update - Letitia James motions to remove Trump appointed US Attorney for New York

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Data shows Trump is 'funneling' donor money into his bank account


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Newsbreak reports that millionaire President Donald Trump is diverting donor money straight into his pocket.

“Even as he leverages his presidency to make himself millions, perhaps even billions of dollars, Donald Trump is also funneling Republican donor money into his own cash registers through the political committees he controls,” said Newsbreak writer S.V. Date.


In the 10 months since he retook office, the Republican National Committee has spent at least $796,513 at Trump’s hotels and country clubs, while MAGA Inc., Trump’s super PAC, has spent $60,733, according to a Federal Election Commission data analysis.

The figures are based on most recent filings, with some committees providing updates only twice a year, so that number will likely grow. The total number for 2025 will not be disclosed until the end of January 2026.

But that combined $857,246 represents just under four-fifths of the $1.1 million that the Republican candidate and committees spent at Trump’s properties, reports Date.

“The RNC, for example, spent $193,145.70 on March 5 to hold an event at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s country club and residence in Palm Beach, Florida. Two months later, on May 2, the committee spent $307,202.49 for an event at his golf resort in Doral, near Miami’s airport. Three weeks later, on May 30, MAGA Inc. spent $20,711.84 at Trump’s golf course in Sterling, Virginia,” Datre said.

In all, 73 different GOP candidates and committees “sent money Trump’s way,” said Date. “Directing committees that he controlled, and encouraging Republican candidates he did not, to spend at his properties — thereby putting all profits into his own pockets — was a strategy [Trump] also used in his first term in office.”

“When Trump rakes in tens of millions of dollars from crypto deals, it’s easy to miss when he grifts hundreds of thousands of dollars from his political apparatus, but those numbers add up. Ask an average American if they think pocketing $800,000 is a big deal or chump change,” said Jordan Libowitz, head of communications for the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.”

Libowitz added that what makes it worse is that this money was originally donated “with the intention of helping elect candidates and push a political agenda,” jnot further enrich a millionaire president.

“More to the point, if there’s no limit to which he’s willing to use the presidency to profit himself, then there’s no limit to the ways America could be up for sale,” Libowitz said.

Read the Newsbreak post at this link.
 

mandrill

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Trump makes major declaration on Venezuela as tensions escalate


President Donald Trump declared Saturday that all airspace over and surrounding Venezuela should be considered closed, a major declaration amid the United States’ rising escalations against the South American nation.

“To all Airlines, Pilots, Drug Dealers, and Human Traffickers, please consider THE AIRSPACE ABOVE AND SURROUNDING VENEZUELA TO BE CLOSED IN ITS ENTIRETY,” Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social. “Thank you for your attention to this matter!”



The Trump administration has ramped up pressure on Venezuela in recent months, starting with its lethal strikes against suspected drug-carrying vessels in the Caribbean, strikes that have killed at least 83 people and have been condemned by critics, experts and lawmakers alike as "extrajudicial killings.”

Beyond the strikes on sea vessels, the Trump administration has also discussed plans to assassinate Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, has deployed an aircraft carrier strike group to just off of Venezuela’s coast, and suggested that land operations would begin “very soon.”
 

mandrill

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Economist says core Trump claim is 'just nonsense'


President Donald Trump repeatedly claims that he inherited a troubled, dysfunctional economy from his Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden, and quickly turned it around. In fact, the United States enjoyed record-low unemployment during Biden's presidency, but widespread frustration over inflation helped Trump pull off a narrow victory of roughly 1.5 percent on Election Night 2024.



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Economist Justin Wolfers, who teaches at the University of Michigan but is originally from Sydney, Australia, tore apart Trump's claims about the economy — from tariffs to the stock market — during a Saturday, November 29 appearance on MS NOW's "The Weekend."

Trump claimed that his tariffs will bring in so much revenue that the U.S. will be able to "almost completely" eliminate federal income tax.

But Wolfers told "The Weekend" hosts Eugene Daniels, Jackie Alemany and Jonathan Capehart, "This is just nonsense. Let me start with one important fact-check. The president appears not to understand the difference between millions, billions, and trillions. That's actually one of the most important points in all of economics; they're massively different. We are not taking in trillions of dollars in tariff revenue."

