“When it comes to whether it’s the district attorney, the AG’s office … they all have people inside that office that leak information out. And so I feel it’s fair that our Political Beatdown family should know it as well,” Cohen said, referring to Bragg and Attorney General Tish James who is investigating Trump for civil financial fraud.
Former President Donald Trump could face minor criminal charges for trying to hide money paid to Daniels during his 2016 presidential run to keep her quiet about an earlier alleged affair, The New York Times reported last month. Trump has denied having an affair with Daniels in 2006.
Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to evading campaign contributions in connection with the Daniels payment. Two years earlier, he’d sent $130,000 to Daniels, which he said was “at the direction of” Trump. The Trump Organization paid Cohen back, but falsely listed the payment as a legal cost, according to documents in his earlier case.
Cohen made the announcement as former Manhattan prosecutor Mark Pomerantz is shopping his new book saying his former boss Bragg shouldn’t have stopped an earlier grand jury from investigating Trump last year.
“I do believe that Alvin Bragg is serious,” Cohen said Tuesday. “I believe that whatever occurred in the past is the past and I think he legitimately believes that there is a case to be made against Donald Trump.”
“Now, of course we’ll see. I’ll let everyone know at our next live event how everything went,“ he said. “Obviously I’m just speculating at this moment.“
A spokesperson for Bragg declined to comment.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
“This never happened. It would have never happened,” Trump told Fox News on Sunday.
“I’m not aware of a single civilian national security leader from the Trump administration who heard of this,” said a Trump administration national security official, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence issues.
The backlash came after senior Biden administration officials spoke to reporters about the Saturday operation that downed the Chinese spy balloon following its one-week traversal of the U.S. A senior DoD official said that similar devices entered American airspace three times during Trump’s tenure and once before during the current administration.
“I can confirm that there have been other incidents where balloons did come close to or cross over U.S. territory,” said Pentagon spokesperson Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder on Saturday, declining to provide additional information.
The difference, Defense Department officials said, is that those balloons never stayed above U.S. territory for a significant period of time. When pressed for specifics, such as the date, location and duration of those instances, Biden administration officials refused to provide them citing the classified nature of that information.
Some officials did speak in generalities, however. DoD tracks “hundreds” of balloons every day, but they are typically not deemed a threat. Their presence close to or over the United States would not be brought to the attention of senior leaders unless their behavior was “completely out of the ordinary, like this one,” said one senior Pentagon official.
At lower levels, officials have tracked multiple instances of balloon activity over U.S. territories in recent years. One of the Trump-era balloons hovered over Guam, according to two U.S. officials. And in 2020, the intelligence community assessed that far-smaller balloons detected off the coast of Virginia were Chinese radar-jamming devices, according to a former senior DoD official.
Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Fla.), a member of the House Armed Services Committee, tweeted Sunday that the office of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin had informed his office that “several Chinese balloon incidents have happened in the past few years – including over Florida.”
“Why weren’t they shot down?” he added. “And according to several Trump Admin national security officials – they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.”
The other time a similar airship appeared with Biden in the White House was last February near Hawaii.
Other senior Biden administration officials say it’s possible senior Trump figures weren’t briefed on those incursions. In some cases, devices were smaller and were only in U.S. airspace for short periods of time — making them harder to detect. And in others, some surmised that the information didn’t filter up to the top because the overflights weren’t significant enough.
The events also may not have been discovered in real-time and only pieced together recently with intelligence after the fact. One senior administration official said the events went “undetected.”
“We’ve gotten better at detection over time,” a second senior Biden administration official said, noting that those responsible for surveilling Chinese spy balloons can remain in government even with a new president in the Oval Office.
But the Trump officials adamantly deny any of this ever happened. “I don’t ever recall somebody coming into my office or reading anything that the Chinese had a surveillance balloon above the United States,” Esper told CNN on Friday.
“This never happened in the first two years of the Trump administration,” a former senior DoD official said. A senior Trump intelligence official said nothing like what transpired over the past week happened during all four years of the previous administration.
