Bill Barr Is Back to Shilling for Donald Trump

Bill Barr is back to defending Donald Trump, this time claiming that the Republican presidential nominee is going to have his felony hush-money conviction overturned.

“When people were talking about it, I said that the case was an abomination, and I didn’t think it was going to be brought at the end of the day because it was so vaporous,” the former U.S. attorney general under Trump told Jimmy Failla of Fox News Radio Wednesday.

“But you think about, how are the American people going to react, in a very close election, if Trump loses and this case is overturned—which it will be,” Barr added. “This case will be overturned.”

Trump was convicted last week on 34 felony counts for allegedly falsifying business records with the intent to further an underlying crime in the first degree, in paying off adult film actress Stormy Daniels to cover up their affair before the 2016 election. Since the news, several Republicans have rushed to attack the trial and to make absurd defenses of the president.

Barr has already endorsed Trump in the 2024 presidential election, but it hasn’t done him many favors in the convicted felon’s eyes: Trump still insulted Barr on Truth Social upon hearing about the endorsement, calling him “gutless.”  

That’s because in the past Barr was a frequent Trump critic. Barr revealed that Trump would often remark about executing people during his time in the White House. He called the former president a “consummate narcissist” whose second term would be “chaos” and a “horror show.” One year ago, he said, “Should we be putting someone like this forward as the leader of the country, leader of the free world?”

But Barr’s political views, specifically his belief in Christian hegemony being essential to American democracy, inform his support of conservatism, of which Trump is the standard-bearer in today’s Republican Party. As Michael Tomasky wrote for The New Republic, “Barr hates disorder and all the rest of it. But he hates something else more: liberalism.”

Conservatives launched into melodramatic meltdown mode after a judge sentenced Steve Bannon to four months in prison for defying a congressional subpoena from the January 6 committee.

Representative Matt Gaetz wrote, presumably as he collapsed in slow motion onto a fainting couch, “It is with great sadness and anger that we observe the death of the judicial system in America.”

“And they’re sending him to prison—not just to torture him but to torture us,” Gaetz added, presumably under the impression the American public will be in shambles without Bannon spewing white nationalist hate while wearing 17 layers of shirts.

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene was similarly superficially apoplectic, decrying the January 6 committee as “FAKE” and announcing, “The DOJ is completely corrupt!!”

Droning British giant—and former deputy assistant to Trump—Seb Gorka groaned to a camera while on a leisurely drive that Bannon was sentenced to prison as part of a “conspiracy to disrupt Trump’s campaign.”

“The deep state is not the deep state anymore,” Gorka announced at the news of Bannon facing the normal consequences of defying a congressional subpoena. “It’s the in-your-face, we don’t care, we run America, and who you choose for president is utterly irrelevant,” he added before pivoting to boilerplate conservative sound bites and pitching his web streaming show.

Bannon was found guilty on two counts of contempt of Congress in 2022 but delayed sentencing by appealing the decision. That appeal was rejected, and he was sentenced Thursday to report to prison on July 1. Bannon can still appeal the ruling to report to prison.

The judicial system, which Gaetz declared is dead, typically sentences people held in contempt of court to prison time: Per the U.S. Penal Code, penalties for contempt of Congress include a jail term of a minimum of one month and a maximum 12 months per violation. Whistleblower Chelsea Manning served a two-month sentence for refusing to testify in a federal case investigating military secrets she handed to WikiLeaks in 2010. The judicial system, it seems, has continued operating as it always has when people refuse to testify. But if the meltdown helps the grift, might as well treat the codified consequences of refusing to testify as a sign of democracy collapsing.

Representative Nancy Mace’s congressional spending is still the talk of the town. On this week’s agenda: her $1.6 million D.C. townhouse.

The South Carolina Republican was accused of “secretly fleecing taxpayers,” in an ethics complaint filed earlier this week alleging she sought higher monthly lodging reimbursements than what was actually warranted by her expenses.

“Representative Mace has violated House Ethics Rules by repeatedly seeking reimbursement for lodging in excess of the actual monthly expense of maintaining her co-owned townhouse in  Washington, D.C., resulting in a misuse of taxpayer funds for purposes unrelated to her official duties,” read a copy of the complaint obtained by Punchbowl News.

Mace’s requests violate two key rules of a congressional reimbursement program, according to the complaint: Lawmakers cannot be repaid for interest or principal on their mortgage payments, and they cannot ask to be repaid for more than their actual expenses.

