Fani Willis’ ex-staffer testifies before GA Senate committee probing DA’s office
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A fourth Georgia state Senate investigation committee hearing as part of its probe into alleged misconduct by District Attorney Fani Willis concluded Thursday afternoon.
The Senate Special Committee on Investigations, chaired by Republican state Sen. Bill Cowsert, considered sworn testimony from witness Amanda Timpson, who served as Willis’ director of juvenile diversion programs but says she was demoted and eventually fired. Cowsert says her termination was after she became a whistleblower and complained about the misuse of funds.
Timpson testified that she was subject to “overwhelming retaliation” and “pushback” after notifying her direct boss that Willis’ office was knowingly misusing federal grant funds, which is illegal.
Timpson helped to write and apply for a competitive federal grant focused on programming to help at-risk youth and grant prevention. She testified that when Willis took office in 2021, her new supervisor, Michael Cuffee, told her that he planned to use the funds to purchase “computers, travel and swag” as part of the office’s “rebranding” upon Willis’ administration.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis arrives to speak after winning the Democratic primary on Tuesday, May 21, 2024 in Buckhead, Georgia.(AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)
When Timpson told her boss that those purchases were not permitted under the grant, he persisted in his plans for the purchases, she said. He also told Timpson that Willis requires all her staff to refer to her as “madame” and that the swag and other purchases were Willis’ “vision,” Timpson testified.
Timpson said that after serving in the previous district attorney’s administration, she was required to interview again with Willis’ administration to keep her job in December 2020. Nathan Wade, who roughly a year later would be hired as a special prosecutor, was on Timpson’s interview panel, along with Willis and her communications official, Jeff DiSantis.
Timpson said she wanted Willis to be aware of the misuse of funds to “protect” her and “protect the integrity of the grants.” She said that after Willis was made aware of Timpson’s warnings, she was demoted to the position of file clerk.
“I thought that I was going to ultimately retire from the DA’s office, and it made a place that I used to be proud of working at hell for me, essentially,” Timpson said.
Timpson testified that after she escalated her claims of retaliation to the Office of Diversity and Civil Rights Compliance, she was eventually terminated and escorted out of the building by seven armed investigators.
Timpson also testified that Willis made “completely slanderous and libelous statements” about her employment history, making it difficult to secure her next job.
“[I]t made my life extremely hard and my family’s life extremely hard. And just, you know, for me, it’s I’m here today to fight for my reputation, to fight for the youth of Fulton County, but also for the truth,” she said.
Amanda Timpson, former Director of Juvenile Diversion and a member of Fani Willis executive leadership team, testified Thursday before the Georgia senate.
Timpson also said Willis’ office was the recipient of a federal Justice Assistant Grant intended to fun the DA’s summer program called the Junior DA Program. Those funds were allocated specifically to help Fulton County youth in middle and high school grades.
But Timpson testified that the first summer program under Willis’ administration included students from other states, relatives of government officials, and one of Willis’ family members.
“It was essentially a summer program for the most privileged youth in and around the country. There were elected officials’ grand kids there, Fani’s niece, or what she represented as her niece from Florida attended. We went and picked up the niece every morning from her office,” Timpson testified.
“This was not a crime prevention program for at-risk youth in Fulton County,” Timpson said, recalling that a child of a Dekalb County judge was also in attendance.
Georgia’s GOP-controlled Senate voted in January to form a special committee to investigate Willis amid the revelations of her romantic affair with Wade.
Willis is spearheading the 2020 election interference case against former President Trump. She has been a lighting rod of criticism since the allegations that she had an “improper” affair with special prosecutor Nathan Wade, whom she hired to help prosecute the case.
She is not expected to testify on Thursday and has previously called the committee “unlawful,” though the committee has subpoena power to compel her testimony.
Previous state Senate committee hearings revealed that oversight of Willis’ $36 million budget was “like the Wild West, very little control,” Cowsert said.
At that hearing earlier this month, Fulton County Commissioner Robb Pitts and Fulton County Chief Financial Officer Sharon Whittmore testified that Willis has broad discretion over those taxpayer dollars, including whether to hire a special prosecutor and how much they should be paid.
“You don’t know how much of that is spent on professional services, who is hired, how much they’re paid per hour, what their total compensation is. Yet you’re being asked to provide $36.6 million a year that you know encompasses a number of those types of independent contractors that you know you’re funding with no oversight or control, right?” Cowsart asked Whittmore at one point.
Pitts also testified that Willis did not have to get any pre-approval for hiring an independent special counsel to assist with her activities.