Biden’s team has given no indication it will downgrade intelligence to prove there were past examples of Chinese spy balloons above the U.S. from 2017 to 2021.
All senators will receive a briefing on the just-downed vehicle’s flight on Feb. 15, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Sunday.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Former President Donald Trump is the only candidate from a major party to announce a 2024 run so far, though a cast of potential Republican challengers have publicly teased potential campaigns. | Alex Brandon/AP Photo
Americans for Prosperity, a fundraising organization established by powerful conservatives Charles and David Koch, is not endorsing former President Donald Trump in the 2024 Republican primary, the organization implied in a memo Sunday.
“The best thing for the country would be to have a president in 2025 who represents a new chapter,” a letter from the organization’s CEO, Emily Seidel, said. But the memo didn’t mention Trump by name, leaving open the possibility of an endorsement further down the road.
The move could mark trouble for Trump, if it leads the AFP’s base of wealthy conservative donors away from his campaign. He is the only candidate from a major party to announce a 2024 run so far, though a cast of potential Republican challengers have publicly teased potential campaigns.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
“It can’t get done. He could get the nomination, but he can’t get [it] done,” Sununu said of the former president.
Sununu, who offered pointed criticisms of Biden’s handling of the economy, said Republicans need to nominate the most electable conservative they can find.
He said that a solid GOP field was shaping up and that he was also “thinking about it” when it comes to entering the race himself.
“Definitely thinking about it, having those conversations,” Sununu said, “but at the end of the day, you’re going to have a lot of Republicans that get in that race. They’re all really good people; they’re really good candidates. You have Nikki Haley and Mike Pompeo and Governor [Ron] DeSantis and a lot of folks who are going to get in.”
Speaking later on the same program, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie agreed with Sununu that Trump was unlikely to defeat Biden.
“I don’t think so,” he said during a panel discussion.
The Post-ABC poll gave Trump a 48-44 edge over Biden. But it also showed that a majority of Democrats do not want Biden to be the Democratic nominee in 2024 and that a plurality of Republicans feel the same way about Trump. The poll, released two days before Biden’s State of the Union address, was conducted Jan. 27-Feb. 1 among a national sample of 1,003 U.S. adults and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
But a key connection to Donald Trump got Gilmore a pardon on the president’s last day in the White House. By the following year, Gilmore had again become a force in New Jersey politics, so much so that the state’s Democratic governor and a Democratic state senator in a neighboring county — Vin Gopal, one of Republicans’ top targets in state legislative elections — broke bread with him.
“I found out who were extremely loyal and true friends, and I found those who were just political friends who were easy to desert you in time of need,” Gilmore, who never pleaded guilty and still maintains his innocence, said in a phone interview.
The diner meeting — which was first reported by POLITICO and also included Murphy’s chief of staff — came a few months after Gilmore, still owing millions to the IRS and facing liens on his home, narrowly won back the Ocean County Republican chairmanship after a hotly-contested race that ended in a lawsuit.
Now Gilmore is poised to have a huge influence on who Republicans run to replace Murphy when he’s term-limited out in 2025, creating a potential impediment to Jack Ciattarelli, a former assemblymember who came just three points shy of unseating Murphy in 2021 and immediately declared his intention to run again in 2025.
That’s no small thing. Despite New Jersey’s blue tilt, Republican candidates for governor can and often do win there.
Gilmore worked against Ciattarelli in 2021, boosting a far-right candidate, Phil Rizzo, who finished second in the Republican primary. In 2022, when Gilmore once again ran to be chair, Ciattarelli’s former campaign manager Eric Arpert aided Gilmore’s rival, County Sheriff Michael Mastronardy. “Ciattarelli I know made phone calls against me because people let me know they received them,” Gilmore told POLITICO shortly after winning back the chairmanship.
Ciattarelli declined to comment on Gilmore. But there are signs he’s seeking to counter his influence in the county. Arpert, Ciattarelli’s former campaign manager, is consulting for a new super PAC founded by the wives of a prominent developer and rabbi in the county’s burgeoning Orthodox Jewish community — a potential hedge against Gilmore’s influence.
