Karoline Leavitt’s Failed Congressional Bid Comes Back to Bite Her

Debt creditors are on the prowl for federal officials.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt owes $326,370.50 in the aftermath of her failed 2022 congressional campaign, according to a new disclosure filed with the Federal Election Commission.

Her campaign committee, Karoline for Congress, didn’t raise any money during April, May, or June of this year, failing to pay off a dime of her mountainous debt, according to the disclosure. The majority of the debt is the result of accepting illegal campaign contributions that exceeded federal limits, the bulk of which she has not yet returned, reported OpenSecrets.

The campaign committee reported in June that it had spent the illicit funds a long time ago and currently had no cash on hand.

Some of the individuals owed refunds include former New Hampshire Governor Craig Benson, as well as the late New Hampshire Senate Majority Leader Robert Clegg Jr. Karoline for Congress also owes more than $46,000 to Missouri-based consultant Axiom Strategies, $41,000 to Missouri-based polling firm Remington Research Group, and nearly $13,000 to Washington-based fundraising firm Fundraising Inc. Other donors, however, did scrape by before the committee stopped dishing out refunds. They, conveniently, included Leavitt’s parents, according to NOTUS.

The committee is currently under audit by the FEC. The excessive donations went unreported for years, but in January, the group amended 17 prior campaign finance reports—each one it had ever made—to account for the unlawful discrepancy, NOTUS reported at the time.

An unidentified source close to Leavitt told OpenSecrets that Leavitt doesn’t personally owe anyone money, and underscored that Karoline for Congress is “working with the FEC through the audit and that process is ongoing, hence the outstanding ‘debt.’”

End Citizens United, a Democratic-aligned PAC, sued Karoline for Congress over the illegal donations in November 2022, but little has changed since then. The FEC has lacked the minimum four commissioners necessary to initiate investigations since May. Donald Trump has the sole authority to nominate the commissioners—who must then be confirmed by the Senate—but so far the president has not nominated a single individual to the regulatory agency, despite recommendations from congressional leaders.

“Cases like this send a clear message: If you break campaign finance laws, nothing will happen to you,” End Citizens United President Tiffany Muller told OpenSecrets. “It’s open season for corrupt leaders who want to game the system and get away with it.”

The right-wing commentariat is using Monday’s deadly mass shooting in Manhattan, in which a gunman shot and killed four people, to discredit the candidacy of mayoral front-runner Zohran Mamdani.

The attacks ran the gamut, from mischaracterizations of the Democratic nominee’s agenda to plain bigotry. Curiously, many attempts to use Monday’s tragedy against Mamdani also treat the Democratic nominee as if he were the current mayor and as if the violence did not occur under public safety policies already in place.

Several prominent conservatives have attempted to scapegoat Mamdani in light of a “defund the police” stance he does not espouse. Anti-trans activist Riley Gaines posted on X: “Do you not realize how terrifying it is this is happening in a city where the mayoral candidate wants to defund the police?” Pro-Trump podcaster Benny Johnson wrote: “REMINDER: Communist Zohran Mamdani wants to defund the police. No cops rushing in—just social workers trying to reason with gunmen.”

These attempts to pin the shooting on Mamdani misrepresent the candidate’s agenda and public comments on public safety. Johnson, for instance, pointed to Mamdani’s (now much-screenshotted) 2020 tweet in support of defunding the police, whereas Mamdani stated clearly during the Democratic primary, “I will not defund the police” and says he supports maintaining the current size of the police force.

Mamdani proposes creating a Department of Community Safety, separate from the New York Police Department, which he says will reduce strain on police officers and free up NYPD “resources to increase clearance rates for major crimes.”

As news of the shooting broke, Fox News columnist David Marcus also leveled a criticism that misses the mark, considering Mamdani is not the current occupant of Gracie Mansion. Marcus took to X to write, “Can somebody in Uganda please wake Zohran up? A cop is dead.” (Mamdani, who was born in Uganda, announced last week—in a video humorously preempting right-wing smears—that he would be traveling to the country in a personal capacity and plans to return this week.)