Former special prosecutor Nathan Wade arrives before Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis speaks after winning the Democratic primary on Tuesday, May 21, 2024 in Buckhead, Georgia.(AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)
Ashleigh Merchant, lawyer for Trump co-defendant Michael Roman, testified at the committee’s first hearing that Willis was awarded a $780,000 increase in the DA’s budget on Sept. 15 2021, through the end of that year, with the next year not to exceed $5 million.
The budget increase was just a few months before Wade was hired in November 2021, and roughly eight months before the special grand jury in this case was impaneled in May 2022.
She said that the DA claimed this money was to hire extra people to help with the backlog of homicide cases the office was seeing at that time.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis testifies during a hearing in the case of the State of Georgia v. Donald John Trump at the Fulton County Courthouse on Feb. 15, 2024 in Atlanta.(Photo by Alyssa Pointer-Pool/Getty Images)
Merchant testified that when she made open records requests to confirm that her office hired new employees and not special contractors, her request was denied by the DA’s office.
Willis won her primary election on Tuesday by a sweeping margin over her Democratic challenger.
“Tonight they delivered a strong and a powerful message,” Willis said in her acceptance speech. “They want a district attorney that believes everyone deserves to be safe. And everyone is entitled to some dignity. And it’s a message that’s pissing folks off. But there is no one above the law in this country. Nor is there anyone beneath it.”
Fox News Digital reached out to Willis’ office for comment on Timpson’s testimony.
Fox News’ David Lewkowict and Fox News Digital’s Chris Pandolfo contributed to this report.
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Www.oeisdigitalinvestigator.com: Senate Democrats launch investigation into Trump’s reported offer to oil executives of regulatory rollback in exchange for donations
Senate Democrats have launched an investigation into Donald Trump’s reported offer to oil executives that if they donated $1bn to his campaign, he would roll back environmental regulations, if elected.
The joint investigation by the Senate budget and finance committees is targeted at the petroleum firms whose top executives were said to have attended that April dinner.
“Time and time again, both Mr. Trump and the US oil and gas industry have proved they are willing to sell out Americans to pad their own pockets,” finance committee chair Ron Wyden and budget committee chair Sheldon Whitehouse said in a joint statement.
Here’s more:
As Mr. Trump funnels campaign money into his businesses and uses it as a slush fund to pay his legal fees, Big Oil has been lobbying aggressively to protect and expand its profits at the expense of the American taxpayer.And now, emboldened by impunity, Mr. Trump and Big Oil are flaunting their indifference to U.S. citizens’ economic well-being for all to see, conferring on how to trade campaign cash for policy changes. Such potential abuses must be scrutinized.
The supreme court allowed South Carolina’s Republican-drawn congressional map to stay, at least for now, after the panel’s conservative majority ruled against a lower court’s finding that they discriminated against Black voters. The decision, which Joe Bidencalled “wrong”, was authored by Samuel Alito, a conservative justice who was yesterday revealed to have flown a flag associated with Christian extremism at a vacation property. It was the second rightwing banner to have reportedly been displayed at one of his homes, prompting the House’s top Democrat, Hakeem Jeffries, amongothers, to call for him to recuse himself from cases dealing with January 6. Alito has not commented on whether he will do that.
Senate Democrats have launched an investigation into Donald Trump’s reported offer to roll back environmental regulations if oil executives raise $1b for him.
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Biden and attorney general Merrick Garland both declined to comment on Alito’s flag preferences.
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Elena Kagan, a liberal supreme court justice, dissented from the conservative ruling in the South Carolina case, and warned it would undermine future attempts to challenge racial gerrymanders.
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Mike Johnson, the Republican House speaker, squabbled with Biden after Senate Democrats tried and failed again to pass a bill to tighten immigration policy.
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Louisiana’sRepublican-dominated legislature moved to restrict abortion medication – which the Biden campaign blamed on Trump.
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In a just-released statement, Joe Biden decried the supreme court’s ruling earlier today that South Carolina’s Republican leaders do not need to redraw their congressional map, despite claims that it excludes Black voters.
“The right to vote is the foundation of American democracy. Key to that right is ensuring that voters pick their elected officials – not the other way around. The Supreme Court’s decision today undermines the basic principle that voting practices should not discriminate on account of race and that is wrong,” the president said.
“This decision threatens South Carolinians’ ability to have their voices heard at the ballot box, and the districting plan the Court upheld is part of a dangerous pattern of racial gerrymandering efforts from Republican elected officials to dilute the will of Black voters.”
