Fraudster Trump Pardoned Is Going Back to Prison … for Fraud

A Ponzi schemer who Donald Trump saved from prison is headed right back to the clink.

Eliyahu “Eli” Weinstein was sentenced Friday to 37 years in prison in a New Jersey courtroom, capping the career criminal’s third fraud conviction.

Prosecutors argued that Weinstein, who in recent years went by the alias Mike Konig to hide his criminal history, milked roughly $35 million from dozens of investors who believed they were putting their money into Covid-19 masks, baby formula, and first aid kits for Ukraine, according to the indictment.

It was a crime that Weinstein never would have been able to cook up if the president hadn’t lifted him out of federal prison in 2021. At the time, Weinstein had served just eight years of a combined 24-year prison sentence for two fraud convictions—a real estate fraud scheme in which he utilized a portfolio of fake property investments to reel in $200 million from unsuspecting buyers, and another in which he duped dozens of investors into investing in Facebook just before the social media company went public (swindling at least one investor of $6.7 million).

For whatever reason, Trump decided Weinstein was the guy who deserved a get-out-of-jail-free card. The 51-year-old was a part of a whopping 143-person pardon the president issued the day before he left office in 2021. Other recipients of the unexpected clemency included former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, rapper Lil Wayne, and former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, who was sentenced to 28 years on corruption charges.

But Weinstein wasn’t ashamed of his behavior. In August 2022, he recalled that he “finagled, and Ponzied, and lied to people,” according to court documents. Shortly after he was released from prison, he started defrauding people again, orchestrating the Ponzi scheme that he was sentenced for last week.

U.S. District Judge Michael Shipp ruled that Weinstein must pay more than $44 million in restitution for his most recent offense, due immediately.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent struggled to sell President Donald Trump’s outrageous claims about how much money the United States is making from his trade deals.

During an interview on Fox News Tuesday night, host Brett Baier asked Bessent how much money Trump was bringing in through trade deals, corporate commitments, and tariff revenue.

“Well, the president uses the number ‘20 trillion’ in terms of total investments, and I think that those commitments are real,” Bessent replied, sounding slightly unsure.

He rattled off a few examples of major investments as part of trade deals with Japan and Korea, as well as a commitment from Apple, calling them “investments like we’ve never seen.” But the Treasury secretary offered no exact number, just the president’s own propaganda.

Bessent’s waffling answer could indicate that he knows how ridiculous that “20 trillion” claim actually is. The White House’s own investments website lists the total of all U.S. and foreign investments at only $9 trillion—but crucially, the Trump administration also misstated some investments.

They claimed that Japan had agreed to make a $1 trillion investment, when the most recent deal from July was for only a little more than half of that. The website claimed that Korea has pledged a $450 billion investment in U.S. energy products, when the number is actually $350 billion, made up of $200 billion in cash installments capped at $20 billion per year and another $150 for shipbuilding. Similarly, Apple has pledged to spend more than $500 billion, and the White House website bumped that up to $600 billion.

At the same time, tariff revenue for FY 2025 was only $195 billion, which is a significant increase from the year before, but doesn’t push that number anywhere near the $20 trillion Trump has claimed.

The Trump administration’s attempt to prosecute former FBI Director James Comey hit two major snags on Wednesday.

First, interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia Lindsey Halligan, who brought the indictment, admitted the entire grand jury did not vote on the final indictment—a shocking development. Instead, only two grand jurors reviewed the indictment before it was presented in court.

Earlier in the day, Justice Department lawyer Tyler Lemons, who is prosecuting the case, also told U.S. District Judge Michael Nachmanoff that someone in Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche’s office ordered him not to disclose whether career prosecutors in the Department of Justice authored a memo recommending that Comey should not be indicted. Lemons said that he was told he couldn’t disclose privileged information without permission.

“At this point, my position would be, whether there was a declination memo, is privileged,” Lemons said. “I don’t know in the world of documents there is a declination memo.”

Nachmanoff pressed Lemons on whether that actually meant that he was told not to say anything by someone in Blanche’s office, but Lemons wouldn’t elaborate.

“I hope you understand that I am trying to answer your questions,” said Lemons.

While Lemons refused to answer the question, ABC News reported in September that career prosecutors did in fact recommend against indicting Comey. This latest development suggests that Blanche, formerly Donald Trump’s personal attorney, is trying to keep that info from being part of the official record.

