Posts tagged with "The Daily Beast"

Above, (left to right) Pence, Trump, Esper, and Milley, (Image source: Kamala Harris/ YouTube)

Ex-Trump officials trash their old boss in Harris’ new attack ad

September 9, 2024

On Tuesday, September 10, Kamala Harris’ campaign will drop a new ad starring some of Donald Trump’s former senior administration officials tearing into the man they once served, reports The Daily Beast.

The montage of scathing comments from the Republican nominee’s ex-colleagues-turned-critics comes ahead of the former president’s first debate against Harris in Philadelphia. The ad will air in the city as well as in West Palm Beach—where Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort is located—along with a nationwide rollout on Fox News, according to Politico.

The ad, which is titled “The Best People,” compiles footage of Trump’s former Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, and National Security Adviser John Bolton.

The ex-officials are variously shown saying they won’t endorse Trump in the 2024 election—calling him untrustworthy, and describing him as pathologically self-interested.

“In 2016, Donald Trump said he would choose only the best people to work in his White House,” a voiceover says in the Harris-Walz ad. “Now those people have a warning for America: Trump is not fit to be president again.”

The ad then quotes Pence saying in August 2023: “Anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should, never be president of the United States.” It also includes a clip of Pence saying in a Fox News interview earlier this year that it should “come as no surprise” that he “will not be endorsing Donald Trump this year.”

Clips from Bolton speaking in interviews with CNN also made into the supercut of shame. “The only thing he cares about is Donald Trump,” Bolton says in one.

The ad further features a segment of the speech Milley gave during his last speech as Joint Chiefs chair in September 2023. “We don’t take an oath to a king or a queen or a tyrant or a dictator,” Milley says. “And we don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator.”

“Take it from the people who knew him best,” the narrator says in the Harris’ campaign ad. “Donald Trump is a danger to our troops and our democracy. We can’t let him lead our country again.”

“To every American who understands the threat that Donald Trump poses, who cares about upholding the Constitution, who believes in the rule of law, and who knows America is stronger when it leads, there’s a home for you in Vice President Harris’ campaign,” Harris-Walz Principal Deputy Campaign Manager Quentin Fulks says.

Research contact: @thedailybeast

Above, Evan Gershkovich is being freed from Russian lockup as part of a prisoner swap. (Photo source: The Wall Street Journal)

Putin frees Gershkovich and Whelan in exchange for Russian hitman

August 1, 2024

Russia freed American Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and others on Thursday, August 1, in the biggest prisoner swap deal between tWashington, D.C., and Moscow since the end of the Cold War, with a Russian assassin heading back to his homeland as part of the arrangement, reports The Daily Beast.

.A total of 26 people and seven countries were involved in the exchange, which took place in Ankara, Turkey, the Turkish presidency said. It also confirmed that Vadim Krasikov—an FSB hitman jailed in Germany for a shocking daylight murder—was included in the exchange.

As well as Gershkovich, fellow American and former U.S. marine Paul Whelan was confirmed to be part of the deal. Russian-American radio reporter Alsu Kurmasheva also was reported to be included, according to CBS News.

Bloomberg separately cited a European official in reporting that Vladimir Kara-Murza, a British-Russian dissident, would be released. Kara-Murza was sentenced to 25 years imprisonment in April 2023 on treason and other charges after speaking out against the war in Ukraine.

While the agreement saw the release of Western journalists and dissidents who had originally been locked up on charges that the United States considered baseless, Russian President Vladimir Putin secured the release of his own countrymen and others who had been convicted of major crimes.

Among them was Krasikov, a colonel in Russia’s FSB security service. Krasikov was serving a life sentence in Germany for the chilling 2019 slaying of Chechen insurgent leader Zelimkhan Khangoshvili. Krasikov carried out the assassination in broad daylight in a busy playground in Berlin in front of children and their parents.

No official confirmation of the deal has yet been made by the White House or the Kremlin.

Turkey’s National Intelligence Agency confirmed in a statement on Thursday that it was coordinating an “exchange operation” that it described as “the most comprehensive of the recent period,” according to Reuters.

The release of Gershkovich comes the month after he was sentenced to 16 years in a maximum-security penal colony after being convicted on espionage charges.