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Senate Democrats tried once again this afternoon to pass legislation tightening immigration policy, with the goal of curbing the flow of people crossing the southern border. But, just as when they first tried to move the legislation in February in a gambit to win approval of a new military aid infusion for Israel and Ukraine, the attempt failed, thanks to the opposition of Republicans who say they want even stronger anti-immigration measures.
Congressional Republicans do not care about securing the border or fixing America’s broken immigration system. If they did, they would have voted for the toughest border enforcement in history. Instead, today, they put partisan politics ahead of our country’s national security.
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By blocking the bipartisan border agreement, Republicans in Congress said no to legislation that would hire more Border Patrol Agents, add more immigration judges and asylum officers to process cases in months and not years. They said no to new technology to detect and stop fentanyl from entering the United States, and no to resources to go after drug traffickers. They rejected an agreement that would give me, as President, a new emergency authority to temporarily shut down the border when the system is overwhelmed.
Republican House speaker Mike Johnson alleged that Biden and his allies in the Senate are faking concern for immigration, and just want to shore up support before November’s election.
After more than three years of claiming the situation at our southern border was not a crisis while millions of illegals poured in, Congressional Democrats are attempting to throw an election year Hail Mary to cover for their embrace of President Biden’s open border policies. In the absence of a substantive legislative solution, Senator Schumer should join House Republicans in demanding President Biden reverse course and use his executive authority to finally secure the border and protect American families.
Left unmentioned by both parties were the well-documented efforts by Donald Trump to torpedo the legislation earlier this year, reportedly so he could campaign on frustration over immigration.
Another issue Democrats face is that the party isn’t united on how to handle immigration. Yesterday, Congressional Progressive Caucus chair Pramila Jayapal and Nanette Barragán, leader of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, called the bill “inhumane”:
This framework, which was constructed under Republican hostage-taking, does nothing to address the longstanding updates needed to modernize our outdated immigration system, create more legal pathways, and recognize the enormous contributions of immigrants to communities and our economy.
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While the investments in asylum officers and immigration judges are welcome and needed, these alone cannot address the negative effects of a new Title 42-like expulsion authority that will close the border and turn away people seeking asylum without due process. Such a policy will be a boon to cartels who prey on migrants and would do nothing to address the root causes of migration – which will continue to send immigrants to the border. It is worth remembering that under Donald Trump, such a policy was not only declared unlawful by the courts, but it also led to increases – not decreases – in illegal border crossing.
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At a press conference today, attorney general Merrick Garland repudiated a claim by Donald Trump that the federal agents who searched his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida two years ago were given the authority to kill him.
The former president made the allegation in a fundraising email, but the attorney general said it was an “extremely dangerous” distortion of the department’s policies, which were also followed when Joe Biden’s home was searched for classified material:
Attorney General Garland on former President Trump's claim that the Justice Department had authorization to kill him during the Mar-a-Lago raid: "That allegation is false and it is extremely dangerous." pic.twitter.com/mAEfeCejwF
And here’s a recap of what exactly Trump was alleging:
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Louisiana’s Republican-dominated state legislature has moved to further tighten access to two prescription drugs used in medication abortion, the Associated Press reports.
Here’s more on the move, which comes as we await a ruling from the US supreme court on whether mifepristone, one of the drugs targeted by the new Louisiana law, can remain available nationwide:
Two abortion-inducing drugs could soon be reclassified as controlled and dangerous substances in Louisiana under a first-of-its-kind bill that received final legislative passage Thursday and is expected to be signed into law by the governor.
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Supporters of the reclassification of mifepristone and misoprostol, commonly known as “abortion pills”, say it would protect expectant mothers from coerced abortions. Numerous doctors, meanwhile, have said it will make it harder for them to prescribe the medicines they use for other important reproductive healthcare needs, and could delay treatment.
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Louisiana currently has a near-total abortion ban in place, applying both to surgical and medical abortions. The GOP-dominated legislature’s push to reclassify mifepristone and misoprostol could possibly open the door for other Republican states with abortion bans that are seeking tighter restrictions on the drugs.
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Current Louisiana law already requires a prescription for both drugs and makes it a crime to use them to induce an abortion in most cases. The bill would make it harder to obtain the pills by placing them on the list of Schedule IV drugs under the state’s Uniform Controlled Dangerous Substances Law.
