Top Election Denier Had Key Role in FBI’s Georgia Election Office Raid

The Department of Justice lawyer behind the FBI raid on a Georgia county’s election operations center used to work under a state attorney general who sought to overturn the 2020 election results. 

The sealed search warrant that authorized a federal raid Wednesday at the Fulton County election office was proffered by Thomas Albus, the interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri, and signed by Magistrate Judge Catherine Salinas.

Albus previously worked at the Missouri attorney general’s office as the first assistant to then–Attorney General Eric Schmitt while Schmitt actively worked to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Schmitt was elected to the Senate in 2022.  

In December 2020, when Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit attempting to convince the Supreme Court to toss the election results from three Biden-won states, Schmitt’s office filed an amicus brief supporting his effort and drummed up support from 17 other Republican attorneys general. 

Years later, the second-in-command from that same office has allowed the federal government to play out President Donald Trump’s ultimate revenge fantasy on Georgia, where he has baselessly claimed the election was stolen from him. 

At a press conference Thursday, local officials said that they had not received a full copy of the search warrant, and were still not aware of where the seized records had been taken or why. Seven hundred boxes of election-related records were seized in the raid, according to Sherri Allen, chair of the Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections. 

America is tiring of its ICE-friendly politicians.

Wyoming Representative Harriet Hageman faced hostile blowback from a crowd at Casper College Tuesday evening, who so furiously demanded answers from the MAGA lawmaker regarding ICE agents killing Alex Pretti and Renee Good that they effectively jeered her out of the assembly hall.

“I’m a student here at CC, and I was here at the last town hall back in August. You mentioned Laken Riley,” a male student said, referring to the 22-year-old who was murdered in 2024 by a Venezuelan immigrant. “However, you did not mention today either of the people who were killed in Minnesota recently. Why is that?”

The question elicited uproar from the crowd, footage published by WyoFile showed. One older man shouted, “shot 10 times in the back,” referring to the number of times agents shot Pretti.

“When I was speaking in August I was describing the Laken Riley Act that we had passed earlier in the year,” Hageman responded before the student cut her off.

“That’s not the question. Why haven’t you mentioned either of the people killed in Minnesota?” he pressed.

“Let me answer the question. I spoke about Laken Riley because it was one of the bills that we passed. I haven’t talked about what’s happening in Minnesota today,” Hageman continued.

But that set off the crowd again.

“Yeah, why is that?” the student demanded. “Why haven’t you said that you condemn the violence or given condolences to the families of the victims?”

Several people in the crowd then shouted out other ICE-related issues that they wanted Hageman to address, such as how the agency appears to be the administration’s “secret police.”

“Woah, OK,” Hageman said, before the student insisted again that she explain her silence regarding the ongoing state-sponsored violence in Minnesota.

“So I think what has happened in Minnesota is a terrible tragedy for the woman and the man who were killed,” Hageman said.

Casper resident Allyse Taylor followed up on the pressure, asking why Hageman had not spoken up about the Fourth Amendment violations by ICE and Customs and Border Protection officers breaking into homes without warrants.

“I’m not sure that I trust your facts,” Hageman spat back, causing the crowd to boo at her.

“It is all over the internet. What do you have to say about that constitutional violation?” Taylor asked.

“I think that I have to look at the investigation,” Hageman responded. “If there were violations of someone’s constitutional rights, there is redress.”

“Then why is there no redress?” Taylor said. “Why are you not calling for transparency with what these people are doing? ICE, DHS, Border Patrol—they are violating people’s constitutional rights, they are killing American citizens in the streets, and you are doing nothing. You are not saying a single solitary thing to support constituents or support the American people.”

Taylor continued: “As a constitutional lawyer, you should be incensed. Why are you not?”

Hageman then proceeded to gather her papers and folders, wave, and walk away from the lectern as her constituents called her “chickenshit.”

Eight Republican senators joined every Democrat on Thursday to block a government spending bill, as a dispute continues over funding for the Department of Homeland Security.

The bill fell short of the 60-vote margin needed to clear debate, 45–55, setting up the possibility of a government shutdown on Saturday. The legislation included $64.4 billion for DHS, which oversees Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Senate Democrats are reportedly negotiating with the Trump administration on restrictions to ICE and aggressive deportations.

“This is a moment of truth,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said just before the vote. “Congress must act to rein in ICE and end the violence.”

