Fox News Brutally Fact-Checks Peter Navarro Speech at Prison Doors

Former Trump White House aide Peter Navarro made one last stand in front of television crews on Tuesday mere moments before getting thrown in the clink—but his fiery speech, framed to aid himself and the former president, was interrupted by a brutal fact-check from none other than Fox News.

“It was only with my case that somehow that has changed,” Navarro said, steps away from the Miami prison, claiming that he was entitled to “absolute testimonial immunity.”

“And here’s where the homework is, because the big constitutional separation of powers are these: Can Congress compel a senior White House adviser, what they call the alter ego of a president, to testify before Congress?” Navarro continued. “And executive privilege goes back to George Washington and his remarks to the Congress regarding the Jay Treaty, and he said, very simply and clearly, succinctly, elegantly, that to write to the Congress, he said, I cannot command you, as members of Congress, to come to me. You cannot command me to come to you.”

That warranted an immediate interjection by Fox News host Sandra Smith, who after a quick correction to Navarro’s rant, completely cut away from the beleaguered Trump ally to cover President Joe Biden’s campaign stops in Nevada and Arizona.

“To fact-check there, it is no longer an alleged crime that he’ll be serving this four-month sentence for,” Smith said. “He has obviously been convicted, and there was no evidence that would have excluded him, per executive privilege, from testifying.”

Navarro was ordered to appear at the federal prison in Miami by 2 p.m. on Tuesday, ready to physically but not mentally surrender. He had filed an emergency stay appeal on Friday to avoid spending the next four months in jail after he ignored a subpoena from Congress, but Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts threw that plea out the window on Monday.

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene is celebrating the fact that her district received federal funds for infrastructure improvements—and conveniently ignoring the fact that she voted against the budget bill that made it all possible.

In a Monday night email newsletter to her constituents, the Georgia Republican included a link to a story about a runway extension at the Richard B. Russell regional airport in Floyd County. The article cites a press release from Greene’s office, which says the congresswoman “meticulously sought out projects that would improve quality of life, increase economic and social development, assist localities with vital funding needs, and harness community support.”

The runway expansion, and other earmarks Greene “netted” for county projects, are part of the fiscal year 2024 budget bill, which President Joe Biden signed into law on March 6. Neither Greene nor the article mention the fact that Greene voted against the appropriations bill.

Greene wasn’t alone in trying to take credit for what the bill helped her district accomplish. Representative Lauren Boebert, Greene’s fellow far-right Republican and former work bestie, said in a Monday press release that she “can’t wait for the ribbon cuttings” on all the projects that the bill would fund in her district.

Boebert voted against the bill. She has also moved out of her district and is running for election in a different one on the other side of the state, sparking accusations of carpet-bagging.

This is hardly the first time Republicans have fought crucial federal funding bills, only to eagerly welcome the money. Biden dragged Boebert in August for voting against the Inflation Reduction Act, and then turning around and celebrating the funds helping build a wind farm in her district.

At least 14 Republicans also voted against Biden’s $1.2 billion infrastructure bill, only to celebrate how the measure benefited their districts after it passed. They include Senator John Cornyn, Representative Nancy Mace, and Senator Tommy Tuberville, whom Biden directly called out for his duplicity.

Donald Trump continues to pick the absolute worst people for the Cabinet in his potential second term, as he is now considering Vivek Ramaswamy for homeland security secretary.

Ramaswamy was reportedly on the short list as Trump’s running mate, but that is now off the table, Bloomberg reported Tuesday. Instead, Trump personally told the biotech entrepreneur that he is considering him for other roles, including head of the Department of Homeland Security.

Some Trump allies, speaking anonymously, said Ramaswamy would be perfect for the role because he has good public speaking skills and is the son of Indian immigrants, which they believe could buffer the administration against criticism of Trump’s planned draconian immigration restrictions.

If only Ramaswamy were actually good at policymaking too. The former Republican primary hopeful had some horrific plans for immigration law, including using the military as law enforcement. He promised to deport all Dreamers, of whom there are about 700,000, and force them to reapply for citizenship.

Ramaswamy also had some objectively terrible ideas for foreign policy. He said that if he were elected, he would let China invade Taiwan after 2028 and he would let Russia keep the parts of Ukraine that it currently occupies.

But Trump isn’t evaluating possible Cabinet members on their actual policy chops. He’s looking for loyalty, ideological compatibility, and potential appeal to voters, Bloomberg reported, citing anonymous sources. And in that regard, Ramaswamy is a perfect fit.

Ramaswamy modeled himself after Trump on the campaign trail, pushing baseless conspiracy theories and even using his campaign as an excuse to dodge legal battles. Although he had criticized Trump in the past, he suddenly refused to explain those comments, instead spinning them to push conspiracy theories.

Donald Trump filed a lawsuit against ABC News and one of its lead anchors, George Stephanopoulos, on Tuesday, arguing that the news network got it all wrong in the coverage of his E. Jean Carroll case—he’s just a sexual abuser.