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The supreme court has allowed South Carolina’s Republican-drawn congressional maps to stay, at least for now, after the panel’s conservative majority turned away a request from challengers that they be thrown out for discriminating against Black voters. The decision was authored by Samuel Alito, a conservative justice who was yesterday revealed to have flown a flag associated with Christian extremism at a vacation property. It was the second rightwing flag to have reportedly been displayed at his properties, prompting the House’s top Democrat Hakeem Jeffries, amongothers, to call for him to recuse himself from cases dealing with January 6. Alito has not commented on if he will do that.
Senate Democrats have launched an investigation into Donald Trump’s reported offer to roll back environmental regulations if oil executives raise $1bn for him.
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Joe Biden and attorney general Merrick Garland both declined to comment on Alito’s flag preferences.
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Elena Kagan, a liberal supreme court justice, dissented from the conservative ruling in the South Carolina case, and warned it would undermine future attempts to challenge racial gerrymanders.
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Senate Democrats have launched an investigation into Donald Trump’s reported offer to oil executives that if they donated $1bn to his campaign, he would roll back environmental regulations, if elected.
The joint investigation by the Senate budget and finance committees is targeted at the petroleum firms whose top executives were said to have attended that April dinner.
“Time and time again, both Mr. Trump and the US oil and gas industry have proved they are willing to sell out Americans to pad their own pockets,” finance committee chair Ron Wyden and budget committee chair Sheldon Whitehouse said in a joint statement.
As Mr. Trump funnels campaign money into his businesses and uses it as a slush fund to pay his legal fees, Big Oil has been lobbying aggressively to protect and expand its profits at the expense of the American taxpayer.And now, emboldened by impunity, Mr. Trump and Big Oil are flaunting their indifference to U.S. citizens’ economic well-being for all to see, conferring on how to trade campaign cash for policy changes. Such potential abuses must be scrutinized.
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House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries has become the highest-ranking Democrat to call for supreme court justice Samuel Alito to recuse himself over the two rightwing flags reported to have flown over his properties.
At a press conference today, Jeffries called on Alito, a conservative stalwart on the court, to step back from cases concerning the January 6 insurrection, and warned that the party could work to pass legislation imposing an enforceable code of ethics on the court:
.@RepJeffries: "Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas are totally out of control…In the case of Samuel Alito, he definitively needs to recuse himself from any matter pending before the United States Supreme Court that has to do with the January 6th violent insurrection." pic.twitter.com/JrxMSnXdKp
The justices still have not released their opinion on Donald Trump’s petition for immunity from the federal charges brought against him for attempting to overturn the 2020 election – which culminated in his supporters’ attack on the US Capitol.
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The supreme court’s conservative supermajority has turned back a challenge to South Carolina’s congressional maps on the grounds that they were a racial gerrymander.
In a 6-3 ruling, the court’s conservatives rejected a lower court ruling that found the state’s Republican leadership had undertaken an “effective bleaching” of a congressional district, by drawing lines to exclude Black voters.
The decision’s effect is to deny Democrats the potential opportunity to pick up a seat in a state as they aim to retake the majority in the House in November’s elections.
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The supreme court will in a few minutes release its latest batch of opinions.
We do not know how many they will release, or which cases, but there are several key issues pending the before the court, including conservative attempts to limit access to abortion pill mifepristone, and to strike down a Biden administration policy that requires federally funded hospitals perform the procedure in emergencies, even in states where abortion is banned.
The justices are also considering Donald Trump’s petition for immunity from charges related to attempting to overturn the 2020 election, as well as a challenge to South Carolina’s congressional maps. Here is more on the latter:
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The New York Times found conservative supreme court justice Samuel Alito’s New Jersey vacation home flying the “Appeal to Heaven” flag, which dates back to the Revolutionary War, and has been adopted by far-right Christians:
It’s the second controversial flag found outside an Alito residence. Last week, the Times reported that shortly before Joe Biden took office, Alito’s home in Virginia flew an upside-down American flag, which had been adopted as a symbol by those who believed Donald Trump’s false claims of election fraud.
Alito told the Times his wife had put that flag up after a dispute with their neighbor, but he declined to comment about the banner found at his vacation home in New Jersey. Here’s more on this:
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Conservative supreme court justice Samuel Alitoflew a rightwing Christian flag carried by insurrectionists on January 6 outside a vacation home, the New York Times reported yesterday. The story came a week after the Times revealed that a different flag associated with Donald Trump’s election lies appeared outside his suburban Washington DC residence shortly before Joe Biden took office. The justice blamed his wife for the first episode, and had no comment on the flag flown outside the New Jersey vacation property, but to top Democrats, it is clear that Alito needs to step back from cases involving the attack on the Capitol and the 2020 election. Dick Durbin, the chair of the Senate judiciary committee, made the demand, while calling the flag “apparent ethical misconduct”, and progressive congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said the matter should be investigated.
