Uh-Oh: Lauren Boebert Quickly Deletes Cameo After Ethics Red Flags

Representative Lauren Boebert’s Cameo page disappeared just one day after it went up amid questions over whether it broke congressional rules.

The Colorado congresswoman was charging $250 for personal advice or a “pep talk” on the celebrity video service, she explained in a welcome video. But questions quickly came up about whether her Cameo gig violated House rules prohibiting honoraria, or a “payment of money or thing of value for an appearance, speech, or article.”

Now, Boebert’s Cameo page is gone, returning a 404 error, and she may have managed to avoid an investigation from the House Ethics Committee over the whole thing. Members of the House are prohibited from earning more than $31,815 in outside income, and the only way she could have legitimized her Cameo income would have been to funnel it into her campaign account. However, that would have violated Cameo’s terms of service.

Boebert managed to stay in Congress during the past election thanks to switching to a safer, more conservative district after barely surviving Democratic challenger Adam Frisch in 2022. It seems that merely retaining her seat wasn’t lucrative enough for her, so she tried to copy her old colleagues Matt Gaetz and George Santos by launching a Cameo page.

But Boebert failed to realize that the two have ethical violations of their own that made them former members of Congress: sexual misconduct for Gaetz and various corruption charges for Santos. Despite her own numerous theatrical missteps, Boebert has yet to join Gaetz and Santos in breaking federal law or attracting attention for ethical shortcomings. But, seeing as how her congressional career has gone thus far, it may only be a matter of time.

Infamous Trump stooge Rudy Giuliani let the world know that he is desperate and broke after an unsuccessful attempt to postpone his trial.

Giuliani is facing another trial after refusing to pay $148 million he owes to Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, two Georgia election workers he defamed after Donald Trump lost the state  in 2020. Giuliani sought to delay this latest trial, claiming the dates interfered with President-elect Trump’s inauguration in January, which he wanted to attend. The last-ditch delay tactic was likely an effort to seek a Trump pardon post-inauguration and make all of his legal problems go away—but unfortunately for him, his request was denied. This set Giuliani off on a pitiful rant against the judge, Lewis J. Liman. 

“It’s punishment for being the one who revealed first Joe Biden’s 30-year criminality,” Giuliani opined. “He’s been trying to torture me, stop me, take everything away from me since then.” It’s unclear whether he’s referring to President Biden or Judge Liman. 

“The reality is I have no cash,” he went on. “It’s all tied up. So right now, if I wanted to call a taxi cab, I can’t do it. I don’t have a credit card. I don’t have a checking account. I have no place I can go take cash out except a little bit that I saved, and it’s getting down to almost nothing.”

Giuliani already handed some of his prized possessions over to the plaintiffs, including his luxury watches, a diamond ring, and a 1980 Mercedes-Benz. It remains to be seen whether Trump will come to his aid.

After funneling hefty sums into the 2024 elections, the crypto industry is poised to wield considerable influence over the incoming government.

The industry spent more than $180 million on campaigns this election cycle, surpassing all other special interest groups, NOTUS’s Claire Heddles reported Tuesday. Lawmakers who ran afoul of the industry’s agenda found themselves targets of aggressive campaigns by crypto-backed PACs. Two hundred seventy-six candidates deemed “pro-crypto” by the group Stand With Crypto will hold seats in the 119th Congress.

Rick Claypool of the consumer rights advocacy group Public Citizen told NOTUS that the crypto industry can “use a ton of money to create this crypto-shaped club that they’re holding over candidates, and that changed candidate behavior.”

President-elect Donald Trump, for his part, has transformed from skeptic to friend of crypto. Calling it “a scam against the dollar” and “a disaster waiting to happen” during and soon after his first term, he is now one of its most outspoken advocates, vowing to transform the United States into “the crypto capital of the planet.” His sons have even launched a crypto venture of their own.

A letter to Trump and members of Congress by crypto industry trade group Blockchain Association, shared by Heddles on X, shows that the industry is anticipating reaping the fruits of its 2024 spending.

