Free Republic

Former President Donald Trump’s political action committee has paid the French-born stylist who designed Melania Trump’s inaugural ball gown more than $260,000 for “strategy consulting” since the start of last year, filings with the Federal Election Commission show. Hervé Pierre Braillard was paid $108,000 by the Save America PAC during the first six months of 2023, receiving the money in increments of $18,000 each month, according to a half-year report filed with the FEC Monday night.Braillard, who goes by Hervé Pierre professionally, also received $152,500 in 2022, broken down into eight monthly payments of $18,000 between May and December of...

Save America, the political action committee financing former President Trump’s 2024 presidential bid, spent over $40 million on legal fees in the first half of 2023. These expenses reflect the ballooning costs of defending the embattled former president as he faces a growing list of legal challenges. (snip) Even where the charges against Trump are contrived (Alvin Bragg Slowly Realizes His Trump Indictment Is Going to Backfire, and He’s Getting Desperate), he has to spend a lot of money protecting his interests until the case is closed. Should he prevail in all the cases, the final legal bill will dwarf...

On Friday night, a judge dismissed former President Donald Trump's lawsuit against CNN in which the current 2024 front-runner for the Republican nomination claimed CNN’s coverage of his election lies equated him to Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany. Judge Raag Singhal, a Trump-appointed judge, ruled that CNN referring to Trump’s claims about the election being stolen as “The Big Lie” did not meet the criteria for defamation despite Trump’s belief to the contrary. "There is no question that the statements made by CNN meet the publication requirement for defamation under Florida law," Singhal wrote. "The next question is whether the...

MyPillow is auctioning off hundreds of pieces of equipment and subleasing manufacturing space after several shopping networks and major retailers took the company's products off shelves. The Chaska-based manufacturer recently listed more than 850 "surplus equipment" items on the online auction site K-Bid. Sewing machines, industrial fabric spreaders, forklifts and even desks and chairs are up for auction. Founder and CEO Mike Lindell said MyPillow has experienced a loss in revenue and the items are no longer needed as the company consolidates its operations.

<p>How did former President Donald Trump celebrate Independence Day? Well, he lit off some fireworks, but not the literal kind, more like that aggro and angry political potshots he’s known for by sharing a late-night meme that read “F*ck Biden” on social media in the wee hours of July 4th.</p>

WASHINGTON — A Trump supporter who stormed the Capitol wearing a “Make Space Great Again” hat had two guns and 400 rounds of ammunition in his van when he was arrested Thursday near former President Barack Obama’s home, federal authorities said Friday. A federal prosecutor said in court Friday that Taylor Taranto, a 37-year-old man first identified by online sleuths in August 2021, also had a machete in the van he appeared to be living in. Taranto's van has been parked near the D.C. jail in recent weeks and he has appeared at protests in support of other Jan. 6...

A top Trump campaign adviser — who apparently was shown classified documents by the former president — has a top post at a lobbying firm serving Chinese entities that potentially pose a national security threat and help Beijing commit human rights abuses. Susie Wiles works on Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign and is co-chair of Mercury Public Affairs, which has taken millions of dollars in recent years from Chinese companies such as Yealink, Hikvision and Alibaba.

Members of the House Freedom Caucus discussed potentially ousting Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) from the conservative group during a closed-door meeting on Friday morning, three sources familiar with the conversation confirmed to Axios. Why it matters: The discussion comes in the wake of Greene taking aim at Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Co.) on the House floor, where Greene called the Colorado Republican a “nasty little b***h” after Boebert introduced competing impeachment resolutions. Two sources said they felt Greene’s behavior was “unprofessional,” with one critic arguing that members are becoming increasingly frustrated with the Georgia conservative for a variety of reasons....

Washington — A California man who prosecutors described as "one of the most violent defendants on January 6, 2021" was sentenced to 151 months — about 12 ½ years — in prison Wednesday after pleading guilty to violent and obstructive conduct during the Capitol riot. Daniel "DJ" Rodriguez admitted as part of a plea agreement in February that he attacked former Washington, D.C. police officer Michael Fanone with a taser, causing him to lose consciousness, and that he worked to stop Congress from certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election. Rodriguez will also have to pay $96,000 to cover...

John Eastman, the Trump-allied lawyer who created a memo arguing that then-Vice President Mike Pence could overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 election win, is set to face disciplinary hearings starting Tuesday in Los Angeles. The counsel for the State Bar of California is asking a court to revoke Eastman’s license to practice law in the state. Eastman faces 11 disciplinary charges for allegations that he engaged in a plot to push a far-fetched legal strategy for Pence to overturn Biden’s electoral victory during the certification of Electoral College votes by a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021. Prosecutors alleged...

