How Washington Post’s Shady New CEO Keeps Breaking Journalism Ethics

One of the primordial rules of running a newsroom sounds simple: Don’t mix editorial with business. And yet that’s exactly what The Washington Post’s publisher and CEO, Will Lewis, has done since taking the reins of the prestigious D.C. publication in January—over and over and over.

NPR’s David Folkenflik reported Thursday that the British tabloid journalist had offered him an unsavory exchange: an exclusive on the Post’s health if he promised to squash a story about Lewis’s involvement in a phone-hacking lawsuit filed by attorneys for Prince Harry, Guy Ritchie, and Hugh Grant. The suit named Lewis at the center of a cover-up at Rupert Murdoch’s News UK—accusing Lewis of “giving a green light” to erase millions of emails pertaining to the phone-hacking accusations, even after authorities had instructed the company to retain all of its records.

“In several conversations, Lewis repeatedly—and heatedly—offered to give me an exclusive interview about the Post’s future, as long as I dropped the story about the allegations,” Folkenflik reported. “At that time, the same spokesperson, who works directly for Lewis from the U.K. and has advised him since his days at the Wall Street Journal—confirmed to me that an explicit offer was on the table: drop the story, get the interview.”

That’s on top of another scandal that seemingly fueled the unceremonious departure of the Post’s editor in chief Sally Buzbee on Sunday. Buzbee reportedly refused to cave to Lewis’s demands, in conversations about the paper’s own coverage of his legal battles in March and May, though the discussions left her “rattled.”

“When Ms. Buzbee said The Post would publish an article anyway, he said her decision represented a lapse in judgment and abruptly ended the conversation,” reported The New York Times.

Judge Aileen Cannon, who is presiding over Donald Trump’s classified documents case, may be in over her head due to a serious lack of experience, according to a new report from CNN.

The news outlet spoke to 10 attorneys who had cases before Cannon in the Southern District of Florida—and they painted a picture of a judge with limited trial experience, who’s prone to getting bogged down by irrelevant legal questions and struggles to manage her docket of cases efficiently.

Before Trump appointed her to the federal bench in 2020, Cannon was an attorney in the Justice Department for seven years and only took part in four criminal trials. In her four years as a judge, she hasn’t presided over many criminal cases either—and attorneys said it shows.

“She just seems overwhelmed by the process,” one lawyer told CNN. Other lawyers said that she lets small, marginal issues overwhelm the major details of cases. She also has rejected joint motions, agreed upon by both parties in a case with no dispute.

“You can’t assume that just because there’s agreement between the parties that she will go along,” one lawyer said, describing her as “incredibly hands on.”

“She wants to be the decision-maker of everything,” the lawyer said.

Defense attorneys that spoke to CNN described her as tough on defendants and notoriously strict on sentencing. But in Trump’s classified documents case, she has given him a long leash, which has not gone unnoticed.

“She’s certainly not sympathetic to most defendants, and she’s certainly playing a different game with the current defendant before her,” one lawyer told CNN regarding Trump.

Whether Cannon’s odd handling of Trump’s case is due to inexperience or a deliberate attempt to help Trump, he seems to be happy with her.

After a weekend full of crisis-actor-level tears from right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, he has officially moved to liquidate all of his assets in order to pay the $1.5 billion he owes to the families of children murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary.

The “hoax”-pushing supplement hawker, who was found guilty of defamation in 2022, filed for bankruptcy under Chapter 11 that same year, allowing him to maintain operations of his businesses and rely on reorganization to come up with the funds. But it wasn’t enough, with the families warning in 2023 that Jones’s plan fell “woefully short.”

In a filing on Thursday, Jones’s lawyers wrote that there was “no reasonable prospect for a successful reorganization” and that filing for liquidation under Chapter 7 was the massacre denier’s only option. This latest decision lays the groundwork for Alex Jones to lose his stake in InfoWars, the pulpit from which the podcaster has continued to spew misinformation.

Earlier this week, a judge prolonged Jones’s slow financial death and allowed him to continue running his media company Free Speech Systems until June 14. This newest move signals that Jones’s ownership will more than likely be sold, according to Avi Moshenberg, an attorney for the families, who spoke to CNN on Thursday. Free Speech Systems had nearly $4 million in cash on hand at the end of April.

The decision came after Jones posted several videos of himself in hysterics, in which he wailed over the prospect of selling his media company. “All we’re trying to do is save America, and they’re fucking us over, over and over again,” he sobbed in an “emergency broadcast” on Saturday. “And it’s just so sick—it’s sick, it’s sick. I want to leave—because it’s going to be over, folks.”

