Uh-Oh: Giuliani’s “Biden Sources” Charged With Being Putin Agents

Ukraine’s Security Service notified Rudy Giuliani’s top Ukrainian allies on Monday that they are suspects of treason, citing evidence that the officials participated in activities aiding Russian President Vladimir Putin.

A Ukrainian member of parliament, Oleksandr Dubinsky, ex-Ukrainian lawmaker Andriy Derkach, and ex-prosecutor Kostyantyn Kulyk are suspected of joining an organization founded by chief members of Russia’s Military Intelligence while Giuliani worked to dig up dirt on President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden in 2019, according to a statement.

The organization received more than $10 million from the Russian Federation to “discredit” Ukraine on the international stage.

“It is established that on the instructions of the Russian special services, it organized events to discredit the image of Ukraine in the international arena in order to worsen diplomatic relations with the United States and complicate Ukraine’s accession to the European Union and NATO,” the State Investigative Bureau said in a statement.

Dubinsky, who is also suspected of spreading misinformation about Ukraine’s political leadership, will be detained for 60 days, or until January 12, 2024, reported Reuters. Dubinsky was not named in the charging document but was identified as the subject of the remand by other lawmakers, according to the outlet.

Giuliani met with Dubinsky and Derkach in Kyiv in December 2019 as part of his “documentary series” with One America News Network on election meddling, hoping to discredit the presidential election results.

A former Ukrainian presidential adviser, Igor Novikov, told Time in 2021 that he believed “Mayor Giuliani’s actions in Ukraine threatened our national security” and that the country should not allow efforts to “drag our country into our allies’ domestic politics” to go “unpunished.”

Giuliani and Trump have both pleaded not guilty in the criminal trial charging them and 16 others with attempting to overturn the 2020 election.

Representative James Comer had a complete meltdown Tuesday when asked about loans he appears to have given his brother.

Comer has insisted for months that Joe Biden is guilty of corruption, most recently citing a check the president gave his brother Jim Biden in 2018. But last week, a Daily Beast report revealed that Comer and his own brother have engaged in multiple land swaps over the years through family-owned businesses that do not appear to actually exist.

When Democratic Representative Jared Moskowitz asked Comer about the loans during a House hearing Tuesday, Comer grew incensed.

“I’ve never loaned my brother one penny,” Comer said, calling the story “completely false.”

Comer also said it was “bullshit” that the story said he owned a shell company. As he continued to deny that he had loaned his brother money or that his family had engaged in shady business dealings, he grew more heated.

“You look like a Smurf here, just going around and stuff!” he yelled at Moskowitz. “You continue to spew disinformation!”

As Moskowitz shouted questions, specifically why voters should believe Comer, the Kentucky Republican yelled over him. He told the Democrat to go to Comer’s district and see all the land Comer owns for himself.

At one point, Comer said, “You’ve already been proven a liar, Mr. Moskowitz!”

“Who’s proven me a liar—you? Your word means nothing!” Moskowitz shot back.

Moskowitz then challenged Comer to sit for a deposition about the loan. Comer said he would be happy to sit down with Hunter and Jim Biden.

Before the hearing returned to its original agenda, Moskowitz delivered a parting shot.

“We believe everything in the media, like when you go on Fox News and say things—and everyone says that they’re true—with innuendos and ifs and maybes, the Biden family, the crime family, all this nonsense,” he said. “But when it happens to you, it’s fake news.”

“There should be the same standard. You said at the beginning of this year, the Biden administration can’t have it both ways. Neither can you, Mr. Chairman!”

A fight nearly broke out during a Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, or HELP, committee hearing on Tuesday after Senator Markwayne Mullin read aloud a union boss’s tweet snubbing the freshman Oklahoma congressman as a “clown” and a “fraud.”

“Sir, this is a time, this is a place, if you want to run your mouth we can be two consenting adults and finish it here,” Mullin said.

“OK, that’s fine. Perfect,” responded International Brotherhood of Teamsters General President Sean O’Brien.

“You want to do it now?” Mullin asked. “Stand your butt up then.”

“You stand your butt up, big guy,” retorted O’Brien.

Senator Bernie Sanders narrowly defused the fight after Mullin rose out of his chair, slamming his gavel while calling the committee to order.

“You’re a United States senator, sit down,” boomed Sanders. “This is a hearing. God knows the American people have enough contempt for Congress.”

