Ted Cruz Admits Trump’s Treason Plot Against Obama Is a Bust

On Wednesday night, Senator Ted Cruz cast cold water on MAGA’s burning zeal to lock up former President Barack Obama for treason.

Joining Fox News’s Laura Ingraham, Cruz acknowledged that the chances Obama is prosecuted for treason are slim to none.

In recent days, Donald Trump’s White House released evidence it claimed proves a “treasonous conspiracy” by the Obama administration to rig the 2016 and 2020 elections. The so-called evidence claims that Obama manufactured intelligence about Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election “to lay the groundwork for what was essentially a years-long coup against President Trump.”

The president has seized on the purported findings, calling Obama guilty of “treason” and saying, “It’s time to go after people.” Over the weekend, the president took to Truth Social to share memes about imprisoning Obama. Obama’s office has dismissed the allegations, suggesting they’re “a weak attempt at distraction” from the Epstein scandal.

Dashing MAGA dreams of Obama behind bars, Ingraham on Wednesday said, “He’s not going to be prosecuted for treason. It’s not going to happen.”

Though Cruz floated other plans to go after Obama officials, he agreed. “He’s not going to be prosecuted in all likelihood for treason.”

“At all,” Ingraham added.

Cruz cited not the weakness of Gabbard’s madcap accusations—which he called “very important, troubling new information”—but the fact that the Supreme Court greatly expanded the powers of the presidency in its 2024 decision in Trump v. United States, which, per Justice Sonia Sotomayor, makes the individual holding the highest office a “king above the law.”

Cruz’s point is similar to one made on Wednesday by The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board, which reminded Trump that the Supreme Court’s ruling applies to all presidents, not just to himself.

“Leave aside the narrow definition of ‘treason’ in the Constitution,” wrote the Journal’s editorial board. “Has Mr. Trump so quickly forgotten his victory at the Supreme Court in Trump v. U.S.? The Justices held 6-3 that a President can’t be prosecuted for exercising ‘core constitutional powers,’ and he has ‘presumptive immunity’ for ‘official acts.’ This surely includes Mr. Obama’s supervision of spy agencies.”

The Treasury Department wants you to Venmo it to help with the $36.65 trillion national debt.

On Wednesday, NPR’s Jack Corbett pointed out that there was an option on Pay.gov, the Treasury’s online payment platform, where Americans could go to throw their Venmo dollars at the gargantuan national debt. You can also use PayPal. The page is titled “Gifts to Reduce the Public Debt.”

The Treasury has run this program for years, and people have donated $67.3 million since 1996, a minuscule amount of the total debt. But the options to use Venmo or PayPal are new.

This is an absolute joke. Leaders on both sides of the aisle harangue Americans every day about the specter of the national debt while throwing billions of dollars at funding the military, funding Israel’s military, and funding Trump’s brutal immigration campaign. To even create this option when the majority of the country is working/middle class appears deeply unserious and tone deaf.

And even if people were feeling generous, it would be virtually impossible to make a dent in the debt given its current size and the fact that it is set to keep growing, and fast.

The best way to stop sex trafficking? Let the people who did it out of prison, if Republican Representative Tim Burchett is to be believed.

House Republicans may ask the Department of Justice to reduce convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell’s sentence in exchange for information about the so-called “Epstein files.”

Burchett acknowledged that Jeffrey Epstein’s former girlfriend and right-hand woman Maxwell is a “liar” and a “dirtbag,” but said that he and his colleagues do have some “leverage” to ensure she tells the truth.

“One thing we’ve got holding over her head is if we find out she lies, she goes back to her original sentence. That’s looking at lifetime. If she’s looking to parlay this into reducing her sentence, then we could have some leverage there,” Burchett said to the Daily Caller on Wednesday.

Luckily for Burchett, no one has ever lied in order to avoid jail time.

Maxwell is slated to testify before Congress in August from a Florida prison, where she is currently serving 20 years for crimes related to her time building Epstein’s pedophile network, and trafficking and abusing women and girls.

Regardless of what Maxwell reveals in her testimony, MAGA will likely be hanging on her every word: Donald Trump’s base has been clamoring for more information on Epstein ever since the president promised to release damning details on the powerful people who associated with the sex trafficker—and then backtracked in July, with Attorney General Pam Bondi saying that the so-called “client list” did not exist.

Since then, Trump has scrambled in vain to quell his base’s rage. He’s attempted different tactics: calling the investigation a “hoax” perpetuated by Democrats, saying that those still interested in the case were “bad people,” and eventually changing tacks to placate his base by requesting the release of grand jury testimony from Epstein’s first trial in 2006. (A judge has denied this request.)

The president purportedly didn’t even know that his DOJ was bringing in Maxwell to assist in the investigation, saying Tuesday that the move “sounds appropriate” but stressing that the Epstein fallout is “sort of a witch hunt.”

Trump’s seeming indifference to the potential bombshells Maxwell could drop speaks to the mindset of a man who, according to the The Wall Street Journal, was told by his attorney general in May that he’s mentioned in the Epstein files.