Others resorted to bigoted comments about Mamdani’s background. For instance, Laura Loomer, the MAGA social media personality (who wields considerable influence over the administration of President Donald Trump), baselessly asserted Monday that the gunman was a Mamdani supporter, writing, “[Mamdani] is inspiring a generation of pro-Islamic cop killers. This is why you don’t elect Muslim immigrants to office.”

Mamdani, for his part, posted a statement promptly Monday evening, thanking first responders and writing, “I’m heartbroken to learn of the horrific shooting in midtown and I am holding the victims, their families, and the NYPD officer in critical condition in my thoughts.”

On Tuesday morning, Mamdani posted a heartfelt message mourning the loss of the NYPD Officer Didarul Islam.

On Saturday night, the Israeli Defense Forces surrounded, beat, and choked American labor leader Chris Smalls as they unlawfully boarded the Handala, the most recent aid ship trying to reach Gaza as part of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition. Smalls was the only Black person on the flotilla and was punished much more severely than any of the other 20 members detained.

“When he reached the Israeli prison, U.S. human rights defender Chris Smalls was physically assaulted by seven uniformed individuals,” the Freedom Flotilla Coalition announced Tuesday morning. “They choked him and kicked him in the legs, leaving visible signs of violence on his neck and back. When his lawyer met with him, Chris was surrounded by six members of Israel’s special police unit. This level of force was not used against other abducted activists. We condemn this violence against Chris and demand accountability for the assault and discriminatory treatment he faced.”

“Pretty hard to believe that the particularly heinous and brutal treatment Christian Smalls was subjected to by Israeli authorities was not a function of racism given it was not inflicted on other Handala detainees,” University of New Brunswick professor Nathan Kalman-Lamb wrote on Bluesky. “And the US media dgaf.”

Smalls entered the public eye in 2022 after successfully founding a labor union at a Staten Island Amazon factory, garnering national praise and even a White House invitation from President Biden. Now he remains beaten and battered in IDF custody.

The IDF targeting the one Black man on the aid ship is sadly unsurprising, as is the lack of uproar from U.S. politicians and large media outlets. Yet another U.S. citizen assaulted and detained by the IDF, yet not a peep from either side of the aisle because Smalls is a Black American leftist who was standing up to Israel’s campaign of mass starvation and trying to deliver baby food and flour to suffering Palestinians in Gaza.

“I’m thinking of Chris Smalls. And about how, because he’s Black, no Greta Thunberg, no celebrity, no darling of the liberal class, he might not make it out alive,” author Camonghne Felix wrote on X. “Blackness, when vulnerable and on its knees, is a white supremacist fantasy.”

While smaller unions have spoken up to condemn Smalls’s arrest, Teamsters—which worked with Smalls on the Amazon Labor Union—has yet to make a statement on his violent detainment, failing spectacularly to meet the moment.*

While Smalls and other flotilla members remain in IDF custody, the coalition plans to send another aid ship very soon, yet another direct challenge to the Israeli government.

“We are calling on others around the world, definitely our countries, to live up to their obligation of enforcing international law, of protecting human rights, but also other institutions that are founded to do the same,” said Huwaida Arraf, a Palestinian American attorney and Handala member who was released from IDF custody due to her Israeli citizenship. “We should not be waiting for Israel to give permission for food or other humanitarian aid to enter … we need to be breaking, challenging and breaking the blockade.”

“And our governments not only have not been doing anything about it … the U.S. government did not make contact with any of the seven American citizens on board, but the [others], like France, Spain, Italy, contacted their citizens on board and told them that they are ready to provide consular services when Israel kidnaps us, which we found to be completely obnoxious,” she added. “They were legitimizing Israeli piracy on the high seas. And that is unacceptable to us. And that is the kind of impunity that our governments, all governments, really, have been allowing Israel to just violate international law.”

*This piece has been updated to correct a description of Teamsters.

Two antitrust officials at the Justice Department have received their pink slips.

