the indictments a witch hunt. And yes, he has been unfairly targeted before – many times.
But is this case really part of that same anti-Trump vendetta? And does it matter?
The latest indictment is for the willful retention of highly classified national security documents at his Florida Mar-a-Lago estate, corruptly concealing documents, conspiracy to obstruct justice, and making false statements.
Many will point to the later discovery of classified documents in Joe Biden’s homes and properties connected to him without him facing criminal charges (yet) as proof that this is an anti-Trump witch hunt.
Last week, the DOJ also cleared former Vice President Mike Pence of any wrongdoing after a small number of classified documents were found at his Indiana home in January.
Trump posted a slew of angry social media posts against federal investigators Tuesday highlighting different treatment.
“The Marxists and Fascists in the DOJ & FBI are going after me at a level and speed never seen before in our Country, and I did nothing wrong,” Trump wrote in one of several posts.
And yes, as I have repeatedly written about, the DOJ and the FBI have been heavily politicized, or even weaponized against conservatives.
But, as with Richard Nixon and Watergate, the problem for Trump here is the cover-up. Had he simply returned the documents once they were discovered, it would have been far less likely he would have been indicted.
Instead, Trump repeatedly refused to turn over the materials to federal officials once he left the White House, and then provided a series of bizarre justifications for his actions, before the FBI raided his home.
A separate special counsel is investigating Biden’s handling of classified material after documents were found at his Wilmington, Del., home and a Washington, D.C., office from his time as vice president.
The difference here is Biden’s team alerted federal officials upon discovering the documents and promptly turned them over.
Trump’s own former Attorney General Bill Barr pushed back on Trump’s claims that a special counsel’s ongoing documents probe is politically motivated.
“Over time, people will see that this is not a case of the Department of Justice conducting a witch hunt,” Barr said in an interview on CBS on Tuesday. “In fact, they approached this very delicately and with deference to the president, and this would have gone nowhere had the president just returned the documents. But he jerked them around for a year and a half.”
The indictment carries serious legal consequences, including the possibility of prison if he’s convicted. Trump will appear at a federal courthouse in Miami on June 13.
In March, the notoriously liberal, Soros-backed Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, indicted Trump on state charges related to hush-money payments to a former porn film star in 2016.
That local indictment appears far more political and ‘Trumped-up’ (pun not intended) than this federal one. The trial for this case begins in March 2024.
Jack Smith, the special counsel coordinating federal investigations into the Espionage Act indictments, oversees other inquiries related to Trump, including those regarding the Capitol Riot on January 6, 2021.
But none of this will prevent Trump from continuing his campaign for president. “Nothing stops Trump from running while indicted, or even convicted,” University of California, Los Angeles law professor Richard Hasen told CNN.
The Constitution requires only three things of candidates. They must be a natural-born citizen (not a naturalized one), at least 35 years old, and residents of the U.S. for at least 14 years.
So theoretically, Trump could be convicted and still be elected President.
Not only won’t this keep Trump from running, but it will probably help him with his core base of supporters in the GOP primary.
And Trump won’t even go to trial for any of this until well into the next presidential term.
But the optics and politics of all this is the biggest issue.
As the Daily Caller reported Pence as saying: “I think this is going to be terribly divisive for the country. I also think it sends a terrible message to the wider world that looks at America as a standard of not only democracy, but of justice.”
The question is when does all of this come to a head? And what will happen when it does?
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
A close aide for former president Donald Trump has been indicted in Justice Department Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the former president’s alleged mishandling of classified information.
Fox News has reported that Walt Nauta, who served as a Trump personal aide and valet in the White House and later at Mar-a-Lago, has been indicted. It’s unclear what exact charges Nauta is facing.
Sources told Fox News that Nauta was seen on surveillance video moving boxes of sensitive material from a storage area at a time when the government had sought information about those documents. At some point, he reportedly had stopped speaking with investigators.
Nauta’s indictment comes after a Miami grand jury indicted Donald Trump on Thursday.
During an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital Thursday night, Trump said the case is “election interference” and “the greatest witch hunt of all time.” Trump said he will “of course” plead not guilty to charges in federal court on Tuesday, and said he is “totally innocent.”
