Raw Story

Donald Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen gave a stark warning Tuesday to Americans who are growing nervous about warning of revenge in a second term: it's no joke.

White House correspondent and analyst Brian Karem spoke with Cohen for Salon, during which Cohen pressed voters to understand that Trump has already delivered on his promises to go after his enemies.

"When Donald Trump turns around and says that he's going to use SEAL Team Six as his own private force to incarcerate his political opponents, and the comment that people make is, 'You know Donald, he just talks stupid s--t. He's not going to do anything,' the point of the unconstitutional remand of me is don't discount what he's telling you," said Cohen.

"He's already foreshadowing what he intends to do. And when you say, 'That's not possible. He won't do it. He can't do it.” He's already done it to me. It was a practice run."

Cohen said Trump knows how to do it now, and he's not afraid to appoint people to help with his efforts.

Recently he's mentioned plans to target former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), who was kicked out of the Republican House leadership after she agreed to serve on a committee to investigate Trump's attempt to overthrow the 2020 election. Trump's former vice president, Mike Pence, became a target when Trump railed against him on social media on Jan. 6. The crowd chanted "Hang Mike Pence" and erected a gallows outside the U.S. Capitol.

"Why people want to ignore, when the guy is telling you himself what he wants to do, I do not understand," Cohen continued. "It makes no sense. And this is what the White House needs to put forth to the American people: You cannot sit back and do nothing."

Writing in his book "Revenge," Cohen talked about life as a Trump target behind bars. The Department of Justice, down to a Bureau of Prisons employee, tried to force the ex-Trump lawyer to sign away his First Amendment rights to score his freedom. Cohen believes Trump was using the government against him to keep him quiet about the plethora of things he watched Trump do over the years.

Now, as the election approaches, Cohen isn't afraid to admit that he's considered asylum if Trump takes office in 2025.

Cohen told Raw Story that, after his lawsuit against Trump was dismissed, no Trump foe was safe.

"It's a terrible, terrible decision," Cohen said. "This goes well past me."

Journalists writing for non-state outlets in Russia and Hungary have been targeted or jailed. Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich has been in a Russian prison since March 2023. Putin has claimed he's a spy and not a reporter.

During her Monday show, MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace confessed that Trump's promises of revenge are making her two-journalist household nervous about what could happen under a new Trump regime.

Read also: 'Radioactive for the Republican Party': Trump's 'woman problem' said to be worsening'

See the full interview with Cohen below or at the link here.

“Lied about every single thing”: Michael Cohen on Trump's debate performance www.youtube.com

Confronted on CNN by chilling comments made by the architect behind the authoritarian Project 2025 hinting at bloodshed if Donald Trump is not re-elected, the best Sen. Marco Rubio could come up with was, "Think tanks do think tanks stuff."

The Florida Republican was put on the spot on CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday when host Dana Bash played a clip of Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts telling a Real America News host, "We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless ― if the left allows it to be."

With Project 2025 stocked with multiple former Donald Trump aides, Bash pressed Rubio, who is in the running to be Trump's running mate, with, "Are you comfortable with that?"

"Well, he's not running for president is he?' Rubio attempted "I mean our candidate is Donald Trump. I didn't hear Donald Trump say that. Donald Trump's running on common sense, on restoring common sense versus the lunacy of the last four years and the far left and the shadow government that now is running our country. "

"Think tanks do think tank stuff, they come up with ideas, they say things," he continued. "Look, I like Heritage Foundation. I agree with some of the things they stand for, but there's a bunch of scholars and people to turn around and work on different projects, but our candidate for president is Donald Trump and Donald Trump is running on restoring common sense, working-class values and making decisions on the basis of that, not an ideological lunacy, which is what we've seen over the last four years."

"Is that what Project 2025 is? An ideological lunacy?" Bash retorted.

"No, I think it's the work of a think tank of center-right think tank and that's what think tanks do.," Rubio demurred.

Watch below or at the link.

CNN 07 07 2024 09 22 59 youtu.be

Tank tracks still fresh on his field in southern Gaza’s coastal area of Al-Mawasi, Nedal Abu Jazar lamented the damage war has wrought on his trees and crops.

“Look at the destruction,” the 39-year-old farmer told AFP, holding an uprooted tomato plant.He pointed to his greenhouse’s metal frame and its white plastic sheeting strewn across the plot, inside an area designated a humanitarian zone by the Israeli army “People were sitting peacefully on their farmland … and suddenly tanks arrived and fired at us, and then there were (air) strikes.”

Abu Jazar said the Israeli operation in late June destroyed about 40 dunams (10 acres) of land and killed five labourers.

His is not an isolated case. Across Gaza, 57 percent of agricultural land has been damaged since the war began, according to a joint assessment published in June by the UN’s agriculture and satellite imagery agencies, FAO and UNOSAT.