The fired officials, Roger Alford and Bill Rinner, were both responsible for preventing monopolies and investigating anticompetitive behavior amongst corporations. Their grounds for dismissal were not immediately apparent, though sources that spoke with CBS News Monday night claimed that their termination notices mentioned insubordination.

Alford and Rinner worked under Assistant Attorney General Gail Slater, the chief of the division. Alford was principal deputy assistant attorney general and Rinner was the deputy assistant attorney general, fronting merger enforcement. Slater had recently taken on lawsuits against several major companies, including Capital One, Apple, and Google.

Their department had become the subject of criticism from some business leaders and colleagues. Earlier this month, CBS News reported that internal friction within the team had led to conversations about potentially pushing staffers out. On July 17, Slater met at the White House with the Office of Budget and Management, the National Economic Council, and the Federal Trade Commission. Staffers at those agencies have started to question if Slater is truly prioritizing Donald Trump’s policies, or whether she is walking her own path.

Some of the team’s disagreements were sparked during investigations into T-Mobile and Hewlett Packard Enterprise, among others, according to sources that spoke with CBS.

Business leaders were reportedly unhappy with Slater after she warned them not to engage with the administration via Trump-aligned lobbyists and consultants. In one meeting between Hewlett Packard Enterprise and its prospective purchase Juniper Networks, Slater said that the businesses should only work through Justice Department officials, rather than outside consultants—for HPE, Trump allies Mike Davis and Arthur Schwartz, according to CBS News. Businesses raised concerns with the White House over conversations of that nature, with leaders wondering why the DOJ was instructing them on whom they could hire.

Louisiana Senator John Kennedy has responded to the deadly shooting in Midtown Manhattan with all the wisdom of a bumper sticker.

“We don’t need more gun control, we need more idiot control,” Kennedy said on Fox News’s Hannity Monday night. “And I don’t know exactly how to do that.”

Host Sean Hannity agreed with Kennedy, noting that New York already has some of the strictest gun laws in the country. But the assailant reportedly drove to New York from Nevada, where there are only minor restrictions on purchasing assault weapons. Upon arriving in New York, the shooter killed four people, including an off-duty police officer.

Republicans love to feign ignorance about solutions to gun violence after deadly shootings, but without essential idiot control laws, they still manage to find their way onto national television to blow hot air in the hopes of being reelected.

One thing is clear: People are far safer dealing with an idiot than an assailant armed with an M4 assault rifle.

On X Monday evening, Marjorie Taylor Greene castigated fellow MAGA Republican Representative Randy Fine for denying the starvation crisis in Gaza. She also notably joined the small cohort of members of Congress to describe Israel’s actions in Gaza as a genocide.

Greene’s post came in reaction to a New Republic story on AIPAC hiding its endorsement of Fine, following his controversial comments last week in which he dismissed a report about the starvation of Palestinians in Gaza, including children, as “Muslim terror propaganda.” “Release the hostages,” Fine wrote. “Until then, starve away.”

Greene questioned Fine’s commitment to his constituents in Florida’s 6th congressional district, citing his alleged decision to move with his wife to Washington, D.C., rather than, per Greene’s advice, to “live in the district he will represent.”

“I can only imagine how Florida’s 6th district feels now that their Representative, that they were told to vote for, openly calls for starving innocent people and children,” Greene wrote. “It’s the most truthful and easiest thing to say that Oct 7th in Israel was horrific and all hostages must be returned, but so is the genocide, humanitarian crisis, and starvation happening in Gaza.”

Greene added that Fine’s statement, as “a Jewish U.S. Representative,” will only “cause more antisemitism.”

Greene joins only a handful of progressive lawmakers in condemning Israel for committing genocide. Several leading humanitarian organizations have already concluded that Israel’s war on Gaza amounts to genocide, including Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders, and, most recently, B’Tselem, a prominent Israeli human rights group.

Greene’s stance on Israel has radically changed since the period immediately after Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack—at which time she smeared a pro-Palestinian protest on Capitol Hill as an “insurrection” and sought to censure Representative Rashida Tlaib on spurious allegations of antisemitism. (The resolution attacked Tlaib for allegedly sharing a social media post “blaming America for allowing the deaths of Palestinian babies at the hands of Israel.”)

