Raw Story

Alt-right Freedom Caucus chair Rep. Bob Good took a surprising jab at former President Donald Trump ahead of a Virginia primary that has more resting on it than his own claim to power, according to a new report.

Good — who will find out Tuesday how his staunch Trump support matches up against a political outsider who has the former president's endorsement in Virginia's 5th Congressional district — shared his views on a cease and desist letter he received from the former president over campaign signs.

“I’m not talking about stupid topics," Good told Politico Tuesday. "That’s a stupid topic.”

Good's opinion stands in contrast to Trump's, who ordered his lawyers late last month to take action against the Virginia Republican he has declared is "bad."

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At question was Good's usage of Trump's name on his campaign yard signs, despite the former president's endorsement of former Navy SEAL John McGuire.

"That is a fraud on the donors," lawyers told Good.

Good has maintained his support for Trump notwithstanding and created what one political analyst described as a civil war within Trumpworld, pitting MAGA bigwigs such as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Steve Bannon against each other.

Politico's Olivia Beavers argued the conclusion of Tuesday's primary could reverberate beyond Virginia and signal a dark future for the MAGA movement as a whole.

"If Rep. Bob Good were to lose, he would be the first sitting chair in the Freedom Caucus’ nearly decade-long history to be defeated — a loss that would embolden critics of the increasingly fractious bloc," she wrote.

"If he wins, he’ll have done it despite strong opposition from former (and possibly future) President Donald Trump and only mild backing from Republican leaders, including House Speaker Mike Johnson — signaling friction ahead."

Former President Donald Trump is dragging the whole Republican Party off a cliff with his "bone-headed" proposal to replace income taxes with tariffs on imported goods, wrote Catherine Rampell for The Washington Post.

Economists have broadly panned the idea, warning that it would amount to a massive tax increase for everyone but the ultra-rich, by making everything more expensive, and would make maintaining government revenue for essential services impossible.

But the GOP has closed ranks around the idea, with RNC spokesperson Anna Kelly saying, “The notion that tariffs are a tax on U.S. consumers is a lie pushed by outsourcers and the Chinese Communist Party.”

It's not a lie at all, said Rampell.

"Multiple careful studies found that the costs of those tariffs were either mostly or entirely passed on to Americans in the form of higher prices. A more recent analysis estimated that his new tariff proposals would cost the median U.S. household an additional $1,700 per year," wrote Rampell. "But the modern GOP being what it is, party apparatchiks must defend every bone-headed idea their presumptive presidential nominee utters. Thus, critics must be 'outsourcers' (which seems unlikely for most economists, who rarely own manufacturing plants) or, naturally, Marxists."

"The expected costs of Trump’s recent tariff proposals would be staggering," she continued. "For example, his plan for a universal 10 percent tariff coupled with a 60 percent tariff on Chinese goods would more than wipe out any savings most Americans would get from extending his 2017 income tax cuts, according to estimates from the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

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The bottom 80 percent of households would see a tax increase on net." Meanwhile, we would be losing $3 trillion in tax revenue per year, and there's no way to make that much from tariffs — $3 trillion is roughly the total value of all the goods we import annually.

The worst part of it all, wrote Rampell, is that while Trump at least had some sensible advisers last time pushing back on ideas like this, he is setting himself up now to have an army of loyalists at his disposal who will obey his every command.

"Project 2025, a Trump-aligned group, is already screening a more professionalized army of second-term loyalists, all of whom will obediently execute Trump’s orders, and dot their I’s and cross their T’s — on trade and everything else," she wrote. "Unless they’re also secret communists, of course."

Alan Dershowitz thinks a Hunter Biden acquittal would heal America as it would prove former President Donald Trump's guilty verdict to be a "laughing stock."

"The best thing that could possibly happen to Donald Trump is if Hunter Biden gets acquitted," the Harvard law professor emeritus said Monday night during an appearance on Fox News's "Hannity". "Because the evidence against Hunter Biden is so much more compelling of the legal issues which were compelling than anything against Donald Trump and it will prove beyond any doubt that this is all about where the trial was conducted and that if you're Trump and you're tried in New York, it'ss automatic guilt, and if you're Biden and you're tried in Delaware — it's a different bird."

He continued: "The best thing that could possibly happen to Donald Trump is the acquittal of the Biden base... it would also be a good thing for America.

"It would uncover and disclose the horrible double standard that our criminal justice system is going through; maybe we can get some reform. Maybe we can do something about it."

Last week, Trump became the first former American president to be convicted of felony crimes when New York jurors found him guilty of all 34 charges in a conspiracy to cover up a plot to unlawfully corrupt the 2016 election by shielding six-figure hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels, who said they had sex.

Trump has denied the two had an affair and vowed to appeal after he's sentenced July 11.

A jury was deliberating Monday in the federal gun case against Hunter Biden where he stands accused of using drugs but lying about it on a gun application back in 2018.