In the letter, Blockchain Association CEO Kristin Smith proposes regulatory overhauls and changes in leadership at agencies such as the Securities and Exchange Commission and Treasury to support crypto industry growth. “Following a historic election,” Smith wrote, “the crypto industry is hopeful and optimistic for a friendlier regulatory environment in the United States under your leadership.”

The letter underscores, as Senator Elizabeth Warren told NOTUS, that the industry, “like all big-dollar donors who think that their money should buy them a seat at the table,” will be expecting significant returns on its 2024 election investments.

Donald Trump’s latest moneymaking scheme has been hit with legal action.

On Monday, the Gibson guitar company sent a cease and desist order to 16 Creative, the owner of Trump Guitars, claiming that the design of its single-cut electric guitar model “infringes upon Gibson’s exclusive trademarks, particularly the iconic Les Paul body shape.”

Trump endorsed a series of guitars last week, both acoustic and electric, with one of the electric models described as “the only guitar officially endorsed by President Donald J. Trump.” The guitars are split into the American Eagle series, the Presidential Series, and God Bless the USA Guitars, with prices starting at $1,000 and surpassing $10,250 for models autographed by the president-elect.

The company isn’t believed to be owned by Trump, as its website states that the guitars are “custom designed and developed by a Veteran owned company with the help of a master luthier.” They also aren’t entirely made in the United States but “have been manufactured by multiple providers and include parts/features that are both domestic and international,” going against Trump’s stated “America First” philosophy.

The guitars are only the latest attempt by Trump to hawk items with his name on them, and being elected president hasn’t stopped his efforts. In the past year, Trump has sold branded Bibles, sneakers, watches, NFT cards, items commemorating the first assassination attempt against him, and even fragrances celebrating his election victory.

All of this foreshadows a second presidential term in which Trump will continue to completely disregard the emoluments clause to the Constitution. And like the first term, Republicans in Congress will prevent any attempts to rein Trump in and prevent him from profiting off his presidency.

Another member of Donald Trump’s inner circle has gotten away with everything. Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner has officially dropped his legal case against billionaire Trump confidant Elon Musk and his America PAC.

During the 2024 presidential campaign, Musk’s America PAC offered swing state residents a chance to win a $1 million “lottery” in exchange for their signature on a “pro-Constitution” petition, with special focus on the First and Second Amendments. Many of the “winners” ended up being from Pennsylvania.

Krasner initially filed the civil lawsuit against Musk and his PAC before the election, on the grounds that they broke state law by operating an illegal, unregulated lottery in Pennsylvania, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer. Though several legal experts and the Justice Department have sounded the alarm, Krasner’s lawsuit was the first legal challenge that Musk faced for his $1 million bribe.

When Musk’s lawyer admitted that the so-called “lottery” winners were specifically chosen and not randomly selected, Krasner’s office doubled down. “This was all a political marketing masquerading as a lottery, that’s what it is. A grift,” said Krasner. “[Voters] were scammed for their information,” Krasner said. “It has almost unlimited use.”

But now the fight is over, as Krasner requested that the case be “Discontinued and Ended as to all parties without prejudice, with all parties bearing their own costs.” The filing came just days before Jack Smith’s cases against Trump also collapsed.

Donald Trump is reportedly considering removing traditional media journalists from the White House press briefing room, making way for friendlier figures in “the podcast world,” according to the president-elect’s son Donald Trump Jr.

In Monday’s episode of the Triggered With Don Jr. podcast, Trump Jr. told conservative commentator Michael Knowles of The Daily Wire that he and his father discussed the idea last week.

Around the 13-minute mark, Knowles suggested that, as incoming White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt “is looking at the new press briefing room chart, maybe it’s time to reorder that chart, maybe take away some people’s seats.”

Trump Jr. replied that such discussions were already underway. “So, we’re gonna break some news here,” the president-elect’s son said, revealing that he had “literally had this conversation” with his father, “I think it was coming back from the SpaceX launch with Elon [Musk] last week.

“I was sitting there, and we were talking about, like, the podcast world, and some of our friends, and [Joe] Rogan, and guys like you, and me to a lesser extent—I wouldn’t be able to get a seat, that would be nepotism or whatever the hell,” Trump Jr. said. “But we had the conversation about opening up the press room to a lot of these independent journalists.”