Wolfers added, "If we were, we could afford his $2000 tariff checks. We aren't. So therefore, we can't."



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The University of Michigan economist also pushed back against Trump's claims about the stock market, which, he stressed, is performing better in other countries than it is in the United States.

Wolfers told Daniels, Alemany and Capehart, "The other thing that he talks about a lot is the stock market. Now, here's a funny thing: If you look at the stock market returns from, say, 25 of the biggest countries around the world, the United States ranks around about 22nd right now. So yes, American stocks are up. But guess what? They're up even more everywhere else."

U.S. consumers, according to Wolfers, are pessimistic — not optimistic — about the state of the economy.

Wolfers told Daniels, Alemany and Capehart, "So, consumer confidence right now — it's quite striking just how bad it is. So, consumer confidence right now is very close to being an all-time low. And this has been measured back to the 1970s. So consumers say that they're feeling worse than they were during the Great Recession, than they were during the pandemic, than they were during the early '80s recession. It's really quite striking numbers. If you dig into that a little bit, you ask them things like: What do you think about the quality of us economic policy?"



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The economist continued, "The number of people who think that the quality of economic policy is poor is at an all-time high. It's roughly three-fifths of the American people. What you have, I think, is that the president has fundamentally lost the battle of ideas. What you normally do with an economic program is you come up with some ideas, and you try and convince people of the virtues of them. And he has fundamentally failed. There's a deep question as to how long people are going to keep spending."
 

mandrill

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Kristi Noem interview answer labeled 'admission' by experts


Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem gave an interview answer on Sunday that some experts and political observers determined was an "admission" warranting legal action.

Noem appeared on NBC News over the weekend, where she was asked about how she reportedly rejected a court's order.



Kristin Welker asked, "The DOJ said that when the administration was ordered to stop sending detained migrants to a mega-prison in El Salvador, you personally made the final call to continue the flights anyways. Is that correct?" to which Noem replied, "The decisions that are made on deportations, where flights go or when they go, are my decision."

Welker further pressed Noem, asking, "So you're saying it was your decision. The judge wanted to ensure that people were given due process…Did you defy the court's order?" Noem replied, "No. That's one of the things we continue to face across the country are activist judges."



That interview caused ex-GOP insider Tim Miller to blurt out, "See you in court, secretary."



Home of the Brave chimed in, "Kristi Noem is making it abundantly clear that she will continue to defy court orders. She's not even trying to claim otherwise!"

Columnist Molly Jong-Fast simply quoted the apparent admission:

"The decisions that are made on deportations, where flights go or when they go, are my decision."

Immigration expert Aaron Reichlin-Melnick also weighed in, saying on X on Sunday, "As Kristi Noem admits to making the decision not to turn the planes around, bear in mind that the Supreme Court unanimously agreed that the procedure to shove those men onto the plane to be imprisoned (and tortured) in El Salvador was a violation of due process."
 

mandrill

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Conservative lawyers call new Hegseth comment an 'admission of guilt'


Pete Hegseth was put on notice over the weekend by two conservative lawyers, including a former prosecutor, who said the Defense Secretary's defense to a major new scandal "makes no legal sense" and is not really "a defense."

Observers' eyebrows were raised after it was reported by the Washington Post in a bombshell story that Hegseth ordered the killing of two survivors of one of controversial drug vessel bombings. Some analysts questioned whether it was murder, or even a war crime.


Former prosecutor Andrew McCarthy, who served as an assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, recently said he has no love for the “craven video” Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) and five Democrats released to the public advising military members to ignore illegal orders. At the same time, McCarthy suggested President Donald Trump’s executive power abuses in reacting to it represent a whole “new level” of threat.

Now, in an essay late Saturday night, the conservative weighed in on Hegseth's new scandal.



"If this happened as described in the Post report, it was, at best, a war crime under federal law. I say 'at best' because, as regular readers know, I believe the attacks on these suspected drug boats — without congressional authorization, under circumstances in which the boat operators pose no military threat to the United States, and given that narcotics trafficking is defined in federal law as a crime rather than as terrorist activity, much less an act or war — are lawless and therefore that the killings are not legitimate under the law or armed conflict," the attorney wrote.



