Lindsey Graham Blocks Repeal of Payout That Could Get Him Millions

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham believes that the government owes him restitution for accessing his phone records while investigating Donald Trump’s actions on January 6, 2021.

As part of the budget bill passed to fund the government earlier this month, a provision was passed allowing senators who had their phone records accessed by the government without their knowledge to sue the Justice Department. Senators would be able to win $500,000 of taxpayer money per violation. Many members of Congress found this abhorrent, and this week the House voted to repeal the provision. Graham was incensed and blocked the repeal when it came to the Senate.

“I’m going to sue Biden’s DOJ and Jack Smith, I’m going to sue Verizon, it’s going to be a hell of a lot more than $500,000,” Graham said on the Senate floor Friday, referring to the special counsel investigating Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election.

It’s petty, corrupt, and vindictive for Graham to demand that the government pay him for being one of eight Republican senators whose phone records were subpoenaed by Smith’s team. The bill is specifically written to be retroactive to 2022 to help them out. Even Republicans in the House see the whole thing as corrupt.

“What they did is wrong,” said Republican Representative Austin Scott about the provision. “This should not be in this piece of legislation, and they can say it’s about good governance all they want to. When they made it retroactive, all of a sudden it was no longer about good governance. There’s actually a list of people that know they will get paid as soon as this thing is signed.”

Embattled Republican Representative Cory Mills was caught with sex workers on an unofficial mission to Afghanistan in 2021, when he was still a congressional candidate. 

Mills was traveling with a group to Afghanistan to save Americans after former President Biden’s withdrawal from the country left the Taliban in power. On their way, the group stopped in Tbilisi, Georgia, where Mills was caught in a hallway with sex workers, leaving the group he traveled with irate, NOTUS reports. The group then decided to part ways with him, and he appeared to go to Afghanistan on his own.

The congressman made no mention of the incident, instead framing himself as a hero and attacking the State Department for attempting to take any credit for the evacuation.

“This is an attempt to save face by the administration for the Americans they left behind. This is a woman with three children from age 15 all the way down to 2 years old,” Mills told Fox News Digital then. “And they did nothing to try to expedite this.… But at the very last minute, you have these ‘senior officials’ at the State Department trying to claim credit for this, like, ‘Oh yeah, look what we’ve done.’”

Whenever Mills is in the news, it tends to be for some kind of scandal. This year, five of his former service members accused him of “stolen valor,” saying he didn’t deserve a Bronze Star as he didn’t actually save their lives overseas and wasn’t even present at the event. 

Mills was also accused of assaulting an ex-girlfriend at his Washington, D.C., apartment, and in February saw his ex-girlfriend file a restraining order against him for  “harassment, threatening to release sexual videos, and to harm future boyfriends.”

And this week, the House Ethics Committee opened an investigation into Mills for “improperly solicited and/or received gifts, including in connection with privately sponsored officially-connected travel,” and allegations that he “received special favors by virtue of his position” and “engaged in misconduct with respect to allegations of sexual misconduct and/or dating violence.”

A report released by Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden on Thursday called for Congress to further investigate JP Morgan Chase over its ties to Jeffrey Epstein, one of the bank’s biggest clients, and his alleged sex-trafficking organization.

Before Epstein was arrested in September 2019, JPMorgan Chase reported only a handful of “suspicious activity reports” documenting roughly $4.3 million worth of transactions from his accounts between 2002 and 2016. After he was arrested, and subsequently died in prison, JPMorgan Chase filed “far more comprehensive” reports documenting an additional 5,000 wire transfers moving $1.3 billion in and out of Epstein’s accounts—a total that was 300 times greater than what was previously disclosed.

The report suggests that JPMorgan Chase executives waited to disclose his suspicious transactions to regulators in order “to continue working with Epstein,” even after he was terminated as a client in 2013 over money-laundering concerns. Citing newly unsealed emails, the report indicated this was done because of Epstein’s influence over billionaire Leon Black.

The report implicates multiple JPMorgan Chase executives, who apparently closely monitored the alleged sex trafficker’s accounts, reporting to CEO Jamie Dimon.