“This is the most corrupt administration in history—there has never been an administration so corrupt, and they’re just starting to find it right now,” Trump told Fox News Digital. “They are trying to deflect all of their dishonesty by bringing this ridiculous boxes hoax case.”
This is a breaking news story. Click refresh for the latest updates.
Hours after Trump was reportedly indicted by a Florida grand jury in the classified documents case CNN’s Paula Reid shared a transcript of the tape in which Trump discusses not being able to share secret information.
Reid and Kaitlan Collins broke the news last week that Trump was caught on tape discussing an allegedly classified document that he had taken with him when he left the White House. During the tape, Trump reportedly acknowledged he can’t show the document, which outlines a plan to attack Iran, to his visitors because of the classification attached to it.
Read the transcript below:
“Secret. This is secret information. Look, look at this,” Trump says at one point, according to the transcript. “This was done by the military and given to me.”
Trump was complaining in the meeting about Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley. The meeting occurred shortly after The New Yorker published a story by Susan Glasser detailing how, in the final days of Trump’s presidency, Milley instructed the Joint Chiefs to ensure Trump issued no illegal orders and that he be informed if there was any concern.
“Well, with Milley – uh, let me see that, I’ll show you an example. He said that I wanted to attack Iran. Isn’t that amazing? I have a big pile of papers, this thing just came up. Look. This was him,” Trump says, according to the transcript. “They presented me this – this is off the record, but – they presented me this. This was him. This was the Defense Department and him. We looked at some. This was him. This wasn’t done by me, this was him.”
Trump continues: “All sorts of stuff – pages long, look. Wait a minute, let’s see here. I just found, isn’t that amazing? This totally wins my case, you know. Except it is like, highly confidential. Secret. This is secret information. Look, look at this.”
During an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital Thursday night, Trump said the case is “election interference” and “the greatest witch hunt of all time.” Trump said he will “of course” plead not guilty to charges in federal court on Tuesday, and said he is “totally innocent.”
“This is the most corrupt administration in history—there has never been an administration so corrupt, and they’re just starting to find it right now,” Trump told Fox News Digital. “They are trying to deflect all of their dishonesty by bringing this ridiculous boxes hoax case.”
He added: “They’re not going to get away with it.”
“I did absolutely nothing wrong,” he said, citing the Presidential Records Act, saying it “makes me totally innocent.”
Former President Donald Trump broke the news that he’s been indicted in the classified documents case.
A federal grand jury in Miami indicted Trump on seven charges for his alleged mishandling of over 100 classified documents after leaving office.
DONALD TRUMP INDICTED – Charged in classified documents probe – Federal grand jury approves 7 counts – Includes obstruction, false statements – Ordered to appear in Miami court on Tuesday – Trump: "A dark day for the United States" – Trump now facing criminal charges in 2 cases -…
Former President Trump has been indicted on federal charges that emerged out of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s months-long investigation.
Trump facing at least seven federal counts related to document handling and obstruction of justice. He has been ordered to appear in federal court in Miami on Tuesday.
Trump himself announced the indictment on his social media platform, Truth Social.
“The corrupt Biden Administration has informed my attorneys that I have been Indicted, seemingly over the Boxes Hoax, even though Joe Biden has 1850 Boxes at the University of Delaware, additional Boxes in Chinatown, D.C., with even more Boxes at the University of Pennsylvania, and documents strewn all over his garage floor where he parks his Corvette, and which is “secured” by only a garage door that is paper thin, and open much of the time,” Trump said on Truth Social.
This is a breaking news story. Click refresh for the latest updates.
Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America,
ANALYSIS – In his Twitter Spaces debut Tuesday night, called “Tucker on Twitter,” former Fox News host Tucker Carlson immediately accused Ukraine of being responsible for the catastrophic attack on the Nova Kakhovka dam in Southern Ukraine.
And he may be right.
Ukraine and Russia have routinely accused each other of shelling the dam, the hydroelectric station and the nearby Zaporizhia nuclear power plant.
Both sides have blamed the other for the attack, in what appears to be a war crime. Kyiv blamed Moscow for the “terrorist attack,” but the Kremlin claimed that Ukraine had struck the dam to impact Russian-controlled Crimea’s water supplies.
And, despite his spotty track record on speculation, in this case, he may be right. Or at least, the assumption that Russia is always the culprit is no longer valid.
