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New video shows Trump may have violated federal law at crypto event: attorney
A criminal law attorney warned late Friday that a new video appears to show President Donald Trump ran afoul of federal laws when he took the stage at a private dinner event for investors of his meme coin.
Trump hosted more than 200 top investors in his personal $TRUMP meme coin on Thursday night at an exclusive, high-profile dinner at his private golf club in Sterling, Virginia. The event rewarded the largest investors in his cryptocurrency venture, something that even ardent MAGA fans have raised concerns over.
A video surfaced late Friday, purportedly showing the president addressing attendees.
EXCLUSIVE: Trump accused of new grift that puts Qatari plane in shade
"The country is doing really well. We have no inflation. Costs are way down. Oil was just at $1.99, $1.98 a gallon, which we haven’t seen in years," he told guests in the video.
Tracey Beryl Gallagher, a public defender in California and former judge pro team, took to X to flag a small — yet important — detail in the video
"He is talking behind a podium bearing the Presidential Seal," she noted. "The Presidential Seal is governed by strict regulations under federal law, primarily 18 U.S.C. § 713 and Executive Order 11649."
Those rules, she said, limit its use to "official government purposes to preserve its symbolic integrity."
"Using the seal at a personal, for-profit event like a money-making speaking engagement or private fundraiser would likely violate these regulations, as it could imply official government endorsement of a private activity," she wrote. "The law prohibits using the seal in a manner that suggests government approval or affiliation for non-official events."
Gallagher pointed to cases including United States v. Sindel from 1995, where misuse of government insignia led to penalties. While some exceptions are allowed for certain ceremonial or educational uses, such as replicas at presidential libraries, "personal financial gain doesn’t qualify," she noted.
Jon Stewart fears Trump will ‘burn our country down for insurance money’
Comedian Jon Stewart had a grim outlook for what the endgame of President Donald Trump's second administration could be, in an interview on the Bill Simmons Podcast flagged by The Daily Beast on Friday evening.
The part that alarms Stewart most, in particular, is all the money that media outlets and tech companies are showering on the Trump family in the effort to curry favor.
"What you’re seeing now is, ‘All must pay tribute to the king.’ And the price of peace is different,” said Stewart. “ABC had to pay $15 million, Bezos had to pay $40 million for a documentary on Melania. Zuckerberg had to pay. They just put money into the pot."
He called it "protection money.”
“Ultimately at the end of this, does Trump burn our f------ country down for insurance money?" Stewart added. "Like, where are we headed?”
EXCLUSIVE: Trump accused of new grift that puts Qatari plane in shade
Media companies and tech are far from alone in coughing up money. Trump also struck a series of agreements with law firms to contribute millions of dollars in pro bono work and change their hiring and representation policies, to avoid getting slapped with executive orders locking them out of government contracts and even access to federal buildings. Judges have recently ruled several of those orders unconstitutional.
Stewart went on to discuss the internal turmoil at CBS News over whether to settle Trump's suit with them, widely considered frivolous by legal experts, and the parade of executives and editors who have left the network in protest of the intent to do so.
“The reason they all left is part of the deal is they have to apologize,” said Stewart. “And in that moment, these people who have built careers on their excellence and their integrity had to look and go like, ‘Alright, well I hope I’ve done well enough that I can weather this, but there’s no f------ way that I’m going to apologize for doing my job the way it’s supposed to be done, just because this one guy is offended by it.’”
‘He is not in charge’: Trump mocked for asking what’s in his executive orders
President Donald Trump has signed more than 150 executive orders, often with cameras rolling and staff looking on. The ritual rarely varies: seated at the desk in the Oval Office, the President listens as someone—typically the White House Staff Secretary—reads a brief summary of the order. On occasion, Trump interjects with a question, prompting speculation that he may not be fully familiar with the contents. He is seldom seen fully reading the orders themselves, which can span anywhere from a few pages to nearly 70.
On Friday, President Trump signed several executive orders, but according to The Daily Beast, one particularly revealing moment suggested he may not have known what he was signing—describing it as “a telling moment” that implied the president hadn’t read the order.
EXCLUSIVE: Trump accused of new grift that puts Qatari plane in shade
“Are we doing something about the regulatory in here?” Trump asked a business person attending the event.
“Several business leaders standing around him were quick to chime in that his order did address the regulations while Interior Secretary Doug Burgum also responded, ‘You are, sir,'” The Daily Beast also reported.
At the end, Trump asked, “Is that it?” and one of the attendees replied, “That’s all we have for you now, sir.”
Then, rather than asking if there were any questions for him about the executive orders, Trump asked if anyone had any questions for the guests in the room, whom he called “brilliant.”
Critics blasted the President.