Since then, Greene has become a frequent critic of Israel, even introducing a bid earlier this month to cut funding for Israel’s missile defense system, in which she was joined only by four progressives and fellow Republican Thomas Massie.

This story has been updated.

Donald Trump’s Justice Department is moving to retaliate against one of the federal judges who stood up to Trump’s extrajudicial deportations.

Judge James Boasberg first appeared on the MAGA radar in March after blocking the Trump administration’s invocation of the wartime 1798 Alien Enemies Act to indiscriminately deport men Trump claimed were Tren de Aragua gang members to El Salvador. The administration ignored Boasberg’s order, and he claimed to have found probable cause for contempt on the administration’s part, although the D.C. Circuit Court has paused proceedings. Boasberg’s principled opposition quickly made him a villain to Trump, culminating in the DOJ’s most recent attack on him.

“Today at my direction, @TheJusticeDept filed a misconduct complaint against U.S. District Court Chief Judge James Boasberg for making improper public comments about President Trump and his Administration,” Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote Monday on X. “These comments have undermined the integrity of the judiciary, and we will not stand for that.”

While Bondi has yet to actually specify what “improper public comments” Boasberg made to elicit such an attack, both her chief of staff and the right-wing Federalist have reported that this huge, inappropriate mistake Boasberg made was simply expressing his (valid!) concern that the Trump administration was liable to “disregard rulings of federal courts leading to a constitutional crisis,” while at a judicial conference.

So Trump and Bondi are trying to sanction Boasberg for sharing his expert opinion, one of the primary functions of a federal judge.

Trump has called for Boasberg’s impeachment since March when he first ruled against the president’s deportations, and has continued to slander any judge who dares to rule against him as some radical, activist Obama judge. The targeting of Boasberg is unfortunately par for the course now, as judges will have to consider either capitulating to Trump or risking their safety, reputation, and livelihood.

Public interest in the president’s reported connections to Jeffrey Epstein is apparently boggling the Trump mediasphere.

Speaking with Newsmax host Katrina Szish on Monday, attorney David Schoen—who has represented both Epstein and Donald Trump—claimed that the nation’s ongoing fascination with the scandal was an invention of “competing agendas” on both sides of the political aisle.

“Just explain this to me because you, again, you’re a former Epstein lawyer,” Szish said. “Why, then, are people so obsessed? And I’m not just talking about one side of the party or on one side of party lines or others. Overall, people are obsessed. What will it take to get this story—I’m just going to say to go away because it doesn’t seem like there’s anything there?”

But Schoen’s response included an unexpected dig at some of the president’s longest allies.

“On the left, New York Times and the Democratic Party, the hypocrisy is outrageous, as I’ve said, but they want to continue to sow as much dissension as they can and distract from the accomplishments of the Trump administration,” Schoen said.

“On the other side, you’ve got, you know, Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, conspiracy theorists, who will never be satisfied by anything,” he continued. “If there were a smoking gun, [Ghislaine] Maxwell says, for example, that some young woman was with, fill in the blank, some famous and wealthy person. They’ll say, well, there must be more. That can’t be all of it.”

Greene has not taken kindly to the Trump administration’s lack of transparency surrounding the Epstein files. So far, the longtime QAnon conspiracist has attacked Trump and 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.

“If you tell the base of people, who support you, of deep state treasonous crimes, election interference, blackmail, and rich powerful elite evil cabals, then you must take down every enemy of The People,” Greene wrote on X earlier this month. “If not. The base will turn and there’s no going back.

“Dangling bits of red meat no longer satisfies,” she continued. “They want the whole steak dinner and will accept nothing else.”

Speaking with reporters last week, Greene claimed that “almost 100 percent” of the call volume at her office has been inquiries about Epstein since the start of the month, when the Justice Department released a memo saying there was no Epstein “client list.”

