Matt Gaetz Makes an Open Call to the Proud Boys at Trump Trial

As court resumes for Trump’s hush-money trial, Representative Matt Gaetz published a creepy, blurry photo of himself at Manhattan Criminal Court with the caption, “Standing back and standing by, Mr. President.”

Gaetz’s post—which originally included no caption—immediately evokes the line first deployed by Trump during a September 29, 2020, presidential debate against Joe Biden directed to the Proud Boys, a far-right extremist group known to essentially function as a violent street gang.

During that debate, moderator Chris Wallace asked Trump if he condemned the presence of white supremacist and militia groups at events in support of his presidency. Trump avoided condemnation, instead asking Wallace to provide him a name. “The Proud Boys,” Biden added.

“Proud Boys, stand back and stand by,” Trump responded. Afterward, Trump claimed to not know who the Proud Boys were, saying, “Whoever they are, they have to stand down. Let law enforcement do their work.” Despite this, Trump’s “stand back” comment was broadly interpreted among the far right as a call to mobilize on his command.

Immediately following the September debate, the Proud Boys released a flier with the phrase “Stand back and stand by” announcing a November 14, 2020, protest in Washington, D.C., that MAGA groups dubbed “Million MAGA March.” Following that day-long protest, a gang of drunken Proud Boys roamed the streets of D.C. on the hunt for anti-fascists, leading to a violent brawl where Proud Boys attacked counterprotesters and press.

Soon after, a second protest was called for December 12, 2020, titled “Ten Million MAGA March.” Proud Boys again showed up to D.C. in droves, getting into fights with counterprotesters and D.C. residents that led to dozens of arrests and multiple stabbing attacks. Soon after, the MAGAsphere announced a multiday protest in D.C. titled “Stop the Steal” that concluded with the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot. That riot was partly organized by the Proud Boys, whose leaders would later receive convictions for seditious conspiracy.

On Wednesday, Trump attorney Will Scharf was left tongue-tied after one simple question from CNN’s Kaitlan Collins. 

Collins asked Scharf, also a Republican candidate in Missouri’s race for attorney general, “You’re an attorney, obviously: Have you ever gotten a legal retainer that was grossed up by hundreds of thousands of dollars?”

The reference to Donald Trump’s hush-money case caught Scharf off guard, and he scrambled to put together an answer.

“Uh-uh-uh, I mean I’ve received payment for legal services in many ways before: contingency fees, fee per hour,” Scharf said. “I think different people come to different agreements.”

But Collins wasn’t done. “Have you ever been owed a certain amount, let’s say $100,000 that you did in billable hours and you got $330,000?” she asked.

Scharf still had to gather his thoughts. “Kaitlan, I, respectfully, the point here is that the payments are ancillary to the case that the prosecution is trying to prove which relates to the records of the payments, not the payments themselves,” he said. “Hush-money reimbursement for hush money—none of that’s a crime.”

The exchange is telling. While Scharf isn’t part of Trump’s hush-money case, he, thanks to his legal knowledge, clearly has trouble justifying Trump’s actions. Trump is charged with 34 felony counts for allegedly falsifying business records with the intent to further an underlying crime by using his former fixer and attorney, Michael Cohen, to pay off adult film actress Stormy Daniels to cover up an affair before the 2016 presidential election. Trump made the “grossed up” payments to Cohen to reimburse him for paying off Daniels and to avoid taxes and scrutiny. Cohen’s testimony has made it clear that Trump was involved in every step of the alleged crime. If the Republican presidential nominee is found guilty in the case, how will his attorneys and surrogates justify it?

President Joe Biden invoked executive privilege Thursday to keep House Republicans from obtaining audio recordings of his interview with special counsel Robert Hur.

The move came at the request of Attorney General Merrick Garland, who warned that cooperating with the request could jeopardize future investigations and witnesses’ willingness to participate in them. In his letter to Biden, made public Thursday, Garland said that lawmakers’ efforts “are plainly insufficient to outweigh the deleterious effects that the production of the recordings would have on the integrity and effectiveness of similar law enforcement investigations in the future.”

White House counsel Ed Siskel also questioned the motivations of Republicans seeking the tapes when they already possess a lengthy report and full transcript of the interview.