In March 2012, John Duffy, the former CEO of JPMorgan’s U.S. Private Bank, instructed Epstein on how to make large withdrawals from his account without raising alarms at the bank, newly unsealed emails showed. In August 2013, Mary Erdoes, the CEO of the wealth and asset management division of JPMorgan who remained in near constant contact with the alleged sex trafficker, “blessed” efforts to continue doing business with Epstein, according to the report.

Wyden said that the extent of the bank’s underreporting went “beyond a total compliance breakdown.”

“It’s impossible to believe the decisions that led to the coverup of Epstein’s financial transactions regarding his sex trafficking never reached the very top,” he wrote in a series of posts on X. “Given the scale of Epstein’s trafficking operation, it’s clear that many more powerful people were involved. My staff have seen a paper trail with their own eyes. Banks that helped enable him should be investigated. As should anybody involved in Epstein’s trafficking ring.”

Earlier this week, House Oversight Committee Chair Jamer Comer subpoenaed JPMorgan Chase for access to some of Epstein’s financial records.

On Tuesday, multiple congressional Democrats made a video reminding members of the military and intelligence community of their duty to the Constitution, not to President Trump.

The comments—made by military and intelligence veterans Senators Mark Kelly and Elissa Slotkin, and Representatives Jason Crow, Chris Deluzio, Maggie Goodlander, and Chrissy Houlahan—set the MAGAverse off. By Thursday, President Trump suggested they be charged with sedition and executed. And yet the Democratic lawmakers remained unfazed.

“We are veterans and national security professionals who love this country and swore an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. That oath lasts a lifetime, and we intend to keep it. No threat, intimidation, or call for violence will deter us from that sacred obligation,” they wrote in a joint statement posted by Kelly. “What’s most telling is that the President considers it punishable by death for us to restate the law. Our servicemembers should know that we have their backs as they fulfill their oath to the Constitution and obligation to follow only lawful orders. It is not only the right thing to do, but also our duty.” They signed it with a reminder: “Don’t Give Up the Ship!”

Kelly later responded personally to Trump adviser Stephen Miller’s claim that their comments are part of an “insurrection” and “a general call for rebellion.”

“I got shot at serving our country in combat, and I was there when your boss sent a violent mob to attack the Capitol,” Kelly wrote. “I know the difference between defending our Constitution and an insurrection, even if you don’t.”

Slotkin posted her own response.

“Earlier today President Trump threatened myself and a number of other service and veteran lawmakers with arrest, trial, and death, because he didn’t agree with a video we put out this week,” Slotkin said. “I swore an oath to the Constitution many times, most recently less than a year ago as a senator. To the Constitution—not to any one man, not to any one president.”

Here is their original message to troops:

ICE is claiming the computer ate its records the day after it was sued for abuse.

404 Media reports that after ICE’s Broadview Detention Center outside Chicago was sued October 30 for allegedly abusing detainees, the agency said that two weeks of video footage that could have shown how immigration detainees are treated in the facility was lost in a “system crash” on October 31.*

“The government has said that the data for that period was lost in a system crash apparently on the day after the lawsuit was filed,” one of the lawyers representing detainees, Alec Solotorovsky, said in a Thursday hearing about the footage, according to 404 Media. “That period we think is going to be critical … because that’s the period right before the lawsuit was filed.”

Earlier this week, the Department of Homeland Security said in court that the video footage was “irretrievably destroyed,” and on Thursday, government lawyers said that “we don’t have the resources” to keep preserving surveillance footage from the detention facility. In a seemingly flippant remark, the government’s attorneys suggested if the detainees’ lawyers provide “endless hard drives where we could save the information, that might be one solution.”

The idea that ICE doesn’t have resources to preserve video footage is absurd on its face, as the agency is receiving an astronomical amount of funding thanks to President Trump’s “big, beautiful bill.” Some $200 billion has been allocated to immigration enforcement, more than some countries allocate to their entire militaries, and at least some of that should be allocated to data preservation and I.T. maintenance.