Democrats are trying to have the DHS funding removed from the bill while they negotiate with the GOP and White House. They’re seeking to ban federal immigration officers from wearing masks, to mandate body cameras and visible identification, to end random immigration sweeps, to require judicial warrants for stops and searches, and to require federal agents to follow the same use-of-force standards as local law enforcement.

“No more secret police,” Schumer said. “The Republican majority must step up to the plate. Republicans in Congress cannot allow this violent status quo to continue. They must work with Democrats on legislation—real legislation.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune reportedly joined the “no” votes for procedural purposes so that if there’s a deal, the bill can be introduced quickly.

Here are the Republicans who voted “no”:

1. Ted Budd (North Carolina)
2. Ron Johnson (Wisconsin)
3. Mike Lee (Utah)
4. Ashley Moody (Florida)
5. Rand Paul (Kentucky)
6. Rick Scott (Florida)
7. Tommy Tuberville (Alabama)
8. John Thune (Oklahoma)

The Melania documentary’s monumental flop has some industry professionals wondering why Amazon accepted the project in the first place.

The e-commerce giant’s film studio shelled out a whopping $40 million to make the motion picture, which was produced by Melania Trump herself and directed by accused Hollywood abuser and profoundly canceled filmmaker Brett Ratner.

Some $35 million was set aside to promote Melania, nearly double the initial budget, squeezing advertisements into television screens across the country and paying top dollar for highly coveted commercial slots in the NFL playoff games.

Altogether, Melania is the most expensive documentary film ever produced, with a rollout more akin to that of a mid-grade blockbuster than a nonfiction portrait.

Before the first lady’s film was signed—with much gusto by the likes of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and CEO Andy Jassy—some of the most expensive documentary productions included Planet Earth, a groundbreaking portrait of the globe’s various ecosystems that cost the BBC roughly $25 million, and The World at War, a sweeping 26-part documentary series that covered hundreds of interviews and cost $17.6 million.

But even those examples are far and away from the typical price tag on a documentary. Super Size Me, which grossed over $20.6 million at the worldwide box office, cost just $65,000 to produce.

That’s caused some in Hollywood to question why Melania was made in the first place.

“This has to be the most expensive documentary ever made that didn’t involve music licensing,” Ted Hope, the former co-head of movies at Amazon Studios, told The New York Times. “How can it not be equated with currying favor or an outright bribe? How can that not be the case?”

And yet the film has hardly attracted any eyes whatsoever. The documentary has been advertised as a fly-on-the-wall depiction of Melania’s life in the days preceding her husband’s second presidential inauguration—a topic that, judging by ticket sales, interests no one.

So far, Melania has struggled to fill seats, so much so that the realization sparked a social media trend this week in which users post their local AMC or Regal Cinema’s seat availability for the film’s premiere. Across the country, theaters are empty.

The situation has become so dire that conservative groups have gotten involved, buying out entire blocks of seats or even whole screenings in a flagrant effort to save face for the president.

“This isn’t organic demand,” one GOP insider told gossip columnist Rob Shuter’s Naughty but Nice substack. “It’s about optics. Empty theaters look terrible.”

Craigslist ads have popped up, with at least one offering to pay people as much as $50 to attend screenings of the film, though it’s not clear if the listings are legitimate or a joke.

“If the GOP didn’t buy the seats, no one would,” another source told Shuter.

Border czar Tom Homan seems to think that free speech is the reason federal agents shot and killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis.

“I begged for the last two months on TV … for the rhetoric to stop. I said in March: If the rhetoric didn’t stop, there’s gonna be bloodshed. And there has been,” Homan said at his introductory press conference in Minneapolis Thursday morning, as he takes over Operation Metro Surge from Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino.

“I wish I wasn’t right. I don’t wanna see anybody die. Not officers, not members of the community, and not the targets of our operations,” Homan continued. “For the people out there who don’t like what ICE is doing—if you want certain laws reformed, then take it up with Congress.”

The Trump administration’s framing of this situation is bizarre. It seems impossible for them to grasp that marching into Minneapolis with thousands of masked federal agents, doing door-to-door raids, and killing two people might elicit some resistance from the community. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, and protesters being “mean” to agents is not the reason two people are dead. And if we’re so focused on rhetoric, what about the slanderous things that President Trump, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, and Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino have said about Renee Good and Alex Pretti? That rhetoric is far more incendiary than the response from the community.

Senior Trump administration officials have held meetings with the Alberta Prosperity Project, a fringe separatist group that seeks to split the province away from Canada. 