On Thursday, a lawyer for the families, Chris Mattei, said that Jones’s decision to liquidate his assets “will hasten the end of these bankruptcies and facilitate the liquidation of Jones’s assets, which is the same reason we have moved to convert his company’s case to Chapter 7.”

Mattei had accused Jones in court Monday of “manufacturing a crisis.”

Last month, Jones was granted permission to sell his ranch, which is valued at $2.8 million, one large chunk of his approximate total $9 million in assets.

A unique detail of Jones’s case is that he can’t skirt payments by declaring bankruptcy. The judge who presided over Jones’s bankruptcy filing last year made his debt “non-dischargeable” through bankruptcy, meaning he has to continue paying the families until he has fully settled the $1.5 billion debt.

As a result, Jones will likely be “basically broke now for the rest of his life,” Harry Litman, a former U.S. attorney, told MSNBC at the time.

During an appearance Thursday on a web show hosted by Phil McGraw, also known as Dr. Phil, Donald Trump spoke of his recent conviction on 34 felony counts in his hush-money trial—and his appetite for revenge against his political rivals.

Dr. Phil McGraw—once an acclaimed talk show staple—now hosts a web show sympathetically interviewing far-right trolls and peddling extremist conspiracies, going the way of innumerable has-beens. McGraw griped that the country is in such shambles that Trump regaining office would be too busy to “have time to get even.”

“Well, revenge does take time,” Trump replied. “And sometimes revenge can be justified, Phil. I have to be honest. Sometimes it can.”

Trump has repeatedly spoken about his revenge fantasies after being convicted, at least three times alone this week. On Newsmax Tuesday, he suggested he may pursue charges against Biden in retaliation for his hush-money trial—an investigation that he blames on Biden but which began in 2018—more than a year before Biden announced his 2020 run for president.

“It’s a terrible, terrible path that they’re leading us to,” Trump said on Newsmax, framing his felony conviction by a New York jury as a dangerous precedent instead of a rare instance of the criminal justice system asserting that no one is above the law. “And it’s very possible that it’s going to have to happen to them,” Trump added.

“Does that mean the next president does it to them? That’s really the question,” Trump continued.

On Wednesday, he repeated his promise for retribution, telling Fox’s Sean Hannity that he has the “right” to send the Department of Justice against his political enemies.

Aspiring to imprison political enemies is nothing new for Trump. He infamously led calls to “lock her up” while running against Hillary Clinton—a phrase Trump now claims he never said.

Two police officers who were injured by rioters during the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol were met with an appalling cacophony of boos and hisses from several Republicans during a visit to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives. Some lawmakers even stormed out of the hall.

Former U.S. Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn and former Sergeant Aquilino Gonell had been touring through Pennsylvania as part of President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign, but according to The Washington Post, several so-called conservative state lawmakers just couldn’t handle their presence Wednesday and threw a complete tantrum.

Dunn, who was pepper-sprayed and injured in hand-to-hand combat during the insurrection, said it was “sad though unsurprising that [Donald] Trump’s allies in the Pennsylvania state House followed his lead in mocking the January 6 attack.”

“The fact they’re scared to listen to those of us who were there and witnessed the political violence of January 6 firsthand speaks volumes,” he said Thursday in a statement.

Gonnell, who was battered during the riot three years ago, wrote in a post on X that Pennsylvania House Republicans had “abandoned the truth” and “sided with those who attacked us.”

Pennsylvania Democrats rallied to the former officers’ defense. Representative Arvind Venkat told the Post that he was “shocked and appalled” to see eight to 10 of his Republican colleagues walk out as the two were announced. Representative Mike Schlossberg said that a majority of Republicans did not stand and applaud the two men, who were introduced as “heroes” by House Speaker Joanna McClinton.

McClinton released a statement about the incident, saying, “The GOP members’ shameful behavior was unbecoming of our institution for any guest, let alone two of the men responsible for defending our democracy during a dark day in our nation’s history.”

Representative Jordan A. Harris, also a Democrat, criticized the Republican response to honoring members of law enforcement. “We talk about backing the blue, but people turned their backs on blue yesterday,” said Harris.

But Pennsylvania House Republican Leader Bryan Cutler hit back at the criticism from Democrats, accusing them of “antagonizing members and inviting division and discord for their political and campaign purposes.” He insisted that he had stayed on the floor.

The shocking incident is a sign of how divisive the January 6 insurrection is, with many Republicans continuing to insist that rioters had not been in the wrong and that the 2020 election was rigged.

Joe Biden’s continued support of Israel’s brutal war on Gaza has crossed a line for the NAACP.

The civil rights organization on Thursday released a statement urging the Biden administration to end weapons shipments to Israel and calling for “an immediate and permanent ceasefire.”