The suit hinges on particular legal phrasing stemming from New York’s penal code. In a Tuesday filing, Trump’s attorneys argued that Stephanopoulos had wrongly cited Trump’s judgment in an interview earlier this month, in which the anchor questioned Representative Nancy Mace on endorsing Trump, even though he had been “found liable for rape.” Mace has said she’s a survivor herself.

“Given that this was the first question of the interview, combined with the intensity and persistence of the questioning engaged in by Stephanopoulos of an actual rape victim, it was clear that Stephanopoulos maliciously intended to convince his viewers of a falsity, i.e. that plaintiff had been found liable for rape,” they wrote.

It’s unclear how the verbiage will play out in court, though Trump’s unexpected specificity flies in the face of another precedent set by the court. In July, Judge Lewis Kaplan clarified that although New York penal law has a “far narrower” definition of rape, the jury still found Trump to have raped Carroll in the modern sense of the word.

“The finding that Ms. Carroll failed to prove that she was ‘raped’ within the meaning of the New York Penal Law does not mean that she failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape,’” Kaplan wrote at the time.

“Indeed, as the evidence at trial recounted below makes clear, the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that [rape, as ‘commonly’ understood].”

Trump’s sudden focus on language comes at a time when he’s scrambling to pay up on his $454 million judgment from his New York bank fraud trial, which is still on the rise, accruing more than $100,000 in interest with each passing day. In a filing to a New York appeals court on Monday, Trump’s attorneys announced that they had been unable to secure a bond to cover the massive legal penalty for committing widespread fraud related to Trump’s real estate operation. More than 30 suretors reportedly refused to accept Trump’s real estate assets as collateral, instead demanding upward of $1 billion to offer the bond—which Trump says he and his businesses just don’t have. That announcement came part in parcel with a ginormous ask by team Trump: Let Trump appeal the case without paying up at all, and maintain the stay that will allow him to continue borrowing money from New York financial institutions. We’ll see how that one works out for him.

Donald Trump appears to have cut Alina Habba out of a recent legal settlement, leaving one of his most prominent attorneys vulnerable to being sued for fraud.

Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, paid $82,500 last week to settle a lawsuit brought by former waitress Alice Bianco, who alleged that she was tricked into an unfair hush-money deal after being sexually harassed by a supervisor. The settlement contract included a bizarre and hugely significant line that stated both “parties agree that Alina Habba is not a party to this release,” The Daily Beast reported Tuesday.

This could prove dangerous for Habba, because according to the original lawsuit, she posed as a concerned friend to Bianco and offered her free legal advice about how to proceed regarding the harassment. But Habba quickly turned around, leveraging the relationship and “fraudulently inducing” Bianco to “quickly agree to unconscionable and illegal terms”—and ingratiating herself with Trump in the process, according to the lawsuit.

“My client is certainly considering suing her for fraud,” Bianco’s lawyer Nancy Erika Smith told the Beast last week. She said she was already in touch with Habba’s personal attorney.

In fact, Bianco is also gearing up to sue Bedminster again. The settlement, which Bianco signed on March 4, allows her to keep her minuscule $15,000 hush-money payment from 2021. Her lawyer won her the $82,500 settlement, and Bianco can throw out her nondisclosure agreement.

“We got everything we asked for,” Smith said. “We asked to void the agreement, that she not pay back. I didn’t want her to pay me a dime. So we got that. And she still has the right to sue Alina Habba for fraud. And she has the right to sue the club for sexual harassment.”

According to the original lawsuit, Bianco hired a lawyer to advise her about work, where a manager was trying to pressure her to have sex. She alleges Habba, one of her regulars at the club, quickly buddied up to the then 21-year-old waitress and began offering her legal advice. Text messages show Habba reached out to Bianco and met with her multiple times, denigrating Bianco’s lawyer, pushing her to keep things quiet, and promising to protect her against retaliation.

Bianco ended up signing an NDA that paid her $15,000 on the condition she never mention the harassment to anyone, not even another lawyer. If she did, she would lose it all and owe the club $1,000 a day. But eight months later, in April 2022, Bianco realized the NDA money would be taxed, significantly reducing what she’d get to take home.

When she reached back out to Habba for help, the lawyer kept Bianco at arm’s length, insisting she couldn’t provide legal advice. What Habba did not say was by that point, she was representing Trump in multiple lawsuits, including against his cousin Mary Trump and a group of New York Times journalists for their investigation into his taxes and the New York attorney general’s probe into his finances for bank fraud.

Trump lost both cases. He owes $400,000 to the Times journalists and $467 million (and counting) to the city of New York for real estate–related fraud.

The Bedminster club has sought to distance itself from Habba, insisting she wasn’t involved in the hush-money proceedings. But as Smith pointed out, “How did Habba know [the club] would pay $15,000 to [Bianco] if she was not acting on [the club’s] behalf?”

“The fact that Habba delivered a check from [the club] in the amount she suggested is a clear manifestation of the authority given to her,” Smith said in court documents.

Habba has garnered national attention for her aggressive defense tactics in Trump’s multiple lawsuits—and for how often those strategies blow up in her face. In Trump’s second trial against E. Jean Carroll, the presiding judge lectured Habba multiple times, even questioning her juridical knowledge.