House Democrat Banned From Speaking After Surreal Fight Over Trump

On Wednesday, Democratic Representative Jim McGovern was banned from speaking the rest of the day after a surreal fight where Republicans lost it over his mention of Trump’s many criminal charges and legal issues.

McGovern pointed out that a Republican had called Trump’s hush-money trial “a sham trial” without any reproach from the chair at the time.

But as McGovern was stating the president’s various charges in full, Republican Representative Erin Houchin interrupted him and moved to have his words stricken from the congressional record for “engaging in personalities.”

Later, McGovern posted on X (formerly Twitter) that he was banned from speaking on the House floor for the rest of the day merely because he stated Trump’s charges, even though other representatives have called the trial a sham on previous occasions.

It’s the latest example of the Republican-controlled House taking action against Democrats for the same words and actions that they allow from their own party. Last week, Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene attacked the appearance of Democratic Representative Jasmine Crockett and refused to apologize, drawing a sharp retort from Crockett that quickly became a meme and a trademark.

If Republicans are going to prohibit mentioning the Republican presidential nominee’s criminal charges, it makes little sense. Trump became a private citizen when Joe Biden was sworn in as president, and they could conceivably extend this excessive privilege to any private citizen they want, arbitrarily. If mentioning his charges is so offensive, they should save their energy, because while Trump’s hush-money trial is nearing its closing stages, his classified documents trial, his election interference trial in Georgia, and his election interference trial in Washington, D.C. are all still ongoing.

A bombshell buried in a footnote midway through an 87-page opinion, freshly unsealed Tuesday, spells further trouble for Trump in the classified documents case.

The 2023 opinion from U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell reveals that an unnamed witness scanned and saved confidential documents onto a laptop owned by Save America PAC, a political action committee formed by Trump in 2020. The detail sheds new light on the depths to which Trump consciously violated federal law.

The explosive footnote, found on page 37 of the 2023 opinion, states that in 2021:

WITNESS scanned the contents of the box … onto a laptop in her possession owned by the Save America Political Action Committee (“PAC”), a PAC formed by the former president in 2020.

On January 6, 2023—two years later—Trump’s lawyer notified the government of what this unnamed witness had done and provided a thumb drive of the files to the government. This revelation came four months after the FBI had already executed a search warrant on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate to retrieve classified materials Trump had illegally kept.

The opinion by Howell, who presided over the case in 2023, also revealed that the FBI discovered more classified documents in Trump’s bedroom months after the Mar-a-Lago raid that turned up boxes of classified materials stored in his bathroom.

Unauthorized removal and retention of classified materials is a violation of federal law with penalties up to $250,000 or up to five years in prison. That an aide associated with Trump’s PAC copied classified documents is damning for Trump—who so far has avoided trial thanks to Judge Aileen Cannon granting motions to indefinitely delay the case.

Trump is charged with 40 felonies of alleged unlawful retention of classified documents and obstruction of the investigation into his super-illegal hoarder antics.

Throughout his political career, Mike Johnson has not been shy in expressing his religious beliefs—that everything he does, whether it be attacking LGBTQ rights or rejecting women’s bodily autonomy, is in service of God. But on Wednesday, the Christian nationalist seemingly had no opinion about Donald Trump’s extramarital affair with porn star Stormy Daniels or the alleged payments made to keep the tryst under wraps ahead of the 2016 presidential election.

“You’re a deeply religious man,” said CNN’s Manu Raju. “Does that alleged conduct cause you any concern about the former president’s character?”

Johnson was clearly peeved by the question. “Look, I’m not going to comment on that,” he said. “What we’ve said about what’s happening in Manhattan is, I’ve called it a disgrace because it is. It’s clearly law-fare. They’re clearly going after President Trump because of who he is, because he will—soon to be officially the nominee of the Republican party for president of the United States.”

Last week, Johnson made a surprise appearance outside Trump’s trial in New York, slamming the gag order against the former president. Dozens of other Republican politicians have traveled to the Manhattan courthouse to figuratively bend the knee to Trump, including North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum and Senators Tim Scott, J.D. Vance, and Tommy Tuberville.