The complaint came on the heels of a lengthy investigation by The Washington Post into Mace’s spending habits. Two former staffers told the Post that Mace repeatedly directed her team to file for reimbursements to the tune of $2,000 a month, despite being informed by people involved in her office finances that she could not justify claiming more than $1,726 a month. During some months of the year, she filed to be reimbursed upward of $3,000—nearly double what her team had calculated.

“This allegation alone deserves further investigation as well as interviews of former staff,” the complaint said. “If true, then this is a flagrant abuse of House Rules and a clear example of a Member secretly fleecing taxpayers.”

“Money is fungible, so the thousands of excess dollars received by [Representative] Mace could conceivably have been put towards any use,” the complaint alleged, noting that if the anecdotes offered by her former staffers were true, she would have twice violated the program’s statutes.

Crime doesn’t pay, but it seems that Justice can get you millions.

A new report from Fix the Court, a judicial watchdog and advocacy group, found that justices on the U.S. Supreme Court received close to a total of $3 million in gifts, at least, over the last 20 years—with more than $2.4 million of those gifts being directed solely to Justice Clarence Thomas.

Thomas has repeatedly been the focus of ethical scrutiny over reports that he received exorbitant gifts and vacations from Republican billionaires, never paid back a loan for his beloved R.V., and cavorted with the Koch brothers, while failing to adequately disclose many of the perks he’s received. All of this has been reported on extensively by publications such as ProPublica. Now, Fix the Court has worked to add it all up.

Fix the Court was able to identify 103 gifts that Thomas received between 2004 and 2024, totaling a value of $2,402,310. Overall, it found 193 when counting some gifts that were received before that period. These gifts could be a number of things: often meals or lodging, with a free flight counting as one gift and a round-trip journey counting as two.

The court’s gift-reporting threshold has slowly risen over the course of 20 years. In 2004, it was $285, and in 2023, it was $480. Of those 193 gifts, Thomas only disclosed receiving 27.

Fix the Court was also able to identify 101 “likely gifts”—mostly trips to exclusive clubs Bohemian Grove and Topridge—Thomas received during those 20 years, which added an additional value of $1,787,684. Including those “likely gifts,” Thomas has reportedly received $4,189,994 worth of perks.

For context, in January 2001, an associate Supreme Court justice like Thomas would’ve made $194,300, a sum that has since risen to $285,400, according to the National Taxpayers Union Foundation. Through gifts, Thomas has roughly doubled his official published income from the last 20 years, which would sit at approximately $4,747,700. To Thomas, being bought and paid for appears to be a second job altogether. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

When counting “likely gifts” furnished to Thomas, justices seated on the U.S. Supreme Court received an astounding 445 gifts valued at $4,780,720. Without those “likely gifts,” the justices’ tallies still hit 344, worth $2,993,036.

Police officers in Burlington, Vermont, opted for an unusual teaching method for an active shooting simulation: inflicting pure terror.

Roughly 20 Burlington High School students were touring the Burlington Police Station Wednesday as part of a year-end forensics program when the authorities decided to stage a surprise active shooter demonstration, with one officer bursting into the room dressed as a masked gunman, firing blanks and sending students ducking for cover, reported Vermont’s weekly paper Seven Days.

Parents of the affected students were outraged, telling the paper that they felt the officers were playing on the fears of teenagers who grew up enveloped in fears of mass gun violence.

“I’m baffled,” one unidentified mother told Seven Days. “It is a very real threat to kids these days to have a school shooting. It’s something they worry about.”

One student, speaking anonymously, told the paper that the incident left her “shaking and crying,” fearing that she was going to get shot. Another said that they scraped their knee while attempting to find shelter, while a third immediately rushed to contact their mother.

“It felt so real,” a student told Seven Days.

Burlington police confirmed to the paper that the incident occurred, noting that they had informed teachers ahead of time that there would be a “gunshot-related crime” depicted during the tour—but not that it would take place without warning.

In a separate email to parents, schoolteachers alleged that the police department had wanted the demonstration to be “as realistic as possible” and that the department had previously performed the live demonstrations for college students and adults.

“The detectives did apologize after they realized that the reenactment did not translate well to high school students,” the teachers wrote, according to an email obtained by Seven Days.

The school district has since issued an apology for the incident and has offered counseling services to the students involved.