Fred Wellman is a graduate of West Point and the Harvard Kennedy School, an Army veteran of 22 years who served four combat tours, and a political consultant.
“He is not in charge,” Wellman alleged.
MSNBC columnist Michael A. Cohen snarked, “It’s almost as if Trump has cognitive deficiencies, which from what I hear on CNN is a major scandal.”
“’Is that it?’ while signing orders he doesn’t understand, parroting talking points he didn’t write, and pretending it’s leadership,” wrote investment banker Evaristus Odinikaeze. “Peak performative confusion.”
Watch the videos above or at this link.
Ex-prosecutor loves judge’s smackdown of Trump: ‘Let’s peopel connect the dots’
A federal judge accused the president of enacting an executive order he declared an "unconstitutional abuse of Donald Trump's power." One of the lawyers targeted in the order is celebrating the ruling, saying he "loves" the judge's smackdown.
Speaking to MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace on Friday as the news broke, former partner Andrew Weissmann smiled as he spoke about the judge's decision to stop the Trump order targeting the law firm Jenner & Block. Weissmann worked for the firm until 2011. More recently, Weissmann worked as one of the prosecutors on special counsel Robert Mueller's team investigating Trump and Russian meddling in the 2016 campaign.
ALSO READ: Defiance of the rule of law from a power-drunk and demented president gone rogue
"What I love about this breaking news is that it allows people to connect the dots," Weissmann said. "Retaliatory actions that's alleged with respect to what the administration has done with respect to Harvard preliminarily enjoined" due to the First Amendment. "The same day, you have a federal judge in D.C. — a very well-respected judge permanently enjoining again, and what is the main ground? First Amendment violation."
Weissmann predicted, "You're going to see this over and over again."
He argued, "It's really important for people to see this not as isolated, but this is remarkable. The United States government repeatedly being found to have violated the First Amendment in really significant ways in attacking ... a series of major law firms and Harvard University."
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Judge smacks down Trump in retribution case
U.S. District Judge John D. Bates, a Republican appointee, permanently blocked President Donald Trump’s executive order targeting the law firm Jenner & Block, finding the retribution unconstitutional.
The order, issued Friday afternoon, alleged that Trump was trying “to chill legal representation the administration doesn’t like, thereby insulating the Executive Branch from the judicial check fundamental to the separation of powers."
Trump targeted the law firm, citing lawyer Andrew Weissmann, a top prosecutor who worked on special counsel Robert Mueller's team that investigated Trump and his connections to Russia in the 2016 election. Weissmann hadn't worked for the firm since 2011 and has been teaching at New York University Law School.
EXCLUSIVE: Trump accused of new grift that puts Qatari plane in shade
The executive order attempted to kill any government contracts with the firm and block any of the firm's lawyers from accessing federal buildings like courthouses.
Jenner & Block isn't the only firm Trump targeted. He's gone after several, and nine of them struck a deal with him to give nearly $1 billion in free legal services to allied Trump causes.
This is the second time a court has struck down Trump's target of a law firm. The others involved include Perkins Coie, WilmerHale and Susman Godfrey, all of which filed suits in federal court. Judges in all four cases have issued temporary blocks to enforce the executive orders.
‘Who’s going to milk the cows?’ Dairy farmers hit by Trump’s deportations
Dairy farmers who voted for President Donald Trump are worried there will be no one around to milk the cows now that the administration is cracking down on "otherwise law-abiding immigrants in the country illegally," The Boston Globe reported.
Farmers in Vermont told the Globe they voted for Trump because they liked his tough talk on quelling immigration and closing the border. Things are different now that ICE is coming for their workers.
“All the dairy farmers who voted for Trump were under the impression they weren’t going to come on farms and take our guys,” one farmer said. “It’s happening more than we’d like. It’s scaring the farming community and we’re like, ‘This wasn’t supposed to happen.’”
According to the report, "Farm owners and workers alike in this agricultural region near the Canadian border have been on edge in the month since U.S. Border Patrol officers detained eight Mexican men on Vermont’s largest dairy operation, Pleasant Valley Farms."
EXCLUSIVE: Trump accused of new grift that puts Qatari plane in shade
The report said that four of the men taken into custody have since been deported.
"Federal immigration authorities say they are not targeting Vermont’s $3.6 billion dairy industry, which is responsible for 63 percent of the milk produced in New England," the report said. "But the recent arrests are prompting some in the sector to wonder how it would survive without its undocumented labor force."
The report quoted Vermont's Secretary of Agriculture as saying, "I think our farmers are concerned about the well-being of their workers. That’s foremost. They’re also concerned if (the workforce) was to go away, who’s going to do the work? Who’s going to milk the cows?”
Read The Boston Globe article here.