He was arrested by Russia’s FSB security service in March 2023 during a reporting trip to the eastern city of Yekaterinburg and accused of gathering secret information about a Russian tank factory on behalf of the CIA. The Journal and the Biden Administration vehemently denied the allegations, accusing Russia of conducting a sham trial.

Whelan, meanwhile, was detained in Moscow in 2018 and similarly sentenced in 2020 to 16 years’ imprisonment after his conviction on contested espionage charges. He figured in the last U.S. prisoner swap with Russia, in December 2022, in which WNBA star Brittney Griner was exchanged for the Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout.

At the time, U.S. officials said Russia would not consider including Whelan in the deal. President Joe Biden said Moscow was treating his case differently from Griner’s “for totally illegitimate reasons”—but nevertheless vowed to “never give up” on bringing Whelan home.

Research contact: @thedailybeast

Above, former President Barack Obama and Vice President Kamala Harris share a moment during an event at the White House in 2022. (Photo source: Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)

Barack and Michelle Obama endorse Kamala Harris but warn: ‘We’re underdogs’

July 26, 2024

Barack and Michelle Obama have endorsed Kamala Harris for president—saying in a spot released by her campaign early on Friday, July 26, that they “couldn’t be prouder” to help propel her to victory, reports The Daily Beast.

But the former president issued a stark warning that Democrats are “underdogs,” reflecting polling that shows Harris still behind Donald Trump despite President Joe Biden dropping out of the race. Michelle Obama also promised to work to elect “my girl Kamala,” suggesting the former first couple will be a major presence on the campaign trail, a potentially huge boost to the Democrats.

The 55-second ad sees Harris taking a call from the Obamas while seemingly walking backstage at a campaign event. Obama’s distinctive voice breaks in over the phone immediately: “Kamala!”

After Michelle greets her as well, the video cuts to a title card—“The Obamas Call Kamala”—before shifting to show the vice president standing in front of a black SUV. Holding the phone to her ear with the speakerphone button visibly on, Harris says, “It’s good to hear you both.”

“I can’t have this phone call without saying to my girl Kamala: I am proud of you,” Michelle says. “This is going to be historic.”

“We called to say, Michelle and I couldn’t be prouder to endorse you, and to do everything we can to get you through this election and into the Oval Office,” Barack adds.

“Oh my goodness,” Harris responds, grinning. “Michelle, Barack, this means so much to me.”

The vice president goes on to say that she and her husband, Doug Emhoff, are looking forward to “getting out there, being on the road” with the couple.

“But most of all, I just want to tell you that the words you have spoken and the friendship you have given over all these years mean more than I can express, so thank you both,” she says. “It means so much. And, we’re going to have some fun with this too, aren’t we?”

But what Michelle Obama said is likely to give Democrats a significant boost and mark a break from her relationship with the Bidens—which was recently revealed to be frosty because of their estrangement from Hunter Biden’s first wife Kathleen Buhle who was also one of the former first lady’s closest friends. The former first lady is the country’s most popular political figure and the Democrats’ most potent campaigner.

Michelle Obama told Harris, “I just want to reiterate, we’ve got to work now. All of us. It’s time to stop wringing our hands, it’s time to stop complaining. It’s time for us to rally around you, your candidacy. This is not on you, it’s not just on you and Doug, it’s on all of us So, let’s all roll up our sleeves and, and make it happen.”

The official thumbs-up from the former president and former first lady comes a day after NBC News reported, citing four sources familiar with the matter, that an endorsement was imminent.

Some insiders told The New York Times shortly after that Obama was holding back his support to avoid the perception that he was puppet-mastering her anointment. Another explained to NBC that he was trying not to “overshadow” President Joe Biden, who on Wednesday night addressed the nation for the first time since announcing on Sunday he was dropping out of the presidential race.

Research contact: @thedailybeast

Above, Stormy Daniels and Donald Trump. (Photo source: CNN)

‘Daily Beast’ exclusive: Trump boasted about sex with Stormy in Tahoe, athlete says

May 29, 2024

Donald Trump boasted about having sex with adult film star Stormy Daniels at the 2006 golf tournament where the two met, a celebrity athlete who played the tournament has said in an exclusive interview with The Daily Beast.