Moments later, the senator posted a photo of himself before a table of guns, captioned, “Let’s do it. Anyplace, anytime.”

A far-right evangelical pastor is scheduled to take the stage at Tuesday’s “March for Israel” rally on Washington’s National Mall, despite a history of controversial remarks that include claiming Jews were responsible for the Holocaust.

Tens of thousands of demonstrators are expected to attend alongside televangelist Pastor John Hagee, a reputed antisemite, including numerous politicians from both sides of the aisle like House Speaker Mike Johnson, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, as well as Israel’s President Isaac Herzog.

“I am horrified that he was given this platform,” said Hadar Susskind, president and CEO of Americans for Peace Now. “His history of hateful comments should disqualify him from decent company, much less from speaking on stage. He is not welcome and should not speak.”

Previously, Hagee claimed that Hitler came from a lineage of “accursed, genocidally murderous half-breed Jews” and suggested that it was Jews’ “disobedience” toward God that led to their persecution.

Such comments were enough to sour public opinion on Hagee in the past. In 2008, GOP presidential nominee Senator John McCain ultimately shirked Hagee’s endorsement after reports emerged that the minister believed Adolf Hitler had fulfilled God’s will by becoming a “hunter,” driving Jews back to Israel.

“‘Behold, I will send for many fishers, and after that I will send for many hunters. And they the hunters shall hunt them,’” Hagee said during a sermon, referring to Jeremiah 16:16. “That would be the Jews.… Then God sent a hunter. A hunter is someone who comes with a gun, and he forces you. Hitler was a hunter,” Hagee said, according to a transcript of his sermon.

McCain subsequently called the comments “deeply offensive and indefensible.”

The war between Israel and Hamas is now in its sixth week. Gaza’s Health Ministry has reported that more than 11,100 Palestinians have been killed in the conflict so far—or one out of every 200 people—with most of the dead being women and children. Approximately 240 hostages still remain in Gaza after Hamas militants attacked a music festival in southern Israel on October 7, killing 1,200 people.

Republican infighting is so bad that lawmakers are getting into physical altercations in the halls of Congress.

NPR reporter Claudia Grisales tweeted Tuesday that while she was talking to Representative Tim Burchett after the Republican conference meeting, Kevin McCarthy walked past. As he walked behind Burchett, McCarthy shoved the Tennessee lawmaker, forcing him to lunge forward.

Grisales noted that she has “NEVER seen this on Capitol Hill” and said that both she and Burchett were stunned. Burchett called McCarthy a “jerk” and said he had never done anything like that before, before chasing after the former House speaker.

“Hey Kevin, why’d you walk behind me and elbow me in the back?” Burchett demanded when he caught up.

McCarthy denied elbowing him, and Burchett shot back, “You got no guts, you did so.… The reporter said it right there, what kind of chicken move is that? You’re pathetic, man, you are so pathetic.”

Burchett told Grisales it was his first interaction with McCarthy since voting to oust the California lawmaker as speaker. Burchett called McCarthy a “jerk” several more times and also called him “childish.”

“He’s on a downhill spiral,” Burchett said. “That was pretty gutless of him. I’m disappointed in him.”

Burchett was one of eight Republicans who voted in early October to boot McCarthy from the speakership. Tension was already running high within the GOP, and vacating the speaker clearly did nothing to improve intraparty relationships.

Ironically, Burchett had warned in July that “a fistfight could break out at any moment.”

He told The Daily Beast that, as a fan of professional wrestling, “it’s entertaining to think that a fistfight could break out at any movement. I kind of dig that.”

At the time, Burchett was talking about tension between Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert. But it looks like he still got his wish, in a way.

A former Justice Department official believes that a note torn up by Donald Trump before the January 6, 2021, insurrection “absolutely” proves the former president’s intent to overthrow the 2020 presidential election results.

In the weeks immediately preceding the January 6 insurrection, Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, took to Newsmax, claiming that Trump could “take military capabilities” and “rerun an election” in key swing states that he lost.

But much to Trump’s chagrin, the military didn’t see it that way.

“There’s no role for the U.S. military in determining the outcome of an American election,” read a joint statement issued by Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy and Chief of Staff of the Army James McConville.

Personnel Chief John McEntee, tasked with rooting out obstructive staffers, then passed a note along to Trump.