The 54-year-old also accomplished a first by being criminally prosecuted as the son of a sitting U.S. president.

For Dershowitz, who defended Trump when he was impeached back on 2019, the verdict has indelibly shaken his trust in the law itself.

"I've been able to 60 years of my life to try to defend and explain the legal system based on neutral principles," he said. "That legal system is gone. The trump case destroyed it.

"And if there were an acquittal in this case, at least it will expose that."

Dershowitz added that America is not a pillar in the law but being pilloried after last week's conviction.

"Right now our criminal justice system is the laughingstock of the world and i feel you're so horrible about it," he said.

Lawyers for former President Donald Trump are seeking a delay in his classified documents case, saying it needs time to find potential experts because one who was under consideration notified the defense over the weekend they could not work on the case.

In court documents obtained Monday night by Politico, the defense seeks an extension of the deadline for expert disclosures until July 8. The current deadline is June 10, as previously set by the court.

"Defense counsel have been diligently working to identify and engage potential expert witnesses, but the process is not complete," Trump's team said, noting the recent six-week hush money trial in New York City "made the timing of the expert-notice deadline challenging."

Additionally, Trump's team said it was considering a potential expert who notified them over the weekend that they could not work on this case.

"We are in discussions with other potential experts, but given the need to confirm that witnesses are conflict-free and able to complete the engagement process, we have been unable to finalize our expert engagements by today’s deadline," the court filing said.

The defense said it has been reviewing recent productions of classified and unclassified evidence from the Special Counsel's office, and it plans to disclose to prosecutors Monday night the topics of expert testimony it intends to present at trial.

The Special Counsel's Office opposed the extension, noting the defense already received two previous extensions and has had notice of the government's experts for nearly five months.

"The Government assumes that this is the only expert Trump intends to notice, because otherwise there is no reason he could not designate the other experts now," Christopher M. Kise wrote in response.

Several criminal defense organizations believe former President and convicted felon Donald Trump received cushy treatment.

Various defense attorneys and legal advocacy groups cried foul following Trump's pre-sentencing interview, in which he was permitted to have attorney Todd Blanche present and allowed to virtually answer questions, rather than the more commonplace in-person conditions.

"This is just another example of our two-tiered system of justice," read the statement issued by The Legal Aid Society, The Bronx Defenders, New York County Defender Services, and Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem, according to Business Insider.

The four New York City-based public-defender organizations said Monday: "All people convicted of crimes should be allowed counsel in their probation interview, not just billionaires."

Blanche's attendance raised Thomas Eddy's eyebrows.

"In fairness, at least when clients are detained pending sentence, it will be a procedural nightmare to permit attorneys to attend," Rochester, New York defense attorney Thomas Eddy, told Business Insider. "How much trouble do you think Trump would get into today if Blanche wasn't there to muzzle him?".

Ivette Davila-Richards, deputy press secretary for Mayor Eric Adams' office, denied to the outlet that Trump was given white glove treatment, stating: "It's common — it's not unusual, and it's been an option from even before COVID."

"No exceptions are being made because it's President Trump," Davila-Richards said.

The president was said to have answered questions for less than 30 minutes with a probation officer.

“Earlier today, President Trump completed a routine interview with [the] New York Probation Office. The interview was uneventful and lasted less than thirty minutes,” a source familiar with the proceedings told CNN, adding: “The President and his team will continue to fight the lawless Manhattan DA Witch Hunt.”

The interview is part of a fact-finding process to build a case for the recommendation of punishment for Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan to use when he's expected to sentence the former president and presumptive Republican nominee for president on July 11.

Trump was found guilty of all 34 counts of falsifying business records for scheming to hide payments to porn star Stormy Daniels who alleged a tryst with him back in 2006 inside of a Lake Tahoe, California, hotel room.

Trump denies the affair and has vowed to appeal.

The night Sen. Bob Menendez and his wife Nadine met three Egyptian men at a ritzy steakhouse in Washington, D.C., Terrie Williams-Thompson was sitting nearby, straining to hear.

The dinner companions were talking “low,” barely above a whisper, said Williams-Thompson, an undercover FBI investigator spying on them. But the conversation grew louder as the wine flowed, and before long, Williams-Thompson heard one thing clearly.

“What else can the love of my life do for you?” Nadine Menendez said.

On the 13th day of Menendez’s bribery trial in Manhattan, that proclamation was, in one way, the most damning of the day — federal prosecutor Lara Pomerantz‘s questioning of Williams-Thompson suggested it was a bald offer to foreign officials on behalf of Menendez, then one the most powerful politicians in the U.S. as ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

But Williams-Thompson told jurors she otherwise couldn’t hear what the men were talking about. And neither Williams-Thompson nor FBI special agent Chase Hunter Mills, who was secretly surveilling the gathering from a van parked on the street, knew the identities of the Menendezes’ guests during that May 21, 2019, dinner at Morton’s The Steakhouse, a posh eatery on D.C.’s famed K Street, where many lobbyists and special-interest groups are located.