With each passing day, more information emerges on Trump’s relationship with Epstein, which the financier characterized as one of close friends. The Journal published a report of a “bawdy letter” that Trump sent to Epstein as part of a book for the latter’s 50th birthday—a book that the victims’ lawyer confirms exists. And back in 2002, Trump said to New York magazine that he had known “Jeff” for 15 years, calling him a “terrific guy” who likes “beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”

Pressure is still mounting against conservatives to release the Epstein files.

On Tuesday, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene described the demand for transparency as “overwhelming,” noting that the call volume related to Epstein at her office has been “extremely high.”

“Since I became a freshman member of Congress—this is fascinating—I’ve tracked the calls to my office,” Greene told reporters. “I have a whole spreadsheet my staff maintains. They track all the calls coming in from the district and from outside the district. We categorize the issues, from past ones to current ones.

“The call volume on Epstein has been almost 100 percent—district and out of district—since this started. They’re demanding transparency,” she said.

Greene noted that many of her colleagues are “getting beaten up at home in their districts” over the Epstein files, as well.

The Georgia Republican has joined hands with a dozen other lawmakers in a bipartisan effort—H.Res.581, dubbed the Epstein Files Transparency Act—to make the Epstein case files publicly available.

Introduced by Representative Thomas Massie, who has a habit of actually standing up to Donald Trump, the bill aims to “make publicly available in a searchable and downloadable format all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials in the possession of the Department of Justice, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and United States Attorneys’ Offices,” relating to child sex traffickers Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.

The text of the bill specifies the release of flight logs, travel records, the names of individuals and government officials connected to Epstein’s “criminal activities, civil settlements, immunity or plea agreements, or investigatory proceedings,” the names of corporations or organizations tied to Epstein’s trafficking networks, potential immunity deals or sealed settlements, as well as “internal DOJ communications.”

And if conservative lawmakers were prioritizing transparency, perhaps they would have pushed through a Democratic-led effort to release the Epstein files instead of blocking it last week, before the chamber recessed. The final vote was 211–210: Just one dissenting Republican would have tipped the scales.

Even if the new bill passes, Americans will have to wait a while for answers. Amid the Epstein-induced federal frenzy, House Republicans decided to start the lower chamber’s summer recess early, ushering lawmakers back home and away from the Capitol while the Trump administration flails in response to the mounting scandal.

A Quinnipiac poll published last week found that 63 percent of voters disapprove of the way that the Trump administration has handled the Epstein case, which has so far included the Justice Department backtracking on the existence of certain documents and the president chalking up Epstein’s notoriety to a Democrat-invented “hoax.”

Columbia University has handed the reins of its admission process to the White House.

One of the oldest educational institutions in the country agreed Wednesday to pay the Trump administration $200 million to settle multiple investigations and reinstate billions of dollars’ worth of federal grants.

But the agreement comes with an alarming clause that will deliver granular admissions data on every Columbia applicant to the Trump administration, effectively allowing the White House to decide if the school has admitted enough historically advantaged demographics—or needs to face further investigations.

The school, according to the settlement, must provide admissions data “consistent with 34 C.F.R. § 100.6 and similar regulations” to an independently appointed resolution monitor, alongside analysis of which students were rejected or admitted on the basis of their “race, color, national origin, grade point average” and test performance. The form will be due to the White House by October 1 of each year.

That data will also, subsequently, be made public, according to the settlement details.

But even abiding by the new system won’t save Columbia from future power trips by the White House.

“Nothing in this Agreement prevents the United States (even during the period of the Agreement) from conducting subsequent compliance reviews, investigations, or litigation into Columbia’s future admissions practices to ensure that those practices are in full compliance with all applicable laws and not a proxy for prohibited discrimination,” the settlement reads.

The university, however, did not interpret the contents of the agreement the same way, minimizing the impact of sharing applicants’ sensitive details with the government.

“Critically, Columbia retains control over its academic and operational decisions,” the school wrote in an email blast to students. “As part of the settlement, the University has not admitted wrongdoing and does not agree with the government’s conclusion that it violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.”

Columbia has kowtowed and bowed its head repeatedly to the White House since the Trump administration made an example of it earlier this year, repeatedly attacking the institution over its response to a pro-Palestine protest that took place on campus in 2024. The Trump administration has accused Columbia of engaging in antisemitism for apparently failing to subdue the protests as aggressively as Trump would have liked.

On Tuesday, Columbia said it would be disciplining dozens of pro-Palestine protesters who participated in the occupation of Butler Library in May, which saw multiple arrests at the time. A pro-Palestine group on campus, Columbia for Palestine, said that 80 students had been informed of their punishments, and noted that the move marked “the most suspensions for a single political protest in Columbia campus history.”

Last week, Columbia further capitulated to the Trump administration, adopting a new campus-wide definition of antisemitism that conflates hatred of the Jewish people with general opposition to Zionism. It has also said it would no longer engage with the pro-Palestinian group Columbia University Apartheid Divest, permitted federal immigration officials into its buildings, and allowed the administration to attempt to deport foreign students who support the free state of Palestine, though those cases have encountered judicial roadblocks.

As per the terms of the settlement arrangement, Columbia will also institute a new liaison to the Jewish community in University Life.