“Chris Miller spoke to both of them and anticipates no more statements coming out,” McEntee wrote, referring to the administration’s defense secretary. “(If another happens, he will fire them).”

Hours later, Trump would tweet a call to action to his supporters, asking them to join him in D.C. on January 6.

“Big protest in D.C. on January 6,” he posted in late December. “Be there, will be wild!”

McEntee’s note, torn up by the former president but reconstructed, was collected as part of the House January 6 Committee’s investigation and now appears in the pages of ABC News journalist Jonathan Karl’s latest book, Tired of Winning: Donald Trump and the End of the Grand Old Party.

“Doesn’t that get right at his intent of what he wanted them to do?” asked MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace.

“Absolutely,” responded Andrew Weissmann, an attorney and former official at the Justice Department.

“My general experience when I was in the government is that the military is incredibly law-abiding and really stands for the rule of law,” said Weissmann.

“As much as you think of it as a military organization with a hierarchy, they are also trained that they do not violate the Constitution. And when there’s an invalid order, they know that they cannot follow it because the Constitution comes first,” Weissmann noted, adding that the note is another example of Trump “brushing up” against a “guardrail.”

That detail could be key to special counsel Jack Smith’s case against the former president, in which Trump is charged with four felonies for disrupting Congress’s certification of the Electoral College results, conspiring to defraud the United States, and depriving U.S. citizens’ right to vote.

A city in Tennessee is using a recently passed ordinance essentially prohibiting homosexuality in public to try to ban library books that might violate the new rules.

Murfreesboro passed an ordinance in June banning “indecent behavior,” including “indecent exposure, public indecency, lewd behavior, nudity or sexual conduct.” As journalist Erin Reed first reported, this ordinance specifically mentions Section 21-72 of the city code. The city code states that sexual conduct includes homosexuality.

Anyone who violates the new ordinance is barred from hosting public events or selling goods and services at public events for two years. Anyone who violates the ordinance “in the presence of minors” is barred for five years.

An ACLU-backed challenge to the ordinance has already been launched, but that hasn’t stopped city officials from implementing the measure. Last Monday, the Rutherford County steering committee met to discuss removing all books that might potentially violate the ordinance from the public library. The resolution was met with widespread outcry from city residents.

“When have the people who ban books ever been the good guys?” local activist Keri Lambert demanded during the Monday county meeting.

Murfreesboro city officials have already used the ordinance to ban four books that discuss LGBTQ themes. In August, the county library board pulled the books Flamer, Let’s Talk About It, Queerfully and Wonderfully Made, and This Book Is Gay.

The board also implemented a new library card system that categorizes books into certain age groups. When it takes effect next year, children and teenagers will only be able to check out books that correspond to their age group; they will need permission from a parent or guardian to check out “adult” books.

Library director Rita Shacklett worried in August that the new rules would prevent students from accessing books they need for a class. She explained that many classic high school books, such as To Kill a Mockingbird, are now classified as “adult.”

It’s unclear if the county steering committee plans to pull books such as the A Song of Ice and Fire series, which includes multiple depictions of heterosexual sexual conduct.

Murfreesboro’s new ordinance is part of a much larger wave of attacks on LGBTQ rights in Tennessee and the rest of the country. In the past year, the so-called Volunteer State became the first state to try to ban drag performances. That law was overturned in court.

In March, the Tennessee House of Representatives passed a bill that would allow people to refuse to perform a marriage if they disagree with it, essentially gutting marriage equality. The bill was introduced in the Senate but deferred until next year.

One of Donald Trump’s former attorneys told Georgia prosecutors that Trump knew he had lost the 2020 election but was simply “not going to leave” the White House, testimony that could signal his death knell in the Fulton County case.

Jenna Ellis struck a plea deal with Fulton County prosecutors in late October, agreeing to testify against Trump in exchange for a lighter sentence. ABC News managed to acquire footage of her testimony, which it published Monday evening.

The video footage shows Ellis describing how senior Trump aide Dan Scavino told her during the 2020 White House Christmas party that “the boss” intended to simply stay in office. Ellis explained that everyone knew “the boss” meant Trump.

Ellis said she pointed out that Trump had lost the election and they had lost all of their attempts to challenge the result in court. Scavino replied, “Well, we don’t care, and we’re not going to leave.”