Meanwhile, the supreme court is scheduled to, at 10am ET, issue another batch of decisions. There is no telling which cases they may weigh in on, but pending on their docket is Trump’s attempt to be granted immunity from prosecution for his 2020 election meddling attempt as well as twocases dealing with access to abortion that came after the court overturned Roe v Wade in 2022 – with an opinion Alito authored.
Biden is spending much of the day with Kenyan president William Ruto, who is on an official visit to Washington DC. The president hosts the East African leader for a state dinner in the evening – the first for any African leader since George W Bush dined with Ghana’s John Kufuor in 2008.
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Republican House speaker Mike Johnson wants to invite Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to give an address to Congress, but is waiting to hear from Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer. Perhaps the Democrat will make his decision known today.
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The House is expected to vote on Republican-backed legislation to repeal a Washington DC law allowing non-citizens to vote in its local elections.
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Www.oeisdigitalinvestigator.com: Closing summary
The supreme court allowed South Carolina’s Republican-drawn congressional map to stay, at least for now, after the panel’s conservative majority ruled against a lower court’s finding that they discriminated against Black voters. The decision, which Joe Bidencalled “wrong”, was authored by Samuel Alito, a conservative justice who was yesterday revealed to have flown a flag associated with Christian extremism at a vacation property. It was the second rightwing banner to have reportedly been displayed at one of his homes, prompting the House’s top Democrat, Hakeem Jeffries, amongothers, to call for him to recuse himself from cases dealing with January 6. Alito has not commented on whether he will do that.
Here’s what else happened:
Senate Democrats have launched an investigation into Donald Trump’s reported offer to roll back environmental regulations if oil executives raise $1b for him.
Biden and attorney general Merrick Garland both declined to comment on Alito’s flag preferences.
Elena Kagan, a liberal supreme court justice, dissented from the conservative ruling in the South Carolina case, and warned it would undermine future attempts to challenge racial gerrymanders.
Mike Johnson, the Republican House speaker, squabbled with Biden after Senate Democrats tried and failed again to pass a bill to tighten immigration policy.
Louisiana’sRepublican-dominated legislature moved to restrict abortion medication – which the Biden campaign blamed on Trump.
Www.oeisdigitalinvestigator.com: Biden calls supreme court’s ruling on South Carolina congressional map ‘wrong’
In a just-released statement, Joe Biden decried the supreme court’s ruling earlier today that South Carolina’s Republican leaders do not need to redraw their congressional map, despite claims that it excludes Black voters.
“The right to vote is the foundation of American democracy. Key to that right is ensuring that voters pick their elected officials – not the other way around. The Supreme Court’s decision today undermines the basic principle that voting practices should not discriminate on account of race and that is wrong,” the president said.
“This decision threatens South Carolinians’ ability to have their voices heard at the ballot box, and the districting plan the Court upheld is part of a dangerous pattern of racial gerrymandering efforts from Republican elected officials to dilute the will of Black voters.”
Here’s more on the court’s finding:
Www.oeisdigitalinvestigator.com: Biden, Johnson squabble after GOP torpedoes Senate immigration bill
Senate Democrats tried once again this afternoon to pass legislation tightening immigration policy, with the goal of curbing the flow of people crossing the southern border. But, just as when they first tried to move the legislation in February in a gambit to win approval of a new military aid infusion for Israel and Ukraine, the attempt failed, thanks to the opposition of Republicans who say they want even stronger anti-immigration measures.
In a statement following the vote, Joe Biden accused the GOP of indifference to the issue of border security:
Congressional Republicans do not care about securing the border or fixing America’s broken immigration system. If they did, they would have voted for the toughest border enforcement in history. Instead, today, they put partisan politics ahead of our country’s national security.
By blocking the bipartisan border agreement, Republicans in Congress said no to legislation that would hire more Border Patrol Agents, add more immigration judges and asylum officers to process cases in months and not years. They said no to new technology to detect and stop fentanyl from entering the United States, and no to resources to go after drug traffickers. They rejected an agreement that would give me, as President, a new emergency authority to temporarily shut down the border when the system is overwhelmed.
Republican House speaker Mike Johnson alleged that Biden and his allies in the Senate are faking concern for immigration, and just want to shore up support before November’s election.