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McCarthy goes even further, suggesting that, "even if you buy the untenable claim that they are combatants, it is a war crime to intentionally kill combatants who have been rendered unable to fight. It is not permitted, under the laws and customs of honorable warfare, to order that no quarter be given — to apply lethal force to those who surrender or who are injured, shipwrecked, or otherwise unable to fight."

He continued, writing, "The operation, led by SEAL Team 6, was directed from Fort Bragg, N.C., by Admiral Frank M. 'Mitch' Bradley, then the head of Joint Special Operations Command. Admiral Bradley is said to have ordered the attack against the two survivors of the first strike in order to comply with Hegseth’s directive to kill the boat’s operators."

While Bradley reportedly claimed "the survivors were still legitimate targets because they could theoretically call other traffickers to retrieve them and their cargo," and Hegseth issued a response saying these were always meant to be deadly attacks, McCarthy isn't sold.



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"Neither Hegseth’s statement nor the explanation attributed to Bradley... makes legal sense," the former prosecutor wrote. "The laws of war, as they are incorporated into federal law, make lethal force unlawful if it is used under certain circumstances. Hence, it cannot be a defense to say, as Hegseth does, that one has killed because one’s objective was 'lethal, kinetic strikes.'"

Conservative attorney George Conway shared McCarthy's essay and wrote, "Indeed, it's a confession and admission of guilt to heinous crimes."

Read the full piece here (subscription required).
 
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mandrill

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Trump commutes prison sentence for former private equity executive David Gentile


HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. (AP) — President Donald Trump has commuted the prison sentence of former investment manager David Gentile, who was convicted of defrauding investors — the latest in a series of clemency actions Trump has taken in white-collar criminal cases.

Gentile had reported to prison on Nov. 14, just days before Trump commuted his sentence, according to a White House official who requested anonymity to provide details of the clemency action. Gentile had been the CEO and co-founder of GPB Capital, which had raised $1.6 billion in capital to acquire companies in the auto, retail, health care and housing sectors.

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He had been sentenced to seven years in prison after an August 2024 conviction for his role in what the Justice Department at the time described as a scheme to defraud more than 10,000 investors by misrepresenting the performance of three private equity funds.

But the White House official said GPB Capital had disclosed to investors in 2015 that their capital might go to pay dividends to other investors, which the White House said undercut claims that the company had engaged in a “Ponzi” scheme in which new investments are used to reimburse previous investors.

The government has agreed to no restitution in the criminal case, though various civil cases are handling repayments and damages to investors.

Josh Boak, The Associated Press
 

mandrill

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'Tech bros out of control': Trump's Silicon Valley czar exposes divisions in MAGA


During the United States' 2024 presidential race, Donald Trump aggressively reached out to Silicon Valley and the tech sector. SpaceX/Tesla/X.com leader Elon Musk was a major donor to his campaign, and venture capitalist David Sacks is playing a prominent role in President Trump's artificial intelligence (AI) push.



But according to New York Times reporters Cecilia Kang, Tripp Mickle, Ryan Mac, David Yaffe-Bellany and Theodore Schleifer, Trump's bond alliance with Sacks and others in Silicon Valley is fueling some heated debates within the MAGA movement.

In an article published by the Times on November 30, they explain, "Since January, Mr. Sacks, 53, has occupied one of the most advantageous moonlighting roles in the federal government, influencing policy for Silicon Valley in Washington while simultaneously working in Silicon Valley as an investor. Among his actions as the White House's artificial intelligence and crypto czar: Mr. Sacks has offered astonishing White House access to his tech industry compatriots and pushed to eliminate government obstacles facing AI companies…. Mr. Sacks has recommended AI policies that have sometimes run counter to national security recommendations, alarming some of his White House colleagues and raising questions about his priorities."

The Times journalists add, "Mr. Sacks has positioned himself to personally benefit. He has 708 tech investments, including at least 449 stakes in companies with ties to artificial intelligence that could be aided directly or indirectly by his policies, according to a New York Times analysis of his financial disclosures."

But Sacks is not universally loved within the MAGA movement, and one of his outspoken MAGA critics is Steve Bannon — host of the "War Room" vodcast and former White House chief strategist in the first Trump Administration.