The indictment is being challenged by Comey for being politically motivated and tainted by government misconduct, and Comey seems to have a lot of evidence on his side. Halligan, who had no prosecutorial experience prior to this case, is only in her position because her predecessor, Erik Siebert, refused to indict Comey due to a lack of evidence. With each development in Comey’s trial, Siebert’s decision is looking more and more correct.

Donald Trump’s approval rating is at an all-time low for his second term, and the president has his old pal Jeffrey Epstein to thank—and those pesky grocery prices.

Only 38 percent of Americans approve of Trump’s performance in office, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll published Tuesday evening. That’s down a whopping nine points from Inauguration Day. But there’s still a far way to fall: Trump’s approval rating for his first term bottomed out at 33 percent.

Unsurprisingly, the Trump administration’s handling of the Epstein files seemed to be a particularly sore spot for respondents. Only 20 percent of Americans—including only 44 percent of Republicans—approved of how Trump has handled the case against the alleged sex trafficker. A whopping 70 percent of respondents, including 60 percent of Republicans, said that they believed the government was concealing information about Epstein’s clients.

After months of dismissing calls for more transparency as a Democratic “hoax,” Trump claimed Sunday that he was prepared to sign a bipartisan measure to force the release of all the government’s documents related to Epstein’s alleged sex trafficking.

The bill finally made its way to Trump’s desk Wednesday after being approved by the House and Senate, but it’s not clear that the president intends to sign it into law. House Speaker Mike Johnson suggested that Trump shared some of his so-called concerns about the unamended bill, indicating that Trump could still choose to veto the legislation.

Epstein wasn’t the only area of concern for Americans: Only 26 percent of respondents approved of Trump’s work managing the cost of living, down from 29 percent earlier this month.

After sweeping election victories for Democrats campaigning on the cost of living earlier this month, Trump ranted that he didn’t want to “hear about affordability.” And so far, it seems that the president’s renewed efforts to address Americans’ economic anxieties is simply to lie.

Trump has repeatedly claimed to have brought grocery prices down despite consumers experiencing the biggest price jump in more than three years, and pushed claims he has defeated Biden-era inflation even though it has steadily increased for the last five months in a row. Again, Trump has claimed that voter concerns were the result of a “con job” by Democrats. In reality, Trump’s tariffs and his crackdown on immigrants have significantly contributed to rising prices.

A January 6 rioter decided to lead a hate march Tuesday in Dearborn, Michigan, a city with a sizable Muslim and Arab American populace, and got punched in the face.

Jake Lang, who was pardoned by Donald Trump while facing 11 charges related to his actions at the Capitol in 2021, decided to hold his own march in the city while Michigan Republican gubernatorial candidate Anthony Hudson led a march of his supporters. Lang had a clear agenda in mind, holding a banner that read “Americans Against Islamification,” taunting counterprotesters with bacon, and threatening to burn the Quran.

One counterprotester decided that Lang needed to be taught a lesson, and, while pretending to march next to him, suddenly turned and punched a smiling Lang in the face. Lang tried to shrug it off, telling a throng of cameras, “I was punched harder by Capitol police officer ladies,” while the puncher ran away across a busy street.

Lang, who is running as a Republican for Marco Rubio’s vacated Senate seat in Florida, was accused of assaulting law enforcement with a deadly weapon and engaging in physical violence on restricted grounds at the Capitol over four years ago. He also tried to form his own paramilitary militia in 2021, and in his remarks on Tuesday, even expressed concern about a growing non-white American population.

Dearborn has been targeted by anti-Muslim and anti-Arab protesters before. The latest protests came after Hudson claimed that Dearborn was under sharia law, only to walk back his claims after visiting the city and meeting Muslims last week. The stated goal of his march was to promote unity, but it seems to have attracted people like Lang, a bigot with a history of violence. Unfortunately for Lang, his actions led to a violent punch in the face.

Senate Republicans are still planning to take advantage of a provision of the shutdown-ending bill that would allow them to rake in cash from the federal government.

At the close of the 44-day federal hiatus, the caucus quietly slipped in a self-serving resolution that granted senators the ability to pursue financial compensation from the Justice Department—up to $500,000 each—if they had their phone records seized by former special counsel Jack Smith as he investigated Donald Trump’s 2020 election conspiracy.