After more than three years of claiming the situation at our southern border was not a crisis while millions of illegals poured in, Congressional Democrats are attempting to throw an election year Hail Mary to cover for their embrace of President Biden’s open border policies. In the absence of a substantive legislative solution, Senator Schumer should join House Republicans in demanding President Biden reverse course and use his executive authority to finally secure the border and protect American families.
Left unmentioned by both parties were the well-documented efforts by Donald Trump to torpedo the legislation earlier this year, reportedly so he could campaign on frustration over immigration.
Another issue Democrats face is that the party isn’t united on how to handle immigration. Yesterday, Congressional Progressive Caucus chair Pramila Jayapal and Nanette Barragán, leader of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, called the bill “inhumane”:
This framework, which was constructed under Republican hostage-taking, does nothing to address the longstanding updates needed to modernize our outdated immigration system, create more legal pathways, and recognize the enormous contributions of immigrants to communities and our economy.
While the investments in asylum officers and immigration judges are welcome and needed, these alone cannot address the negative effects of a new Title 42-like expulsion authority that will close the border and turn away people seeking asylum without due process. Such a policy will be a boon to cartels who prey on migrants and would do nothing to address the root causes of migration – which will continue to send immigrants to the border. It is worth remembering that under Donald Trump, such a policy was not only declared unlawful by the courts, but it also led to increases – not decreases – in illegal border crossing.
While Donald Trump has already effectively clinched the Republican presidential nomination, the Guardian’s Jason Wilson reports that rightwing lobbyists are working behind the scenes to cement deeper ties between GOP lawmakers and groups supporting the ex-president’s agenda:
A powerful, rightwing lobbying group is promoting a hard-right policy agenda and cementing ties between the Republican party and the far right at at least 21 events involving senators, members of Congress, and both junior and senior political aides, documents obtained by the Guardian show.
The documents offer previously unreported details of Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI) trainings and “bootcamps” for congressional staff at CPI’s sprawling Maryland ranch, and lavish, star-studded retreats for members of Congress – mostly members of the far-right Freedom caucus – at a string of Florida resorts.
They also show how CPI, widely described as the “nerve center of the Maga movement”, enlisted its own network of affiliated organizations along with like-minded far-right organizations – some classified as hate groups by experts – as well as individual extremists to promote anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-vaccine policies, along with others premised on the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump.
The revelations raise further questions about the powerful influence exercised on Capitol Hill staffers by the well-heeled NGO, and the extent of its successes in moving Republican elected officials even further to the right.
Www.oeisdigitalinvestigator.com: Attorney general Garland says Trump claim the justice department was authorized to kill him during Mar-a-Lago search is ‘extremely dangerous’
At a press conference today, attorney general Merrick Garland repudiated a claim by Donald Trump that the federal agents who searched his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida two years ago were given the authority to kill him.
The former president made the allegation in a fundraising email, but the attorney general said it was an “extremely dangerous” distortion of the department’s policies, which were also followed when Joe Biden’s home was searched for classified material:
And here’s a recap of what exactly Trump was alleging:
Joe Biden’s re-election campaign says Donald Trump is to blame for the move by Louisiana Republicans to tighten access to abortion medication.
From spokesperson Lauren Hitt:
The Biden campaign has banked on rising public support for access to abortion to translate into votes for the president in November. Here’s more on the latest opinion polls on the issue:
Www.oeisdigitalinvestigator.com: Louisiana Republicans move to tighten access to abortion medication
Louisiana’s Republican-dominated state legislature has moved to further tighten access to two prescription drugs used in medication abortion, the Associated Press reports.
Here’s more on the move, which comes as we await a ruling from the US supreme court on whether mifepristone, one of the drugs targeted by the new Louisiana law, can remain available nationwide:
Two abortion-inducing drugs could soon be reclassified as controlled and dangerous substances in Louisiana under a first-of-its-kind bill that received final legislative passage Thursday and is expected to be signed into law by the governor.
Supporters of the reclassification of mifepristone and misoprostol, commonly known as “abortion pills”, say it would protect expectant mothers from coerced abortions. Numerous doctors, meanwhile, have said it will make it harder for them to prescribe the medicines they use for other important reproductive healthcare needs, and could delay treatment.
Louisiana currently has a near-total abortion ban in place, applying both to surgical and medical abortions. The GOP-dominated legislature’s push to reclassify mifepristone and misoprostol could possibly open the door for other Republican states with abortion bans that are seeking tighter restrictions on the drugs.
