Trump’s Lawyers Scramble to Stop Jack Smith Releasing More Evidence

Hundreds of pages of evidence in Donald Trump’s 2020 election interference case are set to be unsealed Friday, and it has the former president shaking in his boots.

Judge Tanya Chutkan denied Trump’s request Thursday to delay the unsealing until after the presidential election, and said that the court documents containing evidence submitted by the government would be docketed publicly the next day.

Trump’s legal team had argued that “the asymmetric release of charged allegations and related documents during early voting creates a concerning appearance of election interference,” and pushed for the unsealing to be postponed.

But Chutkan didn’t seem particularly swayed by that argument.

“If the court withheld information that the public otherwise had a right to access solely because of the potential political consequences of releasing it, that withholding could itself constitute—or appear to be—election interference,” Chutkan wrote in her filing Thursday.

NBC’s legal analyst Lisa Rubin remarked on Morning Joe that Trump’s team seemed particularly desperate in their scrambled efforts to prevent the release of the evidence.

“They got their ruling last Thursday, they asked for more time to evaluate their litigation options. Then they waited until the eleventh hour instead of getting a ruling from the appeals court, which they didn’t have the ability to do,” Rubin said.

“Why are they fighting so hard if what we’re about to see isn’t really all that surprising? There’s probably something in there that they don’t want the voting public to know about or see in a more fulsome way,” she added.

By Friday morning, Chutkan ordered that the clerk of courts file special counsel Jack Smith’s Redacted Appendix (of exhibits to his immunity determination motion) of Volume I, Volume II, Volume III, and Volume IV.

SpaceX billionaire Elon Musk has taken to campaigning solo for Donald Trump, but his campaign stops might be doing more harm than good for the Republican presidential nominee.

While speaking to a crowd in the suburbs of Philadelphia, the Tesla CEO stumbled and fumbled his way through interactions with everyday Pennsylvanians, failing to convince attendees that they should vote early. Some people were especially unimpressed by the effort, shouting out: “Why?”

In one particularly cringe-worthy interaction, Musk sided with a hardcore 2020 election denier, blaming the media and the Department of Justice for the man’s alleged legal troubles. But the tech mogul would only get so close to the narrative: when offered a book on election denialism and voting machine conspiracies, Musk couldn’t keep up the shtick.

“We have hundreds of people, right now, ready. They’re out taking videos, they’re training poll workers. And we are not getting support from many people in the first front rows here. And their pictures, if we want to know who they are, are in this book,” the man said.

Musk’s response? Use his companies.

“What I recommend is post content on the X platform, and then people can—they can—they can argue and say it’s right or wrong, but if you have videos or evidence then post them publicly on social media and people can, you know, judge themselves, exactly,” Musk said.

“Let’s not get contentious. Team work makes the dream work here,” he continued, to gentle cheers. “I don’t want to dissuade anyone from voting. It’s very important to vote. So any actions with respect to voting machines, we certainly want to put them under intense scrutiny, but nonetheless, everyone needs to vote.”

Getting more Americans to turn out en masse for the former president has been high on the top of Musk’s agenda since he endorsed him in July, moments after Trump survived an assassination attempt near Butler, Pennsylvania. Earlier on Thursday, Musk offered hard cash to his more than 200 million followers on X if they signed a petition in support of the First and Second Amendments.

“If you’re a registered Pennsylvania voter, you & whoever referred you will now get $100 for signing our petition in support of free speech & right to bear arms. Earn money for supporting something you already believe in! Offer valid until midnight on Monday,” Musk wrote.

At his first solo event for the Donald Trump campaign, Elon Musk happily espoused election fraud conspiracy theories, at a town hall in Pennsylvania.

On Thursday, on stage outside of Philadelphia, Musk raised the issue of Dominion Voting Systems and election integrity, casting doubt on the election machines and suggesting they might be involved in fraud—a lie that has been widely debunked. Last year, Fox News agreed to pay Dominion a nearly $800 million settlement for making similar statements to Musk.