The athlete also told The Daily Beast that a decade later, in the run-up to the 2016 election, he received anonymous calls from strangers asking what he remembered of the weekend.

Stormy Daniels says she told confidantes at the time that she had sex with Trump  and has told her story repeatedly since. Trump has repeatedly denied having sex with Daniels.

Nonetheless, hush-money payments to Daniels around the 2016 election gave rise to the 34 felony counts of falsification of business records for which Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, is now on trial in New York.

However, Trump passed up the opportunity to deny sex with Daniels under oath. On Tuesday, May 28, lawyers for the former president and for the prosecution made closing arguments. The first former president ever criminally indicted, Trump could face jail if found guilty.

The celebrity athlete, who spoke to The Daily Beast on condition of anonymity, citing fear of harassment or retaliation, said he was close to Trump and Daniels while they socialized at the 2006 American Century Championship celebrity golf tournament on the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe.

Although Trump sometimes referred to Daniels indirectly as a “porn star,” the athlete said, he emphasized that it was understood among the golfers who heard the boasts that Trump, at the time best-known as the host of reality TV show The Apprentice, was saying he had slept with Daniels.

“It was clear to me and everyone who heard him that he was talking about Stormy,” the athlete said, adding that Trump encouraged other celebs to try to have sex with Daniels—behavior the athlete described as “crass,” “gross,” and “stupid.”

“He’d say all these things like, ‘You’ve gotta bang a porn star, it’s incredible,’ and, ‘It added 20 yards to my drive today,’” the athlete told The Daily Beast.

The athlete said he has not shared his story widely, and that prosecutors never approached him. His account appears to be the first publicly reported description of Trump telling people he had sex with Daniels around the time Daniels says he did.

In the hush-money trial that is wrapping up now. while Daniels’ allegation was an important plank for Manhattan prosecutors who spent the last seven weeks building a criminal case against Trump, it wasn’t central to the charges.

District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg charged the former president for allegedly falsifying business records in service of covering up another crime—an alleged attempt to keep a lid on the $130,000 Trump’s former personal “fixer” Michael Cohen illegally paid Daniels the week before Election Day in 2016, thereby to keep the story from voters and boost Trump’s chances.

In Full Disclosure, her 2018 memoir, Daniels described her alleged liaison with Trump as “the least impressive sex I’d ever had.” In court this month, she dished out salacious testimony—saying Trump had been “blocking the way” out of the bedroom, and claiming she “blacked out” during sex; although she clarified that she had not felt “threatened verbally or physically.”

At the time, Trump’s wife, Melania Trump, was nursing their newborn son, Barron Trump.

Daniels entered a non-disclosure agreement with Trump in 2016 but had previously described the alleged sexual encounter in a 2007 radio appearance—without naming Trump—and then more fully in a 2011 interview for In Touch magazine, when Trump was considering a White House run. Six years after giving her version of events in her memoir, Daniels testified to it in court this month.

Research contact: @thedailybeast

Above, the Kennedy family St. Patrick's Day visit with Biden at the White House. (Photo source: Kerry Kennedy/X)

Kennedy kin make RFK Jr. disgust official and endorse Biden

April  19, 2024

More than a dozen members of the Kennedy family will officially endorse Joe Biden for president on Wednesday, April 24—forsaking their own family member, Independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The family plans to gather with Biden in Philadelphia, where they will make calls and knock on doors on the president’s behalf, reports The Daily Beast.

In addition, according to a draft of Kerry Kennedy’s remarks reviewed by The Daily Beast, she plans to denounce Donald Trump as a threat to America’s “most basic rights and freedoms.”

“We can say today, with no less urgency, that our rights and freedoms are once again in peril,” her prepared comments say. “That is why we all need to come together in a campaign that should unite not only Democrats, but all Americans, including Republicans, and Independents, who believe in what Lincoln called ‘the better angels of our nature.’”

Other members of the Kennedy clan backing Biden include Rory Kennedy, Joe Kennedy III, Ted Kennedy Jr., and Christopher Kennedy.