The damage threatens Gaza’s food sovereignty, Matieu Henry of the Food and Agriculture Organization told AFP, because 30 percent of the Palestinian territory’s food consumption comes from agricultural land.

“If almost 60 percent of the agricultural land has been damaged, this may have a significant impact in terms of food security and food supply.”

The Gaza Strip exported $44.6 million worth of produce in 2022, mainly to the West Bank and Israel, with strawberries and tomatoes representing 60 percent of the total, according to FAO data.

That number fell to zero after the October 7 attack on southern Israel that resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 38,098 people, also mostly civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.

The damage assessment on the agricultural land comes as the UN’s hunger monitoring system estimated in June that 96 percent of Gaza faces high levels of acute food insecurity.

Contacted by AFP, the Israeli army said it “does not intentionally harm agricultural land”.

In a statement, it said Hamas “often operates from within orchards, fields and agricultural land."

No work, no income

The impact is worse in the Palestinian territory’s north, where 68 percent of agricultural land is damaged, although the southern area encompassing parts of Al-Mawasi has seen the most significant increase in recent months due to military operations.

UNOSAT’s Lars Bromley told AFP the damage is generally “due to the impact of activities such as heavy vehicle activity, bombing, shelling, and other conflict-related dynamics, which would be things like areas burning.”

Near the southern city of Rafah, 34-year-old farmer Ibrahim Dheir feels helpless after the destruction of 20 dunams (five acres) of land he used to lease, and all his farming equipment with it.

“As soon as the Israeli bulldozers and tanks entered the area, they began bulldozing cultivated lands with various trees, including fruits, citrus, guava, as well as crops like spinach, molokhia (jute mallow), eggplant, squash, pumpkin and sunflower seedlings,” he said, before listing more damage in a testimony of the area’s past agricultural abundance.

Dheir, whose family exported its produce to the West Bank and Israel, now feels destitute.

“We used to depend on agriculture for our livelihood day by day, but now there’s no work or income.”

Lasting damage

Farmer Abu Mahmoud Za’arab also finds himself with “no source of income”.

The 60-year-old owns 15 dunams (3.7 acres) of land on which crops and fruit trees used to grow.

“The Israeli army passed through the land, completely wiping out all trees and crops,” he told AFP.

“They bulldozed and shelled the land, turning it into barren pits.”

The harm done to farmland in Gaza will last far beyond tank tracks and explosions, said Bromley of UNOSAT.

“With modern weaponry, a certain percentage is always going to fail. Tank shells won’t explode, artillery shells won’t explode … so clearing that unexploded ordnance is a massive task,” he said.

It will require “probing every centimetre of the soil before you can allow the farmers back onto it”.

Despite the risks, Dheir wants to return to farming.

“We want the war to stop and things to return to how they were so we can farm and cultivate our lands again.”

John Ullyot, a former aide to Donald Trump, was scolded Sunday after he attacked Vice President Kamala Harris as a "DEI hire."

During a panel discussion on Newsmax, Ullyot claimed that former President Barack Obama was running a "monarchy" that would select the Democratic presidential nominee.

"Barack Obama, with his henchmen, his aides, have been running the show under President Biden, and now you've got a situation where it's really up to him who it's gonna be," Ullyot said. "But bottom line here is that it's gonna go to Kamala, if anybody, because she was a DEI hire."

"She was hired because President Biden said when he was a candidate that he wanted to hire a woman to be his number two, and then after the BLM riots, then he got a lot of pressure to have a Black woman from a lot of Black women's groups, and he did that," he added.

Newsmax host Sarah Williamson and Democratic columnist Ellis Henican condemned Ullyot's remarks.

"Okay, the DEI thing I strongly disagree with here, but this is not my place to have the disagreement," Williamson said.

"Yeah," Henican agreed. "You shouldn't talk, John, you shouldn't talk like that. It makes you sound like a racist. Don't talk like that."

ALSO READ: Why I'm sticking with Joe Biden

"Look, it's the party that embraces DEI," Ullyot replied. "Those are the guys that put identity above qualifications."

"Don't talk like that," Henican insisted. "In the end, the reality is that whichever one of these candidates is being focused on, that's who's in trouble."

"So this week, it's been Biden," he continued. "He had a rotten debate performance. But next week, Trump will say something like, oh, maybe we should execute the daughter of the former Republican vice president."

Over the weekend, Fox News contributor Charlie Gasparino also attributed Harris's vice presidency to Diversity ­Equity and Inclusion policies.

"The American public may soon be subjected to DEI writ large in the next president of the United States, if Kamala Harris finds her way to the top of the Democratic ticket while Joe Biden wilts away as the party’s presidential nominee after his horrific ­debate performance," Gasparino wrote for the New York Post.

Watch the video below from Newsmax or at the link.