Republican Representative James Comer has teamed up with an unlikely ally—Democratic Representative Katie Porter—on a landmark ethics bill. And it’s sure to piss off Donald Trump.

On Wednesday, Comer and Porter introduced a bill that would require candidates for president and vice president to disclose tax filings for the two years before entering the White House, for every year they are in office, and for two years after that. The bill would also require presidential and vice presidential candidates, along with their close family members, to make any payments, big gifts, and loans from foreign entities public. While it doesn’t attach any legal penalties, the bill does extend Congress’s authority to pursue such financial documents.

Comer told The Wall Street Journal that the bill is not a partisan political tool from either Porter or himself.

“She’s not doing it to pick on Trump, and I’m not doing it to pick on Biden,” Comer said.

That seems hard to believe, though. Comer, as chair of the House Committee on Oversight, has led a long and futile effort to impeach President Joe Biden on sham corruption charges. Comer’s so-called evidence against Biden and his son Hunter was later found to have come from an indicted former FBI informant who was working for Russian intelligence officials, but as recently as last month, Comer was still saying impeachment was on the table.

Contrary to what Comer and many other Republicans say, though, Biden has been forthcoming about releasing his tax returns, releasing them for several years before and after being elected president. In contrast, Trump’s tax returns were only released after a long, drawn-out fight with Democrats in Congress.

Porter, a protégé of Senator Elizabeth Warren and a former college professor, has a reputation for strong research and asking tough questions in Congress, unlike Comer, meaning that Trump and his family ought to be worried about their finances and foreign dealings. The former president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner has made several controversial deals during and after Trump’s presidency. Trump’s businesses took in millions of dollars from foreign governments while he was president, including profits from the hotel he used to operate in Washington, D.C.

Like it or not, Comer may have just accidentally made himself Trump’s next top enemy.

A Tennessee Democrat is taking formal action against “shameless” Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito after revelations that an upside-down American flag flew at his home in Alexandria, Virginia, in the wake of the January 6 insurrection.

Representative Steve Cohen introduced a resolution Tuesday to censure Alito for “knowingly violating the Federal recusal statute and binding ethics standards and calling the impartiality of the Supreme Court of the United States into question.”

“Beyond poor judgment, Justice Alito’s misuse of the American flag is a knowing and shameless demonstration of his political bias,” Cohen said in a statement. “He literally flew a flag in front of his house showing the world he supported the January 6th insurrectionists. What’s more, he continues to participate in litigation directly related to the 2020 election and the Insurrection, in direct violation of the federal recusal statute and the Supreme Court’s own ethics rules.”

“There must be accountability to protect the integrity and impartiality of the High Court,” Cohen continued. “We must protect the Constitutional rights to fair and impartial proceedings. Justice Alito should be censured for flagrant breaches of the law and court rules, and he must recuse himself from all other 2020 election and January 6th related litigation.”

The New York Times revealed on Friday that the upside-down flag was spotted in Alito’s yard on January 17, 2021. In the weeks and months after Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, many of his supporters flew the flag upside down in protest of what they wrongly believed to be a stolen election. Alito, like a true gentleman, blamed it on his wife, claiming that she had hung it upside down to protest a neighbor’s yard signs.

As TNR’s Matt Ford wrote earlier this week, “The revelation casts doubt on whether Alito can ethically decide cases related to the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Multiple such cases are pending before the court, including one on whether Donald Trump himself is immune from prosecution for his role in the coup attempt.”

Cohen’s statement echoes that of a conservative member in the upper chamber, Senator Lindsey Graham, who said the flag choice was “not good judgment.” But not all GOP lawmakers felt similarly. On Tuesday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell brushed off a question about Alito’s behavior, telling reporters that the country needs to “leave the Supreme Court alone.”

No doubt Alito feels the same. “Alito doesn’t care,” Ford wrote. “He abides by judicial ethics requirements, and the general principle that judges should appear to be impartial and nonpartisan, only to the degree that they suit his own preferences.”