Former President Donald Trump has withdrawn his lawsuit against New York Attorney General Letitia James.
Trump attorney Honey Rechtin filed a notice of voluntary dismissal without prejudice Friday in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.
The filing states that Trump “voluntarily dismisses his claims in this action” against James “without prejudice.”
Trump filed the lawsuit in November claiming James abused her position as attorney general to “recklessly injure” him, his family and his businesses. Trump alleged James was pursuing “a relentless, pernicious, public, and unapologetic crusade” against him “with the stated goal of destroying him personally, financially, and politically.”
After James filed a civil lawsuit against Trump and his three adult children in September over allegations of business fraud, the former president responded by suing the New York attorney general in November.
Trump claimed that James “abused her position as Attorney General for the State of New York to pursue a vendetta” against him.
In her lawsuit, James accused Trump and his children of falsely inflating and deflating property values to obtain investments and tax and loan benefits, following a three-year investigation into the former president’s business practices.
This story is breaking and will be updated as more information becomes available.
On Friday, new reports indicated Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) is set to officially launch his Senate campaign to unseat Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) in 2024.
According to Newsweek, Gallego is preparing to release a video announcing his campaign. The video was shot in the congressman’s home district and will be released in English and Spanish on Monday.
Gallego, the chair of BOLD PAC, the political arm of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, plans to make the announcement via a video in English and Spanish that was shot in his home district, which includes parts of Phoenix, according to three sources briefed by the campaign.
The progressive lawmaker and outspoken critic of Sinema has hinted at launching the Senate bid for some time. According to Fox News, Gallego told reporters last month that he was being encouraged by “some senators” to announce his Senate campaign.
“There have been some senators that have encouraged me to run,” Gallego said. “There are some senators, some of Sen. Sinema’s colleagues, that are encouraging me to run.”
Gallego did not identify which of Sinema’s colleagues are telling him to run, but predicted they would “absolutely” support him in a Senate race next year.
Last year, Sinema stunned everyone when she announced her detraction from the Democrat Party and switched to Independent. (RELATED:Kyrsten Sinema Leaves Democratic Party)
“Americans are told that we have only two choices – Democrat or Republican – and that we must subscribe wholesale to policy views the parties hold, views that have been pulled further and further toward the extremes,” Sinema wrote in the op-ed announcing her decision.
“Most Arizonans believe this is a false choice, and when I ran for the U.S. House and the Senate, I promised Arizonans something different,” she continued. “I pledged to be independent and work with anyone to achieve lasting results. I committed I would not demonize people I disagreed with, engage in name-calling, or get distracted by political
The White House from Washington, DC, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley seems to be readying herself for a White House run.
During an interview with Fox News, Haley said that she could be the next President of the United States and that she is seriously exploring the possibility.
'I CAN BE THAT LEADER': Former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley hints at 2024 presidential run during exclusive interview with Bret Baier pic.twitter.com/KAa7qnjzgl
“When you’re looking at a run for president, you look at two things,” Haley told Fox News anchor Bret Baier. “You first look at, does the current situation push for new leadership? The second question is, am I that person that could be that new leader, that, yes, we need to go in a new direction? And can I be that leader? Yes, I think I can be that leader.”
“I was — as governor, I took on a hurting state with double-digit unemployment, and we made it the beast of the Southeast,” she said. “As ambassador, I took on the world when they tried to disrespect us. And I think I showed what I’m capable of at the United Nations.”
“So, do I think I could be that leader? Yes,” she added. “But we are still working through things, and we will figure it out. I have never lost a race. I said that then. I still say that now. I’m not going to lose now. But stay tuned.”
Haley’s comments come a year after the former South Carolina governor said that she would not launch her own presidential campaign if Donald Trump announces his candidacy.
“I would not run if President Trump ran,” Haley told reporters at the time.
However, despite Trump’s early entrance to the 2024 contest the former president has seen mixed responses.
In response to new regulations announced by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) last week, a Florida Congressman has introduced a bill to abolish the agency entirely.