Bannon, the Times reporters note, is a "critic of Silicon Valley billionaires" and the Trump Administration's alliance with Sacks.

Bannon, an outspoken Musk detractor, told the Times, "The tech bros are out of control. They are leading the White House down the road to perdition with this ascendant technocratic oligarchy."

Read the full New York Times article at this link (subscription required).
 

mandrill

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Trump says he'll release MRI results; he doesn't know what part of his body was scanned


WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Sunday that he would release the results of his MRI test that he received in October.

“If you want to have it released, I’ll release it,” the president said during an exchange with reporters as he traveled back to Washington from Florida.



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He said the results of the MRI were “perfect.”

The White House has so far declined to detail why Trump had an MRI during his physical last month, or on what part of his body.

The press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, has said that the president received “advanced imaging” at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center “as part of his routine physical examination” and that the results showed Trump remains in “exceptional physical health.”

Trump added Sunday that he has “no idea” on what part of his body he got the MRI.

“It was just an MRI,” he said. “What part of the body? It wasn’t the brain because I took a cognitive test and I aced it.”

The Associated Press
 

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Lawmakers from both parties raised alarms Sunday that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth may have committed a war crime following a report that he ordered a follow-on attack to kill survivors of a boat strike in September.
The Washington Post reported last week that Hegseth authorized a highly unusual strike to kill all survivors of one of the Trump administration’s attacks in recent months on boats allegedly carrying drugs in international waters. POLITICO has not independently verified the Post’s reporting.


Sens. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Tim Kaine (D-Va.) — both of whom sit on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — said Sunday that, if accurate, such orders would rise to the level of war crimes.


“If that reporting is true, it’s a clear violation of the DOD’s own laws of war, as well as international laws about the way you treat people who are in that circumstance. And so this rises to the level of a war crime if it’s true,” Kaine said in an interview with CBS’ Nancy Cordes on “Face the Nation.”

Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) also said in a Sunday morning interview with CNN’s “State of the Union” that the order, if true, is “clearly not lawful.”

And Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) responded to the article by writing on social media Saturday evening: “Pete Hegseth is a war criminal and should be fired immediately.”

The Pentagon declined to comment beyond a Friday social media post in which Hegseth branded the Post’s article as “fabricated, inflammatory, and derogatory reporting,” insisting: “Our current operations in the Caribbean are lawful under both U.S. and international law.” Hegseth did not dispute that he gave the orders detailed in the article.

While skeptical to concede that the Washington Post’s reporting may be accurate, Republicans also raised concern that Hegseth’s orders could have been illegal if they played out as reported.
Bipartisan leadership of the Armed Services Committees in both chambers vowed to probe the matter, with Sens. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) and Jack Reed (D-R.I.) promising “vigorous oversight to determine the facts related to these circumstances” on Friday.



Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio) told Cordes on Sunday that “if that occurred, that would be very serious, and I agree that would be an illegal act,” and Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) said on ABC’s “This Week” that “if it was as if the article said, that is a violation of the law of war.”

“I don’t think he would be foolish enough to make this decision to say, kill everybody, kill the survivors, because that’s a clear violation of the law of war,” Bacon, who sits on the House Armed Services Committee, told ABC’s Jonathan Karl. “So I’m very suspicious that he would’ve done something like that, because it would go against common sense.”

The oversight comes as Trump has sparred with Congressional Democrats over a video reminding service members of their obligation to defy illegal military orders. Trump called for the six lawmakers featured in that video to face arrest and trial for what he called “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!,” sparking outrage from Democrats.

The White House has since insisted that Trump did not call for the lawmakers to be executed, despite Trump re-posting a since-deleted social media post that advocated for hanging the Democrats.
 

mandrill

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Trump’s secret dealings with Sanctioned Russian Oligarchs It is reported that Trump has already conducted secret negotiations for himself and American businesses to profit from corrupt sponsors of war in Russia. This is the face of modern America in 2025. Billionaires Kovalchuk, Timchenko, and the Rotenberg brothers have started secret negotiations with the US about business projects in Russia, writes WSJ.

A free thread from Beefy - please share and support his work! https://open.substack.com/pub/beefeaterr

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