The family has previously rebuked RFK Jr. for disseminating conspiracy theories. In July, after he suggested that COVID-19 may have be

“My uncle’s comments were hurtful and wrong. I unequivocally condemn what he said,” said Joe Kennedy III, who serves as special envoy to Northern Ireland for economic affairs.

Joe Kennedy II echoed that sentiment, saying in a statement, “Bobby’s comments are morally and factually wrong. They play on antisemitic myths and stoke mistrust of the Chinese. His remarks in no way reflect the words and actions of our father, Robert F. Kennedy.”

RFK Jr. insisted that his remarks were taken out of context and has maintained that the family remains close despite their public dust-ups.

Research contact: @thedailybeast

Above, attorney John Eastman. (Photo source: Wisconsin Public Radio)

Judge recommends that John Eastman be disbarred for 2020 election BS

March 29, 2024

On Wednesday, March 27, a judge recommended that John Eastman–a now-infamous former lawyer for former President Donald Trump during the chaotic final days of his presidential term–be disbarred in California as the result of a case centered around his desperate attempts to overturn the 2020 election in Trump’s favor, reports The Daily Beast.

“Eastman’s wrongdoing constitutes exceptionally serious ethical violations warranting severe professional discipline,” the court states in its decision.

Eastman, 63, can no longer practice law in California, unless he wins an appeal. The decision from Judge Yvette Roland means his law license will now be deemed “inactive” until a decision on whether he will appeal or not. The move to an inactive status comes into effect three calendar days after the order is served. Absent a challenge, the recommendation goes to the California Supreme Court for review, the State Bar of California said.

On Wednesday night, a lawyer for Eastman confirmed his plans to appeal, which means the case will go before a panel of judges before making its way to the state Supreme Court. His law license will remain inactive during the appeals process.

In a statement, Eastman’s attorney, Randall Miller, told The Daily Beast that his client “maintains that his handling of the legal issues he was asked to assess after November 2020 election was based on reliable legal precedent, prior presidential elections, research of constitutional text, and extensive scholarly material.”

“The process undertaken by Dr. Eastman in 2020 is the same process taken by lawyers every day and everywhere–indeed, that is the essence of what lawyers do,” the statement continued, noting Eastman also faces criminal charges in Georgia alongside Trump and will continue to plead his innocence.

“Any reasonable person can see the inherent unfairness of prohibiting a presumed-innocent defendant from being able to earn the funds needed to pay for the enormous expenses required to defend himself, in the profession in which he has long been licensed,” Miller said. “That is not justice and serves no legitimate purpose to protect the public.”

Defending the win in court, Chief Trial Counsel George Cardona said in a statement after the ruling that, “Every California attorney has the duty to uphold the constitution and the rule of law. [Mr.] Eastman repeatedly violated that duty. Worse, he did so in a way that threatened the fundamental principles of our democracy.

 “The substantial evidence presented over 35 days of trial showed, and the court has now held, that … Eastman abandoned his ethical and legal duties as an attorney to conspire with then-President Donald Trump to develop and implement a strategy to obstruct the counting of electoral votes on January 6, 2021; and illegally disrupt the peaceful transfer of power to President-elect Joseph Biden, knowing that there was no good faith theory or argument to lawfully reject the electoral votes of any state or delay the January 6 electoral count.

“[Mr.] Eastman’s efforts failed only because our democratic institutions and those committed to upholding them held strong. The harm caused by … Eastman’s abandonment of his duties as a lawyer, and the threat his actions posed to our democracy, more than warrant his disbarment.”

The ruling came four months after a judge in the California State Bar Court found Eastman culpable for moral and legal violations that stemmed from his work for Trump.

Eastman was the author of a so-called “coup memo,” which laid out a long-shot plot explaining how, despite soundly losing to Biden in 2020, Trump could remain in office.

That memo leaned hard on the fringe legal theory that Mike Pence, then the vice president, had the unilateral authority to reject certified state electors and send the matter back to Republican-led state legislatures, who would then throw the election to Trump. The questionable legal theory sparked a firestorm among Trump’s die-hard supporters, who then put pressure on Pence to ignore the will of the people and nullify the election.