“And I said, ‘What do you mean?’ And he said, ‘Well, the boss … is not going to leave under any circumstances. We are just going to stay in power,’” Ellis said.

“And I said to him, ‘Well, it doesn’t quite work that way, you realize?’ And he said, ‘We don’t care.’”

ABC also obtained footage of former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell’s testimony. Powell, who claims she never actually worked for Trump, struck a plea deal with Georgia prosecutors in mid-October.

In her testimony, she describes being in frequent contact with Trump as she worked to seize voting machines nationwide. Powell also “reiterated the false assertion that Trump won the election—but acknowledged in the video that she didn’t know much about election law to begin with,” ABC reported.

Trump was charged with felony racketeering in Georgia for trying to overturn the state’s 2020 election results. He pleaded not guilty to all 13 charges. A big part of his defense is that he truly believed he won the election and was acting based on legal advice.

But Ellis’s testimony could prove to be his undoing. Neal Katyal, the former principal deputy solicitor general of the United States, said it was significant that Ellis’s conversation with Scavino took place after all of Trump’s election challenge cases were rejected, including by the Supreme Court.

“This evidence goes to criminal intent that Donald Trump wasn’t thinking about whether he won or lost, he was just going to stay in power no matter what,” Katyal said Monday night on MSNBC.

“All of this together paints a really damaging picture for Donald Trump.”

Michael Cohen doesn’t think that Donald Trump should be put behind bars—all because of his big mouth.

The former Trump fixer claimed imprisoning the former president could be “dangerous,” arguing that he belongs under house arrest instead.

“He needs to be held accountable,” Cohen told CNN on Monday. “Do I believe if it was anyone else that that individual would already be in prison or jail? The answer is emphatically yes.”

“But, because he was president of the United States, and for four years he was debriefed on a daily basis on our national security secrets, I personally as an American citizen, I would be concerned,” Cohen said, “because Donald is the kind of guy to sell any of that information for a bag of tuna or a book of stamps, and I do really mean that.”

“It’s dangerous for America to have somebody like Donald Trump in an environment where he can share the information,” he added. “Look, he’s shared it already with members of Mar-a-Lago as well as other individuals that came to visit, so why would he not do it if it benefited him somehow, in some way, in a prison situation?”

Last month, Cohen testified in Trump’s $250 million New York bank fraud trial that Trump made up numbers and then told Cohen to artificially inflate the real estate mogul’s net worth, sometimes by as much as billions of dollars, in order to broker better deals with banks and insurance companies.

“I was confused on how I was going to be,” Cohen said, recalling the moment he came face to face with Trump for the first time in years while taking the stand. “And actually, I felt nothing. It was so weird that here I am, sitting directly across from Donald Trump, and I felt absolutely nothing.”

But while Trump doesn’t face the ultimate consequence of prison time in that particular trial due to its nature as a civil case, he does in several other upcoming criminal trials, including the Georgia election interference case, the January 6 insurrection case, the classified documents case, and the hush-money case in which Trump surreptitiously paid off porn actress Stormy Daniels during his presidential campaign and then paid off Cohen while in the White House for helping him do it.

Donald Trump Jr. might have tripped up his legal team’s entire defense on Monday, slipping into his testimony that the family’s Florida property, Mar-a-Lago, is an “estate” rather than a club.

“My father purchased what was one of the finest estates anywhere in the world,” Don Jr. said Monday morning in reference to the building, which he called “amazing” and likened to an “American castle.”

But no amount of embellishment will hide Trump Jr.’s admission: The family’s beloved Florida home at Mar-a-Lago—which, incidentally, Trump has used as his primary residence since leaving the White House in 2021—is perceived by the family as an estate, or residential property.

The contested valuation of Mar-a-Lago is at the heart of the fraud trial against the Trump Organization. Last week, attorneys for the New York state attorney general’s office highlighted incongruous deeds and assessments for the former president’s various international properties, including a development deed for Mar-a-Lago that restricts the status of Trump’s primary residence to a club.

Despite the deed restrictions, the New York Attorney General’s Office argues, Trump overinflated the value of Mar-a-Lago on the basis that it was used as a private home and could be sold as such.

The $250 million bank fraud case hopes to prove that Trump deceived banks and insurers by massively overvaluing his net worth—with properties like Mar-a-Lago. So far, New York State Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron has already ruled that Trump and his two sons, Don Jr. and Eric, committed fraud.