Judge Cannon Helps Trump Again—Striking Entire Paragraph in Indictment

Judge Aileen Cannon has once again helped Donald Trump in his classified documents trial, this time by removing an entire paragraph from the indictment.

The paragraph in question alleged that Trump showed a classified map of a foreign country related to a military operation to a representative of his political action committee, who did not have security clearance. Trump’s defense team said the paragraph was prejudicial and included information that was not essential to the underlying charges.

Trump’s team had requested that multiple charges in the indictment be dismissed, but Cannon denied that request. However, while delivering that news, she chided special counsel Jack Smith’s team for including language in the charging documents that she called “legally unnecessary to serve the function of an indictment” and that she said created “arguable confusion” in the allegations.

Trump’s defense team has made numerous pretrial requests and motions, which Cannon’s handling of the case has allowed to pile up. She has postponed the case indefinitely to examine each motion, even if they seem outrageous or frivolous. For example, she has scheduled a hearing for later this month to determine whether Smith’s appointment and funding by the Justice Department was even legal.

Cannon has also agreed to hear Trump’s arguments that the FBI plotted to assassinate him—a completely made-up conspiracy theory. Two weeks ago, she blocked a gag order request from special counsel Jack Smith because it was “wholly lacking in substance and professional courtesy.” And one of Trump’s former lawyers, Ty Cobb, thinks that Cannon is doing a terrible job with the case.

The frequently delayed case has not reflected well on Cannon, a former federal prosecutor and University of Michigan law school graduate. One hearing with a Trump co-defendant devolved into a shouting match, and Cannon seems to misunderstand basic legal proceedings and principles in court, forcing legal counsel to explain them to her as the trial proceeds.

All of this has given fodder to allegations that she is deliberately slowing down the case against the convicted felon and Republican presidential nominee, or seeking to ultimately dismiss the case entirely. But, it all could be used by Smith in a motion to try and have her removed from the case. Regardless of whether Cannon’s odd handling of Trump’s case is due to inexperience or a deliberate attempt to help Trump, he certainly seems to appreciate it.

The Streisand effect is in full force as Donald Trump aggressively attempts to bat away an ad released by Biden’s campaign that highlights alleged remarks Trump made at a cemetery for fallen soldiers, where he reportedly referred to the cemetery as being full of “suckers” and “losers.”

The ad references numerous comments made by Trump over the years reportedly expressing disdain toward military veterans and fallen soldiers, blending public comments made by Trump with firsthand reports of statements he made in 2018, according to a now infamous story, with multiple sources who spoke with The Atlantic in 2020. While Trump has taken umbrage with the ad for what he purports to be “misinformation,” sources who spoke with The Daily Beast noted it has particularly provoked Trump because it pairs his own “losers” comment with his insecurities about himself being a loser.

“The biggest insult to him to get under his skin is that he lost in 2020, he lost his court case and he’s convicted now,” a Trump world strategist told The Daily Beast. “You can call him fat, call him an insurrectionist, call him a racist [but] that’s just not gonna stick.”

“I think his deepest fear, or the deepest psychology with Donald Trump is that he [didn’t win] the 2020 election [when] he’s won everything in life,” the Republican strategist added. “That’s the pressure. He’s married hot women, he built famous buildings, he had a highly rated, successful TV show. And he became president, right?”

During a baking hot campaign rally in Las Vegas on Sunday, Trump griped about the ad and those who recommended he not mention it. “I gotta mention it,” Trump told the crowd. “It just never goes away.” Trump continued his tirade on Truth Social, where in numerous posts he called for Biden to “take down the Fake Ad,” which he described as “MADE UP DISINFORMATION by Radical Left Democrats, and Trump Haters.”

“Obviously, I never said that dead Soldiers are ‘losers and suckers.’ Who would say such a thing? It was MADE UP DISINFORMATION by Radical Left Democrats, and Trump Haters, working with a failing Magazine, just like Russia, Russia, Russia, Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine, FISA Fraud, 51 Intel Agents, and so much more,” Trump posted on Monday.

“They even made these horrific words into an advertisement which shows how desperate they are,” Trump wrote in another post. “No President, especially ‘dumb as a rock’ Joe Biden, has done more for our Military than DONALD J. TRUMP. The Military hates Crooked Joe, and all of the failure he represents. Take down the Fake Ad, Joe, and stop the unprecedented Weaponization of ‘Justice’ against your Political Opponent. You are destroying our Country!”