Current Louisiana law already requires a prescription for both drugs and makes it a crime to use them to induce an abortion in most cases. The bill would make it harder to obtain the pills by placing them on the list of Schedule IV drugs under the state’s Uniform Controlled Dangerous Substances Law.
The investigation into the 11 April dinner comes a day after Trump attended a Houston lunch to ask oil executives for more campaign money.
Trump attended the invitation-only meeting at Houston’s ritzy Post Oak hotel. The lunch was organized by three major oil executives, and came only a week after severe thunderstorms hit the Houston area.
Climate advocates in Texas have condemned Trump’s pleas to the oil industry as the state struggles with extreme weather exacerbated by the climate crisis.
“Houstonians are staring at Trump in disbelief as he flies in to beg big oil for funds just days after the city’s climate disaster,” said Alex Glass, communications director at the climate advocacy organization Climate Power, and a former Houston resident.
The 11 April dinner was reportedly called an “energy round table”, the Times reported.
Executives from major oil companies including ExxonMobil and EQT Corporation were in attendance.
The event was organized by oil tycoon Harold Hamm, the Washington Post first reported. Hamm and others are reportedly organizing another fundraiser for Trump later this year, which is expected to bring high donations.
Here’s more from the Times:
Over a dinner of chopped steak, Mr. Trump repeated his public promises to delete Mr. Biden’s pollution controls, telling the attendees that they should donate heavily to help him beat Mr. Biden because his policies would help their industries.
“That has been his pitch to everybody,” said Michael McKenna, who worked in the Trump White House but did not attend the event in Florida.
Mr. McKenna said the former president’s appeal to the fossil fuel industry could be summed up as: “Look, you want me to win. You might not even like me, but your other choice is four more years of these guys,” referring to the Biden administration. He added, “The uniform sentiment of guys in the business community is ‘We don’t want four more years of Team Biden.’”
The Senate Democrats’ investigation into Trump’s alleged quid-pro-quo suggestion to oil executives stems from an 11 April dinner at Mar-a-Lago, the New York Times reported.
Trump reportedly told 20 oil executives that they should donate $1b to his campaign as they would save more than that amount in “taxes and legal fees” once Trump was elected as he would repeal Biden’s restrictions on drilling that hurt their industries.
The supreme court has allowed South Carolina’s Republican-drawn congressional maps to stay, at least for now, after the panel’s conservative majority turned away a request from challengers that they be thrown out for discriminating against Black voters. The decision was authored by Samuel Alito, a conservative justice who was yesterday revealed to have flown a flag associated with Christian extremism at a vacation property. It was the second rightwing flag to have reportedly been displayed at his properties, prompting the House’s top Democrat Hakeem Jeffries, amongothers, to call for him to recuse himself from cases dealing with January 6. Alito has not commented on if he will do that.
Here’s what else is going on:
Senate Democrats have launched an investigation into Donald Trump’s reported offer to roll back environmental regulations if oil executives raise $1bn for him.
Joe Biden and attorney general Merrick Garland both declined to comment on Alito’s flag preferences.
Elena Kagan, a liberal supreme court justice, dissented from the conservative ruling in the South Carolina case, and warned it would undermine future attempts to challenge racial gerrymanders.
Www.oeisdigitalinvestigator.com: Senate Democrats launch investigation into Trump’s reported offer to oil executives of regulatory rollback in exchange for donations
Senate Democrats have launched an investigation into Donald Trump’s reported offer to oil executives that if they donated $1bn to his campaign, he would roll back environmental regulations, if elected.
The joint investigation by the Senate budget and finance committees is targeted at the petroleum firms whose top executives were said to have attended that April dinner.
“Time and time again, both Mr. Trump and the US oil and gas industry have proved they are willing to sell out Americans to pad their own pockets,” finance committee chair Ron Wyden and budget committee chair Sheldon Whitehouse said in a joint statement.
Here’s more:
As Mr. Trump funnels campaign money into his businesses and uses it as a slush fund to pay his legal fees, Big Oil has been lobbying aggressively to protect and expand its profits at the expense of the American taxpayer.And now, emboldened by impunity, Mr. Trump and Big Oil are flaunting their indifference to U.S. citizens’ economic well-being for all to see, conferring on how to trade campaign cash for policy changes. Such potential abuses must be scrutinized.
A former White House lawyer for Donald Trump says he should already be on trial for the classified documents discovered at Mar-a-Lago, the Guardian’s Robert Tait reports:
Donald Trump’s former White House lawyer has attacked Aileen Cannon, the judge handling the ex-president’s classified documents charges, for repeated delays, attributing her rulings to “incompetence” and “perceived bias” and saying the case should have already come to trial.