Based on recent reporting, which I wrote about here, Ukraine may, in fact, have been responsible for the serious sabotage of the Nord Stream undersea gas pipelines in September 2022, which was long blamed on Russia.
This makes the always-blame Russia crowd look less credible. But that doesn’t mean Tucker’s always-blame-everyone-except-Russia approach is any better.
While on Fox, Tucker repeatedly blamed the United States and Joe Biden for being behind the Nord Stream attack.
On Feb. 24 he said: “So the Biden administration committed the single largest most profound act of industrial terrorism of sabotaging history. They blew up the Nord Stream pipeline …”
Thus, as far as we can tell, Biden knew about it beforehand but was unwilling or unable to do anything about it.
Tucker’s claims aren’t helped when he spouts pro-Russian talking points in his video, such as:
The Kakhovka dam was effectively Russian. It was built by the Russian government. It currently sits in Russian- controlled territory. The dam’s reservoir supplies water to Crimea, which has been for the last 240 years home of the Russian Black Sea Fleet.
Firstly, the ‘Soviets’ built the dam during the USSR, not the ‘Russians,’ and the USSR no longer exists. Secondly, it doesn’t matter how long Russia’s Black Sea Fleet was based in Crimea; it belongs to Ukraine because that’s what happened when the USSR dissolved in 1991 and Ukraine became independent.
Tucker’s Trumpian personal insults, like describing Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, as a “sweaty and rat-like comedian-turned-oligarch,” probably don’t help his credibility much either.
Tucker is on firmer ground when he argues that: “Blowing up the dam may be bad for Ukraine, but it hurts Russia more, and for precisely that reason, the Ukrainian government has considered destroying it.”
Especially when he cites a December report from The Washington Post in which a Ukrainian general spoke of using U.S.-made HIMARS launchers to “test strike” on the Kakhovka dam.
So, what are the facts?
The dam spanning the Dnipro River was breached on Tuesday, flooding swaths of territory and threatening crucial water supplies to Europe’s largest nuclear power plant.
At least 42,000 people and 1,500 square miles of land are at risk from the flooding caused by the destruction of the dam, likely slowing any potential Ukrainian military advance in the Dnipro River delta.
Much of the Dnipro River delta will become inaccessible for land operations, raising suspicions that Russia deliberately sabotaged the dam to prevent an expected Ukrainian counteroffensive.
However, the flooding has disproportionately affected the Russian-occupied side of the river.
The Kakhovka reservoir does supply Russian-occupied Kherson Oblast and the Crimea peninsula with fresh water.
Zelensky has said that the only way to destroy the dam is through mining and explosives and emphasized that Russian forces have now occupied the dam for over a year.
In a statement, Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command said, “Russian occupation troops blew up the dam” at Nova Kakhovka in the Kherson region.
Blaming “Russian terrorists” for the attack, Zelensky said on Twitter that “the destruction of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant dam only confirms for the whole world that they must be expelled from every corner of Ukrainian land.”
In the end, Tucker may be right. Ukraine could have been behind the attack.
But he is far more credible when he is less bombastic and emphatic with his theories. Such as when he states:
So really, once the facts start coming in, it becomes much less of a mystery what might have happened to the dam, and a fair person would conclude that the Ukrainians probably blew it up, just as you would assume they blew up Nord Stream, the Russian natural gas pipeline last fall.
Tucker ended his new Twitter show by promising to be back with “much more, very soon.” I’m looking forward to it.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
Former President Donald Trump is responding to fresh claims that federal authorities are closing in on a new indictment against him.
On Wednesday, a former Trump associate testified before a federal grand jury in the investigation into former President Donald Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified materials.
“Today, in what can only be described as a bogus and deeply troubling effort to use the power of government to ‘get’ Trump, I fulfilled a legal obligation to testify in front a federal grand jury and I answered every question honestly,” Taylor Budowich, a former Trump spokesperson, wrote on Twitter.
“America has become a sick and broken nation—a decline led by Joe Biden and power hungry Democrats,” he added. “I will not be intimidated by this weaponization of government. For me, the need to unite our nation and make America great again has never been more clear than it is today.”