Trump infamously draft-dodged by making up bone spurs, denigrated John McCain’s time as a prisoner of war by saying, “I like people who weren’t captured,” and, after canceling on a 2018 visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery in France, asked, “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers”—comments Trump denies making but which were confirmed by his then–White House chief of staff, John Kelly.

A secret tape has exposed what Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s wife, Martha-Ann, really thinks behind closed doors—and the truth isn’t pretty. In the span of just a few minutes, Alito promised revenge on the media, flung around terms like “femnazis,” lauded her German heritage, and went off about Pride flags. It was a mess.

Alito has been in and out of the news in the last month, after her high-ranking husband blamed her for hanging an upside-down American flag outside of their home, a symbol favored by the “Stop the Steal” movement following the 2020 presidential election. She supposedly hung the flag in response to a neighbor’s “F— Trump” sign, which sparked the rather unneighborly spat. Alito also engaged in some light menacing as part of the feud, prompting the neighbor to call the cops on the Alitos. Still, Justice Alito has refused calls to recuse himself from cases relating to the January 6 insurrection.

Journalist Lauren Windsor recorded Martha-Ann’s and her husband’s comments during the Supreme Court Historical Society’s annual dinner earlier this month. A copy of the tape was published on Monday by Rolling Stone.

Windsor first approached Martha-Ann, posing as a Christian conservative, to express her sympathy over “everything that you’re going through,” referring to the highly publicized flag hanging.

“It’s OK because if they come back to me, I’ll get them,” Alito said cheerfully. “I’m gonna be liberated and I’m gonna get them.”

“What do you mean by ‘they?’” Windsor asked.

“There is a five-year defamation statute of limitations,” Alito said, letting out a laugh.

“I don’t know what you mean by ‘they’, like by ‘get them’?” Windsor pressed.

“The media!” Alito said, going on to complain about her coverage in The Washington Post style section from nearly two decades ago.

It appears Alito doesn’t forget about the journalists who’ve gotten on her bad side. In 2016, Alito was reportedly enthusiastic about Trump’s promise to expand U.S. libel laws to make it significantly easier to sue news outlets for their coverage, one GOP operative told Rolling Stone.

While maintaining her cheerful tone, Alito also took aim at any woman who suggested her husband should’ve prevented her from hanging an “Appeal to Heaven” flag, a symbol revived by a Christian nationalist sect and favored by January 6 insurrectionists, at their vacation home.

“The other thing the femnazis believe, that he should control me,” Alito said about her husband. “So, they’ll go to hell. He never controls me.”

When Windsor asked what someone who has the same flag should do, Alito responded simply, “Don’t get angry, get even.”

There was one group that Alito seemed to admire, and it’s not exactly one that people are often openly praising. “Look at me, look at me. I’m German, from Germany. My heritage is German. You come after me. I’m gonna give it back to you. And there will be a way, it doesn’t have to be now, but there will be a way they will know. Don’t worry about it,” she said.

When Windsor tried to ask Alito about the political divide in the United States and her thoughts on the “radical Left,” about which her supposedly nonpolitical husband had plenty to say, Alito cut her off to complain about Pride flags.

“You know what I want? I want a Sacred Heart of Jesus flag because I have to look across the lagoon at the Pride flag for the next month,” she said.

“And he’s like, ‘Oh please, don’t put up a flag.’ I said, ‘I won’t do it because I’m deferring to you. But when you are free of this nonsense I’m putting it up, and I’m gonna send them a message every day. Maybe every week I’ll be changing the flags. They’ll be all kinds,’” she said, fantasizing about the day when she could finally antagonize her neighbors who support the LGBTQ+ community.

Alito even explained she had invented a flag that says, “Vergogna,” which means “shame” in Italian. “Shame, shame, shame on you,” Alito added darkly.

One can scarcely believe that her husband ruled in favor of allowing businesses to discriminate against people who identify as LGBTQ+.

The first presidential debate is set to take place June 27 at CNN’s studios in Atlanta. The event was always going to occur, but that didn’t stop Donald Trump from spending weeks goading his opponent into accepting the details. Now it seems that the presumptive GOP presidential nominee may be trying to weasel his way out of the situation.

Fox News host Sean Hannity floated the idea Monday night, wondering aloud if Trump should “pass on the debate.”

“I think we’ll see the return of ‘Jacked-Up Joe,’” Hannity began, speculating about Biden’s abilities. “Whatever Joe drank, ate, took before the State of the Union—maybe it was just Red Bull and caffeine pills. I don’t know. Whatever it was, that was not the normal Joe. We never saw it before, and we haven’t seen it since. But we will see it for the debate.”