John Russell Howald, 44, from Basin, Montana, was sentenced to 18 years in federal prison followed by five years of supervised release for shooting into a home in what prosecutors described as an attempt to rid the small town of LGBTQ+ residents, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Howald was convicted by a federal jury on Feb. 17 of a hate crime involving an attempt to kill and discharge of a firearm, the news release said. He used an AK-style rifle at the residence of a lesbian, who was home at the time. He then walked...

Eight of the so-called "fake electors" in Georgia who were allegedly involved in efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election in the state have accepted immunity in the Fulton County probe into the matter, according to their lawyer. In a court filing in the case on Friday, an attorney who represents 10 of the fake electors said the Fulton County district attorney's office reached out in April to provide an immunity offer for eight of her clients. "After reviewing the actual, written offers of immunity, each of those eight electors accepted their immunity offer," the filing by the...

WASHINGTON — At least four members of the far-right Proud Boys organization were found guilty Thursday of seditious conspiracy in connection with the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Enrique Tarrio, Joseph Biggs, Ethan Nordean and Zachary Rehl each faced nine counts, and were found guilty on the rare charge of seditious conspiracy under a Civil War-era statute. They were also found guilty of conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding. The jury has only reached a partial verdict, U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Kelly said Thursday, and the verdicts on other charges are still being read.

A New York judge tossed Donald Trump’s $100 million lawsuit against the New York Times and ordered him to pay all of the paper’s legal fees, according to a ruling Wednesday. The former president’s claims that the Gray Lady and three of its reporters hatched an “insidious plot” to get his private tax records “fail as a matter of constitutional law,” New York Supreme Court Justice Robert Reed wrote in the decision. In the 2021 suit, the embattled 45th president alleged that Times reporters Susanne Craig, David Barstow and Russ Buettner schemed with Trump’s niece, Mary, to disclose his 20-year-old...

A federal judge in New York on Monday denied former President Donald Trump's bid for a mistrial in writer E. Jean Carroll’s lawsuit alleging that Trump raped her in a Manhattan department store in the 1990s. In an 18-page filing hours ahead of his second day of cross-examining Carroll, Trump lawyer Joe Tacopina accused U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan, who is overseeing the case, of making “pervasive unfair and prejudicial rulings” against his client. Barring a mistrial ruling, Tacopina requested that Kaplan “correct the record for each and every instance in which the Court has mischaracterized the facts of this...

Former president Trump’s campaign quietly commissioned a second firm to study election fraud claims in the weeks after the 2020 election, and the founder of the firm was recently questioned by the Justice Department about his work disproving the claims.Ken Block, founder of the firm Simpatico Software Systems, studied more than a dozen voter fraud theories and allegations for Trump’s campaign in late 2020 and found they were “all false,” he said in an interview with The Washington Post.“No substantive voter fraud was uncovered in my investigations looking for it, nor was I able to confirm any of the outside...

Washington — The Supreme Court on Friday granted a request from the Justice Department to leave in place the Food and Drug Administration's approval of a widely used abortion pill, preserving access to the drug and reinstating a number of steps by the agency that made it easier to obtain while legal proceedings continue. The decision from the conservative court came in the most significant case involving abortion since it overturned Roe v. Wade less than one year ago, a ruling that threw the legal landscape into chaos and led to near-total bans on abortion in more than 12 states....

Washington — Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito extended a temporary pause on a lower court order that imposed limitations on the widely used abortion pill mifepristone to Friday at 11:59 p.m. The brief order issued by Alito preserves broad access to mifepristone for two more days.

An arbitration panel ordered MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell to pay $5 million within 30 days to a Nevada software developer for proving Lindell was wrong in his claim that certain data was related to the 2020 presidential election and purported voting machine fraud. The panel, in its 23-page ruling issued Wednesday, said that the Robert Zeidman "proved the data Lindell LLC provided, and represented reflected information from the November 2020 election, unequivocally did not reflect November 2020 election data." Zeidman, a software developer, entered the "Prove Mike Wrong Challenge" contest in during a cyber symposium in August 2021.... ... "This...

The Fulton County District Attorney’s office has offered immunity deals to some of the alternate GOP electors who met at the Georgia Capitol and cast phony Electoral College votes for Donald Trump following the 2020 election. In a court motion filed Tuesday, the DA’s office also disclosed that it has been interviewing several of those Republicans in recent weeks, and that some of them accused a fellow elector of committing “acts that are violations of Georgia law,” the motion stated, without revealing specifics. The DA’s office filed the motion in an attempt to disqualify from the case attorney Kimberly Burroughs...