Matt Gaetz, Republican Congressman representing Florida’s First Congressional District, announced the bill’s introduction Wednesday.
To abolish the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. This Act may be cited as the ‘‘Abolish the ATF Act’’. SEC. 2. ABOLISHMENT OF THE BUREAU OF ALCOHOL, TOBACCO, FIREARMS, AND EXPLOSIVES. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives is hereby abolished.
The bill has already been praised by the American Firearms Association:
ANALYSIS – From the day cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was shot and killed on the set of the movie Rust, on Oct. 21, 2021, there has been a flurry of speculation over whether anyone would be criminally charged.
Hutchins was killed when a live round was fired from a real ‘prop’ gun being held by liberal actor Alec Baldwin.
Well, now the speculation is over, and Baldwin will be charged.
He has always denied responsibility, saying the replica old west revolver should have had dummy bullets and that he never pulled the trigger.
On the first point, Baldwin is correct; on the second, he is less convincing.
Baldwin statement on Rust charges 2/2:
'He relied on the professionals with whom he worked, who assured him the gun did not have live rounds.
The set armorer is responsible for ensuring gun safety. And there was no reason for live rounds to be on a movie set. Period.
Much less mixed in with dummy rounds.
The armorer certainly is responsible if not culpable. And a big question is why live rounds were on the set and mixed in with dummy rounds and who put them there.
But experts have shown that Baldwin’s claim of not firing the gun doesn’t wash.
It is physically impossible for this type of gun to fire without the trigger being pulled and/or the hammer dropped.
Beyond his immediate possible culpability as the man who ‘fired’ the gun, Baldwin was also a producer of the low-budget Western film.
After the shooting numerous current and former crew members from the film publicly claimed that safety was extremely lax, and formal complaints had been made and ignored about those safety concerns.
The shooting occurred while rehearsing a scene inside a wooden chapel on Bonanza Creek Ranch in New Mexico.
This is a popular western location seen in the likes of Jimmy Stewart’s 1955 “The Man from Laramie” and Paul Newman and Robert Redford’s 1969 “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”
As the crew worked out positions for the scene, Baldwin, playing a grizzled 1880s Kansas outlaw, fired a live round from an Italian-made Pietta Long Colt revolver replica – the bullet passed through Hutchins’ chest and lodged in director Joel Souza’s shoulder.
Hutchins died in a flight to the hospital in Albuquerque, while Souza was later discharged from the hospital.
In April 2022, the producers, including Baldwin, were fined $136,793 by the New Mexico Occupational Health and Safety Bureau, which said: “management knew that firearm safety procedures were not being followed on set and demonstrated plain indifference to employee safety.”
A wrongful death lawsuit was then filed against Alec Baldwin and other key members of the production in Feb. 2022.
The lawsuit named Baldwin and others who “are responsible for the safety on the set” and called out “reckless behavior and cost-cutting” that led to the death of Hutchins, according to the family’s lawyer.
The lawsuit also claimed that Baldwin and other “Rust” crew and cast committed “major breaches” of safety on the set.
That lawsuit was later settled.
But Baldwin’s legal woes continue as he is now being hit with two counts of involuntary manslaughter over the shooting.
Hannah Gutierrez Reed, the film’s young and inexperienced armorer, will also be charged with two counts of involuntary manslaughter.
Meanwhile, assistant director Dave Halls who handed the gun to Baldwin prior to the shooting signed a plea agreement for a charge of the negligent use of a deadly weapon.
In return, he received a suspended sentence and six months of probation, according to the district attorney.
If Baldwin is convicted, he could be facing up to 18 months in prison.
“Involuntary manslaughter in New Mexico is a Class D felony punishable by up to 18 months in prison,” former Assistant U.S. Attorney Neama Rahmani explained to Fox News Digital. “If Baldwin is convicted, I can see him being sentenced at or near the max.”
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
White House Principal Deputy Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre holds a press briefing on Friday, July 30, 2021, in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Erin Scott)
There is trouble brewing at the White House.