“Now, there are some even saying, Mark, that Donald Trump might be wise to just pass on the first debate, wait until he’s nominated, then debate him,” Hannity said, speaking to Harris Poll chairman Mark Penn. “What would you say to that?”

“I’d say he accepted it. He accepted it in the lion’s den. If I were Donald Trump, I would have done some better negotiating here, but I don’t think he can back out now without really looking cowardly,” Penn replied.

Hannity then took it a step further, suggesting that Trump would be better off during the debate if moderators muted his mic.

“Joe might have done Donald Trump a favor, and I say this affectionately, by insisting that when it’s not his turn to speak that they mute his microphone, ’cause I think that was a mistake in the first debate in 2020,” Hannity said, recalling Trump’s terrible performance the first time the pair squared off in the last election.

Hannity has held a close relationship with Trump for years. The two reportedly exchanged upward of 80 text messages between the 2020 election and Biden’s 2021 inauguration, with Hannity acting as a pseudo-adviser to the former president. Trump, however, has stayed surprisingly mum on the debate, even with the reality of the event just two weeks off.

“I think it’s important for us as teachers to create a space so that our students can dare to reimagine new futures, and they can dare connect and they can dare to dissent,” Texas history teacher Daniel Santos said as he accepted the Toni Morrison Award for Courage at The New Republic’s Right to Read celebration in Miami Saturday night. Santos, executive vice president of the Houston Federation of Teachers and one of five recipients of the award, told the story of a graduating former student from Guatemala who returned to tell him how much a novel he’d assigned about Japanese internment had stayed with him. “He connected with that book, and to this day, he says he continues to read that book because it was valuable and it was important,” he said.

Santos criticized policymakers in his home state, who have enacted some of the country’s most restrictive book banning legislation. So did fellow award-winner Allison Grubbs, Broward County Library director. Over 40 percent of book bans have occurred in Florida, prompting Grubbs to create book sanctuaries in all 36 branches of the Broward County Library system. Grubbs pledged that her “commitment to the freedom to read will remain unwavering,” even in the face of the harassment and threats she’s faced by right-wingers. “When we lose the unchallenged right to read, think, speak freely, we have lost not only our social liberty, but our humanity,” Grubbs said. “The history of totalitarianism in every age and culture has demonstrated that censorship of citizens and their press is a preliminary mechanism by which the descent begins.”

Two award recipients, Texas booksellers Valerie Koehler and Charley Rejsek, are taking on that mechanism directly. They are lead plaintiffs in a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of House Bill 900, the Texas law requiring booksellers to rate books being sold to schools for their “sexual content.” The case, currently in the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals after the state unsuccessfully appealed the ruling blocking the law’s enforcement, reminded Rejsek of a line from Fahrenheit 451, the once-banned Ray Bradbury novel from which her store draws its name. “‘Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick when it came to censorship.’ And I feel like we’re in that moment right now,” she said.

Four-time Newbery Award–winner and MacArthur grant recipient Jacqueline Woodson, who sat on a panel during the Right to Read celebration before accepting her award, drew from another celebrated American writer. “You think your pain is unprecedented in the history of the world, and then you read,” she said, paraphrasing James Baldwin. Woodson’s memoir of the Civil Rights Movement, Brown Girl Dreaming, which won the National Book Award and Newbery Honor award, was challenged in Florida and Texas during the 2021 “critical race theory” panic.

Woodson recalled reading Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, one of the country’s most banned books, as a fifth grader, reflecting on how it informed her own work. “We have seen mirrors of ourselves in literature,” she said. “We have seen windows into worlds that we would never have experienced or understood, or grown to have empathy for. We have seen the other and come to love the other, and we want the other to be OK because sometimes the other is us.”

Now that Donald Trump is a convicted felon, he is not only technically barred from traveling to 38 countries, but his businesses might start to feel the effects too, including his golf courses in New Jersey.

The State of New Jersey is reviewing whether the Republican presidential nominee’s felony convictions will affect the liquor licenses for his three golf courses in the state, according to the state attorney general’s office.

In New Jersey, anyone convicted of a crime “involving moral turpitude” can’t be issued a liquor license. These crimes are ones that include “dishonesty, fraud or depravity” that are punishable by more than one year in prison, according to a state handbook. Other states have similar laws, but Trump has workarounds. This is the case in California, where Trump already transferred the liquor license to Trump National Golf Club Los Angeles to his son, Donald Jr., in 2017.

