Raw Story

A deep dive into special counsel Jack Smith’s massive legal filing that exposed new evidence in Donald Trump's election subversion case reveals the legal strategy behind the prosecution of the former president and the possibility of a key government witness – former Vice President Mike Pence.

MSNBC legal correspondent Lisa Rubin noted in an analysis published Friday that while the exhibits to Smith’s immunity brief remain under wraps, “snippets of witness statements give clues about his litigation strategy if the federal election interference case survives.”

Alternating between playing it safe and taking risks is what Rubin, a former litigator, said she gleamed of Smith's likely approach at trial after poring over the 1,889 pages released by Judge Tanya Chutkan Friday.

She found that the first volume “of 720-plus pages is excerpted testimony and interviews from the House Jan. 6 committee’s investigation.” She went on to list in alphabetical order the officials and campaign staffers whose interviews are included in the filing.

“What’s most interesting about this group collectively — but also advisable in the wake of the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling — is that the vast majority of these witnesses were not executive branch employees, but instead were private citizens, campaign staff or state officials Trump tried to influence,” Rubin wrote for MSNBC.

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She added, tellingly: “But, of course, those are just the witnesses whose statements we can see. And while Volume 3 of the appendix contains the cover and several highlighted pages from Pence’s book 'So Help Me God,' actual testimony from Pence is nowhere to be found. Or is it merely hiding in plain sight?”

Rubin said the bombshell legal filing has nearly “100 pages of fully sealed material between the apparent end of the excerpt of” former Trump senior campaign adviser Jason Miller and then-adviser Katrina Pierson.

“And alphabetically, what, or rather who, falls between them? Pence,” she wrote.

Reading between the lines, Rubin said she believes Smith “has ample testimony from Pence about his many post-election conversations with Trump about its outcome — and whether either of them had any reason to doubt or try to change it.”

While that could pose legal troubles for Trump, according to Rubin, “the bigger determining factor seems to be the outcome of this election.”

Former President Donald Trump "whiffed" and made a tactical error that could cost him, a Democratic strategist noted on CNN on Friday night.

Chuck Rocha, founder of Nuestro PAC, told panelists on "NewsNight" that Trump rebuffed an opportunity to make amends with voters of former primary foe Nikki Haley, whom he defeated following a bitter rivalry.

Trump emphasized during a "Fox and Friends" interview that he soundly defeated the former South Carolina governor the former South Carolina governor and U.N. ambassador in the Trump administration. When asked whether he feels Haley can help him defeat Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump stressed he "beat Nikki [Haley] badly."

" Nikki Haley and I fought and I beat her by 50, 60, 90 points!" he boasted. "I beat her in her own state by numbers that nobody's ever been beaten by! I beat Nikki badly! I beat everyone else too badly! I mean, frankly, I set records, both in speed and in the magnitude of the win... I beat everybody by numbers that has never happened before and they keep talking about Nikki, Nikki."

Trump then emphasized, "Nikki is in, Nikki is helping us already."

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Rocha said Trump had a "great strategic opportunity" that "as a strategist, he really whiffed on."

"There's somebody watching Fox News and that's Nikki Haley voters," he said. "And they literally served him up a softball to say something nice about Nikki Haley and he could not help himself. And he went down the rabbit hole of how he whooped her in the primaries and she's no good."

Haley received 76,000 votes in Wisconsin, noted Rocha, and President Joe Biden only won the state by fewer than 20,000.

"Every one of those votes are like gold," he said. "As a strategist, they vote like it's their job. If they vote in the primary, I promise you they're coming back to vote in the general."

Watch the clip below or at this link.

Former President Donald Trump and tech billionaire Elon Musk are "addicted" to chasing adulation on social media, CNN correspondent Donie O'Sullivan told Anderson Cooper on Friday evening — and the extent to which that obsession is driving misinformation and potentially influencing voters should not be overlooked.

This comes as Musk, who owns Tesla Motors, SpaceX and X, has essentially taken over voter outreach campaign operations from the Trump campaign, in ways that are plagued with glitches and may not be entirely legal.

"It is remarkable the amount of just things that aren't true that [Musk] is pushing out," said Cooper, noting that he has lately been pushing attacks on Dominion Voting Systems, the company that forced a legal settlement from Fox News for conspiracy theories about rigging the 2020 presidential election.

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"Exactly," said O'Sullivan. "It's just — but I really think the role that Twitter, now called X, such a pivotal role it's played in both Trump's life, in terms of basically getting him into the White House, giving him that megaphone, and now of course, Musk."

"Both of these guys have gotten — they got addicted, right?" O'Sullivan continued. "They got addicted to the likes and shares and the retweets, and it's manifested in different ways. Musk ended up buying the platform. But yeah, you can really see that, and Musk does this thing all the time ... where something would be totally ridiculous and Musk just responds to it, says 'interesting' and immediately that gets posted, that gets elevated to potentially 200 million of his followers every single day."

"Musk has, obviously, a lot of business interests that rely on U.S. government contracts, connections," added O'Sullivan. "I mean, he's putting a lot of stock in Trump's going to get reelected. It would obviously benefit him hugely."

Watch the video below or at the link here.