New reports signal growing animosity between the White House press corps and Karine Jean-Pierre over her refusal to stray from talking points and her providing false information.
According to Mediaite, more than a half dozen press corps members told CNN’s Oliver Darcy that “the temperature has gone up a lot in the last few days” in the White House briefing room.
“She is arguably the least effective White House press secretary of the television era,” said one unnamed reporter who Darcy identified as a White House veteran, though this person did exclude Trump-era press secretaries from that dig.
Another White House reporter told CNN, “You just get the feeling that you’re wasting your time and whatever is in front of her in the binder is all she is going to say, no matter how many times you ask the question. It’s just a painful waste of time.”
Pressure has been building in the White House briefing room since last week. On Thursday afternoon, Jean-Pierre repeatedly said that the administration’s search for classified documents had been completed. However, that same night, five additional classified documents were found at President Joe Biden’s Wilmington, DE residence. The Press Sec. did not disclose the discovery of the documents at Friday’s briefing. The information wasn’t revealed until the White House released a statement on Saturday.
On Tuesday, Jean-Pierre was pressed on whether the discovery of classified documents had been concealed from her or whether she knew about them and intentionally misled the reporters in the room during previous briefings. After multiple, lengthy non-answers, Jean-Pierre finally said she did not know the documents had been recovered ahead of last Friday’s briefing.
“There is the expectation that when you say something, it’s going to be true,” an unnamed White House correspondent told Darcy. “That’s been the biggest credibility hit for her, it’s answering a question in a way that ends up not being true.”
A federal judge in Florida has ordered Donald J. Trump and one of his lawyers to pay nearly a million dollars in sanctions for filing a frivolous lawsuit against nearly three dozen of Trump’s perceived political rivals, including Hillary Clinton.
The sanctions, first reported by The New York Times, serve as a significant rebuke of the former president and add to his growing list of legal woes.
“This case should never have been brought,” U.S. District Judge Donald M. Middlebrooks wrote in a 46-page ruling. “Its inadequacy as a legal claim was evident from the start. No reasonable lawyer would have filed it. Intended for a political purpose, none of the counts of the amended complaint stated a cognizable legal claim.”
In the Thursday ruling, the judge addressed Trump’s history of using the courts as a cudgel, going back decades in his business career.
“Mr. Trump is a prolific and sophisticated litigant who is repeatedly using the courts to seek revenge on political adversaries,” Judge Middlebrooks wrote. “He is the mastermind of strategic abuse of the judicial process, and he cannot be seen as a litigant blindly following the advice of a lawyer. He knew full well the impact of his actions.”
Judge Middlebrooks said Mr. Trump’s suit had been “brought in bad faith for an improper purpose” and had “needlessly harmed” the 31 individuals and organizations, including the Democratic National Committee, he had sued “in order to dishonestly advance a political narrative.” The judge added that Mr. Trump’s use of the courts had helped to undermine the public’s confidence in them.
“A continuing pattern of misuse of the courts by Mr. Trump and his lawyers undermines the rule of law, portrays judges as partisans and diverts resources from those who have suffered actual legal harm,” he wrote.
The judge said Trump and the lawyer who filed the case for him, Alina Habba, and her firm, Habba Madaio & Associates, are to pay $937,989.39.
Things are heating up in President Biden’s Department of Justice. The bombshell discovery of classified documents from Biden’s time as vice president at numerous locations months after the FBI raided former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home has ruffled some feathers, to say the least…
Watch Amanda break down the ongoing scandal below:
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
ANALYSIS – The fight against China’s growing global network of illegal police outposts has finally heated up here in the United States with the FBI raiding the large Chinese station in New York City (NYC).
This is the mission the FBI should be focused on, rather than raiding pro-life activists or colluding with Big Tech to censor Americans.
I’ve written about these extraterritorial Chinese police stations several times, highlighting the ones in NYC, as well as those in Canada and Europe.
Beijing says these outposts aren’t doing any police work, only helping Chinese citizens abroad, but Chinese state media reports that they in fact “collect intelligence” and solve crimes far outside their jurisdiction.