“The last thing I would do is trust a computer program,” said Musk, without a hint of irony.

“Statistically there are some very strange things that happen that are statistically incredibly unlikely. There’s always this question of, say, the Dominion voting machines. It is weird that, I think, they were used in Philadelphia and in Maricopa County [in Arizona] but not in a lot of other places,” said Musk. “Doesn’t that seem like a heck of a coincidence?”

A spokesman from Dominion immediately debunked Musk’s claims in an email response. “Fact: Dominion does not serve Philadelphia County. Fact: Dominion’s voting systems are already based on voter verified paper ballots. Fact: Hand counts and audits of such paper ballots have repeatedly proven that Dominion machines produce accurate results. These are not matters of opinion. They are verifiable facts.”

Throughout his talk, Musk continued to call into question the legitimacy of the 2020 election without any proof. “When you have mail-in ballots and no proof of citizenship, it’s almost impossible to prove cheating,” opined Musk, who has stoked fears about noncitizen voting in the past.

Both in person and online, Musk is happy to point fingers at anything that moves. On Thursday, Musk also criticized canvassing efforts in swing states by U.K. organizers, saying simply “this is illegal.” It is not illegal.

Musk is set to appear at least three more times in Pennsylvania and suggested he “will probably do half a dozen throughout the state,” giving him plenty of opportunities to spread more lies by Election Day.

Donald Trump won’t stop backing out of interviews, and his forces have been left scrambling.

Trump dropped out of yet another interview on Friday, when a Trump adviser told producers of The Shade Room that Trump wouldn’t be following through on talks to appear on the podcast because he was “exhausted and refusing [some] interviews but that could change,” two people familiar with the conversation told Politico.

Kamala Harris recently appeared on The Shade Room, a culture podcast with a predominantly young, Black audience. Ahead of Trump’s cancellation, Shade Room staff felt that the campaign was dragging its feet when it came to nailing down the details, according to Politico.

But Trump spokesperson Karoline Leavitt pushed back at the reporting, saying the suggestion that Trump was “exhausted” was “unequivocally false.”

This seems to be becoming a trend for the former president, who has canceled three different events in the last 36 hours. Trump canceled his speech to an NRA convention next Tuesday in Savannah, Georgia; backed out of an appearance on CNBC’s Squawk Box that had been scheduled for Friday; and reportedly “postponed” an interview with NBC’s Christine Romans.

Trump’s not canceling all of his scheduled appearances, though: He still found the time to sit on the couch with Fox & Friends Friday morning.

While canceling plans can be incredibly relieving, Trump’s team isn’t feeling too good. MSNBC’s Jonathan Lemire spoke on Morning Joe about how anxious the Trump campaign is as a result of his shrinking media schedule.

“A few weeks ago, Democrats, you heard it, I heard it, we reported it, were nervous about Harris—she’s not doing enough, she’s not out there, she’s not campaigning. It’s all changed: the media blitz, now she’s barnstorming across the country. Now, Trump is the one who has really pulled back, canceling interviews left and right. And there seems to be a new sense of unease coming from the inner circle,” Lemire said.

Former President Donald Trump broke decorum Thursday, morphing a historically lighthearted, bipartisan charity event in New York City into a bitter, profanity-laden rant against his political opponents.

The Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner, a Catholic fundraising event, is traditionally a well-regarded opportunity for both presidential candidates to poke fun at one another before the high tensions of the season culminate in Election Day. But Trump didn’t bring the jokes—instead, he spent his time on the dais hurling a string of insults at Vice President Kamala Harris, who opted to skip the event to campaign in the battleground state of Wisconsin. (Wisconsin was projected this week to have flipped slightly in favor of Trump.)

“The two candidates for president are supposed to exchange good-natured barbs. And you know, we get along very well. I didn’t like Biden very much, and now I like him quite a bit,” Trump said, practically repeating lines from his rallies. “And now I say that she’s much worse than him. He was a much better candidate than her, actually.

