Surprise, Surprise: Trump’s Presidency Is Already Breaking Federal Law

It looks like the guy who has made it perfectly clear he doesn’t care about federal law is violating federal law. Oh, and also he’s about to be the president of the United States.

Donald Trump and his campaign are currently in violation of the Presidential Transition Act, a federal law that coordinates and funds the transition of power from one administration to the next.

The PTA has a few components that must be submitted by the Trump campaign—and so far, the president-elect’s team hasn’t handed over a single one.

Trump has yet to submit a Memo of Understanding to the General Services Administration, which would theoretically articulate an ethics policy pledging not to hire individuals with conflicts of interest to assist with its transition. The document would provide $7.2 million to fund Trump’s transition, and was due at the beginning of October.

It’s become increasingly clear the president-elect has no intention to submit one. That’s possibly because the PTA also requires candidates to disclose all of their private donors, and places a $5,000 cap on individual donations to the transition.

Trump will be sworn in regardless of whether he complies with the Presidential Transition Act, but his noncompliance will likely stall and disrupt the transition process. In lieu of federal funding, Trump might look elsewhere for big dollar donations, such as his inaugural committee, which is set to be headed by millionaire real estate investor Steve Witkoff and Kelly Loeffler, a former Republican U.S. senator.

Trump has also failed to submit security clearance requests for members of his administration, with each appointment more disturbing than the last.

Last week, the Department of Justice said that it was ready to “process requests for security clearances for those who will need access to national security information.” Trump’s top advisers have previously suggested that the president-elect hand out security clearances without FBI vetting.

InfoWars host Alex Jones appears to have issued his final broadcast.

On Tuesday, the virulent conspiracy theorist—who lost a $1.5 billion case for claiming that the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre that claimed the lives of 20 first graders and six adults was a hoax—announced that his right-wing media empire, InfoWars, was being staged for a federal auction.

“Wednesday afternoon, Infowars, the equipment, InfoWars.com, InfoWarsStore.com, and a whole bunch of other stuff, is at a federal bankruptcy auction, from the fake judgements and the rigged trials where I was found guilty beforehand, and they had literal show trials like out of the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany,” Jones said in a video posted to X (formerly Twitter).

“I saw the auctioneers inside the building, going around and surveying to make sure all the stuff is here,” Jones continued. “Everything tagged, everything marked.”

Jones appeared to be under the impression that “good guys” would buy the fringe network, though he did not reveal who they were. In the run-up to the auction, several groups expressed interest in InfoWars assets, including a coalition of liberal and anti-disinformation watchdog groups, according to The Daily Beast, as well as some of Jones’s own supporters, including Donald Trump ally Roger Stone.

Jones has sacrificed practically every element of his life in order to hock his conspiracies.

In 2017, the InfoWars host lost primary custody of his children in a case that pinned him as a “cult leader” of an online conspiracy network.

Jones filed for bankruptcy in 2022 after losing his case against the families of victims of the Sandy Hook tragedy. Jones himself filed in June to liquidate all of his assets (which, at the time, amounted to roughly $9 million in personal assets, $6 million in InfoWars’ parent company Free Speech Systems, and $1.2 million worth of inventory—all a relative drop in the bucket for paying off his massive debt). A year later, the victims’ families took mercy on Jones, agreeing to settle the outstanding debt for a minimum of just $85 million over the course of 10 years.

Jones is still working to appeal the judgments against him. He now admits that the shooting was actually “100 percent real” but argues that his First Amendment rights should permit him to say that it wasn’t.

Mark Meadows tried to appeal to the Supreme Court over his election interference charges in Georgia, and was swiftly shut down.

Hoping to have his case moved to federal court, Meadows appealed to the Supreme Court, but on Tuesday the court denied his request. A former White House chief of staff under Donald Trump, Meadows faces two charges over his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in the Peach State.

