The Bonkers Reason Why Lara Trump Thinks Trump and Biden Should Debate

At his Wisconsin rally on Tuesday, Donald Trump taunted President Joe Biden with an empty lectern on stage, claiming he’s been “trying to get him to debate.” But his allies don’t seem to have a very good idea of what Trump could actually attack him on.

In a Newsmax interview on Thursday, Trump’s daughter-in-law and co-chair of the Republican National Committee, Lara Trump, decided the best way to conjure Biden for another one-on-one with Trump would be to levy such a wildly vague accusation that she said … pretty much nothing.

“Joe Biden needs to be asked multiple questions about a whole host of different things going on in this country and around the world. He has a lot of answers to give the American people,” Trump said on Newsmax Thursday. “I can only assume he doesn’t have the answers to the questions that he will be asked.”

Donald Trump has so far refused to participate in any debates this election cycle. In fact, he often tried to upstage Republican primary debates with counterprogramming of his own.

Trump hand-picked Lara Trump and former North Carolina GOP Chairman Michael Whatley to replace former RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel last month. The pair have proven the final nail in the coffin for a GOP MAGA makeover.

And their help comes at a critical juncture for the Republican presidential nominee, who is struggling to pay for a legal comeuppance that so far includes more than half a billion dollars in judgments and mountains of cash for his four upcoming criminal trials.

Even after bragging about his assets and businesses got him in legal trouble, Donald Trump just can’t stop.

After a rough week for his new social media venture, Trump Media & Technology Group, or TMTG, the former president ranted on his Truth Social account Thursday about how great the platform is doing—at least, in his opinion. But Trump may have broken some Securities and Exchange Commission rules in the process.

SEC laws prohibit the use of “manipulative and deceptive devices” to pump up stocks. Trump’s bragging in the face of heavy losses by his company could fall under that category, Trump critic George Conway tweeted Thursday afternoon.

The Truth Social posts in question could be seen as the former president trying to talk up his company to increase its stock price after a rough week. Trump Media’s initial public offering started strong last week, reaching a high of $79.38 per share. But then, SEC filings released on Monday showed that the company had losses in 2023 of a whopping $58 million, with just $4.1 million of revenue. Then, on Wednesday, two of the company’s top investors pleaded guilty to using the company’s private information to engage in insider trading.

As a result, TMTG’s stock price has dropped rapidly. It currently sits at just under $43 a share. To make matters worse, stock traders are short-selling the company, betting its share prices will plummet even further.

Trump has a long history of bragging about his finances, and ended up in legal trouble when a New York judge ruled that he committed bank fraud and issued a final judgment of a $350 million fine for inflating his net worth and lying about the value of his various real estate assets. His recent posts about one of his newest business ventures would seem to fit that pattern. Trump certainly can’t afford any new legal cases right now, especially when he has enough trouble paying the legal bills for the cases he already has.

New York Attorney General Letitia James has some questions about Donald Trump’s $175 million bond insurer—mainly, if it can even guarantee the full amount if push comes to shove.

In a court filing on Thursday, Knight Speciality Insurance Company revealed that its liquid assets don’t meet the needs of Trump’s already minimized bond. According to a financial assessment, the company, owned by billionaire Don Hankey, has just $138 million in “surplus.” Knight would therefore need to spend 127 percent of its reserves in order to cover Trump’s bond—far more than the 10 percent of a state-regulated suretor’s surplus that’s allowed by New York law.

Lawyers for the attorney general’s office also noted that the insurance company was trying to operate “without a certificate of qualification” in the state.

But that was, apparently, the plan all along, according to Knight’s president, Amit Shah.

“Knight Specialty Insurance Company is not a New York domestic insurer, and New York surplus lines insurance laws do not regulate the solvency of non-New York excess lines insurers,” Shah told CBS.

Shah also claimed that his company had more than $1 billion in equity, despite financial statements—which were only obtained after New York court clerks rejected the company’s original bond posting and ordered it to refile—indicating the firm only held $26 million in “cash and bank deposits,” with $483 million in stocks and bonds.

James’s office has given Trump and his new financial bedfellows 10 days to “justify the surety.”

“At this venture, with so much at stake, to make these kinds of mistakes, it’s almost unthinkable. And it amps it up with the missing financial statement. That adds all the drama,” an attorney for Michael Cohen, Trump’s former fixer, told The Daily Beast.

Donald Trump’s lawyers, legal appointees, and advisers are finally having to face the music. Former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark was found Thursday to have violated legal ethics rules, becoming the latest Trump legal aid to face consequences this week.

A disciplinary panel in Washington, D.C., found that Clark, who ​​was assistant attorney general for the Civil Division of the Justice Department in the Trump administration’s final days, broke ethics rules for lawyers. Clark had tried to pressure other leaders in the Justice Department to help prevent the transfer of power to Joe Biden after Trump lost the 2020 presidential election.

This ruling clears the way for steps toward suspending or even permanently removing Clark’s law license. Investigators who brought the charges forward say that is the course of action they intend to pursue, Politico reported.

Earlier in the disciplinary process, Clark slipped up in a hearing and admitted that he was thinking of Trump when he asserted attorney-client privilege while refusing to answer questions, prompting his attorney to urge him to plead the Fifth in an attempt to avoid further self-incrimination.

Clark also faces charges in Georgia for allegedly conspiring to overturn that state’s 2020 presidential election along with Trump, Giuliani, and more than a dozen others.

Clark’s legal career has been that of an elite Republican lawyer happy to do his part for the conservative movement’s work to reshape the legal system. He spent years working with other right-wing legal stalwarts at the same places that produced Kenneth Starr, John R. Bolton, Brett Kavanaugh, John Eastman, and many others. He had no problem working with Trump after the 2016 election, which eventually led him down the legally questionable path to where he finds himself today.

He is the latest Trump attorney to face repercussions for his actions after the 2020 election. Earlier this week, John Eastman was recommended for disbarment in California and can no longer practice law. Rudy Giuliani is also facing disbarment, and Sidney Powell could be kicked out of the legal profession too.

Less than a month after confirming it would run a third-party candidate and potentially spoil the presidential election, the centrist group No Labels has decided not to run a third-party “unity ticket” after all, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. Why? The group can’t find any credible candidates to run. 

No Labels founder CEO Nancy Jacobson told allies this week that the group planned to announce the news Monday, the Journal wrote, citing anonymous sources familiar with the plans. 

The news comes after Georgia’s former lieutenant governor, Republican Geoff Duncan, turned down the group’s offer to run for president on their ticket, saying he is “focused on healing and improving the Republican Party with a GOP 2.0 so we can elect more commonsense conservative candidates in the future.”

Failing to recruit the former lieutenant governor of Georgia left No Labels scraping the bottom of the barrel of potential candidates. Audio of a No Labels delegate vote leaked to The New Republic last month showed that the organization was clueless about how to move forward and didn’t know if it would find candidates. Regardless, the delegates still voted at the time to press ahead with their harebrained idea.

The group has faced constant criticism from Democrats and Democratic-aligned groups such as the Third Way and MoveOn, not just for potentially tipping the election to Donald Trump but also for the help No Labels was receiving from right-wing consultants and donors. Even some of its own donors expressed their frustration at the group’s third-party chicanery by filing a lawsuit in January. 

So farewell to what could have been a major spoiler in the 2024 elections. For those who are disappointed, there’s still Robert F. Kennedy Jr.