Trump Corruption

The New York Times reports: Senior Justice Department officials under President Trump have held discussions with federal prosecutors in Manhattan about the possibility of dropping their corruption case against Mayor Eric Adams of New York, according to five people with knowledge of the matter. The officials have also spoken to Mr. Adams’s defense team since Mr. Trump took office, the …

“Medicare and Medicaid have not been affected by any action we’re taking in any way, shape or form. We are merely looking at parts of the big bureaucracy where there has been tremendous waste and fraud and abuse. And that process we identified and stopped $50 million being sent to Gaza to buy condoms for Hamas — 50 million. And …

CNN reports: Truth Social owner Trump Media & Technology Group announced Wednesday it plans to expand into financial services and potentially buy bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Shares of Trump Media (DJT) climbed 8% on the news. Trump Media said it plans to launch a fintech brand called Truth.Fi and to introduce investment vehicles that will focus on American growth, manufacturing, …

ABC News reports: President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he is directing the opening of a detention center at Guantanamo Bay to hold up to 30,000 migrants who are living illegally in the United States. Trump made the announcement right before he signed the Laken Riley Act into law as his administration’s first piece of legislation. The bipartisan measure means …

The Associated Press reports: President Donald Trump is making plans to mark the 250th anniversary of American independence with an “extraordinary celebration” and a new national monument. Trump is expected to sign an executive order Wednesday establishing a task force to coordinate and plan the event, according to a White House document shared with The Associated Press. The United States …

The Washington Post reports: The White House budget office on Wednesday rescinded an order freezing federal grants, according to a copy of a new memo obtained by The Washington Post, after the administration’s move to halt spending earlier this week provoked a backlash. In a memo dated Wednesday and distributed to federal agencies, Matthew J. Vaeth, acting director of the …

CNN reports: President Donald Trump’s administration is ending the case against his former co-defendants in the classified documents investigation brought by former special counsel Jack Smith.The Justice Department has stopped pursuing an appeal brought by Smith to revive the criminal charges against Trump’s employees. The appeal had also sought to defend the attorney general’s ability to appoint special prosecutors — …

Politico reports: President Donald Trump has hired the elite white-shoe law firm Sullivan & Cromwell to appeal his criminal conviction in the Manhattan hush money case, according to two people familiar with the matter. The most prominent member of Trump’s new legal team is Robert Giuffra, the firm’s co-chair. Also working on the case will be four other Sullivan & …

The Daily Beast reports: German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has again criticised billionaire Elon Musk, calling the tech mogul’s latest show of support for the German far right “disgusting.” Speaking to CNN Tuesday, Scholz slammed Musk’s involvement in Germany’s upcoming February election and weighed in on the billionaire’s plea for Germans to “move beyond” the guilt of the Holocaust during a …

Politico reports: Donald Trump’s attorney general nominee Pam Bondi, who represented the president during his first impeachment trial, was voted out of the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday morning in a party-line, 12-10 vote. “Her record and her testimony showed the American people that she will follow through and enforce the law fairly, without fear or favor,” Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck …

The Washington Post reports: President Donald Trump threatened to punish Colombia with tariffs, a travel ban and other sanctions to compel it to accept deportation flights carrying “Illegal Criminals.” But Colombian officials said there were no criminals among the two planeloads of migrants the U.S. government sent over Tuesday. Among the more than 200 deportees were two pregnant women and …

NBC News reports: A pair of Trump-endorsed Republicans easily won a pair of special House primaries Tuesday in Florida, setting them up to fill two vacant, deep-red seats and pad the party’s slim House majority. The Associated Press projected the primary in Florida’s 6th District for state Sen. Randy Fine [photo] shortly after polls closed in the district at 7 …

“The president has no authority to make that offer. There’s no budget line item to pay people who are not showing up for work. This is a guy who made this promise to contractors again and again and again when he was a private business guy. ‘Oh, come work for me on my casino.’ ‘Come work for me in a …

The Daily Beast reports: Elon Musk is considering suing media outlets that called his gesture onstage at a post-inauguration rally a “Nazi” salute. His mother is egging him on. On Tuesday, the Tesla CEO radically escalated his pushback against the criticism, musing in a tweet that it would be a “good idea” to sue Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and MSNBC …

CNN reports: In a post on the social media platform X, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk claimed Tuesday that the Biden Administration left two astronauts “stranded” and said President Donald Trump has asked SpaceX to step in to rescue them. But NASA already put such a plan in place months ago when it asked SpaceX to return astronauts Suni Williams and …

The Guardian reports: “Doge and OMB also found that there was about to be $50 million taxpayer dollars that went out the door to fund condoms in Gaza,” Leavitt claimed. “That is a preposterous waste of taxpayer money. So that’s what this pause is focused on: being good stewards of tax dollars.” While Leavitt did not offer any evidence to …

The Associated Press reports: Just minutes after a federal judge in Washington blocked the funding freeze, Democratic state attorneys generals brought their own lawsuit against the Trump administration. The lawsuit, filed by 22 states and the District of Columbia in federal court in Rhode Island, criticized the administration for implementing the freeze before it was to take effect at 5 …

Stephen Miller: “The president’s authority to fire any federal worker is plenary. There’s no lawful constraints that can be placed on the president to terminate a worker in the federal government. It’s a discretionary policy. That’s the basis of Article II in the Constitution and the idea of a single executive. When you have anyone in the federal government who …

Axios reports: The White House will issue a memo Tuesday offering to pay federal workers who don’t want to return to the office through Sept. 30, as long as they resign by Feb. 6, an administration official tells Axios. It’s an acceleration in President Trump’s already unprecedented purge of the federal workforce. The White House expects 5% to 10% of …

The New York Times reports: Starting last summer, former Representative Tulsi Gabbard publicly berated the Biden administration, claiming that she was placed on what she called “a domestic terror watch list” as punishment for critical comments she had made about Vice President Kamala Harris. The reality was more complicated. The additional security measures were triggered by an event she attended …