Meadows’s legal team argued that since he was a “federal officer” at the time, the case should be moved to federal court, where he likely hoped to claim immunity from prosecution. Meadows was rebuffed in the U.S. Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled against the former Trump staffer because he doesn’t work for the federal government anymore. The lower court also ruled that even if he was still a federal officer, “the events giving rise to this criminal action were not related to Meadows’ official duties.”

In total, 19 people, including Meadows and Trump, face criminal charges in the effort to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results. They have all pleaded not guilty. But Trump’s reelection last week makes any prosecution of him in the next four years unlikely. It’s not yet clear what effect his victory has on his co-defendants.

The Georgia Court of Appeals is expected to hear oral arguments on December 5 on Trump’s appeal to have Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis thrown off the case, but that may change now that Trump is the president-elect. The Supreme Court’s July ruling on presidential immunity affirmed that a sitting president can’t be prosecuted for any crimes, meaning that the Georgia case against Trump will at best be in limbo for several years and at worst disappear altogether.

That will be of little comfort to Meadows and the other defendants in the case, especially since Willis was reelected last week. He and his fellow 2020 election conspirators will be hoping that the Fulton County prosecutor is eventually kicked off the case, or that it gets dismissed altogether.

Justice Samuel Alito has slammed the door on overeager Republicans’ hopes for a Trump-packed Supreme Court. 

With Republicans inching toward trifecta control of the House, Senate, and White House after their sweeping victory last week, the party has now turned its attention to the nation’s highest court. Republicans will have at least two years of uninhibited ability to mold the Supreme Court in their image, especially if conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Alito—76 and 74, respectively—get the message and step down. 

But Alito quickly shut down rumors of his retirement. 

“Despite what some people may think, this is a man who has never thought about this job from a political perspective,” a friend of Alito told The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday. “The idea that he’s going to retire for political considerations is not consistent with who he is.”

Alito was appointed by President George W. Bush in 2006 and has been a bastion of conservative originalism ever since. He penned the opinion on the devastating overturning of Roe v. Wade, something that was made possible in part thanks to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s passing away in 2020, after stubbornly refusing calls to step down during President Barack Obama’s term—giving President Donald Trump the conservative majority needed to overturn the crucial reproductive rights law.  

Liberal Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, 70, has also faced calls for her to step down, but she has no plans to retire either.

Donald Trump’s pick for his administration’s “border czar” suggested that immigrants should “self-deport” ahead of the president-elect’s massive deportation scheme.

During an interview Monday with Tom Homan, Trump’s former director of Immigration Customs and Enforcement, Fox News’s Sean Hannity pitched the idea of a two- or three-month “grace period” for undocumented immigrants to self-deport.

“If you don’t self-report-deport, then you will never be given an opportunity at citizenship and when you leave, you will never be invited back, you will never be able to apply to come into the country,” said Hannity. “Sound like a good idea or no?”

“Criminals and gang members get no grace period,” Homan, the incoming border chief, said. “But, while we’re out prioritizing the public safety threats, and national security threats, if you want to self-deport, you should self-deport. Because, again, we know who you are, and we’re gonna come and find you.”

“So, if you want to self-deport, that’s fine. But criminals and gang members, they get no favors from this administration. You came to this country illegally which is a crime. You committed crimes against United States citizens, some heinous crimes, you get no grace period, so we’re coming for you.”

“But for those others, the non-criminals, you wanna self deport I’m all for it,” Homan said. “Because when they self-report they can put everything in order, their family business that they got, homes, or whatever. They can put all that in order and leave with their family all together. It makes perfect sense for the ones that are not criminals.”

Homan’s rambling response leaves room for interpretation, resting on the administration’s definition of “non-criminal,” which would likely include both undocumented and legal immigrants.

JD Vance has previously suggested that Trump would deport immigrants who are in the country under legal programs such as temporary protected status, or TPS. There were 863,880 foreign nationals in the United States under TPS as of August. Vance has also refused to rule out deporting immigrants with Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, status.

The details of Trump’s plan to execute the largest mass deportations in history are still unclear. Homan said Tuesday he expected support from the U.S. military and special operations.