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Donald Trump's campaign has set up a fundraising page for hurricane relief, but it's not clear where the money is actually going.

The Republican nominee's campaign created the fundraising campaign billed “as an official response for MAGA supporters to offer their financial assistance to their fellow Americans impacted by Hurricane Helene,” reported The New Republic. The page lists charities it says would receive the MAGA funds.

Three of the four charities listed are Christian or Evangelical nongovernmental organizations — Samaritan’s Purse, Water Mission, and Mtn2Sea Ministries — while the fourth is listed as the “Clinch Foundation,” which appears to be the Clinch Memorial Hospital’s Foundation in Valdosta, Georgia.

However, the campaign has not said how it would disburse those funds, which stood at about $7.7 million as of Monday, although Mtn2Sea Ministries says it has received $25,000.

“This is the only funds we expect to [receive] from this GoFundMe account and are very grateful for it to help us serve,” a post on the charity's Facebook page read.

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The crowdfunding page doesn't violate any campaign finance laws, but political candidates typically donate campaign money to IRS-approved nonprofits.

“It’s pretty unusual and actually quite odd,” said campaign finance attorney Brett Kappel.

Brian Hughes, a spokesperson for the Trump campaign, said the former president wanted to “help find a way for his supporters to give as much direct support as they can.”

Fox News anchor Bret Baier revealed Monday there would be "no stipulations" in his upcoming interview with Vice President Kamala Harris.

During a Monday appearance on Fox News, Baier acknowledged a controversy surrounding an interview with Harris that was allegedly edited by CBS News.

"I thought Bill Whitaker did a good job asking matter-of-fact questions and following up," Baier said. "I think the controversy over the edit was a big, big deal for CBS."

"So that's not going to happen with us," he continued.

Baier then shared some details about the interview.

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"It'll be essentially live to tape and no stipulations on the questions, wide open, there's no caveats that are coming to do the interview," he insisted. "So she'll take all and any questions."

Baier's interview with Harris is set to air Wednesday at 6 p.m. ET on Fox News.

Watch the video below from Fox News.

Donald Trump has long openly admired the world's dictators and three weeks before the US presidential election he's taking a page from the authoritarian playbook with escalating threats against the "enemy from within."

One of Trump's hallmarks as president was his constant use of the phrase "enemy of the people" to describe the media -- or at least the media which didn't paint him in a good light.

But as polls show him with a good chance of beating Kamala Harris next month to regain the White House, Trump got attention Sunday when he called for sending the US military to combat a much broader group of Americans.

Asked on Trump-friendly Fox News whether he expected election day would be peaceful, the Republican cited internal enemies.

"We have some very bad people. We have some sick people, radical left lunatics. And I think they're the -- and it should be very easily handled by -- if necessary, by National Guard or, if really necessary, by the military," he said.

"The enemy from within, in my opinion, is more dangerous than China, Russia and all these countries," he said.

The only specific "enemy" that Trump identified was senior Democratic congressman and Senate candidate Adam Schiff, whom he described as "a sleazebag" and "major lowlife."

Trump would not yet have authority over the National Guard or the military on election day, even if he were declared the winner.

However, the suggestion of using the army against Americans reinforces the billionaire's increasingly dark emphasis on authoritarian messaging.

- China as policing model? -

Trump's claim on Fox News that "internal" foes are more dangerous than major foreign adversaries like Moscow and Beijing builds on years of admiration for leaders like Russia's Vladimir Putin, China's Xi Jinping and North Korea's Kim Jong Un.

Those three are "at the top of their game, they're tough, they're smart, they're vicious, and they're going to protect their country," he said glowingly in August.

What's newer is growing emphasis on emulating authoritarians' domestic crackdowns on US soil.

Last month, Trump claimed the country was awash in crime -- something refuted by official statistics -- then told a rally that the solution would be to allow police to impose a violent crackdown.

"If you had one really violent day," he mused. "One rough hour -- and I mean real rough -- the word would get out and it would end immediately."

It was the kind of language that echoed another of Trump's favorite lines -- that Xi runs China with an "iron hand."

"He controls 1.4 billion people ruthlessly. Ruthlessly. No games," Trump lauded in January this year, calling Xi a "brilliant man."

Democrats -- and a long list of former senior Trump presidential staff -- have sounded dire warnings about a second term. But Trump himself makes little effort to push back.

Asked last December on Fox whether he had any aims to create a dictatorship, he answered: "No, other than day one."

- 'Revenge' -

Trump has run for years on accusations that a shadowy "deep state" is the truly anti-democratic force in the United States and that he is there to defend ordinary voters.

However, he upended democratic norms in 2020 when he refused to recognize his election loss to Joe Biden. He now continues to cast doubt on whether November's election will be fair -- raising fears of unrest similar to the January 6, 2021 assault by his supporters on the Capitol.

As election day approaches, Trump has repeatedly suggested that in his second term the Justice Department would imprison election cheats -- despite no evidence to back his claims that any cheating has taken place.

"WHEN I WIN, those people that CHEATED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long term prison sentences so that this Depravity of Justice does not happen again," Trump posted in September.

As Trump said in an interview with TV host "Dr. Phil" in June, "sometimes, revenge can be justified."

© Agence France-Presse