The Trafalgar Group’s most recent poll is a troubling sign for Republicans who need to take back the House this year…
Amanda breaks down why conservatives should be nervous about November’s results below.
An “ultra MAGA” 25-year-old former Trump White House staffer made history Tuesday night. Karoline Leavitt – who celebrated her 25th birthday last month, becoming eligible to hold a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives- won her primary for New Hampshire’s First Congressional District Seat, setting up a November showdown with incumbent Democrat Congressman Chis Pappas.
Leavitt emerged victorious from a hotly contested primary after garnering 35 percent to the 25 percent won by her top opponent Matt Mowers.
She beat out a number of candidates including Mowers, a fellow Trump Admin alumnus and the 2020 GOP nominee for the NH-01 House seat. Mowers worked in the State Department as a top aide to Secretary Mike Pompeo who also endorsed him in the primary, as did the 45th President himself.
Although she worked in the Trump White House and was endorsed by a number of Trump’s closest allies – including her old boss and former White House Press Secretary Kaleigh McEnany – the former President for some reason declined to endorse her in the primary and endorsed Mowers instead. He has however celebrated her win via a statement posted on his social media platform, Truth Social.
Another interesting moment in the primary was the division of endorsements from Elise Stefanik – House Republican Conference Chairwoman and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. Stefanik opted to endorse Leavitt, who served as her Communications Director following her stint in the White House.
House Minority Leader McCarthy sided with Mowers.
Despite the attacks she endured from the DC swamp Democrats and establishment Republicans, Leavitt won. She also garnered the support of the Freedom Caucus’ Jim Jordan of Ohio and Texas Senator Ted Cruz.
Leavitt also campaigned with a pair of conservative members of the GOP freshman class. Byron Donalds of Florida and Lauren Boebert of Colorado joined Leavitt’s campaign on the eve of the primary to express their support for the young conservative dynamo.
Now Leavitt will set her mind to tackling the task of flipping a seat that the Cook Political Report ranks as having a partisan voter index (PVI) of EVEN and an overall rating of “toss-up.”
While reporting on the results of last night’s race, Cook Political Report’s Dave Wasserman attacked Leavitt as “unv****ed America First” and “Pro-MAGA”. Despite his criticism, he still ranks the seat as a “toss-up” – a key indicator that Democrats should be more than concerned about this Republican candidate’s rising success.
As long as Pappas continues sipping the Biden-Pelosi Kool-Aid and helping drive America off a fiscal cliff – Leavitt’s got one heck of a fighting chance.
Aside from the NH-01 race, the Granite State played host to a couple of other key races last night, including a five-way Republican primary for the Senate seat.
New Hampshire is a key swing state and enjoys an elevated political status due to it being the host of the “First In The Nation” primaries in Presidential election years.
The MAGA wave in the state wasn’t just limited to Leavitt. Pro-Trump Senate candidate Don Bolduc also won his hotly contested primary.
New Hampshire’s Republican Governor Chris Sununu — a moderate who enjoys a fair amount of popularity for a Republican governing a blue state and prevailed against three challengers in his own primary last night — stepped into the race with a last-minute endorsement of Charles (Chuck) Morse, the President of the New Hampshire Senate.
Still, that wasn’t enough to swing the race in Morse’s favor. WMUR reported earlier this month that “Don Bolduc, a retired Army general, has been leading in the polls for the Republican nomination. Morse is making the case to voters that he has the experience for the job.” That polling was done before the debate last month and Sununu’s endorsement but seems to have stood true.
Bolduc has set himself up for a matchup with vulnerable incumbent Democrat Senator Maggie Hassan.
Our friends over at Townhall are reporting RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel’s statement in the race:
“Extreme Democrats like Maggie Hassan and [Representative] Chris Pappas have failed Granite Staters time and again by voting in lockstep with Biden’s failed agenda of high taxes, open borders, and historic inflation. Our data-driven ground game is ready to turn out the vote, and New Hampshire is ready to re-elect Governor Sununu and finally send commonsense Republican leadership to Washington.”
Congratulations President Biden on another incredible disaster!
Inflation rates in August rose once again, giving bad news to American families already concerned by sky-high rates.
Watch Amanda break it down below.
The Senate Judiciary Committee is opening another investigation into former President Donald Trump’s behavior while in office. The latest investigation stems from allegations posed by a former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York that Trump’s Justice Department attempted to influence the Manhattan attorney’s office to prosecute his critics and protect his allies.
Geoffrey Berman’s allegations against Trump are recounted in his upcoming book, which Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin cited in a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland calling for the investigation. Berman served for two years under Trump and had previously volunteered on his 2016 campaign and White House transition team.