Pence refused to do so—an act that’s been cited as a key reason Trump supporters raided the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Eastman has since been indicted alongside Trump in Fulton County, Georgia, on charges related to his attempts to alter election results. In the aftermath of that indictment, Eastman decried that Trump’s lawyers were being unfairly targeted for their role in trying to overturn the election.

In a statement, he said last August that he surrendered to Georgia authorities for “an indictment that should never have been brought.”

Research contact: @thedailybeast

Above, New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan forbade Trump (second from left) from speaking publicly about line prosecutors, court staff, or their family members. (Photo source: Agence France-Presse)

Trump gets hit with sweeping gag order in hush money trial

March 28, 2024

Former President Donald Trump’s upcoming hush money trial in New York hit the former president with a gag order on Tuesday, March 26, just one day after Trump peddled a conspiracy theory about a prosecutor—and hours after the tycoon leveled attacks against the judge’s daughter, reports The Daily Beast.

New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan forbade Trump from speaking publicly about line prosecutors and court staff—or even their family members. He also subjected Trump to the same sorts of precautionary warnings the former president has faced from other judges in separate cases, ordering him to not even mention any prospective jurors.

However, a person familiar with the Trump team’s internal discussions told The Daily Beast they believe the gag order does not extend to the judge’s daughter. Merchan’s order only mentions the family members of “court staff.”

The snap decision was made on the heels of Trump’s anger-laden press conference yesterday at his 40 Wall Street building in downtown Manhattan, where the former president lashed out after suffering a minor loss in court when Merchan set his criminal trial—Trump’s first ever—to start on April 15.

When answering reporter’s questions, Trump attacked lead prosecutor Matt Colangelo, an unelected assistant district attorney for New York County. Colangelo worked on investigations against Trump while at the New York Attorney General’s Office; then, did a brief stint at the Department of Justice, only to return to the city to join the Manhattan District Attorney’s current case against Trump.

The former president seized on those details to surmise—without any proof—that Colangelo was somehow sent by President Joe Biden, Trump’s 2024 presidential rival, to bolster the local DA’s case.Att

The outlandish claim was a continuation of Trump’s long-espoused view that any law enforcement action against him is part of a shadowy “deep state” seeking to keep him from power.

Then on Tuesday morning, Trump shifted his followers’ focus to the judge himself—drawing attention to the judge’s own daughter.

“Judge Juan Merchan, a very distinguished looking man, is nevertheless a true and certified Trump Hater who suffers from a very serious case of Trump Derangement Syndrome. In other words, he hates me! His daughter is a senior executive at a Super Liberal Democrat firm that works for Adam “Shifty” Schiff, the Democrat National Committee, (Dem)Senate Majority PAC, and even Crooked Joe Biden,” Trump posted on his Truth Social media site.

This type of judicial decree is rare and seen as heavy-handed in a regular case, but Trump’s incessant attacks on the judicial system and his ability to rally his MAGA supporters has proven to be a unique threat that has flooded government offices with violent threats in the past two years.

In a separate matter in January, the final day of Trump’s three-month bank fraud trial was nearly derailed when a bomb threat was made targeting the home of Justice Arthur Engoron, who had overseen that case. Earlier, Trump loyalists left menacing phone calls at his chambers threatening physical violence against the judge and his law clerk, the attorney Allison Greenfield.

In the Manhattan District Attorney’s ongoing case against Trump, the former president has been launching personal attacks against DA Alvin Bragg Jr. from even before the moment a grand jury indicted him for faking business records in a scheme to cover up a hush money payment to the porn star Stormy Daniels.

Trump infamously posted a doctored photo of himself wielding a bat while standing ominously behind the DA—an image that was widely interpreted as intimidation.

Early on in the DA’s case, Justice Merchan took on a measured tone in court when he cautioned Trump’s lawyers against taking any actions that could be perceived as intimidating. He also strictly limited what the former president’s legal defense team could do with the information contained in the thousands of pages it received as evidence from the DA’s office—blocking defense lawyers from leaking any details that could compromise the case or lead to attacks against witnesses.