Also, it seems too convenient for ICE to have had a system crash the day after they were sued. The detainees who filed the lawsuit claim that the ICE facility is rife with abusive treatment and poor living conditions. In response, the government hasn’t provided much information on the footage, directing attorneys to a company called Five by Five Management “that appears to be based out of a house,” said Solotorovsky.

“We tried to engage with the government through our IT specialist, and we hired a video forensic specialist,” he said, adding that the government specialist attorneys spoke to “didn’t really know anything beyond the basic specifications of the system. He wasn’t able to answer any questions about preservation or attempts to recover the data.”

Immigration enforcement under Trump seems to continuously flout the law, with little recourse available except for lawsuits. At best, legal action seems to only slow the Trump administration’s actions. Will the detainees in Broadview be able to overcome what looks like a government cover-up?

* This story has been updated with the correct location of the ICE detention center.

The U.S. Coast Guard is no longer going to consider the swastika a hate symbol. 

The Washington Post reports that a new policy will take effect next month at the military branch that will reclassify the swastika, used by the German Nazi Party and adopted as a global symbol of fascism and white supremacy, as “potentially divisive.” Other symbols being reclassified include the Confederate flag and nooses, although displaying the flag will still be banned.

Some historic displays or art with the Confederate flag will still be permitted, the Post reports. The new policy comes even though the Coast Guard isn’t part of the Department of Defense, under which Secretary Pete Hegseth has sought to overhaul standards on harassment and hazing. 

Instead, the Coast Guard falls under the Department of Homeland Security, but that hasn’t shielded the military branch from the Trump administration’s attempts to change military culture. On Donald Trump’s first day as president, he fired the first woman commandant at the Coast Guard, Admiral Linda Fagan, ostensibly for focusing too much on diversity initiatives. 

Days later, the new acting commandant, Admiral Kevin Lunday, suspended the Coast Guard’s hazing and harassment policy, which included the swastika in a “list of symbols whose display, presentation, creation, or depiction would constitute a potential hate incident.”

Both in his first and second terms, Trump has trafficked in racist tropes, and reclassifying the swastika may be an attempt to retain and attract people the military would have previously turned away. In any case, racism is becoming less and less of a dealbreaker for national service under Trump.  

Drama continues to follow interim U.S. Attorney and former Trump defense lawyer Lindsey Halligan, as she had a heated exchange with a federal judge who suggested she may be the president’s “puppet.”

Halligan spoke to the New York Post exclusively about the spat, which occurred during a hearing for former FBI Director and Trump administration legal target James Comey.

“Personal attacks—like Judge Nachmanoff referring to me as a ‘puppet’—don’t change the facts or the law,” she said. “The Judicial Canons require judges to be ‘patient, dignified, respectful, and courteous to litigants, jurors, witnesses, lawyers, and others with whom the judge deals in an official capacity’ … and to ‘act at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.’”

For what it’s worth, Judge Michael Nachmanoff never called her a puppet, and was asking the defense for clarification on their argument.

“So your view is that Ms. Halligan is a stalking horse or a puppet, for want of a better word, doing the president’s bidding,” he said, according to court files.

“Well, I don’t want to use language about Ms. Halligan that suggests anything other than she did what she was told to do,” the defense lawyer replied. Nachmanoff did not object.

Still, that was enough to set Halligan off, leading her to do a sit-down with a right-wing newspaper to speak directly about the judge presiding over the case she was actively prosecuting.

“Never have I ever … seen a sitting U.S. Attorney give an interview and make extrajudicial statements about a pending case,” Reuters’s Sarah Lynch wrote on X. “This is not customary for federal prosecutors. Usually DOJ only speaks through court filings.”

This isn’t the first issue Halligan has faced in the early days of her prosecution of Comey. On Monday, U.S. Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick said she made two “fundamental misstatements of law” to the grand jury, putting the entire case in jeopardy. And on Wednesday, Halligan told the court that only two grand jurors reviewed the Comey indictment before it was presented.