“The absence of a legitimate need for the audio recordings lays bare your likely goal—to chop them up, distort them, and use them for partisan political purposes,” Siskel wrote in a letter obtained by The Hill. “Demanding such sensitive and constitutionally-protected law enforcement materials from the Executive Branch because you want to manipulate them for potential political gain is inappropriate.”

Hur’s 388-page report condemned the 81-year-old president as having a memory with “significant limitations.” Republicans have since seized on the analysis, developed after a year-long investigation and a two-day interview with Biden days after Hamas’s October 7 attack in Israel, as an opportunity to attack the president as being mentally unfit for the job.

Democratic lawmakers joined the outrage at the request, including Maryland Representative Jamie Raskin, who called the effort to obtain the tapes—and Republicans’ failed impeachment effort of Biden—a “comedy of errors.”

“The Attorney General gave Republicans the information they asked for, and it’s delightfully absurd to suggest that listening to the President’s words instead of just reading them will suddenly reveal the mystery high crime and misdemeanor the Republicans have been unable to identify since 2023,” Raskin wrote in a statement shared with The New Republic. “Will this hopeless scavenger hunt ever end? Perhaps the Republicans should play the Beatles’ White Album backwards and the impeachable offense will emerge!”

The same day Biden and Trump agreed to participate in two presidential debates, Lara Trump appeared on Fox News’s Hannity to toss out a well-worn talking point from Team Trump, claiming the debates are rigged.

“It’s rigged so heavily in Joe Biden’s favor,” Lara Trump told viewers about the debate her father-in-law agreed to participate in. “But everything always is.”

The buzzword accusation comes more than a month before Trump and Biden’s first debate, which will be held on June 27 at CNN’s Atlanta headquarters, and establishes a convenient pacifier for Trump fans if and when Trump repeats his 2020 performance and loses the debate to the less showmany but generally more coherent Biden.

Lara Trump folded the lazy accusation into recent polling data showing Trump leading in five battleground states as protests against Biden’s handling of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza continue to dog him. According to surveys by The New York Times, Siena College, and The Philadelphia Inquirer, Trump leads Biden in Michigan, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, and Pennsylvania, with Biden leading in Wisconsin.

The Republican National Committee, which Lara Trump began chairing in March, opted out of participating in Commission on Presidential Debates–led debates two years ago when it was chaired by Ronna McDaniel. The CPD had scheduled debates this year between the Democratic and Republican presidential nominees for October. On Wednesday, Biden announced he would not be participating in CPD-led debates, instead offering Trump dates that would account for early voting. Trump eagerly accepted.

Despite the uphill battle Trump faces appealing to normal people, Lara Trump tried to assure Fox viewers her father-in-law will be successful in the debate she’s already decried as rigged, saying: “So, if Joe Biden shows up on June 27 and doesn’t come up with an excuse like he has to wash his hair or something, I have full confidence that Donald Trump will outperform him.”

Ron DeSantis thinks that if the words “climate change” are removed from Florida state law, nobody has to worry about it.

The Florida governor signed legislation Wednesday that would eliminate climate change as a priority in the state’s energy policies and is set to go into effect July 1. The legislation also takes out most of the references to climate change in Florida law, bans offshore wind, and weakens regulations on natural gas pipelines.

“The legislation I signed today [will] keep windmills off our beaches, gas in our tanks, and China out of our state,” DeSantis told Florida’s Voice, an outlet friendly to the Florida governor. “We’re restoring sanity in our approach to energy and rejecting the agenda of the radical green zealots.”

What’s the point of such a bill? Florida faces many threats from a warming climate, including severe hurricanes, higher temperatures, and rising sea levels and flooding. In many cases, the bill is largely symbolic: The state doesn’t have any offshore wind thanks to its low wind speed and severe hurricanes. Instead, it seems to be just the latest example of DeSantis attempting to gain attention from Republicans nationally through embracing the culture wars.

Previously, DeSantis has passed anti-LGBTQ legislation as well as book bans, and he even banned lab-grown meat despite the industry still being in its infancy. All the while, his popularity has waned in Florida, particularly after he dropped out of the presidential race. This latest bill could put Florida residents at risk from increased weather disasters, while also putting more pressure on the state’s already struggling insurance industry. But DeSantis seems more concerned about his image beyond Florida, and is likely thinking ahead to 2028.