The Financial Times reports that State Department officials have met representatives from the group in Washington, D.C., three times in the last nine months. The group’s counsel, Jeff Rath, told the publication, “We’re meeting very, very senior people leaving our meetings to go directly to the Oval Office. 

“The U.S. is extremely enthusiastic about a free and independent Alberta,” Rath said. 

The Times, citing unnamed sources, said that the group was hoping for another meeting in February to request $500 billion in credit to prop up the province if an independence referendum, which has not yet been called, were to pass. The State Department confirmed the meetings to the publication but said, “No commitments were made,” and a White House official added that “no such support, or any other commitments, was conveyed.”

Last week, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent played up Albertan independence, calling the oil-rich province “a natural partner for the U.S.”

“They have great resources. The Albertans are very independent people. Rumor that they may have a referendum on whether they want to stay in Canada or not,” Bessent said to right-wing podcaster Jack Posobiec.  

Podcaster and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon discussed Alberta breaking away from Canada in an episode in November, saying that President Trump sees Canada like Ukraine. 

“The Chinese and the Russians are up there and they see the undefended northern territories of Canada, they’re going to take a bite,” Bannon said. His guest, right-wing commentator Brandon Weichert, expounded further. 

“I know a lot of the people in charge of the Alberta separatist movement,” Weichert said. “The Albertans are ready to vote in the next six months. They’re going to get out of the Canadian union. They’re going to become an independent country. We’re going to recognize them, and that’s going to put them on the pathway to becoming the fifty-first state.” 

In reality, polls show that the majority of Albertans would prefer to stay in Canada. Canadian leaders have denounced the APP’s meetings, with British Columbia Premier David Eby calling them “treason” and Ontario Premier Doug Ford saying that “going behind Canada’s back and negotiating is unacceptable.”

The U.S. is growing increasingly unpopular in Canada, thanks to Trump’s threats to make them the “fifty-first state.” The idea that his team would try to engineer a breakup of the country will only worsen the relationship, especially considering that Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is already seeking to make Canada financially independent from the U.S.

Some people marry to obtain U.S. citizenship, while others undergo a complex and pricey naturalization process. For Nicki Minaj, it was a simple matter of panhandling the Trump administration.

The Trinidadian rapper turned MAGA activist has been begging for citizenship for months. In one particularly skin-crawling social media missive in November, Minaj whimpered to “Papi Trumpo” in a bid for “honorary citizenship.”

On Wednesday, her dreams came true.

Shortly after appearing beside the president for the unveiling of Trump Accounts—the White House’s attempt to slyly privatize Social Security—Minaj posted an image of her reward: a newly minted Trump “Gold Card” granting her legal residency and a pathway to citizenship.

“Residency? Residency? The cope is coping,” Minaj posted Wednesday night alongside an image of the Chucky doll flashing a middle finger. “Finalizing that citizenship paperwork as we speak as per MY wonderful, gracious, charming President.

“Gold Trump card free of charge,” she added.

For months, Donald Trump and his team pitched his Amex-inspired “gold card” as a replacement for the EB-5 visa program, which gives foreign investors an opportunity to gain permanent residency and bypass the traditional visa system. But the $5 million price tag on the slice of plastic has sparked significant backlash, as did its questionable legality.

The “gold card” program officially launched in late 2025, but the novel citizenship framework has come under fire by immigration experts, who have scrutinized the Trump administration’s decision to bypass standard congressional immigration law.

Minaj took a hard-right turn toward MAGA avenue three months ago, when her vaccine skepticism—which by then had become a hallmark of the far right—veered into a larger conservative ideology.

Since then, her “everything must go” sellout spree has morphed her into an administration mouthpiece. She has reposted White House messaging attacking trans kids, spoken at the United Nations on behalf of the Trump administration, chastised her own LGBTQ+ fans (after initially using her allyship to propel her music career), joined Erika Kirk at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest, and attacked Democrats with the White House’s talking points.

National leadership at the Department of Veterans Affairs initially blocked a memorial planned for Alex Pretti, the 37-year-old ICU nurse who was shot and killed by federal agents in Minneapolis.

In an email obtained by The New Republic, officials at the Minneapolis VA claimed that “local leadership was instructed to pause the memorial” for Pretti, initially scheduled for Tuesday at noon.

“So in other words, somebody told our people, ‘Back off,’” said one Minneapolis VA employee, who spoke with TNR under the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.

