Report: Fox News Helped Trump Cheat Before a Pivotal Town Hall

A Fox News employee gave Trump’s team a set of questions in advance of an Iowa Town Hall in January, according to an upcoming book from Politico’s Alex Isenstadt. If true, this is a blatant violation of  basic journalistic ethics—and yet another blatant example of Trump’s hypocrisy, given that he has accused Democrats of doing “cheating” at debates for years.  That town hall, moreover, occurred at a crucial moment in the race: It took place as Trump’s Republican rivals for the party’s nomination were debating for the final time.

“About thirty minutes before the town hall was due to start, a senior aide started getting text messages from a person on the inside at Fox. ‘Holy [shit],’ the team thought. They were images of all the questions Trump would be asked and the planned follow-ups, down to the exact wording. Jackpot. This was like a student getting a peek at the test before the exam started,” writes Isenstadt.

Trump’s team proceeded to “workshop” their answers to the questions, which touched on political violence, his business activity, and his indictments. 

“While we do not have any evidence of this occurring, and Alex Isenstadt has conveniently refused to release the images for fact checking, we take these matters very seriously and plan to investigate should there prove to be a breach within the network,” a spokesperson for Fox News said. 

Revenge, Isenstadt’s book, comes out in March.

Attorney General Merrick Garland announced Wednesday that he will release some of the details from special counsel Jack Smith’s final report on Donald Trump’s criminal cases, but not all of them.

In a filing, Garland outlined his intentions to publicize the final memo on Trump’s 2020 election subversion case, which constitutes “volume one” of Smith’s report, while handing the controversial details of Trump’s classified documents case to the chair and ranking member of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees.

The decision immediately flouts an order from Judge Aileen Cannon, who caved to a request from two of Trump’s co-defendants Tuesday. She ruled that the Justice Department would not be allowed to release Smith’s final report on his two federal criminal investigations into the president-elect. But the joint request to block the release of the 2020 election report, which names neither of the co-defendants, is little more than a reach, according to Garland.

“Defendants [Walt] Nauta and [Carlos] De Oliveira have no cognizable interest in that volume of the Final Report, however, nor any plausible theory of Article III standing that would justify their asking this Court to grant relief with respect to it,” Garland wrote in Wednesday’s filing. “Nor would there be any legal basis for any other interested party to seek to block release of Volume One.”

Garland’s notes on Trump’s classified documents case are doubly strategic. By restricting the release of volume two of Smith’s report to the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, Garland undermined the “essential premise” of Nauta and De Oliveira’s emergency motion, which claimed that the immediate public release of the report would cause “irreparable prejudice to defendants’ criminal proceedings.”

Garland “determined that he will not make a public release of Volume Two while defendants’ cases remain pending,” the filing reads. “That should be the end of the matter.”

Cannon’s Tuesday ruling stated that Garland, the DOJ, Smith, and “all of their officers, agents, and employees, and all persons acting in active concert or participation with such individuals” could not publish any part of the report until three days after an appeals court rules on the case.

It’s unclear if the Trump-appointed judge even had the authority to make such a decision, as the case is pending outside of her jurisdiction.

This story has been updated.

Even Donald Trump’s former allies don’t understand Judge Aileen Cannon’s decision to block forthcoming details of special counsel Jack Smith’s case against the president-elect.

On Tuesday, Cannon caved to a request from two of Trump’s co-defendants, ruling that the Justice Department is not allowed to release Smith’s final report on two of the president-elect’s federal criminal investigations.

In an interview that night with CNN, former Trump attorney Ty Cobb said he believed that Cannon’s continued involvement in cloaking the details of the case made her one of Trump’s favorite tools.

“Why do you think, Ty, Cannon blocked the report?” asked OutFront host Erin Burnett.

“The only reason she’s shining is, she’s his tool and he polishes her religiously,” Cobb said. “He gets the results he needs from her. The Eleventh Circuit has already, as we know, over two years ago, had to admonish her extensively.”