“And when we hopefully win, dispose of her, I’ll like her a lot. But right now I can’t stand her. I’ve never liked people I was competing against, and when you do, a lot of bad things happen,” Trump said to a suddenly mum crowd.

Trump also appeared resentful that Harris had chosen to sit out the event, despite the fact that he himself was the first candidate in the race to break election tradition by refusing to sit for a 60 Minutes interview last month, when he reportedly backed out, last-minute, over fears that the rigorous show would fact-check him. (Trump has since backed out of several major interviews, spawning concerns that the MAGA leader is starting a media blackout with just days until voters have to decide who will lead the country.)

“If you really wanted Vice President Harris to accept your invitation, I guess you should have told her the funds were going to bail out the looters and rioters in Minneapolis and she would have been here, guaranteed,” said Trump.

“Catholics, you gotta vote for me. Just remember. You better remember that I’m here and she’s not,” he said. “I could have done that too.”

“I don’t give a shit if this is comedy or not,” Trump told the crowd of priests.

Fox’s News’s Bret Baier admitted that he made a crucial mistake during his sit-down with Kamala Harris that led to one of her strongest moments in the interview.

At one point during their exchange Wednesday night, Harris referred to Donald Trump’s remarks on Fox News’s Sunday Morning Futures, calling some Americans the “enemy from within” and threatening to send the military after them.

“We asked that question to the former president today,” Baier replied, calling for a recent clip. “Harris Faulkner had a town hall, and this is how he responded.”

“They were saying I was like, threatening,” Trump said in the snippet. “I’m not threatening anybody. They’re the ones doing the threatening. They do phony investigations, I’ve been investigated more than Alphonse Capone. He was the greatest—no, it’s true. But think of it. It’s called weaponization of government. It’s a terrible thing.”

The snippet Baier played conveniently edited out the beginning of Trump’s comments, where he was asked to respond to Harris’s claim that he was “unhinged.” In response, Trump explicitly called Democrats the “enemy from within.”

“You know what they are, they’re a party of sound bites. Somebody asked me, ‘Can they be brought together?’ You know it’s very—I never thought, really I wasn’t thinking like they could. Because they are, they are–very different. And it is the enemy from within. They’re very dangerous. They’re Marxists, they’re Communists, they’re fascists, and they’re sick,” the former president said, calling them “so sick” and “so evil.”

During their interview, Harris had nailed Baier for the blatant misdirect. “Bret, I’m sorry, and with all due respect, that clip was not what he has been saying about the enemy within that he has repeated when he’s speaking about the American people,” Harris said. “That’s not what you just showed!”

When Baier tried to argue with Harris, she tore into him. “You didn’t show that. And here’s the bottom line. He has repeated it many times. And you and I both know that. And you and I both know that he has talked about turning the American military on the American people. He has talked about going after people who are engaged in peaceful protests. He has talked about locking people up because they disagree with him. This is a democracy!”

On Thursday, Baier claimed that the whole thing was a crazy misunderstanding, according to Mediaite.

“Harold, I did make a mistake,” Baier told panelists Faulkner and Harold Ford Jr. on Fox News’s Special Report. “And I did want to say that I did make a mistake. When I called for a sound bite, I was expecting a piece of the ‘enemy from within’ from Maria Bartiromo’s interview to be tied to the piece from your town hall, Harris, where you asked the former president about ‘the enemy from within.’ It just had the piece about the town hall.”

He then played the two clips back to back—again conveniently editing out the beginning of his town hall response where Trump doubled down on his statement.

Many Republicans have struggled to explain away Trump’s incendiary comments, while others denied that they happened at all. But they did.

Last week, a lawyer who worked for the Florida Department of Health resigned, and a letter obtained Thursday by the Miami Herald indicates that he didn’t like the state agency’s decision to prosecute television stations for airing political ads.