“As the nation’s leading civil rights organization, it is our responsibility to speak out in the face of injustice and work to hold our elected officials accountable for the promises they’ve made,” said NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson. “Over the past months, we have been forced to bear witness to unspeakable violence, affecting innocent civilians, which is unacceptable.”

The statement cites Israel’s offensive in Rafah, where displaced Palestinians from across Gaza have been forced to flee, noting that over Memorial Day weekend, the Israeli military killed 45 Palestinians (with U.S.-made weapons) and injured over 200 people, many of whom were young children. Johnson also said in the statement America’s efforts were key to ending the conflict.

“The Middle East conflict will only be resolved when the U.S. government and international community take action, including limiting access to weapons used against civilians,” Johnson said. “The NAACP calls on President Biden to draw the red line and indefinitely end the shipment of weapons and artillery to the state of Israel and other states that supply weapons to Hamas and other terrorist organizations.”

“It is one thing to call for a ceasefire, it is another to take the measures necessary to work towards liberation for all.”

The statement is unexpected, especially since the organization has historically been on good terms with Democrats. Last month, Biden spoke at the Detroit NAACP’s sixty-ninth annual Fight for Freedom Fund Dinner, where he received a lifetime achievement award.

“My name’s Joe Biden, and I’m a lifetime member of the NAACP. Matter of fact, the first organization I ever joined was the NAACP,” Biden said at the event.

Will this statement sway Biden’s support for Israel’s war, though? The Biden administration has shown no sign of changing its policies, even though, as the war’s eighth month begins, Israel has killed nearly 37,000 Palestinians, including at least 15,000 children, with thousands more civilians missing.

The right thing to do now, as it has been for a long time, is what the NAACP, as well as the The New Republic’s, editors recommend: End weapons shipments to Israel.  

House Democratic candidate Mondaire Jones has united pretty much everyone against him after his petty endorsement of Westchester County executive George Latimer over progressive Representative Jamaal Bowman. Latimer is largely considered to be running a Republican-backed campaign solely to oust Bowman, and Jones’s endorsement of his campaign has rankled several progressive groups.

On Thursday, Jews for Jamaal—a coalition of Jewish constituents in NY-16 and supported by local progressive nonprofit Jews for Racial and Economic Justice— released a statement condemning Jones’s endorsement of Latimer and fiercely criticized Latimer’s prominently right-wing-backed campaign.

“As a diverse coalition of New York Jews, we reject continued use of Republican money to interfere with Democratic Party primaries with the aim of unseating a popular progressive Black Democrat,” the statement reads in part.

Also on Thursday, both New York’s Working Families Party and the Congressional Progressive Caucus PAC rescinded their endorsements of Jones. The Working Families Party, which revoked financial support for Jones’s campaign, issued a statement saying Jones’s endorsement of Latimer made clear he “strayed from the values and principles that made us proud to support him in 2020.”

“Over the course of his campaign, Mondaire has strayed from the values and principles that made us proud to support him in 2020,” NYWFP co-directors Jasmine Gripper and Ana María Archila said in a statement to Gothamist. “His decision to back George Latimer, who uses racist dog whistles, rejects core parts of [President] Biden’s economic agenda, and shares donors with Mondaire’s own MAGA extremist opponent, runs counter to our values as a party.”

Jones, a former Bowman ally, endorsed Latimer on Tuesday, citing “Jewish residents in my district who feel anxiety, fear, and anger due to Representative Bowman’s words and actions in particular and an overall climate in this country.”

Bowman—a vocal critic of Israel’s deadly war on Gaza and Biden’s continued arms shipments to the country—has decried Latimer as a “Republican sock puppet” with his campaign’s significant support from MAGA conservatives, AIPAC, and pro-Israel opportunists hungry for the incumbent progressive’s ouster. Now Jones’s endorsement of Latimer threaten his own race against aggressively pro-Israel Republican incumbent Representative Mike Lawler, who represents a Biden district that Jones could have recaptured in November.

* This piece originally misstated that Latimer’s recent campaign video was not filmed in his district.

Bill Barr is back to defending Donald Trump, this time claiming that the Republican presidential nominee is going to have his felony hush-money conviction overturned.

“When people were talking about it, I said that the case was an abomination, and I didn’t think it was going to be brought at the end of the day because it was so vaporous,” the former U.S. attorney general under Trump told Jimmy Failla of Fox News Radio Wednesday.

“But you think about, how are the American people going to react, in a very close election, if Trump loses and this case is overturned—which it will be,” Barr added. “This case will be overturned.”