Budowich previously served as a spokesperson for Trump after he left the White House. He is now the head of MAGA Inc., a super PAC backing the former president’s 2024 bid.
The Florida grand jury hearing testimony is the latest development in the investigation by special counsel Jack Smith into whether Trump mishandled classified documents after leaving office.
Multiple outlets have reported that Trump has received a letter from federal prosecutors notifying him of the impending indictment.
Will the former President have another indictment in the coming weeks over his alleged mishandling of classified documents after leaving the White House in 2021? It’s not looking good.
Former President Donald Trump on Wednesday said he has not been told that he’s being indicted as a special counsel investigation into his handling of classified documents shows signs of wrapping up.
“No one has told me I’m being indicted, and I shouldn’t be because I’ve done NOTHING wrong,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, adding that he has “assumed for years that I am a Target of the WEAPONIZED DOJ & FBI.”
Watch Amanda explain the situation below:
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
A prominent 9/11 group is speaking out after the PGA Tour announced its merger with Saudi Arabia-backed LIV Golf.
9/11 Families United released a statement slamming the PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan for partnering with the Saudi-backed entity, noting that Saudi operatives played a role in facilitating the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
“PGA Commissioner Jay Monahan co-opted the 9/11 community last year in the PGA’s unequivocal agreement that the Saudi LIV project was nothing more than sportswashing of Saudi Arabia’s reputation,” said 9/11 Families United Chair Terry Strada, whose husband Tom died in the World Trade Center’s North Tower. “But now the PGA and Monahan appear to have become just more paid Saudi shills, taking billions of dollars to cleanse the Saudi reputation so that Americans and the world will forget how the Kingdom spent their billions of dollars before 9/11 to fund terrorism, spread their vitriolic hatred of Americans, and finance al Qaeda and the murder of our loved ones.”
“Make no mistake – we will never forget, “the statement continued. “Mr. Monahan talked last summer about knowing people who lost loved ones on 9/11, then wondered aloud on national television whether LIV Golfers ever had to apologize for being a member of the PGA Tour. They do now as does he. PGA Tour leaders should be ashamed of their hypocrisy and greed. Our entire 9/11 community has been betrayed by Commissioner Monahan and the PGA as it appears their concern for our loved ones was merely window-dressing in their quest for money – it was never to honor the great game of golf.”
9/11 Families United statement on the LIV/PGA merger: “Our entire 9/11 community has been betrayed by Commissioner Monahan and the PGA as it appears their concern for our loved ones was merely window-dressing in their quest for money.” https://t.co/sauCfESxkGpic.twitter.com/Oc6Rc6nPdO
The PGA Tour suspended 17 golfers from the tour for participating in LIV Golf, kicking off a year of lawsuits between the two golf entities. Eleven pro golfers sued the PGA for allegedly monopolizing competition. However, all 11 plaintiffs left the lawsuit by May of this year after LIV got involved as a plaintiff in the lawsuit, souring the public image of the golfer’s stated principled stand against the PGA.
According to The Daily Wire, the PGA filed a countersuit in September, alleging that LIV golf had unlawfully aided the 17 golfers in violating their contracts with the PGA by offering them separate contracts to play for LIV.
LIV Golf offered major golf stars huge payments to abandon the PGA Tour. Stars like Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, and Bryson DeChambeau, were paid between $100k-$200k without having to win or even qualify for a single tournament.
With the merger, all lawsuits have been dropped.
The PGA Tour commissioner said the deal will push golf into the future and give fans the best experience.
“Going forward, fans can be confident that we will, collectively, deliver on the promise we’ve always made — to promote competition of the best in professional golf and that we are committed to securing and driving the game’s future,” Monahan said.
Former President Donald Trump has been a strong proponent of a merger between the two gold powerhouses.
Last year, Trump accurately predicted a merger was “inevitable.”
“All of those golfers that remain ‘loyal’ to the very disloyal PGA, in all of its different forms, will pay a big price when the inevitable MERGER with LIV comes, and you get nothing but a big ‘thank you from PGA officials who are making millions of dollars a year,” Trump posted on Truth Social in July 2022.
“If you don’t take the money now, you will get nothing after the merger takes place and only say how smart the original signees were. Good luck to all and congratulations to really talented Cam Smith on his incredible win!”