So while Menendez’s meetings at Morton’s were briefly mentioned in previous testimony, it’s unclear if Tuesday’s testimony packed the punch prosecutors hoped it would.

Still, Williams-Thompson and her partner secretly recorded a video showing Menendez refilling the men’s wine glasses and the couple laughing and talking animatedly with the men, showing the dinner party was a friendly one, despite defense attorneys’ insistence otherwise.

Edgewater businessman Wael Hana, who’s Egyptian-American; Gen. Ahmed Helmy, a top Egyptian intelligence official; and Egyptian diplomat Nader Moussa were the three men at the Morton’s dinner.

Hana was one of three businessmen indicted alongside the Menendezes last September. Prosecutors say Hana secured exclusive rights to certify beef exports to Egypt by persuading the senator — through bribes of cash and gold bars given to Nadine — to release millions in military aid and arms to Egypt and share sensitive staffing details about the U.S. embassy in Cairo.

On cross-examination, defense attorneys said no one at the dinner party showed any concern they’d be seen or overheard, suggesting nothing nefarious was underway.

Attorney Adam Fee told jurors the senator ate at Morton’s “about 250 times” a year, indicating it was a routine outing for him. He also sought to deflate the “love of my life” comment by showing jurors there was an eight-day delay between the dinner and an official FBI report on the surveillance mission, where the comment was first documented.

A fortune in the bank

Jurors also heard Tuesday from FBI special agent Anna Frenzilli, who led a search of Nadine Menendez’s safe deposit box at an Englewood bank.

A locksmith pried the 10-by-10 box open at the FBI’s command, and inside, agents found 10 envelopes packed with $79,760 in cash, several passports, and piles of jewelry, Frenzilli testified. Agents seized the cash and other contents and sent it to the FBI’s headquarters in Quantico, Virginia, for forensic testing, she added.

Defense attorneys tried to distance the senator from the box, trotting out what has become their favorite strategy in the trial’s three weeks so far — blaming his wife.

Defense attorney Avi Weitzman, through questioning, pointed out that Nadine and her father, Garbis Tabourian, first leased the box in May 2016 — two years before she began dating Menendez. Frenzilli conceded that the bank had no record of the senator accessing the box. And several envelopes bore Nadine’s name, while much of the trinkets appeared to be women’s jewelry.

“Do you see the name Bob on any envelope?” Weitzman asked Frenzilli. “Do you see the name Menendez on any envelope?”

Next up was Charity Davis, a forensic data examiner who works at Quantico. She testified for over two hours in questioning that was so dry that at least five jurors and several spectators nodded off, while others fidgeted or doodled in notebooks.

Ultimately, prosecutor Catherine Ghosh showed through questioning that Davis and her evidence technicians found that two envelopes bore the DNA of Edgewater real estate developer Fred Daibes, a co-defendant who’s accused of bribing the Menendezes with cash and gold bars to help him land the investment of a member of Qatar’s royal family.

Disputes and delays

The day started and ended with arguments between the attorneys about exhibits and late filings.

Prosecutors last week warned Judge Sidney H. Stein that the trial was running behind schedule; Stein initially told jurors he expected it would not go beyond the first week of July.

But plenty of things have slowed it down since then. Jurors have arrived late, got stuck in the elevator, and temporarily relocated to a farther jury assembly room after a sink left running over the weekend flooded theirs. Bickering between the attorneys has prompted daily interruptions for the judge to call private “sidebar” huddles to settle conflicts at the bench, while mini hearings often bookend each day for Stein to decide disputes outside jurors’ earshot.

Tuesday started with prosecutors complaining to Stein about defense attorneys’ lengthy cross-examinations and tendency to ignore Stein’s three-day advance deadline for new court filings by either side.

It ended with a small victory for prosecutors when Stein agreed they could introduce evidence showing that the Menendezes traded thousands of emails, including on the day Nadine Menendez was at a car dealership picking up a new $60,000 Mercedes Benz convertible, which prosecutors say co-defendant Jose Uribe gave her as a bribe. Uribe, who pleaded guilty in March, is expected to testify against the couple.

“I’m still here,” she texted the senator from the dealership.

That exchange, along with the couple’s frequent emails and texts, belie defense attorneys’ contention that the couple largely led separate lives and that the senator wasn’t aware of the valuables his wife took or her related activities.

“This shows how they were in constant contact on rather quotidian issues,” Stein said in allowing prosecutors to introduce such messages.

The jury, though, will not hear that the reason Nadine Menendez needed a new car was because she wrecked hers by fatally hitting a pedestrian in Bogota. The judge agreed that was prejudicial and ordered attorneys to avoid detailing the crash or showing photos of her damaged car.

The trial is scheduled to resume at 9:30 a.m. Wednesday, with testimony from another FBI agent.

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