John Wilson, the head attorney for the department, wrote in the letter, “A man is nothing without his conscience.”

“It has become clear in recent days that I cannot join you on the road that lies before the agency,” Wilson wrote. Earlier this month, the department sent cease-and-desist letters to TV stations who aired political ads supporting Amendment 4, a ballot initiative that, if approved by Florida voters on Election Day, would increase access to abortion. The letters threatened to criminally prosecute the stations that didn’t take the ads down. Wilson, along with Florida’s Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, the head of the department, is facing a federal lawsuit over the letters. The plaintiff is the group behind Amendment 4, Floridians Protecting Freedom, which alleges that the threats violate the Constitution’s First Amendment rights to freedom of speech.

In his letter, Wilson stated that he had worked for the state for 14 years and as the department’s general counsel since 2022, and said that circumstances convinced him that he couldn’t work there anymore.

“I wish that were not the case, but I take great comfort in knowing that the lawyers I leave behind will rise to the occasion and provide you the zealous representation you deserve,” wrote Wilson. The letter didn’t go into more detail, according to the Herald.  

The ads feature a woman named Caroline who said that she received a terminal brain cancer diagnosis when she was two months pregnant and would have lost her baby, as well as her own life, if she didn’t receive an abortion.

“The doctors knew that if I did not end my pregnancy, I would lose my baby, I would lose my life, and my daughter would lose her mom,” Caroline said in the ad. “Florida has now banned abortion even in cases like mine. Amendment Four is gonna protect women like me.”

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has spared no effort to fight against the ballot initiative, even as his state was hit by Hurricanes Helene and Milton, spreading misinformation on his X account along with his legal threats. Last month, the state even sent police officers to the homes of people who signed a petition supporting the ballot initiative. At the time, DeSantis defended the zealous police action and even invoked the Republican bogeyman of voter fraud. It would appear that he’s very worried about the state’s abortion ban being negated at the ballot box.  

Last month, Donald Trump announced that he was selling limited-edition, gaudy watches ranging from $499 to the bargain price of $100,000, bragging about their Swiss-made precision.

But a CNN investigation traced the watches’ origin to a shopping center in remote Sheridan, Wyoming, where TheBestWatchesOnEarth LLC, the company behind the timepieces, is based. There’s no indication that a watch company is located at the building listed at the address, only a daycare. Its neighbors include an H&R Block, a Wendy’s, and a “vape and hemp smoke shop.”  

CNN couldn’t find the people behind the company either, because the business’s location allows it to legally hide those details from the public. The news network found that knocking on the door of the business’s supposed address didn’t answer those questions. Interestingly, the limited liability corporation behind Trump’s infamous gold sneakers is also based at the address, along with other random businesses. The watch company was registered on July 29, only two months before Trump announced the watch line.  

A lobbying firm that represents Montenegro’s government is also based at the Wyoming address, along with a company, Kingdom Honey LLC, that sells “male enhancement honey” products that the Food and Drug Administration has warned against consuming. Curiously, that honey venture also goes by TheBestHoneyOnEarth on its online retail store.

CNN could not find a direct connection between the honey venture and Trump, although it did reach a spokesperson for Kingdom Honey, who called it “a highly reputable company” but didn’t respond to a list of questions, none of which mentioned Trump. However, the spokesperson told CNN, “We’ve received direction from our leadership in the US not to engage with any news agencies (specifically CNN) until after November 5,” which happens to be Election Day.

When CNN followed up by asking if the company had connections to the former president, the response from the company was that it “cannot provide any information or details at this time.” There was one link among the myriad companies based at the address, an “organizer” named Andrew Pierce, who has an office in Sheridan. When CNN contacted it, they were told he spends most of his time at the company’s headquarters in Puerto Rico. 

Pierce’s business partner, his father, Mark Pierce, did respond to CNN, and told them he had no idea that two of their clients were connected to Trump. The older Pierce, an attorney, also criticized the former president’s track record, telling the network, “If Mr. Trump or anyone in his family were on the same side of the street I was on, I would cross the street.”