Trump co-owns a hotel in Las Vegas, but the laws in the Sin City’s Clark County are friendlier to felons, where liquor license applicants only have to be “of good moral character” and there is no ban regarding felony convictions. Liquor authorities in New York, Virginia, Illinois, and North Carolina told Forbes magazine that Trump doesn’t hold any liquor licenses in their states, although the publication found financial disclosure forms indicating otherwise. Florida has moral character laws for its liquor licenses too, but Trump can submit an affidavit claiming he knows right from wrong, and can provide character references or evidence of good citizenship.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Trump seem to have patched up their differences, meaning that he probably doesn’t have to worry about a liquor license or jumping through hoops to be able to vote in the state. But he should have no trouble getting an exception from the man he once called “Meatball Ron” and “Pudding Fingers,” right?

Newly released footage from the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot depicts tense scenes as then–Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and then–House Speaker Nancy Pelosi scrambled for a military response to force out the Trump-driven mob that had taken over the Capitol that day.

“You’re going to ask me—in the middle of the thing when they’ve already breached the inaugural stuff—‘Should we call … the National Guard?’” Pelosi asked Terri McCullough, her chief of staff, as they rode in an SUV while being evacuated from the Capitol to Fort McNair. “Why weren’t the National Guard there to begin with?”

The footage was filmed by Pelosi’s daughter, documentarian Alexandra Pelosi, and was recently provided to Republican congressional investigators from HBO before landing in the hands of Politico and MSNBC.

In another clip, Schumer is seen demanding answers about directing Donald Trump to make a statement telling his supporters to leave. Schumer fumes that the city of Washington, D.C., had requested the National Guard but it was denied by the Department of Defense. “I’d like to know a good fucking reason why it’s been denied,” Schumer growls into a flip phone. “We need them fast. We’ve all had to—I’ve never seen anything like this. We’re like a third-world country here. We had to run and evacuate the Capitol.”

“They have not denied it,” Schumer said to Pelosi after getting off the phone. “I spoke to the secretary of the Army. He’s given the full OK to get the National Guard, he says it was not denied. I’m gunna call up the effin’ secretary of DoD.”

The clips shed new light as to why the National Guard failed to mobilize for hours after a pro-Trump mob breached the building and forced members of Congress to evacuate. Alongside existing evidence, it appears Trump colluded with the Department of Defense to drag their feet and let the deadly insurrection play out.

Trump has long falsely claimed that he signed an order for 10,000 National Guard troops to mobilize to D.C. prior to the Capitol riot. Trump and fellow conservatives have also falsely claimed that Pelosi was responsible for preventing their deployment. These claims were previously debunked by noting Trump failed to issue any formal request. As The Washington Post notes, Trump had informally suggested bringing in thousands of National Guard troops to protect his supporters from leftist counterprotests—not as part of a defense of the Capitol.

On January 7, 2021, the Department of Defense released a statement claiming, “Once the reality of the assault on the U.S. Capitol became apparent, National Guard troops responded appropriately and with alacrity.” At the same time, Trump claimed he “immediately deployed the National Guard and federal law enforcement to secure the building and expel the intruders.” The National Guard didn’t mobilize to the Capitol until 5:40 p.m.—nearly five hours after the pro-Trump mob first breached the exterior barricades and began beating cops before breaching the Capitol at around 2 p.m.

Trump Media stock is once again slumping.

Donald Trump’s social media venture reaudited its finances and filed them with the Securities and Exchange Commission Monday, confirming that the company had a whopping net loss of $58.2 million in 2023. As a result, Trump Media shares dropped more than 6 percent Monday afternoon.

The company had to change auditors last month after its previous firm, BF Borgers, was charged with “massive fraud” and subsequently barred from ever serving as accountants again. 

“As a result of [BF Borgers’] fraudulent conduct, they not only put investors and markets at risk by causing public companies to incorporate noncompliant audits and reviews into more than 1,500 filings with the Commission, but also undermined trust and confidence in our markets,” Gurbir S. Grewal, the director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement, said at the time, calling the firm a “sham audit mill.” 

Trump Media executives have reached out to the SEC to see why the company’s stock is performing so poorly, and its CEO, former Representative Devin Nunes, complained in April to Nasdaq’s CEO that the company was the victim of illegal “naked short selling.” In response, he was brutally mocked on Wall Street.