“Our local leadership I think is very good, they’re quite sensitive, I mean they’re really trying to do that. But they’re getting it from above,” the employee said. “I mean, there’s supposed to be a memorial service yesterday, they’re told to postpone it? I mean, come on! That doesn’t seem consistent with how they usually respond.”

“As an institution, we owe it to him,” the employee said. “And I think the formal ritualized events help some people.”

Two employees also told The Washington Post that a memorial for Pretti had been initially blocked, but another service is scheduled for next week.

In response to an inquiry Wednesday about why the first memorial was canceled, Minneapolis VA Medical Center spokesperson Melanie Nelson told TNR that the organization was still working to schedule an event.

“VA employees are welcome to memorialize Alex Pretti in their own way as long as they are respectful and it does not interfere with their work duties,” the statement said.

At the Minneapolis VA, the decision to cancel Pretti’s memorial was another blow in an ongoing struggle with national leadership under the Trump administration. During the Biden administration, “we felt like the national office was there to support us in our mission as opposed to hamper us,” the first employee told TNR.

While VA Secretary Doug Collins has reportedly not issued an agency-wide statement about Pretti’s killing, he did blame Democratic leadership for his death on social media. “Such tragedies are unfortunately happening in Minnesota because of state and local officials’ refusal to cooperate with the federal government to enforce the law and deport dangerous illegal criminals,” Collins said on X Sunday.

“Really, that kind of got to me,” the employee said, referring to Collins’s statement. “And that’s our leader at the highest level.”

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz revealed President Donald Trump brought up the military operation in Venezuela when discussing the situation in Minnesota.

Speaking to MS NOW Wednesday night, Walz described his conversation with Trump earlier this week, which the president had claimed was a “very good call.” Walz had a different take.

“He told me that he doesn’t understand what’s wrong with Minnesota. ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with you people,’” Walz recounted.

“And he told me, ‘Well look, Tim, we did this in New Orleans, we did it in Louisville. There’s no problems.’ And I said, ‘You didn’t kill anybody in Louisville or New Orleans, and the operation here looks very different from that.’

“And then he told me it was successful in Venezuela,” Walz said.

“I’m not sure what gave him the indication that at this point in time, what’s happening to my state, that I’m interested in Venezuela. But he told me how well that went,” he said, adding that the remark was “strange.”

“He saw an operation in Venezuela against a foreign nation in the same context he saw an operation against a U.S. state, a U.S. city.”

Either the president was doing what he always does, flitting from one subject to another in order to inflate his own ego—or he was attempting to intimidate Walz by invoking a violent regime change.

The immigration enforcement operations in Louisville and New Orleans were incredibly different from the large-scale occupation in Minnesota. In Louisville, the operation lasted less than a week, and in New Orleans, only 200 federal immigration officers were dispatched. In the Twin Cities, at least 3,000 federal immigration agents have been dispatched for multiple weeks, resulting in two American citizens being killed in broad daylight.

For some reason, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was at the FBI’s raid at an election office in Fulton County, Georgia, Wednesday.

Gabbard was photographed at the raid while boxes of documents (and ballots) seized by the bureau were being loaded onto trucks. Authorities had a search warrant for the raid related to Trump’s long-debunked allegations of fraud in the 2020 presidential election. Gabbard’s job deals with foreign intelligence, so her presence doesn’t seem to make sense.

Democratic Senator Mark Warner, the ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, issued a statement questioning what exactly she was doing there.

“There are only two explanations for why the Director of National Intelligence would show up at a federal raid tied to Donald Trump’s obsession with losing the 2020 election,” Warner said.

“Either Director Gabbard believes there was a legitimate foreign intelligence nexus—in which case she is in clear violation of her obligation under the law to keep the intelligence committees ‘fully and currently informed’ of relevant national security concerns—or she is once again demonstrating her utter lack of fitness for office that she holds by injecting the nonpartisan intelligence community she is supposed to be leading into a domestic political stunt designed to legitimize conspiracy theories that undermine our democracy.”

Gabbard may have been there in an attempt to legitimize a conspiracy theory popular in right-wing circles (and the Trump administration) that the Venezuelan government was involved in a plot to overthrow the 2020 election. The Justice Department has been investigating the false claim, debunked in a Delaware court in 2023, since November. Is the Trump administration attempting to create a case out of thin air to validate the president’s 2020 election lies?