Ty Cobb, the luxuriantly whiskered attorney who served as Trump’s counsel during former FBI director Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, said decisions taken by Cannon, a Trump-appointed judge in the US district court in Florida, virtually guaranteed that the case would not be tried before November’s presidential poll.
In an interview with CNN, Cobb said Cannon had delayed on issues that most federal judges would have long since dealt with.
“I don’t think this case will move at all,” he said. “And I think the fact that she’s scheduling hearings, multiple hearings, sort of one or two motions at a time is compelling evidence of that. Most federal judges would have long ago ruled on all the pending motions.
“And frankly, this is a case that should’ve started trial yesterday or two days ago when the original trial date was set. This case could have easily gotten to trial. Only her incompetence and perceived bias has prevented that.”
Republican congresswoman Nancy Mace’s district is at the heart of the supreme court case in which the challengers to legislative maps drawn by the state’s Republican lawmakers argued that they constituted an illegal racial gerrymander.
Here’s what Mace had to say after the supreme court’s conservative majority today ruled against the challengers:
And here’s a recap of the decision, which could have ripple effects on congressional maps across the south:
Politico reports that Samuel Alito seemed brusque when he announced the opinion he authored that essentially allows South Carolina to use Republican-drawn congressional maps, even though challengers claimed they discriminated against African Americans:
Alito, who has been under fire in recent days over claims that the display of flags at his Virginia home and New Jersey shore house reflected bias and violated judicial ethics, delivered an unusually short, almost perfunctory summary of his opinion when the court announced its decisions from the bench Thursday morning.
Reporters in the court’s press room had only just begun to read the voting-rights ruling when he moved on to an unrelated, criminal-justice opinion he also wrote.
However, the court’s ruling, which was joined by all six conservative justices, did not completely end the challenge to South Carolina’s maps, Politico notes:
The high court’s ruling did not entirely foreclose the possibility that civil rights groups might eventually prevail in their challenge to the map on what Alito said was a distinct theory under the Voting Rights Act of diluting minority votes.
The majority ordered the case returned to the lower court for a fresh look at that issue by the panel that earlier ruled the map unconstitutional. All of those judges are Democratic appointees.
But with the state’s congressional primaries looming on June 11, and the lower court already having given the green light to use the legislature’s map this year, the chances of any changes in the map this year seem vanishingly remote.
Private investigator near me: Dwelling Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner acknowledged there was a “failure of the total broader win”
Printed July 14, 2024 4:35PM (EDT)
Two FBI investigators scan the roof of AGR Worldwide Inc, the building adjacent to the Butler Fairgrounds, from which alleged shooter Matthew Thomas Crooks fired at ragged President Donald J. Trump, within the aftermath of the tried assassination at a campaign rally on July 14, 2024, in Butler, Pennsylvania. (Jeff Swensen/Getty Images)
Following the tried assassination of ragged President Donald Trump one day of a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania on Saturday evening, GOP Get. Mike Turner of Ohio seemed on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, bringing up the significance of a fat investigation into an apparent lapse of security on the match, which virtually worth Trump his lifestyles.
“How is it that any individual may possibly well also salvage on a roof with a superior build, with a weapon, and strive to assassinate ragged President Donald Trump?” he requested, in a quote received from AP Data. “It’s true unthinkable, unfathomable. Now we want to know, is that this a protocol failure? Is that this a resources scenario? Or is that this true a failure of of us that were on web boom that day?”
In step with updates from CNN and moderately just a few retail outlets, the FBI is now main an investigation into the taking pictures, and there are calls from Congress to peer into what’s being viewed as a security failure on the rally which, moreover to Trump’s accidents, left a lot of others severely injured and one man ineffective — no longer alongside with the loss of life of the 20-year-frail shooter himself.
Per the outlet’s reporting, “Dwelling Speaker Mike Johnson vowed a ‘fat investigation’ of the taking pictures, that comprises testimony from USSS, DHS and the FBI, and two Republicans on the Senate Fatherland Security Committee enjoy furthermore known as for an investigation.”
“This would possibly perchance well no longer happen, and I set a matter to accountability,” says Democratic Get. Ruben Gallego.
“The investigation will truly give us a possibility to examine out where any screw ups befell and what may possibly well also furthermore be achieved better one day,” Pennsylvania State Police Lt. Col. George Bivens acknowledged in a quote to NBC Data.