The Hill reports:
“These reported claims indicate astonishing and unacceptable deviations from the Department’s mission to pursue impartial justice, which requires that its prosecutorial decisions be free from political influence,” Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) wrote in a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland.
Berman alleges Trump appointees pressured the Manhattan office to go after Trump’s critics and to shield Trump and his allies but that he resisted those efforts.
Durbin noted that Berman “contends that Department officials pressured his office to remove references to President Trump from the charging document for Michael Cohen, his personal lawyer, as well as later attempts by Attorney General Barr himself to reverse Mr. Cohen’s conviction and stop related investigations entirely.”
The allegations “compound the already serious concerns” about Barr’s 2020 efforts “to replace Mr. Berman with a Trump loyalist,” Durbin wrote.
Durbin, in the letter to Garland, requested a number of documents and communications between the Justice Department and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.
In a late Monday court filing, the Department of Justice said it would accept one of former President Trump’s proposed judges to be appointed special master to review the records seized during the FBI’s August raid of Mar-a-Lago.
The DOJ wrote in its court filing that it believes Raymond J. Dearie, a former federal judge in New York is well qualified for the position. The DOJ also made two recommendations for the high-profile appointment, retired federal judges Barbara S. Jones and Thomas B. Griffith.
The Wall Street Journal reports:
“Judges Jones, Griffith, and Dearie each have substantial judicial experience, during which they have presided over federal criminal and civil cases, including federal cases involving national security and privilege concerns,” the Justice Department wrote in its filing.
Despite there being a rare agreement between Trump’s team and the DOJ it’s unclear if Judge Cannon will listen to the two parties’ request.
Dearie is a former chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York who also served on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. He was also among the FISA judges who signed an order approving electronic surveillance of Carter Page, a former Trump aide, as part of the FBI’s investigation into whether the 2016 Trump campaign colluded with Russia.
Trump’s team also recommended Paul Huck Jr., who served as general counsel to former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist. However, the Justice Department opposed Mr. Huck because he doesn’t have similar experience to the other candidates.
The DOJ also proposed Barbara Jones, who is a retired federal judge from the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of New York. She served as the special master who reviewed materials seized from Trump’s former personal attorney, Michael Cohen. The retired judge once again served as special master when then-Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani’s New York office and home were raided.
The Justice Department’s other candidate, Thomas Griffith, is a retired judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit appointed by former President George W. Bush. He most recently served on President Biden’s commission to study changes to the Supreme Court bench.
In a Monday court filing, Trump’s legal team noted it does not trust the DOJ to accurately represent what was recovered in the classified documents.
“The Government has not proven these records remain classified. That issue is to be determined later,” Mr. Trump’s lawyers wrote in a Monday morning filing to U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon.
“In opposing any neutral review of the seized materials, the Government seeks to block a reasonable first step toward restoring order from chaos and increasing public confidence in the integrity of the process,” the Trump legal team said, adding that the issue “at its core is a document storage dispute.’’
In a separate filing Monday afternoon, Mr. Trump’s lawyers said they oppose the two Justice Department candidates for the special master role, and asked to explain their reasoning privately before the court to be “more respectful to the candidates.” The filing said only that they believe “there are specific reasons why those nominees are not preferred for service as Special Master in this case.”
Judge Cannon granted Trump’s request for a special master last Monday, issuing a stay on the DOJ’s investigation of the seized materials. In response, the DOJ filed a motion for an appeal to continue its review of Trump’s handling of presidential documents and classified materials.
Trump’s legal team responded and accused the DOJ of seeking to “limit the scope of any review of its investigative conduct and presuppose the outcome, at least in regard to what it deems are ‘classified records.’”
“This investigation of the 45th President of the United States is both unprecedented and misguided,” Trump’s lawyers said in the filing. “In what at its core is a document storage dispute that has spiraled out of control, the Government wrongfully seeks to criminalize the possession by the 45th President of his own Presidential and personal records.”
“The Government should therefore not be permitted to skip the process and proceed straight to a preordained conclusion,” they wrote.
Judge Cannon has not revealed when a final decision will be announced in regard to the special master appointment or if she will seriously consider any of the candidates proposed by Trump or the Justice Department.
What is Brian Stelter’s next move? That question has been circulating since the ex-“Reliable Sources” host got the axe from CNN’s new president.
On Twitter, Stelter announced he’s moving his talents to academia. Stelter will join Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy as a Walter Shorenstein media and democracy fellow and “convene a series of discussions about threats to democracy and the range of potential responses from the news media.”