Cannon was legally scolded by the Eleventh Circuit in 2022, when the appeals court unanimously vacated her decision to appoint a special master to oversee the documents obtained by the FBI after their raid of Mar-a-Lago. At the time, the court wrote that Cannon “improperly exercised equitable jurisdiction” in the case and that the judicial system could not “write a rule that allows any subject of a search warrant to block government investigations after the execution of the warrant.

“Nor can we write a rule that allows only former presidents to do so,” the appeals court added.

Cobb argued that Cannon’s heavy hand in Trump’s case had “created remedies” for the president-elect “out of whole cloth.”

“I suspect they will do so again quickly,” Cobb said, envisioning more reprimands for Cannon by the Eleventh Circuit. “They may be prepared to mitigate the stain that she is and the stain that she’s created again for the judiciary quickly on this.”

Cannon’s ruling stated that Attorney General Merrick Garland, the Department of Justice, Smith, and “all of their officers, agents, and employees, and all persons acting in active concert or participation with such individuals” could not publish any part of the report until three days after an appeals court rules on the case.

It’s unclear if the Trump-appointed judge even had the authority to make such a decision, as the case is pending outside of her jurisdiction.

Former Representative Matt Gaetz is considering running for office again, just weeks after getting chased out of the last one. 

Gaetz, the Florida Republican who allegedly paid several women and an underage girl for sexual encounters, is “starting to think about running for governor” in 2026, he told The Tampa Bay Times Tuesday.

“I have a compelling vision for the state,” Gaetz said. “I understand how to fix the insurance problem, and it’s not to hand the keys to the state over to the insurance industry. If I run, I would be the most pro-consumer candidate on the Republican side.”

Last month, the House Ethics Committee published a long-awaited report on Gaetz’s alleged misconduct, and concluded that the MAGA acolyte “took advantage of the economic vulnerability of young women to lure them into sexual activity.” In total, he paid out more than $63,000 to more than a dozen women and one 17-year-old girl.  

Gaetz left Congress last year after he was nominated to serve as Donald Trump’s attorney general. Unfortunately for him, his candidacy was so unpopular he was forced to withdraw his nomination and was replaced by Pam Bondi, who is set to be confirmed next week. When he didn’t return for the start of the 119th Congress last week, his former colleagues clapped. 

Gaetz said the revelations about his behavior wouldn’t have any impact on a potential run for governor. “Those lies have been told about me for years,” Gaetz said. “They’ve never affected my ability to win elections.”

Donald Trump is asking the Supreme Court to intervene in his New York hush-money case.

The president-elect requested an administrative stay Wednesday on the sentencing for his sole criminal conviction, claiming that the high court’s July immunity ruling should prevent him from having to face consequences. Trump’s sentencing is currently scheduled for Friday.

A jury of his peers unanimously decided in May that Trump was guilty on all 34 counts for falsifying business records with the intent to further an underlying crime in the first degree.

Trump has skirted sentencing since July, leveraging the nation’s legal system to invoke delay after delay until now, when the clock could realistically run out on the case just 12 days before he is set to retake the White House.

But the stay—which will once again delay Trump’s sentencing—would only nix an already pared-down and toothless conviction.

Last week, Judge Juan Merchan dealt the final blow to any suggestions of serious consequences for the president-elect. Merchan wrote in his Friday order that “unconditional discharge” had become the “the most viable solution” for Trump, indicating that the incoming president would not be hampered down with fines, court-appointed supervision, or incarceration.

In the wake of Merchan’s order, former U.S. District Attorney Joyce Vance argued in her legal column Civil Discourse that there could still be a light at the end of the legal tunnel for Trump’s sentencing. Rather than forcing Trump to face the music before his inauguration, she argued that Merchan’s decision to release Trump with “unconditional discharge” could effectively take the wind out of Trump’s sails should he try to do away with the criminal conviction altogether. It would also help delay Trump’s sentencing until he’s out of office again, in which case, all bets are off.

It’s unclear if the Supreme Court will grant Trump’s request. As reporter Steven Mazie noted on X, “several justices will be so inclined,” but that doesn’t mean a majority will be.

This story has been updated.