Justice Department Sends Message to Trump After Supreme Court Ruling

Despite the Supreme Court giving Donald Trump near-absolute immunity and the rest of his trials certain to continue after Election Day, the Department of Justice doesn’t plan to back down in its cases against the former president and convicted felon.

A new report from The Washington Post, citing sources close to the department, said that prosecutors plan to pursue cases with a deadline of Inauguration Day in January, in keeping with the Supreme Court’s ruling that a sitting president can’t be prosecuted.

“The Justice Department isn’t governed by the election calendar. Its prosecution of Trump is based on the law, the facts and the Justice Manual—the department’s bible that lays out the post-Watergate norms that have prevented it from being weaponized,” Anthony Coley, a spokesperson for Attorney General Merrick Garland until last year, told the Post.

“Until those norms change, or they’re ordered otherwise, I’d expect this Justice Department to be full speed ahead. And they should be,” Coley added.

The Supreme Court’s ruling also placed restrictions on what kind of evidence could be collected from a presidential administration, dealing heavy blows to the federal election interference case against Trump. That change alone will add more delays to the D.C. trial, which was already pushed back thanks to the Supreme Court case on presidential immunity. If Trump wins reelection, his lawyers will very likely ask federal judges to drop the case.

Trump’s other federal case involves his alleged mishandling of classified documents in Florida, where he has a friendly judge who has bogged down the case with a myriad of seemingly irrelevant hearings. Even the one guilty verdict against Trump, his hush-money case in New York, has had its sentencing hearing postponed, with the judge giving an ominous warning about the case’s fate. Trump’s election interference case in Georgia is still in limbo too.

While the DOJ’s reported intentions suggest that it will press for consequences for Trump, the fact of the matter is that thanks to the Supreme Court, Trump may evade any consequences altogether.

President Joe Biden’s performance in last week’s debate has sent the Democratic Party into a tailspin, pushing some party members to debate whether Vice President Kamala Harris would be a better replacement for a “comatose” or “dead” Biden.

This week has seen a series of calls between donors, party members, and consultants on how to push Biden out of the 2024 race as support for the incumbent president dramatically wanes in light of his age and frailty.

In a conference call featuring dozens of Democratic SuperPAC American Bridge donors held early Wednesday, former Clinton aide James Carville urged donors to consider an alternative to Biden, and said that donors who want Biden to exit the race should consider cutting off their funds from lawmakers who don’t agree with them, reported Semafor.

“Seventy-two percent of people want something different. Why not give it to them?” Carville said, according to a recording of the call obtained by Semafor. “They’re just asking for a different choice.”

In another call on Tuesday, panic rose among a bevy of Democratic donors, several of whom emphasized that keeping Biden at the top of the ticket would only encourage more Americans to vote for Donald Trump.

“What can we as donors do to encourage the change in the ticket?” asked one donor.

“If you wake Joe Biden at three o’ clock in the morning and ask him who’s president, does he get it right?” worried another.

But not everyone on the call was in agreement. Dmitri Mehlhorn, an adviser to entrepreneur and LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, told donors to stick with Biden, since, despite his health issues, he’s still the more popular choice compared to the next obvious option.

“Kamala Harris is more threatening to those swing voters than a dead Joe Biden or a comatose Joe Biden,” Mehlhorn said. “So if Joe has to go, it’s gonna be Kamala, and if it’s Kamala, it’s gonna be harder.”

If there’s one silver lining to Biden’s devastating performance, per Carville, it’s that the symptom was caught early.

“Maybe we look back on this thing and say, ‘This is the best thing that ever happened to us,’” Carville said, according to Semafor. “If this would have happened to us on October fifth, we’d be more than bruised, screwed, and tattooed. Maybe this will set it into motion something different.”

“And maybe the people on the Zoom call, or maybe we’ll reconvene and I told November tenth and say, ‘God damn man, this thing came together a lot better than we ever thought we would back on July the second,” he added.

It seems that Representative Summer Lee has joined the K-Hive.

The Pennsylvania Democrat on Wednesday joined the steadily growing chorus of Democratic leaders sounding the alarm over concerns about President Joe Biden’s candidacy, pitching Vice President Kamala Harris as the “obvious choice” to replace him should he choose to withdraw.

“Maybe folks don’t want to hear, but we have timing that is running out. Time is not on our side,” Lee said during a radio interview, according to CBS News.