It’s the latest piece of bad news for what was expected to be a cash cow for Trump. The company reported a staggering $327.6 million loss last quarter, and only brought in $770,500 in revenue. The company is trading at just $42 per share, much less than the $72 it was trading at in March after its initial public offering. Trump can’t brag his way out of his media company’s issues, either: The SEC could see it as an illegal attempt to pump up Trump Media stock. And even if he could get away with it, he still can’t sell off any of that stock for six months without board approval, a difficult prospect considering his hefty legal bills.

Donald Trump’s impending attacks on abortion rights continue to take shape ahead of November.

Trump on Monday virtually addressed a forum hosted by abortion extremist group Danbury Institute, which describes itself as an “association of churches, Christians, and organizations aligned to affirm and preserve God-given rights to life and liberty,” and which in reality advocates for abortion to be “eradicated entirely” and calls the lifesaving medical procedure “child sacrifice.”

Trump delivered two-minute prerecorded remarks, in which he promised that if he’s reelected, the group would “make a comeback like just about no other group.”

“We have to defend religious liberty, free speech, innocent life, and the heritage and traditions that built America into the greatest nation in the history of the world,” Trump added. “I know that each of you is protecting those values every day—and I hope we’ll be defending them side by side for the next four years.”

Trump was initially slated to appear in person at the conference, shifting last-minute to providing pre-written remarks. As Politico noted, none of Trump’s messaging to the extreme anti-abortion conference actually mentioned abortion, and instead read like something pulled together in the eleventh hour by someone attending fascism school who forgot they had a paper due today. According to a senior Trump campaign official, the message is part of a “welcome message” that was prerecorded for attendees of the Southern Baptist Convention, of which the Danbury Institute is hosting a forum dubbed “Life and Liberty” featuring a slate of evangelical anti-abortion figures.

​​The Danbury Institute describes abortion as “the greatest atrocity facing our generation today” and “child sacrifice on the altar of self.” The christofascist group is also ardently anti-LGBTQ and anti-trans and rails against “critical race theory and Marxist ideologies.” Biden’s campaign leapt on the appearance, describing Trump’s participation in the convention “campaigning with abortion ban extremists.”

Trump has previously suggested he’d be open to banning contraceptives, which he walked back only to then clarify that his real target is mifepristone—the medication used to terminate early miscarriages and pregnancy, which accounts for 60 percent of abortions nationwide. He walked back those remarks, as he frequently does, and defaulted to leaving abortion restrictions up to the states.

Trump’s floating stance on abortion appears to be an effort to appease competing factions: His most intensely supportive base, Christian fundamentalists, want abortion banned at the federal level while other parts of his base either support abortion rights or prefer the decision be left to the states.

Donald Trump’s campaign has begun vetting candidates to join his ticket as vice president, and according to Senator J.D. Vance, Trump’s asking them about their criminal record, with no sense of irony at all.  

During a Monday interview on Fox & Friends, host Steve Doocy asked the Ohio Republican whether he had “been asked to submit documents to be vetted.”

“You’re not at that level yet,” Doocy pushed. “Or are you?”

“They’ve asked us for a number of things,” Vance replied. “I think that a number of people have been asked to submit this and that.”

“Like your taxes or something?” Doocy pressed. “Your criminal background?” he added with a short laugh. 

“Yeah, but certainly like, ‘Have you ever committed a crime?’ Or ‘Ever lied about this?’ Certainly you have those conversations, but I think a lot of people have those conversations,” Vance said, vaguely. 

Doocy has become a rare voice of dissent on Fox & Friends, regularly pushing against his fellow hosts’ reactionary perspectives, urging them to provide evidence for some of their more baseless claims about President Joe Biden and his family, according to The Washington Post. Doocy has also proven to be the least likely host to blindly back Trump or defend him from worthy criticism. It’s not clear whether his jab about a criminal background was intentional, but it did appear to make Vance sweat.

It appears that Trump’s campaign plans to hold his vice presidential pick to a higher standard than the candidate himself, who was recently found guilty of 34 felony counts. 

To be fair, it’s not exactly clear how that information will be factored into Trump’s decision. For all we know, the “Law & Order president” might welcome the camaraderie of another politician with a rap sheet.

Of the contenders on Trump’s V.P. shortlist, it appears that the only one with a criminal record is Byron Donalds, who was arrested twice, once for marijuana possession and later for felony theft. In the first case, Donalds was kept out of prison through a pretrial diversion program, and in the second, he pleaded no contest to the felony theft charge and received probation. Donalds’s record was expunged and sealed.*

*This article has been updated the clarify that Donalds’s record was expunged and sealed.