But the relationship between Gilmore and Ciattarelli, while tense, is not necessarily beyond repair. The two met Wednesday, and both described it as a positive discussion. “Like all my meetings with Republican county chairs, the discussion is pretty much a private matter,” Ciattarelli said.
Gilmore’s return as chair didn’t start smoothly. He blamed the officials who had controlled the party during his absence for removing items from the party headquarters late at night and quickly transferring funds out of party accounts. He filed a lawsuit seeking emails and other records, with one defendant, Republican Assemblymember Greg McGuckin, calling him “someone in severe financial distress who managed to escape federal prison only due to his political connections.”
But tensions have quieted as Gilmore has worked to restore his grip on power. This month, he agreed to drop his lawsuit, under the stipulation that the party’s former executive director admitted in writing to deleting a Google account to block Gilmore’s access to the former party leaders’ emails. And after several internal party battles over running candidates for state and local offices, some successful and some not, he appears to have secured support for his chosen candidate to replace a retiring state senator — all but ensuring his candidate will win.
“[A]ll of the things that he’s said he’s going to do, the promises he’s made of uniting everybody together and working with everyone again — we’re hoping he stays with that,” said Ocean County Commissioner Virginia Haines, who’s worked with Gilmore for decades and was affiliated with the faction that opposed his return to power. “He is trying.”
Meanwhile, Gilmore’s law firm — which, prior to his trial, made about $2 million a year in public contracts around the state — has disbanded, and he left his position as a lobbyist with one of New Jersey’s most prominent firms. But there are indications that he’s still able to parlay political connections into income — if indirectly. An engineering firm run by a Gilmore ally recently started a new division to expand its work in the public sector, with Gilmore’s wife as a co-founder.
One relationship did more than anything to help Gilmore get back into this powerful position.
Gilmore was sentenced to a year in prison in 2020 over his tax convictions. But he didn’t wind up doing the time because he had something that those other politicians didn’t: A key connection to Trump world in Bill Stepien, Trump’s 2020 campaign manager and a top White House aide who had years earlier nearly seen his own career ended by the infamous Bridgegate scandal. Stepien had kept a lifeline of income from the GOP super PAC GOPAC, thanks to Gilmore’s help. That connection helped secure Gilmore the Trump pardon. Late last year, Stepien took charge as manager of the Ocean County Republicans’ 2023 campaigns.
Stepien knows the power of Ocean County in statewide elections first-hand. He managed both of former Republican Gov. Chris Christie’s campaigns, for which Ocean County ran up the score, securing Christie’s relatively narrow 2009 win and boosting his 2013 landslide reelection.
“Every New Jersey Republican should be cheering George’s return. If they’re not, they’re caring more about self-interest or their bruised egos than they are about winning elections,” Stepien said. “Campaigns are math equations, and New Jersey Republican can’t win statewide without the Ocean County margins only Geroge has been able to deliver over the last 20 years.”
Stepien didn’t call out Ciattarelli directly, saying he was speaking of “no one specific.” But it’s hard to read it any other way.
“One out of every seven votes will come out of Ocean County in the next statewide primary. So if you’re not spending time trying to build a relationship with George and his team, I have to question your strategy,” Stepien said.
Gilmore declined to comment on the meeting with Murphy and Gopal (D-Monmouth), though Gopal confirmed it. The topics discussed were important to the Jersey Shore region, according to Gopal, if mundane by the standards of those salivating for juicy political gossip that would arise from such a meeting of seeming political rivals.
“George had reached out individually to both the governor and I about wanting to talk about shoreline issues that impact both Ocean and Monmouth Counties,” Gopal said. “He wanted to talk about beach replenishment funding, issues with cabanas … and other general funding issues.”
Regardless of what they discussed, the governor’s presence at a meeting with Gilmore sent the real message: Gilmore is once again a powerful force in New Jersey politics.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Plaskett, a former prosecutor, made history in the role as the first delegate to serve as an impeachment manager. Fellow impeachment manager Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), now the top Democrat on the Oversight Committee, was once her law professor at American University.