The Washington Examiner reports:
The 37-year-old former CNN host seemingly fell victim to a major shake-up at the network following parent company WarnerMedia’s recent merger with Discovery. Since taking the reins as CEO to replace Stelter ally Jeff Zucker, Chris Licht has reportedly embarked on a crusade to reorient the company in a less partisan direction.
Star anchors and reporters have seemingly been ousted amid the internal shuffling, including former chief legal correspondent Jeffrey Toobin and White House correspondent John Harwood. As Licht tries to steer the company in a new direction, CNN has been dogged by sagging profit projections amid a ratings slump.
“Brian Stelter is a nationally recognized media reporter and expert on the state of journalism and its wide-reaching implications for society and governance,” the institution said in a press release.
Liberal Carnegie Mellon professor, Uju Anya tweeted a truly disturbing message regarding Queen Elizabeth’s recent passing. As England mourns the loss of its steadfast monarch Anya tweeted that she hoped the Queen suffered in her final moments.
Queen Elizabeth II passed on Sept. 8th, 2022 after serving as reigning monarch for 70 years. She was England’s longest-reigning monarch.
See Amanda’s thoughts on the disturbed message below:
Donald Trump’s legal team fired back against the Justice Department’s motion to continue its review of classified documents seized by the FBI during its raid of Mar-a-Lago last month.
On Monday, Trump’s team filed a motion accusing the DOJ of seeking to “limit the scope of any review of its investigative conduct and presuppose the outcome, at least in regard to what it deems are ‘classified records.’”
The move came after Florida Judge Aileen Cannon granted Trump’s request a special master be appointed to review the seized materials. However, last week the DOJ filed a motion to appeal Judge Cannon’s decision- specifically regarding the order blocking the government from its review of the records seized that were marked classified.
Fox News reports:
“This investigation of the 45th President of the United States is both unprecedented and misguided,” Trump’s lawyers said in the filing. “In what at its core is a document storage dispute that has spiraled out of control, the Government wrongfully seeks to criminalize the possession by the 45th President of his own Presidential and personal records.”
“The Government should therefore not be permitted to skip the process and proceed straight to a preordained conclusion,” they wrote.
In the judge’s initial order for the appointment of a special master, Cannon ruled that the special master would be responsible to review the seized property for “personal items and documents and potentially privileged material subject to claims of attorney-client and/or executive privilege.”
Cannon, though, said the order “shall not impede the classification review and/or intelligence assessment by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (“ODNI”) as described in the Government’s Notice of Receipt of Preliminary Order.”
Trump’s legal team accused the DOJ of”misinterpreting” the order, and said there is “no indication any purported ‘classified records’ were disclosed to anyone.”
READ NEXT: Florida Judge Responds to Trump Teams Request to Appoint Special Master to Review Seized Materials >>
Amanda Head had a chance to attend a private screening of “My Son Hunter,” an upcoming movie directed by Robert Davi which dives into the drug-fueled past of First Son, Hunter Biden.
Watch and hear Amanda’s unfiltered thoughts of the film below:
Former president Donald Trump’s lawsuit against Hillary Clinton has been dismissed by a federal judge in Florida.
Trump filed the lawsuit in March accusing Clinton and more than two dozen others of “a malicious conspiracy to disseminate patently false and injurious information about Donald J. Trump and his campaign, all in the hopes of destroying his life, his political career and rigging the 2016 Presidential Election in favor of Hillary Clinton.”
Bloomberg reports:
The suit was amended in June to include new details from Special Counsel John Durham’s failed prosecution of longtime Democratic lawyer Michael Sussmann, who was accused of lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation while providing a Trump-Russia tip just before the 2016 election.
“At its core, the problem with plaintiff’s amended complaint is that plaintiff is not attempting to seek redress for any legal harm; instead, he is seeking to flaunt a two-hundred-page political manifesto outlining his grievances against those that have opposed him, and this court is not the appropriate forum,” US District Judge Donald Middlebrooks, appointed to the bench by Bill Clinton, said in a 65-page order dated Thursday.
The ruling by Middlebrooks, who in April rejected Trump’s request that he disqualify himself from the case, takes several shots at the lawsuit, noting that the theory of the case was “difficult to summarize in a concise and cohesive manner. It was certainly not presented that way.” He said many of the “characterizations of events are implausible because they lack any specific allegations which might provide factual support for the conclusions reached.”
Trump is currently ensnared in multiple legal battles in the Sunshine State. On Thursday, the Department of Justice filed a notice of appeal regarding a Florida judge’s motion to appoint a special master to review materials seized during the FBI’s raid of Mar-a-Lago.