“We have a few months to do a monumental task. It’s not cheap and it’s not easy. If our president decides this is not a pathway forward for him, we have to move very quickly,” she continued. “There’s not going to be time for a primary. That time is past.”

“The vice president is the obvious choice. She’s sitting right there. She’s already been in the White House. And has the name recognition. And has been on the trail,” Lee said.

She also remarked that the “optics of pushing a Black woman aside” were “not good.”

While Lee is correct in saying that Harris would not have the chance to primary, it’s worth noting that she would be the only other Democrat who could access the $91.2 million that Biden has raised as part of his campaign, some campaign finance experts told NBC. That’s just another reason why she might be considered a top candidate to replace Biden.

On Tuesday, Texas Representative Lloyd Doggett became the first House member to formally call on Biden to withdraw from the 2024 presidential race, and Representative Jim Clyburn said he would support Harris “if [Biden] were to step aside.”

Like Clyburn, Lee’s comments stopped short of urging the president to withdraw his candidacy. Still, her comments make clear that Democrats are beginning to look elsewhere for leadership following last week’s unwieldy presidential debate.

During an appearance with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Tuesday night, Stormy Daniels detailed the harrowing circumstances she’s facing in the aftermath of Trump’s 34-count felony conviction and her big concerns moving forward, noting that threats against her have gotten “more graphic and detailed and brazen” because “people don’t care” to minimize their rhetoric or hide behind anonymous accounts.

“It just poured gasoline on some of the stuff that I had been going through the entire time,” Daniels told Maddow of how Trump’s guilty verdict intensified the harassment she faced throughout Trump’s hush-money trial, including explicit threats to her and her family and harm against her animals. “Some days I’m picking pellets out of my horse’s body,” Daniels said. “There have been moments where you’ve gotten to check out at least for a minute. I’ve never had a day like that in over six years.”

During the trial, Daniels said Trump followers threatened to “rape everybody in my family, including my young daughter before they killed them, very graphic things talking about a child.” Daniels further detailed the financial turmoil she’s been put into as a result of a defamation lawsuit her lawyer pursued without her consent and the legal costs of testifying against Trump. According to Daniels, she faces an estimated $600,000 in legal fees stemming from the trial and earlier defamation suit.

“I’m not afraid of what he could say about me or what he could call me.… I’m concerned [about] him saying something that will make his followers come after me,” Daniels noted in light of Judge Juan Merchan partially lifting Trump’s gag order. Asked about her concerns of Trump winning in November, Daniels expressed fear that Trump will exploit his presidential authority and give his followers permission to do whatever they want to her.

“I think that he will try to make even more of an example out of me,” Daniels said. “His followers will probably be even more bold, thinking if they do something, he’ll pardon them.”

While Daniels says costs from testifying and loss of work have been devastating, including clubs that book her getting hit with threats, the biggest struggle has been keeping her daughter safe. She told Maddow that the courts requested paperwork including her 13-year-old daughter’s legal name and date of birth, which she was unwilling to disclose, and that she’s facing possible jail time for refusing to pay legal fees from the failed defamation lawsuit.

“I didn’t fill out that part of the form. I left it blank, and they rejected it and sent it back, and are demanding that I be held in contempt with sanctions, and that I have to pay this money,” said Daniels regarding the defamation case. “I have to pay $600,000 plus sanctions and contempt of court, which comes with a warrant, possibly an arrest warrant, because the things I said which they found him guilty of, I also have to pay.”

While Daniels has started working again and friends created a GoFundMe to help her pay down legal fees and keep her home, Daniels says she’s still in the red—but most of what she’s lost has been her peace of mind.

“I’ve lost a lot more than I’ve made,” Daniels said. “Mostly my peace, mostly my daughter’s privacy and time I’ll never get back with her.”

Donald Trump spelled out his media philosophy in audio recordings released Tuesday, explaining everything he learned from his time hosting NBC’s The Apprentice—and subtly revealing just how much power he believes he has over the media industry and the American public.

In newly released audio from a 2023 sit-down conversation with Variety editor and author Ramin Setoodeh, Trump mused about the limitless potential of being a TV personality—including that the high-profile position allows one to be “evil” and the “most horrible human”—so long as your program grabs attention.

“So, if I went back to NBC right now to do something, they would do anything I wanted to do, showbiz-wise. I’m talking about,” Trump told Setoodeh. “Doing a show, anything I wanted to do right now, 100 percent.”

That’s because “show business” is all about one thing, per Trump: “ratings.”