Jeffries also nominated three members of the Oversight Committee for the select panel: Reps. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.), Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) and Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.). Connolly and Lynch ran against Raskin for the top spot on that panel but fell short. And Goldman, a freshman, previously served as counsel for House Democrats during Trump’s first impeachment trial.
Democratic Reps. Linda Sánchez (Calif.), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (Fla.), John Garamendi (Calif.), Colin Allred (Texas) and Sylvia Garcia (Texas) also got seats on the select subcommittee. Technically, McCarthy appoints all members of the panel, meaning he’ll need to sign off on the Democratic picks, but the California Republican has said he would let Democrats name their own members for the subcommittee.
Jeffries, in the letter to his colleagues, said that the Democrats leading their party on the committees would need to “stand up to extremism from the other side of the aisle.” In addition to picking Plaskett as the top Democrat on the weaponization subcommittee, Jeffries also picked Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.) to be the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee after McCarthy blocked Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the longtime lead Democrat, from serving on the panel.
The minority leader also tapped Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) to head Democrats on a select committee on strategic competition between the United States and China and Rep. Raul Ruiz (D-Calif.) to be the party’s top official on a subcommittee on the coronavirus pandemic.
“It remains my goal to prioritize and value input from every corner of the Caucus so we may unleash the full potential of our team. The members of the select committees reflect the tremendous experience, background and ability of the House Democratic Caucus, and authentically represent the gorgeous mosaic of the American people,” he added.
Under a fix passed by the House earlier Wednesday, the select panel members were expected to include Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), who serve as chair and ranking member of the full Judiciary Committee, as well as an additional 19 lawmakers — no more than eight of whom would be Democrats. But Jeffries, in his announcement, said that Nadler would instead serve as an ex-officio member. The overall break down of the panel is 12 Republicans to 9 Democrats.
Democrats on the subcommittee will be tasked with finding an offensive lane to counter the GOP investigations, with Republicans on the panel expected to expand the scope of their probes to include the intelligence community, the Department of Education, big tech and other targets.
The minority party largely avoided naming any bomb throwers to the subcommittee, but their members are well-steeped in investigative tactics and procedural mechanisms Republicans may choose to deploy as they pursue their own favored probes.
In addition to serving as an impeachment manager, Plaskett was also on the Ways and Means Committee in the last Congress, which was at the center of the fight for Trump’s tax returns. Sánchez is also a member of the tax writing committee.
Connolly, in particular, also has a long history of tangling with Jordan and other GOP members of the panel through their time on the Oversight Committee.
Kyle Cheney contributed to this report.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
There is expected to be a more intentional recruiting effort from national organizations focused on election clerks and other similar positions this cycle, in an effort to counter a potential wave of MAGA-like candidates running for those under-the-radar positions.
Run for Something, a liberal organization founded after Trump’s election focused on lining up candidates to run for office across the ballot, launched “Clerk Work” last year to recruit candidates for local positions in the election process. It covers everything from county clerks to boards of supervisors.
The group had a hand in recruiting more than 220 candidates in the midterms for voting-related positions, Run for Something co-founder Ross Morales Rocketto said in an interview. That included 32 top-tier candidates, with a focus on county clerk positions in states like Colorado and California and county commissioners in Nevada. The group said 20 of them won their contests, including 10 of the 13 who were running against candidates Run for Something identified as an “election denier.”
“The thing that keeps me up at night isn’t whether we can beat most of these folks — I think we can beat them in most places — it’s actually whether we get people on the ballot to run against them,” Morales Rocketto said. “And that to me is actually the harder challenge in all of this.”
Over the next two years, the group is focusing in on a handful of states — including Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Texas and Michigan — as top priorities to recruit election officials.
Keep Country First Policy Action, a group founded by allies of former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), also launched an effort last year to recruit “pro-freedom, pro-democracy” candidates for office, with a focus on local election positions.