“If The New York Times has lied, they’ve been adverse to everything, they’re functioning as the marketing arm of the Democrat Party,” Trump Jr. continued, “why not open it up to people who have larger viewerships, stronger followings?”

The president-elect’s son seemed to suggest that the idea was well received: “We’ve had that conversation, like, ‘That’s a great idea, Don.’ I was like, ‘I think we should do this.’ And so that may be in the works.”

Replacing mainstream journalists with “some of our friends” would allow Trump—whose demonization of the press as “the enemy of the people” has been a trademark of his political brand—to avoid tough grilling and adversarial questioning, and instead receive favorable treatment from the same figures whose fawning coverage helped him win the presidency earlier this month.

As The New York Times reported, Trump’s embrace of the podcast world during the 2024 campaign allowed him “to sidestep more confrontational interviews with professional journalists, where he might face tough questions, fact-checks and detailed policy debates. The influencers he met with rarely challenged Mr. Trump, and often lavished him with praise.”

Mexico has fired back at Donald Trump’s new threat to institute tariffs against the country, warning that it would respond with tariffs of its own.

“To one tariff will come another and so on, until we put our common businesses at risk,” Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said in a press conference Tuesday, adding that she would send a letter to Trump urging dialogue and cooperation.

Justifying his tariff threat, which came in a Truth Social post Monday evening, Trump complained that “thousands of people are pouring through Mexico and Canada, bringing Crime and Drugs at levels never seen before.” Sheinbaum directly contradicted the president-elect, noting that migrant apprehensions at the border are down and that caravans haven’t been arriving at the Mexican border recently. She pointed out that gangs in Mexico are getting guns from the United States and actually contributing to crime south of the border.

“We do not produce weapons, we do not consume the synthetic drugs. Unfortunately we have the people who are being killed by crime that is responding to the demand in your country,” Sheinbaum said, referencing fentanyl, which Trump complained about on Truth Social Monday. She also criticized U.S. spending priorities.

“If a percentage of what the United States spends on war were dedicated to peace and development, that would address the underlying causes of migration,” Sheinbaum added.

American conservatives, including Trump, have long spread lies about the spread of fentanyl, a potent opioid. For example, it’s not coming from migrants across the southern border: Most drug arrests there are of U.S. citizens. In fact, in 2022, 88 percent of the fentanyl smugglers who were caught at the border were Americans. Plus, the minority of drugs that arrives from noncitizens isn’t coming from individual migrants, it’s being smuggled in tractor-trailers and cars.

Trump is either willfully lying or is clueless, and thinks his tariffs will scare countries like Mexico into some high level of cooperation that he thinks isn’t happening. But Sheinbaum’s words are pretty clear that she’s not willing to capitulate based on threats, and would hold the U.S. accountable for its policy missteps. Trump, who boasts about his dealmaking, will now have to contend with the real effects of his bluster.

President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for “border czar,” Tom Homan, has threatened to jail Denver’s Democratic Mayor Mike Johnston should he obstruct Trump’s immigration agenda.

During a Monday night interview on Hannity, Homan cited a federal statue that prohibits “bringing in and harboring certain aliens.”

“Me and the Denver mayor, we agree on one thing: He’s willing to go to jail. I’m willing to put him in jail,” Homan said.

The wild threat is a response to remarks Johnston made last week. In an interview published Wednesday with local outlet Denverite, Johnston described how the city might resist Trump’s plans to conduct mass deportation operations with federal forces. “More than us having [the Denver Police Department] stationed at the county line to keep them out, you would have 50,000 Denverites there,” he said. “It’s like the Tiananmen Square moment with the rose and the gun, right? You’d have every one of those Highland moms who came out for the migrants. And you do not want to mess with them.”

In comments to 9News two days later, Johnston walked back his comments, saying he “probably wouldn’t have used that image.” But he affirmed his support for and willingness to participate in civil disobedience if “our residents are having their rights violated” or “things are happening that are illegal or immoral or un-American in our city.”

