Higgins Urges Budget Committee to Double Cancer Research Funding

Fox News hasn't found a way to replicate Tucker Carlson's massive ratings in primetime, but the network has found a behemoth of a winner in The Five.

A new filing in a defamation lawsuit filed by Georgia poll workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss against the conspiracy theory website Gateway Pundit reveals that workers at the site feared for their credibility, reported The Guardian — and their own attorney warned them that the source for their claims was not to be trusted.

The site's founder, Jim Hoft, has earned the nickname "The Dumbest Man on the Internet" for years of strange and sloppy claims. Despite this, former President Donald Trump has been reported to be an avid reader of the site.

"Attorneys for Freeman and Moss ... said in their filing that John Burns, a lawyer for Gateway Pundit, had warned the site about relying on Kevin Moncla, a source in Georgia who fed the site information on Freeman and Moss, including their non-public personnel files, according to the filing," said the report.

"'Moncla is a known fabricator. I wouldn’t touch/publish anything he produces,” Burns reportedly wrote, while also calling Moncla “a g-------d fraud."

ALSO READ: Read this powerful GOP senator’s pay-to-play 'benefits package' for lobbyists

As if that weren't enough, Freeman and Moss’s attorneys also unearthed messages from Moncla said in which he said of their clients, "I will help you nail these b----s."

According to the report, Moncla was charged with voyeurism and ordered to pay $3.25 million after filming guests in the bathroom at his house.

Earlier this week, Gateway Pundit filed for bankruptcy amid the litigation against them.

Moss and Freeman, who counted ballots in Atlanta in 2020, have become a focus of numerous MAGA conspiracy theories, spread in part by Trump allies like Rudy Giuliani, who claimed that they were stuffing ballots — based in part on a supposed "flash drive" one passed to the other that turned out to be a ginger mint. Giuliani was found liable for $148 million in a defamation default judgment for his role in these claims.

In addition to the defamation cases, efforts to harass the two workers form part of the election racketeering case against Trump's allies in Fulton County.

U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has tried to build bridges between himself and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) since she first raised the threat to oust him as Speaker. However, Sunday, Greene renewed her vow to take him down.

After initially threatening to bounce Johnson from his gig as the leader of House Republicans, Greene backed off and insisted that Republican lawmakers go home and listen to their constituents about it. This was also after Donald Trump publicly backed the Speaker.

Now, it appears she is back on the warpath against the Louisiana conservative.

ALSO READ: ‘Fraudulent’: Trump tormentor Lincoln Project loses big money in cybertheft scheme

Greene on Sunday shared a report suggesting that Ukrainian leader Zelensky had announced "that Ukraine is working on a security agreement with the U.S. that will fix levels of support for the next 10 years."

"The $61 billion was just the beginning. The next two U.S. presidents won’t be able to switch it off," the individual stated.

In response, Greene claimed "Permanent funding for Ukraine is exactly what they want and Mike Johnson will give it to them."

"Peace is not an option for them because it doesn’t fit the government appropriations war business and economic model, which is vile and disgusting," she added. "They’re plan is keep funding the proxy war with Russia in Ukraine and when that doesn’t work, after all the Ukrainian men have been slaughtered, next they will put American troops on the ground."

Then, she went off on Johnson.

"Johnson will do whatever Biden/Schumer want in order to keep the Speaker’s gavel in his hand, but he has completely sold out the Republican voters who gave us the majority," she said. "His days as Speaker are numbered."

Kentucky representative Thomas Massie also shared Greene's post on his own social media account Sunday.

Former president Donald Trump's attorney Todd Blanche is stuck between a rock and a hard place in the form of a "crazy, unreasonable client," according to former federal prosecutor Harry Litman.

Litman's analysis Tuesday came on the heels of proceedings in the criminal hush money trial that saw Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and Trump's lawyers debating whether the former president had violated his gag order.

Trump's lawyer, Blanche, was ridiculed by legal experts who said he failed to craft an argument without case law to back it up.

"I don't have any cases," Blanche said in court. "It's just common sense."

ALSO READ: A neuroscientist explains how Trump is using existential fear to win the election

"You're losing all credibility," Judge Juan Merchan replied.

"Hard to maintain with a straight face," former prosecutor Joyce Vance said of the battle between Blanche and the judge.

CNN's legal analyst called it an outright "disaster," because it went so poorly for Trump.

According to Litman, this exchange put Trump's lawyer in difficult position.

"Blanche needs badly to work hard to regain Merchan's trust, but he's between a rock and a hard place," Litman said. "He can't look weak in front of his crazy, unreasonable client."

Trump's former impeachment attorney, Robert Ray, tried to downplay the exchange, saying he's had judges say things like that to him before.

Speaking to MSNBC Tuesday, Ray explained that Blanche likely conveyed "he wouldn't be so easily intimidated."

Former Brooklyn prosecutor Charles Coleman disagreed, saying that running afoul of the judge this early in the trial was a problem.

"That was the most explosive," he told Nicolle Wallace on Tuesday afternoon. "That is — for as accomplished an attorney as Todd Blanche is, I don't understand the argument he made. To have a judge tell you that you are losing credibility this early in a trial is really, really dangerous ground to operate on."

Even teenagers were ridiculing Blanche. Two students came to court to observe the trial, including one 14-year-old who thought the exchange between Merchan and Blanche was "funny."

"When the defense attorney was basically annihilated by the judge," said Hope Harrington outside the courthouse. "It was — it really made my day. It was really funny. He had no evidence whatsoever."