But they do far more than that.
They are accused of conducting illegal surveillance on legal U.S. residents and citizens of Chinese extraction and intimidating, threatening, and coercing them.
In some cases, they have reportedly even kidnapped people outside of China.
According to the New York Times (NYT), the FBI raided the suspected Chinese police outpost, hidden in New York City’s Chinatown last fall, seizing materials from one of the secretive operations for the first time.
The Chinatown outpost was on the third floor of a six-story office building on a busy street. It was raided by FBI counterintelligence agents working on a criminal investigation with the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York.
Of course, as the NYT reports, the Chinese Embassy in Washington downplayed the outposts, claiming they are staffed by volunteers who help Chinese nationals perform routine tasks like renewing their Chinese driver’s licenses.
Despite the official Chinese denials, the NYT reports, “Western officials see the outposts as part of Beijing’s larger drive to keep tabs on Chinese nationals abroad, including dissidents. The most notorious such effort is known as Operation Fox Hunt, in which Chinese officials hunt down fugitives abroad and pressure them to return home.”
In October, prosecutors in Brooklyn — the same office that searched the New York office — charged seven Chinese nationals with harassing a U.S. resident and his son, pressuring the man to return to China to face criminal charges.
As reported by the NYT, “It’s outrageous that China thinks it can come to our shores, conduct illegal operations and bend people here in the United States to their will,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said in 2020.
At least 102 such outposts have been documented in 53 countries in recent months by the human rights group Safeguard Defenders. Wray said in November that he’s “very concerned” about the outposts, which he called “police stations.”
“It’s a long-arm power to show their own citizens inside China that their government is so strong,” said Safeguard Defenders researcher Chen Yen-ting. “We have the power to reach globally, and even if you go out, you’re still under our control.”
These outposts are ostensibly set up by local Chinese municipalities or regions. At least four Chinese localities — Fuzhou, Qingtian, Nantong and Wenzhou — have reportedly set up dozens of foreign police outposts in Japan, Italy, France, Britain, Germany, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and other nations.
These don’t include the ones in Canada and the U.S.
Let’s hope the FBI keeps up the pressure on illegal Chinese police activity in the U.S., and the State Department gets involved in controlling any Chinese entities and personnel it has allowed to enter and operate on U.S. soil.
Communist Chinese influence and subversion in the U.S. is the greatest domestic threat we face, not Americans exercising their constitutionally protected right to free speech.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
Former President Trump appears ready to rejoin social media.
According to NBC News, Trump’s campaign is formally petitioning Facebook parent company META to unblock his accounts.
Facebook and Twitter banned Trump a day after a mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol as lawmakers certified Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.
Facebook ultimately decided to institute a limited ban on Trump that would come up for review after two years, starting Jan. 7 of this year.
“We believe that the ban on President Trump’s account on Facebook has dramatically distorted and inhibited the public discourse,” Trump’s campaign wrote in its letter to Meta on Tuesday, according to a copy reviewed by NBC News.
Trump’s campaign didn’t threaten a lawsuit, as some sources close to Trump thought he would. It instead talked about the importance of free speech and petitioned Meta for a “meeting to discuss President Trump’s prompt reinstatement to the platform.”
A Meta spokespersondeclined to comment about Trump beyond saying the company “will announce a decision in the coming weeks in line with the process we laid out.”
According to a Trump adviser, who has spoken with him about Facebook and shared the gist of the private conversation with NBC News on condition of anonymity, explained that his campaign is cautiously optimistic Facebook will ultimately honor the two-year ban. However, the source noted the campaign is prepared to engage with House Republicans to advocate on Trump’s behalf and pressure Meta. The adviser said Congress is likely to examine Section 230 of the federal law affecting social media companies.
“If Facebook wants to have this fight, fine, but the House is leverage, and keeping Trump off Facebook just looks political,” the adviser said, noting that House Democrats like Adam Schiff of California told Facebook last month to keep Trump off the platform.