In interviews, local officials who will be on the ballot in 2024 said they expected it to be a challenging election, with the added attention on both the official side of the job, as they prepare their offices for a busy presidential election year, and on their own individual campaigns.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Despite those high expenses, the fundraising committee — which had money in the bank going into December — still distributed significant funds to Trump’s campaign committee, enabling him to pay staff and fund a variety of campaign initiatives over the holidays.
But the high costs of fundraising are an ominous sign, as the early days of campaigns are often a time for candidates to reap easy cash from enthusiastic donors.
Trump has significant fundraising work to do ahead of what could be a grueling election cycle. His campaign reported only $3 million in cash on hand, compared to more than $19 million that his campaign had at the same time in the 2020 election cycle. Four years ago, the then-president also did not have a competitive primary approaching.
The former president’s fundraising numbers would still be enviable for many candidates. December is typically a slow fundraising month, and the fundraising committee raised more than $15 million in October and November, mostly before Trump’s presidential campaign launched. Declining rates of return on digital fundraising is a problem that has plagued many candidates. But Trump was once considered the exception to his party’s digital fundraising woes, as he raised record sums online during the 2020 election cycle and continued raising large amounts of money after he left office in 2021.
“President Trump has raised $21.3 million in the last quarter, proving that he is an unstoppable force that continues to dominate politics,” said Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for the Trump campaign. “The campaign built out a second-to-none operation both on the national level and in early states since announcing. The President will wage an aggressive and fully-funded campaign to take our country back from Joe Biden and Democrats who seek to destroy our country.”
Trump will still benefit from significant outside money. A super PAC backing him, MAGA Inc., reported having $54 million in cash on hand at the end of 2022 and will likely look to target potential GOP primary opponents in advertising — a costly part of any campaign.
Overall, Trump’s fundraising committee spent over $250,000 on top political consultants and staff, while his campaign spent another more than $330,000 on staff and consultants.
The joint fundraising committee paid more than $4,400 to GS2LAW PLLC, the law firm representing Trump in his lawsuit against journalist Bob Woodward over audio of their interviews released by Woodward. Other major campaign expenses in December included $67,000 spent at Mar-a-Lago and a $5,000 donation to the Republican Party of Iowa.
The filings give some clues as to who exactly is working with Trump in the early days of his campaign. Aides say Trump’s 2024 operation, headquartered in West Palm Beach, Fla., not far from Trump’s Mar-a-lago club, is expected to be scrappier than the large 2020 campaign based at a high rise in Virginia.
Over $50,000 went towards paying advisers like Boris Epshteyn and Christina Bobb, who have assisted the former president on his numerous legal cases. The fundraising arm also paid longtime Trump aides like Lynne Patton, who has worked closely with the Trump family for years and was with Trump since his first campaign, and Dan Scavino, Trump’s director of social media in the White House who will continue that work on the campaign.
Other aides included in the filing include Margo Martin, who worked for Trump in the White House and has continued to be a press and communications aide for his reelect, Liz (Harrington) Shrew, a spokeswoman for Trump who frequently appears on right-wing media, Justin Caporale, a Melania Trump aide-turned-operations adviser, and Danny Tiso, a press lead for the campaign.
Vincent Haley and Ross Worthington, Trump’s top policy advisers and speechwriters who worked with him in the White House, are on the campaign payroll. And so are two of the people frequently at Trump’s side: Natalie Harp, the young OAN anchor-turned-aide, and Walt Nauta, Trump’s former military aide in the White House who moved down to Florida to continue to work for Trump and found himself at the center of Trump’s Mar-a-lago document drama.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Now, Trump’s political apparatus is preparing to follow suit with its own offensive.
Over the next several weeks, the super PAC’s officials are expected to travel to the four early nominating states — Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada — to test out possible lines of attack against DeSantis and a handful of other potential rivals before focus groups. The Trump-aligned organization, MAGA, Inc., has begun drafting messages that could be used to undercut opponents, which it says are based on extensive opposition research.