Aside from these flubs and unconventional media decisions, calling Halligan a “puppet,” even indirectly, isn’t too far off. The only reason the president’s former lawyer was awarded this position is because her predecessor, Erik Siebert, refused to indict Comey due to a lack of evidence.

The White House is falling neatly in line behind Donald Trump’s call to execute half a dozen Democratic lawmakers.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt practically snapped Thursday under a massive public backlash to the president’s dangerous language, accusing reporters during a press conference of inappropriately focusing on Trump’s comments instead of what made him upset. It wasn’t clear, however, if Leavitt was fully informed on the controversy, getting basic details about the situation incorrect.

“Let’s be clear about what the president is responding to, because many in this room want to talk about the president’s response but not what brought the president to respond in this way,” Leavitt said. “You have sitting members of the United States Congress who conspired together to orchestrate a video message to members of the United States military, to active-duty service members, to members of the National Security apparatus, encouraging them to defy the president’s lawful orders.”

Leavitt went on to accuse “three” members of Congress of having participated in the protest, though her count was wrong.

Six Democratic members of the House and Senate—a coalition of veterans and former national security professionals—posted a video on Facebook Tuesday, repeating the message to America’s military and intelligence communities that they “can” and “must … refuse illegal orders.” They made no reference to disobeying Trump directly, only reminding people to uphold the Constitution.

Those lawmakers were Representatives Jason Crow of Colorado, Chris Deluzio of Pennsylvania, Maggie Goodlander of New Hampshire, and Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania, as well as Senators Mark Kelly of Arizona and Elissa Slotkin of Michigan.

“The sanctity of our military rests on the chain of command, and if that chain of command is broken, it can lead to people getting killed, it can lead to chaos, and that’s what these members of Congress—who swore an oath to abide by the Constitution—are essentially encouraging,” Leavitt continued.

“These members knew what they were doing. They were leaning into their credentials … to signal to people serving under this commander in chief, Donald Trump, that you can defy him and you can betray your oath of office. That is a very, very dangerous message, and it perhaps is punishable by law.”

She then added, “I’m not a lawyer.”

Trump responded to the video Thursday by warning that “their words cannot be allowed to stand. SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR FROM TRAITORS!!! LOCK THEM UP???” He followed up on that Truth Social post an hour later by calling for their “DEATH.”

Despite the executive pressure, Democrats have refused to back down. In a joint statement Thursday, the same coalition of Democratic lawmakers reiterated that there was nothing illegal about reminding service members to “follow only lawful orders.”

“It is not only the right thing to do, but also our duty,” they wrote. “In these moments, fear is contagious, but so is courage. We will continue to lead and will not be intimidated.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt offered a truly pathetic defense Thursday for President Donald Trump calling a female reporter “piggy.”

During a press briefing, Leavitt was asked to explain what the president meant when he said, “Quiet, piggy” to Bloomberg reporter Catherine Lucey earlier this week. Lucey had asked him a question about Jeffrey Epstein while on Air Force One.

Presenting her own wild spin, Leavitt claimed Trump’s crude and sexist comment was him being “frank and open” with the press, and an example of behavior that was “a lot more respectful” than that of the previous administration.

“So, I think the president being frank and open and honest to your faces, rather than hiding behind your backs, is frankly a lot more respectful than what you saw in the last administration, when you had a president that lied to your face and then didn’t speak to you for weeks, and hid upstairs and didn’t take your questions,” Leavitt said. “So I think everyone in this room should appreciate the frankness and the openness that you get from President Trump on a near daily basis.”  

Leavitt’s right about one thing: This is completely normal behavior for Trump. The president has a well-documented history of berating female reporters who ask him tough questions, calling them “the worst” and “second-rate,” telling them “to be quiet” and that they “know nothing about nothing,” and saying that he doesn’t like their “attitude.”

A White House official responded earlier this week to the incident with Lucey, claiming that she had “behaved in an inappropriate and unprofessional way towards her colleagues on the plane.” When pressed on what specifically Lucey had done wrong, the White House did not respond.