Despite passing the measure, the House adamantly opposed the detail: House Speaker Mike Johnson has signaled his support for an effort to repeal it altogether. As of last week, it wasn’t clear whether anyone in the Senate actually planned to pursue the new retribution pathway, save for Senator Lindsey Graham—but the upper chamber’s initial resistance appears to have ebbed in recent days.

“The House is going to do what they’re going to do with it. It didn’t apply to them,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune told CNN Tuesday. “There’s a statute that obviously was violated, and what this does is enables people who are harmed, in this case, United States senators, to have a private right of action against the weaponization by the Justice Department.”

When asked whether he believed Senate Republicans would actually line their pockets with U.S. taxpayer funds, Thune said he wasn’t convinced “anybody was talking about taking the money.”

“But I think the penalty is in place to ensure that in the future … there is a remedy in place,” Thune told the network.

Eight known Senate Republicans had their phone records subpoenaed as part of Smith’s inquiry: Senators Marsha Blackburn, Lindsey Graham, Bill Hagerty, Josh Hawley, Ron Johnson, Cynthia Lummis, Dan Sullivan, and Tommy Tuberville. Of that lot, five indicated late last week that they have no intentions to utilize the controversial provision.

“This fight is not about the money; it is about holding the left accountable for the worst weaponization of government in our nation’s history,” Blackburn told CBS News, signaling her support to change the language of the resolution. “If leftist politicians can go after President Trump and sitting members of Congress, they will not hesitate to go after American citizens.”

Smith’s team from the case has clarified that it was not spying on senators and, in fact, was well within its rights to request the phone records. Two of the team members issued a letter in October stating that they had requested phone toll records, which only show incoming and outgoing phone numbers, as well as call duration—not the contents of the calls.

Former Treasury Secretary and Jeffrey Epstein confidant Larry Summers has resigned from the board of Sam Altman’s OpenAI company amid renewed scrutiny caused by the release of his countless emails to the disgraced sex offender.

“I am grateful for the opportunity to have served, excited about the potential of the company, and look forward to following their progress,” Summers said in a statement. He was also cut from his temporary guest columnist position at The New York Times. Meanwhile, Harvard announced Tuesday that it has begun an investigation into Summers, who said he will still teach at the university.

Summers and Epstein were contacting each other back and forth frequently like high schoolers in 2018 and 2019, when both men were in their sixties.

“We talked on phone. Then ‘I can’t talk later’. Dint think I can talk tomorrow’. I said what are you up to. She said ‘I’m busy’. I said awfully coy u are,” Summers wrote to Epstein, seeking advice on the young female “mentee” he was trying to seduce at the time (he was married then, and still is). “And then I said. ‘Did u really rearrange the weekend we were going to be together because guy number 3 was coming.’ She said no his schedule changed after we changed our plans.”

“Shes smart. making you pay for past errors. ignore the daddy im going to go out with the motorcycle guy, you reacted well.. annoyed shows caring., no whining showed strentgh,” Epstein wrote back, just months before his death in prison.

Summers has addressed these new revelations in a “statement of regret.”

“Some of you will have seen my statement of regret expressing my shame with respect to what I did in communication with Mr. Epstein,” Summers told a lecture hall full of students at Harvard earlier this week, stating that he’d be stepping away from other public engagements. “But I think it’s very important to fulfill my teaching obligations.”

This is a former treasury secretary and high-powered Harvard professor who was asking Epstein—a known sex offender by then—for girl advice. Some think he should be far away from the undergraduate students he’s currently teaching too.

“If he had so little ability to distance himself from Jeffrey Epstein even after all that was publicly known about Epstein’s sex offenses involving underage girls, then Summers cannot be trusted to advise our nation’s politicians, policymakers, and institutions—or teach a generation of students at Harvard or anywhere else,” Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren said on Monday.

Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson—who was so set on blocking the release of the Epstein files that he wouldn’t swear in Adelita Grijalva—says he has “concerns” about Congress’s decision to open the files up.

“Any reaction to Leader Thune releasing the bill without adding amendments or changing it?” MS NOW’s Mychael Schnell asked Johnson, hours after the Senate passed the bill on Tuesday.

“I am deeply disappointed in this outcome. I think … I was just told that Chuck Schumer rushed it to the floor and put it out there preemptively. It needed amendments, I just spoke to the president about that. We’ll see what happens.”

“So do you think he may veto it? You say you spoke to the president—”

“I’m not saying that—”

“Is he supportive of it in its current form?”

“We both have concerns about it, so we’ll see.”