Trump was convicted last week on 34 felony counts for allegedly falsifying business records with the intent to further an underlying crime in the first degree, in paying off adult film actress Stormy Daniels to cover up their affair before the 2016 election. Since the news, several Republicans have rushed to attack the trial and to make absurd defenses of the president.

Barr has already endorsed Trump in the 2024 presidential election, but it hasn’t done him many favors in the convicted felon’s eyes: Trump still insulted Barr on Truth Social upon hearing about the endorsement, calling him “gutless.”  

That’s because in the past Barr was a frequent Trump critic. Barr revealed that Trump would often remark about executing people during his time in the White House. He called the former president a “consummate narcissist” whose second term would be “chaos” and a “horror show.” One year ago, he said, “Should we be putting someone like this forward as the leader of the country, leader of the free world?”

But Barr’s political views, specifically his belief in Christian hegemony being essential to American democracy, inform his support of conservatism, of which Trump is the standard-bearer in today’s Republican Party. As Michael Tomasky wrote for The New Republic, “Barr hates disorder and all the rest of it. But he hates something else more: liberalism.”

Conservatives launched into melodramatic meltdown mode after a judge sentenced Steve Bannon to four months in prison for defying a congressional subpoena from the January 6 committee.

Representative Matt Gaetz wrote, presumably as he collapsed in slow motion onto a fainting couch, “It is with great sadness and anger that we observe the death of the judicial system in America.”

“And they’re sending him to prison—not just to torture him but to torture us,” Gaetz added, presumably under the impression the American public will be in shambles without Bannon spewing white nationalist hate while wearing 17 layers of shirts.

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene was similarly superficially apoplectic, decrying the January 6 committee as “FAKE” and announcing, “The DOJ is completely corrupt!!”

Droning British giant—and former deputy assistant to Trump—Seb Gorka groaned to a camera while on a leisurely drive that Bannon was sentenced to prison as part of a “conspiracy to disrupt Trump’s campaign.”

“The deep state is not the deep state anymore,” Gorka announced at the news of Bannon facing the normal consequences of defying a congressional subpoena. “It’s the in-your-face, we don’t care, we run America, and who you choose for president is utterly irrelevant,” he added before pivoting to boilerplate conservative sound bites and pitching his web streaming show.

Bannon was found guilty on two counts of contempt of Congress in 2022 but delayed sentencing by appealing the decision. That appeal was rejected, and he was sentenced Thursday to report to prison on July 1. Bannon can still appeal the ruling to report to prison.

The judicial system, which Gaetz declared is dead, typically sentences people held in contempt of court to prison time: Per the U.S. Penal Code, penalties for contempt of Congress include a jail term of a minimum of one month and a maximum 12 months per violation. Whistleblower Chelsea Manning served a two-month sentence for refusing to testify in a federal case investigating military secrets she handed to WikiLeaks in 2010. The judicial system, it seems, has continued operating as it always has when people refuse to testify. But if the meltdown helps the grift, might as well treat the codified consequences of refusing to testify as a sign of democracy collapsing.

Representative Nancy Mace’s congressional spending is still the talk of the town. On this week’s agenda: her $1.6 million D.C. townhouse.

The South Carolina Republican was accused of “secretly fleecing taxpayers,” in an ethics complaint filed earlier this week alleging she sought higher monthly lodging reimbursements than what was actually warranted by her expenses.

“Representative Mace has violated House Ethics Rules by repeatedly seeking reimbursement for lodging in excess of the actual monthly expense of maintaining her co-owned townhouse in  Washington, D.C., resulting in a misuse of taxpayer funds for purposes unrelated to her official duties,” read a copy of the complaint obtained by Punchbowl News.

Mace’s requests violate two key rules of a congressional reimbursement program, according to the complaint: Lawmakers cannot be repaid for interest or principal on their mortgage payments, and they cannot ask to be repaid for more than their actual expenses.

The complaint came on the heels of a lengthy investigation by The Washington Post into Mace’s spending habits. Two former staffers told the Post that Mace repeatedly directed her team to file for reimbursements to the tune of $2,000 a month, despite being informed by people involved in her office finances that she could not justify claiming more than $1,726 a month. During some months of the year, she filed to be reimbursed upward of $3,000—nearly double what her team had calculated.

“This allegation alone deserves further investigation as well as interviews of former staff,” the complaint said. “If true, then this is a flagrant abuse of House Rules and a clear example of a Member secretly fleecing taxpayers.”

“Money is fungible, so the thousands of excess dollars received by [Representative] Mace could conceivably have been put towards any use,” the complaint alleged, noting that if the anecdotes offered by her former staffers were true, she would have twice violated the program’s statutes.