On Friday, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) amplified a baseless, debunked claim that President Joe Biden was experiencing a medical episode on board Air Force One. Now, the senator is getting roasted for his tweet by both journalists and commentators.

At 7:41 PM Eastern Time yesterday, far-right activist Laura Loomer tweeted: "Joe Biden is reportedly having a medical emergency on Air Force One right now" and that "press access has been removed." However, this was quickly debunked by X/Twitter's Community Notes function, which read that Biden "did NOT have a medical emergency on Air Force One following the Wisconsin rally and was perfectly fine throughout...and exited on his own after touching down in Delaware."

In response, Lee tweeted: "If Biden is having a medical emergency at this moment — on board Air Force One or otherwise — that raises ... a lot of questions." That tweet, which was posted at 8:09 PM Eastern Time last night, is still currently up on his official account.

White House pool reporter Sophie Hills of the Christian Science Monitor shed additional light on the president's health at the time of Loomer's initial tweet, writing that he stepped off of Air Force One at 7:34 PM and left with his motorcade afterward, before stopping at his home in Wilmington, Delaware at 7:50. This means Biden was already at home roughly 20 minutes before Lee sent his tweet.

Former Trump administration official Monica Crowley also tweeted Loomer's lie, only to backtrack and later tweet that there were "conflicting reports about Biden on AF1 but appears to be untrue."

Lee's amplification of Loomer's fictitious "medical emergency" resulted in harsh pushback on social media. Civil rights lawyer Leslie Proll called the Utah Republican's tweet "unconscionable." Biden campaign advisor James Singer accused him of "s—posting lies." And Joe Perticone – a contributor to never-Trump conservative website the Bulwark, noted the absurdity of a sitting U.S. senator relying on disinformation artists for news.

"The most concerning thing about a US senator’s judgment and intelligence is that he believes he’d first be hearing something as important as this from… Monica Crowley and Laura Loomer," Perticone wrote.

Former WGN reporter Jennifer Schulze also sharply criticized Lee and urged news outlets to "take a moment to cover this story about a sitting US Senator spreading malicious lies about the President."

"I know it's business as usual for republicans but it's still newsworthy," she tweeted.

Journalist Jamie Dupree noted the time difference between Lee's tweet and the time in the pool report when Biden was picked up by the presidential motorcade and driven home.

"Sen. Mike Lee R-UT tweeting out baseless medical rumors about Biden tonight. In fact, Biden was already back home (lid at 7:56 pm) by the time Lee was pressing the send button," Dupree posted.

Former President Donald Trump is now aiming to use the Supreme Court's recent immunity decision to justify tossing his classified documents case in the Southern District of Florida. But at least one legal expert isn't sure his gambit will succeed.

According to the 6-3 decision in Trump v. United States, a president is afforded absolute broad immunity from criminal prosecution, so long as any possible violation of laws is done as an "official act." Trump's attorneys may now attempt to have the Mar-a-Lago case thrown out by claiming that the former president's decision to store classified documents at his Florida home was done before he left his office as an official act. And given the fact that U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon — who is presiding over the case — was appointed to the federal bench by Trump, some in the legal world told NBC News that she may side with him and grant the presumption of immunity.

"The outcome will depend on whether Judge Cannon characterizes Trump’s decision at the end of his Presidency to transport the documents to Mar-a-Lago as an official act of designating the documents as personal, and whether she views that act as an essential premise on which the criminal charges depend," Pepperdine University law professor Joel Johnson told NBC.

But one Florida-based prosecutor isn't so sure that Trump will be able to convince even his own appointed judge. Palm Beach County State Attorney Dave Aronberg told the network that Cannon's colleagues in the federal judiciary likely won't see eye to eye with her interpretation and application of the immunity ruling should she take the former president's side.

"If Judge Cannon wishes to adopt his reasoning, I expect she will be reversed by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals," he said.

Cannon has already been overruled by the 11th Circuit in past decisions pertaining to the Mar-a-Lago case. When she appointed a special master to review the FBI's seizure of documents following its 2022 raid on the former president's home, the 11th Circuit vacated that ruling, saying she "improperly exercised equitable jurisdiction."

"The law is clear. We cannot write a rule that allows any subject of a search warrant to block government investigations after the execution of the warrant," an 11th Circuit panel wrote at the time. "Nor can we write a rule that allows only former presidents to do so."

Regardless of how Cannon applies the immunity ruling to the classified documents case, Loyola Marymount University law professor Justin Leavitt argued that the Supreme Court's recent decision will mean even more delays before the actual trial.

"I have no doubt that there will be another set of motions filed and that Judge Cannon will need ample time to work through those motions," Leavitt told NBC. "The primary impact of today’s decision on the classified documents cases is just to reconfirm that it’s extremely unlikely to be heard before November."

Click here to read NBC's report in full.