Asked if he would be willing to go to jail for standing in the way of the Trump administration, Johnston said, “Yeah, I’m not afraid of that, and I’m also not seeking that. I think the goal is we want to be able to negotiate with reasonable people how to solve hard problems.”

Johnston’s remarks drew the ire of many on the MAGA right. Elon Musk, for example, posted on X, “Those who break the law will be arrested and that includes mayors.”

Homan’s threat Monday marks an escalation in his vows to iron-fistedly conduct mass deportations despite the preferences of state and local officials. In a Fox appearance earlier this week, the prospective border czar said, “I guarantee … President Trump will” slash federal funds to sanctuary states.

President-elect Donald Trump’s son Eric sent out a clear “warning shot” to one of their own allies, Republican strategist Boris Epshteyn, amid allegations he tried selling access to Trump to the highest bidder.

Reports on Monday revealed that Trump’s lawyers investigated the senior aide after he was accused of “multiple instances” of “requesting payment in exchange for promoting candidates for administration positions or offering to connect individuals with people in the upcoming administration relevant to their industry.”

Epshteyn reportedly asked for at least $100,000 a month for his services, which he describes as “a type of consulting.” Epshteyn also suggested that Trump treasury secretary nominee Scott Bessent “pay him to promote his name with Trump and others at Mar-a-Lago.” Bessent apparently declined.

Trump himself was told of Epshteyn’s side hustle, and is reassessing his role.

Eric Trump appeared on Fox News Monday night to clear the air on Epshteyn.

“I’ve known Boris for years, and I’ve never known him to be anything but a good human being,” he said. “That said I will tell you my father has been incredibly clear, you do not do that under any circumstance. I certainly hope the reporting is false.… If it’s true, the person will probably no longer be around.”

Epshteyn has denied any and all allegations, writing to CNN that the claims against him “are false and defamatory and will not distract us from Making America Great Again.”

Donald Trump wants to slap tariffs on China, Mexico, and Canada on his first day in office, which would have devastating effects on supply chains and drive up costs on many companies that do business in the United States.

The president-elect made the announcement Monday on Truth Social, saying that he would institute a 25 percent tariff on goods from Canada and Mexico until drugs and migrants stopped arriving at the border.

“This Tariff will remain in effect until such time as Drugs, in particular Fentanyl, and all Illegal Aliens stop this Invasion of our Country!” Trump posted. “Both Mexico and Canada have the absolute right and power to easily solve this long simmering problem. We hereby demand that they use this power, and until such time that they do, it is time for them to pay a very big price!”

In a separate post, Trump complained about China sending illegal drugs to the United States and threatened that country with a 10 percent tariff.

“​​I have had many talks with China about the massive amounts of drugs, in particular Fentanyl, being sent into the United States—But to no avail,” Trump posted. “Representatives of China told me that they would institute their maximum penalty, that of death, for any drug dealers caught doing this but, unfortunately, they never followed through, and drugs are pouring into our Country, mostly through Mexico, at levels never seen before.”

The three countries are America’s biggest trading partners, and many industries rely on exporting goods to them in addition to imports. These include car companies, farmers, and food packagers. In all, Canada, Mexico, and China make up more than a third of all U.S. imports and exports, with millions of jobs depending on them. Last year, the three countries bought over $1 trillion of U.S. exports and the U.S. imported nearly $1.5 trillion of goods and services from them.

These tariffs, added to the costs of goods in the U.S., would cause prices to skyrocket as companies would pass their costs to the consumer. Other countries would likely retaliate with tariffs on American products, hurting industries stateside. By all accounts, his plan would cripple the economy, and it has been criticized by most economists. Companies would be far more likely to take their business elsewhere rather than pay tariffs or shell out the high cost of relocating their operations to U.S. soil.

Plus, the U.S. is currently part of a free-trade agreement with Canada and Mexico that Trump bragged about renegotiating during his first term. Tariffs would be a blatant violation of that agreement and also set off a trade war in North America. For a president who is riding a wave of economic dissatisfaction, however unjustified, into office, this will not bode well.