It’s unclear what exactly Johnson has to be worried about (aside from more allegations and potentially incriminating references to President Trump, of course).

“Yesterday the House did the People’s will by voting overwhelmingly to release the Epstein files, overcoming Mike Johnson’s five month long obstruction,” Representative Thomas Massie, the original Republican co-sponsor of the discharge petition behind the bill, wrote in response to Johnson. “His last hope was that the Senate would insert a loophole to kill the intent of the bill, but the Senate was having none of it.”

From “the files are on my desk” to this, the GOP’s handling of the Epstein case has been completely botched from the jump. Now, Johnson is hand-wringing about amendments and concerns while the majority of Congress—and the country—is longing for any semblance of truth or transparency. What amendments would Johnson possibly introduce that would get in the way of that?

“I cannot believe they took all the Goodwill they had after the election and called us stupid for wanting the files then trying to primary two Republicans to then in the end release the files anyway,” one user replied to Massie. “MAGA needs a better PR firm.”

“Insane, isn’t it?” Massie replied.

The Trump administration has not hired the best people to work for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. One of them was arrested for sex trafficking as part of a three-day sting earlier this month.

The man is an auditor for ICE, and was one of 16 men arrested who were allegedly attempting to solicit a 17-year-old girl in Bloomington, Minnesota. The ICE employee, 41-year-old Alexander Steven Back, could face federal charges, said Bloomington Police Chief Booker Hodges at a news conference on Tuesday.

Back, a resident of Robbinsdale, Minnesota, responded to a fake online ad “offering prostitution services,” and wasn’t dissuaded when an undercover officer pretending to be 17 years old wrote, “U ok if I’m a lil younger than my ad says … just wanna be honest.”

“Sure,” Back responded, according to charging documents.

“K cause I am 17 and one guy got hella mad at me,” the undercover officer, going by the name “Bella,” replied.

“Bella” told Back that she was 17 a second time, and then gave him a Bloomington address, where police arrested him and took his phone.

“When he was arrested, he said, ‘I’m ICE, boys,’” Hodges said. “Well, unfortunately for him, we locked him up.”

Under the Trump administration, ICE’s hiring has become so haphazard that many people aren’t properly vetted, with some being turned away due to disqualifying criminal backgrounds or failed drug tests. Many end up being terminated because they don’t meet academic or physical standards. Back’s case seems to show that the agency is attracting the wrong kinds of people.

Indiana’s Senate has decided not to meet until January, signaling that redistricting will not be on the state’s legislative agenda this year.

The decision is in direct defiance of an order issued earlier this year by Donald Trump, who met privately with Indiana Republicans in August as part of a pressure campaign to maximize GOP House seats before the 2026 midterms.

The White House visits were, apparently, ineffective at changing the minds of state lawmakers. The issue came down to a 29–18 vote Tuesday, with 19 Republicans joining 10 Democrats to effectively adjourn until next year.

But the elected officials’ anticipated rebuke didn’t minimize the president’s gaze: Indiana Governor Mike Braun has remained in Trump’s hot seat so far this week. The two reportedly had a “good conversation” on Monday, in which Trump reiterated that he expected the state Senate to vote to draw up new maps.

“Unfortunately, Senator Rod Bray was forced to partner with DEMOCRATS to block an effort by the growing number of America First Senators who wanted to have a vote on passing fair maps,” Braun wrote in a statement after the vote. “Now I am left with no choice other than to explore all options at my disposal to compel the State Senate to show up and vote.

“I will support President Trump’s efforts to recruit, endorse, and finance primary challengers for Indiana’s senators who refuse to support fair maps,” he added.

The other half of Indiana’s Congress was not on the same page, however. House Speaker Todd Huston told state lawmakers to keep the first two weeks of December clear for a potential redistricting vote, reported the Indiana Capital Chronicle.

The White House’s intense focus on this issue illustrates just how nervous the GOP is about maintaining its razor-thin majority in Congress: Indiana holds nine seats in the U.S. House—seven of those are already held by Republicans.

Trump issued similar directives for a handful of other red states, including Missouri, Ohio, Florida, and Texas, though some of those redistricting efforts have also crumbled. After facing similar fire—including legal threats—from the Trump administration, a federal judge threw out Texas’s gerrymandered congressional maps earlier Tuesday, ruling that there was “substantial evidence” the state had “racially gerrymandered” its 2025 maps at the president’s direction.