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CNN election breach bombshell connects dots for federal indictment: legal expert
CNN’s bombshell report on the Georgia election interference probe reveals the “connective tissue” of the federal indictment against Donald Trump, a legal expert said Sunday.
Former federal prosecutor Lisa Rubin said during an appearance on MSNBC with host Alex Witt that the report connects the dots between what’s described in special counsel Jack Smith’s Jan. 6 election conspiracy case against the former president with evidence of what happened on the ground.
According to the report, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is in possession of electronic messages linking Trump’s legal team to a Coffee County voting system breach in early January 2021, sources told the cable news outlet.
“I think that Alex what we're going to see is sort of the connective tissue that might be missing from the federal indictment, which is to say there was an effort being made at the top, we see that in the federal indictment, right? A number of people associated with Trump, in particular his legal advisors, trying to execute a number of different overlapping conspiracies to turn the election for him,” Rubin said.
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“What we're probably going to see, if we can confirm this, is some of those same people, attorneys who are Trump's unindicted co-conspirators, then working with people on the ground in Georgia to try and make those things come to fruition, whether it's by penetrating voting machines, or perpetrating the fake electoral scheme.”
Rubin added: “Those unindicted co-conspirators, those attorneys and others working at their direction trying to make this happen for Trump in particular, in Georgia, because it was the one place left as we approached January 6, that they still thought they had maybe the tiniest shot of making something happen.”
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Ex-Republican lawmaker in Tennessee sentenced to more than a year in prison
Former Tennessee Republican state Senator Brian Kelsey was sentenced on Friday to one year and nine months in prison in connection with a campaign finance law violation and conspiring to defraud the Federal Election Commission (FEC) in a scheme to bolster his 2016 U.S. Congressional campaign, the Justice Department said in a news release.
Prosecutors allege that Kelsey, 45, of Alexandria, Virginia, was behind a secret effort to illegally funnel money from multiple sources, including his own Tennessee state Senate campaign committee, to his congressional campaign.
Kelsey conspired with others and controlled a Tennessee political action committee affiliated with a members-only club of which he was a member, the announcement says.
The DOJ alleges that Kelsey was involved in a conspiracy that prompted a national political organization to make illegal and excessive contributions to Kelsey’s federal campaign committee by secretly coordinating with the organization on advertisements supporting Kelsey’s federal candidacy, which caused false reports of contributions and expenditures to be filed with the FEC.
The Germantown, Tennessee Republican called the case against him a “witch hunt” before pleading guilty to two felonies last year, The Tennessean reports.
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“The defendants attempted to hide from voters how Kelsey raised and spent campaign money,” Acting Assistant Attorney General Nicole M. Argentieri of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division said in a statement.
“The integrity of our elections is essential to democracy, and voters should know how candidates raise and spend campaign dollars. The Department will continue to work alongside our law enforcement partners to uncover and prosecute campaign finance schemes designed to evade disclosure, and to ensure that violations of these laws carry a high cost.”
Alabama’s Tommy Tuberville may be a Florida resident: columnist
United States Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-Alabama) and his ongoing blockade of military appointments over his opposition to abortion coverage in the Pentagon's healthcare benefits is no longer the only scandal shadowing the freshman lawmaker. On Thursday, Washington Post opinion columnist Glenn Kessler assessed that Tuberville may be a resident of Florida instead of Alabama, based on property files and information on financial disclosure forms.
Last month, Kessler found, "Tuberville sold, for nearly $1.1 million, the last properties that he owned in Alabama, according to real estate records. The properties, known as Tiger Farms LLC, are in Macon and Tallapoosa counties, on the outskirts of Auburn. That same month, he also sold one Florida condo for $850,000 and bought another for $825,000."
Although "Tuberville's office says his primary residence is an Auburn house that records show is owned by his wife and son," Kessler continued, "campaign finance reports and his signature on property documents indicate that his home is actually a $3 million, 4,000-square-foot beach house he has lived in for nearly two decades in Santa Rosa Beach, Fla., located in the Florida Panhandle about 90 miles south of Dothan."
Kessler noted that in Alabama, US Senate candidates need only live in the Yellowhammer State "for one day," compared to "seven years to run for governor," which in 2017 precluded Tuberville from seeking that office because he was technically a resident of Florida.
"In 2018, he voted in Florida in the midterm elections, according to the Birmingham News, but he registered to vote in Alabama on March 28, 2019, a week before announcing his Senate bid," Kessler wrote "For his voter registration address, he listed as his residence a property, appraised at about $300,000, located in Auburn."
But "property records show it is owned by Tuberville's son, who has the same first name but a different middle name, along with the senator's wife," Kessler explained. "The home was purchased in 2017, when the son, generally known as Tucker, was in the process of obtaining an Alabama real estate license. The son now works in New York, according to his LinkedIn page."
While acknowledging during the 2020 Senate race that he was "not an everyday resident of Alabama," Tuberville labeled himself a "carpetbagger of this country," Kessler recalled. But "Tuberville's frequent visits as senator to his home in Santa Rosa Beach can be gleaned through expenditure reports filed with the Federal Election Commission by Tuberville's various campaign organizations and PACs. They show that since Tuberville became a senator, there have been almost monthly expenditures for travel and food in either Santa Rosa Beach or another Florida town, Panama City Beach, which is 50 miles away."
Kessler pointed out that Tuberville "also owns a condominium in Washington that he and his wife purchased for $750,000 in 2021, with a $674,250 mortgage, according to real estate documents."
Tuberville's communications director Steven Stafford clarified to Kessler that "many senators have vacation homes" and that Tuberville goes to Santa Rosa Beach "upon occasion" when he has time. But Kessler's research suggests that Stafford's response "does not match up with documentary record."
Tuberville, Kessler learned, "never owned the house. Tucker Tuberville graduated in May 2016, according to his LinkedIn page, meaning the house in question was purchased — by Tucker Tuberville and his mother — nine months after Tucker graduated from college. Tucker then worked for his father as an assistant football coach at the University of Cincinnati from May to December that year. Tuberville's other son, Troy, did not start at Auburn until 2018 and graduated in 2021; he registered to vote using the same address as his father — this Auburn property."
Kessler closed with a statement that Tuberville gave to ESPN in 2017.
"Six months ago, after 40 years of coaching football, I hung up my whistle and moved to Santa Rosa Beach, Florida, with the white sands and blue water," Tuberville boasted. "What a great place to live."