It’s telling that Trump would put his name on a product that has unclear origins, connected to a business that isn’t particularly transparent. After all, his presidential administration wasn’t particularly transparent, either, and his business activities led to a massive fraud judgment against him. Perhaps it just goes to show how desperate the former president is for cash.  

I don’t know about you, but I think Trump might get sued.

On Wednesday, Donald Trump’s team posted a cringeworthy video of women lip-syncing to a mash-up of Taylor Swift’s song “22” and the song “Trump Trump Bay” by rapper (and, more accurately, right-wing cable news mainstay) Forgiato Blow. Those women, wearing hot-pink Trump zip-ups, included Republican National Committee Co-Chair Lara Trump and former ESPN anchor turned pro-Trump podcaster Sage Steele.

The video appears to coincide with Trump’s desperate appeal to women voters following his sycophantic all-women town hall that aired on Wednesday. It also allowed MAGA to try to get in a jab at mega popstar Taylor Swift over her previous endorsement of Kamala Harris. Following Swift’s call to action for her followers to vote for Harris, Republicans, including Trump, lost their minds, with Trump posting in all-caps on Truth Social, “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!”

In posting the video, Trump’s team has no regard for the singer’s impressive legal squad who are known to use the come-down with serious force. Back in August, after Trump shared similarly strange AI-generated images of Swift endorsing him for president, he quickly backtracked, claiming he didn’t know “anything about them.”

But it’s not just Swift that Trump should worry about. MAGA superfan Forgiato Blow premiered the song featured in the video, which is a parody of “Ice Ice Baby,” at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee in July. The song was pulled from YouTube after a claim by Sony Music for copyright infringement (“Ice Ice Baby” features a sample of “Under Pressure,” to which Sony owns the rights). Blow had since tweaked the video to skirt the rules, but if team Trump used the wrong version on the audio, they may be on thin ice.

The former head of marketing for NBC is apologizing for “creating a monster” in Donald Trump through the production of his reality TV show The Apprentice.

John D. Miller wrote a column for U.S. News and World Report, published Wednesday, about how he helped to market Trump as “a super-successful businessman who lived like royalty,” creating “a false narrative by making him seem more successful than he was.”

For example, Miller wrote, the boardroom that viewers saw was a set, because Trump’s actual boardroom was deemed to be in poor shape and too old to show on TV. Miller also wrote that more successful CEOs were too busy. According to a New York Times article from September, Jack Welch, Warren Buffett, and Richard Branson were also contacted by producers but didn’t make the cut due to a lack of time or the “necessary charisma.”

Trump, unlike those other business leaders, “had plenty of time for filming, he loved the attention and it painted a positive picture of him that wasn’t true,” wrote Miller. Trump’s availability was due to the fact that, when the show first went to air in 2004, he wasn’t particularly busy: His business “empire” had been decimated by multiple bankruptcies, and he was no longer doing much at all. The show’s promotion would blanket NBC’s programming and create an exaggerated image of the real estate investor.

“The image of Trump that we promoted was highly exaggerated. In its own way, it was ‘fake news’ that we spread over America like a heavy snowstorm,” Miller wrote. “I never imagined that the picture we painted of Trump as a successful businessman would help catapult him to the White House.”

In his interactions with Trump, Miller found that he was both “manipulative, yet extraordinarily easy to manipulate,” foreshadowing his dealings with autocrats like Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un. He also noticed that Trump was thin-skinned and quick to seek retribution.

Miller, who calls himself a “born-and-bred Republican,” closed his article by urging people to vote for Kamala Harris, saying that he and others “did irreparable harm by creating the false image of Trump as a successful leader. I deeply regret that. And I regret that it has taken me so long to go public.”

Miller joins many others who worked with Trump, either in his business or the White House, who now regret their efforts and are urging people to vote against him.