“If you have ratings, you can be the meanest, most horrible human being in the world,” he continued. “There’s only one thing that matters: ratings. You can be nice, or you can be mean, you can be evil, you can be horrible. You can be crude or elegant. There’s only one thing that matters, and that’s ratings.”

Trump may have learned that final lesson in 2016, when he re-earned enough of the public’s favor to win the presidency despite a hot mic leak from a 2005 Access Hollywood interview that caught the former TV host bragging that he could force himself onto women and practically “do anything” he wanted to because he was a star, including “grab ’em by the pussy.”

Recalling his interview with Trump on MSNBC, Setoodeh said that Trump appeared to suggest that he was “being wooed” to return to TV.

“That’s the TV star in him,” Setoodeh told Nicolle Wallace Tuesday. “He wants people to see him as a TV star. A successful TV star, and that’s the philosophy and way in which he views the world and the way he governs, if you could call it governing.”

Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker urged President Joe Biden to re-pitch himself to Americans following his disastrous performance at a presidential debate.

Pritzker, whose name has been floated as a possible candidate to replace Biden, discussed what he believes the president should do next during an interview Tuesday night on CNN’s The Source with Kaitlan Collins.  

“Three-quarters of voters, U.S. voters, in a new CNN poll say the Democratic Party would have a better shot holding the presidency in 2024 with someone other than President Biden at the top of the ticket. Do you agree with that, or are the voters wrong?” Collins asked. 

Since the debate last Thursday, one Democratic lawmaker has called for Biden to withdraw, while others have indicated their openness to backing another candidate. On Tuesday, a CNN poll found that Biden was polling worse against Trump than other top Democrats, including his own vice president. Those results appear to have lit a fire within the party, which was already scrambling.

“Well, I think that’s why President Biden needs to communicate more,” Pritzker replied. “We haven’t heard a lot from him since the debate, and that’s why the polls look as they do.

“I think that when you come off a bad debate, you need to remind people why you’re the right guy to elect, and I know that Joe Biden will do that over the next couple of weeks, at least I expect him to,” he continued.

“Or he’ll make a different decision, and I think that’s, again, this is a healthy conversation for us all to be having,” Pritzker said, seemingly referring to the decision to withdraw from the race.

“And I think that the president needs to communicate to everybody once again why he’s the right guy,” Pritzker said. 

While Biden’s campaign has trotted him out at events, the president has spoken sparingly about what his lackluster public speaking performance means for his candidacy. Democratic leaders are reportedly extremely frustrated with the lack of communication from Biden’s team in the wake of the debate debacle, and have accused his inner circle of trying to shield him from calls to withdraw. 

It seems that the Democratic governor may already be on track to get the face time with Biden he desires: Pritzker is expected to attend a meeting in Washington, D.C., with the president and other Democratic governors on Wednesday, according to Axios.

Democrats are becoming frustrated with the response from President Joe Biden and his administration after Thursday’s disastrous presidential debate, according to a new report from Axios.

Members of Congress think that Biden has been slow to reach out to party leaders, as well as lawmakers in tough election races. The report even states that some Democrats think Biden’s staff is trying to shield him from people arguing for him to withdraw from the election.

“I don’t know who’s making decisions,” said one House Democrat “Why the hell isn’t Biden on the phone with congressional leadership? ... Everybody now thinks he could cost us the majority.”

The report referred to a Tuesday afternoon meeting of the House Democratic Policy and Communications Committee, where over two dozen Democrats in Congress vented about Biden and his staff. During the Zoom call, one member of Congress called the situation “the elephant in the room,” leading other members to call Biden “the donkey in the room.”

One source on the call said that none of the members present called for Biden to stay in the race, a worrying sign. Other Democrats have voiced their concerns publicly, with Representative Marie Gluesenkamp Perez telling a Washington state TV station, “Biden is going to lose to Trump. I know that’s difficult, but I think the damage has been done by that debate.”

Representative Jared Golden, another Blue Dog Democrat, even wrote in an op-ed column, “While I don’t plan to vote for him, Donald Trump is going to win. And I’m OK with that.”

Inside the White House, Biden’s staff and aides are reportedly freaking out themselves. A leaked poll shows that Biden is in trouble in states that were previously thought safe. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that Biden’s mental condition was a “legitimate concern” on Tuesday, and one of the longest-serving Democrats in the House, Representative Lloyd Doggett, has even called for Biden to withdraw from the 2024 presidential race. How will Democrats find their way out of this crisis?

Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, seemed to issue a veiled threat to the American left during an appearance on far-right entertainment network Real America’s Voice on Tuesday.

“We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless—if the left allows it to be,” Roberts said, in front of a backdrop advertising the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank involved in Project 2025, a far-right draconian blueprint to streamline ultraconservative legislation that would significantly roll back civil rights, designed to be deployed the second Trump takes office. While Trump’s campaign has stated it’s not involved in Project 2025, the blueprint has been described as a legislative “wish list” for a Trump presidency.

Roberts’s assertion that the country is in the midst of “the second American Revolution” sparked concern among critics, who pointed to his statement as damning proof that Project 2025 is part of a wide-sweeping effort to convert American democracy into a fascist state.

What Roberts means by “bloodless” is unclear, but critics immediately interpreted it as a threat that any resistance to the authoritarian far-right power grab laid out by Project 2025 would be met with violence.

President Joe Biden’s performance at last week’s debate has induced a maelstrom among aides and officials in the White House and on his campaign, with several administration figures reportedly “freaking the fuck out,” according to Axios.

“It’s the first topic of every conversation,” one White House official told the publication. “Senior leadership has given us nothing. To act like it’s business as usual is delusional.”

The debate was a critical moment for not just Biden’s 2024 candidacy but also his current presidency. Over 90 minutes, what was intended to be a showcase of Donald Trump’s extremism in contrast to Biden devolved into a one-sided train wreck, with Biden unable to string more than a few words together before getting steamrolled by an assertive and comparatively alive Trump.

In the aftermath, aides told Axios that they felt that they were handed empty talking points, with no confident explanations for why Biden appeared so weak and unwell during the debate. As the days drag on, that confusion has morphed into anger and resentment among a swathe of Biden’s employees, with one official involved in the campaign describing the atmosphere as “dark.”

“It feels like there is zero leadership or information,” the anonymous staffer told Axios. “People are being told to keep their heads down and keep working, but they’re not seeing the president or being given any reason why they should have faith in him.”

That feeling was shared in the White House, with one unnamed official telling Axios that “people are looking for leadership and direction that they were told to trust, and hoped was there, but aren’t yet feeling, in what is now clearly a defining moment for this presidency.”

Executive branch employees aren’t the only ones losing sight of the light in the Biden administration. On Tuesday alone, several prominent Democrats, including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, have signaled it may be time for Biden to remove himself from the race. Representative Jim Clyburn, whose 2020 endorsement helped Biden secure his last nomination, announced his support for Vice President Kamala Harris to take the reins “if [Biden] were to step aside,” and Texas Representative Lloyd Doggett became the first House member to formally call on Biden to withdraw from the race.

A new leaked poll shows support for President Joe Biden plummeting in key battleground states around the country in the wake of his disastrous debate performance on Thursday.

Puck News gained access to an internal Democratic polling memo conducted 72 hours after the debate, and it’s bad: Several states that were considered solidly blue are now competitive for Donald Trump, including Colorado, New Hampshire, Virginia, and New Mexico. Plus, other Democrats, such as Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, are polling better than Biden in head-to-head matchups with the convicted felon and former president.

The polling came from OpenLabs, a nonprofit specializing in polling for Democratic organizations, and found that 40 percent of 2020 Biden voters now think the president should step aside, an increase from about 25 percent in May. Swing voters believe Biden should drop out by a 2-to-1 margin.

Democrats and Trump opponents may take solace in the fact that Biden only dropped in national head-to-head polling with Trump by 0.08 points. However, in battleground states, Biden is performing much worse. For example, Biden trails Trump by seven points in Pennsylvania, compared to five points before the debate. He also is behind Trump in Michigan (seven points), Georgia (10 points), and Nevada (nine points).

While this is only one poll, conducted immediately after the debate, it reportedly has been circulating in Democratic circles, and may be a factor behind the worries being openly expressed by top Democrats. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that Biden’s mental condition was a “legitimate concern” on Tuesday, and one of the longest serving Democrats in the House, Representative Lloyd Doggett, has even called for Biden to withdraw from the 2024 presidential race.

Can the Biden campaign right the ship and restore calm? ProPublica released an unedited September interview with the president that shows him alert and mentally fit, and Biden also appeared to be lucid and sharp in a North Carolina rally on Friday. He will need more positive counterexamples like those two, as well as a better performance at September’s presidential debate in order to assuage concerns not just from top Democrats, but also voters across the political spectrum.