While the super PAC’s early focus has largely been on DeSantis, officials say its research effort has been expanded to include other prospective candidates. And those involved are not ruling out the possibility of airing early ads targeting Trump’s opponents, potentially before the end of March. The super PAC has hired a media buyer and has begun looking into the cost of running commercials in early primary states, according to a person familiar with the group’s activities. It is also expected to set up a “war room” based in West Palm Beach, Fla. (Trump’s campaign has also set up its headquarters in West Palm Beach, near where the former president’s Mar-a-Lago estate is located.)
Budowich, who heads the pro-Trump super PAC, did not specify an exact date for when the group would start airing ads. In a statement, he said that “MAGA Inc., through deep opposition research, tested messages, and a significant war chest, is building a GOP primary guillotine that will welcome every challenger with swift and decisive force.”
A DeSantis spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment. But on Tuesday, the governor took a rare swing at Trump, arguing that his landslide reelection win this past November in Florida showed that voters approved of his light-touch approach to handling the pandemic.
“The good thing is, is that the people are able to render a judgment on that whether they reelect you or not,” DeSantis told reporters during a press conference when asked about Trump’s recent attacks. “And I’m happy to say — you know in my case — not only did we win reelection, we won with the highest percentage of the vote that any Republican governor candidate has had in the history of the state of Florida. … That verdict has been rendered by the people of the state of Florida.”
With polls showing Trump and DeSantis leading the field in the early-voting states, some people in the former president’s orbit have privately expressed a desire for Trump’s super PAC to begin going after the Florida governor.
The group has substantial resources at its disposal: Fundraising efforts did not begin until 2023, but upon its launch last year, MAGA Inc. was seeded with $55 million, much of it transferred from Trump’s political action committee, Save America. (Super PAC officials downplayed expectations for a campaign finance report due Tuesday evening, which will cover fundraising for the final weeks of 2022.)
Now, the super PAC is looking to build its war chest further, and it is planning to hold its first fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago on Feb. 23. Organizers are describing the event as a “candlelight dinner,” that will be attended by the former president. The super PAC has brought on Meredith O’Rourke, a veteran Republican fundraiser, to oversee its finance efforts and has begun hiring a team of regional fundraisers.
Raising major funds, however, may not prove easy for Trump. Some of Trump’s top donors from 2020, such as hedge fund executive Stephen Schwarzman, have expressed a desire to move on from the former president. Others have also been supportive of DeSantis.
And some big donors appear likely to sit out the 2024 GOP primary entirely. Miriam Adelson, the widow of casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson who has recently dined with Trump and was his biggest financial supporter in 2020, has made clear she has no plans to get involved in the nominating fight.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
DeSantis has made similar remarks in the past, but his Tuesday comments show he’s willing to engage and defend against a rising stream of attacks from his one-time ally who boosted him to the governor’s mansion back in 2018.
Trump over the weekend made campaign appearances in New Hampshire and South Carolina where he told reporters that DeSantis would be “disloyal” if he ran for the Republican nomination and he knocked DeSantis’ record on Covid-19.
DeSantis is a rising conservative star who is seen as one of the biggest potential obstacles to Trump winning a third go-round as the Republican nominee for president. DeSantis’ star has been buoyed by his decision to veer away from lockdowns earlier than most states — but not all — and his insistence on opening schools back up to in-person learning. He leaned into his record as a prime argument to Florida voters who re-elected him in a nearly 20-point victory over Democratic nominee Charlie Crist.
DeSantis has also waded into cultural issues such as race and gender identity that also brought him widespread criticism and attention.
Trump so far is the only major GOP candidate in the race, although many others are mulling 2024 White House runs. DeSantis will likely jump into the race later this year — possibly in May — after the annual session of the Florida Legislature.
Trump also contended that DeSantis was “trying to rewrite history” regarding his handling of the pandemic, including the governor’s decision to allow lockdowns during the first months as well as his aggressive early push for people to get vaccinated. DeSantis has since pivoted and now is viewed as a vaccine skeptic, especially after he asked for the creation of a grand jury to look at any “wrongdoing” associated with vaccines.
Trump has begun to paint DeSantis, however, as another Republican establishment candidate, including taking shots at him because he is on good terms with former GOP Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who Trump mocked and chased out of the 2016 race for president.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