In Trump’s attempt to subdue mounting anger from his base over the Epstein fiasco, he has instead pushed MAGA conservatives toward an uncomfortable choice: Either trust the new narrative cooked up by Epstein’s associates, such as his attorney or longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell, or side with the Republicans who have since denounced Trump as a liar.

Senior Justice Department official Emil Bove is the subject of yet another whistleblower complaint, this time alleging that he lied to lawmakers during his Senate confirmation hearing last month.

The Washington Post reviewed documentation that conflicts with statements Donald Trump’s former lawyer made before the Senate Judiciary Committee about a Justice Department prosecution. The Post has chosen to withhold details to protect the identity of the whistleblower.

Two other Justice Department whistleblowers have claimed that Bove told subordinates that they may need to ignore court orders blocking the mass removal of immigrants under the Alien Enemies Act.

One of those whistleblowers was Erez Reuveni, a former DOJ prosecutor who was removed from his position after openly admitting his frustration that the government had “made a choice here to produce no evidence” to support its allegations about Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

“Bove stated that DOJ would need to consider telling the courts ‘fuck you’ and ignore any such court order,” he wrote in his report.

Bove’s confirmation hearing took a rough turn after he repeatedly refused to discuss his work at the DOJ, supplying scant responses to some questions and claiming deliberative process privilege for others.

When asked about his involvement in an alleged scheme to launch a criminal investigation with former interim D.C. Attorney Ed Martin to seize Environmental Protection Agency greenhouse gas reduction funds, Bove balked.

“I’m not aware of such a ‘plan,’ but I did participate in the matter that you are referring to,” Bove replied. When pressed, he said simply, “My answer is limited to, ‘I participated in the matter,’” a phrase he repeated over and over again.

The Department of Homeland Security lied about the protests against last month’s immigration raids in Los Angeles, and now its cases against protesters are getting tossed out.

A report from The Guardian Monday highlighted the shameful discrepancies between some of DHS’s claims and the reality of the unrest in Los Angeles. Inaccurate and misleading testimonies from law enforcement officers have resulted in the dismissal of eight felony cases against protesters and three cases against people who allegedly interfered with immigration raid arrests.

Just two weeks after they were filed, prosecutors filed a motion to dismiss the charges against four people, “in the interest of justice,” due to a litany of errors that were discovered in the officers’ testimony.

Social media footage documenting the arrest of two sisters, Ashley and Joceline Rodriguez, directly contradicted the criminal complaint submitted by DHS that Ashley had pushed an officer. Instead, footage showed that the officer had pushed her. The complaint said that Joceline had “grabbed the arm” of one of the officers detaining her sister, but the video shows she only briefly touched it.

Key witness Eduardo Mejorado, a border patrol agent, admitted that he had misstated the order of events. Mejorado said that three men, Christian Cerna-Camacho, Brayan Ramos-Brito, and Jose Mojica, engaged officers in response to the arrests of the Rodriguez sisters. In fact, the sisters were detained after the three men.

A video presented by defense showed an officer pushing Ramos-Brito, who had allegedly “pushed [an] agent in the chest.” Mojica, who allegedly “used his body to physically shield” Ramos-Brito and then “elbowed” an officer, was taken to the ground with Ramos-Brito. The video did not show Mojica assault the officers.

Cerna-Camacho, who allegedly made threatening remarks against immigration officers, still faces pending charges, but their lawyers have argued that the case must be dismissed because the indictment listed the wrong name.

Of the nine cases alleging that protesters assaulted law enforcement officers and impeded them from doing their jobs, seven have already been dismissed by prosecutors. The DOJ has filed lower-level misdemeanors against six of the defendants in six of the dismissed felony cases.

These glaring errors should be setting off alarm bells for careful readers, as DHS officials have taken to vastly overstating the rate of assaults against its officers and using it as justification for militarizing Donald Trump’s deportation scheme. With a little scrutiny, their claims tend to fall apart. Already, multiple grand juries have refused to indict protesters arrested during the anti-ICE demonstrations, sending Trump’s lead prosecutor shrieking to high heaven.