Merchan’s warnings grew more stern in the weeks that followed, as Trump began publicly speaking about the judge’s daughter. However, the judge did not punish Trump at the time—opting instead to continue cautioning against heated rhetoric.

But as Trump kept launching personal attacks against judges and prosecutors in other cases playing out in Florida, Georgia, and the District of Columbia—always feeding his loyalists’ hatred by chalking up every case to a shadowy, conspiratorial plot against him—the DA’s office sought steps to keep him in check.

In a request filed in court on Monday, February 26, eight prosecutors at the DA’s office asked Merchan to keep secret the names and addresses of any jurors who are eventually selected to decide whether Trump committed felonies when covering up his Stormy Daniels affair—especially since these New Yorkers will be the first Americans to decide whether a former U.S. president is guilty of crimes.

Prosecutors wrote that Trump’s “conduct in this and other matters—including his extensive history of attacking jurors in other proceedings—presents a significant risk of juror harassment and intimidation that warrants reasonable protective measures to ensure the integrity of these proceedings, minimize obstacles to jury selection, and protect juror safe.”

In a second request filed that same day, prosecutors also asked Merchan to issue a more sweeping gag order to further shut up Trump.

“Defendant has a longstanding and perhaps singular history of using social media, speeches, rallies, and other public statements to attack individuals that he considers to be adversaries, including ‘courts, judges, various law enforcement officials and other public officials, and even individual jurors in other matters,’” they wrote, adding that “concerns grow more acute with the approaching trial.”

With his order on Tuesday, Merchan granted prosecutors’ request.

Research contact: @thedailybeast

Above1, the Supreme Court has ruled that Trump can remain on 2024 primary ballots. (Photo source: Al Jazeera)

Supreme Court hands Trump a big win in Colorado ballot case

March 5, 2024

The U.S. Supreme Court gave former President Donald Trump a major victory on Monday, March 4—ruling that he cannot be disqualified from Colorado’s Republican primary ballot under the 14th Amendment, reports The Daily Beast.

The historic ruling derails a broad effort to keep Trump from even qualifying for the 2024 presidential election—one that sought to hold him accountable for inspiring his MAGA supporters to attack Congress on January 6, 2021, in a bald-faced attempt to remain in the White House after losing that election.

“BIG WIN FOR AMERICA!!!” Trump immediately responded in a post on his Truth Social media network.

The highest court in the land issued its decision per curiam, meaning that all nine justices agreed on a basic premise: Allowing a state to unilaterally take this kind of sweeping action would create chaos. Instead, they concluded, this kind of forceful act citing Section 3 of the 14th Amendment should come at the federal level.

“Permitting state enforcement of Section 3 against federal officeholders and candidates would raise serious questions about the scope of that power,” they wrote in an unsigned opinion.

The justices all expressed a serious concern with the fallout of what they called a “patchwork” approach, one that could fuel partisan hack jobs against enemy candidates and destroy the orderliness of the current presidential primary system across the nation.

“The result could well be that a single candidate would be declared ineligible in some states, but not others, based on the same conduct (and perhaps even the same factual record),” they wrote.

Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor joined together in a separate concurrence to clarify why they thought this latest effort could cause harm.

“In this case, the court must decide whether Colorado may keep a presidential candidate off the ballot on the ground that he is an oathbreaking insurrectionist and thus disqualified from holding federal office under Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment. Allowing Colorado to do so would, we agree, create a chaotic state-by-state patchwork, at odds with our Nation’s federalism principles,” the trio wrote.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a Trump appointee, authored her own separate section of the opinion in which she acknowledged the dramatic tensions surrounding the timing of the court’s decision. After all, the court is weighing in just one day before Trump is set to appear on primary ballots in 15 states, including Colorado and the much larger and more influential California and Texas.

“Writings on the court should turn the national temperature down, not up. For present purposes, our differences are far less important than our unanimity: All nine justices agree on the outcome of this case. That is the message Americans should take home,” she wrote.

The court over the weekend indicated that one case would be decided Monday, taking the unusual decision of issuing an opinion on a day when the court isn’t in session. Rulings are usually issued from the bench, with summaries of their opinions read in the courtroom. The next court day is not scheduled to take place until March 15.

Research contact: @thedailybeast